 Lynn, the host. So Kathy is co-host and Lynn. Okay. So I want to call the finance committee meeting of January 26, 2021. To order. And we have. The agenda with several significant items for discussion. And. I will, but I first want to. Check with everybody because this is a meeting that pursuant to Governor Baker's March 12, 2020 orders suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law, general law, chapter 30, section 18. Is a meeting that is being held. And I want to make sure that you can hear me by responding. And then as you respond, we will know that we can hear you. So. I will start with. Lynn. Present. Bob Hagner. Jane Schaeffler. Present. Kathy Shane. Present here. At the Angeles. Present. Bernie Kubiak. Present. And Dorothy Pam. Present. In addition, we have several staff members present. Who are involved with. The presentations today in discussion. That we're going to have at the meeting. But first, I would like to. Welcome Jane. This is the first meeting that she's. Attending. Since she was just appointed as a resident member. And so. Jane. Welcome. And. You've briefly met the rest of the committee and. I don't know if. Anybody has any other comments that they'd like to make. Otherwise we'll just launch into the agenda. So. The first presentation. The first thing I want to get to is in the first item after called order on the agenda list. Is the stormwater management by law and illicit discharge by laws. Presentation and discussion. And. We have several people who are present. At today's meeting. To assist us in this presentation. To explain the bylaw and to answer questions about it. The first thing I want to get to is in the first item after the bylaw and to answer questions about it. I think that we want to get a general understanding. Of what this requirement is all about. But we want to very quickly. Focus in on our aspect of it. It was referred to two committees. The town services. Committee and the. And our committee. And our role is. Financial implications. So the two people who are here. Involved with the presentation. From. Our Beth Wilson, who's been working on. Developing our planning and working. And I think that some of you who have had a chance to look at this. And I think that some of the people who have sent. Have seen her. Random, which is quite extensive regarding this. And Kiltwood mooring. The superintendent of the department of public works. Who. Possible for all DPW operations. And therefore has been. The one who's. There's ultimate responsibility. Which he always likes to have. I just want to note that I know something that was said that the. Council meeting by. Lisa Brewer. As members of the select board, listen, I had been. Aware of this for some time. Because we knew it was coming. We just didn't know. When was coming and I have to frankly admit until I got Beth's. I don't know. I didn't know the details of what we were expecting, but. This has been something that's been in a while for a while. In path for a while. So. I'm going to introduce Beth and ask her to just give us. An overview of what the process is like and what the bylaws. So we're looking at and we. Help us to zero in on the financial implications of that. Hi. Hi. With the slide presentation. Yes, I will. As I look. Yeah, you can see it. My screen. Yes. I put it up in mind on Beth. I put it up for you. You just need to tell me when. Oh, you did. Okay. Okay. I can. Not share my screen, I guess. I guess that's okay. So that's your screen we're looking at. Yes. Not my screen. Okay. Perfect. Okay. Well, again, I'd like to thank everybody for. Listening to the presentation today on the store, I'm going to go through the basics again. So. As Andy was saying, this is a similar presentation was given to town council and to the TSO. And I will go through the basics again, but skim, skim a bit of the presentation because I know a number of you have heard it and you want to focus on the financial. Aspects of it. So. Okay. Next slide. There we go. Okay. So we're going to go through the basics of our. Oh, oh, this is the old presentation. Stop sharing. That one doesn't have the financial parts to it. So I think we need to. We need this one. Okay. Why don't you put yours up and it is now of it? Yeah. It's open for you to share. Can you see that? Yes. Yes or no. Yes. Okay. Great. All right. Okay. It consists of our catch basins, straightedge twills, piping and manholes. They carry stormwater from impervious areas, parking lots of roads to outfalls, dams and rivers and ponds. It's maintained by MRCPW and it's also known as our municipal separate storm sewer system by the EPA and DEP. That's the acronym they've given to stormwater drainage systems. In 2018, Amherst applied for coverage under the 2016 Massachusetts general MS for permit, and it's also known as the MS for permit. It's been administered by EPA and DEP. It's the Massachusetts permit that all municipalities have to apply for. To basically be given the right to discharge. And as I said, we applied in 2018 and we were granted coverage in 2019. The primary requirement. Is to have all of the stormwater management programs. So stormwater management program. The primary goal. For all municipalities is to have their discharge from their stormwater system or their MS for at all the outfalls, meet water quality standards. And to do that. DEP has required. All stormwater management programs to have six minimum control measures. One, one, three. Elimination. Construction site storm order runoff control. Stormwater management and new and redevelopment projects. And good housekeeping and pollution prevention from town owned properties, basically. on the control measures. Three of them require a bylaw be established and that's sort of a preliminary part of the program, one of the first things you need to do. So we've developed two bylaws. One is called the IDDE or illicit discharge detection and elimination bylaw. The other we've called our storm order management bylaw and it covers all the requirements for the other two minimum control measures, construction site storm order runoff control and storm order management in new and redevelopment projects. And those two bylaws, which you have copies of and what have gone to the town council and the TSO need to be finalized and approved and enacted by the end of June this year, 2021. So the illicit discharge and detection elimination bylaw really focuses on establishing that it's illegal to dump anything into our MS4. So that would be into the catch basin. Also to have any kind of illicit connection to our system. If you're connected somehow pipe-wise and you're causing contamination or producing some that's going into our system that's really an illicit connection. Also it's illegal to obstruct the flow of our MS4 system. The bylaw also establishes the authority for the town TPW to go on to private property to inspect for illicit connections or illegal dumping gives the town the authority. Then if they find an issue to either suspend or actually disconnect somebody from our drainage system. It also requires anyone who has any kind of a connection to our system or even just a catch basin to protect that access to our system. That's what is meant by BMP best management practices. People are required to protect those so that they're not contaminating our system. And they're also required to notify TPW or the town of any spills. The TPW, the bylaw establishes that the town has the authority to enforce all of those things with fines. And the stormwater management bylaw that establishes stormwater management permits that are gonna be required for any new development redevelopment projects, land disturbance any land disturbance or any kind of a disturbance that disturbs drainage characteristics on a parcel that's an acre or more. So the bylaw really sets the stage for us to start issuing those permits. There are some exemptions or certain projects certain properties that are exempt and wouldn't need a permit. The bylaw has a appeal and waivers sections to it so people can appeal having to get a permit. And then the bylaw establishes that the town can create stormwater regulations. And the regulations are gonna get more into the specifics on the permitting process what people need to submit to the town if they're required to get a stormwater permit. What standards their stormwater design is gonna have to meet. So they would submit their design and then TPW engineering would be reviewing it and sort of what are the standards that their design needs to meet to be approved. And the regulations are gonna also establish the permitting fees. So the fee that would be submitted along with the permit application. Yeah, that's basically, oh, and then again the stormwater bylaw includes enforcement with fines for people who either do work without a permit or don't abide by the requirements of the permit that they're issued. So the financial aspects to the bylaws which is what you're interested in. Like I mentioned, there are permit fees that will be part of the Soul Stormwater Program and will be part of the stormwater management bylaws regulations really will include a fee structure for getting a permit. And looking at other communities, we have looked a bit at what other communities are using and the fee schedules vary quite a bit. The range for these permit fees is from about $50 to 2000 depending on the project size, depending on the municipality. That is one financial aspect of the bylaws. Now there is the fines that I mentioned and in both the bylaws, that's set at a maximum of $300 a day. It kind of builds up to that first you get a warning and then you get a smaller fee, but that structure is also very similar to other Amherst bylaws with the same amounts of money. And then the bigger aspect is the whole permitting the whole program that we're required to do under the permit, what is the cost of that program gonna be over the next however many years. And so the bylaw, the stormwater bylaw gives the town the authority to create a stormwater utility or enterprise fund. It's not required by the permit, but it's something that a number of towns across Massachusetts have done and they do it because of the overall cost of the program. Cause obviously the permit fees aren't gonna cover very much of the program. So what we've put together is some costing for FY 22, 23 and 24. And as our estimates, I've divided it up by the, by the different tasks that we had so public education and outreach, public involvement and participation, the IDDE program, construction site, runoff control and stormwater for new and redevelopment projects and then general housekeeping. So I've divided it up that way. The numbers are very much based on what's seen in other communities. There's been studies done by, especially by college students in different colleges across Massachusetts on the impact of the MS4 program on municipalities cost-wise. So some things to note, I guess, would be public education and outreach and public involvement and participation. We've already started. And those two tasks needs to just continue forever. And as much as we'll change things, do special projects, there's sort of consistent costs that we'll have every year. And so you see those costs aren't changing in the next three fiscal years. The IDDE program, in FY 22, there's a number of program development documents, as you can call them, that need to be finished in FY 22, such as the written IDDE program, which it's a document. So that's a one-time cost, similar to these O&M plans that we need to put together and a written plan to maintain. So these are all sort of written plans that are required by the permit that are listed as requirements in the permit. And they all need to be finished in FY 22, but then the costing doesn't continue. But then you'll see some other costs start happening in FY 24. And those have to do mostly with inspecting and sampling all the outfalls. So we need to be, by this point, we need to have a real good idea of where our outfalls are, what kind of shape they're in and which ones we need to go in and start sampling. So some of those costs show up there. FY 24, we have to actually install a best management practice for nitrogen reduction. So that is referring to something like a storm scepter, some kind of an improvement to our infrastructure that will help in removing nutrients. So that's under FY 24. We put in some, again, some estimates for that. This is where the permitting, next under construction site, stormwater runoff control, this is the permitting that we're talking about. And again, in FY 22, this will be still sort of establishing that permitting process, putting a lot of effort in by the town engineer and our civil engineer to continue to figure out what documents they would like to review, how that whole process is gonna go, developing forms for the permitting. And then as time goes on, FY 23, I feel like it's gonna be the first year where we're actually doing the permitting. So for every new development project that comes in, for example, forms will be filled out, applicants will be submitting and our engineers will be reviewing the applications and issuing permits with conditions and things. So then that's a cost that would really continue into the future. Good housekeeping. There's a little bit more to this. It happens even later on, but catch basin cleaning, street sweeping is something we're already doing, been doing for ever. So for FY 22, those costs are in budget for FY 22. We do need to optimize the process under MS-4. There's requirements under MS-4 that are gonna make both of these processes improve a bit. And so we've included some costing as we go down the road of implementing those improvements. And then there's an annual report, an MS-4 annual report that gets submitted every year. So that is another cost that will continue on. So that's what we have for costing right now. And that's the end of the presentation too. So I guess we're open for questions now. Could you send this presentation or have Guilford send it to me so that we can send it to the full committee? Yes, definitely. We were still working on it today. So that's why I didn't get it into your packets or get it anywhere. We were finishing some stuff up. But yes, definitely. Andy, do you want me to take the screen down or to have Beth take the screen down? Well, if there are questions that are gonna come up about the budget part of it, then maybe it's worth having the screen up for a few minutes to see what the questions are. I know this presentation you did, you really, I appreciate you're laying out the costs for us. What are the revenues that are in a typical community from the permitting fees and the fines and how do they match against the expenditures? I can take a stab at that. Like in the previous slide, the permitting fees that we're seeing in other towns are relatively small. And I can't imagine that some of these towns with a fee of say it's $500, get that many projects that come through to be permitted that it covers these kinds of costs, these program costs. The permitting fees, I always think of permitting fees as really paying for the administration of the permit itself. So, and then the finding would just be under an enforcement situation. So that too, I think is pretty limited. Is that what you think, Gilferne? Yes, most of the program won't create very much money to meet the needs of the federal permit. At some point there's gonna be a decision made on how to fund the work that needs to go on. Should it be part of the tax base or should it be a separate storm water utility or enterprise type system? It's an enterprise system that I'm gonna start recognizing other people. But if you're going to have an enterprise fund, what are the revenues that come into the enterprise fund? So communities that have a storm water utility actually will base the revenues that come into the enterprise system on the amount of impervious area that a parcel contributes to the storm water system. If you have a lot that's one acre and it's all paved, you would pay to have that paved lot. It would be maybe twice as much as someone who has an acre lot with half of it paved. That's one of the ways of doing it. Other communities just set a standard rate. If you're a single family home, you pay this amount of money. If you're a multifamily, you pay these rates. So going into a storm water utility, you have different options for how you would charge rates and different ways to set up some type of system to collect revenue. That explains a little bit. So I'm gonna start recognizing members of the committee who have questions. And I see at least four hands, including Kathy, who has their hand up physically. Because I was made co-host, I'm like, Lynn, I can't raise my little computer hand. Okay, so let me start with Dorothy and Bob because they came in early with questions and then I will get back to you. So Dorothy. So this is a new program, a requirement by the EPA, is that correct? Yes. Okay. And as I looked at the budgets, either all of it is for planning, writing and coordinating. It was possible that construction sites Southwest runoff control, that was 6,000 and 10,000 and 10,000. Maybe that was actually a physical something or is this all non-physical? So- No, you're building anything. Is there any infrastructure here? Oh, no, the only thing listed here that's really more infrastructure might be the, it says plan and install a BMP nitrogen reduction. So that's under, right. And that's FY24, that's our first requirement to go in and actually install something. Okay, so then, and that's the year that the expenses are the highest at 59,000. Going on, once you've paid all this money out in work and making plans and putting that what would the yearly cost of maintaining this system be? Yeah, we didn't, we haven't gone out that far yet. Things that just as just an idea of that is sort of down here where we've got catch basin cleaning. And as we move along, we need to optimize that according to MS-4. So there's costing for that. And then there's things like these O&M plans and other plans that we're putting together that then we have to do inspections and things like that going into the future just to show that we, it's not listed here, but we have to do stormwater pollution prevention plans for our more industrial type facilities like the transfer station. We've actually already paid for that and done that but that SWIP then includes inspecting and monitoring into the future. So there are some long-term parts to the program that more involve monitoring what we're doing, inventorying things like inventorying the amount of street sweepings we collect every year and inventorying the volume of catch basin cleaning. And so there is, yeah, anyway, but I can't give you a number for that right now. All right, so in other words, we're going to the goal of having, turning no water into the system that's not meeting clean standards is a very high goal. So in order to meet this goal, the system is set up, but this is gonna be a new expense ongoing of some measure, which is why I guess you were considering a new system of fees for an enterprise system. I mean, I'm just trying to figure out where it's going. Right. So it's going to be an expansion of what we do already. Many of the stormwater things we do now are basically physical repairs to the system. A basin fails, we fix the basin. A pipe fails, we fix the pipe. We need to upsize the pipe or upsize the culvert, we fix that. And that's paid for in capital and general fund money right now and some grant money. So yes, as we go through the program of the planning part where we identify our problems, we'll be going through and trying to address how to correct those problems. And those will be above and beyond the cost we now have for just maintaining a pipe system that collects the water and sends it on its way. Okay. Thank you. So Bob, Pegner? Yeah, thanks. So I gotta have a few questions. I guess I would just immerse a statement that following up to what Dorothy said is that, when I look at the permit, there are some activities down the line that might happen like inspection, doing forensics to find out who did what, enforcement. There's record keeping. So I think there's maybe some other expenses that will occur in the future that aren't covered under this list. So again, I realize you're still working your way through it, but I think we need to make sure we cover all of what's in the permit that I've read. I guess the other, another question I have is Beth, you mentioned sampling and I guess the question is what are we sampling for? I mean, Nipty's program to my knowledge covers all the priority pollutants, which is like 120 something, which I know we don't sample for now. So what is it we're sampling for and how much sampling do we have to do? Cause I think your sampling kits, you've got like $5,000. It just doesn't seem like that's a realistic number if we have to sample 120 something pollutants. Right. Yeah, no, you focus on sort of what are the common stormwater pollutants? So sediment, so TSS total suspended. That's the, so sediment and nutrients and hydrocarbons. Those are the primary things that you're looking at in color and actually even just well turbidity kind of falls with TSS too. It's not a whole lot of pollutants. It's really sort of some of the more basic stuff. So some of the simple sampling test kits that are out there for things like nutrients, like for nitrogen and phosphorus you can use. And then also you really do focus on the priority outfalls. So part of before we actually get out to the sampling, we need to inspect all of our outfalls, prioritize them based on flow and based on just sort of an initial look at them. And then we end up, we don't end up sampling all of them because yeah, we have hundreds of outfalls. So, and also this first year that FY24, we may use the 5,000 and realize, oh, that didn't quite get us as far as we need to. And then the next year, do some more. I understood. I just wanted to point out that I just, just reading through the permit, it seems like there's a lot more sort of monitoring and sampling and forensics, if you will, than what we might be doing now. And so we should be making sure we're aware of what the cost implications of those are. The other thing, the other question I had, and this goes back to the discussions we had for the FY21 budget, where Guilford, I think you mentioned that we might need to upgrade or replace some elements of MS4. And do you have any updates on that? I know at the time you said you didn't know what specifically might be required. No, there's no update on that. As we move through the program, all the monitoring and the reporting we have to do will actually flesh out what we have to work on first. So we still basically have about three to four more years of the program before we actually have to do some substantial planning and substantial improvements based on what we find over those three years. Okay. Well, thanks. Shawn Minganos, our finance director, do you have anything that you wanted to say? It's just that your hand was up. Yeah, I don't know if you want to go to Kathy first. After Kathy, I don't know if she wants to... Okay, because we have two other members of the committee. Bernie also had some questions, so I'll come back to you. Kathy? I'm just gonna build, I think, on the questions. If I focus on FY24, where there's a first year getting things up and running in terms of what revenues might cover, am I understanding it right that the line that says $10,000, that's construction site, runoff control, stormwater management, new development, that would be, we could set a permit fee, I guess, if we wanted to, with the expectation that it would cover that, that's a new site construction fee is that, you know, so there would be a revenue match to that. And then the, Guilford, when you said, if we did a utility, you could do it on a per residence or per impervious lot size. So impervious lot size, would that be, you'd have to go out, I'll just, I'm looking at my window at the snow, which also means I'm looking at our totally pervious driveway, which is dirt. Because long ago, you know, we've never had a pave, so would there be some properties that had no impervious that you'd have to say, this one just doesn't have any? So is that an expensive, if you went that route for the utility side of it, is that a more expensive thing to implement and it also might be changing over time because someone paves their driveway versus a totally pervious driveway. So it was kind of, I'm examining it for in out years, if you did a utility, where would the revenues be and what would they be associated with it. So that was my question. So yes, on the first part of your question, the $10,000 in the construction site control and so forth, that's something that the permit fees, which we should try to make the permit fees match what we're spending there. As you talk about the utility, yes, you can set your budget as being, you need to do $4 million worth of work and then you can balance out that $4 million of work based on who's got the most pervious or impervious piece of property. And that could change every year. There's communities that do it and people are changing and people will take out impervious area just to make their rates go down lower. So yes, rates could change and fluctuate year to year, depending if you did it that way. Can I just ask you came up with the bottom line number I'm looking at right now is $59,000. And as Bob said, there might be, there's different, and then you said $4 million. What's, is there something I'm missing between $59,000 and $4 million? $4 million is a nice round number. Well, it's so is $100,000. And if I'm looking at $59,000, is there something I'm missing about a big cost that's not on this sheet? Andy, can I weigh in on that? Cause that's part of what I was going to speak to. So, so we have been putting some money towards stormwater already as Guilford mentioned earlier. It's been part of our capital plan for a few years, right, Guilford? And I think you said that money's been mostly used for like the repairs that come up. Well, the money that's in the capital plan is being used specifically to support our getting the, the stormwater permit program going and getting things done for that. So is that a cost that we would envision would transfer over if they, if a utility was gonna get set up, would that cost transfer over to the utility? If you, if you use the utility, yes, that should transfer over to the utility. And that's a cost that will eventually would go away once we have the program set up and could be reallocated towards the program itself. Yes. So my point was just I wanted to point out for some people that we have been putting, I think it ranges between 50 to 100,000 a year towards the stormwater program. We've been doing it through capital, but it's really to help facilitate getting this set up. You know, I like the idea of utility in some respects because it really separates the costs of the stormwater program and allows us to be more proactive and manage it in the future as opposed to, you know, reactive. So I see that positive to it. I think we do need to maybe Guilford and I and Beth can dig in more to like, what would be the annual operating costs once the program is fully implemented? I think Beth said this is more of a how we're getting things in over the next few years, but it's gonna be quite some time before the program is fully operational and come back with what that would look like. And can I just follow up Sean on the, you know, when Guilford, yes, four million is a nice round number, but it's a lot bigger than a hundred thousand. And I'm just remembering when we didn't know Centennial was coming and we didn't know the size of it. Is there a $4 million, something that's coming to us because of this program or a million that's in and out here that's at that level? If you look at other communities and what they're doing there in the million dollar ranges for what they're doing for stormwater. So anywhere in the million dollar range is a good number. We run, I mean, the water and sewer enterprise systems which maintains piping systems and does monitoring and sampling and so forth. They run in the three to $4 million range every year. So that was just another reason to pick the $4 million range. That's kind of mirrors the others. I mean, I guess I'll just keep pushing. I don't understand why because we've got a water and sewer. So we've got that system. I would just, if you can't answer it now, it's what would increase, and I think you're talking about annual costs, what would increase it to that level in a town the size of Amherst? So I just would like, I think if we've got that coming, we need to know about it and what are the elements? Because we're not looking at even Sean with your 50 to 100,000 a year, we're not anywhere near that number. So. Yeah, and like I said, we'll dig into it more and look out a little bit. I think to Guilford's point, we don't know exactly what is gonna, so there's gonna be sort of the annual operating cost to this program, but then there could also be capital repairs, just like there are with the water and sewer fund. I think some of those large capital repairs are the ones that we won't fully know until the testing is done. So, but we can come back with more information on that. Yeah, a couple of things I thought about when I'm gonna call in Bernie. One is that we're not the first community as we know from best presentations tonight and in January, but are in December, but there are other communities that have had the system for a while. And so we should be able to obtain information from those communities about what expenses they have been incurring and what revenue they have been receiving, how they've been receiving it. If they have utilities or enterprise funds set up, then they have budgets go along with them. And to the extent that we're able to make inquiry, I think our understanding will be better. The other thing that I was curious about is that before the meeting actually started, Beth and I had a brief conversation. And of course, we're just recognizing that we have a stormwater system already. It's just not regulated, and but there's a lot of physical infrastructure in place. And I assume that that system is really what we're building this all on. And we've been maintaining that system. So the cost of maintaining that system that is currently in place is not being transferred over to this new enterprise or is this enterprise being layered on top of what already exists? What I envisioned would be that the money we're spending now on stormwater would be transferred to the utility. So you would see some savings on the general side as you bring up the utility. And then the utility would carry the full load of maintaining the system. Bernie? Yeah, thinking along the same lines as you, Andy, our friends in North Hampton, I believe, have gone through this whole stormwater management trial already to their disc intent in some ways. So I'm thinking we can learn from what they've done, certainly. I would, looking at what happened in North Hampton and I would favor development of utility that keeps these expenses isolated and more transparent, I think, than what they might be if they just got folded into one of our current operating budgets. Gilbert, have you have a notion about how many permits you're gonna have to issue and the nature of the inspections they're gonna have to go on? So we're gonna probably, we probably do about, well, it's probably in a realm of about 20 or 30 permits is what we do a year currently for site plan review and subdivisions and so forth. So we'll probably have about the same number of permits that we'll have to look at. We do now have to look at additional information which is the stormwater side. So that's the additional part to the permit that we already look at for other things. So it's probably about 30 or 40 probably. Okay. And the nature of the inspections that'll have to take place to begin to ferret out some of those illicit connections? Well, for the illicit connections, that's a whole separate program which we'll have to somehow set up and do a lot of investigating. Many of most of that will actually revolve around the sampling of the outfalls. If we have the detections that the outfalls or things we're not supposed to have, then that outfall and all the piping up that outfall will be where we start searching to look for the connections. Okay. So that cost hasn't really been determined yet? No. Do you have any illicit connections that already exist? We find them every once in a while. They're people who've connected their sanitary sewer to the stormwater system. There's some people who've connected their sump pumps and other internal pumps to the stormwater system which actually they'll have to be disconnected because of this program. Some can remain, some will have to be disconnected. Yeah, we know people have hooked things together and are not supposed to hook together. And some of them are probably more obvious than others. I mean, if you've got roof drains or other stuff like that. The last kind of, again, learning from Northampton. I think Northampton tried to come up with some kind of regular fear text for stormwater and that was not well received. So we're gonna need to look at how we build the funding on this. The other just observation is with nitrogen reduction and lids, I mean, a lot of that stuff could be worked on with the conservation commission with the planning board. And really encourage people to make changes so that they don't have to incur additional fees. And we don't have to incur additional costs by chasing them and finding them. So, thanks. I just want to look into these budgets. I don't have sticker shock. I was thinking this would be much more expensive than what's outlined here. So my concern would be that we collect all the potential costs that might, over time, might fall into this project. So Bernie, when you're talking about costs, are you meaning additional costs to what we're already incurring to maintain the system that's presently in place? Well, I think we'd probably have a good idea where we're gonna have to make, I would imagine that Guilford and his engineer and his staff have a good idea of where in our existing stormwater system is gonna have to be improvements. And as Sean pointed out from my time in the old finance committee, yeah, we have been putting money aside for this. My concern would be that as we begin to get into enforcement of this, especially with the illicit connections piece that we're careful to budget as to how much time and effort it's gonna have to go into that to make it work. And once, I mean, once they begin sampling and get an idea of further idea of how bad things are or how good things are, that'll drive the inspection program as well. So, Lynn? Yeah, I don't have sticker shop shock. I'm just concerned about setting up an enterprise fund in which we all know from the beginning there isn't going to be sufficient revenue to support the fund. All of the rest of our enterprise funds, or at least to my knowledge, don't operate that way. And so one question I have is, is there, are there any other mechanisms? I have no problem with trying to isolate the costs. I just think we need to realize we're isolating costs only so we know how much we have to budget annually to keep the enterprise fund afloat. Sean? Yeah, so we would only go the enterprise fund routes if we had a fee set up as a revenue source. We wouldn't start moving expenses into the enterprise fund if we didn't have that fee set up as well. And we can come back, one of the other things we can come back with are some of the different fee structures that other communities have looked at. Like Gilford mentioned, there's some that are per square foot, there's ranges, there's flat fees. We can come back with a few different alternatives that other communities have looked at. But we wouldn't move costs to an enterprise fund until we had a revenue source. The other thing, I just, this really looking out and hypothesizing that as the present town council or future town councils look at changes in zoning, that could lead to increased development density, is our present system set up to handle that to begin with? And how is that going to, how will greater density in zoning impact this program as well as the present system that this is linking them to? So the system currently, the system is currently what it is and it does have some issues in certain areas. The one thing that the state has been doing probably since the late 80s, early 90s is requiring that developers post-development stormwater has to equal pre-development stormwater. So that has been a place for a long time. So controlling your stormwater when you develop something is not new to people who are developing. So as you talk about developing downtown and you're gonna take a property that's 50% covered by a building and now you're gonna make it 100% covered by impervious surface, that developer still under other state rules has to keep his stormwater discharges the same as it was before he developed. And he'll have to come up or they will have to come up with methodologies for doing that. You build a five story building in the center of town you may have to put a green roof on top to capture your water, your rainwater and use it to water the plants and have an evaporation type system up there to let the water go back up and not come into the system. You may have to build some type of cistern inside the building to hold rainwater and use that for some other purpose. It could be used for toilet flushing it could be used for watering your plantings around the building as well. So the requirement of not increasing your stormwater footprint has been in place in the state and in the country for quite a while. So that's not a change. The change is how do you handle the pollutants that are in that stormwater that is coming in is really what we're looking at. Reducing nitrogen, phosphates those are the things you're really kind of looking at hydrocarbons that's what this program is really geared towards quality versus quantity which is quantity is what we've been managing for the last 20, 30 years. And so again, it's so you're talking about what you're not allowed to contribute to this. And my question also says, does our existing system have the capability of what is allowed to be contributed if we start doing more dense housing and stuff like that? And are you saying that the state law basically won't allow anybody to build that is contributing anything more than is presently being contributed? Yes, that's the way the state law is set up. But we do have sections of the system which are inadequate and at some point we will have to deal with those inadequacies just in general. Yeah, I mean, it's just to say, doing an override for sewers is not exactly sexy. Oh, I think it is. It's wonderful. Yeah. Exactly on the problem that we're gonna have to confront and that is that we either pay for it within current fee structure in case we, then we have to either pass an override to increase taxes or we have to otherwise cut expenses to fund or we have to create a new funding stream which is of course why I think Northampton got into the situation that Bernie and Paul with the council meeting referenced, Dorothy and then Kathy. So Dorothy. Just a question. Since this is a relatively new state requirement or refinement of requirements, are there any grants or money that towns can apply for to help with this? There's limited grants right now which is a lot of different, a lot of municipalities complain about. It's sort of an unfunded mandate. There is a MassDEP grant program this year. There was really two grants that came out of MassDEP for MS4 and one was strictly for nonprofits and another was for when towns work together sort of as a coalition. So if you were a part of a coalition or if you were a part of a nonprofit and you were gonna help with MS4 in some way, you could apply for a grant from MassDEP but I am hopeful that they're gonna start developing some larger grants for this program. It would make sense. Kathy. Gilford, you said it's a state requirement that the new development can't have any more stormwater discharge than before. How do we know that that is the case? Who enforces that requirement? How do you know it? How do you know that a very large building that is now on a piece of land that used to have a house on it doesn't generate any more stormwater? So that's actually one of the things our engineering department does for the planning department. When the apartment comes in, they have to submit their stormwater calculations. It's also for some conservation projects they submitted as well. Jason Skeels, the town engineer takes that information and he runs the calculations and verifies that their post stormwater discharge is less than or equal to their pre-discharge. And that's what the permitting is that we're talking about the stormwater permitting. When a project, a new development or redevelopment comes forward, their stormwater design needs to get permitted. And as Gilford said, it would get reviewed by DPW engineering prior to issuing the permit. And then that does happen right now through as Gilford said through some of the planning processes that we have right now. But this program would basically clarify that process a lot. And also the standards are changing. MS4 standards for water quality and water volume is a little more restrictive than the current Massachusetts stormwater handbook which is what the concoms using and we review to right now. But MS4 is a little stricter. This is a little bit aside from just stormwater, but do we have a similar calculation for draw on water and draw on sewage capacity? So we are more dense. Do we reach a point where we're worried about a water supply or sewage processing capacity? We do. When someone submits a development plan, we do look at sewer capacity and we do look at water capacity. What we've been finding is that we have, the wastewater treatment plant has the capacity to handle the sewage, but we'll find localized problems in the system or the system has to be upgraded where the pipes are too small in that one area and maybe the developer will have to upgrade a couple hundred feet or a thousand feet or it hasn't been, well, some of them actually had to do almost half a mile of sewer upgrades to get the sewage to the plant because the old pipes won't hold that. Water's a little different. Our water system, we're sitting pretty good with water quality or water quantity for development right now. We're actually doing really well. Bob, Hagmear? Yeah, I just had a thought and that is that rainwater is not pure. It's got pollutants in it. I think, I believe nitrogen and ammonium is fairly high or can be fairly high in rainwater. Are we supposedly taking into account what the concentrations are of water hitting the ground or do we have to clean it to a standard irrespective of what the background is coming in at? No, yeah, it would be, the standard CPA is setting our, sort of based on that background level of what current rainwater, like you said, there's acid rain everywhere now, especially in the Northeast. So yeah, they're based on that as a background. So I'm gonna turn the subject a little bit and hope that the committee will help this along, but we don't have to produce a report right now. We have 90 days to do that. And the question is how to use these 90 days effectively. It seems to me that one of the things that I had mentioned earlier, I wanna come back to and make sure that we get and that is the experience from other towns that have implemented the system already, Northampton being one example, East Long Meadow was another one that Beth had put into the original presentation that she made in the memo to the council. But to find out what their experience has been on both the expense side and the revenue side so that we can make sure that we're advising appropriately that the bylaw is being developed in a way that can accommodate the change. Some of the bylaws written gives options really for implementation down the line and doesn't establish a strict structure, just gives options for a structure. And that's fine, but I think that we at least need to understand it and be able to comment to the council about it. Are there other things that the committee can just thought about that would be helpful information for us to have as we under what we wanna report back to the council? The only one, Andy, I think it's the same thing of finding out what other communities have done, but if we did do went the utility road down the road and just faced how do we set the fees, more information than where we see variants, more information on the implications if you go the impervious versus per housing unit, of what people have done if we have examples one way and one one another. And so we know something about implementation costs, maintenance costs going versus that. So Lynn's basic question of you can't set up a utility until you've got revenues coming in, understanding what underlies those revenues and what choices we would have to make, getting more information to inform those choices would be great. Dorothy, did you have anything there? Yes, this is a following up on what Guilford said about large buildings having to equalize their water. Is this a new requirement or was it in effect when One East Pleasant and Kendrick were built? And if it was, were there mitigations or was it decided that since there'd been some parking lot in that area that it was impervious then? And I'm just curious to know, has this been applied into some of the recent larger constructions? And if so, how? Oh, yes, it's been applied in the recent constructions. One East Pleasant was actually, they had an easier time because it was a fully developed parcel and everything was paved on the parcel pretty much. So their post runoff was basically a whole lot because their pre-runoff was a whole lot. One East Pleasant or not One East Pleasant. Kendrick, please. Yeah, Kendrick Place is the one that was up. That one was a really stickler because basically that was a green grass lot. There was like two pieces of concrete pads that were no more than 10 feet square on that parcel. That was the only impervious land on those parcels. Everything else was pervious. So they actually had to put in some underground detention chambers which holds the water and slowly release the water at the post, at the pre-release rates. So that one was the harder building to build because it was, yes, it was mostly a grass lot that was converted to 100% impervious. Is that why, I may have remembered something of this. They originally had thought they were gonna do some underground parking, but they couldn't because of this. Is that a possible connection? They couldn't do underground parking because their groundwater table was so high. All right. The screen that runs underneath there. Thank you. Very informative. Can I say one more thing about the bylaws before you? You're. So you're being asked to recommend the bylaws and what we've told you or what we've given you here is future cost. And we know that it's gonna take a while to put this all together, but we are, this is a permit we're required to do and this is just step one is approving the IDE bylaw and the storm order bylaw. How we implement them going forward, we have probably one to two, maybe even three years to actually think this out and figure out how we want to do this. Nothing we have in our estimate of costs for the next three years is actually more than what we've put into the capital plan for the next five years in the joint capital plan. So we do have time. It's not, don't feel like you're rushed to make a decision on the enterprise system or the stormwater utility. We're, I keep saying this, we're eating this elephant one bite at a time. Bite one is to pass the two bylaws and then we can move on to the next couple of bites and move down the road. Yeah. And I think the road we're probably starting at and that was very helpful of Billford is to make sure that as we look at the bylaw itself that we're comfortable that the bylaw gives us the full range of options that we may want to consider down the line. So that because as has been pointed out at the council meeting where this is originally discussed, it's easier to do things by implementation of a bylaw than to go back and have to revise the bylaw again. So we're hoping we get the bylaw right. And I think that's part of what we're after, making sure that we do through this discussion and the analysis that follows. Other thoughts from the committee on this subject? Because if not, then we can thank Beth and Guilford and move on to the quarterly report for the second quarter. And the other thing, I know we have one attendee who's somebody who's pays a lot of attention to financial matters. So if a member of the public at any time thinks about something that they would want to have, want to raise during public comment, you could go ahead and raise your hand. And at least I know that I need to move up public comment earlier in the agenda to make sure that I can accommodate the public comment that we very much welcome. So having said that, we turn, if nobody has anything else for either Guilford or Beth now, then thank you very much for being with us today. I appreciate it. Thank you. I'll turn it over to Sean and Sonja to present the quarter report. And I guess just make sure that we have an understanding with Lynn as to who's putting it on the screen. Yeah, which one are you wanting to look at, the first or second quarter? Well, the first quarter report, it's posted on the, both reports are posted on the accounting website right now, but the first quarter report is really less significant because the budget isn't set yet. We haven't set a tax rate. So the revenues were still moving around. Now the tax rate is set. So the second quarter report is much more significant. So I was just going through that one. All right. Let me go to the second quarter report. That's the one you want? It is. So I'll start by saying that these are pretty typical from year to year and quarter to quarter. You can see the percentage collected from a budget on a normal year, but what's happened with COVID in fiscal year 21, we had to cut the budget quite a bit. So it's kind of, that's also insignificant to try to compare where we're at collected to a much smaller budget. So for this year, I created another report, which is scroll all the way to the end. And that compares revenues to what we collected last year at the same time. So if you go to the top of that, and that's what I kind of want to go through just so you can see, because really the budgets, even though they are significant, they're kind of insignificant, you want to see what we collected from the previous year and why. Is this what you want? That's it. So first thing is the golf course. We budgeted nothing for the golf course this year because we figured there would be a lot of participation with that. It turns out we had a better first two quarters than we've had in previous years. We actually took in 40% more than the year before at this time. So we did pretty well for the golf course this year. Recreation, that's another place where we cut, we pretty much cut the budget down to zero because of the programs we weren't, we weren't going to be able to run. So it seemed it was logical to cut those down. However, pools were open. And again, pools did better this year than they've done in the previous year. I think we did 72% better for the same period. Now this is just for the first six months all the way across from 2018, 19 and 20. Fees are new this year. We don't budget them. Those are the cannabis host fees and the short term rental fees. I'm sorry, I have to take over on my computer because I can't see the screen. I'm looking over at my desktop. Then we have fines. The budget was reduced significantly. We've already close to reached that budget and we're on target for what came in previous year. Investment income, we've actually exceeded what we are budgeted for. So thanks to our treasurer, she's been really good at investing as much money as she can and she moves it at the last minute. So she does a really good job with that. Then we have license and permits. We're 67.3% collected, but 37% less than the previous year on this. So we're doing okay. We're gonna meet our budget estimates, but we are lower than the previous years at this time. Medicaid reimbursements. We usually collect these in June. However, they are gonna be lower with the schools being out. Miscellaneous non-recurring. This is where we normally have our hotel motel, our UMass fees that are in lieu of hotel motel taxes. And they've been closed. So we're not expecting to collect any of that this year. And so far that's held true. We will be collecting from Amherst College this year. We used to get the 120 from UMass here, but we're still negotiating a new strategic partnership, agreement, which is on hold because of COVID. Was 120 of these schools money or this was payment move taxes? But that was, that's hotel motel, that's- Okay, got it. Yeah. Motor vehicle excise. We collect the bulk of that in February. So we'll see where that goes in the next quarterly report. Other revenue is where most of the department, the miscellaneous departmental revenue is. We are a little bit lower on that, but we're on track to meet our budget estimate here. Other excise. Hotel motel is way down from the previous years. Meals tax is doing much better than we anticipated. It's already reached our budget that we projected for this year. However, we're still about 48% lower than previous years. Cannabis tax, these are new. It's on target for what we got last year. We normally don't budget for these funds until we've had some more trend. We didn't budget for it this year. Penalties and interest. We had a large deferral payment in fiscal year 20. So that's why that seems a little inflated, but other than that, we're on target, actually doing a little better than we expected for that. Pilot, it's on target. These are coming as just as transfers. Realist property tax, we're right on target. Collections are still good. We're gonna meet our 98 to 99% this year. Rentals, the rental budget was reduced significantly. However, we've already collected what we budgeted for and we expect that to be exceeded. Special Assignment Assessments is just timing of when the PVTA assessment payment comes in from UMass and the five colleges. It'll probably more likely be in the second, third quarter state aid. It's on target and there were no cuts. I just wanted to point that out. There were no cuts, which is a good thing. Transferring are just normal. It's free and the indirect costs from the enterprise funds and any community preservation fund money that we budget for debt service, anything that we budget from free cash overlay or ambulance that shows up there. That's just an internal transfer. And then I don't know, do you want me to do the sewer? I'll do the enterprise fund revenues here too. Enterprise fund revenues, we've been doing a lot of adjusting to our budgets, not just due to COVID but due to the consumption going down. So we've raised rates. We've reduced our consumption projections and we've come pretty close. We're down 8% from this time last year. However, UMass is closed. So we would have more than likely done much better if it wasn't for the COVID here. Same with water and we budget our sewer revenues at 85% of consumption of water. Water rate, again, the same thing as sewer, we're down 9% from this time last year. Solid waste are actually doing a little better. I think a lot of people have been staying home, cleaning their yards and their houses and bringing stuff in. Transportation, this is the problem child. The only revenue that the transportation fund receives is from parking meters and parking violations. And we cut the budget significantly here but we are down 56% from this time last year in revenues. So this is gonna be an issue that we're gonna have to figure out what we're gonna do. Probably end up having to move some expenses into the general fund, reallocate employees to different places, which we've done some of that already. So this is on the revenue side. So revenues are coming in very slowly. So on the general expense side, do you want me to take questions? Revenues are way to the end. Is there any revenue questions that people have, Lynn? Yeah, my big concern is this transportation up here when PBTA and UMass finally get their act together in February, because there's been such fluctuation, I'm trying to find it. There's been such fluctuation in bus usage and schedule and stuff like that. So do we have any inkling of that one? So that lags, Lynn. That looks at the reimbursement for that comes from prior years, it's based on prior year usage. So we shouldn't have any issues this year with it. It may linger into future years when this year catches up. Yeah, right here, I guess is where, no, that's not it. Yeah, I'm just concerned about that because it's something to keep our eye on because of in future years. And then the other one that Sonia already pointed out, where you want to go next, or Andy, is there any comment? I just think if there are anybody raised hands to ask revenue questions, but if not, then we'll go on to expenses. I think Gabby has her hand up. Yeah, I think I have three on the Medicaid, the drop. I understand why it's dropping. Does that show up as schools lose revenue? Is that where that revenue is allocated? So it's just a, does it show up in the school budget? No, we don't specifically hold the schools accountable for it. It all goes into that pie that we carve up for all the budgets. And in theory, we're allocating it to the school, but we are, but we won't hold them. Okay, then the second one is on meal tax. This is more on a, to what extent if UMass is delivering food and selling food to residents of town and they're bringing it to, do they pay a meal tax? I don't know if UMass pays the meal tax. They must, right, Sean? To be honest with you. We can, we can find out the, confirm the answer to that. Okay. Actually, that isn't anything in question. And I did do some research on that subject because somebody else had raised the question. And I looked at the state statute and regulations and the university is responsible to collect meals tax and it should be coming to the town. And at some point I was going to ask that question too, to make sure that we're actually receiving the revenue that my interpretation of the statute says that we're entitled to receive. And the, I did add, do some asking around including of one of our counselors who regularly eats on campus and indicates that when he pays cash at say the blue wall that if it's a meal that is an individually paid for meal then there is a sales meals tax applied. And my understanding of it is it should be coming to the town. Yeah. I'm pretty certain they do pay meals tax but that would go directly to the state. We would get it back as on quarterly on monthly through the cherry sheet revenue coming in. So it goes to the state. They don't give us a breakdown or which hotels or which, I mean, which restaurants are paying how much in tax we just get the lump sum from the state. Yeah. And we can reach out to our rep that we talked to frequently and see if she can look and see where that's coming from to verify whether we're getting a good amount from UMass. So we'll follow up on that. Okay. You know, and then my other one against just focusing on revenues is you've got two places where you're getting there's revenue from cannabis. One's an impact and one's a fee. And when I added it up to about 173,000 and I know you said it wasn't budgeted where does that money go? Does it just go into a general fund right now? The fund money. Yes. The DR says it has to go into the general fund. So one of them is the tax itself which comes through the cherry sheet. The other is the, what's the word impact fees? Impact fee, right? That come in and it just, it comes in directly to the town and it goes there in fees. Now all of this gets closed out to free cash. So in the future, when we finally figure out what we're gonna do and use this money towards the vote will have to come from free cash. So keep, everybody needs to keep that in mind. We can't put it in a separate fund. The only amount that we're allowed to put into a separate fund is a donation part. That's in some of the agreements. Sean, you'd probably know more about that one. Yeah. So there's sort of three streams of money, maybe more, but there's three sort of primary streams of money that we get from these host agreements. One is the tax which is less restricted in its use. And as Sonia said, we're just waiting to get a couple of years of trend before we actually budget it. And this year is gonna be a funny year because of the pandemic to see what that looks like. And we also have more establishments opening. So we're trying to get a sense of what the normal level of revenues will look like. The second thing is the impact fee. That's restricted in its usage. It can only be used on what we identify as impacts of the dispensaries. And so it is in reserves. And so as Sonia said, we've got to remember that, I think it's about maybe a little over 200,000 of our reserves right now are actually attributed to those impact fees. And so they're restricted in use when we want to use them, we have to use them for specific things. And then the third is a donation that's made annually. That's, we're really just sort of a holder of it. It's meant for education and awareness and that would go to a nonprofit of some sort. Right, impact fees might not be recurring. A recurring revenue to where the tax is more revenue questions. Yeah, that answer my question. Yep. Pat? Yeah, you said that Sean, the donation would be going for education and something and would be going annually for education and you said something else, awareness. Yeah, I'll send the, I'll have to get the exact blurb. There's a section in the host agreements that speak specifically to the sort of education awareness piece. So I can send the exact blurb so you have more clarity about that. Okay, and it probably is education and awareness about cannabis usage or? I believe so, but let me, I'll send the exact language back to the group. Thank you very much, Sean. Okay. Okay, nice. Not on revenues. So there's not on the expense side and the general fund, there's not any concerns at this point. All the department heads have been really great at controlling their expenses between that and our COVID, our CARES money. We've been able to keep the town running pretty smoothly without any glitches. Any of the budgets that you see that are over 50% spent at this time are due to timing issues, like retirement that we pay up front, all our relicensing fees for software that we pay up front. And in miscellaneous and insurance, we have to pay for our property and casualty insurance upfront. And we pay for both, we pay up front for the town, the region, the elementary school and library. And then we bill them back and the money comes down. So if you see, I think the percentage in there shows 107% over spent, that will go back down to normal once the allocations, they pay us their portions and the allocations go back in there. And also there's incoherences for contracts that are in there like snow and ice. There's a large incoherence in there for salt and sand. And as we get closer and closer to the end of winter and hope there's no more snowstorms, they don't use that full incoherence that ends up going back in. So those are the only anomalies that I have. And there the other thing is, I know there was questions about the $80,000 that was voted at the last budget process. That is sitting right now into a control account. And we just have instructions from the town manager to move it to the town manager's budget in a separate line so that we can track the expenditures that come on here and make it available for the group that's studying this right now. So I believe the only thing that is, nothing's been spent from it, it's still $80,000. I think there's gonna be some stipends paid out of there. And I'm not sure what else at this point. Yeah, just to add to that there's, yeah, nothing's been spent yet. There are some anticipated stipends for the working group, but we don't know exactly how much yet, but it won't use most of it. It'll be a small portion of the budget. Right. And then Sean, they're talking about hiring a consultant to help them with that. Yeah, it would come out of that same bucket of money. The important thing to remember is that, that money is good for stuff performed in FY 21. It would, those funds would restart for the next fiscal year. And they are going to restart for the next fiscal year. Do you know? At this point, we're still going through the budget process, but I haven't heard anything to the, you know. I'm not sure, yeah. And okay, and it's for social justice and equity work. So it could move beyond the community safety working group where it's being applied right now is totally appropriate, but I'm just wondering over time whether there'll be other ways of funding programs or things like that. Yeah, it could, it could broaden in its scope of what it, you know, other social justice initiatives or other public community safety initiatives. Yeah, great. Yeah, cause we're going to have some service changes and stuff. Thank you. Yeah, it is a new fund. So we don't really know was established this year. It's a first time is we have other expenses running through and every year we balancing our revenues against our expenses. We don't know what we're going to, what it's going to be proposed for a few, two years, but I thank you for bringing it up and getting the report. Kathy, you have your hand up. You want me to finish with the enterprise funds? No, no, can you just stay on this page? I had some questions just so I understand what we're spending money on. So in the North Amherst and Cushman School, the Amherst Community Child Care Facility, the South Amherst School Building and the East Street School. The East Street School is, some of these are closed. So if we see money, so like East Street School, is that repair or maintenance costs? And so the same question on each of those, what are North Amherst School is rented out to an entity? So I don't know. It's all for repairs and utilities and it's facilities cost, I think. Some of them are portioned a part of a custodian who maintains the building and the Sonya side utilities. Yeah. Any plumbing issues that come up, any? And the same thing is for bangs, that's not staffing, right? Because you've showed that. No, there is staffing. There is staffing. That one is staffing. So the other is... They pretty much all do, Munson does. East Street School does not, we ship. There is some. I think I'll have a look for the staffing. And that's apportioned out to all the different buildings. Okay. There is staffing. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. So we want to move on down then. I don't see anyone else is raising hands. So we can continue on with the expenditures. Okay. So that's pretty much all I have to say about the expenditures. There's nothing, like I said, there's nothing, no concerns at this point on the expense side. There's going to be some savings and we may need that savings for the transportation fund. So that's to offset some of those revenue deficits. Sonia, do you want to speak to the one other question we had about if there was accessibility improvements, if there was an emergency repair, what we would, how we would pay for that? Yeah. I just want to finish up with the rest of the enterprise funds on the expense side. Everything is like the general fund. Everything's pretty normal as it should be at this point. There's no concerns on the expense side. Other than trying to just keep them down so that we meet our revenue estimates because enterprise funds, you can't overspend your operating budget, but you need to bring, it is illegal to have a revenue deficit. We just don't want to. So if you don't spend all your operating budget, it nets that deficit and revenue down. So we're trying to keep it so that it's a zero net result, which is not always possible. But I just wanted to point that out. And yeah, Sean, the other question was about emergencies. That would depend on the type of emergency. I mean, the DOR regulates a lot of these emergency things. So it depends on whether it's affecting the health and safety of residents of Amherst or employees. It depends, it just depends. So I would need more clarity on what the emergency would be. Sometimes we, if it's like the water pipes burst down at the North Amherst fire department, we had them pay for it out of their operating budget, knowing there would be a deficit there for that. And then we offset it by savings. And if we needed to, we would have asked for a reserve for an appropriation for reserves, but we didn't end up needing to. So a lot of things depend on what the situation is. There's a specific question, a specific emergency, I can be more specific. No, I'm sorry. There was no specific emergency. The committee, the disability access advisory committee has a new member and that person works at UMass where they do have an ongoing emergency fund. And she was talking about the committee controlling a fund like that. So there wasn't a specific emergency, but if all of a sudden there was something wrong with a ramp to the bank center or something like that that was impacting people with mobility issues, how would that be? We have capital articles out there for building envelopes. So if something like that were to happen, we can use that depending on what the balance is in the emergency. We used to have when we were town meeting form a government, we had a reserve fund transfer, which was under the purview of the finance committee. And it was usually $100,000. And it was for these unforeseen types of things. With council government, we don't have that anymore. That's because we can meet more often and have appropriations, emergency operations happen. Where with town meeting, it was only twice a year. Okay, thank you very much. You're welcome. Pat, I'll add one more quick thing. We are planning in the capital improvement program to start putting aside a set amount of money every year for accessibility improvements. Oh, great. So you'll see that this year, specifically broken out in the capital improvement program, some ongoing money to start making some improvements that we learned as part of the study. Great, thank you very much. And I have a quick question. This regional debt assessment, what is that? Regional schools are allowed to have debt too, Lynn. All right, it's not Jack. No, so this is the Amherst assessment from the regional schools based on the regional agreement for the town share of the debt. So this would be according to a debt schedule maintained by the region of all the projects they've approved. So if they ever in the future approve a new roof for approve some major project, this is where you would see that cost hit. And that comes to the council gets to weigh in on that every year when the schools bring their budget forward. They also bring forward a debt assessment for approval as well. And that shows up on the debt service budget in the 7,000 numbers. Not that means anything to anybody, but it shows up there as part of our debt service. We just have to put it in the books as an educational expense. So I carved that out of the debt service and put it up into the education. So it's really their debt service, but it gets paid out of the capital budget, just like our regular current debt. So just refresh my memory. We pay this as they spend or do we transfer the amount that is budgeted every year? So it's typically after the fact. So once they approve a project, they will typically do temporary borrowing to complete the project. And then once the project's complete, they will then assess us our portion of it over a certain number of years, depending on the size. Thank you. Anything else on the way of questions? So I mean, I think your bottom line statement at the beginning, if I have it correctly, is that when we take the amount of money that we had the adjusted budget and we're looking at it against the adjusted budget, we're feeling comfortable with where you're at. 51.7%. Yes. And that's the key takeaway. It's not the comparison to prior years is helpful to let us know where we're at, but we didn't expect ever that we would have the revenues to do everything that we did in prior years. But we did so much better than we expected to. So I thought it was a good story. In part because of, I assume, the Federal Stimulus Cares Act funding. And on the revenue side, that didn't really do much for our revenues. The revenues is a good story all on its own. Okay. Other questions about the quarter budget? Morning, Cunningham, how's your hand up? So I will turn to public comment and ask that Tony be brought in so that she can ask a question or make a comment since she has raised her hand and we went on to that. Hi, Tony. Hi, thanks so much. This is really interesting information. Thanks, Anya, for that. And so my question is about the Centennial Water Treatment Plant. So when it was approved, the estimate was $11 million and it was in for FY22. The town manager made a comment at the very end of the meeting last night that indicated the cost has gone up, but he didn't specify by how much. So with the revenues for the water fund down 11% and the projected debt for the plant improvements as well as the well for improvements close to one million per year. I'm just wondering if there's an update or if the finance committee will get an update on what the rates need to be to cover that. Is there enough in the reserves of the waterfront? And if there is not enough revenue or in the reserves, what happens to cover that debt service? Where do you go? Do you increase the water rates or do you go to the general fund? Does it come out of ongoing capital? How does that cost impact our other needs in town? Thank you. Thank you, Sonny. Sean or Sonny, do you have a response that you can offer? So we will be looking at water rates relatively soon. I mean, Sonny and I have already started working on them, but they will be coming to the finance committee where we do look out for five years. So you will see the impact of Centennial. There are reserves in the fund that could cover some overages. We are seeing a reduction in consumption, but we are anticipating that to be somewhat temporary. Once the universities get back, the university and the college get back to normal, we anticipate that the consumption will go back up. We'll have to wait and see what that looks like. If we don't have enough between our reserves and other cost savings, I'll look to Sonia, but if more debt needed to be authorized, we'd have to get permission for more debt to be authorized. But we're not at that point yet. We're still looking at this year and projecting out forward. I saw a couple of hands up, but just to confirm the prior practice, and I assume the continuing practice would be that this would, any overage would be covered through the enterprise fund, not by transfer from the general fund. Is that correct? Yeah, yeah. I think, I believe so. Okay, Luke. And I assume that as with just about anything that's construction these days, Boston materials and labor, that's driving the cost off. Yeah, I haven't had a chance to connect with Gilford on this yet. So I'd wanna check in with him more before I weigh in on that, on that comment. Thank you. Okay. So if you do, could we just get an update on it at the next finance committee meeting? You know, it's, as everyone remembers, we heard about the 11 million almost after the fact. We just, it would just be nice to know if that 11 million has turned into something significantly higher or not. I'm talking about the construction part, not the study part. Yeah. Yeah, no, we'll bring back an update. I think that's a good segue to one of the next topics. Yes. So we actually can move the agenda along then to the subject of the plans for the committee, the goals for the committee and the meeting schedule. Lynn, did you have that document that I sent around as a word document earlier today? And if not, I can share it out of my computer. I have it. Okay. And I just wanna apologize since it's my document for all of the screwy stuff on it, but... Well, yeah. Oh, I had taken the, when I sent it out, I think I did it without comments, but they showing, but they do show as they are now. What I did was I extracted from a memo that Lynn had sent to the council and he asked that we look at it for the financial goals for both the council and the committee for the year. And I took the pieces that were applicable in some sense and put them into a single document so that we would then skim out the things that we wouldn't have to look at the things that were involved with other committees. But it drives sort of what our thinking is about our work plan needs in the time ahead. And then we'll get to the last piece, which is the actual meeting schedule, which has some wrinkles to it that I explained to. Lynn, did you have anything you wanted to say to us about what you're thinking was or what you're looking for in comments on this? One of my goals this year is to actually see to the extent possible that we can map out a calendar for the year knowing that there will be shifts in it. And so the purpose of this memo of which this is a part was to make sure that I know everything that needs to go on that calendar as well as the council then being able to say for things that are, quote, optional what are their top priorities? So this whole memo, which is extensive was to make sure I haven't missed something. And even now, I mean, I think the last time I messed with this thing was sometime in very early January or late December. And I already can see things as well. So it's something that I wanted both finance, midi and the finance staff to look at and say, okay, what are we looking at? What do we need to make sure goes on here? Of course, what Sean is referring to and he was, I believe referring to and he was talking about the relation to the immediately previous discussion was the said water and sewer rates analysis of alternative ways of setting water and sewer rates were things that had previously been identified by this committee. And that would need to get into our work schedule at an appropriate point. And this bigger? No. All right, I should have printed it out. Okay. Tell me if that's enough, Pat. Is that enough? Yeah. If you go up to review at the top and then... No markup, right? You don't show markup. Yeah, then it'll... Don't show the markup. Then it'll make it easier to look at. There. No. Not a simple markup. You wanna go? Yeah. Go back in. There. Yeah. Okay. So, Kathy, you had been the one who raised this question, you've been raising this question at the earliest. And I think that the question that you and Bernie then had talked about was to look at whether there are other ways of setting water and sewer rates and whether we should be examining them. I think that if we're gonna do that in time for the water rate setting, we probably need to get that on a fairly early agenda in February. And Bernie had not followed up on it, partly because we didn't connect with each other. We were gonna go to Guilford. We'd written out some ideas and talk with him to get him to do some scenarios of what would happen if we did this or that with some, put some numbers on it. And I had it on my list for the fall and forgot. Basically would be the explanation of where that went. So, Bernie, if everyone might remember, we did a memo with some specifics and people, we talked about it. And my understanding is you authorize the two of us to go off and have a conversation with Guilford to see what we could get back. And these wouldn't be formal. These would be more a first look to see whether we wanna do anything. And I think, Andy, we were not talking about FY22 as much as FY23, because some of it would be Guilford wanted to get a more, if we wanna go that route, he wanted to get a more sophisticated estimate. But basically we need to even make a decision whether we wanna get the more sophisticated estimate of it. Does that sound right to you, Bernie? Okay, that sounds pretty good. Sean, give your hand up. Yeah, that was, I was gonna say, that was my recollection too, that it wouldn't be for the FY22 rates, it would be for the next cycle, but that we still wanted to move forward this year with doing the analysis. The other one thing that jumps out to me that's missing, not a big thing, but is reviewing other post-employment benefits. That's actually something we could do relatively soon because we just completed our report. And I think that typically will come to finance committee when the actuary completes the report. So you could, I would put that in there like the annual audit, because it would be an annual recurring item. The thought was that we would only do that with the finance committee, but not the entire council that OPEB is such that taking it to having the full council here from the actuary may be a little bit over the top. Anything else that people see or have questions about when they ask about, we'll have to scroll down through the rest of it. Where it was. Yeah. Bob, shouldn't we put the stormwater bylaws in here? Yeah. I don't see them. Yeah. Yeah, that probably should. Is it two or four? Great. Now we're dealing with two. Two. But there were two. Stormwater and illicit discharge. Yes. I'm just going to do a little something to help me later on. Andy. I mean, I don't know if you may want to put something in there just about reviewing bylaws in general or I can imagine other ones maybe coming forward this year and sometimes those can take time. I don't know if you're only looking for specific things or just things that you might want to factor in when you're setting the calendar. To put in the review additional bylaws is assigned. Yeah, I'm thinking if there's new bylaws proposed throughout the year, the ones that would come to the committee. Yeah, usually we'd only do that if we think that they're financial implications to possible financial implications to the bylaws. Otherwise it's not necessary to refer to this committee. Kathy? My question is more about timing on the fees. Sean, when I'm looking at the fees that are listed there, the parking fees and maybe other fees, do you have a sense you had mentioned, I think last fall or even the spring that you were looking through these, I have a sheet that I, a memo and I just didn't know how far along you are and I had a set of ideas and should I just send them to you or are you about to come to us with this and I should wait? Yeah, so we decided, we looked at them this year and we decided to hold off on changing fees because of the pandemic and everything going on. We didn't think it was a good time to make any dramatic changes to it but definitely send it to me. What I envision a process could look like is, we look at these in the fall and if we're gonna make any changes, we would give enough time for them in advance to notify people of changes. So they might go into effect July 1st, similar to our budget but there's not that sense stone about that but if you have any specific fees you want us to look at, send them to me and we'll take a look. Okay, and then Lynn on the larger council issue, this would be normally a TSO issue because it's a use of public ways. Would, if a councilor has specific ideas about this, can I, I was gonna just send it directly to Sean and then it would come back to the extent town staff like them or don't like them comes back to the council or would it be better to start with the council? I'd send them to Sean. Okay, thank you. Hey, I'm looking to see if anybody else has hands up for suggestions or questions. Go on. Italics, by the way, are required ones. The non italics are not. So I'm gonna go back up here and place this in italics and this is assigned and this is already in italics. Okay, I'm gonna look down the next floor, this Andy. Yes, go ahead. There's, since, I have a ton of them, otherwise. There's one of these we can actually say it's underway. We're like 75% done with it. Almost there. So the, actually the, where we left the capital improvement, the capital inventory was, we said, let's adopt what we had for this year and we could review it at the end of the year for any recommendations we might have for the following year. So that review, she can. I'm typing at a very strange angle, just so we know. I mean, I'm not gonna brag about my typing skills, but. I, they were me, they wouldn't be done. Hey. And of course, through the four capital projects, we were gonna come back and Sean will be making a presentation, I believe to the finance committee, possibly in February, regarding a review of where we are, where the model is now and the funding options. And the questions that you should answer is whether or not you as chair or whoever's chair will be willing to make that open to all counselors. They can either come as audience or they could, we could have it be a committee of a whole. You and I can talk about that later, but certainly it's always available counselors. I think that's what we had concluded. And whether to make it a meeting of the whole, I think is a discretionary question for you as president. The practices I'm supposed to check with the chair before declaring such a thing. Yes. So we can talk about that. Dorothy has her hand up. Dorothy? I wanna speak in favor of inefficiency. Sometimes having something done in one meeting is very efficient, but sometimes hearing it at several meetings, really the facts begin to come home. So I know that we wanted to use Sean's time carefully, but I have found that when issues have, when I've heard the issues at a committee and then I've heard it in the town council, that I just have a much better understanding of it than if I hear it just once in one big super meeting. So. Just to be clear, this is not gonna be a one-time shot, even if it's a committee of a whole to begin with. Okay, great. This is huge. So I think that where we're at is if we can come back to this if somebody thinks of something else that they would like to bring back to it. But I wanna just talk a moment about meeting schedule and what I had sent out to you earlier today and the follow-up conversation that I had with Mandy Haneke, who's the chair of CRC and explain what the problem is. Dorothy is going to be joining CRC and the change over in committee assignments happens on February 1st. So that after today's meeting, we need to make sure that CRC meetings do not happen at the same time as finance committee meetings since Dorothy's assigned to both committees. And so that is why Mandy and I have been having some conversations. And she had originally proposed, I think it was second and fourth Tuesdays for the meetings and that which got me into thinking about first and third. And I think that part of the problem that we had was is that our plan had been has been since the beginning built around the day after council meetings. But when you look at the council meeting schedule for FY21, there are times when there are three meetings a month and there are times when there's one meeting a month. And a lot of it is built around Monday holidays. And so that both Mandy and I were going a little bit crazy trying to figure out how that would work when we talked about it. So that's why they were thinking about going to every other week. And it suggested that they'd be the second and fourth and that we'd be the first and third. But then she ran into another problem that she needs to talk with her committee about after February 1st. And that is that the need to have some meetings of CRC that coincide with either planning board or planning boards on and subcommittee meetings, which is an internal issue of their committee. But she said that she didn't wanna talk about that at a committee meeting until after February 1st when new members were appointed. And so that of course all committees have to elect new chairs again after February 1st. And so she's not even certain that she'll be chair so in Norma, for that matter. But that was what the, what one problem was. The other problem that Mandy and I were talking about that we are going to have to figure out is that during the month of May, we always have the additional burden of more meetings than we otherwise have planned for because that is the time we have received the referral of the town manager budget and have 30 days according to the charter to review the budget and make a recommendation to the council. And we had been doing twice a week meetings during the month of May. And so that we also have to factor that into meeting schedule. So my suggestion is that we establish a February meeting schedule for now and then we just go ahead and do it based on 1st and 3rd Tuesdays. And that when we have a better idea of CRC's final schedule so that we know that we're not doing anything that's in conflict with that, that we've established a schedule for the rest of the time. And that what I would like to start doing is take the document we were working on previously and initially work with Kathy as vice chair but then very quickly turn it back to the entire committee and see if we can attach some dates to that schedule. So that's my recommendation. I don't know when to open up to the committee to react to the recommendation. Any thoughts? Pat. Excuse me. I can, I have the first and third Tuesdays in February. I cannot be there. Would that start on the first or the first meeting would be on the second and I cannot be here for that meeting. If it's at two, two to four, I cannot be at it. And that's unusual. It's a regular conflict, but it is for next week. Yes. We can move off of Tuesdays. If people have an alternative date. That they want to suggest that it's not conflicting with other things because we're talking about just the month of February. I'm only trying to right now to do February and then we'll come back to a longer type of thing. And then we'll come back to that. If we do. If we do a second. It's only week away. We could try Thursdays, which is the other date that we sometimes add in. When we're doing the. Budget review. And then we'll move on to Thursday afternoons from two to four or two 30 to five. Of course, it's a myth that we ended for, so. Yeah. That does not work for me at all. The fourth will not work for me. What about Monday, the eighth. Oh, no, we have a, we have a council meeting that I'm sorry. It's always hard. Council meeting day. The 15th and the first. Is Wednesday out. Depends on the time. Yeah. So I have to do, you know, just make sure that GL is in the morning, which is going to knock out Pat. And then I have. Pretty much from one to three on Wednesdays. So I could do three to five. And just there's one meeting that's not scheduled yet because we were waiting for who was going to be on JCPC for the council. I don't think we're going to have a time slot yet. So Wednesday would be okay. As long as it doesn't run into that, that, and it might still be fine. It's because it's not scheduled for anything yet. What about Friday, the fifth, and then Friday, the 19th, just in February. I'm with me. I don't know. Any objection. Friday meetings, but in the afternoon, but. It's day of zoom and we're not traveling. It's not as. Which days did you just say. The fifth and the 19th. Just for the one month. We would not, Friday would not become our regular date. And we're talking about at what time. I'm open both of those days until five. So anytime that works for the larger group. Okay. I can't do it. In the morning. I could do it anytime after 12 o'clock. You just stay with two o'clock. Yes. O'clock. O'clock on the fifth and on the 19th. And then we're deleting the 23rd and the ninth, which I have puzzled in. Yes. Yes. Jane, does that work for you? So unless I hear somebody saying they can't do it. We're talking about two o'clock on the fifth and the 19th. And that's not our regular schedule. This is February only. And we will establish as soon as we can. In February. A schedule for the rest of the year. Thank you. We might be going back to. The first and third Tuesdays, Sean. Just because the fifth is coming up pretty soon. Do we have a sense of what the agenda would be for that? Meeting. I think the question is going to be whether or not we're ready with that. Okay. We also have the audit and the OPEB report done. So it's possible we could, we could do those as well. But we can connect about that offline. Yeah, that would be an awful lot to do all of those things, but. Yeah, probably one of the other. Okay. So I'll work with. I'll consult Kathy about the. Agenda, but. You would be ready if, if we said we wanted to see the new and improved or modified model, are you, would you be ready then? Or is that premature? Just on our choices. I think there's some things that we wanted to do related to, around community engagement and outreach. And I think it would be a little too soon. When we present this that we wanted to have ready to go for when we present it, that it would be a little too soon. I think for next week, we wanted to have some, you know, some ways to get feedback and input from people. So I think the following meeting would be better if that's possible to shoot for the night. I think it was the 19th. Cause that's close to what we were originally anticipating under the old finance committee schedule. So. I mean, we could go for the fifth, we could do the audit. Can somebody check to see if. Our audit firm is Molanson Heath. Right. See if Molanson Heath is. Would be prepared to. Yeah, Sony and I will reach out to, um, we'll reach out to Molanson and see if, um, if they can be available for, for Friday. Can I just ask a favor that people hold on to Tuesday afternoon so that we don't give that up and start scheduling into it? I personally do not. Enjoy giving up. Friday is my one day I try to keep. Yeah, I, I feel the same way. I infinitely. I, I infinitely like Tuesday better. Is it possible having, having said that, um, Looking at our. Going back and looking at the February schedule. If we did. First and third, they would be the 16th. Could we still stay with the 16th? That was the one who had a problem with the third. The 16th work. Uh, the 16th, I'm fine in February. Maybe we, what we should do is just make that one shift for one week only and. Death. See. He's available. That'd be great. And, uh, because then we could meet as not a committee for that day. Is our principal agenda item. Okay. I think that would go back then to the 16th. Yeah. But on the fifth is when we would do the audit. Right. The 16th is when we hope to bring in the financial model. Yep. Okay. And the last question back to Sean is. On the. Opab. Yeah. With the. The person who's this year to the. Assessment. Yeah. So, so the report's done. It's more. It's a matter of just scheduling it. It depends how you want to spread out the dryness. So. If you wanted to, if you wanted to spread it out, you know, audit and OPEB are kind of similar in terms of. You know, the, the, the content. It's going to be a Friday afternoon. Just bore us to death. But I can reach out. We'll reach out to the actuary too and see what days work for you. So we have a different actuary this year. Yeah. So we have our previous actuary retired. So we went back out to bid for a new actuary for this year. And we found somebody who's really. Does a really great job and has worked with our audit firm before and came highly recommended. So. Sean, was that somebody from Western mass or did, did we still have to go Eastern mass? Um, I don't know where she's out of off the look. I'm not sure where her firm is located. Yeah. Yeah. OPEB is a significant issue in both. Both the audit and the other report. Yeah, they're kind of related in some ways. Yeah. So we just approved it, which I just approved the audit today. So we don't have the final audit in our hands yet. So hopefully we'll have it soon. Oh, interesting. We don't anticipate any changes at this point. We've sort of signed off on the. Except for a couple of little minor footnote changes. We've kind of signed off on it, but we'll make sure we have a final copy before we, um, Before we present it. Okay. No, I think we now have a date set for the. Meetings in February. We. If the second February meeting, we will establish a schedule for the rest of the year. We will meet with Molanson. If they will be ready and they have to let us know that. And whether they're both ready and available. And if not, you know, we'll make adjustments. So I think that's it. Anything else. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'd love to declare the meeting adjourned. And I want to thank Emily for being here. Notes for us. And thank you. Sean and Sonia. And the entire committee. Thank you. If you would like to reach out to Andy. To find out, Have questions about anything that went on today. Given that this is new to you. And your son is gorgeous. And you know that we're keeping it. I didn't hear. I didn't hear you. I was trying to jazz really speaking to Jane. Maybe I'll email you separately and see if you want us, if you want to schedule a time to talk. Okay. So with that, I get to declare the meeting adjourned. Bye. Bye everybody. Bye.