 All right. Well, maybe we should remind people that the meeting is being recorded. Paul Bachmann is here. All right. And so is Risha. Promote to panelists. Okay. Here they both come. Hey, Risha, Paul, you made it. Oh, do we have to unmute them? No, they can unmute themselves. Jessica Allen is still, we'll leave her there for the moment. Hello, Jessica. We're going to try to get the whole trust here and then we'll invite you in. As usual, I'm finishing up dinner. So I'm going to turn the video off for the next few minutes. That's okay. I did that in a great rush just a few minutes ago. So I think we should bring food for all of us. I think that's the only fair thing to do. There you go. If we meet in person. I'm willing to. When we have our strategic planning thing. Yeah, there is Allegra. Allegra is on her way. Here is Allegra. Hello, Allegra. Hello. Welcome. Hi, I was getting somewhere. When I was pressing to click in, I was saying like I'm, I had to join as the host tonight. I don't know. Some, so I don't know if people are having that same difficulty, but I was confused. I don't know. Nate's not here. So a different person who I don't even know. Really Steve McCarthy is it? Who set this up for us. And he's actually, I think he's gone. I don't know if he's around. Here's Rob. Looks like he made you host and then took up. Yeah. That's what it is. We could email him if there's a problem. But I don't know. The email. So actually. We're not going to have a problem. That's all. We hope anyways. Okay. Here's Rob. Hi, Rob. Five of six of us here. No one said they weren't the only person who said they might not come was Paul and he was here first. So. Yeah. Things change. Yeah. So we're waiting for Grover and for Ashley. And we'll, I believe we have a quorum, however, so we'll wait. It's only seven or one late a little bit more. And then we'll just start and add them when they come up. They come. Okay. Since you're going to start, I'll add them. Okay. We're going to wait a couple more minutes. Absolutely. Do we have a quorum? One, two, three, four, five. We do. Six. Six. We're all, yeah. Six. Six of us. So we have a quorum. So we think perhaps that means. Well, call the meeting to order at 702. And welcome everyone who is here. Rob has agreed to take notes for us tonight. Thank you so much, Rob, because George is somewhere else and can't do it this time. So that's where we are. Does anyone hopefully everyone got to see the July minutes? Are there any questions, concerns or comments or anything about the July minutes? Rob. It looks like George gave me parts of credit for doing them. That should be deleted. I'm sorry. At the bottom, it says. By George and me, but it's only by George. Oh, okay. All right. We will, we'll do that. Delete. Delete the part that said by Rob. And here is Grover. Welcome Grover. Are there any other thoughts about the minutes Grover? We kind of started and we're looking at the minutes. And we're seeing if there are any concerns. The only one was Rob. Notice that the bottom it said they were by George and, and Rob and Rob said they're by George. So we'll take him off and he'll do them for us this time. Any other concerns or thoughts? Ashley just joined us. Ashley, we're doing minutes. Thank you. Okay. So we're all here. Fantastic. Are there, if there are no other questions about the. Questions about the comments questions about the minutes. I will assume, unless I see something or hear something to the contrary, that the minutes have been approved. The minutes look good. Everybody agree. I know no one can see the fact that we're raising our thumbs, but. We are. I had here, I hear no objection. So the July minutes have been approved as amended. The amendment being removal of Rob's name. All right. So our next item of interest is to hear from Jessica. And it looks like Laura is also here. So we will promote them. Can you. You want to bring them in. Erica. Yes, I'll bring them in. They are going to let us know how the ball lane project is going. And they have a proposal that I hope the presumably we've all read. A request for $375,000, I believe it is to. Make ball lane work. So welcome both of you. Welcome Jessica. Welcome Laura. You should be able to unmute yourselves. Thank you. And I had a question for you. I think that I could share your slides, but if you would like to, I would happily make one of you a co-host and be much happier than doing it myself. That's fine. If you wouldn't mind making me a co-host that I can, I can show the slides and I will do that right now. Okay. I apologize in advance that I have a puppy outside my door, but I don't have a puppy outside my door. I don't have a puppy outside my door. And I am the mama. So he may start barking at some point during the meeting. So just giving you a heads up that you could hear some, some racket. He doesn't let me. Fair enough. Fair enough. Okay. Well, why don't you go ahead and do your proposal. Let us know whether you would like us to ask questions along the way at the end, or what do you want? Can you see a presentation in a PDF? I'm going to try to make it a full view here. Yes. Yes, I can see it in a PDF. Perfect. There you go. That's a full view. Great. Perfect. So my name is Jessica Allen. I am a real estate project manager with Valley CDC. Laura is also here with me and she's the director of our division for real estate. And I'm going to give you a briefing tonight and answer any questions on the application we've submitted to the trust for the Amherst community homes. I do want to know we're making a slight name change from the ball lane community homes to Amherst community homes. And that has mostly to do with the fact that there's no access to this property off of ball lane and our design. And so to keep public safety from being confused, we're shifting the name from ball lane to Amherst community homes. We'll give it a proper name at some point. We're still kind of hashing out what that name might be, but for right now we're changing the name and the application to the ZBA will be for Amherst community homes. So just wanted to note the name shift since our last meeting. So we gave a presentation in September of last year to the trust on the on this proposed development. And there are some shifts and some changes. So I want to point that out as we go through the slides here. In essence, the project has essentially stayed the same, but there has been some modifications. So I want to make sure that the trust is aware of that from what we presented about a year ago. So I know many of you have attended the numerous community sessions that we've had on this project, but for those of you who have not had the opportunity to be able to do so, I do want to give a background on the site in this project. So we are looking at a parcel that is located in North Amherst. It is right at the intersection of pulpit Hill Road and Monogu Road. It's about a nine acre site. It's in a fabulous location in terms of our real estate development opinion, because it is so close to so many different things and has a lot of opportunity to access to parks and housing and services. So I think one of the key things, and I will highlight this a little bit more later in the presentation, why this is important is that this parcel is located in the North Amherst QCT qualified census tract. This is a HUD designated census track based on population and socioeconomic data. So this is, this is key for this project in terms of how we're able to access public funding that it's located in the community that it's located in the QCT. It is right on the PVT route 33. There is a bus stop that's right here adjacent to the corner of the site. So that's fantastic in terms of public access. We're located near Huffers pond near the Mill River recreation area. The Pioneer Valley co-housing is right up the street. We also are near the survival center near the Mills district. So we are near a lot of goods and services for these future homeowners, which is awesome. The site is also located about one and a half miles from UMass and UMass can be reached on the, on the, on the bus route. So again, a fabulous location for anybody who might be looking to live here. For us, for our purposes, you know, we've got two public ways. We've got pulpit hill and monique road. And as I noted, there's also ball lane, which is a private way. And for a variety of reasons due to legal constraints in terms of access and the fact that it is a private way, we've really shifted from trying to access the site from this private lane and trying to focus our access from the public ways. This site was previously developed. It was a former trucking facility and agricultural facility. There are buildings that used to be there that are now demolished. They were demolished about a year and a half, two years ago. Now we've just got some concrete slabs there. So it is a previously developed site. There does remain an existing house. It's about an 800 square foot house and we are, we have a tenant who lives there. So we are renting it out to, to somebody who's been there for a long time. She was, she was there before we purchased the property. So same tenant has been there for several years. And we do have some wetland constraints on the site that we are very cognizant of as we're moving forward with our design process. So we have a small drainage ditch that's up here on this right along pulpit hill road. That's wetlands. And so we're avoiding that. And there's also this lovely riparian area with wetlands back here towards the southern part of the site. So that's kind of an overview of its location and just some of the characteristics of the property itself. We think it's a beautiful site. I know others that have come to the site also when they've walked it, it is beautiful. It has gorgeous views to the west. This picture here is standing from that back riparian corner and looking down towards the intersection. So you'll see some houses there, but it's a, you know, wide open field with some rolling topography. This is looking from the intersection back. And then as I noted there, you know, it's previously developed. So there's concrete slabs. There's an access driveway coming off Montague road. And this is a photo of the existing house. So one of the main goals of this project is to provide first time home buyers with access to new homes. And so the main funding source that we are looking to utilize in this development is the Commonwealth Builder program. This is a fairly new program. It's been around for a couple of years. And it is as far as we know, and as far as I know, the only state public subsidy for affordable home ownership. Most of the money that's out there that's in public subsidies is for rental. So it is very rare to, to have this program and to have it available. And one of the goals of the Commonwealth Builder program is not only to increase first time home buyers, but really to increase BIPOC understanding that there is a huge gap between black homeowners and white homeowners. So understanding that as individuals in America, most of our individual wealth is held in our house. And for hundreds of years with multiple policies, whether it's land use and zoning that have, that have restricted home ownership, whether it's lending policies, whether it's appraisal bias, there has been multiple systematic problems that have prohibited from black homeowners from owning a home. And so one of the program goals through the Commonwealth Builder program is to increase BIPOC home ownership. And this is, this is reached through the deed writers and some of the lottery preference and I'll, I'll get into those details later on, but that is one of the main goals of this program. So here is the latest and greatest for the proposed development. As many of you know, we are deep in the weeds of design development right now. And our hope is to file permits within the next month to the zoning board of appeals, but this is the latest and greatest. And we're still kind of hashing things out, but in general, the concept hasn't changed all that much since you saw it about a year ago. We're still looking to do 30 homes, 15 duplexes. And I will note that the one major change since we saw you in September is that we've kind of changed the affordability mix. So when we came to you last year, we were looking to do 10 homes at market rate. We had a market study that was completed at the end of last year that indicated that we would not be able to sell the homes at the price that we were pricing them at. A price that we needed to set due to the high construction cost. And so the market wouldn't support that even though Amherst has a really high housing market compared to the rest of the valley, we still wouldn't be able to sell the homes at what they would cost to construct. So we went back to Commonwealth builders and we've been talking with them back and forth about what's the best way to make use of their subsidy. And what's the best unit mix to be able to get the most money into the deal from Commonwealth builders. And so from there, we have now an all affordable development. And we are setting the, the household AMIs at 80% and 100% AMI. And I'll give some more data about what that means in a slide or two. Carol, you had, I saw you raised your hand. Did you have a question? I just wondered if you could give us a hand of what was the thing you, what was the amount you were trying to sell them for that you discovered was too much. What was that amount? I'm just curious. I'd have to go back and look, but I believe they were over 500 for the market. Okay. Okay. They were pretty high. Yeah. And, you know, the construction pricing is just so cuckoo bananas right now that we would be taking a subsidy and we'd be taking a hit trying to sell them at market rate. And that doesn't seem to make sense. So, so by this way, we're able to get public subsidy. We're able to, to, to make the numbers work. So from the site design perspective, we're really trying to concentrate through the development where we've already previously developed. We're trying to preserve that beautiful field in that frontage right on pulpit hill and monarchy road. The idea is to have clusters of little neighborhoods with access to open space. So you'll see that there's these little pocket parts that are part of the design. And really preserving this, this area here. So about half of the property will be developed and the other half will be protected as open space. So we're looking to have this be a very pedestrian friendly development. So parking comes in. We have two shared parking areas and the rest of these are all pedestrian pathways. So the idea is to have a main pedestrian pathway spine with the majority of the homes fronting that pedestrian pathway. And then the secondary pathways that connect these little neighborhoods together. We do intend to have dedicated ED parking spaces. So we're looking to have this open space. So we're looking to have this open space. And then in this development, we're still working out the numbers, but I think we'll have six to start with the possibility of increasing to 11 over time. The building design. So again, try to utilize the. The site and all of the benefits of the site, this open site that can really utilize PV solar. We're looking to have all electric utilities. So no fossil fuels to be used. The homes are small. The idea is that they are, you know, this is a concentrated development with small footprints. So the smaller homes, starting at around 995. So we're looking to have a lot of windows on the southern side, less windows on the northern side. Really trying to utilize the sun to help regulate the heating and cooling within the home based on the time of year. We're looking to have all electric utilities. So no fossil fuels to be used. So we're looking to have a lot of, you know, the larger three-bedroom homes. Getting as high as 1273 Carol, I saw you raise your hand again. I'm sorry. I just wanted to know if you have the parking out there, what kind of. What happens if for somebody with disabilities under any accommodations made for people that might have disabilities. Sure. So these buildings that have. I have C's on them. I have C's on them. I have C's on them. I have C's on them. I have C's on them. So there's three, there's three different building types. One is a. One story, two bedroom. Then we have a one and a half story. Two bedroom and then a two story, three bedrooms. So the one story are designed to be accessible. So those would be six homes. Those homes are being placed. They're the C and the D units. So they are being placed closest to the parking areas. And then they're, they're the C's on the left. So. The area that's being placed next to the first access, the other benefit of placing homes in those location. And this is was a specific request of the abutter here. Is that having a ground floor. Prevents like a second floor. Looking into his yard. So between the screening and the fencing and having a low building on this side. You know, that helps with the, with the butters as well and their concerns with. I see two more hands and I don't know who wants to go first so. I'll leave it to Carol to, to call on members. I see Ashley's hand and first in my little thing so go Ashley. Um, well, hope maybe you're getting to it, but then how much is each unit going to cost and is there a subsidy even for the tenant of that cost. So I'll get to the pricing. Soon I have a slide that kind of details all that do you mind waiting a few minutes. Okay, great. Okay, Grover. Yeah, my question is also about access and design. So, my memory of this area is that there's not existing sidewalks and on the lot here, but there is a bus stop out there so somebody was a wheelchair user or like a child and wasn't going to drive off the property but wanted to go to the bus stop is there going to be some kind of a pedestrian path that's safe that doesn't require people to walk on the road to get to the bus stop. Yep. So what how we've designed this is that there is going to be a pedestrian way that goes down here and then we're adding a sidewalk on this side there's an existing sidewalk on this side but we are proposing to add a sidewalk on on our property. And, you know, we don't have plans to put in a crosswalk, but maybe that's something that the town would be willing to contribute to the project is to put the painted crosswalk from the sidewalk location over to the bus stop. Any other questions about design before I move on. No. Okay. I was just wondering how the two bedroom and three bedroom split came up and I'm asking specifically because we had our listening session back in June and something that I heard from the people that were in my group was that finding a three bedroom is particularly hard at this point. We came up with a split because I think you know that we were responding to what we believe the market was asking for at the time. So, and I think also trying to keep the pricing as low as possible. Commonwealth builders will allow under their regulations they're trying they would like to and I do have this in a slide later on but they do like to try to match up the number of people to the number of bedrooms plus one. So a three family, a three person heads hold would could go into a two bedroom or a four person household would be able to go into a three bedroom. Okay, I'm going to keep going here. So here's our proposed building design and this is just some renderings of what some of the different units look like so we've got as I noted three different or four different building types. So this is building type a which has a one and a half story to bedroom on one side, and the two story three bedroom on the other side. You'll see that there's a lot of windows on this one because this has a southern entrance. This is building type B. So this has one and a half story on the side and two bedroom on this side. However, the window configurations a little bit different on on this entrance side because it's on the north. So you can see this is a one and a half story to bedroom and the one story to bedroom, and then the building type D to story three bedroom, and then the one story to bedroom so this is our building renderings and as part of the application I did provide you with the full set of building plans with the floor plans and whatnot so you can really dig into those plans if you want to when you're as part of your application. So what about the anticipated sale prices. So, final sale prices are going to be set by mass housing and they have they utilize the HUD household income levels to set what some of those income levels will be and then they've got very specific on how they get to where they believe those anticipated sale prices are going to be. So, this is what the numbers are as of today I cannot guarantee that this is what the numbers are going to be. Once we get to the sale of homes within a couple years it's going to depend on HUD income levels and how those change. It's going to depend on a whole number of factors. So, as of right now this is where we're looking for anticipated sale prices for the 80% household AMI two bedroom one story. 95 square footage building we're looking at anticipated sales price of about 150,000. And then the ranges go up and the highest price point is a three bedroom to story for the 100% AMI at 232,000 so the ranges as of right now about 50,000 to 232,000. And for income eligibility up Ashley you had a. Well, so affordable housing, according to, you know the law is 80% AMI so actually half the units are actually considered affordable housing and half or not because 100% AMI is not affordable housing. Is that, is that true. I mean, so I'll jump in. I think there's a little. So for CPA funds, they fund up to 100% AMI, which is the funding that the trust works with. Okay, because that I mean, obviously we talk a lot and debate about what is affordable but yeah, I always thought the law in, you know, it was. The town's own definition of affordable housing is 80%. But your own CPA program which is part of a wider state program has a higher threshold. And it's typical that for home ownership, you might see these higher thresholds than you would for rental housing. It's a different demographic. And so I would just say it's compatible with the funding that the trust has been given. I would argue that if you use a 40B zoning permit, all of the units will be counted on your subsets housing inventory. Okay, well that's, it's interesting and then also we should just note that, you know, if it's counted, we're counting all the units, not just the half that actually is Amherst affordable housing. So I think it's important for people to understand that because of development like North Square, which is mostly market rate. All of those units are on the subsets housing inventory. Even though only a fraction of them are affordably restricted units. So yeah, I know. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I just wonder this sometimes I've heard people say, okay, I can only have 80% am I to buy this house but I need to have whatever one of these things here to buy this house. Are you concerned that there's that you might not have enough people eligible within whatever that window is like, I can't earn more than this but I have to earn this much in order to get a mortgage and is there enough space in there. Sure, so I've got a slide on that. Okay. All right, great. Okay, you guys are just so on top of it. So let's see what's next. So this is, this is just number set by mass housings to understand the household size and what those income levels are again at this point in time and in this moment in time. So two person household earning 63, 8, ranging up to a four person household earning 79, 7, and for the 100% income to person at 75,000 ranging to about 93,004 for a person household and as I noted before per mass housing the preference will be given to households containing the numbers that are equal to the number of bedrooms plus wine. So a three person household can go into a two bedroom. Right, or larger as well. So it's not that you have to have three people in a two bedroom, right for five people also. So this is the window that you were talking about. So this is just I grabbed this as an example this is some of the mass housing numbers and they like to do they like to set the pricing at kind of like a worst case scenario of like if nobody, if somebody had very little down payment if they got a mortgage that required a PMI so there's definitely some flexibility here in terms of somebody's ability to purchase a home. You know you take the sales price of about 150. This is the two bedroom one story at 80% AMI. Now for the Commonwealth builders you're only required to put down 3% for down payment but again mass housing likes to do the calculation looking at a 5%. So they add the 5% down payment, depending current mortgage rates at the time that we were working out these numbers at 6.85. So, looking at your monthly payment PMI taxes insurance and the condo fee puts a monthly housing cost of around $1,500. The minimum necessary income that you can have to afford this if you take 30% of that is $61,000 which doesn't leave a huge window you'll see up here there's not a huge window. But like I noted, there's a lot of variability here and ways to sort of open the window. So, if somebody has a larger down payment or they utilize down payment assistance that's offered to the community, or through the reparations committee. That's one way to bring down that mortgage amount. We don't know where lower where interest rates are going to be in two years they may be dropping we may not be at 6.8% in two years so that will have an impact on somebody's ability to buy. There's a lot of mortgage programs specifically through mass housing that don't require somebody to have a PMI so again that's another way to sort of bring that payment down. There's a lot of mortgages that allow 33 to 35% for gross monthly housing income rather than the 30% that mass housing is modeling. And then a larger household with a larger income eligibility would be able to, again, have that ability to sort of open that window. So Carol does that answer some of your questions in terms of what you were wondering about. Yeah, I mean what I don't know is like and I don't suppose probably anybody does but if anybody has any sense of because you said you did a market study and you knew you couldn't sell things at $500,000. Did the market study give you some idea that there would be enough people to sell these given this bunch of stuff that you figured out. I guess that's my question. Yeah, there's there's plenty of opportunity so the market affordable unit said there'd be no problem selling these these homes at this amount. I mean this is way below what the market is right now and Amherst way below. Yeah, that's clear with just the it's the income, you know because of the affordability because of the AMI requirements it's like you can only go up so far anyway, thank you very much. I don't know who was first Allegra or Ashley so Ashley. Well, so I have looked at the market in lots of other towns and I just want to put in between 150,000 and 2000 is what condos and very small houses in almost every other town but Amherst around us Holy Oak chickpea. You know, if you just don't live in Amherst, this is exactly what you get or a tiny bit below. So in the next two years, I mean this won't be done for two years, there'll be many, many people who will buy houses at this exact rate with no subsidy in lots of other, all the other towns. More lives. Yeah, I mean I think I think what Amherst has is they has a, you know, wonderful reputation with its school system has a wonderful reputation with community and I think that that drives the market that's why the pricing is so high and Amherst now is that it's a desirable location for people to be. I'm not saying chickpeas not a desirable place for somebody to be, but if they've got family and some of the individuals that I've talked to that are trying to stay near their family are looking to buy here in Amherst because they want to they want to be within close distance to their to the relatives. So it's something for somebody to consider. Allegra. Yeah, you had a question. I am just looking at this calculation and, to me, the taxes look kind of low is there any sort of like, how does the tax structure work there. So that was based off of Amherst tax amount I can go back and double check it, but I believe it was, I can't remember 21 something 21 27 27 21. So the taxes are set based on this affordable value, because the units are encumbered with a deed restriction, which diminishes their market value. So, even though on an open market, these would be worth more. One of the beauties of the system though, is the people who buy them will pay taxes on this affordable sales price. That's probably why they look though. Yeah, it's like that looks reasonable. Yeah, that's great. That's also monthly. Yes, and even so it looks reasonable. Okay, okay. Any more questions before I move on. So the taxes for the year 12 times $266. Correct. Yeah, this is this is monthly monthly housing cost. So this is your monthly mortgage payment and interest this is your monthly PMI this is your monthly taxes monthly insurance monthly condo fee. So jumping to Commonwealth builder and their home buyer requirements so this this is the information that's going to be part of our regulatory agreement with Commonwealth builders and mass housing. These are the requirements for any of these home buyers so first and foremost they must be a first time home buyer as defined under the program. And secondly they must not have assets. They can have asset assets less than $100,000. They must have assets less than $100,000. And then they have to qualify income they have to be able to qualify for a fixed rate mortgage they have to be able to put a minimum of 3% down, or be approved for a down payment program. They have to be able to pay closing costs and they have to complete home ownership counseling by the time of purchase so those are going to be the requirements before somebody is going to be granted the ability to purchase one of these homes. And these are all requirements under Commonwealth builder. And I did want to note that Commonwealth builder, when it was first created the program, ARPA was not a funding source and this funding program got a pretty big slug of ARPA money. And so these home buyer preferences have been really set and defined under the ARPA legislation. So the last slide they're going to be requirements. These are going to be preferences under the lottery. So households living currently living in a qualified census track. That's one and that's important to remember, given the location of the site and that it's in a qualified census track, and to households that qualify for certain federal programs as listed here so snap. So for any of those programs if your household qualify for those federal programs, you'd be given a priority and a preference in the lottery. Allegra question for Paul but I saw ARPA and I thought, ARPA. I know that the town still has some funding available and I just wasn't sure if we were going based on the last slide of 7500 for a down payment. The minimum. If that's something that like ARPA funds from the town potentially be utilized for if they have not expired by that point. Yeah, so we have made a presentation to the council about a month ago about ARPA funds and receive feedback on that. This was not part of that request. ARPA funds have to be expended by a certain date. So I'm not sure if the timing will work for this project in particular. So I think the CPA approaches where we probably go. I mean, I think this project has never received substantial subsidies as it is. Okay, I'm going to move on. So here's a map of the qualified census tracks. There's two of them in Amherst. This district here, the 8203, which is the North Amherst area and then down here in the 8205. I think it's important to know that these are the only qualified census tracks in all of Hampshire County. And therefore, this is the only eligible area in all of Hampshire County to utilize Commonwealth Builder funds. So you are the envy of a lot of other municipalities. I've had planners from other towns call me and be like how can we do this can you do this here and I'm like I'm sorry but it, you don't have the, you don't have the right qualified census track you don't have the right data doesn't work for you. So this is in this really unique position to be able to not only have the ability to access these funds for a project but the fact that we're able to find a site within this qualified census track is awesome. So this really is kind of a unique opportunity here to be able to do an affordable home ownership development in the town of Amherst. In terms of marketing, we are going to be required by mass housing to do an affordable fair housing marketing plan that will be reviewed and approved by mass housing. At that time, the mass housing will set the market maximum sales prices that we would market under that marketing plan. As I noted there will be a lottery process and so folks would put in an application. We'd make sure that they are meet the program requirements, and we would hold that lottery process. There'd be a wait list that would be maintained by mass housing. And then we are required to hire a third party affordable affordability monitoring agent to make sure that we have compliance with the housing marketing plan so that'll be part of where required to do Erica you have a question. Yes. So when you talk about a marketing plan it actually has a whole communication aspect to it outreach aspect to it because we're talking about individuals are probably in survival mode. And then also as part of the application will there be links to where you can get support for down payments and closing costs. So we can do that as part of the marketing process for sure. And what I've been saying for a couple years now is that anybody who thinks they may be interested in purchasing a home should be working now to get their financials in order to make it worthy to be able to qualify for for a fixed mortgage. You know, right before you think you're going to be applying for this is not the time to start looking at your finances, you know, really somebody who, who really wants to to apply for this should be doing that work now. And we at Valley have Donna cabana who's awesome and she does first time home buyer assistance and financial literacy. And so I've been telling people who have called me and have asked questions about how could they get into this one of these homes what's the lotter process what's the timeline. I've been directing all of them to Donna and asking them to set up appointments with Donna to make sure that they are going to be in that financial place that they need to be in order to be a first time home buyer. I also set a piggyback on my question so it seems like your communication plan has to start now. And I'm wondering if there's an opportunity if there any, you know, fly as press releases etc that we can also help disseminate to, you know, faith based communities to different organizations to start getting individuals prepared for this. Yeah, any help that the trust members could provide to connect us with the right people in the community would be amazing. I do have a frequently asked questions fact sheet that I did and started to disseminate it. When we had our last community was on site it was in April I think. So I have something that's already set up and ready to go that I can send the trust members and anybody that you can think of to pass it along to would be awesome. We've done some we've set it out a little bit when we were holding that community meeting, and we handed it out at the meeting as well. But I'm happy to send that to if you know individuals, and it's really about the process of, you know, what's it going to take to get into one of these places and encouraging people to get their finances in place now. So, okay, restriction terms so every home will have a deed restriction the deed restriction will run for 30 years. This is probably not as long as you're typically used to seeing for for affordability restrictions for rental projects usually we're doing a 99 year restriction term. Again, to sort of come back to the fact that really this is to help with providing equity in a home for somebody to be able to have for their individual wealth so we don't want to tie somebody's hands by setting a restriction term that's really long because the way that the program is set up is to help people generate that wealth. So, the way that the program is currently set up is there's two restrictions that run. One is for years one through 15 that have pretty specific restrictions on how the resale price will be determined it depends on how much work somebody's done in the house depreciation values. So, that stuff mass housing would figure out, and then there's buyer restrictions again it's looking for first time home buyers it's looking for people who meet those home buyer preferences. Years 15 through 30, there's unrestricted sales profit that could be made and the buyers are a little bit more flexible, but they're subject to the equity sharing with the public funders. Again, there's a formula and a calculation that depending on how much of a profit somebody would make on that sale. Some of that money would have to come back to the public funders one of them being the town of Amherst is already being a public funder and their CPA. So, so that's how it's set up under under the Commonwealth builders program. So, we've had some discussions but because we're going under the chapter 40 be permitting process, the 80% units may not have this ability to have this sort of split. So we're still hashing that out with mass housing we want to try to make it as equitable as possible, but they really are adamant that we do have for the 100% am I households, having these two kind of pockets of restrictions one that runs from years 15 and then another one that runs from years 15 to 30. The other thing to that is unique to this program is that there's a buy right transfer to immediate family during the term so if somebody wants to transfer this house to their son or daughter, they want to transfer it. They're able to do that but it must be owner occupied nobody can buy these homes and then rent them out. It's restrict it's completely restricted in the deed restriction to be able to do that so even if they were to transfer this to an immediate family member, it must still be owner occupied. It's even a right of first refusal that the town has that they can reset the 30 year restriction term, if they chose to do so and they must elect to do so so, you know, when the house comes up for sale, there would be some communication from mass housing to the town, notifying them that this house is for sale and giving the town the option to reset the 30 year restriction term, if they so choose to do so. The sales will be completed by mass housing there'll be no responsibility on the town of Amherst to to do any of the paperwork mass housing takes the lead on all of the the resales. So let's get into our current budget so we acquired the property. August of 2022, I think now. And so we have, we have that money that we've utilized. We are estimating construction costs to run around $11 million it'll be 65% of the budget. All of the other costs that are associated with the project that are necessary legal architects design environmental yada yada yada. That's about 10% of the budget. And then under the Commonwealth builders program we have the ability to collect 20% of the total development for overhead and fee, and that fee really is our backup contingency if anything goes really sideways. That's funds that we use for that purpose. So our sources the Commonwealth builders. They are putting in $250,000 per unit which is about $7.5 million. And then on top of that they're adding some additional contingency money because the construction pricing is so high. They're actually putting more money in than they're obligated to do under the subsidy. They also have offered to pay for the construction interest over the over the construction period because it's going to be running quite high. So they have offered that money as well so that month so the Commonwealth builders numbers a little bit higher than the typical subsidy amount of what they offer for for the 80 and 100% am I households. So we're estimating again based on those sale prices that have been provided to us by mass housing and our conversations about $5.9 million for the sales of the homes. We're looking to sell the existing home. The CPA has already committed $750,000. Thank you. We're looking to sell $375,000 from the trust. We're also looking to, because we're going all electric on these buildings we're looking to utilize some energy incentive payments. We're looking at a couple of grants and foundations to put applications in in 2024. Valley will be deferring their developer's fees so about half of that so of that 20% about half of that's going back into the project to fund the project. So, valley is actually high putting a higher percentage of money and then we're requesting from the town between the CPA and the housing trust. Our timeline up Carol go ahead. You're on mute Carol. Sorry. I know that whenever we looked at this before it looked like you were going to ask the trust for 250. And so that's half again as much now. And I just wondered what other things have gone up. Similarly, I mean you just did a great, you know, you guys are putting in more than you're asking for from us that's pretty significant but I'm just curious. If, if anything else has gone up as well as what you're asking from us. So, initially in the initial budget. I didn't have contracts yet in place for some of the design work so I actually have those contracts in place now and those were higher than we initially anticipated. The soft costs have been running higher than we initially anticipated because we've got those contracts in flat place and now we know what the real numbers are. The construction number could still be low. We don't really know until we go out and get some pricing and to get some real hard data which I'm hoping to do. After the permit set is is out I'm hoping to talk to some contractors and hopefully they can give us some better numbers to make sure that we're on point. So those are rising high construction costs continue to rise we just don't know where that's going to be. And because of that Commonwealth builders is putting in more money than they needed to so you know and I think initially when we were first presented the overhead and fee, we were, we were under the assumption we were only allowed to capture 10% of what was corrected by Commonwealth builders program that it could be up to 20 so that's another, that's a little bit of a difference than what was previously shown about a year ago. So that's where the major differences are. Yeah, I think the Commonwealth builders has come to meet us. And they've definitely upped their contribution. And I think they're seeing the same thing play out all across the state is that we can't keep up with the construction, the cost of new construction so they have had to go beyond what their stated program caps are to make these projects work. Calvin you have a question. Good. Let's see Calvin, you can now talk. Calvin I believe you can now talk if you unmute yourself. Can you hear me now. Yes. Wonderful. So a question about the homeowners Association is valid CDC service of property manager post sale. You provide startup funding to the HOA is, you know is 205 a month a reasonable amount to build a fund to pay for capital expenses. Sure. So the Commonwealth builder program requires that there is a property manager, a third party property manager that is hired as part of at the beginning of this valley will not be serving that role but we, you know, I think we can definitely help and my hope is that we will set the condo up with at least a first time property management company that can assist them. It'll be up to the condo association to really determine whether they want to continue with that property manager in the future. But I definitely think that it is our role to be able to at least set up that property manager and at least get the association up and running. You had another question I'm sorry I don't remember what it was. I think maybe you're providing the startup funding which is good to, you know, cut the capital expense I think that was it. And then I guess success level. So having lived in a condo previously these 2030 units most of the property management companies want nothing to do with them, or they have a large management associated is your experience been the associations have not had difficulties have been able to stick to the estimated HOA fees. That's a good question. I don't know. I didn't wasn't aware that property management companies didn't want to take on a 30 unit. The first go to was going to be the property management company that we're working with on the rental right now because they're familiar with the property and they kind of know the sense of what's happening there. We haven't dug into the weeds yet of that but I think it's I appreciate you highlighting it and I think it's something that we can be looking into for sure. Yeah, so, you know, we walk the tightrope between trying to keep those condos fees as low as possible to make the living situations as affordable as possible without running the risk of the condo association getting into trouble. I have had experience and success with an 11 unit condo association, hiring for professional property management fee services for their early years and then kind of spinning off and self managing. And I think with this style of condo just correct me if I'm wrong, people will essentially be responsible for the upkeep of their unit. So it's a zero lot line division. So some of the things like new roofs that different type of structure might have to plan for as a capital repair will actually fall on individual homeowners for better or worse. Does that answer your question Calvin. And add another asterisk but that's a future thing so thank you. Okay. Um, let's see. We could I just want to point out that we've used more time than we thought we would I think this is really important but if there's any way to. Yep, but this is the last. This is it. So, all right. So timeline so 2223 we acquired the property we've done a lot of community engagement. We've been working on site and building design local funding requests and we intend to put in our permit requests within the next month. So in the next 24 will be focusing on finalizing our construction documents getting pricing and bidding submitting applications to grants and foundations and then any last public subsidy request with Commonwealth builders. And then 2526 looking at closing on all that construction financing starting building marketing lottery completion and sales to selected buyers over those two years. So that is everything, I believe, and open up to any other questions you might have. I guess I would like to ask you have asked the trust for $375,000 and one of my questions is when would you need it. Probably not until 2025. When we get into final construction financing. Thank you. Paul. Yeah, I just want to make sure that we get a copy of this presentation. Maybe we already have it in our packet. Nope, I can send it to you. Okay, I appreciate the application and the copy of the plans. So I will send the PowerPoint. Yep. I think people will be interested. It's a great PowerPoint. Thank you for the work. It's very helpful. Sure, feel free to put it on your website if you need to tell others to see it. Not a problem. Thank you. Ashley. This is more maybe a question for Dave or Paul who who might know this but when we get multiple bids on each project is 20% developers fee. Is it typical or do you get bids that are below that or above that? And how do you decide. You know this is a longer question but is that what you're usually comfortable with I mean in terms of 20% of the developers fee. So developers fee is really important. Developers have to make money. This is how they pay their staff. This is how they pay Jessica, they pay Laura. So having a developers fee in a project is really important so that project is successful. If you know if you sometimes you see a lower development fee, it means you're getting fewer services. So we always want to just be transparent than the developers fee. So everybody knows what's going on and there's some restrictions on I'm sure I'm not for positive, but I assume that there are restrictions on how big the developers fear it can be. But you know developers fee is it's it's pains for services that we're getting like meeting tonight. This is not free. Right. These are folks who are earning a living doing this work. So, so every project, do we know there's a place to look up the developers fee for each project that we consider. Is there a place that we could look that up. If it's a bid project. That we bid that would be transparent in that yes that the town bids. Any other questions. Or comments or thoughts. I mean, I'm, I am not even sure that we, if the money is not needed until 2025. I don't know. Actually, do you need I should ask. I should ask our presenters, would it be helpful to you to have a vote on this right now, or can we can we do I'm seeing Laura shaker head. Yes. So, apparently you would get you would then you would be able to say this is more money committed and I know that would help you be able to go get other money I believe so we're writing grants and foundations to be able to say that the community is behind this by not only one pot of money see pay but two pots of money. That has a huge story to it so I would. Yeah, we need to get money committed and locked in early and often the local money is first but I would have a question though about deferring using the money that long so right now we're paying our pre development costs with the pre development loan. Were we to have earlier funds from the, from the town, then we could save on the overall project costs by not having to pay as much interest. So what are the resources about when we introduced different funds into a vertical project. Okay. Well this is information I would just say I just look back at our financial statement that we looked at last time and there was some $500,000 plus in our development fee line and that Nate did discover that that did not yet include the most recent 225 from the CPA. That's whatever somewhere near 725 or something. $1000 that we have in that pot. This info for information. I would like if someone is willing I'd like to be able to entertain a motion to. I'd like if we can I'd like to put a motion on the phone and then discuss it. So if there's someone who's willing to move that we approve this request or not but if there's someone who has a motion to make I'd love to have discussion after the motion if that's possible. Is any of those hands because somebody wants to make a motion or this has too many questions. Allegra. I move to use five. No, $375,000 from our development funds line in our housing trust budget to support the Amherst community homes project. Thank you. Is there a second. I second it. Thank you. Now let's see if we have some discussion now that we have a motion on the floor. I'm going to just go in the order I see them like Ashley. Well, I was going to ask if we could commit less money or do we have to commit the 375. Like, but that's a longer discussion. Do we have to vote tonight? I think the answer to at least a second one was we don't have to, but it would be helpful to them if we did. So it's not a requirement, but it would make the money even more helpful might make the project costs a little bit less. Paul. Very uncomfortable voting tonight. I mean, it's, we just heard the presentation tonight. We have no context in terms of what other proposals might be coming to the trust that might be asking for the same funds or the other projects that might. Be seeking funding and so just pick doing it right now. I think it's premature. And I think we certainly want to talk with Nate Malloy about what other things he sees coming down the pike if we did, if he dedicates all of his funds is substantial amount of its funds. This is a project we really want it's a groundbreaking project. I don't want this to be perceived as being not supportive of the project. But I think it's from the trust point of view. I mean, you know, understanding the full context of what we're having in front of us, what we want to put our funds towards. And I think if we are voting tonight or voting in September, I don't think it's going to make a huge amount of difference. So I'll be voting no on the proposal. Okay. Resha. My question is very related, which was, could we remind ourselves what else is on the docket and where else we might be asking for but I think Paul just indicated that that would be a question for Nate and maybe that's something we can talk about next month. I second. Okay, are there other other comments or Erica. I'll defer to Grover first. I just wanted to say that I appreciate that this proposal has at least twice as many homes on it. Then the last time we saw the introduction to it and I think that's valuable. And I think the price point. So I said that the proposal. I appreciate that the proposal had twice as many homes on it than what was initially talked about the first time that you were looking at it, and the price point for these homes. I think we'll be a really valuable contribution to our home ownership and equity goals and have and having a range of incomes, able to live and have home ownership in the community so I just want to name that. And note that that's a significant jump from what was it like 11 homes on one lot to 30 and I think that's a good thing. So, I just wanted to say that and I also value all of our members, you know the motion. I could vote on either motion that has been proposed, and I just want to name support and appreciation for what was proposed. Thank you back on grover's comments. I live in North Amherst, and I think that lot is actually very, very valuable and glad that Valley CDC has gotten that lot because there could have been other developers that could have grabbed that lot and could have made market homes maybe two or three or four that were 500,000 that they could sell for I think this is such an important initiative. All of our initiatives have been sort of rental properties, which are important, really important affordable rental properties, but this actually creates home ownership. I think it's really, really important. You know, do we wait till September. I just have to fully disclose I won't be here in September. So, I can wait till September, and you can note that my vote would be yes, because I think we're getting back for the value that we're putting in. I think the return on our investment is huge, not just with regard to those homes but the ripple effect of having families, families that we want, coming into Amherst. So, I just want to state that. Grover your hand is still up or is it just still up Allegra. I kind of want to piggyback off of what Erica just said because I, I was fortunate enough to get to go on the tour at East Gables the other day and so I think that this is a nice juxtaposition of that property so we have kind of a rental unit of efficiencies for kind of our lowest income neighbors and then we have this affordable home ownership opportunity. And it is a higher number that they're asking for but it also seems that it would be able to be leveraging a lot more funding from other sources. And, and they're here and they're asking us, and I understand that there are other things in the pipeline and I don't know if Dave was going to talk about some of those things tonight or not. I, I just did a little bit of math, and I think without counting the CPA funds that we have that are for like consulting services and everything if the if we gave $375,000 to Valley. This project with the 225 that's not yet added, we would be at $490,628 left in our accounts for other projects that might be coming down the pipeline which I think isn't an insignificant number to have left in our accounts. So, that's just those are my two cents. Anybody else, I guess I could add my two cents I just I think that this is a, I can't imagine what is going to make me not want to fund this project by waiting a month or two months or however many months. It feels like an exactly the kind of project that we want so maybe I am maybe I'm being overly jumping in too soon or something but in this case, I don't think so in this case it feels to me like I know we want to do this. I don't have a question about it. So, I will be voting yes on the proposal that was made to say yes now because I anyway, what does anybody else have anything to say before we actually vote which obviously we need to do. In that case, let's vote with a proposition being to approve the $375,000 requested by Valley CDC for the Amherst community homes project to be paid out. Some time that makes sense. I mean, we haven't figured that part out yet, but that we commit the $375,000 that's the proposal. I'm going to go around in the order that I see these pictures on my screen so Erica, how do you vote. Yes. Carol I'm next on my screen I vote yes Paul. No. Rob. Yes. Grover. Yes. Ashley. No. Risha. Yes. Allegra. Yes. I believe that I heard two nodes and the rest yeses. I believe that's the motion passes. Thank you all very much. I think I'm one of my supposed to do now I'm turning it over to Erica to think about and thank you very much to our time. Thank you. Laura's going to stay on and for the rest of the meeting and I'm going to go deal with my dog. Laura's going to have walked miles by the time this meeting is over I think subtle isn't it. Thank you. Thank you very much. So we're going to move to town updates. So Nate's not here but Dave is. So Dave thank you for joining us and I hope you had a wonderful vacation. So the first item on the town updates there are sort of a list of things if you don't have an update then you know you can just let us know that we'll wait till next. Next meeting but if you have one please share with us. So the first one is the housing planner position. Yeah I wondered, Erica if you would mind I kind of have a flow of maybe updates is that okay if I. Right in front of me but I thought I would start maybe if you don't mind with kind of project updates. Absolutely start. Yeah I just wanted to say, you know, to Laura and staff at Valley it's just really impressive to see how that project is moving along. You know I'm kind of in awe of the complexity and I think all of us you know you kind of need to pause for a moment and really think about the complexity of these projects. The complexity of the funding the land acquisition the site assessment, you know, hundreds and hundreds of hours go into these projects and that's at the end of the day. And I, some of these, these costs go go up and, and we wonder what they are but you know as I talk about some of the town projects that we're going to need partners on, because we are not affordable housing or market housing developers. We need partners and those partners are going to go through many of the same steps almost all of the same steps that Valley went through up there on Popeth Hill Road and ballway. So very quickly and again how much time do we have Eric I don't know what else you have on your agenda I just want to be conscious of your time. Because I'm going to be with you. I was going to say if you want to fold in the VFW request, we can try to, I mean we're at right now 812. We have a few things which is legislative update in the strategic plan process but I think both probably both fast. I can go pretty quickly my, my hope is that we have a little time for q&a and again I'm going to be with you I'm going to try to be with you I've met with Erica and Carol and I'm going to try to be with you as many for as many of the fall meetings as I can. So very quickly, ongoing projects, you all know about East Street School and Belcher Town Road our partnership with wayfinders. That work is going extremely well. Again, we're, we're so fortunate to have in addition to Valley to have wayfinders in our community and working on another project in the East Village. Right now we're working on land development agreements and leases. We're starting to get into site design issues we're looking pretty, pretty closely with with wayfinders that some of the wetland challenges culvert challenges all the people that Valley looked at up at Route 63 and pulpit Hill Road, we're beginning to really, you know, more than beginning to kind of peel back those layers and work closely with our partner wayfinders there. So that project is moving forward and I think they're in, in the stages of their, you know, their funding scenarios and reaching out to the state and trying to get into the various funding cycles that they need to get into for that project. On the VFW property, I think you all know that we took ownership of that property a few months ago. We're now into kind of site assessment full site assessment. We're looking at the building as well as the land. We already have completed a survey of the property. Our facilities department and building department are looking at hazardous material and we're doing an assessment of the, of the building itself as you know and has been reported it's a demo we're not going to reuse the old VFW. In order to remove the VFW building we need to assess the site to make sure and the building to make sure that it does not include any hazardous materials. So that work is ongoing right now. We had informal discussions with some potential development partners and kind of scoped out the really, really broad goals of this project as you know the goals that Paul set out for staff and we've reported to the council are to create a space for a permanent shelter as well as permanent supportive housing. So those are the goals those are the broad goals. And we've we've had some informal discussions with potential partners and and there's great interest the site as you know is, you know, on the bus line, water and sewer close to downtown. Highly developable no wetlands all of these factors make it, you know, just a prime site for what our goals are for for achieving there. Next steps on VFW. We, and I've spoken briefly with Carol and Erica about this, but we envision bringing the community together in the fall and winter of 2324. And to really help us develop some, some, some, you know, gather information but also to really vision what the site could be in more detail. So those meetings would include, we're hoping that the trust would cosponsor those with us, we'd bring together Craig's doors potential partners stakeholders, and in all likelihood, those would happen in the fall of this year and into the winter. We're also going to bring on an architect to just help us come up with some conceptual designs in other words what what could be built there how many stories. What will the site hold, and I think a lot of that work will be informed by what we come up with in the in the visioning sessions. We're also, as I mentioned before preparing the building for demo. We do have ARPA funds allocated for that demo we don't have a cost estimate there. But just to give you kind of a sense of magnitude, a demo of a building that size could run anywhere from 75,000 to 150,000 depending on what we find in the building hopefully we won't find anything that is more expensive to to dispose of. But we do have ARPA funds for that. And then we have continued to do outreach and included Craig's doors to McCarthy has been very supportive the executive director of Craig's doors, and is very supportive of this project and, of course will be part of those visioning sessions. And then we've also started to reach out to potential funding sources we've spoken to staff at DHCD about the project. There's there's great support for this and we need to, you know, begin to get going on the next steps. The other hope was that we might do a site visit to some other similar projects around the region and around the state. This is not, you know, we're not breaking any new ground here there are other projects similar to this happening throughout the state. And I think it would be great. Perhaps some members of the trust would like to go with staff and visit some of the similar sites where they've co located a shelter and permanent supportive housing. So I'll stop there that's where we are on the VFW. So a lot of this is background work we have not gone public, if you will, with with with any community has for community involvement yet, but that would happen this fall and into the winter. So, if you have questions, I'd stop there and answer them. Any questions based on what Dave just shared with us. Okay, I'm not seeing, oops, an attendee just a moment one attendee. This is john so we're going to allow john to speak. Go ahead john. Hi Dave. Hi, there were two things that were on Nate's list and I don't know if you can speak to those because those would also require money. One is the strong street project. Yeah, I hadn't finished I was just pausing at VFW but I was going to start going into some of the other on pipeline projects. Okay. Well that's what I was curious about. Sure. So, so moving along to some of the projects that are in the pipeline. Yeah, a lot of this is going to come down to priority there. You know we have a finite number of staff and staff hours and resources so you know we certainly will continue to dialogue with the trust, but you know as a as a manager of a few departments here in town. We will decide which are the highest priority town properties to move forward on. And you know that'll be part of this process this fall and this winter. But as john mentioned, we, we have identified some property off of strong street. We have done some wetlands work there. We have done some some title work, not fully done with that title work. But the strong street property does have some development potential. It is not, I would, I would say it is not the easiest property to develop and may not realize the number of units again we're talking, you know cost benefit here. How much does it cost to develop a site and how many units will the town slash a partner realize in that project so strong street is of interest to us. We're continuing to move it along we know the development costs are going to be very high because this is not a frontage lot. It is considerably off off the street at strong streets so we haven't given up on it by any means but we're trying to edge this move this one forward with other projects at the same time. I've mentioned at previous meetings the South Amherst school the South Amherst campus, which was most recently used for the alternative high school program for Amherst regional high school. It is a town owned property. We are just beginning to start to look at that in the context of what are some of the broader needs for the town. I do know that in that list of broader needs and we'll talk about fire station in a minute. I do know that the South Amherst campus is not an ideal location for a South Amherst fire station so that is not really under consideration. At the same time we're looking at some of these sites. The town council has asked Paul and Paul has asked me for a review and an update of our surplus property policy. So if we're to look at the South Amherst campus, the old school there, that would be in the context of the surplus property policy. Not to say that housing wouldn't be a good fit there. I think it's a large lot. It's flat. As far as I know, there are no wetlands on that site. Again, it would be similar to the East Street school. We have a historic building and then a more recent addition on the south side. I am not a huge fan of that. I think that was the southern addition. The 1950s, 60s addition. But I would love, if we do anything there, I would love to preserve the historic school if we can. So we're beginning to look at the South Amherst school. Hickory Ridge. Dave, I just noticed that a leg or tighter hand up for a while. Maybe that's something from a while ago. I was just wondering if strong street is within the qualified census tract. I don't have that map right in front of me. I have a feeling it is not, but I don't have that right in front of me. But we'll look at that. We'll look at that. We'll look at that. That's fine. Moving along to Hickory Ridge, we've been very busy at Hickory Ridge. A site with great potential, but also a very complex site, but staff has been working diligently to try to gather information and catalog the information on Hickory Ridge. So just a reminder, the property is 150 acres. So the first part of that project that is underway right now is 26 acres of solar. My staff has been working extremely hard with the company that is developing that solar project. A lot of moving parts just to solar alone. So the 26 acres of solar. My hope is that that will be done by June of 24. We have a lot of solar happening on the site. As part of that solar project, there, there needs to be 17 acres of mitigation mitigated habitat for the solar project. We've mapped the wetlands, all the wetlands and resource areas are already mapped on the site. We know where the endangered species are both on land and in the river. We have an ecological restoration plan for the site. We have all the data that we collected through Engage Amherst, which was a, you know, a participatory process we did in 21. Gathered information on the community's interest in seeing all sorts of uses there from affordable housing to zip lines to trails and the list goes on and on. There are dozens and dozens of suggestions, recommendations there. So we've done ecological restoration, and we've also done some massing studies to see what the developable frontage on West Pomeroy Lane can, can hold. And that includes looking at a potential site and I say potential site, if the town moves forward with a fire station. A new fire station to replace the one in downtown. Would we do a fire station at Hickory Ridge. I think that's in the mix the town council has encouraged Paul and myself to at least look at that and we are doing that. We're also actively looking at building demo because as you may know there's a very large clubhouse on that property. The building cannot be reused. And so we like VFW we're doing the assessment of that building we're looking at all of the internal elements to make sure there are no hazardous materials. We bring in specialists to do that there are companies that do that contractors, they do a report, and that report is part of the demo RFP. Obviously, if you have a building that is that contains no hazardous material oil. Any any kind of byproducts of any other manufacturing asbestos things like that. The demo cost will be less if if that that report comes clean. So those are all the things we are currently engaged in there. We also got a grant to do an accessible trail at Hickory Ridge. We are very careful to make sure that that trail does not in any way compromise other uses of the property, particularly the frontage on east. On West Pomeroy Lane. So those are the seven or eight things that were engaged in and all of those things are going to come together in a comprehensive plan that we have promised the town council to present to them my hope is we will do that this fall or winter of 24. So let me stop at Hickory Ridge I know there are often lots of questions about Hickory Ridge. Quite a shopping list at Hickory Ridge. Let me ask John before I make my comment. John, did you have any other comments or questions for Dave in terms of what you just presented. I am I am I can you hear me. Yes. Okay. I had a couple of questions and one is given that we have limited funds CF the discussion we just had about helping Valley community development. We probably cannot do strong street, the VFW Hickory Ridge and potential other projects. We probably can only do in addition to helping Valley, two or three more projects, or one or two more projects I think, and strong streets going to be very expensive. So, and there's likely no outside support for that. So I'm wondering at what point do we say it was a good idea but the product property is too difficult and too costly to develop. I'm also concerned to hear a little bit more about Hickory Ridge, and the amount of acreage on West Farm Rory Lane that could be used for housing. Would you like me to respond Erica. Yeah. Well, first of all, John, this is, I was smiling a little bit when you said, we may not be able to do these projects because you know me quite well and I, you know, part of my job is to create that pipeline. To create that pipeline to get or get projects on the tarmac that are going to be ready I mean I'm looking at this maybe at a little bit longer horizon. I'm looking at this over the next three to be 12 or 15 years. We need land to partner with folks like Valley CDC and wayfinders and home city and others so I think all of these have potential. I agree with you we need to prioritize and that's why Strong Street may be the most challenging of these because of the limited street frontage wetlands slow and a number of other factors there. But it doesn't, for instance on Strong Street it doesn't cost us a lot of money to put out an RFP for Strong Street and test the waters to see if anyone would be interested in doing that so I agree with you we do need to prioritize. We've got these lands we are not, we're in a position, we're in a unique position where we have these properties that we have owned for quite some time like South Amherst school, the Strong Street property more recently Hickory Ridge. We did the same thing as you know with, with the street schools so keeping these in play I don't think we need to rule them out there's, you know, as long as there's not tremendous carrying costs, then rule them out to me at this point doesn't make a lot of sense we do need to prioritize. So, I'm looking at this in multiple years multiple rounds of CPA funds and state grants so so the way the way I understood john and I don't want to speak for john is that I think the trust has to decide where we're going to put our money in terms of what the, you know, biggest bang for the buck is in terms of affordable housing that we may not have all the resources so we have to decide and choose. Okay. Breaking up, breaking up a little Erica but I think I got the gist of your question yeah I think it's incumbent upon the staff to make presentations to the trust. It's really important to recognize that most of the trust money comes through the CPA process. So, we're all going to the same well right the town trust valley way finders so that's one of the, you know, the important funding sources so I agree that we, it's part of the organization process that where are we going to get the most units and what are the priorities you know we've talked in this meeting, we've talked about how the valleys valleys project on pulpit hill road is so needed right now because of the, you know, the owner piece of it and, and really ownership piece of it and getting that equity for those future owners, and we've done a lot of rental projects we're going to do the way finders project. But how do we look at these pieces of land and say what do we want to do on those those properties, and are they conducive say to a product project like valleys doing out at pulpit hill. Some of them may not be some of them may really, really work better with a rental scenario so. So yeah, so let me just if I could do it with a couple of other updates. Paul and I are continuing to have productive conversations with you know you mass with Amherst college and Hampshire college I know that's been brought up at past trust meetings Council meetings. And you know we really, we just signed Paul just signed the strategic partnership agreement with the university. We have a new chancellor at the university we're very hopeful and optimistic about that relationship. Some of us have been recently to meetings with Amherst college and again with a new president Amherst college. The colleges. You know holds about 1000 acres of land and Amherst much of it wet but some of it developable. So we're, we're hopeful there that we can have some productive conversations with with the new president and his staff. And those, those things will be ongoing. And then lastly just, you know quickly on zoning I'm sure you're all aware, Monday night, the, the proposal put forth by the CRC by chiefly by Mandy Joe. And Pat was withdrawn, however, as through that process and as part of that process the planning board has really recommitted I would say to focusing on housing both market rate housing and affordable housing, and they're committed to a series of meetings this fall and into the winter, focused on how can we change our zoning in the most productive efficient way to increase density. And I think a couple of the areas that they've talked about are one would be the east village. Down near, you know, Cumberland farms and, and other other businesses down there in the east village on the way to belcher town, and where our Fort River or new Fort River school will be. And the area that they've talked about focusing on is University Drive. And so staff in the planning department are very, very supportive of working with the planning, planning board to look at those two sites and perhaps others so I think zoning has the real potential we've, we've got some challenges with our zoning but some of those areas just do not allow density to happen. So we want to look at those very carefully. So, those are kind of the property updates or land updates. Maybe I pause there for a second and take any questions. Ashley has her hand up. I don't know if we've had a real conversation about what is cost effective and it does not seem to me that there is a real strategic plan for getting the most units for the lowest cost to help the most amount of people. And so, you know, all these different projects come up and then we vote on them individually. Maybe if we had a year plan, a two year plan with, we need to meet 100 or 200 or 300 units in certain categories. How do we do that? We could figure it out. We don't have to just do it one on one, you know, it's like, it's always piecemeal. We're just voting on each new thing. Like, what, why not have a strategic plan? Why not? And we're going to talk about that. We're really behind. But a girl was going to give a report on our next steps for developing a strategic plan in the process. So I'm going to push Dave a little bit to there. There are two things. One is the position that we still don't know when we might see somebody being hired, because I think that would be very important both for you and for us in terms of the things that we need, such as data, knowing the number affordable housing, housing properties, etc. And then there's a request from the town that, you know, if we don't have time, then we can postpone till the next meeting. Sure. Yeah. And if you're running out of time, that's fine. I did want to just say that, you know, the document that is driving staff right now is the town council's approved comprehensive housing plan. And that does have numbers and it does have goals. So, are short of any other strategic plans that you develop as the trust, hopefully with the town's participation. And that is, that is our guiding document. So that's what we are using that was approved by the town council a year, year and a half ago. And that's what we use every day every month to try to try to prioritize. In terms of the housing planner. They have to first apologize there has been a little delay in posting that our HR department has been very short staffed as other, as you all know that is kind of a challenge in the private sector as well as the public sector. But they are fully staffed now I met with the HR director today and one of her staff, and they assured me that that position would be posted it is not been posted yet. I think we can, can hopefully move that along and have somebody on board, you know, my sense is probably by the end of October is realistic at this point. So that is our timeline for the housing planner. The other question was quickly about some associated costs with the VFW project so in short, the town, the town can only use ARPA funds for certain things that we're just following federal regulations. And so with a project like the VFW. We currently have some even some carrying costs for the VFW project, such as we still have electricity to to the building things like that. These are fairly small amounts they might, you know, by I don't know what Nate forwarded to you, but it would be very helpful if the trust supported funding some of those costs that we don't have operating funds for and can't provide funds for. So, you know, on the order of $2,500 to $5,000 if the town had a an amount like that from the trust, we could then use that to pay for instance, electricity costs until the building is demo demoed I met with our public commissioner today, and he thought the electricity for instance would be disconnected disconnected from the building by December so you know a cost like that might be, you know, to date $500 $700 something like that. That's really what we were looking for is a small amount of money $2,500 to $5,000 for these funds for these costs that we can't put to ARPA ARPA use ARPA funding on. Kelvin you have a question related to what Dave just spoke about. Are you asking me, I'm, I'm sorry, this Kelvin is. Yeah. After you. Well, going back to say you said you can hardly hear you Calvin. Can you hear me now. On Hickory Bridge, how many of the hundred acres remaining are realistically developable or accessible from the streets is it. My wetlands there. Yeah, yeah, the site is incredibly wet. It's also encumbered by what's called estimated and priority habitat. These are, you know, it's a very highly ecologically sensitive site. I would say, on Hickory Bridge, I'm going to say there are eight or fewer acres on the frontage that are at all developable. I think it's more realistic once you get into setbacks and mitigation for impacts, you know, you might have five or six. That's probably where you are the, any of the other the highest and driest acres, other than the frontage. We're taken by by the solar, that's where this solar is going so 26 acres of solar is across the river. But there's five to seven acres on on the frontage on on West Bomberland. Okay, just because of time I'm going to move forward. So, I don't know if we're ready to move on. I know that Nate submitted an email to all of us and what he wrote I think was between 4000 and 6000. And what you're saying is that would be from now till December. No, I think we have some costs at the VFW that we don't have a readily available source of funding for. But if there were I was scaling that back a little between 2500 and 5000 to say that would be very helpful in partnership with the trust. If we had a small fund like that that we could draw from for for expenses that, you know, we don't have a rental and easily available source to pay pay those funds or pay those expenses from. So is the trust ready to make a decision about that or should we wait till September and just to think about it. And this can wait until September. Okay, if you don't mind. Yes, very good. Thank you. Okay, all right. Thank you, Dave. And I'm sorry we always seem to be a little rushed, but we're going to move to john's recommendation with regards to legislation. John, let's just say it's quarter to nine and we'd really like not to be here vastly after nine so tell us what you've got but quickly please. And you also need to get to Grover to I understand. Two files were sent out regarding things that I sought the trust should consider endorsing that are legislation the most important one is the state rental voucher program. And basically, everybody probably has some idea about what section eight is. That's no longer the right name for it. It's a mobile voucher program that HUD runs. But I don't know how many years ago the state set up its own voucher program, because the federal program really wasn't large enough to meet the need. So we now have a state mobile voucher program, but the program doesn't really exist in law. It's simply something that's appropriated from one year to the next. So as I understand it, the purpose of this legislation is to make sure that the state voucher program becomes a permanent part of landscape. So it makes sense to me that we would want to endorse it. And that's the one that's called an act codifying the Massachusetts rental voucher program, and I provided the references and links in the material that I sent to you. So that would be one thing to endorse of the things that I included in my first set of recommendations that's probably the most important. Maybe we should just take the one that is the most important for now and come back next month or something for the others because we do want to hear Grover's report on this on the strategic planning process that we began to think about next time so I can skip the other two recommendations. I didn't want to leave the bond bill alone. We've been talking about money. And the bond bill is about money. And so I think it's important to let our state senator and state rep know that we are behind the bond bill. I think the most important thing is let a process which pulled together a group of stakeholders around Western Massachusetts. And they did a survey of people trying to find out what the highest priorities priorities are for how the bond bill or how the inside of it like should be structured. And I think I've sent you information about that. I think, again, the most important thing is to send a note or a directive to Senator Comerford and Representative Dom saying, hey, the bond bill is really important. Money will help us as well as many other communities in the Commonwealth to develop housing. In the absence of that money, we have less capacity to do development. I don't mean the housing trust per se because the money likely won't come to the housing trust because we don't usually manage that kind of money. On the other hand, the people we rely on to do development, particularly the not for profits that we've been involved with way finders Valley Community Development. They really rely on that money in order to be able to move forward. So, again, there are a number of programs that were listed in what I sent you. I think the most important thing is to make sure that our state senator and state representative know that we support the bond bill, and that we really think it's critical to make those funds available for housing development in Amherst as well as everywhere else. Questions, go ahead Erica. I was going to move that we allow the chairs to write a letter to Senator Comerford and to Representative Dom that we're in support of both the legislation to codify the state voucher program and that we're in support of the bond bill. Second. I second it. Let's vote. Um, let's see. Can we do this? Let's let's just quit Erica. Yes. Carol. Yes, Paul. Yes. Rob. Yes. Ashley. Yes. Risha. Yes. Allegra. Yes. Grover. Yes. Okay. It passed. Thank you, John. And we are running out of time. I'm going to, we have like 12 minutes or something till we're at nine. I'm hoping people can give us an extra maybe 10, five or 10 minutes. So we can actually have a chance to hear from Grover and whatever else about the process that we're all trying to enter into to help answer some of Ashley's questions about our priorities are strategic planning process. Grover. Great. Thanks. So Erica, Carol and I met to talk about and, and formulate. So we started a plan to move forward with our strategic planning process, which will get at. Agreement between us about really what are priorities are in decision making as we move forward for the next years ahead of us as the board. And so we, in particular, We've talked about we heard that people wanted to have a blend of in person and virtual pieces of it. And so, and Erica and Carol please correct me if I'm missing anything but we would propose a process where we all had a couple of in person sessions, where we're talking and naming our val, you know what what is important to us where our values like really coming to an agreement and like building relationships in some ways about understanding what our priorities are, and also doing some pieces of it on zoom and meetings. And so that everybody who's on the trust can participate fully, we would like to have an external facilitator come in and help shape our discussion and move us forward towards our goals and also somebody who has experience in putting together housing plans because it's a lot of technical information right in the end so somebody who really is able to help us move this forward with some expertise and Erica had worked with somebody in the past who she thought did a great job from Pioneer Valley Planning Commission and reached out to her her name can I give her name Erica. Yeah, she works there and we need to also ask Paul to help us. Great. So her name is Catherine rat and we are asking, we have I can, can I email I don't know it. Paul could send an email to the executive director of PV PC and request technical assistant from Catherine rat. And rat a rat a thank you. And she can. She, she said that she would provide 15 hours volunteer and then after 15 hours we would use our funds to pay for her services. So, noting that she has worked with this towns of Northampton and Springfield to develop their housing plans so she's very familiar with the process and with a range of options. So that is my report back and, and I will hand it back to our facilitators to move forward with decision making. I don't even remember which am I supposed to be doing this. Yes. So, we did, we tried, I think we talked about also having like a maybe a first and in person meeting at the end of October or something like that as possible timing thing so just to put that if everything that's obviously got lots of if sands and butts there but that was what we thought we would have as a goal to shoot for. And maybe, maybe if not, if we haven't talked with Paul about any of this, maybe we could ask Paul if this seems to him to be a feasible thing from the town's point of view and then we'll see if there's any questions or anything else. So which piece are you looking about about meeting in person or contracting PV PC. Both. If the me in person, we're moving. You continue to meet in zoom, or you can meet in person. We've been, we're not really switched over to in person meeting chat. We haven't really totally set that up. There isn't a hybrid option. So if you meet in person, it's an immediate person. So, and I think that that's me in person makes a big difference for lots of folks. I think we just want to have it standardized in some ways so that the public knows how you're meeting so they don't come to a meet. They're not signing into zoom expecting to find you and find out that you're meeting in a room. So just wanted to stand. So I think that's definitely a possibility. And I think that's a good thing, especially for this kind of conversation you want to be in person for that. So we can support that. In terms of kind of planning commission. You know, I think what you what we want to do in writing to Kimberly who's the director there is to sort of be specific about what are what we're asking for the really scope out what we're requesting. How many hours we think it's going to take where the, you know, if they can offer 15 hours if there's it's going to take more than that if we're asking them to write a report or something. That's a different thing. If we want to be clear about what our deliverables are with them before we go. But, you know, I think we should recognize, you know, if it's sort of I think what what I'm hearing and what I would think would be valuable is to set our priorities, the trust priorities, because we were you're seeing people. You know, the trust has money people coming in asking for money. And I think pretty much as a group we decided this tonight that the Valley project up in North Amherst is a high priority because it's home ownership it hits all the buttons like that we wrote value. But we've got other projects are going to be coming through the door possibly. And I think we should, it's important for the counts for the trust to say what its values are so I think having that conversation. And if it's more detailed than that if it's like collecting data we sort of already have a lot of the data and might be that the housing planner should function in some of that work. Because if it's data collection is really what the person's going to do is come to our town staff and say with where's the data. So it's, that's not what we really want to do but I think we're I think we're looking for somebody to help up to facilitate us and having a conversation in person about what we think our priorities should be and to connect them into what the town's housing. Paul, I mean not not in a vacuum but connected to the other things that already exist. I think that's what we're looking for. I think that's really good. Let's be really great. Grover. I have two points. One, Paul, I can't remember if you were at the meeting where we had this conversation but my memory is that that maybe at our last meeting, we talked or whenever we made the decision to keep meeting on zoom. We talked about meeting our Thursday night meetings, like the consistently the consistent one staying on zoom but then as needed for these one off bigger things meeting in person so we can do that. Okay, great. And the second point is that when I said data I mean more like it would, I think it would be very helpful for our conversation for a facilitator to prepare beforehand and come with just some very high level data of like, here's what for example here's what the Community Preservation Act definition of affordable is and here's what our town of Amherst Charter definition is and right like some of these things that often come up in conversation or here's how many affordable homes were built in the last five years with this amount of money spent from the trust so that we can have some clear information, shared information that we're all working from. Because that seems to always come up in our conversations. That was my hope and the reason I said the word data. If I can respond to that. Yes. So I think that that again, that's not the planner isn't going to do that the planner is going to come to our town staff and say, where's all give me information they're going to. And so that's going to be a question for Dave if he's going to dedicate his staff time to support that kind of thing really. I guess we should think about what's the goal of our of the strategic plan is it to set priorities and then then I think what you're saying Grover is we're going to need some data or some information to help us make those decisions right. Where where we've already placed our money where are we going to go in the future. Is there anything else to add there or shall I move on. Well, yeah, I was going to say I think that information is actually already publicly available from the documents you've already provided to us so if they won't do it, I'll do it, but we'll do it. Yeah, yeah. That's good. Yeah, I don't think we need them to do that but we probably do want some of that. Risha. So I'm going to have to jump off right after I comment apologies but some of you may know I'm a strategic planner in my other life. And so just to ballpark, I would say you're going to need at least five days of someone's time. Probably no more than 10. So, you know, five to $10,000 would be the budget. If there were not volunteer time, and just to put that out there as a like, I don't know when we need to start being competitive and bidding etc etc but that would be my ballpark for what we're talking about. Thank you. And I'll see you. Lee. Well, um, you know the cup. I would like to know how much like reading the comprehensive housing plan is obviously very useful. But what happens when we vastly exceed that it's, it's pretty low on unit numbers, it's quite low on detail. And I don't think it has much vision. Those are the things I'm looking for. So, you know, I guess what I'd like to know is what happens when we strategically plan far ahead of the town council. Well, I guess that's part of what we would discuss when we do this. I mean, I think that we're trying to figure out. What are, what is the bot? What do we want to do? We want to have some time to be together in order to figure out what we think the priorities of the trust are in the context of what the rest of the town is doing and what the rest of the world is doing and what housing is like in Amherst and elsewhere. So I think that's the task that what you're saying is it's like part of the task. I don't know that this is a thing that exactly is to be voted on. We voted before that we wanted to do it. This is sort of a report back from the three of us who have been working on it to see if it's, you know, this is what we're thinking about. This is what we're trying to move forward on. This is the vague timeline that we set for ourselves. And what do you think, I guess, is the question more than something else. So, Allegra. I think that it's a good idea. I think that that would make sense to have some external facilitation so that everybody can participate and, you know, Erica and Carol aren't kind of bouncing back and forth and not able to fully, you know, take in what's being said and say their own piece. I guess my question would be like, would we decide on time today would we have like a doodle poll at some point in between our meetings so that we're not spending like 20 minutes talking about who can meet when and just I think we just need to get closer like we need to have some we need to have a better idea what we want somewhat when we want it what the availability of somebody who can do it with it is what the availability of a place to do it from the town is etc. Some of those things and then okay here's six options or something what works something like that but yes, I don't want to sit forever trying to figure out which day is best for everybody either so Dave. I was just going to have your hand up. Yes, I was just going to respond to Ashley's question. I think it was a really good one what happens if the trust gets ahead of the town or the town council. I guess I can't speak for the town council but knowing that report and working on that and many other reports at the town council and select but before then worked on. I see that document not as a static document that, but that should change over time. And so the priorities and housing, even in the short time I've worked for the town. The priorities have changed, you know, pretty dramatically so 15 years ago. Very few people in these conversations were talking about homeownership as a priority. It was all about, you know, more affordable apartments and, you know, and, you know, another example would be, you know, I'm really interested in senior affordable housing, but we don't talk all that much about it so I guess I see the council's document as a living document that should change over time and your, your strategic plan would inform that. And the council may look back at theirs and say hey it's been two years or three years or however many years we should update our plan. So I think I think it's a great question Ashley. Um, so I guess that I guess, what do we want I think what we want now is just is there are we on the right track does anybody think that we should, we should keep working on this yes. Yes. I really, I think that's all we need from this part of from this report and thank you Grover for keeping it all in your head or wherever you have it and presenting it for us. Um, so that leaves me to Erica's wrapping up well, or whatever is next. Erica, except Paul, do you want to say something just a quick thing to work on this. As you as you work on this, just think about it in terms of the request we're making to behind your value planning commission, we would like you to do this so we can do that. And so we can think about it in that term. So that's how I will frame it when I write the letter to pvpc requesting the services. So just think about it when you're building this. Okay, thank you. I'm going to try and the timeframe that you're looking at that will be important to them as well. Thank you. Thank you. That's really helpful, Paul. Okay. So what was on the agenda is the East Gables site tour and I know there was a beautiful picture of Risha and Grover. I think Carol, you were there. Ashley, I'm not sure if you were there or not. Okay. But if we can in a few minutes, anyone who wants to talk about the site visit anything that you want to share with all of us. For those of you who went. Laura, obviously it was there too so maybe she has something. I was just really impressed by the passive building, you know, all the, the planning that went into that that it's a fully electric building the walls are very, very thick. And there's a reason for that. So that was really kind of cool to hear and see, you know, all that incorporated into the development. So that was my thank you. Thank you, like, and I'm sorry, Mr. You were in the picture. Anybody else and I'm sorry I missed the tour. Well, I would just share that I really appreciated that there are so many units that are going to be affordable to people who have recently experienced homelessness and also that the units were had a high level of accessibility I think that's really really valuable. There was both weird wheelchair designed units but also every other unit had flexibility that I think most people need, because we all are ability changes. So I appreciated that and it was visible throughout. Yeah. Laura, go ahead, Laura. Everybody came promised they'd come back when we finished the building, share it when it's kind of like undressed like that but so we, if you just want to pencil into your calendars we're targeting Friday, September 22. So that's the time in the early afternoon for our kind of open house ribbon cutting. We will for sure get you all emails that goes for town staff who are here as well as trust members. You won't miss it, we will tell you many times that it's happening. But that's our, that's our goal to get our, our certificate of occupancy or 10th one around September 20 be able to showcase the property and the 22nd and have people moving in right after that. We met with our property management company today and we have a lot of excited people who aren't don't have any housing now who are ready to move in and even though the units are small. I think it's good because they don't have any things. So we're actually talking a lot about buying furnishings, because people are coming in really with nothing for some of those units, and even the people who are at 80% am I, some of them are homeless, and living out of these people's couches, because rents are so high. And that's pretty shocking to me. So you kind of assume that everybody who's unhoused is going to be really low income but it is not the case anymore, given the rents that we have. Thank you Laura and it's not just the rents is the first the last security deposit. Utilities have gotten out of hand. Yeah. And I hope that you also reach out to Amherst College because a lot of the students are really, really great advocates and making sure that the community welcomes this project so thank you so very much. We are closely in touch with Amherst College who are kindly I think going to let us use their parking lot for events so it's it's good. Okay, thanks. Okay, so announcement. You have that on the agenda chapter regional housing meeting on Thursday October 5 from 10 to 12. If you haven't looked at the chat. That is what there's such a breaking up. Great. Probably my internet. I can't. You're breaking up a lot so a leg or has her hand up and I want to put out one thing which is that on the agenda, it says that our next meeting is September 7 or something or other and it isn't. September 14. So I made a mistake. Please don't make the same mistake in your calendar. And a leg or had her hand up. That was my question. I was like, wait, the seventh is the first Tuesday or Thursday. Erica pointed that out to me earlier tonight. I just put it the wrong date. So yes, it's the 14th. It's the second. So I'm sorry I'm breaking up. It must be the pumpkin turning into whatever to coach for vice versa. We are now at 909. So I think we've allowed for public comment throughout. We've been pretty inclusive. So I think we can move forward and either any items. Whoops, Ashley. No, no, that's not I'm done. Okay. I don't think there if there are any items that are unanticipated within 48 hours, send it to Carol and me and we will get it first on the item of the agenda for September. I think 910 is probably the time where we're all just ready to quit for the night. It was a very productive discussion. It's really, really, everyone being engaged. I want to thank everybody for this evening's meeting. And unless there's anything else I don't see any hands up. I'm going to recommend that we go ahead and adjourn. Yes, we are adjourned. We're adjourned. 910. I think I can end it actually. I think you can too. It's just the two of us now. You have the power. I mean, I hope we don't we're not violating violating any rules, but I mean 910. Come on. It's fine. We can go other meetings go over for a huge amount of time. Right. But I just think that's not bad. So I think we did great. Yeah, I think I think it was a really, really good discussion this evening. One thing that occurred to me was that I don't think I didn't think about this till after we already did the vote. But we have committed some amount of money to hire the person and I don't know where that shows up in our budget, but that's money that's committed. I think it's coming out of consultants and something or other else than the development money. But we got to get that. I would like to see it as a committed thing and the next time that we have a. A financial report so we don't forget about it. I just want me to send a message to Nate and ask him to flag for us for September where that position. Okay, I'll do that. Yeah, thanks. Okay. And, um, and we'll, we'll find a time for us and we'll find a time for the three of us on the strategic planning thing again. So, Anyway, great meeting. Thanks Carol. Yeah, it was a good good night. Have a good one.