 Okay. All right, so I will call the meeting to order at 1104 a.m. and I will hand that over to you, Richard. Okay, thank you. I will do my little speech and hang on a minute. Pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021 this meeting will be conducted by remote means. Members of the public who wish to access the meeting may do so in the through the Amherst, the Amherst town website www.amherst ma.gov. 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 proceedings in real time via technological means. In any event that we are unable to do so for reasons of economic hardship and despite past efforts we will post on the on the Amherst town website or I believe also YouTube on audio or video recording transcript or other comprehensive record of proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting. So I call the meeting to order. I also just want to make the statement that this meeting is being recorded by the town of Amherst and if any other persons is doing so at this time, please notify us immediately. Okay. Hearing none. We can do a roll call of members. So doing that, we have chair Richard Morse here. And I apologize for not knowing Lee and Ken you are both considered a clerk. Is that correct. So they are both members. Okay, so we have Lee Heinz. Yeah. And Ken. I don't want to say it again. Our grieves. Okay, 10 heart grieves. Yeah. Okay. Okay, so normally I would open the public comment at this time if there's any members of the public here, seeing that there are none. We will. We'll pass that by for now and if, if anyone from the public comes and likes would like to speak, we can open that at that time. So the next thing on the agenda is our motor vehicle excise. You know, it's not on our agenda is the minutes from last week. Oh, did it again. God. So we can. Do you guys normally read them out loud or do you just approve them because you've read them ahead of time. Gentlemen, if you have a chance to review them. Do we get the minutes. Yes. Yes. Okay. I don't recall. Go ahead if you guys from. I looked at them and they are seem to be fine. So I moved to approve the minutes of the last meeting. Hang on a second. The meeting, the minutes of the last meeting. The date for which was October 14, 2021. Second. All right. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. It was part of the package. Yeah. Okay. All right. Okay. All righty. So then moving on, we'll do the motor excise abatements. You all have a copy of those. There are three. We are looking at excise weeks, 10, 13, 2021. 22, 2021 in the amount of $2,995 and 36 cents. As you will see on your list, these are all. Yes. Can you share screen. Oh, yes. Teresa, do you have that up or do you want me to share? Um, hold on. That way we don't have to go back and forth. Absolutely. Um, while Teresa is getting those up, I'll just let you know that, um, all of these abatements have been, uh, approved. Um, they are, or, um, processed. They all had the proper paperwork, um, providing that they have, um, gotten rid of their vehicles and then either transferred or canceled their plates. I'm not an expert at sharing screens here. So bear with me. Sure. Sure. That's it's up. I think you want to, you're going to want to scroll down. I think. Yes. Got it. We see your email right now. Go back to where you were. What do you mean? Do you want me to, I can share if you don't mind. Yeah, I don't know what. Go back to what? We're looking. We're looking. I don't know what you're looking. I don't, you don't see my page. No, we see your email. Oh, you were on it. Okay. There you go. Is that better? Nope. We still see. Okay. Well, then you're going to need to do it, Kim, because I don't know what I'm doing wrong. There it is. There it is. Just go down. Keep going. There we go. There we go. So there is your, um, if you, Teresa, if you see the little arrow on the right hand side next to where it says request sign on the, um, middle of the screen. I don't know where you're talking about Kim. Sorry. Okay. Here, let me, I'll pop out. Hold on one second. Sorry guys. Okay. Yeah, beautiful. Alrighty. Okay. So can everyone see that clearly? Yeah. Okay. Perfect. So you will see this was, uh, the week again of 10, 13, 2021 through 10, 22, 2021. In the amount of 2,995 dollars and 36 cents. I move to approve those abatement. Second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. And that essentially approves our signatures on those. Correct. Okay. And then, uh, the next list you will see here is for XIs weeks. Uh, 10. 25, 2021 through 10. Well, it's just that day. Um, uh, for the amount of $69 and 60 cents. Move to approve that abatement. Second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. And lastly, you will see 11, four. Um, it's just again on that day, 11, four, 2021. And the amount of 20, $220 and 94 cents. Okay. Second. Two abatements. Second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Hey. All right. So this that you are seeing here is the rollback tax for map three C lot 106. Owned by the Stoats family. Um, this is a lot that was in chapter land. And so you will see, this is the rollback tax in the amount of $17,492 and 42 cents. Um, just a reminder in case you need it, the rollback taxes for the past five years. And this is the difference of the exemption that they were getting. So this is the amount of taxes that they had, um, the agricultural credit had given them. Um, let me start that over again. I apologize. I don't have an agricultural credit on their property for farming it. So this is the amount of taxes that they were exempted. For the past five years. For that property. Is there interest included in there? Teresa, do you know if there's interest included in this figure? I don't know the answer to that. I don't, I wouldn't think so, but I don't know. I'd have to check with. So the law states that we're able to collect interest, but I don't know that we have to. I don't know. I don't know. Can you check for next call? Kim and just let us know. Sure. It's, it's fine. I'm just curious if we're collecting interest on these or not. Sure. Okay. So just so I understand because I'm the, because that this is not my area. Even though I've been here a while, um, this is being taken out of special tax status. For what? For agriculture. Correct. And so they're essentially paying. Um, for the last five years, they're paying the difference between the, the break they got and the full amount of the, the, the taxed land. Is that correct? That's correct. And why. Okay. What happened? Yeah. They, they have decided to remove the land. Um, in this case, I know that they're selling off a couple of lots. Um, but in a case of anyone who has, uh, any sort of chapter properties, if they remove the land from chapter, they would have to pay the rollback tax. So they decided they're not going to farm it for one reason or another. Um, they would have to pay the rollback tax. There is some, um, Uh, situations where you wouldn't have to pay the rollback tax. And that would be if the, if the land is being sold, but it's going to be continually farmed. Then the rollback tax would be exempt. Um, and the other situation would be if you're taking out a rollback tax, you're not going to have to pay the rollback tax. Um, if you're taking out a rollback tax or sell to a child or family member to build on. That also exempts you from paying the rollback tax. But in this case, um, they're, they're removing the entire parcel of land. And, um, they've actually split the lots and they're selling off those pieces. So five. Five years. Yeah. So that is the, that's the, the rules and regulations that the DOR gives us. Um, I, I, my assumption is because you have to, um, to join chapter, to become a part of chapter 61, 61 A or 61 B, um, mostly 61 and 61 A, you have to actually provide proof that you have made profits on the land over the past year. Um, and then there's, there's a lean process that gets put onto the properties, which we'll see some of later on. Um, and then the town has the first right of refusal. So when a property is being sold, they need to notify the town first and the town has 121 days to decide whether this is a property that they would want to purchase at market price. Um, so. The exact reason as to why there are five years of rollback tax, I don't have that exact answer because that was provided by the DOR. Um, I'm sure that there's some. That's pretty standard. I know New York state has the same five years. Yeah. I think it's standard. But the DOR gave me the period. Yes. Okay. It's law. All right. Our regulation. Yes. Okay. So we need to approve our signatures on this warrant. Correct. That's correct. Okay. So move. Okay. Second. Um, Motion to approve the, um, our signatures on this warrant for the, for the rollback tax for this particular property featured here, the stolt, the stoltz property. Um, All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. That's unanimous. Kim, do you know, can somebody remove just part of their. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Um, there, you can, for whatever reason, um, if you decide that you want to just, uh, maybe just. Not do as much work. Um, and you don't want to farm the whole land, you can do that. But again, you still have to go through the same process. You have to let the town know that you're going to, uh, remove it from chapter. You have to do the. The rollback tax. Um, if you're going to remove just like I said, a portion of it to maybe give to a child to build on, but you would be exempt from the rollback tax in that case. Um, if you, maybe you have a section of land that you're farming for, say, carrots and your neighbor said, Hey, could I buy, you know, three acres of your property? Um, cause I want to extend my cornfield and you're like, you know what, I don't want to use that three acres. So you sell them that piece. You can break that off. That would be exempt from the rollback tax. Um, and then as long as you have a conforming lot to be in chapter 61, a you can do that. So if you have less than, um, I believe it's 10 acres, then you would no longer have a conforming lot for chapter 61. A six chapter 60. Are we talking in 61 a now? 61 a. Yep. You have to. So in order to be a part of 61 61 a or 61 b, you have to have a certain amount of acreage. Okay. Um, I think I believe it's 61 b. You have to have five acres. Um, and 61 a you have to have 10. Yes. Of course. Right. That's correct. But we're in chapter 60 here. We're in this is chapters. Um, this is chapter 61 a, I believe they were farming the land. Uh, why does it say chapter 60 everywhere? Uh, chapter 60 is the, um, the chapter that explains. Um, About about 61 too. Also. Yes. So they were in 61. Okay. Yes. So I'm so 61. Is a forest management plan. So you would be, uh, you could be cutting trees. You could be, uh, doing, you know, Christmas trees, you could, you just have to have a forest management plan. So you'd have a forester come out. Um, and, and do this plan on your property. 61 a is any type of farming. So we see on around here, we would see, you know, vegetables. Hey, um, you know, that's type of thing out on the cape. You'd see cranberries. Um, so depending on where you are, that's, you know, sort of what, what you'd see specifically. And then 61 b is recreational. So that is, uh, the property that was formed. In the past. So that's what we're doing. We're building its land at its natural state and allowing others to use that space. Just to set the record straight, the assessor certificate for this property, which I guess we're going to, um, We're going to have to sign also. Uh, no, there, there, signatures are already on them. Okay. Uh, references 61 a. So this property was being farmed for crops. Yes. And our signatures are already on there. Have we, have we talked about this before? Hmm. Or on the certificate certificate. Why don't we wait until we get there? Well, it's just below the, the warrant. Oh, okay. Oh, the assessor's certificate. So yes, this was probably something that was filed when they, um, and filed back when they began farming, or at least when these owners took over, because you have to change it. If, if there's a lien that's filed, then there's a new ownership. You have to change the lien as well. All right. Well, at the bottom of the assessor's certificate, there's a place for the, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a place for the board of assessors and the three of us are, our signatures are on there. So couldn't have been that long ago. No, it had to be more recently than that. Slide down three. See that. Blinded down so we can see what we're talking about. Oh yeah. And this actually shows the rollback tax. Back. So maybe that was just prematurely stamped. Okay. I think I don't know if David had me do that. Because this is something that went to the attorneys because they had to have it in hand to do figuring or something. I don't know. I don't recall. It looks like that. Maybe I, maybe I prematurely stamped it. I'm fired. So we've just approved. So we've just approved. So we've just approved. So we've just approved. So we've just approved. So we've just approved. So we've just approved. So we've just approved. We've approved our signatures on the warrant, right? That's correct. Okay. So we probably ought to just do a vote to approve our signature on the certificate too. Yep. And you can also the war. So the warrant, the first page there that you were looking at was to the collector of taxes. And then the commitment, the notice of commitment. You'll see this, this page here. This is for the accounting office. And then I guess we could, if you'd like to do a separate vote for the certificate, we can do that as well, or we can just include that in the notes on the vote for the warrant to collect as well as the certificate, the assessor's certificate. Okay. Gentlemen, do you have any more questions about, about this particular transaction? Just slide a little more down. Signatures again. Okay. Those are. So to reach that as a stamp with our signatures on them. I guess whether, I guess whether we should redo this, Kim, I don't know whether, if you're fine with it, it's just, we're going to approve it after the date we signed it. Yeah. If you want to redo this, we can redo it. Yes. I think we should, we don't have to redo the vote or anything, but I do think that we should probably check with David again about why this was done prematurely, but we may want to at least retype this and then re stamp it, assuming that the approval for the warrant and the commitment is okay. But I do think, I agree. I think we should change the date as long as that's not going to mess anything up with the attorneys and anything that David was already working on. All right. So gentlemen, do you have any problem with approving our signature on that one? No. Just a question. The normal process would have been for these. Documents to come through together or what would be normal? Okay. Yes. And I guess it has the town already said they don't want to buy it. I assume that's already happened. I assume that's already happened as well because when I came, it was already the lots had already been split and the. The process has already been well underway. So I think that would say, yes, the town has already said that they're not interested in purchasing the property. And you know the, do you know where this parcel is? I do. Yes. This is, this is off market Hill road. If you are headed towards the reservoir, it's going to be on your right hand side. Okay. All right. Okay. I'm ready to vote. I move that we approve our signatures on this assessor for the property of Michael and Lori Stoats. Second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Okay. Okay. Great. So then moving on. Did we do the, the original. Yes. Okay. Yes. Yep. I have the rollback tax for the warrant. For the collector and the accounting office, the commitment for the accounting office. So the next thing on the agenda is our. Chapter 61 renewal. So this is part of the forest management plan that WD calls has worked with the state to receive. There are multiple properties here. So you'll see almost the exact same. The. WD calls. I know that there's a lot of wording and lean recorded. On all of these here. But basically what this is, is WD calls has gone to their forester and said our plan has expired in the fiscal year 2022 for our forest management plan. And we need to renew that because we continue. We want to continue to farm the property, whether that be. We want to continue to farm the property. We want to continue to farm the property. We want to continue to farm the property. Cutting of the trees. That's what I'm. Right. Referring to. So it looks like in this case, their plan would renew in January of calendar year 2022. And go through the end of calendar year. 2020. 2031. So here we are just asking you to. To agree that this plan. We'll be able to continue to farm the property. Whether it's the DOR or the O. The O. The O. O. The O. O. The O. O. The O. O. And you'll see again, there's multiple pages of these. So it's just each one of their properties that had expired. In the year 2022. These are the ones that. Richard will have to come in and sign. There are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 of these, so you should have quite a bit of them. Are the case numbers the same, but I'll show you when we get there. I think they are, no, they're not there. I'm not sure we got them all up. It does look like some of the case numbers are the same. And they're the same property. I think we got duplicates. The question I have, are we missing some that we sure got it? I don't think so. I mean, I'll go through them, but I don't think that there should be duplicates in here. I mean, they list three properties on some of these. Well, that's a duplicate of this one. Okay. Let me see. That's a duplicate of what one? Next one. It does look like they were duplicates. Yeah. That's totally different. Those numbers are totally different than these. Okay. That's not the one then. We'll get to it as we go through it. I guess a general question. Can a lot, a parcel, a tax parcel, can it be landlocked? One of these forest management. Yes. Yes. As long as I guess, I guess that's a tricky answer because there has to be access to be able to get to the property. So yes, it can be landlocked, but there has to be an easement that's granted by the owners with surrounding properties in order for the, if they're doing trees, the people who are cutting the trees have to be able to get to that property. So if there is an easement that's granted allowing people to cross that particular property to get to the one that's in the chapter, then yes, that's okay. Kim, another general question. Are there any requirements or regulations around the number of years that for renewal or the number of years that can be requested? There are not. The only requirement is that you, so you get a 10-year forest management plan that's created by your forester who works for the Department of Revenue, I'm sorry, the Department of Forestry. And then they would tell you, okay, in this 10-year period, you're going to be able to cut the trees this amount of times. And we expect that you'll make, you know, well, I suppose they probably can't tell them exactly how much money they'll make depending on what's happening in the whole world with wood. But they'll say, you know, you can cut twice this year. And then maybe the next year they'll say you can only cut once because we've cut these two sections and they're not going to be big enough trees to be able to cut. So on this one, for example, you'll see that there is one lot with 28.22 acres and then the other two are not that big. So there is a 10-acre requirement for Chapter 61. However, and this goes for 61A as well, if you have a lot that is a budding that 10 acres, it can be any size. So you'll see the second lot here is only 1.57 acres and then the one below that is only 0.4. So those, as long as they are a budding, other lots in Chapter that belong to this person, they can be what's called contiguous. And so they would be allowed to be accepted into Chapter. But you have to have that 10 acres to apply now. So if you do have two acres that, excuse me, two lots that are each five acres and they're touching, you can use those as your one 10-acre lot. So do you look at that, Kim, when these come in or do you just accept it? So I do, I mean, the forester knows that so they have to make sure that that's the case. But I do just verify when this happens as well, just to be absolutely sure that something hasn't happened that the forester didn't pick up on. One of these is a driveway, which surprised me. It's a little tiny parcel on a driveway, which maybe that's for access. So, and the driveway is not supposed to be included in Chapter. It's just the access way. There are little bits and pieces that people could say, well, I use that for this and that and you can include it. But generally speaking, the driveway is not supposed to be included. It's a driveway to the house, which kind of surprised me. And what some of these have where they say, you know, the acres are 28 acres and they're all excluded. So why is it in there? I don't understand why. What do you mean they're excluded? I don't know. Let's go through each one and then I can refer to my notes as we come up with these questions. Okay. Ken, are you looking at these on a plot plan somewhere? No, I just went on the, no, I, before the meeting I looked out at the Amherst tax maps. Okay. See where they were. And some of them definitely are landlocked, but I think they're adjacent to other cows properties that do it. And that would be one of those situations where as long as they have access to be able to get to that property so that the, the logging trucks can get out there. Then they'd be able to include that into Chapter. Okay. So how do you want to do this, Kim? Do you want, so we can either do page at a time, or if you want to vote on all of the cows properties, we can do it that way, whichever you are most comfortable. I'm comfortable doing a page at a time and then voting at the end. Okay. We go through each page. So I'm going to go just based on what's on the screen because I have flipped my pages so I don't know which one is which so we'll go with this one here first. So the map three C lots 13 lot 14, excuse me, lot 13 lot 44 and lot 84 for a total of 30.19 acres. So we'll vote them all at the end. That's where I'm more comfortable. Okay. No. Okay. Okay. So the next one here is 123.99 acres just shy of 124. So we have map nine B lots 11 and 12. And then we have map nine Diaz and dog. So we have map nine B lots 26 and 27, again the same time frame. So these were expiring at the end of calendar year 2021. So we needed a renewal for 2022 through December 31st of calendar year 2031. Does Coles have these on some sort of rotation or is this what we're going to see is it is this they're coming to us. Are they coming back in 10 years or are they, do they have parcels on a rotation? So they're coming back here. Because of being new to the office, they very well may have other properties that are in chapter that will come to us at a different time. Off the top of my head, I don't know that answer. They definitely do have other. So it's a great selection that we approved a carving out from, from some of these prop from some of these lands for solar. Some time ago. Yeah. Remember that at all. Yeah. So if that's the case, then those particular pieces of property would not be able to be in any sort of chapter because they are solar farms. Assuming that they're large, there's the probably solar farms. So with those pieces, we will not see unless they decide to remove the solar and add that back into chapter. Okay. Excuse me for a minute, I'll still be listening. Sure. Here's, here's where we're. Yeah, that's a, that's a duplicate. It looks like just I just want I have them in front of me and you know they had two of them attached to each of these piles so I may have duped it so let me just see what the next one is. They're all the same as well. Oh my goodness. They do send us three copies, so they have one for us to keep and then we send two back to them so they can keep one and they can send one to their forester. So this one looks like one we haven't seen yet. So this is a total of 77.16 acres we have map 6b as in boy lot four, and we have map 3d as in dog lot 2139 and 84. Again the same time frame they have January 1 of 2022 through December 31 of 2031 stumble on that every time that's so far away. That first one 6b for that's the driveway that goes to house. Okay, I wanted to look that up I'm glad that you mentioned that because before. Okay. So this might be one that I want to reach out to the forester on because I do see that you are correct that this looks to me like it's just a driveway. And should not actually be included in the management plan. Because it looks like it's the driveway certainly that goes to the house but there could be access to that backlog as well behind it so this may be one to reset that we want to mark and speak with the forester about why that was included in the force management plan because I don't believe that it should be and I want to just mark that on my copy. Is that the only one can that you thought was kind of. I didn't have time I mean, Kim I hate to bother you but I think I'll check all of them. If you can check all of them because yeah, part of my concern is cows has been doing this for years. Yeah, maybe it's a time to revisit and make sure they're not doing things that are stretching the limit. And I apologize for not doing that ahead of time I should have looked at those. So, in regards to that particular and actually all the rest of them I will just double check these and if I find that there's anything odd. I will certainly bring that back to the meeting in regards to our vote. We don't have a problem. I don't have a problem voting provided you check and okay. Okay, and then actually I'm Teresa let's put on the agenda for next meeting that we're just going to revisit that particular one to see if I can get an answer. Just for a piece of mind that you know a I've done what I'm supposed to do and be just to find out sort of what the answer is and if they're saying yes we we are including that why so that we know in the future if this comes up again. What's going on with that. When you check them if you can also check to make sure they all have access to a road. Yeah. Yeah, and there may it may not be super super clear. You know where the access is coming from immediately but as like if they own two properties side by side one has road frontage the other one doesn't. Of course they're going to allow it for that to happen but if they own something that's completely landlocked by people we don't that that are not related or you know it's not the same ownership will make sure that there's an easement somewhere on the property so that they can get to it. Okay. Okay. All right, moving on. I'm going to keep on going because obviously there's. I apologize guys. This should be the last one. Well, it may have to do this but I think you have to go back one. We haven't seen that this one. Yeah, that was the one we were just talking about. Okay, yep, yep. So this one is 145 acres. It looks like they're requesting that 98.4 acres of the land. So that 98.4 acres of the forest land of the 143 acres of land covered by this be put in chapter so they're not actually farming the whole 145 acres so in this case you'll see. They've actually done a wonderful job at telling us what is what here. So you'll see the column that says total acres which adds up to that 145. And then you'll see the diluted areas which is the next column, and then the final column you'll see is 98.4 acres so on this. On these particular maps, you will see that portions of these lots are not included in chapter land so they should have the full taxable value on on a portion of those so you'll see that there are that like the first one for example, they're excluding that entire property so that maybe in the past was listed in as part of chapter so that is something that we need to look at and if that's the case we need to change for the fiscal year 2023. We need to change the classification of that property. I wonder if that's a solid property. I wonder that very well could be being 20 acres that sounds like it very well could be. And so, going down the line you'll see the same thing. It looks like some of them. So we'll just have to make sure that each and every one of those actually matches up to that certified acre column to make sure that we have the correct value on those properties so again something that will want to take a peek at but the forester has certified that that is the allowable acreage and lots to be a part of the management plan. I was a little surprised why they even put two way on. If it's all excluded. Well, so I, I at first I thought that exact thing but if it was included last year, the last time they did the plan. Okay, that's why they're putting it there because they're saying hey we had it on there last year but look at we're taking it out this year so we want to make you aware of that that it's no longer being classified as chapter land. And so, on our side of things we may have already removed it knowing that there was a solar farm going there depending on how long that's happened you know how old the farm is the, but you know again that's something I can take a peek at and just see. But this is just that's the forester saying, you know, we're removing this piece and we want to make you aware of that. I think that's the last one I guess I wanted to make sure they were on there. Okay, did you get all the ones you need approved. So we have to yep those are all the ones that that needed approval so we just have to have the vote on that and then at some point Richard if you could come in and actually physically sign those. So we'll have you sign all three copies of those. Teresa is going to tell me when they're ready and then I'm going to, I'm going to immediately zoom up there. Okay, and get and sign them. So how many did we actually approve. I think there's only four, four, four. Yes. Okay so we approve for. Okay, there's five on the agenda. Wait a minute one. One, two, three, four, five. Sorry. Okay. Okay so we'll just need a motion and a second. So I'm late. Yes, I second I move I moved to approve of these. What do you want to call what do we call these are chapter land forest management plans. Okay, I moved to approve these plans. Second, by the board. In favor, please say aye. Okay. Okay. And then again, Teresa if we can put that back on the agenda, just to verify that those, that particular law is okay to be included and then just the, just we can just talk about this last page to and just see if that 20, 20.88 acres is actually the solar farm just for just for a little knowledge as to what we're voting on here so. So the next thing we have on the agenda is the discussion of the residential exemption. So although you are aware that the city council has voted to to not do the residential exemption at the moment. I did speak with Sean, our finance director, and I've been putting together some questions for other communities and just trying to do some research on the residential exemption as a whole. What I wanted to share with you is that I have found that out of the 351 cities and towns in the state of Massachusetts there are only 14 communities that have adopted this residential exemption. Those communities only make up 18% of Massachusetts residents. So, and just quickly to whip down the list that includes Barnstable, Boston, Brookline, Cambridge, Chelsea, Everett, Maldon, Nantucket, Provincetown, Somerset, Somerville, Titsbury, Waltham and Watertown. So out of those 14 communities I have chosen Barnstable, Boston, Chelsea, Everett and Watertown to actually reach out to and see if they can sort of give us an explanation as to what their process was, how they decided that they wanted to do the residential exemption, and I chose those because they're the most similar to Amherst and you're thinking Boston, not a chance. The reason that I chose Boston, although they have a substantial amount more residents than we do, they have colleges, they also have very high and low spectrum of income levels. So they have a lot of, although like I said they're not the same as Amherst by any means, they have some factors that we may be interested in finding out how they considered the residential exemption, looking at those particular factors as well as the colleges so but the others in 2020 the census population in Amherst was 39,000 people and in Barnstable it was 44,000, Chelsea it was 40, Everett it was 49 and in Watertown it was 35 so those were the most similar sized towns to us. Also understanding that some of those have, again, you know, they have either a very low income population or they have a college or something so that went into why I chose those particular ones. And then what I was going to do was think up a set of questions to ask them. You know, why did you adopt the residential exemption, how did it affect your apartment rentals, so on and so forth some of some of the concerns that I was hearing the night that we discussed this. And just sort of find out where their thought process was on that so anything that you guys want to add to that please feel free to send that along to me. Right now I have seven questions that I will talk to Sean about and find out if there's anything that he's thinking of that I should be asking these communities. And then I will just draft something up to send along and hopefully get some help on why they chose to do that so that we can present that to the town council. Later on when we discuss this again. Kim to two questions one, can you, can you give us a copy of what you're planning to send out and we can respond one and what's your scheduling on this. This was sort of I was really, you know, had a lot of time to work on it when I first came aboard. It's sort of been sitting for a few days and I haven't been able to touch it so I think you know it's, this is something that is up to the town council to bring up to the to the assessor's office again this is something that's, that's, you know the ball is in their court. So I don't have a specific timeframe that I want to make sure that this is done by, however, I think that if we certainly have it by, you know, the time I would say June, July. That would be my hope of when the town council would want to start talking about this again if they're really seriously interested in considering this for our community. So I could say that I would like to have this completed and all these questions answered by June or July of 2022. So I think the key Kim is to make sure you and Sean are on the same link. Yes. Because, you know, I started recall the council saying they wanted to take this out for public discussion the first half of next year. Okay, I think actually now that you say that I think you're correct so the sooner the better than get on getting this information. I don't think it's a rush but I think they're thinking they want to talk to people first half of next year. Right, right, right and now that you say that I do think that was actually part of the reason that we maybe even put this on the agenda was to talk about putting something in the tax bills to explain how this works get people's feedback and see what people feel about that so I think you're correct and that I will touch base again with Sean about this when he returned so I'm glad that we talked about that. Okay, what were the cities you're going to look at ever. I was going to look at. Barnstable, Boston, Chelsea, Everett and Watertown. Okay. Thank you. I think the trick is finding people who have an institutional memory as to why they instituted the residential exemption in the first place. Yes, and that actually, so let me read you my questions to do maybe see if they trigger any other questions for you so that was my first question was why did you adopt the residential exemption. The next question was how did it affect your apartment rentals. And then I'll follow up on that how did it affect the low income apartment rentals specifically. A question specifically for Boston, what are your what what thoughts went into the college areas when deciding to do this and how did that take place. So, so what I sort of mean there is, you know, did you send out questionnaires did you know how how did this affect the college, the college is the college areas, you know that the rentals that are specifically for the students versus, you know, if you have that something that affects that. So that's sort of an open ended question there. What percent of the average assessed value, did you give, because there is a requirement on on that as well. And then I'll follow up, why that specific amount. Let me explain how you presented the information to your city council or town select board depending on what sort of sort of government they have. And then a follow up to that is, did you feel. Did you feel like there are any really important points that need to be made when presenting to the, the council or the town board. Do you have access to what the percentages are. So I don't right now I haven't been able to do much more research on that so it's possible that I can, I can find that information and if I can't then I could always ask them if they can provide that for us so we can have a comparison and see what we might do if this is something that our council decides they want to vote through. You know, I've got several other things. Go ahead. No, go ahead. Well, I was going to say, one of the problems that that I can see with the public process is that residential residential property owners, single family property owners will be the ones that speak up the loudest. But whether you hear from renters or landlords. That's going to be harder, I think. Yeah, yeah. So, getting everybody, all the, I guess the term they use nowadays as stakeholders in the, in the process. Getting them all to look at what what's being suggested or what's being thought about to speak out about it I don't know I don't know that all the voices are going to be heard equally. Maybe one of the questions that I asked is, how did you get, you know, what was your feedback like was it from specifically one class of property, or, you know, was it a mix of of residences and owners. And if it was just residences rather than owners how did you get the response from the owners, those who rent the properties. I think a broad question would be how did you reach out to the stakeholders. Okay, homeowners. Yeah, our men owners. You know, all the stakeholders, how did you reach out to him. Okay. I'm just writing these down because these are great questions. Okay. Kim, I'll send you a bunch of research that I ran across the last year or two. Okay, great that would be wonderful. There's a list of all the percentages each city has. And, and there was a detailed report done by one town outside Boston research report that gives you a lot of good thinking process helps you go to sleep at night. Wonderful. All right. So I think that was pretty much my, my, what I wanted to tell you about with that. And of course I stuck my agenda at the bottom of it, there it is. So if you guys don't have any further discussion on that for now. I think we could table that for a future meeting. I think we can leave it on our agenda and then if we don't discuss it at the next meeting that's fine we can just table it to the future until we can get some information on that that we share with each other. Okay. All right, so hearing no other questions on that. We did talk about briefly that the availability of our personal exemptions at our last meeting and I had suggested that we table that to talk about in the future. And what has happened here in the office is that we have created a pamphlet that we would let her work in the process of creating a pamphlet that we would like to put into the tax bills. And this just explains basically what what we have for personal exemptions and what your requirements are. It's very brief, but it gives people the idea that there is something there for them if they need the help. And then it also gives, I think we did some important dates for the assessor's office so we talked about, you know, due dates of taxes we talked about when these personal exemptions are due. There was a couple of other dates on there as well. And then we also put in a question and answers portion on this page and this is just a single page so it's very small amount of information but something that may trigger people's call to the office or email. So there was, you know, how, how do I set up an inspection. Can I file an overval on my property. There was a couple of questions that that had come up. As well as a very small introduction as to who I am and what the assessor's office does that is terrific. Did you have anything to do you have a template to work from some past. So the collector's office had put together a pamphlet that they were also going to insert into the tax bills and so it was suggested that we use that as well as be on the backside so that we're not actually putting two pieces of paper into the tax bills but one double sided page so there's some information from the collector on one side, and then information from the assessor on the other so we had just the formatting of, you know, that it wasn't specific exemptions or anything like that because they have their own information. But I just thought, you know, it might be nice to put out the statutory exemption so the blind the senior. Yeah, the elderly, the, you know, the 17D in this and the 41C the blind, the veterans exemption. We did not put on there the hardship because that's sort of more of a personal issue. Nothing else qualifies so let's try this we also did not put the tax deferral because again that's something that nothing else applies and we want to do this. But the more common exemptions. And then with the questions and answers, Steven was actually working on the flyer and he found those questions on our website and so just wanted to reiterate them and then we added a couple like what is the CPA. And so people are aware of what that is as well. And then I just thought it would be nice to put some important deadlines on there because people don't realize that they only have a certain amount of time to be able to apply for certain, whether it be the exemptions or an overvaluation on their property, people can new to the area and new to quarterly tax bills also don't know when the tax bills are due. So actually I've found in green fields, and I assume that goes along with anyone else, people who have their mortgages are their taxes escrowed, have no idea when they're actually paid. So when they've paid off their property and they now have tax bills do. It's a common occurrence that the first bill that's due that they physically have to pay goes past due because they have no idea. They haven't looked at their tax bills, even though they're male to them. They have no idea what the timeframe is so I just thought it would be a nice thing to put on there. Yes, I went through that transition just recently where I now see the bills and pay the bills. Yes. Yeah. It's something I mean you always should be getting them but it's something that you now have to actually pay attention to. So, you know just a little easy spot to find what you're looking for. Can I just say I'm extremely happy to hear this about the about the information going out to taxpayers because I think it's absolutely terrific and thank you very much for doing that. And I think that I know in greenfield and I think that you guys had mentioned in the past that there was like a seminar that was done at the Council on aging senior center. So, you know, I'd be happy to do that again it sounded like maybe it wasn't quite highly attended. But maybe, I mean I don't know what the technology is like for seniors in this area but if we did an in person as well as maybe a quick little webinar. So people could grab it right off our website if they weren't comfortable or able to attend a meeting at the senior center, just to explain each exemption and and you know how to get them and when to get them. You know that might be something as well that we consider. Nothing that we need to implement right away but certainly something that we can think about depending on how you know what what the outcome of this flyer brings. It's certainly just a thought anyway. That's great awesome. A monthly newsletter that goes out from the senior center. You can put a little article in there too, we can certainly do that as well or we can add an insert if that's something that they would be able and interested in doing. It's a different color than the newsletter so it really sticks out and that way too if it falls out for some reason they they say hey what's that, you know. So that that would be something that we can, we can talk about too. Great. That's great. All right, so let's also leave that on our agenda for the future so we can, you know, discuss that. I can also make sure that if there is a approved copy. That you all get a copy of that as well just so that you're aware I mean you'll probably get it in your text bills but you know just at least that way you have it ahead of time. In case anyone comes to you with any questions about anything on it. And we can also do if you guys want to and maybe you don't but before or right after the text bills go out we could do a quick. Either that be a special meeting or not but a quick just reminder of what each exemption is and what the qualifications are. That way I don't know if this community reaches out to the board members as often as they may in Greenfield but if that's something that you guys are interested in I'd be happy to just quickly go over each and every exemption if you want. I think that'd be good at a normal meeting. Okay, I don't feel any urgency but okay meeting in the new year or something. Okay, we could do that. That would be good. Let's let's plan on that then for our January meeting. Sounds good. Okay. Moving on to the principal assessor update. I just wanted to quickly touch base about the classification hearing we all had a conversation that we do have to redo that hearing and the reason for that is, before you're able to have your classification hearing you have to have your la for and 13 approved by the state. So your la for is your values, and your la 13 is your sales. The state basically had, well they had not yet even received a copy of those from us. And I think that the reason that this happened was just the moving parts of the office I think that David was thinking you know I want to get all this done but I don't want to put my name on some stuff and then have Kim's name on some stuff. So it just totally slipped his mind that that needed to be done before the classification hearing and I can completely understand that. So what normally would happen in a perfect world is that we would submit the la for and the la 13 through gateway to the d or the d or would then approve our values which is the la for and approve our sales which is the la 13. And we could take it to classification so we would take it to the town council and say look gateway approved our or the state approved our values and they approved our sales. So we're now asking that you approve that as well, as well as voting on whether or not they wanted to have the single tax rate the residential exemption the small commercial exemption so on and so forth. So what will happen is on Monday night, the 15th. The town council will just receive all the documentation again, and just re vote. Hopefully nothing will change, and then we can submit the rest of our forms to the d or for approval. So you won't have to do the presentation again. No, no, I just spoke with Paul and actually he would like me to just write up an explanation just exactly what I explained to you guys so that he can pass that on to the town council ahead of time, so that they can just make a quick note as to what they're doing and why and then re vote all those those votes so then we'll just get the new copies from the from Athena once the meeting is over with the approval of those. And then we'll get a new certification from the town clerk, just stating that the meeting was was held after those two things were approved. That's good. So I just want to let you know about that first because it's an odd thing something that probably won't ever happen again but you know just I think with all the moving parts in the office it was just a oops. Yeah, when you ask for the signatures that that kind of was an alert that we had to go back and redo. Yes, so. And so the other thing. Along with that. So once we have that classification hearing we should be able to submit the rest of our paperwork to the DOR for approval of our, our tax rate and our values. So I believe next week we're going to be running a test in munis just to make sure that everything is looking correctly and working the way it's supposed to so that we're all ready for that when that time comes. And so that's really the most important update for the assessor's office right now. I think that I did want to mention. And again, this is something that we don't have to make a change immediately I just wanted to suggest some things when looking at our agenda. I see that we have specific dates and the dollar amounts for the motor vehicle exercise. I did get a little background on that just to understand why that was done the way it was done. And I understand that. I'll just like to see that information ahead of time so you're sort of aware of what it is that you're doing. So what I would like to suggest is that we actually don't put the specifics on our agenda and the reason for that being is on the agenda. If, if we put for example if we put these three on the agenda posted to the website. The community says okay they're they're not going to be looking at this week or whatever and they have an issue with that week. They then don't come to the meeting. We realize we missed a week on that. We should not be voting on that without putting it out to the public. So, basically what I'm saying is by making it vague and just putting motor exercise abatements. And then add weeks and if people have an issue with it then they would come to the meeting and they can talk to us. Not that that's really an issue but more so that we're not being super specific on the agenda and then not following it if we need to add an extra week. And that also allows us to with excise specifically that allows us to add the excise weeks right up until the meeting, whereas we have it sounds like we have to post these a week in advance. And that cuts out a whole week of abatements. Gentlemen, do you follow logic on that. Yeah. Okay, yes that sounds so I mean nothing that we have to do right away. If you want to great if not, let's wait and we'll think about it we can read read. Let's do it. Let's do it. Yeah, agree. Okay. Okay. And I appreciate your, your so willingness to adapt to me. I just basically I just wanted to try to make. Follow the open meeting law follow, you know, everything that we're supposed to do exactly the way we're supposed to do it. And this just allows us to have a little bit of wiggle room. Not that we're not being honest because we certainly are, but this just allows us the extra wiggle room to pick up that extra week of excise abatements so that someone can get their refund a little faster is all. Anything that makes your workflow easier and quicker to what suggested. Okay, thank you. This is good for the customer. Yes, it is because the abatements are not supposed to be that the refund checks are not supposed to be issued until the board signs off on them. So this just allows us to move forward a little faster with the week before the meeting. This just allows people to get their abatements a little bit faster which in some cases it's not that big of a deal because it's small but in other cases it's a couple of $100 sometimes so it's nice to be able to move quicker on that for people. So besides getting the tax bills out anything else you're on your mind before you're in. We are looking into next year we have our reevaluation year which I will be a pro at since it'll be my second year in a row. So I do want to, we do it sounds as though we have to put out a bid to get a company in. So historically, I think we've had Roy Bishop working with us on all of those things. So, you know, that's something that I have to work on that I do need a little help from David just because I've never had to do something like that before. But because and the reason I say that is because in Greenfield I had worked with regional resource group RRG, and that was just included in our contract so we were lucky enough to be able to not have to worry about the added cost of a reeval. So that's something that I will be working on. I am working on on the side when I have time, looking at all the buildings that you mass and trying to get measurements of each and everyone to put on our record cards, as well as once I do all of that I'll be going to take pictures of each building as well as picking up anything else that might be on the property that may or may not be taxable because they are that most of the things that are there are not taxable but there may be some personal property items some, you know, ATM machines or something like that that we don't realize are there that we could add. Not something that is super super high priority and I say that with fear that someone hears this and says what do you mean that's not priority of course it's priority to try to pick up extra growth, and that's not what I mean but what I mean is, we have the majority of the items. There may be a thing here or there. See, see. Basically what I'm looking to do is make sure that our record cards match the exact information that's there so on each and every parcel there, there's multiple buildings, and right now we don't have it broken down so if you look up one of the record cards for you you'll see one page, and it will say you know x amount of dollars for the buildings. So what I would like to do is take that one record card and expand it out so if there are five buildings on that parcel I'd like to have five records attached to that parcel ID, so that you can see each and every building that's on the parcel, and that also is going to help you mass if they come to us and say, can you tell us what the value of this building is because we need this for such and such. We can say oh yeah look it's right here we have this value for this particular building. So just working hand in hand with them, helping to be able to make things easier in the long run. And that was something that Sean had asked of me when I first started here, saying you know it's not not super super priority but certainly something that that they would like to be done. Oh, you're this, you're going to have to hire a consultant is that right or next year. So that's something that the UMass is something separate from the revaluation so the revaluation is not the revaluation. Yes, so that is something that we generally I think in the past. Roy Bishop has worked with us to help during the revaluation just giving us a little bit more time than maybe we normally have with him. And so but I, but from what I understand, it's something that gets put out to bid, and then whoever, you know whoever the town chooses if there's multiple people is the person that we will work with if it's just Roy then clearly Roy will get the contract. So that's something that have to be included in your, does that have to be included in your budget request for the, okay, yes. I remember that we've used David issues Bishop before. And in the past review. Yeah. So, those are really the things I'm really still, you know, getting comfortable working my way through things. I'm making a binder of how to do things so that, first of all for me when I can't figure out what I'm doing I can look back at that binder and say oh yeah here it is, but also that helps with anybody who comes in and needs to do something. And Teresa is actually also working on a binder of how to use for her position as well because it's important for someone else if anything is to ever happen to any of us, it's important for someone to be able to pick up right where we left off and know how to use vision and know how to use, you know the rc software and know how you know know how to do this this job in a quick hurry if need be. So do you feel like you have enough help right now, Kim. Yes, yep. David is been coming back as needed so when I get stuck on something. He's here to help me with with any of that stuff vision has been extremely helpful with actually coming in and showing me how to use everything I've been to a couple of webinars with them as well. We have, obviously we have Teresa here full time doing the administrative duties and then we also have been getting we have Stephen who's been working his way back into the office which we can, if we want to talk about personnel a little bit more detailed we can certainly do that in executive session. Okay. It would be helpful when you're doing this SOP and stuff. If you could develop a calendar for 2022, you know a high level counter that would help understand what might be coming during the year. That would be, I do actually have and I can share this with you from Greenfield, I have it's just a regular fiscal year calendar that we've been working on with our board of assessors, so that we know sort of what's coming and what's coming and what we need to be working on. We can obviously make one specifically for a reval year, but if you would like I can share this with you, just so you can kind of see what I what it is that I'm referring to. Okay, I will send that along to each of you after our meeting today. So that's really all I can think of at the moment for the assessors update is there any questions more questions that you guys have. No we're coming up on 1217 so our meeting's running a little longer than usual I just want to point that out. Okay, but that's fine I'm getting educated a lot here. I mean, it's a it's a it's a it's a pretty happy meeting so we're happy to be here so. Okay, well we can move things along I think if there's no other questions at the moment for the update of the assessors, then we can just talk about our next meeting we have scheduled for 12, nine, which is the second Thursday, second, is it Thursday, Wednesday. Thursday, that would be Thursday. Yeah, are we going to, are we going to go, I'm going to stay with Wednesdays. Do you do you mind for at least for now keeping Wednesdays. No. Okay. We can certainly go back to Thursdays, you know after January if that is easier for you but if we could do Wednesdays for now that would be wonderful. Okay, then it would be, then it would be 11. The eighth yes, yes. Okay. All right. Eat an executive session today. We do. Yes, so in our executive session we have some statutory exemptions to go through. I think there's not, there's only a handful of them so I think we can move pretty quickly with these and you're going to and since you're a stickler for open meeting I've got to figure out how to call executive session. What we can do is be we never opened public comment so we don't need to close that with the anticipation is that we will do the executive session and immediately close the meeting here after. So we don't need to reopen the public section. So what I will do is I will stop recording the meeting once we have decided you know once we have voted to go into executive session. So again, as I said, we do not plan to come back into public meetings so we can adjourn the meeting. Once we have discussed the personal exemptions. Okay, and you're going to assume that I'm really good at the procedure here for getting into. So all we need to do now is just make a motion to go into executive session and again I will stop recording once we have made that motion. So move that we go into executive session. Second. Okay. Oops, go ahead. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Okay. All right so I will go ahead and stop the recording of the board of assessors meeting because we are going into executive session and again I just want to reiterate that we will adjourn the meeting. After we discussed the personal exemptions we do not plan to reopen the public session of this meeting. And anyone listening thank you and I will stop right now.