 Well, good afternoon. This is a joint meeting of the Community Resources Committee and the Finance Committee for June 2nd, 2020. And the meeting pursuant to Governor Baker's March 12th, 2020 order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law, General Law 30A, Section 18, is a meeting of the two committees that is being conducted via remote participation. So I'm gonna call the Finance Committee to order and then I am going to go, which I have just done now, and then go through for each member of the committee and recognize you by name and ask you to indicate that you can hear me and you can enter, then we'll know you can be heard to confirm your participation. And then I'm gonna ask Mandy to call the Community Resources Committee together and do the same thing for her committee. And this is necessary in order to complete the beginning of the process. So, Pat Dantelos, are you here? Present. Pat? Present. Okay, thank you. Lynn Griezmann. Yes. Dorothy Pam. Yes. Okay, Kathy Shane. Yes. And then we have three people. I'm just gonna, so that everybody can confirm they're here. These are non-voting community members of the committee, but they are members of our committee and very important members, Bob Hegner. I'm here. And Sharon Pavanelli. I'm here. And Mary Lou Tomlin. Do you need Don Moog? I'm here. Mary Lou or? Okay. So, we are complete. I turn this over to Mandy Jo for a minute. Thank you, Andy. It is now 207, I guess, and I will call seeing a quorum presence the June 2nd, 2020 meeting of the Community Resources Committee with the Finance Committee to order. I will go through the roll and make sure everyone can hear us. Shalini Balmilm. Present. Evan Ross. Present. Steve Schreiber. Present. And I believe Sarah Swartz is still not present. So we are working on figuring out whether she can attend or not, but she is not present at the time. And obviously Mandy Jo Hanneke is present. And I'm going to turn it back over to Andy who will be running this portion of the meeting when this portion is over. I will follow recess of the Community Resources Committee so we can reconvene in a different Zoom room. And I will explain it as we go. Lynn, can you put up the agenda for a moment for everybody to see? And while you do so, let me follow up on what was just said. This is actually a joint meeting of two committees. And if you go down a little bit, what you'll see is that the first order after calling the meeting order, which we just did, is to have a presentation of the Community Preservation Act Committee recommendations for FY21. And Nate Buddington, whose chair of the committee is present and is going to make that presentation in just a moment. What I'm going to do afterwards is after he makes his presentation, we are going to have questions to come from all councilor members of the committee. And I'm going to try my best to recognize people in the order that I see raised hands on the participant list and not organized by way of committee. I will then open it up for public comment. The public comment period at that point will not be on other issues that either committee will be addressing later and that will be on the Community Preservation Act part of the discussion today. When the committees then divide into separate meetings in the way that logistically is going to happen is that the finance committee is going to stay with this Zoom meeting. And members at that point, members of the Community Resources Committee are going to leave this meeting and then join another meeting so that people who are interested in staying with that committee from the public will need to also take a similar action of in order to get to the next meeting to continue with that meeting. And I think that that basically takes care of the logistics explanation of how we're proceeding. So the other thing I was going to ask you to put up if you can as the financial order, Lynn, if you have it available. And if not, I can do it from my computer. The reason that I'm asking for the financial order and Lynn, are you able to find it or? There it is. Okay, this is a proposed as you see marked as a draft financial order that will come before the council on June 15th. And the purpose of this is to be able to vote on and any of the projects that are listed which are the ones that are funded from the FY21 funds. And we very much would like to be able to fund those projects that are supported by the council so that they can have full advantage of the fiscal year to work on the project work. And for that reason, that is the major focus of this. And we will need everybody to understand that and need to have the committees to decide whether they have recommendations to the council for the June 15th meeting. The one item that was recommended by the committee that has a minority report attached to it has to do with Jones library funding, has to do with it would be funded by borrowing. And it is not part of the draft financial order that you're looking at right now. It will not be considered by the council in June. There is no date for consideration of the Jones library proposal. So it is part of the report as part of those and this has been referred to both committees but it is not the major focus of discussion today. However, if questions come up from the committee I'm not gonna say that they're inappropriate questions but I just wanna try and make sure that people focus on what we need to do on June 15th. Our council president is also a member of the finance committee. Lynn, is there anything else you wanna say to what I just said in the introduction? No, I will add that we're not taking the library up at this time because we really don't know when that funding may or may not come through as a grant and until it does, we really have no reason to act on it because it would be contingent anyway. But also I just wanted to bring to your attention that one of the other members of the CPA and Anthony Delaney who staffed CPA are in the attendees room. Would you like me to bring them in? I think we can go ahead and bring them into the meeting because as you point out, one of the staff to the assisted with the CPA, Anthony and Sarah is a member of the committee. By the way, there are no other attendees at this time. I had looked at that a few minutes ago to the participant list. So with that introduction, I'd like to now introduce Nate Buddington and welcome you, Nate. And I had asked you, we had talked earlier today and I explained what I just explained to the committee so that Nate can make a presentation and then open it up to questions after that. So Nate, please go ahead. Would you like me to stop at the end of each proposal to take questions or do you want me to go through the whole thing? What it makes, are you going to be presenting by section starting at the top with housing? I'm gonna follow your transfer order, if you'd like. Okay, well there, since they're done in grouping do you wanna do the community housing and then we'll see if there are questions and then start preservation questions, doing that in fashion? Okay, so do each category and then take questions at the end? Yes, why don't we do that? Okay, first before I start, I just wanna give my annual shout out to Anthony Delaney who is our liaison with Town Hall. He's a pivotal part of this process. He gets us information really promptly. We get fantastic support from him. He just makes the process so much easier. So I just wanted to acknowledge his really excellent work with us. So we have two community housing proposals this year that we've both approved on the committee. One is a $200,000 appropriation to the Amherst Municipal Affordable Housing Trust. This is I believe the third year in a row when we have awarded some monies to the trust in order to bank to be able to use as leverage. If we have a proposal comes up with a developer where we really need to show that we have resources to immediately participate in that project. The trust usually asks us for 400,000 a year. We usually give them half of that. I think they probably have amassed about $400,000 to $500,000 at this point. That includes this year's $200,000 appropriation. They don't do anything with that money without conferring with Town Hall but it is there for immediate use if it's needed to leverage work with the developer. We also have a $234,000 appropriation for Valley CDC's program for a first-time home buyers and mortgage subsidy program. This is to provide a $450,000 mortgage subsidies for qualifying families. They do, there is obviously some cost sharing here. They have to contribute 3% of the cost of the house as a down payment and they have to pay closing costs. So there's $450,000 mortgage subsidies. The remaining amount of money, $35,000, it's articulated in their proposal as a consulting and advising for people who come into this process. I'm not sure that word is really the right word. It's really, I guess what I would call maintenance costs to run this program. One of the things that happens with these mortgage subsidy programs is they will have to reject the vast majority of the people who apply. So there's a tremendous amount of vetting with these different applicants. They have to have time to review the inspection documents. They have to inspect the house. So there's a number of costs, part of which is the counseling piece that goes as they're vetting the applicants. They say that they end up really doing some fairly important home buying counseling for almost anyone who even applies in the process. But that term really, I think it's the wrong term. It's really the maintenance of the program which includes the counseling piece. That takes up that remaining, I think it's 30 something thousand dollars. Those are our two housing projects. I don't see any raised hands. And just second I, yes, Lynn. Nate, I don't know that you know this for sure, but am I correct that the Amherst Municipal Affordable Housing Trust is using some of the money they have for the rent subsidy program during this COVID period? My impression is that they are, but I haven't spoken to John about that. Yeah, I just wanted people to be aware that in addition to maybe working with developers, in this case, they're actually using it also to respond to the present situation we're in. Evan has his hand raised. Yeah, I see Evan and Mandy has her hand raised. Evan? Yeah, actually, my question was actually based on what Lynn said, which was that when this was voted by CPA, this was pre COVID and pre the housing trust making that decision. My understanding is that they have about 500,000 in the trust and they voted 250 of it towards this rental program, which went half their funds. And so I guess I was curious if there had been any consideration in CPA, given that they asked for 400,000 and you agreed to fund 200,000, if there had been any consideration given what's happened since to reconsidering that and upping their amount to help offset what they spent on this rental program. We can't consider it because we haven't been allowed to meet. So there's no medium for us to talk about that very issue, which is a really good one. There had been a long period of time as you know when other committees that were not elected boards were not meeting by Zoom because it was not the ability to provide IT support for all committees. And we've just now gotten into that next phase where we are beginning to have more capacity to do that. But I think that what made this pointing out is that CPA committee got into a time trap because of that. I think that the other point that I'd make and that I want to recognize Mandy and Kathy whose hand is up now too is that the committee could meet again now and make a recommendation and the council could make a supplemental order for adding money to the trust later in the year that we're no longer because we're not a town meeting anymore that only meets twice a year, but we meet every month. We can, it can be a year round process. And so money can be available. So I need to do something. Yeah, I just wanted to add that in this proposal from CPA there is a $377,000 budget reserve plus there's also a $50,000 housing reserve. So that gives us the ability to go back in appropriate layer if we need to. If we don't reserve this tax rate a step then we couldn't do that but we can do it because we have this reserve in here. Okay, thank you. You're welcome. There are questions about that they should we'll come back to it from questions. Mandy. Thank you. Question about some of it's just affordable housing the community housing program in general and the funds in general. I thank you for providing the spent reports the prior years reports and where they are on spending and all. So for the first time home buyer program in the report there indicated there was a recapture of amounts in event of sale deed or transfer deed transfer or refinancing. And so I'm curious who recaptures those amounts does that go back to Valley CDC for an additional sort of home buyer subsidy to say a fifth person or does it come back to the CPA? So that's my first question. And then the second one is we've got a lot of outstanding community housing grants out of CPA that haven't been spent particularly some for rental subsidies from last year that went to ACC. I think there was a full housing another home buyers assistance program from a couple of years ago that hasn't had any money spent in it either. Does the CPA program ever go back and sort of get an ideas to where those are or why some of those have not been spent? I'm curious particularly on the home buyer program and that rental subsidy given the current situation and this current program I know the home buyer was a different entity but you did mention it's really hard to find them. And so I don't wanna tie up money if it's not going to get used for five or 10 or 15 years because they can't find anyone. So could you talk a little bit about that too, Nate? Sure, yeah, that's a great question. So this year on the committee we were kind of looking at what appeared to be a lot of outstanding money some of it from years ago that had never been spent. And we really wanted to get on top of that because we wanted to have a process whereby we could say if this money isn't spent in three years it's returned to the CPA. It's a little squirrely right now in the agreements of whether that really takes place and we really wanted to firm that up. And we did put that into our revised plan CPA plan. But we also were in the process we have a subcommittee on CPA to do largely what you're just talking about which is to come up with a system where we can account for what has happened to previously appropriated funds. And we've been getting some information from other town CPAs to come up with a good system for doing that. It's not locked in yet. I hope we're gonna have it for the next year's cycle. And the first question again, I'm sorry I already blanked out on it. Yeah, the first question was about the program and who recaptures that. Right, the money comes back to the town it was a little unclear to me whether it comes to the CPA or it goes into the town directly but Sonya probably has the answer to that. Yeah, Sonya. So also get funds, do go back directly to the CPA fund. It depends on the funding source in there if it came from a housing reserve go back to housing reserve. It came from open space reserve and go back to the open space reserve. But if it came from the apartment just go right back to the CPA fund balance and be available for appropriation for the following year. Kathy, your hand was up too. Yeah, Sonya answered part of my question. It's linked to Evans on if CPA gets to meet again can they look again at housing? And I'm just wondering what we're saying is available in total to CPA for FY 21. So how much is the 3% that's our surcharge and the expected state match? And is that state match certain or not? So when Sonya, when you said how much would be in reserve is that including the money we're expecting to get from state match or just off our own? So the CPA kind of runs like an operating budget it's estimated and it's the year before. So the state match for this fiscal year has already been received. It was an 11.2%, I believe and I had us make it 11%. Typically surcharges are estimated at about 950,000 coming in from the surcharge and then whatever the percentage the state tells us at the time. Now for fiscal year 22, that's going to be that's unknown at this point in time. But that answer that question. Yeah. So when you talked about the amount being reserved it's counting both of those sources. It's counting everything, yes. Because we need to be able to figure out what we have that we're going to be able to spend and what we estimate for those and then that set aside. But the 377 and our caution we're going to we're going to budget it as a reserve but I would watch carefully as the CPA when you come in to make sure that we're actually going to meet that before we spend it all. So I'll be watching that. Thank you. Yeah. Over to you, I see your hand up. So none of this money is actually in an account called CPA, is that correct? It's all somewhere else or is there an account that's called a CPA account where money they put aside that they don't spend sits? It's how the receipts are for appropriation account and it's labeled Community Preservation Act Fund. So we have to appropriate from that works just like an ambulance fund. So you you appropriate from that fund and then you move it to a capital project fund to be able to spend on individual projects but everything always goes back to that receipt reserve. So it's available for appropriations again. It's a separate reporting that we have to do with state and not ours every year. Andy. Yes. I want to go back to the two housing and just check my knowledge or memory on this. I also believe the municipal affordable housing trust is holding the money for East street school and we don't seem to be moving on that because we've run into all kinds of issues about whether it's really you can do it the way we wanted to with the first RFP field. So I just want to check that I'm correct that that money is held by the Amherst municipal house affordable housing trust. And the second question I have is really on the Valley CVC money and whether any of that money could be used for first time home buyers who are now in mortgage trouble because of job loss. Yeah, that's an interesting question. I mean, I guess I don't know that's sort of beyond CPAs jurisdiction. To your first point about East street school the original idea behind the trust being able to bank a certain amount of money was that if a project like the East street school came up or the East street school in itself that we would be able to jump on at that time we were working under the town meeting framework where CPA was really limited on when we could act. And it was a way to anticipate either that project East street school or something like it should something come up. But the one is it's been allocated to the trusts. I believe that it stays with the trust until spent and if it's not going to be spent it stays with the affordable housing trust. Right. Now I think one of the you know if we go to this model of it in three years if something isn't spent you know we have the option of asking for that money to be returned unless another arrangement is made it could come into play with the trust's money. Although it has that's a fairly specific purpose you know to hold on to that money for leveraging which could potentially go beyond the three year or arbitrary three year timeframe. Yeah. The reason I'm asking is because it really is you know it's just sitting there and we don't seem to be able to move on that building and if more money was needed for rent subsidy that would be another source. Absolutely. And it is something that the housing trust would have to decide then. The is there no other questions on housing than I wanted to let Nick go on to the next section which is the historic preservation grant lines. We have four historical preservation items. One is with the North Amherst community form window restoration and this is a pretty small grant of $4,500. It's the final piece of a three year project to completely restore the exterior of the farm building at the North Amherst community farm. This is a building that was originally in the Dickinson family. It's a pretty central part of North Amherst it's been in terrible shape. Used to house people who work on the farm. They've had a number of funding sources for the entire restoration project that we were involved in the exterior which meant clabbereds that meant largely clabbereds that meant replacing the windows with historic windows and this last part is for the remaining window work and replacement of the window sashes. The second proposal is the, I wanna follow the list here, to update the historic resource inventory. This is $25,000. This is something we haven't done in a long time I think since 1988 and it's a historic resource inventory of buildings. This is something that's a pretty important part of the work of the town being able to understand its own inventory of historic structures and we're way overdue in this. Most towns do this and they don't wait 20 years to do these plans. So we haven't done this in a long time. That's a $25,000 grant. There's a $50,000 grant for the West Cemetery headstone restoration. This is again, I think the third year we've invested in the West Cemetery which is a pretty remarkable resource for Amherst in historical resource and there are still, we're just kind of getting through area by area to replace some of these headstones that have either fallen down or cracked or been pushed down or are on the verge of collapse with some safety issues there but it's really about really honoring this historical resource and keeping it in nearly tip-top condition. I think this is the third year in a row we've invested in the West Cemetery. And then, I guess, those are the three. Yeah, I was including the library when I said the four, but I'm not gonna talk about it. We'll come back to the library before we adjourn but I'm trying to keep the, once we're gonna vote on it in 15 separate we will get back to the library. I see, so the remainder you would be putting into reserve that is for historic reserve, for historic preservation grants and just so everybody knows that because we're required to spend a certain proportion on each category if there's leftover it has to go into reserve that's for that category. Dave Zomac, I saw you've had to hand up for a little bit. I'm sorry, Andy, I was gonna make a comment about affordable housing but I think we've moved on, so I'm fine. Okay. You'd be welcome to come back to it and Dorothy, you had your hand up for a minute but I see it's no longer there. Oh, no, no, it's still there, still there, hold on, I can't find it. Okay, well, but go ahead. Okay, I wanted to ask about the Civil War Stones in the detailed report, a sum of money was given and I just, I came into one of your meetings late and I know they're in storage somewhere and I don't know whether you're paying a lot of money for the storage or whether there is testing going on in the stones now to decide how much money is needed to restore them or whether you're planning to get some money to bring them back to the town green or near the town hall. I just want an update of what's happening with the Civil War Stones. At first I thought they were in the budget but now it sounds like they're not in the budget, so, but there was some sum of money in the longer report. I'll pass this along to Dave Zomick. Okay. Thanks for your question, Dorothy. Yeah, and I think a lot of people are asking given recent newspaper articles. So the Civil War tablets are actually completely restored. That money was spent a number of years ago and so they are in storage. They are not costing us anything to store. They are professionally created having been professionally restored to very high standards. We have looked for a number of years for the appropriate piece to display them. They weigh, I'm gonna say they range anywhere from 500 to maybe 800 pounds a piece. They're five to six, seven feet long by three or four feet wide. They are, despite their weight and their size, they are actually quite vulnerable to the elements. So they cannot be displayed outdoors without extensive protection from the weather, water, heat and UV. So for a number of years we've been looking for a site to display them for, of course, for their historical significance. So I think that search continues. We have had some pretty extensive designs to try to display them outside and those were either deemed infeasible or cost prohibitive. So we've looked at buildings indoor space like the town hall, which is impossible to display them here. We've looked informally at the library, both the existing space plus the potential renovated spaces. And then we've considered places like the schools, the elementary and the high school and middle school. So that's kind of where we are. I think we'd all love to display them, but they are priceless artifacts and need to be treated as such. So we've got to find the right place at the right time for the right budget. So you may see a proposal coming back to CPA in the future once we've determined a potential space for those. Okay, thank you. Okay. There's nothing else. And you could go ahead and just speak to open space. Well, I do see Shalini with her hand up. So I'm gonna pause and get Shalini. Yeah, thank you. Just have a quick question. Is the percentage in which, according to which the funds are distributed, what's in the list here, the 50% for community, 10%, 6%, is that the ratio in which money is distributed? Well, we don't, you know, in any given year, we get different types of proposals, but we for, if you leave recreation out of it for historical preservation, open space and housing, we have to designate at least 10% of our funds. Recreation, we could spend nothing if we didn't want to. But we don't, in any given year, we don't say we wanna spend 25% on each proposal because different years, you get different proposals. So we hope to average over the course of a number of years equity. But I saw a report this year, I think over the last 10 years, we had spent significantly more money on affordable housing than the other three categories, but the other three categories were fairly similar. Is that kind of what you were asking? Yes. Yeah. So I was gonna say, if you wanna just speak to open space and recreation, you could do the four together and then it'll see a way for us. Okay. So we don't have any proposed land purchases this year for the first time in a while, but we do have a $25,000 appropriation for trail maintenance and access. You know, I think if you spend any time on the trails system in Amherst, it's a pretty remarkable resource for the town. That's a little rougher on the edges. We got some bridges that need repair. We need some kiosks in places that we don't have them that are signage, parking areas, things like that. And this is the beginning, we hope will be a multi-year effort with CPA to begin the process of really investing in the infrastructure in our trails and open space. So, and it's important to say that any CPA money designated for trail maintenance and access can only be used on properties purchased through CPA funds. So that's a $25,000 appropriation. We also have a $25,000 appropriation for surveys, appraisals, and studies. This is a fairly regular proposal that we get from the town. This money isn't always spent, but it needs to be on hand, it needs to be available. If an open space opportunity arises, there's a lot of preparation that needs to go into that proposal, surveying land, getting appraisals. And this allows the town, I think, to be a little more nimble in getting those jobs done prior to potentially proposing the purchase of some open space land. And we've done this a number of times since I've been on the committee. In terms of recreation, a very similar type of proposal to what I just said, which we haven't done in a while at all, as far as I know, is recreation pre-development funds. And this is to address the same sort of issue. You know, one of the things I think that came up with the Kendrick Park playground is, you know, we suddenly had the opportunity to get this grant and we had to jump through a lot of hoops pretty quickly to make that happen, and we did. But again, as we think about investments in recreation, we want to be a little more nimble in terms of being able to prepare for kind of pre-designed site work appraisals, that sort of thing, but dedicated to recreation specifically, not purchase of open space land. And finally, there's a $150,000, $500 appropriation to continue the engineering and design into the reconstruction of the high school track. This is part of a multi-town CPA gathering of monies for the high school track, which is woefully in disrepair, really almost unusable. And it would be to get ready to sort of design to kind of move the direction of where the track is and begin the process of getting that whole process moving. And those are the four open space and recreation proposals. Rambit. Thank you. Couple of questions about the high school track. I believe that it is not the town's land, it is regional land. So one question is, what does the, I guess the deed restriction or whatever look like on something like that? I know in the past for historic preservation, we've had deed restrictions on stuffs, but I don't know what that looks like on say a recreation project that we as a town do not actually own. And then my other question related to that is, and I'm hoping you know the answer to this, have the other three towns also appropriated CPA monies for this project? David, would you like to talk about the deed restriction? Do you know the answer to that question? It's a really good question. And to be honest, this funding, so when we're doing architectural work, landscape architect work or any kind of pre-development work, that doesn't, to my knowledge, doesn't require any kind of deed restriction. And that's what this money is for, is really to further the study CPA invested, I'm gonna say about $50,000 to do the initial study of community field and the high school fields. And we share that expense with the region. And likewise, this is a step further. If we were to go to invest construction money in a permanent facility, say a track and or a multi-purpose field there, I think that's where we'd have to explore would that property have to have a permanent restriction on it or open space or active or passive recreation. So we've been talking to town council about it since we're not at that point. And we know that it's a pretty big nut to crack there. If we go the full route, we haven't fully investigated that yet. But I think this is pre-development work for the further study of the feasibility of that. But that's what I know. Does anyone know the answer to whether the other towns have also recommended CPA funds for this? I thought Sean Mangana was on this Zoom, so he might know the answer to that. I was trying to hide over on the side, but he caught me. We submitted requests to each of them. I don't know if they've approved them yet. I can find out the answer to that from Doug Slaughter, but we did submit requests to all the other committees to for their share of the design work. Right now they're struggling just to figure out where they can have a town meeting safely. Exactly, Andy, I was gonna mention they can't approve it till they have their town meetings. But the way this is listed, it says high school track and field replacement. So it makes it seem like we're already in the process of doing the replacement versus looking into it. Could you clarify that? Particularly because of how David has described the issue of who owns the land. Do you want me to speak to that one, Nate, or? Yeah, go ahead. I mean, if it's the same as I remember when I was there, it is to take the sort of high-level master plan type document that we received from the prior landscape by Weston and Sanson, I believe, and to turn that into more of a schematic design so we wanted to get more accurate cost estimates. You may remember the last time we got the high-level design, the cost estimates were somewhere between three to four to six million dollars. And we wanted to get much more detail on what that cost would be. So it's to convert sort of high-level design work into the beginnings of a true schematic design. I would like to make sure that the actual states that. I was just thinking, Lynn's point, I think is that maybe after the word replacement, it says replacement design or replacement studies. So we're not physically replacing the track right now. We're doing the engineering study. It needs one more word in the financial order. It's pretty clear in the paragraph, the paragraph says continue design and engineering work to replace, but it's not the replacement of the track. All right. So we can have our staff consider whether they can add one word to the order before the word draft is removed from it. Sort of substitution, drop draft and add one more word elsewhere. Anything else in the way of questions about either open space and recreation at this point? Pat has our product. Pat's handed it. Oh, Pat. Yeah, I'm just trying to clarify for myself. The current 157,500 would be our share of what it costs to do. This turned things into a schematic design, but would we go ahead if we did not receive funding from the other towns in the region? I don't know if Sean wants to comment on that. Yeah, I can't speak for the region. It is meant to be the Amherst town share because when we were looking at this, we thought we needed about $200,000 to keep moving the design work forward. So this was roughly the 80% or so of that amount. And then we requested the balance from the other towns. I believe if the other towns do not approve it, we can still go, or the region could still go forward with starting some of the design work, but that would be the conversation with the region. Good. So that just brings me back to how much more money do we want to invest until we clarify how we own this or what we're investing in. And then the other question is if we felt we needed the other towns to put their money in, we may want to hold this one off until we get the results of town meetings. Yeah. So part of the conversation around why this was requested was because there was a lot of urgency at the time to keep the design work moving forward. As Nate mentioned, the track was in pretty bad shape and we didn't want to lose momentum or progress from the prior report that started, I think almost two years ago. So I believe that's why the region kept this request moving forward is because there is some sort of sense of urgency to get the trap replaced in the near future. Kathy, and then I see a member of the public, Sarah. So why don't we start with Kathy? On you. So I'm wondering if, well, it's a two-part question. If the answer is we could do something with a 157,500, which is its own odd little number, because it's a 200,000. So we would still want to spend that. If we would want to make it contingent on the other towns, can we ask for it contingent on them? And then the other part of it is when I was at the presentation by Doug Slaughter to the CPA, he didn't have an exact amount, but he said, this is far less than you need for a design and engineering study. It's like the beginning of it. Cause people, the actual proposal just zeroxed the pages from the Western design, which was $4 million to $6 million. So people were saying exactly where does this fit in that giant proposal? But so I don't know whether we're like a down payment on it where we're paying half of it or half of it can be done. So Lynn, your question on, can this move forward? My sense was it wasn't even all the money we needed, but I don't know whether it was for a corner of the field or for part of it. So some sense of how far would we would get if we spend this money over the next 12 months? Sarah, do you have anything to add? Sarah Marshall is also a member of the CPA committee and she's asked to be recognized, Sarah. Hi, thank you, Andy. I would just add to what Kathy said in response to Lynn's suggestion or wondering whether Amherst should wait on voting this funding. The other towns, if they only have one town meeting a year, that's their one shot to award money that their CPA committees hopefully are recommending. And it would be pretty depressing, I think, if Amherst had kicked the ball on it. So given that we would bear the lion's share of the cost, I would hope that we would throw our hat in the ring and say, we'll do it. And if the other towns don't come on board, well, the region may decide not to move forward. That's all, thank you. David. Yeah, thank you. I guess I wanted to just echo what Sarah said and also what Sean did and kind of put an exclamation point on that. I just, this is such an urgent project for all of us, for the region, for all of our athletes. I don't see any downside and I fully support all the work that has gone before this and part of a lot of it to at least vote this. The money's not gonna go anywhere if we don't have a critical mass of funds to move this study forward, it won't happen. I mean, Sean will be involved in that, I'll be involved in that, Mike Morris and Doug Slaughter. So we're not gonna move forward unless we have a critical mass of funds to get us to a next step. Defining that next step today is probably not possible. I do know as an example, there the Tanbrook goes under the fields west of the high school. So part of this money was to really look at the Tanbrook and the ability of improving those fields with the Tanbrook culverted under the field. So we have some work to do. I just wanna say that, I think Amherst should lead on this. And again, we're, I don't think this money is going to be ill spent unless there's tangible steps that we can take toward a full design. So I think the urgency is there if we wait and then the other towns box somehow then we've lost yet another period of time that could be another year and the track is unusable pretty much as it is. So those are my thoughts. And Dorothy. Okay, when people talk about this and they raise this to me, their question is why is it so outrageously expensive? And why does it cost that much money for studies that don't even include dirt or machines to move the dirt? I mean, people played on fields. I played on fields. I mean, if the field is a mess then get a new field, go somewhere else and start with a better place. I mean, the idea that you spend all this money just on studies, I don't understand it and I can't explain it to people. So maybe you could explain it to me. I see Sean's hand. The way I interpreted this project when we were putting it forward is that it's not meant to be a study. It's really meant to be the beginning of the design work for a new track and field. The reason it's so expensive is, hey, you probably heard that the other fields at the region are not in great shape either. And so this project is looking at whether we can do something like artificial turf or some other type of synthetic surface. It's looking at turning the track and field. It's looking at the creation system and things like that for the field. This was a comprehensive study that we already did. We have the study pieces already been done to really improve all of the fields at the region because you probably recall a couple of years ago or maybe it was just last year where the fields were unplayable at one point and that wasn't even the track and field. That was the other fields. They were lack of water or overuse. So this project is really meant to be the keystone of one strategy for getting the fields to be more usable all year round. And it's the biggest chunk. It's part of a larger plan, but it is the bigger chunk. And so this money would be the beginning design work. So it would get us a certain, it allows us to keep moving the design forward and then at a certain point you have to come back and request more money than the rest of the design work. And Andy? Yes. Do not take any of my comments and questions regarding this project. Is there anything other than full support for it? In fact, the fact that Amherst is paying more than other towns is fine with me. It is literally inside the borders of our town and used by our citizens as well as the students that and the teams. I'm just trying to get straight about, who owns this, the other money necessary and how much more is gonna be spent on design before we can actually do it? What can we be anticipating down the road? Can you hear me? Okay. Yes. So the typically design costs and some of those soft costs are, I mean, it's evolving as things go forward, but somewhere between 5% and 15% of the construction costs. So we sometimes use 10% as our rule of thumb. So if the project dig into the detail of that four to $6 million estimate and find out what the construction cost is and then pull out the design. I think in that budget, they did estimate a design to be in there so we can get you the exact number around the design portion. Anything else on the proposals that we've heard today? Because only other thing left and I'll just say and you can add, there's $10,000 that's proposed every year for administrative expenses having to do with the CPA program, including membership in the coalition, statewide coalition of CPA programs. And that's been standard in every year's CPA budget over time. So is there anything to add to that, Nate? No, it's standard costs due to the coalition legal notices in the newspaper or that sort of thing. So those are the things that we're going to be voting on June 15th as a council and the two committees will be asked if they have recommendations on those, on the proposals that are recommended on this list. There's one additional proposal that is not on this list as I explained at the beginning of the meeting, but I wanted to give Nate an opportunity or Sarah to say anything that they want to on behalf of the committee about the Jones Library proposal. And if not, then there's no members of the public attending at this point who are not members of a committee other than Sarah and Nate and they're both now in the meeting themselves. So treat this as also the opportunity for any other public comment from either of them about the issues in general. But Nate, is there anything you wanted to say about the library? Well, I just, I mean, I think if I can just explain a little bit the kind of awkwardness of where we are with this proposal, I don't know how widely circulated the statement has been that Diane Stein and Michael Burtwistle and I wrote in opposition to a proposal that we all had voted for a couple of months ago. So just to give a sense of how that happened when we evaluate CPA proposals, we immediately dispatch the ones that have no support put them aside. We take the ones that have almost universal support in the committee and we put them up on the board and then we begin to have more detailed discussions on proposals where there's kind of some split opinions or people aren't sure. And as we approve them, we put them up on the board and then at the end of the process, if we have enough money, we vote on the entire slate. We got interrupted because of the COVID-19 crisis before we were able to do that last step. But the library proposal was one of the first ones that we looked at and as we evaluated it, I think it was seven to zero to one in favor. After that, when we passed it, a couple of us began to get kind of cold feet about it and started doing a little research on whether it really was an historical preservation project. And as we got more information, the more concerned we became. So at the, in our last, we didn't know it was gonna be our last meeting, but in our last meeting, presentation to basically say, we really think we need to pull back on this Jones library proposal for a couple of reasons that I think are outlined in that paper that we submitted. It was hard to figure out a title for that document without impugning that there's some sort of schism on the committee, there's not. It's just, it's very awkward timing in the sense that we can't communicate anymore our concerns to the rest of the committee as a violation of open meeting law. And the reason that we titled it a dissent or a disagreement was because we had originally voted for it. And we assume that the three of us are holding a minority position. I don't know if it's just the three of us are the outliers and the other six people on the committee are all going home for the proposal. I just don't know. But we felt strong enough about it that we really wanted to keep the conversation going. I think our preference would have been to continue meeting and I probably would have moved to reject the Jones proposal, made my argument, had someone make a counter argument and vote and be done with it, but we weren't able to do that. So hopefully, given this delay, we will get the chance to meet and hopefully as a committee and we work very, very well together. Close it out one way or the other. Sarah, let's see your hand up. Yeah, I would just add to that that at our March 5th, I think it was meeting the last time we met and we discussed this at length. My takeaway was that we were, as a committee, was hoping to get more information. We already had an opinion from the town's attorney that supported the CPA, the appropriateness of the proposal, but then we had some other opinions, other information that was counter to that. So we were hoping to go right to the commissioner of revenue, I think, for the Commonwealth who oversees the program and try to get a definitive answer and we were never able to do that and that's what I recall was going to be our next step. We had discussed it internally, I think as much as we could, we needed more information to help us decide one way or another and we didn't get there. And I should say that we referenced in our letter that Diana Stein had had a conversation with someone at DOR. We then went to the town manager to try to really engage a conversation with him in the room and I think he made a really good faith effort to make that happen, but then all hell broke loose at the end of that week with COVID-19 and we just couldn't get it done. But as Sarah says, that would be a definitive conversation if we could have that. Yeah, there are two other people on the committee who've asked to be recognized. I'm going to get to them the second I just, I thank you both for your comments from the committee. And as I said earlier, it was regrettable that this whole COVID crisis has come up and affected us in the way that it did and the IT couldn't support committee meetings initially creating this time bind. But when you and I talked earlier Nate, I sort of felt because it's not going to be acted on one way or the other by the council. Soon I wanted to concentrate today on what the council is going to act on in June. And that doesn't mean that gives the committee time to come back and have further conversations if it wishes to do so. But I'm sorry that it happened in the way that it did. Steve Gribber. Yeah, so from what I hear from the way that Nate was describing that, that there was almost unanimous, maybe one dissent vote that the library project had support. And then it's really almost like a theoretical question as to whether or not it's historic preservation. It's been a while since I read the couple men, I'm sorry, the town attorney's letter, but from what I remember from that is that, yes, that the town can determine that this is historic preservation. So I guess I have a little bit of a problem arguing there's a worthiness part of the project, which there is sounds like there's a big agreement for that. I think that determining whether or not this is in the proper bucket. I don't know, that I would defer to the town attorney. We can keep asking questions and get the answer that we want, but typically the town relies on what its attorneys are. And I have personally, I have a lot of problem with any of us going rogue and trying to ask people that we know that happened to be in the state house or were it anywhere else fishing for other answers because normally we rely on the town attorney. Well, we went to the coalition before the town went to the attorney. So we weren't going out of fishing expedition. We were trying to get information in because we're a member of the coalition and the coalition is really the kind of clearinghouse for information for CPA committees. It seemed like that was a good way to go. I think the reaching out to the attorney was the town's decision after they saw the letter from the coalition. And to declare that it is the opinion, the minority statement from the three members, Nate and two other members of the committee, CPA committee has been circulated to all members of the council, not just this group. If you have a chance to look at it, I believe it was in your packet though. And yeah, Nate and then we have two other members of the committee who've asked to be recognized. I guess I'm a little put off by this implication some of us on the committee have gone rogue. What we're trying to do in our approach to this project is to what we think is honoring the spirit of the CPA and honoring the interests of Amherst taxpayers. We're trying to play this by the rules cleanly with total integrity. We've kept everybody informed. You know, we're trying to do the right thing here. We're not trying to go rogue. I just want to be really clear about that. This is a committee that I think is still acting as one that wants to come to the right conclusion on this issue. And the only reason this is appearing the way it is is because we can't talk to each other. So I just want to be clear about that. Yeah, and if I may, I apologize for the implication of going rogue. Thanks. Dorothy, you have something? Yes, I do. Well, I was reading this over this just before the meeting started. And I certainly got the case that one of the problems with CPA money is that many towns want to use it to substitute for other town money when they need to do that. And that it's not to be used to subsidize buildings but to for historic objects. And I believe you said in the report that there were no actual historic objects mentioned. I mean, I can certainly see that something that one has to guard and protect against. So I was thinking, am I gonna have to vote on this? Because I found a lot in the minority report to be persuasive. So I thought what Lynn announced at the beginning was a good solution. We don't have to deal with this now. So we're not gonna vote on it now. We're gonna vote on the other issues. And the way we'll become clear as we go forward. So, but I do appreciate the minority report because I think it brought up a major issue for CPA funds everywhere. How towns use the money? Do they use it to plug their own holes? Or for actually what's in the law? Could respond to that. But I think I'm gonna ask Kathy first to since she had her hand up. Yeah, I just wanna, I did think the minority report was excellent was very helpful. And one of the issues that Nate just emphasized was coming back together and this discussion with the Department of Revenue because the spirit of historic preservation, there would have been no question as in the past if we were repairing the roof on the historic Jones building or the facade of the historic Jones building. I mean, the act is very clear that we could repoint the stones or stuff. It was more can you apply it to a structure that is going to a new structure that's going to house papers of historic interests and trying to get some clarity on that. And that's where the discussion was circling around on the comfort level. Cause the Jones project made a decision why ever they did to not apply for money for the historic part of the building repair. They didn't reply for that. They applied for the special collection, a new space for it. So that's where this gray area and trying to honor the spirit of what is historic and get some clarity. So I think it's, I think the solution of waiting until you can come back together and we need to wait anyway as a council because of the lack of, we're not sure when the grant will come in and whether we have enough money in the town for our shares. So everything would have been contingent anyway with this grant. It was only going to move forward if the major project move forward. It's wrapped up. So I think the timing is great to, cause we can wait. This could be voted on next year. I mean, in July, in August and September. I mean, it's not a time dependent decision right now. I see another hand up. What I was going to say is just on one other aspect of it that in what Dorothy said, we have frequently applied the policy when we have looked at buildings and building projects to use other grant sources and other funding sources including CDBG and the Community Preservation Act to help us fund projects. And to the extent that we can do that, it helps us to have funds still available to do a little bit more with other capital needs. It came up a little bit in the JCPC discussion but it is a part of the December Council Budget Guidelines. If you go back and about age three, I think it is and look at the Council Budget Guidelines from December, that point is made there. And I can think of numerous projects over the years that have been combinations of various pieces of money from sources of which CPA is one of them. That's just the other day, looking through a list for other purposes and came back to the town hall amount and the part of the town hall worked for the original renovation. I think the clock tower part was done with CPA funds. So you could argue that that could have been funded by other funds, but we have done this historically over time and I think it is a long-standing town policy to try and do that. Evan Ross, I see your hand has been up. Yeah, just two quick comments. So one, I just want to push back on the idea that this is not that time-sensitive that we could put this off for a while. Just because it's contingent on the grant because I think that a lot of these decisions and investments also show some signaling. And so just as we said that we needed to approve the CPA funding about a year ago for the 132 Northampton Road project, even though that project wasn't going to be using those funds immediately in order to show investment for the state, similarly, every piece we do to shore up this project shows investment, right? And it signals to donor, I mean, they have an ambitious fundraising goal. And so all of these pieces play into that. And so to me, it's actually not something where we can say, eh, we don't even know when we're gonna get the grant or accept the grant anyway, we can wait because there's a lot of moving pieces to this. And I don't think we can take it out of that broader context. And then the second thing is, I think that the struggle that we're facing is we asked, we, the CPA committee asked for two opinions, one or collectively two opinions were received that are in conflict. And you could ask for five other opinions from different entities and they might still be in conflict. And at some point you have to just decide what you're gonna do with that. But at the end of the day, to me our town attorney opinion is the one that should prevail. And if there was interest in the CPAC committee to fund this project, which there was, it was a 701 vote. If we have the town attorney opinion that gives us the cover to move forward with it and there's interest, I'm not sure why we wanna keep soliciting opinion after opinion. We have a legal opinion that says we can do it. We clearly want to, this committee wanted to do it. I hope that too much time isn't spent going back and forth on this if this is something the committee actually wants to see happen. So, if there's nothing else is we're not really gonna be dealing with the library right now and I wanna let the two committees continue their meetings. If there's no objection and I'm really looking for raised hands to see if there's objection then what we're gonna do is I'm gonna ask Mandy Jo to take over for a moment and to recess her committee and give instructions as to how people can continue to participate in that committee meeting. And I'm gonna, during that period of time, treat the finance committees and recess so we will as soon as Mandy has finished that continue with the finance committee meeting. So Mandy, it's your show. Thank you, Andy. At this time, I'm going to recess. This is 322 PM. I'm going to call about a five minute recess of the CRC. We will reconvene as soon as possible in the virtual meeting link for part two. So each of our committee members have received two virtual meeting links. We are going to head to part two link which is just the CRC meeting link at this time. For those in the public, there were two meeting links on the CRC agenda. If you wish to follow us to the continuation of this community resources committee meeting, you will now move to the part two link which was the second link on the agenda and that is how you can join us there. So at this time, 322 PM, we are in recess until we can reconvene in a new meeting. Thank you all and thank you, Andy, and for accepting our joint meeting and hosting us as CRC. Well, thank you, see you guys later. Do we have a vote on this now? The finance committee is going to continue its discussion as soon as the people on the finance committee want to have a couple of minutes recess or shall we continue our meeting? I have to leave. I hear no one. Is... I think we should keep going. I think we should keep going. Okay, so there's no vote. So what we're going to do now, we're going to continue on to the, we can go back to the agenda maybe for a moment, Lynn here and that will enable us to see how we're going to proceed with the rest of the meeting. So what we want to do now is you see it says after public comments, CRC will recess. There was no public to comment. Sarah was the only one who's not a member of the committee and not a presenter and she was on. So I had given her the opportunity. And the, so we're now at the point below that where it's time for finance committee discussion and possible committee vote as to whether we have a recommendation on the financial order, which has to do with the proposals, the everything but the library essentially, that will be funded from FY 21 funds. So we are back together just as a finance committee and I will continue from there. And then we have two other items that we're going to take up afterwards. One is the one month budget that was presented to us just in the initial discussion because it is on future agendas. And then I want to go over the proposed meeting schedule with you as far as is our meetings and the entire budget process on one integrated document. And I'll explain that document when we get to it, but let's stay with CPA and finish it and see if we're ready to get to a recommendation today or we wanna, we could postpone that one week if we needed to. So maybe the first question I have is you think about it too and is whether there are any criteria that you would like to see applied to all grants and how you would, what you would think that the finance committee would be commenting on as far as the CPA proposals that are in the proposed order. Kathy, do you have anything on that or did you have other comment? Well, my comment, I think your first question is whether we were ready to move to vote and I am. I think the discussion we had might be in a report if we vote out this that to the extent CPA comes back together and looks at post COVID after COVID, they may want to look at the possibility of using some of the money they've had in reserves to consider projects in FY21 that weren't brought originally. So I don't know quite how to phrase that but the one that was suggested is if the Amherst Housing Trust would have wanted more money now that it knows it's doing rental subsidies and has a way to do it. So that's one that was raised as a, could they do it? And Sonya responded that because they reserve 50,000 for, because of the large reserve they have that's in a general reserve, that could be considered. So if the committee will be meeting anyway, we might want to at least weigh in on, do we think that's a good idea? Should they be doing it over the summer? Should they be waiting a little bit in the fall to get a sense of where else we might need the CPA money? So that was the one thought I had as we discussed. I didn't have anything specific on any of the large projects but I did wonder and one always cringes that thought that I draw attention to a $25,000 one but the $25,000 on surveys, appraisals and studies when I was there for Dave Zomek's presentation, this was yes, we're not coming to you with any new land purchases but we're always on the lookout for them. So this would be out there not doing a general survey but thinking is there other land that you would want to come? And I think now is not the time to be talking about buying more land. And so I'm going to, in another meeting and I've already, I'd like to find out what the status of Hickory Ridge is because we, if that project's not moving forward we moved CPI money into it and we moved money from reserves into purchasing that land. So we may need that in the next 12 months if it doesn't look like that project is coming to fruition. So the only one I, and I'm ready to vote positively for this but just with caution that we don't really need a lot of proposals coming to us a year from now to buy more land. So that's it. That's my comment. Okay. Sonia, are you still here? I think Sonia or Sean are still on with our meeting. Sonia is here. I think they may have split up. So Sonia is with us and Sharon Marshall is with us. And I think the others may have gone over to CRC. Sonia, did you hear the question that previously on the one of the things that was brought up was a question of what the status is with Hickory Ridge and what happens if it falls apart and is the, we're not able to close on the deal. Sonia, did you hear the question that you're not able to close on the deal? The CPA portion, I assume, stays with the CPA funds. Yes. The other money that the council voted that was to come out of stabilization. Right. Okay. So there was three parts to that. There was funding. There was a real estate, which is another seats reserve for appropriation. And there was stabilization funds. So if that doesn't go through all the money would revert back to those three sources. And I assume that the money for Hickory Ridge would revert back to open space. So that's where it would go. And that's where we met our 10% in another way. So. I am tracking that. It came from undesignated. Sonia designated balance. So that's where it would be hurt back unless it reduced to 10%, which I would figure out before I turned it back. Okay. Thank you. You have your hand up too. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I was just going to comment on this, that we've done this $25,000. Kept to kept that. Little piece of funding there because. It's been experienced that we just don't know when and something is going to come along that we might be interested in assessing. Whether it's feasible or not. And it gives the ability to go forward. So the. The question is, is it going to be available to, is it going to be available to shop? It doesn't mean that. Money is going to be spent. Immediately on it or. But it's to the point where at least. It would be good to find out whether what, what's feasible. And I think that it's sort of in that category. some bad times over a long period of time going back even to the period after the 2008 recession. Very loom. Yeah. Yeah. Can you hear me? Yes. I would like to support what Kathy Shone said about open space and the purchase of land. I think it would be wise to look at that. I don't know if the council has a count on how many acres the town actually owns as open space. I think it's land around, you know, the wells and wetland are important, but I also think buying up so much land is something we need to look at because it also drives up property costs. The other thing is it would be worthwhile for counselors to know how much land is owned by Amherst College, by UMass, by Hampshire. In other words, how much open land really exists in town and how much more do we really need unless we're protecting, you know, watershed and that. So I'm supporting what Kathy Shone has to say about open space. Okay. Kathy, your hand is up again, so. I just, you know, as I said, I didn't want to focus on something as relatively small as 25,000, but as Mandy did, I was looking at unspent funds and I was there when Dave presented this. They got 25,000 in 2020 last year and it hasn't been spent yet. You know, so he actually made a comment is we don't, if you don't want to give us the full amount, we could take less. So I'm just not sure what it takes to be ready. And so this would give a pool of 50,000 is I'm understanding the sheets we just got from Nate today that there's 25 as yet unspent to be looking at this. So that was the only reason I raised it because my kind of antenna went up on getting ready for this when I think we were feeling that we just bought a lot the year before. So that, as I said, it's, it's a small amount of money, you know, trail maintenance and everything else, I think make sense with this leisure services. They presented their 25 more around getting money to rehab a park, you know, to put in something so it wasn't buying. It was doing some things that that the town would highly value in terms of services. So that's the only reason I focused on that one line. Sonia, can you confirm that there's a balance left in that 25,000 that's from the prior year? Yeah, I'll have to. The probably still is, but I this report was done a month or two ago. So I'd have to go back in and look. I'll get back to you in a few minutes. Okay. Because I think that that it makes a relevant part of the discussion before we get to is there anything else that people would like to raise about the any of the proposals that are on the screen right now, which are the ones that are in the proposed order. There was a question that had been raised about I think would we want to say something about welcoming any future comments or we would consider future requests, unaffordable housing, if they come forward, sort of peculiar because we're actually voting on a very specific order and it's sort of like strainiest to the order. I just meant I thought you were in the context of the report we write up. I was I was ready to just focus on this and I thought you wanted some additional conversation. That was the only thing that I thought got raised during the discussion. So let's let Sonia come to a come to the answer and then I don't know if Sean is still in the building or not. Is the other two things maybe we could switch to the third agenda item and then come back to the one month budget because I want to take up a one month budget with a finance department staff being present. So if you could turn to the draft of the plan for future meetings and action in financial decision making process. Hold on. I have to stop sharing and go back. Okay. So what happened while she while Lynn is getting the proper document. I've been engaged in a process for past period. It's coming up for the past several weeks where I've been working with Paul, Sean and Sonia and Lynn to try and visualize how the process is going to work in order to do all of the things that we need to do over the next several months which is going to get to an FY 21 budget after we get us to a one month budget to take us through to the period until we can get to the one year budget because we're hoping for more information about revenues to project into the 21 budget before we finally do that as well as a lot of expense work that needs to be done in this post COVID crisis period during COVID and post COVID and so and for those reasons it needed we needed some time plus the regional school budget has been put onto a different schedule than usual. So I had sent you as an attachment the item that is on your screen that shows what the revised plan would be and what you'll see in there is a number of finance committee meetings. In the finance committee meetings each one is where we would have a role to play and when you look at the period after the manager submits the one year budget which just really gets into that second page there are a number of meetings then where we really get into a high degree of frequency for our meetings which would have happened in May except then May got postponed until July essentially but if we're going to do with finance committees have historically done and we would receive the budget and then after we receive the budget on June 29th then have a series of meetings to review the budget and go forward from from there and so that's what the plan would look like and so I wanted to know if you feel comfortable with the proposed schedule because it does call for a fair amount of July meetings but can we get our work done without doing it and it hasn't been the habit of finance committees to do that. So are there any comments on or questions about the proposed schedule? Indy I just want to point out to people that more than likely these will all be virtual we don't envision being back in the town room for meetings until the earliest probably late August September. The only question I had um it wasn't a question I'm fine with the schedule is when in the weeks in July when we're meeting twice are we going to is every I'm assuming I just put it in my calendar it is 2 30 on the Thursdays um because we have Tuesdays and Thursdays so is the time the same um it's useful for me to block the time in my calendar um so there are several Thursdays in there the others are already blocked because they're council meetings and they're finance meetings so it's it's those Thursdays Indy. I think that's up to the committee in part to make that determination um I think last year that was what we did we just kept with the time that we had been meeting but we don't have to we could right we could do anything. That's the that's why I raised it I don't know whether this um time we had one right we were we were juggling someone who worked and 2 30 was a stretch but not on Thursdays you know so I just don't know other people are on the line so just a reaction to both the calendar but also the Thursday time slot does that work Dorothy is not teaching during the summer so I don't see that as a problem she had to leave today because of a family issue. Pat? Two hands up. Pat I saw. I can do the Thursdays at 2 30. And Bob? Yeah I was just gonna say I can do uh really anytime on Thursdays. There was another issue that's related to this that I wanted to bring up. Mary Lou and I had a conversation outside of formal meeting and now I can actually report on it because it's in the for an open session and that is in the old finance committee we used to divide up into the into the sections that are evident by the presentations and have different people from the committee sort of take a higher level of role and help draft short explanatory section. I think that we did less last year because the council is more actively engaged in um the town meeting is so it's a little bit different but Mary Lou is raising the question if we wanted to go back to that a little bit and have each of us take on a little bit more extensive role in any one section or group of sections and then helped write the report. Mary Lou did you have anything you wanted to say as to whether I misinterpreted our conversation? No you are accurate in that it could be council members it could be the non-voting residents but I think it was useful for one person to have a lot of knowledge about the different departments of the town. It's good for everyone to have an overview of it all but there's so much involved with each of those departments that I found it useful now whether you would you know the council would I don't know but I think old finance committee members found it very useful and helpful. Last year what happened in part was is that the council had gone through a very extensive period during the month of January February in March where each of the department heads came in and met the council and explained in great detail what the department did how it established its goals what its plans were so when we got the budget book it attached very cleanly to the presentations we'd received before we're now into into a different year we're a year past that and so I think that the brevity of the report last year was frankly recognition that we didn't need to repeat what the committee at art with the council had already heard me create detail which is but I still think it was a good question as to whether for example Mary Lou did the schools for several years whether having somebody who's a little bit more extensively researching the school issues and saying a little bit more about schools than um whatever is and uh to sort of put it together in a way that's helpful so the might be helpful to the council thoughts on any additional comments on this or any opposition to the idea I think otherwise we need we would just want to get into the presentations and hear from groups and then we still need we still can make the decision at that point that we would each take sections to write where we would take the budget as presented by the town manager and the presentation and supplement two together Kathy Kathy need to unmute I thought part of the suggestion and I like the idea a lot would be that when we are hearing about the proposal for the school someone would have more knowledge so they could lead the questions that we're asking when the people are with us not so much after that discussion is over um so I might have misheard what you were saying because that on this so I mean I like that idea just I think we would have to decide pretty soon on who's on education who's on water and sewer who's on you know dpw you know I mean we would just have to divide it up sooner rather than later um and and for for those who didn't sit through this in May I don't know what form it will come to us but we got a very thick book with a lot of pages in it for each of these departments um with appendices you know so knowing that someone was going to take something that was a large department with a lot of money at least one of us was would mean that other you could focus somewhere else so I didn't know whether the suggestion and he was to come into the room on the you know if it's starting on June 30th there's June 30th July 2nd those are the department meetings where presumably Guilford would be there for public works and Mike would be there for schools um so come prepared to have thought about it before you got in the room we can do that that's a good actually we could either if one of our next two meetings we could come to a final decision I could ask people if they have a particular interest in a section to email me and then I can present it back to you and we could make a final decision that our next meeting or the meeting after about what it is that we would want to to do as far as who's dividing to which budget but if that makes sense we'll we'll do that and I'll just send out a reminder email afterwards asking people if asking each of you and all members of the committee are involved in this we're a single committee so we're in we're proceeding as a single committee so I'd ask you to email if there's a section of the budget that you're particularly interested in try and make sure we get get it divided up and then it'll help prepare for the beginning part of the questions and help for the follow-up when we have to make a report does that seem agreeable uh I see Lynn Andy I heard it is two things one is um pay more attention to the detail maybe going into the conversation but then also basically write that section or at least the initial draft of that section for the report yes okay that's what I understood it too yeah so um there's the remind the request will be um within the next week to send me back a note if there are any particular sections you're interested in and then that'll give me the opportunity to work with Kathy and his who's vice chair and come up with plan bob yeah I just have a general question about what the budget booklet will look like um is there going to be any kind of section on you know here's how we have paired the budget down compared to what we normally would have put put in or is it just going to be here's what we're asking for in Andy my yeah my understanding is it'll be a budget booklet like every year and there always is a comparison to at least one year behind you okay one year that you're through you all are going to need that but it will it will be a budget booklet like we always can but what we might what we might not have I mean I just was looking at what the regional schools did when they came to us is it's just an unusual year we had what we thought FY 21 was going to be and now we've paired it back so Paul may you know Paul may do uh you know uh introduction from the town manager going in march of this year or in february this year we thought it was going to be this you know and it was going to increase from FY 20 by this much and now we're here so we've kind of done those the skeleton of that big picture look but then what we don't know is how did each of these departments um turn on a dime when they thought they were going to have some growth and now they're told have just they had the same amount of money as they had last especially the town departments um how did they live with that yeah I don't think there's any intention to show what they were hoping for in FY 20 I think all we'll show is FY 19 and what they're asking for in FY 21 and that will include the one month budget amounts okay so I think that we have the were there any other questions about the proposed uh planning of itself as to how we get to the uh through this entire process and the series of steps that were defined and spaced into dates and we tried to court what we tried to do obviously is correlate the work of the various committees with and mostly our committee of course and uh the council when the council would act and when we would act in order to make proper recommendations so it was and um the only thing that's a little bit unclear is where we are with regional schools uh which I'm gonna we'll talk about it just separately um the piece on the piece on the regional schools I'll be really brief and then we're going to turn back to finish up the community preservation act discussions um the regional schools have the potential of doing a one month budget um the department of elementary and secondary education is recognizing that schools are um regional schools have a challenge because of the inability of some towns to organize town meetings as quickly as they normally do and they want to have budgets that are approved by all member communities or the sufficient number of member communities to constitute three quarters which makes for a binding budget by uh July 1st but if not they want every region to be prepared to go to a 112th budget so a 112th budget is an entirely different process and it's really something that is done by department of elementary and secondary education based upon input from the regional staff so that's kind of where we are at and we are moving forward with the assumption that we have we're we have a regional budget that has been presented to us and we're going to try and keep moving through the process so that we are prepared to act this month and as we find out what our fellow communities are able to do in scheduling town meetings and how they're prepared to move forward with the timetable see if we're um can be in sync with them so that we put down the last council meeting of this month um which is I think June 29th in order to have a target date to have the budget the superintendent will be at that meeting which is posted as a meeting of the finance committee and the council for next Monday there are actually two hearings that are scheduled in that similar fashion and they're required by the charter that there be a finance committee hearings on all sections of the budget and all budgets so we're required to have hearing on the one month budget and we're required to have a hearing on the region budget so the superintendent and Doug Slaughter who's now the finance director of the for the region are going to present the budget to the entire council and to the entire finance committee everybody who's on this meeting is a part of that meeting too so that's our opportunity to hear their presentation and ask questions of the superintendent and the school finance director and so please be prepared to be present for that meeting and then we will talk about it as course finance committee separately afterwards but that is also posted as a public hearing so we will hear from members of the public who will have questions about the budget which you already have so is that a that process understandable Mary Lou did you have something yep are you going to say something or I go on if not what I'm what we're going to do then is turn back to the Community Preservation Act and see if we have the answer to the question that Sonia was looking up which to remind everybody was going back to the $25,000 amount for or is a fund available to look at potential land purchases as they became available and Sonia did was is that $25,000 so it was allocated last year was any of it spent it's the same balance that's on the report yeah so whatever was in the report is still accurate in terms of leftover amounts where was that I have to go back to the report to look unless we recalls you want me to try to bring it up Andy was $19,000 Sonia said $19,000 so almost almost $20,000 so do we have a recommendation that we want to make on um the proposed order then yeah I'd like to move that we recommend to the town council that they accept the recommendation for this these expenditures of the CPA money this year I hear a second I second I second okay the promotion is made in second and that keeps the $25,000 as allocated money and as I think in the following year though if it gets to the point where there's $45,000 that have not been spent that could be Lynn has your hand open yeah let me also say that I really like the idea that we do a um we look very carefully at what money's not expended and after a three-year period we bring it back in even if it's town money I it's just sitting out there and there's no reason for it just want to know also in the CPA report the very last page shows articles some of the articles and projects that work closed out to find out so we also track that so things are getting closed as we're sure the projects have been put down um could they close a little faster at times absolutely but I just want to point out that they are getting closed and that's there's a report of that at the end of the CPA report right I thought at least the committee was talking about and I think it's a good process you know if it's open find out why it's open I mean if it's just they didn't get around to closing it close it if they're about to finish it you know it was like it's a time limited that you don't just wait till five years have gone by you're you're thinking like three years is the magic number or two years and they said they didn't notify people when they've made the awards you know so going forward saying you know we we expect to hear from you it's something this was what I heard the committee discussion how do you alert people in advance that um you're going to be expecting the money back if they end up not actually needing all of it um in a timely way there's the nineteen so I just say some things I haven't done the CPA I've been a liaison to the CPA committee in a bit but the actual um proposal that goes out gives it a three year limit so when they're making that proposal they'll be asked if there's any outstanding money where they're at with that and they're told in that proposal that they have three years from from the day of the morning which is usually July 1st we want to include that in our report as an additional information that the committee um has identified the the policy about three years and to say that we encourage the continued application of that policy I think so I think so the Hagnar has your hand up yeah I would agree I think I think we should actually I think it's just a good management practice to require that at the end of three years you either close the project or you you know you close the project unless there's some reason not to that's a reasonable rate you know a good reason and if there's money unspent you close the project and get the money back you know I just think that's good management so um when you were the maker the original maker of the motion can we have the motion be that the committee is going to submit a report to the council recommending everything that is in the proposed order and add the that we would we encourage the community preservation committee every year to look at the balances and to determine whether funds have been expended within a three-year period and if not and there's no reasonable explanation why not that it consider whether the grant should continue as being open and available or I accept that amendment and I'm just wondering do we need to vote separately on this financial order and that or can we combine them that way I actually was going to suggest we separate I think separating them would be good because there's a specific thing we can it's even got a name up at top that we can refer to that we voted on and then we in addition to it it's the order is FY 21 you know we can I'll I'll accept that and keep that as two separate motions so the motion on the floor is that recommending appropriation order FY 21-07 as presented and all projects that are in listed in that order is recommended by the finance committee to the council so any further discussion this is the opportunity for members who are non-voting to be able to say anything additional before we vote if not then I'm going to go for a roll call vote as required um so Pat Tangelis yes Lynn Grusner yes dorthy had to leave right so that she's absent Kathy yes and I and I'm yes so as part of the euro with one member absent and then is there a second motion so how do we word it so we we recommend that the community preservation act um revisit every grant within three years and close it unless there is a good reason to continue and I second that okay so there's been a motion by Kathy seconded by Lynn any discussion can I just say the only discussion I would have is a few of these I'm just thinking of a major building project that takes several years but that would I guess that would qualify you know I'm you know I didn't qualify we would still look at it did it even start is it in progress so then it's still it still works it won't be finished but it still works right so I can yeah I'm sorry Mike my concerns things like the east street school money just sitting there right well the east street school money is actually an interesting problem that you have to decide on because the the idea wasn't that it was ever given by the town meeting or the community and recommendation of the community preservation act for the east street school it was given to the Amherst affordable housing trust to have funds available to address affordable housing issues and be able to flexibly address projects and needs as they identified they are a town committee that has the authority as a separate trust to make decisions to expend funds and I think the question the then flows from that is if they've been unable to expend funds should they be should should more funds be added in any given year and each year we would expect the CPA committee and then the council to look at the amount of the balance and the affordable housing trust and to determine whether the balance is sufficient to give them the flexibility that they need to move forward or at what point do we stop giving funds to the affordable housing trust essentially just Andy I just want to say that Sharon has her hand up to so I just wanted to get that clarified Sharon I just wanted to make sure that the language closing the project means also returning the money just to be clear like the money must be returned or the money is returned at the closing of the project or I don't know that we need to add that or not so yeah if money is does money get it sent to the grantee no it stays in the town's treasure until work is done in your reimburse for work or those own progress reports but the money is in the town treasure it doesn't get released well I guess my point is that it gets put back into a different um it does that need to be specified or does that does that happen automatically when a project is closed it's put back to the funding source original funding source so if it was CPA on the balance and we go there it was a reserve it would go there whatever the funding sources so we're going to the Valley CDC first time home buyers program I'm mortgage subsidy program until they have identified somebody and has they're actually making a loan subsidy arrangement that with the expenditure funds for that identified individual the money is in the town um accounts not in CDC's account yes so the the question of if something we're going to be taken back it's the ability to continue to to look to that fund not the ability not the actual capture of recapture of dollars yes even trust even a affordable housing trust it is in the town's treasury it's not in a separate area and they have to follow all the current laws and they also look at they're also held to a new CPA regulations because it is CPA funding it still has to be spent in a local purpose there that's all great so so an additional question I would ask about Valley CDC program which is one that I picked on before they have a provision in their proposal that if money is provided to a home buyer the home buyer then as they repay or if they no longer qualify and it's recaptured it go does it get recaptured by Valley CDC or is that a or does it get captured by us or is that to be determined that I'm not sure of that would be a question for Nate on the way I'll run that by I'm pretty sure it stays with the I think the restriction just sits uh transferred down to the next person but I'll double check on I don't know what you mean to them because I was thinking that there's we have other programs like that um I think it's on the property it stays with the property it's been a while I'm pretty sure that something happens but there is the provision that money ultimately gets repaid back to Valley CDC and they were anticipating that they would then identify new homeowners down the line would qualify so so we'll follow up with Nathan and get back to you guys it's just an issue that is significant enough that anyone wants to I have a hazy memory of this so I'm not going to say what but when Valley CDC presented this new grant there was a discussion about this and Valley CDC said well of course you could write it that it came back to you we would prefer that it you know sits in a pot for another person so it it's sound but but Nate will know whether how we wrote the last one and whether we had the flexibility depending on what we want to do um do we want to you know make it available for another first time home buyer or not but it sounded like that they've done these in other towns in both directions but as I said my memory I didn't take written down notes I took my mental notes probably the minutes might reflect that but they certainly there that was discussed during their review of this project and your potential is your hands up guys thank you Andy I am I'm the newest member on the committee and my background is limited right now I'm it seems to me that different funds the different projects that we fund are very specific but the what we might call back is very different so it seems to me I would like to see that first time home buyers keep their money because then it would be available for other home first time home buyers where another fund I might not feel that way so it seems like we need to make or I would like to see us make these decisions on a case-by-case basis but I agree with the general thought about money being returned after three years if it's not being used so why don't we turp that's a good point and maybe what we're really saying is that the Valley CDC is not finding buyers and the funds are just sitting at Valley CDC then they're not being expended for the purpose and that's really a part of what we're trying to do and we will craft the wording of your report to reflect that sentiment great oh yeah I'm just wondering this is more of a committee discussion for CPA committee since they have the Community Preservation Act plan and their their policies and procedures so it should be something that they would be discussing to print to put in there because I'm not sure voting it here is going to make it happen there so I'm just wondering about the process your process is this this part of the motion why we separated out is we're really making a recommendation in part back to the CPA committee and doing it this way okay I was just trying to understand the whole I don't think it's it doesn't necessarily have to lead to council action council action is the order so is that consistent with the motion Kathy yes presumably someone wrote it down so are we ready to vote yes here's the comments from the committee members who are who are not going to be voting when I do the roll call seeing none um we'll go I'll just go through the same order Pat yes Lynn yes we'll indicate Dorothy's absence Kathy yes and I'm yes so it's four to zero one member absent so the only agenda item that's left is whether there any immediate questions about the one month budget if not we'll take that up at the next meeting and what I would encourage you to do think very carefully if we don't have questions now about issues that you'd like to raise Lynn Andy I think in an earlier discussion or somewhere I saw that we we'd like to make sure we understand which parts of the one month budget are one time only and which parts are considered to be that month what is needed that month for that group so we know for example retirement is a one time at the beginning of your payment we do it because we get a discount by paying it early other other things in the one month budget like that and that could that's for next week yes um did you want to say I we just got it last night I had that same question but just we can funnel questions through you Andy so that can be part of next week's discussion you know what we haven't seen the you know the school the school pieces I don't know which things because one of the discussions they had is do they have to invest some things in the school property but I think that's a great question to get answered do you want to see I had to go on Lynn were you saying something I'm just going to put it up putting up the one um so what I had done is an additional spreadsheet and is um was to take the one year budget and divide it into 12 and compare one 12th of the annual budget against the amount in each column where it's able to do that and when you do that what I found was is that for the um town operating budget line elementary schools and library services that um each of those lines the one month was less than one 12th and so I had said with their reason for that and trying to come back with a little bit of an explanation but I think that was one level of question that I had posed then the other thing was in the series of questions about enterprise funds right because enterprise funds didn't necessarily work that way and there's no ability if enterprise funds are overspending and we don't have the revenue coming in because of university not coming fully back in session what happens we're not going to have the revenue coming in at the same rate and it's not like we have the depth of reserves and so I was asking about the each of those enterprise funds has a reserve balanced and wanting to understand what the impact was and the reserve balance for each of them so those were questions that I had sort of thrown out as an initial group so think about questions that we want to pose and when you look at the plan that's one of our things for next week and you'll get my spreadsheet and my initial set of questions in more detail anything else people would ask about the one-month budget now because if not then I think that we have nothing else that hasn't this in the unanticipated category and we can adjourn okay seeing nothing then thank you very much and when you're adjourning the finance committee meeting at 430 thank you bye everyone team to twice today bye bye