 lot that just said this one place. There were a lot that split between two places. There were a couple that split between two places. A lot of time, and then there were some that if they were splitting, they would either split them equally and not leave the sort of that split up to bylaw. And so it would be sort of set in stone of we're going to split it equally between a trust and CPA. Some of them actually I think put some of it to like a CPA or to their housing authority or something like that or trust and general fund split equally. And so there weren't, I'm trying to remember, I don't think there were a lot that listed specific amounts because they chose to take the sort of even split or 100% to one location. But we believed in looking at all of these that we had to declare something. And we weren't sure a, at least I wasn't sure, that a leaving it a split up to the bylaw that included say the trust as well as the capital stabilization and the others would fly in the legislature. Because then the bylaw could in theory say $10 to the trust and the rest to general, right? So we thought if we wanted to leave that sort of flexibility as to a certain percentage or an amount of the sort of remainder we had to, I felt I had to put some number in there that guaranteed an amount to the trust. And so that's why we put a number in current. You know, I would say we don't know how much on I'll get back, you know, we were looking at 1.7 for 2021. I think Anna's, my big memory is that none of the numbers were under $1 million a year. You're correct. You know, and so we wanted to make sure the number to the trust was not a number that would be above anything we might see in any one year, right? If we're going to put a number in, which is why I suggested at the beginning, maybe one of the solutions to putting a solid number in is then adding into that section where it says, you know, deposit it in the capital improvement and general fund as allocated by bylaw, capital improvement, housing trust and general fund as allocated by bylaw to give us that additional flexibility that says, you know, we know we picked in some sense a lowish number, but we're going to allocate the rest by bylaw to give that other flexibility. Hope that answers your question. That whole idea made me feel much better about the 250, I must say. I'm trying to remember if I had one. I thought I had. No, I think it might just be that there was something here that I didn't know what it meant. And that would be number three in section two, transfers of real property subject to an afford. No, I'm sorry, transfers made without additional consideration to confirm, correct, modify or supplement a transfer previously made. I just don't know what you mean. It's probably fine, but I don't know what it means. So it I will say these five sections were in nearly every transfer act we special act we looked at. Okay. What I'm going to say is I'm guessing that means that, you know, if you if you file a deed and you list the wrong name or the spelling the name of the person is spelled wrong. You know, and so you're then fixing the deed, but technically because the name of the person was spelled wrong, someone might say, oh, you actually transferred that it would be something like that. That would be my guess. But that's just a total guess, but that one was in, I think every special act. It was some lawyer knows what it means and it's important. Yeah, my interpretation of that one is similar to Mandy's. It's more of a what's the nice way I have to stop swearing in these meetings. It's a it's a nicer way of saying that this is in case of error versus anything else. Okay, well, if there aren't other questions, I guess my next question is, where is this in your process is there some what do you where do you go where do you want where would you like us to go to help if that's an issue what's up next. So where we are currently is that this is now being discussed by the finance committee. What would be helpful for you all is you know, I think some discussion amongst yourselves about whether you'd like a higher baseline number and stay there or whether you'd like to do I believe what Allegra first pitched which was add the housing trust to the split right and kind of it would still be regulate like the percentage would still be by the by law which we have not written yet right so so one of the things that's been really important for us to do is to differentiate the special act and the bylaw. So that that bylaw is just a sample that is very much not written yet very much up for debate we've got a lot of work ahead of us but we didn't want to write an entire beautiful bylaw which I think we can do before we know if the special act is going to get passed or not. So what would be really helpful is first for you all to think through whether you want us to bring that initial number higher whether you want us to do a difference in the split like what makes most sense. And then the second thing is what would also be helpful is if you decide as a committee to write a letter of support to the council and the finance committee about this we have it at finance I believe it's only going to finance I don't think it's going to CRC and then it comes back to the council and I think I just froze again so I'm sorry if you can't hear me anymore. Hi we can still hear you even though it's frozen. Sorry and I know Nate has a question but Mandy did I miss anything? Oh once the council approves it then we send it to the legislature. Ideally we are looking at a relatively quick turnaround we're hoping to have it to them in January. Okay then I guess the only other thing I would like to say is I sincerely hope that as we go through this process with you whenever you come up to be writing the bylaw you will come back and let us help you do that too. 100% yes. Nate. Sure thanks so my understanding is that the trust is part of the town so I don't think you need to name it separately okay you know it has powers established through you know statutory you know state law that we adopted locally so it's you know I don't think it's necessarily a separate entity you know the housing authority is it's but I just had some questions throughout the act have you as any community had this long enough to know if there is other impacts you know the effect of actually raising rental costs or other housing burdens that's one and the other one is is the first 200% exempt and then over that is charged or is it yes you know so yeah okay the you know the bylaw says something but when I read the when I read the act I wasn't sure but I read the bylaw it's clearer and so it's confusing is that you know is it just that the bylaw doesn't need to get that specific in terms of how what you know what price point it applies to. Yeah the the reason is that it allows us in the bylaw if for some reason we decide it needs to be 300% to change that and so yeah the bylaw the bylaw is a little this is why we we're trying to explain this and I think we're still honing our pitch clearly but the bylaw is a 2% total and then what we do is in sorry I screwed it up already the special act is a 2% total and then the bylaw exempts the first 200% of the average assessed average sale price so it's just the amount over yeah and then it's for owner occupied non-owner occupied it's on the full purchase price yeah and then the you also define residential real property right so although that's mentioned the bylaw that again becomes a defined I mean in the act that becomes a defined term in the bylaw right correct or you say real property interests so in in the special act the as Anna said the 2% is on any real property interest not just residential and so then we deal with all of those exemptions in the bylaw which we would then define what residential is versus commercial and right like that yeah I just remembered another question so does this have any suppose that there's a sale of a duplex or a triplex or something that's not just one owner occupying it does that come into this at all so it in our tax in our tax classification those are considered residential properties so they would count for this and that's something that we we can try to maneuver around depending on on where people land on this this question came up in finance yesterday but one of the things that comes up is do we want to charge this on large apartment complexes and somehow not on duplexes and is that even possible so if y'all don't know this Mandy is a wizard at writing these these bylaws and so she managed to to kind of help us sort this out a bit but this would take it's going to take some finagling so I think that that's really important feedback for us to hear from you all is when we get to the bylaw part of this and I recognize that it it impacts the special act so we shouldn't talk about it now but that would be a conversation that's going to be really important for us to have is what should be exempted and how we craft that to make sure that we're not making loopholes that are too big or too small right like not loopholes making exemptions yeah that are too big or just one question would be how you define affordable housing or other type you know income limits and so you know sometimes it's by deed restriction you have an AMI which is a little fuzzy and I don't know who calculates that so typically when you know when we're looking at inclusionary zoning or other other measures we we don't want to use percentage that the town calculates on its own we'd like to use a reference point like HUD or yeah something else and so you know the hundred percent also excludes voucher holders so I don't know if you're considering how you know it in those move right so you know that's not tied to a unit some are but for the most part they're you know the mobile vouchers can be in any dwelling unit so I wasn't sure if there's a consideration there you know in your definition of affordable if it's you know you know is it is it the price is it the you know is it the price of the home or the income of the resident that is the definition there um I think I need to find the which specific part of you so we are talking about deed restrictions but what do you mention you you have a definition for affordable in the bylaw and the act doesn't say anything about that doesn't say anything about that so really it's interesting the act is is quite generic the act is really generic right yeah so the act does mention affordable housing but it it's it's in section two under the exemptions um and it's affordable housing restrictions so yeah that's where I saw that right yeah that that that is part of the special act is any transfers of property that are subject to an affordable housing restriction which is different than the bylaw that that has some other things in there that talk about affordable housing as not a restriction but as something else if if we can unless there's something really critical somebody wants to say about the possible bylaw I'd like to not talk about the bylaw now it's not written it's not it's all we have to talk about is this and we have some other things we'd like to talk about too so I think well if it's okay to move on yeah no I guess what's interesting is you say affordable housing but you know it's it's based on income and then typically someone can't spend more than 30% of their income and so you have to do some type of analysis to determine what that is you know where everything else is based on a sale price of the home not income and so you're just bringing in a different metric so you're saying that we should consider an exemption based on income for folks I'm not I don't know what I'm saying I'm just you know it's just you know if if you're like oh it's based on 100% of the area median income then you have to get the income from the the seller's buyers or whoever's living there which is different than the sale price of the house and so usually to verify that you ask for taxes or pay stubs and that becomes a lot more rigorous than the sale price and that's all so I don't know how that figure gets determined in this process you know that that's all it's just one of those things you know usually to make sure something's affordable we ask for you know possibly three years of income verification and then you you know bank statements and it gets pretty pretty rigorous and I don't want to say intrusive but it can be but it is right but I think I think still is that not a consideration for writing the bylaw rather or Nate are you saying that something different should be in this no I think it's just something to consider for the bylaw you know in the in the act if you mention affordable housing then capital A affordable is always you know if it's by the status you know 80 percent AMI well I think Mandy's right it only says the only place it's in here is about affordable housing restriction which is a different thing and that's clear what that is if it is so again I think I would like to thank our two town councillors for coming Mandy you have a very confused looking on your face do you have something you want to say I was just looking at the bylaw to see where we mentioned some of this okay beyond the definitions and so I wasn't I wasn't scan I was scanning all right okay that's okay I don't want to I don't want to cut off something that relates to be said but also I would like to move on if we can and show thank you all so much thank you both for coming you know our emails please reach out especially if you do land on a number or what you know the as you're thinking about this please reach out we this is a really a great time to have open dialogue as it's going through the different committees so thank you all for considering supporting it and taking the time when would you if we were going to write a letter when would you need it by probably the first meeting in January for the council is what I would say because I think that's where sort of the goal is given restrictions on filing of bills at the state house I think that's what the finance committee was sort of talking about okay and we would need feedback on on if you we we are happy to muddle through and look at numbers ourselves but if you have specific feedback on numbers it would be helpful to get that as soon as you can so that we can kind of think about what edits might need to be made as this goes through finance specifically okay thank you all thanks for your time work it's really important and we appreciate it ditto back at you um let's see so we maybe need to have a conversation amongst ourselves before for which you can stay or leave I don't know to whether to see whether we have some opinion about that seems like the possibilities are up the number that we get for sure or add the trust to the to the place where the bylaw gets to decide how to divide up the rest of it and the other thing is do we want to write a letter of support those are the two things I think we're thinking about Ashley well I'm happy to up the number and also increase our percentage let's do both but the other thing that I was thinking and John brought this up in other contexts too but one unit is costing $500,000 to create and I think we need a bigger discussion about why we're spending $500,000 on a unit because if you can look at um what condos are going for in Amherst or the area the lowest the cheapest condo is about 200 to 250,000 and it's already existing and it's not it's ready to move in why are we spending 500,000 on a new unit when we could buy two units house two people or two families for exactly the same price why does everything have to be new is what I'm saying why is the focus this is a larger conversation but why is it always building why can it be taking things that are already on the market that are lots less than 500,000 and it's a whole unit and it's ready to move in why aren't we buying things already made um that seems like a good conversation to have at another time and I expect that George Ryan has written it into our notes so we won't forget Rob I was going to slide up but you're right that's that conversation for another time I would my um my opinion I think is that is that 250 seems fine obviously I would like more but I think there the town has lots of priorities and and as a taxpayer in town you know I I I recognize that uh capital budget needs to be funded so so and and you know it's not just um annual capital expenditures it's these gigantic building products that we have um you know we need to we need to supplement our taxes some way so so I I would be fine with with 250 whatever and then and then a percentage of of the remainder somebody else have something to say about this particular thing does that mean that we are sort of in agreement with 250 and a percent of the remainder just as a straw Paul I'm going to see thumbs and then we'll do something more official but can I just get an idea if we're all in the same place or we're in different places I only see Paul not saying anything Paul do you want to say something no I because it's only a council matter I'll abstain on this one so whatever the all right okay that's what to do is fine so can I just say I did a quick math and what I mean by that is I used a calculator and so I took the 1.7 million that was referenced and divided nope subtracted 250,000 from that and then did a third of what that would be so that would put so say the you know 250 plus a third based you know on that number roughly would put the total at around 730 730,000 which would be about 43% of the entire number if that makes sense that was it make yes I'm not sure that there's a guarantee that the bylaw would divide the remainder into into thirds right that would be a conversation that would happen when the bylaws written and it might be since the trust already gets something that the starts wouldn't get a whole third of the remainder I feel like that's a fight down the road to have when they're and when there's more information about what is the we will have better numbers about what was the amount of money that this would actually have brought into the town coffers and several years so it won't be quite as much of a but yes that's if it were a third yes that would be that would be great well somebody said go ahead I guess I understand that the bylaw is a different fight for a different day and nothing is guaranteed but I would say we accept the 250 with the understanding that the bylaw the intent of the bylaw is to split it in thirds because I think otherwise we get kicked to the curb really fast and just get the 250 so just I mean it holds no weight it is not in a you know it it's not even a handshake but it I would I would like that wording in our sort of suggestion to make sure that it's there when the bylaw gets written anybody have any comment about Risha's comment as anybody objects including that particular wording and what I mean I think that that would mean we would say we are in support of the $250,000 amount for us and we want we absolutely want the trust included as one of the three people who will get the remainder that's kind of yes that need to be in there and in addition we really hope that we'll get a whole third of it is that am I getting it right what the what your intent is Risha and anyone else I was sorry go ahead Risha no no go ahead I was sort of hoping that we'd say we agree with the 250,000 if we are one third equal if we get that one third equal share and some caveat of like that that's the intent because we know there's voting and negotiation and blah blah blah but that that's sort of the understanding going in is that that's where it is that's what we would like to see because the yeah because we don't have whatever we're saying now is not going to the bylaw thing is a whole different thing but we okay any any other thoughts comments somebody in the audience has their hand raised um two people in the audience have their hands raised now okay let's hear those things and then I will hope that we can move on because we're getting behind schedule Alisa thank you I just wanted to say that buying existing property just changes which low income person gets to live there it doesn't add to the stock in response to Ashley's question and I think the object is to add to the amount of low cost housing or lower cost housing not not just which who gets to live there because the people the people who live in 250,000 condos are not wealthy people but they bought it 40 years ago or 30 not necessarily you don't know that okay let's we have we'll have a comment here but not a conversation please because I would hear what you said we've heard what Ashley said and now if that's okay with folks we can hear what John wants to say and then hopefully we'll move on something else occurred to me under the trust bylaw theoretically we could also have a role in bonding expenditures so for example if wayfinder somebody else comes to us and say we need a million dollars to do something and we don't have a million dollars in principle if we have a regular income of 250,000 a year we could bond a million dollars and have that guaranteed income to pay it off year after year now I think that works but I'm not sure that it does maybe Paul or Nate would have something to say about that but if it does it dramatically increases the capability of the trust in helping to fund projects we're never going to fund an entire project don't misunderstand me you know we're never going to buy a single unit because that's silly but what we can do which we've done in the past is demonstrate to the state which is the major funder directly or indirectly for the projects that we're interested in that we have skin in the game and if we have this capacity to actually bond larger amounts to commit to a project over a 10 or 20 year period that would be created by having this guaranteed income then that could be a real game changer for the trust that's true wow that's an interesting thought I think it only means more definitely do we want this to happen so that we have the chance of some regular income and that we want and I think we can write something as a letter of support the way that Erica described it that I believe is okay with what honors the intent of what Risha said and what Allegra said and does this sound right to folks are we ready to say yes to this and do I have to do some formal vote thing or maybe I guess uh let's see um oh yeah I mean if we think we would want this to be you know the trust to recommend this I think a vote would be good yeah so and then language it doesn't have to be specific language but just you know what we would like to have added um and then to John's point yeah I think if we have a steady stream the trust can borrow you know it'd require a two-thirds vote so you know if it's exceeding a sort of ratio of our of the trust assets it takes a you know a super majority vote but I think that's something that could happen so it does you know opens up possibilities of funding larger amounts so all those in favor of writing a letter of support to the finance committee and the town council in support of this proposal with a $250,000 guarantee for the trust and the trust in amongst the three people that will the money will be shared for and we hope that it will be shared equally among the three other parties is that although uh if so no I'm supposed to do a vote Erica how do you vote yes I vote so we make it best the motion if we have a second sorry oh sorry I second the motion is there any additional conversation there we haven't already had up uh George has his hand up George sorry I need to unmute the no-taker needs the language a little bit clearer or maybe later but at the moment he's struggling to get just a clear statement so um you have a motion it's been seconded at the moment I have a motion that a letter that a letter of support to the town council with a guarantee of $250,000 to the trust anyway please just spell it out clearly so I can type it up a guarantee of $250,000 to the trust and the remaining funds collected each fiscal year shall be no I don't care where they're deposited shall be uh oh shall be deposited in the town of Amherst capitalization improvement fund and general fund and housing trust fund as allocated by bylaw we anticipate the bylaw or we help me Erica you do the next sentence no certainly um after you said the three entities equally should go after equally very good as equally as allocated by the bylaw George did that work as hopefully stated in the bylaw I will get the more precise language but at least have a general sense of it from you okay okay thank you so uh we have a motion it has been seconded George your hand is still up is that just because you didn't take it down okay uh and so we should now vote on that I'm gonna go around the way people are on my screen starting with Erica yes um Allegra yes Paul abstain Rob yes Risha yes Sid yes Alec Ashley yes and myself yes so we have everyone yes with one abstention thank you very much can can I just add I had understood that they wanted two things from us and one was an informal communication of what we just talked about in terms of the money split and the second was a formal letter of support ready for January but I think they want the numbers as quick as possible so they can do further negotiations etc okay that's probably that's probably true and so one of us will I can email them and tell them what we just said they're still here they're still here then they heard okay I'm obviously not I'm getting hot trying to do this um all right is there anything anything else about this particular about this particular issue or can we move on since we're kind of behind the next thing on our agenda was uh kind of an overview of the CPAC meeting and I think I might even well we I hopefully everyone got to see what what we submitted uh when I hope if anybody had if anybody had any questions or thoughts or is there anything anybody wants to say about our submission which tried to walk a line between saying the other projects that you're funding yes they're great housing projects yes fund them but don't cut us out entirely because we are where the new things often start and you don't want to make it so they can't start that's a two-second summary but um do people have thoughts or questions some of us at least at least Erica and I listened to the public comments just before our meeting now and I just a quick uh they were all sort of either in favor of affordable housing in general the field at Fort River and more specifically many of them were about uh support for the ball lane project the home ownership project and a lot of those were from people right who are in the area um butters or at least close butters so and what they're doing in there how they're figuring out what they're going to do I don't know my understanding was that they will talk about it some tonight after their meeting I think last till nine they will are now right now having some conversations but I believe they decided they might do straw poll voting but I don't I don't really know what's going to happen next but we will find out at some point who they funded and how much are their questions because I'd like to not I'd like to not I'd like to try to have enough time for the other these updates especially since I see that Dave is here in um as an attendee and we were hoping to have him talk to us about some things so maybe I think quickly uh Kara I just want to say yeah you know the there are many asked to the CPA committee this year and you know a lot more money than is available and so the committee is really trying to determine how best to prioritize and recommend proposals and so you know the trust hasn't and I know the store commission didn't either you know in its memo prioritize or rank proposals and so the CPA committee hasn't necessarily asked that of the trust but it's something if you know if we wanted to discuss it now would be a good time to um it could be at the next meeting but you know just the housing proposals themselves um you know is probably twice the budget of the CPA this year and so you know then there's many other proposals so I think the the committee is really trying to find the best way to to manage that and you know we haven't you know part of this discussion was also the trust has some money there's ARPA money and so you know have we you know um for instance valley CDC said in their proposal CPA proposal they'd likely come to the trust and ask for $250,000 for ball lane and you know perhaps wayfinders might ask for some but we haven't the trust hasn't discussed you know would we not seek funding this year or withdraw our CPA proposal you know would we allocate you know half a million dollars from the trust to support these projects and I'm not sure CPA is asking but I think the trust made you know they might right so I think it'd be good for the trust to talk about it if not tonight then at the next meeting you know where we feel about you know putting our the money up this year for these projects and you know because realistically the CPA committee just can't fund you know every product that's been asked of it so you know there's you know and we can talk about what's an appropriate local match or share at this point in projects so you know you know does valley or wayfinders need as much as they've asked and do they need just a certain amount to show a local match at this point in the project and would they need to come back at a future year or year to secure more funding if necessary and so you know I just want to put that out there that you know part of the conversation and some of this agenda item that's what I would say right because you know one one or two proposals maybe three proposals is more than all the CPA has for funding so you know they can they can even fund one proposal in its entirety let alone all the ones that are received um all right um so we want I anybody have any comments about what Nate just said well I have one comment which is that I don't think we should withdraw proposal so that was one of the things that you wanted us to consider I don't think we should withdraw our proposal the CPA did ask additional questions which were raised at the first meeting after Carol presented which was to all the proposals I'm sure we all got the question which was could we do with less and how much less or could we postpone projects but I think one of the things that we all discussed prior to submitting our proposal was that this funding allows us to have funds available during the year that either the CPA you know you can't you can't go to the CPA for and that we can you know use that as seed projects at times where there may not be other funds available so I think if we withdraw it I think it limits our ability especially knowing that probably you know see the CDC is going to come to us for at least $250,000 and that you know maybe we could provide just a little bit of funding to the East Street and Belcher Town Road though there wasn't anybody who spoke up for that this evening so that was a little interesting so I'm just concerned about us if the if the conversation is about withdrawing I don't believe we should they can make a decision about how much they want to give us but I think we shouldn't withdraw the proposal other comments sure thanks yeah Eric I wasn't I wasn't saying that or recommending that we should I just want to put it out there that you know it may be that the CPA committee might come back and ask a few you know they ask like could you accept less money they might be like well what if you don't get funded at all um they you know they haven't asked that yet but I guess I personally feel kind of reluctant to answer the questions they haven't yet asked I just I don't know I mean we've answered the questions that they have asked of us I think as well as I mean somebody has comments about what we said and things we should have said something different and things we should now say something different uh please speak but I don't I don't I don't know I don't anyway that's just me I don't feel inclined to answer questions that we haven't been asked somebody else want to say something to we then at this moment need to do any is there anything that anyone wants us to do right now relative to overview of the CPAC meeting as opposed to moving on to the updates that we're going to receive it's made from we're going to receive from at least Dave can you remind me of when we expect a decision if I remembered I would I do Nate do you know Paul do you know the the CPA committee makes recommendations to town council you know they don't they're not you know the decision is then voted so even if CPA makes recommendation the council may you know weigh some options as well so the CPA usually likes to have the recommendations done if not by the end of the year in January and then council could vote you know in this you know spring winter it depends on how their the budget process works and so um you know a final vote may not be until it could be March April funding isn't available until July 1 of next year okay thank you which again that that brings me back to if we were to remove our proposal we're talking about funding for next year and that was going to really limit us we you know as I said we have 600,000 right now we don't know how fast that could go remembering back when we first worked with the town with to buy the belgiatown road property we had to have those funds available and we had to move very quickly and I think you know if we don't consider the future we constantly talk about pipeline projects and if we don't have that funding available it's going to really limit us so I think we need to consider that as well so I'm inclined to move on unless someone objects please bring Dave into the room and I will turn the meeting over to Erica thank you and I one I was remiss in not thanking George for taking the minutes so thank you George for taking the minutes Dave if you can join us you're the first to provide an update I think you have some very good news it seems from the town on some of these projects and so very excited to have you here and give us an update on all three of these projects or two projects and and the ARPA funds using for hug initiatives sure thanks thanks for having me I would be remiss if I could just because I've been listening for the last 1015 minutes I actually came from the CPAC meeting so just if you're not aware there tonight is all about the public forum and then they did their straw polling so I don't know if that was kind of brought over to you tonight so the straw polling just really gives the other members of CPAC and staff and under you know a general understanding of of kind of you know strengths and weaknesses of proposals and questions that members of CPAC have so they are going to meet again they've got a pretty rigorous schedule they're going to meet again next Thursday so as Nate said I think it'll be a few meetings before they they coalesce around their recommendations and then a memo to the town council but as Nate said I just did want to reiterate that you know part of our job as staff is to work with you work with the the CPAC to kind of understand available funding priorities etc and as Nate said I believe there's 8.5 million dollars worth of proposals this year and I think we have about 1.8 million maybe 2 million if we stretch things a little bit to actually allocate if all of the dollars were were allocated so there's going to be need to be some hard decisions for CPAC in their recommendations to the town council and and I for one would would likely probably come back to you in in the next you know number of weeks or in the next month to kind of discuss you know kind of what town funds are available and what trust funds are available and I heard your discussion about keeping money in reserve and I I applaud that but at the same time part of the reason the trust has funds is to seed projects that are in the pipeline and right now we have two very exciting projects wayfinders project in Valley CDC so I was not here for the earlier part of your your conversation but you know I would hope we would we would look favorably on those I will say you know the town is partnered with with wayfinders on east street school and Delft Sound Road with the trust as you know the two properties combined are probably worth a million dollars and that is a gift to the project we've already made wayfinders as you know has come in with a 1.8 million dollar request which is a very in my I may be wrong on this but that might be the largest request that has been made to CPAC since we adopted the CPAC in 2003 if the trust excuse me if the CPAC were to recommend that to town council so that's a very significant commitment on the part of the project and again you know we've been working with with wayfinders from the get go on that since they were awarded the the project but so there's going to be some hard decisions to make and I think you know we might need staff might need to come back to you to to kind of discuss that more so so anyway why don't I jump to start with yeah the exciting news I don't know if you've discussed anything related to the VFW project I'm happy to give you a quick overview of that I believe Nate might have sent you the PowerPoint and the memos and other associated documents from the town council meeting on Monday night but you know at Paul's urging staff about probably a year ago with with some you know real directed focus began to to look around as as thoroughly as we could for a site for a permanent shelter this is not an easy task as you know with the real estate market in Amherst and zoning and protected land and college and university land and we we started with about five or six sites and began to kind of do our due diligence on each one of those sites you all know one of those sites was the I guess most people refer to it as the former hot pot site down in east the east village and we looked hard at that and for a number of reasons in particular that the the building was condoized was one of the main reasons we did not think that was a good good move we we we moved on in our process and we eventually landed on on on the main street site of VFW we knew that the VFW had been closed during the pandemic and and there was a possibility it wouldn't reopen so we you know quickly opened a dialogue with the leadership there had some very fruitful conversations did an appraisal and you know fast forward to November and Paul was able to feel confident in the agreement and was able to sign a purchase and sale agreement we are slated to close if all goes well with the town council we'll close in the middle of January on the property it's one acre the zoning is very favorable to to a creative project which we hope will will allow us to again bring together a lot of funding to create a permanent site for a shelter supportive services we hope on the first floor and then permanent supportive housing on the second and third stories of the building it's going to take a couple of years to get done some millions of dollars to to bring it all together and local and regional and state partners so I might have missed something Paul or Nate but that was the quick summary we're really excited about the opportunity again I can't say enough about the the VFW leadership of course they are closing they've closed their building but they will continue to meet in town and we hope to provide some of the units in the second and third floor to veterans who need housing and that kind of help I'd just like to add two things Dave one is that this was town council priority and one of their goals for me last year and we had a unique opportunity that we recognized with having ARPA funds so early so in November of last year we allocated a substantial about 10% of our ARPA funds to achieve this goal so we got one step of the goal which is a piece of land that seems to be suitable so we've got a long that's the first step and that's an important first step but we've got a long ways to go so Paul did set aside one million dollars for this purpose and the appraisal was 775 we will be closing at that figure the building itself is really a tear down we have no intention of using the building for sheltering that would frankly not meet any local or state codes to do so so the building will come down we will after the first of the year and once we close we will will create kind of a schedule of of next actions I could foresee some of those being some preliminary design for what could take place there and then we would move forward with demo of the building as soon as possible we will you know be a short term owner of a building that we'd like to see down just for safety and other purposes building demo is not inexpensive these days I would not be surprised if demoing that building maybe in the 75 to 150 thousand dollar range but don't quote me on that but I think that's safe range so we would love to assemble you know interested parties from committees and boards and and and our partners at craigs doors and some of the players that you all know in the valley CDCs and the wayfinders in the home cities and others and and begin to vision a little bit about what could be on the site I've already contacted DHCD they're very aware of of our actions and supportive of of where we're headed there are some other models that are happening out in in other parts of the common wealth where this is being done in particular I believe in Quincy mass there is a project that has very similar components to it so so we're looking forward to kind of a robust visioning and then as I said it's going to take a considerable amount of funding and a lot of hard work to get to the next couple of stages so happy to take any questions any questions or comments well I just want to say in my comment congratulations this is wonderful congratulations for all of us at Amherst this is really a wonderful project and it's something that is also really important to us because we're really looking from you know people who are unhoused all the way to home ownership so this is great the leg or either hand up sorry a leg that's okay um no I just I wanted to echo the congratulations I think it's been something that the town has been talking about working on since I don't know like last last May or so I think the task force formed um and you know I I guess my questions are just one will so if if the one million was allocated for the the shelter it would some of that be able to go towards either the demo or construction costs yes okay yeah that that's our hope but we haven't had extensive conversations with Paul but Paul controls the ARPA money and and and Rob Mora who is our building commissioner and works closely with with me and Paul and Nate um you know we would we would formulate a plan to look at both the demo of the building essentially the clearing of the site preparing the site we would survey the site um and some of those due diligence steps to basically um prepare it for some sort of RFP process similar to what we did with the East Street school um we would uh possibly use some of that ARPA funding to do some preliminary design work as well so that we could present it in the most favorable way and hopefully one of our partners as again as I said wonderful partners like Wayfinders and Valley CDC and Home City and others in the region um might be encouraged to partner with us uh to create something pretty special here just you know a couple of blocks down from from our our town center yeah and I think this has been a goal or a dream for many many years for both Craigstores but the town in general so a long time coming but we're happy that's here today no and so would it be kind of a almost like public part private partnership and that maybe some of the services are being provided not by town staff directly but by say Craigstores or um Elliot or somebody else coming in or am I getting ahead of us yeah I know the town will I don't think the town will be in business of providing the services we'd probably want to contract with somebody or you know get state grants or something like that to um the state has been investing pretty heavily in this field so I think partnering with people who know what they're doing is really important they're in CSO for instance has a ton of money right now to do this kind of work so that's a natural partner on the service side of things not the development side of things yeah I think that's absolutely right and and again I think we use the East Street and and Billstown Road models you know we worked with the trust and and um you know aggressively went after some land that we thought made sense in that village center and in this case we aggressively went after this piece of property close to our downtown on bus route with town water town sewer and and really once we gain site control which we will in January then we can package this up and hopefully presented in such a way that we can get both a development partner but also partners for services and as Paul said we're we're not likely to be the service providers but Craig's Doors could be one of those service providers and Iliad services and other folks who do that good work in our in our region so so very exciting and I guess the hard work now we got to roll up our sleeves and and really get the work here so help and support it absolutely this is this is a wonderful and exciting project we'll support absolutely yeah we we are going to reach out to you and and many others and we've had Paul and I and and the council I think have had very good feedback from the community and regional providers as well so we're excited about it so stay tuned on that um let me see um Hickory Ridge a quick update on Hickory Ridge um so um I think the first thing to remember is that the town just uh got site control of Hickory Ridge in March of 2022 so although we've been talking about Hickory Ridge for a couple of years it took a long time no fault of the towns but uh took a long time to tee this up and line it up and actually have us have site control so that happened in March my goal has always been to complete a and I've told this to the council um to complete a comprehensive plan of the property that plan will include um you know full due diligence on the on the 150 acres that means survey work wetlands work um you know delineating flood plains any natural resource areas we are doing an ecological restoration plan that'll be part of that comp plan we're also doing some modeling work with a landscape architecture firm to really look at what what the the property can support we know you know although 100 I think I've said this to you before but I'll say it again it it bears repeating that although it's 150 acres um there's a very small uh window of developable land and to be honest you can see that when you drive by on West Bama Roy Lane what you see is pretty much what you get in terms of developable land that won't be solar so let me say a little bit about solar there will of the 150 acres there'll be 26 acres of solar we're working with a partner that came with the project if you will that's amp energy um so when we bought it amp had already signed on board with the previous owners and so we are partnering if you will now with amp energy to develop 26 acres of solar um and that will be on some of the land north of the Fort River that is uh it's about a 6.2 megawatt project the town will see will not be an offtaker on the project we decided um well amp let me back up amp needed uh one offtaker for all of the energy and we simply did not have that much need for green energy so instead the city of Springfield will be the offtaker on the project which is actually we see as a win for Springfield being able to lessen their carbon footprint and green their municipal and other energy needs down in Springfield we will benefit through a pilot a payment in lieu of taxes so the project will bring in I don't have the figures right in front of me here at home but approximately 65 to 70 thousand dollars in a payment in lieu of taxes every year for the the value of the solar array on 26 acres I say the solar project um is an important part of this project it is almost a full-time job right now getting this solar project permitted approved and and going they would like to break ground in January that's how quickly this is going and it is taking um parts of me and and our building commissioner and his staff the planning staff to get it going it is a very we want to do it right we want to do it uh well and we want to make sure that amp follows all of the zoning and and planning and uh conservation regulations so it is a very it's going to be a very intense period here they will probably take three to four months to construct the array and that will take up 26 acres as I said we then kind of 26 of the of the of the um 150 acres it's important to recognize too that the town never would have been able to purchase the land so I said there's there's land along um Amaroy Lane where the clubhouse is in the parking area is that's pretty much the buildable land call it five to seven acres of land if generously if you will the only other land that was developable was across the river um and that's the 26 acres that will be solar and two things to remember about that one is we never would have been able to purchase the land if the solar had not been part of the project we would not have been able to afford the land we were able to purchase it for five hundred and twenty thousand dollars which is a pretty large bargain sale the land would have been worth without solar north of two million dollars so the solar is essentially paying if you will for the town to to purchase the land at this lower value you might also ask well we gave up did we give up 26 acres of buildable land for housing or some you know residential use or other use and the answer to that is no there was no way to permit anything but solar north of the brook the fort river it would have been impossible to get subdivision roads across the fort river so the solar project is using an existing bridge they will build the entire solar project crossing one bridge there's seven bridges on the property only one of them is able to support they'll be slightly improved and that they'll they'll build the entire project using that one bridge so we didn't give up anything if you will in terms of buildable land and had we not had the solar as part of the project we never would have gotten the bargain sale at five twenty so we're we're completing the um comprehensive plan that will look at housing it will look at a number of uses for the frontage along palmeroy lane and and i'll be perfectly frank there are a number of potential uses there there is a potential for housing uses and we're looking at high density medium density low density we're also looking at community buildings um there is a great need as you know for a south amherst fire station site um we are modeling whether a south amherst fire station could could fit there um we're also looking at other community buildings that may fit there as well so so this is all part of our comprehensive plan is to look at all of those potential uses and some of them may be able to fit side by side on the available frontage so why don't i stop there we hope to have that comprehensive plan done in february or march and would present it to the town via the housing trust conservation commission um town council of course so maybe i should stop there i get i get pretty excited about hickory but happy to take questions or or comments well i think you know what our interest is and one of the areas especially affordable housing for elders that was one area that we also see that there's a big gap in in terms of amherst so um we i think we'll be very interested in knowing um what the plan will be in terms of the use and i know there's lots of competition but i also remember i think it was a bubble exercise and there was a lot of support for affordable housing in that exercise as i remember sort of a dashboard so we did we did a very um um a nice um piece on our website on the engage amherst section and i know there were a couple hundred comments that came in rihanna sunray that are overseas that part of our website um worked with staff ben breger and others to really elicit hundreds of comments and they came in over a number of months and so all of those will be incorporated into our comprehensive plan and we got we got wonderful comments across the spectrum from zip could you put zip lines there and amphitheater community gardens affordable housing mini golf dog park i mean it if you go to the site i believe you can still see many of those comments and so they're all there and yes we saw a strong interest and support for looking at affordable housing there so that has not been lost i just wanted to echo that we've only owned it since march and so that's when our timeline started even though we've been talking about it for a while thank you dave so the last year that we've asked you to comment on is the opera funding for housing initiatives and i think that will help us as well uh in terms of thinking about our priorities uh and how we continue to partner i mean we're part of the town and so um honing in on what your priorities are but our priorities on how we can work together is really important yeah and i think you know happy to have paul i'm in here as well but but as as i think of things that i've been talking to paul and talking with nade and talking with sean mangano our finance director about this um you know i um i guess i would say i was never good at chess but i do like to to play three-dimensional community development so so the bottom line is i think it's very exciting how many projects in affordable housing we have going right now paul did set aside in the roughly 12 million dollars that we got in arpa funds he did set aside one million dollars for the sheltering need identified and one million dollars in affordable affordable housing and so as i look at that three-dimensional chess i think or three-dimensional community development i think of things like you know what do we have currently going what's what's happening in town and so you know we have valley cdc doing their wonderful project at 134 north hampton road which you know has received funding and support and i i hope we're keeping our fingers crossed given climate and whatnot that they have the funding that they can proceed with we we the town with the help of the trust partners with wayfinders on east street school in belcher town road and they have put in that request as i said 1.8 million to cpac and cpac is doing its thing but cpac is not in my mind doing its thing in a vacuum right we you the the trust the staff we are we are part of this this you know a community decision on on how do we help move these project forward so we have wayfinders at east street school belcher town road we have this wonderful project with valley cdc up in matusko ball lane we are fully investigating strong street now and i don't know if you talked about that i think it might be next on your agenda but we're looking we're now through some preliminary wetlands work and rare species work on strong street we now as of monday night you know the council has not yet voted on the vfw site they don't need to vote on the funding but they do need to vote on the acquisition that will happen on um um december 19th so we we now have wayfinders in process that wonderful project valley cdc vfw site which will include sheltering as well as permanent supportive housing we have strong street in play so as we as as as i work at paul's direction um and with nade and with our building commissioner and planning folks we kind of look at that at that one million dollars in arpa funds and say how is it best allocated among and between these projects to to move them forward so i don't have a specific recommendation or number tonight but that is an ongoing conversation that we're having with paul and with nade with nade in the room and also with our finance director shon mengano um a million dollars sounds like a lot but in fact when you look at what valley cdc needs what wayfinders needs and what we'll need for the vfw site and potentially strong street we know that these these numbers don't go as far as we'd like so there's not enough funding to to do all of these projects but but um i guess i would also say that you know the kind of a bird in the hand we've got wayfinders wonderful project valley cdc a wonderful project and now potentially vfw uh a project that is not as far along as the other two but certainly has some momentum so i i honestly think um hickory is a little you know you talked about pipeline earlier erica hickory is potentially in the pipeline but not in the near term it's farther down the road so i'll stop there yeah so a couple things on that one one is we there we haven't mentioned the um development that's going on that include affordable housing units as part of it that's that's happening based on private developers who designated affordable housing units um but there's also a certain certain level of staff capacity um you know we have some turnover going on in the second floor how many projects can we reasonably manage over time um so i think that's that's an important piece for us as well and the third thing i want to mention is that the council is looking at the goals for the town manager for me for next year and they're having that discussion now if there are priorities you think that they should be including in those goals you should definitely communicate with them probably individually sooner than later um because that's you know if if it's important for them to say what they want you know because they're the elected leaders of the town if they say we really want to shelter that's what we work on if they say we want more moderate income housing that's what we work on and so having that sort of sort of prioritization is really important for us as we allocate our time so yeah happy to take questions on that i just wanted to give kind of a flavor of how many projects it's exciting right it's very exciting to have to have these projects we know there's a tremendous unmet need out there we know these projects also as paul said we have projects that are happening in private developments like on u drive south um um on aspen heights that just was completed over on uh route nine um on the south side of route nine um so we have we have rental projects that are happening and then we have valley of course wayfinders project but then we also have valley cdc looking at affordable home ownership so it's it's exciting i mean it's exciting it can be a little overwhelming from a staff standpoint to kind of how do we support all of these projects and keeping them moving forward some of them will many of them will need to move through the 40b process so that's a big lift for staff um so happy to take questions carol go ahead um i just figure out how to lower my hand now i i guess that i'm it's true there are so many things going on and one of the things that i keep wondering is how do we collaborate about it it feels like we're in these separate silos here's the housing trust doing something here's cpac doing something here's the town staff doing something and how do we i mean it seems like it would be better if all of those things really got to figure out together what's the best way to use everything like cpac is trying to figure out what to do but maybe it makes a difference what they do about what you all going to do with this money or what the trust is going to do with whatever it's money it just feels well it just i just my question is how what's the best way that we can do this together for the best outcome so ultimately it's the town council that sets the direction for the town they're the elected the chief elected officials for the town they have to set the guidelines for cpa they're the ones who finally make the decision for any of these projects that were purchasing land they have to vote to accept the land all the projects funneled through the staff on the second floor a few days to me so anything would do with affordable housing goes through the same people but there are different people there are different committees that have different responsibilities and i i guess i would just add carol that that that was kind of what i was alluding to in my opening remarks about cpa the cpa process you know we've we've worked we the town that you you the trust are part of the town i know it may appear you know at least maybe i don't know to some on paper or whatever on an org chart that you're not but you are you are part of the town and and we we help you know staff your your work and and i know you know and i see john is still here tonight but you know over the past three to five years we've worked very successfully i think together in in collaborative efforts that have resulted in some of the projects we're talking about so i think we need to build on that but a lot of it comes down to as you said carol is how do we how do we decide at least in the short term how some of this funding is best applied to the valley cdc project the wayfinder project to the fw project and you know the town has some resources that we control you have some funding that came to you through seatback and i understand you want to you want to make sure you can have some of that funding to be nimble and and flexible between seatback rounds but also i think part of the reason you have funding is to apply it to good projects and here we have two good projects before us and we know there's not going to be enough seatback funding there is just there is no way they can fund all those projects even if they bond some of them we also have to be a little careful with bonding bonding seems oh easy we can just do that well there are implications of bonding more projects town-wide but also every time we bond a project it takes money out of the annual funds that are available for new projects next time right we need to make sure that bonding that debt load for seatback is not too high so yep so i think that's why i suggested that let's see what seatback does tonight with their straw polling i'm going to get together with sean mangano and we'll of course talk with paul and take a look at the arpa money that we've been discussing some of the seatback money and i and i would you know hope that we could come back to you with with some suggested paths forward and it might need to be before before the holidays i i don't know if you have another meeting scheduled but we might need to add one meeting before the holidays or or shortly thereafter to kind of have a follow-up conversation sure okay and that's going to include um thank you sorry carol um absolutely thank you um that includes also the 500 000 that you guys still have from seatback because i remember mentioning that last seatback meeting um but i think yes having a conversation uh in terms of priorities and how we can best maximize and still ensure that we have some flexibility because we're talking about not only this year but next year so i think absolutely um you know we absolutely are collaborators um as you said we're part of the town so we want to vision we're all part of the town and we all support affordable housing so we want to maximize the resources so thank you i just want to make sure before we move on to nate uh that uh anybody else has an opportunity to make a comment or say anything not seeing you know to say quickly that the ARPA funds are are really unique in that they don't have some of the same restrictions as CPA or CDBG you know block grant funds and so you know when you know looking at the vfw site for instance it's like well what what funds are appropriate there and you know there are probably a number of different funding sources but you know we have to consider as we talk about this you know what what are you know what could be good for design for development for construction and so each each funding comes with some restrictions or you know strings attached and so you know i think ARPA funds though are flexible and and um you know there's a deadline though but i think they are you know more flexible than say block grant or even CPA and so i think that just you know as we as trust members consider that just remember you know if we start thinking how to layer funding on a project whether it's trust fund CPA or other funds that you know each of those has their you know caveats with them and um you know so that's some of the conversation Dave was alluding to i think you know the CPA committee is asking that as well like okay if if valley needs three quarters of a million and we give them half a million where does the 250 come from or if we give them 300,000 how do we help them build up to the requested amount and maybe it's a combination of you know three or four funding sources um but you know i think that's something that may need to happen as Dave mentioned in the next month or so yeah thank you uh ashley did you have your hand up i was just you know it's it's a little bit hard for me to like think about all these projects but also i think we just need to think about like the people's lives that we're touching because even in like ball street i forget how many units there are but it's it's a relatively small amount that actually has affordable housing like i forgot the percentage but so if there was 24 units i could look this up we could look this up only like 10 were actually affordable right so that's like helping 10 families out of 24 units and so i think it's 30 and 20 ashley but go ahead well that's good but i'm saying like it's i want to talk about what percent like because it's not like a project doesn't help it's not an actual it's just a development some of it some of it is actually helping is affordable a lot of it in this marketplace people are just buying it i think we should need to talk every single time about how many people are really how many low-income people are really being helped with each project because that's what matters lots of people are just getting market rate housing with their development you know and so it's like we got to talk about how many people were helping not just all the numbers but 20 out of 30 is better than none but it's like i would like some 100 percent i mean hopefully that one that's the vfw is like a hundred percent helping people because that's going to be like a high percentage so that's like that seems like a priority the the more percentage affordable units or free that's the better project yeah if i could and no it's a great point um i think sometimes we planners get a little we get focused on the project and and we and the funding and the sites and the real estate and and all the steps and it's important to to kind of step back sometimes and say who are we trying to help and how many more people can we get into housing in Amherst that is affordable to them as an individual or or as a family the the one thing about um any of these projects is that often the mix of and i'm probably not telling you anything you don't know here but many times it's the market rate units that subsidize help subsidize the the affordable units so it is challenging to get a 100 percent you know all have all the units be be affordable and that's why we see these mixes whether it's in valleys project or waitfinders but but i again i think the project that we're envisioning for the vfw all of those would hopefully be you know affordable and some of them set aside for veterans but i think your point is well taken um we need to remember the people and the families we're trying to help so all right i just want to pay attention to time it's 847 carol i'll i'll try to be brief but i actually think there's another benefit to when it isn't all low income housing together when it's mixed that means that all the different kinds of people and different levels of income get to mix too and and so it helps end the kind of segregation that we have it brings us together in a way that's really important it's been important for for me personally in my life to live in those kinds of communities and so it's doesn't i i don't know i don't think that there's no benefit there is no social benefit also as well as the economic benefit that dave just mentioned and probably and we shouldn't probably get off on this but i just i had to say something because i think there is also a social benefit with i think the mixed you know income is a benefit i just think that maybe it could be 50 50 or something but it tends to be not that much not that much so i think one of the things that ashley you're saying which we've also been trying to get a handle on is what's the actual number for amherst and um you know we've been trying to look at all of the data and george actually put some data together but it's something to consider for the future maybe parking lot or bicycle rack future discussion but possibly a dashboard where we have all of the different developments private how many are actual affordable and how many are market rate so we can actually know and so when you know we're presenting data to the c-pack or to whomever um that we actually have those numbers so uh we could be clearer on you know when we're supporting a project what does this actually mean in terms of numbers and families single families or extended families etc so i'm gonna move us i'm gonna move us to the next topic just because it's 849 but that's really a really important conversation that we'll put we'll continue um so nate do you want to talk to us about strong street where that's sure you know the this has been an ongoing project for a bit and you know we did have the wetlands assessed and rare species as dave mentioned and you know it looks promising so you know this is going to be a slow project um you know it looks like the site can be developed uh we have you know some good preliminary assessments but you know as we looked at it you know it's not something that's going to yield a large number of units right i mean you know 10 15 at most right it doesn't seem like it's appropriate place for a large apartment building um there are some complications with utilities and access um but it's you know something that the town's going to continue to pursue and so uh you know i think that for now um you know i i could say we could take it off the trust agenda every every month and it's something that we could provide updates on periodically you know we're still looking at uh dave and i are meeting with neighbors tomorrow so there's some neighbors to the property that are interested in what's happening you know there are some owners that own property that bought into the subdivision when it was approved back many years ago and their properties were never developed um so we've met with them and you know i think it's something that we're looking at how to move forward you know what you know is it something that the town would use you know ask trust money uh to do design and development and we could bring it through permitting and then try to RFP it to a developer with a permit already in hand or is it something that um you know we could help with utilities and then have a developer take it over and so you know we've approached a few and asked what you know what kind of scenarios would be best but so i think it will move forward it's just not a fast project and it's challenging so you know i think it's a good thing right so if if at this point the environmental assessments were different we would say let's just walk right we would say that this property is not uh you know viable for any development but that's the opposite so you know that's the good news that i guess what really is is just a kind of a slower process to figure out what's appropriate on the site and you know i mean we were thinking you know homeownership units um you know could be rental but you know just it's not a large number of units so it's not something actually to your point you know most developers right there's an economies of scale or some number of units that makes it feasible and so we say oh we have a 10 to 15 unit project most developers would not really be clamoring to to do that and so we're trying to figure out ways to incentivize it or make it feasible for someone to come in um the town's typically not a developer right we can help with utilities and horizontal uh infrastructure but not typically you know actual building of residential units so would would that be a potential site for something like habitat to step into or it could be out i spoke with habitat a long time ago and they you know they were concerned about the all the cost actually just get utilities and road and everything into the site and so you know it's something that if they're responding for that if we could you know essentially make it more developer ready they would be interested in it so that's it's still a possibility it's just you know right now it's really a driveway with no utilities and you know it could be a pretty big project just to get the site ready to build on and that's something that they you know they if it's at that point they would take it but they're not going to do that work either any other questions or comments so Nate what you just said really stresses why we need money i'm sorry it really does stress why the trust needs to have available funds in order to support things like this um but um thank you um i mean i think the other consideration is what's the feasibility of possibly selling it and then using that money for other projects um but that's something that we could probably take on at another meeting right it kind of has a disposition policy that could you know be looked at and so you know the the trust i think has kind of still has the you know the ability to look at it um you know there isn't you know unlike kickery ridge where there's some flat land along a street frontage you know most of this is wooded and up a steep slope and so right maybe maybe there's a sale of a lot or two but there's really not too many other uses that you know we're not going to put a you know for instance a fire station up there or a senior center but um you know right i think robin mentioned that at you know you know could have been like a year ago when we were looking at this you know robin mentioned oh well if there's one or two lots could those sale of those at market rate help subsidize either the development of the property the rest of the property or go to some other project and so there's probably some considerations as we move through this absolutely so it oh sorry go ahead carol i see it seems to me that what you're saying is the environmental study is promising enough that you're not that we're not ready the town is not ready to give up on it as a possible place for housing but the housing is probably not going to come as a project development it may come much more like as what allegra and what you were talking about maybe we are asked to bring in some services and then habitat picks away at it one thing at a time or some other similar thing like that happens and so from the trust's point of view we will hear about it from you again if you think the trust can do something in that process to move it forward is that right yeah that's a good summary thank you okay thank you thank you does anybody else have any comments or questions for nate we'll make sure i'm not missing anybody here and not seeing it from okay thank you so now i'm going to go ahead and move it on to paul um regarding uh our filling our trust vacancies i think you have some good news for us as well yeah i think um angela set up some interview times for next week i think so i just see on my calendar so we're doing a whole bunch of interviews it's a good time of year for us to be doing interviews so that will go then what happens with that is that i make the appointment it goes to the tso committee of the council and then to the full council so i think there's one vacancy right now that's right trust yeah thank you and thank you for moving that forward and carol will be representing us on excellent any questions from anybody all right so i'm going to now move it on to carol um for public comments and other topics before we wrap up and we have three minutes to wrap up i bet you we can do it again an announcement that i think nate had at the beginning of the agenda but i anyway rita farrell our long-time wonderful person who's worked as a consultant for us is involved in town politics in shootsbury and has has is no longer available to us so if we need the kind of support that we got from her again in the future we will have to find another person to get it from because she's she's no longer available and we're really glad that we had her and hope that she does well and what you're doing now um are there any public comments from anyone who is still here who's still here still lots of people there's a number of people there are one two three four five six people one of whom is our note taker still remaining as attendees and if anyone would like to make a comment a public comment please raise their hand at this moment i'm gonna dave has his hand raised yeah okay go ahead i don't want to extend your meeting i know you're trying to wrap carol but um this is a topic that i think i i would like to come back and talk with you about it some future date i know that you know we've had a great relationship with rita through the years been very effective um the town requested and and uh um was supported by the town council for some funds for for part-time staff and so i i think having having a discussion about staff and staff for the town dedicated staff for the trust and dedicated staff for the town focused you know exclusively on affordable housing makes a lot of sense to me so i i know we don't want to take time tonight but i think we should have that conversation in in the next two months um i think there's some economies of scale there that we can we can capitalize on and and as paul indicated uh we we've lost some staff on the second floor so the next couple of months are going to be very challenging for us nate is wonderful but nate i can tell you he has a whole lot on his plate right now so um i'm sure he does so let's if if i could maybe in the your january meeting we could bring that some ideas to you and we could talk about you know some of the needs you have some of the needs the town has and maybe there's a way to look at at um your your funding that you've set aside in the past and the funding we got from cpaq and and and be creative about it so i'll stop there thank you okay well we can put that on the agenda for january 12th i think it is um and i think that we will ashley go ahead i i i second that or i totally support that and also the first thing i want them to do is a cost analysis of why it's so expensive to get affordable housing like why is a unit so expensive and why is it what what can we spend and how efficient can we be to house the most amount of people and i totally want to hire that person okay thanks thank you um do we have any other public comment from anyone else who's who's either in the room or not yet in the room hands are not up i do not see any hands um so i think we now have a couple of items on our future agenda i don't have any items other than those we just put on the future agenda that weren't fought up in the last 48 hours and i put in a possible item on the future agenda sorry yes um so i am also the co-chair of the community safety and social justice committee and we have been floating the idea of perhaps um co-hosting community listening sessions with different um other agencies in town or committees in town that are doing you know intersectional work with social justice so one of the committees that we thought would be reasonable to perhaps host a listening session with would be the housing process so oh yeah so you so you want to say more about that as an agenda as a future agenda item or you want the future agenda item to be to do that um both okay okay that's fine that's fine but i don't think we have any like details or anything really flushed out yet so i think that that perhaps when that's more concrete if if people would be willing to listen to some sort of pitch then that would be sure in the future sure all right a future but not the next is that right yeah any any whatever okay okay um anything else i have a quick question for future as well if maybe paul nate or dav can comment on this in the future um i believe amherst is receiving opiate abatement funds is it are we considering possibly using those funds to support behavioral health services for the vfw project but that does not need to be answered now okay anything else that anyone wants to say before i guess we have to vote to adjourn but i think we can do it with our songs you actually the chairs can just say i declare that i just adjourned the meeting so you don't have to vote all right i declare something really quick that the meeting is adjourned at whatever time it is nine oh three five three thank you all for your participation and patience and everything else and uh see you on january 12 unless i i think that we were warned by dav that we might need to have an additional meeting and so that we might need to make some kind of talking about how all of the different funding things work together so uh i'm going to ask dav if you want to do that to please give us as much notice as you possibly can so we can manage to have a quorum for you and i'm just going to we should just all be unnoticed if that might happen so we might see you before january 12th um it could be can be january first if everyone's available on the first day your house i'll come with a mask let's keep that as a tentative date good night thank you everybody