 Thank you. I actually had a question about the minutes or maybe just my misunderstanding about whatever we did last time. I thought that we had agreed at some point at the end and maybe we just didn't that all of the four proposals that we liked all of them but that John you and I'm not sure who else was going to try and kind of condense them into one thing that went to Sean. Yeah, did I make that up or was that. No, you did not make it up Carol. The truth is that I didn't get around to doing it. On the other hand, I'm not sure at this point, or even if we've done it earlier, it would make any difference. I believe that Sean, well, I'm pretty sure Sean went ahead and propose to spending plan to town council. The last Monday I'm not quite sure when and what I don't actually know is whether town council approved the spending plan. And then, and this is something to ask Nate, when he comes online if he knows. And then if they did approve it, when we actually get to give our detailed recommendation on what should be done with the money that theoretically we have some responsibility for which would be both a million dollars related to addressing issues for homelessness and the million dollars less addressing issues related to affordable housing. So whatever the four things that we proposed is still in the background it never got far for which is fine I just. It was kind of unnecessary because Sean did not want to provide more detail. Yeah, okay, town council. And the first of the four goes under that rubric of programs to address homelessness. And the other three go under the rubric of promoting more affordable housing. I'm guessing that it'll be on our January agenda, but I don't know. Okay, thank you. Okay. I see Mindy has also joined us. That is representative Mindy Dom. Who I think of as Mindy, because I knew her before she was our state rep. Okay, so I did say we should review minutes from the last meeting. I distributed those any comments or questions about those minutes. They were prepared by Lucia and I made a few editorial changes. Nothing really very significant before I distributed them. Okay, if there are no questions or comments, then I think we will as usual, regard them as accepted as submitted. So that brings us to the next order of business, which is discussion of the town comprehensive housing policy. And I'm going to make take a shot at sharing my screen. Looking for something I prepared before this meeting. That is a list of things that I wanted to share. And I'm not seeing it come up. Yeah, I see it in my. Sorry. See, I did send it to you. Can you share the screen on this? What is the document? Housing trust priorities for the town comprehensive housing policy or from the town housing. Comprehensive housing policy. So while Lucia is seeing if she can share the document. I'll just say why I, why I wanted to bring this up at all. Basically, I think that while much of what's there is already consistent with things that we are doing. We should try to identify things that we definitely regard as priorities. And that we may want to own as the town works on implementing this. This policy, because that really is the next step. Thanks Lucia. So okay, so we need to identify what to set as priorities. And then we'll take a look at a draft of that, which we'll take a look at in a minute. A second thing we need to think about is how and when to communicate to town council about what we want to take ownership or responsibility for. And the policy itself really goes beyond affordable housing. So we just need to be cautious about the fact that our statutory responsibility is affordable housing. I guess the other thing that I didn't list here that we need to be cautious about, which I wasn't necessarily in putting together this list is not taking on too much. As I said, a lot of what's here is already on our plate. So we need to think carefully about what we want to add questions about that. I just is our statutory responsibility is affordable housing with the capital a or not. I mean, is it just subsidized housing or is it any housing that is affordable. No, I think it's subsidized housing. Okay, anything that is for individuals or households that are generally 80% am I or below, although it could also count 200% I'm sorry 100% am I or below, but not below that. And not enough. Yeah, not above that not not inappropriately though the policy does set some goals for people who are at a higher level of income. But that is at least not according to the state statute and not according to the town by law is something that is identified as part of our responsibility. Thank you. Okay, so most of it is really a lot of it is on this first page. And as I said, this is all things for the most part that we're already doing. Even if the language is a little different. So, I'm not going to read it, or I'll just kind of briefly allude to these things, production of diverse housing types as alternatives to single dwelling home so that's part of the policy. And reducing the occurrence of rental conversion of single family homes, which is something we may or may not want to be responsible for. Working with stakeholder in town to increase production of starter homes and other options. Starter homes doesn't necessarily mean, in fact, probably doesn't mean in this context, single family homes, it can mean doing a condominium development, for example, for new homeowners, or other things that we might do that's targeted toward new homeowners. So partnerships is something that we also have been doing, and I assume will continue to do the specific policy at least in this location, mentioned seniors singles and disabled residents. And I just added italics persons who are unhoused as well. I'm not here in the document, but I just wanted to highlight that. The policy places a major emphasis on homes that go into the subsidized housing inventory which I'm pretty sure is 80% am I, although under some circumstances it could also include 100%. But I'm not sure about that. The policy though as I mentioned earlier references people earning 120% am I or older or lower. And we're not doing that we are doing 100% for example in the East Creek Belcher town road development. Building racial and social equity into planning. And ensuring that barriers are reduced is something that I think we've already started to do some work on. I'm not sure we've actually done much or have any plans to do the seventh item so that's something that we have to decide. Under each of these, if I'm going to send a note to town council, I would probably want to cite things that we're already doing. You know, we have the belcher town road East street school project. While it's not exactly our project, we have work to promote the valley community development studio apartments that are next to the Amherst college campus. Again, the second thing I'm not sure we've done anything related to that, and whether we're going to be in a position to do so. And so this is a place where, and other places obviously, where I'm looking for what you all think about what we should be doing, and whether we should be formally telling town council. Okay, this is on our list. So I'm going to stop and give a chance for comment and not sort of steamroll everybody we're just keeping on talking. Okay, no comments. I'm going to say in number two, which I agree with in principle, I guess like what would that look like action steps wise for us like it's, I mean are we going to go fully like the realtors to say like you can't, you can't sell to investors. Well, that being operational, I guess operationalized there there are some things the town can do. For example, we could take the town could change the tax structure. So that if single family homes are not owner occupied, the tax rate could be higher, which they declined to do recently correct they voted that down. A few weeks ago, am I wrong in thinking that I don't recall that I think that may have been something else that to do with differential rates for commercial versus residential property. Okay, I thought there was a central exemption in there as well. So if they did what I'm describing actually they would need special actually new statutory authority to do that from the state legislature and the city of Somerville is seeking that as Mindy pointed out to me so thanks to Mindy for pointing that out to me. So that's an example of something that the town could do. Again, whether we want to do something developing a proposal along those lines, or leave it, for example to the special task force that Pam Rooney wants to appoint. Hypothetically along those lines like I know statewide they're talking about the kind of luxury real estate tax or whatever they're deeming it is that something that could potentially be like a bylaw that the town council could create and and make it. So the Amherst does that regardless of what the rest of the state does. Oh, as you said there's there's a state statute pending. And it's gradually getting more and more interest among various towns and cities in the Commonwealth. But they need to have legislative authority to be able to pass that. And then it would become a local option. If the state passes the relevant statute, then Amherst could elect to do the would really be an additional tax or fee on luxury home sales. That wouldn't be on the value of homes until they're actually sold. And things would need to be decided which is, what's the line so to speak is it half a million dollars in sale value, less than that more than that to be subject to this trend real estate transaction fee. And what the percentage of the sale price. And the state statute would actually offer some options that towns could adopt. But we're still not there yet. And actually Somerville, again is leading the charge to the best of my knowledge on trying to get that bylaw passed. I guess this is an area where we could do something which is to say we could join with other towns in doing that advocacy at a state level. And actually to some extent I have done that. But not necessarily as aggressively as we might. But there needs to be more interest, I think among towns and Commonwealth before the legislature selected to pass the two changes we were just discussing. But potentially we could come up with other things that would create more of a price if you like for doing rental conversion of single family homes. The third item is something that we're definitely already hoping to do. This isn't necessarily the language that we apply but for example, where we are hoping to be able to use property on strong streets to create, say a condominium development that would allow home ownership. That would be an example of something that fits under three because likely those would be starter homes they'd be primarily available to households that are new in the market for purchasing homes. So I definitely think that belongs on our list. Other comments. Let's see the other thing I would say about three is the initiatives that Carol mentioned earlier in the meeting about use of ARPA funds also would be focused on home ownership. Whether it comes through a project like strong street, or it comes through the kind of one household after one household with the projects that Rob was talking about at our last meeting. All of those also are examples of trying to increase the availability of starter homes. In the community. Let's see. Number four. Again, we've been doing partnerships. For example, our most recent RFP. Which I'll talk a little bit about the status of a little bit further down on the agenda is now an example of trying to do something that meets the needs of particular population in the community. And so we do want to continue, I assume to pursue these kinds of partnerships. And it can be through an RFP process or it can be something like Valley Community Development initiated with its Amherst studio apartment project, where we kind of stand in support of what they want to do. And so that's our first request for support from the Community Preservation Act committee, and we try to organize constituents or advocates in the community to oppose people who try to block the project. So again, that's all stuff that we have been doing. And I'm guessing we would continue to do any comments. Okay, then we have the fifth item. And again, that can be some of these, there's redundancy across these items, I will say that but can creation of homes can be doing new building stock. Or I would consider, again, the kinds of projects that Rob talked about, that the American Community, sorry, Amherst Community Land Trust has initiated or Habitat for Humanity, or Valley Community Development, all of them have things, although generally you're talking about 80% of area median income, or 60% or lower. We really don't have projects and are not likely to have projects that are as high as 120% AMI. But again, that's something that we have been doing. Any comments. There were like a condominium sort of some kind of situation. Could there not be one in which some of the units were 80% and some were up to 120% so there was a mix. There could be. Yeah, so if we do an RFP for condominium development, we would do something similar to what we did with Belcher Town Road and East Street School, where we allow units on the Belcher Town Road property that are up to 100% of area median income. Or on the East Street School where we might actually get some market rate units, because that isn't restricted with respect to income. So yeah, there's no reason we couldn't have that. And in fact, to the extent that DHCD looks at new projects and says well there's only so much subsidy will provide. If we put more units up. Well, make the other ones market rate because we're not going to subsidize them. So, I would say at this point Carol, that's definitely possible. That's good. Other questions or comments. Okay, number six. No racial and social equity, etc. into planning. I think, again, some of this we do automatically by assuring that the housing is available to people with lower incomes. So we did the RFP for East Street Belcher Town Road site. One of the things we did is require the developers to do special outreach to individuals or households of color, for example. It's not simply low income, but we're also trying to build in racial equity, as well as social equity. And again, I'm guessing that that's something we would try to be able to continue to do. I don't know about the limitations, but the fact is that when a developer builds a pool of people who are eligible for a new development. Probably randomly selecting folks to come in. And I don't think we can put in a racial or ethnic bias into that selection. But the one thing we can do is require that they do a lot of outreach. So the cool definitely includes different racial and ethnic groups than you might get if you didn't put much effort into it. And then we have the seventh item actively acting to eliminate discrimination and housing. Actually, the predecessor group, or maybe the predecessor of the predecessor group to the housing trust was a fair housing committee in town. And we've never really adopted that as a goal for this group. And if we did that, I'm not quite sure what we would do. But we don't have a fair housing group anymore and Amherst. And an interesting question is whether there should be a fair housing group and whether that should be a responsibility the housing trust. When we did the educational forum on racial equity. The woman who served as the kind of mistress of ceremonies. So the Ortega Bustamante or Bustamante or take I'm forgetting the right order of her last name. But anyway, she talked about a problem that she and her husband had when they purchased the house that they're currently in. And they were unable to get alone to fight the spite the fact that they were fully employed. And it's all to believe that that was a consequence of discrimination, although there wasn't necessarily a way to prove it. And they were able to purchase the house because the people who own the house agreed to give them a loan. Right to hold the mortgage so that they could pay off. And again, I don't know if there's a way for us to get actively involved in that kind of situation. But it's definitely a fair housing issue. Certainly a soldier raising it made me more conscious of the fact that even in liberal Amherst, the realtors and the banks don't necessarily do the best job in assuring access to communities of color. So that hasn't gone away. It's historically a problem, and it may still be a problem. I should say I actually talked a little bit to Rita who couldn't be in this meeting. And she made a very good point about some of these things than that is, if they are things we're going to do, we should do them to some extent in collaboration with other groups or individuals in town. For example, number seven is a perfect one for the Human Rights Committee, which Sid is a crossover member. If we're going to do some kind of initiative there. I think it would mean that we would work with Sid and with Ben Harrington who's the chair of the committee and potentially other members of the committee to rough out some kind of plan for what we might want to do. Again, it just adds add something to our plate so you know, a lot of the discussion we've been having on the other group is about how would we do more education around some of these issues. And a lot of this, you know, looking at the eliminating discrimination in housing, it's educational right it's it's about bringing the lenders in bringing the banks in and educating them how how he can be better for the community to have a diversified community. I agree with you that this would be a really great project between the housing trust and others and the Human Rights Commission, I think that Ben and most of us would welcome that. Okay, so that's something potentially to put on our agenda. And I don't know, because we have yet to have the new town council seated what Mandy Joe who was the person who was principally responsible for the new town policy, or other people might have to say about what initiative they expect to take. I think that through a task force like I described Pam Rooney wanting to undertake or through some other town council initiatives. So those are the first seven there aren't many more that I would strongly endorse on the other hand. I think as I said earlier. I, I made the list probably over inclusive. So we really do need to be careful about what it is we actually want to do. I remember one point with committees like this is that in part people need to vote with their feet that is they say okay. It's important and not only do I think it's important, but I'd like to take some initiative in pursuing it. Okay, any other comments about these first seven. Okay, let's move down. We'll see it to the second page. Yeah, sorry you're moving down a little too far. Okay, so we're talking about goal Roman numeral two. And what I pulled out of that is the idea of working with institutions of higher education, particularly UMass. And again this relates to an issue I mentioned earlier which is. We've got students taking considerable advantage of existing housing in Amherst it's led to occupation of what historically were starter family homes. And it's because they don't have enough options on campus. There are at least two articles one that Nick grabby wrote in the Amherst current and another one that appeared in the collegiate about students going as far as Holyoke or Springfield to be able to find housing. And I'm thinking about students on the UMass campus so that's not very convenient. In fact, it probably undermines their capacity actually to, to be students. So it's not only a problem for the town of Amherst but it's really a problem for undergraduate and graduate students at the university who need housing. So, this is what's in the policy. I don't disagree with any of it. The question is, what if anything related to this do we want to take on. Does this kind of remain in the portfolio of things that we see as something to should be a responsibility the housing trust to participate in to take the lead in. What do people think. I tend to imagine that the town has more pull to do any of those things and that our job would be to be supportive as as asked or something like that. I don't, I don't, it just doesn't seem like a place where we would shine at being the. Whatever you call it to lead people. Yeah, I see a note on my screen that. Sorry. I was going to say, I tend to agree with Carol that this would be more on the area of town down relationships and have those two groups work on it. And then as Carol said, then we would be supportive more of, you know, what, what the town side what the town decides to go with, but I could see more of a town down relationship area type of action. Okay, Linda Slakey had her hand raised so I'm going to recognize her and see what she has to suggest about this. Well actually I raised it when we were back in the set before sorry I missed it. That's all right, I'll just say briefly that the, the item six and seven that is to improve the picture for racial and social equity. It's an issue for us and for the ACLT. And we find ourselves just not equipped to understand what we can legally do if the town can find ways to go beyond marketing to the populations that we want to encourage that would be a great help. We recently got a donation of land. And one of the things the donor wants to do is to write into the record of the gift, her desire that the property eventually come into the hands of people of color specifically. In the meantime, she sold it to the city. But in terms of what the trust can do and the town in general, the more we can open up policies that point the way to really encouraging, if not requiring that the properties be available to populations have been discriminated against in the past, the other, I understand that's a hard challenge I just want to put a voice in there to say that, that some creative work on potential remedies would be all to the good. Yeah. Well, I appreciate that. You know it goes out back to the discussion about our picking up on the fair housing responsibilities and doing that in collaboration with the Human Rights Commission. Right. I do have some experience with the university's effort to house its students. I don't think I have anything that you probably aren't already aware of the university is proceeding with public private partnerships the project that they're going to build that they're launching on Massachusetts Avenue I believe some part of that is such a public private partnership so I think they're moving a little bit beyond what seemed to be a roadblock for a long time to actually being able to do that. The more long term view is that one of their concerns is that it, it's extremely difficult at this moment in time to predict what the long term likelihood is of any continued growth in the resident population. A more likely prediction is that it will shrink. That drives some of their willingness to tie up buildings and capital and that. Yeah, I've heard that. Basically, right now, their capacity is to be able to house about 14,000 students on campus. And the number of students that are enrolled that make use of the Amherst campus. This is that is I'm excluding people who are distance learners is 28,000. So I can't imagine the gap between 14,000 and 28,000 is going to shrink very rapidly. And my impression is that, as I said, students would not everybody but a significant number would live on campus if they had the opportunity to do that. But once they get into their third or fourth years, or maybe even their second year Sid would know better than I would that opportunity probably shrink significantly. It does if the students choose to go off campus and then come back on campus. Traditionally, if a student is like from this first year, second year to third year, they choose to stay on campus the chances of them continuing on campus is actually pretty good. Okay, what they do is however they will go off campus and then try to get back in. That's when they don't have priority to get back on campus. Okay, that's interesting. I wasn't aware of that. Thanks. I mean, as you pointed out, and they do have the first of a public private partnership project beginning. It was supposed to begin now about two years ago. When they eliminated housing at North Village. And the Lincoln apartment housing is kind of been up in the air also. So they aren't moving very expeditiously to add the net new three or 400 units on campus. I, I hear you're saying that they're doing it because they are reluctant to over invest on new residential programs. This is from talking to other people that the university has lost its capacity to subsidize on campus housing. And as a consequence, that's the major reason why they're not willing to build more on campus housing, because even under a public private partnership or whatever else they might be doing. It's just too expensive. And I think that drives a lot of their reluctance to invest further. I don't know if anybody else. Okay, anything else on. On the issue of what if anything, we might do related to the issues in UMass or is it really something we want to leave to town council. And I've been listening. I haven't here for a little bit. I do agree with Sid that I think, you know, town gown relationship could be strengthened. So, I mean, whether or not the trust is a part of that or just, you know, recommends that, you know, I thought when you tack was meeting, it seemed like there was some really good discussions. And you know, I think it's been quiet for a little bit, but I think that, you know, just having those open lines of communication are good. You tack dissolved when Amherst changed the charter, and the new town council didn't pick it up. But I'm not sure the university press for three establishment either. So I think that definitely is in town councils court at this moment. I mean, you know, I think, you know, for instance, the gateway project, which some neighbors didn't approve of, but on the UTAC report, they did identify some areas where it could make sense to have, you know, higher density for off campus student housing that could be privately developed, you know, and I think that's a good idea. But, you know, I feel like it's a good long road but I think it's worth a conversation worth have having because, you know, it is a town problem when, you know, so many of the single family homes or other private properties are rented to students and it's forcing out non students and so. Yeah, I just think that it's a balancing act and I think it's good to have that conversation available. Okay. Maybe it will be helpful for the, for the trust to say to say hey town council would strongly support you getting going with this town gown thing. If it's kind of laying not doing anything knowing at least if there was somebody that thought it was a good idea might help it get started. Okay, so we could endorse the re establishment of town gown and indicate our willingness to participate if we were asked. Okay, so let's move on to Roman numeral goal Roman numeral three please to see a. Okay, so now we get into an area that is less closely related to our regulatory responsibilities but not that it's unimportant. In fact, one of the three or four are related proposals that we have one is related to this. That is funding changes to the sustainability of existing multi unit buildings, which are not necessarily heated or cooled. Using electric resources and as a consequence there tend to be inefficient and they are environmentally poor conditions. On the other hand, this has not been a major issue for us until really we did a forum on housing and sustainability with the environmental. Was it climate. And I can't remember what is ECAC stand for I've lost it sorry. Energy and climate. Yes, thank you. Okay, so this is something that again we might not want to take the lead in but it's something we might want to collaborate with. Stephanie who's the town sustainability coordinator, and also with the Laura Drucker who's the chair of the ECAC comments thoughts. It's important but also think that, you know, we can take a supportive role, maybe in partnering with ECAC if that's their primary goal, but maybe not take the lead on some of it. Right. Other comments or thoughts. Okay, well that's something that we could do in collaboration with Stephanie Chickarello and Laura Drucker, but as Allegra said we wouldn't necessarily want to take the lead on it. Go for that actually is something that we've done something about. Again, if you look at the RFP for East Street and Belcher Town Road, at least for that housing. One of the things we expected of a developer is to assure that it's constructed in ways that address climate action are sustainable and resilient. So, I assume we continue to do that kind of thing is there other thoughts people have about that. It just seems like we do it in in conjunction with the house, whatever housing development or renovation or whatever the heck else we're doing that we do it in conjunction with that kind of not as a separate thing. Right. Exactly, we're entirely with what you're saying Carol. The ECAC wants to do it in a way that addresses the kind of existing capacity of all the housing, and also the commercial property in town. Obviously that's a long haul is a lot to do, but it's not something that we would necessarily want to take the lead in or have a strong supporting role. Okay, so basically, with respect to go Roman numeral four, we want to continue what we've been doing but we don't want to do a whole lot more than that at this point in time. Okay, so we're on to go five. And basically, this is about maximizing the available financial resources. It doesn't really propose new resources. But it at least gives us some support for calling on CPA funds, the community development block grant funds, other revenue sources which could include the fees associated with short term rental properties, which may come at some point in the future, actually would also include resources like town property that becomes available. Again, something that we've already done. So, could include, although it's not named here tax incentive financing as another way of adding resources that would be available to support affordable housing. At all of this a little bit like the town policy creates a kind of hunting license or hunting license. And what it means is that we can try to look for what potential opportunities are there that we think are feasible and select among those and say, okay, we want to move in this direction and town council we want your support to do that. Since you created this policy. Doesn't this one the one that says that that the town council will proactively engage the am here's the housing trust and moving forward on developing identified properties and working to establish and receive new revenue and funding programs to support. It's kind of says they're going to support us, at least the way that I read it. Yes, I agree. Yeah, basically it puts us in a position of saying you committed to this. Here's a particular property or particular initiative that we want your help on. Yeah, so yes. So we just have to find those opportunities and then push them to support us. I say just as if that was going to be easy. Any other comments on this goal. Again, I think for the most part it's, it's consistent with what we have been wanting to do, and already been trying to do a question. And I don't know where this would fit in but I'm wondering about the role of kind of trying to keep the affordable housing that there is affordable still. Because I've been speaking with Kevin on the housing and re housing working group. It seems as if a lot of people are being displaced right now because units that were once affordable are being renovated and the rents are raised, and people are displaced. So I wonder if there, there's where that goal would for that idea of trying to keep affordable housing that's already in existence affordable. It is in there but it mostly refers to, for example, housing that's owned or managed by the Amherst housing authority. So that, for example, if they have a building or units that are threatened, because they're out of date, or they're running into various kinds of problems, then that should be a priority. But what we don't have which I think is what you're talking about Allegra is where housing isn't formally identified as affordable with a capital A. Whoever owns or controls the housing decides the rent they've been offering at is too low they could get more for it. And so they do some renovation and essentially the people who have been in the housing lose it. And there are definitely examples of that in town. I can think of a particular example of someone who is a custodian in town. He's held a variety of other positions. He was living in housing like that with his son. I guess from his point of view the good news is that his son had graduated high school before they were forced out of it, but even so he would not have left the community. The housing had remained affordable, but in essence whoever his landlord was decided that they wanted more for the housing and he was forced out. So I think that's what you're talking about. And I don't know how we address that. It's a very good question. Legally housing that has been affordable is not necessarily covered by any of this. Well I think you know there's there's the capital A affordable right that has deed restrictions that's subsidized housing inventory so those units, you know we'd have some leverage and ability to keep them affordable. They can, they still can be evicted from affordable housing if they can't make payments or certain things but I think what John is talking about is our units that don't have any deed restrictions or, you know any mechanism to, you know there's no rent control right so there's no mechanism to control how much the rent can increase but for the ones that are deed restricted, we've maintained those pretty well. We invested over a million dollars in rolling green to keep 41 affordable. We've worked to do a few first time home buyer programs with ballet to keep some of those units. You know with affordable homeowners but you know I think in general, we don't, you know the town doesn't have much, you know, authority over the market in terms of market rate unit so if there's a landlord who decides to increase his rent beyond the voucher program. You know we might find out about that after the fact, because you know someone might tell us, you know, vouchers are no longer, you know voucher holders can apply here or they don't work here but we don't really have any leverage with them necessarily unless somehow we probably have a lot of funding to buy down the units over time but it is a difficult thing to monitor the kind of lowercase a affordable units. Yeah, I mean vouchers are a general problem. Again, I people may already be aware of this but the Amherst housing authority, which manages the voucher program has a difficult time assisting people in leasing up in Amherst, because the rents are so high, and they go above what's allowable under the mobile voucher program or what used to be called the Section 8 program. And I don't know what we do about that, but it's consistent with what you were raising Allegra. I can't find it now but I thought I read something in here that was kind of amazing to me that it said in this whole bunch of things that could be done possible municipal regulatory strategies. I thought one of them was look into the possibility of, and then there were words that sounded to me like it meant rent caps but it didn't say it that way. It's something that we talked about once, once before trying to see if there's any, any kind of way to look at bringing back or bringing in some kind of you can't charge more than this for this. I could be wrong, but I believe the town would need legislative authority. I think I do that. I believe that's true to what that doesn't mean, like some other things in here where I forget thing we talked about earlier where the first step would be to get some legislative authority to charge some of those fees for Oh, selling really expensive homes or some of those other things. The transfer fees, it's just, it's just another thing that probably won't go anywhere at least in a very long time if ever but it's there, there have been such things in other places. And yeah, so I think there's something like here somewhere 20 or 30 towns that are now lobbying the legislature on the transfer fee. That's for high end real estate transactions so maybe we'll be closer to that. I don't know if Mindy's still here if she has anything to say about that. She's here. Mindy is there anything you want to add on that. I don't want to put you on the spot so you don't have to say anything, but if you do want to say something you need to unmute. Sarah thank you john hi everybody and I first want I really want to say thank you for all of your work I know you. I try to attend these meetings and be a fly on the wall. And I can't keep up with you your meeting and your meetings are always incredibly substantive and have heart so I just I really want to thank you as a resident of Amherst for your hard work. We have different kinds of bills in the state house regarding transfer fees on housing. Some of them are home rules, meaning they're specific to particular towns, and some of them are statewide that would allow for local option. So for example, Rep Dylan Fernandez who represents communities like Martha's vineyard has a transfer fee home rule for Martha's vineyard that would create a fee for houses over, excuse me, over maybe. I'm not exactly sure what the number is. It might be several million of dollars. And those that transfer fee would then go into a fund to support the development of affordable housing on the island. Martha's vineyard has a very particular issue that's not that different from other communities but the people who work on the island can't afford to live on the island so they literally have to migrate to the island to be able to do their work. And there's practically no affordable housing on there. So that's an example of a home rule because it would only really apply to Martha's vineyard. There are other bills out there that would try to do that on a statewide option or give localities a local option to do that. But the other home rule that's up in the legislature that I thought really sort of, it reminded me of what Amherst was trying to do that I brought to John's attention that he mentioned earlier in the meeting is Somerville, which is I think a real leader in trying to create innovative ways to generate revenue to support affordable housing. They also deal with a population crisis in terms of the housing crisis that's similar to ours because being in Somerville. And they have a lot of students who go to the colleges in Cambridge and also in Medford and at Tufts. And so they have this increasing pressure on their housing market as well. And their home rule. I don't know what chance it has a passing but it really sort of speaks to I think Amherst dilemma on what to do about home, not non home owner occupied housing. They have a population out of town LLCs that scoop up these housing and then rent them to many students and kind of take them off the market for low to middle income families. And so their home rule is a transfer fee specifically on homes that are being sold to or from non home owner occupied LLCs. They're very targeted at if you're a company and you're in your out of town and you're not going to live in the house. And you're basically renting it to people who aren't also from the town or coming into the town, there's going to be a transfer fee and then that fee goes into a pot of money to support the development of affordable housing for low to middle income families. And that one I really got excited about because I had heard that the Amherst town council was struggling with a way to deal with the non homeowner occupied scenario. And I think Somerville has figured out at least for themselves, one way to do it, they have not yet been successful in getting this through the legislature but I think this is a situation of more towns need to sort of come across the state to build momentum for support for transfer fees for affordable housing. And I'm, I'm happy I talked with john and I'm continuing to work with the reps from Somerville to learn more about what statewide coalitions they're part of and how I can learn more about those efforts so I can bring them back to you. Okay, thanks Mindy. Yeah, I am in touch on it off with Ellen chapter who's the head of Somerville's office of housing stability, who keeps coming up with these kinds of ideas that we want to copy. Yes. I'm a former legal services attorney. And actually, her husband taught Paul Buckleman's one of or more of his children in the summer of schools. If you have the concerns or questions that you'd like me to sort of do research or dig up information on please let me know because I'm within. That's part of my role as an advocate is kind of taking whatever information you have and your concerns and trying to find out information that can meet it, even if it's not. I don't know if it would be helpful, but I don't have to do this now I can actually send this to you in writing if you'd like for me to sort of update you on what's in the state ARPA bill regarding housing. If you could do it. I could send it to you tonight, or I can wait until we see what the governor does because he still hasn't signed it and assuming he signs the housing portions I can send it to you once he signed it so you can have it. That would be great. Thank you. Sure. Okay, so we've spent quite a bit of time on this. And we've got other things to do, but I do want to at least cover a little bit more. Other things that the town council adopted was setting a minimum goal of 250 new units of affordable housing, which again I thought was great. And this is consistent with affordable housing plan that we had proposed to town council. Now I think three years ago, but it's great that they adopted that part of the plan and that is now part of town policy. And again, I think that's something we should definitely be reinforcing. Okay, Lucia, could you move down a little bit further. And the rest of these tend to be things that either redundant with stuff we've talked about before, or things that are more difficult for us to get involved in people may have seen the data that a high percentage of renters are cost burdened or severely cost burdened. And the question is, what if anything can the town do to try to reduce the extent of cost burden on renters. Again, it's consistent with what Allegra raised earlier about cost burden really driving people out of their housing, one way or another. Again, I don't know whether we want to leave these items in our things that we want to try to tackle. Obviously we do want to tackle the third one reduction in the number of homeless individuals served at Craig stores. Any comments or questions. I feel like I've exhausted your patience with this area of work. So, again, I, I don't feel necessarily strongly about any of the rest of it. I mean, there's a list of potential municipal funding strategies they may be things that we'd like to see. And I think we would probably support anything town council does in those directions. But I'm not sure that there's something for us to do, except to take advantage of it. If they adopt some of these new strategies. So again, unless there are further questions or comments, I think I'll close out this part of the agenda, and we'll go back to all of the various reports. I think we're short, but some of which may generate some discussion. John, would it be possible for us to get this document that you put together right email just kind of review. It absolutely would be electric. And if I had done it more than a couple of hours or completed more than a couple of hours before this meeting I would have been emailed it to you, but I will do that. So that everybody will have it. And if you have further questions or comments, please let me know. I think what I'll try to do between now and our January meeting is draft a memo to town council, which we can deliver in January we can deliver in February I wouldn't want to wait too long. It's a good time to do it as the new council is forming, and people are kind of getting their feet, feet wet and again where I think there's a lot of willingness to address affordable housing issues. So I'll do that and that will also be something we can take a look at at our next meeting. Okay, so thank you all. And let's go back to the rest of the agenda. The next item I had on the agenda. And I'm sure you're sick of listening to my voice. So I've asked Lucia to report on this. And that is where we are in working with the town on a survey of older adults. Hi, everyone. So, john and I met with Becky bash of PVPC who has conducted the survey in various other towns in the region and Helen McMillan, Maureen Pollock and Brianna sun read all from the town on Monday. And it sounds like PVPC has at least several thousand dollars in funding to be utilized, but not funding for mailing out surveys so that would come that would be the responsibility of the trust. They're currently working to establish a working group, including the new senior center director that will meet monthly and discuss proposals for the town to make it more dementia and age friendly. And this working group will also agree on the finalized version of the survey. So the survey is not finalized right now. And it is open to suggestions for changing the questions but john suggested that it looks like it sufficiently sufficiently meets the need of the trust so didn't suggest any changes. John proposed to the group that we for the random sample that we mail out 500 surveys, and then a few weeks later follow up to those people who did not respond and anticipates that about 35 to 40% would return the surveys. And for online surveys, they use a survey monkey which Becky bash was pretty adamant about keeping it through survey monkey and Brianna confirmed that there is a way to set up duplicates so that we know where the surveys are coming in from so that we're able to separate the random sample from, for example people who get it from the senior center or something somewhere else on Facebook or something. So that will help keep the random sample results separate. Becky expressed hesitation on the PVP sees ability to do data analysis analysis if the results are disaggregated that way. So this would likely fall on. Maybe me and a couple of other you mass volunteers working with john to to sort of analyze some of the data. And then Brianna also offered to help drafting an engagement plan and community mapping which I think based on what I've seen john send me he's already worked on that himself a bit. And then there was one concern raised by Helen which is outreach for the convenient sample for certain groups like meals on wheels would require social workers reaching out and there would not be capacity for that until the late spring. But other than that, the timeline is hopefully the working group will first meet at the beginning of January, they'll have their second meeting by early February and agree on the finalized version of the survey, and it will be ready for dispersal as of early February. I don't know if there's anything else you would like to add john. I did distribute a copy of the Hadley surveyed of people a month or so ago is that right. What did I actually keep that to myself and not share it. Nobody I thought you did distribute john some survey question, some survey questions I can't remember. Yeah, it would have been the Hadley version. Yeah, did we go in the meeting. No, I don't think we spent much time on it. So it isn't necessarily memorable. My own view of it was that about 20% of the survey is devoted to housing then there are ancillary items that would be helpful to us like the age and race and ethnicity of respondents and so forth so I actually didn't see much of a region to change it. I can redistribute it. If anybody has any suggestions. You can send them to Lucia, and I, and there's something that we could ask the task force to consider when it meets. I think the task force you know they're not looking specifically at housing. I mean that may be one component but it's really. As Lucia said trying to make Amherst kind of an age friendly, you know, community with a number of different factors there but you know I think it's right that if they're doing this outreach we could augment the survey and the findings then you know also get some support for housing. It could aid you know aid in place, age in place programs or just other services for seniors that you know is relevant to housing so I think that's I think it's a good thing also with the new health director I think there is a lot of push to do some community assessments probably in the next year year and a half I think that's something that trust could also work with John kind of you know as you know just offering support and as you're doing with the this this you know kind of this progress or this task initiative that you know you will see are helping with I think the trust could also with a community health assessment to and have housing be tied to it. That gives us more information. I was going to just give a quick update there is money the planning department has someone to do a housing production plan update, you know the last housing production plan was almost 10 years ago. However I've been told that the census data is not might not be ready until next fall. So the detailed data that we use right now with there's just basic data so I spoke with you know with the HDD and there's a round table discussion and so you know they recommended not starting it now because some of the data would just not be current, which is disappointing but we have some money for that to. Yeah, the UMass Donahue Institute is the regional location for us census data. So I'm not second guessing what you just said but that would be those would be people to check in with, because they would hold the regional database that we want to be Yeah, and I can look again yeah I mean they said there's some kind of surface level data but it's not hasn't been refined so you can you know couldn't cross reference you couldn't get more detailed tables you can get some you know larger numbers but not some of the detailed stuff. Yeah they actually had detailed information about race and ethnicity. For some reason, maybe not surprising that became available early, but in the meantime. Everything else seems to be on hold or waiting. Right. Yeah I have a couple of contacts at the Donahue Institute so if you remind me I can check with them see if they know anything more than you or I do. Okay, well, that's all good. I wanted to give Allegra chance to report on what is happening with the committee on the future of the seasonal shelter in Amherst. So we have been meeting less frequently than we met over the summer because over the summer we were really focused on trying to get a place for this fall. Operations are up at I mean Lutheran so Craig stores is operating out of there for the season. The hope is that some of the ARPA funds will be used to potentially purchase a property that the town could use for both shelter and possibly like day space for case management services is kind of the conversation. The service providers in the group kind of centered around. There has been one property that the town has seen and the members from Craig's doors have seen separately that they were excited about, and the town might have some other potentials that aren't necessarily on the market. So that's what we're thinking about. So we're not necessarily proving some of that information but the kind of consensus among the group so far has been that it would be great to have a permanent location and for a shelter to be operational just in the winter but year round and have space that could provide places to meet with case case management services whether that's housing search services or health services or employment search warming and cooling I guess right now. Craig's doors is operating out of the manual Lutheran church they're busing people up to Amherst survival center for showers. They're busing people or you know people are taking public transportation down to the VFW for a warming site or that would that's the plan if it hasn't opened yet. So it's, you know, there's three different people locations that people are kind of bouncing around between at this point and it would be lovely for all those services to be able to take place under the same roof. The, you know, the hope is that our funds can be used to move forward on purchasing a property that could be used as a long permanent shelter site. And I think part of our conversation has been also. There seem to be a lot of things in the works in terms of permanent supported housing not just from, you know, possible town funds if, if the CPA funds go towards the town's proposal for, you know, some permanent supported housing. But there are other kind of statewide things coming down. I know there are some safe haven. Franklin County. Yeah, so Franklin County will will manage that. Actually, I think it's service net or would be the contract holder although I'm not sure. Maybe yet to be decided. Yeah, from what I'd heard it would at least be located, you know, focused on Franklin County or operational out of Franklin County. So it is a potential site in North Hampton being looked at for like 16 medically compromised individuals leaving chronic homelessness so they're you know, I think part of the conversation has been that because the majority of people staying unhoused in Amherst identify Amherst as their home there are people coming from North Hampton coming from East Hampton coming from Holyoke and Springfield so it is a regional issue that we're dealing with so there are other towns nearby that are also working on some of these permanent supported housing initiatives that could potentially take in people that are staying in Craig stores as well. And I know the university motor lodges still those units are there but they're basically offline there it's not like they're turning over every night those are basically kind of almost operating as permanent supported housing at this time because those people are stable in that environment. And they are they have, again, Kevin Newman was saying they have seen about four evictions recently, one of which was a previous rapid rehousing client who had been staying in in town and is now displaced because of the property renovation that took place. So they have seen an increase in people looking for services because of the rents rising in Amherst. And that's not just from this one particular property in the center of town but they're saying you know they're hearing anecdotally that some of the apartment complexes that are traditionally thought of as more affordable have also been bumping up their rents because the newer buildings that are coming in are more expensive so you know the market rate is going up. So they are, I guess that you know they're, they're kind of request to the housing trust in terms of support there was making sure that the lower 30% under am I don't get left out of the conversation in terms of developing further units and with the understanding that the Northampton Road units will be coming online at some point that is geared towards that population but that that won't necessarily be enough to fix the problem in Amherst. So that that is still a population that's in need of permanent housing. I said a lot and I don't know if it all made sense, but people have questions or comments concerns. It does make sense. Was there any further discussion about the potential competition for resources between having a permanent location for the shelter versus developing a transitional housing program. It wasn't really I mean I guess. I guess because it sounds like there are some other sources of funding for permanent housing permanent supported housing coming whether that's through ARPA or through there are a few RFRs I think we're out right now. And I think is there's there's one that just came out that was, I think, for working with people who have opiate use disorders so opiate use disorder rapid rehousing. I don't see why RFR just got out. And there was another similar. I think we're rehousing RFR so there are there is some. There are some other funding sources out there that at least some of the other people in the room were aware of. Okay. I'm not on everything but. It's kind of difficult to keep track of it because there are the main resources come through the Department of Housing and Community Development. But some of it comes through the Office of Substance Abuse Services some of it can come from the COC the continuum of care that gets money from HUD. So you never know quite where those opportunities are going to materialize. Any other questions for Allegra. Okay let's move on to a couple of other things. Let's see. Nate where are we for other people with the Strong Street property evaluation. Strong Street the consultants are hoping to get out there if it wasn't this week next week. And so they're they're donating the wetlands on the entire property. They're also doing then soil testing on what would be considered upland just to see. And then they'll do some hand digging and hand borings and then do a concept development or I think it's like up to three development scenarios on the property and also you know how to bring in utilities so. I'm hoping that's underway you know they he said they definitely get to it next week if not this week so. There was a survey it there was a survey done. You know, it's old now but it's recorded and they looked at it and they thought it was was detailed enough and you know accurately enough that they didn't have to resurvey so that saved costs so. Their services are cost about $5,000 and from there it'll just be you know I think it'll help inform the town and the trust what you know what are the options for the property what do we what do we think. If the wetlands are pretty extensive then you know that's one thing if they're not and that's that's all right. You know I'm told that the property is has a lot of ledger rock on it so I'm hoping that they can determine that. And maybe that based on their development scenarios, we would actually have to. Maybe have someone go out there and actually with an excavator and do a few bigger test bits to determine soil type and whether or not it's feasible to get utilities up there. So, you know, I think in the next few weeks we should have something to to look at. Would it be possible for us to schedule a report from the consultants at our January meeting. Yeah, I'll email tomorrow and see if they, you know what if they can do that. That would be good. Yeah, that will give us a chance to get an overview and to ask questions and to get our better idea about what we might or might not be able to do with that property that would be great. Okay. I just wanted to briefly go over what's happening with the review of proposals for the East Street School, Belcher Town Road project. The review committee met earlier today I don't think I'm breaking confidentiality to say that that happened it was essentially a kickoff meeting there wasn't a lot of details discussion. The group includes Dave Zomek. Okay, who is from the Department of Public Works. She's the assistant director. Rob Mora, who people may know is the town building commissioner. Sid, myself, and also from the finance group, Holly Drake and Simone Christopher who's the new town procurement officer. She is there to assist Simone, the provides training in her role as the new procurement officer. I had originally thought we could form a subcommittee of the trust to support Sid and I and our review of these proposals it now turns out that I was misled, and we are not able to do that for reasons of financiality. People probably saw Nate's note. So we're not going to be able to do that. Two proposals were submitted to the town, one from wayfinders and the other from home city development. And they're both good organization so I'm optimistic that we'll have two good proposals to choose from. Another thing that I wasn't aware of until really a few days ago is that there is an added element to the review, and that is the two firms that are making proposals will be asked to do presentation and respond to questions, probably in early January. The goal is to wrap up the committee's report to the town manager, so he can make a final choice. I would say no later than mid January, possibly even a little bit earlier. So that's where we are with that process. I'm not sure if there are questions that I can answer them but I can try. When earlier Carol had asked about ARPA funding. And I, if you know Nate, when I didn't know whether or not town council had approved the proposed spending plan that the town manager and town finance director had proposed or not. And second assuming town council is going or has approved it when Sean would be coming back to us and saying okay, now I need your specific recommendations for how money relating to housing and homelessness should be spent. Yeah, the town council did approve the general ARPA plan. And so you know there's the million dollars for housing, a million dollar for million dollars for homelessness and then there's some money for social services which could be, you know, tangential the housing. I think the goal is to have programmatic guidelines ready in March or by April one. I think Dave Zomax, you know kind of in charge of the housing money so he or Sean may be reaching out in the next few weeks john to you. It sounds like, you know, we don't, they'd like to have, you know, say if we want to do three programs we'd want to have kind of like what we started having a summary goals and objectives measurable outcomes, a reason why it's needed. And then, you know how it would be implemented so I think the work the trust has already done is, you know, we're in good shape for that so I think, you know maybe it's just now working with staff or you know reaching out to Dave to see what you know how we want to get started on that. I'm not going to prove anything specific so it's just the general, you know, we saw what Sean presented to us with some just general categories and so really it's now a chance to refine what what those are, you know what what programs will be be doing so. Okay so we'll know presumably pretty soon. When we need to take what we've already done and put it in a form that works for the town. Right, I have a meeting tomorrow I think staff, we've been staffs from meeting this week with Sean so I just have a meeting tomorrow to learn more about it. Okay. Any other questions about that. Well, maybe it'll be an agenda again for the next meeting to talk more specifically about what we would prioritize among the things that we've talked about. I see I also have another report to do on Community Preservation Act. The committee is meeting tonight to finalize their recommendations to town council. From the most recent interaction that I had with Sarah Marshall, who's the chair of CPAC. I believe may happen. And again don't take this to the bank but what I believe will happen is that CPAC will not approve either of the larger amounts that we requested or the town requested for major supportive housing projects. It's not that they will disapprove it either. What they would would do is take an amount of money, maybe as much as $600,000 and bank it so that if we come up with something that requires that funding between now and the time town council acts on their application, which could be April May I'm not quite sure, then it could be reallocated taken out of the bank so to speak and reallocated to a specific project. I'm absolutely sure because Sarah wasn't sure that that's what's going to happen but that was my impression about where the Community Preservation Act committee was not as of tonight but as of a week ago. If anybody else has any further information. This would be a good time to add it. I think they're John I think that you know the CPA committee did have a lot of proposals this year I think they will in the coming year so it's getting more competitive. They were disgusting trying to fund a lot of the proposals that reduced amounts. And there's some discussion like john said to try to keep some money in reserve for housing projects so I'm not yeah I'm not sure what what they'll do. I will say that when I attended the CPA see meetings, there was a lot of support among the membership for using money for community housing. And I think that's one of the reasons why there is likely to be this reserve. It doesn't necessarily be for housing per se, but I think for the people on the committee who are most committed to assuring that we have more money for community housing. They want it there, so that if we come up with something specific, there'll be money there to fund it. I'm not reluctant to just put it in the housing trust bank or allocated to the town because their attitude is really should be for a specific project and also if it's an amount as large as half a million dollars. They probably want to bond it. They want to spend all of that in any single year but they want to spread it out over a number of years, which is what bonding allows. So I think that's why we're not going to see our request for project money approved in the amount that we we asked for. Maybe it's also because if they can't approve both the one from the trust in the town because that's too much money. What if they approve the one that doesn't fly and then the other one doesn't have any money if they hold on to it they can go with the one that comes up first. Yeah, and it isn't the necessary. I agree with what you're saying Carol. They might also give us a kind of consolation prize under any circumstances of another $100,000 to hold in the bank that we can use for due diligence on projects that we're considering. We're using money to do the evaluation for the strong street property. So we may get some money, but a smaller amount, but the majority of what we asked for is likely to be in that reserve. And also I don't necessarily see it as a victory for us or a victory for the town of money goes one way or another. I don't think we necessarily would oppose what the town wants to do with that money. So I think either way, it's a victory for affordable housing and that's what we want to see. I think that the CPA committee did ask, you know, fair number of questions of the housing proposals and I agree with John they're reluctant to, to, you know, capitalize the trust with funding, although it's allowable it's you know the trust is. I mentioned at a meeting that there, I said it again, repeated myself again at one point that the trust is named in the statute as the one place that can just, you know, bank CPA dollars, but I think they're uncomfortable doing that so. You know, I think we just can keep trying. Yeah, it has to do with the culture of the committee, as it's existed over time, and they, their inclination is to want to see a specific project, and if it's a large amount of money to bond it. I think, you know, every other category, whether it's, you know, open space recreation historic preservation, it is for a specific project and so it's unusual that for housing with the trust you don't have to have a specific project so I think they're just so used to, you know, allocating money product by project and not just saying okay we can just provide money for future projects. They really like to have that, you know that project basis. And I remember as I feel like they were really keen on that this year I was kind of surprised how much they really wanted a project. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, Tim Neil, for example is a newer member on the committee, and he was very excited about the possibility of community housing, but he wanted to see something specific. That may be the way we need to look at things in the future that if we don't have a specific project. There almost is no point in asking for a large allocation. Also on my list was Hickory Ridge. I assume at this point this town is still waiting for whatever is that's holding up being able to close on the property. Because otherwise I think we would have heard that the town's about to close. Yeah. Yeah, I have another meeting on that tomorrow too actually on the restriction on the property. You know there is the solar company and then there's a conservation restriction on some of it and so there's a lot of moving pieces but as far as I know there's still I thought the goal was to close in mid January and get everything lined up by then but not to be critical Nate at one point you thought the goal was to close in mid October. I know. I honestly I still think the owners of the solar haven't heard about their rebates from the state yet. And that's that's one of the reasons it's been delayed so many times is that the the financing of the solar hasn't been worked out and so they're not, you know, they're willing to work with the town until it is but it for some reason they're just not, they're not hearing. Yeah. I mean, as our conversation with Mindy indicated there are things happening in the legislature. I don't know will is there anything that you want to have us focus on. Well, there is the state ARPA funds that are before the governor right now, which has I think it's like $600 million of money that's here Mark for housing. The specifics, I don't know if Mindy's on the line and wants to speak that I know she mentioned sending us the specifics in an email, but basically it would be awesome if all that money were, you know, available is immediately or as soon as I think that if the trust wanted to connection, you know, we could send letters to the governor and encourage, you know, town council and others to do the same. The I see that, you know, the, the coalition and homelessness has a form letter that we could pretty easily just send their way and have other folks broadcast that as well. But yeah, that's, that's how I would suggest we focus our energy. Okay. Yeah, I'd be surprised if the governor didn't approve it, unless he's concerned that it's not enough money, because he originally proposed I think a billion dollars for housing and homelessness. Yeah. Well, we'll have suggested that we send a letter to the governor supporting the legislature's plan for housing and homelessness within the ARPA funding state ARPA funding. Is there, I'll take that as a motion. Okay, well, that's good. Is there a second to the motion. Thank you. Okay, so I guess we can vote to decide whether we'll send that. I guess, Will, are you in favor or opposed. I'm in favor. Sid. Yes. Rob. Yes. Allegra. Yes. Carol. Yes. And I'm in favor. Okay, so I think we'll, we are taking you up on that suggestion. And I guess I can go to Pamela Schwartz's website and find that letter, right. Yeah, yes. Okay. Okay, great. Yeah, actually, if you do whatever is needed to complete it, that would be fine. And then we can send it along to the governor's office. That's great. Anything else we should be taking up. If not, we're one minute to nine. So we're in danger of finishing on time. Okay, well, I thank everybody for participating tonight. I think it's been a productive meeting. And I think I have a pretty good idea about what's going to be on our agenda for January. And actually, I can't remember. Oh yeah, the January meeting will be on lucky January 13th. So if I don't see anybody or everybody before then, I wish you a happy healthy new year and a great holiday season. And we will reconvene on January 13th. Thank you. Thank you. Good night. Good night. Thank you. Good night, everybody.