 All right, we are recording. Okay. So. I'm going to call the finance committee meeting of. March 1, 20. 22 to order at three minutes after nine pursuant to chapter 20 of the access of 2021 this meeting will be conducted via remote means members of the public who wish to access the meeting. I've been able to do should be able to do so and they and people can join by zoom or telephone. No in person attendance of members of the public is permitted since this is a virtual meeting, but every effort is being made to ensure the public will be able to adequately access the proceedings in real time by technological means. So what I'd like to do quickly to start the meeting is just go through and make sure that everybody is connected adequately can hear and be heard. So. Well, I'll go. An alphabetical order by last name Lynn Grusner. And would you like me to put the agenda up when you're done? Yes, you can. That would be helpful Bob Hagner. I'm here. Bernie Kubiak. Present. Michelle Miller. Kathy Shane. Yeah. Alicia Walker. Yeah. Okay. I think that that's everybody accounted for who we expect to be available today. We have one member of the committee who has indicated that he would not be able to be present. So with that, let's go to the agenda and do it. And I'm going to quickly. Just go through it and tell you how I propose to run the meeting. And see if I have any comments on this. We have a lot that we're trying to do. I think that. Two action items are the CPA project. And the transportation fund recommendation. In addition, we have two discussion items that are of significance. I was assuming that each of them. If we're going to actually take action. We should try and allocate 30 minutes to them if possible. But we should try and be very conscious of our. Desire to adhere to a two hour time limit. In the law, about 15 minutes each. The two discussion items. One is assessing university and college property. And the other is water sewer rate policy. The rest of the time to make sure that we have time for public comments. Address. Minutes questions. And. Do planning for future meetings and any unanticipated business. So. That. In the, as far as the order is concerned, I was wondering. Now turn to ask Sean this question too. Would it make sense to do the 15 minutes. That we were going to try and give it the overview of the. What would be involved with assessing. University and college property first so that Kim can get on the other things. Yeah, I think that makes sense as long as Dave, Zomek and Ben are okay with that. I just want to make sure they are. They're attending for the CPA topic. So I just want to make sure that they're okay. Waiting a little bit. So. Give them a minute to our second. And if they're not okay. Okay, wait a minute. I do have one other. We do have all members present. So. Matt. Just want to make sure that you're connected and you can. Hear us and we can hear you. Good morning. Yeah, president. Thank you. Okay. So we have all the members of the committee here. Good point. Let's try and do the ones that have staff first and maybe we'll. Take the order that. Well, I do think the assessing one will be probably the quickest. We'll see Dave or Ben saying that they can't wait a few minutes. Ben, is that okay with you? Yeah, 15 minutes. Okay. So I don't, if you're okay with it, Andy, I'm happy to start with. Okay. I'm going to ask Kathy actually a question and let her start for. Because she's the one who requested that this be on the agenda. And it would be. It would be helpful if she lays the context of her. Request to have this on the agenda, just. And then we'll turn to our staff to. Provide the information of what would be. The. Involved, including costs and costs and staff time and other costs. To do it, but Kathy, you want to. Yeah, thank you, Andy. There has been a long time interest in a piece of legislation that actually didn't go anywhere of taking a look at the tax exempt properties, particularly of. Where the property has high value. And in this case, it would be our university and our colleges. And we would be able to, we would be able to, we would be able to tax the property. Proposal and there's still an active proposal would do the assessed value of the property. And then be able to tax it at 25% of the tax. Of the value. And to do that, you need a valuation of property. So in some. Of cities like Boston. Or North Hampton. They, you needed. Some benchmark of what the assessed value was. And what you needed to get a handle on that. Is a starting point, what some areas have used. So in Yale, New Haven. And some other parts of the country. That initial look enabled you to say, what amount of money would you be collecting if. You had a pilot payment that was more substantial than the current gifts we get through negotiation. And that allows you to have a base at which you can at least do a calculation on what amount is foregone. There is a proposal. Again, it's, I'm not sure whether it's moving anywhere that would do this across the state would do a study. Would have the, the state work with all the assessors to do an assessment of all property. These non tax properties above a certain million dollar range. And they would be able to do it every five years. So would be trying to do that across the state. So, so the, this would enable us to at least start to look at this. When I tried to get this information, I couldn't find it. And I initially found North Hampton's mayor. Had used it when she was looking at Smith. Or he was looking at Smith when it was a he. He was looking at Smith. He was looking at Smith and University of Vermont had used it. So it's been this technique. So that's where this came from Andy on an interest. And then what I didn't know, Kim. Was I understand this is not an easy task. So I'm assuming. Because this has been a live issue for a while. That, that at the board of assessors level, or at a larger collective level, people said, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I don't know, but I know that I have a problem with the local housing. I don't know what's going on with the city of downtown coming up with, how do I go about doing this? So it wouldn't be a homegrown way of saying. Land value may be easy to price, but the building value. You know, what are the alternative? What are the market uses? I understand it's complex. So I wasn't looking to try to find the most expensive, arduous way of doing this. I was looking at, is there a way. a couple of the other Massachusetts communities. I don't know what happened in New Haven. And just so people know Yale is now paying multi-million dollars toward the city of New Haven. So we're not talking about, can we get another $50,000 here or there? And University of Vermont did an agreement with the city of Burlington, which is a long-term infrastructure agreement that's in the $12 million range. It's earmarked. And they said, we drive on your roads, we use your schools, whatever it was. And it wasn't done with a, let's just write you a check. It took some doing to get it. So that's where this came from, the request. The one thing that I want to add and then I want to add is that Lynn has her hand up, is that the legislation that you referenced that is pending in the legislature does not apply to the State University. It only applies to private institutions. The way it was, Andy, the way I read the newest version, it does, but I'll get it. The old version definitely did not. Does no one excludes it also, Lynn? That's why I have my hand raised. Okay, okay, so it excludes you, Mass? Yeah. Okay, I would have to read it again because I had been told that it was being broadened, but I guess not. I mean, I'll trust you, yeah. Is there anything else that you wanted to add? No. In connection, Lynn? Yes. So the piece of legislation, so I've been loosely connected to a statewide group that's been looking at pilots and they're the people that sponsored this legislation with a state representative from Somerville. And the legislation that they're looking at does have the 25% and it does not include the publics. And part of the reason the state is reticent to do that is because basically they would have to come up with the money for the publics to pay. The question out there is whether the new bill or the bill that's presently alive is at the 25% of property, including buildings and land or of endowments, in other words, your wealth. And so recently I was asked actually to provide some information about Amherst for this group in a meeting that they had. And I use the integrated post-secondary education database, which has figures that of land in terms of, it has figures for land, building and endowment. It's the federal government's database that is used to collect all the higher ed data. And in the process, again, that was readily available and so forth. I also wanna mention that about 20 years ago, Stan Rosenberg did have a study conducted statewide of assessing land. And I have not been able to get a copy, but I think it would be worth getting a copy from the state library and asking them for that because it would be a paper copy. I can't imagine it would be electronic. And that was conducted actually by people at UMass Amherst. And my also understanding is that the bill regarding the study is actually died, but the bill regarding the actual pilot at 25% is still, has been allowed to go forward from the committee cutoff date, which was February 2nd. So I just wanted to provide those updates. Thank you. And Bernie, did you have anything that I wanna turn it over to Sean and Kim? Yeah, this goes round and round and round again. I was involved in considerable discussions with Northampton two and three mayors ago because there's probably a dozen or so communities in Massachusetts who have over an excess of 20% of their property, not taxable because of this matter. I know that New Hampshire has some way of managing this. I vague on the details, I wish I'd done some homework before we got into this meeting. The Department of Revenue, whatever they call their Technical Assistance Bureau now because I know it changed its name, has data on how much taxes are potentially lost by Amherst and other communities by non-taxable property. And I don't wanna give a number because I'd be working from my head and it's not too reliable. So this is always of interest. The 25% comes from, I believe, the original going back three Boston mayors. Pilot program that was proposed in Boston that when you subtract out everything other than police fire and highway, you come up with 25% of the taxes. So that's what gets attributed to the universities and colleges. North Hampton, by the way, would know where with his pilot program. So, especially when the previous mayor presented his proposal to Smith College, they went meh. And that was the end of that. So good luck with all this. It'll be an interesting discussion. No, and Bernie, if department has data, I wasn't looking for spending a lot of money to get the data. So, when I proposed this, it was what is a way to at least know what those numbers might look like? Well, yeah, the UMass definitely knows what its buildings are worth. And I believe there's some assessed valuation of that to begin with. Although it may be really difficult for the assessor to use their methods in the like. I think it would be helpful to flow the phone call over to DLR. And again, I forget the name of the technical assistance bureau has not changed its name. But I'm sure they've got that data. If not available, they could create it. Andy, is it okay if Kim and I start? Yes. So there's, so just building up this conversation. So there's a couple of different pathways. So there's the state-owned land pilot program, which we currently get some funding through. But I think everyone generally is unhappy with the way the state-owned land is valued and how much we get. And I'll pull up on my screen in a second, some information so you can see what that looks like for Amherst. And then there's this separate pilot program, which would be a pilot program between the town and nonprofits directly, like what Northampton tried to do. And we've done some initial calculations. We looked at the Northampton model and how they calculated what their estimated pilots were. And we plugged in the values of our nonprofits in town and they had some exemptions for mental health associations and religious institutions and things like that. So we've done an initial model, but to Kathy's sort of broader point, the big issue with our modeling is that the values we have for Amherst College and the values we have for UMass are not, we have values, but they're not reflective of what the buildings actually are worth today. They're out of date. So let me share. So on the first pathway there, the state-owned land, I think our payment this year is about 230,000 that we're getting from the state. And it's really just for the land. It doesn't account for any of the buildings that are on top of that. And let me know if you can see my screen. Is this too small? I don't hear anyone saying it is. It's too small. If you could increase it a little bit, it would be helpful. Let me see if it's not growing for me. Let me try something else. Make it a little bigger. So this is the calculation for FY23. Or this is the data for the calculation for FY23. So they value our state-owned land. And so what they based on for FY22 is $23 million is the value of our state-owned land. And I think the most important piece here is the acres. So that they have recorded 1,800 acres, which is a big chunk of our total acreage in town. And then the part, so to Bernie's point, I had a conversation with, I don't know the technical name either, but from the Bureau of Local Assessment, a gentleman who helped create this new state-owned land pilot program. And most of my conversation was focused on why our price per acre is so low. If anyone could buy an acre of land in Amherst for $12,000, I'm sure they would. So that was most, and what it really comes down to is the formula they use is not really reflective of what you would pay today or pay in the market for land. So again, I think there's two fronts where if we're gonna advocate for change, I think one front would be advocated for change on this side with a program that already exists, which is the state-owned land, again, reimbursement program, where we advocate for changes that would better reflect the value in Amherst. And then I think the other piece is what Lynn was talking about, which is sort of a private pilot program that the town would use. And then so I will stop here and turn it over to Kim and Kim can tell you a little bit about what we've already started doing. So when I first started, I've heard that this was a priority to start inventorying all of the buildings at UMass in particular. And so it has been started. It's a lot for, if Kim was just to do it herself, so some of it comes down to how quickly we want the information. If there's a certain timeline, we would have to potentially contract it out. If the horizon's longer, then Kim's office may be able to do it over time. But Kim, do you wanna speak to where you're at now? Sure. So at the moment, Sean has actually reached out to UMass to see if we could get some of the buildings, the sketches as well as the cost of the building. So that will help. I mean, ideally if we could get that, we should be able to do the whole thing relatively quickly, but if we don't get that information or if it takes a while to get, that could cost us a little bit more time. And if they are not willing to give, then we would need to actually have someone on the ground measuring each and every building. And as you know, there's a lot of buildings at UMass, so that would take some time. The other thing that I was doing when I first started understanding that this was something that needed to be priority was looking at our GIS program and actually measuring out each and every building based on a UMass map as well as our GIS. And so that was gonna save a little bit of time. It wasn't going to be a perfect measurement, but it was going to be better than what we currently have. So I thought that would be a place to start. So between those two methods, hopefully UMass will come through and be able to give us all that information because when they build a new building, doesn't go through our building department and our planning department, it goes through a state. So we don't always get the plans for the buildings. So I know specifically looking at the map that I had found on their website, it's, I think it's around a 2016 edition of that map, maybe a little earlier, but there's certainly some new buildings since then, one in particular, I know used to be a parking lot is now I think a science building. So it definitely is gonna take us some time to get through these things, but depending on if UMass will get back to us and how quickly that might help, but if we do need to actually hit the ground and start measuring every building, that is gonna take some significant time. And again, depending like Sean said on our timeline, it may cost us some, if we need to contract out and have help with that. The other thing is using the GIS like I was starting to do, that's gonna help us at least get a rough estimate, a better estimate than what we have, but we're also still gonna have to go out and actually take pictures of each of the buildings. So we know what it is that we're looking at as well as picking up the new ones. So we will have to do some measuring list on those new buildings, but it also doesn't hurt because we might be able to find some other things like personal property items that maybe we don't have that would help us collect our revenue. Kim, I see Lynn's hand up real quick for Lynn. Can you just talk about the way you would value a building like a dorm or a classroom facility? Sure, so there's different ways to go about it. So when speaking with David about this, he had meant- Prior assessor for people who don't know. Yes, David, our prior assessor, sorry. He had suggested that we do an income method on these buildings. The other ways that we can do this is based on like the replacement cost new so we can look at what that value might look like. We can also do comparisons to other communities. The cost approach, the sales approach, the income approach. So we'd really have to do a little bit of studying and figuring out what the best method would be to come up with exactly where we wanna be. And I think, again, with those methods, if UMass can provide us with their cost figures, that's gonna help us tremendously. And then we can considerably compare them to other communities and other colleges of like size to see where their assessments would come in. Thank you. Lynn, and here's your hand up. Yeah, let me just mention two things. First of all, Peter Gray Mullen, who is an Amherst resident, is, works now for the UMass Building Authority and they would be the people that could help you immensely on this because they oversee all building at UMass across all five campuses and any place else. The other thing is I strongly urge you look at the IPEDS data and understand how they do it because that is a national formula that all higher ed institutions are used or is applied to all higher ed institutions and would be considered, I think, the generally acceptable way to value land and buildings and so forth. So I'm thinking about what Kathy said earlier and that is how can we do this without spending a lot of money and time because each of these institutions, public and private, have serious inventories. Some of them are insured publicly or through a company and some like the higher ed institutions, public higher ed institutions are self-insured but somewhere along and then in addition to that the equipment, for example, in very expensive science buildings will also often be actually insured by a company instead of being self-insured. So there's a lot of, again, I'd start with IPEDS and understand that and also then let me mention that there are two, at least two residents in Amherst who understand IPEDS at a serious level, one of them is, happens to be my husband, Brian Harvey and the other one happens to be Marilyn Blaustein who ran the institutional research center at UMass Amherst for many, many years and both again are Amherst residents. Marie? Those are great suggestions. I was going to say if you haven't spoken and I'm not sure who you contact, maybe our rep and Senator could be helpful in contacting people within DKAM because DKAM is basically the state landlord and they watch all this stuff and they have all this information. I say that with some hesitancy because I'm not sure my experience with DKAM is ancient. So I would check with DKAM, the other private organization that's done a lot of work on pilots is the Lincoln Land Institute. They published a pretty decent book which is available online as PDF on pilots and maybe floating a call over to the Lincoln Land Institute to see what they've done more recently, what suggestions they have would be helpful and inexpensive. Of course we have two other institutions, higher education services. What did Lynn say one method might be the endowment and when you look at the other institutions, that's it's a meaningful alternative, but in any case, yeah, we do. So Andy, just to propose next steps, Kim and I can have a conversation with the town manager and maybe bring back an update at the next meeting just on sort of a plan forward on this issue. Does that make sense? I guess you thought on that. Well, I think that makes sense. I just had one quick question on your land chart, Sean, on the A-grade. Is that both the UMass, I think it's the answer is, it's both the UMass land and any state conservation land? Yeah, anything that's owned by, so it wouldn't include Amherst College or... But it would include the pieces that are states. Yeah, it's not all UMass, right? There's some other state-owned land components in there. Yeah, no, because I know what the UMass acreage is and it's a bit higher, so I just was quite... Yeah, I think it's... Yeah, they don't, I don't think they provide that on the website, the detailed breakdown of what's in that number, but we could probably get it, yeah. That's fine, you answered my question, thanks. Yeah, just DCR land, the notch visitors at that state park that's in Amherst, is that included, do you think? Yeah, I mean, Nate Malloy knows quite a bit about it. I don't know if Ben or Chris work with this as much, but I know Nate has a way of getting the breakdown. He would be the best person to ask that. Michelle? Yeah, I agree with Sean's plan to bring back a report, but Lynn, I wonder how you feel about this being a more comprehensive conversation for the council to have with respect to how we approach our anchor institutions, you know, whether it be through this program that was outlined today or through private pilots or through requesting earmarked funds for specific purposes, like the school building or other new initiatives that the council would like to pursue. And Andy and I have spoken about this a little bit with respect to some of the other work that I've been doing. So I'm just wondering if this calls for a more comprehensive conversation to occur with all of the council in approaching it more holistically in how we engage and approach these anchor institutions. The town manager's goals, which he just reported on this in his town manager memo last night includes a goal regarding our relationship with higher ed institutions. It includes in that goal developing a memorandum of agreement with each of them. And he reported on the progress of that in the town manager thing. So I think from a standpoint of, has the council already discussed this at that level they have? I think if we start coming up with additional ways in which we want to move forward with regard to pilots, then that can also happen. It may not be well known, but the town manager meets weekly with somebody from UMass and they discuss all kinds of things. And the UMass presently pays, I think Sean about $120,000 specifically to the schools. Yeah, they pay 185,000 to the schools and they pay about 400,000 for EMS services. Right, so there's already one payment of the EMS services for services in kind. The payment for the schools was done specifically because of the North Village which they're now reconstructing and will be open in this fall. And that has lots of students that go to our schools in it and it's university owned. And that came about based on a study that was done by the EMS Donahue Institute. And then finally, I just want to mention that before I agreed to be on the panel and collect the data that I did for the panel that was statewide, I did talk with the town manager to make sure that he felt that it was politically okay, to kind of launch into this murky area and he agreed it was fine. So I think at some point when we're ready from the finance committee, because we regularly report it should come forward, but we have a long way to go with discussion with research and also discussions with the higher ed institutions. And those are open discussions. They're the town managers engaging in those weekly. Just to follow up quickly. Thank you, Lynn. I did a little bit of research on this and as Kathy said, there are communities all over the country that are receiving millions of dollars particularly from private institutions. And so it seems like this conversation has come around a lot. And I just want to put on the record that I feel like a more comprehensive discussion with the council about this would be appropriate and beneficial. Okay. Kathy. Just a quick comment. I think I agree with Lynn that we will bring this forward in our financial guidelines that we put out this year explicitly mentioned pilots as one way of going so broader than agreements. And some of those millions of dollars in other communities were negotiated in a collegial way with first saying what you would pay if we taxed you. So it was a public kind of nice way of saying it's time to be a partner with us. So I think that's where this potentially goes. It's not only one route but it is a route to getting something more Paul. I think of it as I'll use the word power. You don't like to go with your hands out saying please give me something. You want to go the extent you can with let's talk about what we think would make this work for both of us. And so this is partly the evidence that is pulled together by these assessed values. However we do it helps give some oomph to it. So I think where we're at is so Sean made a proposal that he and Kim would talk with Paul now report on today's conversation, get his feedback from it and then report back to us at the next meeting so that we can continue the process and the discussion. And my other suggestion is that I will do a better job this time of getting the draft done earlier of the committee report of today's meeting. Though it won't be, it's gonna be hard to do it for next Monday's meeting but at least get something in there so that we can start informing the council through the committee report that we've started this discussion because I think the point of making them aware of it is that the council as a whole is a good idea and that's the way institutionally that we've set it up to do that through council rules. So agreeable, because I don't think we need a motion or anything like that at this stage. We just have a process that we've agreed to by consensus, unless somebody objects. And I, okay, then let's go forward on that basis and try and get on to one thing, the next item which is to try and get to the CPA discussion and see if we have additional information that was requested and can address the two proposals that are still outstanding for without a recommendation from the committee. Sean, do you wanna? Yeah, thank you. So Chris, Ben and Dave are gonna help with this discussion topic. I'm gonna share my screen so we can look at something. So the two projects that were not acted on were the Conkey Stevens house for 240,000 and the Amherst women's club for 135,000. So let me just pull up my notes real quick. So we asked the attorney a few questions and then we also had a more extensive conversation among the planning staff and Sonya and I about we do a lot of these types of projects but we do a lot of preservation restrictions and things like that. We've had those in the past and how those worked and I think we wanted to just bring some clarification back to this committee. Just what are the provisions that are in those preservation restrictions and then hopefully that will provide some added assurance to this committee that if there is a preservation restriction placed on a property that carries a lot of weight and there's a lot of provisions in that restriction that address some of the concern to the committee. So we're going to just sort of go through the questions one by one and sort of add each person maybe we'll add a little bit. So the first question that we address was can the town place a condition on the grant that if the property is sold that the CPA money is reimbursed to the town. So our attorney Sharon Everett from KP Law said that we can. We're able to basically and within the grant agreements for these first CPA projects you can have certain triggering events that would result in a repayment. I think talking about it more with staff we feel like the historic preservation restriction is probably more appropriate and more consistent with what we've done with other projects in the past. That is a restriction that's placed on the deed and it addresses things like maintenance and just if the building's ever sold and things of that nature. So I'll turn it over to Ben probably first to start and just talk a little bit more about what's in the restriction, how it protects our investment and we've got an example too if people want to see an example of a restriction we've got one that I can pull up on the screen just so people can see the different sections that are addressed within a restriction. Maybe I'll do that now. Do you want to go Ben while I pull that up? Sure, yeah thank you everyone. So a little bit about historic preservation restrictions. They are a binding legal document that is filed at the registry of deeds. It's a restriction that runs with the land I think is important to note. So even it's really on the property itself. So if the building is sold the restriction is still in place and with the new owner. There's a few sections that I think are important to highlight. One is the covenant to maintain. And actually I'm just going to back up for a second. I think there's another question later on about kind of what comes with the national being being listed on the National Register of Historic Places which the Conky House is one of seven individually listed properties in Amherst which is a very important designation. However, one thing to note about the National Register is it's purely an honorary distinction. There's no obligation on behalf of the property owner to maintain the property to keep it in its historical condition. Really it's an honorary designation like I said and something that really kicks in when there's federal or state funds at play. However, with local funds the National Register doesn't come into play. So it kind of adds to the importance of a preservation restriction which is what we're looking at now which does require and it's a legally binding document which requires maintenance to the property and we can see it here in the bottom sorry in the fourth to the bottom line the secretary of the interior standards for the treatment, sorry on paragraph 4.1 at the bottom there the secretary of the interior standards for the treatment of historic properties. So that's essentially a set of guidelines put forth by the secretary of interior's office on how historic properties should be maintained with the highest integrity architectural standpoint. And then there's also kind of this list of properties that can be permitted without any review such as ongoing maintenance and that kind of activities and then there's a set of activities that require review in this case it would be by the historical commission. So I think actually Sean if you go to the very end there should be a list of minor and major activities typically it's at the end of the appendix yeah here there it is yeah so there's a list of these types of activities that require review the major activities would require review by the historical commission and their approval and so that's a way to ensure that any kind of exterior changes to the building are being done with the most architectural integrity to respect the historic nature of the buildings and then certainly there's just it's a legally binding document that they can't demolish the building certainly and kind of just that these major exterior changes need review and approval by the historical commission so so what you're just to build on with Ben describing what you're looking at as an example of one this one's from we've got some that are in progress or something we've had in the past but we didn't want to drag up old yeah old debates in this town so we gave an example of one from another community but the sections are pretty consistent right Ben yeah so this one is from the city of Salem but so I guess I think the point of this was to say that if the concern of the committee is protecting the investment of CPA funds we feel the restriction can protect the investment of CPA funds in terms of maintaining whatever improvements are made that those improvements will live on I think the second piece Ben did you want to say anything else before I was going to turn it over to Dave? No yeah I was just going to add that this restriction is kind of the template that the Mass Historic Commission sends out to communities to base their restrictions off of so that's where it came from so I think that the second piece we wanted just to weigh in on is sort of the importance of privately owned historic property in town and Dave was going to speak to that a little bit this past year in particular the CPA committee did a lot of outreach encouraging sort of private proposals for CPA Ben I think you even mentioned that the historic commission actually did some outreach to different parties because of that message that the community preservation committee gave and so some of these projects are in response to that sort of outreach effort so I guess Dave do you want to just weigh in on what we were talking about? Sure thanks Sean I'll be very brief and I think thanks to Ben for pointing out a number of those elements of the restrictions themselves but very briefly staff had a conversation about really the importance of these historic structures and I use the word fabric of our community as we look at some of the historic districts in town and Ben talked about being on the National Historic Register that there are a number of these and in Amherst Ben referenced the number seven structures that are on the National Historic Register but more importantly these are structures that we all walk by, we bike by, we drive by they're part of the fabric of what makes Amherst so unique and really take us back in time and I guess in our conversations with staff I made an analogy really and to the importance of farmland and so I look at these historic preservation restrictions in a very similar way to the way I look at APR as agricultural preservation restrictions that the farmland that makes up Amherst is part of our agricultural history and I think a word that comes to mind often is that these restrictions are in perpetuity so they're designed to be forever so I think that's really important that the public benefit the CPA investment those dollars that the public is really making available for us to use are protecting this resource for us and more importantly for future generations in perpetuity so that's the way I look at these historic preservation restrictions and I look at the building and the various generations of structures there and was kind of sitting in the parking lot over the weekend just thinking about how long that building has been there and the importance of it so I think that's what we wanted to kind of share as staff is that these are in perpetuity their investment for us but for future generations to enjoy this building and enjoy the history of what those buildings have meant to our community so I think I'll stop there and we can move on to other questions that the committee raised Chris did you want to add? I just wanted to say that I think that there also an element in our economic development people come to Amherst to see these historic buildings when they go and view the Bucky House they may stop in at the Black Sheep or they may have lunch at Oriental Flavor and then they go to the bookstore or Hastings and these buildings bring people to Amherst whether they're staying in Amherst or just driving through on their way to the Berkshires or whatever but I think that they're an important element in our economic development and that we really need to preserve them, thanks and Ben correct me if I'm wrong the way it stands now there's nothing that requires the owners to maintain the historical elements of the house with this investment of funds and the deed restriction there would be something that would require that so I think that's just something to keep in mind as well so the second question that we received was can the town place a condition on the grant requiring that the property will be maintained to continue to meet standards continued inclusion on the national register of historic places or as required by the historic district commission so I think Ben already stated I don't think there are sort of maintenance standards that are currently required however if we do have if we did have the historic preservation restriction there would be sort of a required maintenance element as part of that restriction the third question was can the town structure a CPA award as a loan to be repaid by the owner or for a condominium assessed to owners for a share so we asked this to our legal counsel as well they confirmed it could be structured the grant could be structured as a loan Sonya and I in particular have some concerns about starting that precedent of loaning out CPA funds and how that process would work and how we're going to collect this over so many years and things of that nature so if this is an option the committee just wants us to pursue further I think Sonya and I would want to do a lot more research on how this works in other communities because we haven't done it here Christine I think you'd have a hard time combining the historic preservation restriction with the idea of a loan because the historic preservation restriction is in perpetuity and why would someone want to put a restriction on a building in perpetuity if he knew he had to pay back the loan so that's all I wanted to say you might lose that element of it and then the fourth question really the last question is can the town on its own decide that we will only fund personal historically designated property to a certain level and if so what would this measure look like so we also talked to legal counsel about this I think the first thing to notice the counsel has final say on all this in terms of the appropriation and they could always reduce the appropriation more or less by the amount of the projects it doesn't want to support so the counsel does have final say on all this in terms of an official action by the counsel that would be sort of preemptive where you would say CPA coalition we only want you to recommend projects up to a certain level legal counsel said you could do that as sort of a non-binding guideline but it would not be binding because there's a certain authority given to CPA committees and the counsel can't sort of over usurp that authority so the counsel could issue guidelines that were non-binding if it wanted to but our attorney didn't think that there could be any binding action to do that and I think this one also when staff spoke about this again it also gave us a little bit of a pause about the outreach efforts that the CPA committee has taken this year to encourage proposals and then if there was sort of for the restrictions on those proposals that might counteract a little bit of what they were doing or make it a little more complicated when they do outreach about we don't want all proposals we want these types of proposals or something like that so just to keep that in mind as well and then the last question was sort of straightforward so can the attorney help us with this process if the counsel decides to move forward with anything here and our counsel is always happy to support the town if there's additional questions or needs so I guess that's what we wanted to report back and see if there's any additional questions if there's any additional concerns or elements that we didn't address I don't know can anyone hear me I'm not sure I just want to make sure that I'm connected and I have to tell you about my limitation then yeah we can hear you okay for some reason my computer will not reconnect to some actually on my cell phone the problem with cell phone is it's very limited in what I can see and therefore I think I'm going to have to request that either Kathy or Lynn continue to chair the meeting so that we can keep it moving I can chair Andy I can I saw the order that the hands went up so I can call on people so I think Lynn was the first hand up Lynn yeah could you provide us a list of the seven properties including their status in terms of public occupancy our ability for the public to have access and maybe some additional information like value have we ever given those properties anything else that's number one and let me just say behind this for me is an issue of do we have access to the building as the public for example we have provided to hope church and we can go to hope church and we can look at it we've done the same thing to JCA we can go there we can look at it we can go inside same thing is true for the women's club but if it's a private property that's condoized you know I happen to have a business in that building that is no longer there that I did business with but it's been a long time and I was only there because I was there for the business so part of me I understand that CPA money is really only for the external part of the building and what we're trying to preserve is the look but then there's there's for me the bottom line is this is taxpayer money and what do we feel we owe or should do so I'm still very much thinking about this and it's created a serious level of consternation for me about people buying historic homes and then coming to the public and saying can you help me repair my home so thanks Michelle I really appreciate what Dave said about these properties being the fabric of our community and I appreciate also what Chris said about them bringing economic stimulation I agree with those statements and I like the idea of a historic preservation restriction my question is in some sense this may sort of perpetuate like a repeated indication by the particular in this case the congee home they may come back because now they're bound by these restrictions so is there a way to attach a fund reserve that they would be required to keep to the restriction so that we can be assured that they are also taking some measures to in this case collect from the condo owners and build a reserve to properly maintain the property I don't know Ben or Dave if you have seen anything like that and any of the prior agreements that you've worked on I think we can require them to maintain it if we wanted to talk about the mechanism for which they maintain it we might be able to put something like that in a grant agreement in terms of future requests it's always going to be up to the CPA committee whether they would want to entertain future requests and Sonya will kill me if I don't say routine maintenance is not eligible for CPA it's got to be it's got to be to preserve the historic elements any routine maintenance would not be eligible so but we can look into that about whether we can include the mechanics or sort of explicitly say like we expect you to take care of this the next time it comes up or something like that yeah we can look into that yeah and you know I'm thinking about it now from the perspective of the condo is more in my experience with condos they have several lines of reserves so maybe this wouldn't apply to all historical properties but in this particular property where there are condo owners that are paying in that's pretty standard to have those line items for different types of reserves it may be possible and Ben you may remember this from working with this group they do have a capital sort of fund and I believe they're making other improvements aren't they are they're planning to save up for other improvements to the building yeah certainly they have an assessment that they on condo owners both the residential properties at the sale and place condos and the office condos within the conky house pooled into one fund for ongoing maintenance and capital improvements this CPA request was preceded by I don't want to quote the exact numbers but it was quite a large investment in the slate roof for the conky house to really shore up the the weather proofing for the roof so they have you know invested quite a bit in the conky house over the past years and they do have the ability to kind of have ongoing funds from the assessment for maintenance Bob yeah I had two questions the first question has to do with the maintenance requirement and I only had a chance to look at it very briefly and I'm not an attorney but it seemed to me that it was unclear whether for example if we were to use CPA money to fix a roof whether the maintenance requirement then extends to the entire structure or only only refers to the roof that's the first question I have and the second question I have is what happens in the case of bankruptcy what do we do with a property where the owner goes bankrupt and can't maintain it or do anything with it other than sell it so we will post that restriction to the packet so people can if they want to go back and read it in more detail we were going to do it ahead of time it was my fault for not getting in there so we'll post that to the packet and we'll also post some of the background information on the conky Stevens house and the women's club to some of the history of it and we will talk more with Sharon about what happens in the case of a bankruptcy does that change anything with the restriction again if the property changes hands we know that the restriction goes with it but just if there's anything else we should be aware of I see both Dave's hand and Chris's hand went up are you both speaking to what was just asked Dave sure I think there were two questions there from Bob and maybe Ben or Chris could address the roof related maintenance issue in a minute but I just you know I'm very confident on the bankruptcy issue I mean we can get that information from Sharon Everett at Copeland and Page but I really think the historic reservation restriction runs with the deed so it regardless of who owns it it does not go away it is analogous to an APR so it runs with the deed whoever the future owner is would be bound by that historic preservation restriction I don't think there's any way to lift that I think it would take an act of the town council and also an act of the state legislature to remove that historic preservation restriction but we can get more detail on that and yeah I just wanted to say this is a great conversation I understand the concerns about this being a private property if you will and I heard your comments or your concerns earlier Lynn but I also want to put out there that you know in my experience there really are no guarantees about future ownership and you know I even want to put it out there that we funded the JCA we funded a historic preservation restriction of the Jones Library we funded a historic preservation restriction of the UU of the historic stained glass window but these structures it does feel there's something it feels a little better when we're funding an organization a non-profit but I just want to put it out there that non-profits come and go there is no guarantee that the women's club will be the owner of that building in perpetuity just like there's no guarantee that the JCA will own that historic church down on Main Street in perpetuity but the preservation restriction will live on in my experience almost 20 years working for the town it has been very hard to get private owners of historic structures and hammers to come forward and do these projects with us because of the concerns about putting a deed restriction a historic preservation restriction on their deed and I have to say that also in my experience there's no other sources of money out there to protect these historic homes you know I've been in so many communities where people say there must be federal money there must be state money in my experience there really isn't CPA dollars and this is true across the state communities use CPA dollars to preserve these private homes and again Lynn you asked the question about access and I think there's a way we could structure the historic preservation restriction so that if the owners were willing again this is a business the condos in that structure are open say nine to five Monday through Friday we could put some reference to that in the historic preservation restriction that if any of us are in the future people wanted to go in and view the internal structure of the building they could whether they're visiting one of those businesses or not but primarily the historic gets us access to the outside features of the building which are what we are preserving but I think there's a way to get that Lynn just like the JCA or the UU have to provide you know if somebody wants to go in and see the beautiful historic structures they can during business hours of that organization organization A or B or C so I think there's a way to get access to the building we could negotiate that with the owners of the condo association or the individual condo association owners so anyway just wanted to put out a couple of those comments Chris are you still speaking to this as well I wanted to speak to another of Bob's questions and the question was if an entity receives money to fix its roof does the historical preservation restriction only apply to the roof and no it applies to the whole building the whole historic portion of the building so if there's a portion of that building that was built in the 70s it probably wouldn't apply to that portion but the historical portion of the building the whole thing would be covered by the historical preservation restriction thank you Bernie it just because we're talking about this opportunity I think to talk about this process as a whole and any concerns about these two specific properties here but I would just suggest that in the future when the CPA comes forward with a proposal for funding a private piece of property that the proposed deed restriction be part of that recommendation or be available at the time that these questions are resolved in advance so I'm going to call myself and then I'll call on Bob again I think differently about the two properties so I think the reason we're focusing on Conke Stevens is what Lynn was remarking on that the women's club we do have access to it is a public resource I mean you have to pay for events when they're there are lectures and other things so it's the larger public use so my one of my questions is with the yes we could the attorney said we can get money paid back what I my concern is that we are potentially enhancing the value of the property and then it could be sold and the current owners of it and otherwise the condo association would reap that so could we do a combination of the payback should it be sold and historic preservation because the two seem to me to work well together the historic preservation is an obligation to continue to preserve this the other is saying that I don't think anyone especially it's so complicated the ownership on it's there are lots of condos in here it's not just one or two so it's more likely pieces of it would be sold over time so I'm not even sure how the payback works but my concern is really on the private ownership and the potential to have the value of the property be enhanced with public money without public access so this one I differentiate from the other quite a bit and I will stop there you know I think Bernie absolutely that we should be sending this forward but I think this isn't is not a good long-term use when even if it's not this year because no other proposals came up it's competing for CPA dollars that could have gone for affordable housing some broader recreational land improvements are high school track it's not I'm not looking at this in isolation it just it wasn't competing in this queue but those monies can be reserved and use for other purposes so I think of this as tax dollars just through another route and I will stop there Bob I just wanted to add a comment that the questions I had please don't misinterpret them as questions about the value of historic preservation if you look over my shoulder on the picture that's a bridge in Switzerland that a footbridge that dates back to the 15th century and is still in use today and has paintings from the early 1600s inside it so I definitely appreciate the value of the historic preservation with Kathy and Lynn I'm just questioning where how do we put public money and do specific structures so Bernie's hand is back up as is Chris's so Bernie is a new topic Chris well anyway I'll just first Bernie then Chris I don't discriminate between the women's club and the condo association they're both private entities they're not public entities and we are making capital improvements in both those structures so I just and I do agree with that these compete with other demands out of the out of the CPA money although we do have some you know we do have a I believe we have a restriction we have to spend 10% of it on these matters so again I'm not cutting the one applicant any slack over the other they're both corporations that are not that are private corporations that hold these properties that we're making a capital improvement in so I just wanted to know two things and one is that I think that rather than enhancing the value of the property the CPA funds would really be preserving the value of the property because they're not adding a wing or you know some fancy you know thing that isn't there already they're just taking what's there already and trying to preserve it and make sure that it doesn't leak or fall apart or whatever so I think preservation rather than enhancement is the way I would look at it the other thing I wanted to note is that in the past it's interesting to me that we're having this conversation now about funding public properties versus private properties because in the past people have argued against using CPA funds to fund public buildings like repairing the town hall for instance or something like that they say well you know you really should use public tax money to maintain the public buildings you shouldn't use CPA money so that's that's an argument that I've heard in the past whether it was at town meeting or where it was I don't remember but there's always this kind of push pull between funding public and private and I think that in our town both public and private buildings are important to maintain because they bring people to town that's all thanks Lynn and then Sean Chris I I totally remember those arguments going back to the preservation of town hall and the renovation of town hall which was more inside but the preservation outside but I am going to disagree with you as a former treasurer of a condo association it's clearly helps the value of sale if people know the association has kept the property in good repair and it would be individual property owners from the condo association that when they sell they benefit from that I do differentiate between the two and I and I am not against historic preservation I'm just trying to figure out how we as a town have to balance this against things like meeting a new field for recreation which is not out of the same percentage so but that's it thank you Sean yeah so I guess I just wanted to talk about two things so next steps and what information does this committee need to either make or not make a recommendation on these two projects so is there a date set for the hearing on these projects? the public forum which is required is tentatively set for the 21st of March we have not advertised it yet okay so I mean it the goal in the past has been to try to do CPA as early as we can so the people who will be getting CPA monies know that as early as they can so the actions this committee can take is to either recommend these projects or recommend against these projects or I suppose abstain in its action on these projects yes we can decide not on these projects but at some point we need to go one way or the other my point is in an ideal world we would make a decision on these projects so all the projects can be considered at that public forum and whether the vote is for or against or again abstaining that they'd be considered with the other slate of projects and so again that just brings me to I've got some notes down about additional pieces of information but it really seems like it's sort of a philosophical discussion at this point not a something the attorney is going to help us with about whether these types of projects the finance committee wants to support or not support and I think we're not you know Sonya and I aren't laying in I'm not sure about planning but we just want to get you whatever information you need to to act on these so Andy I turned back to you can you go back to chairing because I you know I finally got my computer working again some I had to actually go through a whole restart process in order to get it to come back when those is wonderful isn't it the you know I have been listening to the conversation it's been very good conversation I think that the public-private discussion is probably not worth pursuing too much because you could go down that path forever I've always CPA funds as public funds it's just a different form of public funds their question still is hangs out in my mind at various times about some of these proposals is when the anti-aid amendment comes in it creates problems but I think that that's also a difficult question that we did that really delve into I think that's been addressed we've had other projects like that with the steeple and with stained glass windows I think the general opinion is the benefit to the public is the view that's sort of what I've heard that's the public benefit as long as there is a public benefit I don't think this project would be unique to some of these other projects that we've done well then we get into the distinction between publicly owned and by individuals or a non-profit and whether that creates a distinction because this I'm not sure that we've done one where it's privately owned as opposed to by individuals as opposed to non-profit so that would be the only distinction though the history of the anti-aid amendment suggests that it's not a valid distinction I do think we need to come forward with a recommendation to the council or not but I would hope that we can the statute has the recommendations made by the community preservation act committee reports to the council council asks the opinion of its committees but actually the referral from the CPA committee is to the council itself and therefore ultimately this question belongs to the council I see several hands up and I don't know Kathy where we were with that but as far as order is concerned I hope that somebody is now getting to the point of suggesting a resolution that we can consider so Lynn's hand came up first but Matt hasn't spoken yet Andy I know we take Matt then Thanks Kathy and I'll be brief I think the main thing I want to say about both these discussions is my gratitude for Dave and Sean and the town staff in terms of doing the background research and just giving us all this information you know it's complicated as somebody coming in new it's a lot of complicated and historical information to gather so I appreciate it and I really appreciate the perspective of what is the intent of the CPA and kind of reflecting what Andy just said I do think that Chris and the CPA are their public servants as well and they're entrusted with these recommendations and I think a lot of these concerns about public private and public housing have been leaked into the underlying statute for this and I think we have to trust and expect that the CPA is making those balance weighing these things on balance and looking for immediate urgent public needs as well as historical preservation as well as public housing so to Andy's point I think that the CPA's recommendation to the council and I think we've exceeded some of the public expenditures overall in terms of amount into affordable housing and such so I'm in support of the proposal as made and I think if we want to look more broadly at the overall 3% you know tariffs that goes in or 3% that goes into the CPA funding I think that's a much bigger conversation about the particular slate of a project so I do support the slate of projects as written and I really appreciate the thought that's gone into it I think just to two comments one Senator Warren withstanding we pay a wealth tax that's unproperty and the CPA is a wealth tax so it's all tax money for one and for two my understanding is amendments requirements are met through the deed restriction so as I said before put the deed restriction up front along with the proposal so those questions about how the public purpose is going to be met and protected are answered thanks Lynn please take Leisha next Leisha Thank you so I'm just I'm listening to everyone's feedback and trying to develop my own opinion on this and I just have a question because I've never worked with CPA funds before about how they work and so if we were not to adopt these recommendations then what happens to the funding so Sony do you want to weigh in on what happens if these projects aren't approved and the funding going back to the CPA well we're obligated to approve at least 10% for each category historic preservation community housing or open space and recreation which are combined so we have to at least set aside 10% for each of those if we were not to recommend any projects we put 10% into reserved fund balances for that and the rest would be in the undesignated fund balance but if you're talking about just removing these two projects we would have to we would have to go back to CPA and CPA would have to recommend approximately $43,000 to go into a historic preservation reserve because we wouldn't need our 10% this year okay thank you you're welcome so just adding to what Sonya said we're going to reconsider ways to spend that money they could put into the reserve but at least a certain amount will have to go towards historic preservation projects to meet that 10% and I guess the other point is the notion of reserve it carries over to the next year if they don't spend it's not a use it or lose it situation I mean it's reserved for a particular designated purpose and so it means if another they actually can my understanding from listening to the committee is if a project came along in the spring they don't have to make a decision just once a year they have done it that way but this could be part of next year's funding base so it can go in both directions can I just add to that as long as there is a reserve because once the tax rate is set it's no longer budgeting on estimated receipts so it has to be money that's in the account somewhere or other first of all I want to just thank the staff for the enormous amount of research that's gone into this because I think you've even opened up additional issues such as whether or not we want to do preservation restrictions and I think Bernie you're absolutely correct that needs to be known upfront that that's part of the deal you can't say to somebody after the fact oh and by the way if you accept this now we're going to do this to your property you need to say it upfront so it seems to me that there are several questions that will go forward to the council that's one of them whether or not we want to do that kind of deed restriction the second one that I think has to go forward to the council is the fact that we have approved all of the other projects and so we're ready for a conversation on that the one that's still out there is what and how much we want to do and with regard to these two particular projects and there's nothing that stops the council from having a public forum and hearing from other counselors and then having the finance committee reconvene and take a vote on those last two projects and in some ways I actually am suggesting that that's what we do okay so I think that there are three possibilities if I've got it right one is what Lynn just suggested which is to not make a recommendation but report on this and then suggest that it come back to the these two projects come back to the committee or of course the council could just decide to vote a second one is that we go ahead and make the recommendation as it is and the third is that even though it was not known to the applicants at the time that they put it they're still very much wanting the money and to go with and say that we would suggest approving grants subject to an agreement from the applicant at least in the either one or both applicants actually which is a separate discussion that in the store that there be some kind of historic preservation restriction that we would add so Dave is on it sure I don't mean to disrupt where you're going I know you want to move toward a vote Andy I'm a little confused is there some question that either one of the applicants didn't know that they would have to put on a historic preservation restriction that's always part of our discussion with applicants so there's no confusion we always that is a requirement of the law so anybody who applies is told that so I just wanted to put that out there that there should be no surprise on the part of either one of these applicants that they would have to put that on there to Bernie's question about putting I'm not exactly sure what you meant Bernie by putting that out front in the broader discussion maybe we always don't want to put that out there because we live this every day we can't put the actual document that we would use for the conky house or the or the women's club out there in the packet we can put a boilerplate draft because that would still need to be negotiated between the parties so we would not spend all that time energy and legal council's time negotiating that if the council had a project do you follow me on that so we could put out a draft there's a boilerplate that we use for most of these and they're specific to a particular property or building or structure but again we wouldn't take it down that path and get to the finish line of a historic preservation restriction before the funding is authorized and I like to I think Andy where you were going is you would a finalized historic preservation restriction so I just wanted to put those two points out there that the applicants always know that it's a requirement to put on a preservation restriction and two we wouldn't put out we wouldn't work on a draft with them prior to knowing whether they're going to get funded because it's just not a good use of staff time or legal time thanks that's helpful Bernie did two responses was part of the project yeah I'm aware that there's a requirement about notifying an applicant around historic preservation restriction or the requirements of the anti-aid amendment you know I can accept Dave's point that you know that and I think the notion of saying that this would be approved pending a suitable deed restriction that's a good compromise I don't want to get into arguing whether or not negotiating this upfront because there's probably some discussion that goes on up front about what we do or what a boilerplate historic preservation restriction looks like but I think when I said up front what I meant is when the CPA committee goes ahead and recommends to the council that the the project go forward that the whole some detail whether it's a boilerplate or not of the preservation restriction is part of that proposal so that everybody knows up front there's going to be a deep restriction and it will more or less meet this framework and that there will be a final vote when the deed restriction is completed to approve the project so that the town knows people know that their funds are being and the property is being protected I used to work next to my office in Springfield was right next door to Mulberry Street and I unfortunately remember Dr. Seuss' house going away and it was supposedly preserved historic property so I'm not saying that the great applicants are anywhere near doing something like that but I think we need to have some protection here for going forward and that's one way to do it so I think Dave's suggestion is a good one I think it would be a good compromise Chris do you have anything you wanted to add from the staff perspective that we have just a quick comment that sometimes these deed restrictions take a long time sometimes they need to be approved by the Mass Historical Commission they can actually take years to be put in place so to hold back the money until the deed restriction is signed and filed at the registry recorded at the registry may be kind of a bridge too far but the idea of having a draft when the money is approved I think makes a lot of sense I'm just cautioning you against withholding the money until the thing is actually recorded at the registry because that could take a long time Kathy I just wanted to Annie I know you were trying to get to closure on what are we going to do for next steps I'd like our report in terms of recommendations to reflect that the bulk except for these two we are recommending approval we had a good discussion and then on these two talk about the discussion we had the issues that were raised we don't have to right now come to a yes or no but issues on the deed restriction on repayment some of these other issues because I think it's important that the rest of the council have the benefit of what we've heard rather than wait for public comments on this and so I think that section should flag why and including the comments by staff on the value of having well preserved fabulous historic houses as we drive down the street in Amherst that it's an asset that's a public asset I think we should be it should be a rich report on this section but also the questions about competing needs and the fact that this is a privately owned condo association I think I never would have flagged this if that hadn't been true and listening to the presentation initially at CPA this one because I'm the liaison was the one that jumped out at me just because it seemed very different and I'm not saying that it hasn't happened before it just seemed very different and so I just think our report Andy should be robust on this element if we're not going to take a vote on these two today I'm ready to vote on them but I don't feel like I have to vote on them now I get a second chance yeah I'm personally ready to vote on this today although I hear what Lynn said about wanting to potentially hold a public hearing and I appreciate that I think one of the things I think we need to be really conscious of is what the CPA guidelines say and I don't think there's anything that precludes private properties from being included in proposals and so we can talk about philosophy as a council but I think it's important that we consider what the sort of historical and present day context of the CPA fund is and I agree with what Matt said with respect to trusting the CPA committee in that they've looked at the full slate of proposals and they've balanced them according to the various requirements like the 10% that Sonya spoke of I believe it was and just the competing demands so I would be ready to make a motion on this I really stink at motions I tried to write something out but if there isn't you know objection to doing that I would I think it is I hear you Kathy about like you can wait but this has been on people's radar now for a few weeks and we've done a quite a bit of research I think and had quite a bit of discussion so from my perspective I do believe it's time to move it forward to a resolution so with that said I could try to read the motion that I wrote but somebody else has something else to add or object to that I would say go ahead and make your motion and then if there's a piece that somebody thinks should be added that could be an amendment to the motion but at least it moves us forward sure so again I'm not great at motion writing so we might need to amend this but I moved to recommend the Salon Place HOA and the Amherst Women's Club CPA proposals to the town council for approval as part of the overall CPA recommendations with a historic preservation restriction agreement in place okay so is there a second of the motion waiting to hear if any of the council members are seconded I'm going to second it to get it so that we can continue to move forward because I think that the there's some questions that still need to be resolved but it moves a little bit further Kathy number one can you refresh my memory did we already recommend the rest of the package yes we did okay so secondly I don't think that does enough to the concerns and just on the history of this Michelle we have separated out proposals from CPA before that's one of the council's roles we don't have to take the whole slate we in the last instance it was around an affordable housing project we had an extensive discussion on it so this would not be at least I mean the council doesn't have a long history okay on doing this that's one point and the second point if this wasn't a year where there was two million dollars more of requests and then pared down to this limited set so one of my concerns is we do not we have the ability because of Sonya's ability to figure out how to reserve it we can make decisions not to spend all the money and this wasn't of we had five choices and this was the best of them so I think we as a town need to be really careful and think about the pipeline and CPA as a committee the CPAC does not have to look at a five year timeline you know what's coming to them in a month in six months they want to allocate their money they do one year at a time I think it would be good if they did look that way the way we have to as the town on the capital side but that is not the practice because they are one year at a time and they don't actually know the allocation there's a good reason why they're doing that it has to be determined so I don't think we're out of line in scrutinizing if we have questions about this motion because I don't think we have to make it Sean I guess one question I would have and maybe this is just a zero in on the core issue is do people feel the same way about the women's club project as they do the conky Stevens house because the women's club project to me seems more consistent with many other projects that have been approved in the past and so I guess I don't know I haven't heard many a lot of discussion about that specific project and I guess the question can one of them be recommended or not recommended today to kind of get to the core issue I'm just confused as the process we're following here does finance committee have that authority to reduce the no whether they're going to make so I think what we talked about is whether they're going to make a recommendation on these projects to the council or not okay all right I'm just trying to figure out because I know the whole council the council itself can reduce the amounts but I'm not sure if finance committee can they could recommend a reduction they can yes it's recommending that something it's not actually can't act on it ultimately it's a recommendation to the council Lynn if voting no means that it will not go forward to the council I will be voting no I'm not sure that ultimately I will vote no but I really do want to hear from the rest of the council and I do want to hear from the public and Sonia it is the council's final decision finance committee can only recommend okay thank you so I'm going to have to ask in a minute for Bill to read the motion again I'll get to your second Michelle it would I think that the key elements that I would want to see in the motion is it's a recommendation to the council to the recommendation that is in the motion is to fund the proposals as recommended by the committee but subject to an agreement that a historic preservation restriction will be developed subsequent to the grant and probably the best that we can do because we as Dave pointed out earlier I think it was Dave that takes time to get the historic preservation completed Michelle I want to just clarify what Lynn just offered because I guess I'm a bit confused in the way it was my understanding that this would bring it forward to the council to have this discussion and they would be aware of whatever way the vote happened and the discussion that surrounded the vote so what I heard you say is that you don't want to bring it you do want to bring it to the council and you do want to bring it to the public but you would vote no on recommending that they be included in so you're not saying you're not willing to vote on this I'm confused because it sounds to me like there's going to be an opportunity for the council by virtue of this vote having happened today to discuss this and then there will also be a hearing on the CPA proposals as a whole and so if you could clarify that before we vote I'd appreciate it I would like the public forum not public hearing public forum to include all of the proposals that we've received but I have at the point we are right now I will be a no vote because I am or I could abstain either one because I really want to hear what the public has to say and the rest of the council it's been a very very interesting and you never know when the next little issue in Amherst is going to arise and how this is one of them that's great thank you for clarifying Kathy and Michelle the differences the wording you had as we recommend approval as recommended we are going to move the package forward with a recommendation for everything but these two and leave it open on why these two were not included in the overall recommendation we don't have the ability to not do them today the package is the package but it's a vote of clustering them all and we like the whole most years we have just said we like the whole slate we haven't had this discussion we didn't go through this Sean asked if I feel differently about the two and the answer is yes but I will get a chance to vote on that at the council level I don't put the women's club in the same category but that's me I think the motion essentially is coming back to without the exact wording that is recommended subject to the agreement that is historic preservation restriction will be developed on both of the properties so Sonny did you have something else that your hand is still up so Andy in terms of next steps we have to vote on the motion and then I guess if conversation is done or we all in agreement that the next stop is just the public forum the finance committee has reviewed it so we can move forward to the public forum Sonny you would put together the order you would put together would include all the projects because that's what was recommended by the CPA committee but we would just note that only the two that were not recommended by finance committee at this point not that they were recommended against there was no recommendation given on those two actually who would be recommended but with the subject to an agreement that there be added historic preservation restriction only if this vote passes that you've got to vote first Andy I'm just trying to clarify what the motion does it moves all along and all are recommended without restrictions it's recommended that the council add this restriction and Sonny is there anything that you know of in the statute that would preclude the council from taking that action at the time of its vote No no they can reduce the order by any amount with their intent well it's not reducing by an amount it's adding a provision that's already added by the law itself so that has to happen no matter what so you can put it in the council order but it's going to happen it's part of CPA requirements it's so it's really not it can be in the motion that really required is what you're saying it's required it's required of the town to get a restriction for them in order for them to have the money but it's not required to be in a motion so in other historic preservation like for the UU church there was a restriction that was placed ultimately and most recently was the Jones library any special wording about the restriction in that appropriation order I don't believe right Sonya no we never put that part into the motions because it's part of the law you have to do it so it has been done in each of the cases that we're talking about the UU the JCA Jones library yes correct me we don't need anything other than the motion and the report of the discussion the motion being a clean motion just saying we recommend these two projects because it would be subject to the restriction anyway said so Michelle would you would that change how you would word the motion Michelle go ahead well I guess I just want to clarify because our whole discussion last week or last meeting was around this historic preservation restriction and whether that would help us meet the anti-aid requirements and so I guess because we didn't have staff here maybe last time we weren't aware that that was sort of an automatic and what I would like to understand is that an automatic on all historical preservation CPA proposals is that what you're saying is that it's sort of an automatic requirement of those proposals when I hear you say that's the law I'm just trying to understand what you mean Sonia by that Sonia Dave either one of you so that's a great question Michelle first off I don't I don't see any harm in putting this in the motion I mean I like the word contingent upon but that's a very good question Michelle about does every project require a historic preservation restriction and I guess the correct answer that would be no so if we for instance if the town you know I'm thinking of projects in the past if the town the town has authorized funding for some materials that were owned by the strong house I believe there was some years ago there was one of Emily Dickinson's dresses I believe and so that was about four I'm going to say $14,000 that's not really nothing to restrict we're not going to we're not going to be able to restrict the building or the the entire strong house building or or something of that nature in perpetuity for that so towns do have the ability to structure what the preservation is so so towns could do a 30 year restriction towns could do there there's some gradation there that sounds are able to do larger projects, we the town of Amherst have always gone for a restriction in perpetuity. So, and even for for instance the UU, the beautiful stained glass window on the UU, we got a restriction in perpetuity for that project. I don't recall the number on the stained glass window, but I want to say that might be able to help me or Chris, I want to say it was $150,000 or $200,000. I don't recall the exact number, but we got a restriction in perpetuity on that. But for smaller historic preservation projects, we would not necessarily get a restriction in perpetuity. So, I don't see any reason why it can't be in the motion if that is clearer and more transparent. All right. So, Bill, how do you have the motion down? Well, I have slightly tweaked what Michelle said based on what you said. So what I have is that Miller moved in Steinberg seconded to recommend that the Conkey Stevens House and the Amherst, to recommend the Conkey Stevens House and the Amherst Women's Club to the town council for approval as part of the CPAs recommendation, subject to having a historic preservation restriction agreement in place on both properties. Michelle, do you feel comfortable with that wording? I do, yes. And I do too. So that's the motion that's done before us and maybe it's time for us to move towards a vote. I think it's safe from resident numbers as to whether they support the motion as worded. So seeing all the hands going up, I am going to proceed in that. And we'll go alphabetically. So start with Lynn. I vote no. Bob, what's your opinion? Bob. Sorry, I have to recuse myself again because of the conflict I mentioned previously. Okay, Matt. I support it. Bernie. I'm going to, I'm going to disagree with motion. Michelle. I vote yes. Kathy. No. And I'm voting yes. I just want to confirm I, I'm voting no, but that, that means just that I'm not recommending it to the council. Okay. Thank you. Okay. So the motion fails. Because there was a vote. Of the council members voted three no. Two yes. And we had. And the one supporting from the resident members one recusal. And Bernie, I'm not sure how to. You said no. Yeah, you were recommending against. So we had one, one. One recusal. So at this point. I want to just suggest two things. First of all. That given the nature of how to reflect this. And the fact that the hearing are the, excuse me. Now I'm saying hearing the public forum is not until the 21st. If you want to make sure Andy, that you have time to write the report and get feedback. From the committee. You could wait to file. The report on this. Until then. But the other thing I just want to mention is we have a hearing. On the 10th. Regarding the parking permits. And we're supposed to have a finance recommendation. On the 10th. Or at least thought to be will. To TSO for that meeting. On the 10th, which is a committee of the whole. And it is already 11 o'clock. So I don't know how we want to handle this. Yeah. I think that we're going to have to end the discussion today. Without in what we're going to end up doing is exactly what. I will do a draft. And say that we have not made a recommendation. At this point on two proposals. And this is the background why and try and summarize the discussion. And. So we can move to the last item and see who's. If anybody is not able to stay with the committee long enough to have the discussion on the transportation issue. Real quick, Dave and then Kathy so we can move on. I was just going to say I'm ready to move to the transportation. I have specific. I read the memo from Sean, but I have specific recommended changes and what was recommended that I'd like to discuss. So. Sure. Andy really quickly. And I'm sure staff. I just wanted to take away just so we could talk about it as staff. Just so we understand if the proposal for the conchie house, if the conchie house were a private. Residents and they had applied for funding. I'm just curious, would. Would the concerns still be the same? They would. Okay. Yeah. So. Because. So our takeaway, we're going to do a little conversation, you know, with, with Chris and Ben, because that is. That is kind of a more significant. You know, broader concern than, than I thought here, because clearly, I mean, across the, across the Commonwealth municipalities have. Have invested in private homes and historic homes all across the Commonwealth. It's sends kind of, it may send kind of a chilling message to, to try to preserve historic structures in our, in our community that are, that are privately owned. So if that's the, you know, the, the concern that is being expressed here, you know, we can kind of look at that as a, as a staff. So I just wanted to clarify that. I appreciate your input on that. So thanks. I'm not sure that we can say that the committee has a position on it because. We didn't really have a separate discussion. I think we were focusing more on the historic preservation. Question in the boat. Okay. I saw some heads nodding. Yes. So I apologize. I didn't mean to take that as a, as a group. I agree. Andy, I think it's premature to spend staff time on that issue. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think that at this point. That issue will end up being reported to the council. And then the council will give guidance on. The issue. After the public forum. But I don't think we're there yet. As a committee, because we haven't taken. We didn't take a specific vote on that issue. Chris. I just wanted to say that that point of view. In my understanding. Runs counter to the point of view of the CPA committee. And I think that the CPA committee has recently felt that. Some of the historic preservation money should be. Distributed to private properties. And so it may be worthwhile at some point to have. You know, You know, If there are all of this group or some of this group. Meet with the CPA committee to try to understand their point of view. And then that would inform your point of view. Because right now you're talking. You're sort of in silos talking. And coming together and talking about this may be helpful. Thank you. And that's very helpful. And I think that. It was appropriate now is that I have a conversation with Sarah and. With Lynn and to find, figure out how we want to get the CPA committee. Involved in the public forum. And council discussion. Kathy. And as part of that, Andy, we've gotten some very good answers, legal answers and what else can be done. So it's not like never fun, but we asked about loans. We asked about, you know, a payment back. So we got information as part of this that would be good in that discussion with CPA to be sharing it. So there's not a reinvention of, of that. So just most of that was given to us verbally, but I'm sure Sean has it all written up too. So that was. I just, this was staffed at a lot of work for us to get information back to us that I found very useful. And we all appreciate that pretty much and thank all of the staff, Michelle. I just want to push back a little bit because I think that what Dave said actually does have some accuracy to it in terms of what this discussion meant today. And, and I'm not, I'm not saying that it's ready to go to staff to, you know, say that the, in fact, I personally wouldn't want, I think we've, I think we're divided here essentially is what I'm saying on our philosophy around this. But I think it does sound to me that there are some members of this committee that do feel that supporting private. Properties through CPA funding is not appropriate. And that there are other members who feel or at least I will speak for myself that I feel that that as Dave said is being done throughout the state of Massachusetts and is sort of like part of what CPA does. And so I'm just wondering like where the sort of what's being debated, particularly in Lynn and Kathy around this, that feels so uncomfortable, given what the guidelines are of the CPA as it stands. And that doesn't have to be answered now I just wanted to put that out there. Yeah, I think that's helpful and I think that that's what I was thinking should be part of the report and why I wanted to take that part of the report is to make sure that the fact that that discussion has taken place and the issue has not been resolved within the committee gets before the council. So I think the wording of the report will get there. Does anybody need to leave immediately because we really do want to get to the transportation issue and I want to hear the call in Kathy to start that conversation since she seems to be wanting to propose something other than what was specifically recommended. So seeing no hands go up about my question as to whether there's Chris. So Andy, you don't need Ben and me anymore to discuss this transportation issue, right? No, I don't think you were involved in the transportation discussion. I think both of you, you've been very helpful. It's really, you know, you've been a great resource in a difficult conversation. So thank you. Thank you. Kathy. I'm going to keep this moving. So. So some of my comments, recommendations of changes, build off conversation we had last time, even though it was pretty short, I get, I don't know how best to frame it. I mean, probably if Sean can put up what was recommended in fees, I have, I, I like a lot of the framing that was done in the last couple of months. And I think there's a lot more of how high we would go and how quickly we would go. And then there were a couple other issues. Alicia raised on affordability about these. So I'll just go, I'll go through my specific list and then we can map them. I like. I think talking about the permit fees as in two categories with one. You have registered your car in Amherst. So to me, that is a person who's probably a longer term resident. The other residents who didn't register their car didn't bother to because they're not planning on living here forever. So on, on the, I like that split. I see no reason not to go up the resident without. Amherst registration, I would go up right away. I wouldn't phase it. And I asked Sean and he got us information about what is it cost to buy a permit to park at the new at UMass. Parking lots and 400 is about the right number. So I would go up quickly on it. Cause I see. I would enrich the goals of what we're trying to do here. We're doing it for revenue so we can do some infrastructure. I think we want to limit parking downtown. If people have an alternative place to park their car. And so we shouldn't be providing a per financial and center that we're the cheaper place to park. So for the non. Amherst vehicle registrations, I would phase it in quickly as in next year. And the thing about these is these are turnovers. So it's not hitting someone who's been here forever. For the resident with Amherst vehicle registration. I wouldn't. I wouldn't. I'm not sure why we need to phase it over three years rather than two. And I, I don't know how difficult would be. We have seniors living downtown and senior housing. If we said we would give them a different rate. And we would give with the new units being built. There'd be some affordable housing downtown. If you're living in a designated affordable housing unit. Could we do that and have a two tier for a resident. With an Amherst vehicle. With Amherst registration who lives downtown. And Sean's distribution on this. We don't have that many. And I think a lot of them may be living in the senior housing. So trying to worry about that. So, so I had those two. So could we do a tier? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know that. So, so I had those two. So could we do a tier within resident with vehicle registration that gave seniors. And low income, meaning people who are living in affordable housing to the extent we have a downtown. And go up faster on. Non, because we don't, we don't eat. They always could have the opportunity to register their car. And then I, my last point is on the lower level garage. My observation of this is we're giving a year round 24, seven. Opportunity to park your car in a protected garage. And the spaces are often empty on nights and weekends. Exactly at the time when people are circling around town, if there's a big event. You can't find a parking place and sometimes it's as money as half of them are empty and you can't park. So I'm wondering if there are, Sean's given us the information, there are 28 of these. And you can apparently have up to three cars. So three different license plates could be in one of these reserved spots. So I'm wondering if we could do a differential that half of them become 24 seven, if we don't want to eliminate it all together. All right. On the other hand, the only way you can make it all together is if you get a car in a safe space where the others get, you get this only from nine or from eight until five or whatever the meters, the meters in the garage go up to free it up at nighttime and to free it up on the weekends or to free it up on holidays because it's, it's good space to park if you're coming to a people do seem to renew. Sean's got this information that about 70% or so are renewals. You know, so this is not. So you can kind of keep your permanent parking place. And it seems to be summer employees downtown. So those were those were my three main areas and my goals were get more money from the permit increase. So if you have another place to park, so that's the go up faster. If you're out of thing. And not hurt people. Who are living on restricted income. So that, those were my three pieces in reaction to what was proposed to us. I guess that I would have some questions. Got to either you and to the group as a whole. One is one that Sean has raised for, which is. Going up. Too quickly doesn't does that. Run the risk of. People making a choice, not the park. And then it's runs counter to the goal. Of. Generating revenue for the enterprise fund. Because people are going to choose not the park. To go to the university for. Their car there as opposed to downtown. And then we lose the revenue for the enterprise fund. So that's one question. And the other is on this. Particularly in the downtown garage question. Those spaces that are just not permanently rented. Does it. Create enforcement problems because. Does it put the town in the position of having to. Heavily regulate. Early in the morning or whenever they. Time. For the. That it's a reserved space. That somebody's paid a lot of money for. Do we have to get towing done. At that time. And do we want to go that route? Just a quick response, but then I'm. Interested, you know, for. I wasn't going to change his resident permit with. I'm Amherst vehicle. I think the original idea of building. Doing the no. The buildings downtown that didn't have to provide parking. The argument was people wouldn't have cars. And now we've got an issue of there too many cars parking downtown and people can't always find parking places. So I think that if you have a car, you need to park it someplace. So Sean came up with these numbers. I'm not quibbling with the 150 with 300 and 400. I would just go up faster. Get to that 400 by. Either by year one or by year two. Because it. Because of. Because of the number of permits, Andy, if even half of them. Continue to buy a permit. It is a lot of money for the enterprise fund compared to $25. That's all they're paying now. So it's a lot of money. And he gave us numbers. We're, we're giving a lot of permits to park on our streets. And I think Bob raised that a few of these permit signs. Might be better to have a meter in them to allow short term people to, you know, people coming and going. So we may have too many park with a permit signs. And one of my have a few more with the old. Put your money in the meter and pay to park. So I don't think what I've said would end up with a shortfall. It. Because the calculation was based on how many people. How permits. So that's, that's it. And, you know, and I wasn't going to go up. That higher on the resident permit with Amherst vehicle. I just was saying, if we go up, can we. Protect. It was a licious question last time. Is there a way of protecting people from a big jump up. If they're living on restricted income. So could we do two tiers in that? We have a second tier already for employees. They're in another group. I'll stop. I'm trying to be quick. Yeah. I actually agree with the non Amherst vehicle registration. Maybe starting a little higher to begin with and maybe moving up slightly further. I think what you want to basically do, because your competitor here is the university. However, I want to point out the university is out of parking spaces. So the reality is we aren't competing against them. Because they don't have anything to beat with. So I don't think on the non resident one, we're in a lot of danger of losing a lot. I also want to be very specific. I want to be very specific. We're in a lot of danger of losing a lot. I also want to be very sensitive to not just low income people, but low wage earners. Yep. And, and just, you know, I'm, if I'm learning $15 an hour in a waitress position, if I'm lucky, I just want to be sensitive somehow to that. But that's really the employee employer. And I think we are being somewhat sensitive there. And regarding the lower level and both would, I think several people have made the point that they go down there. They see these empty reserve spaces and they go, well, then either they're empty and people should pay a lot more for them, or we should figure out how to free some up. Part of the time. So I like the cat fact that Kathy has asked these questions and Sean, I want to thank you yet again for your amazing responses to all of us. Thanks. Mostly Jen, just for the record, mostly Jen. Thank you. Bob. Yeah, I do want to echo what I had said before and what Kathy had suggested is that we should push the, the resident non Amherst registration up. More quickly. Because I agree that there's no reason not to. I agree with that. With, in terms of the, the lower level of both would. I'm sort of torn a little bit. One is that the town is offering these spaces to people. To park at will. And if a car is there or a car is not there, we're still getting the revenue from that space. So I think if we're setting spaces aside. That people who have the means or whatever can pay for them. I know it. Optically, it's not very nice, especially if you're driving around looking for a space. But if we want to do that, then I think we just have to accept the fact that people are not always going to have a car there. The other, another alternative would be to take some of those spaces and move them from downstairs in the garage to upstairs in the garage. You know, so that people would have to clean their car off in the garage. So I think we can do that. So maybe they'd be less expensive spaces. But I think there's ways we can do that. Without just sort of. Eliminating 28 of them or 10 of them, whatever. I think we can do something in between. Thanks. See who's next on the list. Michelle muted. For as long as I can remember the. The numbers that Sean gave us this 28. The number of spaces that we're talking about here. And the number of spaces in the boat would lot. That's been reflected in my observations. And so I'm wondering if it makes sense just to reevaluate how many reserved spaces we're talking about here. As opposed to having sort of time constraints that Kathy suggested, because I think the towing situation would become real. Like how do we actually enforce it? And how do we take 10 of those reserved if we don't need them? If we're historically showing that we're only filling. You know, 30 of them, then maybe. We just remove five or 10 of them and open them up. Just for regular meters or something along that line. Sean. Yeah, thank you. So a few things. I think with the lower level boltwood garage. You know, I would be concerned about reducing. I think we've actually been looking at increasing and looking at our lots that are underutilized elsewhere and seeing if we could put reserve spots there to again, bring in more revenue. We know we have some lots like prey street and the law behind CVS sometimes that just aren't people don't know about them. They're underutilized. And those might be good locations to add reserve parking, which up until this point has brought in more, you know, really great spots bring in more revenue than all the other permit parking in town. So, you know, the other three, 300, 400, whatever it is. You know, I'm just thinking personally for myself, like when I, if I'm going to spend $1,500 for a spot, you want to spot. I know they might not be there, but there's, you know, no one's in their parking spot 24 seven. I don't, I think we would have to dramatically reduce the price or just the price if it was going to be. If there were going to be qualifications on when you could I mean, we could survey. Those permit holders to find out, but I'm guessing like knowing there's a spot there is, you know, the value for that. I think in terms of the, how quickly we raise the prices. That's definitely something that TSO has talked about. Quite a bit. I think, you know, our intent with the transition plan again was to allow us to evaluate each year. How these price increases impact the number of permit holders we have now that we, especially now that we have the open gov system where we can get much more data. So I mean, I don't think we're against going up quicker. I think, but our, but our intent was to kind of do this over time so we could, we could evaluate. And then I think the last thing I'll say is, and I think this is where TSO is too, is I think we want to hear from the people now before we make, I know from Ross, it's like, oh, that's not so expensive, but we haven't heard from the permit holders or the public at large. And even to the point about, you know, adjustments for seniors. I think we should see if that comes out at the public forum. We sent, we have sent the notice of the public forum to every permit holder that we have. So everyone, you know, that currently has permit that will be affected by this has that information. And we're hoping that there's a good turnout at that forum to let us know what they think. Thank you, Bernie. Just real quick, I would agree with that the bullet garage situation should be kept simple. You gotta, you buy a spot for a year. It's your spot. That's it. Let's not try to slice and dice and create enforcement difficulties. I would also encourage an increase of a rapid increase. And I understand the need to stage it, but I would encourage a more rapid increase in the rates. And the other thing is the term eligible. Elderly needs to have a definition. Otherwise. You've given me a discount. Yeah. The problem with anything that we do the condition that that's not the more complicated, you make the condition the harder it is on staff to implement it in the more. Intrusive it is to ask the questions in order to implement it. Andy, I just wanted to quickly say, I have a hard stop at 1130. Yeah, Jen may be able to stay. I'm not sure, but I just, I have another meeting at that time. Okay. Well, I want to move this along and get it done. So. Should we just report to TSO the discussion without a specific recommendation and. Suggest that we're as interested in the forum as. They will be. And who would like, would appreciate the opportunity to continue this discussion after the forum. I think that makes sense, Andy, and that the sense of the committee was to go up faster on the. Resident without a Amherst plate. You know, but, but that we're not voting on it, but just when we were looking at. Because I think the framework that's shown set up as a very good one that we haven't had that differentiation before. I think it's, it makes a lot of sense. I might also add that I think the committee has a consensus that we need to increase parking fees. So I don't think. I don't think that that I think that's an important thing to message to carry. Carry forward. Okay. Did my best. So. Going back to. Then is there anything further to be said on the transportation recommendations. At this time, though, we're not going to take a position, but we're going to do a report and. I think we have a context of what the report will be. Is anybody uncomfortable with that? Is the resolution for today? And I think that report needs to be. Ready for Monday, if possible. Yeah, we may have to bifurcate the report and get that one moving. Thanks. Then the other one, because if we try and do them both together, that'll take longer. So I'll approach it in that way. Anything else that you said on transportation and I guess the. One thing I need to do it. I don't have to do public comment. At this point, I think there was one person earlier. And who's not there now. The approval of minutes. The, I had some. Some changes that I would make they're not major. They're more wording kinds of things. I don't have a bandwidth right now given the time constraint. To pull up my notes and actually read them to you. But they're. They really are not anything more than clarity of wording. Types of things. So. Can I move that we. Leave the approval of these minutes to Andy. Based on. Slight worrying changes. I would second that. Okay. So there's no motion made in second. Any discussion on the motion further. Otherwise, I'm going to quickly run through the. Vote and just. So we can be done. And. So. With. Bob Hagner. You see your support Matt. He's. Bernie. Ported. Michelle. What. But you're a yes. Yes. Kathy. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. I'll do that in a minute. So I'll send you. To show you what the corrections were as well as clean version. I can do that pretty quickly. So. Our next meeting. Or it. I don't have my note in front of me. Kathy, do you remember what we? You actually tabled it, Andy, because we got to agree that March 1st would be a date and then we didn't say whether we're meeting again on the 15th. You had originally had, I think, the 22nd. Yeah, so is there anybody who cannot meet on March 15th? I could be available if needed, but I would prefer not to meet that day, if possible, I'm traveling to visit family. I also don't think I'd be available for the full duration of the meeting. I cannot meet on the 15th for what it's worth. Yeah, I remember you had said that there was a problem that you had with the date. Did we decide that we couldn't meet on the 22nd? So I was- I can't see a problem with the 22nd. I have an eye doctor appointment, which took me four months to get. So I won't join you because it's, I'm not going to be out of there till like quarter of 10 in the morning. So I would come late. I could come back for, I could be joining for the second half. I'll just carry my iPad with me to the doctor's office. So here's what I'm going to do, just to get this moving along. And that is, I'll send out a poll for some other dates and we'll meet on the 22nd as the default, if we can't find another date through that method. Yeah, and Andy, well, I don't know what, I hate to screw people's schedules up, but if it didn't start till 9.30, I probably can make the whole meeting on the, most of the meeting on the 22nd. So, you know, it's just what you do when, so I just, it's an 8.30 in the morning. It's over in North Hampton, but any case. So I'm not, the whole morning's not gone for me, but just it's an overlap. So I don't want to be the one that, it seemed like that date works for everyone. So I don't know whether a nine to be. We'll do that then, thank you, that's helpful. So let's do it on the 22nd and I will consult you about the agenda order. Okay. And we'll meet at nine. Yeah. Okay. And you'll just know I'm joining you late. So do whatever Kathy doesn't care about. At the beginning. Yeah. I want to thank everybody because this has been a really valuable meeting. We've covered a lot of territory and a lot of good discussion, but it took longer than we had wanted. I have nothing further that was business not anticipated. At least nothing that I can't put in the memo later. So I think for discussion today, if nobody else has anything to add, I think that we can declare ourselves adjourned. Bye everyone. Good meeting. Thank you. It was a good meeting.