 Good evening. I'd like to call this meeting of the community preservation that preservation act committee to order at 602 p.m. on December 2 2021. We are still meeting remotely because of the pandemic. I would like to call on the members I see here and make sure that they can hear me and be heard. So I am Sarah Marshall I present the recreation commission. Sam McLeod. At large member. Tim Neil. Present. Also at large. Sarah Eisinger. Present, and I'm taking minutes. Wonderful. Thank you. That's right. Dave Williams. Housing Authority. Andy McGoogle. Present. Thank you from the planning board and on a Devlin got here. Present. And the conservation commission. So we will hope to say, ah, and there is heady startup. Just taking attendance. Can you hear me? Yes. That's wonderful from the historical commission. So perhaps Katie will join us in a few meetings. All right. And Sarah Eisinger is taking minutes. Thank you so much. All right. Did I hear anything? Okay. Okay. So I will launch right into reviewing minutes. So I hope everybody's had a chance to look at. The revised minutes of November 10th. Taken by Sam. Let's start with those. How many have read them and are ready to. Make any comments. Okay. So I'm going to go back to the rest of the comments. I'm going to go back to the rest of the comments. More than, more than little edits and typos and things, which you can send directly to Sam. Does anyone have some. Large. Dave, Dave, I hear you. I'm not sure if you're trying it. Okay. Now I hear you, Dave. If you don't have it. You don't have a question. I'm not sure. I think. No, no question. And I'm having some technical problems. So keep moving. Okay. All right. Perhaps you'd like to mute yourself then. And since we've lost your video, put up the little yellow hand. If you, if you have a question. So, and here is Katie. I'm going to go back to the rest of the comments. Okay. Thank you. Also at large. Welcome. We're just tackling the minutes, the revised draft minutes of November 10. And I'm asking if anyone has substantive questions or, or changes to make and I don't see any. No. All right. Then would someone move to accept them with any minor changes that are emailed directly to Sam. Okay. Thank you. Seconded. And he's seconding. Okay. Thank you. I have to do roll call vote. Sam. In favor. I. Hi, Tim. Hi. Sarah Isinger. I can hear you. I see you some thumbs up. Okay. That's what that. Let the record show that's an eye. Hi. Hi. Katie. Hi. Andy. Dave. Not sure if he can hear. Anna. Hi. And I am an eye. So that's. Let's call that. Eight to zero with maybe David not able to vote at the moment. Okay. Wonderful. Okay. Now the minutes from two weeks ago. From Katie. Thank you, Katie. Okay. Again, you can send small changes directly to Katie. Does anyone have a substantive. Change to suggest. Sam. I did email them to get to Katie this afternoon. Cause I just read them today. They involved that in a sentence. So I guess that would be substantive. That is. There were three items on page four paragraph 11. McLeod. I would benefit from the discussion. From discussion to hear committee, different committee members, perspectives. I added the sentence. I would be an advocate in favor of Katie's suggestion regarding consensus. Building. Given the variables involved. Which is still a condense for what I said. I don't know if anyone object to that. I admit I, I elaborated or corrected my, some of my own comments. I had three, I had three emails. With what I would consider those small ish edits. I don't know if anyone else had a chance to read or if anyone else sent them to me. Well, yeah, I don't know. Tim has something to offer. I don't know if anyone else has a chance to read or edit. So I don't know. I don't know if anyone else has a chance to read or edit. But there were versions I saw there were two, and I don't have it in front of you. There were two sections marked in yellow. Yeah, those were corrected. Okay. Great. Great. Okay. So I had two other edits, but if they're minor edits. According to the minute, take, or I'm fine. Not verbalize them. If, if we want to hear them all Sam. Okay. We don't have to write them down twice just. Send them to your email them to her. I do have them already and Sam, you're welcome to share. I didn't think they were a major change, but feel free to share. I'm indifferent. Okay. That's fine then. So any other comments on the minutes of November 18. All right. Sorry, I had a quick one. Yes. Yeah. Sorry to interrupt. For my comment about concern about the dollar request being too high question, if it could be phased and noted, it was lower priority to subsidize private business. The last piece, I, I haven't had a chance to like word this, but like that last piece was, was more of like amusing of mine and certainly does not represent. The, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the committees. Thinking that. That those projects would not be. Would have. Not be as important. Sorry. I didn't, I bungled the wording there. I'll, I can flip you a note with it, but I just wanted to make sure that it didn't come across as. This is the committee's preference. Right. Okay. We'll feel free to send that to Katie. So yeah. Okay. Thank you. Can I have a motion to accept. The minutes of November 18th. I moved to accept the minutes of November 18th with the referenced edits that have been emailed to Katie. Thank you. Sam, anybody second. Who has. Tim. Okay. Roll call again. All in. Asking, are you in favor of accepting the minutes as edited. Sam. Hi. Tim. Hi. Sarah. Another thumbs up. I'm sorry. I'm, I keep, yeah. That's fine. Okay. Thank you. Heady. Yes. Katie. Hi. Dave. Hi. Anna. Hi. Andy. Hi. And I am an eye. So that's nine zero. Dave is. Back. Back in the meeting. Okay. Wonderful. So at this point, we will take public comment. If there's anyone in the audience. If you wish to make a public comment, please. Put up your hand. The little yellow hand and Sonia will. Or Sean will bring you in. I'm going to bring in, I'm going to bring in my, my cage. Okay. Hi. Hi, everybody. Oops. Excuse me. Sorry. We hear you. Hi, Sarah. Hi, everyone. Thank you. For having public comment at the meeting and thank you for your general enthusiasm for the project. That we propose this time for the second time. I'm sorry. I missed the discussion last week when, or last meeting. Anyway, I don't know if it's on the agenda this time. But I wanted to. I wanted to make sure that we felt for the project. From many of you, but also from the conservation commission and the historic commission. And feel good about our forward progress this week. Or yeah, I had a, or last week, I had an interview. Excuse me, Meg. Can I interrupt? Can you just state what project you're in support of? I'm sorry. No, but I just want to make sure. Thank you. That's so helpful. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. This is a history. It's a project in the historic. Category for an interpretive trail along the Mill River. Identifying where there were mill sites, many of which are there. And the purpose of the project is to preserve. Those physical structures that are there. And as I said to someone earlier. These were in the 1775. In the 1850s, the middle of the county, the middle of the county, the middle of the county. And some of the, some of the ones. There were dozens all along the mill river. And the remnants, the sites. There are fragile and valuable. To protect. And this week, I've, I've met this amazing man, Pete Kosolaskos, who's lived on summer street. Since the middle of the 1930s. And as a high school student worked at the law lumber mill. Steve Puffer, Barbara Puffer's father harvesting ice off Puffer's pond, which they carried all over the place for use in the summer. We did an hour long video, Barbara Puffer, Steve Puffer's daughter and Peter Koslaskis, 98 years old and sharp as a tack, I couldn't believe it. And this video will be available for people to hear his live, his memories of his childhood and watching the ice house burn down and things like that, what tools they used to harvest the ice. So that's the project. And I am pretty confident we're going to be able to succeed one way or the other. It would be really great to have CPA funding because it would be such a vote of confidence from the town. And I see that it's questionable. I always put the positive shine on something, let's just call it questionable, which is maybe more positive than it needs to be right now. We rewrote the proposal to be what we thought was aligned with CPA guidelines. And last year it was 160,000 we requested. And this year it's really just for four very specific sites, particular sites, not for the whole project for the whole trail and for signage and so on. So if we're not funded, it would be really helpful to know exactly why we didn't meet the criteria when we made such an effort to modify the proposal so that we would meet the criteria. Again, I'm thrilled. All of us working on this are delighted that this project has received so much positive enthusiasm. And we don't see it as, whatever happens happens and there's no ill will. But if you have questions I'm here. But anyway, if you have suggestions too, feel free to make them like more people we should interview or anything. It's pretty cool that there's so much interest in finding out what was going on in North Amherst, mostly in the 19th century. That's great. Thank you, Mae. Yeah, thank you, Sarah. I guess I unmute now, right? Yes, I think Sonia will remove you. Okay. Is there anyone else? Yes, Bruce Coleman. Okay. Hello, Bruce. Can you hear me? Yes, I can. Can't see you, but that's all right. It's your choice. No, I don't seem to have the ability to show you myself, but that's fine. The question that I want to present here, not the image. I did attend the last meeting and noted there was some concerns and particularly the question of eligibility. But before that, there was a question asked as to whether NECF has and the farm has received CPA funding in the past. And the answer is yes, that it has. It received $100,000 or so of CPA funding back in about 2005, when the land was first secured. So there's a precedent for CPA funding flowing to NECF and to this particular place, this North Amherst community farm. The other matter raised was the eligibility and you were uncertain as to whether this project would be eligible. This project being the erection of a pavilion further into the farm using materials that we essentially source from the existing barn rather than going and buying them from somewhere else. So I did contact the community preservation coalition and Stuart Saganar and I believe Sanya's also emailed them because I understand that the town's advice and guidance for such questions as this comes from the coalition. I went on to their website and it seems to me to be absolutely clear that such projects as ours are eligible. It particularly says, quoting, open air structures and park-like amenities such as pagolas, bandstands, pagodas, monuments, playgrounds, equipment, and there's a bit more of a list. But clearly open air park-like structures such as bandstands and pagolas would seem to be incontrovertibly describing our proposed structure. So it would seem to me that there's no doubt as to the eligibility of this project so far as the coalition is concerned and I hope the town and the committee will be guided by that. I think that the only other thing to say is that it just seems like a hell of a good deal that for $25,000 we will leverage it further 60 or 70 and we'll get a pavilion which would otherwise cost somewhere in the vicinity of $80,000 to $100,000 and there will be access and it will be a amenity that adds to the recreational facility of the town both in terms of access to land and in terms of a place to focus activity once you're there. So I commend you for all that you do. I hope that you will agree with me that the eligibility of this project should no longer be in question and I'll be here as if it's appropriate if there are any other questions that could be I could use to engage in answering. Thank you very much. Thank you Bruce. I'm bringing in Robin Fordham. Hello Robin, welcome. Hi there, can you hear me? We hear you, we don't see you, that's fine. Okay, I'm just in my car so you don't need to see me. Hi everybody. I enjoyed listening into the meeting last week and I just wanted to make public comment to the committee. I'm Robin Fordham. I'm a member of the commissioner of the historical commission former rep to the CPA for the historical commission and I just wanted to speak on behalf of the congee house proposal from a historic preservation perspective to hopefully provide some helpful direction. The first thing that I wanted to say or encourage is to when we look at projects like these that are not necessarily town projects from private some sort of private entity when you're dealing with historic preservation and CPA funds I'd encourage viewing the beneficiary of the funding as the actual historic resource. So in this case this would be the congee house. It's actually the congee house that is the beneficiary because we are preserving it in order for it to provide its benefit to the general public. Whether a church or social club or a private owner on something when we fund with CPA funds I believe that the general effort is to retain a historic resources for the benefit of the town, to retain the town character, to retain a piece of local history that has economic benefits and just general welfare benefits to the residents of the town. So there is some definitely secondary benefit to whoever owns the property but think of the resource first would be my suggestion. In terms of this particular house I wanted to make note of the fact that it is on the National Historic Register which is a really significant fact I think in reviewing the proposal it is not an easy process to get nominated and placed on the National Register and while we do fund other resources in town that haven't made it to that level yet the fact that it's already there that it's achieved that mark really moves it to the top of the list in terms of preservation focus for things that we should be thinking about preserving. It's in a particularly prominent location for our town. The second empire style is not widely represented and it would be a great loss to have it further diminished. Third I think that had he made this point and Shiana had talked about the fact that CPA funds there was some suggestion about funding a private enterprise and that in fact of the CPA coalition Massachusetts Historical Commission and I believe also preservation mass I'll specifically point private homeowners to CPA funds because there's so little funding for historic preservation if you're not a nonprofit. There are grant programs for things here and there for nonprofits but for private homeowners this is one of the only places they can come. They can look at tax credits which are an unrest and complicated process. I'd still encourage that in any regard because I think seeking out any additional resources is a great idea but CPA is targeted for that purpose so I just wanted to make that clear. And related to that denying funding for a project will not that does not have options for other funding will unfortunately just lead to further delayed maintenance and while it might be the case that it's frustrating that someone might come to us with a property that maybe should have been or would have been helpful if it had been kept along the way I think any of us who own historic properties know that that's not always the easiest thing to do and the purpose of historic preservation funds is to allow people to repair their properties in an appropriate manner. And then the last thing I wanted to touch on very quickly was just that the Historical Commission was in conversation with the congee house. We had a site visit there. We talked about the potential to restore the cast iron fence. So I wanted the members of the committee to know that there was active encouragement on our part to get them to come forward to request funding so that this very significant resource could get the care that it needs. And with that I look forward to you entertaining me for the rest of my drive. We will hope to make it worth saying. Thank you Robin. Drive safe. Thank you. All right. Samia, I believe Barbara Party wishes to speak. Yeah. I don't know if there's someone else also but yep. We're going to run the room now. Okay. Oops. No. We're out the wrong person. Well, no, you didn't. Hello Barbara. Welcome. Thank you. So I'm Barbara Party. I'm going to speak with respect to the NACF proposal for the pavilion made from from boards from the historic barn that Bruce just spoke to. I'm almost in a butter of that property. I live on Hobart Lane, which I think of as a kind of little anti-oasis in North Amherst made lovely by the existence of nearby farms, both the UMass learning farm and the wonderful simple gifts farm on the NACF property. So this land that's owned by NACF, the nonprofit NACF, at least to the wonderful CSA simple gifts farm. It really is an oasis in a densely populated part of North Amherst. Just a mile and a half north of the university, lots of family owned housing and student housing around it. And NACF and SGF host quite a number of public events there like the annual farm festival. And they often get more than a thousand people to come to some of those. The new pavilion, the proposed new pavilion, I think will be a great addition to such events as as was explained, I believe in the proposal. And that and I'm really interested in the trail system that's getting developed across the farm and connecting with a growing network of trails in the North Amherst in North Amherst new pavilion. I think I think it I think it really could be a nice focal point for that trail has great views out toward the Berkshire. It's a place where people can stop and raster take shelter from rain or picnic or whatever. And once once once the pavilion exists as the result of your support and a whole lot of volunteer effort and fundraising that NACF will do, then I'm sure a lot of other uses will surely arise for it. I think it will be a very very worthwhile and popular addition to what Amherst has to offer. That's it. Thank you, Barbara. Thank you. That's it. Okay. All right, then we will move on to any update on financials and then also hear about a possible funding plan for us, you know, what we could do with these projects with the money we have available. So Sonia, go ahead. So there's really no update in the amount of money that's available. Well, Tim has a question already though. You're muted. I don't understand what the estimated fund balance of 1 million and 29. Where's that coming from? Is that unspent projects or where's that from? Right below the table. Right below the blue box there, Sonia. Can we share the screen? Yeah, I'll share the screen from the packet. Okay. Right, right up between the yellow one. I'm looking at the 1 million, 29,459. Where's that from? Well, Tim, because Community Preservation Act is just like the operating budget where it's estimated. I'm estimating that at the end of fiscal year 21, that will be what's left in our fund. So it's just an estimate. Okay. So it'll probably be a little more than that because we'll probably take in a little more surcharge than was estimated. And who knows what the state's going to bring in. So that might be a little more. But with the information I have at the moment, that's the fund balance that we will have at the end of this fiscal year, 22. Oh, you said 21. I said 21 earlier. But it's 22. It's 22. Sorry about that. Because we're paying out of that at the moment, because yes, we're working. Sorry, is that because we didn't do some projects that previously had been allocated funds for or the funds came at less? Or is it primarily that we've gotten more state money that we hadn't anticipated? I guess I don't understand what where that money comes from. Maybe others do, but being new, I just don't understand what comes from. Well, we're in the middle of fiscal year 22. We're still taking in tax surcharge on CPA. We're not quite sure exactly how much it will be. So it's it's extra tax or plus that might come in. It's extra state aid that that might come in. Well, state aid is what we're at now. We already have that. I can't look at my sheet right now. But it's just an estimate of what we're going to end the year. Are you asking what's the difference between the local surcharge 3% number of a million and the one that's the 22? Is that what you're asking? I'm asking, well, if let me see how I can ask this. I guess I don't understand why we would have so much in fund balance at the end of the year. If we if last year, the committee approved projects in the year before approved projects and so on, and all those projects were were completed and the approval assumed estimated charge surcharges coming in. And so why would we have 1 million and 29,000 left? I guess I don't understand that. Sonia, will projects that are that's our underway and seeking reimbursement this fiscal year, will they be paid from that pot of money? No, no, we've we take all the projects that are voted and it's moved to a capital project fund. So then none of that money is there. The only way that will show up is if anybody returns money from projects, it'll go back into the actual CPA fund and become appropriated. I'm just trying to open up. Most of it most of it is new money. It's revenue in fiscal year 22. Is that correct? Right. Okay. But last year when you looked at this chart, I assume you had a number from the previous year and the year before you had it. So that's what I don't understand. I guess I it's hard for me to explain because we're because we're working with two years of estimates. So it's really complicated. Tim, if you want to stop by sometime, I will go through it all. If everybody else understands it, fine. I just. Well, I don't totally either. So it's very confusing and it's a really confusing subject. I know Sean, can you answer that? We're making decisions for the future based on our estimates of money that we will have. When we had our first meeting that I joined a couple of meetings ago, there was something like we only had $1.4 million and over about three plus million dollars of requests. So I don't understand now that we have 2.8 rather than that original 1.4. And I don't know if I've seen that 1.2 million. I just don't understand where it's come from. So my understanding is this is when things come in better than our estimates. And we roll it forward. So if it comes in better than our estimates, then we use it. We put it towards the following year because we don't know exactly what's going to be collected every year in surcharge and we don't know what the state is going to do. We budget conservatively, but then whatever that difference is always gets rolled into the next year's allocation. So it's basically a way to be conservative in how we budget, but then to use that difference the following year. You see, last year for fiscal year 21 we ended with a fund balance of 1.5 million and the surcharge came in better than what we had estimated. So that adds to it. Last year we also had returned appropriations. So that adds to it. And I don't know right now what's going to be returned. So this is our best guess of what our, it won't be less than this. I can tell you that. Okay. More likely be more than that. That's even knowing that is really helpful. Okay. Can I say? I don't understand it's all either. Can I say this? We could spend the whole meeting going over this and I mean I don't understand it all either, but I'm willing. I believe that Sonia and Sean. Okay. I would agree. So I would just, I mean maybe someday we'll have an hour long Zoom just to have this explained to us. And that would be great. You know what we can do too? We can send an explainer sometime after this meeting in the next week or so to the committee that just breaks down in more detail why we have that. And then if there's follow-up questions, we can address that in a future meeting, but we can get that information out after this meeting. That'd be great if it's not too time consuming. I know you're all super busy. Suggest I send my worksheet out to everybody. Okay. Sorry. Sorry. It just is different information than when we started the, when I, the first meeting was we were in the deep trouble because we had far more requests than we had funds available. Now all of a sudden we're only have $560,000 delta there. So that's one of my concerns. Part of it was the big extra amount of money that was just awarded like the day of our previous meeting, like very recently there was, yeah. And we've made some adjustments already to this sheet that, that we can walk you through. We've reduced about 350,000 or 400,000 from the original requests. So that delta would be bigger if we hadn't done that. So, Sarah, do you want me to walk through the plan? Well, yes, in a moment. So the amount of money available is not essentially different than what it was last meeting. Okay. So there's no changes. So yes, Sean, if you would walk us through what is possible, that's different from what we'll want to do, but at least what is possible. Okay. So I'll walk you through the changes and then give you some more information. So we reduced the housing trust of 250,000. That was based on the discussion last week of bringing that, cutting that in half. We reduced the Conkey Stevens house down to 241,915. That one might need another look and talking with the submitters. I think we tried to get down to 240. I looked at the projects and the budgets related to the different elements of the project. And 241,915 would allow us to do a lot of like the roof work, the siding work, things like that. But I think we'd want to get more information directly from them on whether that package of projects makes sense. We removed the North Cemetery Fence project as just being rejected. The Alice Maud Hills house. So Sonya had spoken with those submitters and the actual costs ended up coming in lower than what they had submitted when they added everything up. So it turned out to be 135,000 instead of what was originally 166,000. So that's been adjusted. And we did a borrowing for the high school track. So you'll see that's come off this list in terms of coming out of current resources, but you'll see the impact of the borrowing on the next page. And so with all those adjustments, and we have a couple more things we'll fill you in on in a second. But with all those adjustments, it gets us down to a gap of 565,000. So there's two more positive things that we've sort of, since we put this together, we've discussed with people. So one is, Sonya, do you want to explain the Plum Brook project and why that might be reduced a little bit? Yeah, the water cannon, I understand, is a movable piece of equipment. And I don't believe that's allowable under CPA. So did you have a number for that, Sonya? It was 22,000. So of the 60,000 for Plum Brook, we think 22,000 is going to end up being pulled out is not eligible. So in a second, I'll let Sonya share the modifiable version of the sheet so she can update that number and you can see what that does to the gap. Can I just ask, Sean, I don't recall, and maybe I just don't recall, that they'd included the cost of a water cannon in their budget. Yeah, so Sonya had a conversation with Alan Snow today about that and that was what he had said, right? Sonya, that there was a water cannon included? It is. It's in the narrative in the actual proposal itself. Yeah, so that'll have to be a capital request from the town or come through another avenue. So that will reduce the gap by about 22,000. The other one that will hopefully make all of your lives easier is I spoke with the schools about the Crocker Farm Elementary School Playground and they were amenable to the idea of doing just design this year and pushing off the big part of that project to next year, which is similar to how we've done other playground projects in the past. So if you agree with that, you could reduce that 500,000 to somewhere between 50 and 75 and then expect another request next year, but that would take out about 450,000 or so from your gap. And so that would get your gap down to somewhere under 100,000, which is where we sort of left it. Could you also show, however, I know there was an additional sheet showing the debt service for the next year because saying that we'll borrow it just makes our lives in the future more difficult in some way. So yeah. I'm trying to zoom out here. Can you still see that? Yes. Okay. So this is the debt schedule for CPA. So one thing that's on the radar but sometimes can get lost is the Jones Library authorization because it's a little ways out, but we plugged in an estimate for FY24 for the first payment to start. That could be a year further out, but we thought it's better to start it sooner and if it gets pushed out then great. So we've plugged in an estimate for Jones Library. We have an estimate in there for Valley CDC. These are projects that have been approved, but haven't been borrowed for yet because they haven't really started. And then I plugged in another estimate for the high school track if you decide to move forward with that borrowing so you can see what it looks like. So your debt in FY24 would go up and then it would start to come down after that, subject to you approving borrowing for other projects. And then I put it down here just so you can see what the impact would be if you did decide to do another borrowing for either the cracker farm project or for the transitional housing project. If you wanted to see what impact that would be, you would add 65,000 or so to the total debt number for FY24. Any questions on the debt sheet and what we're trying to show here? I have several, but I'll ask. Yeah, I see Sarah. Ising your hands for hand up. Yeah, hi. Sean, I actually had a question on the previous sheet. So can I ask, I'm happy to stay here though. And we're already looking at it. Right. So it's on the on your, the first, the 241, the Concley Stevens House. Yep. So you said, can I just understand what you did from a budget perspective? Did you just look at their line item budget and reduce it? Because there would be a proportionate, you know, there would be changes. You can't, we can't, and you said you wanted to talk to them. So I just wanted to understand a little bit more about that. Yeah. So, so, so the committee last time I think reduced it down to about 240 when you guys were talking through it. And so I had gone in and looked at their budget and tried to see what pieces could be put together that seemed like would make sense for one project that would be close to 240. And so that's how I came to the 241. And it was a combination of the roof work and some window work. And it got cut off here. I'm not sure what there's, there was another piece or two. Chimneys and flashing. Okay. And so, yeah. So again, that might not be the right package of projects. I think the goal was to try to get to that around that 240 number. And this came close. But before you recommend it, you'd want to, we'd want to back and forth with them so that they're supportive of however you package it. Right. Okay. So that was just right. Got it. Thank you. That's helpful. Okay, Andy. Are you dead service or which, which page? Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. Dead service. Thank you. This is, thanks for the walkthrough on the show. That helps a lot. Sort of two questions. One is just I, I always lose track of our fiscal year versus calendar year. I see you've got the high school track hitting an FY 2025. What does that mean in terms of our real expectation for timing for the project? So that would mean if they started working on it in FY 23, say it was approved this, it was approved this summer, July 1st, and they started working on it, it would mean the bulk of the work probably getting done the following summer, which would be the summer of FY 24, which would then have our first payment usually be at the, in the, the same time the following year, which would be the summer of FY 25. So that AD again could flow forward or backwards depending on how quick that project goes. FY, I'm sorry, but FY 24 starts when and ends when? Okay. So FY 24 starts July of 23. Okay. Cool. Yep. All right. Yeah, that runs July 23 to June 24. Okay. Yeah. And I guess the other thing just as I had looked through this was, and this is a really helpful view is what it does end account for in the out years or what we might ask for next year. Right. Yeah. It looks great. We're going to add to the borrowing. Yep. And it looks like we've been doing that pretty consistently and, and I haven't looked closely enough, but the stuff that's going to be rolling off is not necessarily the most expensive. So anyhow, just more food for thought, I guess, right? Yeah. And I think that's a good, a good conversation that this committee should have at some point, and we can certainly support it is sort of where do you want to be with your debt? You know, how much of your, your allocation each year do you want already tied up in debt? And, you know, do you want to, do you want to benchmark for that? Or do you just, is it really dependent on the projects? And if it's a really important project, then you're, you know, you want to move forward with it? I was actually going to ask if you had an opinion that you might share in terms of what would be a reasonable number for us to, I mean, I think it's useful for us to have some sort of guardrails, at least to know when we're going to like go way past them or when we're feeling good. So like, is this, this, is this level of four to 500,000 seem appropriate relative to the scale of our budget? So, so the town stats really low, so you're asking the wrong person because we typically like to keep our debt really low. But so this is, you know, it's about 20% of the money you have to maybe a little bit less of the money you have this year. I don't think you'd want to go much higher than that. Again, unless it's, you know, unless it's a really important project that you want to make an exception for, I don't think you'd want to go much over 20% of your, you know, the money you have available each year to be tied up in the debt. I like that. Thanks. Then I would ask, well, what about fiscal FY 25 or rather 24, which is the highest total debt there? That's likely to be well over 20% unless we're going to get a big increase in our fund balance. So I'm just looking at like for this year, I think our total money we have is the 2.2 is how much, so it's in that 20% of all the park. It might be a little bit higher, but no, I think, I think it'll, some of it depends on what, how big the projects are that get submitted and trying to be disciplined and when we, it may mean making harder decisions about approving some of the bigger projects or using cash for some of them. So I have a couple of questions. This is related to Andes. I mean, I guess the town's only been in this program for what, less than 20 years? Are these for, for Amherst historically high levels of CPA debt? Would they be? I would look to Sonya. Do you, have we? I don't have to go back and look in our debt sheets. Okay. All right. Another question is I just want to confirm all these borrowings are 10 years. 10 years and the, and just so, so the high year of FY 24, there's not really anything we can do about that right now because those are all projects that have already been approved. So that 487 that high year, or sorry, 558, that's just based on projects that have already been approved. And again, the timing may change a little bit based on how the library project goes and how the Valley CDC project goes. Interest will probably come in a little better, but, but really the new debt doesn't even start here until FY 25. Well, that new debt meaning that we might. Right. The debt that you haven't approved yet. Yeah. Right. And my, and my other question is about the very first item says town hall exterior repair. Is that, but there's, there's no debt shown. Did that come? Yeah, that must be complete. That we can probably get off the list. Projects that we voted but haven't started yet. No, no, that must be something that was paid off recently. Okay. Okay. All right. So the two projects that we, we might approve this year, the ones in red. Well, they start kicking, they make FY 24, perhaps even higher. And then even much higher in the year following, although older, older articles are coming off. So, okay. All right. Anyone else have any questions on this? Sam? Sam, did you hear me? Sean, thank you, Sarah. Is a 3% the current borrowing weight? Is that accurate? I see the 24. Yeah. I use 3%. We, you know, historically, we've used 5%. We spoke with our financial advisor right now. 3% is pretty conservative still. So that's what I plugged in for, for the new stuff. And once you borrow, it's, it would roll forward at that interest rate throughout the term of that. Yeah. Once we actually borrow, it'll turn into an actual interest rate. And it'll be, it'll be fixed. Thank you. Andy. Thanks, Sarah. We'll probably come up later, but just, you know, we had the two projects, which we had the eligibility questions on, which I see we both have rolled in here too. So at 37. We'll talk about those next. Okay. Yeah. Just at 37, I know you kind of walked us through where we could be at a scenario where we're like 50,000, like a gap of 50,000, and that wouldn't account for those two projects. So like, if those two ended up being determined to not be eligible, we're coming in like really tight. Right. Yeah. Okay. And we do have the reserve. So yeah, that's a good point, Sarah. If we feel strong, if we feel strongly about what we want to fund, we, you know, strongly enough, we can ask to take some from the reserve. And by, I'm sorry, by tight, just to clarify, I mean, like, we're almost perfect, right? Like we're almost exactly, that I didn't mean it as like a negative thing. I see. Okay. Well, to me, what's, what's, I mean, that is, that is good. That would be good. But I want to be sure we, you know, are strongly in favor of the proposals that we end up recommending. We don't have to fund something just because we can. So well, thank you, Sean. That's really helpful. All right. So I think before we launch in now to more discussions and hopefully coming to consensus on specific projects, we can resolve the two with eligibility, at least the major eligibility concerns, the pavilion at the farm and the Mill River history trail. And so I turn again to Sonia, but maybe we can start with the farm because you had a question regarding the APR, which I think is agricultural preservation restriction, is that right? And that applies to the whole property. And could you explain the importance of that for us? I think Dave Zamek is probably better answer that and he's here. Okay. Hi, Dave. Did not notice. Come in. Welcome. What can you tell us about the APR at the North Amherst Community Farm or in general? Sure, I might speak more generally and I apologize. I think I missed the first couple of minutes of the meeting when Bruce Coldham might have addressed this. I'm not sure or might have spoke about the APR, but Bruce and I had a conversation and I think there are a couple of emails that he might have provided to Sonia, I'm not sure. But yeah, so the agricultural preservation restriction is a permanent restriction that is co-held by the town and the state on the land, on most of the land, not all of the land, but most of the land that is owned by North Amherst Community Farm and farmed by Dave and Jeremy at Simple Gifts. And so where that plays in really I think is twofold. One is can a structure go up? Can a structure be placed on an APR? And if so, what permissions are necessary to put a structure, be it a barn or a pavilion or a greenhouse? And that really comes down I think and Bruce can speak to this more than I can because he's been in touch with the APR program this week, is I think it really speaks to how permanent is the structure. And so there are ways to get permission to put up a structure like that on an APR. And then I think the second related question is I know in Bruce's proposal and in his presentations, he discussed public trails to the pavilion or including the pavilion and I had asked him to really inquire with the APR program about that because I'm not really sure that permanent trail easements can be placed on an APR after the APR has already been basically locked in in permanence with the state. And so this all speaks to what is the public good? What is the public getting from the investment of taxpayer dollars, CPA dollars in the project? So that's kind of the broad brush and I see that Bruce is still here. So perhaps, you know, with the chairs, you know, if the chair would like to ask him more specific questions, I'm here to help if I can. Thank you. No, I don't. I'm glad Bruce is there, but I don't have any questions for him yet. I want to ask Sonia about what I think I saw in an email that she sent around saying that the land that has an APR is therefore defined as open space. And if it's open space, then CPA does not allow you to put a structure on it. So if that's true, you know, then that seems dispositive to me. So Sonia. So we're still trying to gather more information on this project and the trails project. So what I was going to recommend to the committee to do tonight, if they want to recommend these projects to go right ahead and do that. And the money doesn't become available until July 1. And we have time to find out certain whether either of those projects can go forward. And if they don't go forward, the money goes back into the fund balance. So that's what I would recommend the committee to do, because the time I have already sent more questions to Stuart, and I believe that we've got a call into town council on a couple of these things. So with it being the holidays and everything, things are taking a little longer to get back and forth. So that's what I would, that's what I would recommend the committee to do, either do that or leave money in the reserves and come back at a later time when we have more information. I see. So we could, we could for now, assume that they're eligible and make a record, you know, and recommend them or not. But if, if they are recommended and if town council votes to appropriate the money, it's still contingent on eligibility. So if it turns out they're not eligible, then if they don't get the money, is that correct? Okay. Sarah, could I just add that, that I was the one that did reach out to our town attorney. I just want to make sure town council and town attorney. So I assume you're wrestling town attorney. We all do that. Yeah, town council, town attorney. So we work with a very capable attorney at Coleman and Page. And she has long history with CPA projects. So we've both forwarded the NACF and the North Amherst Historic Trail to, to Coleman and Page. And I had a conversation with our attorney two, three days ago, and she is reviewing them. I think the preliminary review and was that she, she definitely had more questions about the NACF pavilion than she did the, the historic trail. I think the way they frame the historic, the trail project seemed to be more in line with, with getting a favorable review from her. Now, again, we won't get a legal opinion. I think we will, we will get, we will get her input, but a legal opinion is a written legal document, which is actually quite expensive for the town to get it. So we'll, we'll bring that information forward, as Sonia said, as soon as we can. And I think that's just, that might be two weeks away. That's not a long wait for that, that information. I think we can get that from, from town attorney in the next couple of weeks. Thank you. Tim? Yes, I had two questions. My notes show that before the last meeting that the CPA coalition, and I'm not familiar with what that is, I did not say it was eligible. So I don't know if anything's changed. No, that hasn't changed. So what, or at least not yet, because we keep having new, but what about this, but what about that? So I think the conversation is ongoing. I think that's, so if they officially say it's not eligible, it's not eligible. I'm not sure what the CPA coalition is. No, they recommend that they're not attorneys. So they recommend that we get our opinion, get an opinion from the attorney or a ruling. Oh, okay. Which is what we just talked about. Which is what we're doing. Okay. And the other question is regarding this is requested under recreation. And as I understand it, the funds requested are to rip down the barn. And that's what the fund, I don't see how that's recreation. I mean, that's my understanding of what the request is for. The end product might be a pavilion that would result in trails and so forth. But the funding is requested to rip down a barn to get some lumber. I think we will have that. Yeah, I think we will have that discussion. We will have that discussion. But I wonder if we can just kind of agree perhaps to, well, that we maybe don't need the final answer yet. We can, I don't know, does anyone disagree? Do we need to work out this taking apart a historic barn? Is that that seem to be a recreational use or not? Sam, is this on the same issue? It's on the issue of eligibility and delaying the vote based on Sonja's recommendation. The question I would have aside from any particulars on the projects which, you know, both are wonderful projects and it's a question of eligibility. If we were to, as you indicate Sonja, say, yeah, let's go ahead, tentatively put it on the slate and approve it. And the town council subsequently votes and approves the CPA slate of projects. What would be the mechanism to retract that if we subsequently find out that it's not eligible? In other words, if CPA recommends the project at whatever funding level, projects, what mechanism actually decides? I'm sure that we will have a ruling on that before town council votes on it because this won't go to town council until when, Shawn May? It's not going to, yeah, I won't go until May or June and we want to get to the council to vote until we know if it's eligible. And it would be a rule before it goes to the council. We would make a motion to remove that amount of money for those projects if they weren't available. But the ruling would come from whom? Town attorney. I was going to say town council again. So the committee could make recommendations with the agency that town council deem it eligible and then they would have veto power. We might issue a revised report if, you know, based on any such judgments. Sarah? Yeah. I really like Sonia's proposal here for us not to get bogged down in the machinations of eligibility and it's out of our, I think it's out of our purview. And I think in fact, if we take a step back and just look at the use and the concept here, these are two projects that are for small money kind of propel some of our goals forward. And in fact, you know, these are smaller projects. They're community based projects that I think align with what we're trying to accomplish. And so I would be in support of Sonia's proposal and I'm also in support of the proposals. And I think this again, you know, really aligns nicely with what the larger goals are of the CPA that we want to see these kinds of proposals coming forward from groups and nonprofit organizations. Thank you, Andy. Excuse me. Thanks, Aaron. Thanks for the explanation, Sonia and Dave. I may be in a similar spot to Tim. I believe the trailhead, the NACF, it does seem like that's money that's being used to demolish and not actually achieve the goal. And while the end goal may be correct, I think Tim kind of worded it nicer than I would even be able to. I'd love to be able to just put the eligibility aside and like vote and sort it out later. For that one, I don't know that I could. I don't have the same opinion about the North Amherst Trail, that one I do feel comfortable with. I think we've we've had some discussion for folks in the board last year or the committee last year as well. Well, then let's just can we then let's just start talking about the North Amherst community farm proposal. Okay, whether we would like to recommend it or not, based on whatever factors people are concerned about, could we perhaps go back to our rating spreadsheet just so we have the. Oh, I don't have that one. It'll take me a minute to email myself. We didn't score it. We did it. We didn't score either the the ones we were unsure. We gave everything we gave everything scores. But I don't think so. We may not have like put it forward into the Sean would you see if we can fund this array of projects but we gave all of them ratings are one to five ratings. Well, thanks. I wish we had this, but see it. Well, all right, well, eventually we'll see see the ratings. So let's talk about that specific project. There we definitely did. I mean, I go back to my own rating sheet and on those I've written NA because we I think agreed to not score them really. Okay, my all right. I misremember then so but if we all did have rate make ratings perhaps we could just go. I could ask everybody what they are and get a sense of if people have their ratings at hand if I ask what you thought of the pavilion proposal. Um, I'll start with Sarah. What did you give it? Um, yeah, I'm going to go back and I'm out of I would be a five Sam. Do you remember? Um, it's contingent on eligibility. I love the concept. I love what they're doing. I love the community involvement and I love their frugality. I think I think it's seriously I think it's wonderful that they are uh being so uh cost-effective and involved. So my only question on the project, you know, I love the project but it relates to eligibility and you received the prior communication at the last meeting from Sonya via from Stuart via Sonya but then we have this updated one regarding a temporary structure. So I find that temporary structure concept intriguing. I would love to be able to support it. So it's hard for me to render a decision based on that if it if it's unequivocally eligible, which I don't know that it is, then I'd be very much in favor of it. I understand it, you know, there's the trade-off of the destruction of the decrepit using a Bruce's term barn for re-envisioning it. But if it's not a historic preservation project, if it's recreation, I like it. I like the project. So I'm going to give it four. Okay, thank you. Let's just get the ratings on the table. Tim? Okay, I had originally rated it a one and that's in great part because the time I rated my ratings were based on which project I think should get the money. And if we were short on money, which I thought we were way short, I felt this was one should get thrown off the list because I didn't see it as high a priority. I might argue a perhaps a two now but I do have some concern that it's a demolition of a barn that's not really recreation. And so I would say I want to stay with my one or two for that reason. Okay, all right. Dave, what did you give to the pavilion project? What? The North Amherst community farm. Yes, I'm looking at the farm. Okay, I would say that if you're looking for, I would say I would recommend a three for that. All right, thank you. Katie? Four. Andy? I'm a one. Anna? All right, three. Boy, people's spaces move around. Sarah did already get yours? Yeah. Okay, Heady? Sorry, I'm muted. I just wanted to say that, you know, the issue of the original barn did come before the historical commission. And so these guys have really done a lot of thinking, you know, for a lot of time about how to sort of try and strategize a little bit what to do with this building, given how much it would cost to restore it. And that being economically sort of not indicated, you know, in their work with us, you know, they have, you know, come up with this other suggestion. So it's using historical materials. I would think of it as adaptive reuse. Did you give it a one to five rating? I'm sorry, that was the wrong. I can't remember. This is really embarrassing. I can't remember what I gave it, Sarah. But thinking it through again and knowing how much this actually has the potential to be publicly available, even though it's not on public land or townland, it seems to me that it merits something between a three and a four. Okay. All right. I thought my original rating, Sarah, which was a three. So just to be clear, we did approve as a commission to let them demolish the barn. I just want to make sure that that's minuteed because that may clarify some concerns that other members of this committee have about what we're doing and why we're now considering it in another sort of guise in other lights. All right. Thank you. And I gave it a one. So we're all over the map on this one. Sarah, what was Sarah Isinger again? Five. Five. My original vote, Sarah, was a three. Well, I think just a few minutes. Or if it's eligible. We're going to assume it's eligible. We're going to assume it's eligible. Then I'll go with a four. So I think we're basically in a three. So I will maybe I will say why I give it such a low score. And maybe Andy will will also I am not sure that they're I don't feel that the public use the public benefit may be very significant. I think the farm itself would get a lot of use out of this structure, but I'm not persuaded that residents would. It's not got picnic tables. It's not near a playground. I gather there are trails, but we heard tonight, I mean, whether there even can be easements to make sure there are always trails is in question. And then there's this this very informal network of trails. But so informal, we can't even see them on a map. So, you know, I feel like we can have it both ways either either it's part of a trail network, and it's amenity for that or it's not. So I just don't feel it's very large public benefit, and I don't give it a high priority. And anyway, that's my feeling. Andy, what did you think you were the other one? I think Yeah, well one as a historic preservation project, right? I felt like the basically the demolishing of a historic structure to build a new structure wasn't preserving anything. It would be equivalence of like, and I'm going to like just to illustrate point, it's like, you know, taking you could take the nails and say, well, we're saving these nails to build a new house. So we're preserving this is a recreation project. This is a recreation. It's lifted under historic preservation. Like didn't come across as start. Am I losing my mind? This is It's submitted under recreation. Yeah, yes. Oh, all right. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm looking at the wrong line. Okay, so let me go back. So in terms of the recreation piece, my concerns were like my original concerns were that this was also something that the public use was it was a little uncertain, right? In terms of a lot of the stuff you just mentioned right now. It's it's I would say more quasi public is how I thought of this. And I don't know that it would really provide the great level of use to the broader public that some of the other projects would. I'm not saying that there isn't value to this. But I think relative to the construct of TPA, I don't I wouldn't recommend it compared to these other projects. All right, somebody gave it a two. Who gave it a two? Did we lose somebody? Gave it a one or a two. I'm not sure. Oh, all right. So yeah, I think it must be you. All right. Well, again, my my feeling is if you recall last meeting, I did not agree with reducing the five hundred thousand dollar Amherst town request for community housing to 250. And I would much much rather raise that from 250 to 275 and not approve this project. I think in terms of the priorities, this does not meet that at all. And I think I would go with that priority. And I still have the concern that we are I don't see the recreation need here. All right. So those of you who are very much in favor, can you maybe talk about again, it's under recreation. So about the recreation benefit you see and or it's high priority compared to other projects, Sam. So I have an inherent bias towards smaller community oriented projects, small budgets, because I believe that the CPA community preservation act and more projects, all things being equal, more can get done if all the projects are smaller. So I'm aware of that. But it also influences my vote accordingly to raise up smaller projects such as the two that have eligibility requirements, along with I have a slight bias towards the breadth of participation of community members. It may not be as large as some of the other recreational facilities. So my rating is not saying if everything costs the same, which one do I think is a higher priority? It's saying I think this is a good investment for $25,000 given the grand scheme of things. I do share some of the thoughts of Andy and Tim and perhaps others regarding the fact that a barn is coming down a decrepit barn to quote the applicant. But I also I take into account and I'm pleased to have heard Hedi's comment regarding the historical commissions sanctioning for lack of a better term, which weighs in on it. So for me, it boils down to very low dollar amount for an extremely frugal community driven organization. And I like that aspect of it if it qualifies. And I don't know about the temporary nature of the project or not, but it's something I would love to see the CPA be able to fund given the low expense. Hedi, you're muted. You're muted. Sorry. My feeling at this point is that it has inherent worth this project, but that it doesn't have an urgency. If I was the owner of this lovely material, historic material, I would keep it safe somewhere, which I know the farm will do. And maybe they can in the meantime, seek other funding sources. I think it has branding potential to be a named temporary pavilion. Maybe that's an option down the road. I am very intrigued by the way that the pavilion connects to the trails that are being developed. This is pretty close to where I live and to the UMass community. I just think that it's a very rich place in terms of landscape and passive recreation. So there's a lot of merit in this, even though it's, again, not on public land, it's doing what a lot of things are doing right now, which is creating a kind of public-private connection. So maybe we can just bear that in mind and encourage them to preserve the material at this point and the vision for what they're trying to do. Well, as I understand it, they are asking for CPA funds, in fact, to dismantle, essentially, do the work that would let them preserve the material. I think they don't want to let the barn just collapse and then sell. And doing it correctly is a really good idea because you could make the argument that that is, in itself, a way of honoring the way the barn was put together in the first place by taking it down in a very careful way. I know this is really up in the left field, but the Peabody Essex Museum took down a Chinese house and brought it to Salem, Massachusetts. And I think these people are very thoughtful in the way they're trying to do things. And I really want to support them. And like Sam says, this is not that much money in the big scheme of things. And there are a lot of people in North Amherst who shop there and go there and pet the animals there. And I think it's just there are too many value-laden pieces of this for me that just make me want to keep advocating for them. Okay, thank you. Sarah. Thank you. Yeah, I want to build on what Sam and Hadi have both echoed. I'm an enthusiastic supporter of the project. I hear what Tim and Andy say about recreation, but I want to build on the idea of the passive recreation uses and that connection to the trails. I do live up here. And I think if you see over the last several years, the investment that the NACF community has made in the Simple Guest Farm, it's been really extraordinary, you know, the opening of the farm store and the investment using CPA monies in the farmhouse. Those now attract public users all the time. The farm started, you know, these festivals, a strawberry festival around its very popular pick your own period. So that pick your own strawberry. Those fields are right where the pavilion is. There's also been a fall festival. Those both efforts were stopped during COVID, but they would bring in hundreds and hundreds of people for these daylong festivals. And I think those are the kinds of uses that we want to see and we want to see organizations making those contributions. So I think, again, it's small money. I like adaptive reuse. They have galvanizing community and volunteer engagement and support. So for all those reasons, I'm really supportive of the project. All right. Remember to put your hand down if you, unless you do have another question. So I think, all right, does anyone else want to speak to this? And then I think we should just vote, an actual vote up or down to put it on our slate, you know, or to recommend it. Sarah. Yes. I was able to get the file over from work. So I'm going to share it now. Okay. Thank you. Yep. I'm going to try to share it now. Yeah. Can you see it? Not yet, but it's there it is. There you go. Can you, yeah, enlarge it, fill it, fill your desktop with it? Is that getting smaller or bigger? No, it's getting smaller. Can you make the whole? Maximize it. Yeah. Yeah. Up there. There we, all right. Now maybe you can magnify. You have it? There. That's good. Okay. All right. All right. So where is this? This is number 14. Yeah. Line 17. Gosh, can we just quickly go fill for the record, fill in these ratings. All right. Anna, can you everybody get there, refresh their mind about their ratings so we can just add this in now. Anna, you had it. I did. Yeah, I am. It was a three. It was a three. Okay. And Sarah, Eisinger, it was a five, I think. Yep. Yep. And Hetty, you were four. Andy was a one. Whoops, gotta let Sonia catch up here. Sam. I was a four. No, next is Andy was a one. I have that. Oh, sorry. There must be a delay or something. Yeah, I think so. So Sam was a one. I was a four. Thank you. I was a one. Tim. I was a one. It's very slow. I have three. Three and four for me. Want to fill in the other one? No, not yet. Okay. I think, okay. There's quite a lag still waiting, but I'm sure you have it. You see it. Maybe others see it before I do. Okay. So I think we should just vote. No one's proposed, funding at a level other than the request for $25,000. So why don't we just vote? Yes or no? Weren't we going to talk about all the projects before we voted on any? Yeah. We can't keep talking about all of them before. Well, we never discussed the Plum Brook or the others to my understanding. I'm just afraid we're never going to get through this in the next couple, you know. Sarah, did you just want to vote on this project in particular? Yes, because it is small money. I don't feel like it'll, you know, it'll change what we're able to do on any of the others. Okay. So maybe we could deal with this and Mill River and then vote on this one and the Mill River History Trail and then discuss the others. Okay. All right. So we will vote then whether to recommend a grant of $25,000 to the North Amherst Community Farm for a farm and trailhead pavilion. Anna? Yeah. Yes. Sarah, Eisinger, sorry. Oh, I saw a hand. So I'm going to call that a yes. Eddie? Yes. Andy? I'm going to say no, but let's, you know, once we do all the tallies, let's see where we land with the money. Sam? Yes. You really changed my mind, you people who spoke, spoke it so strongly in favor. I will say yes. Tim? I love the concept. I agree with all the comments. I just don't feel comfortable with the recreation money for this. So I'm going to say no. Dave? Yes. And Katie? Yes. All right. I got to work on this. Okay. I think it passes. I can't, the spreadsheet is lagging, so I don't know what the numbers are, but Sonya, if you've entered them all, whoops, says Neil. I know. I see. So I don't have to take, sorry. I don't have to record the vote. No. Okay. Good. Okay. I delete them. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. I think it's seven in favor to oppose. Okay. All right. So let's move on to the Mill River History Trail. Again, many questions, and this is submitted under historic preservation, and there are eligibility issues which will get resolved. So let's assume it is eligible. So we should now give our ratings for this one. Anna? Five. Sarah Eisinger? Three. Hedy? Five. Andy? Four. Sam? Four. Sarah Marshall? Five. Tim? My original was one because I, again, I voted based on the priorities. I'm three. Hedy? Five. And Katie? Three. Okay. So I still don't see, I think the lowest score now is a, sorry, Tim, what did you give it? I don't see it yet. Three. Three. Okay. Well, so nothing lower than a three. Does anybody want to discuss this, say something about it? Maybe just for the record, because we have not, we have not talked about it in any detail. Would anyone like to, Sam? I'm just very impressed, again, with this other small project in terms of the community engagement, the community involvement, the thoroughness of their multiple attempts, and the incredible frugality of how they're approaching this. They're approaching it the way I would approach fixing my car. Really. Do it yourself, huh? Yeah, I'm just, I'm very impressed with both of these projects. I rated it a four because I'm uncertain of the eligibility, but it's, you know, I'm very, you know, I like what they're doing a lot. Thank you. Anybody else want to? I will say, I think it's a, oh, Dave, I'll come to you next. To me, the remnant structures along the Mill River are unquestionably an historic, are historic artifacts and that it's an historic landscape. And to me, doing the work they're proposing in this phase, to me, it's no different than the engineering study the Simeon Stronghouse needs to do to find out what steps, you know, what the current condition is, what they need to do to preserve it. I mean, it seems to me a necessary and sensible first step to do what they are proposing to do in this phase. I also wanted to add, I conferred both with Anna and Meg Gage about this, even though they talk about creating a history trail, they are not literally cutting a new path. I just wanted because I'm not sure if there's been confusion about what's being created. It's only being created by virtue of the education they hope to, you know, the displays they hope to have eventually, but it's not cutting any new footpath, making a new trail across conservation land. It's an existing trail. Okay, so I wanted to say that. Dave, you had your hand up. Yes, just a comment since this project is appearing for the second year in a row. I think for me, the issue here is clarification. It was here last year, it's back, and we need to find out and also share with the individuals where we really not, where this project really stands within the guidelines of CPA. And if there are questionable areas about it, they need to know that because this is their second request. Right. It's a unique project. It touches on all the categories, all the CPA categories, all of which have different eligibility criteria. So it's tricky. Anna. Yeah, I mean, I think this is something, I did want to clarify the creation of the trails thing. So thank you for saying that. It would be a very different story from the conservation angle if it meant creating a new trail. So very clearly this is an existing trail footpath. I think what's also exciting about this is this isn't a historic resource. I mean, we don't have, as far as I know, and maybe this will be Meg's next project, but this is one of our only, there's nothing else like this in the town. And so I think that it's exciting that we can pursue this type of project and really name and identify these sites and also protect them. I think that that's the other part of this is that it's identification, but that protection component is very real as the landscape shifts and is disturbed. So this also, I mean, it helps protect not only the historic resource, but also the natural resource as well. Which is great. Thank you. Does anyone else want to comment on this before we vote? I'd just say that it's both historic and recreation. It's got elements of both. And it's on conservation land. Yeah, it's it's that's what makes it both exciting and complicated. All right. So let's vote on whether to recommend $12,900 and CPA funds for Phase One of the Mill River Historic Interpretive Trail. Anna? Yes. Sarah Isinger? Yes. Petty? Yes. Andy? Hi. Sam? enthusiastic. Yes. I am a yes. Tim? Yes. Dave? Yes. And Katie? Yes. All right, unanimous. Okay. Super. Well done, Sarah. Keep us going. Oh, well, now we get to the thank you. All right, let's tackle let's tackle the track. I think there is no question that if we want to recommend the track that we will recommend borrowing that the money be borrowed, right? We don't want to you blow most of the budget, the cash budget, so to speak. All right, so, so let's just take that as a suit as assumed, unless somebody wants to argue against it and talk about the merits of the project and any conditions we might want to include. I will note we have not received any more information about, you know, cost estimates to reorient it or to not reorient it. So we don't have any more information. Andy? Thanks, Sarah. Yeah, I will just say that I'm a yes if it's reoriented and I'm a no if it's not. So for you, that would be a condition of the award. It's like, yes, yes, if it's reoriented in keeping with that master plan. For me, that's true. Yes. Yeah, I'm in the same boat for what it's right. Okay. So am I recording these votes? No, no, no, I don't think we're quite there yet. Does anybody not want not want to recommend borrowing for this project? I guess that's basically I mean, does anyone not not interested in this or not feeling it's urgent? Sam? So I'm glad that the town is paying attention to this track, which clearly is in need of repair. I would be in favor of the project in general, assuming reorientation and assuming in compliance or in conjunction with the recreation plan for the fields that had been worked on previously. I still would like to see further information related to the 157,000 for studying the expenses, because I think the 800,000 that's being asked is uncertain, let's say it's not grounded in any pure knowledge of what it's actually going to cost. And the only thing I would add from what we talked about last meeting would be that my vote on the budget amount currently 800,000 could impact some of the other projects that we hadn't discussed yet. That, you know, such as a couple of houses, I don't think we talked about and the plumbroke. So, you know, there's a budgetary component to this is what I'm getting at. Yeah. Well, this is actually a little on the one hand, we could say, well, if we are recommending borrowing, we don't need to worry about it now. We don't have to decide now. We could wait to have more information on costs. On the other hand, as you say, if we are contemplating approving it that does impact, well, it impacts the future budgets, not the current budget. So I guess I'd like to hear if you all think we should, in fact, vote on this now, or do you, because it's borrowing, we can push it off a little bit? I would prefer that we hear that we hear and discuss all of the projects before we vote on the main projects. Okay, Tim. Yeah, I was just going to say the same that I do not feel comfortable in voting yes on this without a firm study and opinion by the school committee about the reorientation and how it fits into the terms of the overall fields plan and so forth. So I just happen to think it's premature even that we might bar for it to vote at all this time. And so I just want to lay that out there for others to think about. All right. Then does anyone feel strongly that we should take a vote on this tonight? All right. Seeing that, yeah, Katie, sorry. No, sorry, Sarah. I, whoever recently just, I don't know if it was Sam or Tim said, I don't mind voting on it, but I feel like I do want to talk about others and then come back to that. Just because of the amount and because of the potential for borrowing, it seems to would help make my decision. I'm very much in favor of it with contingencies. So, but there are other things that are also high priority for me. Okay, then we certainly won't vote this moment and we will move on to discuss the other projects. All right. So let's talk about the Alice. Oh, okay. That's why the project one, the town of Amherst acquisition and development of transitional housing is rated very high for the full amount. Sarah, your hand is up. I know I'm just trying to find me. I'm wondering, this is a procedural question. I'm sorry, Sean presented a proposal of how we could get these projects funded. Can we not look at that totality and see where he made he the town made changes around the margins and use that or are we because that's what we asked them. That's what they said they would do last week. He's done it. We're almost there. So can we use that as a starting? I'm just wondering. Yeah, I guess what would be helpful is to have the so the numbers that yeah, go ahead. So if you look at the screen that you're on the proposed, I don't know if you can see my mouse. Yeah, the proposed column is what the original is and then the gold column next to it is pretty much what Sean is proposing. So the question is, Sarah, maybe the committee wants to discuss whether you want to reduce the Crocker Farm playgrounds project down to 50. Again, the Rupert, I talked to the regional school or the school district and they were okay with doing design first and then the bring the project back. So I didn't make that adjustment yet because I wanted the committee to discuss that and see if you want to do that. Okay, that's a that's a good idea. But you did make some of the other. Yeah, the other changes. That's been adjusted already. All right. Sure. Then let because the Crocker Farm request is so large that does make a big difference if we although it puts it off for a year. So the proposal is or what Sean is suggesting. And I think it been my suggestion last time is that we fund the like the site work that 50,000 to do a design and to lay out the the paths for accessibility. Yeah, that's how the Crocker Farm preschool playground was done successfully that first and then came back a second year with an actual design, which was easier for the committee to kind of discuss and see. Okay. So would anybody does anybody not like that? Does anybody want to keep the full amount in here? That's my specific question at the moment. I think it makes a sense to do do it that way. So all right. So so is is everyone in favor of changing the noise not about but in favor of putting 50,000 in instead of 500,000? Anybody object? Sam, your hands up. Are you objecting? I'm uncertain if 50,000 is sufficient or not. I'm not objecting to 50,000 but I have in my head the possibility of the ADA compliance aspect as well. I'm certainly in favor of funding the study. That's what I would like to see occur from a planning perspective. But depending on where all the numbers roll out, it could conceivably be higher if they're able to phase in the ADA compliance aspect. Excuse me. This was their number, I believe. I understand their proposal. Yeah. Okay. Tim? The only concern I now that Sam has mentioned the number, the only concern I have is I think if we're going to do a study and ADA, we need to look at both playgrounds, not just the kindergarten one in the back, but the other one because that I think in the future we're going to have a need to request funds. And as I said, it's when I visited there and met with the principal, he showed me both playgrounds. So I don't know, maybe I would personally like to have a study about both playgrounds and then we can debate in terms of the future expenditures of the dollars to actually pull off the project. So if 50,000... I don't think we can do that. Yeah. We can't do that. The proposal, that's not how the proposal came to us. Okay. So this proposal is just for the kindergarten one, right? Okay. Well then, fine. And Tim, the other playground is actually on the capital plan, the five-year capital plan. I talked to Doug, it's a couple of years out, but they have it on the town's capital plan. And just because it's been brought up a couple times, both the town and the school have capital, recurring capital items for accessibility work, for just making accessibility improvements. So this doesn't have to be specifically about accessibility because we do have separate pots and money for that. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Well, this project had reasonably high average rating even at the full amount. So all right. So, but we're not voting. You want to talk about the other ones, but okay, that makes a big difference, I think, to the grand total. So let's talk now about the other one that was, or another one that was modified is the Plum Brook. It's gone down to 38,000. Okay. And the conch, yeah, sale in place down to 241, 915. Yeah, it did seem that there were some ineligible aspects of the, in the budget, like replacing furnace, that's not something, I don't think that's something CPA funds can do. And interior painting, and that's not, doesn't benefit the public. So, but these would all be eligible expenses. Does anybody want to say something about this project? Which project? The conchie Stevens house. Yes, Sam. It's a large ask as I see it. I liked Andy's phasing aspect of it. But of the projects, I wouldn't have rated it as high as the others for reasons we already discussed at last session. I'm very much in favor of doing the fence aspect of that's, that would be where I'd start and build up, if it were me, because I think it's a lot of money for a different type of proposal with less community access than many of the others. But I think we have to accept, and I have, that the only public benefit the historic preservation needs to provide under CPA is a view. It doesn't matter if we can't go in it or not. It doesn't, that's, that's not important. And it also, you know, I withdraw my earlier objections about based on the ownership. It doesn't matter what the form of ownership is. If it's historic, you know, the town already made the decision to put, to allow taxpayer dollars to go towards preserving private buildings that are of historic importance. I'm not suggesting it doesn't qualify. I'm saying it's a factor in my consideration how to vote or how much to vote. But what is the factor that we can't, that the public can't go inside? In all things being equal, I would have a greater preference to fund money of a facility that has greater access, or even a public facility in that regard, in the scale of judgment, which is what I consider what we're doing. So I'm not saying it's not qualified. It is, it does qualify clearly. I'm saying my opinion related to the project in terms of how we're considering it. Got it. Thank you. Sean, you wanted that you're muted. I can wait, but when we, when you talk about what portion of the project, I see that Ben is in the attendees list. I had had a conversation with him about, they had looked at this project and talked about the potential phasing of it. So if you do want to have a conversation about what it, what this money funds and what it doesn't fund, we might want to bring Ben in and get his, he may have information to share on that. All right. Thank you. I think not quite yet, but so Katie, what is your comment? I just simply wanted to say I might even raise my rating just because of some of the points that Robin from the audience made earlier. And I'm in favor of this based on the fact that CPA funds are really one of the most, you know, the only places for folks like this to get funding to preserve that piece of property, which is really prominent for our town. And so I just, I just, I'm in favor of this. So you would like to make your rating? No, it's, I mean, you're free to, it's free to change it. I mean, it's fine. We, I don't know if that makes any difference in terms of whether we vote yes or no, I think it makes the most difference, but does anyone want to hear more detail from Ben about the aspects that can be done first? Or are we not? I think phasing is interesting because if we, because I can't see Sonya down below. It looked like we were at 98,000 in terms of a gap. 93, yeah, almost 94. Okay. I'll call back on Ben in a moment after we hear from Andy or Sonya, maybe you can just bring him in. Sean, can you do it? Cause I can't see my attendees on my screen right now. Right. Sorry. Andy, go ahead. I just wanted to, to get Ben depending on whether that 241 whatever number would align with the phasing. Ben, uh, do you need to unmute? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Hi everyone. Thank you. I, I missed the last part of Andy's question because that was kind of in, in limbo moving into a panelist, but I can, I can essentially channel what the discussion that historical commission had. I think two, two, maybe three lengthy discussions about the conchie house project. And I think in the memo that the historical commission put together, they also agreed around 240,000 was the number that could be allocated for a phase one of this project. And a lot of that has to do with some of the, you know, strategic, some of the strategy that goes into it with like, if you're gonna, a big cost is putting up scaffolding and the framing to get up to the roof. And so it makes sense to do the work first that is up on the roof, such as the chimney and the roof itself and the dormers. And I think that's all kind of reflected in that first phase. And then I think the second phase could move into some of the lower cost items that aren't as urgent, but there, from what we heard from the applicant, you know, there's urgency to making that roof watertight, preventing any further damage. And then moving down, I think, to the porch and some of the items lower down on the building. So that's the discussion that historical commission had. And they reviewed it pretty thoroughly and recommended it highly. Right. Well, we also have to make sure the particular costs are eligible under CPA. So this first phase, so 241-915 is for phase one, essentially. And that does not include interior painting or furnace replacement. Yeah, correct. Yep. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else have a question or comment on this project? Andy? I was just gonna echo what Katie said. I would also raise my story. We don't need to do that, but I just wanted to say that I appreciate this committee having robust discussions to help me rethink this. So thank you. Yes. I would also raise mine. Yeah. Okay. Then can we move on to discuss the Alice Mahill's House project, which now stands at 135. That's the net to being asked of CPA. All right. So Sam raised a concern about eligibility because so much of the cost is for painting parts of the house that aren't having significant repairs. Sonia, I think you feel that it's eligible. It's appropriate. Do you want to say anything? I don't know if Sam is convinced yet or what, but maybe we should just speak about that. Well, I had also submitted that question to Stuart at the Coalition, but he hasn't gotten back to me. I think he's on vacation right now. It would depend. The painting, I believe the way I read it is the painting depends on whether it was, we were paying to bring it back to the historical colors that it was, the historical condition. Like somebody painted the walls black and they really should be this gold yellow. We're allowed to do that. And also the painting, if it's for rehabilitation, like we're fixing a wall or we're fixing something, and then you can paint it to preserve it. But I'll admit that I didn't read this proposal really closely. I was looking at the numbers. So if they're just painting a room that isn't a historical, bringing it back to its original colors, then without any repairs, I would consider that routine maintenance and not eligible. Well, first of all, all the work is exterior. None of it's interior. And I also looked at the page, Sam circulated, and it, I mean, it isn't routine painting because it hasn't been painting in 20 years. So I mean, I think at some point, at some point, it really is preservation. It's unfortunate, but that's what I would argue. But it might be worth kind of as a CPA policy to say, if we're paying for painting, like this, that you can't ask us for painting like this again, you know, we're not going to be. Right. Right. If they were just painting because you did another coat of paint, the answer would be no. Right. But if it's been 20 years and the structure is now, you know, a significant risk of decay or whatever, you know, maybe, maybe that makes it different. Tim, I was just going to ask how that would differ than repairing a chimney or a roof. That's maintenance in a way. It preserves it. I don't know, painting is specific to the CPA regulations or not. So that, but maybe someone hasn't answered that, but I don't see the difference, frankly. Well, reserve, the place in a roof is preserving the asset. It's preserving the historic house. If the roof needs, if the roof is leaking and it's deteriorating. But if something is not painted correctly and water gets in and it's peeling and the board rocks, what's the difference? Maybe replace the boards and then they can paint it. Yes. Okay. That's, that's allowed. So do you think we should also assume that this is eligible, but recognize there might be some, I mean, is the town attorney going to look into this one also or that request has not been made? I put the request into Stuart on this one, how Sandy says for the first round. Okay. We pay the coalition dues. I figure we might as well get our money's worth. Make him work. Okay. All right. Well, then let's for the moment assume it's eligible. So I sent 56 around page 56 so everyone could read it because it's specific to the project being discussed. And it is the rehabilitation portion that would qualify in my perspective in regards to painting qualifying. I distinguish between a roof and a slate roof and painting based on longevity masonry as well. There's 7500 year projects, whereas the house was recently painted about, I think it was 2004 they said. But there's a couple aspects that struck me. The definition of rehabilitation, in other words, the scope of painting. 70% of the project to me means it's a painting project with a lot of rehabilitation. I have walked around that project. I walked around it again today and I read the quote carefully. The work that's being done for repairs and rehabilitation relates to three of the porches, a corner section, and the cupula, which is already included in the painting and the north smaller section of the wall. But there's no work being done on the carriage house. The carriage house is a straight up painting job. And that's 19,000 five. I think the committee needs to consider whether or not we think painting and 20 years is relatively routine in terms of duration these days with the acrylics that are out there in terms of longevity. That's an issue of precedent for me. The carriage house unequivocally is maintenance. There's no rehabilitation on it. I don't think it meets the definition of rehabilitation for this. I love the building. I mean, I really do. But I couldn't support that portion of the bill. I think it's of the projects in the middle. I think it's debatable whether or not two full coats on the perimeter that has no work done on it would be maintenance or not because certainly spot priming is graved in it and then one full coat around the whole perimeter. I understand that. You could argue that if there's two thirds of the house that's having no work done on it and you're doing two full coats, that second coat would be maintenance. That's my thought process behind the whole project. My posture is that I'm uncomfortable with the $19,500 for the carriage house because I can't see how that would qualify unless we assume that every house that's 50 years or older in Amherst can have painting done after 20 years, actually less than 20 years. The rest of it, the committee members could and they can even for that make their own decisions. But I think it's highly relevant. I also, they did indicate they're willing to put in $30,000, which I see lower in the amount, which is good. The estimates for the repairs are about $50,000. $49,000 makes the painting project a smaller component than the large one if I was going by the peer definition. At a minimum, I'd want to see the carriage house not included because I just, I think it would be setting an uncertain precedent for the committee for the long term, given the volume of houses in that age for work that's not associated with rehabilitation. So that's my general thought processes regarding the project, which I love the house. Anybody else have a comment on this one? So it seems to be a matter, well, that most of the cost is for painting that may or may not be eligible for CPA funds. So, but there's a chunk of it, maybe $50,000, maybe it was 60. Don't remember that's for repairs, repairs and then painting of the repaired area. So, if, you know, again, that what we can just like for the farm and the history trail, assume it's eligible and, you know, if it isn't, then they won't get all the money. But if no one has anything more to say about that one. Can I suggest something? What I would suggest is that we make a contingent on this is just for the main house and not the garage. So they would have to use their portion to pay for the garage. Well, that doesn't satisfy all of Sam's concern. I mean, we could, but it would seem to me that if the house, if the painting of the house is eligible, then the painting of the carriage house would also be eligible. But I guess we could still decide not to do it, not to pay for it. Yeah. Thanks. I may have not followed the number right. Sam, were you saying that you thought 20,000 of this was maybe not eligible? I'm saying at a minimum the 19 five for the carriage house. I don't consider to be eligible because it's straight up painting after yeah, 17 years or 19 years, which would be the same for many of our houses. Yeah, that makes sense. I guess in terms of the ask, though, wouldn't they just use their portion towards that paint and then this ask would still be the same amount? Like it is actually impacts unless it's more than like the 30,000 delta between this and their original quote. Debatable. That's, yeah, that's debatable for the committee. I assume this this ask is the net to us that it assumes they're putting in. Right. And they would just put their money in towards if it's ineligible because they have near marks that towards anything at this point. So my sense, unless it's more than that 30,000 something would be impacted and they still would be compliant to your concerns. Sam. That I understand your logic. I have, you know, some concerns beyond the 19 five, but I hear what you're saying if we don't want to factor in their if we don't want to deduct the their contribution to the project from our total to be considered. I understand that. I'm not following it. It's already been deducted. They're asking us for 135. Correct. If they're if they were asking us for 135, which seems to be the case, to me, I still have issues with the 19 five. Of course, I have other knowledge, specific knowledge on this subject that informs my opinions very thoroughly. That's fine. Well, we can't and we can't answer the eligibility part tonight. So I think we should move on. So Andy took his took his hand down. Okay. Why don't we just finish with the historic preservation items? The Simian Strong House study, 18, just under $19,000. Does anybody want to comment on it? Who is very highly rated? Anything to say at the moment? No. Okay. How about the West Cemetery Fence? We already rejected the North Cemetery Fence. So number 11, West Cemetery Fence replacement on part, I think on the west side and some signs. Anybody have any comment about this, Sam? Very much in favor of completing the perimeter with a repaired fence on the let me see, east side of the cemetery. Yeah, the east side. And it's a phenomenal, very impressive cemetery of such a thing can can be. And so I'm very much in favor of what has occurred to date with the town's work and what they're proposing here. Anybody else have a comment on this one? I have to say I object very strongly to spending any CPA money to to unassigned say anything about the mural, which is a public artwork, not a historic, not a historic artifact. I don't care if it's about history, that doesn't make it an historic artifact. So I just don't, you know, even if we can give them money for signs, I just don't think mentioning the historic mural or pointing to it would be an appropriate use of CPA funds, you know, that that part of the printing or whatever they could they could find some other money for. Anybody? They did have two types of signs, Sarah. I understand your thought process there. And I was trying to figure out which ones were referring to the mural or not. They're the two entry signs at the end of the whole at the front and the side that are more comprehensive. But there are three in the cemetery. And I think those are the three that might be pointing towards or referencing the murals along with other information. That was a question I had myself. Yeah. Well, yeah, it may. Yes. Andy? I agree, sir. Are you for your content here, you just make that comment or do you want to actually prove the language? I think what I would like to do is reduce the amount of the award by something approaching. But I don't know. I mean, because I don't know if they were discrete, discrete signs. I mean, it could be the full amount. It's just that you can't use any of it to talk about the artwork. I mean, I agree. I don't feel comfortable making that comment. Andy, you have gone into an echo chamber. We can hear you, but it's you're sort of reverberating. I don't know if I will reconnect. Okay. Do you disagree with with my point of view on this? I mean, because I'm saying something is ineligible. I don't have the memo that I sent out to everybody. I don't know if it was last week or the week before Stuart had some clarification on signs. I don't have that in front of me. Well, he said it was okay for like general opening hours and, you know, kind of the rules, stuff like that. And some interpretive, I think there was interpretive, too. It shouldn't be the larger part of the project. Yes, which it certainly isn't. But I don't think and I think it's valid to or allowable to interpret the cemetery, which is the historic thing. I don't think interpreting the artwork is allowable. So that's my point. All right. Doesn't look like anyone has something else to say on that. So let's go up to the housing projects. Supportive transitional housing. 500,000 was rated very highly. So was the municipal housing trust request for $500,000, but for just to have in their trust fund for projects as they arise. And Sean's exercise used half that number. That was my suggestion. That doesn't mean we have to use it or any other number. But whoops. Yes. Okay. So, Katie, what do you want to say? Well, Sarah, similar to Tim, I feel very strongly about the critical need for housing, affordable housing in the town. And so I'm totally in favor of the items one and two, as stated. I guess I have more questions around three and four because they're multi-year. So I was looking, I'm very less patient for process as I probably should be on this committee, but I'm sort of like, oh, if we have $98,000 to cut, maybe, maybe we should look at where we might have some consensus around cutting. Like, but I appreciate that, you know, talking about each of these proposals is really critically important too. So I just wanted to, I'm concerned. I sort of would love to talk about the two items three and four, especially because, you know, the $100,000 is a big number. And it's for three years. And I'm just wondering what other people on the committee think about a one-year proposal or not funding staffing or, you know, how, I know staffing and having extra capacity is really important. I think when John spoke about it, he was saying, you know, the other two pieces were more important than the consultant. So I just had some thoughts about that might be a place to reduce and wonder what others thought about that. So let me just check. So you would be in favor of the full funding for both of those. For one and two, but three and four, I have questions about. All right. So if we were to fund the second one at $500,000, we'd have to cut another $250,000. Because right now, I know, Sarah, what I said is as stated in your, in the gold total. Oh, okay. Sorry, I didn't hear. Okay. Tim? Yeah. Thank you. Katie just sort of summarized my feeling as I expressed the last thing. What I hate to do is us to reduce it to $250,000 from the second one. I would be in favor of both $500,000 and not the $500,000 and $250,000. If come to find out this coming year, we in fact do have some opportunities and we wish we had, the Housing Trust wishes had double money in it. I would rather take that priority and fund it and not fund some of the other projects. And that's my dilemma. I just don't know. So. Okay. Sean? So to Tim's point, Tim, that's one of the reasons why we still have a budget reserve. So if there's something that comes up during the year and the committee wants to allocate more funds to it, at least as of this point, you have $600,000 in that reserve. And the trust has some money of its own currently. Oh, got it. Because in all these figures, we are including that some reserve we have. Yeah, right now that full $600 is still in the number. Okay. Good point. Good point. Thank you. And Tim, just to, so, you know, I'm not sure if you do realize that the Housing Trust comes to CPA every year and always will. Okay. Because, because so far we CPA money is the only money available to that. So this is routine. That doesn't mean it's unimportant. But, you know, they will ask again next year also. Okay. Projects and projects may get underway. I mean, they're very slow to get underway. You know, that's just how it works. But the money doesn't get spent very quickly, as far as I can tell. Okay. And I guess I have a secondary, I think it's important symbolically to support the public housing versus some of the other projects, particularly private owned projects. And that's my other feeling. Thank you. Okay. Thanks, Andy. Thanks, Sarah. I think that's a very good point, Katie. I hadn't thought about particularly number four, whether that could be split my, my initial reaction, like really initial reactions is that from the 30,000, I know they had a resource in mind. That seemed like a pretty concrete ask and maybe a clear sense of the cost. On number four, I wonder, you know, they'll need to do, they'll need to do a search. They'll need to find a candidate. They'll need to try to retain the candidate, whether if we cut that down, whether we might, whether that might jeopardize the ability to backfill should be not be able to get, you know, somebody in place for two to three years. If we feel like there's a way to reduce that number, I would be supportive of it if we were close, but I just want to make sure that that, I guess I'd like to hear from, from the town particularly, whether or not they feel like less than 100 would be enough for them to bring in a candidate of quality for the duration acquired, if they had to do the search more than once. Thanks. Remember, it's a part-time job also, I believe. Sarah? I was just going to say like a lot of people are trying to hire part-time employees and they can't do it. Just wanted, yeah. Sarah. Just, it's an interesting idea. I agree what Katie said. It strikes me suddenly number four that I mean, I really believe in building capacity of the town and building the staff in order to be able to execute housing projects locally. That's why I voted at 100,000 as a five. And now thinking about it, I'm wondering, is CPA the logical source to be funding a staff position with the town to be doing housing? I would love that to be funded by HUD or CDBG money, I don't know if we could qualify for that so much, or the state. I just find CPA money to be paying for that use slightly odd. So I could be persuaded to restore one and two to 500 each and think about eliminating that coordinator if I felt confident that the town could find a different source of money to build that important capacity. And Dave's homecass, I expect, is here to comment on that Very point. Dave? Or am I imagining it? Sure. No, I'm happy to comment on it. I was just trying to gather my thoughts there for a minute. No, this is a great conversation. I totally, I understand the questions. I understand the concerns. You know, I guess I would go back to just on the two amounts for a minute. You know, as Sean said, you know, if the trust and the trust has its own resources that it has come to CPAC for in the past, I don't know what their current balances are, but they're not zeroed out. So they have a few hundred thousand dollars in their, in their, you know, under their control, if you will, at this point. And then as Sean said, if you have a reserve, a budgeted reserve, if something were to come up, then we could always go back to that, to that source. With regard to funding, you know, the bottom line is that, you know, the planning department. So let me go back to who makes projects happen. And I want to be completely respectful of the housing trust for a minute, but the housing trust is a partner with the town. The town, for the most part, is making projects happen. It's my staff and I who Belcher Town Road and the East Street School, a lot of that really was staff driven and not trust driven. We're collaborating with them. So what I'm trying to do is build some additional capacity. As Sarah said, is this the ideal way to do it with a three year grant? Probably not. But it's being done this way all over the state. I think there's over 20, maybe between 25 and 30 different communities who use CPA funds to do this. And it's really a part time staff person to help us increase our capacity to do more projects. So could we do it for less? Could we do it for two years? Sure. We'd probably be back asking you for year three, four and five. And we could look creatively at other sources in the future. I don't think there's a lot out there, but we could look at those. But it's all about capacity and it simply takes staff time to make these things happen. Because really what you're talking about, and I think you all appreciate this, is you take these amounts that seem large to us like half a million dollars here, half a million dollars there. But you're really talking about pulling together a project that might be 10 or 20 million dollars to make it happen. And things like that we've worked on Butterfield, the Butterfield Affordable Housing Project, Olympia Oaks, the North Square, all really happened through staff initiatives. So I think I'll stop there. Happy to take more questions. Thank you. Let's see, Sam and then Katie. I think Katie was first. Okay. I'm glad to speak, but she was waiting for a while. Sam, I'm calling on you. Okay, sounds good. So I appreciated Sarah Eisinger's comments. I think she phrased it well and I appreciate that Katie's initial raising of the subject matter because I wrestle with those thoughts as well, specifically relating to the hiring of staff with CPA funds versus some of the projects that are out there. And it's a tough call because I'm just verbalizing my thoughts on this project because I hear Dave's commentary regarding capacity. Certainly, we know someone such as Dave is extremely busy. And there is a time management element to productivity. And so I'm trading that efficiency and the origin of projects that we've seen versus the concept of hiring staff. That's my internal wrestling. I recognize the efficiency aspect of it. Regarding Katie's comments on the 30,000, I think 15,000 a year for two years is very, it's not excessive from the consultant standpoint. And so to me, in summary, the consultant 30,000, I would certainly, as my vote was, my rating, be in favor of it. And the staff for the town seems like a reasonable concept in terms of efficiency. I'm wrestling with it. And it would be a function of our overall capacity to fund the projects. I would factor that in. So that's my mindset. Thank you. Katie? Oh, thank you, Sarah. I really appreciate what you had to say, Dave, because I think funding without capacity, without staffing doesn't go far. So I really appreciate it. I'm just struggling with three years worth of a commitment and just your point about that you wouldn't be able to find other funds. I was sort of thinking, oh, what if we gave you a two-year on-ramp? So at least we could get somebody in and get things working and then eventually find some funding. But if what you're saying is, no, we're going to need CPA funding forever, I just, I worry that that's not possible. So anyway, I am in favor of some portion of this. I just want to say publicly to fund some capacity because I think it's critically needed. So I want to jump in with two things. First to say, in case you're wondering, I think we should be prepared to go till nine o'clock and just get through all these initial discussions and if we were initial. If we've discussed all the projects before nine, then we'd either quit or start voting. But we're definitely going to have to meet next week. So that's, I hope everybody was prepared for that. Second of all, I want to say that I consider Project One and Project Four to be a package deal. I don't, I don't think there's much point in giving the town half a million dollars for a housing project and then not funding staff. Not that that person would be only be working on that project, but as we previously discussed, the town council has a policy as a new comprehensive housing policy and is going to want to push forward in many directions on housing. And I know the planning department at least is incredibly overworked. At least that's my impression. And I just don't think that it's going to happen if we don't fund that housing coordinator. And yeah, so, so that's my, that's my position. And I do think that the housing trust, they don't need, they don't need all their money or even any of their money immediately, although they would certainly like to have that in the trust. They could come back. We do have a reserve. If something, some new project or some project is moving forward and they do in fact have an urgent need for funds, we can address that at the time. But I think it, I think the need for a housing coordinator, a part-time staff person is very urgent. And so I do not favor reducing or eliminating that. And I think it's much easier to hire a really qualified person if you can offer a three-year contract than one or two. Dave? Yeah, I just, Sarah, I don't know. Was that me or the other day? I may, but Dave Williams, if you have a comment, go ahead. Sarah, I'm here, but somehow or another, my picture may not be. No, yeah, we don't see you, but we hear you. Yes, but I hear all of what is being said. Okay. All right. Well, I was calling on Dave Zomek. I'm sorry, I wasn't clear about that. Go ahead with Dave. Go ahead with Dave and then see. All right. Thank you. Two quick points. I probably shouldn't have been so heasty about what happens after three years. I think what we would do is we'd really want to take a look at a cost-benefit analysis of this. What did we achieve? What capacity did we build over two years or three years, depending on if you decide to recommend this to the town council? And then, yes, I think we would need to look at and say, okay, is this a sustainable way to fund this position? But first and foremost, what did we achieve? What additional projects got moved forward? And I think as Sarah Marshall said moments ago, these projects take a long time. So an Olympia Oaks or an East Street School project takes years. Valley CDC's project on Northampton Road is years in the making. But again, I think we can take a look at in year two or three, how effective was this? Are there other sources and was mentioned earlier, CDBG funding? Or is this important enough for the town to say, you know what? We need to step up to the table and fund this through the operating budget, if it's that high a priority. The other thing, just a quick point before I step back is I want to make it clear what the trust and the town were not two separate entities. Sometimes when there's discussions about what the funding goes toward or what it will be like, it's a collaborative relationship. So there isn't a trust project and a town project. They're really all one in the same. Nate Malloy, who's a senior planner who works under my guidance, attends every trust meeting. But he is, you know, out straight, if you will, and going so fast and he writes grants and works on affordable housing and a myriad of other projects. So I just want to make it clear that it's all collaborative. And so money to the trust, money to the town, it's all one pot of money going toward affordable housing projects. So there isn't a real division line that says, oh, the trust will spend this on X and the town will spend that on Y. If we come up with a good project, whatever the trust has and whatever the town has access to will likely all go in that pot. So thank you. So Sarah, can I add to that? I can't raise my hand because I'm sharing my screen. But the money for the trust sits in the town treasury. So we actually pay the bills for the trust and everything. So it's part of the town treasury. Right. But that money, in fact, moves into their account, right, unlike the other. If this is about July 1, we move this money and we put it into that trust fund. But it's basically just another bank account under the town's control. Does anybody, so it seems that we're really talking about all four, the first four housing projects at once. Does anybody want to say something else about them? At some point, we're going to have to propose a specific number for each of them. And I don't know, I guess we vote up or down. And that's how we decide if it's the right number or not. Sam, you're muted. I appreciate your comment, Sarah Marshall, regarding the concept of projects one and four working together. And I hear Dave's comments regarding not just the collaboration between the housing trust in the town, but regarding capacity. And, you know, I do see the time management benefits for initiating projects by having additional resources and staff in town. And I can see the benefits to accelerating or raising more opportunities based on having a dedicated person there. So the concept of what's being proposed is understandable and it seems good to me. The only issue is budget. And the fact that you mentioned 20 other communities in the state are doing this as well has an influence to me as well. So that's all I have to say. I wonder if we should move on to discuss the final housing project, unless there's something one of you wishes to add about these first four. Okay, then let's move to the nutting building envelope project. 87, 934. And I'll remind you that they have another source of funding. I don't remember if it was for the same amount, but a significant amount from another source to contribute to the project. So this would leverage, be leveraged essentially. So anyone have a comment on this project? Does not appear that anyone does. Okay, then we move on to the remaining few recreation projects. The largest asks, because we're putting the track off for the time being, the Hickory Ridge Trail development for 150,000. And then we'll talk about the pickleball courts for 120,000. Anybody wish to talk, say anything about Hickory Ridge? Which had an average rating of 4.2. I think everybody's getting tired, Sam. I'll just reiterate that I think it's a fantastic project. I'm glad the town was able to come close, soon to come to fruition, acquire the property. It's certainly a rare location. Those types of properties don't come up very often in Amherst, given the space and the connectivity. So I'm in favor of it, as I said last week. Thank you, Anna. So I just want to, I can't remember if I'm reiterating or not, but just talk about the relative urgency of this. I think Hickory Ridge is going to start, and it is currently being used by folks who live in the area. And so the importance of getting trails in there as soon as possible, there is urgency to that. So you see, yeah, right. Dave, I don't suppose the town is the proud owner quite yet. No, it's always a few more months. We are not the owner yet, Sarah, but I will tell you I've spent probably three hours of my day today working on Hickory. So it is, we're very close. We're working on easement agreements right now for the solar part of the project. And once those are done, things move very quickly. So I know I've been saying months, but our target right now is by January 15th, we will own the property. So we've had some good outreach sessions. We were just at Mill Valley Apartments for two outreach sessions. It was a little cold. This was about two weeks ago, but we had a number of people who live in Mill Valley Apartments come and talk to us about what they like to see on the property. And we're getting the property ready for winter, even though we don't own it yet. We've demarcated the parking lot and kind of limited to, limited where the parking can be for the winter, because as Anna said, people are using the property daily for running, dog walking, bird watching, etc. So, and we're getting signs ready as we take ownership, just giving people kind of a sense of, you know, some, you know, dawn to dusk usage and things of that sort. So it's really going to happen here very shortly. And if it doesn't, then obviously this, you know, this grant wouldn't happen. Kim, you're muted. My only concern, I 100% in support of the project. However, my concern is whether this is premature. My recollection is there's going to be community input, etc., etc., etc. And whether or not we're approving something that in the future might not necessarily be needed. Now, these funds are for not a specific designed trail at the moment. It's for any trail or, because that's my concern, is 150,000 for trails is fine. But if we already are predetermining where the trail is going to be, etc., I'm not sure that's premature. So do you have any thought on that, David? Well, yeah, it's a good, it's a good point, Tim. What we have, what we have, what I can say with certainty is that in all the outreach we've done and we have the Engage Amherst page up on the main part of the Amherstown website, we have, I think, 100 or so comments on that. And, you know, there's lots of different things that people would like to see there, but trails and access for the public, both visitors from afar and also town residents and nearby residents, that is crystal clear and rock solid. So I think a trail system there is probably the number one piece of input that we've gotten. Everybody wants that. Where the trail will be will be determined through permitting, because of all the natural resources there, vernal pools, rivers, floodplain, etc. We're going to try our very best to use some of the existing card pass. So all of the trail system would have to go through the Conservation Commission. And the plan itself would probably come back at least for informational purposes to the town council in, I would say, the spring, late spring of 22. So we, as Anna said, we will have to get going fairly quickly to do some trail improvements, because if we own it, people will come and they're already coming and we don't own it yet. So we're going to have to make the trails clear, safe, accessible, etc., very, very soon in 22. So thanks. I thought I had seen another hand now. It was for me, but Dave covered it. Okay, better than I could. All right. All right, moving on then to pickleball courts, which had, where'd they go? Where's the pickleball? Oh, 4.1, 4.1 rating, I believe. It's pretty high. Sean? Thanks, Sarah. So I was talking with Dave and the town manager, I think the one thing with this project, we just wanted the committee to be aware of or to consider is the location and not necessarily locking in the location at this point, because it hasn't really been vetted by staff and analyzed from a public works perspective and a recreation perspective. And so I think everybody supports the project, but we just wanted to raise the concern about being too specific on the location at this point and maybe leaving some flexibility there. Okay. So I suppose, and maybe this is always possible, that as should the project proceed, it might turn out that whatever site seems appropriate, $120,000 would not be enough, right? And there might be further request. I guess that's something that can always happen. It certainly happened with the Grove Park playground that was I think funded by at least three CPA awards. So just to put that out there. Eddie? I keep seeing stuff about pickleball courts now that it's been come before the committee and reading Friends enjoying it a lot. I think the money that was the proposal was based on the efficacy or the economies of scale of creating three pickleball courts because that was sort of the best way to proceed. I still go by the War Memorial Pool and fondly think that we might do one pickleball court or two pickleball courts on the old basketball court there, which would create another reason to be there. And maybe have it be a sort of let's build it and they will come and then we expand our pickleball courts to the Mill River Recreation Area later. I mean, that's just my two cents worth. So let me just clarify. So is your thought primarily to fund just one and at a location to be determined? And if it's popular, then maybe they'll come back and ask for funding for another one or two in another location. Right. And I'm picking up on what Sean just said, not to lock ourselves into a specific site. Right. I really hear that and I really want them downtown. I want to ask for Sarah. Yes. Yeah, is there some building on what Sean said, some due diligence that we could planning money and to instead of this hundred this hundred twenty to build three at Mill River? Is there some of confidence in pickleball? And but is there some kind of coordination that this could have with the town plan the logical place design it? And that's what we pay for. So I would I would ask Dave whether that work would just be done. I mean, we wouldn't it would just be funded out of the operating budget if rec staff or DPW staff were checking out and trying to determine what would be the appropriate site. Would would any extra funds be needed to make that determination? Yeah, no, I don't think any extra funds would be needed to make that determination. But but again, I think Sean said it best and I hinted at this, I think at your last meeting that there wasn't a lot of time and and again, nobody's fault, but there just wasn't a lot of outreach to town staff so that we could kind of vet this a little bit. So, you know, in my mind, if the committee supported the hundred and twenty thousand to actually, you know, vote to if you're so inclined to vote to that sum of money to create pickleball court or courts in the town of Amherst site to be determined by staff in consultation with the with the applicant and the the you know, the proponents of the project and then give us the time to work with them. As Sean said, DPW recreation planning to work with them to say, all right, is Mill River the best site? Or is I believe that was for three three pickleball courts. So hypothetically, if if it was determined that near the War Memorial Pool was a better site, maybe that site is cheaper or maybe it's more expensive. So you might get two there and and maybe in future years, we come back and say they're so popular that we need more of these. But I like the idea of recommending the number and then let staff work with the proponents to say maybe the Mill River site is a great site, but maybe it isn't, maybe it maybe there's a better site in town. We just haven't done that, but that could all be done by staff. Not something I can say this time of year that we would jump right on to be honest. There are so many year end things we're working on and and winter is coming. So it'd be a spring summer thing. But if I just follow up before calling on Katie, Dave, if staff were doing, if it was in house work, finding the right site that could be done before July 1st, maybe, and then the funds would be available to actually start designing. Yeah, yeah, I think I think July 1st is very reasonable. And again, it's again, we may find Mill River is the best site, but we just haven't had that time, that chance to really do the due diligence. Sure. Okay. Thank you. Katie? Well, I have another question sort of muted yourself, Katie. Hold on, I'm back. I was trying to lower my hand and lower your voice. Yeah, I lowered my voice. Yes. Sorry about that. I just was building on what a question I have is since the town hasn't evaluated this, and we don't know what the outcome of that might be. They might decide there isn't a good place. But I mean, I guess what I want to say is I'm in favor of pickleball courts. I think it's a great, I love this idea. But I'm just wondering, could we, this is a question, Sarah, is could we instead of voting on it now say, Hey, this is what reserves are for when when the study by the town is done in the spring and they look at it and they say this is really urgent and we can do this. We can get it ready for the summer. Couldn't we vote on it and use the reserves to do that at that point? I would say in theory, we could act, but town council has to act and they have their own very busy schedule. So I'm not sure we could guarantee to get that they would be able to vote on it before the end of the year. Okay, well, it just, it feels like without a real plan and without the town having weighed in on it, I feel a little uncertain about it, even though I'm in favor of the idea of pickleball courts. Well, I would say they're all, you know, projects like this are contingent, you know, if you can't find it, if you can't find a good spot, you know, then it's just not going to happen. But Dave. Which one? I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I will learn. And you're back on screen, David, will you? Yes, I am. I'm calling on, but I'm calling on David Zimmer. Yeah, just in terms of, I'm very confident. So, so overall, I think staff, the staff I've talked to are supportive of this proposal for pickleball courts and Amherst. I think, I think we can find a site. We've got plenty of recreation land, flat dry recreation land. So I'm not at all concerned that we won't find a site. And I think staff are supportive of it. This was discussed pretty extensively at the Recreation Commission with our new recreation director, Ray Harp. Barb Bills, who was our former director and was in the department for 20, 20 years, so years did some due diligence on this as well. So I think, and I've talked with Guilford Moring and Alan Snow from our DPW, and I think overall no one is opposed to pickleball courts. It's all about just finding the right site. So and I think we will. This is much different than, say, putting, you know, a new outdoor swimming pool somewhere. That's, that might be a hard, a much harder analysis. But this is a fairly small surface area. I will say at Mill River, the location that was selected, you know, it's kind of common sense to say, okay, are there any utilities under it? Will these, will these courts need lights? Is there any drain, are there any drainage issues? Are the trees overarching the area? Do you want it to be sunny or shady or, or half and half? So all of those things just need to, would any trees need to come down? If you know Mill River recreation areas, you're going down the hill, this was the parking lot on the left, kind of near the new basketball courts. So it may be the perfect site for them. We just haven't done the work to determine that. Thank you, Sam. So I heard Sarah E and Katie, and I share their thoughts on the benefits of identifying a plan that would, you know, more thoroughness in terms of what we might do. I know it's new, but I know the town needs to be involved. I'm glad to hear Dave's comments that he's confident there are locations for it. Certainly, I support the concept of pickleball in Amherst. And like you, I believe it was Hedy, you said you heard about it. Maybe it was Katie. My brother, when I was at Thanksgiving, he goes, yeah, I'm playing pickleball. I've never heard that before. He normally plays basketball. This is clearly out there. So I'm in favor of it. I'm, I have no concept as to the ask price as to whether or not the project amount makes sense or not. I understand that they tried to estimate based on what other towns might have done. But I don't think you really know what the actual project might cost. And therefore, more information from the town would be very helpful. But I certainly support the concept of pickleball. And if we are tight on funds, we could conceivably fund a planning element, although it sounds like you may not need it, because the town staff could do so. So those are my comments. Sarah. Yes. Yes, David Williams. Yes. Yes, thanks so much. I basically, I endorse the comments that are coming from Sam, the cloud, and also the comments from David. The other David. Yes, the other David from the town. I see, and I think I should say in our proposal, it was suggested or recommended that the court should be over in North Amherst. I live in North Amherst. I endorse that 100%. North Amherst is on the move. We have just spent time tonight talking, discussing funds for the Mill River Project. And what I see happening is this is the beginning of a new sport for the town of Amherst. Pickleball courts will be built all around Amherst. This is a starting point. And North Amherst is where it should start. The suggested site. And other sites identified. And I'm sure that individuals becoming back or the town will be coming back, asking for additional money from CPA for pickleball. Okay. All right. I think we can, we only have five minutes. So let's quickly talk about Plum Brook irrigation system. The ask is now $38,000, I believe. So removing the water cannon. So let's make it quick. Sam? Yeah, I wasn't present during the meeting three weeks ago when we talked about Plum Brook. But I really had something I wanted to say. I'm very familiar with Plum Brook. I coached in the Amherst Youth Soccer Association for many years. And I'm currently on the board of directors of the Amherst Youth Soccer Association and have been for five, six years. I want to bring to the attention of the committee just how widely utilized that field is and just how important this project is. The volume of kids from our community and a few surrounding towns, but it's primarily Amherst who play on that field is huge. I used to pick up kids from all over town, bring them there. And what you saw happen on that field was fantastic. For years, it's a continuity aspect. But it's not just Amherst Soccer that plays there. It's ultimate Frisbee plays there. Very wide uses. So that might be the most heavily used field in town, certainly more so than even the high school field. And the other thing that I wanted to say is that it actually is a safety issue. About four years ago, I remember, I think I emailed Dave, Zomac, in fact, saying, Hey, these around the perimeter of that building, there are two foot holes that have these caps on them, which contain the drainage. And I literally could just step right in one two feet down and break my leg like that was right on the sideline. And there are little elevated portions where all these kids are running full speed around the field. So it's both a genuine safety issue, more significant than the others that I heard on the track or elsewhere. And the participation levels are huge at Amherst at Plumbra. It's really amazing just how much fun kids and parents have at that location. So I enthusiastically support it. And I hope the other committee members recognize the the benefits that could occur. Thank you. Let me just speak on behalf of the Recreation Commission. The commission is very strongly in favor of this. As Sam says, it is a very heavily used recreational asset. It just would benefit a very large number of people. So they feel very strongly. Andy. Thanks, Sarah. So just want to, for clarity, with the removal of the cannon, is this is this really just basically the removal of the irrigation lines and heads? Is that like this to the primary scope of this project? I don't have the notes in front of me. I can't remember. No, well, well, mostly. Oh, okay. And the, I think their cistern and pumps and stuff, they're leaving the water lines in place. They will remove, they will pull the heads out on their own town time. Perfect. Thanks. Okay. Can we quickly say or just open it up for comments on the just general trail improvements to have the town trail system? This is also basically an annual ask. We have so many miles of trails and Anna. I'll go so fast, I promise. I just again want to speak up in favor of this one in terms of urgency and importance, right? This is trails us so much increased use this past year that we're noticing even an even higher need for maintenance. And the conservation department does a really great job phasing it out and kind of facing where the greatest need is. But I know it's a, I know it's a regular ask, but it's even more important this year than in past years. And let's use the word improvement, not maintenance. I'm sorry, I'm so tired. I meant improvement. I'm sorry. Thank you. I'm trying to see that was pretty highly rated. Sarah, I'll give you the last comment and then we'll, I don't know. So what happens if we restore, like, can we just do the math and we see how much reserve fund we have to dip into? If we do what? We restore number line five, you know, to 100,000. Okay. Which line? The Amherst of the Housing Trust. You know, it's, yeah, number about 350, I think, right? It was 500. And what if we cut, I'm just playing here. Salem Place, Conkey Stevens, you take out 20,000, that painting, right? Wasn't that something like? That was the Hills House. The Hills House. I'm sorry. I'm just playing, like, I just want to. Let's do it. I don't think you take that out, though. No, I don't. Yeah. Yeah. You don't take anything out. I think they just paid, they just paid for the paint. Okay. So are we taking anything out or are we just dipping into the reserve? No, we're taking anything out. We've already taken, subtracted the 30,000 that they're putting in. Right. No, I'm saying anything else that we're taking out. I don't think we've even gotten to that level of discussion yet. Everybody, we seem to want to get through all the proposals once. I think next time we have to decide what to, what to do about the specific amounts and about the track. I'm sorry. No, don't change it. Okay. And I just wanted to say about the reserves. I think I heard this from Anna some time ago, and I've heard it, I guess, directly from the committee involved that the reparations, African heritage reparations committee may bring a proposal, I mean, obviously out of, out of schedule, but may request funds in this fiscal year for this current round of funding. So I don't know what they really have in mind or. I said that, and then Sean also said it, I think. Yeah, or what amount or, you know, or how they actually move it along. Yeah, I can speak to that more, but until it's actually a proposal, I don't know if that's prudent. Well, okay, let's see, Sean. Thanks, Sarah. So one thing I would just say is at this point, the way the financial picture is if you reduce the reserve to 500,000, you could vote the package. And then that 500,000 is still available for the housing trust if they have a project that comes up. So you could leave the housing trust at the 250, and you'd still have access to the 500 reserve, which is still a significant level of reserves to bring forward. Can I see if you didn't want to cut anything else? Sonia, can you scroll? Because I don't see the reserve. Yeah, go down to the total amount. And the, and then your gap right now is about 93,000. So if you drop that to 503 or, yeah. Okay. Tim, and then this, we will really adjourn. Okay, that was actually going to be my question. I couldn't see the bottom line. Oh, okay. Now I can. Okay, so next week. And I will remember that we will take a break. Like at eight o'clock, if we're not, we will take five minute break. I'm sorry, we've all been sitting here for so long. But I think we really need to try hard to get to work. And that means specific amounts. And the track is still, is still kind of the open question, I guess. All right. So thank you all very much for your time. Hang in in there. This has been very productive. I think, I think very hopefully we can move expeditiously, but no guarantees. So with that, the meeting is adjourned at nine o'clock. I know five. Good night, everyone. Thank you. Thanks, Sonia. And thank, ah, okay. Thank you, everybody.