 Okay, the recording recording has started. Okay. So let me call the meeting to order first pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021 this meeting will be conducted via remote means members of the public who wish the access to meeting may do so through the Amherst town website www.amherstma.gov. No person and no in person attendance of members of the public will be permitted but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time by a technological means. In the event that we are in the event that we are unable to do so for reasons of economic hardship and despite best efforts. We will post on the Amherst town town government website and YouTube and audio or video recording transcript or other comprehensive record of proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting. Thank you. This meeting is called to order. Okay. And as you all know the meeting is being recorded. And so if anyone else is doing so at this time. Please notify me. Hearing none. Okay. We don't have any do we have anyone from the public. We do not. Okay. I think on the agenda I do not see the approval of the previous meetings minutes. But again. I thought I put that on there. That's all right. Can we do that without it being on the agenda. We're not supposed to. So let's table those until our next meeting. Okay. Can so, so can we make a note that we're going to have to review because I had some notes about things on the minutes that I wanted to get, get clarified. So we can actually we can talk about them. We just can't make a vote as to whether or not we can approve them. So if there's any changes that you want to make, we can do that ahead of time. Without the approval of the, without the approval of the minutes. So I don't know whether my colleagues can can pull up the minutes on their screens. Yeah, yeah, hold on. Yeah, I got him. You know, I'm just Kim, I'm just trying to be careful that these minutes are such that a person a lay person could come in and look at them and would understand what they're all about. Absolutely. So I will bring you down to discussed with Richard Morse to stop an office. If you, if you look at the phrase decision to table until next meeting to discuss. The next phrase I think is fairly incomprehensible some questions. Yeah. Can we, can we get that statement to be clear. I'm sorry where are we discussed with Richard Morse just oh okay gotcha gotcha decision to table until next meeting with some questions. Maybe you should say on parcels. Is that a separate topic. Yeah, you're right. So it should read discussion to table next meeting to discuss questions about the following parcels. Okay, all right so can we, can we get that language cleared up a little bit. Yes. Okay, thank you. That, that for you to sign is something different right. It's another paragraph shouldn't it. Yes, I think I think you're right can I think it's a it's actually a separate item. I think yeah what we can do is we can say, if it's okay with you guys discussed with Richard Morse to stop into the office to sign certificates of chapter 61. Period, period. And then, and then new paragraph decision to table until the next meeting to discuss questions about the following parcels. Okay, if we can, if we can look at it in January and review it just to make sure we. Yeah, we can do that. Also I have discussed residential exemption if you come down. Could we get that, could we get that line to be fair, fairly clear as to what, what you what is going on there. Hang on just a second time just trying to take a couple notes I just want to catch up with you. Okay, so discussed residential exemption principle assessor, assessor, can you findings about other communities who have approved this board requests copies. Okay, what would you like it to say. I'm trying to figure out what you meant what is meant to be said there. And I'm not so we just basically what we did was we talked about the residential exemption with some of the information that I had pulled off the web about other communities and I had had some questions for those communities. And then I was going to send you my questions which I have for this week. I would prefer an insertion of the word used principle assessor Kim you are some word like that sub verb or something used or reviewed review I like that yeah. Okay, all right. Review. Okay. Okay, we can make those changes certainly. All right and then one more. Sure. Going to the next page. I mean, I'm just asking for a different word than vague. I like, I guess. Oh, I see. Discuss being more vague I like being more general on. Yeah, I'd go with discussed, eliminating the detail on something to provide more timely response by the assessor's office. Well, whatever you want to do. That's that's fine or discuss being more general on a bit agenda items to be able to cover more material I just, but I vague is too much of a pejorative term for me to be. I agree I like that. But I think the whole purpose was to be more timely and responding. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and it could someone could take that the wrong way and we certainly don't want that so. Kim that's the most that's the most talking about about a board of assessors minutes I've ever done. That's all I'm done talking about that. No problem so we'll table those till next meeting so we can get those changes done and as well put it on the agenda to be able to vote on that and along with these minutes that will create for today's meeting as well. Okay, now why can't we vote on them today. So they were not on the agenda and so if something doesn't make the agenda we can't technically vote on it, because the public doesn't know that we're going to be discussing it. It's about notice under the open meeting law. That's correct. Okay. I had one question about today's agenda. True. Which I can't seem to pull it up, but they all look alike. Were we revised that about not being so detailed. Oh, you're seeing the motor excise commitment with the with the information I bet. So that's different than the abatement. Yeah, what today's agenda where it says signed motor vehicle abatement reports. I'd stop there I wouldn't say four colon, because it sort of implies you, we didn't. Yeah, yeah, I forgot to take that off. That's my, my bad. So in the future we'll make sure that that gets taken off to statement. Yeah. Okay, so I'm now turning the meeting over to you Kim about the motor vehicle abatement. Okay. Do you want me to share my screen. Okay. I can. I can try to pull up the think we have three weeks to look at. We do. Yes. Let me just grab this out of my board folder. Where did it go. There we go. Okay. Sorry about that. All right, let me share my screen. This over here. That was a good one. The beach. Oh, you saw my little guy. He's now part of the public record. That's right. That's okay. Okay, so here we have excise weeks for 118 through 1112. You'll see that all of these were processed in the amount of $361 and 14 cents. And again, on this one, all the applications and other paperwork that needed to be turned in were filled out and turned in. So we're able to process those. I move that we approve those abatements for the, the week of November 8. Second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Okay. Oops. Okay. So one is for the week of 1116 through 1118. Again, all the paperwork was turned in applications, all that in the amount of 453 14. Okay. Now I want to tell you that at some point last in this year, we were shown the two letter codes. And I'm sure that one member, some member of the board can actually tell you what each one of those. But anyway, I think SC is sold car, right? Correct. Yeah, I forgot what TC is, but anyway. Traded car. What? Traded car. So clearly Teresa, it would actually win the prize here. I know them all. Okay. So what is OS? Out of state. Okay. They mean the person, mean the person moved out of state. They registered the vehicle out of state. Okay. All right. I move to approve these abatements for the week of November 16, 2021. Second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. What's to. I'm sorry. Total. And there's some more for you. So on this week, this is 1122 through 1130 in the amount of $678.61. And again, all the paperwork was turned in. So in this case. Well, back to the other one for a moment, the total vehicle we needed. The total vehicle we needed. So the total vehicle we needed. And the paperwork showing that the plates were canceled, paperwork showing the car was totaled and no longer in the possession of the owner. And the application. So things like that. We're turned in for these as well. I just want to note on this one, a couple of these, like, um, Dukes LLC and university drive. And the garaging incorrect are from their last commitment. That we received for billing. So I just, as a sort of an example, my wife traded her car in July and bought a new car. So what's the process to, to actually. Get an abatement on her. For that. So she, did she transfer her plates over to her new vehicle or did she get new ones? She transferred. She transferred them. Okay. So a copy of her new registration. A copy of the purchase and sales agreement from the dealership showing the old car going into their possession. And then the application would be filled out as well. I'm sorry, could you run that by me again? Sure. So, um, the application to be filled out, which you can get on our website or we can, um, email or mail or however easy as to get. Um, then she would need. Excuse me. Her. A copy of her new registration, which just shows that same exact license plate on a different vehicle. And then she would need a, uh, the purchase and sales agreement from the dealership. Um, and in the case of a private sale, we would just need a copy of the bill of sale. And that just shows the old vehicle going into the possession of someone else, whether it's a dealership or whether it's private sale and it's another person. Okay. And I raised all that just for the general public interest of that particular. Situation. Thank you. Yes. You're welcome. All right. So can we move to approve these abatements for the second year of November 22nd, 2021. Second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Two new codes. G. Garaging and garaging incorrect. Okay. And easy exempt commonwealth. So what, I don't understand. Why did these even show up? So these codes are on here so that, um, we know the reason that we processed these abatements. Um, so, um, let's just say the garaging error. So we got this bill for $44 and 25 cents from the registry of motor vehicles. When actually it should have gone to another community. So we abated the bill in full. So when we look at this list, we just know that the reason that we abated this bill in full is that it was a garaging inconsistency. And it should have actually been sent somewhere else. And then so on and so forth at University of Massachusetts. We know that that was a exempt property. So those GI entries. Those are people whose cars are garage outside of the town. That's correct. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Hearing no other questions. I'm going to go back to the, which is the commitment for the excise tax. So this was our fifth commitment that was sent to us from the registry of motor vehicles. So on this page here, you will see the warrant to the collector. In the amount of 43,000. $253. And 71 cents. That was 46,000, not 43. Did I read that? Yeah. We'll have to go back and check that then because I've got the. Do we have the paperwork attached here? Yes. Yeah. Correct. Correct. Okay. So the agenda is incorrect on the amount. The, the warrant is, is correct. In the amount of 46,000. $253. And 71 cents. So I apologize for that. So we have this page again, going to the warrant. To the collector. The second page you will see is the commitment. To the accounting office. Again, in the amount of 46,000, $253. And 71 cents. And then the final page that you will see here is the print out out of munis, which just shows that there was 553 bills. Shows the valuation for that amount of vehicles. And then again, that amount of 46. 253. And 71 cents. Okay. I moved it. We approve this commitment. Second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. When you put on the bill there, bill, bill, bill total 553 total. What is that? That's the number of bills that we are. Expected to. To send out in this commitment. So that's the number that came over from the registry. In the case of. Well, never mind. I'm not going to go there right now. So anyway, so that would be the. Total number of. Actual envelopes that we mail out. Valuation is the total number of value on those particular. Vehicles that was given by the registry of motor vehicles. And then the excise tax, of course, is the amount that we expect to collect from that number of bills. Okay. Thank you very much. Welcome. All right. Do you advise the state of the number. Initially, and then they repeat it back to you or. Or this, they come up with that number separately. They come up with that. So those are the number of vehicles. On the first commitment. Those are the number of vehicles that are registered as of January 1st. In Amherst. And then the, like, like this commitment, for example, we'll get multiple throughout the year. So every three months, they send us another one. So they say, okay, we ran the. Commitment on say December 31st. Of 2021. Right. So back. So in April, say. They'll run another commitment from. January 1st. To. Say April 1st, for example. And that's going to pick up anyone that has then registered their vehicle in that timeframe. So those numbers come in fully from the registry. So that's how you get five commitments. That's yeah. And sometimes we'll have, you know, seven, eight. I've seen as many as nine. But they, it's just anybody that registers their vehicle throughout the year, the calendar year, they'll pick them up somehow. Towards the end of the year, we sometimes get a commitment for. Like say, for example, we'll get a commitment for 2021. At the same time that we get the full commitment for 2021. But it's just somebody who registered at the end of the year. Right around the time that they're sending out the new bills. I was one of those people at one point. I got a new car in December. So I got my. Excise tax bill for the month of December. In 2019. And then I got my full year for 2020. All at once. So that's an unfortunate situation, but it happens. Thanks. Welcome. All right. So I will move on to the next agenda item, which is the lean for a chapter 61 B property. This property is located at 15. Let's not say on here 15. I thought I put it on the lean. I apologize. That's Christ. That's 13, 13, 50 Southeast street. So this property was sold recently. As you see on the. Bottom page here, it says book and page number. The date is May 17th of 2021. So. What happens when there's a sale of a property that's included in any type of chapter is that we just have to re, re. Submit the lean to the registry of deeds with the new owner on it. And so that's what we're doing here. So this person has decided to keep. The property in chapter 61 B. There's a total of 12.9 acres of which 10 are going to be considered into chapter 61 B. So they have just shy of three acres for their yard. And so that is basically what this is here. It's just taking the exact same information that was already. Build, and we're just. Redoing the lean. Do I take it that this is a property with a trail across it? It could be. It could be just a property that. Doesn't necessarily have a trail. Maybe it has multiple, but it's basically open to the public. So if anybody wanted to walk through it, they would have the ability to do that. Yeah, Richard, I think that's right. There is a trail there. I think there might be on this particular one. Yes. Three trails that come off of Southeast street, like baby carriage and there are a couple of trail. There are like three trails. East off of Southeast street. So this, yeah, this, I'm pretty sure when looking at the map, I do remember seeing that there was a trail. But yes, if so, but, but again, if anybody had a piece of property that they had, I think that's right. There is a trail there. I think there might be on this particular one. Yes. So if anybody had a piece of property that they wanted to put in chapter 61 B, they don't necessarily have to have a trail going through it to do that as long as they open it up to the public and allow them to travel through. Is this normally effective only one year? No, so this lean. This basically the reason that we're doing this is because there's a change of ownership. So they have filled out their application for chapter 61 B. And that has to be done every year. So that part of it, yes, is effective every year. The lean only has to be done if there's a change of acres and or a change of ownership. So the lean can last if these people own this property for 50 years and never change anything, it can last for 50 years, but they have to fill out an application every year in order to actually receive the. Reduction on the taxes. So that application goes to you or to the state. To us in the case of chapter 61 B. If they have chapter 61 and or chapter 61 a with a forest management plan. The plan would be created through a state forester and then given to us to look at. Got it. Do you have any idea how many 61 B's we haven't down. I don't off the top of my head to reset to you. I do not. I've helped them. I don't know about you, but I can't recall seeing one before this. But maybe we did. I don't know why I don't remember it. If you can make a note and just let us know next time. Yeah, we can do that. So our signatures go in how many places just on this form or is there another form after this? Just on this particular form. Okay. So we'll need each of you to sign just once. So we have to come in. Yes, we do. So do we vote to approve our signatures on this before. Correct. So I move that we approve our, our signatures on this. I can't see the top of the. Oh, sorry. That's all right. I'm just trying to state it. I'm just trying to make sure that we do approve. Approval of this recreational land tax lien. Second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. And I just want to quickly note to myself that we want to bring. The amount of chapter six. We can tell you actually how many we have of each chapter. If that's something of interest to you. That'd be nice. Okay. Is this available to be signed this afternoon or not? Okay. Sorry about that. Well, that's fine. Okay. So we'll move along. The next thing on the agenda is the residential exemption. Excuse me, could you go back up again? Sure. I had a question. So in order for this signature to be notarized. I noticed that there's the entry of the. Driver's license there. Have we presented our driver's licenses. To the, to the, to the assessor's office. It would be the town clerk has a notary. And so they usually will require that. When, when they, they do the. Their signature there on the notary line. Okay. Just being careful about this. Have we, have we actually presented our driver's licenses to do that? No. Okay. Some notaries don't require that. I can't really speak for. Who and why and when they do what they do. Yeah. There's got to be some functionality having a law degree in this area. I don't know. I don't have any intention here. Keep it straight, Richard. We can be properly notarized. Do we have to. Appear before the clerk when we sign this. We've never done that before. Yeah, that's what that says. Yes. I just want to honor the formalities, Kim. So I want to keep that in mind. Yes. So this should be. Yes, that too. When you come in, just come to us first, because we'll hang on to it and then we can walk down with you and have you sign that. All right. I'm glad I spotted that. Yes. Thank you, sir. All right. Yes. Okay. So. I think I just wanted to make sure that we had a lot of information about what we had collected in regards to the residential exemption. That I thought was really, really important when, and if we do a presentation to the town council. And the process of collecting a lot of things, but I just, you guys, we had talked about it last time and you guys had asked for a copy of what I had so far. So we wanted to show you this. Something that I thought was really important, which I think I had mentioned last time is just that there's 14 residential exemptions. I think there's a lot of people in the city. I think there's 51 cities or towns. That have the residential exemption. None of those are in Western Massachusetts. I know there was some conversation about Hadley doing this. And I spoke with the assessor and they have not adopted that. So with those figures of the 14 communities, that's only 18% of Massachusetts residents who, who actually are affected by the residential exemption. I think that number speaks volumes. I think it's important to be able to present that in our, in our presentation, whenever we do that. So you'll see a list of those communities. And I used the 2020 US census data for the number of residences that you will see. So the ones that are highlighted are the ones that I wanted to reach out to. I had spoke with Sean about this as well, Sean, and we decided that these were the five best communities to reach out to. You will see that there are, there are three of them with the stars, Barnstable, Chelsea and Watertown. Those are the most comparable in size to Amherst. So I thought those were the most important to reach out to. Everett has slightly higher number of residents, but they have a lot of low income housing and residents. So we wanted to check with them on how that would affect the, how it is affecting those particular properties. And then the city of Boston, obviously being a city and having way more residents, you're probably thinking, why are you sending them questions? But they have colleges there. And so we wanted to address, you know, how they looked at the colleges, how it might have affected the colleges, how it might not have affected the colleges. And that would include the, any rentals that are outside, you know, like we have a lot of. Rental rentals here in Amherst that are rented by students. So those are some of the questions that we wanted to, to touch on with those. So, and then as you can see, as the page goes down, I had some questions that I wanted to specifically ask these communities. Why did you adopt the residential exemption? How did it affect your apartment rentals and the low income ones, especially specifically to Boston? What were the thoughts that went into the college areas and how did that take place? What percent of the average assessed value did you give? And why would that be? And that goes to all communities. Then again, all communities. Can you briefly explain how you presented this information to your city or town council? And do you feel like there are any really important points that need to be made in particular to them? And then how did you reach out to your taxpayers to let them know that this was being implemented and sort of along with those lines is, did you reach out to your taxpayers to let them know? And why or why not in that case? Did you get a response from the residents and landlords? And how did you manage this every year? So how did you reach out? Or did you reach out to property, to taxpayers yearly? Sort of, you know, what was the information that was gathered? What were the questions that were asked? And how do you keep track of the owner occupied homes versus the rental or seasonal homes? Go ahead. The only thing I was thinking is when did they make the decision to make the change? Okay. I will write this down because that's what I was going to ask you guys next was if you had anything to add. I love these questions. I'm the idiot savante of proofreading. Okay. So a fact is spelled with an A, not E. Just, just telling you. Oh, okay. Thank you. No, I appreciate that. That's one of those things that I read it and I see it the way I want to see it, but it won't spell check me on math. Thank you. And also I would note that Waltham has a lot of college students too. Yes. So that's another community. Okay. So I have a quick column. Next to each of these towns, how many students they have. Actually, that's not a bad idea. Cambridge would jump out and so would Waltham jump out. How did you make the determination that Everett has a lot of low income residents? Is that something you just know as a factor? That was something that Sean had brought to my attention. So that I don't know whether that's something that he knows just as a factor or whether he had been doing some sort of research on his own and found that information out. I think that also applies to Chelsea, by the way. I think Chelsea has a lot of. That's my sense of having to ask for 10 years. Okay. What is the current population for Amherst, the new census. So the 2020 census population that I had for Amherst, which was the only one that I could get my hands on at the moment was 39,263. And then you get the whole issue of how many are year round. Yeah. Sorry. I know you can't see what I'm doing. I'm just taking notes as to what we're talking about. So I can add things to this. I try to remember what we are, what, what we are aiming for in terms of a presentation. So. It's kind of up to the council because if they, you know, if they would like us to come and talk about it, then. You know, they need to invite us. I think that's a good idea. I think that's a good idea. I think that's a good idea. This is, this is one of those situations where. The assessors will give the information, but, but they don't. You know, they maybe give a recommendation, but they don't want to necessarily say like, you know, here's what I think we should do because we don't want to do this. It's, it's here's how this would impact if we did it. Here's how this would impact if we didn't do it. So it's, it's kind of, it's a, it's not necessarily a good idea to do that with. I don't want to say completed, but we're hoping to have a better understanding of how other communities look at this and how they're doing it. I think by June I think was the deadline. So I'm hoping to be able to put together. A letter. Probably specific to each town cause as you see, some of these questions might not necessarily be. Appropriate to ask every community, but those were the fives that we were specifically going to looking for, then possibly reach out to some of the others. So Kim, let me ask you, what do you think the significance of the fact that no community west of the cobbin has done this? So not Holyoke? Yeah, yeah. And I think the reason being is the fact that this was actually created for communities out, for example, out on the Cape for vacation home communities, where people were coming and they were purchasing property and they didn't really care what the cost was, but they were driving the cost of values so high because they were paying X amount of dollars for a tiny little cape or a ranch or whatever the case was. And so the people who were there all year round were seeing this dramatic increase on their taxes because people wanted vacation homes. So I think seeing that it's sort of a hard line of where it stops is sort of telling as to where maybe people have vacation homes here, but it's not necessarily affecting the value of our property. So the hard discussion with this is, well, we have a lot of landlords here that are buying up property and then renting them. But it's something. That's like the Boston area. That's why it moved from the Cape up to Boston. Exactly. And so it's something a little different than it's even different than Boston because people buy up places quickly in Boston because first of all, there's not a whole lot that probably goes on the market that's somewhat affordable, but also they may work there and live here and they need a place to stay during the week. There's all these different scenarios. Looking specifically at Amherst, we do have a lot of rentals, but I wouldn't go as far as saying that someone is paying hundreds of thousands of dollars more for a house that's a rental versus someone who's trying to buy a house to live in themselves. And I think that's sort of where it gets overlooked because that's why this was created, it was for people who were paying. Say all of us went out to the Cape and we were all looking for homes, I'm looking for a vacation home, maybe Teresa and Lee, you're looking for a place to live forever, you know, Richard and Ken maybe you're just looking for vacation homes too. You know, Teresa puts in an offer on a house at 200,000 and I go, well, I really want it because I want a vacation home, so I'll pay 400,000. And that's kind of what was happening and that's why this was created because people were just willing to pay more because they just wanted it and they could. So again, here in Amherst, I don't think that's necessarily happening when it comes to the value of rental homes. People aren't just saying, oh, I just want it to rent, so I'll pay, you know, $100,000 more. And that's where I think there's confusion with this. Okay, so let me just point out here, another data point or another trend, not just to throw it out there for us to think about, is that it seems as though there is now some upward pressure on homes in general, on residences for people who seem to be moving out here to telecommute, they wanna get out of the whole commuting thing and they realize they can live and work at home or work out of their home or they only have to go into work in one of the big cities, one or two days of the week. And so I think there may be some upward pressure on real estate values here similar to on the Cape because of what sort of has been created here, the access to conservation land, that whole trend. So not only just landlords, but also people looking to buy high-end homes or homes that are outside of the urban rat race. So I have seen and I've heard people talking about that as well. And I think that that is a trend that is, like you say, sort of in an upward motion throughout the western part of Massachusetts. And that is pretty much like from just outside of Boston and over to the end of Massachusetts. So I think it's something that all communities are experiencing. I do think that it's still really on the fence as to where that direction is gonna go because some businesses and employers are saying, okay, that's fine, we're okay with you not being in the office and you can do your work from home, we don't actually need you here. We don't, at this moment, we don't want you here because of COVID, but where is that gonna go once? And if COVID starts to decrease and or go away, our business is gonna say, look, this is enough, enough is enough, we want you back in the office. And if that happens, then we're gonna see a huge decline. And then if we've already got this implemented, we could be in trouble with how it's affecting our tax dollars coming into us. So I think certainly something to keep an eye on, but I think we need to see that trend continue for longer than just a short period of time to be smart about implementing the residential exemption. I think we need to be, not that I want anybody to struggle because that's not at all what I'm saying, I'm just saying, I think that we need to have more detailed information. We need to have a longer study time to be able to do this because if you put this, if you put the residential exemption in, if it gets voted in to your community, it's stuck there for three years at minimum, unless you have like catastrophic issues with collections or with somehow it's just totally throwing things askew. And then you have to bring it back to Capitol Hill and there's this huge process of getting rid of it before the three years. So implementing this in a quick hurry is not, I think the best idea in my opinion, I think that we need to get a lot more information and do more studies and make sure that this is really right for our community. Okay, I agree with everything you said and I spoke sort of in that vein at the last council meeting where this came up. I do think there are council members who are wondering whether there is now a sort of a lower layer of lower income property owners residential owners who are being affected by the upward pressure on real estate values. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and that's actually hearing that maybe Chelsea has some lower income properties as well. I'm really interested to hear back with Everett and maybe Chelsea on how is it affecting them and if it's helping them, how it's helping them? Because I agree, I think that there is some lower income residences, landlords, anything that might be seeing things a little different right now because of the way the market is going. So again, I think there's a lot of research that still needs to get done before we should, in my opinion, again, before we should implement this. This is a very complex problem. It is. I guess one data point is, is it easy for us to tell how many homes sell each year in Amherst and what price they sell for? So we can do a report of sales. I don't know specifically because I'm just not too familiar with vision yet. If we can pull it on sale prices, but I'm sure. Sorry, we do have a sales report out there that I create. Okay, so yeah, so I'm sure that there's a way that we could look at that and analyze the data that we get off of that to see where our sale prices have been over the last couple of years and what's happening to them. I mean, we know just by looking at the values of properties that sale prices have been increasing because the values have been significantly increasing. Just that's just everybody going up. I mean, yeah, so that does it. But I think we really need to look at home. I mean, all this other cities are great, but we need to make sure we have all the data that we can get from our home Amherst database. Yes, and I think also a part of getting the information from the other communities is going to help us to figure out what exactly we need to look at here too. How did it affect the lower income properties? How did it affect the college areas? So what do we need to pull for data here to figure out how things are looking right now here in Amherst? So I think the conversation between these communities and absolutely Ken, your point is we absolutely need to make sure that we have all of our ducks in a row. We study our own town. We check out other towns and cities and see how this is working in their areas. And just make sure that we're absolutely 100% sure that this is right for us. Well, yeah, we're never going to be 100% though. You know that. Well, closer to 100%. The other concern I've had people express is 60% of our housing units are now rental. And what are people going to feel like when it's 80%? Right. And the trend's going that way. Right. Right, and I think maybe also something else to think about and I don't know without doing any research, but are there other ways to incentivize buying and living in owner-occupied properties? Are there other ways to look at this stuff and help the community to, I don't want to say recover from a high rent. But the university, it's always going to be going that way unless there's some kind of slowdown or pushback. And one type is encourage more on university housing. Yeah, I do know a little bit Amherst College specifically. They don't allow their students to live off campus, their freshman year. And I think up until you're a senior and potentially a junior with certain circumstances, you're not allowed to have a vehicle. So that also saves on our admissions and parking issues if we have those. But it's still back to housing, it's still something. I mean UMass is enormous if they made all freshmen stay on campus. There may not be space for other people who want to stay on campus. So it's a huge brainstorming, conversations to be had with the colleges, just trying to sort out what the best thing for us to do is. Isn't the pressure from the council coming from the idea that the increasing in value, the increasing values of housing is causing many, especially older folks, to be housing poor and seeing their taxes go to where they can't afford them. And that's where the pressure is really coming from. Yeah. A tax break for some number of constituents who are voters who own homes who may be on fixed incomes. Right, right. And so addressing that concern is, I think, a key point. Yeah. So as I understand it, every municipality in the Commonwealth has to visit this issue every single year? We do, yes. So I would take it that Northampton, for example, visits this issue every single year as to whether to provide a residential exemption and they have not done it. That's correct. OK. And this is just depending on the community, it's a question that we have to propose to the council with a recommendation. Sometimes it's just we don't recommend it. That's it. Other communities want to look at more detail, like Amherst is doing. Greenfield did the same thing at one point when they were concerned about their values increasing and all their taxes increasing. So it's something that sometimes it's just here's the question and we don't recommend doing it, period, and other times it's more research. So since we're talking about Greenfield, was there any sort of pressure from the council to investigate the issue? There was a little bit. It wasn't as much as here because it was a different situation where they were just upset because their values were increasing and the taxes were going up so high, more so than a specific class of people being singled out. There it was more of just a quick explanation of what could happen if we did this. I actually didn't even have to do this detailed of research. I just sort of gave the explanation of why the residential exemption was created and how if we did implement it and basically same explanation with a split tax rate is we still have to make the same amount of money. So if we do this and we give these people the discount, all everyone else is going to have to make up for that. And I think that that alone just weighed heavier on them than the concern of actually getting the discount because so there's a lot of people in Greenfield who live in Greenfield but also have a business in Greenfield and it was just going to end up hurting them more than just leaving things alone. So if you get to 80% and I guess Ken feels as though that I don't know whether we can track that. The percentage is getting higher every year of people who are renters in town who are in renters. I guess if you get up to 70% or 80%, you don't have a political constituency for a residential exemption, right? I mean, you always have somebody. Yeah, you will because you're always going to have people who live here year round. And just because they're renting doesn't necessarily mean they're only part-time here as well. We have plenty of, and I know that's not what you meant, but we have plenty of people who rent because they can't afford or don't want to have a house. And so those people would still be affected by the residential exemption because if they are living here full-time but they're renting, they're not going to see that exemption, you know, they may not see that deduction in their, not deduction reduction in their rent, which wouldn't help at all in their case. It might make it worse for them. Okay, so is there an action item for the board that is connected to this particular discussion that we're having today? I think the only thing is if you feel like you wanna do research and you want to ask more questions of other communities and or help me to figure out what it is exactly that we need to research about our town, you're welcome to do that. At this point in the game, I'm gonna focus on trying to reach out to these other communities and find out how things are affecting them. So then we can come back and look at, okay, this is what could happen, how would this affect us? So at the moment, unless you feel inclined to do so, I would say no, there's nothing that you can, that you have to do anyway. All right, so I just wanted to say, I'd be interested in how many minutes did they spend in Northampton on this past year? Discussing, maybe this is maybe not having a residential exemption as part of the conventional wisdom in most of these towns. So they don't really give it any thought at all. I don't know, but apparently you actually have to, you actually have to vote on it every year. That's correct. Does it just get passed in front of council members and boards of select been around the Western Massachusetts and they just vote no on that? I guess I'm curious about Northampton and maybe even Hadley as to whether they've even talked about it. Yeah, I mean, it's not a bad idea to reach out to them since they are our neighboring communities and just see how they're handling it. And like you said, it very well may be just, the board doesn't recommend that we do this, period. Case closed, we move on. In a lot of communities, I think that's the case, especially smaller communities in Franklin County. I know that that's the case there just because they just don't have, they just don't have the resources to want to do this. But I don't know much about Hampshire County yet. So I would be interested to hear from these other communities as well. What percentage, if you know, what percentage of residents in Greenfield were renters? I don't know that. Okay. If you talk to these like Hadley or Northampton, definitely ask them, what percentage are renters versus homeowners? Cause I think if it's a large, like 90% homeowners, you can't push it off except on the higher homeowners, you can't push it off onto the renters because there aren't many renters. Right. It's a whole different dynamic. I'm also concerned that this is turning into a research project that's spreading and getting bigger. Well, I think it will be anyway, depending on which direction that the council wants to go with this, you know, the new council coming in may just be like, you know what? This is stupid. We don't want to do this. Just leave it at that. They may come in and say, this is great. Let's do some more research. Let's find out. They may just say, please do some more research because we're not sure we want to do this, but we want to know more about it. So either way, it could turn into a research project, but it, you know, it very well could just be that we reach out to these communities and that's that. This council is meeting five plus hours each meeting. And so they're jammed up pretty badly. So they don't have time really to sit and sort of leisurely look at this issue, I don't think, but there do seem to be a couple of council members that are interested in it. Yeah. The pressure is building with what, what did our tax bills go up this year? Eight, nine percent? Yeah. And they're going to go up another eight, nine or higher next year. So all the nurses are going to be saying, wait a minute, who else can pay taxes instead of me? Right. And then we have the capital plans coming and that's going to overrides. And so there's going to be general pressure over the next two or three years to. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the longer lines of the capital projects too in the overrides, they don't necessarily immediately affect the tax rate and some don't affect it at all, depending on, you know, how the funding is being created. You know, in the case of the library, there is a grant that's there. I don't know too, too much about it and I don't want to get off the subject. But, you know, things like that do help with that as well. So that's something that will also come into play to at that point. But again, I just I don't want to get too far off on that. OK, so I want to make sure that we move the meeting along. Is there anything else? I guess just one question that's never been answered at some point down the road, Kim, I would talk to our affordable housing committee or whoever in town here is and understand them. What would happen to affordable housing? I've heard all the way from people saying their rents would not get affected at all because they're set by the state to know they would get directly affected. Need to make sure we have a clear answer when you do to finalize this. Yes. Yes. And that's, you know, that leads to a bunch more questions, too, because depending on the actual answer to that, you know, if it doesn't affect them because it's set by the state, how does it affect the owner of that part of that property? And then if it does affect them directly, you know, then that leads to a whole new set of questions as well. So I think there's there is a lot more in regards to that. And that is one of my one of the things that I want to do as well is to reach out to to our community members and our, you know, housing authorities and find out, you know, really in all reality, all we care about is our community and how this is going to affect us. As I understand it, our sales of houses and Teresa probably knows a much about this are consistently now above the sale prices is consistently above assessed values by quite a bit. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, you know, that is something that's happening across the whole state of Massachusetts. So that's not just unique to us, too. So that's that's a whole other thing there. So it's nothing compared to some places. I mean, I have a daughter who lives in Bozeman, Montana, which they're attracting a lot of people from California and their median price for their home last month was 750,000. Wow. The median price. So it's happening across the whole the whole country. It's it's, you know, I mean, I know specifically about Massachusetts just because that's where we are. But but yeah, that's interesting to hear that it's continuing to happen, even in that far away. OK. 700,000 noon right now. So I want to make sure I'm just keeping track of our time. OK. So we can move on to that. We can again, we can, you know, leave this open ended. We'll we'll revisit it at some point. We don't necessarily have to leave it on the agenda, but we could and just table it weekly or monthly if we don't need any conversation about it. Can I understand that you're just going to continue on with the survey? Yes, as as we except we've added a couple of questions. Yes. Yeah, which I appreciate. And again, you know, if you want to do some work on it, you're totally welcome to do that, but you don't have to. I just wanted to present the information to you because we had talked about it before and you guys had asked to see what I had so far. So that was really more or less what what I wanted to do today. Kim, I would hesitate if you have something we can help you with. Don't hesitate to send us an email. OK. Would somebody like to help me on this? I mean, sure, sure. Thank you. We'll tell you no. Or yes. Sounds good. Thank you. And I would err on the side of happy. I would err on the side of not being any later than June because this council has made it pretty clear that. Yeah, they don't want to get jammed again. Right. And we don't want to get jammed either because we don't want to have to be scrambling at the end of the year trying to do everything else that we have to do plus set up the residential exemption. So we don't want to get jammed either. OK. So. You know, I suppose that it probably needs to be someone met. I guess that would be me that would reach out to the council president, whoever that is next year and indicate that we have this sort of ongoing discussion and do they want a presentation at some point? Yeah, and I think, you know, let's get some more information before we do that. But I think that that we could we could certainly do that as well. I would think it would go through, Paul, though. I don't think it's our role to reach out directly to the council. That's true. I think it is. It's like, excuse me, I just beyond. OK, I'm on the same wavelength with Paul before you do it. Well, of course, but we're not being we're not the council. The council runs the town runs the town through the manager. So so. Right. And I don't. And I don't expect council members to be looking at these meetings. So so. The fact that this is happening is pretty fairly private. I mean, that we're having this discussion. So. I don't know how private it is. It's been public pretty well. I mean, the meetings have been. When's the last time you read any press about what we're doing, Ken? Well, I don't think we need press. I mean, I'm all I'm saying is make sure you talk to Paul before you or any of us go directly to the council. OK. But but we what generally is happening is we go to October, November, and then the council complains that they got jammed up. Right, right, right. And so I think along those lines, you know, we should definitely keep that in mind and be in touch with whomever we need to to to have a presentation before that time frame. So so in the meantime, you're going to you're going to continue this research. I am. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So again, hearing that it's noontime, I think we can move on from that. And, you know, we can leave it on the agenda and just table it if we don't have anything to talk about just in case we do. No vote needs to be done, so it doesn't have to be there. But, you know, it doesn't hurt for it to be there. So I think a minute update every month from you is fine. OK. All right. So moving along then to the discussion of the availability of personal exemptions, I think we're still working on that as well. They are all listed on our website, as we had mentioned last time. So if no one has anything more to say about that, I think we can certainly table that in if we need discussion about that again. We can we can do that. There is there is a flyer, actually, that's going out in with all the tax bills that is actually in the town manager's office now for approval before we do that. But, you know, other than that, I think at this moment. I think that's all we have for for that item line. And so then our update, I just wanted to let you know that we've done a couple of test files. Everything is looking really good, and we're hoping to put the bills in live either this afternoon or Friday. So we should be able to mail the bills out. We'd rather not mail them Christmas week because it's just not nice. So we're thinking that we'll mail them the following week and everything will be ready to go for February 1st. And, of course, if anybody wants to pay them ahead of time, they can do that. The week between Christmas and New Year's. Yes. Yeah, you know, it's just it's it's Jen and I were talking about it and it's, you know, sort of not nice to send them for Christmas. So happy New Year. New Year's is different. They have to be out in the mail by that week. So yeah. So anyway, that's the most important thing that's going on right now. We're preparing for a bunch of mailings that we have going out in January. We have the income and expense requests, and then we have three ABC requests and personal property form of lists requests. So we're working on trying to be the most efficient with all of those and what the best, most least expensive way to handle those are and getting the best response. I did bring with me from Greenfield, a postcard that we send out for a reminder of the income and expense. Greenfield is much more tech savvy than than Greenfield was. So we have all of our forms that we're going to post on our website and send out a postcard to those who get the income and expense and just say, hey, you know, it's time to do that again. You can get your form online. And of course, if anybody wants to call us and have us mail them or if they want to pick it up, we can do that as well or email, whatever works, I think we're just going to stick with the actual applications for the three ABCs and the form of lists just out of those are much more complicated forms. And just it sounds like the response for those would just be better to do it that way. So sure, what's the three ABCs? Three ABC is exempt entities such as UMass. No, UMass wouldn't necessarily have to fill one out because they're exempt through the Commonwealth. I'm thinking of churches. Churches, yes. Most churches are not actually required to fill it out, but some some do. God, I'm totally drawing a blank on the names of these people. You told me companies. You told me no. No, that would be personal property form of list. Amherst College, we send some out to. I've got one on the tip of my tongue and it's just service. You know, biodynamic farms, stuff like that. Yeah, so so so non-profit usually entities get those. Sorry for completely drawing a blank on that. And then the other thing that we're getting ready for is the big excise commitment that is going to be coming our way in the beginning of the calendar year. So we've got some new processes to to put forth with that. Just making things easier for ourselves, time saving. So we're just trying to be more be most efficient. And so I think that's really all I've got for for an update for now. Those are the most important things that are coming and being worked on. We I have a list on my board. We're overworking on our manual for policies. And that's across the town. I think everybody, every department is doing that. And we're going to do one specific to internally. We're working on how to books to. So if something happens to all of us, somebody could just pick up where we are and, you know, know our processes. We're working on drinking a lot of water. We are going to look at our statutory exemptions and see if there is a different way to input those into the billing system. But but otherwise, I think, you know, nothing really changing, just trying to be the most efficient that we can be. So are you all right now? Starting at the end, starting in January, I will be fully here. I'm very ready to be fully very ready. I will be in Greenfield at least two more weeks than depending on sort of what happens with their tax bills, because they're not in the best place right now. I may or may not be there. Going forward. So we'll see what what that brings. So I should have a better idea. Probably at our next. Well, at our next meeting, I will be full time. So I want to make sure that you the coals chapter land is still on the agenda. Yes, that is actually in the executive session. OK, yes. So so so moving along with that, then, I think our next meeting, since it's going to be in January and I will be here every every day in January, do you guys want to stick with the Wednesday meetings or would you rather go back to the Thursday meetings? Wednesday is fine. Yeah, I see. OK, OK, so we'll stick with a Wednesday date. Then I, you know, either way, it doesn't matter to me. We I appreciate you guys being so willing to change that for me through through now. But if you want, if you Wednesday's work best for you, then we can stick with that. And if we find that that's not working, then we can always go back to Thursdays or change to another day. So the 12th, 12th, 12th again. Yeah. OK, so so our next meeting then will be January 12th. So in our executive session today, if there's no other things to discuss, we will talk about the chapter land and then we have a couple of statutory exemptions to look at. OK, so hearing that there are no other discussions in. Oh, shoot, I think I stopped recording. No, no, I didn't. I didn't. I'm still recording. OK. So there are if there's no other discussion for the public session, then we can go ahead and move forward with what? With the agenda to make sure that we cover everything. Yep, which I'm having a little trouble using. I will really be glad we go in in person. But me too, what's that what's our look for that in person? So there was conversation about what the new city council wanted to do. And if. If I remember correctly, they were going to vote on that at the first meeting. And then I I want to say I had because of the variant, they're going to keep it remote for now, but that very well could have just been conversation. So I don't know that there was a final decision yet on whether or not we could go back to in person meetings. They are following the governor's guidelines and they're waiting on the governor's office. That's what Angela told me today. Oh, OK, great, great. OK, so if everyone is OK to do so, we can close out the public section of the meeting and then we can go into executive again to discuss personal exemptions as well as the Coles chapter property with adjournment at the end. I move that we go into executive session. Second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. OK. Stop recording. Yep. And then you have to then you have to go record the executive session, too, right? No, we do not have to record executive session. All right, so I'm going to stop recording. So again, just to to put it out there for the public. Next meeting will be January 12th at are we still going to keep one o'clock 11 o'clock? OK, OK. So next meeting will be January 12th at 11 o'clock. And I say, given your schedule, Kim, you know, obviously we could slide around a little bit if you need us to. OK, I appreciate that. I think, you know, again, after the end of December, I'll be fully yours. So whatever works then best for you guys would be fine with me. I'll be here again every day. So if we decide that Wednesday is the day that we don't want to do, we can always switch back to Thursdays or any other day of the week that we decide is is a good day. So OK. So I'm going to go ahead and stop recording.