 We are being recorded for broadcast on Amherst media so that when we get the public comment, public participation, we will be asking that people come and sit at the table in order to speak in the microphone because we want to make sure that the Amherst media program captures everything that is said today. This meeting has several agenda items but I want to be very clear because I know there's somebody here who's about one of the other items. I think that virtually the entire agenda today is going to be about the discussion of the Valley CDC Community Preservation Act proposal that was discussed briefly at our May 28 meeting and postponed until today for consideration so that it would be after last night's meeting. We do have a couple of other things on the agenda and there's one item that I will have to bring up at the end for the committee under items not anticipated 48 hours in advance which is really more of a committee organizational issue. So I'm saying this because I don't think that we're going to have very much time for percent for arts and if we do, it is really going to be to figure out when to talk about it, not anything else. So I just wanted to let everybody know that who may be interested, Mr. Grouty. You're welcome to stay. I just didn't want to mislead you because if we talk about it, I don't even think that we're going to get into the substantive discussion of what will be the agenda of topics to be discussed. I think it will be more of a when we take it up question and I can fill you in later if you would like. So just so you know. So I need to make sure that we have a minute taker. Will you be able to? Yeah. That's why I was, I appreciate it if you did, but if you can't, then we'll have to find somebody else to do it. Okay. Well, thank you. So getting onto the major agenda item of today, I guess that what is, yes, we really are here principally to talk about the Community Preservation Act discussion and to follow up on that. And I'm looking for an email that I have on the subject that, here, just a second, here we go. So what had happened just to inform everybody present that I sent a series of possible agenda items or by agenda, I mean topic discussions under this item to members of the committee. And I'm going to tell you what they are right now, because the first thing that we want to do as a committee is to have a discussion so that we can get clarification of what are the range of items that we want to discuss at today's meeting for consideration. The things that I had put forward in that email, and I'm now reading the four items as I wrote it, the proposed borrowing, whether it will have an impact on our future borrowing capacity for major projects or affect the cost for those bonds. Number two that I recorded was, and I think I can send this email to you so that you have it, what will be the annual repayment obligation which will reduce funds available for subsequent CBA processes, how many years, and how much each year. Three is the effect on the operating budgets of town departments, in particular public safety, and for us any other town costs such as capital costs. All of those matters are focused on the budget and the financial considerations directly for the town. I have assumed that the finance committee discussion would be on that and not on the financials of the Valley CDC because that is really a Valley CDC matter, but I am open for committee input on that. So at this point I would like to turn to my fellow committee members and ask if they have additional items or have comments on those items and then we will proceed. I agree the specific finances for the project are not something we need to get into today, but I think to the extent there's any out year or other impact on public costs where the town might be involved, those should be on the agenda for today too. Can you give some example of what you are talking about? I actually got some answers to this when I sent out, so an example would be if we need to have a bus stop and a carve out where the public works budget would have to come in because there isn't one currently there, so we needed to move one. If there isn't any impact, then not a problem. So that would be an additional public expenditure that might or might not be covered by the original developer costs that they are expecting getting. If long term, and I think I got good answers to this, but I thought we should get it on record that if there are capital expenditures for the project and if we originally invested in it would Valley CDC, if they didn't have enough reserves, need to come back to CPA for support for things like a major expense roof and others, or are the reserves going to be what happens longer term, so out five years, ten years. Okay, some of that fits under number, as I wrote number four, any other town costs such as capital costs. Exactly. So I'm not going to put it as a separate item, but just I appreciate the clarification, clarification of what those would be. Okay, committee, anything else of major topics for that you consider financial considerations? I'd like to just, I'm sorry, I'd like to just start with these and let's see if something else emerges. Okay. I, in a moment, I will recognize for an initial round of public comment, public comment solely on the issue of whether there are any other matters that members of the public should, would recommend that we consider so that we have that on our list of topics for discussion. And maybe I'll take a moment right now and see if anybody wants to add on that particular line. Mr. Hornick, yeah, please come to the microphone now because we're trying to make sure that Amherst media captures this meeting as fully as possible. Yeah, should the green light should be on and it should stay on when you, once you do that. John Hornick, Amherst Municipal Affordable Housing Trust, I would like to speak to the role of the finance committee and the role of town council in reviewing this particular proposal. Okay. Thank you. I actually was going to raise that as the next item for the committee as we go in, but there's one other hand over here and please identify yourself and thank you for coming. Kate Sim, 77 Dana Street. I would just like to suggest two additional topics for consideration. One is, is there precedent for subsidizing an outside development organization to the extent that is happening here? I believe that their own numbers suggest that, you know, the net cost of the town is at least $300,000 and yet they receive $550,000 in developer fees and overhead and $16,000 in ongoing management fees. So a question is, you know, is there precedent for that in the town? And then my second question is just, did you get my detailed letter? George just mentioned that it was there and then moved and he couldn't find it and there was a lot of questions in there, particularly about the cost of the project. So I think the second question is just, you know, what is the cost of this project versus other possible alternatives to reach our goals? And I don't know if that's within your scope or not, but that's a question. Thank you. Lynn. When did you send that email? I've just been deluged with email, so I just want to make sure I could find it. Thank you. Yeah. Let me, let me respond on a couple of things. One is in this is basically on the Community Preservation Act because I think that it's important that everyone in the community as well as the committee, obviously, I think already does understand the Community Preservation Act and Ms. Aldrich will supplement as needed. But the Community Preservation Act is actually a special increment of funding that was approved by the town and it actually was an election. It was not even a town meeting vote. It was, it's required by state law that it be through an election process. It adds an amount to taxation that has very limited but directed purposes, one of which is affordable housing, one another's conservation, historic preservation in recreation or the areas. And the process that is required to take place then is that these are totally isolated funds, but there is a Community Preservation Act committee which is required to exist under state law. The process is that the Community Preservation Act committee sends out to non-profit organizations and to others, including to within town, the town departments, requests for, essentially requests for proposals. Proposals are presented by a variety of different non-profit providers as well as town departments. Those are reviewed through a thorough process that goes for several months during usually the winter or spring months and then at the end of that time, a report and recommendations are made to the legislative body of the community, which is now the council. The council has the opportunity to vote. Yes, it will accept a recommendation. No, it will not accept the recommendation or it can reduce the amount. It cannot increase the amount. It cannot change the terms and it cannot add a new proposal. So, Sonia, have I missed anything in that summary? Okay, thank you. And the older finance committee before town meeting used to, what they would do is they would review each of the proposals and their terminology was that they would say to town meeting, we have reviewed this and find that it is consistent with the Community Preservation Act and is appropriate for funding. They did not make recommendations up or down on the proposal for the for the substantive content but left that as a town meeting decision but did make those comments. And what we did with our other proposals and I went back and pulled up and have in front of me at the moment, the finance committee's report to the council about Community Preservation Act and I'm going to read just two quick paragraphs from it because it will set the context of the discussion and then I want to get into the topics of discussion. What we wrote in the report was as follows, the finance committee reviewed the recommendations to the Community Preservation Act committee beginning with a presentation by that committee chair and vice chair at a meeting attended by many members of the town council and therefore a meeting of the council. The committee considered whether each proposed project is sound, financially responsible, consistent with the purposes of the Community Preservation Act and raised any other legal questions. There may be other factors that the town council may consider to be compelling reasons to fund a project recommended by the Community Preservation Act committee or not to do so. The committee voted to postpone the final consideration of the valley community development corporation proposal until June 25th after the forum announced by the president. We recommend the other proposals submitted by the Community Preservation Act committee based on the criteria described above and so I am going to be assuming that the criteria that the committee is going to choose to consider the same criteria but that's obviously always subject to committee discussion. So having said that then I think that we can get back to the question of the agenda items that we wanted to talk about and the first one was the question of whether the proposed borrowing would have an impact on future borrowing capacity for major projects or other or affect the cost for those bonds and Ms. Aldrich did respond to me on that. I don't know if you want to summarize your response as opposed to my reading. My response is that it would not be a significant hit to our borrowing capacity for all the large projects considering this is CPA funding so it's coming from the surcharge not from a regular taxation and we're about to drop two major debts from CPA this year Town Hall masonry is dropping off and for fiscal year 21 the Hawthorne property which we bought is dropping off so we will see very little change. So members I just I'm going to ask a couple questions just to make sure there's clarity for everybody okay nevertheless this money does fit under our borrowing ceiling is that correct the capacity yes the limit thank you so anything else this is in the realm of borrowing and that is that we would borrow if we approve this this money would be available subject to the approval by the state of their funding right correct okay and in that case therefore the money actually would not be borrowed maybe until late in this fiscal year is that correct correct also valley CDC would have to meet the town's requirements so you have to go through the whole cba we don't we don't just cut the check for 500 thousand it has to be a reimbursement so they would have had to have started the project and started spending the money okay this is all very useful wanting to make sure people understand the pieces here and then in addition to that all of that would be subject to whatever happens at the zba yes finally if cpa chose to recommend to us a year from now that they use half million dollars from next year's money to just pay off the loan they could do that that would depend on where we are in the borrowing process if it was still as a ban which is a bond anticipation note then we would have some of that flexibility but once it's permanently borrowed as a bond we don't have that flexibility so okay all right thank you so i was just going to follow up on linds on when we would actually incur expenses for this so you said it would be when the project is as i understood it uh full blown in that there this state has approved the money and the town has approved the project so it potentially is not even in the next fiscal year it's a fiscal year it's in two years you know depending on how so it's actually when when the actual plan for we wouldn't borrow the money until we had to pay the money okay so um it could be next fiscal year i mean this fiscal year it could be down the road in 21 okay yeah i'm Dorothy would this in any way impact um how are how we would proceed in borrowing for the new school should we get the go ahead i don't believe so and i just want to be clear that the actual our expenditures start when we start paying debt service not the five hundred thousand i mean just like a mortgage you're building a house you don't really incur the expense of that mortgage until the debt services in place which could be if they don't spend the money until 21 our first debt service will be in fiscal year 22 just so i understand correct so um when we have um is a town of course these are based on um decisions made in town meetings in the past have fairly often borrowed money to fund larger cpa projects and then space them out and the you mentioned two that were some of the oldest ones because they're the ones that are about to be paid off um but the fact that they are about to be paid off of course means that there will that the fund when we set up a cpa budget for the year the first thing we do is subtract the amount that we know we have to use for repayment um since those repayments won't be made if we borrow this money then it sort of washes against the other yes yes um sonia i know that legislature is still working on the budget um but the issue of increasing legislative amounts for cpa is part of that discussion yes it is has anything to your knowledge happened um i haven't seen anything come through from the coalition yet so yeah i don't think they're done with the conference committee okay and for just so that everybody understands what that kind what that question was about is that um communities that choose to participate in the community preservation act by levying funds that there is an additional um piece of money that comes from the state the state um also levies um a tax on transfer property which goes into the statewide community preservation fund and then it is given as grants to local communities um and but the amount is dependent upon legislative action and uh so we don't know the amount of that additional increment that we will receive from the state because the state budget has not been completed so anything else on the borrowing capacity um in proposed question before we get to the question too yeah and lind i i'd just like to push a little on the impact on future borrowing before we leave this um we are queued up hopefully for up to four different capital projects in amherst um the one that's been most talked about is the schools the first we will hear whether we're moving forward with that this year is december 12th a date that will be in my mind for a long time uh and if that is the case we will have to come up in this next year or in this year with about 450 500 000 somewhere in there it'll be the match to the feasibility study but that feasibility study goes on for up to two years and we wouldn't even move into borrowing until we actually were approved to go ahead by the state so that project could be as many as two three years out in terms of big borrowing um the dpw and the fire station are actually at the point where as we identify and locate the land we move to schematic design in this year the maximum that would be is about 250 000 per project uh again you can't build until you do schematic design and then you have to go back out to bid and so the earliest we would be in that phase would be an f y 21 22 um the actual library project i believe it's f y 21 for the library net the statewide association and so that one actually could come up at a little more money faster but the later on in our agenda or sometime in a very future meeting we're talking about those various projects but i just wanted to point out to elaborating a little bit on sunya's statement and that is by the time those projects hit will be at least probably two years and to pay back on this project so i think that the major point though is that all of those projects have to be paid for by other funds they are not paid for from the community preservation act fund so i just want to clarify one thing on the msba in borrowing for the schematic design we would have to borrow the full amount of that not just half of it because the msba works as a reimbursement so i don't want to surprise anybody down the road when we're asking for a million instead of 500 000 or something like that um but it does not count against our debt limit or capacity which we found just found out recently that msba does not count against that so thank you yep okay so anything else get dorthy i'm having a problem putting two ideas together one we're discussing the finances and the question is is there anything financially wrong for the town to do this and that's the focus of what we're doing yet i kept hearing last night that this vote says the town totally approves of it and we're just talking about borrowing and repayment schedules and not about the project itself so i guess that means that this is just an advisory statement to the town council and then at the town council is that where the discussion will take place let me answer the first question all committees are advisory to the town council um if the council approves the borrowing um it will be an indication of support that will help the valley cdc's submission to the state for the additional funding that it is seeking and they are they do look for local support there are other ways if the council were to want to indicate its support for the project but not authorizing the the borrowing that actually could come in some other fashion i would believe though i would have to look to some experts in the process to respond to that a little bit more fully i think what they said was is that because of the fact that they look for local support but we also have to remember that there was a point that was made um i think it was on Ms. Brestrup last night that um they um there is a whole process of actually if they file and ask for um borrowing capacity um whether they um the town supports it and that would come as a um to the council and the council would have to vote on that anyway so there's this question of support um it's not just totally tied to this this is not the dispositive answer on that um but i do think that the other thing that we probably all recognize is is that um is a non-profit corporation valley cdc is trying to put together a package that would fund construction of a project that's a complex project and you know their request for money is a real request for money to assist them with the package and that if the council were not to approve of the proposal and no cpa money is given over that they would have to find alternative funding for that additional piece and that may or may not um be possible for them i don't um it's not a discussion that i have had with valley cdc because i don't think that it's a question of a financial impact for the town and which is what i think our responsibility is. Kathy? No i just um when you look at the financing for the whole project um in terms of our role where this five hundred thousand dollars is leveraging another four million dollars so it's the actual building of the project is bringing in what i'm looking at a large a large amount of money millions of dollars from the housing innovation fund a series of others so this point about a package um that's it's if we were to try to build a project like this all by ourselves we wouldn't be able to put a project like this together so this is i think a high rate of return on this initial investment when we're looking at it so to think that five hundred thousand dollars would actually build this is it's a down it's like uh the front end cost on a mortgage that you have to put on on the house um so i i think in that context it looms much larger than the amount of money we're looking at so i agree this is the impact on the town that's why i asked are there any other long-term costs beyond the front end that we're putting in that we should anticipate not saying that that's a killer deal for this but just we should anticipate it um if there would be a future draw on cpa money beyond the repayment of debt okay so uh can we yes so what i'm hearing in what dorthy's saying is something that i've been wrestling with as well and that is i believe there are things that we have heard during this conversation um that spark at least in my mind some considerations that down the road might happen during the zba process that the um seat valley cdc would take into consideration and i guess the question i have and maybe it's the one dorthy has is is there a point in time where it is appropriate for the council to express that even if it is not a condition of the vote it's on the record you know uh it probably is a council question more than a finance committee question then i will see what i can get opinion on that before next monday thank you uh yeah i mean as far as uh maybe we i'd take these questions out of order since we've getting into the question of any other town costs such as capital costs which was the fourth item um the um since uh this breast strip is present i i ask the i guess my question is this um if there were um such costs is it possible that the zba would consider um that they put the responsibility for any such costs as a condition onto the granting of the approval so that the costs would have to be assumed by valley cdc as opposed to by the town whether we have any other experience with um such conditions having been attached to proposals i don't know what the you know you mentioned 130 or whatever it was a beacon and uh if there was were there any similar analogous provisions that you recall in that listing yes generally speaking the zoning board of appeals does not get into um placing conditions on a project that involve um the developer paying for items unless there's a direct um connection between the item and the project so for instance if a project were to cause um problems with an intersection close by because of traffic increases um the zoning board of appeals could put a condition on the project saying that the developer um should participate must participate in the improvements to the intersection um so it would be something like that where there was a direct connection between the impact and um and project i i wanted to um also if you don't mind my going on for a minute longer to please respond to miss shane's concerns about um route nine and the possibility of putting in a bus stop there um i wanted to just remind everybody that mass dot is currently involved in uh preparing a set of plans for improvements to route nine in the corridor from um south pleasant street all the way down to university drive and those are currently in the stage of what they call 25 percent so there are still opportunities to make adjustments to those plans and if um it became clear that there was a need for a bus stop i think a bus stop could probably be worked into those plans and that section of route nine is owned by the state so um i'm not sure that the town would have a responsibility to construct anything in that corridor before you leave christy so one of the conditions obviously that went along with the beacon project was access from different directions for both people to walk as well as for emergency vehicles to get into the property so i drove by recently and there was this all of a sudden a whole different sidewalk with being or some level of concrete i turns out it's a road for access for emergency vehicles and for pedestrians i assumed something like that was a condition of the project from the zba yes so the zba did um require um beacon to construct the sidewalk in the right of way along coles road that was part of the project beacon um committed to doing that without any kind of uh cajoling on the part of the zba it was part of the project that they designed and the zba agreed that that was necessary um they didn't really make um any other improvements to coles road for instance the two ends of coles road were not improved as part of this project they are providing a pedestrian pathway across um other private property from the project to montague road for pedestrians um and they are providing a crosswalk across coles road to the bus stop on the northern side of coles road so there are some minor um improvements in the right of way that they committed to yeah there's what while you're here there's one other thing that came up last night there's um i want to clarify too the whole beacon um process was complicated i'm speaking now as a former member of the select board um because the select board also had to um chose to um give a tax increment um agreement with beacon for um allowing the um to helping with the financing but um in exchange we achieved an agreement on deep affordability for um some of the units and um it was in in perpetuity and it was embedded in the agreement that the select board approved for the tax increment financing um in this circumstance of course we don't we're not being asked about tax increment financing that's not part of valley cdc's request but um it's my understanding that um the kinds of agreements that were made through that um process could also be placed by um the zba and furthermore there was a question of whether um they could um valley cdc could ever add more than more units to the number that were allowed to begin with and again that's um something that would really be precluded by whatever the zba decision is and i just wanted to clarify that for the community yes you want me to respond yes please so um the the beacon communities project does have um deep affordability it does not offer units at 80 percent or less all of the units are offered at either 50 percent or less or 30 percent or less and that was part of the agreement that they made with the town and they did receive um over two million dollars in tax increment financing over a period of 10 years but the um in this circumstance the zba would be able if it wished to consider similar requirements on this plan yes um they could consider similar requirements it seems that um valley cdc is already offering a mix of units um they're offering units at 80 percent or less they're offering units at 50 percent or less and they're offering units at 30 percent or less and the town could request a different mix if it chose to if it had a reason to um i think valley cdc has given reasons why they think that particular mixture will work best in this situation and will give um people in the kind of workforce um strata of income um a place to live as well as giving people with very low income a place to live does that yes thank you not when you've been looking back and forth because i was members of my committee to feel so um kathy you had done some research into the question that we're that we're now at which is number four on the list taking it out of order any other town costs such as capital costs um are you able to summarize for the other members of the committee what you found uh yeah and and this is i had some finance uh directed questions and uh at the urging of john hornick and then the willingness of laura to respond i just sent them in and i expected quick verbal responses instead i got very nicely thoughtful essays coming back um but i was looking at out years going out 10 or 20 years on the margins on the project and whether the question was both uh it's a thin margin but if enough is being accumulated for things like the roof needs to be repaired the boiler breaks down so something that's not beyond mowing the lawn and maintenance and she sent back and we can post the responses and it's actually i was looking at an old older budget um so it was a revised budget there's an initial amount put into reserves it's quite substantial in each year there's more money being put into reserves and it's a fairly substantial amount of maintenance costs in the budget on the annual basis uh to keep up with the maintenance of the project so i think we could post all of those including a spreadsheet that does do a pro forma look out with a suppose expenses go up three percent a year and only revenues only go up two percent so it's almost a worst case scenario that you can't control it and it's solid out um it's not often that you see out 20 years on a look because my concern was that we would want to maintain the units to be the type of place people would want to live and not have deterioration and then worry about coming back because that for example one of the loans that CPA is paying off is for renovation of Ann Whalen you know so looking at that it's not just initially when you build it but in the out years and it looks to me like they have built in these costs so i just might add that we also i went over and took a tour of some of the equivalent units they're not quite the same because one was actually smaller than 240 square feet it was 200 and they're beautiful you know and so and they've been around for multiple years so what you can see is a real pride in the building and the grounds both of the people who are living there but also maintenance so that was my concern that we if we want good housing in Amherst we should build it well at the beginning and then the the project itself should have a built-in allowance for keeping it that way just a note that um i received those from Kathy yesterday i don't know if everything got loaded before last night's meeting but at the top of the agenda for last night at www.amherst.gov 3489 North Hampton Road project should be all of these documents and it would be i mean when you look at this the spreadsheet what i call the pro forma it was particularly instructive i thought because you can see how thin the margins are in out years but it's in part because every year an amount is being put aside and this includes the on-site person who's managing it but also the person who's coming in to help do services coordination so those costs are built into the rents and the calculation of what it will cost to operate this in out years so there is a committee yes one of the things that has come up and this actually does relate to town money although it's federal dollars that come to us and that is that the issue of social services and the town though we have a very small amount in our present budget for that we do have a pot called cdbg and we do provide that to social services around the town uh some of whom work with the homeless and other people who don't have it i'm not suggesting that that is a source of funds but i just want to point out that there are other ways in which social services are also provided in the town to various populations by our money as well as a lot of state money that's available for that as well putting that web together whether it's a single person or whether it's a variety of different people that's not the purview of this committee but it is an issue where a cost or an application could come to the town looking for the anybody else who want to take up anything right now on the issue that we're currently on which is other town costs such as capital costs what i'm going to do is we're going to try and go through the other two items have some discussion presentation of initial information and then i'm going to have a period of public comment so that anybody who has questions about topics that we've discussed has an opportunity to do so so i just wanted to assure you that i know you're there and uh but um as far as the second of the issues as we put on the list was what will be the annual repayment obligation which will reduce funds available for subsequent cpa processes how many years and how much for each year and sonia sent a response which i sent to the committee and i'm going to try and explain it real quickly to you give you the the actual numbers what this is about is and this is always a concern cpa is an important piece of funding because it enables us as a community to invest in public housing recreation in conservation in historic preservation and money we spend from that pot of money on one topic or item is then not available obviously for others that's what budgeting is all about and so that if we set aside an amount of money of this amount by borrowing then for that number of years that it requires to pay back that money is not available for other grant purposes for cpa in future years and so that is a direct financial consequence because it's affecting the cpa budget in future years as hasn't been noted this has been done previously it is a part of the state statute that allows this to be done we have some of the big projects that are about to be paid off but i want to the amounts it depends upon whether it's done as a 10-year or five-year bond and if it was done as a 10-year bond at a 4 interest rate in the first year and this is typical by the way of bonds that they the amount that is paid required for repayment declines over time in the first year on the 10-year bond the repayment total would be $70,000 in the last year it would be $52,000 and of course it would be declining over that 10-year period if it was done as a five-year bond the first year would be $120,000 and the last year would be $104,000 the total amount that would be repaid it's going to be lower on the quicker payback because the interest is less but it has a greater impact during those years that of payback if it's done as a shorter bond there's a greater impact on other cpa projects during that period of time so the five and ten-year question makes a difference i did send those numbers to the finance committee it has not been shared with other members of the council at least not yet we'll make sure it's posted but it will be so i didn't know if there were any questions from the council about that particular topic since it was a fairly straightforward question that came back with a fairly straightforward answer okay so then the last question that we said was that we had identified was the effect on operating budgets of town departments in particular public safety and we did hear a little bit from the police chief on this issue last night we did i did send a memo to the town manager who's on vacation this week so he's Mr. Zomek is here and instead he did not respond that he to the question do you foresee any significant expenses that we would need to consider i don't know if you're aware of anything that i'm afraid i don't have any additional information on that i'm i i do know that mr. bachelman has has spoken to both chiefs about the about the proposed development but i don't have any detail on those conversations okay shelly so i had mentioned yesterday about the research paper that looks at what are the savings and costs what are the costs of housing and providing housing to homeless people and then what are the savings with respect to emergency and other costs associated with people living without homes and that was six thousand dollars and then there's additional information on websites like the massachusetts housing and shelter alliance which document the savings per year as 27 thousands from massachusetts and the cost of housing per person is 15 000 so there's net savings of 12 000 to when we actually provide housing so we should definitely look into you know what are the savings when we take care of people the other thing i wanted to highlight was the cost of postponing the construction so you know there's a suggestion we need more time to think about it and so forth and i'm in no way saying this is the only thing we're going to do and at home we definitely need to look at how to improve the system this is not valley cdc not doing a good job this is a broken system overall that makes it so difficult and expensive for developers like valley cdc to provide this kind of housing and i would be very interested personally and commit to looking into that issue in the long run but for now i think we are very lucky to have someone like valley cdc and many of us have gone and looked at their projects in northampton and they are so well maintained and they are so thorough with with you know they have a really good reputation and so i would really like us to consider the cost of postponing and make you know keep that in our consideration the last thing which is personal to me but i'm just going to put it out there is what is the cost of human life we lost three people that in a year and a half and i don't know how we put a number two to that i really don't know where this issue fits but it's the issue of the property and the taxes it will pay could we have any information on that call somebody i'll call a friend you'll call a friend okay yeah um thank you we do have something that was placed in one of the answers the valley cdc gave that they had obtained that information from the town assessor who is i think um who is contacting to see if there's the answer to that question that we can get directly from the assessor right and i'm looking back both at the information kate sims had and the response from valley cdc unfortunately i haven't read it word for word so i'm still confused the bottom line is the property does pay taxes and that's that's a given and in the 20 if we do the 20 put up the spreadsheets they're showing the amount per year so over 20 year period it's a little over 600 000 so it's in the 21 000 plus per year is what's what's in the spreadsheet now and and actually it was looking at the having purchased the property they're paying taxes now on it yes laura laura is here so she can be more specific yeah um and for the uh please identify yourself just because we're going out on the amorce media and some people may not have been there last night who have forgotten me from last night i'm laura baker i work for the valley cdc um there are um an analysis done in the myriad materials that are there that compares the tax revenue that would be received where the property to continue at its present use pays about 5400 dollars a year in taxes now uh compared with the redeveloped use and i did talk with david burges we together looked at what we thought the value would be which is what's going to determine the future taxes so what would be the likely value of the property after development and from that we looked at the current tax rate and and put a number on it of 21 000 dollars um at today's tax rate so when we went out 10 years i think the difference the added revenue over the current use and the proposed use was around 178 000 and then over 20 years i think it was around 400 000 but those spreadsheets are available we trended them both at 3 percent so what we really looked at was what's the incremental increase in tax revenue because obviously it's going to be a more developed site um it's going to be a more valuable site and so it will it will generate more tax revenue um unlike the public housing authority which is typically tax exempt unlike i think the college field that we're next to which i believe is also tax exempt um this would be a a taxable property paying at the rate that the assessors value it at thank you sure yes what laura is still there okay so um we've been looking at and kathy's done detailed analysis of your budget and margins and yet the questions i've asked you about the budget you have not answered and i honestly thought from the email you sent me and a document you said to read about a possible service plan that i was not to disseminate which i have not i thought there was going to be a great surprise last night in which you are going to give some more details and which in cost relates to your budget of uh service coordinator and more follow-up service on the clients because as shallony said this is very important but our interest in doing this is really not just in housing people in cold weather but it's it's to do as one of the clients said last night to provide an opportunity for development and growth and and true independence and um i just don't know why you can't give us those details that you suggested that you were thinking about and working about because this process is outlined last night is going to go on forever and some of us have jobs and you know don't want to be at every meeting every hearing writing letters constantly posting there are other things that we have to do as people and as town counselors and as just citizens of the town so i'm just wondering why the delay yeah dorthy um before you answer i'm i'm going to turn this over to the council president this is where we're going beyond the finance committee considerations of financial issues that are pertaining to the town which is what we said that the purpose and the finance committee recommendations would be solely focused on that so i wanted to turn to the council president who's also a member of this committee so uh dorthy i i hear you loud and clear and these are the questions on many people's minds um and i'm certainly going to look to laura to add to this but i'm going to put on a long-term knowledge of social services that come from my own life okay no one individual can be served by one other individual if you are homeless you have somebody working with you about housing you have somebody helping you get food you have somebody helping you get health and you have somebody helping you get transportation and all of those very often and unfortunately are not the same services but what we're really looking at is there's somebody that's going to help make sure the person gets that service and that service is coordinated so my 10 years with the emmer survival center where we bring in all of those different services to meet with the over 50 people who are homeless that we serve they you know they get that but they don't get it from the same person so one of the reasons why and this really is beyond the finance committee but one of the reasons why earlier i was talking about cdbg money but yet not being specific about it paying for a single person is because for better or for worse that's not how services are provided in our society and i'm assuming that the eight homeless people who would be fortunate enough to land in this home in this apartment complex the studio apartment complex would already be coming with a cadre of services that have been helping them get to that point and there is nothing more rewarding than seeing someone who's gone through that and now has a job and they can even move out but it didn't get there by one person it got there by a village but turning back to the finance issues which as i'm going to go back we actually do have um i i think a fifth question that came up and i think it's a valid question and i'm you know just say kind of respond to it a little bit myself for with an analogy and then see if you have anything you want to add but it was labeled as cost of postponement that if the thought was has been made by suggestions of several citizens that we not vote on this proposal now but put it off so that we have more time to work on um refining the proposal that there's actually a cost to postponement and i've had this experience in a very unfortunate way in my select board role that we had a 67 million dollar school proposal and at town meeting when town meeting was considering whether to authorize the bonds i made a what i thought was a forceful statement to town meeting as a financial person on the select board estimating 13 million dollars is a minimum additional cost if we postpone the project and lo and behold i was unfortunately correct because the number now is 80 million dollars so my 13 million dollars projection was actually real so i kind of feel like it's actually a valid issue and i don't know if you have any comments from that is to what the consequence of postponement would be am i still on i am still on so we've been seeing uh pretty radical uh cost inflation construction it's been particularly bad this year because of trade and tariff and things like that so you know we look at five to eight percent a year inflation for construction costs so that's a significant number when you're looking at our construction budget alone um because we kind of went out on a limb and bought this property um in response to the really competitive nature of the emmer's housing market um we have carrying costs associated with the property um and so we're probably looking 50 or 60 thousand a year just you know debt service taxes maintenance lawn care i mean all the usual things that go on um and so that's an issue for the project as well so there's just normal escalation that would happen with any capital project um that we would experience and affordable housing is very challenging to finance um to put all the different sources together and so every time the source size side goes up and typically the state does not increase its caps year to year in spite of the escalating construction costs so the squeeze um gets worse year to year so yeah we see that as a real a real concern thank you and just for um the added information for the committee uh you mentioned percentage increases in construction costs over time as being a factor in the calculation of this nature when i did that calculation before the town meeting um presentation that i referred to i'd used a seven percent figure which is within the range that you talked about i just had to pick a number um um so are there any other council or our committee um questions about anything that we've now talked about including the fifth issue which we've identified unfortunately david's not here and i think we actually we did get some information from laura when you were um because she had had conversations with david and gave us the details of those conversations which actually i think um were before us in other information that is on the website since some of the documentation so um anything else from the committee right now and if not i'm going to see if there's public questions or comments um but i want to give yes shall we i just want to share one thing that um that came up for me yesterday at the meeting and um it's been a huge learning process for me meeting with the residents and valley cdc people and just reading up about it and just as an example i think what blew me away is the interconnectedness of all of this we're looking at it in bits and pieces all these different pieces of information but just to see the interconnectedness of all the players and people and how it's impacting so many more people than we know just as an example the we everything is recorded here by ms media which is provided free i believe to the town people it's such an important resource for us so they are able to do their job with interns who are not paid for it but they get you know they get experience those interns are not paid and they're putting in time for all of us and those interns are the kind of people who would be living in an apartment like this like the gentleman yesterday who was recording us still 11 at night he was there he doesn't get paid for it but he would probably be one of the people who would live in be able to live in amherst in a town in an apartment like this so that's just seeing how all of these pieces are connected how you know as pamela said yesterday takes a village to build a healthy community i think we really should keep that it really might all of us to keep that in mind so appreciate comments anything else from the committee if not so anybody from the public would like to be recognized at this point so let's start again stay with same order mr. hornyk first and then sims and then see what if there are others is that john hornyk again amherst musical affordable housing trust thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak and my comments really do come from the trust not just from myself i want to discuss briefly the role of this committee in the larger town council last night we heard a number of people who opposed this project and believe the town council should examine every aspect of it before deciding upon the cpa recommendation as you all undoubtedly know there are at least two very important groups that are charged with the responsibility for review of this and other affordable housing projects the town zoning board of appeal and the commonwealth's department of housing and community development for those of us who stayed into the fourth hour last night uh we learned that both of these groups routinely examine this type of proposal with a fine tooth cone if i recall correctly christine breastrift the town planning director said the zba had attached 150 conditions uh to their approval of the north square development by beacon communities peter jessup for many years a local developer spoke about being put through the ringer by zba for building project after building project that he proposed tom gagelman the chief executive officer of home city housing a not-for-profit housing developer based in springfield uh told us that dhcd looks uh requires an extensive application and looks in at the in detail at the budget and financing plans for each project it reviews as well as the management plan before deciding whether to approve a proposal and they are not well approved especially on initial application it is my understanding that if a developer and this was confirmed earlier fails to receive either a permit from zba or funding from dhcd the promised $500,000 permit uh from cpa is canceled the town is no longer obligated to pay now i'm not going to tell you that you cannot choose to do this level of review instead of entrusting it to others who are responsible for it it is up to you after all to decide what specific tasks you wish to take on but i do suggest uh that having this finance committee or the larger town council take on these detailed reviews is probably not sustainable because i am before the town finance committee i will turn my attention to the matter before you the cpa recommendation looking at the criteria by which cpa applications should be judged i believe one that this is an appropriate use of cpa funds under the category of community housing one of the four categories permitted amish has been using cpa funds to support a wide range of local housing projects over the past decade this fits there is a community need for this type of housing there is documented need for housing to serve low-income individuals in the 2013 housing production plan as well as other documents new affordable housing production both past and planned has largely targeted the needs of families the proposed amount as well within the resources available to cpa as mr. aldrich pointed out and cpa has not succeeded its fiscal authority in making this recommendation they have used this bonding authority in the past there's nothing new and they have a dedicated annual revenue stream from state and town funds to pay off these loans and to this i will add a fourth point cpa funding is expected to leverage state funds particularly from the department of housing community development in amounts that far exceed the town's commitment dhcd just released a special notice of funding availability for small projects like this that is proposed here like the one that is proposed here this does not occur on a predictable schedule and the timeline for responding is short therefore it is essential that the project be shovel ready when opportunity knocks i urge you to advise the full council to approve this recommendation without delay thank you for your attention thank you and i i appreciate the comments and i do remind you that we will and to the extent that some of the topics went a little bit beyond finance as i hope you were there's an opportunity to share them in other places but we are going to limit our recommendations on what we determined to be purely financial matters mrs. thank you thanks very much so this is a very expensive project for the town and shallony just mentioned the need for good information to be out there which i completely agree with at this point neighbors have made a series of arguments and tried to highlight the the key role of information i don't have any problem if you the council or voters in general do not find those arguments compelling but to be honest i think what what neighbors have a really hard time with is that it feels like a lot of the information isn't seeing the light of day while a lot of the information that valley cdc has carefully prepared is listed front and center on the town's website my ask is that the materials carefully prepared by neighbors um to valley cdc's information including the detailed letter that i prepared responding to valley cdc's may 21st letter to the finance committee be posted with equal clarity and status on the website so currently valley cdc's information appears as separate easily clickable documents everything that neighbors has sent which right now i think only includes until last friday or something is buried in a gigantic pdf document that makes it very hard for the public to actually see that information so my question and the document that i prepared contains detailed links to lots of other town documents that will be completely lost if it's posted as a pdf if it's posted as a word those links come through people can really see that other information um so my my main question is you know when could we expect that these would be posted by whose responsibility is it to post these documents um and uh you know i again i think there's some key information in there so for instance we just talked about tax revenue and what the town invests the town is investing 750 000 the net change in tax revenue is 418 000 those numbers when subtracted show that the town is putting in more than 300 000 that's an important piece of information whether or not it's compelling or not um it does suggest what the town is putting into this um finally i guess i would just so i would just say that um that there's also a human cost to wasteful spending more people can be helped if we do things in a cost effective fashion and i don't quite understand why valley cdc hasn't rented this house out so that people can live there while this project is being developed um and i don't quite understand why we're not interested in in seeking a more cost effective proposal overall but again the the main problem i think that neighbors have at this point is with process we've really just been asking for a reboot of this process so that neighbors are involved in the planning process from the start instead of it feeling as if uh you know a lot of things are happening that a neighborhood didn't get to weigh in on um so could i just ask for the questions to be answered about when could those documents be posted by can all of the power point presentations and that letter be put as separate clickable documents on the town website and whose responsibility is that and when might that happen by thank you very much yes i'm more than glad to respond we began working on making sure all of those documents were pulled at the time and they caught up as of friday okay so i will go back with the people in town who are employees of the town who are working on that and to those to the extent that we can pull out individual documents that have links in them such as yours as i received additional documents yesterday i must have forwarded 20 emails and said please put these on the website uh it's trying to make sure where is up to date as possible um but it is town employees but i have been working closely with those town employees and asking that it be done and they have been working on it very hard when should we check back by i guess is the question i i will check in this morning after the meeting's done early this afternoon and see where we stand on that the the power points from last night that were presented by neighbors were not provided into last evening which i understood was going to be the case and is acceptable um those what now we will post them on that web page whether we also post them as documents that were part of the meeting i will check on that as well okay yes go ahead can i ask a clarifying question so what i'm hearing you say is that there are a lot of questions being posed by residents and information shared i get one part of it which is the information shared and it needs to be posted so that everyone can see i get that but what i also would you say is that you're asking all these questions and you're not receiving responses to am i right in that or no no i i actually feel like laura has done a very nice job in answering questions i think the concern is that the town website currently contains material prepared by an outside organization that is posted by the town in an easily accessible fashion and it does not do the same for the neighbors and the butters all of that information is okay into a huge document and and let me just say one of the things that actually took place during the initial exchange with residents is some residents were not aware that the moment they wrote town council that document was public we've now included on our website as well as the town manager's website that all documents sent to us are in fact public um there if you want to live a private life don't be a town counselor uh so um the so we're we're working on that as well and helping people understand that i've actually seen your document and you've had a very rich and full exchange with laura i think your questions have been excellent i think laura and her staff have provided good responses it's worth making sure it's posted thank you okay committee of other let me just say there are other members of the public i now see strategy good morning my name is tim adridge i live at 143 north hampton road and i i come to the podium to ask for a little bit of clarification and to make a statement the clarification is that the cpa was adopted by the town meeting i believe back in 1999 or 2000 and the purpose of that was to allow taxpayer funds to be used on specific items low income housing being one of them uh if i if i'm not mistaken it was 1.5 percent and then around 2005 2006 it was raised to 3 percent still the same purpose was to spend taxpayer money on specific items and when i see that the cpa has recommended five hundred thousand dollars for the development of the vc dc property at 132 north hampton road and asking the town to borrow five hundred thousand dollars it's it says to me that the cpa funds are not sufficient in what they have in escrow to fund this project so they want the town of amherst to borrow five hundred thousand dollars to help them do that well i believe that was the town voters that said we are accepting this so that the tax monies that are raised can only be used and if we allow the selectable i mean the town council or the finance committee to okay this it allows the vc dc to have or any entity that is using cpa c funds to have two bytes at the apple in other words that town meeting members said that we want this these funds available to do certain things but the vc dc are the housing advocates are the low-income housing advocates in the town say we want to do this now so therefore we are going to use taxpayer money that is not from the vc dc or pardon me not from the cpa c and i have a real strong objection to that because it's just a way of doing something with the cpa c funds when they don't have the appropriate amount of funds to do what they want to do i'm going to come explain you a second to respond to this a little bit too but it's what i was explaining before is that when we borrow money that is for cpa purposes the repayment is from the community preservation act funds so no other town funds are being used to support the borrowing and it is a determination that the project fits within the purposes of the cpa and is being repaid from cpa because it allows us to do that now the first time that i recall us doing that is this town and as i pointed out it was in the state statute was with the plumbrook athletic fields down on pot wine lane and we could not have afforded to do that work without borrowing the funds that were required to be borrowed but the repayment was entirely from the community preservation act budget and as anthony or sonia whether there are circumstances where there have been cpa proposals that were not town projects that was a town project of course there were not town projects that involved borrowing before we've done a lot for conservation land purchases roll in green roll in green yep well let me ask this question then the cpac i understand the cpac is going to repay the loan or pay back the loan and this is just more or less an advance on what they're going to pay back in the future however does that cover all the cost incurred through the debt of the borrowing in other words cpac will pay back instead of the 500 thousand whatever interest on top of that loan is yes yes and we can post the statistics that andy cited but in that whether it's a five year or 10 year right was how much interest each year so the total cost and it's all drawing on the cpa funds okay yeah nothing to add i think you covered it okay cpa is a very complicated state level and when you buy in you buy into all the stuff that comes from the state so that's just to be kept in mind when the town decided to do that we said we're willing to abide by whatever the state says cpa does yeah the example it was given for just for this actually for the committee's benefit too is that when we when i was asking the question of a reminder of when we have borrowed funds from cpa that were not for a town purpose like plumb brook or the repair of town hall and the answer of course dave son you reminded me is rolling green when we assisted with preserving affordability for rolling green apartments because it was to be sold to a private developer that would have taken it out of subsidized unit requirements that had been imposed at the time that it was built it was it was called expiring use and the arrangement that was made was that the town would assist in the purchase of it and so but it was beacon that was which is the same organization that is doing the north square that we worked with in north square so there is precedent yes tim the analogy that i was making is is that you have a set number of funds to use on certain items and you want to for example you want to buy a new car your your car's getting worn out you need a new one you don't have the funds to do it so you borrow you borrow that you borrow those funds and somehow find a way to repay them back i don't see how cpa funds can be stored up and and borrowed against for future for for immediate projects and pay it back in the future i thought that cpa funds were to be used on those items and if you don't have them you wait until that money builds up no that's not what the state statute says state state law is very clear that the kind of borrowing that is being requested is a standard part of the community preservation act choices that a community has that it can borrow money and pay it back from future cpa funds it does have a consequence i did identify that at the earlier on when i was giving the the payback amounts because it has a real consequence a financial consequence and one that i think that the committee needs to both consider itself and making its recommendation and will point out in its report to the council i view the report to the council is both informative about our discussion as well as our recommendation it will any money that is being paid back during the time of payback is then not available during those future years so that when future cpa committees are making decisions they will be making decisions on a slightly lower amount of money for the proposals that are coming in in each of those subsequent years if the because the first chunk of money would then have to be used for repayment and that's about all i can say on it well thank you for the clarification yeah um i guess that that's all i have to say thank you very much miss faker did you have anything you wanted to add please hi just a few financial items that i've heard people talk about that i wanted to quickly respond to um regarding the fees that valley will earn as part of this project you'll see them broken into overhead and developers fee the developers fee is about half of the earnings in there it's at risk money so it doesn't get paid till the very end of the project if we have cost overruns in the project which is very possible that fee would get used to pay those the state reviews all of the budgets for these projects they have standards that they look for they also have a cap on the fees that developers can earn and we are below that cap that they set the management fee that's earned during the course of operations is an actual cost of the project we have to pay people to manage it it is not retained by valley cdc it's paid to hmr to do their job to manage the property typically the cash flow if there is any when you when you get the income and you pay the expenses and there's a little bit of money at the end typically it stays with the project because it's not enough to suck off and we want it there as a as a cushion the comment about renting the house is something that we are definitely looking into the house has condition issues including lead paint that we need to consider as a landlord we also if we're using public money contemplating public money in the future and we have a tenant that we place in that house we owe relocation potentially relocation benefits to that tenant so it's a little bit of a complicated math problem about whether it's worth renting it given all those other costs that we would incur to rent it but it's definitely something that we will we are looking at I was struck last night when the police chief said that 12 percent of their calls are related to homeless persons and looking at their approximately 5.2 million dollar budget and thinking about what that means in financial terms for the police department to be responding to that number of calls it seems to me you wouldn't have to do much to increase that one or two percent to have a big impact on public safety costs for the town I was very surprised when he gave that number last night thank you come to the microphone now I'm sorry just just want to point out that there is also a 10 percent contingency for soft costs and a 10 contingency for hard costs in their budget and I'm confused about the management fee that she just mentioned because there are separate line items in their budget for staffing and for all of the property maintenance so and it certainly looks like the 7 percent management fee is overhead so I'm just genuinely confused about that thank you we do as is typical carry contingencies for construction and for soft costs especially early in planning because our numbers are not well defined we have to go out and really reality test them in an escalating cost situation such as we talked about before it is not at all uncommon to go through those contingencies and then some and that's where the developer fee would kind of backstop those assumptions the management fee 7 percent is paid to the property manager it is their staffing cost so it's distinct from maintenance someone who might be fixing a screen or mowing the grass it's we do a lot of compliance work we have to document people's incomes we have a lot of fair housing requirements we have agencies come out several times a year to view the property we have paperwork associated with the project vouchers that we're using so there's a whole set of tasks specific to managing the kind of paperwork and tenant side of the property and that's what that 7 percent management fee goes for there's an asset management fee of $1500 a year that if we are able to earn it would come to Valley CDC for the job of general oversight of all the vendors for the property as well as oversight of the asset itself so we do the capital planning looking at long-term capital replacement your needs for the for the project it's definitely not a winner for us we put much more time in than $1500 a year in terms of oversight for the properties just to follow I assume some of those marks are part of what's required by the state in terms of contingency fees etc they they absolutely will be nervous if we don't come in and certain levels of contingency it will be a problem for us so with the construction if you don't have you know typically you want 10% if you don't have at least 5% your funders will get very skittish right I'm having overseen and raised money for one construction project and overseen two you've got to have your contingency fees etc especially working on a rehab of an existing property because you run into things that you didn't know during the course of construction thank you okay so I want to move this along if I can unless there's any other public comments the committee needs to decide whether it is ready to make a recommendation and I want to again go back to the question that I started very early on what we said for all other community preservation act proposals that were presented to us earlier in the this year's process the statement we made to the town council was that the committee considered whether each proposed project is sound financially responsible consistent with the purposes of the community preservation act and raised any other legal questions and we also recognize that there may be other factors that the town council may consider is compelling reasons to either fund or not fund a particular project but our recommendation was based on that first sentence are there other considerations that this committee would like to add or are we making recommendation based upon the same criteria as for the other proposals committee I I think it's the same but as you we listed at the very beginning we're doing both current and longer term so I think we have addressed those so it's not just at this moment you know a few of the other proposals were clearly just a cash outlay for right now so yes I think that's a good statement so what I would propose subject to a motion from the committee is that if the committee makes it wishes to recommend that that be the motion the basis of the motion to recommend and that the report to the council summarize the five issues that we have now discussed and the information that we developed and what we heard from the community so that our the information that we've gained is shared with the full council in a similar fashion to what we've done with other finance committee reports so that would be my recommendation and I will as I have in the past if that is what the agreement of the committee is is work with Kathy as vice chair to produce that report on behalf of the committee so if there's committee agreement to the general process then what we would need is a motion and I would not going to offer it but it would be a motion to recommend the project based upon the criteria of consideration from used from the prior report and recommendations so if there's a motion I will take it okay so the motion has been made by shallownee in the second second is by Lynn um discussing the motion for quite a while so I don't know if we need further discussion is there any just a quick comment if you see me run from the room it's because I have a class because I do have one thing that I will do try to do real quickly afterwards uh and then we'll have to schedule the next meeting um but I think we can go ahead and vote um all in favor of the motion on the floor indicate by saying aye and raising hands aye so it's a unanimous five zero vote um I had the the item that was um postponed for discussion um I met with the um I'm trying to see if I can find my notes on it right now I'm I met with the okah regarding the um resident members of the committee and um the okah uh yesterday and there's um some members of okah present if they wish to participate they're certainly welcome to but um okah postponed um action on um in discussion of the initial um recommendations and um for a future meeting but one of the things that came up during the conversation was is that um there were a number of people and I don't have an exact number um but they would have been people who would have been given active consideration in their process but that um when they found that we have our meetings during the day they had to withdraw because they conflicted with their own personal schedules and um so it raised a series of questions one is it put us on notice that um we were being um the the our time of day for the meetings was affecting what um the ability of some people who might otherwise have been interested in doing that participating as resident members of this committee and so one question was whether we would with that information revisit the issue the second issue was um just generally whether we still feel that it's appropriate to have uh resident members of the committee any change in that would of course have to go back to the full council that's um was an identified issue but it's not an okay issue um and um there was the final question that is to whether we have in any way um based upon our most recent experiences changed our view on what the criteria would be for who would be a resident member of the committee knowing that we have the time we've gone beyond our time limit and that um Dorothy has to leave I wanted to at least share that with you I did um explain to okay yesterday that um we were limited in time today because we knew we would be working hard on dealing with the percent for arts question but I so we may need to schedule another meeting but I wanted to alert you to that and um I uh and get your feelings about when we can get back to the next meeting um and Evan was selected as the new chair congratulations and I don't know if Evan is the new chair of OCA or any of the other OCA members would like to add to what I just said well I just um the time of day we we initially picked the time of day because of uh to accommodate some people among the five of us who couldn't work evening hours and also to make it easier for staff to be here without putting so I don't think it's a fix but clearly that's one we've been meeting so the question I think that came up is some people withdrew because of that time of day and if we're flexible I think we should make that decision now because we're going to be reopening the interview process I assume you know asking people who withdrew to say if we met a different time and my understanding it was a daytime problem as opposed to if we met in the morning versus the afternoon um late so it would we reopen it and the interviews interviews would have to happen with people who withdrew um so we don't even know who would be in the queue so that seems like a if if we would be willing to do that it seems like we should make that decision now because it's it sets a whole nother thing in motion um because I think there were qualified applicants who were willing to serve during the day so it's not that we didn't have applicants for uh these positions yeah um I believe that is correct and I want to make it clear that I did not ask the committee and the uh and therefore the committee didn't have to answer the question as to who withdrew um it was the just based on the statement that there were qualified applicants who withdrew I don't know who they were yes um I know that my husband said that looking around he's last night he said how much money is being spent on overtime for all of the town people at the meeting last night and um I've got to imagine it was quite a bit I do think we want to stick to daytime meeting we have found town workers staff extremely helpful to us in our work and um you know I did set my teaching schedule to be Tuesday Thursday again but um you know 2 30 or 2 2 30 would be fine I think there's a problem with adding another night time meeting every Monday we have to keep open for um possible town council and then there are all these other hearings and meetings that if we went to them we would never ever be home for dinner um just a couple pieces of information in response um one is that uh the former finance committee um regularly met as an evening meeting as to many town meetings town boards and committees planning board zoning board of appeals are all tend to be evening meetings um matter of fact I think that virtually all of the meetings that I when I was uh lay us on the select board were evening meetings um staff um who attend meetings um it's not um they're usually it's not an overtime it's a um compensatory time so they do uh it it does affect their work hours but it's not an overtime issue and uh so yes Shalini and then I'll I see Alyssa's hand up most of my classes are in the evening and I normally just teach twice a week but just limits my opportunities to teach in the evening if you have another evening meeting because we already have Monday and then we have some other meetings and then um a district yeah we have district meetings in the evening so two days are already out for me out of the four and then if you have this this will be the third meeting and then I can't uh so um let me pause this for a second uh Dorothy has had to leave and she advised us that she has a class schedule that she had to attend Alyssa but please please use the microphone we are actually being recorded by Amherst media I'm sorry thank you Andy and thank you for pointing out that the finance committee for decades has met at night with staff present sometimes when they're needed and other times not I think the other thing we're overlooking when we're saying that all most of the council committee meetings which is where much of the council committee work is being done is being done during the day which is awfully convenient for some of the counselors right now but it's not particularly convenient for the public and we're hearing that input on a regular basis because people with there actually are people with nine to five jobs in Amherst and they can't ever watch it live that doesn't mean that we don't have incredibly complicated schedules to work around so one of the things that we tried to make clear yesterday at our OKA meeting was that we were not in fact expecting you to change your meeting time if this is what you had to do because it's what you had to do just like we would not if we had a super amazing planning board candidate come in and they said yeah but you know I really can't ever do Wednesdays we'd say well sorry because that's when planning board meets and so they're always going to be those push pull things what was unclear is whether or not the schedule might be changing at some point in the future or if there was if there was more flexibility available then had been expressed to people because they were given a handout prepared by the finance committee that said the meetings were at such and such time so they took themselves out of the mix just like you would if you were applying for planning board and you couldn't and you taught on a Wednesday night so that's all we were trying to be clear on and there's no indication at this point that we're reopening interviews so that's not a discussion we've had yet and so if any input you have as to how we can explain this more thoroughly to candidates in the future whether or not it impacts this particular pool would be great and the other question we had asked was given the period of time that has lapsed because we all knew that we had a lot of other priorities and things we absolutely had to get done under the charter that we delayed appointing these non-voting resident if there had been any change over this time period now that you've been through so much of the budget cycle as to what you were looking for in those candidates as opposed to what we all imagined was true back in February if we need to do additional work on those candidates but things are in flux right now. So, Lynn? I personally would like us as a finance committee to go back and look at our charge. I also understand at some point there was a discussion about terms and staggering versus what it said so I really feel that we should go back and have a more full conversation about this before OCA continues with this nomination. Okay, I just want to you know for the record this wasn't a discussion we had last December or January we talked about criteria and bringing non-voting people on in April and we came back and revised the charge to go from four to three when we decided a size and we had a pretty long discussion including whether we would be doing the interviewing or whether OCA would be doing the interviewing and listed the kinds of people backgrounds including experience outside Amherst not just inside Amherst so we did we didn't have a short discussion and it wasn't in the ancient past it was having worked together for five months and thinking what could do enrichment so the notion that we're going to go back to everything to me would be that we somehow didn't get a good mix of people applying for this and we're short so if that's what's driving this I'd like to understand I don't mind having another conversation about I'm just saying that we had we spent time in the rules committee then we spent time in the finance committee then we spent time in the council so this was not a you know so I just want to understand what the origin is on reopening Lynn the overall charge because on staggering I was the one who talked about three-year terms staggering you know bringing them on a different and the larger group didn't want to do that so we went to two-year terms you know so I know where what why I was thinking of continuity past the time that we were on so the reopening seems to be coming from OCA rather than we considered but in other words yeah so so I can hopefully fill some of this so where where this is coming from so OCA had chosen a designee about a month ago that designee has performed the interviews and put forth some recommended appointees we began discussion of them at our OCA meeting yesterday one of the things that we were looking at then is how we're there was a discussion in OCA about how we're evaluating these designees the intention we've always seen was that the whole point and not these designees these recommended appointees the understanding was that the the intent of the charter commission had been to appoint non voting resident members of the finance committee to bring expertise to the finance committee should elected counselors not have that expertise the thought was now that the finance committee has already gone through a budget cycle and has gained some expertise in this is that still what finance committee feels they need the alternative perspective that was put forth by one member of OCA was that perhaps the role of these non voting resident members would be to bring perspectives are asked to do questions which would be a very different role than the one put out and so I think this was not having to do with any paucity in the pool we had actually a fairly rich pool of candidates as you've seen since all the counselors have the CAS it was just having now gone through a full budget cycle as as a finance committee do you still feel as if what was put forward and the role of those non voting resident members is to bring expertise as opposed to something else so that was sort of that that was the origin of that conversation with regard to the timing thing I don't think that OCA necessarily has any intention of reopening the interviews there's a lot the OCA process has been discussed ad nauseam right on the council and so we are we're well aware of some of the shortcomings one of which is that with the exception of the OCA designee us on OCA aren't even aware who withdrew based on the time or whether those those withdrawals came prior to or during an interview some people I know in my experience in doing interviews for a rank choice voting someone withdrew during the interview themselves and so we don't we don't have that information where this conversation came from and I can speak for myself because I as Andy can attest was one of the main people making an issue out of this was my memory which is memory and the minutes don't accurately capture this was that when we met with some representatives of the finance committee back in early May about this whole process I asked a question about whether or not an individual's ability to meet between two and four p.m. was a minimum requirement so are we disqualifying people and my memory was it's our strong preference but if there's a really great candidate what happened was anyone who couldn't meet during that time was not considered and so the question became does finance committee intend to hold that meeting time going forward planning boards been in existence for a long time right so you never you wouldn't ask plane board to change their meeting time but if finance committee envisions that two to four p.m. is its meeting time for the next two years right which is the the term that were that were recommended then that's important that is a minimum qualification but if there's any suggestion that finance committee might be altering those times such as they did today or perhaps if there's a these appointments are one year right if there's a new finance committee new members appointed in January by the president and the times change well all of a sudden we used a minimum requirement of the ability to meet that time for a time that in the end is flexible so the question we had for finance committee was is that the time going forward for the next two years it's two to four p.m. or is there some flexibility and if there is some flexibility you know do you as the finance committee should feel like we should have been disqualifying people based on that I know that you don't have time to fully talk about this today you're out of time that said as chair vocal I would like some guidance from finance because we are scheduled to meet on Monday July 1st for what will be our third meeting on the recommended appointees as non-voting resident members of the finance committee and so if there is a feeling among the finance committee that you do not want us to proceed until you've had this conversation that will impact the agenda that I've been writing in the back of the room today so I'd love a little bit of feedback on that I think that we're in an awkward position because the earliest we could find a schedule an additional meeting if we needed one and we that's are going to be our last item would be actually at the same time that you're meeting which would be during the daytime on the first July Monday July 1st yes I think that was the earliest we came up with is a possible date we don't know that we're going to need to use it now because we've now completed our work on what was the most time sensitive issue that we were dealing with back to the committee you're telling me I personally really difficult for me because I hate to make everyone change because of me but I really have only four days and I'm just doing it's very simple calculation they're like two meetings that two days in the evening that are already committed to town council because of the district meeting and our Monday meetings town council so and I need two days teaching in the so I don't know how other than I can quit the finance committee yeah I think that the the other question that was being posed was not just that but also morning meetings on a regular basis morning is fine and yeah you know I'm the most flexible of all of us but we literally mirrored the handout that was done on planning so if the if the question is daytime hours versus evening hours I mean certainly if there were people that would could have met in the morning versus the afternoon that's a different question so yes I personally I'm fine if we move to an evening I personally would prefer it be early or even a late afternoon I like many other people enjoy being home occasionally I enjoy being home anytime but occasionally I get home but I do and I do want to make the role of the council feel like it's doable by anybody who feels they can run and serve so I just wanted to say that personally I'm just trying to figure out whether or not we're going to be able to give Evan and the committee a full set of responses because it seems to me we have three questions on the table one is when we're meeting another is do we even want these people added to our committee and the third one is the issue of terms so I that's more discussion than yeah as far as the time in meeting let me I'll just make my own comment real quick on that I mean I think that I would be fine with morning meetings and if that was and I think that we probably do have the ability to make that shift if we recognize that there was valid reason to do so my recollection Dorothy unfortunately had to go is that she that her general teaching schedule is two afternoons a week and that we were working around the afternoons the mornings was not an inhibitor for her and I think that we were just so that there was no magic to the time of the day that we chose my other general comment is I think the council hopefully was going to figure out how to have fewer meetings of committees because our schedule is getting to the point where it's going to discourage a lot of people from being able to run for the council in the future and if we really want to make the council available to the community at large then we have to make sure that it's a doable job but I think that's a separate issue that's going to have to work its way out before the end of the third year it's not one that we're going to solve for this particular purpose that the Oakland needs to finish this process one way or another so I think that I just want to say one more thing on the Evan is raising that now that we've become amazing experts do we need the extra expertise and I think my answer would be a solid yes so I don't know what else you've heard but you know a I don't think you can count on me um I'll just talk about I can't I don't think you can always count on the richness of who you have on the current finance committee in terms of backgrounds and expertise and the whole goal of this is to make um the as I said I think the charter was right you can't count on that so you don't know who will be on finance we're only appointed for one year terms and to the extent the intense meeting has some people drop off and someone else say I'm going to give it a try we could have rotation coming through a which is very healthy I think I would encourage counselors to go through the you know being staring at the budget so you can instantly say how much do we spend every year and how much does it you know I've got the memorized at this point um but but I think that's a healthy thing because we should need to know that so this brings us a continuity and I also think to the extent we get people who aren't just Amherst council or Amherst finance committee that they've had some experience beyond the town or beyond just a finance committee it's a new set of eyes that asks questions um I noticed counselors who weren't on finance you being one of them had very detailed questions on the budget um because you hadn't had to sit through all the hours but a group that's just focused on this I think is extremely healthy so I would not reopen that question if two years from now we find you know eight people is just too much or we can't find anyone who wants to be on finance who's not a counselor then I think we could revisit that we're not getting thoughtful creative people willing to spend the time but I think it's very healthy to do what the charter envisioned they said may but I think it's a good thing um thank you that feedback is helpful yeah I mean the other thing in this is a piece that I think that probably the council needs to talk about more broadly than just the committee is the gets back again to what the role of the committee is um and uh the former finance committee had a very different role because the budget was being presented by the finance committee to the town meeting now the budget is presented by the town manager to the town meeting and we are just providing advice so um it is a little bit of a different role in how that factors out I'm not going to get into because I could get into a 15-minute philosophical discussion but uh we are um in a new territory and I think that you know when I suggested that I would want to have conversations with people who are being proposed not to screen them out but just to make sure that they're comfortable with the fit is that I think the finance committee somebody who served on the finance committee actually has to understand the difference in the process that's what I was really getting at yesterday and but unless so what I think that we're at is is that there would be a willingness to consider a time of day change there's not a willingness right now um or an ability to change to evening meetings and at this point we may be too late in the process to suggest that going back to people would be a change uh be an appropriate thing to do and I mean that going back to candidates who was true because of the time of day issue especially you know if you found out that it was daytime was the problem you know that it doesn't matter whether it's 10 o'clock in the morning or two o'clock in the afternoon that was the challenge you know so I I and since I have no idea yeah somebody knows so I'm confused though at what are the terms that people are being appointed for two years I think it was uh okas though as of yesterday was a maximum of two years there had been no conversation yet of staggering and we had not assigned terms to any individuals of course this is okas recommendation and what does our charge say the finance committee charges two years two years right okay and it was because I lost the argument on staggering and I lost the argument no longer yep one of the possibilities for us to consider is that you proceed and we try it out and after the two-year term is up before our terms are up we make a recommendation back to the council whether we think this should be continued or not that's an option I'm not making a motion and we probably left it open that in theory some could be one year and some could be two year we said you know it it I was told that we didn't have to put staggering into the charge the way we did it but we could make that decision they're just not three years is no longer a possibility because we went to two was I mean we could go back to the record Mandy was saying well maybe you could even do I didn't understand how we could do three if we said two but in any case so we in a position to take formal action here because we really are just providing guidance at this point and that may be the best we can do right now and this guidance has been very useful for for us to take back to Oka I think one of the guidance you're hearing is to the extent it was the afternoon hours versus morning hours that was a problem if someone would throw just on the basis of that and you're willing to do one or two more interviews I mean I don't know whether we're talking we lost one person or we lost three people or you know what happened that that would be it in terms of we we already expressed you know a diversity of experiences coming on and laid out in verbally and also in writing what the kinds of experiences and or expertise or thought processes that would be useful thank you so anything else to add on that I don't think so yeah yes I think we have what we need okay thank you thank you very much um the percent for arts discussion we obviously did not get to today and I'm not even going to start down that path but we will need to as the next step identify the issues that we need to consider we do have a little bit more time there because I think the council vote was that we they wanted us to report back in 45 days so we still have time to work on that and the other question that was up there was the decision making process for the large building projects those two items need to be put off for our next meeting we could schedule a meeting earlier than we had originally planned for our next meeting but I think those are the two items I don't think there are there any budget updates on you so there are no budget updates in public comment I don't know if there's additional public comment but really was did public comment previously on the major item of the day so I think that our major task left is just quite frankly scheduling the next meeting so that we can adjourn and I'm trying to look back and make sure that I have the date of the next finance committee meeting as of right now July 23rd I think yeah that's what I had July 23rd also do we know that Sean can be available that day since yes Sean is I believe was prepared to be available that day okay and when I emailed him and told him it was not worth his spending time he was welcome to be here but we didn't need him here he said he'd use the time to work on refining the analytical tool which I said is fine so can we postpone all these items till the 23rd and knowing that that puts prior do we want to schedule an earlier meeting in order to get percent for arts going just looking at my calendar if you want earlier I could do the ninth I cannot do the 16th I'm on a river my river yeah you know so I you know it's a question I guess we don't have to if we move forward with the the non-resident appointments by that time they would be joining us for the first time on the 23rd correct possibly yeah possibly um the actually they have to go forward to the town council that means they have worked on July 1st right and our next meeting of the council is not till the 22nd so it's really whether or not they'd come forward on the 22nd and be available on the 23rd right so that's when they might be but it's not for sure yeah right I I'm not available on July 9th okay so let's leave it for the 23rd it's the next meeting it's funny and so I think that at that point we have the plan that I will start working on the report with Kathy and for the topic of the topic of the day and I think we're otherwise somebody wanted to move okay and can I just check on my calendar on the 23rd it's back to the 2 o'clock slot that's what I have on my schedule that's what I have in mind so I that's what I'm holding so I I'm I can do morning also okay okay so is there anything else or somebody want to make a motion to adjourn second and all in favor yeah so four to zero one members now absent thank you very much Amherst media we appear to appreciate your recording this meeting I think it was an important one to make available to the public and thank you Anthony very much for your help and thank you Sonya