 Okay, so a good morning to the 1314 15 of you who are joining us live right off the bat. Good morning. This is Kappa Joe with your town manager Paul Bachman and special guest Amherst finance director Sean mangano. I am Brianna communications manager with a sore throat so I'm going to try not to talk too much today. But before we get started, I will remind folks who want to get in on the conversation please raise your hand in zoom we will pull you into the room. To ask your question if you're joining us from the phone like I see a couple of you are press star nine we can pull you into the room once you've raised your hand. We also have a q amp a function feel free to post your questions there. So I'm going to let Paul give a little welcome and Sean as well. So, I'm glad thanks for showing up even though you're feeling bad I know you're feeling poorly, Brianna. So, so the big topic of our day is been about vaccines, and we've put a lot of effort into that led by our health director Emma dragon. As you all know that the state has shifted its focus to having vaccines distributed through these mass vaccination sites wanted the closest one to us as the Eastfield mall. We're, we've been running a really nice operation at the high school and at the bank center and we'd like to continue that. We're advocating to the state, and with our support from our state revenue state senator that we would be partnering with City of North Hampton, which is what we've been doing they take the western part of Hampshire County we take the eastern part of Hampshire County to provide personalized in a way, vaccine services for our large number of communities. So we are seeking that support from the state to deliver this because there are no vaccination sites in Hampshire or Franklin County. So, getting vaccines into the arms especially since they opened up to those 65 and older is a high priority for the town. We've dedicated enormous number of resources. We have our covert hotline that's that staffed molten. We've added extra people to answer that phone we try to answer as many calls as we can we return every voicemail that's left. I think our reputation is growing we're getting calls from across the state now trying to get information. And but we don't really we can't really help people who are going through the state site for other locations so where our commitment is to the town of Amherst. So, we also have the senior center fielding calls and reaching out to people individually. We have a team that's really focused on the most vulnerable populations and the people who are homebound so to get vaccines to those more direct access to who need that special attention. So a lot of work being put on getting the vaccine into people's arms we think that's our highest priority as a as a town right now and dedicating all as many resources as we need to do that communication is key. Brianna is every morning working on the website, updating information with information from our health department, just a lot happening so, but I think to the public's point of view, the vaccine is important and it's important to us as well. But what about capital projects on that's kind of important to not as important as the vaccine. But going back to vaccine related stuff one of the things we're working on a lot in the finance department is managing all the federal resources that are coming in to help make all that happen so I think everyone's heard about the cares money and we've been trying to manage that that program was extended by a year originally was going to end December 31 2020 that was extended to the end of 2021. So we're managing that go moving forward and then there's also FEMA reimbursements that come into this with a couple different programs one for the vaccine and then one for everything else. And the rules keep changing as more information comes out changing administrations. It's constantly changing so it's a, it's a challenge to manage all these different resources to support everything that we need to do to contain the pandemic and get people vaccinated. So that's really to that on the capital front and budget front we're sort of in the, in the midst of that. We're meeting with departments are on their budget and for viewing their capital proposals and get more information and we had a busy week for capital, presenting the plan for the four building projects on Tuesday. And presenting the capital improvement program to the joint capital planning committee last night, and that's going to continue next week with the library on Monday. So it's been a busy couple weeks for capital. And we spend about what 12 hours and budget meetings this week. Yes, and so busy week with our department heads. You guys just see dollar signs in your eyes right now. We take away dollar signs from people. I'm going to take a quick chance to remind the folks in the room who might enjoy and late we've, we've got a lot of live attendees today we'd love to hear from you live you can raise your hand and zoom star nine from your phone or pop your questions into the q amp a function right within the meeting so just a quick little plug there. Yeah, so I just, this is like a remember how we would do these things at a different restaurant so we'd all sit around table and people just throw their questions so that's what we want this to be about it's not a presentation. You're not going to hear a presentation so folks if you want to raise a question, raise your hand come in, talk to us. That's what wants us to be. Yeah, maybe it might be worth for folks who haven't kind of followed the whole history of this project you know last year we had before pandemic hit we had a series of listening sessions videos produced about the projects. Can either of you give like a quick little historical background on where where this projects these projects came from and where we are now, and what we're looking to do. I think where the projects came from before I was hired in the recruiting document they actually the support at that time said we have four major capital projects we have to address. And that was one of the biggest goals when they're hiring a new manager for over four years ago. And so that's been on the on the docket for a long time and it's just, this is the, you know, we had this failed school project. And the, when the money wasn't borrowed for that. And so that sort of set us back somewhat but this is the farthest we've gotten. We're really in good shape I think with the two grants for one for the library one for the schools. You know we are struggling with a location for the DPW. That's the thing is holding back that series of projects but there is no state funding for the for fire or DPW facilities. So these are things we're going to have to do on our own. A key component of the plan that's Sean presented on earlier this week on Tuesday was that in order for us, our mission from the council was figure out a plan that where we can do all four projects and tell us how you would do that, which is what we did. And one of the big constraints on it was, we have to say, Okay, we need a budget for each project. There's less than what everybody wants for the most part. And so we will put that budget in, and the rest of the resources either have to come from the outside, or we'll have to build to meet that budget line. So I think that's sort of a challenge, especially for a fire and DPW fire and DPW to say, Okay, we have to throttle back what we have thought about, we could want it in our new facility. So we've got a question I think your explanation prompted some questions so thank you, Paul. Please explain how a debt exclusion for capital projects would work. It is, it is a temporary increase in tax, or once the project has paid off property taxes returned to normal with max two and a half increases. So there's two types of, there's three actually capital debt exclusions or overrides one is if you purchase a capital thing and no one ever uses that. The two major ones is an operating budget override where the town votes to increase its taxes and that stays on forever. And North Hamptons has used this every five or six years they go out for a debt exclusion for operating budgets and then that increases the taxes permanently. The other one and it's the other one is the one that we use which is a debt exclusion override. So, what it says is that when those payments for that debt come in, we will put those on the tax bill over and above the normal tax bill. And then as those payments ramp down those extra payments on the tax bill ramp down and then after 20 or 30 years, that extra payment goes off the books that's not included into in your tax bill anymore. That covers shiny thing. Yeah, I think you might have accidentally when you refer to North Hampton you might have said they do a debt exclusion override but they, but they do just a general override which is a permanent increase in taxes. Yep. Thanks. All right, I'm going to prompt again for questions anybody raise your hand feel free we'd love to hear from you live if you have. Oh, here we go I'm going to allow and invite Sarah into I'm going to ask her to unmute and introduce. Hi, I'm Sarah McKee and Chad court in Amherst. There are the four capital projects you've mentioned. The, however, we also have a. We also have a water plant water treatment plant. The price of which has nearly doubled, I think, since the lightning hit it in 2018 it's up to 13 point something million. We have roads. We have, I believe, some other capital projects, and I understand that the water treatment plant is not paid for out of taxes. However, if your water bill goes up, does it matter really whether it goes up as part of. The timing of the term, or the taxes. So what is the total tax or total payment increase contemplated for the four capital projects, plus the sort of hidden capital projects that also need to be taken care of if we, as a matter of the quality of our life. Thanks. Sarah. So I can start. For the four building projects, the increase specifically related to those projects would be the for the one project that's debt excluded. So there's a in the presentation I gave on Tuesday there's a range depending on your different property value of what you can would anticipate that that exclusion is approved. So the annual increase would be both sort of what the max would be in the early years and what the average would be over the life of it. For the water for the enterprise fund project the water fund. So I look at to figure that out on a person by person basis based on their water consumption and what that's projected out over future years. This year's a little bit unusual because you mass isn't this doesn't have as many students in town so the water consumption dipped a little bit and so we're tracking what that's going to look like in the future. And that spreads out the cost more broadly across the town. So I think our mission was to was how do we build these projects within the within the budget that we have. And that's why when you hear us talk about 10% for capital that means we're building we're taking stuff from operating and moving it over to capital to pay off for these projects. The mission our mission Sarah was to do as much as we can without impacting the taxpayer. What we can what Sean said to the council, or the finance committee on Tuesday, we can't do it for all four projects that's why the school was recommended that it could be set out as a debt exclusion. That would be over and above. You know that the plan also does recognize the need for our other capital needs for our buildings that that need investment for roads and sidewalks that need investment. And we have really ramped up our investment in roads and sidewalks over the last three years anyway, much more significantly than we had in the past by 10 fold almost. And so, from the from the town's point of view so. So I think that we've recognized those ongoing capital needs as well. In terms of the, the water plant is something we're going to have to do, and you're right it I mean, if you tell, if you tell me, I'm taking money out for taxes or a water bill it's coming out of the same pocket. So we, it's an impact on the on the rate payroll in the property tax owner so it is an impact. Right I've got a couple of questions here in the queue and then some hands raised so I'm going to pose this one since it's kind of relevant to what you're speaking on right now so today's Gazette suggested multiple overrides might be needed. But Sean's plan shows we can do all four projects with only one debt exclusion. So why might more overrides be necessary, or desirable. So yeah, so the model we put forward only shows one I think it various settings in the past there's been discussion of more than one. However, one of the one of the principles that we built into our model is again to try to minimize the impact on taxpayers. So the plan we put forward or the option we put forward only has one debt exclusion included. Did reference that in the future. If something happened if there was a recession or something happened where the town had trouble making the, the amount needed to pay for all the capital projects on an annual basis the percentage allocated towards capital that there were a couple different options the town could put out there. And some of those options were reduce shift more from the operating budgets it could be do less for other capital project other capital needs. Another option was use reserves and then the last option that was put out there is something that could be considered would be potentially a second debt exclusion but again that was more for contingency planning of what if this happens in the future, the option we put forward just has one. I have some hands raised I'm going to invite my friend, Ken into the room if you could unmute and introduce yourself. Good morning. Thank you I'm 10 Rosenthal 53 Sunset Avenue. I have a quick question and a couple of comments I'd like a reactions to the question is where can we see this presentation, Sean. I know that you're going to be presenting something on the Jones library Monday, but what you've already presented is there. Can you tell us where to look for that. Yeah, that's a great question. So the, on Monday, it's a broad presentation from lots of people associated with the library I just have a small piece on what the financing schedules could look like. However, the, the presentation from Tuesday is in the packet for finance committee but we're also going to sometime today set up the a web page dedicated to the four building projects, and communicating information related to those projects. So there will be a link on that page and I'm, I'm sure Brianna will do a push out so everybody knows where that is and so we're going to link up that presentation and other information to that page so it'll be a one stop place you can go to, to get more information. Thanks, then my quick comments. I know that the library proposal includes a major fundraising effort on the part of the library. I know that you have good people who can estimate costs of buildings, but have you assessed the ability of the library and these times to raise the money from private sources that they say they're going to need to raise because if they don't, then there's a big shortfall that's going to have to come on the shoulders of the taxpayers that's the first. And that is at a district three meeting last night. One of our counselors mentioned the problem of increasing taxes in Amherst to the point where he said that when his wife retires they might have to leave the town because they would be unable to stay. And I'm very fortunate that I can pay the taxes that you're charging me now and I want to stay in Amherst for the rest of my life, but I worry about people who are going to be driven away, or the people who are not going to be able to come here in the first place because of the rising tax base and I, that's a comment I know you may not want to react to that but I think it's on the minds of a lot of people, especially with four projects that are going to cause increased in taxes. Thank you for listening. Yeah, so I think you can that's that's those are really important points and we do recognize the taxes in Amherst are very high and and that people are sometimes struggling to do that to pay them. The town has chosen and over time we have dedicated, we have a full service community, we have full time paramedics on staff 24 hours a day to service the community people have said we want that as a priority for our community. There's lots of services that the town has chosen to supply that that neighboring towns have not chosen to supply. So, it's a matter of choices and it costs money to do provide the level of education and services that we that the town provides so that's one of the challenges that we have plus I mean there's a lot of other reasons for it one is we have a diminished tax base because so much of our land is is controlled by nonprofit institutions that don't pay taxes so that large tax burden falls on fewer people. And one of the challenges for the town is to broaden the tax base so there's less impact on our on our regular property tax taxpayers. You know, nobody likes to pay taxes. And, you know, I hate when people have to feel like they can't afford to live in our town. It's and I think there's a squeeze into a lot of town residents, you know, town employees who live here have the exact same experience that you that you've just identified. So, yeah, and I'll just add to that that if people are struggling there are a number of exemptions that are abatements that are open to people who might qualify and we're going to do a better job moving forward of sending those out to people and laying them out clearly what based on income levels or age there's different ways that you could get a reduction in your tax bill so we're going to start sharing that information out. And this coming the next round of tax bills that go out as some we received some feedback from the CPA committee as well because there's exemptions related to CPA. So we will be putting that information out this year. And can you raise the idea well can the library raise the funds, and that's been a high level of concern by the town council as well. Like, okay, you say you can raise this money prove it and one of the things that the trustees have done is say said we have an endowment that we are that we're looking at pledging in essence to guarantee you that that won't come back to the town. That's, you know, the town council is asking that precise question that you raised in terms of, you say you're going to raise this money. How can you guarantee that so we can. It doesn't fall to the taxpayer. And the Monday presentation will speak specifically to both of your points one about their progress towards meeting the fundraising goal, and then also more on the endowment. So both of those will be addressed on Monday and pretty good detail. Thank you. And I do. I do see that we have another hand in the room. So Tony, if you could unmute and introduce yourself please. Hi, Tony Cunningham. Thanks for continuing to do these couple Joe's virtually. A little while ago, it's a matter of choices and I saw the presentation the other day which was very thorough allocating more of the property tax revenue to capital at the level sufficient to fund these four projects will mean really tough operating budgets for all town departments. Kathy Shane asked Sean how many years the presentation talked about the impact in 2023. And Sean seemed to indicate that it would go further than that. And your presentation on Tuesday for that 2023 example showed holding operating budgets to one or 1% one and a half percent. And we're already seeing what that means for the schools the regional schools this year with a $1 million cut to their budget, which will likely result in 16 job losses. So are you asking the departments to model going forward into future years what that 1% or one and a half percent operating budget would do to their budgets I know the fire department often says they're under staffed and the schools are really struggling to meet that 1% increase. So my question is firstly how long into the future how many more years would that be required that one or one and a half percent operating budget increase. And will you be asking the departments to model what that would look like before any decisions are made to move forward with this plan. Thank you. So the reason why we focused on 2023 is because that is sort of the big step up to where we need to be for capital funding. So we're for FY 22 we're projecting eight and a half percent for FY 23 we're projecting that we have to get up to 10% so increasing that percentage and a half is the big step. We focused on that year. The presentation we gave was more of a hypothetical but it was meant to give some context or some basis for people to consider because we had to project how much our revenue will increase we don't know exactly how much our revenue will increase for FY 23 you sort of a conservative figure. But but it was again meant to be helpful for planning, but after 2023, then it's a small step up to get to 10 and a half percent for FY 24 and then we stay there going forward. So we are projecting out, maybe the next five or six years to show what that would look like and we have to make assumptions around what revenues would increase. Which, you know, always could change it's, you know, could average out but it's always going to be a little bit different than what we project from year to year. But 2023 is the most the year with the most significant increase for capital spending so that's why we focused on that. In terms of, you know, I think Tony you're right about every budget is about choices and it reflects your values and, you know, and having sitting through all of our budget means every department says we need more resources to do the things that the town is asking us to do. You know, Brandon not sure has she knows it is needs support so you know we have to make choices about what we can do and what we can't do. The school has had to make the same thing they've sort of put their their number out there is what they every department is getting the same level of increase from the from the town budget. So we're all managing to that to those numbers. Yeah, there's every department would like to have we'd love to have additional firefighters and all these other things as well. It's just a matter of what that you know we talked just recently about the high cost of services in the town and the impact on the taxpayer so my job as town manager is to manage that down to make sure we stay within our budget that we can afford and we start with the revenues that we have and then go from there. And I'll just add one sort of general comment about the presentation on Tuesday, which is, we did build in quite a bit of conservatism into the into it because it does project out a number of years we didn't want to project a best case scenario. So when you look at that, you know, we're being conservative around interest rates, which are much lower right now than they are projected in that model. That's an area where things could certainly improve. We're being conservative about the usage of reserves because we're saying that we're going to pull out a certain number of reserves but we're not talking about what we're going to put in every year which if you look back in history we typically add to our reserves. And so there's a couple other areas where again we're really, we're trying to be conservative so that we know things are going to change there's so many variables that are in this model, but if we lean conservative when they change will have more flexibility. Great, and I've got a bunch of questions coming in thank you Tony for your thoughtful question so anybody who has follow ups feel free to just raise your hand. I'm going to go to some of the Q&A for a moment here because we've got some of those stacking up Nancy wants to know could you explain the current plan for the school construction projects, what's going on with Fort River renovation and are we still hoping for a new school building. Yeah. So, right now we are in an MSBA mass school building authority process of which Paul and I are on the building committee along with several others. And that committee is looking at two possible options. I'm not going to get the enrollments right but there's a couple different enrollments one that would address both buildings for River and Wildwood. So that is still moving forward and we're the process right now where we're trying to procure an owner's project manager which is a position that essentially represents the town and they do a lot of the logistics and the scheduling and making sure that what the building committee and the town are asking them to do, and they really sort of manage like the operational management of the project. So we're the very early stages of that. And another question here that I'll answer quickly is the video for the finance committee meeting from Tuesday posted yet it's not up yet but our goal is to have that up today for those of you who want to take a look at that but the packet and the presentation is up online. So that's a quick quick answer there. So I have a hand and a couple more questions in the room. More I would like to know is it possible to decentralize the DPW putting the offices at one site and storing the vehicles at another. I think the fire station is badly needed and it's being held up by not finding a place to move the DPW. So yeah so that those two projects are linked because we know that the current DPW site is the right location for the fire department. We plan on moving forward on both of those projects in the current now very soon. Yes, DPW can be separated it's not the ideal situation. And the big issue is not the office space is really just finding a site that's big enough to accommodate the DPW operation that we have. The second thing is the size of it then and also it's a site we did have a really good site but it's the site that that was not the site that we want to put the DPW because it's a tough site to locate because it impacts this 24 hour operation it impacts neighborhoods. And so there are there's very little open space that's available for that has 20 acres or whatever we need in the town of Amherst. So that's, we'll be issuing an RFP shortly to see if there's any space that we have not identified so far. So, we know we have to move forward, and the council has been very clear and President Griezmer has been very clear has been served as chair of several fire department study committees and the most recent one in fact. And this is a high level, high priority for us to move forward on. So, we can, we know where we want to put the fire we can start the schematic studies for that location. And then we're prepared to look at DPW even moving it to a temporary site, while we can move these projects forward. So remind the room we've got about 20 live attendees right now, and feel free to raise your hand or use the q amp a function. I do see a phone call phone, someone has joined us from phone with their hand raised in the last four numbers of your phone is 6922 if you'd like to unmute and introduce yourself. And to unmute from a phone that's going to be star six. Hi. Hello, can you hear me, we can hear you. Welcome. Hi, my name is Maria to pick a thank you so much for taking my call. So, I have a comment and, and then a question. So, a lot of the assumptions in the model that was presented are. I don't know that we can meet them. One of them is that the percentage of the levy that we contribute to capital would increase to 10.5% per year for into the foreseeable future, and we haven't been able to meet that at all. So I'm going to ask another is significant reductions in both the fire and DPW budgets, and I, we're talking going down from 24 to 15 and from 38 to 20 and I'm not sure if that if there's an actual realistic plan that could do that. So other increases that we haven't talked about yet that not only to our water bill, and one possible debt exclusion override but possibly to, and then there's going to be increases to our sewer bills as well because of construction projects. So, there's a, I think that there's a lot that is really optimized in in your assumptions that may not be realistic. So, given that and given the fact that there are much more than these four capital projects that you're speaking about. There's Crocker farm which has $9 million of necessary repairs and 20 million in order to adequately serve the 40% of kids that could possibly be there with the school project. I think it's important to get the residents opinions about what to prioritize in terms of operating budget or in terms of projects moving forward at this time, especially given all the changes that have happened in our lives in the pandemic and other reasons that people might be financially stretched. Thank you. Those are really good questions Maria. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, I think the model that we presented was a model and it's based on certain assumptions which you identified. You know, we, Sean has looked at Sean can I talk about where the numbers came from for the police for the fire in DPW. Those are comparable to other cities and towns that are building facilities. It won't be everything that we want in those facilities that were that our department has one. But sometimes you just have to build you have to say here's your but here's our budget and here's what we can afford to do. And that's what we're saying at this moment in time. This is what we can afford. And we can build things and say, let's build this temporary structure until we have enough money to build something else. We do that for our homes already. So it's not that much different. For our department heads to say, we have to scale back our appetite a little bit on this. It's a doable. There's a lot of unknowns. We don't really know the impact of a net zero on our constructing our buildings, how much add that is to any any construction project there aren't enough out there to give us a real strong evidence for that. So, and there are other projects that are coming down the road that, you know, like the centennial water treatment plant that are that we have to do if we want to keep our water going, and we have to do the sewer projects. If we want to make, make sure our wastewater is handled properly. Those are there whether we like it or not. And those are paid for through the enterprise fund. And through our water and sewer bills. And that's based on the amount that people use. The advantage of that is that we also have our large nonprofit users. Amherst College Hampshire College and UMass, who use those services as well and they pay their fair share of those added expenses. So they, those added expenses are spread out over a larger number of users, not just the tax paying public. Sean, is there anything else you want to add? Yeah, I'll add a couple of things. So one of our next steps with the DPW and the fire station is to work with designers to have them. So they've done a certain round of sort of feasibility and design. We want them to go back now and do it with budgets and with net zero, which the last time around I don't believe that was factored in. So we want to see what we can get for what for those amounts, and then then we'll have a discussion about the trade offs and whether that's satisfactory to the to the town. And, you know, the other thing I just always think about is delaying projects are not doing them is not going to mean the costs are going to be less than maybe spread out differently. In those cases, it's entirely likely the cost could be more if we push these projects down the road, there could be higher interest rates with further out there's more cost escalation. Again, we have a recent example to look at to see how pushing a project back what the impact on the cost is. And, and then the other big thing is we, there's lots of other buildings in town that are, you know, coming down the pike. So we're thinking for years from now that we want to make sure this wave of these buildings that need to be addressed with, which we've heard from a lot of people they feel they do that they're off on their way off our books, and so that we don't have a big debt load when we have other project building building projects come up in the future. So we're, you know, we're thinking about now but we're also looking down the road 30 years and trying to make sure we're in a good position then as well. And that's a really good point because, you know, I think, typically, you know, we haven't built a new building since 89 when the fire the police station was built and, you know, I think a community like this we should be looking at taking on new debt for a new building about every 10 years we do have significant other buildings that are in their 3040 year lifespan that in 20 or 30 years, the are our, our successors are going to be saying how do we pay for this project. And so, for us to tackle the projects that need to be tackled now is really important, and we're not going to be able to get everything that we want, but the town has asked for a lot and so we're trying to build as much of that as we can and until we get into the design stage and dig a little bit deeper onto some of these things. You know, the town we need we as a community. Consider this so and then you the earlier question Maria was like how does how do people weigh in and every we have 13 elected officials who are highly responsive to the public. They are the decision makers on this, the town council is the one entity that's going to say yes or no on how we move forward. They're very good at they've each every one of them has had district meetings had attended they're very, they're very well good at listening and reaching out to the public. So that's the way you convey your, your interest in your, your sentiment on these projects. Alright, so we have another question here. Interest from the library's endowment is essential to paying the library's annual operating cost at the library borrows against its endowment in order to pay for capital funding on its proposed project. Does the town plan to increase its annual contribution to the library budget in order to meet the library's operating costs. I can address it so they're not, they're not borrowing against the endowment that's not the way it's going to work. The light the funds from the board of library commissioners is different than a lot of other funding sources. Do you want to talk about that Sean. I would say in terms of how much the annual contribution is our approaches historically been I think is what continue the future is we give the same allocation to all the departments. So, that's been our approach around budgeting is to, you know, if it's a two 2% increase for the schools it's a 2% increase for the town it's a 2% increase for the library. I don't know if that's, if that was answering the question but so I guess what I'm saying the endowment will still be in service to the library to where they can use the interest to support their, their, their operating budgets but you know what, you know, and the assumption is that they will raise the money, but the I think the council is going to say well, what's your, your assurance to us that you're going to raise the money and they said well we have this endowment. If they have to dip into the endowment to pay for the capital. That's a significant impact on their operating budget. But they know they're not expecting to have to do that. And more and more can be learned about that on Monday's meeting is that the entire presentation is going to be from the Jones library about the Jones library project and funding. It's like an hour long presentation I think I haven't seen it so. Yeah, it's a very in depth presentation that has a lot of focus on finances and what the building. What's going on with the building project. And that's Monday evening it's on our public meetings calendar so if you if you head on over to Amherst may gov into the public meetings calendar for Monday all the information should be there if anyone's interested in digging a little deeper into that project. And Paul I just want to say you mentioned earlier about counselors. We do have several counselors joining us today and I just want to, if they feel comfortable if they raise their hand and we'd be happy to hear from them as well so counselors in the room feel free, raise your hand and we'll bring you in. But you're buying coffee if you come in. Oh, there we go. So I'm going to invite Council President. Lynn Griezmer to the room. Good morning Lynn. Good morning. I'll be glad to buy you all coffee. I want to mention that we will have the presentation and it is already in the Council packet for Monday it includes a taped presentation that the library spent a fair amount of time they shared the outline with me. I'm going to go back to them and made significant suggestions on timing and what they needed to focus on and in addition to that, they have taken the time to answer a three page memo from the Council. That included a significant number of quite detailed questions and that is in the packet as well. What I really want to emphasize, however, is that on the town website. If it's not there, it will be there are going to be two public forums that the library will be the focus of the public forums. And those are on the third of March at six o'clock, and on Saturday, the sixth. I believe it. And those will be at least two hours. We want all the questions that you can possibly have, and then some, and I'm sure you'll have them. And the library is prepared to, and the library will be joining us in those public forums and able to answer those questions as well. And the other thing I want to also mention is that Sean mangano on behalf of the town has spent a fair amount of time, both talking with the mass board library commissioners about how their loans work and or excuse me how their grants work. And in addition to that working with the town's financial advisor, in terms of how the finances were the model work. So I just want to really thank Sean on behalf of all of us for all that outstanding and very detailed work. Thank you. Thank you Lynn thanks for popping in and you can send that coffee right up the road. Any point today. Your neighbor. I'll take another chance to remind the room. We still got plenty of time for questions if you want to raise your hand in zoom star nine from the phone, or pop questions into the q amp a. I have a couple of questions that are here that are kind of off topic but if we want to stay on the financing piece. For now we can take the other one. So, this question states I've read about vaccine doses at some locations being wasted because they expire before they, before being administered. Has this been a problem in Amherst. That's a great question and I have read some of those same things. We are really, we're on a much smaller scale than a lot of the other vaccination sites so. And our, our folks are showing up when they, they say they're going to show up so the health department knows exactly how many doses to have available sometimes if they might be a vial that has a couple extra doses. And sometimes people show up or they don't show up. So they do work with making sure that every vaccine is distributed. If someone had tried to sign up for a. An appointment on that day and wasn't weren't able they, if it looks like they might. The health department could reach out to that individual and say, hey, are you available to come in and get a dose. But they've been pretty good at just sort of managing it managing it down. Okay. So more more questions rolling in. Back to the finance. Discussion is there a typical pattern of investing in town city infrastructure in is our tendency to put off capital investment unusual. What would be the best practice. I'll, I'll start with, and then Paul can hop in is the finance committee a while ago and I see Andy's in the room. They had set a goal to get our capital spending to 10%. And that was even before, you know, talking about these building projects that was just for maintaining capital in general. So we've been trying to get to 10% for a while. And we're almost there. And we were almost there before the pandemic. We would have been there. We would be there this year. It would be there right now. So when we talk about getting to 10 and a half, we were basically there. And the dip in revenues caused by the pandemic kind of dropped us down for a year, but we're more or less just getting back to where we would have been a little bit higher than where we would have been this year if it wasn't for the pandemic. But the question is, is this. So debt is used to purchase buildings for cities and towns. And the logic on that is that if you put, if you build a new building, the people who are using that building over the next 20 or 30 years are getting the benefit of that building and that's why you use debt. So the people who are there utilizing the building are paying, paying for that building over time. And so utilizing debt is a, is a very, it's, it's every city in town uses debt to manage its, its large public infrastructure and we do the same thing. I think where the town where this town hasn't where we've fallen a little bit behind is we haven't addressed some of the major capital projects as quickly or as early as we should have. So maybe decisions made 20 years ago before anybody was on, you know, in this room was really involved where we could have been more aggressive about addressing some of our infrastructure needs. I think it's a lesson learned going forward is, you know, we're looking at things 30 years from now. We don't want the people 30 years from now looking at our decisions and saying, Why didn't you do something that now it's much worse for us. So that's why it's important for continuity of government and for the looking forward to plan to the future to address this capital needs that we have right now. So that the people who are going to come after us have that the benefit of our of the infrastructure that we've built for them. You know, I'm a professional manager I've been in public service. I'm a trained planner. When I see something that's been that my four bears have have done and I go wow that was really advanced planning and really appreciate that. I look at our wastewater treatment plan it was it was really has large capacity. And at the time they built it they probably didn't think that they're going to need that capacity but thank goodness that they had the foresight to build it at the size that they did really smart thing to do so there's decisions like that you see and you say wow that was really a big hit that and we want to be in that kind of situation going forward. Quick follow up to that is, what was our percentage before we have an attendee asking. So I think we were at nine and a half percent and FY 20, and we were going up to 10% for FY 21, or fully committed 10% FY 21, in February before everything sort of tanked so we were right about there. So let's just add to what Paul said earlier. We also have this unique opportunity where we have all these projects that, you know, are facing us and interest rates are also at historic loads. Absolutely. I can't tell you how big a difference, an interest rate makes the overall cost when you, you know, you're borrowing over 20 or 30 years. So some of the rates that I've been hearing from our financial advisor of some projects that are the same size as ours, you know they're in the low one to 2% range. And if we can take advantage of that that really makes a makes a huge difference in that model it can make that model get a lot better and a lot more palatable to the town if we can take advantage of those low interest rates. And that's a huge point that the interest rates drive so much of this, and the strength of our town right now we have very strong reserves we have strong management, all the things that the bond rating agencies look at. You know, our, our economy even that in the step and the whole community countries looking at it. We are financial advisor feels that we're very well poised and our auditor has said the same thing to get a really strong bond rating which will lower our interest rates as well. So that's why time is really crucial right now. So I do see we have counselor Steinberg's hand raised so I'm going to invite him into the room. If you could unmute. Welcome. Good morning. Good morning. And I too will look forward to the time when we can all be together and I can actually buy you a cup of coffee. We're looking to that day. The history a little bit from my perspective goes back to when I was appointed by Harrison Greg to the former finance committee that was a committee of town meeting back in about 2008. And at that point, we really just engaged in our planning process for a number of things. Johnny Santy had just joined Amherst as finance director, and took a very different perspective on how we should go about looking at policy and planning, and the finance committee work to develop what is now the town's financial management policies. At that point, we were spending around six and a half to 7% on of our tax levy for capital. And we realized that it was not sufficient so the goal of 10% was established then, and it really was a work in progress to move that up so that we would do it without affecting unduly the operating budgets. And one of the many disappointments besides not being able to get together in person for these couple job. So Paul's events is that we lost our plan to finally get to 10% in the current fiscal year as previously noted. And whereas the major building the projects point out two additional things. One is that it's always wise to look to grants when they're available to supplement the ability to build buildings, and we don't always choose the timing. The mass board of library commissioners and the MSBA, each have unique processes which determined in part the timing of the project applications that we've had. And the other two buildings have just taken a lot of time in the planning because of the difficulty with finding the right location for each project and then the right location for the facility. Andy, thank you. And, yeah, I mean, you bring such a long history and perspective to this. And an acute financial mind also so it's really beneficial to have you and the other members of the finance committee they're asking those the questions that some of the questions we've heard this morning in fact. Thank you, Andy. We have another question here in the Q&A. So I'm going to ask this one as we close to our nine o'clock and time, but feel free this for anybody who has a question or a comment. Now is your chance to raise your hand or put it into the Q&A. So people would probably agree that a new elementary school is more essential than a $50 million total price for an 18,000 square foot increase to the Jones Library. What is the thinking on giving citizens an override vote for the school rather than for the library. I'll take the first part of that which I don't believe it's a $50 million project the last I looked and again Monday's presentation we'll talk about that but it's 36 altogether and then the town share would be about 15.8 That 36. And then, you know, as to why the schools are the debt exclusion so at least in the model. It's because the schools is the largest project. And if you we don't do a debt exclusion exclusion for the schools, then and try to pay that out of cash capital there when we want to have enough cash capital for the other three projects. Even if we did a debt exclusion for the library we still wouldn't have enough for the other two projects. So really the school taking that one out and having that be a separate debt exclusion allows us to do the other three projects within our the existing capital that we're planning forward. Yeah, and so the mission put before us by the town council was show us a model that allows the town to move forward on all four projects and that's what that model that presented does. That's the plan. It doesn't mean it's the way to do it. Ultimately, what goes out for a debt exclusion override is up to the town council they're the ones who make who decide what questions go on the ballot. Yeah, just a quick follow up on what Paul said, you know we put that model out there with the intent of spending a lot of time explaining it and getting feedback, and then also with the intent of refining it it was not meant to be. Here it is it's not going to change and we're stuck on this we wanted to hear people's feedback. And then and then refine it going forward so we shared it we're engaging people and that's going to start today, and then we're going to analyze what we get back in terms of feedback and then refine the model again. So that we're, we're coming up to our hour, Sean Paul, are there things that you can, what are the next steps for people who want to follow along with the project. What's out there what's coming up, and how do people stay connected. So for the four building projects. Again I'll just state again that we're putting up a website focused on the four building projects that will have links to more information I'll also have calendar dates of opportunities coming up that are related to them or that we have a couple specifically to just talk about this and just hear feedback. So we're going to push that out shortly, and that would be my advice is to visit that website check it out and and see what works for you in terms of when you can participate. Okay, I was going to go ahead. Okay, so what what Sean's referring to is that we'll have a project page on our new public participation platform called engage Amherst. So we'll be we'll be launching that today with this project it's basically what Sean mentioned lots of information and the opportunity for you to ask your question and get an answer directly from someone on our team will also catalog other questions asked about the project from various other other types of formats will will try to put them all there so people can see what's being asked and answered. And that'll also be linked on the capital planning page where there is a lot of historical background information information from those listening sessions last year. So there's some background there if people really want to look at some of those details. I mean, so shout out to Brianna because in this pandemic we've had to think how do we engage the public in a more robust way when we can't have in person meetings and that's why this new platform that she has figured out and has developed for a lot of our projects will be utilized and it's a it's more interactive than just a typical website so it's an opportunity to really engage the public in a different way along with other tools like. I'm not sure if you've been in town the Sufa science where that has real time information and we can do polling and things like that from those things that people don't normally go to our website there's we're trying to get different ways to connect with folks. And that's absolutely right you know we've we've done a great job of having our meetings and public comments so what we're looking to do is allow avenues outside of that prescribed period for people to kind of give us their opinion and ask their questions so more to come on that. A quick comment in the room, a couple people saying thank you thanks for this information looking forward to hearing more. So I think we're at our hour now and any, any final words from Paul or Sean. Just thank everybody for showing up there's a great turnout we really appreciate it. Yeah, thank you. And we will put this recording up on our community chat playlist on YouTube in case you want to refer back to anything or share it with a friend or neighbor. And as always if there's any questions feel free to reach out to us via email info at amrisamay.gov we can provide you links to anything we talked about today. Thank you. Bye.