 Share some information about the four of the plan for the four building projects. Walk you through sort of how we're performing outreach related to those projects. We'll look at the tool briefly and then people have any questions on any of that. It's really mostly meant to get your feedback from the residents and anybody was questions on it so the one thing I'll say before we for I share my screen and we look at a few things. Is the financial option that we presented to the finance committee last week. It was really meant to be the beginning of a process it's not it was not a final product by any means it was meant to be responsive to one of the goals set out by the town council this year which is to bring forward a plan for the four building projects. And then, you know, our hope was to share that out, hold some sessions like the one we're holding this afternoon and there's another one coming up on March 6. Here feedback from residents and counselors, and then refine that plan going forward so I won't spend too much time actually going over the plan. I'll show you where the presentation is posted and we're going to be posting the video from the finance committee as well. But I'm happy to clarify anything that anybody has questions on and and we'll go from there. So I'm going to share my screen of a couple questions in the chat. Oh, thank you Steve. All right. Give me one second, why share my screen. All right, so the thing I wanted to start with is the to talk a little bit about the new engagement tool that the town has been using our communications manager Brianna has put a lot of work into this and it's this is the first time I've worked with it related to this project but from what I've seen so far it's really neat and it's it seems like it's going to be a really good method for getting to a communication on different things. So the web address is at the top engage Amherst.org. This is the landing page that you'll see when you first go to engage Amherst, and there's a lot of information here that you can read about I'll point out a couple things. Right now we have four projects or four activities that are on the engage Amherst website. But as more things come up in the future we talked about maybe doing like the FY 22 budget possibly on here and some other activities that come up. There will be more added, and you'll see how to find the four billion project one works. There's a lots of neat ways to interact and share your feedback and again get two way communication answers to questions and things of that nature. We'll be focusing tonight on the financing the future one which is related to the four building projects. Before I go into that, I will say, if anybody is interested in this engage Amherst tool, there's a feedback form where you can say whether you like it don't like it or if you have any requests for things that maybe aren't there currently that you'd want to see added. And there's also this learn more. Click on to go to learn more. There's an FAQs that might answer some questions anybody has. And there's also a Q&A feature here and there's a poll here that you can interact with as well. So there's a lot of good information, a lot of credit to Brianna for putting this all together. She's been amazing at supporting sort of the outreach related to these projects. So I just want to acknowledge her work. So I'm going to go back to click on the engage Amherst that brings you back to the homepage. And then if you click on the financing, the future and click learn more. So this is the project page for the four building projects that's dedicated specifically to the financing of those four projects. There's a little introduction here that sort of explains, you know why we're even talking about this on the right hand side it talks about who's listening so right now it's myself and Brianna. Whenever somebody submits a question on this page, Brianna and I are notified of that question. And then that way we can respond to it. So the right now the main feature on this page is this questions tool, you can come in here and again write a question, put your email and how you your screen name how you want it to appear. And as soon as you submit that the question will come to both Brian and I, and the right person can answer the question. And when we answer it you'll get an email it'll it'll post here so that we can have a running list of questions. So if there's recurring questions that come up, people can come here first and see if it's been asked. You can just send an email to the person that asked the question to let them know it'll it'll set provide them the answer so it's a good way of sharing information directly with the person asking, but also keeping an inventory of the question so that we can develop a frequently asked question document or just have a list running lists for people who are interested. So that's the main feature that we're using right now but there's lots of other things for other types of activities that can be done. So you can see we have one question that was posted a few days ago asking where the tool is at the time the tool was not posted it is now so I'll show you where that link is. So the other thing on this right hand side you can subscribe to these project pages so that it allows us to send updates to anybody who subscribes on there's new information or changes to the page we can update the group. So one feature that is nice with this engage MRs tool. There are some links again specific to the four building projects so we've got the public engagement tool. We've got background information, and we have this is the finance committee presentation so this anyone who's interested in in reviewing what was presented the preliminary financial plan was presented. So with this, and we're actually going to be clipping the video of that presentation so that you can get the words that went with it, essentially. And then below that are key dates of what's coming up. So, some of these things have already happened there was a couple Joe on the on the four building projects last Friday. I gave up. There's a presentation on the Jones library project on Monday, we're here tonight doing the workshop, and there will be another one on March 6 at, I believe it's 9am for anybody who wants to come back and ask more questions. So I'm going to quickly. So if you click on the presentation so again this is the, I'm not going to go through this tonight because we're going to be posting the video and, and this presentation is here. But if anybody has questions on this again I'm happy to answer them, or if we can't answer them tonight we'll take that take it down and then get back to whoever's asking it. And then I will also click on the building tool. I'm going to stop sharing so I can share the screen that has the Excel tool on it. So this is the, the public engagement tool. It's meant primarily to help the public a get involved and to understand some of the decisions and some of the variables that we're all thinking about as we develop these plans it's it's not capable of doing every scenario or doing the detailed planning the nuanced stuff that we you know we have to get into the nitty gritty with, but it does an okay job at kind of helping people understand relationships between different things. So there's some instructions that anybody can review gives you a little breakdown of them. You know what to review first and some of the assumptions where the information came from. There's a glossary that just does some basic definitions. And then the simulation tab itself is right here and you know I'll do just a quick overview of this. You start with the first question and pick the options that you want to model. So this first one is the library. So there's the addition renovation option which is the nblc project that's being considered. And we also listed a number of repair options so there's different tiers of repairs. We recently updated the repair options to include the two new repair options that you know put together. The only thing again that this isn't nuanced enough to really follow the timeline that Cune riddle proposed. So if you click these options it's just going to be based on whatever year you say the debt is going to start it's not going to follow the timeline that Cune riddle put together. Then you pick the debt, the year that the debt would start. So just in general, that's usually once the project has started, usually after it's a year in, you might start making debt payments on the project. So this is another thing that's more nuanced when we work with our financial advisor we map out, you know, when we're going to borrow money. When's the first time we would have to start making payments on the money we borrowed. Then the next piece is the funding source so whether it's going to come out of our the existing money that we allocate towards capital, or if we're going to propose a debt exclusion which means we would raise additional taxes. It would have to be a vote by the council and the taxpayers, and if we would raise additional taxes to specifically fund the debt related to that project, and that would be a temporary increase in taxes for the life of the debt of whatever project is approved for debt exclusion. And then the last piece is the borrowing terms so how many years we want to borrow over. So you got that for the library similar options for the fire station similar options for the public department public works. The schools get a little more nuance because there's a couple different options so there's, there's a single school option which right now is the 575 student enrollment option. And then there's a two school option which I believe the enrollment is 320. So that means there'd be an MSBA project for enrollment of 320, and then there would have to be something else to adjust the other school. And so if you, you can only do one of the other so if you pick the single school option then you can't adjust the other two. If you pick the two school option then you can't adjust the single so it's sort of an either or you do one of the other. And for both this project and the MVLC project there's grant funds automatically applied. So we assumed a 50% reimbursement rate which is hopefully conservative. And we'll get a more detailed once we move farther along MSBA process we'll get a better sense of what the reimbursement rates going to look like. So right now the options are 80 million the debt starting 2025 using a debt exclusion for the schools and paid back over 30 years. If you have questions on what you want to model then you can adjust some of the other assumptions that affect it so the next one would be the borrowing rate or the interest rate. So we give a range of between two and 5% right now rates are at the lower end of that rates are really good as many of you have probably heard. So I'll put it at 2% even though it's probably may not be realistic but let's do it for illustration purposes. Next is choose the percentage of the tax levy that is allocated towards capital so the way the town funds capital. The most majority of its capital is each year we decide what percentage of the tax levy will will be allocated towards capital projects. And if we were in 20 FY 20 I believe we're around nine and a half percent, we were hoping to go to 10% for FY 21 but then the pandemic hit and capital is one of the areas we look to to offset the impact of COVID-19 for that particular year. And so now we're trying to get back to where we were so we were planning on going to 10% and FY 21 before the pandemic hit. So this 10% again for illustration purposes this this again this means allocating 10% of the tax levy for capital. And then the last question is how much will be allocated towards other capital needs in town so a lot of our focus is on the four building projects but we don't want to lose sight of all the other capital needs because we don't want to create issues and other areas that we don't currently have issues so we want to create a significant amount for other capital needs while we're also addressing the building projects. And so right now we've got it at 4 million which is pretty good. As if you think about that's being used for everything outside of the school, the two built two school buildings, the library, the DPW and the fire station having 4 million for everything else is pretty good. And once you make those changes this chart updates automatically. And you can see how you're doing so this solid black line reflects how much is allocated towards capital. So whatever your choice was there whatever percentage you chose this will move up or down. The green bars are existing debts that the town is already obligated to pay. The yellow bar is how much you have decided for other capital needs so if you chose 4 million this would adjust to 4 million. The one thing I'll know is the first few years here 2022 through 2025. It's actually based on the five year capital improvement program so those years are fixed. And then the 4 million kicks in after I think I think it kicks in in 2026. And then if you chose a debt exclusion the project won't appear here because this chart shows the funds that are coming or the projects that are being paid from our existing capital. If you chose a debt exclusion that would come from another source so that doesn't show here so you won't see the single school appear here. What you'll see are the other projects that were selected is coming from existing capital so the gray bar is the debt payment for the DPW. The purple bars the debt payment for the library and the red bars the debt payment for the fire station. So you can see what that looks like over time. And so when the bars exceed the black line that means in that particular year, the, the sum of our debt payments, both projected and actual. The cost for ongoing capital needs it exceeds the resources that we have. And so that's not necessarily means it's impossible that we plan, even going back several years when we were planning for these projects. It was assumed we would use some amount of reserves to basically buffer the peaks when we have a peak in the debt payments we would use our reserves during those years. So it's really a matter of how much do we exceed that black line and whether we feel our reserves are sufficient to cover those years. We built in this little box down here. That tells you by how much do the yellow bars cumulatively exceed the black line. So in this particular case with these options. The yellow bars exceed the black line by 4.8 million. And we put some, so people have some context. If it's, if it doesn't exceed it at all, it would highlight green showing that the option is affordable. If it's between a zero and a $10 million deficit, we, if it's marked as yellow saying it might be affordable but we would have to think about what other sources of funding we would use to offset those years where the debt payments exceed the funds we have available for capital. If it's over 10 million, we market as red saying it's likely not affordable. So, you know, there's no hard and fast rule for those we just try to give some guard rails for people to consider when they're to give some context to the number that comes up here. A couple more things I'll turn it over for questions so this chart just shows the outstanding debt from the new building project so as the new as we start paying the debt on those projects and those billions are completed. The debt ramp up, and as we make the payments, the debt starts to wind down. And then the last thing this is to help people get a sense of what the impact may be from a debt exclusion. So based on your options above. And the value of your home or the value of the home you want to see the impact on this will adjust accordingly so, for example, if we wanted to change this to 250,000. Depending on how the debt schedule set up the early years the impact would be about $200 addition to the annual tax bill. And that would trickle down as the debt decreased over over the life of the debt obligation. So when you're in here you can put in any value you want to get to get that information. Just note that it is an estimate and it's based on our, the value of taxable properties in town right now and that changes every year so it really has to be updated every year to get an accurate picture for that particular year. If the tax if the tax base grows then the impact will lessen for each individual home. And with that, I was going to stop share my screen for now. We've got some more people that have joined that's great. And I'm going to open it up for questions if anybody has any questions. Just raise your hand and I will make it so you can speak. Someone's got to have questions. Hi, Tony. Hi. Sorry if no one else. No, thank you. And Tony, I want to let you know I did get your question. And I'll be responding to that hopefully early tomorrow. Great, thanks. I just stumbled across website by chance. So it's good to see you advertising tonight. So thanks for this, Sean. It's amazing work that you've done clearly. I had a few questions for me. The priority is the school followed by the fire station. And I'm worried about operating budgets and the effects that is that will have a staffing, both at the schools and all other town departments. So with those priorities in mind. I mean, I'm concerned that if the library happens first out of capital. That that commits at least 16 million dollars toward that project that won't be available for the projects later later. If a school override fails. We want to keep going with the project regardless of we don't want to pull out the school override. So we're going to need $40 million in capital, or at least the ability to repay debt for $40 million out of capital. So I would consider, or am I right in thinking that first of all, and then secondly, to me then the logical conclusion is that the library should be an override. And it should happen after the school's override. So that if the school's override were to go down, we can still afford to do the school project. Yeah, so let me give you my thoughts and then if you have any follow ups. So one of the complicating factors is the library and the school are part of grant programs that have sort of specified timelines. So I'm unclear, I don't think it will be an option to wait until after the schools, when the school will come up for a vote to vote on the library, we have to think more through what those timelines look like. Because we're really in the early stages of the of the school process. We're going through the process right now as a school building committee to bring on an owner's project manager. So that's really the very sort of beginning stage of the feasibility studies so that, so that's one thing that complicates all of this is thinking about the different timelines related to each grant. The second piece, you know, if a debt exclusion fails for the school. I think we have to rethink all of this so it, you know, that would be a $40 million cost right now that would be, you know, almost as much as the other three projects combined. So if that does fail that's one of, you know, one of the things you'll see in the presentation that was given at the finance committee. That's really one of the underlying assumptions that if that doesn't happen, then the whole plan has to be reconsidered. And then the last thing I'll say is I totally get your point about operating budgets and it's a really good one. So we're in the process and I'm sure this will come up more at finance committee, when we talk about this of modeling more of what the future could look like around operating budget so I think in the presentation we just focused on FY 23. Mainly because that was the year, sort of the greatest jump in our capital spending. However, you know what I've heard one of the pieces of feedback I've heard so far from you and from others is can we model out farther under different assumptions and see what the impact may be on operating budgets past FY 23. So that's something I'm working on now that will, you know, when we refine the model, and we come back with more information. I'm sure that will be part of it. And I know for this year, it's not just hitting in FY 23. Right now, departments are putting together their budgets for the year that starts on July 1st FY 22. And the instruction to them as you know was 1.5% increase and so far, we've seen that for the regional schools that means a million dollars in cuts. Last night at the Amherst School Committee meeting we saw it's over half a million dollars in cuts. We haven't yet seen what it'll mean for the other departments, but presumably it'll be staffing cuts across the board for this year too so that's FY 22, FY 23, possibly FY 24 and maybe even FY 25. And the operating budgets are going to be cuts, cuts, cuts, cuts, cuts. And as Peter Demling said, once they're gone, they never come back. So when you lose a program, you lose a program for good like the culinary program or you know you know from your time in the schools, things go away and they never come back so I feel, you know, bearing in mind if other people share my priorities where they're gone, fire is number two, and I have a strong concern about the impact operating budgets. I feel like there's got to be a way to postpone a decision on the library until after the school is more solid. So I'm going to the NBLC and saying we need two more years, you know before we can commit to funding, then maybe that's the path to go, because once we move forward on that. We're committed to spending that money and, and, you know, it's at least $16 million the numbers I ran myself it makes it look like it's another two and a half million beyond that at least, which I assume would fall to the town. Yeah, I just wanted to see if there if there can be some exploration of that you know of postponing a decision on the library so that we can make sure the school is locked in first. And if not, like you say everything falls apart because we need to be able to afford to repay $40 million in debt for the school, which I think, you know be interesting to know if the town was pulled what people's priorities would be and if they would share those priorities that I have I'm sure everyone has different priorities but it would be good to know where people stand and if the library is not number one then maybe the library shouldn't go first. Thanks Tony, I'll do a brief response and then I'll, I'm going to go to the next question and then if you have other questions feel free to raise your hand again. One thing I will just say is for this year and it's again it's a good point Tony made this year we are facing a 1.5% budget increase, and a lot of that has been caused by the pandemic, and one of the key variables as we look forward and we're estimate the impact on operating budgets will be how quickly do we come out of the pandemic and do our revenues return to normal. It's like a huge hit during the pandemic when everything shut down. And if we get back to normal and in a reasonable amount of time, that's going to make things a whole lot easier looking forward. If it's a slower recovery, then it'll be a different story that we'll have to model out. So that's a key variable again that we're looking at as we go forward is how quickly do we recover and do things get back to normal, relative normalcy. After the pandemic, once we get out of the pandemic. So I will now turn it over to the next person, which is Kathy. Hi, Kathy, how are you. I'm good. I'm, I decided to go on and what you do the tutorial rather than try to go on myself. I have a question that you may know the answer to or not. What is the debt exclusion override. Do we have to go out for the entire amount, or can you go out for part of it so if with the, and I know with your model so I could say suppose the school was 20 million out of current out of our capital flow, and another 20 million was coming from debt exclusion, I could play with it so I could see what those two impacts are but you know whether that's possible. I think it is possible. You can't do it with the tool because again that's one of those things that's a little more nuanced, but I believe it is possible to exclude whatever amount you want essentially of the debt so I can but I can verify that just to confirm. Okay, because it's a financing so the kind of back and forth on saying suppose of fire and DPW start a bit later. Looking for what part of the school be able to be financed, and then part of it would be that now I know I can't do the tool for a half of a school. But what I could do is just for hypothetical I say okay I'm going to make DPW the debt exclusion so I could see 20 million out and see what's left so I can play with it that way. I didn't know whether it is even possible to do that. If we were facing the kind of decision you know, can we do a significant share of the school from within our own resources but not all. So that that was has been my question for a while. I think what you just showed us is, if we're over, and this is also for the audience, if we're over, we've built up reserves, and you've done the green, yellow and red by you can pull down on some reserves but we can exhaust them. So that that's what that green, yellow and red is doing is, am I correct. Yeah, so it's, it's saying if it's over 10 million. You know, if we're 10 million over what we have available for capital, you know, are when we built the model we thought that was too much to be pulled from reserves to pull out 10 million. If it's over 10 million if it was somewhere between zero and 10 then and it's spread out over, you know between five to seven years, then that's something that is more at least upper discussion. That's why we came up with that color coding. Okay, and then my last question is the way the town has been financing debt is you pay the principal off more quickly, you don't do flat payments you do you're paying more at the beginning so we play less in total in interest as I understand it and I've got a municipal tool that can do flat. We play less initially when we do that but we're paying more toward the end. This tool doesn't allow us to see that am I correct. Right now so again that's one of the more nuanced thing so in the the financial option we presented last week. It does that sort of level debts, which I think is what you're talking about where you have approximately the same debt payment. In the interest and principal throughout the life of it. That's actually how the library is modeled in that in that option. And as we get closer to these other building projects will get more into those, the real nitty gritty of how they would be financed for so we haven't done a building project in a while so most of our smaller things are as you say we you know we pay more upfront and it declines or the life of the debt. And the reason for that is you pay that's how you pay the least amount of interest. If you, if you maximize principal you're paying however for building projects you often look at several different ways of financing the debt to see what works for your community. Yeah, and, and, and I'm not saying that one is better or worse than the other and certainly when interest rates were higher, paying it off faster made total sense when then this low. Someone is giving you money at a very low premium so the interest costs. Yes, they will be. It will be more over the lifetime but it's no longer that huge multiple when we were paying it 510 or, you know, five or 10. So that is another way I think that those bars don't. You can smooth it out a little bit better. You could definitely bring down the payments in the early years, potentially. Again, it would raise payments in the out years, but you could reduce the payments in the early years and that's one of the things we've been thinking about with the schools in particular in the debt exclusion, you know, should it be an equal payment for 30 years is it, you know, just philosophically should people for 25 years from now be paying the same amount for the school. They're paying now because the school be 25 years old at that point but that's, but you're right you can do it both ways to see what works. Yeah, no, and I said not one better but I'm partly looking at ways of smoothing it out so right now we can't do that with the model but you can do it. Right. Yeah, well and I work with our financial advisor to do it. Yeah, our financial advisor puts the debt schedules together. Right. Okay, I think that's it so is this tool now up in a way that people can, I guess they have the questions. Is it easy to find because when I first went to find it it wasn't up and then I think it is there now and I just, the request, make it as easy as possible to find. Yeah, we have a couple people that joined I'll just show this one more time. You can see my screen, you can undo me and you can have me leave the room. If you want to, I'm done. Alright, let's see I think this is it. Alright, so if you hopefully you're seeing my screen so this is the new engage Amherst site. So to get here you just go to engage amherst.org. And you'll come to the landing page and you'll scroll down to see the different activities that we're currently using the new page for. And one of them is called financing the future and that's the one focused on the four building projects. And if you go to that page, you'll come here. And so the tool, the private, this is probably the easiest way to get to it is under this link section, the building project public engagement tool if you click that it'll pull it up. Okay. We might want to feature this whole what you've enhanced somewhere on the homepage, at least initially and the other is, I'm not sure people saw that you were doing these forums, Sean you had told us you were doing so I was looking for them. So, I didn't find it right away on the pull down calendar I found it by going to this so you might just for the next one. So the direct people where to find it. Yeah, absolutely. So this first one, it was sort of a, we were finalizing some of the information so the sort of the push out of information happened a little later than it might normally but Brianna is working on making sure the next one is well in advance, which for people here it's going to be on March, March 6. But you're right this one was a little bit under the radar but I'm happy that we have a people came that's great. Okay, so you can, you can have me leave the room. Thank you very much. Let's go to Kathy if I remove you I'm not sure what happens here, you might get kicked out. That's all right with me. Okay. Are there any other. Okay, Arthur. Hi, Arthur. You can unmute and ask your question. All right. Can you hear me. Yes, I can. Okay, great. So look, I would love to get behind all the projects. But I'm having a hard time convincing myself that the 90.8 million dollar cap is credible. And so I see a lot of insurances that the projects are going to remain within the cap, even with the 10% contingency that's supposed to built in be built in that that's credible as well. And so, you know, I see lots of instances where the numbers just don't add up for me so let me give you one example. Given that construction costs escalate by about 4% a year. The $35.8 million estimate for the library was based on construction beginning two years ago. And figuring that construction is not likely to start until next year. Where are the cuts going to come from in the library proposal to keep that budget within the 35.8 million dollar cap. And I don't know if that one was specifically addressed at the library presentation but there are and maybe I'll bring Lynn in for this one. There are a couple of forums focused on the library coming up soon. And so I think that would be a great time to relay that question to the library also when they have their designers and their OPMs there. Because that's really more of a question for them but when if you do want to speak any more to that just raise your hand and I'll bring in. Do you have any other questions are there. No, I mean it seems to me that that's got to come off the 35.8 million 10% contingency has to come off. And then there are other questionable numbers in their proposal, you know, based on the page report and so, you know, I think I think if, if you guys would like us to get behind you in this. You know, there has to be some clear indication of how the project can be built inside that cap because it certainly doesn't look that way now. No, I think that's a it's a great question and again I strongly urge you if you haven't already to submit that question, probably to Lynn, and and we'll make sure that gets addressed at the forum because I think that I've heard that question a couple times and so I think it will be really important that it gets addressed. Okay, thank you. Yep, I'm going to bring one in because she has raised her hand. Go ahead, Len. Hi, first of all, it's, I'm really glad to know so many people did find the meeting information. And let me just mention that there are the two library forms coming up. One is on the six. I mean the third March 3 at six o'clock. The other is on March 6 at two o'clock and I believe Sean you're doing yours at noon is right is that right. I think we're doing ours in the morning so maybe nine o'clock I think nine or 11 o'clock early. So people can just do capital projects all day long on the sixth. But let me just mention. If you've not ever overseen a project. And I have overseen a couple. What you have is an owner's project manager. And that basically is the person that needs to stay within the budget and the budget is, there is a contingency, but more importantly, every step of the way. You're making choices, those choices and this is this is a trivial one. Okay. Am I going to use this plate for the lighting fixtures or am I going to use this plate and the difference between that maybe $100 versus $300. And so you make compromises, hopefully in the place that don't compromise one the quality of the structure. And the second is the sustainability of the structure. When, again, when you're building something. It's not what the budget you see today is not the budget that you would end up with, because there have to be changes along the way. Let me give you an example of a big remodel I did in a space in Springfield for the university, you know, and the project manager said oh and you know I think we should do the bathroom and I just looked at and said, we're not doing the bathroom. Those bathrooms were done five years ago. And so it's a situation where you need to have somebody that you have full faith in, who is going to keep the money under control. And Shawn, you were right before you can go out for a partial amount in a debt exclusion or not. Okay, very helpful. Yeah. Arthur, I think you raised your hand a second time. Actually, I didn't, but your hands still up. Sorry. I was taking notes. As long as you've got me. Just a question back to Lynn. Yeah, I understand that bit about the responsibilities of the project manager. But if the initial budget starts over budget. Isn't that a problem. If you're, if you've got a cap. And you're ready over the cap when you start with that initial budget. Shouldn't we at least start with a budget that's under the cap. And now I'll put my hand down. Yeah, you're back in. Yes, you have to start with a budget that's on on target so as they are doing various schematic designs, they're not at their last one. And when by the time they go out to actually bid the building of the project. They have to be on target or left less and they have to have either a 10 and sometimes 15% contingency 10 is the building contingency 15 is the other last night. Or Monday night they told us they had a five and a five. You know, that's okay. But you're at your by the time you go out to bid the project. The bid has to be within the budget. There's no wiggle room here. It's, and this issue that what if they have all these overruns well, if you have people standing there saying you know I don't really like it that way I think that wall should be there. Then you have cost overruns, but you're not going to have that if you have the right project owners project manager. And this is critical because the schools are getting ready to go out to bid for their owners project manager. I met the owners project manager until the other night. I was pretty impressed with him. He spoke the language that I'm used to hearing when you're talking to people about owners about costs and what you have to do. Yeah, and I'll just echo what you said Lynn I think, even with the prior school project. There's always sort of value engineering that you might have to do if bids come in higher and I think that's not an uncommon thing for designers and for owner product owners project managers to know that it, you know, if towns have a number, and then the bids come in higher. You have to do some work to get it down to the number that the town can afford. And so I think that's, you know, the plan we have going forward. All right, are there any other questions that anybody has Irene. My name is Irene Dujovny. I, I'm still grappling with the idea of the library and the cost. I don't still understand how they're asking the town to pay the amount of money they're asking to pay for a new building when the building is not owned by the town. We always hear that the Jones Library doesn't want to commit to things on the North Amazon Library because the building is not owned by the Jones. But at the same time, the Jones, the Jones Library trustees wants the town to commit to things for a building is that is not owned by the town. So I have a hard time justifying the funding and the cost that they're asking the library cost is about this cost that the 315 school would cost. If you look at the Fort River feasibility studies for the smallest, the smallest school, one of the estimates was around $40 million. So, I think we have to put in perspective the cost of the renovating the whole edition on the library is the same as building a new 315 million 315 people as students. Right. So, I think I agree with Tony. I think if the priorities are the schools, let's do the schools first, then the library because justifying. I think there's a, sometimes I think there's a moral question here asking when the trustees have certain certain way of addressing the North Amazon Library versus the Jones Library and the Jones Library is not owned by the town so there I cannot see how we can, you can, the town can justify asking that big ask, when is the cost of building a small school. Thank you Irene, that's, that's helpful feedback and again, I'm sure at the forum there will be a lot of topics discussed and we can, we can discuss some of these things more. And just to reiterate, I think Lynn just to confirm you said the first forum is on March 3. Correct. Correct. Okay, six o'clock. Any other questions tonight. Again, I strongly encourage. If other things pop up, you can come back on March 6 then we can talk more. And also to use the Q&A feature on the project page, because a lot of the questions you may have might be good questions for the whole town to hear the answer to Tony, bringing you back in Tony. Thanks, Sean. I just had one last request, the estimate for the repair, the cash flow that was presented on Monday. It seems like it was on the more expensive option that takes longer. Is it possible for you to do a cash flow for the 14.4 million repair and use the same assumptions that you use for the expansion with interest rates and timing and principal premium it seemed like you were estimating with the expansion you could get 15.7 million for a cost of 15 million, which I don't quite understand that's beyond my capacity for numbers but if you could apply the same assumption on principle to the cheaper repair. So, so absolutely we'll get the. I can get the financing schedule for the repair option to that Q and riddle presented and and have that available, the just to clarify a couple other things so we, you know, the reason why I originally went with repair option one was because it seemed to me if we were going to go with a repair option as opposed to the MVLC option. The building is over a longer period of time. We don't do it all at once and one swoop in general, not that that's never done. So that's why repair option one sort of to me seemed like a more, if we are going to be looking at how do we space this out and start making repairs to this building it seems like repair option one was more along that line. But I get to your point, you know, when you do repair option one if you follow the timeline that Q and riddle put out there, you're not borrowing the biggest portion of that until 2027. And that has a higher interest rate assumption because it's five years out in the future so it so that project that option is more expensive in general but when you add the higher interest rate then it's even more expensive. So we can definitely model repair option to as well that's no problem. The reasons for that one should be pretty similar to the repair or the MVLC project again the financial advisor as we go out on time he includes more of a buffer and what the interest rates might be. So I think in 2023 2024 or in that two to 3% range. And as you get beyond that we start going higher, but I can work with him and make sure that the the assumptions make sense based on the time timeframe that we're looking at and for repair option to I think that borrowing would be in 2024 so it should be pretty consistent interest rate assumption for that one. Thank you. Yep. All right, any final questions. Again, want to thank everybody for coming tonight and asking what you did. And I again strongly encourage you all to use the Q&A some of these questions that you've asked tonight I might just enter them on the Q&A myself because some of them are good ones for just everyone to see the answer to. So I might you might see those get put out there to help the town give people one more minutes if any questions pop up. Arthur Keene asked how many people ended up attending so we had eight people. Two of which were counselors and the rest were residents I believe. All right, one last call for questions and if not I will. Good night and thank you all again. All right, well, thank you one last time. If you have any questions you can either email me you can use the Q&A function. If you want to get on to that engage amherst.org website and play around with it and see what it has to offer. Subscribe to this if you're interested and you want to get updates going forward. But thank you again. Have a good night.