 Yeah, okay. Yeah, I mean, it's a really interesting thing. I feel like the CPA has gotten out there, you know, the, you know, it's like, I feel like in the last few years, it's become, you know, more widely applied for, which is good, but it's like when you have so much in requests, it's like, you can't, you know, how do you fund, you know, five, six times more than what you have available. It's just not. I know. I mean, if you take all the things that put our proposal and the three that we've been asked to support, it's like three, almost three and a half million dollars worth of proposals. Right. Yeah. It's like, that's, you don't need anybody else to apply CPA. You just need us. Us and our cohorts. That's it. Yeah, I'm going to be back in a second. I'm ready to start this. Okay. Risha. Hi, Risha. Hello. That was everyone. Hanging in. How are you? I'm in a new place. I'm realizing there's a light right behind my head. So let's see if I can get. I liked that. We have a rug that looks almost like. What's the background behind you? Yeah. It's fake. Nice. Yeah. Okay. Do you get a chance to. Go ahead. I was just going to ask if you got a chance to look at some of the proposals and stuff. I did. I was actually going to ask while we're waiting for people. A. What is that open meeting question? Because I hesitated to email both of you and ask how the forum went. Because I didn't want to start a three person conversation. So I just, I emailed John. Cause I just wanted to know how the forum went. That's good. Cause he's not on the trust. So he can do whatever he wants now. I wanted to know what the proper way of just, I mean, is it breaking anything to ask for information? I just don't want to accidentally start a conversation as the. It's a good question. And I don't know the answer because it's not, it's not a policy thing. It's not anything we're doing anything about. If you're just asking how did something go? It seems like it should be okay. But. An issue with code shares is that it automatically makes three. Exactly. Just email one of you, but. Yeah. Maybe Nate has an opinion. It's a total violation. No. I think, I think, I think it's fine. I think, you know, if you're just trying to get a recap on something, I don't, that's not a violation open meeting. I mean, it would be more like, you know, you're, you hear, you know, you're taking something from the forum. And you're saying, well. Oh, you know, like way finer's proposal. I really think we should recommend changing this and what about this? And then all of a sudden. Right. You know, you talk to Carol and it's not even if it's at the same email or conversation, but they consider a serial conversation of violation. So you talk to Carol, then you talk to. You know, you talk to someone else and then they talk to Erica. And all of a sudden four members of the trust have been talking. You know, in a, you know, independently, but as a part of a serial conversation. So, but I think asking how something went fine, you know, sharing information is fine. If you read a great article. You know, I say share it, right? So you can send it to me or the co-chairs and ask them to distribute it. And then, you know, typically, you know, Eric or Carol, if you did that, we would just say, please don't reply all, but you know, here's a great article from, you know, something or here's a training that's coming up. You know, I think what happens, I think it's just a great thing to do. I think it's just a great thing to do. And see as people tend to reply with some comments. Yeah. That's, that's what. You can't do. I feel like it's never. Intentional or malicious. It's just. Yeah. And I didn't want to accidentally. I mean, it's pretty hard to give a recap without giving any. Opinions on anything. You know, because it's a. Oh, that went well or that when. I understand it was sort of that nothing came out. That was a huge surprise. There was no big like opposition to anything that was not expected or so that's great. No, I mean, you know, one of the neighbors, a media and neighbors to East Street School as, you know, as email the town and wayfinders, just, you know, with some concerns and questions but that's, I mean, that was kind of expected, right? The most immediate neighbor would, or neighbors would. Nate, it looks like Rob's here. Yeah, I just... You just promoted him or whatever you do. I know it does feel like the promoted to panelist as always. Promoted. And George, Ryan is here. Thank you for being here, George. We're grateful for your note taking. Yeah. Hi, Rob. We need one more. Yeah, after the list arrived. All right. Great. So, hi, Ashley. Sid's here. Oh, good. Oh, great. I'm wondering about Sid. So that's probably it because we heard from both Paul and Allegra that they won't make it to this one. So I believe this is us for today. Hi, Sid. Hi, Ashley. Hi. Hello. Hi. All right, well, then I will start. Thank you all. Sorry, I think it's automatically starts reporting now. All right. Yeah, I know it started as soon as you started. Yeah, I think the IT set it up so people wouldn't forget. So the minute you start a webinar it automatically starts reporting now. Okay, I have to remember that. Yeah. Well, thank you very much. And I hope all of you are well. So we're going to start our Amherst Municipal Affordable Housing Meeting today, Thursday, October 13th. And we're going to go with the agenda. So I'm going to call the meeting to order. And we're going to start first with a review of September's meeting notes. So again, thank you, George, for putting the meeting minutes together. I hope everyone has had an opportunity to review them. I believe they were sent out with a few corrections. And so if we agree to accept them, then we're agreeing to accept them with the corrections that were part of the meeting minutes. So I'm opening it up to anybody who has any other corrections or would like to add anything to the meeting minutes from September. All right. Not hearing any other corrections or any comments. I believe that we agree to accept the meeting minutes for September's meeting. Okay, thank you very much. So we'll move to the next item. Our next item is review and discussions of the CPA proposal. There were three and Carol's going to lead us on this discussion. Yeah, so I wonder who is the only person who is here at the moment is Amherst Community Connections of the three ones that we wanted to review. I believe that Wayfinders and Valley were expecting to send someone if they don't, that's okay too. But since Amherst Community Connections is here, why don't we start with that one and let please give us a brief, some brief highlights, Wayling, I presume it's you who's there. And then we'll see if we have any questions. And go from there. Yeah, hi, Wayling, or Amherst Community Connections. I'll allow you to talk. I thought I promoted you to a panelist, but okay. So I'm joining you as a panelist or stay as an attendee. Yeah. Okay. You're a panelist now. Yeah, so that's fine. Okay. I know you cannot see me, but I have a beautiful smile for you all. Thank you so much for serving on the committee. It's seven o'clock. I bet you had a full day of work. You just came home and you haven't even had supper and you are sitting here listening to me blabbering. I appreciate that. So my name is Wayling Greeny and I am representing the Amherst Community Connections. And this year we filed a application for the CDBG fund and the purpose of this funding is tied to our proposal that we sent to CPA for a rental subsidy program phase two. Now, most of you have heard that we used to run a housing first, phase one, phase two. It was a great success. And now we had another program started three years ago. It was rental subsidy phase one. And it ran for three years. So by this coming February, it will expire. And that fund supports six families which include individuals and family with children. And what we do is to provide $400 of subsidy to them after they pay their rent, they will come to our office, show the receipt and we will reimburse them $400 of their rent that they paid. And the criteria to be admitted to this phase one and phase two program, the same A, they have to be Amherst renters. They cannot be homeowners and they cannot be living in other towns because we are talking about CPA that we will apply as Amherst residents. So that's one. Two, they have to be low income in a sense that they cannot make more than 50% of the area median income, which is about $29,000, 900. So third, that they had to be paying 50% or more of the income for rent. As the HUD defined, people who are severely rent burdened is exactly this group of people. They are paying 50% or more of the income toward housing. And the rationale to categorize them as rent burden is because they have to forgo essential things, food, Medicare, medical services, medicine, transportation in order to make the rent payment. So we work with about 700 families a year and more than half of them has self disclosed when they enter into the program working with us. Either they are currently homeless, college serving or on the street or they have received noticed quit at risk of becoming homeless. So that's a very serious problem. So we know families, they know how to spend their money best. So when we give this $400 to them, we have a string attached. It's not a string free. So they have to come to our office on a weekly basis. We give them an hour solid case management time. And we have 10 benefits programs that we help them apply. And these programs ranging from SNAP benefits, free cell phone, utility discount, internet discount, all the way down to raft or child tax credit application or earn income tax credit application. So we estimated a family of two, just the application for food stamp, SNAP. We can net them in the course of a year, about $6,500 just through the act of our case worker helping a family of two, one of the 10 benefit programs, we can help them net over $6,000. So in our calculation, we can help boost families, their income up to $27,000 just by going through this motion of applying to everything that they're eligible for. So if we have 12 families, that's what our CPA proposal is for. Instead of providing vouchers to six families, we want to help 12 families. Why? We have 25 families on the wait list. And so far, we are only able to serve 17 families. And every family has a success story they can share. And among them, I want to highlight when they stay with this program, during the time they are in the program, every one of them, 100% of them stay housed. Nobody has lost their housing and onto the street. That's one very good accomplishment. And the others such as 94% of them, they are working. They are working. We help them find jobs with their income. And that's why they can stay housed. I will not go into other accomplishments they have made, but by your support of the CDBG support service, because without the support service, the $400 you give them, it's not going to help them achieve the long-term, permanent affordable housing and secure a financial self-sufficiency. Those are our two goals. When we attach the support service to the voucher, that completes a circle. So the money is provided. I'm asking for the team of social workers, our case workers to work with them. And this is 12 families, and we work with them one at a time every week. So that's our promise to continue the program. Thank you, Wei-Ling. That's definitely a program that's done great work. And I would just like to ask, while Wei-Ling is still here, if anyone had any questions about this program that they would like to ask before she leaves. You know, I just, I guess I think it's pertinent for me to disclose, I am one beneficiary of the rental assistance. And so I just, I don't know if I should abstain, but I do benefit from this. And I just wanted to tell people that. Thank you. Thank you. That's good. That's great. I don't know if you should abstain either. I mean, you're a living example of how that works. So, hey, does anybody have anything else, anything else anybody needs to say? So I mean, Ashley, I think, you know, we're the trust might just vote to write a general letter of recommendation. And so I think that's fine if you vote, if it was something a little bit more concrete regarding Amherst Community Connections. And I would probably recommend you abstain just because, you know, just your relationship with them. But I think it's fine what we're doing tonight. Great. So, I'm sorry, Erica. Go ahead, Rob. I have a question. It says that this is a, you're seeing a three year grant, but does CPA do that, they get three year grants or? May I answer the question? Please do. Thank you. This CPA does provide three year grant and I can give you two of our past grants. One is the housing first phase one, it was a three year grant and phase two also was a three year grant. And further, we apply for a third phase of housing first grant, we got it. And now we got it, we will increase to six vouchers but because of internal capacity, our agency had to decline that phase two, three year grant funding. So there is a precedent, there are precedents here that we have received three, three year funding from CPA. Thanks, sounds good. Thank you. Anything else? Well, my question is, so our families, the time is for them to be on the subsidy for three years? No, we want them to be out as fast as we could get them out, that way we can serve more people. So we want to set a goal of no more than one year based on our experience, because of pandemic in the past two plus years, in general, our families have stayed with us through the second thing of COVID-19. So between the individual or family household, they just have individuals and the families, their time changes. So for the family, we give them on average, so far based on our statistics is about 18 months long. But for the individuals, it takes less time to achieve the progress of sustainability in their income and affordable housing achievement, and they take about half the time. So the more we can graduate them, the faster we do it, the more people we can take into the program. Thank you. So I don't know, does someone wanna suggest, I don't know if we need an exact proposal, but does someone wanna suggest that we support this proposal? I believe that at the end of this, what we'll do is write some kind of a letter that states what our support for whatever it is that we're supporting, conglomerate of whatever the things are that we support. Or Carol, I think, sorry, and Rup, we could just have review every proposal and then just talk about them in context of each other, just. Okay, I don't know if we have to decide. Okay. All right, well then, William, thank you very much for being here. And I'm not really seeing anybody from either or the other organizations here, so. All right, well thank you so much. Thank you for being here. So wayfinders, I present people that had some chance to look at it. There's, it's a 70 unit proposal. They're asking for $1.8 million. They've already received the $735,000 that it cost to buy the property from the town. The town bought the property. It's a 30, if you add in the price of the land back in, it's over a $31 million project to build the 70 units on Belcher Town Road and at East Street. And I probably, we all saw, you know, or I believe we all saw their proposal at the forum. So is there further discussion or their thoughts? Is there anything anybody thinks to say about this proposal? Okay, moving right along then. We have the Ball Lane proposal, the other one from Valley CDC. Their proposal to the CPAC is for $750,000. They're doing a 30 unit afford a home ownership project. 20 of those units will be affordable and 10 will be market rate. There's a breakdown like that for wayfinders, which I can't quite remember how many of them are affordable. A few of them are not, but most of them are. They're asking for $750,000 from CPAC and built already into their sources and uses things that they showed in their proposal was, I guess in anticipation of asking also the housing trust for another $250,000. So that's where that is. Again, we saw the presentation. Jessica Allen presented this to us last time, I think at our last meeting. So I don't know, was there any discussion about this particular proposal? And then we can talk about all of them together. Okay, I had one question on the Ball Lane and that was just, I noticed that they talked about revenue coming from selling the house that's on the land and I didn't quite understand what that was about. Yeah. It's, you know, I think it's over eight acres and there's an existing house. So there might actually be two. And there's one house, it's actually at the end of Ball Lane, it's not kind of on the open property and there's a current tenant that lives there. And they would actually may want to stay in the house. And so they were considering trying to sell it to the person who's living there. So that was what that is. And that wouldn't touch any of the development or? No, they're gonna try to create its own parcel or separate area that the house could be, you know, not included with any of this. Okay. Whether it's, yeah. Thanks. But, and also, so the Ball Lane, people are asking for 250,000 out of our, basically 300,000 or so that we have, that's like most of it, right? Yeah, they haven't requested it yet, but in their budget, they showed that they will be requesting that from the trust. And the way finders people are, are they requesting anything out of that 300,000? They have not said, at least I don't think, Nate, I didn't see that it said in there anything that we're gonna request from the housing. No, I haven't either. One can never tell what will happen in the future. And Valley hasn't asked for it yet, but it is in their sort of pro forma budget that they presented, there is that $250,000 there. Of course, we have right now, whatever that is, $300,000, as you mentioned, 300 plus. We also have submitted our own proposal to CPAC for $500,000. So if we get that, then maybe, you know, I don't know, it's a dance, but the purpose of all of the funding that we have anyway is development, but you're right, they are thinking of asking for a significant piece of money from us as well. But can we be basically for the Ball Lane development, even if eventually we come back and say they either can't have all of the $50,000 or they can't have that, if we could still be for the basic idea of Ball Lane. Absolutely, absolutely. We can say, I mean, in a letter that we write, we can voice, I would expect that we would voice support for all of these projects. It's so great that they're all coming. We need them desperately. We're glad to see them all happening and see developers engaged in doing this stuff and working with the town to do it. And I am probably, and then we can talk about whether we wanna say, we could leave it right there. And let CPAC wrestle with whatever they have to wrestle with about how much anything is. If we think there's something that we wanna say about the amounts, we can say that. So it's kind of, this is our chance to discuss what we might wanna say beyond what I just said, which I don't think anybody would disagree with, but please holler at me if I'm saying something you don't agree with. I mean, these are projects that we are so glad to see getting into the pipeline. We need all of this kind of housing very much. Yeah, I mean, quickly, I think the CPA process, the committee might take another two to three months to make their recommendations. And so the trust may have another meeting where these could be discussed. Just those housing proposals alone are three times the amount of available funding in the CPA pool this year. And there's actually like five times as much money requested as is available. So, I don't think it's actually feasible to fund all these requests at, there's proposals at what they're requesting. And so, does the trust wanna recommend funding something at less or do we take a more kind of general approach as Erica mentioned to say that these are all really great projects. It's important to show a local support through CPA funding. And really, then it's the trust, the CPA committee may come back to the trust and say, well, what do you think? But maybe initially we could keep it more general. I do think that way finders proposal, it'd be the largest request ever of CPA if awarded. Valley is asking a lot for Ball Lane at 750. I mean, in their proposals, they say it's less than 40,000 a unit. That's true, but when you're providing a lot more units, it's just the total cost is really high. And so, I think, like I said, there's a lot of proposals this year for CPA more than in the past. I think it's a very competitive cycle. And I think that the CPA committee also asked, what are you leveraging for other funds? And so, I think Valley is just coming right out and saying, well, we're gonna ask the trust. They also have requested ARPA funding. Way finders hasn't yet, but they might. And so, my guess is that way finders really wants 1.8 million from say like non-state or federal sources, whether it be local or fundraising, whatever. If the CPA committee only recommends a million, they might come to the trust for half a million and then they're gonna try to fundraise or find another 300,000 outside their typical financing. Valley has claimed, and I think they're right that they would know better, I don't know. But the program they're doing is the only subsidy program. So, way finders apply to the low income housing tax credit program, it's a big rental project. And there's other sources of funding. It's really competitive. But Valley as a home ownership project, there's very limited subsidy programs out there for them. And so, there's really only like one or two. And so, I think that's why they're asking for a fair amount. So, yeah, I mean, I think, I agree with Carol, I think they're really all great proposals. We funded waylings previously, for instance, the CPA committee may say, well, we're not gonna recommend three years because it's a big budget we're gonna recommend too this year, right? And then they just reduced the amount, pro-rate the amount or something. I mean, there's gonna have to be decisions made on every proposal. There's just no way to fund everything that's being asked. The historic preservation proposals, the recreation proposals. I mean, it's just, it totals many millions of dollars. And so, I just think it's gonna put the CPA committee in a tough position and they might ask applicants, what's the bare minimum? What's the least amount you need? Or could you come back next year? Or I just think, I think for Valley and Wayfinders at least, they're trying to go through permitting in the winter, spring and apply for funding next summer. And they would like the local match available at that time because then it makes their application more competitive. And so, although they submitted a CPA proposal now, the funding isn't available until next July. That's true for everyone, but they can't really wait a year because that could delay their application. They really like the state and others really wanna see a local match and permitting at time of funding application. So, that's why they're putting in something now, even though the products aren't guaranteed. Yeah, and one thing that Nate reminded me of when we were talking before the meeting started, the CPA committee can't, the town council has to approve all this at the end of it all, but the CPA committee can propose to bond something, which is the only way that they can kind of agree to spend more money than they have. By getting a bond for it, then they only have to pay the bond, the whatever it is, the monthly amounts, like a mortgage, so they only have to pay the yearly amount each year. And then they have a debt service, which they have to continue to pay obviously until the debt is done. And that spreads the cost over some years, but also means that in the future years, the amount they have available is less than they might otherwise because they have increased the amount of debt service that they have to carry. So, they have a lot of hard things to figure out, even make their proposal to town council. And then town council has to agree with whatever they propose. So, there's a long ways down this road to go. So, I guess I'm interested in what people's thoughts are about how we should proceed at this moment right now with these requests for support. Any opinions, welcome or questions or confusions or anything, please speak. I like the idea of recommending all three of them to go forward with a letter from us and then wait to see how much they request then from us and then we can discuss it then. I think they're all three of them great proposals. And like you said, we should be supporting these types of projects. And that would be my suggestion and vote. I agree that supporting all of them, I guess I'm just less enthused about the least amount of units that cost the most. And it sounds like ball lane just because it's ownership and they're going to cost a lot and have like a fairly low percentage of affordable units, right? Like what's the percentage of affordable units on the ball lane? 20 of 30, I believe that's right. If somebody remembers differently, please. I think there's 30 units, 20 will be affordable and 10 will be market rate, whatever that exactly means. Yeah. That's good. They're just kind of expensive townhouses, more or less. I mean, but you own it. I mean, yeah, yeah, but you get some kind of ownership benefit. Nate, do you remember? I think there are some affordable out of the 72. I mean, some that are market rate out of the 70. Do you remember that number? I don't remember it offhand. I mean, for wayfinders? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, wayfinders only have, you know, 45 affordable and then 25 market rate. So, you know, they're balancing affordable and market rate as well. Wow, it's that high. I forgot only 45 are affordable and 25 aren't. So that's like a lower percentage, I think, than the ball lane. So, yeah, I mean, I think, you know, I mean, actually I agree. I the only thing I will say is home ownership is an expensive program. You know, so we haven't, the town hasn't really had many affordable home ownership developments, right? They're all rental. And so, you know, Valley is taking kind of a step here because North Amherst is a qualified census tract. So it's eligible for this Commonwealth Builders Program. You know, it's trying to get equity into, you know, into homeowners. And so I think it's a unique opportunity. You know, I just, it's interesting to, you know, when you do comparisons of cost to units or a number of affordable to overall, right, there is a difference in home ownership is typically more expensive. But I still think it's, you know, it's a great project. It's really hard to, sometimes it's hard to make that comparison. And, you know, the, you know, at one point the trust that we wouldn't want to spend more than I think in our guidance document was it, or I feel like 50,000 or up to 100,000 in rare circumstances per unit. But, you know, it, yeah, I mean, we're not, we wouldn't be offering that much. It's still less, I think I said around 40, but typically when Habitat develops a house, we've been providing 50 to 80,000 a unit between usually the towns of all of the land acquisition and then with, you know, direct support to Habitat for the construction. So it is just a more expensive program. Yeah. There's less subsidy. To take that into account that, I mean, maybe there's a real push for many people to want to own something. And I just think it's, you get a lot more people in, well, I mean, maybe not percentage wise, but 45 families helping versus 20 people, 20 families that can own something. I mean, apples and oranges maybe, but just to consider what really helps more people. Partly it's the, partly it's the size of the, I mean, I don't think you could put 45 affordable units in the ball lane place anyway. I mean, it's like very different kinds of circumstances and different kinds of, look at 132 Northampton Road is what is it? 20-something units, I think. And that's kind of the what, the size of the place. And so there's just a lot of variety. And at least in my opinion, the variety is good. I like the fact that there are all these different kinds of things coming up, different possible ways to live. But yeah. Well, I want a tiny house, a lot of land. Yeah. I mean, the thing is, is you can fit a hundred tiny houses. I went by ball lane, you can fit a hundred tiny houses on ball lane, in my opinion, but not that I measured anything, but it's like, you know, people like tiny houses too, you know. Yeah. That's a good touch is a thought and the thing that I personally would like to see more of somehow incorporated, but I don't know how to do it either Ashley, but yeah. Anybody have anything else? Just a question on sort of how useful our support letters are. I mean, what, you know, in the decision that Nate sort of laid out in terms of do we state any preferences or just sort of give blanket approach, you know, support and then if they have questions, they can come back to us. I just, I'm wondering sort of the weight of our opinions and how much debate should go into this. I'm going to ask Nate to answer that. I think that's a really good question. I think for now, you know, it's so early in the process that I'm not even sure the CPA committees met to review proposals. And so I think something just more general. But I do think, especially in, you know, for this round, at some point, the trust may want to, you know, put a preference in our priority or say, you know, these are the two housing proposals. We think that should go forward or at this amount, you know, in the past, the town boards and committees have, you know, put a priority ranking and funding amount, but it's somewhat odd because the trust also asked for funding. And so we stopped doing that because it's seemed somewhat inconsistent or, you know, arbitrary that we would recommend, you know, our proposal first always. But no, so I think, you know, for this round in particular, just because of the size of the requests and the, you know, there's not enough funding to go around, I think the trust may want to come back to this and say, okay, you know, valley, we think this much way finders this much. And the reasons why, you know, in terms of the way the CPA committee is a committee of representatives, with a few out large, right? So there's someone from the housing authority, conservation commission, recreation commission. And. I think sometimes they look for guidance. And so, you know, they may ask actually from the trust or from town staff. But for right now, I think it can be more general. Yeah, I think I feel at least I feel comfortable with writing something that says these are great proposals. We certainly support them. And in some generic kind of way and kind of not be surprised if they come back and ask us more. But. Yeah. Yeah. Erica Carol. I was talking before the meeting. I said, right. Sometimes. The CPA committee likes to find a project and not necessarily have them come back the following year, but. Knowing that, you know, the way these could be funded and cost of everything, you know, trust, for instance, could say, let's fund these at this amount with the expectation that they would come back in the next year or two and ask for more. And, you know, we would, you know, we would consider that or something or, you know, just. You know, I think it's difficult. Say, for instance, they said, oh, it's one way finders at 1.8 million. That's, that's more money than they have this year. And then it would also require borrowing half a million. That means every other proposal wouldn't get funded at all. And so it's just, you know, it's, you know, unless the trust feels really strongly that that one proposal should get all the money. You know, I think we can wait to have kind of that conversation. So, you know, I don't even know all the proposals that were submitted for all the other categories. And so. You know, it could be like a really great historic preservation project that. You know. You know, my, you know, not that the trust would necessarily recommend that over housing, but you know, it may be something that. Could get funded or a recreation project. So. Yeah. Nate said that on the website at some point on the CPA website. There'll be the proposals for the current year right now. The only thing up there is the ones from previous years and a way to send one in, but we can't really look at what other proposals there are. We know of these four because the three. Or at least two of them the way finders and ball lane or projects that we're interested in and supportive of. And we've been always supportive. Frequently at least supportive of Amherst community connections proposals and our own proposal. So that's what we know about. We don't really. Except for whatever Nate might know by hearsay. We don't know what the other proposals even are at this point. So. So, yeah, so I guess let me ask, is it, is it acceptable to people that I and with Erica's help will draft some kind of a letter of support. And we'll. Well, I don't know how fast we have to submit it. If we need to submit it. Nate, do you know how fast we need to submit it? No, I'm on the. I know I'm not. I'm on the CPA committee web page right now. At first they had kind of look like a. A quick timeline, but I think, you know, in the next two weeks, you know, the trust says it's good for the co-chairs and staff. We could write a memo. And, you know, we could send it to trust members or we could just look at it at the next meeting. It says that they. What the meeting, the CPAC, the CPAC meeting that I want to, to learn about this procedure, they said. They will have questions to us by October 28th and need answers by November 4th. Yeah. So we're going to have to answer at least their questions about our proposal. Between now and our next meeting. So we'll do that in one way or the other. And, and so maybe they want. You don't think we need to have things in before they're asking questions. Nate. No letter. No, I think. You know, we could say by like November 1st. You know, first week in November, I think would be a good time. Okay. So we will have a letter. And then open meeting law. Could we draft a letter. And send it to the entire trust and tell them only to respond to. Us or you with any comments. Yeah, we can do that. You and then if you collect the comments and give them to probably I will be mainly drafting it and get it. And then we'll have a letter. I'll send it to them to probably I will be mainly drafting it and getting it to Erica. Yeah. Does that work? So, so by sometime before November. Shortly before November 1st, at least I will have something to everyone. And Nate will get any of your comments back to me, but so we should have the letter ready to go my November 1st. So we'll try to have everything. And then we'll be getting it out, but getting any comments to Nate, Nate telling me what happened to happen before November 1st. Yeah, I mean, if Carol, if you could draft something by next Friday to 21st, I can send it out. We could get any other individual comments by the 28th or 27th. And then I can get all those together and send them to you. Okay. I will drop something for you by Friday next by a week from tomorrow, right? Yeah. You know, if that schedule works for instance, we can get a copy of the calendar. Well, that works because actually I'll be out of town the following week. So that's a good schedule. Okay. Also work, Nate, if you gave us a copy of the one that was sent prior. I think. Yeah, that'd be helpful. See what we've ever done in the past. Great. Okay. Well, I think that we can move on then to our next topic. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So we just wanted to give an update on the forum. It seems so long ago. It was on September 13th. That we had a public forum for the way finder project. Which is the East street in the Peltier town road. And what we did is we did a presentation and sort of laid the ground for why affordable housing is so important. And then way finders stepped in and talked specifically about who they were. Generally what they have done and what their experience is, and then they presented their design. And after the presentation, we had two speakers. One was from Olympia Oaks, who I think was very moving in terms of her experience. And the positive impact of having affordable housing. And the other speaker was from the family outreach event. And in terms of the work that they've been doing and the challenges that they've had in terms of housing individuals. And how affordable housing has is really an opportunity to help individuals and families here in Amherst. And to also meet the needs of very diverse individuals. Here in the community. I know that Rob was there. Ashley was there. And. I think. Oh, Allegra was also there. So we were all there. And so there were, I believe there were about. A little bit more than 30 people who attended. We had sort of hoped to have 60. But I think this was just the beginning. We were also prepared if there were any sort of. Negative feedback, but we didn't get any. We really got very good feedback. We got a lot of feedback. We got a lot of feedback. We got a lot of feedback. We got a lot of feedback. We got a lot of feedback. And. Negative feedback, but we didn't get any. We really got very good questions around the design. You know, around timelines. I thought it was very supportive. We also agreed that this would be sort of the beginning of a conversation. You know, so this was the first. Community meeting. To present the design, the, the initiative. And that we would have other follow up meetings with this. So I thought it went very, very well. It was very successful. I thought the dialogue went really well. It was over an hour and a half. As I remember it, it really, we answered all the questions. We were prepared, you know, if there were. You know, there were too many questions that we couldn't answer. We were prepared to take those and possibly. Provide answers later, but we were able to answer all the questions. So I thought it was a really good dialogue, but we were able to answer all the questions that we could. So I think we had a lot of time. I think we had a lot of time to invite Rob and. Ashley to chime in. And I know Risha, you spoke to John. In terms of his opinion of how it went. So. Great, Ashley. Sorry. You know what? Like a phone call came in and it made that mute for a second. I don't get the couple of seconds. Sorry about that. Sorry. So I don't know if you wanted to say anything about the forum. Anything else that you wanted to share regarding the forum. Oh, well, I thought it was very interesting and very informative. And also. I don't remember her name, but she did speak quite eloquently about. Her troubles with the barriers and with the. You know, I think she had a daughter who was facing. A vision and she was having a very, very hard time. Getting her into new housing. And I think, I think it's important to address some of those things. But then also, you know, building new things is important, but the other part is getting the people into the new building. And so it's like. I think we need to focus some on the barriers and making it easier. And it is. There's just very little affordable housing in the Amherst area or Western Mets like. It is hard to find it takes months and months to get into it. And you might be denied even after those months. And that's, you know, I feel for her. I know what it took. To get my tax credit apartment and it was a regular role. And I have a lot of access to. You know, resources and computers and self-aggressive. And not everybody has that. I would say one fact is that we ask people to give us their emails. And so there were at least eight or nine new email. Contacts that we got that I've now put on the list of where we send all the, all the information about the trust out to. Now eight or nine more people than we were before. Who manages that list? Because in my promotion of the event, I got a few as well that wanted to be added. I have the list. If you send them to me, I can add, I seem to be managing the list by some kind of default. So I will continue to do that. Unless somebody else wants to take it over. That would be fine too. I thought it was run out of the community. Wasn't actually run out of the trust. John's group. Yeah. Well, there's a list that John gave us that I have now. Taking a few people off because they kept bouncing added a few people to that he sent out, I'm sure he sent it to the housing advocacy group, but he also would, every time before a housing trust meeting, send out an announcement about the housing trust, about these meetings to this group of people also. And so, so we've continued, I've continued to do that. And that's the list that I'm working from. The list that he had. Yeah, the trust, we don't, you know, staff, we don't maintain the Rolodex at one point we tried, and it's just, it's too much. And really, we, you know, then people rely on the town or the board or committee to always remind them of something. And so I think it's great that Carol is doing it. You know, it's, you know, I would tell people that it's not, I think the housing advocacy coalition could do it as well. You know, this, I would say this is not, you know, in place of checking the town's website or looking for an agenda posting, but it, you know, John kept, you know, I think he would email like 70 to 90 people every time there was a meeting, you would just have a, you know, a recurring email he just, I respond to and send it. Yeah. No, I thought the form was great. You know, the staff, we've been way finer since, you know, there's a few adjacent neighbors who've had questions. There's one that may, you know, we're going to work more with that, you know, but I think that's a great idea. Yeah. I think that's a great idea. I think that's a great idea. I think that's a great idea. And I think that's a great idea. I think that those properties are most impacted. They're trying to get out on site to do some things. So. Yeah, I think. They'll probably be another community meeting and then, you know, they'll submit something officially to the town. It could be two months. Maybe by the end of the year, and then there'll be a public comment period as well too. There'll be 30 days for the town to respond. And so, you know, I think what they're hoping to do is have, you know, have a lot of opportunities for people to speak then, you know, you've kind of gone ahead of the game in terms of getting comments before you submit to the town and the state. So yeah, I mean, you know, I was kind of surprised actually I was hoping for more. And I, you know, I surprised the comments were really general. You know, I was, I was, I was surprised I'm, I'm waiting for maybe more specific comments once they see some things, but I thought it was really supportive as well. So it was, it was nice. I agree. It was, I thought it was very, very supportive. I think, you know, Ashley and Risha had mentioned that we, we should probably do one in person and possibly work with the schools, the school in the area to do in person. So I think it's something that we should work with wayfinder on. But I did think it was very positive. And I thought the dialogue and the comments and the insights were really positive. So it was good. And I think, you know, what you mentioned, Ashley, the individual who talked about their, their child, their adult child and all the challenges also demonstrated the immediate need versus the long-term need. And so that's why it's so important thinking back in terms of the form and thinking back in terms of our CPA proposals that we just talked about, there really does need to be sort of a multi-prong approach in terms of immediate support to families and individuals, rental support and home ownership, because I think that's just so critical in terms of our goals. And so that I just also wanted to just mention and thank representative Dom was also at the, at the forum. And she's always at each event supporting us and affordable housing. So I just wanted to thank her also for being there. Rob, I don't know if you had anything that you wanted to share from the forum. No, nothing to add. It was, it was very well done. Thank you. Yeah. Oh yeah. I'd like to just, you know, I underscore what Ashley said is, you know, I meant to call Francine after the next day and say thank you because, you know, it, right, you forget how important, you know, some, you know, certain services are right. So everyone's like, the housing piece, great. But, you know, it's hard just to even apply for it and then maybe stay in it. And so, you know, and I don't think people realize that, that you could, you know, have an incomplete application and, you know, I think way finders will work with an applicant, but you know, others may not as well. And so it's a whole process just to apply and, you know, I think that's great. It's kind of like when my daughter was born, she was in the hospital and everyone's like the surgeons think they're rock stars. They're going to say she's great, but the nurses are the ones who know everything and they're going to tell you otherwise. And so it was really funny. So then the next day the surgeon comes in is like, she's great. She can go home the next day and the nurses are just like, no, but they want to see the progress. And they don't, they don't want to do the actual care. I'm not, I'm, I'm generalizing here, but it was funny to hear someone say that. And then, so I feel like, you know, people don't mention family outreach or Amherst community connections or others, but that's so important to keeping housing and getting in housing. And it's kind of the intangibles. And so, yeah, I mean, I think, and I, you know, when I heard the person speak, it's like, how do we address that? Some of it's bigger than just the development. It's like, you know, statewide, can we have a better application process? Or can we, you know, how do we change a broader macro level thing? Because, you know, I think, I think people would do it if it was available. Is have, have we ever, and is it possible to do sort of more of a listening? I was thinking about the ball lane barbecue. And I liked that idea because it is more informal than a forum. And gets people there for reasons that aren't about. You know, ball lane development, but then they also hear about that. I mean, is it, is it something a group like us can do to show up or host a community more of an event neighborhood event and listen to people or is it just, there's no way around the open meeting that we would inevitably talk about something. I think we could be creative. I mean, we'd have to post as a public meeting. I mean, it'd have to be in an accessible location and a few, you know, we'd have to have a few, meet a few kind of thresholds. But, you know, we, I think like Eric was saying having something at the schools, we've done that before for other projects where, you know, it's, you know, that usually ends up having, you know, good attendance, you know, especially if there's some opportunity to have a place for kids can be, or if you have, you know, food or something. And so, you know, we could think about that if we needed to for this, for some of the projects. I mean, the, when Valley had the barbecue, they went to district one. So it wasn't Valley's thing. It was, you know, district one had a neighborhood meeting and they attended. And so I was thinking, you know, right, is it possible to have some other, you know, could we piggyback on or take advantage of some other type of meeting or venue and then have this be something where we get comments. So, you know, it may be, it's interesting. You know, we've let a lot of neighbors know and so I'm expecting we'll hear more comments, but maybe, you know, maybe quiet is good. Maybe it means they support it. So they're not, they just don't feel the need to come out. Yeah, and I don't even mean the specific, you know, the specific development, but just in general, if people are so struck by hearing someone's experience with it, maybe it means we all need to hear about more experiences and so that we can focus our energy where it needs to be. Yeah. I mean, I went to that district one potluck. It was in the Mill River Park. I don't, I mean, can we have a affordable housing trust fund potluck once a year just to, I mean, maybe it doesn't have to be like a formal meeting or it could be, but just to have it be like, we're out in the community at least once per year in the park. Like that's an Amherst Park. I mean, can't we just get the little pavilion and have a little potluck? Yeah, I think we could. I mean, I want to, right, I think, like I said, we might have to post it as a public meeting, but that doesn't mean we can't then have it be a potluck, right? We just say there's a public meeting of the trust at Mill River Pavilion from seven to nine. And, you know, it's just kind of, you know, just a more broad general agenda. So, yeah, I don't, you know, I think we could do something like that. Well, maybe something to shoot for in the spring or something at this point. Yeah. Yeah, but then also, I mean, ultimately, are we going to meet in person? I mean, people are meeting in person. I go places, like do things. Don't you guys have jobs? Like people are meeting in person. So I think we should meet in person somewhere. I think it's a town decision about meetings at present. I mean, we were meeting in person and were required to meet in person before the pandemic. And now the town is doing what it needs to do in order to meet state requirements and its own technology issues and stuff. I believe that at some point the town will say, okay, you should meet in person, but it hasn't happened yet. At least for our regular meetings. Well, Nate, I mean, do other committees meet like town council? No, it's all remote until next year, until April. So that's the recommendation is, I mean, I don't want to say it's like a mandate, but it's going to stay remote. And then, you know, the state may or may not, you know, allow remote meetings after that, but we'll be meeting remotely for the next few months. So, you know, I actually think it's pretty efficient from my perspective for a lot of reasons, but the, you know, if we do go back to in person, the difficulty is to have like a hybrid meeting where it could also be remote and in person is very difficult. So it's almost easier to be one or the other. And I think so that's a big decision. But, you know, if we are allowed to meet in person, you know, the planning board had said, oh, it would be great. And I said, well, maybe like once a quarter, right? Or right at some point you could have in person meetings. Maybe it's not every meeting, but you could have, you know, some schedule where most are remote and then you can meet in person or you can have events in person. And so, but for up until, you know, for the next few months, it's really going to be remote. You know, we, that was asked actually just recently in the, that the answer was to continue meet to meet remotely. So I just want to recap because I think there were a couple of ideas thrown out here. One is in terms of the way finders project, if someone else were to invite them, such as district one invite that they, that the valley went to, and they actually had a wonderful presentation and little modular designs that people can just look around and talk to people. It was really wonderful way to just have conversations with the architects and the designers and really think about what is that they were doing and be able to see the model on the table and see how it's going to sort of be displayed and their ideas. And also the different types of houses around the country as well as Canada. So when you looked at the pictures of houses that were already developed, they were beautiful places. They were absolutely beautiful places. So one is that, you know, different organizations could invite them in and we can go as well. The other is it sounds to me like possibly listening sessions where we sponsor an open meeting and invite people to come and we listen to whatever people want to share with us to better understand, you know, different needs around housing and being housed here in Amherst. And then I think the third thing was is that we eventually have a meeting together in the spring or whenever the town decides that it's safe for us to all be in the same space. So I just don't want to lose any of that. But if we were to do listening sessions that included potlucks, et cetera, we would have to have people organizing it. So, you know, it's it does take organization. It takes publicity. It takes making sure that we have a venue. So it's it's it's time that people have to commit to and investing in doing that. But it sounds like something that we might do. In the spring. So let's keep that open. Let's keep that on the agenda. All right. Discussion. So the next one. This was actually raised by one of our members. And it sort of came about when the conversation was that immigrants were being flown from Texas to Martha's vineyard and Amherst and Northampton were also sort of put out in the list of that. Immigrants were just going to be flown and dropped off inhumanely in a town without any support. So with that, without much warning. And so the conversation was, well, you know, if something like that were to happen, how can we as a trust be supportive around the housing that there might be some housing needs? And so when Carol and I talked about having this conversation, I said, yes, that's definitely going to happen. But another scenario could be knock on wood. Hopefully never happens. But what if we had an earthquake and half the town needs housing very quickly? Or, you know, there was some sort of disaster fire, et cetera. Is there any mechanism that our trust could quickly provide some funding to whoever steps in to house people because of a disaster or an emergency or a crisis? And so that's what we're going to be talking about. And so we thought maybe we should think about, and so this was just a brainstorming and then including you in the brainstorm, should we have some sort of protocol or procedure, which could either include having an emergency meeting of the housing trust members around the situation to think about, you know, could we contribute a certain amount of money to the housing trust? Or could we have a protocol or a recommendation that we could have a meeting of the housing trust members around the situation to think about, you know, could we contribute a certain amount of money just to quickly support whatever intervention there was to house people in an emergency? Or, you know, with the protocol or recommendation be that the two chairs could designate maybe $5,000 or $10,000 are from our trust. And so we thought maybe we could do something about that. And so we thought maybe we could support something like this. So we wanted to put it out here to the group and thinking about, one, is it necessary? Two, is it possible? And three, what would it look like? And we'd start a conversation here, but if maybe somebody would volunteer. If we think it's necessary, we think we should do something like this. If someone would have volunteered to actually put something together and bring it back to our next meeting. And then we'd start a conversation about, that's the type of protocol we could put into place. Yeah. Also, I would like to suggest. Like. Maybe we could just also ask kind of like our partners, because I did ask John about this one time. Two things. Craig's door. Because of one time I had called for a friend to, it was me in the place. It last I knew, which is maybe a month ago. It had a wait list of like 50 to 100 people. And I'm sure that if they had more funds, they would get more hotel rooms, probably. I mean, I would hope so. Maybe they have a proposal like. For their, because they're probably more like on the ground with like, you know, disaster, people have fires, people have floods in their own departments and then become homeless overnight, just like, you know, one family. What if they know of people who are coming to them with emergency things? And so, and then also, I mean, hopefully we won't have any immigrants just dropped off, but there are people that place migrants in places. And maybe they would have a proposal for when an emergency happened. They're already kind of like one is called Jewish family services, I think. And it like they probably already know kind of like before us, maybe what's happening and maybe they need the funds. So maybe we could, the proposal could be like putting out to several agencies, including Craig store. If you have an emergency, this is like your application that we would look at quickly because it's an emergency. And then we would see how much we could fund that. But I had read, correct me if I'm wrong, Nate, probably know more about this, that when we had the hoax, hoax phone call, that some of these conversations started taking place, right? That some people started talking about how to go about what if these immigrants were to show up on our doorstep. Do you know how far those conversations got? And did the town develop a plan based on that? Because I had heard that there was going to be the case where people like, okay, this was for us to come up with some plan to put into play if something like this was to happen. Yeah, I didn't, I wasn't too involved with those conversations. I mean, I think, you know, it was mentioned that we do have ARPA funding. So, you know, in the current, you know, in the current time, there's probably some ability to help. But, you know, in future years, if there's not, you know, certain programs available, right? Then I do think you would, you know, I don't know. I think I like Ashley's idea. I mean, I think there's one, the trust can be make itself available and respond to proposals. I think the trust can always meet and allocate funding through a vote of members. It doesn't necessarily, you know, I mean, we could try to have a meeting as long as it's a 48 hour posting, you know, we could vote to allocate funding for a, for something without even knowing necessarily funds have to be used to support housing, affordable housing, but, you know, it could be like, okay, if we do think migrants are coming, it could be like, okay, we vote up to $15,000 to support, you know, housing. And then, you know, it could be that then myself and the chairs, we could, you know, we could try to see what organizations as Ashley said are on the ground that may work better and we could, you know, offer support that way. Or someone could submit a specific proposal. Yeah, so, you know, I think when the town was made aware, I said, right, there were conversations and discussions, but okay, how, how, and what does it mean? What's like, what, right? What is the immediate need? But, you know, I think that, I mean, something like that almost triggers like an emergency response, you know, so we have an emergency response team from the town, you know, so like police, fire, you know, you know, a number of different department heads and town staff were meeting on that probably. And so, you know, someone could have been just right set up a, you know, temporary shelter and then you go through the steps of, of it. And it may be at some point that they would have contacted the trust to ask for funding. But I'm not sure they would expect the trust to be trying to organize something on our own, right? We would be, you know, kind of helping. And maybe trying to facilitate connections or something. Yeah, that sounds, that makes sense to me. I think it, if we can have a meeting within, like with 48 hour notice, that if there is some emergency that something happens that we think we could have some way to respond to the thing to do is to try to have an emergency meeting, it seems to me and see what comes of it. Go from there. And we need a quorum to vote. Yes. Yeah, I think the trust charger by a lot, I mean, you know, unless it's a large amount, I think it's just a quorum. It doesn't, you know, if you needed to borrow money or do some things, it's, you know, a super majority would need to vote on it. But I find that unlikely. It feels to me like the, the right step is to. Just make sure that we are known to the emergency planning groups and that they know. To sort of reach out if there's anything that. Would involve housing. So I don't know if that's Nate. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know how, or how, how we liaise on with that, whatever kinds of conversations and scenario planning that they do. Yeah. I think I know the assistant town manager, Dave Zomac, he's, you know, familiar with the trust and part of a team. So I think. Yeah, I can talk to him to see if there's other ways to even just other outside organizations that aren't town related, right? You know, for instance, like with the survival center, but right, maybe we need to just. I'm on both boards. So that's me. Yeah. But, you know, right. But I think, you know, maybe we haven't ever said that, right? So. Is it that, you know, over the next few months or something, maybe the chairs, we, you know, we. How, you know, we do reach out to organizations just to say, you know, the trust, it could be a resource if needed. I mean, something. Kind of simple. I mean, I, you know, I don't want to put ourselves out there as a, you know, a relief organization, but we are, you know, I mean, the trust may have resources. So. I mean, typically people will call the town, you know, whether it's my office or finance department. I mean, I'm always surprised. You know, who, you know, we'll get calls. And so I feel like most town staff are pretty aware. It can, you know, help direct people, but. Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I just, I guess I would like to. We don't have, I don't think a lot of money that we could do. Well, it depends on what we're trying to do, but we only have a pretty small amount. We're going to go into our financial report next. So we'll have a better idea of this, but I think we have only a fairly small amount of money that doesn't have to live by the CPA requirements. And so I would, I don't want to give false hope anywhere. You know what I want to say? I would, I want to be able to be whatever help we can be, but I also don't want to. Have people thinking that we have some way, some ways of helping or some resources that we don't really have. That's my only reservation or a reservation though. Well, I think we're talking about an emergency. You know, an unplanned situation, an emergency, something that's just totally. You know, that needs a response. So it seems like the town has a protocol for response. I'm sure it'll, it'll mobilize other service providers. So for example, you know, if, if Amherst community, I'm going to get this wrong, community cares. If, you know, they could step in and help families and they're willing to step in, but you know, that means repurposing their staff and their other families that need support. And so they may need something extra and that's just, you know, it's a short-term state of emergency. They may come to us, something like that. So I think the fact that we can meet within 48 hours and that somebody can propose to us, you know, this is an emergency situation. It was unplanned for, you know, it's really dire. We need a little bit of support to do XYZ. I think then that's our protocol and the town would be aware of what's going on, I would assume, and could also then trigger saying, well, you know, we're working with this organization and, you know, they just need a little bit of support in order to get through this because of the situation. You know, so I think we have two different ways of thinking about how we could sort of respond to an emergency situation. Okay. All right. So the next is our financial report. Which Nate, you send out something later, which he's going to put on the screen there. And hopefully Nate is going to explain to us something about how we got from where, what this looked like last time to what it looks like now. Yeah. I mean, so this is, you know, account balances as of, gosh, I say July 8, I guess. This is the balance. This is actually as of September 30. The, I guess I didn't change the heading. Yeah. So the, you know, even going back to the emergency funds that I agree with Carol, so the unrestricted account, you know, there's 35,000. Most of the trust money is CPA funding, but CPA funding can be used to support housing. That's what we have funded with Amherst Community Connections to some others. So even in an emergency situation, it's not like all CPA funds could be used if they're directed toward housing. And so then there's, there's interest on earnings. So there's 52,000, you know, all CPA funding and trust, you know, it's a trust fund. So it does have earnings, which we will spend from time to time and it dips. I guess, I mean, some of this might be like, it's funny money. Right. It's not, we have it, but then it shifts with the investment portfolio, just like you know like a retirement account right you have some money available but it might might actually decrease or increase technical services so you know that over the last three years four years the trust has been awarded CPA funding to hire consultants and so that that you know there's 37,000 available and there's 12,000 in contracts so those contracts are you know wetlands for old farm road to see if a house could be moved there strong street same thing wetland and botanist and I think there's some older contracts for I think still some work on east street school the town is still hoping to do and so you know that those are you know that's 12,000 and then you know 37,000 so you know that that funding could be used if we needed to hire someone to you know look at anywhere from you know land assessments to you know the feasibility of housing certain groups or you know a study of something and so that's you know that's a pot of money that's available there. Consulting services was specifically for a consultant to assist the trust so you know read a feral's under contract that's the 8900 and there's 18,000 left and so you know that was a little different than technical services you know for instance if the trust wanted to hire an attorney to look into something or you know do some work for the trust and not necessarily say to develop housing which technical services is kind of tied to so there's funding available there and we may need that so say for instance if the trust is to acquire property whether that's the release or easement or something we have to file documents at the registry and we you know we need to hire an attorney to update the trust some certificates and things so you know that could end up being two thousand three thousand whatever a few thousand dollars and so you know that's what that funding is for and the development funds there are funds that the trust has been awarded you know every year the trust asked for money from CPA so the almost half a million that's available is you know funding from the last five years that the CPA committee's been you know recommended in the town has voted to the trust and so I think that's all the way through FY 23 so that's the current funding that has you know is available right now the seventy seven thousand in contracts I actually think that's still it's for two things it's for the rental subsidy program emergency program I think there was some money that we just kept just in case you know the program's been over for a while now but just to make sure some of the reimbursement process from FEMA can take a while so we kept some under contract there and then some of that funding under contract is still for the purchase of um Belcher town road properties the trust voted a certain amount and not all that was used but some of it could have been used for appraisals or other things and so the town may still need to use some money just to do some site assessments there um so really you know the trust has six hundred thousand available um you know actually asked earlier though what if valley does come and ask for two hundred fifty thousand that'd come from the development funds and so you know it would be more than half of what's available I mean the trust has it um but you know then you'd have to consider okay if you you know if valley and then way finders both asked for two hundred fifty thousand it would deplete you know all the development funds of the trust and so you know it sounds like a lot but um you know it may and you know maybe it can't go you know it's kind of the trust decision how much would you award to a project um and so yeah so do you know if in the development funds is have we received what what the CPA the last CPA grant was going to give us it is is the money in there now yes I factored I factored that into the 466 so I went through and I took the last two years and put them in there so um I don't you know you know essentially these balances won't change right because unless the trust gets you know donations or you know say the next round of CPA awards some money then that development funds um balance would increase but otherwise you know there's not really you know and it did it did increase from last time the other thing is at what point do some of these things that are encumbered become unencumbered because they're not needed anymore they're just stay encumbered forever do they I mean if you don't need the money how does it go back into being available yeah I mean I think the technical services and consulting services you know it's not large amounts those are still pretty active I mean like I said it might be like two thousand dollars in technical services we could we could liquidate I mean all it takes is a confirmation from staff working with accounting um you know I don't want to say it's just that but you know we check with whoever was under contract and we just have to get something in writing for the development funds um I thought I had said to liquidate everything but it might just be that there's still um I'd have to see exactly what is needed uh you know but so essentially you know what um you know to Erica's question that or to Kara's question 77,000 in development funds most of that probably could become available uh if needed you know because I'm not sure we're really gonna put much money more money into the emergency rental program or the Belcher Town Road property so and the process of it becoming unencumbered is basically like you or somebody goes to the town and says hey we don't need this anymore can you change this I mean that's how it how actually happens yeah I mean if we think that it's you know especially that 77,000 if we think it's not necessary you know I would um you know I can look into it and then I can just you know I'd want something in writing from if it was say that emergency program I would just you know I'd want to talk to the finance director and everyone to make sure that the program is closed out and that's not you know that we may not you know for instance it could have been we submitted everything to be reimbursed through um through COVID and I'm assuming that we the town received everything but what if payments are still pending and you know we don't want to close out that line because it was a truck right so you know I'm just trying to understand the process at the moment I mean I know you want to leave it there until you don't need it anymore but but there is yeah I mean if you're kind of calling the question I can look into it and I can reach back out to you Carol and Erica as you know co-chairs and to say okay here is where it is what do we think we should do um that sounds great they're not this is I think I asked you this before and it may be a really dumb question but the available balance is the total which includes the incumbrances right no so the so the available so the balance the balance is like in this case the 77 plus the 466 no the balance is what's not in contract so it's what's available now it's what's not encumbered so there's 466 thousand dollars in the trust that is just in the bank account right it's not under contract or anything so and then there's 77 thousand in contract so really in that development account there's you know the sum of those two things yeah 550 thousand or whatever it is okay so incumbrances plus available balances equals the total thing right okay I thought it was the other way around last time but no I've been wrong so many times thank you yeah are there any other questions or so um if we unencumbered certain amounts such as the development funds if we actually had that 77 thousand 737 and per you know organizations that may have a need if they came to us we could use that funding to help some of those organizations right I mean we the 77 thousand we had a set aside for emergency rentals um it seems like there are families who constantly have emergencies that we could use that to support them or maybe even for subsidizing mortgages if we decide to do something like that correct correct yeah I mean I think the trust you know we um you know with the emergency rental program you know we worked with community action and that you know we I think we went through a really good process to set up a application and kind of criteria and so the trust could do that again could you know we could either contract with an agency who's already doing something or the trust could come up with its own program and then you know fund it so there's a few you know a few different ways that it could be but right so I think I think most of that 77 thousand could probably you know be turned into available balance um could we also ask people like Craig's door if um you know maybe they have an internal program that's like either they're getting more hotel rooms or they're helping homeless people move out somewhere like what if you need first last and deposit but you only have the first I mean Craig's door do they do that kind of thing do they kind of like subsidize formally homeless people moving on to the next place they're moving on to wherever that could be yeah there's they have some housing subsidy program so I think you know right to do some something like that the town used to have a similar program you know so I think if we were to do that there are agencies that already help administer something like that and so you know we might want to develop our own criteria for instance if we're doing security deposits the idea is maybe you want to get them back right and so or maybe you're funding you know just uh rental amounts and not you know a finder's fee um which is what we were hoping to do when we did the emergency program we tried to have you know landlords agree to reduce certain fees but um I mean that could be possible I just think you know that would I'd like to know you know and I would not want it to be just like a one-off each time someone wants something but if the trust thinks it's a program uh to fund I would you know say okay let's let's say uh here's the criteria here the parameters and we're going to allocate 40 000 to help um you know a maximum of 2000 a household or something and we're hoping to help 25 households or whatever right and so I'd want to really think carefully before you know Craig's Doors just comes and says we have one we have two guests or that are now getting housing can we can we have $10,000 and then you know a month later they say oh we have another one and so you know I'd want to be a little bit more strategic about how we spend the money but it is something we could do set up a program that's available like that um but you know I I just don't you know I don't want to become um you know I feel like the trust I'd want to make sure like I said we have guidelines in place and everything just so it's a consistent uh spending. Sure like maybe we could ask several people I mean Amherst Community Connections or or Amherst Survival Center or Craig this door or whoever we put this out to to see you know what if they needed they already have their internal programs that maybe we have parameters about too but each person can you know vie for up to 10 000 or up to 20 000 or something I mean it could be more than one entity isn't it? Yeah I mean I think um so the you know the trust is a public uh it's part of town government so if we did that essentially it becomes like a a competitive bid process and so we'd have to then make an award to a program it becomes a little bit more complicated um but um you know I so yeah I think um you know we could it's just not it's not as easy as like oh let's just have a rental program and we can give somebody to this organization or to hear to this person you know I like I said we'd have to have um you know program guidelines and criteria and everything um but they already have for I'm just saying that they already have programs that maybe they already could tell us about I mean it's not like we don't have to make up the whole thing do we I mean they could probably they probably already have some kind of system that they just they need the funding for but they have system. I'm gonna stop my share right and so they can actually you know the trust has a request for proposal document that an app you know an agency could complete and that's what valley did when they wanted some funding for north hampton road so craig's doors could complete a request for proposals to the trust and then it you know the trust would review that as a funding request you know is that something um you know you would vote to do so that's how that would work oh yeah yeah yeah as opposed to you know trying to set up a new program um or something different yeah just time and energy and money of ours like it seems like if they're already doing it and they're doing it fairly well and you kind of trust them because they've already been doing it for years then they could just propose they need more money for the stuff they already do kind of well doesn't quite seem like that would be the kind of an emergency that we were talking about before but I presume that something that we could consider if we wanted to do we want to are there are there any more things about the financial report we've thought of lots of ways to use the money but are there more questions about the financial report if not uh erica do you want to do go through our usual updates sure um so generally our updates are from Nate or from um the organizations that are leading the initiatives so we'll start with strong street and that would be Nate yeah I mean it's interesting time you know going back to the available balances you know there are you know there's a few projects happening for horrible housing and strong streets one of them right so there's strong street there's ball lane there's um you know wayfinders project and then you know there could be strong street and hickory ridge and maybe old farm road and so all those projects at some point in the next year to two may request funding from the trust and so um you know that available balance could be spent pretty fast so so strong street you know it's moving forward it's a little slow but we had a botanist we had to have some you know most of the site is considered rare or priority habitat for rare and endangered species and the state said you know we couldn't develop it um but we've had um we've had experts out there um doing field assessments and documenting the site and once they're done then we we're going to apply to the state uh program of natural heritage and um and you know have a conversation about what what can happen and so that's kind of the first step so you know I'm a we've also met with a few property owners um you know the you know I don't think that strong I think strong street could probably end up moving forward and it won't be a big development right so the site's pretty challenging I think even if we could develop it it might be six to 12 units um you know it'd be a small development it's not as if it's going to support you know 40 units so I think the due diligence the trust you know we've been doing is worthwhile you know we've had conversations like okay what does it mean if it is only 10 to 12 units you know could it be something that um the town tries to go through permitting and then you know it's you know habitat takes it on as a multi-year effort or you know we will find someone and so you know right now we really have to determine if the site can be developed and so that's what you know we're you know probably I'm I'm thinking in the next two months we'll know you know we'll have met with the state a few times and if you know they if they say no if they say you can't impact this priority habitat area then really there's almost um you know there's the one lot on strong street or what there might be one or two lots on strong street that could be developed the rest wouldn't and so when we talked about this months ago you know Rob had suggested well what if we sold what if the trust what if the town sold those as market rate lots and then the trust could take the money and then use it for another product to leverage it and you know that could be an option right so I'm kind of curious to see what what happens with the environmental assessment you know in land assessments you know so I'm kind of optimistic you think you might have it you think you might actually know an answer though in a couple of months that's cool well yeah the the they've been out there um and they should be wrapping up the work in the next week or so week or two and then we'll you know we already have I said I've been in communication with the state so it just depends on how fast we can review the information and see what kind of answer they give us maybe I'm optimistic but it'd be nice to know right in the winter and then if we want to plan something then we can start planning something in the spring you know otherwise you lose a year so absolutely that's why it's so important to have projects in the pipeline so I have not spoken with Laura Baker in with Valley but I have driven past East Gables and they are absolutely fast and furiously getting that up and running so I know there's lots of work being done on it at the same time that the streets being worked on which I'm sure is very challenging but they seem as far as I see they seem to be on track for moving forward I don't know if anybody else has any information from Valley CDC Laura did say that when it seemed appropriate to like do something like a tour that she would let us know I will remind her again at some point I actually thought some of them were going to be here tonight so maybe something happened I don't know but I'll ask you again just remind her that you know we would we'd like to see it as it goes up at some point yeah and we've all just talked about the East Street Belcher Town Road Forum I don't think there's anything new at this point so the next one is Hickory Ridge which I have not heard anything and I think we had asked Dave to come and talk to us about what are the town's plans for this so I don't know Nate if you have anything but I have been reading the Emers Bolton and you know there are conservation trails that are being created there so I'm just wondering are things moving forward without us with us what's happening yeah I know the town did receive a grant it's for you know an accessible trail loop in in an area that can't be developed so it's considered you know riverfront or low-lying area yeah I don't you know it's interesting I'm not exactly sure I thought I now we would have kind of some public process but I think the town I know a meeting I think next week about it to try to set up kind of a master plan process and so I know some staff have been tasked with coming up with a kind of a you know kind of some kind of methodology and you know kind of a whole timeline so I still think that's going to happen in the next few months where the town may be asking a little bit more directly what they'd want to see happen on Hickory Ridge so you know there was the Engage Emers page and people could comment on it but I think there's going to have you know maybe some more efforts to see what could actually happen you know how much land is developable and what are the uses so yeah stay tuned you know I think there's definitely a lot of interest anywhere from a community center to maybe fire station to community center or senior center to housing you know to maybe even just like a venue for a you know other things not even like necessarily town related so you know I think everyone's going to try to it's a nice site you know it is big it's 150 acres like I said though there's probably less than 10 acres that are that could be developed maybe it might only be like seven or eight but so what's going to be different from what happened prior which is the town did ask for recommendations and they were even like what is it word bubbles were yeah it's the same thing then you would tap on it so they'd be bigger and bigger because so they could see where the priorities were so how is that different from what you just mentioned that the town's going to do yeah I think you know there's all these layers to the site so you know there's 27 acres of solar you know that are going to be leased to a developer there's this area with the accessible trail there's you know 20 acres along the river that have to be under kind of wildlands conservation restriction as mitigation for the solar the town is has blocker money to try to make a trail actually an accessible like route from east Hadley road through the site to Pomory village but what some of those ideas didn't have maybe was you know actually like a map or some more information about what what's possible on the site so I think you know as the next step would be like I said I have kind of some maps or some a little bit more information about okay this is the area that you know could be developed or could support infrastructure or here's where maybe the recreation would go and it would be a little bit more framed in terms of the you know the comments or feedback the town would want so originally it was just like oh what do you want on Hickory Ridge and you know people said anywhere from you know nothing to you know you know I don't know I think some people said it would be great to have like you know weddings and a winery there and you know there's I mean it was great ideas like disc golf to like bicycle tracks to bird watching to this this and this but I think the next step would be to kind of frame some of the questions more maybe take what was already heard and say okay here is you know here are kind of the categories of things that we've heard but let's talk now about okay what about the frontage on West Pomeroy you know here's where the clubhouse is the parking lot I mean I don't I'm honestly I'm just that's my expectation it may not happen that way but you know that's kind of what I'm guessing is like okay you have a you know what what can we do there okay thank you thank you for being sort of the messenger so I'm gonna put you in the spot again we also invited Dave to talk about permanent shelter and we know that's been a huge goal both for the town and for us and I know Allegra's been working very hard too to to support that so do we have any more information about getting a permanent shelter is getting cold out there there are lots of homeless people who need spaces so and Ashley you've mentioned that as well in terms of the waiting list for for you know for Craig's door and I'm sure the survival center has a lot of people who need to be housed yeah yeah I mean I think you know the good news is Craig's doors will operate you know the shelter this year and I think they've you know they were I think they were successful applying to DHCD for funding you know there was a whole different process of how shelters throughout the state would get operational funding but I think you know they're definitely planning on having a you know the seasonal shelter in terms of a permanent shelter the town is still you know looking at sites and really trying to get something to happen I mean when I say something to happen it would mean right securing a site or somehow getting you know a person sale or something but really you know it could be you know two to three years before there is a you know if something has to be built like you know everything's slow but the town is still you know looking at sites to try to get something going but I don't you know that's all I know there isn't you know there isn't like you know say the winner or you know I think Craig's doors has been really fortunate and I think you know there's it speaks to you know some of the property owners in town and in the area that are willing to you know to have them so you know I think the University Motor Lodge you know the Lutheran Church and some of their sites they've been using I think they will be able to continue to use which is really you know really great are we do we know anything about Hadley because I had heard that the Econolodge was going to be turned into a shelter or maybe I got the wrong yeah no Val there was two projects in Hadley you know Valley was hoping to turn it into some studio apartments with some maybe transitional housing and then there might have been something else I don't I don't know I don't you know I've heard I've heard that too I don't have anything specific okay yeah yeah the concern is just listening to today about how cold it is and how shelters turn people out early in the morning they have nowhere to go you know for the unhoused there there's no place to wash no place to go to the bathroom restaurants don't let them go and then they use you know outside and then you know they get arrested and so I think it's just so important that we keep this on the table and do as much as we can to ensure that people are out in the housed are going to be safer over the winter okay yeah I think Ray I think can and hand with the permanent shelter would be what do you want to call it like a day center or resource center or right if not on that site or at least trying to make connections with other services and agencies so right right now there is a gap you know right um both you know year round and then day to day when there's no there's really not a lot available so that leads us to ARPA because I think we all had major hopes with regard to ARPA we were asked to submit proposals we submitted multiple proposals um and so we still haven't heard anything about you know we're the towns head and housing yeah you know the town has used some funds to do you know some energy efficient retrofits we've done some emergency you know we still have an emergency assistance program we did one um you know then there's larger pots of money for some housing and so you know staff we've discussed that with the with the CPA request for housing there's also been some discussion about you know would ARPA money be available right because there's more you know there's a few million in housing requests and so um yeah I don't you know I don't think anything's quite then decided the town's still hopeful there's funding for a permanent shelter for sheltering in ARPA money and so we're we're still um hoping that something can be found in the next year to spend the ARPA money but then there's still money for housing uh and so I think yeah I mean I think when Dave was going to come next month I think it could be good to talk about that you know is there you know in addition to the sheltering pieces there and you you know what kind of process is there for say the housing ARPA money um you know you know valley put in their CPA you know in their pro forma budget right I think they were out there they were going to come and ask for you know whatever I forget how much it was a few hundred thousand in ARPA funding so where does one like the I think it's ARPA funds that provided the funding that the bid used to give a bunch of grants to businesses where does somebody go and look just to find out what the town is doing or what it what it is that it has done because it seems like it's done some things how do you find out about that this is just me being a curious person I don't know that this even has anything directly to do with the housing trust but I'm like how do you find out that stuff yeah I'm looking as you're asking yeah there's um in the finance department uh under finance there's a you know they have the American Rescue Plan Act and then there's you know there's some quarterly reports and product information uh at one point I thought we're gonna have a little bit more of a um kind of like a uh like a like a dashboard of sorts that would show it um and that might be on an engagement so yeah I don't I don't know exactly uh Carol to your question okay well thank you yeah for whatever you do know or for your honesty or whatever all of you both I mean I know the town's spent money I just it's interesting right you say oh well where what are the pieces and I you know I could say yeah we spent I know oh we've helped a bit or the chamber we've helped businesses and I know we've done you know um you know emergency response crews uh in some town staff you know some staff were tasked with working during they can um during the pandemic and they received some type of you know stipend or pay but I yeah if you ask me now I I just have to go to the website and keyword search well if you find out anything let us know thanks so Nate it seems that what I heard was is that uh there's a commitment for Dave to come in November because we've been asking him to come yeah yeah I think I think we are with I think I don't care was it you we he had reached out or maybe he maybe he did say it was November it'd be a good month or the last time I talked to him I didn't actually ask him specifically about this meeting because the last time I talked to him he said ask me for November so I will ask again I didn't bother this time given that conversation yeah I think he's hopeful that in November he can have updates on some of these things as opposed to just telling you you know that sounds good yeah and it would be you know I will think I you know anything about the shelter or property you know we go into an executive session so you know that's an agenda item take a vote of the trust members and essentially anything that's an executive session really can't be spoken about outside of it you know just because it's you know the reason we go into it is it's you know there's sensitive material that could be damaging or you know hurt the process or whatever is being discussed so and absolutely I think we're you know we definitely would you know designate the last half hour to do that if we could prepare for it if we knew that he's coming in so yeah that would be great I think the other piece too is um correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't last year as part of the town CPA proposal was to hire a housing individual housing staff member all right have a housing staff member no no we're we had a job description it's a little it's interesting um you know that we did some outreach and you know it was it was it was going to be a a part-time non-benefited position for up to three years um you know some initial outreach said uh some people said it would be hard to find someone because you know you know yeah you're kind of to balance like who who can fill that position someone who may already have some other job right or so we would think strategizing about um how how to do that um it's also you know we can no longer hire the person as a contractor they have to be a municipal employee not that they wouldn't be but sometimes in the past we had done we'd hired um kind of that for that type of service we'd hired as a contractor and it's been it's becoming harder to do that so um you know I did we met with HR and we kind of have a um we're trying to figure out a way to move that forward um probably by the end of the year but not they're not on board yet yeah well the reason why I say that is because you know we as the housing trust we're an arm of the Amherst town to ensure you know that the issues of housing are addressed and that we should also be in sync with the town so that's one of the reasons why we want to know you know what are the priorities and this is you know I know again you're the messenger but back for David and for in its grid that Paul's on here it's just it's really important um to know where things are at and how we can support each other on this so really good to know about hickory farm and arbor as well as um you know the permanent shelter right yeah when the position's on board I mean really they are focusing on just housing so I'm assuming to that they'd be also to assist you know the trust in myself and you know town and a number of ways um and some of it might be just you know carol hide-ass I sent out it's off topic but you know the subsidized housing inventory and you know that's the state's recognized list of housing and at one point we were hoping to have a little bit uh kind of more fine-grained spreadsheet and then also maybe having it mapped um you know online and a few things and so something we've talked about but you know this position for instance could just could actually do that you know finally get a database together a little bit more information and you know I think the subsidized housing inventory is pretty good um you know one nice thing is that there's not really any expiring uses anytime soon so in the last few years there's been a few projects where the affordable units would lapse and I think we're we're safe quote safe until like 2036 I think is what the most recent one is but most of them now we've been able to negotiate you know longer leases or restrictions so um you know I think we're in a good position there at least okay uh unless anyone else has any comments or any questions about the updates that we just went over I will hand it over to carol um I'm wondering if I have a question or an update or or I I wonder if everybody it was news to me at some point that that uh subsidized housing inventory counts all the bill all the units and up in a property in the affordable housing list even though some of them may not be affordable it even count it counts the ones that are market rate units if they're in a project that was built with a bunch of affordable units in it so the first time I heard that I thought it was crazy and I'm not sure I still think anything else but I just think we should all know that in case we don't because at least I didn't and maybe I'm the only one who didn't but I just wanted to point it out so um so basically there's like a lot less I mean I live in North Square apartments and like there's less than 20% or less is affordable and they're counting every single unit and that's 260 units and only about 26 are affordable so it's a fraction was 20% at 20 20 to at least 20% of the units have to be affordable in a rental development and then all the units in the development count I mean that's that's statewide and so you know I know every if you look at every SHI in the community you might say well if you know most of the SHI are rentals then you're right if they say they have a thousand affordable units it might really only be 200 the state did that as a way to incentivize the development of affordable housing with the comprehensive permit you know 40b so yeah it's a little misleading um you know we say oh you're above 10% of your housing is affordable but it's you know it isn't really I I mean I I mean in a way I like that kind of development that's mixed the one that I lived in Pomeroy Lane was but I know it's listed with 25 units as affordable and at least uh six or eight or something I don't know I'm sure it was more than 20% were affordable but some of them were market rate units but it's a great way to live because it bridges some of the gaps that would otherwise be there so I don't I like it as a way of building things I just wish even if they all count I would love to have a list that showed this many count in this thing but the actual number of affordable units is whatever it is um so good so at least at least see what was going on so I'm sorry that's maybe a pet peep of mine and I maybe shouldn't be bringing it up here but I wanted to make sure everybody knew that situation and now we'll go on to announcements and let's anybody I don't need anything else to say they get in my own way here uh the only announcement I have is that on Monday the 17th at 2 p.m. is the community individual services forum on online panel of the Schwartz's thing if you want to go to it and don't have a link you could ask Eric or I it's all online does anybody else have any other announcements? Rob does he just sent us one. Yeah well the Eversteen Land Trust is having a fall get together a walk starting at two o'clock on Saturday at Mill River so a chance to just informally get to know us and find out what we'll do. Great thank you thanks for letting us know two o'clock on Saturday at Mill River. He sent all of us the information. Really? I guess just before the meeting. Oh okay I didn't see it yet okay any any other announcements uh any public comments from any of the couple three people that are attending at the moment I don't see any hands do you see anything Nate? I don't and yeah there weren't any any other comments I don't think. Okay um are there and if there are future agenda items please send them to Erica and I um our next meeting is Thursday November 10th uh I believe that at that meeting we will have the presentation we had maybe going to be have tonight when the town council will present information about their property transfer fee proposal and whatever else but if people have other thoughts for agenda items please let us know and then is there anybody have any last comment that they want to make about anything then I believe that I shall close the meeting at 8.52 by my clock thank you everybody for being here and see you in a month if not before. Thanks everyone. Thank you. And look for the memo from us from Nate. Good night. Yes. Okay great good night.