 So to begin, welcome to the Amherst Historical Commission public meeting on Monday, October 26, 2020. Based on Governor Baker's executive order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law, signed Thursday, March 12, 2020, this meeting is being held virtually using the Zoom platform. My name is Jane Wald and as chair of the Amherst Historical Commission, I'm calling this meeting to order at 6.33 PM. This meeting is being recorded and minutes are being taken as normal. As a remote meeting, we'll take a roll call of commissioners in attendance. So as you hear your name called, unmute yourself, answer affirmatively, and then please place yourselves back on mute. Patricia Off, Robin Fordham, President Janet Marquardt. Here, but you know, Jane Schaeffler is it? So who is taking meetings? Minutes, I mean, you said minutes are being taken, but none of us are. They're being recorded from which we can develop the minutes. OK, because if you want, I can take. But if Ben, you're going to take them off of that even better. Yeah, I'm taking notes and we'll have the recording as well. Great. Jane Schaeffler is not present. Heady to start up? Present. And Jane Wald, I'm present. Please use the raise hand function to ask a question or make a comment. I'll see your raised hand and call for me to speak. After speaking, remember to re-mute yourself. Opportunity for public comment will be provided during a general public comment period. Please be aware commissioners need not respond to comments during this general public comment period. If guests wish to make a comment during that time, when called on, please identify yourself by stating your full name and address and put yourself back into mute when finished speaking. Residents are welcome to express their views for up to three minutes and at the discretion of the commission chair. So from there, we'll turn to our agenda, which first calls for announcements, if there are any announcements. Do we know of any? So let's just hope that you probably do a lot. I think for me. OK. Thank you. Then next, we have three CPA proposals to consider Community Preservation Act proposals. And let's see. We'll start with a North Amherst Library wall repair. Great. Jane, do you want to just give a brief overview of kind of like we did last time for what we're expecting of the presenters? Sure. Yeah. So for presenters, members of the Historical Commission have had access to your proposals. And we've already read the material you submitted. So in this part of the agenda, we would like to hear anything else you would like to add. You may summarize your project, add details that may not have been in the proposal. And then commissioners may have questions for you. So thank you for being present to talk about your proposal. The responsibility of the Historical Commission at this point will be to discuss among itself the various proposals that have been submitted under the historic preservation category and to assemble a recommendation to the Community Preservation Act Committee that details the Historical Commission's views on the various proposals to help them eventually with their final decisions in putting together their own recommendation to the town council. So we will have probably 10 minutes or so for to talk to you about your proposal, ask questions. So we'll begin with the North Amherst Library Wall Repair. It feels more impressive. Great, yeah. So I've, Gofford, I promoted you to a panelist. And if you can, you can unmute yourself. And great, thanks, Gofford. Hi, how are you doing today? I think the only thing I'll add is is that the proposal doesn't really talk about which wall we're doing. It just kind of talks about wall repair. This is actually the front wall of the library in the basement that we're talking about. So it's the wall underneath the main entrance to the library at this time. And I'm willing to take questions. Commissioners, do you have any questions for Gofford? Well, I hate to do this, but I have the same question that somebody else had last time, which is, why does this not fall within town maintenance budget? You can always argue that most CPA projects might fall under town maintenance budgets. This wall is actually to the point where it's beyond a maintenance activity. This would be more of a major renovation or restoration at this point. The maintenance activity was to prop up the wall and shore it up the way they did. It can be left that way, but I don't think the actual overall project would benefit from leaving it that way. And it actually might cause more harm than good. OK, thanks. We're having trouble a little bit more this year than we have in the past, because so many proposals have come from the town. And I guess in the past, it always seemed clear that it was either an organization that wasn't the town or it was a building that didn't belong to the town. Now, with a lot of town things, I think we're just finding it's a little fuzzy for us. So that's why I'm asking the question. Yeah. But you could ask that same question to the people coming to you from outside the town. Why didn't you do enough maintenance to preserve it? Or why is it? I'm not casting aspersions on how you've kept the building. I'm just looking at where the source of funds is. That's all. I understand. But that's always, and hadly, I always found it hard to understand how you could say no to a CPA request for historic preservation. Yes, it is maintenance. Or I understand exactly where you're coming from. OK. There is a design process, I guess, underway for the North Amherst Library. Can you tell us how this project would intersect with that larger one? This may be a question about urgency. Well, actually, this actually was brought up by the design process for the addition. The addition is a building which is roughly about the same size as the first floor of the library, a little bigger, with a connection to the existing library, which will provide handicap accessibility. And it will also provide bathrooms, ADA compliant bathrooms. And when we were looking at hooking into the building and how to connect the two pieces together, that's when we started realizing there were some discrepancies in how the, there's just some discrepancies, which is mainly in this picture here you can see is someone cut the main beam to the first floor to put stairs in. They took the back door, which was the access to the basement out and decided to put stairs in from inside. And that's what's caused this little, well, the building shifted a little bit, as well as the walls rolling in. And to correct this, you need to take out the stairs and put this beam back in, which is in the project now. But then the wall is not in the project. So that's why we added the wall as a CPA request, is trying to get that fixed, as well as when we're doing the beam as a project. I have to say, the photo of the beam sliced open for the stairs is pretty startling. When you actually, if you actually go inside the library and you walk through the foyer and you go into the main room and turn and walk along the wall between the wall and the circulation desk, you can actually feel the depression in the floor. It's about an inch to two inches of a depression where the beam where it's dipped down. It's kind of, it is very interesting and strange. OK. That is, please. Can I? It's a very random question, and it's partly ignorance. But I love this building and this part of our town. And I'm always curious about the relationship of the building to the area behind it. And I wondered if anybody has ever talked about moving it. I only asked that, and maybe it's a completely irrelevant question at this point in terms of this project. But of course, if it was possible to move the library, reorientate it or create some kind of different way of getting there and inside and out again and parking and all those things that are quite complicated on that very sort of constrained site. Then obviously, what we're considering right now in terms of the staircase and the wall would be kind of putting our money to something that might be not part of a more larger project. And so forgive me for if I'm asking something that's completely off the wall. It's not off the wall. People did talk about moving the building and turning the building. And it was kind of decided to keep the orientation as it is because it's looking directly down towards what is, although the building is a little low, it is facing directly south down the North Amherst Common area. It kind of heads up that Common. And when we realign the intersection of Sundown Road and Montague Road, there will actually be more of a green space to the west of the library. And there'll be more space behind the library to move the parking and put that and kind of clean it up a little better. And it'll look a little more like it's fits in with the rest of the Common at that point because it won't be surrounded by pavement. It'll be have grass on one side and it'll have pavement on the other side. So it'll look a little more like it was on the Common. So this is the Montague Road or this is the Montague Road site? That's Montague Road site. So what we're seeing as pavement here is going to be green space. And the intersection between Sundown and Montague is going to be further north, is that? Yes, it's basically going to go through the gas station. Sort of creating an island. The library will be on an island. Well, it's kind of on an island now, but when you get to Sundown Road, you're going to link the library's green space with the recreational field on the west side and with the old school. That'll be all linked as three parcels together. OK. Thank you. I'm not really familiar with the larger context of what the plan is for this really nice building. All right. Are there other questions or comments from commissioners? I guess I have a question in terms of how the town shows this particular aspect of the project to apply for CPA funds for. And I guess it's pretty clear that it's building stabilization, so that makes sense. It's the one side that we're not touching. Actually, it's one of three sides. We're not touching with the addition in the back. So that was kind of one of the things that guided us this direction. OK. I think this is Nate. A few years ago, the library, the North Amherst Library had some money to do some work. And one of it was the foundation doing a little bit of work. But afterward, or maybe when that was under, as that was being done, like Gilford said, it became apparent that the problem was it was more than just fixing some bricks, which we thought originally was maybe working on the bricks. It's actually that the structure of the weight of the structure now is causing damage. So you can't just fixing the brick foundation or the foundation doesn't help. You actually have to then put in a new structural support. So I think eventually this has to be dealt with. It's not. I think at Gilford said, I think the timing is now just because it was looked at a few years ago and now it's become more apparent that the problem can't be ignored. And it makes sense to tie it in with a larger project. Yes. When we do the larger project, almost everything in the basement comes out and it opens up the whole basement for work and gives you a chance to do all this without causing a lot of disruption. Right. It just amazes me that somebody would cut that header beam and then put an extra two by four and think that took care of it on either side. I mean, really, it's astonishing. We find lots of that stuff around town in the older buildings. There's some stuff in the DPW barn that you would never expect someone to do. And they did it. And it's like, wow, it's still standing. Well, thanks for the proposal and for coming to talk with us about it. It does help to be able to have some questions answered that we may have thought about before or may only think about tonight when we're talking about it. So is there anything you'd like to add, Guilford? I think the only thing we haven't said is that the estimate is developed by the architects who are doing the project. It's not something we threw together. It was put together by Coon Riddle and their design team and their structural people actually came up with this and have worked very closely with putting it together. So that's where the estimate came from. OK, that's helpful, very helpful. Who would do the work? Would it be town DPW folks or would it be contact? No, no, no, no DPW. It's going to be put with a bigger project for the addition and add it together as one big project and let as one project. OK, well, thanks very much. We will certainly include this in our overall review of proposals to send up to the Community Preservation Act Committee. Thank you very much. Thanks a lot. Thank you. I may stay and listen to the North Common one too, but I'll just sit back and be quiet. Well, yeah. OK, thanks Guilford. OK. Next on our agenda is the Jones Library Special Collections facility. Great. So, yep, we have the project team is here. I'm going to promote Sharon to panelists. And, yep, and Kent looks like. And if there's anyone else from that team, if they can raise their hand just so I can know who to add in here. Oh, perfect. OK. All right. So, as mentioned earlier, we've read the proposal and may have some questions for you but want to first offer you an opportunity to add anything or emphasize anything that you would like to. Sure. Hi, everybody. So I'm Sharon, Sharon Sherry, and the director of the Jones Library. And so I'm actually here just to answer questions if I can, but it's going to be Kent Ferber that's going to give you a little bit of side information. Kent, sorry, you're on mute right now if you could unmute yourself. Is Cindy Harvison on also? Do you see her? Yes, I'm here. Because she should be available for answering the questions also. Thank you very much for your review of our application. I should introduce myself. I've been, I'm not a trustee of the library, but I have been on the Feasibility and Design Committee since 2014, if you can believe it. I've been very much involved and also the co-chair of the Development Committee of the Friends, which has undertaken the lion's share of the fundraising for this project. So I have been the coordinator of this application. The application speaks for itself as you note. It's more lengthy than that. And then you might want to read. But I would just emphasize a couple of things. This is basically the same application that you approved last year for a grant of $1 million recommended. There's a couple of changes and a couple of context changes that I just want to highlight. This is fundamentally, though, for the preservation of one of the most important historic assets of the town, mainly the library's special collections. The description of the special collection is an exhibit A, which you probably read that indicates, describes not only their international importance, but their value to us as the town exists today. It's a marker of the town's past as a guide to its future. And it's used all the time for that purpose. And one additional change to this revised proposal is that it's the evolution of the schematics of this larger grant, of which this is a part, have now put most of the special collections facility in the original 1928 building. So this is an adaptation, a rehabilitation of that building as an additional historic preservation goal. The second new feature of this revised application is that we now have very specific and detailed estimates for the cost of just this facility alone. What you have attached to the application applies only to this facility, no other part of the larger project. And the amount estimated is substantially larger than the $1 million recommendation you made last year. Two new items of context give this project an urgency it might not have had before. Number one, you probably read in the paper and we outlined in the application the damage to some of the collection from the HVA system, which can't be repaired. The trustees, as a result, have now advanced. They're trying to advance the larger project to the town council, asking them formally for a decision on this by next April, because the trustees are now feeling quite urgency, urgently, the need to do something with this facility. If they can't pursue the larger project, they've got to be on to whatever it is they can do. But even if the town council doesn't take up the project by April, next June or July, the Mass Board of Library Commissioners is going to offer the Jones Library its award of $13.8 million, and the trustees will be required to make a decision within six months after that. So at the very latest, the decision has to be made by the end of 2021. And that, again, your recommendation and the CPA's recommendation will play a very major role in that larger project. And I should just finally remind you that remind all of us that this historic preservation project is part of this larger expansion project. And as part of that, it's an unusual opportunity to achieve a much larger historic preservation objective with the help of lots of other funding sources, the MDLC, private donors, other grantors. So basically, this CPA grant is going to achieve a historic preservation goal that it could not achieve on its own. And for those reasons, we think this is really a good idea and should be recommended by the CPA committee and by you. So we're all happy to answer any questions. And thank you very much for the opportunity to present this. Can I ask how the special collection is being protected now after the Fiasco with the HVAC system? Cindy should answer that. We've covered the stacks in tarps so that they are protected from the water. This is an unfortunate measure that we have to do. It's really hard to access the stacks under the tarps. But they are protected from the leak. So that's what we're doing. But they're not temperature controlled anymore, apparently. They are still in the, they have as much temperature control as they did before, which was sort of variable because it's an open space without a door. But it's still, the problem with the leaking can't be fixed, but the system itself is still limping along. And that, of course, doesn't include all the collections that are in other parts of the building that aren't secure or temperature climate control. Correct. So my other part of my question, I guess, is if we move forward with the renovations and I'm not sure what we're calling it to the library, the reconstruction, the renovations, is there a space? I just heard that it's still going to be in the original building. But has that been, has the idea of preserving the special collection been considered in the new construction? I'm not clear what your question is. Yes, the, I think the, one of the exhibits is the proposed schematics floor plan for on the ground floor of the newly renovated expanded building, and that includes a large enough space for special collections that secure climate control plus reading room, plus exhibit space that's much larger than what we have now and will allow, in fact, an expansion of special collections going into the future. In the new space, not in the, I'm hearing two different things. I'm hearing that it's going to be in the original building and it's going to be in the new space. Most, maybe the thing to do is, can you call up the exhibit? What is that? C, D, I think it is. Here we go. Yeah, I was going to ask, are there visuals in this? Here we go. Keep going, B. Keep going, B, that's cool. This is what we presently have on the ground floor, exhibit C. And then exhibit D is what is proposed at the moment. And so the CPA committee asked us to make this clear. The left is north and the entrance of the library is on the left side. The yellow space identified is all of the newly successive special collection space. Sorry. Yeah, you're okay, good for you. Okay, so reading it upright, reading upright, the very bottom of the yellow is special collection storage. Going up is more special collection storage. Then going above that is a workroom. And going above that is the reading room with a couple of offices for staff. And then over to the left side across the hall is a yellow denoted special collections exhibit area. Does that answer your question? And this is in the original building or in the new space? That's in the new space. It's not new, it's the new, it's the sexer addition. We're gonna take down the addition that's there now and create another addition there. And it would also be added onto the back of the original building. The original building is the L-shaped. Let's see, there are large lines. Yeah, it's good for you. Thank you very much. That's the original building. It goes all the way back up to that hall, that blue hall. There you go, now you go across. That's good. That's all the original building. So all of the special collections space, except for the exhibit area, will be in the original building in this particular iteration of the schematics. We don't expect this to change very much. When asked about this, the chairman of the Board of Trustees told the CPA committee the chances of this being moved somewhere else is equivalent to the chances of Joe Biden not winning Massachusetts. Could happen, but very unlikely at this point. Just to clarify too, they're calling this the ground level, but this is where the lower level is now. So the auditorium in blue with all the seats, that's where the Woodbury room is located now. So it's on that same level. And so this is where the stacks are. Yes, that's where the nonfiction stacks are now. If you go the previous exhibit E, shows the present configuration, there you go. So the purple areas are the adult nonfiction. The blue in the upper left corner is the Woodbury room. And basically what's in the tan is gonna be repurposed for special collections. And then ESL in the back. So if, forgive me, I just need to have some clarity for myself, if this is the plan for reconstruction of the library, how would the CPA funds be used specifically to protect the special collection? If this is all being reconstructed and reorganized to house the special collection. This will be reorganized to house the special collections only if the town council approves it. And part of the consideration of the town council approving it is where's the funding that it comes from? I've outlined that in some detail in the application, but let's rehearse it. We have a grant of 13.8 million from the MDLC if the town will come up with the other 22 million. And whether the town will come up with the 22 million depends upon, we've been saying from the beginning that we think we can raise 6 million of that 22 million. So the town bond funding would have to be only in the amount only in the amount of 16 million. If we can't raise that 6 million, the chances of the town approving an entire 22 million in bond funding is considerably less likely, considerably less likely. So the presence of that 6 million in funding from other sources is exceedingly important. It's likely to be a make or break factor in this larger project. Going down one more level, the possibility of our raising that 6 million dollars depends heavily upon our ability to obtain a major grant from the CPA committee. So that's where that fits in in terms of the contributions other than the town bonding. Yes, we need to clarify with the town whether the CPA grant reduces the town bond funding from 16 to 15 million or helps us raise that 6 million dollars in other funding. And where I would assume the town is concerned that if it lowered the town's bond funding, that wouldn't respond very favorably to the question that was asked at the last project. Why isn't the town doing this? CPA money is not intended to reduce the operating budgets of towns. It's to, the intent of the CPA funding is to make possible quality of life projects that wouldn't otherwise happen. And that's where this CPA funding is very likely to make this happen or not. Is that, should I go back over that again? That's a complicated. No, no, no, no. So we've got the space as part of the plan if this gets approved. We're gonna move the special collection to this new space no matter what, if it gets built. And I guess I'm having a difficult time wrapping my head around, you're requesting it for the special collections to preserve and protect, but I'm having a difficulty wrapping my head around how that actually fits into what is a plan here. Can I jump in? Sure. So I'm not sure if this is the direction that you're going at, but on, I don't know what page it is in the proposal. There's the overall summary budget, which is what we asked, the CPA asked for last time finally to have the proposal resubmitted with a line item budget that related specifically to special collections. So that's all, my understanding is that's all been been into a budget that is specific for this project only. So when it references fire protection, it is fire protection for special collections. It's not a portion of fire protection for the whole library. It's just separating out the space and the content of the space. Right. And it's, let me just see if I can figure it out. I think it's page 29 of the proposal. Okay. So you can see that budget. And I actually, while we're there, I had a couple of questions just in terms of definitions of what's on there. One of them was what finishes and equipment and furnishings refer to specifically. I think that's, is this what you were referring to, Robin? Yeah. 23,000. And I'll have, well, that summary is a summary of the later detail, the pages in, the detail in later pages. So if you go down to page, let's see, what that would be of that. Oh, here you go. Yeah, equipment is here. Yes. Yes. And now I can't tell you exactly what commercial equipment is. I'd be happy to get an answer to that. You know, you can guess that it's part of the HVA system. I don't know. I would have to get you an answer to that. Okay. All right. I mean, I think, I'm just, I'm guessing that the CPA committee will want to know. Well, I didn't, the CPA committee did ask what the exterior closure was. Right. And I consulted the architects and that is that one wall of the, if you go back to the drawing, the right side wall of the special collections is the exterior wall of the building. That has to be done. That's part of the enclosure of the special collections area. And the detail, so you'd have to go here. Okay. There's exterior closure, B20. And if you go to the next, I think it's four pages later, there is a description of what that consists of. But basically it's creating the exterior. One wall of the special collections area is the exterior wall of the building. There you go. Thank you. You know, last year when this was brought up, sorry, this is Nate. There was some discussion about, because this is on the ground floor, is there ample security, whether it's on doors or windows, to protect the collections? And I just want to make sure that that's addressed. So you have different, a fire suppression and other systems in place. And is there, whether it's safe for windows or an alarm system, can doors be propped open and just left open? So I just make sure that that's covered. Yes, we can definitely confirm that, but I feel certain that the architects address that and we'll confirm. Good. I'd like to ask two questions of clarification. One is in the footprint of the plot of the building. Just to make sure we understand whether new space, new construction, is taking place within the 1928 footprint, or whether it is something different, because I'm hearing a little bit of, maybe a kind of overlapping of terms there. If we look at the original footprint of the building. Sorry, if I'm making you dizzy, here we go. Yeah. Yeah. It's hard on you. The heart, the thick lines. What I'm understanding is that the thick lines show the main block of the original structure, and then to the right or to the east, that is still within the footprint of the original structure, but it is now being rehabilitated for special collections, is that correct? Yes. I don't know how else to answer it, because if you go down to the next exhibit D, okay, I think you can see the same thick lines. Yeah. Yeah. And go up two exhibits, you can see the original footprint. Yes. And it's the same, well, it's turned. It's the same shape. Okay. Yeah. All right. So I wanted to sort of get the 1928 building and the terminology about new space kind of straightened out. So thank you. And then second has to do with kind of segregating this portion of a larger plant. So segregating the preservation of special collections through rehabilitation of structure, protective systems, and furnishings and fittings. So that is about 1.8 million, that part of it. And so asking for a million from CPA, the 0.8, the 780,000 would be coming from other sources, coming from fundraising or grant or, it is necessarily some other source of funding is necessary for this proposal. Yes. That's what makes, in our view, this proposal particularly efficient, is that we're gonna be able to accomplish a historic preservation goal for a CPA grant that's a lot less than the total cost. And maybe one last... Could I just also point out that we sort of, in our effort to detach this project from the larger project, we've completely ignored the fact that you couldn't achieve this facility for special collections as a standalone building for the million seven. That is, in addition to the cost of these walls, you're gonna get a roof and a front door and a walkway and everything else that's gonna be paid for as the cost of the rest of the building. In other words, making this part of the larger project achieves some additional efficiencies in addition to the funding that you did of sharing that you just talked about. And then I think maybe I have just two more questions. One is town bar, I mean, the town portion, the non, let's, how shall we put this? The non library commissioner grant for this is about 21, 22 million. And are you not? Why are you not asking the town for the 21, 22 million? Because we think the town is already stretched to consider 16 million. That is, it's just, this is an attempt to give this town a fantastic resource. And it's, you get what you pay for. And for the town to try to come up with all that money on its own, we just didn't think was politically feasible. Okay, and then finally a sort of technical about the fire suppression system is, so I see that the estimate envisions a missed system, but at that cost that must be without the central plant for the missed system. Is the rest of the library going to be on a missed system? I don't think so. This is a, I have pressed both the architects and the, well, the architects who arranged for this estimate to make sure that this was the cost of this. And I have been reassured that this is the complete cost and this will be a separate system from the rest of the library. Okay. I think the part of the explanation is that installing this with new construction, you know, when you get, and the whole building is gutted is just a lot more economical than trying to retrofit an older building. And that's the, as far as I've been able to determine that's much of an explanation of why this is so economical. Thank you. Hey, are there other questions from commissioners at this point? Are there any final comments that Kent, Hugh or Sharon or Cindy would like to make? I think where I think this is the application speaks for itself. And there's a lot there. But we appreciate your help with this. Thank you. Okay. Well, thanks a lot for the proposal and for coming to speak with us tonight. It's certainly very helpful to hear, to be able to figure out the tails as we sit together. So thank you. So we'd be happy to answer any other questions that come up to shoot us an email. All right. Thank you. Thank you all. Great. Thank you. Thank you. All right. The third proposal for us tonight is the North Common and Main Street parking lot. Great. So I'm going to add in Chris and Dave who are here. Let's see if I'm out to panelist. Hi, Chris. Good evening. How was everybody? Yes. Hello. Thanks. Is Dave there too? Dave is here. So I, I did put together a little presentation just because I thought some people on the commission were not part of the original group that in the other, in the other years when we came to the commission to ask for support for getting funding from CPA. So I just, I'll run through it quickly. If you don't mind, because I think it's sort of a logical presentation. So I wanted to report on the progress and also to request that you support our request to CPA for $250,000 to help with the construction of the North Common project. We've been working on this project since about 2013. We've held three public forums. We had a working group made up of citizens and staff and some of the people here tonight were actually part of that working group, Jane Wald and Jen Markwart. And we had members of the LSSE commission as well. Dave and I were part of that group. I wanted to show you a few pictures of the current situation here and also talk about why we're doing this. Current conditions of the Common are pretty bad. There hasn't been a lot of attention paid to it in the years, well, since the 60s. If you'd go back to the previous slide, then I can show everybody exactly where we're talking. One hall is here, the Main Street parking lot. The green area in the middle is the North Common. The area to the right where all the tents are is the Spring Street parking lot where the farmers market occurs. So if that just gives you a little context. So onto the next slide. Another, that's a picture of the existing conditions in the winter. And next slide is really just, what are we doing here? It's a historic site. It includes the historic WCTU Women's Christian Temperance Union fountain. A cute little dog fountain off to its side. The existing conditions are that it has very poor drainage and really no turf. We add mulch to it periodically to make it, so it's not just a sea of mud. It lacks accessibility. It only has one path that goes right through, kind of diagonally through it. It's very limited as to seating and lighting and gathering spaces, but it is an important place for the town center. And we would like to make it more of a central gathering space and a really nice space for the town. It also has a number of really beautiful old public shade trees. So if you have the next slide. It's as old as Amherst. It's part of the right of way. It's not a piece of property. The town council has jurisdiction over the town common because it is part of the right of way. Many boards and committees are involved in its maintenance and planning. It is part of an original historic common and it's not a park. It's been used for civic events and communal uses and gatherings over the years. And it's been continually redesigned over the years to accommodate changing public needs. So next slide. This is a picture of a map from 1740 that shows two major rights of way that ran through the town. One is the North Pleasant, South Pleasant complex, really on the left. And the other one is the North East Street, Southeast Street complex. So these green dots represent some of the commons in town. The one on the left is the town common that we're talking about now. To the right of that is the East Village Common. And then below that is the South Amherst Common at where the church is and the Munson Library. So onto the next slide. This is another historic map of the town and you can see the town common as this long rectangular piece here. The northern part of it, the northern part above that ellipse is the North Common that we're talking about now. The very southern part of it below the ellipse all the way down at the bottom of this rectangle is actually still part of the town common but Amherst College maintains it. So it actually looks like Amherst College property, which is kind of an interesting thing. Next slide. Here's a picture of the town common from sometime in the 1800s. I'm not sure how they got up so high at that time but it shows that it was basically a green space surrounded by trees and it has a fence around it. And I don't know if they were grazing animals there at that time, but you can see there are a few kind of circular or serpentine paths. This is a picture of the Frederick Law Olmsted design for the town common. It's a very curvilinear design and it does show a bandstand on the east side, which we'll be talking about in the future when we talk about the bandstand. But the red square here is the portion of the common that we're actually talking about now. And you can see the yellow rectangle there is where town hall is. Okay, the next slide. So these are pictures of the town common from, this is probably from the 30s or 40s. It's one of those colored postcards. Next slide. This one is one of the beautiful elm trees that used to line the common and the grace church is off to the left there. And the next slide. Next slide is what happened in the 50s, 50s and 60s, I guess, where we started to eat into the common to create parking. But you can see there was still an old elm tree there. So it has been changing over the years. What does the next slide show? I think we have some pictures of some of the conditions. Oh, this is a design that the Conway School did back in the 80s. And really all they were doing was adding one new path and adding some trees and trying to rejuvenate the lawn area around there. So next slide. So this gives you an impression of what happens to the common when it rains. It really doesn't have anything to hold the soil in place and the roots become exposed and the soil becomes compacted and there's poor drainage. So those are some of the problems that we're trying to solve. Next slide. This shows the scope of the common from, the North Common from Northeast to Southeast. There's about a 16 foot grade change there. So it is, it's challenging for people who are trying to get around there who may not be as mobile as some of the others of us. But it does show the location of the shade trees. Next slide. And this shows some of the pathways both through the common and surrounding the common that we'd like to improve. You can see that the pavement has deteriorated and there are a lot of bumps and cracks and we'd like to fix those. So people, you know, able-bodied people and handicapped people will be able to enjoy the common. Next slide. I don't think there are too many more, just more pictures of. Like when it rains, and I think that's probably it. Is there one more thing, one more slide to show? Yeah, just the tree boxes here. Well, those were put in in the 60s and they've seen better days and it's time. So just to, oh, and this is pictures of what it is today. There's the WCTU fountain there and a picture of newly rehabilitated paving along the Spring Street parking lot. So I just wanted to tell you that in 2016 and 2018, DPW worked with us to develop a concept plan and we applied twice for CPAC funding and we did receive funding in both of those fiscal years to the amount of $550,000. And we started working on a plan for the North Common, hiring Western and Samson, landscape architects from Boston. And while we were working on the concept plan with them, we were made aware, maybe we already knew this, but we put two and two together and said to ourselves, well, the Main Street parking lot is also being worked on at the same time. So why don't we try to put the two projects together and see how we can make it even a better place? So we went to town meeting in 2018 and received approval to borrow up to $450,000, $400,000 of which was earmarked for the Main Street parking lot. So now we had $950,000, which seems like a lot of money, but that wasn't quite enough. So we moved along in the design process and while we were working with the public and members of the historical commission and members of the leisure services group, we decided that it was really, that we really needed to take advantage of the area in front of town hall and try to make it more welcoming and more useful, not only as a parking lot, but also as a gathering space and potentially as a performance space, our speeches or farmers market, all kinds of things could go on there if we made it a little more welcoming and not just a sea of asphalt. So Western and Sampson came up with their preferred plan and could you show that, Ben? I think it's part of the presentation that we made too. Yep, this is the one. This is the preferred plan. This is the plan that we came up with Western and Sampson and it shows some of the parking being taken away. The rest of the parking becomes a plaza area that is paved with concrete pavers that could be used as a plaza or it could be used as a parking space, but it kind of gives a grander entrance to town hall. The whole entrance into town hall, including the area down at the bottom of the stairs is all renovated and made nicer. There's also in the northwest corner of the North Common would be a more gracious entry into the Common where you would have a place where people could stand or people could sit along those steps that you see coming down there and then they could enter into the North Common along this elegant curved pathway. And in the middle is a seating gathering space that could have chairs and tables. It could also be used for playing games. It could be another kind of space where people have, say poetry readings or book readings or things like that. And then the pathway continues on down to the Southeast corner. So you can really walk through the Common in both directions now, given this plan, not just one direction. We also made improvements to Boltwood Avenue, making it one way and still providing parking, but improving the sidewalk there and also improving the sidewalk on the opposite side, which is along South Pleasant Street. So this picture that you're looking at here, the cost estimate came up to 1.9 million. And so that was a kind of a surprise. And we, but we'd still like to make this project happen because it's such a great project. And it could be construed as part of a greater effort to make the downtown really lovely. And that would be along with the new playground at Kendrick Park, a possible parking garage, a band shell for the Southern part of the Common and improvements to the downtown sidewalks and crosswalks and streetscapes. So as I said, the cost estimate for this lovely plan is 1.9 million. We would need an additional approximately $1 million to build this project. Our currency pack includes about 500,000. Our currency pack request includes 500,000, 250,000 from the historical preservation funds and 250,000 from recreation funds. Let's see, is there anything I left out? Yes, Guilford has been helpful recently in looking at the Western and Samson plan and trying to figure out is there a way of making it less expensive? Is there a way of making it managing to save more of the trees? So he had his staff put together an alternative plan. And I think Ben has it here in his pack. There it is, yes. So one of Guilford's staff members worked up this plan, which has a lot of the same features that has the entryway from, it's kind of flipped around. I don't know if you can rotate it. Yeah, I can rotate it. So it's the same orientation here. Yeah, so that's better. So you can see the entry from the Northwest is still that graceful entry. The pathways across the site are, there's still one going from Northwest to Southeast. There's still one coming from the direction of town hall going over towards Hastings. There's a nice gathering space in the middle of the park, of the common. And then the parking lot, it's drawn as if it were asphalt, but we're hoping that we could pave it with really nice concrete pavers and make it part of a grand entry to town hall. This plan here, Guilford's people managed to save most of the trees. So we're very happy about that. And so I just wanted to show you this. So we're hoping that you will support our request to CPAC for $250,000 in historical preservation funding so that we can build this lovely design and make it really a part of a beautiful jewel in the downtown. So do you have any questions? Why don't you go back to the other plan? It's a little more illustrative. Wait a minute for a second. How much does the DPW plan shave off the Weston and Samson estimate? You'd have to ask Guilford about that. Is he still here? He is, yeah. Guilford is here. Now he wishes he hadn't stayed. I wish he hadn't stayed. I doubt that it's just a lie-off. It sort of depends on whether we pave the parking lot with the really nice pavers or not, but Guilford could probably give a better answer. We're still in the conceptual phase here. And every time we turn around, we keep running into an ADA conflict and ending up having to put a wall and some handrails, an interesting twist to get around it. We're not exactly sure how much we're gonna shave off that number. We're hoping to get at least down to the one and a half or below that number is really where we're open to get to. Do you have any concerns that the estimates we're looking at tonight are from January 2019? Actually, I'm confident. We've bid several projects in the recent, well, actually, we've been several projects recently and they've actually all come in a couple $100,000 below the estimate. So now it's a good time to bid projects if you're not doing any pipe work. I mean, a lot of water pipes are going up and sewer pipe is going up, but it seems like just regular horizontal construction with asphalt and concrete and pavers, that type of stuff is staying a little more competitive because people are looking for work. We are hoping to apply for a park grant next summer wherein we could get as much as $400,000 and we're also intending to do some private fundraising. So hopefully we will get up to the amount that we need to build this project. You see Dave Zomek's hand, Dave? Sure, good evening, everybody. Yeah, I just wanted to add a few comments and many members of our team are kind of assembled here. It just so happens. So by all means, if there's additional questions, but I guess I just wanted to put a finer point on a couple of things that Chris said. I guess starting by saying, I hope we all recognize many of us have been working to try to improve the North Common for probably more than 10 years, maybe going on 12 to 15. It's a sad and embarrassing space for the very central core of our downtown. Some of those pictures really illustrate what poor condition it's in. As Guilford said from an engineering standpoint, it's a very challenging space with a grade change of 12 to 15 feet from corner to corner. I think we've all probably been out there. If you've walked it at night, it is uneven. It is difficult for seniors, people with disabilities. There are many routes. We need to protect the trees. We need to enhance the space. But we also at the same time, I think throughout the entire process that many members of the Historical Commission participated in, we wanna respect the history of this space. And I think this plan, we're looking now at the plan that DPW has come up with in recent weeks and over the last four to six weeks. But we wanna respect the history of the space as well. But at the same time, I think we wanna activate that space. It is the central core of our downtown. When people come to downtown, whether they're visiting a college, a museum, the historic buildings in town or going to one of our shops or restaurants, this is the space that often they have to walk by or through. And I for one, I'm not terribly proud of how that space looks. And so I think the overall goal of the project was to improve that space. During the COVID period or COVID summer, it was interesting and staff have talked about, we put five or six picnic tables out on the North Common. And it was fascinating to watch a slack like putting five or six picnic tables out on the Common. How many more people use the North Common for eating, dining, talking, socializing, et cetera? Granted, we're all trying to social distance, but that small act of adding seating where people, families, friends could safely gather really made a big difference. So I think we're looking to improve the drainage, make it. And all of this I should add on the drainage side, this links to a project that the town is working on with regard to the Fearing Brook. All of the North Common and the main part of the Common drain into the Fearing Brook, the town is working on a project to improve the water quality in the Fearing Brook. So it starts really here with all the runoff that comes across the North Common. But we're dealing with runoff, ADA issues, lighting, parking, gathering spaces. We wanna make this a place where people wanna be, wanna eat, socialize, sit down, work on their computers, have potential small theater presentations. We also talked about art on the North Common and the potential for small sculptures to supplement the design and build on the design. So that's all I wanted to add. I know that the bid and chamber support us and feel very strongly that they would love to see us come out of COVID and really have a plan for the North Common that the town can get behind. So I think that's one of our final themes is we wanna help our downtown because it is gonna be a struggle coming out of COVID. And as we perhaps engage on this project, if we can pull all the funding together, what a wonderful place that would be in a couple of years. Thanks. Thank you. I wonder if someone just as a kind of reminder about, I think it was 2016 and 2018, what historic preservation, CPA historic preservation funds were allocated for. I do have that information. Yes, I just have to find it. So in 2016, there was $180,000 of historical preservation funds. And in 2018, there was another $180,000. So $360,000 altogether and $190,000 for recreation for both of those years. To 2016, it was 114,000 for recreation. And in 2018, it was 76,000 for recreation. Okay, thank you. Questions, commissioners? I have a question. I'm just trying to figure out how, and this comes out of the experience with the Jones Library last year and figuring out how projects fit within the terms of the CPA. So the Jones Library has proposal has now made pretty clear detailed line item budget about what things are particularly historic. Their objective is to preserve special collections. This seems to be followed more under rehabilitation of the historic resource. And I'm just curious how, I don't even know if this is a question for the proposer, but maybe with the commissioners with more history. How do you define of the $250,000? What is going towards the historic preservation aspect of the project? Sure, I mean, this is Nate, I can answer that. So right, so the National Park Service, the standards for rehabilitation are different than preservation. So we're not proposing to recreate an Olmsted plan here. We're trying to rehabilitate it with care in terms of how it's designed. So for instance, we're not, we're careful about vertical structures. And so there's standards that are being followed here to modernize it and make it usable, but still be a part of the historic common. So that's what rehabilitation, that's how that works. So also as a contributing landscape in the National Register District, this would be reviewed by Mass Historic as well as the Historical Commission. So as this move forward, there'll be something that would be reviewed in terms of its overall design and materiality. So I think even the pathways though, the parking, all of that is somewhat reminiscent of the previous plans that Chris showed. So there's still, we're not saying we're changing this altogether, but there's still elements from previous plans that are echoed in this current plan. Okay, yeah. I mean, I'm looking at the rehabilitation and restoration definition and it does say make assets functional for intended use. So I guess that's the part of the rubric that it goes under, that you're taking a historical resource, which is defined, like you said, that the Mass Historic Commission is gonna provide that confirmation, not that that's in doubt. And then you just have this more, I mean, it's a very broad statement to make assets functional for intended use. But I get, I just wanted to see where it fits. So thank you, that was very clarifying. And the fountain on the plan too is also gonna have a small little sitting area around it. There can be some more interpretation. So I talked about, could there be, whether it's signs or other things installed on the common that could be used for interpretation, at least one at the fountain and possibly in another location. So calling attention that this is still a common. I mean, it's not a property, it's part of the road right of way. And it has been ever since the founding of Amherst. So it's pretty unique that it's maintained that character. Yeah. And I always felt when we were on the planning committee talking about this, that it's not just about the design of the common itself for its own use, but it serves to enhance the entire downtown area. If it's designed right, it enhances all the historic buildings that surround it and creates an ongoing aesthetically pleasing view of the center of town. I guess it's kind of how I thought of it too. Sometimes, well, for large town projects, a question will come up about how the town has thought about capital planning and budgeting for projects that take some years to come to fruition and this one has been maybe has been thought about and work has been done on this for some years now. Is it, has it at any time been considered a candidate for capital funding other than the bond authorization? I'm not aware in my time in town hall that it has been. Should it be? Jane, I think it's a great question. Certainly during my time in Guilford's time in Chris, we're all kind of in that same boat of having been with the town for a similar number of years. I think it has come up from time to time, but honestly, the number of capital demands for buildings, for vehicles, fire engines, fire station, police station, town hall, roofs, this never really made it near the top of anyone's list. It's challenging, I think, because we have so many needs that involve vertical structures, buildings, and then, of course, vehicles for police fire and all town services. Certainly been discussed, but never at the great length, I think. All right, other questions? Is the maple tree a part of this plan, the famous maple that's lit up? I think that maple is not part of this plan. My understanding is it's a Norway maple and it's an invasive species and it's not in great condition, but Guilford could probably enlighten us more about that. In this plan, there's actually three trees that come down and one of them is the Mary maple. When I've only been in town three years and that tree is pretty significant. Not the first Mary maple, though. There have been a number of them. It's kind of like Lassie. It gets replaced regularly. My understanding from snow was that the Christmas lights are kind of holding it together at this point. Okay. I always think of it as just one in a long line. I remember the Mary maple being closer to town hall. I mean, there was a maple that was closer to town hall but it was the Mary maple at that time. The historic photograph that you showed, Christine had the suggestion of a sort of allay of elms in front of town hall. It was a really amazing photograph. Kind of exactly where the parking is. Right? Yeah, I don't know if Ben can bring that back again. Yeah, I can try to find that. Yeah, there's in this slideshow, right? Yeah. There it is. That's heading south. There you go. That's it, yeah. It's a double allay of elms. So elms aren't something that we would plant these days because they don't do well here. And it looks like a lot of this land is taken up with trees, doesn't it? So one of the things we want to do is make the town common useful for people. And I think there was an earlier photograph of the town common surrounded by trees but the center of it was really open. So over the years, you know, trees have come and gone. The gray, not this photograph, but previous to that. The aerial view, Ben, the aerial view where somebody was in a blue, yeah, that one. So this one is showing that much of it was open grassy area surrounded by rows of trees or lined by rows of trees on either long side. So it has, you know, ebbed and flowed with trees over the years in terms of them filling up the space or just lining the open space. What year was this, did you say? I think this is sometime in the 1800s but I'm not really sure exactly when. So it must have been a hot air balloon. I think it might've been before Town Hall was built. I see Grace Church there, which was built in 1868 but do I see Town Hall? Is that Town Hall behind it? I'm not sure. No, Town Hall was, the Alma Block burned down in the 1880s. So no, this is sometime between 1868 and 1890. Well, it's not like we're bound by some window of significance architecturally or historically, are we? I mean, we could be, right, everybody's saying no. Okay. Well, you're going to like having a certain planting plan or what are you just? I mean, I'm just, yeah, I mean, I'm so new to this area that it's just great seeing all these pictures and I think people will be interested to hear about how this project has evolved and why and even if it isn't available in a huge description of the project on the common itself, if there's a place where it can be explained, I think that would be really nice. Just knowing what's been there before digging down where you are in terms of placemaking, I think is going to be really important to people going forward and I love knowing about the right of way, the fact that as you said, Nate, that that's always been there in town before I get on my high horse and say, goodness me, why have we got parking and cars in front of Town Hall? I mean, just knowing about the specificity of this place is really helpful. Yeah, I mean, I think in this image, if you look at the northern end, I mean, the part of the northern part of the town we're talking about is crisscross with paths and it's kind of the more urban area of the common. The greatest area of that crisscrossed area way up there in front of that building, which has since gone away, right? Yep. In between those trees on the bottom left, it looks like they're sheep or animals of some kind crazy. Yeah, it's fenced in too. It does look like that. There's a serpentine fence. We're not proposing that as part of this project. Oh, wouldn't it be nice though? Bring your sheep to the common and let them graze. Just think of all the mowing cost we'd save. All right, well, thank you, Chris, Dave, Gilford, thank you for bringing this, especially this really evocative slideshow to us. Thank you for listening to us. We hope you support this project. Got it, thank you. Thanks, Chris. Thank you. All right. All right, so let's see. Now we have discussion and evaluation of CPA proposals and I have two just two questions about, one is about the CPA CPAC, the committee's timeline, which may mean we need to finish up our work tonight. And the other is about the email that went out about a kind of review matrix. So what is this just to make sure we know what the CPA timeline is? Is that, Robin, do you, can you answer? Yeah, I was trying to look it up here. I have it back already. It's funny, it's not, oh, here it may be packed. Yeah, the website does not, you know, have a nice, you know, information is kind of buried on it. So it's hard to... Let's see. There was a draft. I found it. So in September, they let out the schedule where they would meet, you know, through October and review proposals and have presentations. And then, you know, by November 19th, you know, so by then November, they would vote on their recommendations. Yeah, so the 12th is supposed to be the public hearing and then the 19th, the vote. Okay. We need to get our recommendations to them before the 12th. Is that the timeline for us? Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Best, yeah. Okay, so that means we need to do a good bit of work in the next half hour or so. Hold on. Yes, did anybody prepare a list of each thing and the cost for us? What are we looking at here for total numbers? I just put it up on my Google spreadsheet. It's like there's a million dollars and a million $27,000 in requests from the historical end of things or everybody. That's the historical end of things. Okay. How can that be if the library is asking for a million? The library is actually a holdover from last year. Okay, so that's not part of the... That's not part of this year's total, yeah. Wouldn't it have to be though, Robin? I mean, that was never voted on. Oh, that's true. Yeah. Yeah. So it's a holdover, but it's not real money to them. Right, but it's bonded. If it's bonded, then it goes forward and then it doesn't even hit, correct me if I'm wrong, Nate, but it doesn't even hit this year's numbers. Like let's say we bonded a million dollars over 10 years. It would be the FY23 budget that would see the first debt service payment. Right, correct. Okay, so you couldn't approve that now and know that it was coming out of FY23 to... I don't even want to say what FY, what FY32. Right, it would be factored into debt service. Right. And how much is available for historic preservation? Good question. There, I had 111,000 is the 10% requirement. And then there was a reserve from last year that I don't have the number of, but didn't get in time for the meeting. I can't remember how much that was. And then finally, do we know how much in all CPA funds is available for this year that is not, does not need to be spent on debt service or anything like that? I never have that number, correct? They were, so I pulled up an earlier budget from September, Robin. So they were saying it'd be like 1.13 million. 4 after debt service? That is after debt service. So it's 1.53 total. And then there's almost 400,000 in debt service bringing it down to 1.1. Okay, so that's 1.1 available for all categories. Yeah, that makes sense because it's when the estimate was of 10% was $111,000 per the fifth three category. Okay, yeah. Okay. Okay, so I've opened the webpage that you all linked us to for historic preservation with the list of the six projects. But I don't see anywhere a list just like that with the numbers. So can you tell us for each one what exactly the numbers are so that I can just make a list of like, what's the good win? What's the Mill River Trail? What's North Ambrose Slavery well-prepared? The total amount they're asking us for in one place. Do you want me to go, I just pulled that together. Do you want me to just state that, Nate? I mean, you can just show your screen or... Yeah, can you share your screen? To email it to Ben or I, we can display it. Yes. I don't have it on the machine that I'm broadcasting. But hold on. I thought I had it, but I can't. Yeah. This usually comes in our agenda for the meeting where we make the decision. Just so you know, Ben, for next year, we usually have that in front of us. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. So, you know, in any event, we're over, I mean, just this historic preservation projects are over budget. By a lot. Can I just, just before we even go down that road, the slate roofs and the steps were two projects that all the funds for the projects were being requested from historic preservation. Is that correct? And when we sort of asked for a budget that teased things apart a little bit and maybe shifted the nature of the ass, we don't have that as far as I know. Yeah, I don't think we're ever, you know, how to revise budget. I think, you know, during the discussion, there was some question of, you know, could, you know, prioritize the roofs and maybe, you know, eliminate the self steps on the town hall just to, you know, are there ways to, you know, either prioritize the budget or change, you know, reduce it. Yeah, like the 210 instead of 265, I think is where we kind of got to on that, taking off the self steps in the design of the site. So. Yeah, I mean, I think for the commission, so I don't know if people receive Robin's email, you know, the commission, you know, typically the commission assumes all products are eligible. There were some questions about the previous proposal. So there could be a discussion, you know, are some of these proposals this year, are they meeting the eligibility criteria for CPA? And then, you know, the question becomes, does the commission want to prioritize these in a rank order, you know, however it falls within, you know, preservation, the preservation plan or master plan or is there kind of a more general sense about the importance of these and you know, have general recommendation. So in years past, it's been a combination of both. It's been, you know, a pretty, you know, a rank order or it's been more of a summary statement and general recommendation. So I think that's something to discuss how, you know, how you want to structure this year. Yeah, I mean, there's, there would also be the question of recommending something, but like we did with the Jones, but not recommending it at the level that they asked for, right? So you could be ranked number one, but not get a recommendation of all the funding that you requested. Yeah, we usually do that. Can you take Robin's email and share the screen? Yeah, I'm doing that right now. Yeah, I mean, I, yeah, it is interesting with, you know, between the other categories, I mean, you know, there's a few recreation proposals and there's a few housing proposals and, you know, some of the housing proposals, just two housing proposals are, you know, the full budget of the CPA. So I think, you know, there's, I think there's probably two to three times the amount requested as is available. And so, you know, my thought is whether or not the CPA committee recommends it for bonding, I think that's a really, you know, kind of a difficult decision for the council to bond so much in so many projects. So, you know, to, you know, so my thought is that either projects are gonna be reshaped or reduced or some may not be, you know, receive any funding just because it's, there's just so many requests. So if you all have received Robin's email and Robin, you can speak to this. Actually, this is the matrix Robin that you had sent. So if we go up, go up some to the steps suggesting and first of all, identifying the historic resource and then identifying the verb. Make sure that everything we're looking at kind of fits. Is that, do we see that? Yeah, it's right there. You're on it. Yeah. Okay, cool. Yeah. And we wanna go proposal by proposal from the bottom up, get some momentum going with these smaller proposals. Yeah. Well, no, I guess. It's a great engine moving, huh? Yeah. Yeah, I think, yeah, I mean, I think, you know, like I said at the discussion, there were some questions about, you know, for instance, the community archeology, you know, how is that an eligible CPA expense? So, you know, whether or not it is historic, you know, historic in nature, is it eligible for CPA funding? And then there's- Yes, that's the no river walk. Right. So do we wanna go one by one? Yeah, maybe that's better. Yeah, let's do that. Just before we do that, can you, I just am trying to get a number for each one of them. What was the number? Chris was asking for it for the North Common. Right here, it's 250,000. 250, okay. And then what's not on here is Jones Library, I think. Oh, right. Yeah, I didn't, I was sort of separating that out, but that's just, that's a clean million. And that's the only one that's not, that's the only one we're missing, right? Yeah, yeah. Okay, all right. Okay, do we want to- They were asking us for a million, I thought they were asking for less. From us. Jones was asking for a million, yeah. Do we wanna separate town proposals from other proposals? That's what I would suggest. I'd suggest we tackle the three non-town first. Cause there's some, are there two? Two, two. And they're all, they also haven't done a lot. I guess one of them's a little bit larger. Okay, so Goodwin and Mill River, that's the first two on our list. So I think with Goodwin, we had recommended adding, possibly adding some percentage for contingency. And so I think that, whether or not, I don't know if Nancy, we were thinking it could be like 18,000 or knowing that some of our estimates may have been low. And she mentioned that at the CPA meeting, so. Did she provide an updated number at all, Robin? It don't think so, but yeah. But she made it clear that we had recommended that. Well, if we approve this, we could approve it at a range of 12 to 18,000. Yeah, right. Yeah, I mean, my, you know, with the Goodwin church, I thought, it's pretty straightforward. My only concern is that the estimates could have been from a contractor that I think that was familiar with the church. And if you had a different contractor, the numbers might be higher and it would just be unfortunate if this was approved for funding, it wouldn't be enough. Well, let's just hold a place with 12 and then kind of work from there until we get started with somebody. So in terms of this project, just to go with this, you know, identify the resource, identify the verb, I would say, you know, it's pretty straightforward. The resource is the church. It is, it's on the historical, is it on the National Historical Register, Nate? Yeah, it's individually listed, so it's one of the buildings in town. So it qualifies through that and then where the objective is to preserve the building. So nice and straightforward. Nice, that's a good easy one. All right, so you wanna do the eligibility piece first and then later we can go to these other criteria in the table. Sure. Okay, all right. So that's good one, no river walk. Yeah, that one's just interesting trying to figure out the resource. It's like almost a whole. Can I ask for all of the 51, right, from us? So I have some things to say about that particular proposal. If you don't mind my jumping in. Please go ahead. I think the first thing I would know, I'm just trying to find it on my list here, is that it's a request for planning. It's not a request for an active preservation. And so that would be my first reservation. There's not a resource that's being protected because it's essentially creating a written document. And I know we talked about this last time. There is, and I forgot to forward this on to you, Nate and Jane, but there was, in the Jones Library discussion, there was a piece that we got from Diana Stein that was guidance from the Department of Revenue that had something specific about a specific example that a history of a town could not qualify for historic preservation funding under the CPA. So I don't feel that it qualifies because of the nature of the proposal. I mean, of another issue with the number that they came up for and number in timeline that they came up for the consultant just because there wasn't really any backup of how they estimated the amount of time that would take over the course of the year or what the salary would be for that person. But I would say right off the bat, I would disqualify it on the basis of it not being eligible, which isn't to say that I don't think it's a good idea. So if they had had a study done and they were ready to start and they wanted money for, say, installing signs or I don't know, fixing reinforcing foundations or something that would qualify. Yeah, I don't know if interpretive signs qualify. And then it gets into this question of whether if you're under the verb of preserve, the DOR guidelines seem to be really specific about wanting to have a specific physical object that you're preserving. But I think, yeah, so I think that's where there's some interpretation does, is education and awareness through signs or other interpretive material is that protection? And we've the town, we've argued before that it is. So, yeah, I mean, I think with that proposal, it was unclear though, I mean, the commission had talked about adding signs or making it a trail, but really the proposal didn't have any elements in there related to that. It was, you know, I don't really think that any site restoration work, it was just about studying it and... Yeah, and they were trying to sell it to us with the education aspect, which is great, but it doesn't have anything to do with us. It's better to do something like go to UMass and ask them to give students credit in a course structure for doing the work or something than to ask us for money. Right, and Robin, you know, did they ask, has this been presented to the CPA committee? You know, the meetings are coming so close together, but I can't answer that question. You know, with someone... They're, you know, between... Yeah, Mag, you know, Mag... And I don't go to a physical place anymore. Right, and Ben and I, Mag, you know, Ben and I, after the commission meeting, and then someone had mentioned having this be a recreation project, and I said that that's, you know, it is actually... I think the CPA committee at one time recommended that to our staff did. That would be, you know, it would be eligible under that. And the area that would be under is both conservation and recreation, but I'm not sure they did that. So, you know, whether or not the commission would want to recommend that. So maybe, you know, is it eligible for a store preservation? If not, is it some of the commission want to say that it's still an interesting project or would it be a recreation request? You know, I don't know about that. I just need to say good night. I need to sign off now to meet my other commitments. Thanks, Pat. Sorry about that. Good night. Good night. Nate, I think that would be a nice way of letting them down. I mean, if we say it isn't eligible, but consider applying to the other, they'd have to wait till next year, right? They couldn't do it now. I'm not sure if they could have did it that quickly if the CPA committee would allow that, but... Makes sense to me. I think we should recommend that. That sounds reasonable. It's not like we're looking for enough to cover our 10%. It's one of those projects which I really like because it considers, you know, not an isolated building, but a sort of continuum of sites and historic interests, which I think really has its own merits. I don't really have a strong feeling about how it gets funded, but I think it would be great if it could go to another committee to recreation because, and conservation, because it does seem to be, you know, a good fit. So, I mean, I see it as a really good idea. I also see it as an, and it's really beginning stages. And I think it's a good idea to recommend it outside of historic preservation, but I was just thinking about how the review process provides, you know, has an expectation and provides guidelines for bumping someone to the next year to present a more fully fleshed out proposal. And I guess if we're not gonna take it under eligibility than that, we don't have to answer that question, but it seems, you know, sort of like, it's kind of more as an idea unless it's a full proposal. They don't have people lined up from, you know, so, anyway, that was one thing. But the other thing is that she mentioned something about written resources that were a danger of being lost. And I don't know what she was referencing at that point in the conversation, but it would be good to get that message to the applicant that if there is some sort of physical documents or that would be something that, I mean, I don't know how we would fund it, but... I mean, they could just be donated to special collections at this point. I mean, if it's someone's personal manuscripts or, you know, history, you know, that could be... So I guess I'm looking for the link to be able to tell them, you know, that we wanna be able to facilitate that kind of action coming out of a proposal like this so that they don't wait until they get money to move the project forward for preserving any kind of written documentation that... Yeah, I mean, Robin, you know, I hear what you're saying that this proposal was almost, you know, too preliminary to even, you know, maybe to be suggested this round, you know, that they could have reached out to UMass, had estimates, I mean, you know, we've asked the other, we usually asked someone, an applicant, that they have talked to their consultants, they have, you know, drawings or cost estimates and it's a real project and... Right. I wonder if still if the Massachusetts Preservation Projects Fund is still active, I believe they have some technical assistance grants or planning grants. Yeah. But I guess it's sort of like, it's the missing step between you get a proposal that's not well-developed, you can't fund it and you don't know how to, I don't know what part of the process that applicant gets feedback to help them come, so that they come back with a good proposal, like how do we close that loop? Yeah, I think we need to have a process, but it also needs to be very closely tied into an explicit and understandable process that the CPA committee has because I think it's really CPA committee that where potential applicants will look first for, you know, the guidelines timeline, so they need to be referred back to the appropriate committee, I think. So maybe we can have a discussion about process on another meeting given time and everything, but I just wanted everybody to understand kind of all my feelings that came up from that particular project and also from the North Amherst Library request last year. It's the same sort of circumstance where, you know, a lot of merit behind what the ultimate aim is, but not coming to us at a point where it's a useful proposal. I mean, if we moved the North Amherst Library now, I mean, to me, you know, from last year to this year, you know, now there are plans, there's an architect involved and there's actually real numbers, there's a structural engineer. So, you know, I think, right, so to me it's progressed, right? So last year, there wasn't much and now all of a sudden there's, you know, a clear scope. Right, right. And the whole addition that he was talking about being added on the other end of the building, that's the one that's being privately funded, right? Right. Yeah, okay. Yeah, right, like Gilbert said, and I think, you know, it became apparent though that whether or not that addition moves forward, I mean, it's cost-effective to roll it into that if we're doing it to work, but you know, the library itself, this work needs to be done to the foundation. So at some point, you know, that beam has to be put back in and the walls have to be shored up and. Well, looking at the resource and the verb, I would say it's eligible. I failed to ask, I would like to know what the total estimated cost of the larger project is. Sort of, well, yeah, it's privately funded, so. I thought that the private funding was right now around 400,000, is that right? All right. I think that's what I'd heard, but I don't know. Yeah, I don't know actually. So we could consider that, you know, a matching fund or another source of revenue for this project if we consider this project part of that other project. Right. I mean, our 40 would be matching the, whatever, 400 or something like that. Yeah. And then the library would be in good shape and they could leave us alone for the next 10 years. Yeah. What would we call the other verb in this case? We would call it rehabilitation. Okay. I'd say preserve. I'd say preserve, yeah. Yeah, preservation. Really? We're preserving this. We're preserving it from collapsing. We were rehabilitating it from a state of collapse. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Agreed. Conserve is the one that we use historically as opposed to preserve. Right. Okay. So next in order of magnitude is, I believe it's the North Common. Yeah. Which just, I think Chris said it, I just want to make clear that, you know, the town's also been making an additional request to, for recreation. So the total request this year for CPA funding for the North Common is 500,250 from historic and 250 from recreation. And if the DPW amount goes down from like 1.9 to 1.5 or so, and we have 900,000 and they get five, they're only a little short. So it could actually happen. Yeah. And I know the, I think the bid in the chamber, we're going to help with some fundraising efforts to kind of get us over the hump. Yeah. It's so important to get that bloody thing cleaned up. We've worked on it so long. And then, you know, we talked in the committee at the time about other additional things later, like if they want to, like if they have to do asphalt and they want to add paving stones later, or I had gotten bids for those animal sculptures that kids could get on and stuff and, you know, dotting those around. And those could be done on an individual basis of funding, you know, private funding and stuff. So this would just get the thing redesigned and then we could add the frills afterwards. Right. I think, you know, the material choices is a big cost factor. So, you know, are all the walkways, you know, concrete, you know, is the SAW, Waza, you know, individual Belgian block pavers or is it just the stamped asphalt? And, you know, I, you know, those are decisions that would have to be made at some point, but they could have a dramatic impact on cost. But if they had close to the amount, then they could really tweak each of those little, you know, decisions. Right, right. And maybe, you know, we are applying, I think we've talked about trying to apply for a park grant. The town did apply twice before and was unsuccessful. I think the difficulty is that... It's not a park. Yeah, and it's a... Well, park grants will help with historic projects, but I think the difficulty is that this is the town common. Right, so it's not a piece of property. And so they funded, for instance, what they call the Cambridge Commons, but that was actually a private donation and it's private, you know, it's a property. It's not actually a historic common. And they funded some other Commons, but they're not actually Commons the way Amherst is actually, you know, an actual common. So, yeah, I find it's a difficult project to get funded. You know, there's not a lot of programs that will fund this type of work. That's good to know for evaluation purposes. Yeah, all the more reason why they need us. Right, yep. I mean, it's disappointing though, we've looked at a few different grant programs and because it's a historic common and it's not a property, you know, there's no deed associated with it. It becomes, you know, almost a lot of these grant programs will say, well, where's the ownership? And then we'll, you know, show them the maps and some, you know, old books about Amherst and they, no one's convinced. It's good information to take to the CPA, you know. I wanna say too, one thing Gopher didn't or Chris didn't talk about was that we, like, tried for a while to see if there's a way to phase the project in, like first do the parking lot and then wait on the park or vice versa. But because of the grading and like making it all meet and it became really difficult to try to do, like one piece now and one piece later. So that's why we joined them in the first place, really. Right, right. So I'm going to, so I think this is eligible. However, a strict constructionist would look at identifying this historic resource and find that the thing that matches it is real property, but we've just said it's not a property. A historic resource in the town, though. Yeah. We do have it. I agree, I'm just, yeah, I'm just sort of. It's a contributing landscape in a historic district. There you go. Call it Town Hall's front yard. So if we, you know, if, well, we can get to amounts to recommend later on, but just maybe worth noting that if 250,000 is granted in historic preservation, that would bring historic preservation's contribution to this project to 610,000. Okay, so eligible. And then slate roofs. No, no, no, no. Sorry, town steps. Yeah, and that could be dropped if we take out the south side to 210. Yeah, I was just looking through my notes. I think Jeremiah had talked about how the town has $74,000 kind of as a match. Yeah, for everything. He was hesitant, but at least they could put some towards it. Yeah. That is one of the ones that really feels like it, that in the roofs that you could argue should be town funded, not there should be maintenance. The steps, well, I don't know, both of them. The slate roofs are historic materials and those are historic steps, but heck, they're just steps that need to be taken care of. I don't know. Well, my argument was that, you know, what about taking care of those steps is costing extra money because they're historic? Like if they have to be treated extra carefully, if you have to bring in some sort of a skilled craftsman or something like that. Well, they're taking the blocks away, they're numbering them, they're storing them. They're restoring the handrail the way it is. I mean, it wouldn't be done like that if it were done cheaply. You just rip it all out in poor concrete. Right. Yeah, I mean, there is careful effort being taken to replicate what's existing with the exact same configuration of the granite blocks. Well, I was saying to Jane that, you know, if you look at a roof and you have to replace a roof and you can compare the cost of replacing a standard contemporary roof with replacing it with slate, you have a pretty clear difference in what the extra historic component is costing and then you can kind of apply that to a dollar value. And I was just wondering if there was that weighted to kind of apply that to the town steps to say, well, if these were just regular steps, like Jane said, and you can just rip them out, you know, what is the piece of the historic aspect of it that's making it more expensive, that's making it harder for the town to afford? It's the whole Richard Stoney and Romanesque bag. You know, you've got those massive pieces of stone that are beautifully shaped and dressed. Right, I know, I mean, I understand that piece of it. I'm saying, how do you quantify that? How do you put a dollar amount on that? Go back to the, but there, no, yeah. Going back to the budget, yeah. Yeah, so the materials storage and staging, not the permitting. I mean, permitting, I don't think there's a lot of, I mean. I can't imagine as much money into that, but like this is, you know, a hundred thousand dollars is just because they're historic, right? I mean, you have to. Yeah, yeah, I think we need to press these kinds of proposals a little bit on their budgets to really figure out what the historic piece is. I would say, you know, 90 to 100,000, would be okay with considering it at that level. And then I think we also kind of have to consider it in a sense of urgency against the other proposals. We may, you know, we may want to limit the dollar figure of our recommendations. And, you know, that either means cutting down requests or it means not recommending requests, I think. Yeah, so we could tentatively say we might give them 90 here, but if the roofs are protecting buildings that are leaking or something, then that would trump this, you know? I mean, yeah. Well, we usually, I usually bring a rank to the CPA because, you know, then the CPA, all of the CPA has to vote on it, too. So they're gonna have an opinion. So a little rank at the end, we always do that last. Right. I mean, the south steps, you know, are actually really uneven and difficult to navigate, but as a, they're not the publicly used steps. So, you know, I know, I think, you know, there's thought that, well, if we're doing the steps, you can just kind of tack on the south steps, but. Yeah, but he even admitted that they aren't historic steps. So this is a, the budget that's up there is for both sets of steps. We don't have them split out. We'll get off the steps, it's 40,000. The second items. Oh, sorry. Thank you. That's $55,000 for the south steps. That's why I was saying to 10 or something. Okay. If you take, you know, if you just take the 90 and say the historic part, that's plenty with amount of money we're looking at. So. I wish we could somehow be really devious and no, I don't. To think about the civil war tablets in relation to this, because isn't one of the ideas to put the civil war tablets in front of town hall? Oh, but not here. It was on the other side on the south side. It was looked at though, out here. There was, at one point there was a concept design. Yeah, I mean, you know, I still think that having the tablets inside would be better for their, for their sake, it may not be as easily viewed. So I still think there's, you know, whole decision-making process about how they get displayed, but. So just, sorry, I didn't mean to muddy the water some, but I, so the bit we're considering now is just the bit in the front of the building, the main steps. Right. Okay. Just the steps themselves, yeah. Yeah. Right there. I mean, you know, they're psychopedian steps, guys. You know, they're up there with the Mycenaean tombs as far as this country is concerned. I don't want to push it because I'm being a bit playful, but the massiveness of all of that is pretty impressive. And that's what we've got, you know? We're not Crete, but we've got, we've got, you know, this amazing town hall. And I don't really understand the economics of why the town isn't fronting up enough money for all of these projects, that's beyond me at this point. But if we can vote, if we can recommend rather that we work on the front steps, I think we would be doing the right thing. Well, maybe if we gave a little something towards the historic end, that would push the town to come up with the difference. And if nothing, maybe they won't do anything. I think Jeremiah has about 75 realistically for the front steps because the budget he gave us was for the full entire envelope of town hall. So I think when he said he had over 100,000, I mean, that's really, some of that money's, I know he said that there wasn't, it wasn't maybe detailed, but I think some of that was probably expected that I won't point to town halls and have new storm windows. Just so we can, you know, I mean the amount of energy waste through the windows. And I think some of it may have been trying to fix leaks in the roof. And, you know, so I agree that I wouldn't, you know, he could take some of that money, but if we're saying, okay, he maybe has $100,000 at most for the steps. And we could work, you know, we could work backwards from there. We, I don't know what the budget shows, but. So it's two 10 for the steps themselves. The part we're working with is two 10. And I think we could take a percentage of that even. Right. Yeah. I mean, Jan said maybe 100,000 or 90 or something. That might be enough to get enough movement. So why don't we, so that's eligible because it's a structure building and it's a restoration. Now we need to wrestle with slate roofs. Yeah. Sorry. I think I just wanted to say one more thing about the town hall steps is just considering it in relation to the North commons project and how they are kind of linked together. They're for, you know, supporting, redoing the front of the kind of front yard of town hall, then doing the steps kind of corresponds to that. And they just did the door. Right. Right. So. This does look nice. Yeah. The door does look nice. Yeah. Man, the slate roofs are expensive. I have to say it's. And the 20,000 for the town hall, would that have been within that money that Jeremiah City had for town hall? You're saying storm windows and roof. Is that in that money? It may be. I mean, you know, he said in tie, he said envelope. So. Yeah. So maybe he kind of has that somewhere and we're double dipping here. Yeah. Yeah. Good question. I don't know for sure. Right. But. The months and really needs it. I don't, I know the North Amherst school might, but 250, we don't even have 250 total. I know the slate is looking pretty rough on North Amherst school, but. Did he, did Jeremiah say? Well, I'm imagining he would say that these are of equal urgency, but. Did he, did he rank them in a priority of any sort? He didn't rank them, but he did mention the leaking in months and. Yeah. I mean, my thought would be the North Amherst school. My only hesitation was the membrane on the back. To me, isn't necessarily historic. And it would be a shame to put on, spend money on a slate roof. And then five years from now have to rip up a lot of, you know, a fair amount of slate to do the membrane. And so. All right, that could be a different material. That could be asphalt or something. I don't know. I would say that it falls into preservation. I don't think the membrane has to be historic, but I think it preserves the building. Right, but I think it has to be a membrane because I think the slope of the roof isn't steep enough so you can't use shingles. So you have to use a certain, you know, different material. It's not, you know, it's a too shallow of a pitch, but I don't know. Yeah, I just, North Amherst school, that's such a big estimate. I'd love to have, you know, another estimate or two and have- Is there an urgency to it? I mean, do we know the extent to which it could wait another year? Well, something's gonna have to because we don't have enough money, so. Right, I would, I mean, my thought is to recommend Munson Library. Yeah, the town hall could fold into the town hall budget, wait on North Amherst school and just do the Munson. Yeah. And it should be the library building. It's not just the library. It's a building that houses other stuff too. Right. Something that's confusing. Was this accompanied by a detailed method or is this the only? Yeah, there was. Sorry, there's estimates attached. Okay. I can get that out here. So for, they're done individually by building. So here's the Munson library. There are some slates that need replacing. It sounds like, right, they're gonna do valleys and ridge, right? They're gonna basically kind of, you know. Yeah, he was saying that the flashing was in bad shape and rendered straights. Reflashed the chimney, installed copper on all the ridge caps. One section of snow guard. I'll be duty covered gutter at the back eve of roof. I'm pretty sure he's saying that right, I see him. And then, you know, I mean, I get it, a heavy duty copper gutter can serve the job better, but is there a different material if it's in the back of the building? It's not visible as much to, you know. Yeah, that was one thing that I thought. I mean, you do walk around to the back, but. Snow guards can be installed, but are not necessary. He doesn't have that in the budget. And he's using copper instead of slate caps to save money. Right. Does that, I mean, we could move on to more, this kind of matrix that Robin put together for the Jones Library is still on our list. Do we wanna consider that separately or consider it's part of this? Well, we have to consider it together, don't we? Cause we're gonna have to, or do we rank these and then that one's not ranked within our priorities? Because it's. Well, the Jones Library is only different because last year we, so if we're talking about cash out of CPA funds this year versus recommending Jones for bonding. Oh, right. That has the impact on the dollar amount. So we wouldn't put it even into the total for this year. We just understand we'd be recommending, like I said, if it was bonded over 10 years, $100,000 of historic preservation funds for 10 years of debt service. But I think, no, but to me, it's interesting. I thought it was interesting the way Anthony categorized it as an old request. To me, it's a new request this year. And I think we need to consider it that way. I don't know because the request changed a little bit. It's just like the North Amherst Library coming back or if we ask goodwin or Mill River to come back next year. We had asked, we had in the CPA, we'd specifically decided not to vote on the proposal and asked them to bring back a new proposal. I don't think we, I don't even know that we anticipated that we'd be reviewing it at the same time as the other proposals. So it's a little bit separate. I mean, it was really a request of the committee to revise their proposal so that we could consider it. Are you talking about the library? Yeah. Okay. It wasn't on the part of the applicant, it was the request of the CPA committee. But to me, I don't consider it an old request. I mean, it's a current request this year, I guess, is all. Okay. So as I look at the one, two, three, four, five, six proposals we've talked about, excluding the Jones library and the rough amounts that we've said. So this, we're at about 165,000. I get 445. What about the other? Rough amounts. Well, but I was putting down the amounts that we talked about actually giving them. What did we talk about for the North Common? I have 250 for that. I have that. And then I have 40 for the library, 12 for the good one. Oh wait, 165. I guess I forgot to add the 150. You're right. I did something wrong here. Yeah, 12, 40, 250, 190 maybe for the steps and then 53, right? Yeah. I've got 445 for that. Yeah, I get 445. Would you recommend more for a good one? Like, you know, like Jansen Arrange, maybe like 15 to 18 or 12 to 18? Yeah. I thought they were asking 10 and we put it up to 12. No, they're asking 12. Oh, okay. So let's see. You said the total project cost was about 24 to 25,000. And so I was figuring if you added a contingency on it could add, you know, five to 6,000, four to 6,000 on. Okay. So, all right. Let's say 15 for a round number. That's like $450,000, which, you know, against, how much was it against? 110. 0.1. Yeah, we're not going to say. Yeah. I think that's fine though. Okay. You know, I think there's, you know, a few recreation, there's some housing. There's not a big conservation ask this year in terms of property acquisition. So. So the larger overall fund is going to have more to lean towards this direction this year. I mean, the housing trust is putting in, there's like, you know, there's probably, there's, I think 1.2 million and just 1.3 million are just housing requests. Yeah. So. So could we frame this as, so we can go back and talk more specifically about these proposals if we want to, I notice it's about 10 minutes to nine, but could we like frame a memo or a recommendation that explains in what ways we find these projects eligible and then a recommended funding amount for them and then a ranking of them. And then how much more detail do we need at this point? I think, you know, if the commission wants to do a priority order, I think that would probably be it. But it hasn't been, it looks like you have the North Amherst Library and the Goodwin Reverse. But what about the Jones Library? I guess I'm confused. What's happening with the Jones? We're treating it as separate, right? I mean, how we, yeah, I'd say recommended, but. Yeah, I mean, all we can do is get it supportive and then they're going to have to find the money, right? I mean. Our recommendation there can include a bond authorization. Right, well, that's what, that was what we did last year. We recommended it at, they asked for a million and a half and we recommended it a million for specific items because there was no detail in the budget. So what happened to that, Dan? Did it go through? No. No, that was the problem of the CPA was that there were, there were two or three members who were concerned about it falling under a creation definition of, that's excluded from the CPA and that. If they've rewritten it and it makes sense and it's all right, then it's probably pretty likely that the bond authorization will be approved then. Yeah, I think the CPA was comfortable with the bond idea and they were certainly seemed much more comfortable with the idea of reviewing it once there was a specific line item budget. There were just a bunch of different people in different ways that the project made them uneasy. One was the detail, one was the definition of historic preservation. This reiteration of it was to clarify those issues. So I would recommend it at the million dollar, we're basically reiterating our recommendation from the last cycle, which is a million dollars. Now we don't have to tell them what the money goes towards because they've been given us a definitive line item budget we can just say bonded or bonded over 10 years or bonded over five years. And what about if we do that but we also just sort of leave it with a line between and then do our rankings of the other five or six, the one would be at the bottom and not put it in our rankings since it's not really out of the pot of money that we're supposed to be creating a ranking for. Does that make sense? I think, yeah, I don't know a lot about that. Yeah, yeah. So shall we, I mean, we've got just a few of us here, can we just sort of do a shout out of our number one? Before we do a shout out, I just have a quick question, Jane, you made the point that the 250,000 for the North Common brings a lot of money into a lot of historic preservation money into that project. Is there any reason that you feel we should reduce that amount given how much historic preservation money is already in the pot there? I didn't know if that was. Yeah, well, you know, I have a, I do have this sort of little niggling thing from the presentation tonight and that is that we saw two plans at presumably two different cost points and we don't know what the second cost point is for the design. I don't think, I mean, frankly, I'm really not sure that a cost estimate that's two years old is really gonna hold up even if they say it's really gonna go down. But I'm not sure exactly what we're endorsing. I don't think, you know, I think they could use all of the 250 no matter what happens. Yeah, I mean, it's been fuzzy from the beginning. Don't you remember on the committee, they kept saying, you know, we're just gonna let them give us the perfect plan and they claim they've told them our budget, but then people at those public meetings were saying, this looks like a $2 million plan. And they were saying, no, no, we've got 900,000, it'll be fine. And then it came back at 1.9, you know, and they haven't been open about the budget end of it all the way along. And they're kind of doing that again. They're obscuring it by saying, here's what we got from the designers, but now DPW has, you know, gotten a cheaper one. Well, we don't know how much cheaper, but I mean, come on, you're giving us a proposal. Give us some numbers. It's been kind of a style they've had all the way. If I could go for it right then, I mean, I don't think it'll get much lower than 1.5. I mean, I just think the cost of materials, you know, if we do nice pavers, nice, you know, we have decorative lights, we do, you know, benches are a few thousand each. We do a lot of benches, the table. I mean, I... They're saving on a few trees and, you know, maybe they won't have quite the same number of walls, but the grading and everything that's been required are a certain amount of that construction, no matter why. Yeah. Well, we could, I mean, if they think they're going to bring it down by 25%, we could bring 250 down by 25%. I don't know, that seems a little... They're still going to need it though, even if they get it to one point. Yeah, they will, yeah, they will. So I don't, I guess I don't really see a reason. Okay. You know. Ben, would the comments... Would the slate roof, we're only saying for the Munson Library, right? So that's the... And then with the North Common, I think what a previous commission recommended, you know, previously was that the amount for North Common would be whatever is the same amount for recreation. So for instance, you know, they're asking 250 from recreation and if recreation only recommends 220, then there's always, you know, some parity between the two. So we, you know, it could be that, you know, we recommend this with, as long as the, you know. That's not to exceed. Yeah. Yeah, to be matched by LSEC or whatever you call them. Right. Yeah. Not to exceed the LSEC, not to exceed the recreation. Allocation. Recommended allocation, yeah. Yeah. Then it's just one common, the North Commons. Can you just take that, Esso? Thanks. I don't even like calling it the North Common because it's really the, you know. But it's the North Common. The North Common is where it is down the road for me. No, that's the Cushman Common or something. Isn't it a different name? No, it's the North Village Common. North Village. Yeah, yeah. That's right. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Maybe under good one, you should, under the notes, you should say that we're adding, what are we calling the addition? Tendency. Yeah, and I'd say like material price increase. Yeah. Okay. So now all we need is the ranking. So, I'm going to shout out. Okay. Take a search, number one. I agree. Yes, me too. Oh, right. Yep. I agree. The North Library too? To fix that. Or the, the months. The North Common. Yeah, I'd say North Common. I think I'd like that. Because we're committed to it. It would be interesting to know, how long they have to bank all this money before they actually use it. Yeah. Is that a decision too? Two. Patty and Robin, you okay with that? Yep. Yep. And then the North Amherst Library. I can agree with that. Okay. And then Monson. Then. No river doesn't. So down steps is five. No river doesn't count. And then library, the Jones Library isn't on our ranking. Yeah. I think we should include the Mill River Project in our, in our. In the notes. Yeah. With a. No. The reason why we think it's not eligible. Yeah. Go back. NA was correct. But then in the notes, we'll explain why. Yeah. Exactly. So. We want, yeah, not eligible. And then we're going to ask for a better proposal. Right. Well, we're going to refer to recreation. Right. I mean, Meg, I think Meg reached out to staff. It may have been just like a week or two weeks before the CPA proposals were due, asking about a few things, but it wasn't clear that she was asking because it was for a CPA proposal. So. That's good, Ben. You know, sometimes it's hard to vet a project or work with it before the application's actually received. Right. Right. Yeah, it's a short process. For some reason, my, so I have this terrible charger on my iPad that. I think. You've gotten this. Charges less than this. I just want to say this before. We'll just send this to CPA committee. That that's essentially our memo right there. Ben, if you spoke brilliant. Thank you, Ben. If you want to add any text, I'm happy to work on that for you. A little preliminary, a little goodbye at the bottom, and we got it. I mean, we could just throw the letter CPA on there somewhere and. Are there any notes for the North Amherst Library? Just, you know, it's all I have is that it's preservation for the verb. And I think we said that it's nice that the other project could be considered part of a match, you know, and they're kind of folded into. I think in each of these cases in there is sort of, you know, quote unquote justification where there is, where there are other resources that are being brought into play. We should. We should. Ben, maybe something like serves to match new construction. And I, I think it's okay to note. Where there is no proposed alternate additional resource, like, for example, the slate roofs. Yeah, and then for the south steps, like, you know, at this time, interesting towns and towns. Yeah. Just putting out the south steps at this time so that we don't look like real creeps. Even though we are. Yeah. No, man, I do think though the, you know, in the last few years, CPAs become really competitive. Yeah. And so, you know, with all the categories, there's been a lot more requests. I think it's become, you know, difficult to, to recommend and narrow down the proposals. I think that's actually. It's so different than like four or five years ago. Yeah. We've got maybe 25,000 max. Right. This is really a lot. Yeah. No, I, yeah. So if we're good with our CPA discussion for now, I suggest that we have an update on the writer's walk and then see if anybody wants to adjourn. Yeah. So the only thing about the writer's walk, Hedy and I did it house by house, footstep by footstep, and it works really well. So we're ready with the change to add the words West Cemetery and to fix the link. And we're ready to order the signs. So that can go out next week or this week, whatever. But the website is out of date. It hasn't been updated. So I had told Seth that we were okay. Now we're finalized with the text, but I think either Ben or Nate, or if you want me to, but somebody should talk to John Olson, is it? Yeah, John Olson about tactfully about changing the bolt, changing the Lord Jeff to boltwood. I listed a couple of things to you, Ben. I can't remember what they are now, but there's a few other things. And then Hedy was concerned about the entry for Helen Hunt Jackson, that it just says that she wrote her books and did her work for the sake of Native American rights and does not list the tribes. But we don't have room on the sign to list the seven tribes plus that she specifically was working on. So I think it should be on the website. You know, like more information past the little tiny blur would be on the website. And that's gonna take a little bit of research, but also asking him to put that on because that's not in their text at all. So I asked Hedy to maybe do a draft text that we could offer to him. So we wouldn't be asking him to do the work. We'd just be asking him to upload it. But sooner or later, we're gonna have to ask him to either give us most of that website or we're gonna have to rework it or something because we can't keep going back to the sky and ask him to make every little tweak. Right, so yeah, so, you know, the web link is amherstma.gov backslashwriterswalk and that just redirects you to amhersthistoric.org. But that web link can be put anywhere. So, you know, I've spoken with IT and they, right, they mentioned working with NT to either update the website or, you know, they said it sounds like there, I don't know if there's a way we could migrate that page onto our domain, so. I would like it if we, if he would give us permission to take most of it because he has a lot of photos and a lot of information on there that I didn't, you know, spend the time researching that would be useful. Right. Some of it needs vetting still, but like the photos and stuff are great. I don't know that he has permission from on a lot of them, you know, to use. So it'd have to be checked. Yeah, yeah. I mean, right, so at least the web link is good and we can always, to me, it's like, you know, we can always refine where it goes. So if, you know, if he's hopefully amenable to having his, because he hosts other, you know, listening tours on that website. On that website, yeah. But before we get the signs up, I'd like him to at least fix a couple of really crucial things like the large F is no longer that and that sort of thing. Oh, and the numbers, the numbers have to be changed because his map numbers are different. Right, right. He has a big one. He doesn't have the Dickinson house and he has, it's like number two to go out to Robert Francis way up in, you know, North Amherst. So we just, he'd have to use our map and numbers. So do you want to talk to him, Ben? Email. Yeah, maybe just with an introduction from you, Renee. Yeah, I can do that. I'll be like, okay, John, here's Ben. No, I can email him. Okay, can we do that this week? So we know that he has plenty of time. We're not saying to him, we need this tomorrow, the signs are going in. Yeah, yeah, no, that's good. I know tomorrow. Okay, great. Because I talked to our IT people, they had some ideas. So I think, you know, the easier thing to do is to have that his website updated, you know, kind of worst case scenario is we try to migrate the data or, you know, recreate the web, his webpage, and then can you just CC me on it and say that if he wants to have, you know, wants to all be happy to work with him on the details? Sure, yeah. Okay. I just think it's better if you guys sort of take over the official communication. I'm happy to, you know, help him, but I don't feel like, I don't know, it just doesn't feel like it should be me from the town. No, that's great. That's fine, yeah. Okay. I agree. I'm trying not to take over here, you notice? Thanks, Jan and Heddy for checking all that out and seeing how it's going. That's great, yeah, yeah. It was great. It's a really, it represents a very important body of work. And I think Jan has been amazing in convincing everything. Amazing and persistent. Yeah. I do have a bracelet that says nevertheless, she persisted. I realized that we can't adjourn without having a public comment, inviting public comment. Oh, God, has anybody been waiting for all this? I will invite public comment now. Yes, so any member of the public, you can click raise hand. Doesn't look like they're raising their hand. I'm not seeing anything. Are you Ben? Nope. Okay. All right. Can I just ask under an unanticipated items, some time when we have time on an agenda, Heddy had this great idea that we start thinking about in our desire to save barns, maybe doing barn tours the way that the Historical Society does house tours to raise interest and get people motivated to save their barns or work on them or something. Can we talk about that sometime on an agenda? Yeah, that is interesting because Shannon from PDPC had said that a number of owners are actually really excited by them and they have old photographs or history of the barn or property. So yeah, it'd be a nice thing to add. And maybe we could ask her in her notes to tell us who some of those are to get going. It'd be great. That would be so much fun. Would it? Yeah, yeah. Do you remember a few years ago there was a lighting, a barn lighting project up there? Oh, yeah, I remember that, yeah. Yeah, that was kind of interesting. Well, Can we put that on an agenda, Ben? Yeah, I just wrote it down here. Thank you. Hey, thanks everyone for slogging through all of this. It was really productive. So thanks so much. And now we get to meet the CPA timeline. Yeah, before we adjourn you. I mentioned though is the MHC Survey and Planning Grant, Ben had looked into it. We've applied it previously and they first asked for a preliminary letter. And then if you're accepted, you submit a full application. But the preliminary letter is due, I think in mid-December. Right then. I forgot the timeline, but. November. Yeah. You know, something that we want to consider. Yeah, I think we can't consider it tonight. Well, right. I think for the next meeting, it could be, I think we have time, but I think just to, you know. Let's put it, let's put it up higher on the agenda for next time. So, yeah. And when is our next meeting? I do, do we have it scheduled? Is it, we have a, is it third Wednesday of November? So Ben Hilda just emailed, she might wanna speak. She can't raise her hand. Yeah, I saw that. Sorry about that Hilda, if you wanna make a comment, I didn't realize you couldn't raise your hand. No, I didn't. I just wanted to tell you that when that screen filled the whole thing, there was no way I could find it. It might happen to somebody else who didn't wanna talk. And a lot of icons aren't accessible. That's good to know. Just in case it comes up again, I thought you might wanna know that. Okay, thank you. Well, actually the pre-application letter for the survey and planning plan is due November 16th. Maybe we should meet on like the 11th or 10th or something then. I think we're gonna have to do that maybe by whole, just to see, I mean, we've got, all right, we've got a quorum here right now. So if somebody wants to propose a date, we can consider that date. Otherwise, we'll have to do some kind of whole thing. Do you mean the meeting? Would it be the 11th? 11th is a holiday, just FYI. Yeah. Yeah, Wednesday. Well, we've been meeting on Wednesdays, but today's not Wednesday, today's Monday. So what about tonight? We've been, yeah, we've been meeting on Mondays. November 16th. That's the deadline. Oh, oh dear. Can't do Thursdays, because that's CPA. How about Monday the 9th? So that's in two weeks? I can do that at 6.30. Yes. Or possibly. Me too. Me too. Victim, button for punishment. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good thing I like all you people. Yeah. I know. Except for a negative course, but that's a given. So what was that? Nothing. I was reading the, the Serbian Planning Grant requires a 50-50 match. Sorry. So I was just looking over our CPA balances. So the commission has $25,000 for historic, for a preservation plan update. There's 50, there's money for headstone work. I mean, there's $25,000 for historic resource inventory. So my thought is for the Serbian Planning Grant, we could ask for either money to update of the preservation plan to do historic resource inventory work or to do something with cemeteries and restoration. So those, because we already have money appropriated, we have the 50-50 match already in hand. So that way, those three topics would work. Because if we propose something, we have to have a 50% project match, which we may not have for a summary. Okay, historic resource inventory. I can't think anymore. I'm losing track of what you're talking about because I'm so tired of all this. So I can send it in a summary email. Yes. Yes. This lists the things that are eligible and then we can respond with our sense of priorities. But I really think we have to stop now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I'm ready to go. Do you agree on the ninth? Do we agree on the ninth? I agree. Yeah, we did. But we are tired. Do I hear a motion to adjourn? Yes. I motion to adjourn. Second. All right, I think not debatable. All in favor? All right. Great. Okay. All of you all have a good evening. In two weeks. I'm so sorry, was he joking? I'm gonna tell your dog your ideas. Goodbye. Bye, everybody.