 This program is brought to you by Cable Franchise Vs and generous donations from viewers like you. So I want to call the Finance Committee meeting of January 26, 2021, to order. And we have an agenda with several significant items for discussion. And I will, but I first want to check with everybody because this is a meeting that pursuant to Governor Baker's March 12, 2020 orders suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law general law chapter 30 section 18 is a meeting that is being held via remote participation and therefore I need to go through each committee member and make sure that you can hear me by responding and and then as you respond we will know that we can hear you. So, I will start with Lynn Riesmer. Present. Bob Hegner. Jane Schaeffler. Present. Kathy Shane. Present here. That's Angelus. Present. Bernie Kubiak. Present. And Dorothy Pam. Present. In addition, we have several staff members present who are involved with the presentations today and discussion that we're going to have at the meeting. First, I would like to welcome Jane, which is the first meeting that she's attending, since she was just appointed as a resident member. And so, Jane, welcome, and you briefly met the rest of the committee and I don't know if anybody has any other comments that they'd like to make otherwise we'll just launch into the agenda. So, the first presentation, the first thing I want to get to is in the first item after called order on the agenda list is the stormwater management bylaw and the listed discharge bylaws presentation and discussion. And we have several people who are present at today's meeting to assist us in this presentation to explain the bylaw and to answer questions about it. We want to get a general understanding of what this requirement is all about. But we want to very quickly focus in on our aspect of it it was referred to two committees, the town services committee and the end our committee, and our role is financial implications. So, the two people who are here involved with the presentation from our Beth Wilson, who's been working on developing our planning and working and I think that some of you who have had a chance to look at material to understand have seen her random which is quite extensive regarding this and killed with mooring the superintendent of the Department of Public Works, who possible for all dpw operations and therefore has been someone who's there's ultimate responsibility, which he always likes to have. And I just want to note that I know something that said that the council meeting by Alyssa Brewer as members of the select board Alyssa and I had been aware of this for some time. But it was coming. We just didn't know when was coming and have to frankly admit until I got Beth's rather like the memorandum I didn't know the details of what we were expecting but this has been something that's been in a while for a while. So, I'm going to introduce Beth and ask her to just give us an overview of what the process is like and what the bylaws that we're looking at and we help us to zero in on the financial implications. So, Beth, hi. Hi, with the slide presentation up. Yes, I will. How does that look. Yeah, you can see it. My screen. Yes, I put it up in mind on Beth, I put it up for you. You just need to tell me when. Oh, you did. Okay, then I can not share my screen, I guess. I guess that's. Okay, so that's your screen we're looking at. Yes, not my screen. Okay, perfect. Again, I'd like to thank everybody for listening to the presentation today on the store monitor management and ID bylaws. As Andy was saying, this is a similar presentation was given to town council and to the TSO. And I will go through the basics again but skim, skim a bit of the presentation because I know a number of you have heard it and you want to focus on the financial aspects of it so. Okay, next slide. There we go. So Amherst has a storm on a drainage system. It consists of our. Oh, this is the old presentation. Stop sharing. That one doesn't have the financial parts to it. So I think we need to, we need this one. Okay, why don't you put yours up and it is now of it. Yeah, it's open for you to share. Your screen is paused. Can you see that yummy. Yes. Yes or no. Yes. Great. All right. Okay. Amherst storm or a drainage system. It consists of our catch basins, drainage swales, piping and manholes that carry stormwater from impervious areas parking lots of roads to outfalls, which is usually at our streams and rivers and ponds. It's also known as our municipal separate storm sewer system by the EPA and DEP that's the acronym they've given to storm water drainage systems. In 2018, Amherst applied for coverage under the 2016 Massachusetts general MS for permit, which is administered by EPA and DEP. And the Massachusetts permit that all municipalities have to apply for to basically be given the right to discharge. And as I said we applied in 2018 and we were granted coverage in 2019. The primary requirement of the MS for permit is for municipalities to develop stormwater management programs. The primary goal for all municipalities is to have their discharge from their stormwater system or their MS for at all the outfalls meet water quality standards. And to do that DEP has required all stormwater management programs to have six minimum control measures. And outreach, public involvement and participation, illicit discharge detection and elimination, construction site stormwater runoff control, stormwater management and new and redevelopment projects and good housekeeping and pollution prevention from town owned properties basically. So, of those three minimum control measures which were we've you know we've started our program we're starting working on the control measures three of them require a bylaw be established. And that's sort of a preliminary part of the program one of the first things you need to do. We've developed two bylaws one is called the ID DE or illicit discharge detection and elimination bylaw. The other we've called our stormwater management bylaw. And it covers all the requirements for the other the other two minimum control measures construction site stormwater runoff control and stormwater management and new and redevelopment projects. We've developed two bylaws which you have copies of and what have gone to the town council and the TSO need to be finalized and approved and enacted by the end of June. This year, 2021. So the illicit discharge and detection, elimination bylaw really focuses on establishing that it's illegal to dump anything into our MS for. To be into the catch basin. Also to have any kind of illicit connection to our system. If you're connected somehow pipe wise and you're, you're causing contamination or producing some that's going into our system. That's really an illicit connection. Also it's illegal to obstruct ours, the flow of our MS for system. The bylaw also establishes the authority for the town TPW to go on to private property to inspect for illicit connections or illegal dumping gives the town the authority, then if they find an issue to either suspend or actually disconnect somebody from our drainage system. It also requires anyone who has any kind of a connection to our system or or even just a catch basin to protect that that access to our system that's what is meant by BMP best management practices. People are required to protect those so that they're not contaminating our system. And they're also required to notify DPW or the town of any spills. The DPW, the bylaw establishes that the town has the authority to enforce all of those things with fines and the stormwater management bylaw. That establishes stormwater management permits that are going to be required for any new development, redevelopment projects, land disturbance, any land disturbance or any kind of a disturbance that disturbs drainage characteristics on a parcel that's an acre or more. So that was the bylaw really sets the stage for us to start issuing those permits. There are some exemptions or certain certain projects certain properties that are exempt and wouldn't need a permit. The bylaw has appeal and waivers sections to it so people can appeal having to get a permit. And then the bylaw establishes that the town can create stormwater regulations and the regulations are going to get more into the specifics on the permitting process, what people need to submit to the town if they're required to get a stormwater permit. What standards their stormwater design is going to have to meet. So they would submit their design and then DPW engineering would be reviewing it and sort of what are the standards that their design needs to meet to be approved. And it would and the regulations are going to also establish the permitting fees so the fee that would be submitted along with the permit application. It's basically oh and then again the by the stormwater bylaw includes enforcement with fines for people who either do work without a permit or don't abide by the requirements of the permit that they're issued. So the financial aspects to the bylaws which is what you're you're interested in. Like I mentioned, there are permit fees that will be part of the soul stormwater program and is will be part of the stormwater management bylaws regulations really will include a fee structure for getting a permit. And looking at other communities we have looked a bit at what other communities are using and the fee schedules vary quite a bit. The range for these permit fees from about $50 to 2000 depending on the project size depending on the municipality. So that is one financial aspect of the bylaws, and now there is the fines that I mentioned. And in both the bylaws that set at at a maximum of $300 a day it kind of builds up to that first you get a warning, then you get a smaller fee but that structure is also very similar to other Amherst bylaws, the same amounts of money. And then the bigger the bigger aspect is is the whole permitting the whole program that were required to do under the permit. What's what is the cost of that program, going to be over the next, however many years. And so the, the bylaw the stormwater bylaw gives the town the authority to create a stormwater utility or enterprise fund. It's not required by the permit, but it's something that a number of towns across Massachusetts have done. And they do it because of the overall cost of the program because obviously the permit fees aren't going to cover very much of the program. What we've put together is some costing for FY 2223 and 24. And as our estimates, I've divided it up by the, by the different tasks that we had so public education and outreach public involvement and participation IDD program. The construction site run off control and stormwater for new and redevelopment projects and then general housekeeping. So divided up that way, the numbers are very much based on what's seen in other communities there's been studies done by, especially by college students in different colleges across Massachusetts on the impact of the MS for program on utilities cost wise. So, some things to note, I guess would be public education and outreach and public involvement and participation. We've already started. And those, those two tasks needs to just continue forever. As much as we'll change things, do special projects, they're sort of consistent costs that will have every year. And so you see those costs aren't changing in the next three fiscal years. The IDD program in FY 22. There's a number of program development documents, as you can call them that need to be finished in FY 22, such as the written IDD program which is it's a document. So that's a that's a one time cost, similar to the these O&M plans that we need to put together and a written plan to maintain so these are all sort of written plans that are required by the permit they're listed as as requirements in the permit, and they're all need to be finished in FY 22, but then the costing doesn't continue. But then you'll see some other costs start happening in FY 24. And those have to do mostly with inspecting and sampling all the outfalls. So we need to be by this point we need to have a real good idea of where our outfalls are what kind of shape they're in, and which ones we need to go in and, and stamp start sampling. So some of those costs show up there. In FY 24 we have to actually install a best management management practice for nitrogen reduction. So that is referring to something like a storm scepter some kind of an improvement to our infrastructure that will help in removing nutrients. So that's under FY 24 we put in some again some estimates for that. This is where the permitting next under construction site storm order runoff control. This is the permitting that we're talking about. And again in FY 22. We still sort of establishing that permitting process, putting a lot of effort in by the town engineer and our civil engineer to continue to figure out what they work documents they would like to review how that whole process is going to go developing forms for the permitting. And then, as time goes on that FY 23 I feel like it's going to be the first year where we're actually doing the permitting. So for every new development project that comes in, for example, forms will be filled out. Applicants will be submitting and our engineers will be reviewing the applications and issuing permits with conditions and things. So then that's a cost that would really continue into the future. Good housekeeping. There's a bit more to this that happens even later on but catch basin cleaning street sweeping is something we're already we're already doing been doing for ever. So for FY 22 those costs or are in budget for FY 22. We do need to optimize the process under MS for there's requirements under MS for that are going to make this make both of these processes improve a bit. And so we've included some costing as we go down the road of implementing those improvements. And then there's an annual report and MS for annual report that gets submitted every year. So that is another cost that will continue on. So that's what we have for costing right now. And that's the end of the presentation to so I guess we're open for questions now. Do you send this presentation or have Gilford send it to me so that we can send it to the full committee. Yes, definitely I we were we're still working on it today so that's why I didn't get it, get it into your packets or get it anywhere we were finishing some stuff up. Yes, definitely. Andy, do you want me to take the screen down or to have Beth take the screen down. Well, if there are questions that are going to come up about the budget part of it then maybe it's worth having the screen up for a few minutes to see what the questions are. You're this presentation you did a really, I appreciate you're laying out the cost for us. What are the revenues that are typical in a typical community from the permitting these and the fines and how do they match against the expenditures. I can take a stab at that. Like in the previous slide the permitting fees that we're seeing in other towns are, you know, relatively small. And I, I can't imagine that some of these towns with a fee of, of say it's $500 get get that many projects that come through to be permitted that it that it covers these kind of costs these program costs. You know the permitting fees. I always think of permitting fees as really paying for the administration of the permit itself. So and then the, then the finding would just be under an enforcement situation so that too I think is pretty limited. Yes, the most of these most of the program won't create very much money to make the meet the needs of the federal permit. At some point there's going to be a decision made on how to fund the work that needs to go on should it be part of the tax base or should it be a separate store more utility or enterprise type system. I've seen an enterprise system that I'm going to start recognizing other people, but if you're going to have a have an enterprise fund what are the revenues that come into the enterprise funds. The communities that have a stormwater utility actually will base the revenues that come into the enterprise system on the amount of impervious area that a parcel contributes to the stormwater system. If you have a lot that's one acre and it's all paved, you would pay to have that pay plot it would be maybe twice as much as someone who has acre lot with half of it paved. That's one of the ways of doing it. Other communities just set a standard rate if you're a single family home you pay this amount of money. If you're multifamily you pay these are these rates. If you're going into a stormwater utility you have different options for how you would charge rates and different ways to set up some type of system to make the collect revenue. That explains a little bit. So I'm going to start recognizing members of the committee who have questions. And I see for members including Kathy is their hand up. Because I was made co host I'm like Lynn I can't raise my little computer hand. Okay. Let me let me start with Dorothy and Bob because they came in early with questions and then I will get back to you. So Dorothy. So this is a new program requirement by the EPA. Is that correct. Okay. And as I looked at the budgets, either all of it is for planning, writing, coordinating. It was possible that construction site Southwest runoff control that was 6000 and 10,000 and 10,000. Maybe that was actually a physical something or is this all non physical. So building anything. Is there any infrastructure here. Oh, no, the only thing list here that's really more infrastructure might be the, there's a plan and install a BMP nitrogen reduction. So that's under right and that's FY 24 that's our first requirement to go in and actually install something. So then, and that's the year that the expenses are the highest at 59,000. Going on once you've paid all this money out in work and making plans and putting that. What would the yearly cost of maintaining this system be. Yeah, we didn't, we haven't gone out that far yet. Things that just is just an idea of that is sort of down here we've got catch basin cleaning and as we as we move along we need to optimize that according to MS for so there's there's costing for that. So things like the, these O&M plans and other plans that you that we're putting together that then we have to, we have to do inspections and things like that, going into the future to show that we, it's not listed here but we have to do stormwater pollution and other plans for our more industrial type facilities like the transfer station we've actually already paid for that and done that, but that sweep, then includes inspecting and monitoring into the future. So there are some long term parts to the program that more involve monitoring what we're doing inventorying things like inventorying the amount of street sweepings we collect every year and inventorying. The amount the volume of catch basin cleaning and so there is yeah anyway but I can't give you a number for that right now. Right so so in other words we're going to the goal of having turning no water into the system that's not meeting clean standards is a very high goal. So in order to meet this goal the system is set up. But this is going to be a new new expense ongoing of some measure, which is why I guess you were considering a new system of fees for an enterprise for an enterprise system. I mean I'm just trying to figure out where it's going. Right. So it's going to be, it's going to be an expansion of what we do already. Many of the stormwater things we do now are basically physical repairs to the system. The base basin fails we fix the basin pipe fails we fix the pipe. We need to upsize the pipe or upsize the culvert we fix that and that's paid for in capital and general fund money right now and some grant money. So yes as we go through the program of the planning part when we identify our problems will be going through and trying to address how to correct those problems and those will be above and beyond the cost we now have for just maintaining a pipe system that collects the water and sends it on its way. Okay. Thank you. So Bob. Thanks. So I got to have a few questions I guess I would just more statement that following up to what Dorothy said is that you know when I look at the permit. There are some activities down the line that might happen like inspection, you know, doing forensics to find out who did what enforcement. You know, we're keeping so I think there's maybe some other expenses that will occur in the future that aren't covered under this list. So, again, I realize you're still working your way through it but I think they will need to be. We need to make sure we cover all of what's in the permit that I that I've read. Another another question I have is that you mentioned sampling and I guess the question is what are we sampling for. I mean the Nipty's program to my knowledge covers all the priority pollutants which is like 120 something, which I know we don't know. So, what is it we're sampling for, and how much sampling do we have to do because I think your sampling kits, you've got like $5,000 it just doesn't seem like that's a realistic number if we have to sample 120 something pollutants. Yeah, no, you focus on sort of what are the common stormwater pollutants so sediment so TSS total suspension. That's the so sediment and nutrients and hydrocarbons. So primary things that you're looking at in color, and actually even just multirbidity kind of falls with TSS to it's not a whole lot of pollutants it's really sort of some of the more basic stuff. So some of the simple sampling test kits that are out there for things like nutrients like for nitrogen and phosphorus you can use. And then also you really do focus on the priority outfalls. So before we actually get out to the sampling, we need to inspect all of our outfalls prioritize them based on based on flow, and based on just sort of an initial look at them and then we end up, we don't end up sampling all of them because yeah we have hundreds of Yeah, so. And also you know this this first year that FY 24. We may use the 5000 and realize Oh, that didn't quite get us as far as we need to and then the next year to some more. I just wanted to point out that, you know, I just, it just reading through the permit it seems like there's a lot more sort of monitoring and sampling and forensics if you will, then what we might be doing now and so we should be making sure we're aware of what the cost implications of those are. The other thing I the other question I had and this goes back to the discussions we had for the FY 21 budget where Guilford I think you mentioned that we might need to upgrade or replace some elements of MS for. And do you have any updates on that I know at the time you said you didn't know what specifically might be required. So there's there's no update on that that as we move through the program, all the monitoring and the reporting we have to do will actually flesh out what we have to work on first. So we still basically have about three to four more years of the program before we actually have to do some substantial planning and substantial improvements based on what we find over those three years. So thanks. Sean Mengan those are finance director do you have anything that you wanted to say so it's just say your hand was up. Yeah, I don't know if you want to go to Kathy first or Kathy. She wants to. Okay, because we have two other members of the committee, Bernie also had some questions I'll come back to you. Kathy. I want to build I think on the questions if I focus on FY 24 where there's a first year getting things up and running. In terms of what revenues might cover. Am I understanding it right that the line that says $10,000 that's construction site runoff control stormwater management new development. That would be, we could set a permit fee, I guess if we wanted to, with the expectation that it would cover that that's that's a new site construction fee is that you know so there would be a revenue match to that. And then the deal for when you said, if we did a utility, you could do it on a per residence or per impervious lot size. So impervious lot size, would that be you'd have to go out. I'll just, I'm looking at my window at the snow which also means I'm looking at our at our totally pervious driveway, which is dirt. This long ago, you know we've never had it paved so would there be some properties that had no impervious that you'd have to say this one just doesn't have any. So is that an expensive, if you went that route for the utility side of it is that a more expensive thing to implement and it also might be changing over time because someone paves their driveway versus an impervious driveway so it was a kind of, I'm examining it for in out years if you did a utility. Where would the revenues be and what would they be associated with it. So that was my question. So yes, on the first part of your question $10,000 and that in the construction site control and so forth. That's something that the permit fees which we should try to make the permit fees match what we're spending there. As you talk about the utility. Yes, you can set your budget as being, you need to do $4 million worth of work and then you can balance out that $4 million of work based on who's got the most pervious or impervious piece of property. And that could change every year. There's communities that do it, and people are changing, and people will take out impervious area just to make their rates go down lower so yes, rates could change and fluctuate year to year, depending if you did it that way. Can I just ask you came up with the last, the bottom line number I'm looking at right now is 59,000. And as Bob said there might be there's different. And then you said 4 million what's, is there something I'm missing between 59,000 and 4 million 4 million is nice round number. Well, it's, it's, it's so as 100,000 and if I'm looking at 59,000 is that, you know, I'm just, is there something I'm missing about a big costs that's not on this sheet. Andy, can I weigh in on that because that's part of what I was going to speak to. So, we have been putting some money towards stormwater already as Guilford mentioned earlier, it's been part of our capital plan for a few years right Guilford. And I think you said that money's been mostly used for like the repairs that come up. Well, the money that's in the capital plans being used specifically to support our getting the stormwater permit program going and getting things done for that. So the cost that we would envision would transfer over if they if a utility was going to get set up with that cost transfer over to the utility. If you if you use the utility, yes, that should transfer over to the utility. And that's a cost that will eventually would go away once we have the program set up and could be reallocated towards the program itself. Yes. My point was just I wanted to point out for some people that we have been putting, I think it ranges between 50 to 100,000 a year towards the stormwater program we've been doing it through capital but it's really to help facilitate getting the setup. You know I like the idea of utility in some respects because it really separates the costs of the stormwater program and allows us to be more proactive and manage it in the future, as opposed to in a reactive. I think that that positive to it. I think we do need to maybe go for tonight and bath can dig in more to like what would be the annual operating costs once the program is fully implemented I think that said this is more of a power getting in over the next few years but it's going to be quite some time before the program is fully operational and come back with what that would look like. I'll go up Sean on that you know in Guilford yes 4 million is a nice round number but it's a lot bigger than 100,000 and I'm just remembering when we didn't know Centennial was coming and we didn't know the size of it is there a $4 million something that's coming to us because of this program, or a million on that. That's in and out here. That's at that level. The communities and what they're doing there in the million dollar ranges for what they're doing for stormwater. So, any anywhere in the million dollar range is a good number. We run I mean the water and sewer enterprise systems which maintains piping systems and does monitoring and sampling and so forth they they run in the three, three to $4 million range every year. And that was just another reason to pick the $4 million range that kind of mirrors the others. I mean I guess I'll just keep pushing I don't understand why because we've got a water and sewer so we've got that system I would just. If you can't answer it now it's what would increase. And I think you're talking about annual costs if you're what would increase it to that level. And town the size of Amherst so I just would like, you know, I think if, if we've got that coming we need to know about it and what are the elements because we're not looking at even Sean with your 50 to 100,000 a year where we're not anywhere near that number. So, yeah, and like I said, we'll dig into it more and look out a little bit I think to Guilford's point we don't know exactly what is going to. It's going to be sort of the annual operating costs to this program, but then there could also be capital repairs just like there are with with the water and sewer fund. I think some of those large capital repairs are the ones that we won't fully know until the testing is done. So, but we can come back with more information on that. Well, things I thought about and I'm going to call in Bernie. One is that we're not the first community is we know from best presentations tonight and in January but there in December but the there are other communities that have had the system for a while and so we should be able to obtain information from those communities about what expenses they have been incurring and what revenue they have been receiving. And if they have utilities or enterprise funds set up, then they have budgets go along with them and to the extent that we're able to make inquiry I think our understanding will be better. The other thing that is curious about is that before the meeting actually started Beth and I had a brief conversation. We're recognizing that we have a stormwater system already it's just not regulated and but there's a lot of physical infrastructure in place. And I assume that that system is really what we're building this all on. We've been maintaining that system so the cost of maintaining that system that is currently in place is that being transferred over to this new enterprise, or is this enterprise being layered on top of what already exists. What I envision would be that the transfer the money we're spending now on stormwater would be transferred to the utility. So you would see some savings on the general side as you bring up the utility, and then the utility would carry the full load of maintaining the system. Bernie. Yeah. Yeah, thinking along the same lines as you Andy I got friends in North Hampton I believe have gone through this whole stormwater management trial already to their to their discontent in some ways so I'm thinking we can learn from what they've done, certainly. I would learn looking at what happened in North Hampton and I would favor development of utility. That keeps these expenses isolated and in more transparent but I think then what they might be if they just got folded into our current one of our current operating budgets. And Gilbert have you, you have a notion about how many permits you're going to have to issue and in the nature of the inspections they're going to have to go on. So, we're going to probably we probably do about. Well, it's probably the realm about 20 or 30 permits is what we do a year currently for site plan review and subdivisions and so forth. So we'll probably have about the same number of permits that we'll have to look at. We do now have to look at additional information, which is the stormwater side so that's the additional part to the permit we already look at for other things. So it's probably about 30 or 40 probably. Okay. And the nature of the inspections that'll have to take place to begin to ferret out some of those illicit connections. Well, for the illicit connections that's a whole separate program which will have to somehow set up and do a lot of investigating. Many of most of that will actually revolve around this the sampling of the outfalls. If we have the detections that the outfalls the things we're not supposed to have been that outfall and you know all the piping up that outfall will be where we start searching to look for the connections. Okay, so that cost hasn't really been determined yet. No, you know the illicit connections that already exist. We find them every once in a while. They're there they're people who've connected their sanitary sewer to the stormwater system there's some people who've connected there some pumps and other internal pumps to the stormwater system which will have to be disconnected because of this program. Some can remains some will have to be disconnected. Yeah, we know people have hooked things together and not supposed to hook together. And some of them are probably more obvious than others. I mean if you've got roof drains or other stuff like that. I think the last kind of. Again learning from North Hampton I think North Hampton tried to come up with some kind of regular fear text for for stormwater and that was not well received so we need we're going to need to look at how we, we build the funding on this. The other just observation is with nitrogen reduction and lids. I mean a lot of that stuff could be worked on with the conservation commission with the planning board. And really encourage people to, to make changes so that they don't have to incur additional fees and we don't have to incur additional costs by changing them and finding them. So, thanks. I just want this, the budget leg into these budgets. I don't. I don't have sticker shock. I was thinking this would be much more expensive than what's outlined here. So my concern would be that we, we, you know, we collect all the, the, all the potential costs that might over time that might be might fall into this project. So Bernie, when you're talking about costs, are you meaning additional costs to what we're already incurring to maintain the system that's presently in place. Well, I think we probably have a good idea where we're going to have to make. I would imagine that Guilford and his engineer and his staff have a good idea of where and our existing stormwater system is going to have to be improvements. And as Sean pointed out, from my old, my time in the old finance committee, yeah, we have been putting money aside for this. My concern would be that as we begin to get into enforcement of this, especially with the the illicit connections piece that we were careful to, to budget as to how much time and effort it's going to have to go into that to make it work. Once, I mean once they begin sampling and get an idea of further idea of how bad things are, or how good things are. That'll drive the the inspection program as well. Yeah. I don't have sticker shop shop. I'm just concerned about setting up an enterprise fund in which we all know from the beginning, there isn't going to be sufficient revenue to support the fund. All of the rest of our enterprise funds, or at least to my knowledge, don't operate that way. So one question I have is, is there, and are there any other mechanisms I have no problem with trying to isolate the costs. I just think we need to realize we're isolating costs, only so we know how much we have to budget annually to keep the enterprise fund afloat. Yeah, so we would only go the enterprise fund routes if we had a fee set up as a revenue source. We wouldn't start moving expenses into the enterprise fund if we didn't have that that fee set up as well. And we can come back. One of the other things we can come back with are some of the different fee structures that other communities have looked at like Alfred mentioned there's some that are per square foot there's ranges. We can we can come back with a few different alternatives that other communities have looked at, but we wouldn't move costs to an enterprise fund until we had a revenue source. The other thing I just this really looking out and hypothesizing that as the present town council or future town councils, look at changes in zoning that could lead to increased development density. Is our present system set up to handle that to begin with. And how is that going to. How will greater density in zoning. This program as well as the present system that this is linking. So the system, the system currently, the system is currently what what it is and it does have some issues in certain areas. One thing that the state has been doing probably since the late 80s early 90s is requiring that developers post development stormwater has to equal pre development stormwater. So that has been a place for a long time so controlling your stormwater when you develop something is something that is not new to people who are developing. When you talk about developing downtown and you're going to take, you're going to take a property that's 50% covered by a building and now you're going to make it 100% covered by impervious surface. That developer still under other state rules has to keep his stormwater discharges the same as it was before he developed and he'll have to come up or they will have to come up with methodologies for doing that. To build a five story building in the center of town, you may have to put a green roof on top to capture your water, your rainwater and use it as a to water the plants and have an evaporation type system up there to let the water go back up and not come into the system. You may have to build some type of sister and inside this the building to hold rainwater and use that for some other purpose. It could be bullet flushing it could be used for watering your plantings around the building as well. So, the requirement of not increasing your stormwater footprint has been in place in the state and in the country for quite a while. So, that's not a change. The change is is how do you, how do you handle the pollutants that are in that stormwater that is coming in is really what we're looking at. So, the origin of phosphate phosphates, those are the things you're really kind of looking at hydrocarbons that's what this program is really geared towards quality versus quantity, which is quantities what we've been managing for the last 20 30 years. So, again, it's so you're talking about what you're not allowed to contribute to this. And my question also says, does our existing system have the capability of what is allowed to be contributed. If we start doing more dense housing and stuff like that. Are you saying that the state law basically won't allow anybody to build that is contributing anything more than is presently being contributed. Yes, that's the way the state law set up but we will we do, we do have sections of the system which are inadequate and some point we will have to deal with those inadequacies just just in general. I mean, it's just to say, you know, doing a doing an override for sewers is not exactly sexy. I think it is wonderful. The problem that we're going to have to confront and that is that we either pay for within current fee structure in case we then we have to either fast override to increase taxes or we have to otherwise cut expenses to fund. Or we have to create a new funding stream which is of course why I think North Hampton got into the situation that Bernie and all of the council meeting reference. Dorothy, and then back to Kathy. So Dorothy. Just a question. Since this is a relatively new state requirement or refinement of requirements. Are there any grants or money that towns can apply for to help with this. There's limited grants right now which is a lot of different. A lot of municipalities complain about it's sort of an unfunded month mandate. There is a mass DEP grant program this year there was really two grants that came out of mass DEP for MS for and one was strictly for nonprofits and and another was for when towns work together sort of as a, as a coalition. So if you were part of a coalition or if you were part of a nonprofit and you were going to help with MS for in some way you could apply for a grant from math DEP but I am hopeful that they're going to start developing some larger grants for this program. It would make sense. Kathy. Guilford you said it's a state requirement that the new development can't have any more stormwater discharged than before. How do we know that that is the case. Who who who enforces that requirement how do you know it how do you know that a very large building that is now on a piece of land that used to have a house on it. It doesn't generate any more stormwater. So that's actually one of the things our engineering department does for the planning department. When a permit comes in, they have to submit their stormwater calculations. It's also for some conservation projects they submitted as well. Jason skills the town engineer takes that information and he runs the calculations and verifies that they their post stormwater discharge is less than or equal to their pre discharge. That's what the permitting is that we're talking about the stormwater permitting when a project a new development or redevelopment comes forward. They, their stormwater design needs to get permitted and as go for it said it would get reviewed by DPW engineering prior to issuing the permit. And then that does happen right now through as go for it said through the through some of the planning processes that we have right now but this program would basically clarify that process a lot. So the standards are changing MS for standards for water quality and water volume is a little more restrictive than the current Massachusetts stormwater handbook, which is what the concoms using and the, and we review to right now, but MS for is a little stricter. This is a little bit aside from just stormwater but do we have a similar calculation for draw on water and draw on sewage capacity so we're more dense do we reach a point we're worried about a water supply or sewage processing capacity. We, we do when someone submits a development plan we do look at sewer capacity and we do look at water capacity. What we find what we've been finding is that we have the wastewater treatment plan has the capacity to handle the sewage, but we'll find localized water systems in the system or the system has to be upgraded where the pipes are too small in that one area, and maybe the developer will have to upgrade, you know a couple hundred feet or 1000 feet or hasn't been. Well some of them actually had to do almost half a mile of sewer upgrades to get the sewage to the plant, because the old pipes won't hold that waters a little different or water system we're sitting pretty good with water quality or water quantity. We're developing right now we're actually doing really, really well. Bob. Yeah, I, I just had a thought, and that is that rainwater is not pure. It's got pollutants in it. I believe nitrogen and ammonium is fairly high or can be fairly high in rainwater. Are we supposedly taking into account what the concentrations are of water hitting the hitting, hitting the ground, or do we have to clean it to a standard irrespective of what the background is coming in at. Oh yeah it would be the standard CPA is setting are sort of based on that background level of what you know current rainwater like you said there's acid rain everywhere now especially in the northeast so yeah, they're based on that as a background. So I'm going to turn the subject a little bit and hope that the committee will come help help us along but, you know, we don't have to produce a report right now we have 90 days to do that and his question is how to use the 90 days effectively. And it seems to me that one of the things that I had mentioned earlier I want to come come back to and make sure that we get in that is the experience from other towns that have implemented the system already. Northampton being one example East Long Meadow was another one that Beth had put into the original presentation that she made in the memo to the Council and. To find out, you know what their experience has been on both the expense side and the revenue side so that we can make sure that we're advising appropriately that the bylaw is being developed in a way that can accommodate the change. So one of the bylaws written gives options really for implementation down the line and doesn't establish a strict structure just gives options for a structure. And that's fine but I think that we at least need to understand it and be able to comment to the Council about it. And there are other things that the committee can just thought about that would be helpful information for us to have as we under what we want to report back to the Council. And Andy it's, I think it's the same thing of finding out what other communities have done but if, if we did do went the utility wrote down the road and just faced, how do we set the fees more information than where we see variance more information on the implications so the impervious versus per or per housing unit, what people have done if we have examples one went one way and when went another and so we know something about implementation costs maintenance costs going versus that so lens. Basic question of you can't set up a utility until you've got revenues coming in understanding what underlies those revenues and what choices will we would have to make getting more information to inform those choices would be great. Dorothy did you have anything there. Yes, this is a following up on what Guilford said about large buildings, having to equalize their water. Is this a new requirement, or was it in effect when one East Pleasant and Kendrick were built and if it was what were their mitigations, or was it decided that since there'd been some parking lot in that area that it was impervious then and just curious to know, has this been applied into some of the recent larger constructions and if so how Yes, it's been applied in the recent constructions one East Pleasant was actually, they had an easier time because it was a fully developed parcel and everything was paved on the parcel pretty much so their post runoff was basically a whole lot because their pre runoff was a whole lot. One East Pleasant, or not one East Pleasant. Yeah, Kendrick place is the one that was up that one was a really stickler because basically that was a green green grass lot there was like two pieces of concrete pads that were no more than 10 feet square on that parcel that was the only impervious land on those parcels. And everything else was pervious. So they actually had to put in some underground detention chambers, which holds the water and slowly release the water at the post at the pre release rates so that one was the harder building to build because it was. Yes, it was mostly a grass lot that was converted to 100% and pervious. Is that why I made it may have remembered something of this. They originally had thought they were going to do some underground parking, but they couldn't because of this is that a possible connection. They couldn't do underground parking because the ground water table was so high. Alright, that runs underneath there. Yeah. Thank you very informative. Can I say one more thing about the bio laws before you. So you're being asked to recommend the bio laws and what we've told you are what we've given you here is is future cost. And we know that it's going to take a while to put this all together. But we are. This is a permit we're required to do, and this is just step one is approving the ID by law and the storm order by law. How we implement them going forward, we have probably one to two, maybe even three years to actually think this out and figure out how we want to do this. Nothing we have in our estimate a cost cost for the next three years is actually more than what we put into the capital plan for the next five years in the joint capital plan. So we do have time it's not don't feel like you're rushed to make a decision on the enterprise system or the stormwater utility. I keep saying this, we're eating this elephant one bite at a time by one is the past the two bylaws, and then we can move on to the next couple of bites and move down the road. Yeah, and I think that what we're probably starting at and that was very helpful bill for it is to make sure that as we look at the bylaw itself that we're comfortable that the bylaw gives us the full range of options that we may want to consider down the line. And because as has been pointed out at the Council meeting where this is originally discussed. It's easier to do things by implementation of a bylaw than to go back and have to revise the bylaw again so we're hoping we're right. I think that's part of what we're after do making sure that we do through this discussion and the analysis that follows. Other thoughts from the media on this subject. And we can thank Beth and Guilford and move on to the quarterly report for the second quarter. And the other thing I know we have one attendee who's somebody who's pays a lot of attention to financial matters so if a member of the public at any time thinks about something that they would want to have one want to raise during public comment. You could go ahead and raise your hand at least I know that I need to move up public comment earlier in the agenda to make sure that I can accommodate the public comment that we very much welcome. And that we turn but nobody has anything else for either Guilford or Beth now. Thank you very much for being with us today. Thank you. I'll turn it over to Sean and Sonia to present the quarter report and I guess just get it. Make sure that we have an understanding with Lin as to who's putting it on the screen. Which one are you wanting to look at the first or second quarter. The first quarter report. It's posted on the both reports are posted on the accounting website right now but the first quarter report is really less significant because the budget isn't set yet we haven't we haven't set a tax rate. So the revenues were still moving around now the tax rate is set so the second quarter report is much more significant. So I was just going through that one. All right. Let me go to the second quarter report. Anyone. It is. So I'll start by saying that these are pretty typical from from year to year and quarter to quarter you can see the percentage collected from from a budget on a normal year. What's happened with COVID fiscal year 21 we had to cut the budget quite a bit so it's kind of that's also insignificant to try to compare where we're at collected to a much smaller budget. So for this year I created a another report which is scroll all the way to the end. And that compares revenues to what we collected last year at the same time. So that's what I kind of want to go through just so you can see. Because right, really the budgets, even though they are significant, they're kind of insignificant you want to see what we collected from the previous year and why. This is what you want. That's it. So, first thing is the golf golf course we budgeted nothing for the golf course this year because we figured there would be a lot of participation with that. It turns out we had a better first two quarters than we've had in previous years, we actually took in 40% more than the year before at this time. So we did pretty well for the golf course this year. So that's another location. That's another place where we cut, we pretty much cut the budget down to zero, because of the programs we weren't, we weren't going to be able to run so it seemed it was logical to cut those down. However, pools were open and again pools did better this year than they've done in the previous year. So that's 72% better for the same period. Now this is just for the first six months all the way across from 2018, 19 and 20. Fees are new this year we don't budget them those are the cannabis, those are the cannabis, cannabis host fees and the short term rental fees. Sorry about my computer because I can't see the screen. I'm looking over at my, my desktop. We have fines. The budget was reduced significantly we've already close to reach that budget and we're on target for what came in previous year investment income. We've actually exceeded what we are budget for so thanks to our treasure she's been really good at investing as much money as she can and she moves it at the last minute so she does a really good job with that. License and permits were 67.3% collected, but 37% less than the previous year on this so we're doing okay we're going to meet our budget estimates but we are lower than the previous years at this time. Medicaid reimbursements. We usually collect these in June, however, they are going to be lower with the schools being out miscellaneous non occurring this is where we normally have our hotel hotel moat or UMass fees that are in lieu of hotel motel. taxes. And they've been closed so we're not expecting to click any of that this year and so far that's held true. We're still collecting from Amherst College this year. We used to get the 120 from UMass here but we're, we're still negotiating a new strategic partnership agreement which is on hold because of Kobe was 120 these schools. Money or this was payment moved taxes. But that was, that's hotel motel that's. Okay, good. We have a quarter vehicle excise we collect the bulk of that in February so we'll see where that goes in the next quarterly report. Other revenue is where most of the depart the miscellaneous departmental revenue is we are a little bit lower on that but we're on track to meet our budget estimate here. Other excise. The bill is way down from the previous years meals tax is doing much better than we anticipated it's already reached our budget. That we projected for this year however we're still about 48% lower than previous years. We had cannabis tax. These are new. It's on target for what we got last year. We normally don't budget for these. These funds until we've had some more trend. We didn't budget for this year penalties and interest. We had a large deferral payment in fiscal year 20. So that's why that seems a little inflated but other than that we're on target actually doing a little better than we expected for that pilot. It's on target. These are these coming as just as transfers real property tax. We're right on target collections are still good. We're going to meet our 98 to 99% this year. The rental budget was reduced significantly. However, we've already collected what we budgeted for and we expect that to be exceeded. Special Assignment Assessments is just timing of when the PVTA assessment payment comes in from UMass and by colleges. It's probably more likely being second third quarter state aid. It's on target and there were no cuts. I just wanted to point that out there were no cuts, which is a good thing. Transfer and are just normal spring and the indirect costs from the enterprise funds and any community preservation fund money that we budget for for debt service. Free cash overlay or any once that shows up here. It's just an interim transfer. And then I don't know, do you want me to do the sewer? I'll do the enterprise fund revenues here too. Enterprise fund revenues we reduced. We've been doing a lot of adjusting to our budgets, not just due to COVID but due to the consumption going down. We've raised rates. We've reduced our consumption projections and we've come pretty close. We're down 8% from this time last year. However, UMass is closed so we would have more than likely done much better if it wasn't for the COVID year. Same with water and we budget our sewer revenues at 85% of consumption of water. Again, the same thing as sewer. We're down 9%. From this time last year, solid waste are actually doing a little better. I think a lot of people have been staying home cleaning their yards and in their houses and bringing stuff in transportation. This is the problem child. The only revenue that the transportation fund receives is from parking meters and parking violations. And we cut the budget significantly here but we are down 56% from this time last year and revenues. So this is going to be an issue that we're going to have to figure out what we're going to do. We probably end up having to move some expenses and general fund reallocate employees to different places which we've done some of that already. So this is on the revenue side so revenues are coming in very slowly. So on the general expense side. Do you want to want me to take questions. If there's any revenue questions that people have. Yeah, my, my big concern is this transportation up here when PBTA and UMass finally get their act together in February because that's, there's been such fluctuation I'm trying to find it. There's been such fluctuation in bus usage and schedule and stuff like that. So we have any inkling of that one. So that lags Lynn, that looks at the reimbursement for that comes from prior years based on prior year usage. So we shouldn't have any issues this year with it may linger into future years when when this year catches up. Yeah, right here, I guess is where. No, that's not it. Yeah, I'm just concerned about that because it's, it's something to keep our eye on because in a few three years. And then the other one that Sonia already pointed out. Okay, where you want to go next. I'm just thinking if there are anybody raised hands to ask revenue questions, but not, then we'll go on to expenses. I think Abby has her hand up. I'm trying. Yeah, I have, I think I have three on the Medicaid the drop I understand why it's dropping does that show up as schools lose revenue that where that revenue is allocated. So it's just a where does it show up in the school budget. Yeah, we don't, we don't specifically hold the schools accountable for it. It all goes into that pie that we carve up for all the budgets and in theory we're allocating it to the school but we are, but we won't hold them. Okay, then the second one is on meal tax. This is more on a what to what extent if few mass is delivering food and selling food to residents of town, and they're bringing it. Do they pay a meal tax. I don't know if you mass pays the meal tax. They must right shown to be honest, we can, we can find out the confirm the answer to that question and I did do some research on that subject, because somebody else had raised the question and I looked at the state statute and regulations and the university is responsible to collect meals tax and it should be coming to the town. And at some point I was going to ask that question to to make sure that we're actually receiving the revenue that my interpretation of the statute says that we're entitled to receive. And the, I did add do some asking around, including of one of our counselors who regularly eats on campus and indicates the when he pays cash at say the blue wall. The if it's a meal that isn't individually paid for a meal then he then there is a sale is meals tax applied. And my understanding of it is it should be coming to the town. I'm pretty certain they do pay meals tax but that would go directly to the state we would get it back as on quarterly on monthly through the cherry sheet revenue coming in so it goes to the state. They don't give us a breakdown or which hotels or which I mean which restaurants are paying how much in tax we just get the lump sum from the state. Yeah, and we can reach out to our, our rep that we talked to frequently and see if there's, if they, if she can look and see where that's coming from to verify whether we're getting a good amount from you mass. So we'll, we'll follow up on that. Okay. Yeah, and then my other one against just focusing on revenues is you've got two places where you're getting. There's revenue from cannabis once an impact ones at fee and I when I added it up to about 173,000 and I know you said it wasn't budgeted. Where does that money go. Does it just go into a general fund right now does it money. Yes, the DR says it has to go into the general fund. So one of them is the tax itself, which comes through the cherry sheet. The other is the tax fees impact payway that come in and it just, it comes in directly to the town and it goes there and fees. Now all of this gets closed out to free cash. So in the future, when we finally figure out what we're going to do and use this money towards the vote will have to come from free cash so keep everybody in to keep that in mind. We can't put it in a separate fund the only amount that we're allowed to put into a separate fund is a donation part. That's in in some of the agreements. You probably know more about that one. Yeah, so there's there's sort of three streams of money. Maybe more but there's three sort of primary streams of money that we get from these host agreements. One is the tax which is is less restricted in its use and the Sonya said we're just waiting to get a couple years of trend before we actually budget it. There's going to be a funny year because of the pandemic to see what what that looks like. And we also have more establishments opening so we're trying to get a sense of what the normal level of revenues will look like. The second thing is the impact fee that's restricted in its usage. It can only be used on what you know what we identify as impacts of the dispensaries and so it is in reserves and so Sonya said we've got to remember that you know I think it's about maybe a little over 200,000 of our reserves right now are actually attributed to those impact fees and so they're restricted in use when we want to use them we have to use them for specific things. And then the third is a is a donation that's made annually that's we're really just sort of a holder of it it's it's meant for education and awareness and that would go to a nonprofit of some sort. Right impact fees might not be recurring a recurring revenue to where the taxes revenue questions. That answer my question. Yeah. Yeah. You said that Sean the donation would be going for education and something and would be going annually for education and you said something else awareness. Yeah I'll say I'll have to get the exact blurb. There's there's a there's a section in the host agreements that speak specifically to sort of educational awareness piece so I can send the exact blurb so you have more clarity about that. And it probably is education awareness about cannabis usage or. I believe so but let me I'll send the exact language back to the group. Thank you very much fun. Okay. Not on revenues. So there's not on the expense side and the general fund there's there's not any concerns at this point at all the department heads have been really great at controlling their expenses between that and our cove it our carers money. We've been able to keep the town running pretty smoothly. But just any of the budgets that you see that over 50% spent at this time are due to timing issues, you know like retirement that we pay up front all our re licensing fees for software that we pay up front and and insurance we have to pay for our property and casualty insurance up front and we pay for both we pay up front for the town the region the elementary school and library and then we build them back and and the money comes down so if you see your I think the percentage in there shows 107 percent overspent that will go back down to normal once the allocations they pay us their portions and the allocations go back in there and also there's conferences for contracts that are in there like snow and ice there's a large encumbrance in there for salt and sand and as that as we get closer and closer to the end of winter and hope there's no more snow storms they don't they don't use that full encumbrance that ends up going back in so those are the only anomalies that I have in there the other thing is I know there was questions about the $80,000 that was voted at the at the last budget process that is sitting right now into in a control account and it's I just we just have instructions from the town manager to move it to the town manager's budget in a separate line so that we can track the expenditures that come on here and make it available for the group that's studying this right now so I believe the only thing that is nothing's been spent from it still $80,000 I think there's going to be some stipends paid out of there and I'm I'm not sure what else at this point yeah just to add to that there's um yeah nothing's been spent yet there are some anticipated stipends for the working group um but we don't know exactly how much yet um but it won't use most of it it'll be a small portion of the budget right and and then Sean they're talking about hiring a consultant to help them yeah I would come out of that same bucket of money yep the important thing to remember is that um you know that money is good for stuff performed in FY um 21 it would that those funds would restart for the next fiscal year and they are going to restart for the next fiscal year do you know um I at this point we're still going through the budget process but I haven't heard anything to the to you know I'm sure yeah yeah and okay and it's for social justice and equity work so it could move beyond uh the community safety working group it where it's being applied right now it's totally appropriate but I'm just wondering over time whether there'll be other um ways of funding programs or things like that yeah it could it could broaden in its scope of what it you know other social justice initiatives um or other public community safety initiatives yeah yeah great yeah because we're going to have some service changes and stuff thank you yeah it is a new fund so we don't really know was established this year it's it's a first time um as we have other expenses running through and every year we're balancing um our revenues against our expenses we don't know what we're going to what it's going to be proposed for a few two years but I thank you for bringing it up and getting the report um Kathy you have your hand you want me to finish with the enterprise funds no no can you just stay on this page I had some questions um just so I understand what we're spending money on so in the um North Amherst and Cushman school the Amherst community child care facility the South Amherst school building the East Street school East Street school is some of these are closed so if we see money so like East Street school is that repair or maintenance costs um and so same question on each of those what what are North Amherst school is rented out to an entity so I don't know it's all for repairs and utilities and it's facilities costs okay I think um some of them are portioned a part of a custodian who maintains the building and Sonya said utilities um yeah any plumbing issues that come up any and the same thing is for bangs that's that's um it's that's not staffing right because you show that there's that there is staffing there's that one is staffing the other they pretty much all do Munson does um East Street school does not we share there is some I think I think I'll have a study and that's that's apportioned out to all the different buildings okay there is staffing okay thank you yeah so we want to move on down then I don't see anyone else is raising hands so we can continue on with the expenditures okay um so that's pretty much all I have to say about the expenditures um there's nothing like I said there's nothing no concerns at this point on the expense side uh there's going to be some savings and we may need that savings for the transportation fund so that's to offset some of those revenue deficits Sonya do you want to speak to the the one other question we had about if there was um accessibility improvements um if there was an emergency repair what we would how we would pay for that yeah I just want to finish up with the rest of the enterprise funds on the expense side everything is is like the general fund everything's pretty normal as it should be at this point there's no concerns on the expense side other than trying to just keep them down so that we meet our revenue estimates because um enterprise funds you can't overspend your operating budget but you need to bring it is a league it is legal to have a revenue deficit we just don't want to so if you don't spend all your operating budget it nets that deficit and revenue down so we're trying to keep it so that it's a zero net result which is not always possible but I just wanted to point that out and uh yeah Sean the other question was about emergencies what that would that would depend on the the type of emergency I mean the dor regulates a lot of these emergency things so it depends on whether it's affecting the health and safety of citizens of residents of Amherst or employees it depends it just depends so I would need more clarity on what the emergency would be sometimes we if it's like the water pipes burst down at the north Amherst um fire department we had them pay for it out of their operating budget knowing there would be a deficit there for that and then we we offset it by savings and if we needed to we would have asked for a reserve for a an appropriation for reserves but we didn't end up needing to so a lot of things depend on what the situation is there's a specific question a specific emergency I can be more specific no I'm sorry there was no specific emergency the committee the um disability access advisory committee has a new member from and that person works at UMass where they do have an ongoing emergency fund and she was talking about the committee controlling a fund like that so there wasn't a specific emergency but if all if all of a sudden there was something wrong with a ramp to the bank center or something like that that was impacting um people with mobility issues how would that be we have capital articles out there for building envelopes so something like that were to happen we can we can use that depending on what the balance is and in the emergency we used to have when we were town meeting form a government we had a reserve fund transfer which was under the purview of the finance committee and it was usually a hundred thousand dollars and it was for these unforeseen types of things with with council government we don't have that anymore that's because we can meet more often and have appropriations emergency operations happen where with town meeting it was only twice a year okay thank you very much you're welcome yeah i'll add one more quick thing um we are planning in the capital improvement program to start putting aside a set amount of money every year for accessibility improvements so you'll you'll see that this year you know specifically broken out in the capital improvement program um some ongoing money to start making some improvements um that we you know we learned as part of the study great thank you very much and a quick quick question this regional debt assessment what is that regional schools are allowed to have debt too when all right it's not no so the so the this is the amherst assessment from the regional schools based on the regional agreement for the town share of the debt um so this would be according to a debt schedule maintained by the region of all the projects they've approved so if they ever in the future um approve a new roof or approve um you know some major project this is where you would see that cost hit and um you know that comes the the council gets to weigh in on that every year when the schools bring their budget forward they also bring forward a debt assessment for approval as well and that that shows up on the debt service budget in the 7 000 numbers not that means anything to anybody but it shows up it shows up there as part of our debt service i we just have to put it in the in the books as an educational expense so i carved that out of the debt service and put it up into the education so it's really their debt service but it gets paid out of the capital budget just like our regular current debt so just refresh my memory we pay this as they spend or do we transfer the amount that is budgeted every year um so it's typically after the fact so once they approve a project they will typically do temporary borrowing to complete the project and then once the project's complete they will then assess us our our portion of it um over a certain number of years depending on the size okay thank you anything else in the way of questions so i i mean i think your bottom line statement at the beginning if i have it correctly is that uh when we take the amount of money that we had the adjusted budget and we're looking at it against the adjusted budget we're feeling comfortable with where you're at 51.7 percent yes that's the key takeaway it's not the comparison to prior years is helpful to let us know where we're at but we didn't expect ever that we would have the revenues to do everything that we did in prior years but we did so much better than than we expected too so i thought it was a good story thought it was a good story in part because of i assume the federal stimulus cares act funding funding and on the revenue side that didn't really do much for our revenues the revenues is a good story all on its own okay other questions about the quarter budget money cunning him has your hand up so i will turn to public comment and ask that tony be brought in so that she can ask question to make comment since she has raised her hands and we went on to that hi tony hi thanks so much this is really interesting information thanks ania for that and so i'm i'm my question is about the centennial water treatment plant so when it was approved the estimate was 11 million dollars and it was in for f y 22 the town manager made a comment at the very end of the meeting last night that indicated the cost has gone up but he didn't specify by how much so with the revenues for the waterfront down 11 percent and the projected debt for the plant improvements as well as the well for improvements close to one million per year i'm just wondering if there's an update or if the finance committee will get an update on what the rates need to be to cover that is there enough in the reserves of the waterfront and if the if there is not enough revenue or in the reserves what happens to cover that debt service where where do you go do you increase the water rates or do you go to the general fund does it come out of ongoing capital how does that cost impact our other needs in town thank you thank you tony uh shawner sonny do you have a response that you can offer um so we we will be looking at water rates relatively soon we've already i mean sonny and i've already started working on them but they will be coming to the finance committee where we do look out four or five years so you will see the impact of centennial there are reserves in the fund that could cover some overages we are seeing a reduction in consumption but we are anticipating that to be somewhat temporary once universities get back to the university and the college get back to normal we anticipate that the consumption will go back up we'll have to wait and see what that looks like if if we don't have enough between our reserves and other cost savings um you know i'll look to sonia but we would if if more debt needed to be authorized we'd have to get permission for more debt to be authorized um but we're not at that point yeah we're still we're still looking at this year and and projecting out forward i saw a couple hands up but just to confirm the prior practice and i assume the continuing practice would be that this would any overage would be covered through the enterprise fund not by transfer from the general fund is that correct yeah yeah i think i believe so good uh look and i assume that as with just about anything that's construction these days Boston materials and labor it's driving the cost off yeah i haven't had a chance to connect with gilford on this yet so i'd want to check in with him more before i weigh in on on that um on that comment okay okay so if if you do could we just get an update on it at the next finance committee meeting you know it's as everyone remembers we heard about the 11 million almost after the fact we just it would just be nice to know if that 11 million has turned into something significantly higher or not i'm talking about the construction part not the study part yeah yeah no i will bring back an update i think that's a good segue to the one of the next topics yes so uh we actually can move the agenda along then to the subject of the uh plans for the committee the goals for the committee the meeting schedule lind did you have that document that i sent around as a word document earlier today and if not i can share it out of my computer i have it okay and i just want to apologize since it's my document for all of the screwy stuff on it but well yeah uh oh i i had taken the uh when i sent it out i think i did it without comments but they uh showing but they do show is they are now what i did was i extracted from um a memo that lind sent to the council and he asked that we look at it for the um financial goals of um for both the council and the committee for the year and um i took the pieces that were applicable in some sense and put them into a single document so that we would then skim out the things that we wouldn't have to look at the things that were involved with other committees but it drives sort of what our thinking is about our work plan needs in the time ahead and then um we'll get to the last piece which is the actual meeting schedule which has some wrinkles to it that i explained to uh lind did you have anything you wanted to say to us about what your thinking was or what you're looking for in comments on this one of my goals this year um is to actually see to the extent possible that we can map out a calendar for the year uh knowing that there will be shifts in it and so the purposes the purpose of this memo with of which this is a part um was to make sure that i know everything that needs to go on that calendar as well as the council then being able to say for things that are quote optional what are their top priorities so my this whole memo which is extensive was to make sure i haven't missed something and even now i mean i think the last time i messed with this thing was sometime in very early january or late december and i already can see things as well so it's something that i wanted both finance committee and the finance staff to look at and say okay what are we looking at what do we make need to make sure goes on and of course the uh what um shon is referring to and he was uh i believe referring to and he was talking about in relation to the immediately previous discussion was the said water and sewer rates analysis of alternative ways of setting water and sewer rates were things that had previously been identified by this committee and uh that would need to get into our work schedule at an appropriate point and this bigger no all right i should have printed it out okay let me if that's enough pat is that enough yeah if you go up to review and at the top and then no markup right you don't show markup yeah then it'll make it easier to look at there no uh simple markup you want to go yeah go back in yeah yeah okay um so kathy uh you've been the one who raised this question you've been raising this question at the earliest and i think that the question that you and bernie then had talked about was to look at whether there are other ways of setting water and sewer rates and whether we should be examining them and i think that if we're going to do that in time for the water rate setting we probably need to get that on a fairly early agenda in february not followed up on it partly because we didn't connect with each other we were going to go to gilford we'd we'd written out some ideas and talk with him to get him to do some scenarios of what would happen if we did this or that with some put some numbers on it um and i had it on my list for the fall and for god um basically would be the explanation of where that went so bernie you know we we done if everyone might remember we did a memo with some specifics um and people we talked about it and my understanding is you authorized the two of us to go off and have a conversation with gilford to see what we could get back and these wouldn't be formal these would be more a first look to see whether we want to do anything and i think andy we were not talking about f y 22 as much as f y 23 because some of it would be gilford wanted to get a more um if we want to go that route he wanted to get a more sophisticated estimate but basically we need to even make a decision whether we want to get the more sophisticated estimate of it does that sound right to you bernie okay that sounds that sounds pretty good sean give your hand up yeah that was i was gonna say that was my recollection too that it wouldn't be for the f y 22 rates it would be for the next cycle um but that we still wanted to move forward this year with with doing the analysis um the other one thing that jumps out to me that's missing um not a big thing but is um reviewing other post employment benefits we that's actually something we could do relatively soon because we just completed our report and i think that typically will come to finance committee um when the actuary completes the report so you could i would put that near like the annual audit because it would be an annual recurring item the uh was that we would only do that with finance committee but not the entire council that opeb is such that uh taking it to the having the full council here from the actuary may be a little bit over the top anything else that people see or have questions about when they ask about we'll have to scroll down through the rest of it where it was yeah we should don't shouldn't we put the stormwater bylaws in here yeah i'll see them yeah yeah that probably should is it two or four right now we're dealing with two but there were two stormwater and elicit discharge yes i'm just gonna do a little something to help me later on andy um you i mean i don't know you may want to put something in there just about reviewing bylaws in general or i can imagine other ones maybe coming forward this year and sometimes those can take time um i don't know if you're only looking for specific things or just things that you might want to factor in when you're setting the calendar to put in the review additional bylaws as assigned yeah i'm thinking if there's new bylaws proposed throughout the year the ones that would come to the committee yeah usually we don't want to do that if we think that they're financial implications to possible financial implications to the bylaws otherwise it's not necessary to refer to this committee kathy um my question is more about timing on the fees you know shawn when i'm looking at the fees that are listed there the parking fees and maybe other fees um do you have a sense um you had mentioned i think last fall or even the spring that you were looking through these um i have a sheet that i a memo and i just didn't know how far along you are and i had a set of ideas and should i just send them to you or are you about to come to us with this and and i should wait yeah so we decided we you know we looked at them this year and we decided to hold off on changing fees because of the pandemic um everything going on we didn't we didn't think it was a good time to make any dramatic changes to it um but definitely send it to me you know what i envision a process could look like is you know we look at these in the fall and if we're going to make any changes you know we would we would give enough time for them uh in advance to notify people of changes so they might go into effect july 1st um similar to our budget but there's not the sense don't about that but if you have any specific um fees you want us to look at send them to me and we'll take a look okay and then lin lin on the larger council issue um this would be normally a tso issue because it's a use of uh public ways uh would if if a counselor has specific ideas about this can i i was going to just send it directly to shawn and then it would would it come back to the extent town staff like them or don't like them comes back to the council or would it be better to start with the council uh i i'd send them to shawn okay thank you hey i'm going to see if anybody else has hand up for suggestions or questions the one italics by the way are required ones the non italics are not so i'm going to go back up here and place this in italics and this is is assigned and this is already in italics okay i'm going to look down but the next below this andy yes go ahead since uh uh is one of these we can actually say it's underway we're like 75 done with it it's almost there so the actually the uh where we left the capital improve the capital inventory was we said let's adopt what we had for this year and we could review it at the end of the year for any recommendations we might have for um the following year so that review she can um i'm typing at a very strange angle just so we know i mean i'm not gonna brag about my typing skills but i or me they wouldn't be done hey of course through the four capital projects we were going to come back and shawn will be making a presentation i believe to the finance committee possibly in february regarding a review of where we are where the model is now and the funding options um and the questions that you should answer um is whether or not you as chair or whoever's chair will be willing to make that open to all counselors they can either come as audience or they could we could have it be a committee of the whole uh you and i can talk about that later but certainly it's always available counselors i think that we that's what we had concluded um and uh rather to make it a meeting of the whole i think is a discretionary question for you as president um the practices i'm supposed to check with the chair before declaring such a thing yes so we can talk about that um Dorothy has our hand up Dorothy um i want to speak in favor of inefficiency sometimes having something done in one meeting is very efficient but sometimes hearing it at several meetings really the facts begin to come home um so i i know that we wanted to use shawn's time carefully but i have found that when issues have when i've heard the issues at a committee and then i've heard it in the town council that i just have a much better understanding of it than if i hear it just once in one big super meeting so just to be clear this is not going to be a one-time shot even if it's a committee of the whole to begin with okay great this is huge so i think that where we're at is that um if we can come back to this if somebody thinks of something else that they would like to bring back to it um but i want to just talk a moment about meeting schedule and what i had sent out to you earlier today and the follow-up conversation that i had with uh Mandy Hanakie who's the chair of CRC and explain what the problem is um Dorothy is going to be joining CRC and the change over in committee assignments happens on February 1st so that after today's meeting we need to make sure that CRC meetings do not happen at the same time as finance committee meetings since Dorothy's assigned to both committees and so that is uh why Mandy and i have been having some conversations and she had originally proposed i think it was second and fourth Tuesdays for the meetings and that which got me into thinking about first and third and i think that part of the problem that we had was is that our plan had been has been since the beginning built around the day after um council meetings but when you look at the council meeting schedule for FY21 there are times when there are three meetings a month and there are times when there's one meeting a month and a lot of it is built around Monday holidays and uh so that uh both Mandy and i were going a little bit crazy trying to figure out how that would work when we talked about it so that um we that's why they were um thinking about going to every other week and it suggested that they'd be the second and fourth and that we'd be the first and third but then she ran into another problem that she needs to talk with her committee about after February 1st and that is that um the um need to have some meetings of CRC that coincide with either planning board or planning board zoning subcommittee meetings which is an internal issue of their committee but she said that she didn't want to talk about that at a committee meeting until after February 1st when new members were appointed and so that of course they all committees have to elect new chairs again after February 1st and so she's not even certain that she'll be chair so and nor am I for that matter um but that's that was what the uh what one problem was the other problem that Mandy and I were talking about that we are going to have to figure out is that during the month of May we always have the additional burden of it of more meetings than we otherwise have planned for because that is the time we have received the referral of the town manager budget and have 30 days according to the charter to review the budget and make a recommendation to the council and we had been doing twice a week meetings during the month of May and so that we also have to factor that into meeting schedule so my suggestion is that we establish a February meeting schedule for now and then we just go ahead and do it based on 1st and 3rd Tuesdays and that when we have a better idea of CRC's final schedule so that we know that we're not doing anything that's in conflict with that that we've we established a schedule for the rest of the time and that what I would like to start doing is take the document we were working on previously and initially work with Kathy as vice chair but then very quickly turn it back to the entire committee and see if we can attach some dates to that schedule so that's my recommendation I don't now want to open up to the committee to react to the recommendation any thoughts Pat excuse me um I can I have the first and third Tuesdays in February I cannot be there would that start on the first or the first meeting would be on the second and I cannot be here for that meeting if it's at two two to four I cannot be at it and that's unusual that's not a regular conflict but it is for next week we can move off of Tuesdays if people have an an alternative date that they want to suggest that it's not conflicting with other things because we're talking about just the month of February I'm only trying right now to do February and then we'll come back to a longer type of thing if we do if we do a second it's only week away we could try Thursdays which is the other date that we sometimes add in when we're doing the budget review we've often gone to Thursday afternoons from two to four or two thirty to five of course it's a myth that we ended for so yeah um that does not work for me at all yeah the fourth will not work for me what about Monday the eighth oh no we have a we have a council meeting then I'm sorry the 15th and the first is Wednesday um out depends on the time yeah it GLL is in the morning which is going to knock out Pat and then I have pretty much from one to three on Wednesdays light up so I could do you know three to five or whatever and just there's one meeting that's not scheduled yet because we were waiting for who was going to be on JCPC for the council and you're looking at two people that are going to be on that and we were meeting at five five thirty on Wednesdays last spring we just don't we don't have a time slot yet so Wednesday would be okay as long as it doesn't run into that that and it might still be fine it's because it's not scheduled for anything yet what about Friday this um fifth and then Friday the 19th just in February fine with me any objection usually like Friday meetings but in the afternoon but it's day of zoom when we're not traveling it's not as big a problem which days did you just say the fifth and the 19th just for the one month we would not Friday would not become our regular date and we're talking about at what time I'm open both of those days until five so anytime that works for the larger group okay I can't do it in the morning I could do it anytime after 12 o'clock you just stay with two o'clock yes two o'clock two o'clock on the fifth and on the 19th and then then we're deleting the 23rd and the 9th which I have puzzled in yes Jane does that work for you so unless I hear somebody saying they can't do it we're talking about two o'clock on the fifth and the 19th and that's not our regular schedule this is February only and we will establish as soon as we can in February a schedule for the rest of the year thank you we might be going back to the first and third Tuesdays Sean just because the fifth is coming up pretty soon do we have a sense of what the agenda would be for that meeting I think the question Sean is going to be whether or not we're ready with the financial model okay we also have the audit and the OPEB report done so it's possible we could we could do those as well but we can connect about that offline yeah that would be an awful lot to do all of those things but yeah probably one of the other okay so I'll work with work with Lynn and I'll consult Kathy about the the agenda but you would be ready if if we said we wanted to see the new and improved or modified model would you be ready then or is that premature just on our choices I think there's some things that we wanted to do related to around community engagement and outreach when we present this that we wanted to have ready to go for when we present it that it would be a little too soon I think for next week we wanted to have some you know some ways to get feedback and input from people so I think the following meeting would be better if that's possible to shoot for the night I think it was the 19th because that's close to what we were originally anticipating under the old finance committee schedule so if that's I mean we could go for the fifth but I think preferable would be the 19th can somebody check to see if our audit firm is Melanson Heath right see if Melanson Heath is would be prepared to yeah Sony and I will reach out to um we'll reach out to Melanson and see if if they can be available for for Friday can I just ask a favor that people hold on to Tuesday afternoon so that we don't give that up and start scheduling into it I personally do not enjoy giving up Friday is my one day I try to yeah I I feel the same way I infinitely I infinitely like Tuesday better is it possible having having said that looking at our going back and looking at the February schedule if we did it first and third they would be the 16th could we still stay with the 16th that was the one who had a problem with the the third does 16th work the 16th I'm fine in February so maybe what we should do is just make that one shift for one week only and do it on the fifth and see if Melanson Heath is available that'd be great and uh because then we could meet as not a committee for that day is our principal agenda item so we would go back then to the 16th yeah yeah but on the fifth is when we would do the audit right the 16th is when we hope to bring in the financial model yep okay and the last question back to Sean is on the opab at what point do you think we're really going to be ready to meet with the um on the the person who's this year did the uh assessment and yeah so so the report's done it's more it's a matter of the schedule in it um it depends how you want to spread out the dryness if you wanted to if you wanted to spread it out you know audit and OPEB are kind of similar in terms of um you know the the content okay it's going to be a Friday afternoon just bore us to death but I can reach out we'll reach out to the actuary too and see what days work for her and I'll get that back to you so you can schedule or whatever you think makes sense so we have a different actuary this year yeah so we have a our previous actuary retired um so we went back out to bid for a new actuary for this year and we found somebody who's really um does a really great job and has worked with our audit firm before and came highly recommended so Sean was that somebody from western mass or did we still have to go eastern mass um I don't know where she's out of off the look I'm not sure um where her firm is located yeah yeah the OPEB is a uh significant issue in both the audit and the other report yeah they're kind of related in some ways yeah so we just approved that we I just approved the audit today so we don't have the final audit in our hands yet so hopefully we'll have it soon oh interesting but we don't anticipate any changes at this point we've sort of signed off on the except for a couple little minor footnote changes we've we've kind of signed off on it but we'll make sure we have a final copy before we um before we present it okay no I think we now have the dates set for the uh meetings in February we at the second February meeting we will establish a schedule for the rest of the year uh we will meet with melanson if um they will be ready and they have to let us know that and whether they're both ready and available uh and uh if not you know we'll make adjustments so I think that's it anything else no I think none I'd then I'll uh declare the meeting adjourned and I want to thank camille for uh being here to take notes for us and thank uh Sean and Sonia and the entire committee thank you let me just say if you would like to reach out to andy to find out have questions about anything that went on today given that this is new to you please do that and the rest of us are willing to help with that as well and your son is gorgeous and you would know that we're keeping it I didn't hear you answer I was trying to jazz really speaking to Jane maybe I'll email you separately and see if you want us if you want to schedule a time to talk okay so with that I get to declare the meeting adjourned bye everybody