 Okay, we're recording please go ahead. Okay everyone, welcome to the meeting of the finance committee. Pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021 extended by chapters 22 and 107 of the acts of 2022 extended by chapter two of the acts of 2023. This meeting will be conducted via remote means only members of the public who wish access to the meeting may do so via zoom or by telephone. No in person attendance of members of the public will be permitted. But every effort will be made to ensure that the public and adequately access the processing the proceedings in real time via technological means. I see Alicia has joined us. Seeing a presence of a quorum and the committee I call the meeting of finance committee to order at 205 p.m. If I'm going to go around the room and see if everyone can hear me and can. We can hear you so councilor councilor Hanneke. Present. Kathy. Yes, appear. Andy. I'm here and as I indicated I will get off in a minute when my computer allows me to and switch devices now confirm again. Okay, Bernie. Alicia. Yeah. Thank you. So everyone can hear. So and everyone should be aware that this meeting is being recorded. So please bear that in mind. Athena or could you put the, the, the meeting. Agenda up please. I can't actually right now I'm. Okay, not in a place where I can do that. I'm sorry. Okay. So anyway, the, the, the. The agenda is posted. We have. This is the subject so the 2024 meeting schedule. Update on the FY 25 projections that the draft on the surplus property disposition policy. I want to have a short discussion of the Amherst Pellum regional school committee. Recession and replacement of the debt authorization. Public comments topics not reasonably anticipated and then we'll adjourn so. Let's start with the 2024 meeting schedule. Does anyone have any changes they want to make to the meeting schedule? Okay, not seeing any. We adopted one last time, didn't we? Yeah, we did. I just wanted to make sure if anyone had any, any changes. Okay, so we'll just keep it as is. And Paul, I don't think there is an update on the 25 projections, but if you have any information, please let us know. We continue to work on it whether there's still some numbers that are that we're trying to finalize. So we hope to have that in the very near future though, certainly by your next meeting. Okay, thank you. So let's dive into the draft surplus property disposition policy. This may be something where we should put the policy document up on screen. Kathy, can you do that? Do you have the ability to do that? Yeah, let me just find it while you're talking and the question I have Bob is we actually, we have the current one, meaning the old one. And we have the draft. So is the one you want to put up the draft draft with all the comments in it? Okay, and, and I will do that. Let me just take a second to find it. Sure. And I have received some, some comments from the public, which I will try to weave into our conversation. So it looks like we have a fair amount of comment regarding the, the sort of the steps one through X of the process. And there's some clarifications that people want and some, some other issues that people have brought up so. I'll do that. Yeah. So I know that I see Dave Zomek is here. Dave, did you want to leave the discussion on this or have Athena leave the discussion on this? Thanks, Bob. You know, I think Athena and I are, are here to participate. We're here to listen. We've seen some of the comments that have come back from the council. I don't believe I've seen any that have come back from the public. So I'm interested in those as well. But we, I think we were hoping to, you know, kind of have a, have a give and take back and forth here and on what some of the council concerns are. I don't think we'll be able to answer all of your questions today. You know, Athena and I work together. As you know, I, and my staff are often involved in properties around town that the town owns and manages and is either in the past or currently considering alternative uses for if they are, if they are quote underutilized. Thanks in large part to Athena with her knowledge of the charter. She really took a very hard and close look at the old policy under our former form of government and then worked to redraft that to be in line with the, with the charter and, and the current roles and responsibilities of the town manager and the, and the council. So I'm happy to have Athena chime in if she wanted to say more, but I think we're, we're interested in your comments, your concerns, your questions, and, and where we might go from here. Hey, Kathy, I don't think this is the one that has all the comments in it, unless you've not. This is the draft. The draft one as they know when you sent it, this is the one with the red lines, but it's, I don't have an ability. I don't have the word version of it. I have the PDF version of it. Okay, I can send you the word version, but there is a, there is a PDF in the packet that has comments and other changes. Okay, so I'm, I've got the wrong version then. Yeah. Yeah, it should, it should have, it should say, it should be a blue legal requirements on the first line. Yeah, it's called member edit at the end it says member edits and comments. Yeah. Oh, it's so member edits and comments were. If you have it, I'm going to just let you share screen to. Then I won't spend time searching for it. If I can Bob make a couple of comments before just to begin. So the council steps of the process are first to declare a property surplus so it would begin with a town manager request the council declare a property surplus. The council would authorize the issuance of an RFP. And then finally, after that process, they, the council would vote to accept a proposal and authorize the town manager to sign a purchase and sale agreement. So there were some comments that I received from the committee about the public process that was removed from the previous draft, or the preview of the current policy. And the, the, one of the main differences between the previous form of government and this form of government is the, the function, you know, the role of the chief executive is previously being the select board and that advisory committee advising the select board. And now that we have a town manager, the town manager may form an advisory committee to advise him about whether to propose or to request the council declare a property surplus. And that's completely within the purview of the town manager to seek advice from staff or whomever he wishes, when he's considering declaring or asking the council to declare a property surplus. And so there were some comments about who would be on an advisory committee to the town manager but it's really up to the town manager to seek advice from whoever he wishes. And Andy's joined twice so there's some feedback. Just going to meet that. So there is, and I reviewed the surplus property disposition policies and several other cities and towns. And so that's what I used is sort of a jumping off point in drafting this version. So my suggestion, if there is a desire to incorporate a public process. Some other cities had a threshold. So if a property was over a certain, or the value was over a certain dollar amount, then the process would vary. You know, the intensity of the public input would be more if it were a larger property or a higher valued property. So one option is for the incorporation of a committee to develop an RFP and review bids. And then they would make a recommendation to either the town manager or town council before the council accepted a proposal. So that could be worked in, but it wouldn't be an advisory committee to the town manager would be advisory to the council. So a couple other notes that I had, sorry, lost my place for a moment. Were that there were there were some comments about specific properties, the schools in particular and how the town would take those up. I just want to clarify that we were not talking about that at this meeting because there hasn't been a request. We don't know what will be happening with those school properties yet. They don't belong to the town yet they still belong to the schools so I think, you know, keeping in mind that that's something that might happen in the future but that's not in front of us today. And another thing that I wanted to point out is that this policy would apply when there's a request to dispose of a property so sell a property if the town was going to take one of the, if the town word, if the schools were to transfer a property to the town and the town to accept that property. And then the town decided to do something else with the property itself, then this policy wouldn't apply this would apply only if the town were to sell it. So, one of the examples that Dave and I spoke about the other day was doing a long term lease agreement on a property that's owned by the town. This surplus disposition policy wouldn't apply because the town's not selling that property. I think that's all the notes I had right now but I can answer questions if that's helpful. Thanks. Andy. Yes, so hopefully now you can hear me because I'm on the computer and off the phone. I think that the thing that I was concerned about really gets into something that needs to be talked about early in the process. I wish I had thought about this more. Kathy kind of raised the question conversation I had with her. And so she might be going the same place in a way but the council may have either policy issues that it would like to raise or goals about a particular property. And, you know, the bigger properties like the school like Wildwood are certainly in that category. And I don't really feel like the council has enough opportunity early enough in the process to express its views on sort of exceptional things that could be done with a piece of property and hearing disposition of the property towards people who would bid on the property with the idea of trying to pursue those goals. Andy, are you suggesting we put a section in here sort of sort of pre decision to sell. I think that I am because I can't think of another way to do it. Kathy. But you had a very creative idea, for example, about Wildwood that you had talked to me about and I don't know if you want to share it with the rest of the group to let them know where I can, but I think that it really would require that there be an earlier process in order to do the kind of thing that you were thinking about because I've none of communities that have taken surplus property and had a goal in mind of what to do with that surplus property and what they wanted to see achieved for the benefit of the town, either in its own governance or for other purposes. And how do you go about doing that if you don't have an early discussion? I'd be happy to speak to that, Bob, if you want. I sent fairly extensive comments in but it was all around this issue. So what Athena referred to is some towns, well, two things. One, the point about it has to be declared surplus first before anything really happens is an important point. And I wanted to clarify that in the way this is written. So with the example of Wildwood, there's a two step process. One, the schools have to say they're not planning on using it and giving it to the town. And then the town has to consider are there potential uses for it. What I've seen in other communities is there's been a committee set up once some surplus potential surplus. So in terms of thinking in advance, rather than a rush potential surplus package, politics process that set up a committee that once there was a decision that was going to use Wildwood and the South Amherst school as an example. Okay, not saying that they need to be packaged together. But what East Hampton did is it was a committee that once it knew the town was not planning on using it. And so in that decision, the committee talked about potential alternative uses with an open public process and came up with a housing option, a housing option with public use. So it was an interesting approach that they wanted in an RFP to provide a gym, public space. So I'm just using this example where Amherst could, in theory, say the top floors could be residences, the bottom floor could be a community center, could be X, Y and Z. So they did a mixed use where part of it was public. But for that to happen, you had to have some kind of committee process, both examining the current conditions of the buildings with a thorough the soil testing and everything else structural. And then develop an RFP, which was asking people to respond to some conceptual ideas. So it wasn't a quick public comment. It wasn't like a 30 day or 40 day. And East Hampton actually did it per year and a half, as an example, you know, really trying to do a thorough. And they were able to get state money. And the reason I think the longer process is the committee was supported by a person who knows how to develop more complex RFPs through a state grant that was a redevelopment grant. And that helped them also have an RFP with an evaluation criteria. So I don't know whether we'd want that elaborate a process but the main point is it wasn't a quick declare it surplus, take a look at it, and, and go out for public comment. So the, what's described here doesn't allow for that amount of time. So that's where I didn't have specific wording and how to embed it. So just one other thing is the revision from the earlier, the existing one which clearly has to be revised because it keeps saying select board. And ML MGL 30 B section 16 actually triggers some of this because once it's a property that's more than $35,000, instead of a simple disposition, you're getting the property appraised you're get you're going through a certain amount of process. And you don't have to do proposals prior to disposition but you can, you can do, you can decide a disposition that has conditions and restrictions and use when you develop in the RFP. So I thought the wording of that where basically the old version kind of had most of the MGL 30 and the new version refers to yet in the very last sentence MGL 30 B section 16 sets forth additional steps. I'd like to embed it into our policy the additional steps that we and Amherst might like to take when it's a major so it's not we're not talking about a truck or something more minor. So that was just where thinking in the future what do we need to embed here. And I totally agree that if we decided to reuse the property. And there was a considered deliberate we, we wouldn't be going through this but I think one of the reasons town embed this is because it might require a longer process we've been sitting on some quote surplus properties for a while without a sense of what they might be reused for this might help activate a process that then makes a decision rather than telling staff they have to do everything it can bring in external and by the way the committee's always had the kind of people like a Dave Zomac or DPW wasn't just a completely external had some, whether it was counselors heads of other departments of committees. So I'll stop talking there but that's the part I'd like to see this enhanced to enable that once the property is going to be considered surplus and I don't know how with a really large a large and valuable property, like the south east school which has been sitting there closed as a storage cabinet, but the longer it sits there totally unused, the building itself is not very that it becomes not as valuable because you have to do a lot of work, simply because it's been shut. So that's, that's a long winded way of thinking of saying that I think this needs a different subsection that talks about a process for major major property dispositions. Thanks to that council. Thank you. And listening to Kathy and our clerk Athena on just the descriptions of this policy, I feel like I'm hearing from the committee and some residents, a huge desire to have something not for disposition surplus property but for an unused and underutilized property which is not what this policy is about. So I want to bring us back to what this policy is which is from what Athena said property that the manager has already determined. He wants to sell, not long term lease, which means something like the belcher town road property doesn't go through this. That's a 99 year lease. So potentially the strong street property wouldn't go through this because that would be a long term lease potentially. And so we wouldn't even see it under this policy because this one is supposed to deal with only once the executive. Again, keeping us in our lane versus a different lane the executive says I want to sell it. And I get concerned when we are talking about getting into his process for how he makes that determination. The process is in a policy like this that's trying to follow the law of what do you have to do to actually sell the property and what would the council need once the managers made a decision to recommend selling the property what should the council do in light of that If we want a policy that gets us involved in gets the council advising or as part of the process for what to do with underutilized properties. Hickory Ridge, for example. I think that doesn't belong in this policy. I think that's a completely separate area so well I don't disagree with a lot of what Pathy just said, I don't think any of it belongs in this property because it's all that was all about. What do you want to do with a large property like Hickory Ridge and how does the council advise or make recommendations or get involved in that that's not what this is. And so I think they're two separate issues and it would be really good if we could concentrate on this one of if the managers made a decision. What does the council need to work from the manager to sort of investigate that decision. Okay, thanks Bernie. Yeah, I just noticed the software got taking my hand. So I've got to try and catch myself up here with the discussion. I'm agreeing with counselor. The policies about dispositions and not about planning for reuse. And if the council really believes that it wants to do some advanced planning around reuse of a property that the town either has or potentially will come into possession of then the council can set that up. This is really about what happens when you've got the three quarters of an acre property that somebody left to the town or the town is taken because of unpaid taxes. It really focuses on disposal, not reuse and it's designed I think to give the council sufficient information to determine that the manager has made a good faith effort to look at the property but it's worth in, you know, and offer that. I think we're getting off the bait and path here. It's really, it's not planning. It's not designed to be a planning process. And it's not designed to encompass Wildwood or the South Amur School which I was just walking by prior to this meeting. And it's designed to say that this is something we own, we have, and we'd like to dispose of. And it really focuses on real property as opposed to surplus equipment, which is a whole other thing. We have an old truck we want to get rid of, an old fire engine. So let's go back and focus on that as opposed to a planning process. The other thing is I'd caution because I noticed in the comments that why was all this explanation taken out of the policy? It's a good thing to take all that explanation of the policy. You write the requirements of the general law into a policy at your own peril because the general law changes. And that means you're constantly looking around for whatever changes happened and amending you're going through the process of amending your policies. So it's best just to incorporate the general law by reference with those magic words as amended. You know, I think this policy is, I had some, my comments were all sort of nuts and bolts. Let's define what we mean by history. You know, so I think the policy does what it's supposed to do. I don't think, I think that the concerns that somehow the town manager is going to make a decision to sell Wildwood without talking to anybody is overblown. We don't even own Wildwood yet. So let's, let's go back and focus on what what's in front of us. Thank you. Thanks, Bernie. Andy. Well, first of all, it's not just about Wildwood because we also have the south hammer school which you also referred to and that is surplus potential surplus property. This property that we own, it's a significant location and it has value. And so it's, it is a prime example in addition to Wildwood of property that is now on a high likelihood of being surplus or could become surplus, which is Wildwood, where it is a significant enough piece of land that thinking about what the goals are for the use of the property and how it might benefit the town in any, in any number of ways is a valid and important attribute to be able to make sure that the council is involved in. And that I think that it's something that I find missing still from this, because it is yes, bridging into planning, but I'm not sure I understand what's wrong with that. Kathy, you're muted Kathy. I'm just, can everyone still see me my screen just suddenly how it got small. But I thought the point if we don't need to put everything into this that we are talking about after a decision to dispose so it may be that, you know, for sentences like no longer required for public purposes. What I was getting at is we may want to have a public purpose to a property or a set of public properties built in to a decision to dispose but to dispose in a particular way so it may be we can add a sentence or two when it's a significant property. There should be a process and the council would set it up. But what I what I, and I can send people what East Hampton did because I thought it was, and I couldn't find I didn't search for what their disposal of surplus property, but they did do the double they decided they had three schools that they weren't planning on using as public buildings. And so it was a question of reuse of them, private and they were selling them Bernie it wasn't a lease. But they, they put in a process well be while the schools were still occupied, knowing that that event was coming they weren't going to be used as schools anymore. So, and set up a committee and it was partly a council committee to be able to think of the potential reuse of them. And it had lots of what this has in it an evaluation of the property. How many acres is it. What is its assessed value. What are the structural issues in the building so when the RFP went out. It, it did say to bidders, you can use or reuse any part of this building or decide to not keep part of it and there was a request to try to use the auditorium try to use the gym. So what I'm thinking this is that we might not need to do a major rewrite of this but I would put a sentence in where it's a significant and valuable real property. The manager shall discuss with the council a potential process before moving toward disposing because otherwise you don't have time to develop an RFP, you're rushed to make a decision on what is going to be used for. So it's it's trying to build in a distinguishing between more minor and more major and of course if we decide to keep it inside that we're going to use it ourselves or we're going to lease it and not dispose of it. That's a different issue. But what East Hampton does has done is very clever because they have a taxable real property back on the property tax thing, but they also have public space that's been protected as public space and both playgrounds and internal space so it's a different kind of a mixed use. It's a public private use. So in any case I just if there can be some, if we could figure out where Bernie doesn't want to embed an entire planning process into disposition process and says the council can set that up. And Mandy's correct that this is only once we decided it's surplus. So surplus is an interesting concept. It's not not useful. It's just surplus. So that's where I was looking for something that says if we're going to go the external route. Something that signals that there would be a process rather than just a 90 day coming through it. And I'll stop there because I don't, I didn't mean to embed an entire planning process into this. And I do understand that the reference to the MGL is probably best left it is, but it does require every resident to go find the law. So it might be include a link to the law so that we know what we're talking about. I'll stop. Bernie. Yeah, well, we are. We did get into a whole discussion about planning process. And again, if the council feels that there needs to be some advanced planning done for a particular property that we either have or we don't have, then the council can set that up. And yeah, we can embed links into the policy so people can find the legal references. I wouldn't have a problem. Putting in under the heading policy and process for disposing the surplus real property that the town manager discuss with the council. What process might be used for particular property. And it also, by the way, the council has a, this is a request to the council. So the council has a finalist position of this and it doesn't mean that whatever the town manager proposes happens. It means the town manager comes to the council with the best possible alternative that they've determined. So, yeah, if you want to put a sentence in there that says, you know, we have to, we have to the council gets to determine whether a property is significant or not and that triggers a different planning process that's fine. But for our purposes in our discussion here. You know what he's tempted did is is interesting. It's not the first time it's not unusual. It, you know, they've they've been, I've been involved in a number of public private discussions about properties. So what he's tempted to was certainly cutting edge and I do congratulate them on the being able to get a grant to, to pay for the process because it's one of my concerns about this policy. It's a small part piece of it and also in the larger piece is the amount of cost that's going to be involved in this and the amount of staff time it's going to take. So okay, let's agree that we'll put a sentence in that paragraph that gives the council some assurance that they will be able to say this is a significant parcel and we want a greater moral ever process and move on. Alicia. Thank you. So I was essentially going to say a very similar thing and to just point out that I think that what Kathy was saying before is also extremely important, even if it might seem like a little bit extra. I think that they stop of like the concerns that we heard from from some community members and some feedback and based off of like what the clarifying description that Athena just gave us. I think that this is something that comes to us after the decision after the decision has been made that a property will be sold. And so what do we do if we want the decision for the property to be sold to be reconsidered, which I think is similar to what Bernie was saying I think that we need to have a process embedded in this in this document for like what we do if we want that that initial decision to be reconsidered. Okay Dave. Sure thanks Bob. I think this is a great conversation I'm listening pretty intently here and just wanted to make a couple of notes. I was interested in. I think it was Bernie moments ago or someone else said you know this kind of surplus versus underutilized. And I rarely think of town properties as underutilized I more think of them as kind of assets to be developed in the future. It would be too valuable to actually give up too valuable to surplus because we have so many unmet needs. And in particular I think of housing so when I think of South Amherst campus, you know, my staff and I have been and continue to look at the South Amherst campus as as a potential for something to happen there and one of the potential uses could be for housing, be it affordable housing mix used to mixed income housing. Market rate housing so I just wanted to put that out there that you know underutilized may not be exactly a word, you know from a staff standpoint that we, we use that often. But I do think I also wanted to put in context that, you know, as we are charged by Paul to really look at properties in the context of his goals that the council creates for him. So a lot of those things flow down through his goals to staff to say, okay, as I look at the properties that are assets of the town that could be developed into other things I think of yes Wildwood School but that's not even a town asset yet you will town proper. But if we look at the VFW site that we purchased the South Amherst school, the hickory building site off of West Pomeroy Lane, strong street land that was mentioned by Mandy moments ago. I think of in the future will we have the downtown fire station as a piece of property to reimagine and the DPW site on West Street if we don't utilize that site for part of DPW. What could that be so I just wanted to put it in the context of of Paul's goals that you provide and clearly over the last five to seven eight 10 years. One of the key filters that we use or lenses we use has been housing, reduce more housing so how do we as a community produce more housing and one of the ways we do that is to look at down assets town land, and, and put that lens of housing down over it so just kind of wanted to put some of the kind of thinking of staff into this conversation and I appreciate where everyone's going and, and that kind of surplus. I was interested in land that clearly the town manager could say that land should be surplus and sold and it is no longer an asset to the town versus land that is is is an asset that we could develop into something else. So I'll stop there. Thank you, Athena. Thank you, Bob. There was a couple of comments about the timeline and I just wanted to point out that while the policy as it's written now requires the council to hold a public hearing within 90 days of the town managers request. There's not a deadline for council action on the request, and the council action could come following a review by one or more council committees. So if there were questions about what the property might be used for that the town manager is proposing to sell that the town manager doesn't provide in his memo to the council. Then there can be a committee review and discussion process with the town manager and further questions can be answered at that point so I just want to point out that while there's a public hearing requirement with a deadline the council action doesn't provide a deadline. Council Haneke. Yeah, and to answer. Councilor Walker's comment. The council doesn't have to vote to dispose of it. And so if the council, if the manager says, you know, comes to the council under this policy and says sell the South Amherst property. I'll just pick that one for example. And then the council looks at the memo, looks at stuff, and then, you know, here's from Dave Zomek about his thoughts on things, you know, I'm just making stuff up here, here's from the public and says you know what, it's we're not ready to dispose of that that might be a valuable property in the future, the council can say and vote no. And then it's back to the planning process. So, just because the manager brings us a request to sell the property doesn't mean we have to agree with it. We could always, as Athena just said go back and say you know the memo wasn't complete enough we want more information on x, y and z. So, you know, I, I look at this and and say, what do we want in that initial memo. What, what else are we missing, or have we put too much in these one to 12 that the memo's too hard. Do we need all of that at first look, or start with more basic information and then go back and say, you know, and say, you know, for this property we don't actually need independently prepared salvage structure cost effective, but maybe for another property we do. Because maybe we don't need it because it's obvious we're not going to keep this building, because it's in horrible condition Hitchcock or something the Hitchcock the old Hitchcock Center or something. So, I'd love to talk about what these one to 12s are and and get into whether we want more items in the memo or less items in the memo and then, whether we want to add anything beyond the manager bringing us a memo. Like, it's going to get referred to committees or things like that to that we would require things to happen instead of just think about them happening. Mandy, thank you for bringing this up because I think what had me feeling there's no process in here was that before we get this memo, the town manager was supposed to have thought through with staff alternative uses for the property, any public benefits, what restrictions might be property, and this long list. And that's what to me is a planning process and potential use of the property. And I thought this is quite a memo we're getting, if it's, if it's a major property, if it's as Bernie said, if it's a small thing, it's like, you don't need to do all of that. So, the, I think if it's significant property, it does need a process so this idea that the, the town manager would discuss with the council what process they might want to put in place including establishing an X, Y or Z but this is, I'm not ready to write this one through 12, but it did strike me that we were asking the staff to do all the things I just said I would like to do with a major property that's a public process. And they're supposed to come in one memo, then the council goes out the way this says that the council goes out and gets public comment but it's too much to ask that all of that happened for a major piece of property. And that's what I found intriguing about this one town and I think I was looking at Deerfield might have done something similar. I'm knowing where property was going they set up a process so that the town manager at the point they were disposing of it. I already had some idea where they were going with an RFP, but it wasn't because internally, they came up with every idea, and every option so, so, I don't know how we do that today or not, and I really, Athena, I would love to get a word version of this afterwards so I think about it, but, but it's, it is that wording all the way through that had me say, this is all an internal staff no one even knows what's happening it comes to the council and then the council reacts that it puts us in a reactive, rather than a more advanced assets to be developed which is what Dave Tomek talked about. It shouldn't be just town staff thinking about an extremely valuable piece of public land and public building on what could be done with it so it's a simple sentence that says there. The council could work with the town manager could set up something would help me understand what will happen when it's major. Thank you. So I think, you know, I haven't really investigated East Hamptons. I don't think there's processes based on a policy. I think it was the executive saying here's how we're going to investigate disposing of these properties. So that was developed by the town staff and said, when we're thinking about it, we're going to put a committee together and here's how we're going to it's not you imply that it's just a town staff that the executive could form a committee of lots of people to investigate what to do with a piece of property to whether to do all these things. It doesn't, you know, I think that doesn't preclude the ability of the manager to put together a committee and do a very public process before delivering it to the council. So I would we can call over at East Hampton see what their actual policy is versus what their action was I believe was the executive putting this together from what I could read quickly online. So I think, you know, the the idea is we're trying to look at the roles and responsibilities of the council and the manager, and that this is a policy just about getting to disposition. Council holds the ultimate power and authority to say yes or no, and to say this was not good enough we need more involvement of the public or however you think it should happen. So I think this this is a relatively simple policy about, you know, what do you need to make the decision. And I think you get you start to getting more detailed of it is going to be more and more complex and cumbersome in order to dispose of something that everybody knows we want to get rid of. Yeah, it's, I guess, maybe we should focus on the one through 12. Because I think I'm hearing that I'm hearing two things I'm hearing one thing which is, we really should weigh out a process for making the decision as to whether we want to sell something or not. And the second thing is what do we need to know about something in order to before we dispose of it before we sell it. And I'm not sure that we're. I'm not sure that this this policy is is the place to do that. So, anyway, maybe we should, because I when I look at one through 12. I see a lot of the steps in making a decision as to what you want to use this property for. It's not just before we sell it we have to, you know, we have to do XYZ. It's really, you know, we really look at, you know, what are the potential future uses of this property, you know, what makes sense economically. So, I don't know, I mean, maybe I'm miss reading one through 12 but maybe if we go through one through 12 we can at least put some, you know, put some bounds on on this policy itself. And then, you know, move on from there. Does that make sense. Okay, so. Maybe just go through each one. Do we. I mean, one of the questions that came up. I think it's here is, you know, how far back do you go in history. What is, you know, what do you mean by, you know, future uses, you know, etc. So, I think there's some question from the public, at least on, what do we mean by history and past uses, and how far back do we go and then, you know, does the current use is the current use really relevant to a decision to dispose of something. Bernie, you muted Bernie. That wasn't from the public that was me because I've been there. Yeah, you know, when you say it's it's history history and past uses are, you know, I would just say past use. And, you know, rely on what's in the assessor's records. Because as a historian, if you want to, you know, do you really want to know if the, the property was involved in a significant historical event or or. And she wanted to know what the previous use was. My other concern would be a concern is just how, you know, how far back do you want to go in terms of past use. And sometimes it pays to go go back significantly if you understand that the property had some industrial purpose way back when. So that was that was it. Let's, we need to, I think we need to set a limit on this. Yeah, and again, I would possibly rely on the assessor's records as to for what what past use the property had. Well, maybe that's something we could, you know, that would be something to you would want to include a historian a town historian in your decision making group. That's not what it's exactly what I'm trying to avoid. You know, we have a tendency, we towns in New England have a tendency not to throw anything away to reuse everything, which is fine. Towns in New England also have a tendency to go back to ancient times, which is not necessary. I mean, if we're talking about a piece of property that the town has taken for back taxes and wanted to clear its surplus. And it sits in the middle of a subdivision why in the world would you want to incorporate anything more than its its previous use in this in this discussion. Why would you want to get a town historian involved. I'm trying to get this to be simple and direct, which is stuff we have, we have problems with simple and direct and immersed. So do we really need past uses then we just use past use and, you know, just just past use. So, and again relying on the assessor's record for what for what those past use use were, you know, or immediate past immediate past use. And again, if the council feels that I need to go back into ancient times I'm something the council can then reject this and say we need to go back to times. But for for just for practical purposes just to move this along. And, you know, I really don't know how many properties we're talking about either we're spending a lot of time talking about this and we may have what I don't know how many properties we have that we want a surplus. Because again, is, is, you know, both tradition and Dave's omics careful process. We tend to look real hard at things that we own and figure out how we can make better use of them rather than get rid of them. Council Hanneke. I'm going with what what Bernie was saying is current use really relevant to whether we're going to dispose of it or not. Or I think actually, Bob, you were saying that and, you know, it might be useful to know and it's probably not hard to figure out. So, but I guess I could probably get rid of it past uses. Immediate past use would be good, but I also wonder if knowing if we're looking if the council's trying to decide whether this is something that a correct decision was made to sell versus keep for potential reuse. Knowledge of whether there is any past use that might affect reuse of the property. I'm not sure how that would be worded, but, but as as Bernie was saying, if it was a past use of, like, like the, the DPW location now, or any of the, there's many DPW locations, if we reuse it for 50 years into something else, and then decide that it's surplus property and want to sell it it might be worth knowing that it was a DPW location at some point or salt shed at some point. Because it might affect how we think about the potential for governmental reuse, but I don't know how to how to put that in there or whether just past uses or immediate past uses is good enough. Because I think number one is fine. I agree with the history though we don't really need the history. If we're thinking about disposition of properties that run the gamut from tax title and a subdivision to large parcel that is in a forested area, but might be able to be developed. I can see that you would you definitely want to know if there's any past use that affects, you know, that that restricts future use. I'm thinking of a brownfield situation that you could not put residences in a place without without cleaning up, say soil contamination. You might be able to put some, you know, office building in there without as stringent to clean up. So, okay. This is an addition the second one is an addition I don't know who put that in there but maybe we should whoever put that in can talk about what I put it in. I had seen it in the current policy and, you know, I don't know whether something would come to the council for disposition that wasn't within the council's custody to dispose of, or whether that would have already been taken care of. But I thought it would be useful as part of the memo. If it's not already in the council's custody to know it's not and that we'd have to take custody of it in order to dispose of it. So, it shouldn't be a hard thing to add to the memo, but I think it's worth knowing whether we have one step or two steps. And, and Mandy that's in the current policy so I saw you just it made it clear that someone has to have released custody of it. So, okay. That sounds reasonable. We have three map comments on that commented source of the map. I can't read read everything because the things are getting in the way. Again, that was a suggestion I made that, you know, we're going to have a map of the property in the budding parcels. It may be certainly before it gets sold. It's going to have to be served. Yeah. I can't rely on accessories maps their approximations but for the purpose of informing the council is to whether or not this is disposed could should be disposed of I think. You know the accessories maps would probably would probably survive suffice. Okay, so. I'm not. The question is for number four is whether we should have that for each a budding parcel as well or just do we just need to existing zoning status of the property and in question. Mandy has her hand up up. Oh, I'm sorry. Keep moving things around sorry. That's fine. I wonder. When I thought about I didn't myself propose any changes. I'm not. And then when I thought about it I figured all it's asking for is the zoning map is my, my belief. And if it's all it's asking for is essentially the zoning map of Oh this parcel is in the BL or this parcel is in the RO. That's fine. I don't know whether we would need initially zoning changes that have been made within the past five years I'm not sure what that would provide the council in helping to make its decision as to whether to dispose of it or not. The existing status is because the existing status is the existing status if you dispose of it that's what falls. And that's what applies. And if you've got the zoning status. If it is really just the zoning map of what what district it's in. And I'm not sure if it's just going to be on the map, but I'm not sure it's necessary for the abutting parcels either unless there's a concern, but I don't have anything against the abutting parcels, but I'm leaning more towards requesting deleting the zoning changes made within the past five years because I'm not sure how useful that is for deciding whether to dispose of the property or not. I tend to agree with that. I totally agree. I don't know. I don't know why it's relevant and you know the only the existing zoning status would I think I'm trying to think where there is a school it may be zoned for education even though it's in the XYZ zone. Clearly the I don't know what the South Tamer school is currently zoned as for example Dave so my it hasn't been used as a school in a long time so I'm assuming it's just in the residential zone that it's in the residential zone. Yeah. So. Okay. Five. Just real quick education uses tend to be exempted from the zoning levels. So you could have a school in the middle of a residential district. Right in the middle of an industrial district. So it doesn't have to be it. You want to know what the. You want to know what the existing zoning is. And again an educational uses is an exempt. Use. Okay, so five out of the wording and comments on five. Six was an addition. I guess. What is usable condition mean. I said is usable condition referred to its immediate past use. You know, then made the remark that we probably might just fold this requirement into. What was discussion number six and is now discussion number 10 out of number 10. You know, if you say we want to convert it to it's you to a usable condition is that mean it's immediate past use or does it mean we can use it in another way. And six was for that reason, Bernie, I thought it was completely problematic, you know, unless it's going to be reused as structured. The cost vary a lot. So the cost of restoring the also the words restoring. So, so I think you do need to. And so if we're not talking about the land, it's conditions of the building, right? I mean, in some way, you have to talk about the, the wiring, the H back and everything else. So if it gets folded into something else that's fine with me. Is that does seven sort of cover that. You might be able to fold it into seven and 10. I like talking about the condition of the building. I think instead of like restoring it more of, could you even is the age back system broken. Yeah, so I would somewhere talk about the condition of the condition of the building. So we have that in number one. Yeah, we have the condition in number one condition of the structures, condition of the structures. Maybe we could add and, you know, in critical components, you know, such as HVAC. That would do it for me. You know, when, you know, just to use the South Amherst School Dave when we talked about potentially opening the doors, it was before anyone it could be used at all you had to spend so much money. You know, a couple hundred thousand dollars on it. So it's, so then would we just eliminate six. I think we can just eliminate six, you know, so seven. So seven was the one I read as, yeah, if it's major, a whole lot of planning just went into doing seven. Because it's public benefits, alternative uses, environmental impact, financial impact for each alternative. This, this is easy for a vacant piece of not very usable land, not so easy for building. So I wonder if I think I'm the one that added a to summary of the reasons for deeming the property surplus that's similar in some sense to number seven, I would hope seven was done before asking us to dispose of the property. And maybe keeping number eight of tell us why you're saying we don't have a use for this now or in the future and we can sell it, we shouldn't hold on to it without requiring all of this analysis every time. Because going back to Bernie's example of tax title, or you know gift at death. Right, sometimes the town has left houses at death bequests, and we just don't want them. Do we really need an environmental impact analysis before we decide to sell it. And if the summary is not deemed sufficient, the council can always ask for more information. It goes back to what do we need to start considering the request to sell. And I'm not sure all of seven is needed, much of it should have been done, but can be included in the summary for reasons to deem it surplus. And if it said a summary for reasons for deeming the property surplus comma, including any analysis that reach that conclusion, you know, of uses that reach that conclusion so you just, you're, you're saying that you went through some sort of process to decide it's actually surplus. But that this is where I do want that process when it's major but it doesn't have to be right embedded in in this piece. I agree. I think we could get rid of seven. I think it was any did you have a comment. I'm just trying just to make sure that we thinking about things that are particular to the property itself, like wetlands or brown fields. Well, we talk. I think, I think the issue that we we talked about earlier was whether there were any past uses that precluded future uses. I think that would get at the brownfields issue wouldn't it. Possibly, probably, yeah. Wetlands and other limitations on development would both be something that we would be thinking about I assume the manager would be thinking about in whether there's potential reuse, but also potential for sale. So do you think do you want to do you think we have enough information here or do you think we need to put something in here as it in what is now eight says including any analysis that eight of the manager and reaching that conclusion. Number eight is currently written summary of reasons for declaring a property surplus including any analysis that eight of the manager and reaching that conclusion. That's what we're suggesting we added the limitations on developer sort of comes up and will be considered in nine. I have a suggestion if we. Athena is capturing these as pasties right now because she's not working on a word document. It's me because I'm not. Yeah. And we're doing this maybe we can take a second look at this because as we're moving things to other bullets and doing some sub things it would be easier to figure out if we're missing something. Yeah, so. So right now, Mandy, Andy can't see how eight would read because there's a white thing over. Yeah, I don't know. It's an easy way of doing it, given that it's pace. I call pasties, but I don't have a different way of quite get it far enough over. That's all right. I mean, I'm glad you're doing it this way but. We're not going to finish this today it might be good enough for us to get to a new draft. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. What you're doing because you're capturing things that we're raising about each of the points and placing it with the point you're doing it in the most logical way so thank you. Okay, so we move to what's now nine doesn't look like anybody has any comments on that. David. I think that's a small thing. I just find the wording there is rather redundant to independently prepared appraisals of the properties worth and a good faith estimate. Good faith doesn't really come into play when you're talking about a third party appraisal so to me it's just too independently prepared appraisals of the properties. Value fair market value. An appraisal of fair market value is what a prospective buyer would pay for the property. So, I just think we could simplify the wording there and get rid of properties worth and good faith estimate it's not. But then you do need the words fair market value because worth is a different concept. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. So, I think we should be prepared appraisals of the properties fair market value. Again, you know when we think of you know when Bernie pointed this out. And I'm not sure if all of these will be required but getting to independent appraisals of a three acre parcel in South Amherst that we may want to surplus. You might, if you really require two independent appraisals that might be more value than the property actually has on the fair market so. Because that three acres might be partially wet and not even be a building lot but you know, we're talking about very small parcels in some case or, you know, small piece of the property that may have very little value there in the world. But that's, that's true. I mean we need, you need an appraisal because your other appraisal is the value that these sessions set. Right is the suggestion changing it to independently prepared appraisal of the property, rather than. In my career I've had very few instances where we've used to. I mean I think it could come up in very high value properties but I. I can probably count on one hand, both in Amherst and other positions I've held where you've gotten to. Perhaps Bernie in his role in public administration. What do you think Bernie is? I've never, we've, I've never had a reason to get, to get two appraisals. Again, I mean you have, you have one benchmark in the assessors valuation of the property which should be, you know, within plus or minus what 5% of the value. And then you've got, you've got what the appraiser says before. You have the assessors value, you have the assessors value and the appraised value from an independent appraiser. Right, what do you need. Yeah, I think, I think one is fine. Yeah, that's also to throw a little bit of a curve in here. I believe the chapter 30 B gives us some flexibility in terms of what we sell the property for. So if we were going to sell the property to a conservation organization, they were going to add three acres on to their is on to their existing conserved property we might want to let that go for less than the appraised value. It doesn't look good. So, but certainly, you know, you've got two benchmarks. 30 be limits you on the upside by property it doesn't require you to set a highest and best price on the downside when you're selling it, I believe I could be wrong. I think I think one. You might want to include here, since the opening sentences what the managers going to be providing the council, the assessed value of the property and one appraisal. Just put it together. I will say the only time I've ever gotten to appraisals was really purchasing land for a municipality when the seller didn't agree with the first appraisal appraisal too low. And yeah, just appraisal costs have gone up like anything else but really these days you're talking appraisals going for 3,000 3,500 depending on the size of the property it could be 8 to 10,000. So it's not a trivial amount to get to independent appraisal appraisals. I'm just throwing this out. We have the experience in Louisiana of doing valuations of homes that were damaged or or destroyed by Hurricane Katrina and we started out using brokers opinions. These are basically real estate brokers would say what would I value that property at the end the public, the public preferred to have appraisals and I actually compared what we had where we had appraise values and brokers opinions and brokers opinions were actually higher than the appraise values. So, but you can get those a lot less, they're a lot less expensive than doing appraisers appraisals. So maybe for smaller properties. You know, we could just get the, the assess value and then a broker's opinion. You know, they do comparables basically. So it's just a thought. Yeah, I wouldn't want to ask a broker to do a comp on a three acre parcel that's a wetland. But yeah, it's, it's possible. The difference between, you know, the, the, I don't know if, and again, you know, I think we have, we can have a high degree of reliance on our assessors values. We have a careful professionals principle assessor and I think that that databases is pretty valuable and it's a good start. It's fine. Yeah, I like Andy's suggestion of, you know, including these the assess value as well as one independent. Yeah. So it should be added to nine. Yeah, it is. Okay. I didn't risk writing that with my hand. I handwriting. Okay, so 10 is one that I added. And it gets at the issue that Andy and I have discussed where there, you know, there's, there might be salvageable stuff in that building that could be sold. I don't know whether that's kind of folded into some of the other analyses or not, or whether it's folded into costs for demolition. So, excuse me, spam call here. If you that will affect the likely affect the sale of cost of the or demo cost of the property because somebody's going to, you know, somebody's going to demo what's going to take all the valuable stuff out first. Right. Right. So if you've got the people have gone through and it's always a toss up as to whether a demo of a building is an as increases the value of the property or not. So, it's a good thought but but the salvage value of the components would be in the would likely get folded into an appraisal of the property somehow, or might be an incentive for someone to accept the appraised value and bid high. Okay, my, my only comment here is that independently prepared estimate. What does that mean is that adding more cost to this, you know, because no one's going to come into building X for less than a few thousand dollars so we're adding more and more cost to this assessment. So my experience working with, you know, Rob Mora and and other staff here. You know, as much as we would like to reuse building components and elements of buildings, it at least my experience here has been. Not a lot. We're not talking about beautiful oak beams in barns and things of that sort. Most of the time when we've approached this, it actually adds cost to the, to the, to the demo contract to do. So, you know, it's, it's a worthwhile endeavor but we've not, you know, yes, there could be some pipe, you know, some copper. Maybe some flooring, maybe some, some structural beams, but most of the time we do kind of break it out and we ask the demo company to give some sort of an estimate is that a plus for them or is that a minus meaning is it going to cost us more or less, because we're also trying to do, do some of these demos in the most environmentally conscious way we can. So, I would just for buildings, you know, an estimate of whether salvage of the structure or components of the structure would be cost effective I just worry about that independently prepared because that means bringing in an engineer. Yeah, Dave, let me just add something to help you on this. The reason that I had raised it with Bob was when I was canvassing prior to an election. I ended up stopping by the house that turned out to be, he remembers last saying, I think Paul Weiler, but he was the manager, the building manager for the school district at one time. And he was there for very familiar with what was in the guts of the two school buildings that we are about to move away from as build usable buildings. And he made the comment to me that from his knowledge of the buildings that there's a lot of valuable material that's in the buildings and that we need to make sure that the town doesn't give away that value that benefits from the value of those components. Mandy has her hand up. Yeah, yeah, Councilor Hanna key. So, I'm trying to figure out whether this one's necessary for disposal of property thinking about what we would have why we would have this memo which would be to sell the property. And even if there's a lot of hidden value because there's copper pipes or something that if someone demos the building can sell the copper, wouldn't that be part of the independent prepared appraisal for fair market value because if you're selling it. You're selling that component to and so do we really need to know salvage for property. We're being asked to sell versus salvage if we're going to demo and reuse the property itself, but that's the reuse that's not what this this memo is asking us to do. And so I'm leaning towards not just deleting the independently prepared part, but the whole item. Ernie. I would agree. I also can tell you about going to associated wreckings. Property and in Springfield, looking for marble. Because when they take a building down they take it apart first and recycle what they can and then they knock it up or bricks from mold buildings and holy up being taken out one by one and cleaned and sent off to China where they were considered an essential element. So, so I would just, I think if we're going to have an appraisal of the property the appraiser can offer a recommendation as to whether or not there's salvage value, which would go into the sale price. And, you know, Dave from his experience and building commissioners experience with, you know, takedowns. You know having some salvage value in there reduces the cost of the takedown may reduce the cost of the takedown. So I just let it go. I agree. Should we put some some reference to salvage value in the previous one which appraisals. I was going to suggest that Bob if Mandy keeps doing sticky notes. The independently appraiser the property comma fair market value comma, including any salvage value of materials. To get at this because hopefully, if we're actually going to market, we're not the demolition people it's the buyer. Let's get gets back to what Andy said we don't want to be giving away a lot of value that we could otherwise sell basically. Okay. Okay. Any comments on 11. Okay. Or 12. All right. And I guess the, that's it. We just have questions in here. I have, I have one question. Can you scroll back up just on a mandate scroll to where the council pieces. The prior to taking any action the council shall hold a public hearing. This, this time period. The council has to go out for public hearing if the council wants to ask questions or set up a process. We have to hold a public hearing on this on the request for disposition. So is that 90 days dictated by statute was my question. This memo. It's a question. Check. I don't think I pulled that out of the narrow. I think it came from somewhere, but I would have to check if it was in the statute or if it was a practice that other communities had adopted that seems logical. That's me so I can check. Because to me, for the most part, we would just move forward if it was again, if something hasn't happened before. We might not go for public comment on a surplus property with a recommendation to sell we might invoke another. I mean, we don't agree that this is surplus, or we don't agree with the terms that you've come up or whatever. It's just a question I have on the having to go out with what the manager has recommended to us as opposed to potentially questioning it, putting it in. And so it's, it's because I read this. I think everyone would everyone else read it. I think with what's been proposed to us is the way I read it is the way I'm reading it. We can't go out with something else. So that's my question. And it's just, it's a purely technical question is, is there a requirement that once something has been declared surplus by the manager the council has to go out to hear on that recommendation, or can we talk about it. And Bernie's got his hand up. I did check Bernie by the way, in the old wording, you're right that it's possible that, given special conditions one might not get so it birds full market value because you've got conservation that's written into the state statute. You just have to really good reason why. But this, this is, this is just my question on that specific wording on technical requirement. You can hold a hearing. And I believe that that's, I'm guessing that's part of 30. You can hold the hearing and you can part of the hearing can say how horrible this proposal is. And hearings can be called and then recessed to a date and time certain, so that if you believe that night after 90 days you're not going to have the information you need the council believes that they can hold a hearing and say at the hearing we don't have the information so we're going to continue this here. And off you go. I've seen situations where actually planning boards have made it an art of continuing hearings on on on infinite to get around making a decision so that you do have you have some flexibility is what on the council has some flexibility here is what I'm saying. Hey, I think does, do people agree that we should just have Dave and Athena do another draft for this with these comments and then we can kind of take a look at that. Yes. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. Good. Any other comments on this. The last thing that's on the list. Put her hand up. Sorry, go ahead. Athena, I was just going to thank you. I was just going to offer a time check. It's 340 and we haven't taken a public comment yet. Right. I was going to go to if the committee doesn't have sufficient time to really get into the original school vote on the debt authorization then I would just ask that the committee send us their questions and we're planning on inviting the school staff to the next meeting or at least the superintendent and someone from the regional school committee at the next meeting so it would be helpful to have those questions in advance. Yeah, I just had a question about that. If you're going to skip sort of discussion, what, what is the deadline for sending questions and to who would they need to go. You could send them to me and let's say by next Tuesday week from today. And I will forward them on to to Doug. Kathy. And I just want to make sure we are asking the school or notifying the schools that in the case of CPAC they need to go back to CPAC to get that word wording to address the wording. You know, so that when we, when we meet in finance, it would be CPAC. But Paul probably knows this but usually after they've voted out their package and it's gone to the they don't necessarily meet between now and when we're meeting next. So they'll have to convene a meeting in some way. So I just want to make sure that that step doesn't get lost somewhere in the process because it went to the finance committee. We can't act on that. We can just send the request. So that will be one of my questions, but I want to make sure we put something in motion. Okay, Andy. Yeah, the only thing I'm thinking about is the four times meeting. And whether this will we haven't seen the agenda yet for the four times meeting. Whether anybody is going to be on the agenda for discussion. And if it is, it might be worth just saying that the committee should send. Suggestions to the town are the council president and the chair of the finance committee. So they're aware of the questions prior to the four times meeting. Which is the 17th. Okay. So, I want to open this up now to public comment. The comments can be on anything that is within the jurisdiction of this committee. It doesn't have to be on anything that's on today's agenda. So if there's anyone in the audience that wants to provide a public comment, can you please just raise your hand and we will recognize you. I do not see any one raising their hands. So I think we can just. I will then then close public comments. Yeah, so anything else. As I said, we were going to just ask for any questions that people have on the, on the debt authorization. The regional school commissions. Recision and replacement of the debt thing we were going to ask for questions and then we next week or next meeting will, will have representatives here to discuss this in greater detail. Councilor Henniky. Given that there was no public comment, do we want to take the next 10 minutes to, to have a mini discussion or throw out some of those questions so that people can hear where they are. Sure. Do people have questions? I'm happy to start, but I'm happy to let someone else start to start. I have questions and I'll try to go through sort of the, the subject matter of the questions. One is the, the specific wording of the borrowing authorization. I am still very concerned that it includes non rotation of the track. I was talking to some school committee members this morning about that. So I'll have some questions around. Is that still a possibility that, that this might only go towards repairing a six lane track in place. Concerned about what does the wording has been received mean, and what counts as quote sufficient funding to move forward with a rotation of the track and expansion to eight lanes. And then sources, this gets to what Kathy was saying about sources have, have CPA been applied for how does that work it goes back to what does sufficient funding has been received actually mean, and, and stuff like that. So timing of stuff like that. And then a lot of my other questions relate to maintenance costs, which are kind of related to this. I put it as trying to figure out whether we should authorize this borrowing. Based on what is the expectation as to who will maintain the fields and in what condition and who will absorb the costs of that maintenance. So a lot of my questions go towards that. If the field is replaced in place the track and field is replaced in place if it is rotated and done with grass versus turf, who are they expecting to maintain it in what level current maintenance or higher maintenance if it's grass, things like that and just trying to get an idea of what ongoing funds would go on that way. And also updated cost estimates because it's my understanding that the 1.5 million is supposed to cover a replacement in place. But that estimate I believe is a couple years old so I'm going to be asking about whether it does actually cover a replacement in place things like that. So those are sort of some of the larger areas of my questions. Andy. Andy's taken a number of the things that I was going to raise about maintenance. So I'm not going to repeat what she just said. The only thing that I would add is. Are we concerned that there be enough laying fields within the area of the regional schools to allow all sports that could potentially be desired to have adequate field space at all times. And I say it all times because I think that we know that the area is built on over a brook that's underground that it's wetlands that the conditions can be very. Or for maintaining the fields for use. At all times and I think that that was one of the reasons that we were looking for something that would solve that problem and allow for adequate field space for all activities. Okay. Kathy. And I'm assuming that Athena is capturing these as words but building on what Andy just said the and Mandy. I'll send them in as words the if the track. I'm not sure if it's updated Cal systems but if the track remains in place. There is a problem with drainage of the field that's in the middle of the track. It was never whatever wasn't done to it. That would allow drainage so one of the things you get is is water comes off the field onto the track. And now Andy's talked about all the fields. Even the expensive proposal didn't deal with several of the fields it just left them the way they were, you know that it, it fix the field. If it reoriented the track, it fix the field in the middle. And it was never clear to me that that the cost estimate included drainage systems that would do the others the the original design as shockingly expensive it was said oh by the way this we're not dealing with field x, y and z. Andy you just broadened it a lot but I would like to know if whatever estimates they're getting, or at least doing drainage systems. And the reason I'm asking about this is the Fort River elementary school, a big part of that project cost is not the not the building per day, but it's dealing with the water level and raising the school and raising the field levels to put underlying drainage systems underneath them in a way that they didn't have before. So it's about the fields and drainage systems when they're getting cost estimates. And when you said sufficient Mandy I also wanted to know sufficient by x date. Because the CPA funding also was, you know, this money is available. If the project is moving forward so what we're hearing from track and field people is my goodness at least give us a track. You know, you're tied up and in reorienting not reorienting but meanwhile, we don't have a place to run so I think having a date certain would be good on a green light for something. My last has nothing to do with the regional schools themselves, but UMass has fields, including artificial turf practice fields, and I think we should make a concerted effort to approach them for the in kind kind of distribution. Bernie has talked about several times of at least letting practice sessions happen on some of those practice fields because they're empty. A lot of times, and there's a new chancellor who wants to be part of the community. So I just think it's, it's a side issue but for our teams or even our ultimate frisbee team goes to another town to play when we've got playing fields between Amherst College and UMass. So it's, it's a side issue but I think we should be pleading the cause of our athletic teams. Okay. So, if you can put these questions, you know, write these questions out and send them to me. I'd appreciate that. Okay, any other comments, issues. Any other topics that not reasonably anticipated. So just, just a quick check Bob next meeting track and field will be back to us and CPAC will be back to us and then to extend their updates on estimates that's the anticipated agenda. Yes. Correct. Okay. Athena has her hand up. I had added the minutes to the packet but I failed to put them on the agenda so they're, they're in the packet for today but I'll make sure that they're on the agenda for next time along with minutes from today. Okay, thank you. All right. If there are no other comments, we'll adjourn the meeting it's 3.53pm. And we'll see you in a couple of weeks. Thank you. Bye everyone.