 Good evening. It is November 13th and then this is the first of two meetings that we have tonight, both of which will use the same zoom. The first meeting is the one we're about to start and it's with with regard to the financial indicators. It's literally when we officially kick off the budgeting season for the next year, believe it or not, even in November of this year. And then the second meeting is a regular town council meeting. This meeting is a joint meeting. It's called the budget coordinating group, but more importantly, it is made up of the town council, the finance committee of the town council, the school committee and the Jones library trustees. The open meeting law has been extended and this allows us to continue holding meetings remotely without a quorum of the council physically present at a meeting location. While providing the public with adequate alternative access to the meeting. This meeting is accessible in real time by zoom by phone and as live broadcast on Amherst media channel nine and live stream. Given that we have a quorum of the council present. I'm calling the November 13 meeting of the town council to order at 604. I'll call upon each counselor by name at that time. Please unmute your mic and say present. This will indicate that we can hear you and you can hear us. And then please remember to mute your mic. That same set of instructions is true for the rest of the committees as well. When I call on your chair to call you to order. Present. Patty Andrews present on a Devlin got here present. Lynn Greece Merse present Mandy Joe Hanneke present. Anika Lopes is not present at the time. Michelle Miller is not present at the time. Dorothy Pam. Here. Pam Rooney. Here. Kathy Shane. Here. Andy Steinberg. Here. Jennifer top is not present at the time. Alicia Walker. I'm expecting Alicia but I don't. Oh, I'm sorry. He said present. Thank you. Oh, I know I have to flip my screen. There's so many of us on screen. Good evening, Alicia. Thank you. I'm calling upon the following to convene their respective bodies. School committee chair of roads is here yet. I don't believe Irv is here. Jennifer, then your vice chair. I believe I am and we don't have a quorum present. I don't think so. We'll wait until later. Thank you. Thank you. Austin. Jones library trustees. Thank you, Lynn. I'm calling this meeting of the Jones library trustees to order. I'll ask the members of the trustees want to call your name to indicate your presence. Lee Edwards on mute. Present. Thank you, Lee. Bob Pam. Here. Farah. I mean. Thank you, Alex. Present. Thank you. And. Tammy. Present. And Austin. Sarah is present. Okay. And the finance committee, the remaining members of the finance committee, Andy Steinberg. Yes, I'm calling the finance committee to order and noting that we have already established the presence of the council members. Lucia Walker, Kathy Shane, Lynn Prismar. I'm going to call on the three resident members, Matt Halloway. Present. Bernie Kubiak. President. And Bob Hegner. Present. Thank you. So, Lynn, I believe the school committee has a quorum. Okay. Jennifer. I'm seeing a quorum. I'm calling the Amherst school committee to order. When I say your name, please unmute yourself and say present Katie Lasdowski. Present. Gabriella Weaver. Present. And Jennifer Shaw is present. And just keep an eye out to see if other people come in from the school committee and let me know. Jennifer, thank you. There is no chat room for this meeting. If you have technical issues, please let Athena O'Keefe or me know. Please use the raise hand function button. If you would like to ask a question or make a comment. If we have any difficulty with the technology, we will try to determine what we're going to do at that time. I want to make note that representative Mindy Dom is with us in the audience. As she often is. This is a regular, the regular meeting of the town council will begin sometime after seven o'clock. Immediately following this group. And there is no public comment during this particular meeting, but there will be opportunity for a public comment on the others. So this is the official kickoff. As we mentioned, this is the process that includes many opportunities for residents to make suggestions about their priorities for the budget. One of those coming up is in fact, quorum, I mean the public forum on the budget on the FY 25 budget. And that begins at 630 next next Monday night, and will be both in person and the ability to be on zoom. Welcome, of course, our town manager Paul Bachman, Holly Drake, the interim co-finance director and controller. Jennifer Lafontaine interim co-finance director and treasurer collector Kim you principal assessor. And as part of this team tonight. Athena O'Keefe our clerk of the town council. And with that, I'm really going to turn it over to Paul. And thank you everyone for being here. This is the annual gathering of the major elected officials for the town. It's a very important night because it's when we start the budget season. And we do that by sharing information about the condition of the town's budget and how we ranked with other communities similar to us. We miss Sean mangano, but we have a very everybody nods on our team. We have a very strong team and that's one of the blessings that Amherst has is that we have a deep bench and so thank you to Holly and Jen and Kim and Athena for stepping in to put this thing together. So, the next slide we have about 34 slides seems like a lot, but we will go through them quickly and we hope to have some time at the end for some questions. So, so we're on this one. It's good. Tonight we're going to talk about our 5 year or 10 year monitoring report, which we do every year. We just updated annually. We're going to talk about the current fiscal year assumptions and projections. We're looking for FY 25. And what we identify as our major challenges going forward. We also will look at some revenue and expenditure projections. And then the budget planning calendar. Again, I look, we look at this as the beginning of a long conversation that happens that goes through next, the end of next fiscal year at June 30. Next slide. So tonight's major takeaways. So the challenges that we're going to talk about are not unique to the town of Amherst or to us. The major challenges are the rising costs and the need for continued economic growth. We need to continue making progress on our 4 major capital projects, which we have been, I have been identified for a very long time. We're hypersensitive to the impact of increases in taxes on our property tax owners. And we need to be balancing our new initiatives with maintaining our fiscal, our ability to pay our bills. And then the thing for all of us, I think I can speak for the school department as well as staff changes. There, you know, this interim superintendent Doug slaughter who is here tonight is wearing multiple hats and carrying a lot of responsibility at the school department. We have had our finance director move on so everybody in this room is carrying some additional weight and just again. Holly and Jen have taken on the role of interim finance directors and doing a wonderful job. The. I also want to talk about our financial foundation because we're in. We've done a lot. We have a very strong financial condition. We've been focused on growing our services. We have a new strategic partnership agreement with UMass. And we have a strong financial foundation that's been confirmed by our bond rating agencies. We have excellent fiscal management and forward looking planning. This is what this is a part we always brag about this kind of process when we meet with our bonding. We have strong bond raiders. We have strong financial systems. We have great working relationships between the library and the school and the town staffs. And we really work on coming up with solutions. And through this, we try to maintain sort of steady managed growth, but nothing we don't look to grow too quickly. Next slide. So what we're going to talk about now are the major indicators over the next next few slides. And I turn it over. So we've been doing this since 2007. So it's a it's a practiced process that we follow. We update it so it's there's consistency from year to year. And we've refined it somewhat based on feedback from people. So we're always welcome, eager to hear from you in terms of what kind of how we can make it better. So we turn it over to Holly. Point of order before we begin. I'm so sorry. Can I get some help with Bob's tablet? It's projecting sound. It's what there's like an echo effect. Thank you. I also want to mention that these slides will be added to the packet and made available online. They're in there now. They're there now. Thank you. Hey, Holly. So as Paul said, this presentation started about 15 years ago and it is the kickoff of our budget process. It does a 10 year look back on some key financial points and trends both within our town and statewide to see where we fall. So this first slide here is the sources of revenue for our general fund budget. And it just shows you 10 years ago in 2015, you know, basically what the pieces of the pie were and what they are today. Like most cities and towns, our main source of revenue is property taxes. The charts are very similar, but they do show that we're having a slightly larger reliance on property taxes and a little bit less on state aid and local receipts. Go to the next slide. So these two charts show the major categories of expenditures with the vast majority being made up of the town elementary school budget, the regional assessment and the general fund, the town operating budget. The percentages again are pretty similar to what they were 10 years ago. The capital piece has grown from 5% to 8%, which was a very intentional to increase our capital spending from year to year and start planning for the four major projects. The miscellaneous category has grown as well, and that is due to the retirement assessment as they are looking to become Hampshire County retirement is looking to fully fund the pension trust fund. And we are making great strides towards our OPEB obligations as well. So that is some of the reasons why that miscellaneous category is increasing. I think that we have mentioned this one in the past, and I always want to point it out where it looks like the elementary school budgets have dropped from 31% to 28% of the general fund budget. Part of that is due to an accounting issue and how we how we account for the charter and the school choice reimbursements and charges through the state aid. So that results in that's probably at least a one to one and a half percent of that difference is simply an accounting issue that we change that used to be part of the elementary school budget. It's now part of the general fund budget. Next slide. Good evening. I'm going to talk about the new building projects that we have. I'm going to talk about those property tax revenue and it and it's the primary source of both operating and capital spending. It includes new growth that has been averaging somewhere around $720,000 annually over the last 10 years. We provide tax revenues of almost $300,000 for the town in FY 24 annual increases are limited by proposition two and a half unless the town passes and operating override, which was last done in fiscal year 2011 with the blue line being actual dollars and the red line being constant dollars. This is adjusted for inflation. Next slide please. This slide shows a 10 year history of uncollected taxes as a percentage of the net levy fiscal year 2020 was slightly higher due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The town adopted an extended due date for the fourth quarter property taxes pushing the due date from May 1 to June 30 without any penalty. And this also pushed the demand bills into July to the next fiscal year. The amount of uncollected taxes at the end of July was back under 2%, which is more in line with what we expect to see after that. Overall, this slide shows our collection rate to be very favorable to the bond rating agencies as we have remained well below the 5% or above warning indicator. To this low percentage of uncollected property taxes. We also we've also collected around $168,000 in tax title money in FY 23. And a tax title is a lien placed on property to enforce the collection of property taxes and is removed when the property tax account is paid in full. Next slide. Okay, so this shows our state aid, which is one piece of that original pie of our revenues in both constant dollars. And in actual dollars and in constant dollars, which would be adjusted for inflation by taking the CPI and in running that out over a 10 year period. We do not have the CPI information from the DOR for FY 23. So this stops at 2022. But if you look at this chart, it looks like our, our state aid dollars are increasing and they are increasing. But when you adjust them for inflation, we are actually seeing when adjusting for inflation, lower state aid in 2022 than we had in 2014 when adjusted for inflation. We will not have a look at the state's numbers until January. So we're being pretty cautious right now with our first draft of FY 25 revenues until we have a little better understanding of what state numbers will look like. Next slide. So the next slide also just shows the state aid as a percentage of our operating revenues. So state aid peaked for us in 2008 where we took in almost $17 million of state aid, and it was approximately 28% of our operating revenues back then. There have been increases, but oftentimes what happens with those increases is that when our state aid goes up, so do our offsets and the next chart will show that. I'll hold that for one second. The next chart will show that a little bit better. But right now we're still about one percentage point lower than we were 10 years ago, 10 years ago in 2014 it was 20.5% of the operating budget this year. It's just our for 2023 it was 19.4% of the operating budget. So you just, it just goes to show you that we're, we're really relying a lot more on our property tax base than we are on state aid. So next slide. So this one here is the state aid history, and you'll see that the cherry, the cherry sheet receipts are in red. The charges are in green, and then the net state aid is the purple line floating up there at the top. So this shows the amount that we actually have for spending. You know, again, most of the time an increase in state aid also comes with increased in the assessments. So that purple line is, is basically our spending power there. And again, we'll be just waiting on the first round of governor's numbers to the governor's budget numbers to see where we're going to fall for our first estimates for FY 25. Next slide. Okay, so this shows our economic growth that our economic growth revenues include meals tax hotel motel motor vehicle excise tax building permit fees and our new growth. As you can see on this chart in 2023 the percentages were down from 2022. We presume that this is caused by inflation and higher interest rates, which contributes to fewer new vehicles purchased, which is directly ties to the amount of revenue that comes in with that's generated with the excise tax. Also in regards to the building permits in 2022 there was a few large scale permits that were pulled. And this year we had fewer large scale projects, but we did have an overall increase of the number of actual permits. I just, I just wanted to point out there as well. Part of the drop that you're seeing there is in FY 23. We had some very large transfers in and out of stabilization funds and so that artificially increased our total operating budget. If our total operating budget is bigger, that percentage is going to look a little bit smaller. If we were to, if we were to back out those large revenue and expenditures, simply related to the transfers of free cash. This number would be about 4.8%. So it would be right in line with last years. And because of all of the transfers in and out of the stabilization funds, it made our budget look bigger than it really was. That makes sense. So the next slide. So this chart compares our three major general fund revenues by showing each one again adjusted for inflation as well as in actual dollars. So the red line at the top is the property taxes and it is our biggest revenue source. It increases annually by the amounts allowed by proposition two and a half as well as the addition of new growth. It shows that property taxes are increasing, but when you look at them adjusted for inflation, they are not increasing nearly as much as we would think they are. The middle is state aid. Again, the green lines with our second biggest revenue source. Again, although this is slowly increasing and it is keeping a little better pace with inflation was still well below that peak back in 2008. The last revenue shown here are local receipts, the purple lines. They have remained relatively flat. And again, our keeping better, keeping better pace with inflation. Obviously, they dropped dramatically in 2021, but we are slowly getting back closer to our normal levels and expect local receipts to to increase in 2025 as well. Hopefully. Next slide. So, these are operating expenditures per capita. So, although our actual operating expenditures are going up when you adjust them for inflation, they're not going up again nearly as much inflation is hitting everybody, including our revenues are expenditures and all of our budgets. So, in 2022, we are actually 3.1% lower than we were in 2014, if you adjust these numbers for inflation. This is a major challenge for our population numbers. And our budgets. And one of the things that has always sort of been mentioned here is that we have a very unique population here in Amherst and that with the number of on campus residents and off campus residents who don't actually pay property taxes, but they are using town services. They use the roads, they use the sidewalks, the parks, the comments, public safety, etc. But they're not contributing as much to the to the revenues of the town. That has been a challenge in Amherst, just in terms of trying to figure creative ways to increase our tax bases. And you can go to the next slide. This one here compares our operating expenditures per capita to our peer communities, peer communities. We began comparing Amherst to communities with similar demographics back when we started this presentation about 15 years ago. And then, you know, most of these communities were out East. And so people wanted some more local communities. So we had added the local community. So now we show. We typically show both sets of these numbers when we're comparing ourselves to, to the other communities by calculating this data per capita and comparing ourselves to other communities. And it makes it a little easier to interpret the data in this presentation. The colors coded up here show the bond ratings with the purple being triple A blue being double A. The tan color is just a single A and the town of Amherst is a double A plus we are shown in green on all of these charts for us to stand out a little bit. And then the statewide average is also shown on these charts and they are the red. Our spending per capita is roughly half of the statewide average currently Amherst operating expenditures per capita are still below all of our peer communities and the similar communities as well. Next slide. So this next slide depicts the budgeted municipal staffing levels for the town's general fund only. This does not include enterprise funds and it does not include the schools information on school staffing levels can be found on their website. We have improvement further information on our enterprise funds, but we've never included it in this presentation is mostly about the general fund. This chart shows that over the past 10 years we've added approximately 15 FTEs or full time equivalents. There were the eight Crest responders that showed up here in FY 23, as well as the four firefighters, which are currently shown down in the bottom in the green section that is grant funded. We also have had some recent additions of positions in the last few years such as DEI communication manager clerk of the council some positions over the last few years here and there but the major changes are the the addition of the Crest in the DEI departments as well as the four additional firefighters. Next slide. So this chart shows our salaries compared to the overall budget and compared to just the salaries and benefits. Sorry, the salaries and benefits portions of the budget. So the bar shows our total budget salary slowly rising, which is consistent with the prior slide obviously as staffing levels go up so will our benefits. These benefits include things such as COLA steps retirement costs insurance unemployment life insurance health insurance. The blue line shows salaries and benefits as a percentage of the total budget. And it has fluctuated a bit over the years but it remains relatively flat. Again, you'll you'll see that blue line going down just a little bit this year and that once again is simply due to the fact that our budget was slightly inflated due to all those transfers in and out. So if that had been leveled off you would see you would see a much flatter number it would probably be just above the 50% instead of below the 50% here. The green line shows that benefits as a percent of just the salary and we just portion of the budget is also slowly increasing. And you will notice I think it was in 2000 between 2018 and 2019 where you see that green line jump from just below 40 million to above 40 million. That was when our we changed from being self insured to fully insured and we moved to the Maya program. It did result in some higher rates for us but some much more stable and much less volatile worries there. Next slide. So this slide shows our debt service. This is our annual debt expense as a percent of our operating net revenue. These are annual principal interest payments on existing debt. Because our debt expense is low currently at 0.8% we have greater flexibility to issue new debt and debt continues to drop. And a reason for this is borrowing for central fire station repairs road paving and Keras which was a CPA project or all paid off in fiscal year 23. New debt will start hitting in the next couple of years for debt. Authorizations approved through the capital improvement plan and debt service is part of the capital budget. Next slide. So this slide shows us compared to other communities throughout Massachusetts above and compares us to our neighboring communities below for debt service as a percentage of the operating budget. This will look different in the next few years as more debt is taken on with a few of the big projects underway. Our credit rating is strong due to a low percentage of debt relative to the general fund revenue and also to good fiscal management. Next slide. Amherst long term debt load has remained relatively low and has actually decreased in recent years as shown in this slide. This percentage includes both long term and short term outstanding debt. This chart does not show authorized but unissued debt like the Jones library the new elementary school fire pumper truck and fire ladder truck. Once these items are borrowed for our outstanding debt will reflect an increase in percentage. Next slide. So this is a comparison to other communities in Massachusetts above and below a comparison to our neighboring communities showing what our outstanding debt is as a percentage of assessed value for fiscal year 21. The state data lags a few years so this was the most recent information we could provide. So long term outstanding debt only currently Amherst is the lowest but again this will change as we take on more debt in the next few years. And again we maintain maintain a strong double a plus credit rating as a result of this low percentage of debt relative to our general fund revenue. Next slide. We continue to make progress on its long term liabilities. Our pension, which is the blue or purple line there is at seventy eight point six funded with a fully funded date estimated to be in twenty thirty three. And art, the change in percentage from twenty twenty to twenty twenty two that increases due to favorable market performance. We've been working on some different scenarios for the open funding plan and continue to make annual payments. But the most significant change will be in twenty thirty three once our pension liability is met and we can redirect funds to it. Next slide. I just wanted to mention on that last slide that the the OPEB and the actuary studies are only done once every two years. Twenty twenty two is the most recent data that we have. They'll do an interim update in between and update some of the numbers but they don't update everything again until twenty twenty four. So our current financial policies recommend our reserves to be between five and fifteen percent. And as you can see we're over at over twenty five percent exceeding the reserve ceiling is intentional. Um general reserves which is free cash which is the red line and general stabilization being the green line combined or around sixteen percent with the rest for capital stabilization recently voted by the town council for F. Twenty three to help offset the costs of the major capital projects we are facing including debt service and our commitment to continue to fund the reparations fund. Having good reserves provides the town with greater flexibility to react to any loss of revenue such as steady cuts and unforeseen emergencies like we just went through with the pandemic. So I just wanted to mention here as well that we were not able to do a twenty twenty four number because we've not brought those financial orders to the town council yet on what may or may not be used from free cash. So I certainly have some estimates we can discuss those things both with the finance committee and with the town council later but those orders will be coming later on tonight. So twenty twenty four numbers we struggled with whether to put them up there or not put them up there but at this point they were all just sort of going to be estimates. So there'll be a lot of discussion around that I'm sure but we typically are a year behind on this slide anyways because you never know when your free cash is going to be certified and how much of it is going to be used. So this slide shows that the town does very well compared to other municipalities above and neighboring communities below with reserves as the percentage of the operating budget. So this comes back to me now. Thank you. But we got more coming. So first off I want to mention what OPEP means many people don't know what OPEP means it's other post employment benefits basically it's the promise we make to employees that we will continue to contribute to their health insurance after they've retired. So we've made that commitment to current employees. We are pre funding that is required by by our auditors and by accounting principles. It takes time. The strategy is to get full funding of our pension liability and then to take the money that we've been putting into that and to put that into our health insurance OPEP liability. So it takes decades to do this but it's the right thing to be doing. So what you heard is especially the last few slides is a purposeful explanation of why we have done of our strategy for building our big capital projects. Jen talked about the debt rolling down that we have a very low debt load very low debt load right now because we're we have very few outstanding balances that's a good thing. We have you've seen the increase in our free cash and our capital reserves and our and stabilization funds that's purposeful so we build up our savings account in essence so we have money to help pay things off. You'll see later that we are we continue to create room within the operating budget to put money towards capital expenses so we can pay things off. We're not struggling to cut things in our operating budget versus paying off our debt so all those things. And then. So those are the real key things and then also we have the strategic strategic use of debt exclusions like we've done with the school, the elementary school. And that's all part of the plan for how we build up our reserves and pay off our debt so we can take on these new capital projects which we needed a long time ago. And also, you'll notice in this presentation that many of our measures showed population as a metric. It's not the best pop the best metric for us because our population is skewed with a lot of students so we have a 40,000 person population, but we're a much smaller town in reality but it's the metric that we've used. And so we would you would expect us to be lower on many of those on those metrics. But the other thing is that we try to use numbers and ratios that anybody can go to the state website and get so you can validate all this information if you want. So it's consistent from year to year, you know, Holly and Jen said what has been updated on the state website because we wait until the website is updated versus us going and trying to be talking to different collectors and comptrollers saying what are you doing. We want it all to be standardized. So, these are, you know, we talked about our bond rating double a plus is a very good bond rating for us. It's a, we, we have really worked hard over the last couple years to move it up even higher, the better your bond rating to lower the interest rates that you pay for bonding is we are we struggle to increase ours because with our large population it also shows a demographic that is low lower in income. So, when they're looking at a town like Western they'll say oh there's a huge amount of ability to pay for bond rating because the average household income is very large, whereas our average household and hold income is low. We've made the pitch to the bond rating agencies that you shouldn't look at the student, you should look at the students family who might have much more buying power because that's what they bring to the town it's not just the students and come out you should be looking at, but it's the, the students family. They have not really bought into that we've made the pitch once we're going to keep making that pitch to them in hopes that they say, ah, you actually are undervalued and so that that's one of the things that we're working on in terms of our bond rating. But given everything are double a plus is really a pretty pretty strong rating for us and it was reaffirmed last year I think it was when they reaffirmed it, which is a lot of it had to do with our financial situation which you just looked at and they look at all these things. And also with our management's financial policies, the way we've how we've managed in the staffing to meet all of our staff and things like that. On the second thing we talked about our health reserves, which is our free cash plus our stabilization funds, oops, and go back. So, as Holly said, it says 24 million 26% that's last year's number. Because we again, the council hasn't acted on these new actions that we're presenting to you tonight. So we have an updated that that'll be updated once the council takes action on the things that you've been requested to do tonight. The big thing for us as we created the capital stabilization fund, and that was a significant statement by the council to say yes we're saving money for these projects it's not just random. Why we're, why we're building these reserves is communicated to the public why we're building them, it's to pay off these capital projects. And the council also created the reparation stabilization fund to help address that goal so we're starting to put money aside in advance to start to meet the goal that the council set for reparations. Excellent. So, one of the things that I talked a little bit about this is that one of the things we really pride ourselves on is that we're all on the same team, the library, the schools, the town, we communicate well, we share the resources that we that we bring in. We, and that's one of the strengths that we bring when we talk to our ratings agency is that there aren't there aren't these bitter battles that you see in many communities over funding and things like that. We communicate this is one of the very few communities do what we're doing right now where everybody all the elected officials come into one room and they share the information. The, we're projecting a 3% increase in operating budgets this year. We built that in this year and we address us what we're doing at 525 in a minute. We continue to invest more in our capital and sustainability efforts. And then the other thing that the council be looking at later on tonight is the council had wanted to include for new firefighters into the into the operating budget. We initially funded those with ARPA funds with the strategic partnership agreement with UMass. We now have an outside funding source that lets us integrate those four positions into our operating budget, which it's a very good thing. It's, it's important piece there. The challenges, you're going to hear about inflation inflation inflation, it's there, it's happening. And it's happening on all when we buy vehicles when we're negotiating collective bargaining agreements when we're buying buildings, all those things. We continue to do well in our major industry for the town, which is housing. There are there's an incredible demand and for for housing and you see new buildings going up in key areas. And that's generating more income. I, as Jennifer said, you know, 300, these, those three new buildings are generating $300,000 in new revenue to the town every year. And so that's money that goes into our operating funds that helps us pay for the services that the town would like. We also need to more strategic partnership agreements. We've got one with UMass. We need one with Hampshire and we need one with Amherst college. Those are challenges that we are are really driving towards right now. That's fine. So, as we move into our FY 25 assumptions, these are the revenue projections that we're, we're looking at the 2.5%. We, we always get 2.5% property tax increase that goes up. And everybody's individual property tax bill goes up to 2.5%. It's an overall overall calculation, but we can raise our property, the income we get from property tax by 2.5% townwide. We also budget a number for $650,000 for new growth, new growth. Is there what is anything that you, if you have a new building, you put it an addition onto your house, that's called new growth. We can add that to our tax base. So, any new construction, any, any new additions that people have you put in a swimming pool, things like that. That's a taxable thing that we add on state aid is flat. We are constantly arguing for more money at the state level. I used to work at the Massachusetts municipal association called the MMA and the nickname for the MMA was more money always. And that's how we took the message to the state house. We're starting to see local receipts. We come back to a more normal level compared to the pandemic. We really reduced local receipts dramatically because that's what was happening in the world. And then one of the things that we do is we have enterprise funds enterprise funds are basically separate businesses that operate with their own funding source. That's water department, our sewer department. Transportation, which is downtown parking and solid waste, which is the transfer station and we, and we collect revenue from those things and then we account for them separately. In addition to that we asked those enterprise funds to pay for the services that they get from the town government. You know, so like Holly's time or Jen's time, we collect the money and so during the pandemic, we reduce that those funds that came to the town. We've gone back with water and sewer that's been back to normal and this year, transportation is back to normal. We have not we don't collect it from solid waste. It's a very small fund. And again, just an important thing. Other communities are looking for overrides. The town of Amherst is not looking for an override for an operating budget. Next slide. So working assumptions for FY 25 and this is this is sort of the major thing. Last year at this point, we were looking at a 2.5% increase in our operating budget this year. We're saying 3% we're confident in our numbers and our growth, our new growth that we believe. And we also know that the expenses of our departments are increasing through collective bargaining agreements and so we're going to start at 3% and hope we can do better. But I think that's a good place for us to begin our conversation. As we enter FY 25, we have a number of contracts that are unsettled when we have settled contracts that gives us predictability and what our labor costs are going to be. The town we have a blessed moment for a few months where we have all of our labor contracts settled. The fire department comes up on July 1 so we were we just finished settling all our last two contracts and within a month we'll be back at the table again. The bad news for us tonight is what we're projecting for health insurance where we've been informed and we don't we won't get that percentage increase until January. But we've been told to expect the worst. And so we're budgeting encouraging the other departments budget 12% increase. It's a large increase for us and it's a major piece of our budget. And that will eat up a lot of our increases that we're able to put together. And that's 1 of the reasons we want to go to 3% because it is a significant increase. We hope that that number will come down. We'll work at doing making modifications if we can to our plans to bring that number down. But we will have more certainty about that about the 3rd week of January when we get our rates. Okay, so the, I think we talked a little bit about our retirement assessments. We're looking at that going up 7% to meet our commitment to the Hampshire County retirement system. We're hoping to maintain our capital investment at 10.5% we move from 10% last year to 10 and a half percent this year. We want to maintain that because it's important as we continue to meet the backlog of capital needs that we have. And we're going to continue to make a modest increase to our contribution $50,000 to bring it to $600,000. It's not an enormous amount of money, but it's important for the rate. The rating agencies really like to see that even in hard times we're making commitments to make to look at our long term liabilities. So the fact that we've done this every year is really significant when they look at us. Next line. So we asked the major challenges for each of the 3 entities here and so again for us for the town of Amherst, it's the sodium and infrastructure needs getting more economic development. The uncertainty where we're pretty confident that things are coming out in a good way, but there's still uncertainty with inflation coming forward. Our health insurance costs costs. And then we're seeing major new buildings being built, but they're not huge consumers of water and sewer. They're very, very efficient. The university is really much more efficient as is the college. So we're not getting the level of revenue. It's a good thing, but it means our revenue isn't coming. We're producing the same amount. It costs the same whether you do one gallon or 10 gallons of water basically. For the schools and Doug has told, you know, the big challenge is the moving off of the federal funding as our funds because that's been stabilizing the schools and that's going to end and managing that transition. Some people call it the fiscal cliff, but it's it's something that we'll be working towards facility needs at the schools are clear. We can't get the new schools soon enough. State aid, the funding for federal grants and state grants and then trans planning for the transition of the sixth grade to the middle school. Those were the major school things for library. Sharon shared that was diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, the needs of the facility and the reduced reliance on the endowment, which is a goal of the trustees. So, going forward, we're going to be talking about these sort of redundant actually isn't it. The key thing for me though is the on our on the concerns is maintaining our fiscal discipline and what that means is trying to manage our headcount. You know, it's called we call it position control. We are very judicious about adding positions when there's a major initiative that the council really wants then we we integrate that into the budget but we try to really manage those that headcount because that headcount comes with it. We call it fiscal pep liabilities health insurance costs and pension liabilities we all that all gets calculated into our number. So, maintaining that kind of fiscal discipline is really important. Moving forward on our four major pack capital projects but also figuring it out and sharing with the public how these are things are going to be paid for. We know right away. I mean here every day, the needs of our departments outweigh the resources that we have. And there isn't it's just a, it doesn't move it's the way it is. And then we also clearly everything looks through the lens of the impact on our taxpayers because taxes are high in the town of Amherst. But you get a lot of services by working for the town. So the other slide is just how we try to get more things, you know, more money into our system. Development is important getting grants is important getting money from our nonprofit partners is important using reserves at key times is important. And then we as we make changes on sustain sustainability efforts we tend to we start to have savings in our operating costs and that's a good thing for all of us. Next slide. So this is a spreadsheet that no one can really see probably, but it'll be in the packet and you can study it, but this is you will see this many times over the course of the coming months. It's something that we update regularly. And do I go through it Holly or just sort of identify it that it exists. This is just sort of again our first draft of an FY 25 budget, like Paul said, we're going to go through it again and again and again and refine it and, you know, add things and take things away and balance things as governor's numbers come out. But so the first page shows basically the sources of revenues. And then the second page is the expenditures. And when all is set and done will be looking for a balanced budget. Right now, there is a shortfall there is a deficit. But what we are hoping is that with increases in state aid and hopefully being able to increase some local receipts that we won't have a problem, you know, filling that gap in and getting it to a balanced budget. You know, again, this is just draft one. There's still a lot of information that will need to be, you know, gathered and analyzed and and state aid numbers. Coming from the state in January as our first gas will give us a little clearer direction on on where we're headed. So, so this snapshot tells us we're with the assumptions we just shared with you. You plant that onto the spreadsheet. It shows us a $281,000 deficit that we would have to make up before the council could approve a budget or I can deliver a budget that has to be balanced. So, this is the first stab at it. And we will be looking at all these numbers as we go forward and then checking them and reality testing them. Then Athena is going to walk us through where we are in the process and where we're going. Basically, like Paul said tonight is the kind of kickoff of the budget season. We are going to the finance committee for the town council is going to turn around with this information and begin developing the budget guidelines for the coming year. We plan to have a council vote on the budget guidelines before the end of the year on December 18. The budget public forum is coming up at the next council meeting on the 20th. Like I said, the budget guidelines adopt on. December 18 for the town council and then in the new year in the spring. The community preservation act committee will be finalizing their recommendations for CPA projects and presenting those to the council. And then later in the spring, the regional school budget will come to the council and be referred to finance committee. And then on through the year with the managers presentation of the budget and so on. That concludes our presentation. Thank you. Before we go to questions, I'd like to note that Nica Lopes, can you hear us? Yes, I can hear you. Thank you. And the minute should show that a Nica joined us somewhere around 640 or so. Nobody particularly knows. Thank you. Are there questions from we have no public comment. Are there questions from the various groups, boards, et cetera that have been gathered. Please use the range and function. Jennifer. Jennifer show from the school committee. Thank you. I think it was Holly in the pie chart page. You mentioned the change from moving charter and choice from the school budget department to the general fund budget. And that the change between. That's why the numbers looked so different. One of the reasons between 2015 and 2024. When did that change first? When did you make the change? Last year. I'm looking to Doug and I'm looking to Andy. I'm going to have to double check on that. It was, I want to say it was about three or four years ago. Okay, I'll check on that one for you. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. I'll mention that fiscal discipline is an important factor. But he limited his time into head count. And I would argue that fiscal different discipline goes far beyond head cap. I think as we move forward, we have to be very careful about new initiatives, spending. have to trim back on their wish lists. We're in good shape, but we're certainly not out of the woods. And there have been mistakes made in the past. We shouldn't have to expect to pay for those mistakes. Keep in mind we have two critical needs in terms of capital projects that have not been addressed. The fire department and the Department of Public Works. Both those departments affect public safety. And we need to be careful, because every dollar we spend somewhere else is a dollar we take away from those two very essential projects. And that would be my message. And that physical discipline, when you look at discipline means asking yourself, do we really need to do this? I know it's a favorite project or a favorite idea, but do we really need to do this and keep in mind those two very critical capital issues? Thanks. Thank you. Town Councilor Anna Devlin-Goth here. Anna. Thank you all so much. So my question, I think is I'm going to just kind of put it out to all of you and see who wants to respond. I'm really intrigued by the slide that had the per capita operating budget and compared to relative towns. And I'm curious about, I know that we always are presented with that slide like it's a good thing. And I understand why we're presented with that slide like it's a good thing. But for me, that slide is actually really worrying. And because I worry that we aren't, that we're burning out people if it's on people, that we are understaffed, right? If it's again, salary takes up a big chunk of this. And so I'm curious if you have a more broken down analysis in comparison to the state or other towns, in terms of where we are under spending comparatively and where we're over, if we're overspending anywhere. So I'm curious about this in terms of capital spending, but also if we're able to break it down, you know, looking at areas of the way our budget gets broken down. And I know that that's not a perfect formula because everybody does their government slightly differently. But if there is a way to kind of look a little bit more detailed versus just operating, I'd really like to see that. And it relates to my second question, which is about the compensation study, which I believe Paul is currently in process. And I'd like to kind of pair those things together. And if this is ever something that can come back to us to see, I'd like to see that kind of wrapped up in that as well, if possible. Sure, I can take that. So you're right that every, when we try to do comparisons across towns, every town does things differently. We, that's why we try to tag it to what the Department of Revenue requests in terms of reporting, but it's not perfect. You know, our library has its own endowment fund, other communities don't have that. You know, and we may have different things under public safety that other communities don't count as public safety. So it's not a really, you have to really dig into and say, head to head, tell us what you're looking at. And that takes time and money for someone to do that. In terms of the classification compensation study, that is in process. I know they're truing up all the information in terms of what it looks like for our non-union employees, non-union employees have not had to look at their positions for a very long time. So that's what this is all that, that's what that's about. Thank you. And I think to kind of relate why I am thinking about staff burnout, right? We've seen a lot of turnover recently and we know it's more expensive to hire people than to retain them. And so, you know, thinking about how we can make sure that we're, we're building budgets and, and planning in a way that helps us to retain the staff we have. And so I think that the studies you're doing will, will be helpful for that. Thanks. Before I go on, I just want to note that for any of you that are here for the regular town council meeting, we are still in the indicator, financial indicators meeting, the regular town council meeting will pick up after that with a hearing that is scheduled at 7.15, which will be as soon as we can get to it. OK, Mindy Johannike, counselor. Thank you. One observation and two questions. The observation goes back to the state aid. Over the course of a decade, it has decreased on an actual dollar basis. And that is not anything the three of you can do anything about. I know that, but we have Mindy in the audience here. And so I would like Mindy to take a hard look at that number compared to other numbers and think about why we have such a budget crunch in this town and in other towns and in schools throughout the municipalities in this state. And part of it is the fact that our state aid in 2007 covered nearly 30 percent of our budget. And now it only covers less than 20. And even just a decade ago on actual dollars, it was 14 million. And now it's 13 and a half million. That's a problem. So that's my observation. And that's a lot of the root of maybe many of our budget crunches. Two questions. The first one is the 3 percent increase that is projected in financial indicators across the board. What is your rough estimate of how much of that increase every year? Percentage wise or dollar wise goes to contracted salary increases for our employees. You know, I know salaries, one of the charts showed salaries are about 50 percent of costs. But I'm curious as to the increase each year, how much really goes to is just by contract keeping up with salaries and our contractual obligations with salary and COLA increases. And the second question is, I noticed there's been a lot of quote, you know, towns don't profit, but a lot of large revenue profit every year in the last couple of fiscal years. I think 20, you know, when you go to that last slide, that bottom line, that's not the last slide, slide 33, the surplus was 4.9 million in 2021, 4.6 million in 2022, 6.1 million in 2023. Has there ever been an analysis done over the last five years as to what is causing or why we have those surpluses and whether that is a result of us underestimating revenues or us overestimating expenditures such that those surpluses could be potentially allocated towards additional expenditures within the budget for other, more people or other programs. So on the contracted increases, we can share with you what the contracts with the contracted agreements are with our unions. That's public information there on our website. And but we can share that. I think most of them are, you know, there's the COLA, then there are other things that get built into a contract. Typically, they're in the two and a half percent range for the most part, two percent sometimes. And then for the where that surplus comes from or whatever, you know, where free cash gets built from, we can give you a calculation of what that is. It's always a combination of when we do a good job at underestimating our revenue and what we were underestimating or whatever it is. We're making sure we come underneath the budget and that we're bringing in more money than we project, we will. So that that when we achieve that, that means there's a what you call profit. It's really we don't want to be, you know, say we're going to bring in a million dollars and bring in 800,000. That's a problem. We never want to be in that situation. So we're very conservative about that. Sometimes things happen that that bring in a lot of revenue, say a large facility gets it brings in a very large building permit fee. That's not something that we build into our budget on an ongoing basis, because that's a one time event and then it falls to free cash and it shows up there in free cash. So but it's usually it's it's usually a combination of both. And we can sort of idea where that comes from. Councilor Pam Bruni, thank you. I really, really appreciate the work that goes into this. And I especially like the the comparisons with the other communities. So it occurred to me as I was watching through each of those related slides, is that the only one that does not compare Amherst to the other communities was the staffing levels. And I think that would be something that I would find of interest. I think that would be informative and and just to understand. Are we are way above the average or or how do we stand in terms of staffing? Does it mean that we try to take on too much and need more staff to accomplish all of our exciting goals? And then Mandy Joe actually asked the questions that I had about the free cash and how to how to perhaps better narrow the gap or or if we or if we want to continue with this practice that perhaps there is also an estimate or excuse me a proposal of what we might do with the free cash ahead of time so that there are some clear priorities being set for any free cash that does get generated rather than the discussion that we're going to have tonight, which is going to be a little bit more. What do we do with some random, you know, distribution of money? Well, thank you. School committee member Katie Lesdowski. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for the comprehensive explanation. My question is simply what is the basis for choosing the communities in which we're comparing ourselves or in which those that are focused on the slides? And I'm just curious about what parameters are used to select those particular towns. Someone can address that. Thank you. So initially it was a UMass study that looked at communities like Amherst that hit similar demographics, similar budget sites, things like that. And that was the and I think Holly said, those were the communities that tended to be in Eastern Massachusetts because there aren't a lot of communities like Amherst in Western Massachusetts. But for as the decision makers had this would look at that information, they would say, well, I know about East Hampton. I know about North Hampton or Greenfield or what are our neighboring property, neighboring communities doing on those same metrics? So I don't know, three or four years ago, Holly, we said, let's tell us the communities you want us to include. And we created a second chart that included all of our neighboring communities. And we put that information. It's there. Many of them aren't comparable to us because they have different types of operations. But it is how people look at things when you're a decision maker. You may have somebody who lives in Hadley so you know what their what their operations look like and you can see what they're doing. So the initial take was based on a the people who had done the initial study for the town. Taking my turn as a counselor. One of the things that strikes me as we look at the additional money called quote free cash, none of which is free and none of which is cash. The that we actually think about maybe we are at a point where we should increase the percentage we're putting into capital and or we do have staff needs and I keep hearing about staff needs every day. So that's one one just observation. Another observation is as we continue to prepare and try to make the case state level regarding pilot payments from both public institutions as well as private institutions, it would be interesting to look at a chart similar to those communities where we compare where we pick the ones that have the twenty nine public higher education institutions and also concentrations of large numbers of higher higher education institutions using something like student enrollment or something because my guess is that we begin to see a trend in those communities as well as we compare to others where your per capital expenditures are lower than they are in communities that do not have all of that land that is not taxed. I have many other questions, but this is just the beginning. So, Andy. Yeah, I appreciate all the comments and I waited until towards the end of the process to raise my hand because I wanted to reflect on sort of my own experience having been probably along with Doug Slaughter involved with town finances and Amherst longer than anyone else in the room. And so recognizing that we were both on the finance committee back in the town meeting days. And so a couple of things that I wanted to just mention this question that Mandy raised and has been talked about a little bit about budgeting and the budgeting philosophy is not new. I mean, it's really been talked about every year. Should we spend more money and live at a higher risk? And, you know, each year we come to the same conclusion that Paul mentions, which is that our bond rating and our sanity will be totally turned upside down if we make a mistake and go the other direction. But the other thing is that the ability to have the free cash to transfer for other uses at the end of the year does have some value and it is something that the council is going to be talking about, including a substantial addition to, for example, roads and repair of roads, which we have had the ability to do last year and hopefully will have the ability to do this year. Other things that I thought about was this question of the increase in state aid, which never matches inflation. And therefore, when you get to the actual dollars, has negative slope. And I think that that is really something that is always concerned all of us. The I think that we look at state aid. We have to remember that the importance of state really started in 1980 when the voters passed proposition two and a half, as it is known. And it limited increases to an amount that in the best of times just matches inflation and that we counted on state aid to make up the difference and to keep towns financially healthy and state aid became increasingly important. And I've always been concerned that when if we got into a period of higher inflation, as we have since the pandemic, that the two and a half would not work anymore and that the legislature was under the same pressures. So again, there's an historical context to that. The last two things that I just wanted to mention is that there's a lot of information available about all cities and towns and comparison of all cities and towns that people can find to work with themselves by looking at the state website for under Department of Revenue Division of Local Services. And they put out just a tremendous number of different charts that you can look at as does the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education for schools, because a number of people regularly look at that one for how many dollars are spent per district in each district per student. And so I just wanted to point people in that direction, which gets to my final point, which is that I've wanted to look at something that I think is a financial indicator that we never thought about looking at. And it's just become a much more of a discussion as of late. But the percentage of property within the town of Amherst that is residential, commercial and industrial, that in comparison to other towns, we are very low on commercial and industrial. And therefore, the percentage is much higher on residential and that has tremendous effect on options that are available to us. And I am looking at that comparison a little more and encourage that we give some thought to that is being recognized as part of our financial analysis. So thank you. Thank you, Councillor Dorothy Pam. I know I wrote in my notes that you don't have any charts that show authorized but not borrowed money for the Jones and the fire pumper. And I can understand why you might not have them because they haven't been borrowed yet. However, I think we'd like to see that. So is it are we going to see such a graph or later today tonight? We don't have anything prepared for that. We certainly know what the numbers are and how much authorized and unissued debt we have. I believe right now is about one hundred and sixty four million dollars, which is a really big number, but all of that debt will not necessarily be issued. Some of those some of those projects like the Jones Library. The full amount of the project has to be authorized, but that doesn't mean that's exactly what we're going to spend. So that number is is is not really a great metric because it doesn't necessarily mean that we're running out the door and borrowing one hundred and sixty four million dollars next year. That could be over time. Those numbers could change. Those projects could come in lower higher, God forbid, or what not. So we don't have anything prepared for that, but we certainly can can break that down for you. We have it in all sorts of reports. Thank you. It would be very good because if you're a visual thinker, it would be helpful to see them with the other charts and graphs. Thank you. Councilor Cathy, Shane, I may be the last person, so I will really try to be brief. I just want to expand a little bit on a couple points that Andy, first Mandy than Andy made. Andy, we do have an industrial base. It's called education. It just we can't tax it. So our three are major industry are in terms of major employers. I mean, whatever you think about someone else might have a factory. We have a pretty big education factory. So it's something I think there's no way of capturing. You captured it when you went quickly through it, Holly, that how much of what might in other places be a tax base is not a tax base. And this really was brought home to me when we were looking at the carrying costs when we went out to the community for the new elementary school. And there's this great little state tool you can say if you need a million dollars, plug in your town, divide it by the people. And in Northampton, we were dividing it by twice as many taxable units as in our town. And we have about the same population. And I mean, it was really startling to see divide by six thousand five hundred versus twelve thousand. So what we have a base that has to carry a lot. The other thing I wanted to say on the decline of state as a share, which Randy said this was this started back in the seventies to the federal government cut down to state states cut down. We decreased income taxes, which are a very equitable way of collecting money. So there's there's been a push down to the property tax level that has been an ongoing thing, which I personally think we need to reverse at some point. And that we rely on our state reps to start thinking about that. Mindy's going to be sorry she attended. I want to thank you all. You did a phenomenal job. And I know it's been without Sean, but you know what? He picked well because you're all doing a terrific job. And we really appreciate what you've come forward with tonight. I'm going to ask each of the committees to adjourn their group. We'll start with Jennifer Shau for the school committee. And our school committee is now adjourned. Austin Sret for the Jones Library trustees. Jones Library trustees meeting is adjourned. And Steinberg finance committee finance committee is adjourned. And before I adjourn the town council meeting, if any of you that are staying here for the next part of the meeting, the regular meeting of the town council, please move to the audience. And if you're part of presenting at some point, we'll ask you to come up as well. OK, the town council meeting is adjourned, but we will immediately I'm sorry, the special meeting of the town council is adjourned and we will immediately move into the regular town council meeting, although we have a moment to shift. OK, that's fine now, but it will never take a few minutes. Athena, would you please take the screen down so I can see people? It is hard to explain. We're going to leave Austin in the room, but we should put Gabrielle Weaver in the audience. And Katie Lesdowski needs to be moved into the audience. OK, we're going to proceed with our meeting. So good evening. It is still November 13th. And this is the second meeting of two meetings tonight. This is a regular meeting of the town council. And we will begin by just saying the open meeting law allows us to do this in a hybrid mode. I will be making sure that all members of the council can hear us and we can hear them. This meeting is also available by Zoom, by phone and as a live broadcast on Amherst Media Channel 9. So given that we have a quorum of the council present, I'm calling the regular meeting of the town council to order at 7 24. I'm going to call on councillors again to make sure you can hear us and we can hear them. Shalini Balmilne. Present. Pat DeAngelo. Present. Anna Devlin. Gauthier. Present. Lynn Griezmer. Present. Mandy Johanneke. Present. Anika Lopes. Present. Michelle Miller is absent. Dorothy Pam. Here. Pam Rooney. Here. Kathy Shane. Here. Andy Steinberg. Present. Jennifer Taub is absent. And Alicia Walker. Here. Thank you. There, I want to note for the public that there are three public comment periods during this meeting. The first is related to a hearing on tax rates for the coming year. And so we will only accept public comment regarding that at that time. The second is general public comment and that's for anybody who would like to say anything to the council within the time limit we allow. And the third is particularly in related related to the proposed Jones library increase in bond authorizing. So with that, we are going to begin with the announcement. Yes. I'm sorry. If you would like to speak at any point during the public comment periods, any of the three, please, and you're in the room, please make sure you see Athena. I will be asking for hands of people on zoom later. Okay. On the agenda for this evening, we've listed various meetings. I just want to note that next Monday night, the town council will actually convene at five o'clock. It's a very boring period because basically we spend about an hour and a half reading the town manager evaluations in the draft. And so there's actually nothing going on, but we have to be in public meeting at six 30. We will begin with a public forum on the fight FY 25 budget. We mentioned that earlier and it's seven o'clock. We will be also having another public forum on the supplemental budget and the bond authorization regarding the library. The regular town council meeting will resume after the seven o'clock public forum. We have two other council meetings scheduled through the end of this term, December 4th and December 18th. All of our committees are extremely busy and I particularly want to make note that each of them is trying to finish up whatever they need to get done before the end of this term and also prepare their carryover memos of the finance committee. In particular is meeting twice this week, once on November 14th at one o'clock and once on November 17th at one o'clock. With that, we're going to move into the hearing. It was scheduled for 7 15. This and I'm going to clear that the hearing is now officially open. I'm going to ask him, you are principal assessor to please come forward and make a presentation. And I want to make note that Nick Grabby, who is a member of our board of assessors is with us in the audience. Two other people help are on that committee with Nick and they are Richard Morris and Ken Hargreaves. So we will have public comment after the presentation and then councilor comments and then close the hearing. Kim, welcome back again. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. Can everybody hear me okay? Yes, a little closer. Okay. Is that better? That's much better. All right. So we can go right into the next slide and what we're going to talk about tonight are these are what we're going to vote on. So we're going to vote whether we have a single or a split tax rate. We're going to vote on an open space discount, a small commercial exemption and the residential exemption. We can go to the next slide, please. This is just a little history of why we're doing this tonight. So in 1978, the state decided that municipalities needed to classify their classes in residential, commercial, industrial and personal property. So the DOR has all of our rules and regulations that we set. And then we bring it to you for approval. Next slide, please. This was something that I went over last year, but I just want to briefly touch on these again. So this is just a quick definition of each of our classes. So the residential class is anything that you can live in, basically. This also includes accessory land buildings such as garages, sheds. This would include things such as tennis courts, pools, so on and so forth. This is single family homes all the way up to any type of apartment building. So two families, three families, condos. As for commercial, this would be anything such as office buildings, stores, banks. This does include vacant land as well. And this also includes our farms. So all of our farmland that serves vegetables, tobacco, so on and so forth, as well as our recreational land. So we have our land that's left of its natural state, our hiking trails. Things to that nature. Industrial properties is anything that's manufacturing. This also includes our solar. And then with personal property, basically, if you were to lift a building off the ground, anything that would fall out, desks, computers, chairs, refrigeration, any of that sort of thing would be considered part of our personal property. Next slide, please. So this is just a pie chart to show you the distribution of our town. So we are 89 percent residential. Our commercial comes in second at 6.2 percent. Our personal property is at 4.4 percent. And then we have less than 1 percent of industrial. And just to touch back on our residential property, we have 3,101,008,000 three hundred thirty nine dollars in value. So just to show you that on next slide, please. So about our tax rate. So you'll often hear people refer to a factor of one, which means a single tax rate. If we decide to do a factor of less than one, what we're doing is shifting our taxes to the burden of our taxes, to the commercial and industrial classes, to lower our tax rate for a residential class. If we were to do a factor of greater than one, we would be doing the opposite. So we would be shifting our tax rate to our residential class to lower the rate for the commercial industrial class. And I will touch a little bit more on that as we go on. So we can go to the next slide, please. So here is some examples of our estimated impact with our tax rate. So what this year for fiscal year twenty four, we're estimating a tax rate of eighteen dollars and fifty one cents per thousand. If we do the single tax rate, the factor of one. Our average single family home is five hundred and eight thousand seven hundred and thirteen dollars. And with that tax rate, the average single family tax bill would be nine thousand four hundred sixteen dollars and twenty eight cents. And with the commercial, our average value is five hundred and ninety six thousand eighty seven dollars. So again, with that tax rate of eighteen dollars and fifty one cents per thousand, the average tax rate or tax dollars would be eleven thousand thirty three dollars and fifty seven cents. So then we get into our split tax rate. If we were to do a split tax rate, as you can see, we are estimating about seventeen dollars and forty two cents for the residential property. And twenty seven dollars and eighty cents for our commercial properties. This is at the highest split tax rate. So this might be a little bit more than what we're thinking. But you'll see that there is an average decrease for single family homes of about five hundred and fifty four dollars. But then when you look at the commercial impact, it's an increase of fifty five hundred dollars. And so when we're looking at the split tax rate, we do need to think about our small commercial class, our large residential of eighty nine percent. And so if we are to impact to put in place the split tax rate, we really need to think again, is it going to hurt our commercial class, which in turn is going to hurt our residential class. So just something to think about with some figures there. We can go to the next slide, please. So the next thing that we would need to vote on to make is the residential exemption. And I know this has been a big topic in the past. So what I just want to start out with saying again, is that the residential class is single families, condos, two and three families and apartment buildings, vacant lots and any portion of a mixed use property that is someone's residence. So the residential exemption would be a shift in valuation for those homes or apartments, excuse me, not apartments, those condos that are owner occupied. We can shift up to thirty five percent of the valuation and that would be a vote that you all would make based on whatever decision you have. And basically what we're doing again is we're going to be shifting the tax off of those homeowners who are owner occupied. This is going to take some work. So I would recommend that if this is something that we are interested in, that we address it much earlier in the year. If you can actually please go to the next slide. There are a lot of things that we would have to go through. So an owner occupied, qualified property is a single family home, a condo, a two and three family and part of the mixed use properties. What we have to keep in mind again is if we want to help our elderly stay in their homes, they would not qualify for this exemption if they have a trust or if they've turned their home over to their children or other family members so that they don't lose it in a situation of going into a nursing home. Clearly the second homes and rentals would not be included as well. And then the apartment buildings and nursing homes and large assisted living facilities. But really important to keep in mind with apartment buildings, we're not necessarily hurting those who can, helping those who can afford homes if they don't qualify for this. So their tax could potentially increase. And again, with the properties that are owner occupied, however, in a trust or owned by someone's children, we're not helping them. Um, we can go to the next slide, please. This just shows an estimated owner occupied status for the information that we currently have in the computer system. When we get a deed through the registry of deeds, we often will look for a homestead act to find out if the home is going to be owner occupied. Another method that we use as well is if someone comes in to change their address, their mailing address, then we can sort of tell if they're living there or not. I do say this is an estimate because sometimes people don't do that. If they're on direct pay or their things to that nature. So there might be some places where we could use the staff to update. But again, this is owner occupied homes is about 67% of our residential property versus the non owner occupied about 33%. Next slide, please. So just a quick summary, basically, we would redistribute the text so that those who do qualify would have a lesser amount as going through this slide. I laughed because I don't know if you all remember, but I called it a misdemeanor last year, but the exemption is sort of a misnomer. It's, it's, it's sort of, it just shifts. It doesn't actually give anyone or it doesn't give us all a break. It just shifts who is taking the burden for the taxes. And then again, as I mentioned, it tends to penalize those of lower income apartment buildings, you know, the tenants potentially of those apartment buildings and anyone who's in a trust or having their family own their home as well. Next slide, please. So if we were to jumping back to the split tax rate, if we were to adopt a split tax rate tonight, a small commercial exemption is something that we could also adapt any business that would be less than 10 people would qualify for this exemption. But I also want to bring to your attention again, most of our businesses probably have less than 10 people. So if we were to do the split tax rate and to adopt this, it wouldn't really do us any good because we would be taxing those businesses that are larger, which are probably very few at that higher tax rate, which in turn could potentially push them out and cause us to have more vacancies. And that's not something that we want to do. So but the intention of this is to give those smaller businesses a break when you do have the split tax rate. Next slide, please. So in quick summary, we basically would just like to recommend that we keep the single tax rate of factor of one at the $18 and I believe 51 cents. And so we would keep no small commercial exemption, no open space because we don't actually use the open space here in Amherst. We use the chapter land properties instead. And if we do want to do a residential exemption, I would recommend to vote no this year, just because we need some more time to be able to pull all the data together, make sure it's accurate and make sure that we have all the staffing to make sure that we get all that done on time. That concludes my presentation. And why don't we just have you stay there for the moment? Sure. Maybe shift a little to the left or something. I'd like to ask Nick Grabe, if as a member of the Board of Assessors, you have anything that you would like to add. OK, so are there any people who have signed up for public comment with regard to this issue, either here in the audience and there are about 20 people at the same time, there are 38 people on Zoom and many other people probably watching on TV. Is there anybody in the audience who would like to make comment at this time with regard to the tax rate? OK, then I am going to ask if there are any counselors who have quick clarifying questions, noting that we will have an opportunity to address this earlier later. Anna, actually, we won't. So Anna, go ahead, please. Yeah. Thank you. I always somehow feel both smarter and less and dumber after these presentations. So first is it's kind of a long question. So when we think about the the estimate of split rate increases and decreases when you looked at it, it was like the five hundred and something and then the five thousand something. Does that also vary by property value? So hypothetically, owners of higher valued properties would save more versus owners of lower valued properties in terms of that for the residential. Does that you said that on average? And I was thinking about when we were faced with the average when we were talking about the elementary school and it varied. Is that would that be true? And is my assumption true that then higher value properties would see a greater decrease than lower values? OK, so it would impact hypothetically those who are it would benefit those who are wealthier, more hypothetically who own higher value properties. Is that correct? Fair. OK. So and then is it also correct that affordable apartment complexes would be excluded from that? Excited from the residential from the residential exemption. OK, so I think one of the things that I'm struggling with is it seems clear to me that the resident residential exemption. Well, if you look at it just on the face value, it seems like a smart idea for town like Amherst, it doesn't actually benefit our residents. Do you have a valuation of non owner occupied properties in the pie chart? You have the valuation of residential. Do you have that broken out into the valuation of non owner occupied and owner occupied based on your best estimates? I don't have it with me, but I can easily get that. And that's for you tomorrow. Yeah, I think it would be interesting because as we think about possible so like possible ways to to make larger changes, if we don't I'm not going to support adopting the residential exemption, I agree that doesn't make sense. But if there are ways that we need to advocate on a larger level for other changes in tax classification, I think it would be really helpful to know kind of what we're looking at in terms of the valuation of that property in town. And as much kind of specificity as possible with that would be would be appreciated because it does sound like the only way that we're going to be able to shift that change, shift that that didn't make sense to make that shift and to kind of classify income earning residential properties as commercials that is at a state level. So I just would love more more data, please, if possible. Thank you. Absolutely. And just to note as well for I know that it doesn't affect everyone, but we are working on another senior exemption that's going to have higher income levels. So hopefully that will help in other cases as well. So I know it won't help everybody, but, you know, it might help a much larger group of people than what we're actually helping right now. Thank you. And you're actually I mean, can you just briefly mention what the exemptions that we are that we do offer? Sure. So starting with seniors, we do have two exemptions that are income and asset based. They start out at $1,000 and it's the same application. If you didn't quite qualify for that, then you could potentially start out at $340. Both of those can increase to double as long as you apply and qualify every year. We also have a number of different veterans exemptions. So those who are at least 10 percent disabled or have a purple heart, you could potentially qualify as long as you can provide us with certain paperwork. And again, that can double as well. And that starts out at $400 and goes all the way up to a full abatement on your taxes. And then we have an exemption for those who are legally blind. All you need to do is provide us with your certificate of blindness from the commission of the blind, as long as it has this year's date before July 1st, you would qualify. And all the deadlines that we have is April 1st. So people still have time to be able to apply for those for this year. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Pam, Rene. Thank you. A quick follow-up to that is how do we advertise the exemptions that are available? That wasn't my primary question. I'm interested in the sort of evaluation process and wonder if you could explain a little bit how what the difference is between a mixed-use building, which was mentioned, I think, by you and, for instance, a hotel. So a hotel is commercial. A mixed-use building is valued differently than that. Yet it is also completely a commercial income generating business, if you could describe that. Sure. So briefly, to answer your first question, we do, I generally go over to the senior center and have a chat with everybody about the exemptions that we do have. I think last year we did not do it on Zoom, but it was something that we had talked about. More people could join and then to hopefully maybe put it up on our YouTube page or our website. The exemptions are also listed on our website. And for those who do apply, we do send them out to you each year. So it is a one-year thing, once a year thing, so we don't expect everybody to remember. So we hope that word of mouth travel. I've been out in the field a lot, doing a lot of inspections lately. And so if I ever run into someone who's mentioning their struggles, I always ask, do you get our exemption, help them find out if they would qualify for it and let them know that it's there if they don't qualify when they may. So to answer your question on valuation and the difference between a mixed-use property and a hotel. So mixed-use property is any type of property that has multiple uses. So we can look at our chapterland and we can say, OK, well, there's a farm and there's someone's residence. So that would be considered a mixed-use, specifically to a building like downtown where there may be a restaurant or a store in the bottom and residence in the top. Those particular buildings, generally when I do the valuation, we use the income and expense method. The reason for that is because there is income coming in from at least the bottom units. If not, downtown, it seems like there's multiple units, residential units involved. So likely there's income there. But if you had a building that had one residential unit, but all the whole bunch of commercial units, that could potentially be lopsided with the income and expense, the owner may live in the building. So we do use the income and expense method on those properties. Whereas a hotel, we still use the income and expense method. It is listed as commercial. But the intent of the hotel is for profit and not to technically house someone, but to have a place for them to stay for a short period of time. So the DOR has classified specifically hotels as non-residential, but commercial for that very reason. Yeah, Dorothy. All right, we'll turn this on right here. OK. Yeah. I noted that the average value was in the 500 thousands. And I think that's quite a bit higher than it was. And we're basing our tax on that. How long ago, what was the value about three years ago? And how likely is that value going to stay at that high? Because that, to me, is a big jump. They don't have the valuation from three years ago, but I can certainly get that again for you. I the way the market has been trending in the amount of money that people are willing to purchase homes for, I would expect this value to keep rising at the moment. We have seen sales slow down. But with that being said, they're still very, very high. So what I mean by that is, you know, we may have a handful of sales this week versus, you know, 20 or 30 sales, but they're still at the same high value that we've been seeing over the past couple of years. Everybody was sort of expecting values to come down with all the rates increasing, you know, people not maybe spending as much money on homes, but it doesn't seem like that's happening. It seems like people may be not buying as much, but the ones who are still spending that amount of money. So unfortunately, I do expect to see that value to continue to increase for a while. You know, I mean, there's been a crash before. I do expect at some point things will start to slow down and start to come down again, but I can't really predict at this point when that might happen. But again, I would be happy to get you the average single family value for the next for the past three years. And I can email that right tomorrow. One quick thing, is this rise consistent with our neighboring towns such as Hadley and Northampton and or has it been higher in Amherst? It's been pretty consistent across the state of Massachusetts. You know, you will see certain towns have a little bit of a higher hike than others. But for the most part, it's really I mean, it's almost been, you know, statewide, even farther than that. And, you know, across the U.S., we've seen a huge spike in homes. So, you know, I don't I don't want to say, you know, Amherst is higher than anyone else because it might be higher than maybe Hadley, for example, but Northampton might be right in line with us or vice versa or something to that nature. So thank you very much. Kathy. Thank you for the very clear presentation, Kim. On the exemptions that people can get, I'm wondering if we can work with the town to get something simple that we as district councillors when we do a district meeting as it's near tax time can remind people that these are available. And so I know you can find it, but people don't always know where to look to find. So we could be in the series for you was was one thought on that. And then, at the last, as my understanding is the value if our property values are going up because the markets going up, our tax rate is often going down because we can't collect more than a certain increase. So it doesn't necessary. You know, people were worried if my house is valued more, my tax is going to go up proportionate to it's now 30 percent higher. But we're still facing that lid. That's correct. Yes. So you so it's like a seesaw when your values go up, your tax rate should go down and vice versa. If your values go down, your tax rate should go up. Another way that people tend to confuse me slightly when they look at it is your home is your asset. And so you want your asset to be valued hot, which in turn would then, you know, lower your tax rate as well. So if you look at it that way versus, oh, I don't want my value to be high because I don't want my taxes to be high. You do want your value to be high because it's your asset. So and and and just like you said, you know, it is a seesaw. So if your value is high, your tax rate should come down. So the only other comment I want to make, because you didn't show over the last few years, you and others have shown us some of these valuations on if we did the exemption. And one of the points that was raised is the higher valued properties didn't necessarily reflect people with low incomes. So you're probably someone who bought their house a really long time ago. So you weren't necessarily helping the people you want to help that we don't have an easy way to do that other than these small exemptions. So there were some very good pieces put up that led us to agree with this uniform rate. So I thought that was a good insight that you know, there are people that have our property rich, but income poor. Yeah, yeah. Yes. And that's one of the reasons too that we are looking into another exemption because that for that reason, exactly, you may have been in your home for 60, 70 years and when you bought it, you bought it for $10,000. You know, you just the way cost is going. Our paychecks are not necessarily going up, but everything else is, you know. So that's another reason that we want to try to help out to keep people in their home and I'm working on a presentation. So you'll soon see that. And do you had your hand up? I actually lured my hand again because that Kathy's point was what I was going to make sure was brought up, but I don't need to repeat it. There was one other thing that I had mentioned to Kim before, but I don't think that it's something that we're going to be able to really address tonight because it's a complicated issue. And that is not really a tax classification issue, but an assessment methodology issue, whether there is a way of assessing houses that people own that they don't live in and are operating as businesses and whether they can be taxed on the income and expense methodology and whether that would shift property that is being run as a business, as opposed to the house next door, which is being owned as a residence. And someone had mentioned to me recently that there was Northampton that they were doing something like that. And so that got me to raise the question with Kim. But as I said, it's not related to the tax classification pairing, but it is something that the council might want to have a little bit more information on when it's available. Certainly. The useful. Kim, I just want to make sure are we using the maximum example exemption amount that we are allowed by the state for the personal exemptions for personal exemptions for elder for veterans or blind with the elder exemptions. Many towns will have seven hundred and fifty dollars as their max. We do do a thousand as well as allow for that to double as long as people apply and qualify each year. And again, that that goes across the board for all of the other personal exemptions as well. There is the new senior means, which I keep mentioning, that some towns have been adopting. And so that's something that we're now looking into as well and looking to potentially get your approval to send that request to the state. And you would come back to us off cycle with something like that. OK, are there any other questions from the council? Then I'd like to move and seek a second to close the hearing. Second. OK, thank you so much, Kim. Oh, we need to vote. Thank you. All right. Let me find a place where I can record some votes. OK, Shalini Balmill, we're voting to close the hearing. Yes, Pat DeAngeles. I Anna Devlin, Gotham. I Lynn Griesmers and I may need your hand. I Anika Lopes. I. Michelle Miller is absent. Dorothy Pam. Yes, Pam Rooney. Yes, Kathy Shane. Yes, Andy Steinberg. I Jennifer Taub is absent. Alicia Walker. Yes, it's unanimous to close the hearing with 11 counselors in agreement and to absent. Thank you very much. We're going to move on to. The next item to general public comment. Again, let me mention general public comment. We do have a special public comment period with the relationship to these library. So this is general public comment. Athena, has anybody signed up? Is there anybody in the audience who would like to make general public comment not specific to the Jones Library? I'm seeing one hand. And so we are going to have that one comment. We're leaving the general public comment to three minutes and please enter the room, state your name and where you live. Maria Capecchi. Maria Capecchi. I live in South Amherst. I'm speaking tonight on the agenda item regarding what the town manager has done to help residents bear the burden of the debt exclusion to pay for the new elementary school. The motion that passed in April of this year read as follows. To request the town manager develop options to reduce the impact of the debt exclusion on residents by developing a financial plan that identifies an additional five million dollars of alternative funding to be presented to the town council by November 30th 2023. What we will hear tonight is that the town manager has completely failed to do any such thing. Back in April, Councillor Walker tried her level best to get her colleagues on the council to put some teeth into this motion so that this failure would be avoided. Walker didn't want any empty promises and pretty words. She wanted the town to take actual action of its own to lessen the burden of the debt exclusion override on individuals and families. The fact that the MSBA changed its funding limits for building and site costs is great news, but that does not relieve the town manager and the town from doing its own work to directly help the people of Amherst. In the spring, several of you counselors justified your lack of support for Walker's initiative by expressing confidence that the town manager would work hard to develop creative options to find additional funding, confidence that many of us did not share and for good reason. It's especially galling that the town manager and other town leaders apparently did find the time and energy to lobby Amherst College to give money to the Jones Library, a donation that will not lessen the town's share of this project. Meanwhile, the town schools get words rather than funds from this institution of higher learning. With several school roofs in need of replacement and solar panels and aging oil and gas boilers needing to be replaced with non-fossil fuel systems, I hope that the town manager will go back to Amherst College and other sources to secure funding that will benefit the schools, the climate and the taxpayers in Amherst. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. Concludes general public comment. We are going to move on to the consent agenda. The items were selected because they were considered to be routine and it was reasonable to expect they would pass with no controversy. To remove an item, please raise your hand as a counselor. And after I go through the items, I'm going to also elaborate on one or two of the items as I go through the following items. To move the following items and the printed motions they were under and approve those items as a single unit. Adoption of South Asian Festival Lights two thousand twenty three proclamation. Adoption of Human Rights Day proclamation two thousand twenty three. Six C adoption of proclamation and small in support of small business Saturday and card days and more. Eight A adoption of residential factor of one equal tax rate and no open space discount for FY 24. Eight A to adopt a residential. I'm sorry, thank you to not adopt a residential exemption for FY 24. Eight A to not adopt a small commercial exemption for FY 24. Eight C one A to F referral of supplemental budget appropriations to the finance committee. Please note, we will have conversations about these. This is just to vote referral. Eight G dissolution of the African Heritage Reparation Commission. That's an eight and it is a change on the wording up there. But I also want to take this time to express our sincere appreciation for their work as it is stated in the motion. Eight H waivers of town council policy on making recommendations for town council appointments to multiple member bodies. Are there any that people would like to remove, Dorothy, I'm sorry. Yeah, I guess I am confused by the dissolution of the African Heritage Reparations Commission because the work has not been completed. I wouldn't you absolve it after the work has been done? The I mean, if you would like to pull it from the agenda, we can do that and have that discussion. OK, some consent. OK. Pam Rooney, pardon me, Lynn. It's the HRA. It's the African Heritage Reparation Assembly, not the new body. Right. It was proposed. Right. Assembly. It is. I did. I made that change, I think. Did I? I'm sorry. Pam Rooney. To pull eight C one A through F. I understand we'll talk about it, but I don't think it should be on that. Which one is that eight C one A through F? It's the only eight C number item. It's the eight C, which is the referrals for all of this to the finance committee. We're going to be talking about those. Do you want to vote on them separately to refer? Yeah. OK. Kathy, we're doing down your list. The the collection of eight A's, I think we should be voting on the residential factor of one, not just putting it in consent. OK, so it's a trip. It's a triple line on that one. None of those require a second. So as we go through the consent agenda, we are dropping eight A adoption of residential factor of one equal tax rate and no open space discount for FY 24. Eight A to not adopt residential exemptions for FY 24. Eight A to not adopt a small commercial exemption for FY 24. Eight C one A to F referral of supplemental budget appropriations to finance committee and eight G dissolution of the African Heritage Reparations Assembly. I also want to note that the approval of the minutes has been dropped from the motion I made. Is there a second now for the motion? Second, Hanneke. Thank you. We will now vote. I'm going to start with Pat DeAngeles. I. Anna Devlin, got here. I. Lynn Grease Mears. I'm Andy Joe Hanneke. I. Anika Lopes. I. Michelle Miller is absent. Dorothy Pam. Yes. Pam Maroney. Yes. Kathy Shane. Yes. Andy Steinberg. I. Jennifer Tubb is absent. Alicia Walker. Yes. Shallie Balmille. Yes. Passes unanimously with two counselors absent. We are going to then quickly move to just a few comments regarding the resolutions and I'm going to call first on Shaolin to read the last paragraph of the South Asian Festival of Lights. Thank you. As many of you know, the valley and its many different forms is celebrated by many South Asians and very happy to share that we are going to be in the second or actually third year bringing together the community. And we're all you're all invited on November 19th, which I will be sharing in the proclamation. So all of those of you who celebrated the valley and its different forms wishing you all again a very happy the valley. So now now, therefore, the Amherst Town Council recognizes the religious, historical and cultural significance of the valley, the Festival of Lights and its message of tolerance, compassion and of the victory of good over evil, which resonates with American spirit and be it further proclaimed we the Amherst Town Council express our deepest respect and best wishes for South Asians and all Americans in our community who celebrated the Festival of the Valley on November 12th and invite all residents to join us on November 19th, twenty twenty three at Crocker Farm Elementary School to continue the celebration at the South Asian Festival of Lights sponsored by the Amherst EI Department, Human Rights Commission and Amherst Recreation Department. I also actually. That was the end of the proclamation, but I also want to acknowledge the Amherst Chamber of Commerce and the Business Improvement District for financially supporting this wonderful event. Thank you. Thank you. And your Hanukkah Human Rights Day Proclamation. Yeah, so this is the Human Rights Day Proclamation for twenty twenty three. It is co-sponsored by counselors, Rooney Toph, Griesen or Hanukkah and D'Angeles and the Human Rights Commission. Now, therefore, the Amherst Town Council hereby proclaims December 10th, twenty twenty three Human Rights Day, encourages our community to embrace every opportunity to reflect and embody the values of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in their work for the community and urges Amherst residents to celebrate this day with a communal reading of the Declaration of Human Declaration of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at the Banks Community Center on December 10th, twenty twenty three at four p.m. Please join us. And I just want to note that is a new location. You will not find it on the town common. It will be inside and much warmer for the reading. So please join us at the bank center on the 10th. And Pat D'Angeles proclamation in support of small business Saturday and card days and more like Mike. This proclamation has been sponsored by councillor Spreese, Mohanke, myself and Jennifer Taub. The community sponsors are the Amherst Chamber of Commerce and the Amherst Business Improvement District. And now, therefore, the Amherst Town Council proclaims November 25th, twenty twenty three Small Business Saturday and urges residents of our community to support Amherst to support Amherst Wide Small Businesses and Merchants on Small Business Saturday and throughout the year. OK, thank you. We are going to move on to the action item A, which is tax classification, tax rates and exemptions. I'm going to read the motion and look for a second and move through the three of these. The first motion is to adopt a minimum residential factor of one equal tax rate for all classes of properties for physical year twenty twenty four and that no open space just counts be granted. Is there a second? Second, the answer list. OK, is there any question or comment? Then we're going to move with Anna Devlin, got here, I, Lynn Griezmann, I, Mandy, Joe, Hanneke, I, Anika Lopes, I, Michelle Miller's absent. Dorothy Pam. Yes, Pam Maroney. Yeah, Kathy, Shane. Yes, Andy Steinberg. All right, Jennifer's absent. Alicia Walker. Yes, Shalini Balmille. Yes, Patty Angelis. All right, it's unanimous with two counselors absent. The next one is to not adopt a residential exemption for fiscal year two thousand twenty four. Is there a second? Second, Devlin, got here. Any further question or comment? Then I'll start with myself, Lynn Griezmann, I, Mandy, Joe, Hanneke, I, Anika Lopes. I, Michelle Miller's absent. Dorothy Pam. Yes, Pam Maroney. Yes, Kathy, Shane. Yes, Andy Steinberg. I, Jennifer Tubbs absent. Michelle Alicia Walker. Yes, Shalini Balmille. Yes, Patty Angelis. I, Anna Devlin, got here. I, unanimous with two counselors. Absent and finally to not adopt a small commercial exemption for fiscal year twenty twenty four. Is there a second? Second, Devlin, got here. Any questions or comments? Start with Mandy, Joe, Hanneke. I, Anika Lopes. I, Michelle's absent. Dorothy Pam. Yes, Pam Maroney. Yes, Kathy, Shane. Yes, Andy Steinberg. I, Alicia Walker. Yes, Shalini Balmille. Yes, Patty Angelis. I, Anna Devlin, got here. I, in Greece, Mirza, I, it's unanimous with two counselors absent. We are now going to move to the Jones Library Building Bond Authorization. This is an automatic referral to the Finance Committee. And I would like to welcome to while and may have asked people to make the presentation, which I will talk about in a moment, particularly Paul Bacchum in our town manager, Kent Farber, the head of the of the funding of the fundraising campaign and Bob Pam, who is on the library trustees. Other members are here with us in the audience are on Zoom. They include Austin Sret, who is a chair of the trustees, Lee Edwards, Alex Lefebvre and Tammy. Is Tammy still with us? No, OK, Farah Meen. And we also have Jenny Hamilton. And I'm going to start later. I'm going to ask town manager to introduce our capital projects consultant. So let me just start. The purpose of this agenda item is to begin the process for increasing the bond authorization for the library. It is not a request for increasing the town's contribution to the library. The town's contribution to the library is 15.8 million. And the assumption is that it will remain that. And there will be a clear opportunity for counselors to ask questions and request additional information. In addition to that, we will have a special public comment. There is no vote tonight, and there will be no vote on this until the finance committee is ready to make a recommendation back to the town council, whether that be by next week or a subsequent meeting. The process for consideration and of increasing the bond authorization for the Jones Library renovation expansion is as follows. First of all, we start tonight. In your packet, there's a memo from the town manager that includes an update on the estimates for the project. The Jones Library Funding Sources Summary is also going to be part of our presentation and an update on fundraising. The MOUs are also included for your convenience, as well as our previous votes. The presenters will attempt to respond to questions asked by counselors about the bond authorization. Though there have been some questions about the building construction in general, most of those can be discussed at a subsequent finance committee meeting. But of equal importance, it is we want to make sure that counselors have an opportunity to make sure they request any additional information in preparation for the finance committee. Because this is a bond authorization, it is automatically referred that committee to the finance committee. That committee is meeting on November 14th tomorrow at one. And again, on Friday at one, and there are subsequent meetings after the Thanksgiving holidays. Therefore, while it is possible, this will return to the town council for a vote on Monday, November 20th after the required public forum. It is also up to the finance committee, whether or not they're ready to make a recommendation to the council. Your packet tonight has various items in it. I'm not going to go over those since I've mentioned most of those, but I do want to mention one in particular. The town manager has provided an updated cost estimate for repair of the present structure. This is not an estimate for renovation. Please note that these estimates do not include the added cost of the impact of the statewide energy code changes that took effect in July of two thousand twenty three, nor do they include the expanded asbestos abatement, both would add further to the escalation repair costs. An estimation of the cash flow for the project is being prepared, but not ready for this evening. It will be ready for the finance committee by Friday, November 17th, and that will allow us to begin identifying when the town actually has to borrow for the project, which has not happened thus far. I just want to mention that several bodies have been involved in support for this project over the years, going back all the way to two thousand fourteen when the town meeting authorized the launch of the extensive planning process. When the then in two thousand seventeen, where they when the town meeting approved the submission of the grant proposal to Mass Board of Library commissioners in two thousand nineteen, the town council engaged in a variety of listening sessions. And this was one of those items in those listening sessions in two thousand nineteen to twenty Community Preservation Act subsequently approved by the town council approved funding of one million dollars in two thousand twenty to twenty one, the Amherst town council process results in a ten to two to one vote to approve project funding. In two thousand twenty one, the town like a referendum confirmed sixty five percent of public support support for the project. And in two thousand twenty one, the Jones Library Building Committee began work, including extensive public outreach efforts. Since its formation, the building committee has been working diligently and deliberately through the process, doing its due diligence and ongoing value engineering and will do more. This is similar to the elementary school building committee, which is ably chaired by town councillor Kathy Shane. Our job is to receive their updates on financing and devote an increase in the bond authorization. If you would like to get into more details about the actual building, please make sure you attend as many of those meetings as you can, except for those details, particularly as it relates to cost. I also want to just stress the importance of this project to the town. It is where we will house the Civil War tablets. It is a building that will in fact meet the sustainability requirements now set by the state. It functions in many ways as one of our community centers. It's an economic driver for visitors downtown and something near and dear to my heart. It is often the other place where residents or where people who go to the survival center have a place to go, especially during winter. So with that, we are going to turn this over to Paul and you have a memo that you've prepared for the council. I have. Thank you, Lynn. So first, I would like to recognize and introduce you to Bob Parent. Bob is our special capital projects coordinator who joined the town a few months ago. We brought him on to help with the school building project and with this library project and with some other capital projects. Bob brings a high level of technical expertise and a critical eye to the work. He works closely with our facilities people and building commissioner, and he's actively involved in the details of the school and library project. Bob brings a wealth of experience to the town, including serving as the city engineer for the city of Holyoke, superintendent of public works for the town of East Long Meadow and even served as acting town administrator for a time. And he's been an engineer with time in bond for 15 years, which is a private engineering firm and a lot of other experience. So he's a registered professional engineer and knows how government works. And so we're very fortunate to have him give us some hours every week to work on these projects, and he's really made a big difference. So I'm going to explain why we are requesting this additional appropriation and authorization to borrow from the council and how we got here. So if you recall, the original estimate for the Jones Library in expansion renovation was 36,279,700. I'm not going to get into every detail. I'm going to say 36.2 million just to make it easy for everybody. That was in April of 21. And with that cost, the town's local share that the council approved was 15,751,000. The MBLC grant, which is the book Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners, was 13,871,000. And there was a one million dollars commitment approved by the Council for the Community Preservation Act. And the rest was on the Jones Library Inc. contribution. So this along with this commitment from the town, along with the MBLC grant through five payments based upon milestones in the project left a remaining balance, which the trustees were going to address through fundraising. The Mass Board of Library Commissioners requires that the recipient of a grant bond for the entire cost of the project. Therefore, at its meeting in April of 21, the council appropriated 35,279,000 for the expansion and renovation of the Jones Library and did all the other things, authorize the treasure to borrow the money, things like that. And with the amount authorized to be borrowed is to be reduced by the extent of any grants received by the from the MBLC and any other sources that we get. So with these two town council actions, the ability to the 15 million dollars in the one million CPA, the town was able to provide the full cost of the cost of the building. To support this motion, the trustees of the Jones Library entered into a memorandum of agreement with the town that stated that the library would be responsible for and shall pay for the full library share of the total project cost. That was our security. Based on the updated cost estimates received in October of 2022, the trustees and the town manager enter into an amendment to the memorandum of agreement that recognized the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on construction costs and establish a total project cost range of forty three point five to forty nine point eight million. Both of those agreements are in the town council's packet tonight. In short, the memorandum of agreement and amendment maintain the town's maintained the town's commitment of fifteen point eight million with the guarantee to meet the remainder through a grant since increased by the MBLC from the with CPA money and library trustees commitment. So as predicted, as we anticipate it, the cost of the Jones Library project has increased to the impact of COVID and other building costs. Recent cost estimates, including two cost estimates that were received on November 8th were reconciled and confirmed the need to adjust the appropriation and total borrowing authorization. So I've included a chart in my memo and I can get into that. But Bob can talk about he's gotten into this the details of this. What was good is that through the significant efforts of Senator Comerford and Repdom with support from the town and the library, the MBLC took an unprecedented action to recognize the cost increases and increased its commitment by awarding an additional pandemic escalation payment of that increase there. The total command might about two million dollars. So there's a chart that shows exactly how much it increased. So I want to go into exactly the numbers. So where we are is fifteen point eight million is coming from the town. That has not changed. One million is coming from the CPA. That is not changed. Fifteen point six is coming from the MBLC. That is one point seven million dollars more than they had authorized previously the last time the council looked at this. And thirteen point eight million is coming from the Jones library. And the Jones library folks will talk about how they're meeting this commitment. So if we want to talk about why prices are going up and what information we have now, if it's OK with the president, I'd like to ask Bob parent to weigh in on this, if you will, Bob. Certainly, thank you, Paul. And thanks for summarizing my background. The point I want to make is that I've been working with and for municipalities for 40 years on capital projects, 30 years as a consulting engineer. And then the last 10 years as a municipal employee, you know, working on projects just like this, this is what I'd like to do. I don't think I'll ever stop doing. We'll see someday, maybe I will. But I've been again, this is what I do. This is what I like to do. I like to get things done. I like to see projects through the end to make certain that they get done on schedule and on budget. And that's really what I've done my entire career. Relative to cost estimating on this project, it's been a very rigorous project. And I'm two months into this project. So there's a lot of history that comes well before me. But I first even became aware of the project in the middle of September and then have jumped into it headfirst since that time. The cost estimating process that Paul referenced involves two independent cost estimating firms, and that's all they do. There's one firm that's retained by the designer by Fine Gold Alexander. And then there's one firm that's retained directly by the town. And they independently develop their cost estimates. We sit down and then we reconcile the numbers. In some cases, they agree. In some cases, they don't agree. What has happened as the project gets closer and closer to the finish, and this is very typical, is that you see the differences in cost estimates get smaller and smaller and smaller. Because a big part of cost estimating, particularly at the beginning of the projects, is what you don't know. And you're trying to put an estimate on things that you don't know. And as you get closer towards completion, you know more and more and more about things that at the beginning of the project you didn't know very much about. So you had to make assumptions. Those assumptions get much fewer as you get to the end of the project. And that's, I believe, what we're seeing right now is we're seeing the two cost estimates coming in very close to each other. They're effectively the same number. We've invested a lot of effort in trying to reduce uncertainties to the greatest extent that we can. And the additional asbestos work that has been identified is the result of additional testing that was done over the last couple of months to make certain we identified all the possible problem areas during construction. So we know about them now. Any surprises you have during construction will cost more than they will if you include them in the bidding documents to start with. So that's what we've been doing. We've been doing our due diligence. We've been, again, trying to reduce the uncertainties. By going through a very rigorous process to get the number to what the number is. And as Paul had cited it, we're really, we're right on where this project had been budgeted several years ago. So we're, you know, we would like it to be less costly, but we're not surprised that the cost estimate is what the cost estimate is at this point. So I think that touches on the few things I wanted to mention. But if there's anything else that I didn't cover that you'd like me to cover, Paul, certainly let me know. That's, there may be questions, Bob. So thank you. Okay. So, you know, I think that this project has been approved by the town and has identified when I got hired as a priority for the town, it has been received the support of the town council from town meeting, town council, and a town election. We have invested a lot of time and energy into getting this project to this point in time. It's an investment in our community and in our future. Coming out of the pandemic, we knew there were going to be challenges and we're hitting them. And but amazingly, the town has maintained its commitment to maintain the funding that it has. It's the fiscal discipline that we talked about earlier. We've maintained that. And the additional funds are being actively sought by the fundraisers. Since we have repeatedly supported this project, our job now is to fulfill the vision that was brought to the town council, to the town meeting, and to the voters. I recommend that you vote to authorize the full borrowing amount. And again, there's no additional funds going into this project from the original town council vote. Okay. And I'm going to ask one or two clarifications, Paul, and then I'm sure other people may have some as well. Have we already received any payments from MBLC? Yes, we've received the first payment. And MBLC grant program works differently than MSBA. MSBA, that's the school building authority. That's a reimbursement program. The MBLC gives us money and then we invest that money and we hold on to it and then we can pay out of that account. So even though you're, as Holly mentioned, we have authorized but not borrowed funds. There's a lot of funds like that that we have because we have to show the funding agency typically that we're willing to borrow the money if we need to. But normally we manage it so we borrow as little money as we possibly can. We never roll this into a final borrowing number until the end of the project. So we know what the exact number is. We use a device called BANs, which are bond anticipation notes, which is short-term borrowing so we can manage our cash flow, which is what we're working on right now. So you'll see when we have to borrow. We're very judicious about when we borrow. So we're borrowing just in time to meet the needs of the project. Okay. And some of that will become more clear with the cash flow that we see on Friday. With that, I'm going to, I guess, Kent, you're next. We've got to turn it on. Good. Okay. I'm Kent Furber. I'm the co-chair of the Jones Library Capital Campaign being conducted by the Friends of the Jones Library on behalf of the trustees. And the news and the campaign, I'm happy to give a report because the news is brisk and prospering and we're doing well. I think Paul's numbers need, I think, in order to understand what it is that we've been doing and how successful we've been, I'd like to rephrase the numbers so that, in the way that we understand it, which is that what we see as our task is to close the gap between the cost of the project and the sum of the town's contribution, the 15.8, and the MBLC contribution. Our closing that gap at this point represents about nine million dollars. And if I could have, oh, sorry, that's the slide I want. I'd like to give you a sense of the way that gap has been closed over the years. In April of 21, when you first approved this project, the gap was to be 6.6 million dollars. At that particular point, we'd secured something like two million, even though we didn't have a project yet, about 30 percent of what was needed. You fast forward to September 22 when you had to reconsider because of the increased cost of the project, which turned out to be 46.4 in the presentation that was made to you. So the gap then was about 16 million dollars. At that point, we still, because of the delays and the uncertainty of the project, we hadn't done as much fundraising as we would have liked to. So we were at a total of about 3.2 million at that point. And finally, you come to the fast forward in the last year, really put the pedal to the metal. And so the result is now we've closed that gap by nine million dollars. We, in addition to the, most of the totals for the April 21 and 22 came from individual donors. But we have generated a lot of additional, the MVLC additional grant, and the grants from the state, from the federal government. So our total is now over half of the amount needed to be raised. Where we're getting that number is, if you could have the next slide please. Okay. So again, just to recap, the local share of the town, it's going to be 15.8. We do have the preservation grant of a million dollars. Mass Board of Library Commissioners original grant was 13.8. They've now, because of our work, and we appreciate the help of the town of Pat. And Mindy Dom and obviously Mindy and Joe were tremendously, were basically made that possible, but we started the process and we worked through it with them. Then we represented a McGovern, was able to insert a 1.1 million dollar earmark in the omnibus spending bill last December. Because of the hard work of some of our consultants, we were able to submit a grant to the National Endowment for the Humanities, a nationally contested process, where we got the largest grant in the program for that particular time period. We also were able to get a couple of other smaller grants from the state. And then finally, we've been out on the streets talking to the local community. And you probably heard about the Amherst College's grant recently. There was another $100,000 commitment from a local business person. So our total there is now 3.7 million dollars. In addition, we have some other things since this is printed. We had another $75,000 in commitments, and then we have about another 100,000 in oral commitments, but we're having a very rigorous process. We're not reporting anything until we can get it in writing. So with that total as a result of all this activity and the involvement of a lot of additional people, we have many more prospects. I'll be happy to answer any questions about more details. But having reached the 50% mark, I think I am as encouraged as I ever have been that we can close this gap. Time is essential here. With enough time, we can raise this money. I feel good about it. Any questions? I'm happy to answer. I'm going to go on to Bob Ham and then have both of you come up and make sure you can be there. Trustee Bob Ham, who is the keeper of the books and the overseer of the endowment. So have you ever been given that title before, Bob? No. Anyway, thank you. Bob's going to talk about their efforts to ensure closing the gap and not putting the endowment at risk. Well, I think everybody understands that the question is, can the library raise the amount of money that is required? There's a second question, which is, can we do it within the time frame that is required of us? And so one has to look at all of both the money that has been raised and will be raised in terms of a time scale. As it turns out that Kent has been doing extraordinary work, but what he is reporting is the amount of money that has been both received, awarded, and committed in those three different sets of numbers. Some of those numbers will occur and have occurred already and they can be transferred reasonably quickly. Some of it is awards which will happen over the course of the construction and some of it will happen during construction after the construction and some of them actually a little bit after the construction is completed. So we have to really pay some attention to all of those things. You've heard the description of the fundraising. What we need to do is to think about exactly where that leaves us. And as Kent has reported, there's something over $7 million which still has to come and that is $7.5 million beyond the amounts that have both been awarded or are committed. My assessment after spending a lot of time thinking about the numbers is that the current commitments plus new contributions over the next three years during the construction and once the building reopens will supply much of this. I don't know exactly how close to the total that will get to us. That will get us. If the difference is small, the library can sell funds by withdrawing it from the endowment. Annual withdrawals from the endowment currently contribute 10 to 12% of the library's budget but that actually represents about half of the operating costs that are not provided by the town. So that's what I think about a lot of these times. We can't take a huge chunk out of that. But the endowment is built to tolerate short-term swings through two different mechanisms. We take withdrawals for operations based on a three-year average of its value. So the impact of peaks and valleys in its value on the withdrawals available for operations are stretched out. For example, between 2017 and 2023, the endowment has swung between about $6.4 million and $9.9 million. But our 4% withdrawal rate has stayed essentially in a narrow and adequate band. We have continued to have enough money to operate regardless of what happened in a particular month or a particular quarter. Second, it is conservatively managed to match the return of the stock and bond markets. And over time, that produces reliable earnings that are greater than our withdrawals for operations with the excess available to rebuild any withdrawals that we may do for this or for other reasons and to make it grow. So if successful fundraising is continuing, we can manage a payment to the town from the endowment of, say, a million to a million and a half. And we can go a little higher than that if we increase our draw rate. But we might not choose to take such sums from the endowment. Or if the gap is larger than we can safely take from the endowment, then we will borrow. I have projected what a loan of $4 million would look like. And that can work as long as fundraising continues. And our assumption is that it will and it will continue on for as long as it's needed. I'm not sure a gap of $5 million or more could be overcome. But that's a whole other issue. So what we've been doing is exploring several forms of lending. One is a line of credit or other similar flexible loan for a limited amount and for which prepayment is simple, quick, easy. Second would be a commercial loan or mortgage backed by the assets of the library with perhaps a lower interest rate. And C, a tax-exempt bond purchased by a financial institution at a still lower rate probably, but more complex and probably feasible only for a larger loan. We have talked to two local banks and they have indicated interest. One after a fairly detailed review of our finances. But we recognize that they can't give a commitment for a loan three years from now for an unknown amount or an undefined period. But it's still serious reviews that have been going on and we're comforted by those reviews. And Bob, because I was part of this conversation, we also talked with the Mass Development Finance Corporation, which is they're the group that would do the that would be the ones who would give a tax-exempt bond. Right. And they have also said that as long as we can find in a financial institution, which is willing, that makes sense to them. They've also described the process as being somewhat more complex. And consequently, that's why I think of it as being the way you would go if it is a larger amount and probably for a longer period of time. Okay. And just Mass Development Finance Agency is what is called a quasi-public corporation in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. And it is specifically there to help organizations, municipalities, et cetera, fund and fund projects. And we have, of course, described what the library is and they said, yes, you are following. Right. Thank you. We're going to now move to questions and particularly about clarifications from counselors, but also recognize that we never promise to answer all the questions tonight. But Kent, perhaps you'd like to come up and sit with Bob. We have other people in the audience that we may call on. And I'm going to now ask counselors with regard to, you know, respecting other, the three minutes, et cetera, to begin asking questions. Kathy. One is a basic request. That was a great set of overhead charts you just gave us, Kent. So I'd like to be able to post them. And over the weekend, Lynn managed to get the details of the most recent estimate, the November 8th. And I'd like to get those posted as well, you know, both posted so everyone can see them. But when finance takes it up, it would be good. And so some of what I'm going to ask is because I've been staring at them since Saturday and Sunday. And then going back to look at what we looked at in 2021, you know, on where the piece. So Bob, you said what I've been focusing on, we still have this gap. And I came, it's 7.4, 7.5. So Kent, you were talking about how well you've done in closing the gap. But the issue that you've been grappling with is the gap got really big. You know, it was a little over 5 million because CPA, you'd already secured when we voted on it. And then it ballooned up and you brought it down to 7.4. So one of the questions I have, and it's, I know Paul is trying to get us this information, is if we assume all is well and somehow the rest of the 7.4 appears. Okay. So if we assume, so Bob, you said we could do one and a half out of endowment and then there's some additional things. When that flows to us really matters. Because if we have to, at the beginning, take on the 46 million dollars, we had this flow chart with some assumptions that Sean did last time on the carrying cost. So there's debt for the first four years, first five years. Before I think even the bond, the grant from NBLC gets paid out in five different chunks, I think. And I think Amherst College, they said they wouldn't do the, someone told me they wouldn't do the fifth, the new piece until the end. And Amherst College is in four pieces. So I would just like to see that flow and have people say who pays the interest on that money before we're made whole, where we're held to just the 15.8. So that's just a question on the flow. And I don't know how you would work that out. That is being worked out by the town manager with assistance from our former finance director and going back to our original chart. I just want to correct one other thing, Kathy. We've already received the first payment of six from the Mass Board of Library commissioners. We are slated to receive the next payment as early as this next summer. So they take on an online. And that's all I'm asking, Lynn, is just it gets laid out because you can see that we're not at risk for that amount of money because we're getting it, you know, in 2024. So I just would like to see that to have some sense of our carrying costs because when we estimated the whole project in 2021, I mean, everyone knows this. We were in a world of low interest rates. And we said, oh, we can get a 20 year bond at 2%. That was really nice. Or we can get the short term bands at two. And I think we had 2.8 for the 20 years. So I just want to see that worked out. Then I also have a question on the most rigid budget estimates on line items. It looks to me like the furniture and equipment budget is on the low side because it's actually lower than what we saw in 2021. And I know there was a cutback initially to just stay within the 36 million. So I want to know whether we are in fact on short on audio visual desk chairs, mobile equipment, you know, do you have a budget to actually buy this stuff? Because I would not like to open a library with we could go a skating in it or something, but we need to sit. So just on a, is there a gap there that you had to cut back to make the numbers work? And then the last part, Bob, when you talked about the endowment, what if you said you could go maybe one and a half, but not five? You know, so where is the squish room there to really mean that we're the taxpayers in Amherst are not at risk for this. It's the trustees at risk. So I just like, I know you can't answer all of that now, but I'm hoping over the discussion, we would get more of that. Thank you very much. Pam, Rene. Thank you. Kathy had a couple of points that actually need some clarification for Bob Pam. Again, that one to one and a half million dollar payment possible. Is that a one time or is that per year that the endowment can carry? You talked about a loan for maybe four million dollars. Is that the only amount because we're really talking about a seven point four million dollar need. Another question is, does that current cost estimate include our specialized code energy requirements? And if not, does it still meet our energy goals from the town? Does it also include the transition costs that we're looking at to move the books out and clear the space for construction? When the finance committee talks about this, I think we, well, first of all, we, everyone has said we are, the town is not going to contribute more than 15 eight plus the one million of CPAC money. But in fact, we really are going to be contributing more to the project because the interest rate has increased since the first council made that commitment. So I just want to be clear that the town is in fact, has in fact contributed more. When the finance committee starts to talk about this, I think, as Kathy said, all the different line items and the payment process and timing is important. But we also need to see what the effect of that additional interest is. The difference between the very low and now the four and five percent that's being projected. Where does that money come from to pay that debt? If we are looking at the short term ban, is that being paid out of our capital reserves? Is it being paid out of our ordinary 10.5 percent capital budget? I would ask the finance committee to use that wonderful financial model that Sean showed everybody with all of these expectations and changes of number. I am very concerned that the additional money and the additional interest rate or borrow has to come out of the capital budget. And I think it will consume a great deal of our even our current budget. So that is a real concern because I do not want to see today's needs being set aside because of the increased interest rate. And this interest and this increased amount that we're borrowing. Thank you. Austin, you put your hand up during that time. Would you like to respond to any questions? I just want to clarify something just so that we're as clear as we can be. Right now, there's a seven million dollar gap. We don't contemplate that this is the end of our fundraising. So one needs to and that's what Bob was trying to get us to do. One needs to think about this in time. So the hope is that what Ken Edwards and their good colleagues have done, which seemed to some of you and some of us quite unimaginable a couple of years ago, not only have they raised what they promised for that time, they've raised three million dollars, roughly more. So they're at nine million dollars now. But when we think about the number that Bob was talking about, we're not going to stop the fundraising. It's not going to be a seven million dollar gap. It'll be a gap that will be somewhat lesser and we hope much less. Lynn, can I ask a point of order? Sorry, the agenda had listed presentation, public comment, and then discussion. Are we having discussion? Are we having clarifying? No, we're having discussion and discussion and then we'll go to public comment, then we'll come back. Okay. So now it's just questions, not discussion. Okay. It's hard to separate. I know. I just wanted to make sure before I raise my hand. Thanks, Dorothy. So I've got two parts. One follows up on the interest question. I really hadn't focused on it until recently and then I began to get very upset. And I'm wondering, does the town have to pay all of the interest rates? Can't we have some of that interest rate paid by fundraising? Because it's a huge amount. It really adds up with the higher rates and the higher cost. So that's question one. Is the town absolutely have to pay all that interest rate? And the second thing is in terms of when bringing up the question about equipment, is there sufficient equipment? I heard recently that the library still intends to get the $400,000 book sorter, but that it can't fit in the back room, which we had been originally shown, but that they were going to have to remove the director's historic library, which is to the right of the main entrance in the front of the library. And that seemed to me, one, that we don't want to destroy that office. Number two, that maybe that would be one way to save some money. So that, I mean, we're looking at ways to go forward and to do the things you have to do, but not to do the things that you don't have to do. So those are my, my comment questions, really to Austin, I guess. Okay. At this point, since we've had some initial counselor comments, we're going to move to public comment. So I'm going to ask you two to step to the side. And if you are in the Zoom audience and you would like to make public comment at this time, please raise your hand. And how many people in the audience have signed up? You have to please sign up with Athena to make public comment if you are in the room. Okay. Let's begin with the Zoom where we have three. And let me just say public comment is no more than three minutes. And counselors do not respond, although we're perfectly interested in the additional questions you may ask so that we can incorporate them into our further meetings with the Finance Committee. Tony Cunningham, please enter the room, state your name and where you live. Hi, Tony Cunningham, Owen Drive. I actually had drafted some comments, but Kathy and Pam have asked a lot of my questions. So plus one to all of the questions they asked and the data they asked for. So I won't repeat those. But as I wrote in emailed comments, I don't see how you can vote to authorize a higher borrowing amount when you don't have all the funds secured and you know you won't have them before construction begins. Time and time again, I've heard the town manager say he cannot move forward with a project without having funds secured. Why is it different in this project? To date, I believe only 500,000 of the trustees now 16.5 million share has been deposited with the town and one of six MBLC payments has been received. While the library fundraisers have done very well to raise funds, they are now in reality further from the target than they were when this began at a shortfall of 7.4 million. And they probably exhausted most, if not all of potential sources of funding at this point. To properly understand the financial impact of authorizing borrowing of 46.1 million for this project. As Kathy and Pam have said we need to see the debt service projections over the life of any proposed borrowings. We need to see the cash flow for the project showing when MBLC and library share payments will be deposited with the town. And we need to see the financial model showing the impact on the town's capital budget and reserves updated to reflect the higher cost estimate and higher interest rates. When Sean Mangano showed the debt projections using the old cost estimate, it showed not only the debt service for the town share of 15.8 million and the 1 million community preservation at contribution, it took it showed the debt service on the bands and like Kathy asked who is responsible for that. And it showed 1.2 million in interest on those bands at that time with the lower borrowing and the lower interest rate. So I imagine it's significantly higher than that. So if we're saying that the town is contributing 15.8 million and no more, how then can we say we're going to borrow and pay interest on bond anticipation notes. It doesn't add up. And so I think that's what I had to say on that. I just wanted to echo Kathy's statement that we need to ensure the taxpayers and Amherst are not at risk for this. And right now I cannot see how this is not extremely risky and jeopardizes the timeline for all of our other capital projects and our ongoing capital needs. Thank you so much. Dana. Jeff Lee. Please push the button on the microphone so the green light lights up and then state your name and address before you make your comment. Thank you. Thanks. I'm Jeff Lee from District 5. This vote for supplemental borrowing authorization strikes me as rushed and without providing adequate information to really make a good decision. I know there's, you said there's more coming, but it would be good to have it now. I'm just, I just discovered some new documents in the packet before I came over that I'm trying to digest. But I also found, frankly, that President Griezmer's and Tom Manager Backelman's description of the library project sounded more like an infomercial for the project rather than a balanced look at the pros and cons. One of the big cons has been brought up by several of the commenters and counselors. If we're borrowing 9 million, 9.9 million more dollars, there are interest payments that go along with that. So I find it very disingenuous for you to claim that we're only paying 15.8 million when we're paying interest payments. Could be even an additional couple million dollars or more. So also the, a new document I found in the packet related to the repairs, the library has frequently argued that repairs are going to cost more than expanding the library by 15,000 square feet. I ask, where is the capital campaign in making these repairs? They've never offered any contribution to the repairs, only to the new project. Someone mentioned the book sorter, which I find a waste of money and a destroyer of the historic character of the library. I noticed in the budget that was put in the packet today that there was no mention of the book sorter under the audio visual line item that had been located in the past. Audio visual line item is 440,000. The book sorter was supposed to cost around 400,000. So, and the OPM was worried that that would leave little to pay for audio visual for the rooms in the new library. So that's a question I have. What's going on with the book sorter? And lastly, in regards to the financial indicators statement presentation, I appreciate that Amherst has a bond rating of AA plus. It's worth noting that Hadley has a AAA bond rating and the, at least last I checked, and the ratings agency point to their low tax rate is the reason they've gotten that good bond rating. So I guess that's my comments for now. Thank you for listening. Thank you for joining us. Ken Rosenthal, please enter the room, state your name and where you live. I'm Ken Rosenthal. I live on Sunset Avenue. I want to echo what Jeff Lee has said and comment briefly on why I think this is a premature action tonight and at the finance committee in the next week and you again the following week because there are things that are missing that you do not know and because the bond authorization does not have to be approved anywhere now for the next several months. What you don't know first of all is what the cost of fundraising is going to be that may not be a big amount, but it's going to be subtracted from the amount of money that's raised. What you do not know is an estimate for the cost of borrowing at various stages and you're going to have to work that out when you know more carefully about what you have already raised and what has to be raised in the future, but that's a number that can be estimated. And the final thing that you don't know is what this library is going to be. It's a long time now since the library was designed, since it was submitted to voters, since it was adjusted because of COVID, since it's been adjusted through some of the changes that you have talked about financially here. You have not seen the design of a library that is going to correspond to the amount of money that's been projected, it will cost. Jeff Lee, for instance, and Councillor Pam raised the question about the sorter and the effect that's going to have on the director's office and also the front of the building where there is going to be a whole bunch through, I believe, through the stone. So there is a lot that you don't know and you're going to be repeating this conversation again months from now, I'm sorry to say, and it doesn't have to be done now. I think you should relieve the Finance Committee of making that decision now. I think you should relieve yourselves of making that decision in the next couple of weeks until you have all the information or much more of the information that you're going to need. I want to make one of the point that I should have made a little earlier. To the extent that the endowment is used, as Mr. Pam said, it might have to be used, that money will then not be available for operations. This is a quasi-public library. The town contributes to the costs of the library in many ways and the citizens do too. So if the money is not there in the endowment and able to produce income, then it's going to be another cost that the citizens are going to have to pay. In addition to the deceptively misleading Community Preservation Act cost is not being charged against the taxpayers, which 100% of it is. So I hope you will put this off to a time when you have more information and can you make better decisions. Thank you for listening. Oh, I want to say one more thing in my 25 seconds. I want to thank very much all of you and the members of the library board for working so hard on this. I know it's not easy and the fact that we raise questions doesn't mean that we don't love the library and appreciate what you're doing. We just want the best for the town at a price that the town can fairly afford. Thank you again. Thanks for joining us, Ken. Athena. Vince O'Connor, please come up and state your name and address before you make your comment. Vince O'Connor, 175 Summer Street. First, I'd like to second what Mr. Rosenthal said about the impact of the use of the endowment on the need for operational support from the town. And there probably should be a chart showing the increase in operational requirements of the library that will need to be supported by the town depending on the amount of money contributed from the endowment in addition to the other iterations regarding the use of the endowment. But that's a key one. I'd like to speak to the so-called fundraising that's gone on. I don't think I'm the only person who has noticed that many of the millions of dollars of quote fundraising is actually taxpayer money from a different source. I don't really consider that fundraising. I wonder if people who pay income tax to the Commonwealth or to the United States would consider it fundraising either. That is taxpayer money from other sources. It's not really fundraising in the traditional sense. Finally, what I haven't heard and perhaps because I haven't seen the latest documents is how this project is going to be staged on the site and around the site. I don't think we're going to contemplate closing off part of Amity Street or North Prospect Street. I'm quite concerned that after the project is approved, then the project folks will come back and say, oh, by the way, we need from you to implement the authorization to take all of the parking spaces behind CVS so that we can properly stage the project. At that point, it will explode the downtown in a way that I think would cause so much destruction that the library project is not worth it. I would urge the council not to approve the bonding until they get a very definitive statement as to how the construction is going to be staged and where and what the implications are for other downtown activities or the survival of other downtown businesses and entities. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. Maria Capecchi, please enter the room, state your name and where you live. Thank you. Maria Capecchi, South Amherst. A lot of the previous speakers have said many of the things that I am happy to have had said here and I hope that you heed this. Another thing that you haven't talked about is the $46 million estimate, cost estimate. That would be, frankly, a miracle if this went out to bid and came in at that amount. Many other projects have come in higher than the cost estimates. The numbers that we're seeing here are their wishful thinking. The 46 is a wishful low. The 7.5, still to raise, is a wishful high. It's also not even expected until long after this project would have been, would be started and finished and then you're stuck. That 7.5 million is a million five worse further away than you were six years ago. This is, it's mind boggling, actually. For this to have been brought up in this way, posted immediately after the election with a planned public hearing and vote the week of Thanksgiving, giving 10 days to make a decision on this when the information hasn't been brought forward when the cash flow isn't even expected until the end of this week. Yeah, I do not support this. I agree with the previous speakers. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. Kelly Irwin, please enter the room, state your name and where you live. Kelly Irwin, Applewood Lane, South Amherst. I would just like to say I'm very much in support of this project. I am one of the people just a regular citizen in town who's devoting a great deal of time to raising the funds and to continue to support the operations of the library. I'd like to invite everyone on the council and who's spoken previously, who's concerned about the funding to join with us to help us raise the money to create the community jewel that we need in the center of our downtown. And I would like to mention that the business improvement district at Chamber of Commerce and the businesses downtown are extremely excited about this new development. None of them are complaining that this is going to hurt their businesses. We have already been talking about this for maybe eight years since we first started talking about it. And the longer we go, the more expensive it will be. And instead of saying no, let's all say yes and let's say yes together. And let's do something positive, exciting for the town and move on to the other important capital projects and work together on those as well. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. That concludes public comment. We're going back to counselor questions and comments, keeping in mind that part of what we want to do is gather questions and requests for additional information. Mindy Jo. Yeah. I want to make sure I've done my calculations right here. So the memo we received, I think, today on the updated estimated repair options has an updated estimate repair option cost to the town, right? Towns share of the estimated repair costs of 19.4 to 21.7 million that does not include any interest for the borrowing of that money. I believe that's correct. And does not include compliance with the specialized code that we as a town council just adopted. So those numbers are actually probably low. What we're being asked to do here in a week or whenever the finance committee finishes its review is to authorize an increase in the borrowing amount, but where the towns cost excluding the interest, but the 19.4 to 21.7 on repair just excludes interest on the borrowing for 19 to 21 plus million of 15.75 million, which is four to $6 million lower from what I look at. And right now, the gap between that 15.75, well, the everything that's been raised and committed and the total project costs for the borrowing that we're being asked to revote is approximately 7 million of which 2 million is historic tax credits that are there. And so if the historic tax credits are assumed to be gotten and we'd be done to about 5 million and additional to raise, but that means if they stopped fundraising today and the town decided to make up that difference. And I'm not saying the town would, but if the town did instead of the endowment, the town share would be 20.8 million, which is smack dab in the middle of the repair. And so I guess I'm trying to figure out how it is not the refiscally responsible thing to do to keep the town share at 15.75 million, do this project and not switch to a repair only because that would cost the town potentially $4 to $6 million more than what we're being asked to vote on when this comes back to the town. I think that is correct. So help me out if I'm wrong on that. I don't think there's anything wrong with your math. Are there any other comments, Kathy? I thought we were mainly trying to gather questions because I could debate some of the points that Manny just did, but I don't want to do it here. I just really want to focus on the project in front of us. Okay. Please do. But if we have an opportunity later, I would debate the points. I just don't want to do it tonight. Okay. Did you have any additional questions, Kathy? I think I raised most of them and I've sent others to you, but I will. And I have shared those. Well, I've shared more. I shared them up to a point, but not in the last 24 hours. Okay. I can make sure that they're saying, you know, Bob, what you said is the draw on the endowment, it would be good to know where the endowment is right now, the total amount. And that was one I asked you earlier, Lynn, and I can look at any budget to see what we've been pulling on it, but I'd just like to know where it is. So it's just putting all the little pieces, little pieces. These are big pieces in line. Thank you. And I will collect the various questions, Kathy, that you've sent and make sure that the people know those before the meetings. I want people to think about this before I call on the next two people. Among counselors, we still have time to post the Friday meeting of the finance committee if the chair agrees as a committee of the whole. And if the chair agrees, we should then discuss that tonight. Alicia. Thank you, Lynn. So I think like what we're being asked to do right now is just refer this to the finance committee. So that seems like sort of a small ask, but I think that for the finance committee to be looking at this really in-depth tomorrow, that we are missing some information in terms of making like a well-informed decision. And I think a few other counselors may have already asked for something similar. But what I think would be helpful is having that cash flow analysis, an updated version that will show the debt service, the amount bar each year that would include interest and what the town portions will have to pay, including that debt service. And I'm hoping that that might be something that can get to us before at least Friday's meeting, because I'm not sure that that's realistically possible for tomorrow. And I do have a couple of other questions mostly about process. And so I think one of them is is there a reason that this needs to be happening right now? Because I do agree and it feels sort of like it's being rushed. And so I'm wondering about the timeline. And if there's any clarification on why this needs to, like, is there a timeline for this decision? Or is it possible to wait until we have more information? Or what is going on with the timeline here? I think would also be helpful information to have. And then what happens if the trustees are unable to reach their fundraising mark within also that sort of buffer zone that was talked about in terms of using the endowment. And I can't remember exactly, but maybe I think they said it was like five million or so. And so what happens if that does happen? Would the town then be required to cover the gap amount if we do sign this sort of authorization to increase the debt, the borrowing of the debt? Or would there still be time to say at that point that it didn't happen? So I'm asking about like what level of commitment this document binds us. And I can attempt to answer a couple of those questions, but let me just be very clear. We will not have the cash flow until Friday. And so I think the possibility that this will be a decision that gets delayed past the 20th of November is strong, okay? But we will, we've already been working on the cash flow. And there are various reasons to have this come up now versus February or something. First of all, it helps fundraising. Second of all, as the library is planning to get ready to go out to bid, people are more likely to bid on a project if they know the money is there. And if they know the money is an amount stated, they're likely to bid to the amount. And if they don't, then people have to go back to the drawing board and decide what to cut. That's called value engineering or any number of other things. So there are, but there are reasons to get a commitment so that you encourage solid bidding and you encourage fundraising. Those are two of the many reasons. Is it okay if I ask a quick follow-up? Sure. I'm just wondering when are we expecting to solicit bids? When are we expecting to what? I'm sorry. To go out for bid, to ask for bids. My understanding is sometime around February. Would you like Bob to answer that? Yeah. I'm sorry. Bob Perrin could answer that for you. We're actually looking right now to start that process in January. Just as a point of clarification, it's actually a two-step process for any projects that are over, I believe it's $10 million in funding. You have to pre-qualify contractors and subcontractors first before you even start the bidding process. You may notice a public notification of that pre-qualification process starting as early as the next week or two. There's no commitment to funding to that, but it begins the process of defining who the potential pool of contractors will be and then the bids would actually be advertised most likely in January for receipt in probably February, beginning of March at the latest. Does that help, Alicia? Yes, and then I wasn't sure if I was going to be waiting for the answers to the other questions or if you had some of those now also. I think we'll have more discussion at finance committee in terms of the exactness of the plan of the trustees if they don't reach their fundraising goal although their plans do not include coming back to the town. They include taking out a loan or something of that nature. There's three options. I don't know. There's a lot more to all of that discussion, so hopefully we can expand on that at the meeting on Tuesday and more likely Friday. Are there other questions, Alicia? Not right now. Thank you. Okay, Dorothy. Similar to Alicia, I want to know if there's an answer to my question, which is, what are the rules of the game about who pays the interest rate? Must the town pay the interest rate? Is there any flexibility? Because that change in interest rate due to size of loan and increase in interest rate has raised the amount of money the town will give, and we had said the town's not going to have to give more than what we said. So is there flexibility and does the town have to pay all the interest rates? That's really the question. Dorothy, I don't, we'll put the question down and address it during finance, okay? Thank you. Andy. Yeah, I just wanted to point out that there's been a lot of questions about interest rate. We approve bonds all the time in this council for all sorts of things, fire trucks, buildings, whatever. And this is not a question that we ask. You say we're authorizing borrowing of the amount of money necessary to buy the fire truck, and we don't go farther than that. We also make a lot of purchases that don't involve any borrowing, but involve cash, or paying from some fund that we have, a stabilization fund, or just from the budget, whether it be fixing up the bank center for the crest department, or anything else that we might do. We don't talk about what is the lost interest of not having that money. We just put the money into the roads because we feel that it's an important thing to do. So I do think that the council needs to consider what is the consistency of our process here. Pam? I think we should think about interest rate. We are talking about a lot of money. We're talking about a period of time. We're talking about a high interest rate, which is usually or has been in the past lower. So if we don't talk about it, we're derelict in our duty. So I think it's a good question. Mandy Jo? The elementary school building project did not discuss interest rates either, and that's a project that's bigger than this one. Kathy? Sorry, the issue isn't the exact interest rates. A question of are we going out for 15.8 bond and paying interest on that, which we always thought we were. Are we going out for a $23 million bond and paying interest? It's the gap question, Andy. It's not interest. So we're just trying to get a sense of what our financial risk is. We always saw in three years ago, we saw there was interest on 15 million or 15 and a half million. And the assumption was we wouldn't have that burden coming back to us for the rest of the 36 million because of the trustees raising the rest of it. So I think we're focused on this gap issue, which we'll know more about on Friday. Are there any other questions or comments on this issue? Seeing none, then I'm going to suggest that we take a break of 10 minutes and come back for the rest of the meeting. Thank you. You might want to turn your videos off while you're on break. Lynn, is there going to be more on the library? No, we are not. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for joining us, Austin. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we need to reconvene. I'm sorry, folks, people, we need to reconvene. Yes, I think between she and I, we can reconstruct them. Okay. All right. Athena, could you take the screen down so I can see who's here? Please turn your video on when you return. Hi, Dorothy, you're back. Andy, Joe, I know you're here. Alicia, are you here? Yes, I am. Thank you, Lynn. Great. I don't think we noted that Anika has left. Yeah, I was going to make a note of that. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Okay. Thank you. We are now ready to go on to the supplemental budget appropriation requests. And I'm going to call on Paul and Holly Drake again. And Jen, are you also part of this, too? Sure you are. Great. We're a team. Just come on off. Yes, there's actually many motions. We're going to do the first motion. Oh, no, it isn't. It's one big one. Just one. Thank you. Okay. The motion. Perhaps we want to put it on the screen, but it's to refer the following supplemental budget requests to the Finance Committee for Report and Recommendation by November 20, 2023. Council order FY24-05C, an order appropriating funds for the Town of Amherst Sewer Fund Capital Program Sewer Collection System and Wastewater Treatment Facility Equipment and Repairs. Council order FY24-12A, an order appropriating from pre-cash to the stabilization funds. Council order FY2405B-05B, an order appropriating funds for a portion of the Town of Amherst Capital Program Road and Sidewalk Repairs. Council order FY24-04B, an order appropriating a supplemental increase to the Town of Amherst Operating Budget for fiscal year 2024 to incorporate four firefighter positions previously funded by our budget. Council order FY24-16A, an order appropriating from pre-cash to the Cannabis Impact Special Revenue Fund and Council order FY24-16B, an order appropriating from pre-cash to the Opioid Settlement Special Reserve Revenue Fund. Is there a second? Second. Okay. Paul and Holly and Jan, General. So I'll give you a quick overview. Okay. These are actions or requests for action that the town of Amherst to take every fall. After we get pre-cash certified, we come to you with certain orders to balance out the accounts and meet the financial guidelines that the financial policies that the Town Council has. So the first one is to transfer funds to maintain our General Stabilization Fund at the amount that we say we want to have. The second is to fund the Reparation Stabilization Fund as we had previously proposed last year. The third is to put the remainder into the Capital Stabilization Fund. There's also capital requests for a million dollars for roads, which we had done last year. Pardon me? Yeah. Okay. Comments to follow. Yes. And then there's an appropriation from the ambulance receipts to support the four firefighter positions because that ambulance receipt account was filled up with funds from the UMass Strategic Partnership Agreement. And then there's the other commitments of creating revolving funds for cannabis money that comes in and also for opioid settlement money. And this is just, as the memo describes, just mostly an accounting way of managing and keeping track of those funds. So I know these will be discussed at the Finance Committee. And then there's another one for the sewer capital funds, which Gilford, I didn't ask him to be here tonight, but he'll be here at the Finance Committee meeting tomorrow to take funds from the sewer funds version of free cash to replenish his accounts because they had some unexpected costs that went along with that. I just want to clarify under Council Order FY 24-12A that that's three different funds that we're transferring to. We're transferring some money to reparations. We're transferring money to the capital stabilization and some other money to just the other stabilization. General stabilization. Okay. I just don't have the order in front of me and I just wanted to clarify that that's what that covered. Is there anything else you want to add to that summary? No, that's good. Okay. Like I said, a lot of it is just sort of housekeeping the way that the DOR works is these things are general fund revenue. They have to follow the free cash and then in order for us to keep track of them and appropriate them and set them aside, we have to do all this fancy footwork to keep track of it. And we want to thank you for being the people that keep track of all that fancy footwork because we don't want to. So thank you so much. Are there questions from the Council? Oh yeah, somebody wanted to pull this from consent. I think it was Pam Rooney. Correct. So I think the explanation from Paul of what the various pieces are going toward is helpful. I know that we have talked about reparations fund, cannabis impact fees, opioid settlement, and I understand that those, you know, we'd like to see pretty consistent and anticipated. The money going for, so given that this is a large amount this year and due to everyone's hard work, we ended up with a free cash balance of over $9 million, which is incredible. I think we've had quite a discussion tonight about where will the money come from to help support the projects that we're seeing coming down the road. And if we were to put more money into the capital stabilization funds, for instance, that becomes our bank account for helping make some of that happen. So it feels in some way that much of this money is already committed, but it also feels like we ought to have a bit more discussion before the end of the year when the free cash amount is certified. And we know for sure what we have, you know, kind of where we want to put it before it arrives at our lap. Thank you. Okay. Are there Paul? Yeah. So free cash has been certified. That's how we know that information. That's why we're bringing the orders to you now. So this is the action that I think you're referencing, Pam. So free cash was certified. We're now recommending to the council that you take the actions that are in alignment with the policies of the council. Does that make sense? And so, Pam, I guess the question would be, are there any of these different financial orders that you would like to see changed that would change the balance going to end into any one effort or fund? I think that's the discussion that the finance committee needs to have. Okay. But if you have any other thoughts, as a councilor, the finance committee wants to hear them. Okay. I think of all the myriad of capital projects that were brought to JCPC and, you know, just, you know, one department versus the other looking for, you know, a piece of equipment or something like that. This is such a large amount that maybe it's just the process. Maybe it's just the process that we're talking about that we're locked into. You know, would that be distributed in this manner or would it be distributed in some other way within the items that come to JCPC for consideration? Pam, I realized there's a point of clarification that might help you. This, the nine million is the sum of what was there before this year plus this year. It's not a total of nine million new this year. That we discussed that at a previous meeting when you were not here. So I realized as you're looking at this year, when nine million, that was my action too. It's not nine million. It's only about four million something. Thank you of new money. Okay. Kathy. So I think, you know, some of that discussion actually happened in finance. So Pam would have missed it unless she decided to listen in. But one of the dilemmas we ran into, maybe it was a week ago, whenever we last met, is that we actually made a motion, Alicia made a motion to move the cannabis money into the reparations fund. And we said, well, can we make that motion until the town manager has to first suggest that this would happen? And then we say, okay, we can't tell him what to, we have this, who makes what. So now is actually the time, you know, this allocation doesn't make sense for finance to be raising it. And the other way I think about this road money is at the beginning of this fiscal year, we wouldn't have been sure we could have allocated a million more to roads. We already allocated 10 and a half percent in capital to, to, through JCPC, and we took a big chunk of that for roads. But we were having to play it off on others. We didn't know we might have another million. So we're, we're building up our road arsenal. It's another way of thinking about it by, by these end of the year and unspent money from the year before where Paul, Paul and Guilford can go out and pay for a bigger contract. So it's, it's kind of nice to get it at the end of the year, which isn't the end of the end of the year, you know, because you go out in the spring for these projects, you know, it's, it's, it's a good timing to have the money be available. Okay. Are there other questions or comments from the council? Seeing none, then we're going to move to a vote. I believe I am with Dorothy Pam. Yes. Pam Rooney. Yes. Kathy Shane. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Yes. Jennifer Thomas Absent. Alicia Walker. Yes. Shall we bum in? Yes. Patty Angelus. Hi. Anna Devon Gough here. Hi. Lynn Griesma is an I, Mindy Johannick. Hi. Anika Lopes is absent. And Michelle Miller is absent. So it's unanimous with three councillors absent. The next one is the proposed to establish a safety zone in accordance with Mass General Law chapter 90, 18B on paragraph 18B on Henry Street between Market Hill and Pine Street and other traffic calming measures. I'm going to ask Kathy to speak to this and then we'll put it in motion. Thank you. Thank you, Lynn. As I, I think most people remember we were visited several council meetings ago by the people from the Cushman School to talk about the speed, the speedway that their childcare center is on and ask if we couldn't do something to mediate. And that led to the discovery and action by the council that a town can adopt a safety zone and childcare centers are explicitly mentioned as one of the areas that you can have a safety zone for. There has been some work done and Mandy raised a question about this proposal to move to do something. There has been work done to study the speed and cars. There's been some traffic studies. So when we had met with Paul and the people from the center, he said there's been quite a bit of work done on that. So we didn't necessarily need to work, wait for a full survey. There still will need to be some decisions on what we're recommending and it's a combination of three actions. One is in a safety zone. You can lower the speed limit to 20 miles per hour and you have to do it at a minimum of a quarter per mile. So where does that quarter per mile start and stop? You can do it for longer and they've provided us with a map with a suggestion of where it would be. Speed limits don't necessarily lower speed and you can come look at my road which is posted as 45 miles an hour on Montague Road and it's a 60, 80 mile. So the recommendation actually even by DOT, the state, is other kinds of mediation such as speed bumps. And so we've put that in as a second piece of this and it's either one or two and it would be right on the road just by the school to slow cars down. And then the third is there is an intersection where there is a stop sign but cars go pretty fast past that intersection and cars turning in there are periodically accidents there and stop signs would stop the speed as well. So we've proposed and had made offered a motion as this package of three and this came directly from them as a suggestion and Lynn and I both thought it made sense. There are DPW folks don't necessarily like the idea of the stop signs they don't they're not great fans of speed bumps so there's still some work to do on what exactly would be done here but this conceptually is a package and their maps attached to this that would show you where all of this is located and it is it will be a benefit both for the Children's Center but also the people who live on this road it's a very narrow road with no sidewalks and with two-way streets and large trucks use it as a cutoff as do cars so it's a good place to do this. Now this will be our first safety zone so this does not necessarily mean this is the policy we'll go out and put speed bumps all over you know we would still have to say where else we have a speeding problem or a cutoff problem it happens that the safety zone fits this place because of the Children's Center we're and we adopted that MGL provision on October 2nd so we've already done the get the ready to move so we're bringing this before you with a motion to do these three pieces asking the tail manager to do that and with a report back to us on a plan so it's not necessarily on exactly where this would go but to report back by the end of the year if possible with a plan to proceed. Anna. All right I'm about to be the bad guy and I'm just owning that now so I have so many concerns Kathy and Lynn I don't like I'm actually kind of struggling with where to start I when we accepted the motion when we accepted the provision about safety zones it was really clear and it's outlined in the memo that Paul wrote to us and we accepted it that the next step was to establish a process to create the criteria for these safety zones I know that MGL gives some examination some some specifications of what that might include I'm frustrated that the memo didn't include the the speed analysis study which is part of MGL MGL says you need an engineer an engineering study that includes a speed distribution and so I I don't think it's responsible for us to start setting safety zones as a council without this going to TSO I don't think that it's responsible for us as a council to start to do this without considering the precedent that we're setting do I think that Cushman Scott should have a safety zone and should have these things yes do I also think this needs to go through TSO or through and with recommendations from TAC yes I don't think that it's responsible for us to just start carte blanche applying safety zones without criteria when that was the step we said was in the process that was the step we communicated to the people petitioning us to to create those safety zones that's been clear from the start so I'm really concerned about the precedent of this council just deciding to put speed bumps and stop signs in when we have not done that for any other traffic to my recollection we have not done that for without referral to a committee and without the the recommendation or input from our transportation advisory committee so I and I also don't agree with what you with what I don't remember if it was Lynn or Kathy said that you're you're asking for a report back from Paul in this motion the motion is very clear that this is what that these are to be put in not that we're asking just for a recommendation from Paul so I don't think that the the motion is doing what you're saying it's going to do which is just to get that input so I think to to sum it up and I think it didn't start the time around me which is kind of her maybe but I think we I would like to see a revised motion that is sending this to TSO or with input from TAC and or or or if that's not what the sponsors would like to do a motion saying that they would like recommendation from Paul on this and I'd like to see the engineering study before we approve this setting a safety zone I think we're jumping ahead several steps I'd like to just respond really quickly it's not an engineering study it's a speed study and it is part of it when you read the the fact that this is a child care center qualifies it for making the 20 mile an hour so we could have brought just 20 miles per hour and then you'd figure out where the quarter mile is so yes this was an effort to expedite a response to a group that's been asking for 30 years for action and rather than putting it through a council process but I think we have an alternative motion Lynn on the sheet that rather than moving to motion to do this if the motion would be to refer this to TSO and go through a series of steps so my understanding I mean this came to JCPC with a background that the police have been out and done a speed study and they talked about putting a blinking light in the question was could you put a stop sign in could you do some other because it didn't look like we could just do it until we found this safety zone thing that allows a town to do some extra steps for these conditions but yes the alternative path would be to refer this to TSO rather than on taking action tonight I do want to clarify Kathy that mass general law specifically says engineering study on speed that that is part of the the law the text of the law and engineering study I think we may be just quirk quirbling on what an engineering study on speed it's totally I'm just just quoting the actual text here that's all okay man did you so I second everything Anna just said because the memo in the October 2nd 2023 packet when we adopted the safety safety zone specifically stated quote in order to establish a safety zone mass DOT work requires the town council to make a finding as to the following minimum safety criteria and then it listed three criteria and then the memo continued to state in addition to the above minimum criteria an engineering study must be performed to validate the posting of signage the study must include an analysis of the current speed distribution of free flowing vehicles the motion that is proposed by this memo includes none of the findings required in order to adopt a specific safety zone and it does not reference any engineering studies that included any analysis of current speed distributions I think if we went ahead with this motion we would be deficient in actually adopting and it would not be valid in addition the motion doesn't include any speed limit we would designate I'm not sure the safety zone must be 20 I could be wrong it might be able to be designated as 25 it might be it might be as low as 20 but I think we might be able to designate other numbers I'm not sure it doesn't talk about that but any motion should require and include the actual speed limit we would be designating and in addition there is no cost no attention to what this would cost the town because the adding of speed bumps depending on what type of speed bumps you do I believe is costly and where would we get the money for it and how much would it cost I'm going to take one more comment before we put one of the two motions on the sheet on the table Andy yeah I think a lot of what I was thinking has already been said I'm the counselor who lives a block and a half away from the center section so I know the center section well I am very interested in knowing what the input is from the professionals at the EPW because they have the traffic engineering background that we don't have as counselors that's why we employ them and I would like to have their input driving through that intersection at least twice a day if not more I'm not sure that I see a benefit and I just see the need to make extra stops for a lot of people of which I'm one so I'm going to put the following motion on the table and seek a second to refer the proposal to establish a safety zone in accordance with mass general law chapter 90 paragraph 18b on Henry Street between Market Hill Road and Pine Street and other traffic calming measures to the town services and outreach committee with input from TACC for a report and recommendation by December 18th 2023 after we get a second I'll speak to the motion is there a second Shane will second that okay and I also just want to recognize that TSO may not get to this and it may be part of a carryover model okay I wanted to make sure you you understood I yeah okay Andy anything more are there any other counselor comments before we move to a vote all right then we're going to move to a vote we start with Pam Rooney yes Kathy Shane yes Andy Steinberg yes Todd is absent uh Alicia Walker yes Shelley Balmille yes Pat D'Angelo's hi hi Devlin Gauthier hi Lynn Greaves person I made me Joe Hannity hi whoops is an absent Miller's absent Dorothy Pam yes it's unanimous ten in favor three counselors absent um we are going to move on to e which is the option to reduce the financial impact on residents of the elementary school building project debt exclusion um Paul did you want to start since you've had the memo sure um so this was in reference to a council request to lower the impact reduce the impact on the taxpayers of the school borrowing which is a debt excluded borrowing if you recall earlier this year in April you had uh allocated five million dollars from our capital stabilization fund to reduce the borrowing for the school for the elementary school project um so the so we looked into that and there were subs so two things where it happened one is we lobbied in in the support and we're able to get an additional um sum of money from the state MSBA you know so you know really led by our state legislators but you know counselors were there as well fighting for this money and that made it a significant increase of contribution from the um from this MSBA of 9.7 million dollars if the council I think in my memo I explained if the council there are no magic sources of money the only other source of funds that the council could allocate within its power would be to take five million dollars from the capital stabilization funds which if you appropriate the funds into it as we recommended it will have a balance of 6.9 million dollars closely seven closest uh six point close to seven million dollars so um you could take five million dollars from that seven and allocate it to the school building project if you so chose other questions you could if that was the direction you want to go I could submit that to you if that's what you wanted to do I would not recommend that you do that though okay comments bandit yo so I'll be clear I don't want you to go that direction at all it would jeopardize our other two building projects 100 um but my next question relates to the five million it appears and maybe my memory is faulty that that the five million that the capital stabilization fund used to have more than four million in it it was close to nine or so so the five million that we allocated has already been removed from there and put where is question number one where is it sitting right now um and question number two is what are the plans when we when we voted that a you know a couple months ago um the the belief or intention was that um IRA money um in for um any green energy rebates would go back into capital stabilization and so where is the standing of that and is that still the plan and how do we get that sort of in writing because I was kind of disappointed that the memo you discussed today didn't talk about replenishing capital stabilization with any um monies received from the federal government for green building so we've not received any money from the federal government for the green building so that's that would come to you separately I think um in terms of where's the money is it's an account it's not like it's not like moving bags of money from one account to another it's an accounting thing so we have to account for it because it's like we've already taken an action so it comes out of that capital stabilization fund and goes it's accounting wise kept someplace different so it's it's accounted for in the school building project so we know that as a funding source for the school building project do we have an estimate as to what the um green any green building grants we might get could be at this point or a better one than we had months ago yeah I don't have that off the top of my head I could look into it I'm sure Kathy do you the the estimates were I many I have has it says to say this reasonably accurate in that we had exactly how much we were spending for the geo the ground source heat pumps and how much we were spending on solar and the credit the only uncertainty is um you could get a bigger credit if you paid directly for it rather than financed it with a municipal bond because they offset it if you were already getting a break so it's you know would you be getting 40 percent versus 35 percent so those those are the pieces there is there are some other elements that we potentially can apply for and I think this is a larger issue that I've talked to Paul because if we look across what we've been doing in the town this new North Amherst library expansion it went from oil to electric that's eligible for a rebate from IRA we are doing it in other buildings in the town so we need the town has got to figure out how to file tax returns they get this money back for us across a series of pieces so I think it's real money it's just going to be how we account for it the other piece that there's a bonus if you use local solar panels and if you the workforce is a particular workforce paying um uh prevailing wage and our designer would always use those so we will qualify for all those little pieces so so it was a decent estimate but until we actually apply for this we're going to be guinea pigs on a lot of things um for these big tip picket items in massachusetts everyone is waiting for that first check to come back to municipality alisha um thank you Lynn I'm feeling pretty disappointed um in this report and less about the outcome and more about what I feel like is a lack of transparency and communication as to what the intentions were uh with with the search for the funds for this um and so I feel like I was told that we were going to be looking at possible sources and what I'm hearing now is that since there has been an increase from the MSBA that we are no longer going to consider additional sources but was that the plan just all along in terms of saying that like lobbying the state for this additional monies was the plan to get more monies for the town um to complete this project and if so why that wasn't transparently communicated when the motion was proposed because that was not what I was under the impression was going to happen um and it feels additionally disappointing that the response is a possibility is to take money from the reserves which I believe we've already determined is not a favorable option for this council um so it's feeling kind of like we're saying there's nothing else we can do because we've already gotten an increase um the extra nine million that's provided by the MSBA which is great and I'm super happy to hear that that's happening um but when I made the proposal for an additional five million to the motion that Kathy proposed for five million which would be a total of 10 million off of the impact on residents were still less than that 10 million and saying that now this should be enough um when I proposed it people were saying it wouldn't even be a substantial amount of relief um in terms of the impact on residents and so I'm wondering why we aren't continuing to seek additional ways for the town to offset the impact to residents um Andy yeah no I appreciate um with Alicia's raising as a question but as I look at it that the major goal we had was to try and do what we could to make sure that there was something that would further reduce the burden on taxpayers in the amount that their taxes would go up by passage of the debt exclusion override and um as it turns out um that reduction can happen in this other way but I think that we also need to be realistic that as Mandy pointed out um it does jeopardize other projects because when the finance committee last spring heard the analysis from Sean Mangano about what the alternatives were for the four building plan the preferred uh alternative that he presented in the finance committee was to try to the extent possible to use the stabilization fund to just pay for fire station or as much of the fire station as possible and uh so it is a question then how do we go back and fund the other two projects which we know are really critical um for the town and have been postponed for far too long and um any other amount any other source is going to affect budget either the general operating budget or other because I think that we've already talked about the capital budget and we've had a presentation earlier this evening about how tight the next budget is going to be and what the difficulties are of funding what the priorities of this council are and so it's a question if we don't accept the recommendation of the town manager and go to another source then I think that we have a harder time when it comes to trying to figure out what our priorities are because I think our priorities are going to have to deal with um a reduction an equal reduction in the amount that's available Kathy I have to say that getting an additional 9.7 million off the Amherst share is stupendous and if I add that to five that's 14.7 and we did work behind the scenes Sean worked really hard on a memo with I reviewed it with our OPM to the granting authority on raising the cap I mean we've been working on this all the way along so that this came through was stellar and I I'm pretty sure Paul you can confirm with me that when you were meeting with Amherst college because I know when I met with them two years ago we had the school on the map of would you like to help us pay for the solar would you like to pay for something around the climate and they came through with Jones they didn't come through with the elementary school but I think we shouldn't stop looking for that and and one of the issues that is helpful with the school is if if we just get a grant rather than these other sources the MSBA will offset our grant but if we get it for things that they don't cover and that includes solar panels there's no offsetting so if we get help if there we got more state money for our solar panels and or we got a private entity putting in money I mean it would again lower it so I think that's where we should be looking and the nice thing about that is we're not putting those solar panels on for a couple years you know there's time to offset the full cost so so I think we should turn toward what else are we going to get in our strategic agreements or the lack of them and where are we going to start talking about what we were talking about earlier tonight on bigger share of the education money on the millionaires tax coming back to our schools more coming back to our roads we really need help with all of this and that is the thing that we can really help taxpayers with Anna I think there's been okay well let me start with my really concrete question which is Paul I'd really love to hear from you what the process and plan is that's in place for making sure that we maximize the Inflation Reduction Act grant money and I want to I'm curious who is responsible for making sure that those those applications get filed and all of that is in I think I am always perpetually worried that we're leaving money on the table and I think what Kathy brought to finance a while back for for the school around Inflation Reduction Act funding was really incredibly promising and and so I'd like to just if you could offer some reassurance that we in terms of how we are and how we are making sure we are maximizing all of those opportunities and then I think you know I want to highlight there have been a couple times tonight where folks have when we've been talking about this concept of raising funds or gaining funds for projects and where that comes from and I think that we're not recognizing the amount of effort and advocacy work that goes into receiving state or federal funds because when we say you know find five million when we say find a funding plan when we say and fundraise all of those things take so much effort and work and I I don't want to minimize the work that went into finding the to finding meaning petitioning the MSBA for increased funding and I know that Paul did a ton of work on that I know Kathy did a ton of work on that I know Lynn did a lot of work on that like I mean I think that the it's so critical to recognize the amount of advocacy and effort that goes in and the fact that if we hadn't been pushing which I think is really helpful you know that advocacy I'm sure would have been there because these are some really dedicated and committed public servants but I also I think that this this is a response to that and I think it's a perfectly valid response to that to that ask so I I agree you know that dipping into reserves is not the the way we want to go and I just I want to commend I didn't think there was going to be an answer to that I didn't think that MSBA was going to up it and I'm I'm not often the pessimist and so I was I was extremely pleased to be proved wrong thanks to that work from from the folks who did that advocacy so I want to commend the the fact that you found more than what we were even looking for Alicia did you want to say something um yeah so I I mean I do agree with with what Anna just said and I do I don't want to make it seem like I don't think that there was a lot of work that went into the advocacy and the in the lobbying at the state level and that I'm not grateful for the increase because all of those things are also true but just that that's not the answer that I expected from that's not the outcome I expected from this motion I expected the town to be looking into ways that we could make more of a contribution so it just kind of threw me in again in terms of transparency around like what our intentions were moving forward and that was not clear to me and so that's really my disappointment not the actual outcome but just the process and the the lack of understanding as to that's the direction we were going in this as opposed to looking at what other possible contributions the town can make itself because that's what I specifically asked when I proposed the motion um and so I think some great examples of that could be what Kathy suggested which I think we're all really great suggestions in terms of other ways to find uh to sort of take portions of the project and certain initiatives there and get funding for those things and sort of break it down in that way um and I would have loved to hear or see some of those ideas come across in this memo and I feel like that would have felt a little bit more transparent in terms of what I had been asking for and what I had been looking for um so that's the only comment I wanted to make is that I just don't think it was very clear that this would have been the outcome based off of the motion that was presented and so I do hope that we can sort of look into some of the things that Kathy suggested and move forward there in terms of trying to figure out how to get funding for other initiatives that are involved like solar panels and continuing to um work with Amherst College and other possible places where we could get more funding for the project. Um so Alicia I understood what you wanted was to make sure that people who were more impacted than others because of income level might be a way to solve or to address your original intent of this motion and that this does it but not maybe in the way that you wanted it done and so I just want to recognize that um at the same time um my president's reports include all kinds of topics that we discuss with Mindy and Joe this MSBA funding has got to be at least there five times in president's reports in the last year alone uh which is my way of being as transparent as I can without calling everybody up and say guess who I talked to today um I want to really commend Joe Comerford and Mindy Dom for the work they do in the state house it is our pleasure as Amherst town of Amherst to work with them and have them listen to us in the way they do and then respond with getting us these kinds of things and when we're trying to fund something as long as it's legal I'll go wherever the money is and if that means standing up and going to the state house and waiting on for four hours to testify on behalf of some bill at the state house because we filed special legislation I'll do it if that's what it takes to help fund Amherst and if somebody feels like I need to be more transparent then file a president's report within every two months and talk about the fact that we're meeting with legislators and maybe asking them for money then I don't know what else can be done I'm sorry I felt very criticized by both this and the library and the lack of appreciation for our legislators for what they do for us Paul yeah I do I do I um when you read the motion that the council passed um I think I met the requirements of the motion and then some the council voted to ask for five million dollars in alternative funding to be presented by November 30th so we have presented nine point two million dollar nine point seven million dollars in alternative funding through the MSBA it doesn't say what the source should be and if if if the counselors wanted a specific source they could have commented on that in addition to that I offered the ability to take five million dollars from your capital's stabilization fund as another way to put an additional funds into it there you know as I said when I made this presentation um you know we we are always seeking seeking funds and it's not just writing a memo about it it's actually doing the work on it um if I can't produce it for you I'm not going to put options in a memo um so I think that you know I would just actually respectfully push back to say I have met the requirements and the request of the town council's motion is there any other comment and let's move on to council compensation um this is a well we're going to start with a report from the finance committee I thought there was supposed to be a motion here and there's not uh no action okay um um Andy finance committee report finance committee was charged with finding uh the money to increase the compensation for the council and essentially uh we should start with the recognition that uh there are three alternatives that were presented and discussed at the last meeting and those are the three alternatives one was to transfer funds at this point in time when we are transferring uh money from free cash in other words we would take uh a little bit less money going into stabilization funds as has been recommended in the uh a motion that was referred to the finance committee um and uh asked that that money be um added to the budget for the first um six months which is the remainder of the current fiscal year and then we would expect the uh town manager to submit a budget for the next fiscal year that would cover the second six months and another alternative was to just wait six months to start the increase and have it be only a half of a year for the first year covering the second the the uh fiscal year that starts on July first we have the situation here where the charter talks about a year but the year doesn't coincide with the fiscal year and the third was to try and suggest to the manager that through the budget guidelines that the entire amount for the calendar year be included so it would be a larger amount requested from the next budget but that the increase would be then have to be paid by larger payments during the second half of the year and there would be no increases for the first half so having recognized that um you know the finance committee had a substantial discussion on the subject and um was recommending I'm trying to give the look to Kathy she's your vice chair um yes andy I can I can help if you like thank you please the finance committee thanks recommend option two from the august 10 memo to the town council from paul bakerman and shall mangano to delay implementation of the increase until the fy 25 budget so that recommendation as I recall means that counselors would be continued to be paid at the rate they're presently paid from january first until july june 31st 30th and as of july first they would be paid at the new rates is that the correct interpretation that was the recommendation finance already made I think with the with the understanding that it would be in the financial guidelines okay including in