 And okay. All right. I'd like to call this meeting of the CPA committee to order at 602 p.m. on Thursday, November 5th. 2020 pursuant to the governor's emergency. Declarations we are not allowed to meet in public. So our meeting virtually and this meeting is being recorded. We have a quorum. Oh, and okay. I think I will start by. Asking for a minute, take her for this meeting. Who has not done that maybe. Hey, thank you, Sarah. Good. I'll send you what I use anyway. Yeah, awesome. You don't mind. Okay. So while that is happening. I think it was. Sarah who asked last time that we begin with introductions. Was that right? Was that you? It was me. I mean, it was mostly because we had new members. And I don't feel like they knew who we were. But we had done that. If not that meeting. I thought we, we done it in one of the last two meetings. But we could. We did. We did it on the 20th. Yeah. And I had said I had been gone. So, but last week I understand it was Katie Owens. It's almost first meeting. We didn't introduce ourselves. Right. Well, happy to go around and do that. Right now. Maybe a couple other, maybe she. We'll. Be able to attend. So I don't know what order. I don't know. I just call on people to introduce themselves. We'll start with Robin. I'm Robin Ford. I'm a representative from the. Amherst Historic Commission. Historical commission. Thank you. Sam. You're muted. I'm Sam McLeod. I'm an at large member. Long time Amherst resident. Thank you. David. David Debbie Williams. House and authority. Sarah Isinger. Hi, Sarah Isinger. I've been on the CPAC. I think this is my third year. Our third cycle. I live in North Amherst. And in my, I'm an at large member and in my day job, I work at the Herald Grinspoon Foundation. Okay. Diana. I'm Diana Stein. I am a long time resident. I'm an at large member of CPAC. And I'm happy to be one. Thank you. Anna. Hi, I'm Anna Devlin got here. I am the rep for the conservation commission. I am not a long-term Amherst resident, but a boomeranging one. So I grew up here and I'm back. And so I guess long time if you count cumulatively. And yeah, really excited. This is my third meeting. So. All right. Thank you. Katie. We're just introducing ourselves. Thank you. I actually was on from the beginning, but you couldn't see me and I could just hear you. But thank you, Sarah, for asking to introduce, I know you introduced last week, but we, we didn't really, we just said our names. So I appreciate hearing. And getting to know you all a little bit more. This is my second meeting. Anna. So I am Katie Allen's Oble. I live over on Bay Road. I've lived in Amherst. Probably 25 years. And I work in my day job is at the community foundation of Western Massachusetts. Katie, I'm also on Bay Road. So like basically neighbors. Long road. I still counted as neighbors. It still counts. Houses are far apart. And I'm Sarah Marshall. I'm the LSSC rep. Although we are. Changing our name to Amherst recreation. You. That you should see that news coming around soon. And I came on at the same time. To see CPAC is Robin and Sarah, I think. So this is our third cycle, but the each cycle, each season has been advanced in the calendar. So I think we're only coming up on two years. It's been very busy. Busy time. I think it's been very busy. I think we're only coming up on two years. It's been very busy. Busy time. I think that's all the. Members. So we are missing. Andy. Just Andy. Okay. And there are several other people, staff, people participating. And, but I think we can. Move on to financial updates. I don't know if Sonya is there or nothing new since the document she shared. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know who this week. We did send you the. Maybe too much information and that spreadsheet this week, but. That has that. There's no nothing new to report on that front today. So I think we're talking about. Is it backwards? Does this make it backwards to you? No. Okay. So that one because Sonya had shown it on screen at one point. And then we never saw it again. So. I don't know if you see this kind of thing frequently. So now you have a copy. You can scrutinize. Why did you say too much information? I mean, it's the same old thing. I mean. Well, I, you might have noticed that there were like 10 different worksheets in that workbook. Not all of them are useful to an end user. That's all I'm. Okay. Okay. That's all I meant. I wanted to say that. I think that was something I should have noticed. I did not notice that, but it sounds like it doesn't matter. Thank you. And this is the top, the top. She. So. Okay. So nothing new. I did want to ask. Anthony, do you think that returned appropriations are now. Complete. That. That all the. You've been through all those accounts and closed out. I don't know if I'm correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe those are complete. And that is all that we have authorization at this point to cancel. There may be more coming, but not in the very near future. Okay. All right. Thank you. All right. Does any, did anyone. Have questions about either, you know, the general nature of this. Document or specifics. I'm still getting used to the fact that. Even monies we, we spent last year. There's still just estimates. So, you know, it doesn't all become settled for quite a while after we've made the grants. Hopefully they can all still be funded at that point. I don't know if it's ever happened. Anthony that the money did not in fact come in as. I don't know if it's ever happened. I don't know if it's ever happened. I don't know if it's ever happened. I've only been in this game for a couple of years. You know, I. I think we have pretty good faith in Sonya's numbers. And I think they're, she tends to be conservative with them. So. Okay. I would agree with Anthony on that the numbers are. Estimates, but because CPA is a tax. It normally does come in. It's not something that's. The estimates are very good. Okay. Thank you, Robin. Oh, I was just wondering if we would be getting a report of outstanding funds for previous grants, just so we can have a historical reference to what's out there. Do we need that to help us decide. This round of proposals. Do you think, or is that something we could look at maybe after we've. Well, I think in the past we had applicants from the historical commission or historic preservation proposals that had a number of outstanding. Grants that hadn't seen activity on them. And so to not know what's out there and whether or not it's moving along. If you have someone coming up for another proposal, it's helpful in that regard. But I, I mean, I would most of just find it helpful in general. Well, yes. Oh, maybe we could ask if any of the applicants. Have that state previous. And unspent monies. It's not a difficult report to run. Okay. Yes, we can prepare something for the next meeting. If you like, that's not a problem. Okay. So be great. Thank you. And I think next meeting is the public hearing. So there might. If there's not a lot, a lot of public comment, there may be ample time for that. So. All right. Yes. Sorry, Sarah. I just, Anthony, is this since I'm so new and I looked at that spreadsheet. I wondered if there might be either you or someone else. In the town office that just could review a couple of, I have a bunch of questions I don't want to take time here for. Is that something I should check in with you about? I'm just not sure the right protocol. Okay. Why don't you actually email me. Sean mangano. I think it will find a time to do that. That goes for anyone else on the committee. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate it. And not more than four of us. Right. Yeah. No, we'll, we'll avoid a. Public record. Public meeting law violation. Okay. Anything more about that. Set of numbers. Okay. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. We have anyone here. Excuse me. We have anyone. If any of the attendees would like to say anything. And you're not one of the presenters tonight. Go ahead and raise your hand. In zoom. No one is raising their hand. I don't think you have any. All right. Then we can begin the presentations. The first one will be from. John Hornick. And I'm bringing. All right. I'm going to unmute. Okay. Can you hear me now? Yes. That's a cute backdrop. Yes. It says affordable housing behind me, but you can't see that. Okay. I took it off the internet somewhere. I thought it was appropriate given my role. Right. I have. Really a presentation with a lot of very new information. So I'm going to go ahead and bring it up. And then I'm going to see that. In fact, there are some limitations in what I can communicate now, but I'm going to do the best that I can. And then I'll be joined by Dave Zomek. Some days I feel like I'm on a roller coaster, particularly in the last month. With the end of the state eviction moratorium, I know that many households are hanging by a thread. This morning I was on a call organized by Pamela Schwartz, chair of the University of Mississippi, the Wisconsin City of Milwaukee, where it was at the end homelessness. There were over 40 people on the call, including Senator Cumberford, Senator Hines, mayor Narco, which and other state officials. The news was not good. In Western Massachusetts alone. are rolling out very slowly. Statewide, it is estimated that there are 26,000 households backlogged awaiting processing for RAFT, the state's program titled residential assistance for families in transition. In Hamden, Hampshire and Franklin counties, the RAFT providers do not have adequate staffing to handle the workload. Nothing that we are going to speak about this evening will address the immediacy of this disaster. It is the principal responsibility of the Housing Trust to focus on the development of affordable housing. We do this so that the kinds of problems that families and Amherst face today can be better addressed in the future. You, the Community Preservation Act Committee, are our primary partners in this endeavor. Without commitments of CPA resources, we cannot encourage or support appropriate development in Amherst. As I have said to this committee before, this is one of, if not the most important investments you can make. Not only will the dollars you commit support the development of housing for individuals and families who are homeless or at risk of homelessness, but it is the most highly leveraged use of CPA resources that you can make. For every dollar you invest in affordable housing development, eight to ten dollars are added from the Commonwealth Department of Housing and Community Development, that is DHCD, or other public resources. Nothing else you fund has a multiplier of eight to ten times your investment in affordable housing development. All of this is preamble to explaining the largest ask that the Housing Trust has ever made of this group. My story begins about one month ago when Dave Zomek, the Assistant Town Manager, called me to say the Town Hall had identified a site of approximately 2.6 acres that is on a major road close to a village center and on a public transportation route. John Dave asked, would the Housing Trust be interested in purchasing this property for development of affordable housing? Honestly, best news since sliced bread. As Chair of the Housing Trust, my goal has been to seek whatever reasonable opportunities are available to build a pipeline of affordable housing. It's not been easy. Over five years ago when the town adopted its housing production plan, Amherst committed to adding 45 affordable units each year, a modest goal. I think we have yet to reach 20 percent of that. So, yes, Dave, we are very interested. The asking price for the property is close to $800,000. In addition, we will probably have at least another $50,000 in costs related to property evaluation, addressing wetlands issues and closing costs. Dave, Rob Moore, the Building Commissioner and Nate Malloy, Senior Planner, have taken a close look at the property. Rob estimates that 30 to 40 units could be built on the site. So while $800,000 sounds like a lot of money, the per unit costs of land acquisition are likely to be in the range of $20 to $25,000. That's actually quite reasonable for Amherst. With unanimous vote of the Housing Trust acting in executive session three weeks ago, we formed a partnership with the town and submitted a formal bid for the property about two weeks ago. We hoped closed by mid-January 2021, so a couple of months away. So this is an urgent matter. In addition to talking with Paul Backelman, Dave Zomek and Nate Malloy, I have also been talking with not-for-profit developers and a financing expert. One of the things that I learned is that if we can purchase this property and combine it with the E Street School site, we have a much better chance of getting state financing to develop both together. This is a very important opportunity. To put it in context, Laura Baker, the real estate manager for Valley Community Development, spent two years searching for an Amherst property that we now identify as 132 Northampton Road. When that search ended and Valley decided to purchase the property, afraid that it would be scooped up as other properties she had been looking at had been. Many of you may know that the Zoning Board of Appeals just last week approved Valley's request for a comprehensive permit. Valley would be submitting a financing application to DHCD in December, and a very important element of their application will be the $500,000 that CPAC recommended to support this development. Assuming everything goes smoothly from here on out, it will still be at least two years from now before the first tenant walks in the door of the Amherst studio apartments. As I come before you today to ask you to consider a grant of $800,000 to the Amherst Municipal Housing Trust, I do so in the knowledge that most of us will no longer be in our current roles in town government when people actually move into the planned affordable housing. For me as well as for you, it is an act of faith both to make this request and to improve it. I do want to ask Dave Zomek to join me. He and I will do our best to respond to questions. Admittedly, we are short on details because we are in the midst of negotiating with the seller and this is a public meeting. But before we move on to questions, I want to leave you with the words of a past local champion of affordable housing speaking about the Valley Community Development Project at 132 Northampton Road. Quote, this proposal gets to the heart of CPA's affordable housing mission. It's and it's worth remembering why we have affordable housing as part of CPA to begin with. A few data points. The National Low Income Housing Coalition found that a renter working 40 hours a week and earning minimum wage can afford a two-bedroom apartment without spending nearly half of their income in exactly zero counties in the United States. The federal government consistently subsidized middle and upper middle income homeowners rather than low income renters, seniors and the disabled. Annual federal costs of the mortgage tax deduction dwarfs what the government pays for rental subsidies in public housing. Embedded in these statistics are the folks who will be living in the proposed Valley CDC fully accessible complex. These folks, homeless, low income and single veterans, people under the care of mental health services, the physically disabled, they're already in this community living on the streets or with friends or family in already cramped apartments spending half their meager income on inadequate housing. This project will dramatically improve the lives of our most vulnerable neighbors. So we have before us in this proposal a local solution to what is a profound human crisis faced by almost every community in the country. That is excerpted from Nate Buddington, former chair of CPAC, speaking before town council after the CPA voted for the Northampton Road project unanimously and with enthusiasm. It was a wonderful speech. I wish I had been as eloquent and now questions. Thank you for your consideration. So we'll take questions from the group. Please do raise your hand. I saw Diana. Well, this is a very specific question about the East Street school and maybe you don't want to go there right now. But one of the things that has to be assessed is wetlands. And I was wondering how with a broken culvert, one could get an accurate assessment of wetlands. Is that a good context right now? John, would you rather come back to that later? No, no, I can answer it now. It's easier for me to answer East Street school questions and harder to talk about the other piece of property. Actually Dave's also been more involved in the direct negotiations with the realtor on the other piece of property. So I'll expect him to talk more about that. But with respect to the East Street school site, Nate Malloy has had a wetlands consultant expert out there. And he determined that the area immediately around the school, which is where the coach backs on to the culvert, is not a problem. The culvert is definitely a problem. So there's no question that we have to fix the culvert before we can move forward with development of the East Street school. I don't know exactly what that will cost several thousand dollars, but whatever it is, it would be worth it. Because if we have that, then we can go forward with development of that site. Go ahead. I'll go back to now the bigger picture, new piece of property. So you're asking for 800,000 and you have 400,000 available right now? Is that true? Or is that going for the rental assistance and preventing eviction? What's the status of that? Okay. The 400,000 you speak of should be available. We do have other funds that will be needed to pay for the emergency rental assistance program. Some of it will be reimbursed by CARES funding that the town is receiving. But to the extent that we have expenses and we anticipate this, that go beyond December 31 right now, that will have to be paid out of housing trust funds. So we have approximately 400,000 dollars that is available to us, honestly, plus a little bit more money for technical services, which we'll also need for those sites as well as other things that we would like to do. We don't want to put ourselves in a position of wiping out all of the money that the housing trust has. So at this point we're asking for 800,000 dollars. Dave can speak to this, but in a week or two when we have a response to our purchase and sale request, we may find that the cost of the property is a little bit less than what we now think it might be. So we're being conservative, but it is possible we may not need 800,000 dollars. Okay, one other thing, and I'm bouncing all over the place, you withdrew the request for money for your consultant, your technical person, Rita Barrell. Is that correct? And if so, why? That's correct. It's not because we don't need Rita. I was on a call the other day with Peter Graham, who's a financial consultant. I was very helpful, and Rita was on the call with me, and she was critical to asking questions about of Peter that I wouldn't have thought of, and she's often critical because she has much more experience certainly than I do in these areas. After consulting with Nate Malloy, we realized that we probably had enough money banked, if you like, for technical services, so we did not need to ask for that 20,000 dollars now, and given how much additional funding we're asking for, it seemed very reasonable to withdraw the request. Okay, that finishes my questions. Thank you, John. Thank you, Diana. Sam. This may be for John and Dave, I'm not sure. Regarding the new information that you provided, regarding a potential property, you indicated you're in partnership with the town, so am I correct that the thought is that there'd be a piece of property purchased by an entity or by the town where there would be funding coming from multiple sources, meaning the trust and the town, or is this a property that would be funded through the trust CPA trust funds, but by virtue of that purchase, it would be designated for future development, and if so, what might the future development cost be? Would the purchase of this put it into a category similar to where East Street School is right now? Multiple questions, either one of you. Maybe I could take a shot at that, John, and you could help me out if needed. So first of all, it's hard to follow John's intro there. He covered almost everything, so it didn't lead me much, but Sam, your questions were very good. So a couple of things. Number one, first of all, the town, even prior to having a housing trust, the town has been in the game of supporting affordable housing for a very, very long time, longer than any of us have been doing this work for the town, probably 30 years. More recently, obviously, we have supported everything from securing affordable units at Rolling Green, the units that were developed at Olympia Oaks, Butternut Farm, and the list goes on and on and on, but more recently, and in recent years since the trust was formed, and I should say the trust is really part of the town. It is not a separate entity. We are one. We are all working toward the same goal. Many people have said to me, well, is the trust like the Kestrel Trust? The Kestrel Trust is a separate nonprofit entity that also has conservation-minded interest and has partnered with the town for many years, but the trust itself is part of the town. Its funding is overseen by our finance director and our comptroller, Sean Mangano and Sonia Aldridge. So when John speaks of this partnership, it's really bringing the best of what the town can offer and the trust can offer. The trust can actually purchase land and hold it on its own. So that is the trust, Housing Trust in Massachusetts have an incredible amount of power and ability to buy and sell property. So we came together, we assessed this opportunity and thought we should move as quickly as possible. I think tonight, I was trying to put myself in any of your shoes, and I was kind of thinking, number one, this is a big ask, and number two, they're coming to us without a lot of detail. And I guess what I would say is we would welcome a follow-up conversation with you as soon as we have all of the moving parts of the deal locked in. And that's really why we can't be more specific about the property and price, etc., because those things have not been agreed upon yet. Normally when I come to the CPA, I have all of those pieces put together, you know, for buying Conservation Land X or Hickory Ridge Y, we have all of those worked out. We're not there yet, but we had to get you a proposal to meet your deadline. So we did that to keep the door open for this project. And we think, as John said, it's very important. Our goal is to, John, use the word pipeline. My goal working for the town would be to have a number of parcels, both town-owned and potentially properties to acquire in the pipeline, so that every year, every two years, every three years, we have property to develop for affordable housing. As John said, it takes years to get these projects through. Sam, your last question, I think, was about funding. So the town resources that would go toward this are CPA dollars. The town, those are town resources, right? They're all of our taxes. So the trust and the town, really, the money is the same. So the town would not put in any additional funds. They would be CPAC funds. We would then go out and we would work with a potential developer to secure state and federal dollars and tax credits to make a development happen. I think the other opportunity John scoped out is the possibility to link to bring these two together, East Street School and this property, and potentially put them out together, which could have some benefits for a potential developer doing a project on two sites in Amherst. I think you answered the question, but I did hear a reference to, you're indicating that the trust can acquire property on their own as well, understanding that they're part of the town. And when the trust does purchase property, it's still in the beneath the town of Amherst's name. It is, yes. So am I correct that the intent of this is to have the property purchased by the town but utilizing trust funds to be a CPA to contribute to that? Or would this be a property purchased by the trust using the same, not that is a big distinction? At this point, all of those details haven't been worked out, but either way, the trust in the town are so closely linked, there can be purchase and sale agreements where if the town were taking the lead, the town can assign the right of the trust, so the town could assign a purchase and sale agreement to the trust and vice versa. So we're working through all those details. The intent is to use the trust, the CPA grant and the trust funds for the purpose of this potential project if it comes to fruition. Yes. And as John said, we would come back to you obviously with more detail, with maps, with potential, we have potential development scenarios already worked out that we'd like to show you. And then at that point, once the elements of the acquisition are locked in, we could then really put a fine point on the dollars. Do we really need the full 800,000 or do we need less than that? And if so, why? What are some of the elements of this project and have they relate to what the trust already has at their disposal, which John referenced 400,000? I'd like to interject something just right now. Excuse me, we may start deliberating next week. So anything you could give us in writing, even if it's just summarizing what you presented tonight, I think would be helpful. So we're not relying entirely on our memories. I don't know how quickly you expect a response to your bid. So if there's then more information, but I think we need at least something to be, I would find it helpful, something to look at. If we understand you have a timeline, I guess we would ask that given the complexity of this project that any deliberation, if possible, could take place at the end of your deliberation, number one and number two. I have had a couple of conversations with Sonia Aldridge and Sean Mangano, and in all likelihood, given the size of this project and that it is a land acquisition, one of the best options for CPAC to look at would be if you choose to fund this, would be to bond this project and not take funding out of your existing available funds for next year. Okay, thanks. Katie had your hand up. Well, I just wanted to respond to one thing you asked, Sarah. Oh, sorry, John. Yeah. After this meeting, I will send a copy of my remarks, because I wrote them out to Anthony, and then they can be distributed to you and everybody else. Thank you. That would be fine. All right, Katie. Thank you, Sarah. And Dave and John, thank you so much for the presentation. And John, I started my day with you and on that call this morning. So I appreciated you summarizing the need. I'm totally new, so forgive me. These questions might be so obvious to others, but your initial request was for $800,000 without any knowing about this. Is that right? And it just so happened that the purchase price... No, no, we... Yeah, go ahead, John. That's not quite request, quite correct. I had drafted the request, but before I put it in, Dave gave me the call. Okay. And so I upped the amount that I had in the request. It probably would have been half of what it is now. Okay. That's clear. I thought, wow, what a coincidence. That's... No. And my other question is, and I was curious about the bond piece of it and bonding that, but I also... Can the CPA make a commitment of something up to with the condition that you come back with the specifics? So if the timing doesn't... Maybe the timing gets pushed off for you for a month or some further time from here. I mean, could we... I don't know who this question is for, but can we make that the commitment that CPA funds up to this, say it's $800,000, but on the condition that we see the detail and that if it's less, we change that or something along those lines? Yeah. I mean, the realtor has promised, Dave, that they'll be getting back to us I think in the next 24, 48 hours. And at that point, we'll know kind of where we stand or to the extent you can ever know where you stand before the transaction is complete. So within a matter of a couple of days, we may have more detail that we can share. I don't know, Dave, do you want to add anything to what I just said? Yeah, no, it's a great question. I would just follow what John said, that we're talking weeks here. We... I fully believe we will have more information on this. It may not be by next Thursday, your next meeting, but certainly by the following, I think you're meeting weekly now. Is that correct for a while? Yeah. So by the following Thursday, I think we could email, as soon as we have, if all goes well with the negotiations, we would email you more follow-up information. And then we'd like to come back and give a presentation to you with all of those details. But I could see that happening. I think next week might be a little optimistic, but the following week. So I don't think we'll need a month. I think we're talking 10 days. That's terrific. Thank you. I saw Sarah. Oh, Holly, you want to add... Excuse me, Sarah. I would just like to say in terms of bonding, if we were to approve an amount and they did not need that amount, we would just rescind the difference and it would go back into our available funds next year. We would not borrow more than we needed for the purchase. So whatever we didn't need would just go back. Thank you. Sarah. Yeah, I'm just wondering, Dave, if even, I guess next week or possibly in two weeks, if we could see just a generic budget, sort of project, it sounds like you already have development scenarios. So if you have that, is that not something you can walk us through and sort of a use of funds? Or I don't want to rush your process, but just it sounds like you already have that completed. We certainly have a draft acquisition budget. We would not be able to provide a project budget. You don't have a development budget yet. Yeah. So just for those members who are also new to CPAC, normally a town, the way a town or a city contributes to affordable housing projects, very few towns are able to fund these projects on their own, either using CPA dollars or other town or city funds. Typically what happens is the town, in our case, we're interested in doing two things. One is we're, as a town, we have decided that we are interested in potentially donating the East Street School property to an affordable housing project. So the East Street School property has a value. We're donating, it's a significant value of that property. If that were put on the market now, it would have a significant value to a developer. So we're interested in the town has made a decision to potentially donate that to a developer. Likewise, our contribution to this project would be the acquisition of this land held by the town or the trust or jointly. And then we would try to send out, we would, put out an RFP saying the town or the trust and or, you know, in partnership is willing to donate land to developer X. Developer X, then it tries to attract the funding from the state and federal government, the tax credits, etc., to build X number of units. We do believe, as John said, Sarah, we have a number of, we do have a couple of development scenarios that we could share with you as soon as we have the purchase and sale agreement signed. And again, there's a range of units, as John said, that may be between 20 and 45, maybe even more than 45 units. So we'd be happy to share that as soon as possible. I think we're going to have to stop in a minute. We've been going half an hour. I just want to ask one thing. Sorry, Sam. If the trust moves forward with the purchase and sale, I'm just imagining things. And CPA does not want to give you any money. What happens? Is your purchase contingent on our contributing? Yeah, we have a number of contingencies in the, in any deal that the town and or trust would enter into, and certainly getting approval from seatback. And frankly, you're not, you're not the last word that town council is the last word, right? On any of these projects, whatever category they're in. So we would, we have contingencies in there for those approvals. And if we don't get them, then we move on and we look for another project. But you have no other source of funds to purchase this land? That is correct. No, we have a small private contribution that's been offered, but we're talking about about $5,000. Nothing in the ballpark of what we are looking for. I have a comment, not a question, Sarah. Given that you indicated that you're in the process of purchase and sale and potential negotiation, recognizing this is a public meeting, hopefully, you know, the determination of CPA wouldn't be something that could put you in a bad situation for negotiations. So it's related to the contingency question that Sarah asked, which is, it would be a shame for the time element of CPA decision making to prevent you from pursuing your negotiations the way you wish. In other words, hopefully it's not contingent on just CPA in this timeframe that, you know, maybe we'd deliberate in the future if you have some sort of price barrier, so time isn't used against you. Given that this is a public meeting that others can watch. Okay. I think we will, we anticipate getting John's remarks and maybe more information and I'm sure there'll be an opportunity for additional questions, right? Great. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. So you all heard that the second presentation is canceled because the consulting services application has been withdrawn. So next we should have Meg Gage and perhaps someone else from District 1 Neighborhood Association just speak about the Mill River Historic Trail proposal. So there are two others. Jessica, Mix Barrington and Eric Johnson I think are here to come into the room. I don't know what happened to my, my camera is non. When I promoted you to panelist it reset you so. Hi. There you are. Okay. So we need Jessica down here. Jessica, let's maybe put your camera on. There she is. And Eric is down there. So thank you everybody. It's good to see you again. Jessica's going to lead off our presentation followed by Eric who's there with his dogs romping in the background. Eric is on the anthropology, archaeology faculty at UMass and we'd like Jessica to be able to share her screen. Does she have a shirt? I believe she has the ability to do that. Should be a green button down in the bottom middle. Jessica you're muted. You're muted Jessica. It sounds like someone has a radio in the background. Maybe we could all mute ourselves during the presentation. Ms. Barrington there should be a green button in the bottom middle. Yes, it's not really letting me, I don't know. It wants to know, sorry my computer is picky. I apologize. Is it going to work now? I'm sorry. Oh, I see. If it's not going to work, you can. It's going to work. There we go. Not a regular Zoom expert. This is a short introduction to the reasons why we think an interpretive historical trail through the Mill River conservation area would be a very beneficial project for the North Amherst neighborhood for a number of different reasons. We're talking about using the sites along the whole Mill River all the way from the recreation area to the factory hollow, aka Puffer's Pond, and then along the Cushman Brook from State Street to Cushman Common. This is an integral part of North Amherst center. This is a highly used area. People are on these trails all the time and so there would be a large audience to take advantage of any trail information that we can put out. Here are some slides that show you what used to be in this area. Clearly, you can see the Puffer's Pond dam, the factory hollow dam. Here's something you might not realize though. There's a sluiceway that goes into the door that's built into the wall. That sluiceway powered mills downstream from the dam along the Mill River, including this Amherst woodworking mill. If you take a look at these folks, it's eye-opening to think that people like that would have been our North Amherst neighbors 100 years ago, 150 years ago. We also, another one of the many industries along the course of the river, was the Puffer's ice project. It started in 1912 and delivered ice in a wagon or perhaps a truck later on until 1948. The interesting thing about this picture on the above left is that the ice house, where the blocks of ice would be shot down to for storage, is where the south beach is now. People who go swimming at Puffer's Pond don't know that they are on the site of what was a successful industry 80 years ago. The town acquired land around Mill River, Puffer's Pond, and Quichman Brook for water quality and conservation purposes, starting in the 1960s. The wooden mill buildings, which were always ephemeral, fell down, went away, got carted away. What's left is foundations. These are just two different examples of cellar foundations that you can see from the trails in the Mill River conservation area. Here are a couple more foundations. These are the Robert Paper Mills. You can see the family names that were once associated with North Amherst Mills, Roberts, Puffer, Jones, Rowe, Cushman, Kellogg, Mills, and Hall became identified with other areas of town life and commerce. The names survived, the businesses did not. Interestingly enough, unless you really know what you're looking at, it's hard to tell what was in the landscape in the past. For example, the picture here called View from the Playground is at the Mill River Recreation Area. Steve is standing below the edge of this berm with the hill behind him. If you're standing in the playground and if Steve weren't there, you wouldn't know that there's a trench in the ground. The trench, which you can see in the right hand picture, goes along. It's the same trench. This was the longest canal from the Mill River, from the dam over here on the left of the Mill River, up and around the outside of the Mill River Recreation Area across the road and over to to power the waterwheel at the Grist Mill, which is right at the bridge on Route 63. Who knew? You can't tell that information by standing out there. Just as if you go to Walden Pond and you walk around the pond and you somehow missed the book Walden in high school, it's a pond. It's got trees. It's got rocks. It's got a path around it. Okay, but when you get to the site where Thoreau's Cabin was and you see, and all it is, is foundation on the ground and you look at it and you know the background and you know the history, it becomes a new place. It becomes the place of story. It's deeper. Your world is bigger because you understand now how landscape and life came together. And so that's part of what we want to build with our history trail. This is another place up along Cushman Brook. It's the site of the Cushman Clam Club. Never heard of it, I'm sure. It is now a cellar hole and a big pile of clamshells. That's all that's there, but people got married there. People used to have Friday night parties there. People lived their lives and really used the Clam Club as a social hub in what was North Amherst City. Cushman used to be called North Amherst City because it had so many factories. Factories? Cushman? Really? But yes, that's actually quite true. This picture is a kind of a sad thing. These are metal objects that were taken away from one of the Roberts paper mills by a person with a metal detector. Somebody went out in the woods with her metal detector and just found these objects. At least she took pictures of them, but they are not archaeologically significant because they've been taken out of their context. That happens, I think, more than we know and it shouldn't. So what are we here for tonight? We are here to ask for money for phase one of a two-phase project. Phase one is to identify and research the remains of sites in the Miller River conservation area. That's what we're asking for funds for tonight. Phase two, which we fully intend to complete once we're done with phase one, will be to install interpretive signs with additional information available to walkers on the trail. Important in both parts is to build community so that the neighborhood encourages the project, looks out for the project, looks out for the sites once they are aware of the importance of those sites, and it really takes care of our valuable heritage. Number one, this is what we're asking for the money for, which is to fund a field school this coming summer to research sites along the Miller River and Cushman Brook. This is a research project. I know that there's some hesitation to consider a research project as qualifying for CPA money, but from the CPA guidelines, it's printed here, you can see that in fact that studies have been taken into account and studies are basic to doing any kind of identification and preservation as we go along. So that's stage one. Stage two is to provide information with interpretive signs. It's a little hard to see, but this is a quabin, the sign that's here is a quabin on the left with a picture of the building that used to be where the cellar hole in the ground was. And so building up for the viewer a more detailed picture of that house in its landscape, we plan to use the 21st century technology of QR codes and cell phones to add additional information if anyone wants to look it up, both in written and spoken form and in American Sign Language. We also could in the future have the information translated into the major languages of other Amherst residents. Building community is what Dona is all about, and so projects like when we're suggesting will bring people together for a purpose, but also create the plans that they need or the situation that they need to become more neighborhood centered. Dona is a group of North Amherst residents. We call the District One Neighborhood Association, but we do fully intend to work with our district two neighbors on this project, and we are interested in providing a bridge between residents, the government, the town government, and other North Amherst specific issues, and we do promote North Amherst as a good place to live. So that's my presentation. Meg has quite a lot of questions about the proposal itself, and Eric will say some words about the field school. So thank you, Jessica. So I think we'll ask Eric to describe the field school and what community archaeology is all about. And I guess I'm so excited about this because of the 30-some years that I've lived in North Amherst, I've become increasingly aware of the how long the history of entrepreneurial North Amherst people goes. Historian William Robinson told me the other day that in 1775 there were already six mills on the Mill River in North Amherst. It's amazing. We need to figure out where they were and what they did. We're really delighted to be working with Eric, who's got this extremely distracting, lovely background. Eric is on the faculty at UMass in archaeology. You need to unmute. I just did. Thank you, Meg. Sorry about the the dogs are distracting. My students love them, so when I have Zoom calls with them, I keep them up. Yeah, I've been involved in archaeology in Massachusetts for a little over 40 years, and I've worked for the Mass Historical Commission, the state archaeologist, and the University of Massachusetts. And I've directed the field school at the Emily Dickinson Museum that's been going on the last few years. And if you have had a chance to get out there and see what we have been doing there. And I have been involved in a few community archaeology projects and just to say a few words about community archaeology. It's archaeology for the community and by the community, and the archaeologists work on what the community is interested in and whether that's sites or areas or some specific research projects. And the community members are involved from the earliest stages of the project through the research and the reporting and the results are always shared with the community. And that gives them an investment in the research and in the resource, the archaeological resource, and it encourages the community members who participate in the research or who follow it to become stewards of the archaeological sites in the area of study. They are the best equipped people to protect and preserve and interpret and enjoy those sites. Archaeological sites, even these ones made of sturdy stone, they're actually fragile and they can easily be damaged or destroyed by people who just not realizing the damage they're doing are looking for coins or bottles or sometimes they do know the damage that they're doing. And once they've been disturbed by something like a flood or somebody digging around in them, that cannot be repaired. They are gone forever. And the best protected archaeological sites are the ones that have local people who care about them. And those sites, they're tangible links to our history and our heritage. And those old mill foundations, they may not have the structures anymore, but now they are foundations for the imagination. They invite us to contemplate the past with these tangible visible remains and with some information added, people can imagine what this place was once like. They can fill in the sites and sounds and smells and the work that was done and the people that were working here. And it's like an opportunity to time travel. And that's what I mean when I talk about enjoying the sites. And this field school would involve, our plan is to involve UMass students and high school students. And what we would be doing, we call it an archaeological reconnaissance. It's an archaeological study that involves everything but the digging. It's always the first step in any research project that does involve digging and we'll do archival research, finding out everything we can about the history of the place. The students and I and other interested people will be looking at maps, photographs, deeds, histories, contemporary documents, even oral histories. And we'll also carefully observe and document, record the sites in their present condition by mapping them and photographing them. We might use minimally invasive tools like small soil cores. These about half inch diameter hollow metal tube that you stick down into the soil and you pull it up and you can see the different layers of soil. And we might use thin metal probes to find stones that are buried. And all this information is essential for assessing the integrity of the site. What kind of condition is it in? What kind of information is it holding that we can protect? And we could also possibly identify threats to the site. And all this information will go into how to create this interpretive plan for the site, the interpretive trail. Hi, I don't know if I'm interrupting. We do need to... Okay, that was... I'm all set. Perfect. Thank you because we still have one more presentation to go and we want to open it up for questions. So thank you. Who would like to speak? Anna. All right. Hi. So I know that this was submitted under the historic category. I'm the conservation person and so I have a bunch of questions around conservation for you. And I'm curious, can you... You've said many, many times that you're not digging. And so I'm very... I'm happy to hear that. And I'm also... I just want to make it very, very clear and make sure I have a lot of clarity around what you mean by cleaning these sites. And so when you say, are you going to be removing debris? I know in some of the pictures... And I know they were just example pictures, so I'm not saying that's what you're doing. But I know in some of the pictures leaf litter was cleared off and things like that. And part of this trail does run through identified priority habitat. And so I want to just be very clear on what exactly... what disturbances may occur on those sites. Eric, do you want to answer that one? Well, I would want to do as little disturbance as possible. And actually, I think it would be a great idea to be working with the conservation commission to make sure that what we're doing is not inappropriate. Yeah. And I think this is something that will eventually have to come before the conservation commission, just based on putting signage on conservation land. So I mean, that will be a step at some point, because it's a project on conservation land. But I do... I mean, yeah, I think that the only other question around that was one of the things in the initial proposal discussed making recommendations for their preservation. And so again, I just wanted to kind of clarify and I know none of us can see into the future. But I'm curious what you think that might entail. I think we would try to develop some guidelines for how to appropriately enjoy the archaeological sites, not digging in them, not probing them to find bottles and things like that. I mean, minimally. We're not... I don't think we're... anybody's talking about any kind of construction to protect sites, building, I don't know, barriers along the edge. That's definitely outside of what we would be. Yeah, the idea of the signs, the signage, is that they tell stories that let people see what happened there without us having to do anything. And with the QR code, we can have some of these students telling the stories, what they found out, what the lives were like, you know, when did electricity come? When did the industry move from Amherst to Holyoke? A whole bunch of things can come to life because of the interpretive nature of the project that don't have to actually affect what's on the ground that much, or maybe at all. Yeah, yeah, no, I definitely, I understand that. And I think it's a really neat idea. I think the question is that one of the basis, one of the things in the basis of this proposal was that these sites are disappearing because of natural occurrences, right? And so I think my question is, are you going to continue to let those natural processes take place and to let the sites continue to get degraded as the earth shifts underneath them? Which feels like a larger question. I think nature will take it away, but we're concerned about people. So part of a rumor, but we heard it from a couple of people that when the pond was closed for E. Coli this summer, some students dammed up the river further up and that they may have used stones from one of the sites. So the theory that Eric has described so well is that when people in the community who walk these trails very often, these are very, very heavily used trails, they're going to be monitoring and they're going to be trained so that they know to be guardians. I think, I mean, that's the best we can do. Yeah, thank you. That helps. And then my other, is that okay, Sarah? Go ahead. Okay. So my last question was your proposal discussed quote, cleaning new spurs off of the main trail. So I have two questions, one for you all and one maybe more for Anthony or Sarah. I'm not actually sure. So the first is what does that mean? I can't help you. No, that's not for you all. That's for Megan, Jessica and Eric. What is that? What do you mean? Could you clarify what hearing new spurs means? We just did the whole trail last week, our team. And actually, I don't think there'll be very many, but for example, the dam that makes the canal that goes to the mill has actually a path that people have made to get to it. That might be a sign that says down here is the dam. It's about 15 feet off of the, so you know, at the Mill River Park, when you go across the bridge into the woods into the Julius Lester Trail, before you go across the bridge to the left, about 20 feet is the dam that was actually in the slideshow. So we might, you know, have a sign that takes people down there on purpose, but negotiate that with the conservation. Obviously, we're not going to start. I mean, we should have been in touch with the conservation commission and this whole thing happened so quickly, the deadline was so quick. And we were trying, we just, it's our fault, we should have, and David and I have been in touch today and we're going to meet on Monday. So I apologize, we all apologize. We're just trying to do this the best we can. I don't understand. I definitely know that it'll be a large conversation with concom as well. And so my question for Anthony and maybe Sarah or other folks is, you know, if CPAC, okay, my regulations in my head, right? So if CPAC money was not used to purchase this conservation land, can CPAC money be used to update trails or do work with it? Like what's, where is that boundary line? Because I know that you can't use CPA money on land that was not purchased with CPA funds. So I just, I want to understand the regulation and where that line, where that line is. Because I think like the signage feels different to me versus building a trail. I don't know. Well, the trail's there. Well, or sorry, constructing new spurs of the trail would, if that's, you know, if that is something that happens. So Sonia Aldrich does have some questions into the CPA coalition on some of the specifics of this. I don't believe we haven't answered yet, but we are looking into some of the specific questions raised by this proposal. Okay, thank you. That is all my questions. Thank you. This is complicated, interesting and complicated. I'd like to give Rob in the next spot. Thank you. I see I have one specific question about the, the objects, the photograph that you've provided. Are those objects in someone's collection at this point? We took them. Oh, no. I think the coins and the coins in the silver and that. Yeah, that's somebody gave me that. Right. But I'm asking if those exist somewhere where they could be acquired is the question. We're going to try to find out the question. Exactly. We just got, I just was given this yesterday's ago and sort of blown away by it. Okay. Yeah, I'm blown away by it too. I mean, that's a real, that's a real physical historical resource. Some of these are, one of them is a Massachusetts volunteer militia badge that's sort of deteriorated in a South Carolina militia badge. Sort of amazing. Do you know where they are now? This is my question. Yes, I have the person's name. Okay. Because acquisition is one of the, one of the allowable uses under the CPA under historic preservation. So that just stuck out in my mind right away. My next question is just I'm trying to gauge the urgency of this project and I understand that what you're saying is that it is sort of constantly under threat. But CPA funds do come around every year. And so I guess I wanted to push a little bit on that if you were, if your timeline could stretch into another year for further planning and development of your plan and also exploring other funding resources. And I just wanted to share something that I looked up because I'm looking at this and I'm seeing historic interpretation and not so much historic preservation under at least my familiarity with the definitions of the CPA. But just as an example, the National Endowment for the Humanities looks like just awarded a ton Vermont, let's see, I've lost a page here, hold on a second, that yet in Browboro, a five walking path tour of a planning grant around the amount that you requested for a five path walking tour and educational visitor center for interpreting a local landscape. So I guess if you could just talk to the ability to take some longer time to expand the development of the project and also to look for other sources and maybe in terms of matching grants or that sort of thing. I know you mentioned some maybe some private donations would be possible as well. Robin, was that the National Endowment for the Humanities? Is that what you said? Yeah. So we actually think we'd like more clarity about why we don't qualify. And it's interesting because several people, both on the story, Jane Wald and others have offered to help us reapply. But if we don't qualify, why on earth would we reapply? But we can wait a year or two years, you know, or go to other sources. But this seems like perfect for a town fund because it's townland and it's creating the research that would allow us to raise the money for the the signs. I think nobody's going to fund these signs if we don't know what they're going to say or where they should be placed. Right. Absolutely. I mean, it could be that the funding of the signs could come later if there was planning funding. I mean, just trying to understand that this phase is a is a planning phase. And then there's the implementation phase. But that there is there is time. I mean, while it is urgent, there is time to I guess what I'm trying to say is that not being funded wouldn't necessarily kill the project. No, it's interesting to know more precisely why we don't qualify this year. Is it because we didn't talk to the Conservation Commission? Is it because we're not restoring something? It would be helpful just to, you know, and we if I mean, I can give you I mean, a short answer is that we went through this last year with discussions around the Jones Library special archives. And it is just a matter of the definitions of and again, that wonderful grid acquire, acquire, right, you can acquire the I think in the historic preservation hold on. That you have to have a historic resource, which is a building structure vessel real property, document or artifact, and then you can either acquire it, preserve it or rehabilitate it, but planning just doesn't fall under one of those categories. And at least some of the guidance that we looked at last year from the DOR really suggested a real physical presence. So maybe that there are aspects of your, your proposal that have the suggestion to reapply would be to find the pieces that could be funded more specifically, but also to broaden the scope to find some planning funds. It's a fabulous project and we're not, you know, the CPA funds are not the only game in town. There's other other options out there, but you do want research, research in in advance of project completion. And I think that was research. Right. Right. So that's why we're asking for the money. And it's in your own plan, you know, the CPA 2017 plan that we cited on the PowerPoint. That's why we're confused. Right. Right. I think there's, we need more clarity in that regard, but we'll work on getting that. Right. It's, it's all very simple until we dive, dive more deeply. But I, I appreciate, I mean, I'm sorry for the frustration. It's not the only time this is not the only project that's faced these kinds of questions. Sam. Oh, Diane, I think. Go ahead, Sam. In looking at the project, which seems very creative and very engaging with a lot of different members of community in history. I wonder if there are elements of the project that are recreation. I mean, it's not considered as such, but it's on trails with people walking outdoors. And in recreation, there's not a creation aspect of it. And that's something for the committee to define. But it's certainly by my understanding of what you were doing research aside is related to activities individuals might take while walking on trails, exercising or with others. It's a thought that came to my mind that I thought I would share with the other participants here. Thank you. It came to our minds too. And the eligibility under, under the outdoor recreation goals does say that trails are a legitimate cause for funding. So we do kind of cross that line historical between historical and recreation. I mean, I'm the representative and maybe we can discuss we're almost out of time. I don't think in this phase one, as if I understood what you presented and you're only asking for funding for phase one, correct, that there is a recreation eligible element in the phase one. Okay. Yeah. We need to wrap up. Diana, can it be quick? And then I have, I have one question. Go ahead. Okay, I, this is a point about the proposal. Why are you asking for a partial scholarship money for the high school students? That's one. And the other is you talk about a community of volunteers maintaining the setup along the trails. And I'm curious to know whether you think that's a sustainable management core that you'd be able to come up with? I know you have a very effective district organization, but still that's asking a lot. Those are my two questions. Really quickly, because we're almost out of time, the scholarship for the high school students could be waived. We're hoping the students could get college credit. One of the great things about Amherst High is you can, when I graduated from Amherst High, I had nine college credits and they have to pay tuition. So it's an incentive to have actual town residents as part of the field school with the UMass students. And that, you know, we could maybe raise that money separately or the families, we'd rather not have just wealthy families participating, although if they're getting ready to go to college maybe they're prepared. Anyway, we think the community group is crucial and that there's a lot of interest in this. They're already community groups that maintain the trails. Almost every trail in town has a person or two or three whose job is to walk it every week and maintain it. And we're very confident that there are a lot of people who care about our history and are fascinated when they see some of these sites that they've just walked by for years and never really noticed. So we're actually, and that's a key part, as Eric described, of community archaeology, that the community is better able to monitor than the government because they walk it all the time. And these trails are really frequently walked. This is the Robert Frost Trail and the Julius Lester Trail. They're really popular trails. People walk their dogs there every morning so they could keep an eye on the trail while they're walking their dog. It's not unbelievable that there would be a lot of people who would be willing to do the maintenance that needs to be done. I mean, you are a CPAC committee. I think people would be willing to be on a trail monitoring committee. All right. My question I think must be for Eric because I have a vision in my head about what archaeology is and then you said there was going to be no digging and that you're not going to dig. It doesn't sound like the Conservation Commission will want you to dig or touch anything. It sounds like you're doing, you said archival research. You're looking in documents and in photos. You're also surveying, I suppose, the ground. But in what, how is this archaeology as opposed to historical research that doesn't involve digging? Well, archaeology doesn't necessarily involve digging. When an archaeologist digs a site, they destroy it. That's why we document everything so carefully because we know it's going to be gone forever. But we will still be studying the archaeologists, studying the material traces of what we've done in the past and that's what we're doing here. So you are, people are, the vision is there'll be people on their hands and knees doing stuff on the ground but not digging. I don't know if they'll be people doing on their hands and knees but there'll be people walking around the sites, taking photographs, mapping, measuring walls, things like that. And then there'll be people working in archives. Okay, thank you. I think we have to stop because we have one more presentation. We thank you so much and we invite you to think hard about whether we qualify or not. We think we do but I know. We'll talk more. Thank you very much. Thank you everyone. Bye. Bye bye. So back to Dave Zomek if he's out there. I'm still there. And I'm also going to bring in Chris Brestrup. Guilford, if you want to be a panelist, raise your hand. Sarah, I think Chris Brestrup is going to begin and take us through a series of slides and Guilford and I are here to support Chris and answer questions as needed. Thank you. Hi, Chris. Hello everybody. Hi. Is this a good time for me to start? Yep. So I have my coat on because I'm here in Town Hall and it's really cold. We have to forgive me for that. So I'm Chris Brestrup, Planning Director and I'm here to talk to you tonight with Dave Zomek about the North Common and Main Street Parking Lot project and to seek your support for funding from Community Preservation Act funds in the categories of historic preservation and recreation. We've been working on this project since 2013 when we held the first of three public forums to gain input from the residents of Amherst about what they wanted to see in a rehabilitated North Common. In addition to public input, the North Common and Main Street Parking Lot project was guided by a working group of citizens who were members of the Historical Commission and the LSSE Commission. In fact, Sarah was part of that group for quite a while. We also had a group of town staff people included including DPW, Department of Conservation and Development. We have the Assistant Town Manager Dave Zomek and the Economic Development Director who has since moved on to another town. But it is an important economic development project as well as having historical and recreation aspects to it. So the North Common project is part of the Destination Amherst Initiative that the Town Manager introduced a few months ago. He was talking about things that would strengthen downtown Amherst with public and private investment in public infrastructure and key projects including the Kendrick Park playground which was recently, the contract for which was recently awarded. A possible ban shell on the main part of the Common which the bid is encouraging us to do. Improvements to downtown crosswalks and sidewalks and we do have some grant money to do some of that work. Streetscape and possibly a parking garage. So those things would all be part of Destination Amherst. I'd like to tell you a little about the history of the North Common and show you where it is located and then talk to you about the design process and show you some plans. So if Anthony will bring up the slides. Yep. So we can go to the first slide if you don't mind the intro slide Anthony. Yep. So here's the town, the north part of the Town Common what we call the North Common. You can see the Town Hall is there and the Grace Episcopal Church and the Parsonage, the hotel which is now called the Inn on Boatwood and the Spring Street parking lot which is where the farmers market occurs and the North and the Main Street parking lot which is to the left of the North Common. So the North Common is the area where you see all the trees and the green space. It's really a wonderful place the way it is now but it really needs some extra loving care. It looks good from the air but not so good on the ground. So if you go to the next slide. The Town Common is as old as Amherst. It was part of the road right of way and it's not a piece of property. The Town Council has jurisdiction over the Town Common and many boards and committees are involved with the maintenance and planning of the Common. It's an original historic Common and it's not a park. It's used for civic events and communal uses and gatherings and the Town Common has been continually redesigned over the years to accommodate changing public needs. It hasn't made static at all. So if you'd go to the next slide please. This is a map from 1740 and it shows the two major 40 rod wide rights of way that ran through Amherst at that time. The one on the left is essentially South Pleasant Street and West Street in the southern part of town and North Pleasant Street and East Pleasant Street in the northern part of town and the green dot in the middle is roughly where the North Common is located. If you look over to the right you'll see another 40 rod wide highway is what they call them and the green dot in the middle of that one is the East Amherst Common and the one to the south is the South Amherst Common where the Munson Library and the South Amherst Congregational Church are located. You go to the next slide. Next slide shows a map from the 1860s and here the Common is this long rectangular shape in the center of town. You can recognize some of the roads surrounding it. The Common is the southern part of the Common is actually town property but it's maintained by Amherst College which is very nice of them but it is still Amherst property. The northern part of the Common up above this kind of elliptical shape here is the North Amherst Common that the North Common that we're talking about today and you can see that it looks like there was a kind of elliptical shape or oval shape. I'm not exactly sure what to call that shape a racetrack shape probably a fence and then the Common was surrounded by trees back at this time. So if you go to the next slide the next slide shows a photograph and I'm not sure where this was taken from. Some people have been saying maybe it was taken from an air from a balloon but I don't know that for sure but anyway it shows the Common in sometime between 1868 when Grace Church was built and 1889 which is when the town hall was built because town hall is not visible in this picture. So the Common was an open grassy space surrounded by trees. It had a fence around it and some people say it looks like there might be animals grazing on the western part of that open grassy space. So next slide please. This slide shows a plan that the firm of Frederick Law Olmsted designed for the Amherst Common for the Complete Amherst Common and it shows a series of meandering kind of serpentine pathways as well as roadways. The part within the red box is what we're referring to tonight which is the North Common and you can see where town hall is right facing onto the Common. Next slide please. These are some old photographs colored photographs of the Common. Here you're looking towards Hastings and you see there's a flagpole there which has since been moved but lots of trees serpentine pathways and grass. Next slide please. This one shows beautiful Elm trees that used to line the Common. This was probably back in the 1890s or 1910 sometime around that time period and the middle of the Common seems to be filled with trees and grass as well. Next slide please. And this is the picture of the North end of the Common when it was turned into a parking lot and so this is kind of where the Main Street parking lot is and the area to the left of this is what we're considering the North Common. You can see the Women's Christian Temperance Union fountain there along the pathway. Next slide please. So the North Common is a critically important space for the center of town. It's central to the downtown. It's a very important open space because there aren't really too many open spaces in town. There's Sweetser Park and Kendrick Park and the North Common on the southern end. It's used for weekly, monthly, and special occasions events. It's surrounded by local businesses. It's a key to revitalizing downtown. It's critical for our economic development and it's going to be crucial to rebuilding downtown post COVID-19 as we try to emerge from this pandemic. Next slide please. So the issues that we need to solve as far as the Common goes are include that it's a historic site including the WCTU fountain. So we have to maintain that. We have to respect the historic integrity of it while at the same time trying to develop it for our modern uses. It's got a lot of drain inch problems and it doesn't seem to have much turf, although it sort of depends on what time of year you go out there and whether it's been raining or not. It doesn't have very good accessibility. The pedestrian paths are limited. There's not much seating. Lighting is poor and it doesn't really have any gathering spaces and I guess I couldn't get over the poor drainage problem so I headed it again. Next slide please. So here are some existing conditions pathways that are deteriorating, buckling up. It's hard for people and walkers and wheelchairs to get over these. This is a narrow, at the bottom is a narrow pathway along South Pleasant Street. Next slide please. And here it is in the rain and this is really serious. Working in Town Hall we often go out there when it's raining and we see this kind of disastrous site. It looks like the whole thing is about to slide into the Grace Church. Next slide please. One more picture of existing conditions and these tree boxes that were put in back in the 60s which have served their time well but they're really deteriorating and need to be replaced. So in considering design concepts for the for the North Common we really based it on a site assessment and past comments that we received from the public as well as from the working group that we were working with. It's certainly a key downtown space. It's used year-round. It's an urban setting and we wanted to preserve its historic character. Again you can see the little Women's Christian Temperance Union fountain there which has a little side fountain for dogs. That hasn't been operational for a number of years. It's broken and it's under a cover but we're hoping to restore that. Pedestrians really only have one way to get through the Common, a diagonal path. Again accessibility and safety are issues. No seating, no lighting, drainage and no gathering spaces. So I think between so you can stop there Anthony. Between 2016 and 2018 we developed a concept with the help of the DPW and we applied twice for CPAC funding in 2016 and 2018. In both times we received approval for funds from the historical preservation and recreation portions of the CPAC funds. These amounted to $550,000. I'll show you a little chart later on to explain all of this. Then during 2018 and 2019 the town hired the firm of Weston and Sampson, landscape architects and engineers from the Boston area to develop a plan for the Common. During the time we were working on this plan we became aware that the DPW had plans to redo the parking lot just to the north of the North Common and so we decided to combine forces and make it into one project. We went to town meeting in the spring of 2018 and we received approval to borrow up to $450,000, $400,000 of which is earmarked for the Main Street parking lot. So now we had $950,000 all together and we moved into the design process and members of the public as well as the working group became convinced that the area in front of Town Hall should be used for more than just parking. So we began to incorporate an idea to create a plaza in front of Town Hall that could be used for parking as well as public events such as concerts, gatherings, readings, speeches and performances. And in the spring and summer of 2018, Weston and Sampson completed their work and presented us with the preferred plan which is shown in this next slide if Anthony will show that. So the preferred plan is really a big improvement over what's there right now. It capitalizes on the fact that there is a parking lot there now but eliminates some of those parking spaces in order to be able to flatten out the existing parking because right now that parking lot is on a slope and if you come out of your car on the wrong side your car door slams onto your legs. So this would flatten that area out. It would also in this scheme pave that area with concrete pavers that could make it more amenable to being used for multiple uses rather than just parking. In the northwest corner there's a gracious entry plaza that's created with a series of steps and ramps that bring you down into the into the common. Then in the center of the common is a is a very lovely gathering space with tables and chairs and people could come to rest there. This design also provides easy access from the northwest to the southeast and the northeast to the southwest via these circular paths. In this design you also have Boltwood Avenue being turned into one-way streets so they can better be used for pedestrians. And then we worked with Gilford. Of course we were working with Gilford all along and Gilford and his team looked at this design carefully and tried to look at it through the eyes of value engineering and also through the eyes of wanting to save as many of the existing trees as possible. So the next slide shows the design that Gilford and his team came up with which does save all but four of the existing trees which is really quite amazing given the amount of grading that would need to be done. It also provides a lovely sitting area in the middle and a small sitting area off to the south. And the parking lot as you see in this picture here could be Asphalt parking lot but it's been regraded to to be the flat parking lot that we want rather than this tilted plane that is so uncomfortable to try to navigate when you're getting in and out of your car. It also provides the entry the gracious entry on the northwest corner. Now of course you could pave this parking lot with concrete pavers and we're hoping to be able to do that. It kind of depends on how much money we have overall but just making this parking lot into a flat plane is going to make it so much more usable for events. So the project that's currently before you, really the western and Sampson plan is cost estimate is 1.9 million. It includes renovation of the North Common, rebuilding the Main Street parking lot, repaving and redesign of Boatwood Avenue and the sidewalk along Boatwood Avenue and the creation of a plaza in front of Town Hall. It all ties together in a beautiful package but we need more money to build it. So the next slide is all about money. Can you turn to the next slide Anthony? So here's the money that we have to date. We as I said we got historic preservation funds in FY16 and FY18, $114,000 one year and $180,000 another year. And then we also received the recreation CPAC funds. In 2016 we received $76,000 and in 2018 $180,000. So if you combine the two numbers for FY16 you come up with about $190,000 and if you combine the two numbers for FY18 you come up with $360,000. So the total money that we have available through CPAC is about $550,000. We did have to pay western and Sampson for their work so we paid them $64,000. And then as I said before we received authorization, the town received authorization to borrow up to $400,000 for the Main Street parking lot. So all together we currently have $886,000 and a little bit of money and a little bit more. So the next slide is all about what we're asking for. The top portion of the slide shows what I had just shown you all the way down to the blue line in the middle. That's the amount that we have now. We're requesting from the historic preservation funds another $250,000 and from the recreation funds another $250,000 for a total of $500,000 in CPAC funds. And I think this would be FY22 if that's, I think that's the fiscal year we're working towards. We're also proposing to apply for a park grant in the summer of 2021. That's when they come do the park grants or applications or do I think in July or August. And then we're also hoping to do some fundraising. So the total budget of $1.9 million would be achieved via this plan. As I said, Guilford is doing some value engineering on the project. He doesn't really have any revised cost estimate to show you at this point, but that's an ongoing process. We recently met with the historical commission and they are supportive of this project. The LSSE commission has supported this project in the past. Unfortunately, we didn't have a chance to meet with them given the rapid schedule for CPAC. But I've been informed by Barbara Bills, the director of LSSE that she believes that LSSE commission would be in favor of this project. So if you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them. And maybe you could just show the last slide, Anthony, because that shows the slide of the Western intensive plan. And Guilford is also here to answer questions. And so is Dave. Your microphone, Sarah. Commuted, Sarah. All right. Thank you, Christine. Thanks for the presentation. Are there any questions from committee members? Diana. To get to drive down in front of Grace Church, you would have to come from behind Town Hall, because no. No, you would come the same way that people do come now from Main Street. You could come. You could come over the plaza. The plaza is going to be raised a little bit, but you can drive over it and then go down into Boltwood. You could also enter Boltwood from the parking lot behind Town Hall. Okay, that's good. I just, I forgot about the race. This is something that I've mentioned that I'm curious about. There was a discussion in the proposal, I guess, about a private parking structure that might be built. And is there any speculation as to where that would be? Another garage type thing. That's really a reference to the garage that the town manager included in his destination Amherst proposal. Currently, there's a thought that the garage would be built behind CVS. And there have been numerous plans to show how that could be done. Okay, that would be privately funded and not through the town? That is what the plan is. The bid has been working on that. And yes, as far as I understand, it would be fun. But it's not hard. It's not connected to this particular. No, but it got mentioned, and that's why I'm done. I have a question about the park. Grant, I had heard that this, the North Common is too small to qualify for funding. That's why, and that's, that was a reason it lost previously. Dave? Yeah, actually, no, the size of the North Common had nothing to do with our earlier proposals. And we have tried to, just so everyone, I know some members are new, we have tried in the past to get state funding for this project. Overall, I think the state really liked the project. I think our timing was not good. We have been fairly successful with getting park grants in the past. We got a park grant for Golf Park for $400,000. And we got a recent, more recently, got a park grant for the playground at Kendrick Park. So it really had nothing to do with size of the park, Sarah. It is a little bit more complicated because this is in the public way. It's not a park like Golf or Mill or Kendrick or Sweetser. So we would have to make a very compelling case to the state for that funding. I will say, and again, some people have heard this story, but in the year that we did apply, when the grant administrator was coming out to do the site visit, I was to meet him on the North Common. I went out and somebody had just tripped over one of the routes on the North Common and fell flat on their face. Luckily, they were not injured. But the grant administrator from the state office asked me if we had planned that. And the answer was no. I was glad I was relieved they were not hurt, but some of those earlier images of the state of the Common kind of illustrate where it is. If I could, I know you have some more questions coming, but I wanted to just add a few things to what Chris said, which I thought it was an outstanding presentation. But I think there is also an impression that the project budget or the project itself has grown and we keep coming back for more funding. So in some of those earlier proposals, to see back, we had not gone through the full public process to design the improvements to the North Common. I don't have the exact number, but I know it was more than 100 residents. I would guess it perhaps was closer to 200 residents participated in what I think was over a year-long process to work with Westin and Samson, to work with town staff. I can remember some very spirited conversations with, you know, 40 or 50 people in the town room during these different meetings about what we should include in the, in the design of the park. So this didn't all come from staff. A lot of the recommendations came from members of various committees, including the historical commission, to come up with the design that celebrated the history of the North Common, but also made it more functional, that it is this centerpiece of our downtown. And that's where the plazas and the walkways, you know, certainly trying to protect as many trees as possible, that's where that all came from. Unfortunately, when projects don't get fully funded, you do need to come back over time. So there is that impression that the project has grown or, or there's project creep. I don't really think there's been much project creep. This is kind of the project that Westin and Samson designed well over a year ago. We also went through a structural change. We changed our form of government. So we stopped doing anything on this project when we went from a select board representative town meeting, a form of government to a town council form of government. So really not much has changed. And that was, I think that was the fall of 2018. We stopped working on this because we wanted to come back to you and to the town council to gauge your interest in whether we should move forward with this project. And again, because this is in the public way, the design of the, of the improvements, not only the funding, but the design itself would need to be approved by the town council. So I just wanted to put a few of those things out there. Thank you. Thank you, Dave. Katie. I just was curious, Dave, especially since you just mentioned that, you know, sort of the, the long planning arc of this and funding over a number of years, I didn't quite understand. I mean, I understand that there's 600, if we were to be able to provide what you're requesting, there would still be another 600,000 to meet the total cost, which you're hoping the summer of 2021. So would there be work started at some point in 2021? Would you not start until you had everything fully in hand? I just was wondering about the timeline of the project. I, I, I'd appreciate if Guilford is with us and from an engineering standpoint, I think he can answer those questions better than I can. I will just say that we have, and we're, we're, we're continuing to look at the overall budget, but there, there aren't a lot of bells and whistles to this. It's not a very fancy plan. There's walkways, lighting, the parking lot, the grading, the seating areas. So it, it's, it's not by any means the Ferrari of plans. It may be more like the Toyota Camry of plans to, to activate that space. But let me turn it over to Guilford to talk a little bit about phasing. I don't know if that's possible. He can speak to that better than I can. Well, right, right now, the estimate is about 1.6. It's made a little over 1.6 million dollars. We've got the estimate down to that number. So with another half million dollars, we're in a better ballpark. Bidding, the bidding climate right now is really good. We've done two projects recently and they've both come in about maybe 20%, 15 to 20% below our estimates. So we're in a good place to actually do this. If all the approvals are acquired between now and the spring, we can probably start this project next year. So we can start rearranging it. And actually if I hate to say COVID's good, but if COVID remains, now will be a good time to do it because there's not as much parking and activity on the common. We can probably knock it out with less disturbance to the public starting it in 2021 than we could if we waited much longer. Our goal, Katie, was to do it when the university and the colleges were not in session. So between May 10th and September 1st or something like that in any year, I mean, you know, we started whenever it were to happen. Yeah, thank you. I really appreciate the presentation and thanks for that answer. And we would, may I say something? Oh, we, we've had very good luck working with the DPW and their design team on the Kendrick Park playground. And I would think that they would, I shouldn't say this, I'm putting words in Guilford's mouth, but I hope that they would be happy to work with us again and do the construction drawings and specifications for this project. Because, you know, that would save us money and not having to pay a consultant to do that work. Sarah. The question for Dave, one is that, you know, we just saw a presentation last week about the Town Hall steps, which seemed to kind of be the entry point to this, to the North Common. Did you have any thought ever about linking those activities? And if not, how would you prioritize these two proposals before us? That's a great question. I may not be able to answer that prioritization question tonight. Again, I, you know, having, having worked on this project for, you know, it feels like about 10 years now for some of us that we have been trying to move this project forward. And I think intensely, probably the last six or seven, it seems like a very high priority. I know that we have worked with the bid in the chamber extensively. They are very supportive of this. And COVID just kind of puts an exclamation point on the importance of how do we come out of this pandemic when we're potentially losing 50 to 60% of our downtown shops and restaurants. And that's what 2021 will look like for 22, depending on when we're, we're safely out of this. Your question was about, how do we link? Is there a link between these two? Sarah? Yeah, it just seems like the restaurant, I mean, before us, I know they're separate projects, but they're basically the same location and the stuff, the front door to the North Common, right? Well, we, you know, working with Guilford and working with his staff and Christine's staff, we definitely felt as though we wanted to improve bolt wood to make it more walkable, make it more accessible. We retained parking. And I believe in the DPW's proposal, I think there's, Guilford correct me if I'm wrong, I think there's about 20 regular spaces and two ADA spaces. Is that about right? Yes. So that was, you know, three or four years ago when we were intensely planning for this and working with Weston and Samson, parking became a very hot butt issue for this project. I think we've done a really nice job at balancing both improving the access, improving the approach and the outside look and feel, the aesthetic of coming out of town hall or approaching town hall, one of the most important buildings in our entire town, while also retaining parking that can be flexible. It can be parking one day and the area for the lighting of the merry maple the next or a concert the next day. So I think we definitely thought of improving the approach to town hall that would include the front steps as well. I mean, that's a structural issue. It's becoming a safety issue. We've had people as I'm not sure if Jeremiah LaPlante went through that, but we have had people fall down the front steps of town hall. So that's becoming a real safety issue as well. On their way to tripping in the Yeah, the short answer is yes, we believe they're linked aesthetically and and and programmatically and and and from a functional standpoint. They were totally linked in the Weston Samson plan. You could not do the project without doing the steps. The way we've kind of arranged it is if you do not give the money for the steps this year, we can adjust the plan, finish the finished part of the common up to a point. And then the plan, the steps can be worked in. And then we can finish up the second part, which would be down Boltwood Avenue and tying into the steps. So we did take that into consideration. And when we started laying out how to do this and changing some grades and laying out the overall project. So there has been some thought put into it. We hope they all go at the same time and make life a lot easier. But we did separate some grade changes and make sure we could separate the projects if they don't go together. Sam, I heard her talk to different residents in town recently and over the years on the project. One question that came up and it's related to the businesses downtown. And thank you, Christine, by the way, for the photos, particularly the one that showed McClellan's. They probably would remember that store downtown from way back. But that parking is indeed a significant issue for the businesses, whether it be the buildings near Hastings or some of the other ones down on Main Street. And in response to the questions, I saw your response, Dave, that it's looking about maybe 11 parking spaces maybe removed from the current and that maybe a couple could be added on South Pleasant. I understand that parking is a distinct issue related to the current plan. But I want to underscore that I think it's significant just from somebody who comes downtown in parks. And when we're not in COVID, it's a significant need for the town, particularly in that lot. And I'm wondering, and maybe it's Guilford, maybe it's Uday, besides adding a couple potentially on South Pleasant, are there other areas where some more spaces might be squeezed in? For losing 11, it's a busy day. We're adding two. You got nine more cars circling. Have you given any thoughts to that? We have, Sam. And I would defer to Guilford on that one as well because I know he's been thinking about that. It's definitely been part of our conversation about this plan. But Guilford, I don't know if you have thoughts on that. We keep trying to find space for parking wherever we can. We added actually four or five spaces on Spring Street down past the Spring Street church, or First Conditional Church, Spring Street Preschool, because I know it. We add some spaces down there. We have some room to add some more spaces in that area. When you start talking about the center of the town, there's less places to add them. We put them on the outside of the businesses. So you're parking on the outside and save the inside spaces for the people who need to park on the inside. But we do keep looking for spaces and we do keep trying to find some around town. It's a challenge for sure. Always has been. There's the adjacent to the First Conditional Church. There's that Amherst College lot, I believe. And people can park there without, you know, inquiring. They don't really tick it, but anything that can be done to increase the number of spaces of parking, recognizing this project is distinct, would be a very desirable thing. And I know with certainty that the downtown businesses have a lot of interest in that. I know some people who own some buildings down there and some of the restaurants and the subject has come up repeatedly. So I'm just throwing that out there to add to something that you already know. Anyone else? All right then. Thank you, gentlemen. And Chris, thank you, all three of you for your presentation and answering our many questions. Thank you for hosting us. Thank you. Thank you. All right. It's already nine after eight. It would be good if we could do two more things if people are willing to stay on for maybe we can be super efficient and do it in 10 minutes. What I think we need to approve now two sets of minutes. And I would like to Anthony to put up on a screen something that will be familiar to everyone who was on the committee last year, but new to the new members, of course, which just shows how we have started our about, you know, once we've heard all the presentations, how we have gone through them to come up with decisions. So are people willing to stay on? Is anybody unable to stay on 15 minutes? Okay, we will be done before 830. I very much hope. So first, Anthony. You said 10 minutes and you said 15. Now we're saying 830. I said before 830. 825. It's 810. Just want to. Provisional ones coming in. Okay. Well, let's not waste it then. So if Anthony can share his screen, I'm looking for the vote. How about where we gave our ratings of one through five said in some hidden, yeah, must be some hidden columns. Here it is. Okay. So this is scrolling weird for some reason. Oh, it's got squished. Okay. So this is the thing we've done the past couple of years, which is a straw poll. Essentially after the public hearing or the meeting after the public hearing, we'll ask the committee to committee members to essentially rate how they feel about proposals on a scale of one to five, five being very likely to recommend and one being very likely not to recommend. We record these sentiments right right in front of me on a spreadsheet. And I don't know why everything is squished like this. So it basically gives us a sense of how we're feeling about proposals at the start of the night, what might be an easy approval, what might require more discussion. Or an easy this year, that time there were no really low like 2.2. But sometimes there are projects that are easily rejected. Yeah, I would like to say that you should already come to the public hearing with that ranking because we went right into it last time or the time before. And I didn't come prepared with rankings. I thought we were going to do those after the public hearing. So I just suggest people have it and you can adjust it afterwards, but at least you should come prepared to kind of vote. Yeah, we have potential discussion and voting on the agenda for next week is if public comment takes the entire time, then we probably won't get to it. But we could. We could well start discussing next week. And we could qualify in our discussion like I really like this idea, this project, but maybe not so much money. Okay, so you don't have to be on board with the whole thing to want to pursue granting it in some form. Okay, Anthony proceed. Thank you. Sorry, I'm sorry, Anthony. I'm not sure I understand. Can I ask a question now? Yes. The straw poll based on what Diana just said, the straw poll is not something you asked for from us in advance of the meeting, but we're supposed to be prepared at the meeting to say four, five, two, three, whatever. But that is not voting. That's a straw poll just to test. I'm sorry. Do you mind? So this came about three years ago when we had more proposals than this, Katie, and it was a way for us as a committee to sort and say, we don't need to give equal discussion for half an hour or whatever on the Jones Library versus the $10,000 or whatever. Or it was a way and which maybe those were that we both wanted to fund them, but it was just a way to really rank them. So totally makes sense. It was a way for us to just frame the discussion and that's really the intent of it. So that makes sense. I just heard somebody say voting though, because a straw poll and sort of initial sense is different voting. So I for next week, are we supposed to be prepared for voting or sort of a straw poll discussion? And then for a straw poll vote, which doesn't bind in any way, but that's the way we base the discussion somewhat. I would rather not even use the term straw poll. I would rather call it something like interest level. You know, very is just interesting. That's that's better. That's less confusing for me. But I love the how it prioritizes and those that everybody's in agreement aren't good or are good. It helps to move the process. I love that. Thank you. And that helps us. Yeah. Decide in what order to take to take them. All right. And then Anthony can explain the actual votes over there. So there's Sarah on the straw poll for new members. When I was there last year at part of that ranking, besides the one to five and the interest level, we referenced that a vote of three was an indication that we felt the need for further, you know, more discussion about it. There were a few proposals that we thought we all wanted to talk about more. And it wasn't an indication of in favor or not, but or that it was just a three. It was like, I want more discussion on it. I'm not sure how you would have us both that time. But that is this coming season. But that's what we did last time. A three wasn't just a three. It was, I want to talk more about this one. Sorry, Anthony. I'm sorry. If a five, I don't think we need to overthink this too much. If a five is strongly in favor and a one is fairly strongly opposed, you know, a three would reflect some kind of mixed sentiment about it. Yeah, we end up we talk about them all. It's not like if something is really highly rated, then we don't need to talk about it. We do. It just, it's priorities. Okay. So recollection of last time's instructions. Yeah. So the start of the spreadsheet is the proposed funding. After that, we've got the whatever funding we actually approve or recommend to town council. We have the funding in all four slash five categories totals. The blue columns here are debt service. And then down here, just a quick math check to make sure we're making our minimum contributions per category. And then just for sanity's sake, I also track the vote in the same spreadsheet makes the minutes easier. We do a roll call vote. And this gets reported in the CPA report to town council. So that's how I would propose we proceed this year. And as Diana mentioned, since, since if there is the public hearing next week, if it's only 15 minutes, we don't want to just end the meeting and lose all that nice time we've set aside. So it would be good. You know, I used index cards, one for each project. I wrote my rating and some notes about why I felt that way. And then we could, you know, move through them, at least get the levels of interest mapped out and, and know how to proceed. So is everybody on board with that? Yeah. And another thing for the newcomers, we never know how many people will turn up at a public hearing. There can be many who want to get in final comments about their proposals, or people can feel they've made the case and there's no reason for them to show up. So it's a time slot that we're really not sure how it will come to pass. And any member of the public can come speak in favor or against? Right. Any proposal? Right. Okay. Sam, let's make it quick. We got some minutes to cover. Yeah. Well, I think the voting that is coming up, that's the most significant thing in terms of how, you know, what we'll be allocating. My thoughts are that when the time comes for us to go through that process, that it's beneficial to be thorough and take our time and not necessarily rush the votes if there's a desire for further discretion. I felt last time it was a little bit compressed when we went through some major projects, even though we talked about them a lot, there was a lot of back and forth, and then we just voted all at once, not the ones that were easy. So that's my comment that I think it's in our interest. And personally, it wouldn't be a problem for me if the votes, you know, if there was significant issues discussed, there may or may not be, if we had another meeting on it, if need be, that's my opinion. Yes, we have that flexibility. So we're not going to, yeah, we got to be happy, we have to feel good about, and I have to speak up for what we approve when it goes to council. Is there any benefit, Sarah, to doing the straw poll, coming through it, the interest level, figuring out what we might want to spend, and then once we see them all, then voting again or just a thought? I don't know. We don't have to iron out every detail about this tonight. The new folks need to need at least to be introduced to this, okay? So I mean, I think every season we, you know, we adjust our process if we want. This is not part of the law or anything. So I think this is enough to carry us forward to next week, okay? Thank you, Anthony. Let's see if we can get through at least one of the rounds of minutes. I thought there was only one. Did I miss a set? Last time we were given the minutes of the June 30th meeting. Oh, those, okay. But we decided to defer. Yeah, that's right. We did. So are people ready to, who is ready to discuss the minutes of June 30th? I am. I just have to find them. Okay. We have enough people who might vote on them. We have, okay. I think I have to abstain, don't I, Sarah? You don't have to, actually. Well, I think I probably will since I wasn't there and have no idea if it's, yeah, no, that's fine. Who's taking the minutes on these minutes? I have my comments on the June 6th, whatever that date is. Yeah, I have those and they're in red. I just don't have them, so I'm not capturing those notes. That's all I'm saying. Okay. I don't know what you're talking about. I'm looking at, we're talking about the minutes Anthony took of our very first Zoom. No, I understand. So I'm just trying to understand who's taking, who's capturing those comments. I can capture them. I know Anthony doesn't, right into the document. So, okay. So I make my comments on them. There aren't very many. I mean, anything substantive, anything that's grammar or punctuation you can just keep. Okay. I, for some reason, I have this one comment by Sam, all in red. So I, I don't know whether that was substantial or not. It's, it's the one under Mr. Burt was the last, if the reference to one million could be removed from the motion. And then he, Mr. McLeod said that the motion strike out to amend is that the vote should be rescinded. If that is not correct, I'm writing, please make clear what it should have been each time here and below. I, I got a little bit lost in the references to the various motions. What actually was being discussed here. That's my only substantial one. So a couple of edits on that to Anthony. Yeah. I, I, for you what I was speaking with, if you wish, I could do it in a sentence or so if it needed. Well, I just want to know if at this point the motion was that the vote should be rescinded. If that's not correct, then it should be made clearer to me and in the minutes what the vote was at that point. The vote was not to rescind. Initially it was going to be that Nate had an addition to it and I said, wait a minute, are we voting to rescind a recommendation or to rescind the vote? I was advocating to rescind the vote as the subject at hand. But then we had a amendment that came from Michael after discussing with others and we voted on that, which was the final one. So my comment was related to Nate's initial motion, which was then edited thereafter. So I don't think it's major. Well, the only thing in the minutes that wasn't clear to me was that. And so if there's a way to phrase it, Anthony, to make it clear. The other two are other things are very minor, they're typotype things. So I'm going to send those to Anthony right now. Thank you. Does anyone have anything substantive on the June 30th minutes? And additional. All right. Can we approve them? Assuming that these edits will be made. All right. All in favor of approving the minutes of the June 30th meeting. Do we need a second? I second it even move it. Okay, I moved Sam seconds. Dave, are you? Yes. One, two, three. I did, sir. Yeah, yeah. So five. Isenger, are you voting? Oh, are you there? I'm here. I'm here. I'm approving the minutes. Six. Okay. Six in favor and two abstaining. And we're out of time. We did one though. So that's great. Thank you, everyone. You adjourned the meeting. Oh, yes, I moved to adjourn the meeting. Second. Okay. All in favor. Hi. Hi. Thank you. Good night. Good night. Good night.