 Seeing that we have a majority of the Town Council present, I'm going to call the Committee of the Whole together, and then turn it over to Andy Steinberg, who is Chair of the Finance Committee. And I call the Finance Committee to order, and welcome all of you who have come to the public hearing of the Council Finance Committee to consider the fiscal year 20 budget, which was submitted by the Town Manager to the Council on May 1st. The hearing is required by the Town Charter, more importantly, it's an opportunity for the Finance Committee and the Council, since it must be the Council's here, as well as the Town Manager, to hear about your questions, your concerns, and your priorities regarding the budget. The budget is stated in your priorities. The Charter provides in Section 5.5 that immediately when receiving the proposed budget from the Town Manager, the Council shall refer the budget to the Town Council's Finance Committee. It goes on to say, and I quote, The Finance Committee shall hold the public hearing of the proposed budget, providing no less than 10 days notice to such hearing. The Finance Committee will thoroughly review the budget and make a presentation and recommendation to the Town Council within 30 days of referral. Close quote. The Finance Committee has been meeting twice weekly and has heard from the Town Manager, Superintendent of Schools, Library Directors, and the heads of the Town Departments to fully understand the proposed budget and how it will continue the important services on which all of us rely. These are the portions of the budget that support the operations of the Town Government. On Thursday, May 23rd, which is a tradition today, the Committee will consider the proposed capital plan and will hear from the Chair of the Community Preservation Act Committee about its proposal for the use of Community Preservation Act funds. While this is a separate process, it is also an allocation of funds raised by taxation and state allocation that supports what the Town can do for residents. The Finance Committee will hear comments on the expenses proposed by the Community Preservation Act Committee at this hearing, but the Committee recommendations and Council actions are a separate process from the action required on the budget under Article 5. Just so you know, the hearing is going to go on the following process and then I'll turn it over to the Town Manager who's going to start with the full presentation and description of this proposed budget. If there are any further questions from the Councillors, the Councillors have heard a presentation previously, but if there are questions from the Councillors, entertain them. This is a process, by the way, that's outlined in the Charter. Members of the public, all of you, will be able to ask questions about the proposed budget in the Finance Committee in the Town Manager. We'll attempt to answer questions. We'll then do a slightly different thing after getting questions, which is we will then welcome you to speak in favor or about your concerns about the proposed budget or any particular section. After that process, we'll have an opportunity to hear from further questions from the Councillors. Who can ask questions to clarify what they've heard because we want to make sure that all of us here understand what you bring forward to us so that I want to give the Councillors that opportunity. Then I'll ask if there are any further questions or comments that you may have to offer. The Finance Committee will not be taking any action on the budget tonight. This is really about listening and responding to the extent that we can. We anticipate the Finance Committee will vote on this recommendation to the full council that it's meeting on May 28th. That's on the budget as a whole, not on the Community Preservation Act that is likely to be on a separate date because we need to deliver our report to the council about the budget as a whole. On June 3rd, there is a requirement that we act on the budget separately and before we act on the additional piece which is the Community Preservation Act. During the meetings of the council and of the Finance Committee, there always is the opportunity for the public and there always is an opportunity for the public comment. I guess my last statement, and this is for people who are watching at home too, who won't have the opportunity tonight to offer their thoughts, but hopefully they will be thinking of things that they wish they had asked. And if they do, they can send them to us. They can send them to me as the chair of the Finance Committee and I'll forward it to the Finance Committee, Steindor A, and GamersMMA.gov or you can send it to the council. The town council will address to give them the attention of the entire town council if anyone could have sent a button because the town council at AMMA.gov. So that introduction, I want to turn it over to Ms. Backelman. Thank you, councilors. My name is Paul Backelman. I hope you can hear me. I'm not as loud as I can. If you can't, just wave your arms in a wild way and I'll try to be louder. I want to thank the council and the finance committee in particular for accepting this presentation tonight. I did a similar presentation but not the exact presentation a little while ago. I'm joined by Sonya Aldridge, who is our Interim Finance Director and the Comptroller. Also, Margaret Nardowitz, who is the clerk to the town council everywhere wears multiple hats in town hall. We're happy to be recorded by Amherst Media and this will be rebroadcast later. And this presentation will be uploaded to the budget page and it's been emailed to the council if you want to follow along. Any budget and any presentation like this is not just my name is on there but it's really a team effort and it starts with Sonya. She really leads the way. We have a capable people in Maria Raca, Holly Bowser, and on our staff in town hall with Roy Pivotal and developing the budget. This budget, as I will present, also includes the schools in the library. So in the school department, Mike Morris and Sean Wingano were the ones who built that budget. Sharon Sherry, the director of library built that budget. Two school committees have reviewed their budgets. The library trustees have reviewed their budget. It all started last year in 2018 when the select board and the finance committee back then set ground rules and guidelines for how I should build this budget. And then for the month of May, the finance committee has been meeting twice a week to review every element of this budget with every department head in the town. So I just want to go through what's included and this idea is to provide you a full financial picture for the town. And the thing we're going to talk about most tonight is the municipal budget. That's the one that we're really focused on. The elementary school budget is also part of the vote, but that's been presented to the school committee and then through the school committee to the finance committee. The library budget, again, through the library trustees, by the director and to the finance committee. The regional school budget has already been acted on by the town council because that had time-sensitive piece to it because we're in a regional school district and we want to get that done earlier so that we're ahead of the other towns who have town meetings. And then we have our capital improvement program and that's sort of a standalone thing. There will be a public forum on that, as Andy said, on June 10th. There are two other pieces to this and that's the Community Preservation Act budget and the Community Development Block Grant budget. I won't be talking about either one of those things tonight. That's not on the agenda for tonight, but I wanted to make sure you saw the complete financial picture for the town. What's the skinny on this? This is a good budget. It maintains our solid financial position. Our reserves are at 15.6 percent and our goal is to be between 5 and 15 percent. It sustains our core services for all of our departments, school, library and town. It doesn't really provide a lot of new stuff but it doesn't delete a whole lot of stuff. And it increases our capital investment to 9.5 percent of the tax revenue which is our goal is to get to 10 percent. We've been going up a half a percent a year. So how did we do this? We balanced our use of existing revenue from different sources. We don't use any reserves to balance this budget from our stabilization fund or our free cash. Those are things that you are one kind of thing. And importantly we are not requesting an operating budget override. You will see other communities are talking about overrides which means going to the voters asking them to tax themselves over and above to be allowed 2.5 percent. We are not doing this for the operating budget of this budget. So we first always start with our budget with revenues. Our property tax revenue are allowed to increase by 2.5 percent plus new growth. New growth is when you put on in addition to your house you put out a new normal on the assessors can tax you more because your house is worth more. But the real new growth comes from new construction. New houses being built, new buildings downtown, new office buildings. That generates a tremendous amount of new money that comes into the town. And that takes our 2.5 percent of tax increases up to 4 percent. And that allows us to meet our needs. We also have local receipts which is motor vehicle excise tax for the most part. And that is something that is driven pretty much directly by the economy. A strong economy. People are buying new cars. That means the cars have higher value. We tax the cars at the value allowed by the state. And you see that going up 5.5 percent. State aid is 20 percent of our budget. It's only going up 1.8 percent. They're lagging behind. They're not supporting us at the same level that the local taxpayers are also supporting the budget. Water and sewer rates are being composed of increased by 2.5, 2.6 percent. And probably the biggest thing for us this year has been a loss of ambulance revenue of $600,000. Because we have a I'll talk a little bit more about this. A regional delivery of emergency services. And we were providing emergency medical services to the town of Hadley. The town of Hadley decided to go out on their own in contract with a private company because they had their own reasons for it. I don't comment on that. But that meant that we did not get the contract we had with Hadley nor did we get the revenue we get because every time we transport someone to the right or to collect the ambulance revenue. So we're down $600,000. So that's a loss of revenue that is made up by the other increases. So I talked a little bit about where the money comes from. So property tax is the blue. That's by far the biggest one. Local receipts is the red. State aid is 20 percent. And so that's sort of a picture of where our money comes from. We are highly reliant on property tax. That's the people who live in the town who own property in the town who are paying taxes to the town. That's why this budget is so important and that's why people should care about it. Snapshot of our budget, we break it up into different things. The municipal budget is up 2.8 percent. Elementary schools up 2.6 percent. Regional schools 2.5 percent. The tax support of the library is up 2.5 percent. So an average of 2.6 percent. The library is a unique creature. It gets money from their trust funds but they also get tax support and we treat them the tax support money just like any other department but they have their own entity. We also have our capital of over five million dollars, which is really important to us. We have required things that we have to pay for retirement and OPEP. OPEP has other post-employment benefits. The municipal employees are entitled contractually for health insurance, certain health insurance payments. We are starting to budget for that going to the future. So that we have money set aside for future liabilities. And then assessment and others is things that the state tells us that we have to pay for PVTA and things like that. So I wanted to show you what where our money goes. If you look at the I'm colorblind so I'm going to yell out some colors if I'm wrong, tell me. Half of it is schools. The red and the green is the big piece. So half of our total municipal budget of 83 million, 83 and a half million dollars goes to schools. A part of it goes to the town and then it's other part of it goes to capital, things like that. So the big pieces on what we're spending money on and we allocated 2.6 percent average increase to the schools to the library and to the town. One of the things that saved us this year and I'm not going to go into details but a year ago we had a health care crisis. The town and the schools and the town of Collin were all part of a trust. We self-insured our health insurance for our employees. And that was very volatile. Sometimes it worked out really well for the town. Sometimes it didn't. And we were on a downward slide and last year we made significant changes working with our collective bargaining units and moved from a self-insured high-risk plan to a fully insured plan. And so that cost us a lot. The employees gave up a lot of there were more deductibles, more shared costs in the program for the employees which is sort of the reality of what we're all facing today. And we got lower rates. This year it proved to be a good thing because our health insurance rate this year went up 0.6 percent. That's less than 1 percent. That's our biggest other than personnel, our biggest expense. And that saved us this year. That won't happen next year because we're not going to be able to have less than 1 percent increase in the health insurance world. We benefited from this this year. The other things the other big expense was we wanted to maintain our commitment to putting more money into capital which is roads, sidewalks, taking care of our buildings, things like that. So then now we're moving from we had the town, the schools, the library now we're just going to look at the town side and that's what this municipal budget the terms get a little confusing because they say general government, general fund we're just calling this the municipal budget. So the general fund is all the town operations and then we have four enterprise funds. One for water, one for sewer, one for solid waste and one for transportation. And so enterprise funds are sort of stand alone entities that run like little businesses. They're supposed to run their operation take on all their expenses meet all their obligations through the fees that they raise and that's how we structure our local government. And those enterprise funds are going up relatively a little or going down but the general fund is the large number by far. So as we look at what we spend our money on we're a people business we spend our money on people and on benefits for people. That's the red and the blue. The operating part of our budget is 15%. So when we start talking about budget reductions or anything like that we always have to think what jobs do we want to eliminate because that's what we're really talking about. And then as you say what do we spend our money on? We really spend the bulk of it on public safety, police and fire, emergency dispatch, things like that. The public works and the general government are the other big pieces of that as well. General government looks big and the reason for that is we have a lot of our we don't most of our unions don't have settled contracts yet and you'll see this later in the slides. So we don't put money in their budget to say oh we think you're going to get X percent we put it into a pot because we want to account for it but we're in the middle of negotiations with five of our collective bargaining units when those collective bargaining units are settled we'll fund them out of this blue box there. So what's included in the town budget? We had Welcome to the council first, we have a budget for them because not enough, they don't get paid nearly enough, they're my bosses I'm encouraged to say that but they've worked, I think anybody who's paid attention to town government seriously recognizes the how hard these people are working because they're building something from scratch and every decision has to be thought about and said is this the best way we can do it, can we learn from others so I really give them credit for the amount of work that they're putting into it. The charter called for a small salary to be paid back to the councilors, plus we have some funds money for them to attend there's a conference in Boston every year that the Mass Municipal Association puts on and that takes some money to go to that and subscribe to certain things. We eliminated some funds because we don't have to pay this life board anymore, they received a small stipend as well and the town meeting had a small budget. I mentioned that top right when the salary was reserved for contract negotiations that's there, I want to make sure everybody knows you'll see increases in public safety being really low and you'll say why are they so low it's because there are no salary increases in the budget for those accounts and then because we got rid of the health insurance trust which was a standalone entity, there were people who worked for the trust and they paid out of the trust. Now those positions have moved over into the town's budget and so we've absorbed those within the 2.6% that was included. So I'm going to talk about individual groups of departments. So the first was public safety shows a 1% increase and again no, it doesn't include any of the collective bargaining increases that are for their employees. I already mentioned the loss of the EMS service to Adam Hadley. An important note on that is that we didn't reduce the staffing of the fire department because Hadley accounted for 20% of our ambulance calls we have about 5,000 ambulance calls a year about 1,000 of them went to Hadley so we have done a fire staffing study and are already stressed on the fire department so this just relieves that stress a little bit. The other thing that I mentioned a little bit was the regional public emergency services agency. So we provide dispatch services to Leverett, Callum, and Sheetsbury we provide ambulance services to those other communities. We have contracts with them they provide us a stipend and then we collect the services and I think the attitude of the town has been like regional schools that Amherst has a duty to help the other communities who have less and when I interviewed here I was sort of shocked by how willing the town has been to help make sure that those proper services were delivered to the other communities and they're grateful for that too. Public Works 1.7% increase again does not include the contractual salary increases and I'm trying to figure out they're basically just going to keep doing what they're doing one of their big things this year has been that they went over their snow department their snow removal budget this year by $130,000 or $14,000 and we're going to figure out how to make that whole for them for this fiscal year but basically there's no new services being offered for DPW there are some things we're trying to do better in all our departments but for the DPW it's really about getting a better work order system implemented so that they can receive ideas or complaints from the people in the town and they can follow them properly to the right people to get them fixed Conservation and Development is a 4.7% increase that again does not include contractual salary increases so things that they're working on this year and you'll see a new dog apart coming up that's going to be funded through grants to the standard foundation so that they can prepare for Puffer's Pond improvements there you'll see a new roadway sign so the Mill Street bridge has opened it's a one-way bridge and there's going to be pavement markings to try and rationalize the parking around the Puffer's Pond area especially on State Street we'll have extra police officers there especially early in the season to monitor things if you go there in the summer it's crazy and you just I worry constantly about making sure emergency personnel can get there if there was an emergency and parking on both sides of the street it's just like we have to fix this we're doing it in a really sensitive way we're not putting up lots of signs it's all reversible we're putting paint on the ground and trying to do it so that people go wow you really screwed up we can reverse it quickly and also one of the beauties of the Puffer's is that it feels like a country road and we want to maintain that feel so that's one of the big things on the agenda also is to talk about the North Common and the Main Street parking lot the council has asked us to put that off till later in the year it's a big project it revolves around parking downtown which is a very complicated issue so once the council is ready to take that on we'll be coming back to the council to start engaging with that conversation the council has expressed a lot of interest in reviewing the master plan for the town which is a really important document and that project will be going on and then there's a heavy emphasis on planning in North Amherst specifically around the intersections in front of the library adjacent to the library and that whole area in terms of where that's going in the future and one other feature is that we're updating our flood maps and that's a it sounds like a simple thing but we're pretty intense saying it takes a lot of effort from our GIS people community services is going down by 3.3% again does not include our contractual salary increases increased hours of public health nerves we reorganized LSSC which is our recreation department and had some savings from a reduction in positions there they've been doing really good work they have reached out into the community they're programming things at butternut farms and other east happy road to try and bring their services to where people are living especially in the summer they've actually been recognized for that statewide at one of their conferences this year so credit to them for that the big thing the big emphasis for us this year like last year is on roads and sidewalks last year we put in million dollars in town funds and roads we had been putting in $200,000 a year we quadruped whatever that quantum is five times that as much this year in addition to that we have about $840,000 it's still not enough we did a study of all the roads there's a company that came in and surveyed every road in the town we need over $2 million for the next six years to meet to bring our roads up to the standards that they need so this is not just a one year commitment we're trying to carve out funds to really invest in the roads and sidewalks that are really needed sidewalks previously we were putting in $30,000 a year to improve sidewalks sidewalks are really important for everybody be it little kids for walkability for health I met with a group of six graders today who talked about they can't ride their bikes to school at Fort River because the sidewalks their parents won't let them be on the roads because the roads are too dangerous and the sidewalks aren't in good enough shape to ride and they were frustrated because they wanted to ride their bikes to school and so it's that type of thing that we have to really start investing in and we're prepared to do that and then we're also our first order of business when we talk about if we have capital money what do we do with it we want to take care of the buildings that we have this building included town hall, police station things like that we have over a million dollars that we're investing in exterior maintenance and building repairs our first thing is to make sure the roofs don't leak and I've got to talk about the school buildings right now and then because that's the first order of business in all of our buildings we have some work to do on the town hall roof and on the police station roof energy conservation always looking at programs that can help us make us run our buildings more efficiently and making insecurity improvements is a really important thing for us too because where we're living we're always looking at how we can upgrade our security systems and procedures we're also beginning the process of planning for the big new buildings that we know are coming down and are very much needed we have $900,000 programed in this capital budget to begin the studies for the schematic design things like that for these buildings that includes the department of public works headquarters, the fire department headquarters and the new elementary school we want to get those projects moving again this is another major topic for the town council they're going to be grappling with the challenge of yes we all recognize we have these needs and libraries out there too people talk about them in the senior center but how can we afford it how can we pay for it all without running everybody out of town because their taxes go too tight so that's the thing that they'll be working with all summer and into the fall so what can you expect coming forward we're going to be looking at renovations to the northbound as the council agrees with the plan or a plan to go forward with that we have a parking study going on downtown parking right now that should be finished in June that will be delivered to the council and probably maybe the council will work after summer we haven't really talked about it but realistically probably won't come back until the fall when people are back in town and can have a rational conversation about what are the solutions to parking downtown we're working right now on Groft Park with a complete renewal of that with funds from some CPA funds and other funds I mentioned the dog park already we're working on putting solar we've been working for a long time we're putting solar on the Northland film that is in the permitting stage and it will take about a year to permit we're estimating that in 2020 we're hoping to get into the construction phase of that what else is on there we've been reading the paper about athletic fields the condition of our athletic fields we've had a study of our athletic fields we know that there's incredible need for that it's in that three to five million dollar range it's another big number and we're starting to figure out how does that fit in with all of our other capital needs some of the fields are on regional school property they have put it in there as one of their top priorities in the coming years but it's something that we have to take into account Huffer's Pond if you've been up there lately it really is filling up literally with sediment it's made by people it's not a natural pond so it needs to be dredged and that happens every once in a while we're going to be getting ready for the permitting of that and then presenting the idea of dredging that coming in the future we talked about the Northambridge Village Center our water system is really important and making sure that we have adequate supply and diversity of supply too and that there's resiliency something we'll be investing in in the coming year and then our buildings the library those are the things that we really want to get a plan how are we going to move forward if we're not going to move forward let's say it and let everybody know about it so this is to show you where we are today we've been working in the fall we forecast our revenue streams we allocate where that money will go through the guidance at that point the finance committee on that board internally the staff starts to meet and refine we finalize it and we present our budget to the finance committee which again has been meeting twice a week during this month and then the next step is for the council to adopt the budget and then during the course of the year they monitor the budget so this is just where we are so today we are on May 21st and that's where the finance committee holds a wired pilot town charter next up is May 28th the finance committee is scheduled to vote on its recommendation the finance committee makes a recommendation to the full town council and then on June 3rd they present that recommendation to the council and then on June 6th I'm sorry it should be June 10th June 10th is a public forum so we talked about the capital items there and then the council have to vote on the budget by June 30th and that's the presentation I have for tonight and I'm just getting ready for questions to the chair so as I said before I'm going to start with two pieces to see if there are any questions from the council right now that can ask questions later too but if there are any clarifications that anybody thought was helpful and if not then I would have turned to questions from Mr. Bachmann about his presentation to members of the public so yeah, Dorothy you said the North Amherst Village Center you're talking about the intersection and the North Amherst library it was I wasn't quite sure all of it was encompassed in that case it certainly is the intersection that the two intersections and how they interrelate so we've done the traffic study and that's up on the website that just monitors the traffic flow it doesn't take into account any of the finances any property takings that might have to happen nor does it take into account what do we want that area to look like in terms of planning so I think that there's an effort there the planning department wants to put into planning that whole area to pay more attention to it especially with the impact of the new development up there so there's nothing I'm going to go somebody back here has a question the item that you had on your penultimate slide, you said May 28th I think I had understood that meeting was May 23rd, could you clarify could you show us the penultimate slide go back to it but there's several different meetings that we have indicated the finance committee has been meeting twice a week generally on Tuesdays and Thursdays and we have in each of those meetings been looking at sections of the budget so the May 23rd meeting is actually a finance committee meeting one of a whole group of finance committee meetings that has been taking place each time we are looking at one section on that particular day we are going to be looking as a finance committee at the capital plan and the community preservation act committee proposals so that's what's happening on May 23rd the May 28th date is the date on which the finance committee is going to vote on budget recommendations not necessarily CPAC community preservation act recommendations vote on the budget that was presented and heard today and I know that there's a lot of interest in community preservation act this year so I will come back to it and explain a little bit more about that process in a couple of minutes but I want to see a few other questions I have a request actually from a note taker if people could let us know their name and address that would be helpful my name is Rosie Cowell my address is 104 Dana Street my address is 2 thank you my name is David Robertson and my address is 39 Northampton Road my question is I enjoyed the budget presentation one thing I didn't see this you might have to excuse my ignorance my question is do Amherst College and University of Massachusetts which I think are tax free organizations are there ways that they physically support the town not enough and we're in negotiation we're in discussions with the university especially right now and one of our missions is to document what they already contribute what we contribute to them and to make them more financial accountable for what they are we believe they should be paying to support the town operations same with Amherst College and Hampshire College Amherst College doesn't pay anything Amherst College pays a small amount do you want community support for that yes questions yes I had one and it's just because oh I'm sorry Barbara Graven Moberg 126 Northampton Road my question and probably a dumb one is you talked about the increases and fees 264 water and sewerage plus the increase in tax rate so is that 7.7% increase for each minute is that the impact it's going to have on my income that I can anticipate paying an additional 7.7% in the year 2020 no the way what Props would ask us is that we can't raise for the entire town more than 2.5% so some properties will go up more the values will go up more and some won't go up as much but the average for the entire town has to be 2.5% so it's not everybody goes up to 1.5% or 4% whatever it is so it depends on the value of the property and how it's evaluated compared to all the other properties in town in the other piece to that I'll add to it this is the presentation to water and sewer rates and the council has to approve after it's presented to us what the water and sewer rates for the next year will be there is going to be that proposal to increase the water and sewer rates by a little over 2% and the council will consider that recommendation I guess there are a couple things to explain it all one is that the water and sewer funds are actually separate from the rest of the town budget so you have the tax support part of the budget and then you have the what are called the water and sewer enterprise funds which are separate where the cost of running the water system that is the example comes entirely from the amount that we can charge for water usage that's actually common in cities and towns across the commonwealth should be noted that our rates are really very low in comparison to our neighboring communities we always get compared to Northampton and we always like to remind folks that we do have substantially lower water in this proposal rates than those are sitting to the other side of the river on the west I also want to say you can't take each of those percentages and add them up so think of what your water bill is so if your water bill was $100 it's 2% over that amount of money I understand that so it's going to be differential whether it's real estate tax or not in terms of the impact on you so another question yes how to use 30 orchard street so the transportation fund is going down 9.5% is that what we attribute to the bus and then when you have so do you work with Pioneer Valley Transit in creating bus routes in town or do they respond to the town's need individually or how would that so the town does have a seat on the Pioneer Valley Transit Authority Board we do have conversations with them about the services the lines are pretty much set there the last time I think the line was adjusted was when it went farther up into Northammer's survival center we appropriated $53,000 in additional money to have evening services I did not include that this year so that's why that budget went down that was the main reason for that I wanted to add on the enterprise funds which the transportation fund is one of the capital plays a big part in that percentage going way up or way down so if we need more capital then we want it down the budget's going to go up because the capital is within that operating budget so this year we need less capital and transportation so that was part of that decrease and I guess the last thing I'll just say to that and then I'll get to the next question the transportation fund it's other major expenditure but also revenues its revenue source largely is the parking system well that was going to be my comment if you decrease the transportation the buses and stuff will that not impact the amount of parking you're going to need because if people can't use the bus together will they then have to drive their cars I understand what you're saying what we bought this year were late night service during the summer so there's additional runs at 9.50 at night so that wouldn't really impact the existing runs aren't being adjusted the BBTA looks at all their routes based on ridership they count every person who gets on and gets off the bus so they know if their ridership don't start and they adjust that according to their budget but frankly their budget is under stress too because they rely on state funds a lot in assessments from towns and cities and they're not getting the value the amount of money that they feel they're entitled to in a sense because a lot of money is going to the MBTA in Boston which has an incredible need and sort of this is a black hole that absorbs a lot of funds and the regional transit agencies are saying don't forget about us we're the third largest regional transit agency in the Commonwealth and it has a wide swath of service area so it's a challenge for them as well yes my name is Kate Trose, 99th Street I didn't come to talk about transportation but I just took the train to New York from Northampton and I want to encourage that there be a linkage from Amherst to the train system because this is pretty exciting to be able to take public transportation down to New York including to where I was going when I was in New York so the only place that I really had the difficulty was Amherst to Northampton and I understand there's going to be additional trains within the next six months so they'll be rather than just one there'll be three lines three times going down to New York so it's pretty exciting yeah so I don't know where that fits that's actually helpful as Mr. Bachman indicated we do have a representative who sits on the PBTA board and that's a valuable comment that we've been conveying him as a representative so this is another question that you guys thought of Tim Adamich 143 Northampton Road the time council is deadline to vote on the budget is June 30th is that actually what is going to happen or do you know what is going to happen? right now the meeting there's two meetings scheduled in June they are scheduled for June 6th and June 20th we would hope to complete the voting by June 20th there's one other thing I was going to say about the transportation funding just generally if you're interested in looking at the town manager's budget as a whole it's a several hundred page document and it contains a lot of information and it's really if you're interested in what's going on in the town it's a valuable resource to have available online as our prior years by going to the town website which is and then if you go under government which is one of the tabs across the top one of the next tabs you get to from that is budget and you'll be able to very easily find the town manager's budget there's great detail in each section so for example I'll just pull the police department it gives the mission of the police department it gives the goals of the police department the achievements that they've had in achieving last year's goals what their big challenges are and then how what their budget submission is and how it relates back to staffing and to the items that I just mentioned also in there are some appendices and appendix F is transportation fund data and it actually gives the ridership for a lot of the bus lines for each of the fiscal years so that you can as I say it's a treasure trove of information for anything that you might find you're interested in so I wanted to make sure we're in it you can also find school budget there as well as the library budget and just as with the town budget they have a lot of meaty data about their accomplishments and the kinds of services they provide a lot of people put a lot of work putting their budgets together as a communication document not just about dollars but about management and services my name is Rosie Carroll I'm the president sorry if I pronounced your name wrong you just mentioned that you hope the town council would have completed voting on the budget by June 20th it may sound as though you're doing the votes kind of piecemeal maybe over the 6th and the 20th or maybe other dates as well could you unpack for us how that works since we are making this up as we fly the plane you've heard that line on more than one occasion this is the first time this town council has gone through a budget cycle it will in many parts depend on how the finance committee forwards their recommendations whether they forward it as pieces or and or as a whole and then we will take those up making sure that the council has plenty of time to talk about each of the pieces prior to that but in addition to that for all of the finance committee meetings they are all taped by Amherst media and put up by Amherst media and they've all been made committee of the holds so that anybody from the town council could come and fully participate in the meetings as well and I mentioned those two dates in our calendar clearly if we've not reached consensus on the budget by the 20th we would have to call another meeting of the council I guess one other thing and then I'm going to see if I can see you in Saqqameq from the slug court just a second the one thing I wanted to just add to that is that I know that a lot of people here not everybody but a lot of people came because you're also concerned about community preservation act proposals and the community preservation act should be also voted by the council during the month of June but it does not need to be in the same vote and in fact is unlikely that it will be close in date they are parallel in linked processes but they are separate processes I just didn't want to leave that out and create confusion when you hear the budgets coming up and then find out that a night of your concern about isn't coming up on the same day Lynn and then also I'm going to ask Sunya to correct me on this community preservation act we can vote for all we can vote against all and then we can also separate them and go from the individual and I just this supplement is community preservation act committee reviews proposals and then makes decisions on what they would recommend as well as they formally did to town meeting and as in the performer process and it's the same for the current process the council cannot fund anything that wasn't requested but we don't have to fund what they propose so our votes are on what they propose to us within the context I just described no problem it's just a simple request actually so if we could re-publish this timeline the third and the 17th those are actual scheduled council meetings that would help my brain because I keep hearing the 20th I don't know what the 20th represents I think it's the third and the 17th thank you for that correction it is the third and the 17th it's the sixth and the 20th the council meetings will be on June 3rd and June 7th unless we have call a special town council meeting so just see if there's any final questions because what I had said at the beginning and will come back to is that I also wanted to have time for people to speak about budget beyond questions what your concerns are which you particularly find something that you support and want more attention to something that you have concerns about however you want to phrase it so I want to open up the floor to that just to make sure that there are no additional questions Margaret do you want people to write their names in the next okay thank you so shall we turn to the next section then so your meeting so if so I open the floor now to general comments and general not just questions anything that people want to say about any particular section of budget back row way back William Cason 32 Golden Rod Circle I just want to thank the town manager for really listening to the public and keeping money and increasing the money for roads and sidewalks in the budget and thank the council for supporting that because I really do think it's an issue that affects us all very directly every day and so thank you would you like to be conveyed to us the public hearing yes please Kate Sim 77 Dana and I would like to just recap I guess a letter that I sent yesterday along with my spouse regarding the proposed 132 North Hampton Road SRO development project which we now understand clearly the vote is scheduled by the town finance committee for May 23rd and it wasn't clear whether or not public comment would happen before or after that vote so I think that's part of the reason why many people are here to try to speak tonight we won't be voting but just please continue after what is going to happen at that meeting is we will hear a presentation from the community preservation act committee and several of the presenters may also choose to be present they don't have to be but some of the applicants may be in attendance it is an open meeting public comment is also offered as an opportunity at that meeting but it is our opportunity as a finance committee to hear for the first time from community preservation act committee as to why they're making recommendations they are and any of the petitioners who choose to come forward so I don't do not expect that we will be voting that day but please continue I think still a lot of people are working during the day so it may also be a difficult time for many people to attend so my two comments are just to urge you to delay funding on that project until there's a chance for due diligence on the full long term cost of the project for the town since it is a finance committee and meaningful input by neighborhoods most affected by the development so in terms of unbudgeted costs the project does seem likely to entail substantial extra cost for the town including traffic management or lighting in the area or additional resources devoted to social support and so it seems to be the responsibility of the finance committee to make a full accounting of those costs before voting yes or no then second on the meaningful input meaningful input is called for in the 2016 town mayor march housing production plan perhaps this is one of the venues where it can happen but I'm not sure that everybody has come prepared for meaningful input short notice the project supporters cite that housing production plan and the plan states on page 73 it will be important to continue to be sensitive to community concerns and provide opportunities for residents to not only obtain accurate information on housing issues whether they relate to zoning or new development but have genuine opportunities for input planning further states on page 93 that efforts will be made to provide information to the community about us in particular on new developments to help bolster local support as discussed in strategy 5.1.1 also it will be important for local leaders dot dot dot to help fine tune development proposals to best meet local needs and address community concerns so we wrote to ask town councilors to delay the project until these genuine opportunities for input have happened regardless of whether you support the developer or not we are asking for debate and discussion it seems that Valley CDC has had several opportunities to present to the town but neighbors have not neighbors didn't hear details of the project until the recent presentation on April 24th notices have been sent only to immediate abutters and not to the broader neighborhood and the $500,000 community preservation act funding seems to have been recommended by CPAC before Valley CDC held their meeting with the bludders so as you mentioned the town council is a new form of government for Amherst and we are putting our trust in you to do this appropriate due diligence and listen carefully before you make decisions thank you for your time and service to the town thank you I have a question on that too yeah go ahead it's just about the $500 that was in the budget that was presented at the meeting that you did it doesn't show up in the toll of the budget and the explanation I got was because it hasn't been given yet but if you're planning on spending it at some time I was confused as to why it wasn't in the budget at this point it's just a borrowed authorization it's just saying the town is willing to borrow the money when they're ready to do it and until you borrow the money and actually spend the money there's no cost debt service will come later on there will be a part of it does that mean that you keep somewhere separately how much debt? I mean is this the only debt that you have or are there other debts that are out there so now we're in the back of it and that total does that total not enter into the projected budget because it doesn't affect the budget until it becomes debt service like a mortgage payment right but you want to have that money is that money sort of like in reserve then in case you need to come up with it no it's part of the budget process it's part of the capital program that was shown earlier the $5 million debt service is taken out of there so it'll come out of there it'll process the CPA the CPA funding will pay for that so just if I can follow up on page $189 of the budget you'll all have the time you'll be able to see all the CPA you'll go online or 78.cus.budget that shows the debt for the work that has been over there from now through that 2025 then this would be if that was approved this would be added any other new debt would be added on next year yes again as we decided the budget page 189 that shows all of the debt for the fund for various things including but not just exclusively community preservation act and for those of us who've been around town for a long time and we've seen some of us will remember back to the fights over soccer fields when the club broke down in South Amherst and that was a travel that went all the way up to I think a voter initiative that all of us had to go vote on just whether we supported that but it's the kind of proposal where it is large enough that even the community preservation act funds something like that cannot be funded in a single year otherwise there would be nothing else that could be funded but at that point consideration is given to borrowing the money it has to be paid back so it does affect future years and we don't recognize that and want you to know too that if money is borrowed to build soccer fields or whatever then for the number of years you're paying it back you have less to allocate to something else because you've already committed the funds to paying it back whatever it's borrowed so that is all part of the process that we need to go through as a finance committee and then as a council yes so my name is David Robertson I live at 39 North Hampton Lowe's I've written a couple kind of like meeting emails to the town council that's my job very good so I've received and acknowledged I I'm not sure how much detail is appropriate to go into but I have so I'm a physician I work right now in allergy and clinical immunology I'm also in words of fighting internal medicine and general pediatrics I practice mostly at our spring field office we have offices around the area I'm also involved in doctors and public health and I'm involved in health policy at the state level we're on the vice president so in general I like and support the idea of affordable housing I know that's a significant public health issue but one lesson that we keep learning over and over again in the field of medicine is that doing things with good intentions doesn't necessarily always have good outcomes in my particular little corner of the universe in the year 2000 there was a general recommendation there was an acknowledgement that peanut allergy and not allergy was a bad thing and we should do something about it so there was a general recommendation to avoid nuts what that stuck until age three and what we saw was the rate of peanut allergy across the country skyrocketed it turned out to be exact wrong advice there was no evidence to support it but there were some good ideas about it maybe if it doesn't fully mature whatever it seemed like a good idea at the time there was very good evidence to support it and it was exactly the wrong advice so the follow up study that I showed early peanut introduction is a good idea in terms of this specific property and the proposed development I did attend the meeting on April 24th and I walked away with a number of different concerns I think they can be broadly categorized into two categories one is transportation and access to community services and then the other really follows the category of social support for the residents so in their proposal the Valley CDC has acknowledged that the majority of residents at this property are going to have limited access to transportation and because of that they've actually asked for fewer parking spots and they have residents so as we 28 residents and I think there's maybe 12 with working parking spots the idea is that these people are not necessarily going to have cars and so the nearest bus stop is 0.4 miles away up the hill in town and as you mentioned the last time the bus rides were adjusted were actually when the Amherst survival center was placed and in fact the Amherst survival center that point was 0.4 miles from the nearest bus stop so I'm concerned that this population which is already an average population 12 out of 28 are going to be either homeless people or people that are under the services of their partner in health and may or may not have disabilities that they're being asked to walk 0.4 miles into town to get to the nearest bus stop why was that too far for people that use the Amherst survival center which is acceptable for the residents of this property so I think that's a significant concern actually possibly more significant concern is access to the shopping center down at the bottom of the hill at University Drive that's promoted as being 0.6 miles away so it's a little bit further the hill is kind of steep but the bigger issue is there's no sidewalk so on the on the south side of the street the westbound sidewalk going down the hill actually ends basically in front of 132 North Hampton Road for both property it really ends right at the beginning of the Amherst at Amherst College of Blood and Field so there's no safe way to actually get across the street to get down the hill the nearest crosswalk is 0.3 miles up the hill at 11th Street but they have to go up the hill 1.2 miles across over the street another 0.3 miles down and then walking another 0.6 miles so it's actually 1.2 miles to legally and safely cross the route 9 to get to the shopping center or residents are going to be faced with the option to cross illegally and unsafely which again just doesn't seem optimal and to be 100% honest I'm trying to imagine it myself we went over our snow budget this year it was a bad year for snow and carry home groceries doesn't seem practical or feasible or even humane I don't think that I don't know how that works for these residents so one possible solution that kind of addresses is that Valley CDC would like to offer a shuttle service that would really ameliorate a lot of these things but then that's a significant cost of operating a shuttle van insurance and all these things I don't think that's something that wasn't part of their presentation for sure now one upcoming thing that will actually maybe alleviate at some extent is the proposed expansion and improvement of route 9 so I think everybody knows about this you guys do so route 9 is going to be expanded there's going to be a crosswalk on both sides there's actually going to be a crosswalk at Orchard Street which would be very convenient to this but I believe that project won't be done until some time optimistically in 2023 and so the question is during the construction I've already highlighted why access to either bus routes or shopping area is limited during construction it's going to be even more disrupted the sidewalks are going to be torn up so how does Valley CDC plan to support residents needs in terms of transportation during that period and again a shuttle bus or a shuttle service might do that but I don't there's nothing that I know of in their proposal that would really address that so that's kind of the transportation and access side of things the other side of things are social services so again a significant portion 46% of homeless people either struggle with what they classify as severe mental illness and or substance abuse issues and then the Valley CDC again acknowledges in their proposal 90% of alcoholics in recovery relapsed in the first four years of sobriety relapsed the natural part and it's an expected part of the recovery process it just happens and then you support the addict and work through it it's part of the process but my concern is based on the numbers again 12 out of 28 are going to be people that are either actively homeless or under the care department of mental health statistically speaking there's going to be multiple residents who are struggling with addiction or mental health issues at that facility so the question is what on-site services again highlighting the difficulty of transportation and access to get to care what services are going to be on-site for addicts when they relapse what services are going to be on-site to support the other members of the community or the other members of the tenants or residents again when someone does relapse and I haven't seen anything in the Valley CDC's proposal that addresses that and we brought this up at the meeting on April 24th the response was they would have a day manager whether it be no overnight they actually have no plans for anybody with a professional credentials in mental health counseling or substance abuse counseling on-site and so I think that to me it almost seems like you're running an apartment complex which that's not what this is these are people, this is an at-risk population the reason we're doing this and even talking about this because we acknowledge this is an at-risk population so I think to to lump a bunch of people together who need social support and then not to provide that social service to them homeless women in particular and I forgot to send the article I tried to make up where I did send it are a specific population that are at risk and have different risk factors there's a high percentage of homeless women have been past victims of either domestic or sexual assault or abuse there's a high rate of PTSD and so the Valley CDC estimated that 70% of their tenants in this mixed gender single room occupancy single room occupancy structure historically have been male so my question again is how are they going to support and protect women, homeless women or women who are struggling from a socioeconomic standpoint what specific interventions and support services are they going to have for women at this facility predominantly male if historical trends continue and then I think finally this SRO would be the largest SRO that Valley CDC has ever tried to operate and my concern and question again is what specific challenges have they foreseen with that and where they've done to accommodate them I don't know if they have any response to that so thank you for everybody giving me a few minutes sorry if I took too much time since there are issues that are financial you have any thoughts about how you can include the council to this discussion this is good actually I do although I'm not presented by the council at this point in the not too distant future I do think we need to have a conversation a conversation that includes some representatives of the council some representatives of the town government some representatives of the community and some representatives of the people in the community who advocate for this and we need to come up with a resolution of how to move forward from where we are today which is pretty much at a standoff and the people in the council that I've got to know and they've got to know me know that my general approach to things is to basically look at all the issues and figure out how to find a path to move forward and I don't know what that path is but I do know that there are people who I think could help manage this conversation both with the neighborhood as well as people who represent the housing advocates and community and people in the council who hold housing issues very near and dear to their hearts and so before I think we as a council can go forward with this I think we need to make that commitment to you as members thank you you're not allowed to clap we asked that one last time the one thing I'll add and I want to go back to you in the audience the finance committee is one that's going to be nice hearing and our role in the community preservation act is to try to do financial analysis and offer advice on financial aspects of proposals back to the council number of issues were raised that were beyond financial issues and I recognize that and that's why I wanted to do that I did say at the beginning that I recognize that there would be an interest in talking about issues that were more broad and I wanted to give the opportunity for that to happen so I appreciate your expression now I'll turn to more people let's see Melissa yes one of the reasons that we have to have that conversation is because the town council knows almost nothing about its role in this particular project because the town council is so new that they've never done the comprehensive permit it is completely different than when we had a select board the town council is not the chief executive officer the select board was different on so many levels from the beacon project that's one of the town managers the chief executive officer we have and I believe we will get a written document soon that explains what our limited role is we appoint the ZVA the ZVA issues the comprehensive permit we can decide whether or not to fund the CPA request and obviously that will make a really big difference to the project we can attend site plans it's not a site plan review but if we can attend when the funding agency comes to do a visit we're allowed to attend and put in input just like the historical commission and all of you are allowed to put in input but the only way we can stop this project is by not putting any money into it and then if they find money elsewhere we have nothing to say about that so I think that that will really help as we eventually to understand our role better and put more things in writing I know timelines and lots of better information have been provided but I think once we know that better we'll be able to better help you find the best ways to have the conversation with us and with each appropriate agency so you feel like you're really getting to the people who are making the decision let me hear from more of the audience to come back to the council because that's what I said at the beginning the big process yes 99 Dana Street so one of the things that's happened is because we live close to this many of us have gotten really into looking through the details so we've become almost a resource and we've been working on this quite so we put together some more information including in one session thank you and there are financial other financial issues in those in that information and I just want personally to say that I don't go at this and say I'm not interested at all in the project but from the first time I heard about it there were safety concerns related to the amount of time that the on-site manager would be there the number of people that would be living there so that caused me to want to learn a lot more about it and it's been frustrating with all of our efforts to do research, write letters not having much response or knowing who's listening and in fact I've even talked to people who have been past the letters that we've written and most recently got an email from Amherst forward or something advocating a position I mean it was just very disconcerting because we're just been trying to do a detailed look at the concerns the considerations of the specific project and actually try to be constructive about it and in our community we have three physicians that have waited a person that works in the social services field and a very similar project to this and so we've been trying to contribute information and we're eager to feel as though what we're doing is going to be listened to and taken into consideration and that maybe we can work something out that the neighbor would feel comfortable saved with and it would be would work, yeah but when I also want to say I tried to meet the Valley CDC they cancelled my meeting and they didn't reschedule so let me continue on around I appreciate getting another meeting together and it just occurred to me that I wonder if it makes any sense and I probably couldn't bring them in but people complained about the number of homeless or whatever has anybody talked to them to find out what they would want because it might be interesting to get perspective of the people who would potentially be in this environment how they felt or what they thought would be needed drawing up your inviting or whatever are any names speak up so you know so far so good thank you yes stop let me just have just as I see hands I'm totally right how many is 30 or two straight I was actually on town meeting and voted for this and I feel badly that being misconstrued that people are anti this I know that I for one when I got the letter was very happy to have I thought it was going to be you know condos or something I didn't realize the size and scale of the development I think there are a lot of people who are willing to work with the Valley CDC or other groups just to talk about the scale or the supervision nobody here I think is anti say don't develop this at all but I would ask to delay the finance committee to delay approval of the CPA funds until there is more of a general consensus and a better understanding about the project because I've reached out the Valley CDC and haven't heard back and I have a lot of questions about when I say substance free for six months what does that mean, what does that mean for alcohol I'm on the board of license commissioners so what does that mean for marijuana if it's legal is that substance free I'm going to put it back Yes, in the back Hi, Melissa Porter 110 Dana Street and I've actually I've done work in this field for 32 years now and I currently run a program in the Holyoke Chicken Pea Area which oversees two separate SROs with 14 people served in each of them and some are embedded in some of the housing authorities in many of the cities, municipalities around there and we're predominantly funded by the Department of Mental Health and so the folks that I work with and I serve 300 people it's a lot, most of them have dual dual addictions as well as homelessness post-traumatic stress disorder depression a number of things and I think as many of the speakers have already stated very eloquently and I don't want to sound redundant but I think there is this kind of major response of let's fix it, let's do something about homelessness and I think it's very kind of it's ill-conceived in many ways I guess is the kind of way to say to say this and I think that there are many many kind of problems that are I deal with daily I get phone calls from neighbors in the community at large on a daily basis about problems with these SROs and I think it can be anything from public nuisance issues of a variety of things people that are having symptoms that need to go to the hospital substance use, bring people in on the street and I think that I would just ask that we kind of look at valley development with kind of a discerning eye and to not be naive about they have an agenda and of course they're going to present things in a way that is they're doing a screening process that's very rigorous you know that they're not going to allow leveled sex offenders in or people I think the other stipulation was people that produce and distribute methamphetamines so I don't really know what the other what the other offenses could be that you can get in but I can tell you right now both the programs that I oversee are staff 40 to 60 hours per week with staff there are 5 to 6 staff on site and there are many many problems and so I think that actually they quoted us that the person that they would have would be some kind of like a property manager and would be there 20 hours per week so I mean I think that it is a disservice to say the least for the folks that are in there and that are going to be living there I think it's going to be a strain on a community in which we already have on Route 9 there's a lot of absentee slum boards on that strip as a whole and we have a lot of student housing there and I think you know I guess I would want to say when we talk about affordable housing I kind of wonder what that means is my property taxes go up incrementally every year and I think you know affordable housing and I think Amherst has had a reputation for many many years of needing to attract kind of a different cross section of people that don't make you know either under $7,000 annually or over $800 and I think we don't have kind of a middle cross section of people that we attract from neighboring towns and people that work where their median income is $50,000 $60,000 I mean like I said I think there's this kind of polarization of people that are attracted and it's either people that are on mass health and are virtually indigent or people that are making $200,000 a year and I think you know as a person that kind of has one income you know I live paycheck to paycheck so when we talk again in my property taxes they're high Amherst I mean we have a reputation for extremely high property taxes and you know so I think I guess I question a lot of this in the sense of how is this conceived what does affordable housing mean who are we trying to attract I mean all of it and I think that you know sorry that guy is a very passionate but anyway I'll shut up now I wanted to reserve some time to see if any of my fellow counselors either have questions that they want to ask about what they have heard or have anything else that they would like to say and I didn't promise them this panel I have a question and this is a finance I have not totally followed how that $500,000 works for example does it get paid back through CPAC money that comes year by year by year are there any town and tax levies in there how does it affect the town's capital projects going forward and I'm asking you Andy as the expert to explain that so okay here's the expert sorry so this particular article is for borrowing authorization CPAC gets about a million dollars a year in short charge revenues which is part of your tax bill so we can use that money for affordable housing short preservation, open space and they we had a lot of projects this year that came up on the table and they funded and they didn't come down for cash can't follow out of the arrow to fund them all so this one they chose to borrow for so until the money's borrowed and we've actually spent it it doesn't really need to get paid back once it's spent borrowing or paying debt service it comes from that serve charge it's so that will be $1.1 million less that debt service to go for the next year does that help? the other piece though while it gets paid back from CPAC money it does go against the total of towns borrowing them correct? it does though that's less of a concern I thought it might be earlier what what is distinct is that the other projects that were discussed by Mr. Bochum and you've probably read a lot about the need to replace the two elementary schools that are quite sick the library improvements of the library itself and the trustees are advocating for the library department building and the DPW building those would be town buildings to the extent that we end up borrowing money for them they're going to be repaid from taxation that is a distinct part of the general budget and it can come up in one of two ways either there'll be enough resources to do the repayment within current taxation levels or the council could ask all of our voters all of you and all of the other voters to approve what's called a debt exclusion override but that's essentially an override that is only for the specific purpose of funding a particular project so that's a whole different process than the community preservation act borrowing which is what the payback is from the money that is specifically allocated that portion of taxes which we voted is an additional increment for community preservation act so they're like two separate pieces and they don't necessarily affect each other but it does have real consequences as I said earlier to the extent that you decide to borrow money for a for this purpose or any other purpose then in future years there's less CPA money for other housing historic preservation in open space purchases so here's one comment and then I'm going to turn back to the council to see what's going on my name's Amy Gilbert-Lawner I'm at 14 on Truth Street I just have a question about the timing so they're coming to the town asking for value CDC is borrowing I'm sorry the town is borrowing the proposal is for the town to borrow $500,000 from CNAC debt service at back I just but we were told it was a $5 million process why do they have to come to the town and have the town borrow the money first instead of going to other sources how do you know with $450,000 left to finance I don't know that much about the financing but to go from $500,000 to $5 million so we won't borrow the money until they need to spend it asking for from the town is a commitment of funds because when they go to the state for additional funds they want to say the state says does the town support this showing evidence evidence is putting money on the table in essence which is what this money would show so that's why they're asking for it up front there are two processes here one is the finance process and one is the permitting process they haven't started the permitting process that goes through the zoning board of appeals and it's kind of a chicken and egg so when we go to the state and say can we move forward on our permitting unless the state looks at their performance and says you've got your ducks in a row in terms of finances yes you can go forward on permitting so they're in the stage of trying to establish funding sources one of the funding sources is CPA but the town would say if the town council approves this the town council would say we're willing to borrow this money we won't borrow it until you're absolutely ready to build we've promised that we will borrow the money even when the time comes when it comes time to pay back that money it'll come out of the CPA funds so the source is paying back the funds so then just to follow up on that this is the finance committee and we're talking about finances but then I don't see how you can separate out some of the other social concerns that we have because the town is in the end saying they support it or don't support it so I just want to say this is all kind of interrelated part of the whole discussion I think we we agree with what you just said that they are separate but very interrelated issues and so the finance committee will look at an aspect of it but they're what the council president thinks am I right is indicated and this is correct to explain is there is going to be separate processes to look at a whole bundle of issues and that's what she was explaining and we do have a committee of the council that very early on I think was their second meeting looked at this and if they weren't ready to take this on so I don't want to point a finger on that at all even a little bit I do think it has to do with that both financial and social I want to confirm with Sonia and then turn back to because I do see other hands my recollection of how this all fits together that this would require a two-thirds vote on the council because it involves borrowing those of you who are involved in town meeting and I recognize several faces as having the former town meeting members when we did CPA votes at town meeting the moderator would distinguish which ones required a majority of which ones required two-thirds and once the required borrowing required two-thirds so there will have to be a separate vote from the council that has the two-thirds threshold, yes please Duncan's House 67th Ministry so of course if there was a vote to delay borrowing money from the project then what would the next step be such a vote where to have it I want to make sure you are doing something that they can go on without any money from us at all whether that would sell to the states another issue they needed this money or not the council they can vote this whenever they choose they are not tied to any fiscal year they can vote CPA funds as long as they are available but they need nine votes of the council to authorize a town to borrow no I know eight eight is two-thirds oh sorry but they except for some of the issues they could you could go out you could buy a property and you could say this is what I'm going to do with it if the property was some property and for that use and you had the money so that's called private enterprise it's the only way to really bring them to the negotiating tables to delay approval perhaps maybe if town council wants to say if that's what I'm hearing I can personally say there's really nothing that the town could do if they wanted to go ahead and do it zoning is they're not they grew a bench and that's why she was mentioning the zoning board of the fields because there would be that's where Melissa and I were on the select board most recently went through similar questions about the North Square development and North Amherst and the select board was really involved in again financing questions but ultimately the final approval and the questions of what exactly would be built was a ZDA decision and you know put our roles in the right place that's the analogy I would give just a quick question do I understand the timeline like I think you said the CPA is not both for the finances of the CPA not tied to the town budget so that June 30th deadline doesn't really apply that little right I asked this question because this is a online article the deadline is now June 30th the rest of the CPA articles because it's coming when estimated proceeds like the regular operating budget then it does have to be voted before the tax rate is set so June 30th to have it available in July 1 because this is borrowing okay yes sir Jim's lesson during the 93 day industry at the April 24th meeting I asked the LACBC representatives if they had enough clients in Amherst to fill 132 as both and they said definitely not they thought they had about 60% maybe 70 and they said that they would be advertising to get more people from a much larger area and I'm just wondering if you know how it is that Amherst wants to spend money on service needy folks from a very broad area that are town residents so looking back to the council to see if there are any other further questions to give follow-ups or one yes I hope it's quick could you explain to us because I understand most of the members of the ZBA are turning over this summer could you tell us first how large a majority vote for the ZBA is required to grant the special permit if there are five members how many of those need to approve it and also a little bit about the process for selecting the new members do you also have that this is a thumb wrestle kind of deal so we just appointed the members of the ZBA last night that's done and they are almost all the same as they were before there's very little change it's my understanding that as a comprehensive permit unlike most votes of the ZBA which now that it's a five member it used to be a three member body had to be unanimous votes for most things it has to be a four out of five for a comprehensive permit it's my understanding it has to be three out of five yes I just wanted to follow up on Vin's comment that there might be more room for conversation moving forward and wondering if you can clarify it all about what happened what kind of timeline or organizational process to be honest I meet with the town manager on Wednesday and this is on the top of my list for tomorrow so if you can get ready anything additional if not do you have anything you want to say I really appreciate all that you've offered to us and the way of input the purpose of the public hearing is that we can hear from you and we appreciate you coming to be a part of that process so thank you and hopefully now that you have better understanding of the budget processing going forward and since a lot of questions were about CPA you know what the date is two days from today it is a daytime meeting as noted we will be giving a formal presentation for the first time at the finance committee of the CPA proposal so far we have only received a written form which you may have seen on the website and we will diligently move forward and the information that you have provided is very valuable an important part of the process so thank you yes I just want to say thank you very much for your work in Amherst sometimes it can feel you can feel pressure to be silent around flashpoint topics like homelessness and affordable housing and I think it's a mistake to give in to that pressure being vocal is part of being an engaged citizen so I hope these conversations continue forward who isn't in support of affordable housing but that umbrella of affordable housing is rather wide and there's a whole continuum of services that are required under that umbrella and I think we should be fiscally conservative and also careful about the language we use when we talk about our most vulnerable populations that's very subjective so I hope to keep those things in mind as we move forward thank you we have to adjourn both meetings so why don't you do finance first okay I will return to the finance committee meeting see all of my committee on is there a motion for adjourn the court council I'll make the motion and second is that was all those in favor thank you for being here thank you thank you Amherst media