 Yeah, I think we're good. Okay, great. So I guess we're ready to begin. I have only one announcement and it was kind of prompted by Francis. Who asked me about, should we be talking about what's going on with zoning in town? And the answer is yes, but not tonight. There are a variety of things going on. It doesn't, I don't know how far along to say they are. One has to do with the infamous footnote and which would affect the amount of additional building that could be done as infill on Lincoln Avenue and a number of other locations in town. Anyway, I don't know whether the planning board is going to move on that quickly. It's basically a mess and somebody needs to come up with a good idea to get us out of the mess. I won't describe it any further. The other two things that I believe are going to be on the planning board agenda are the use, which are accessory dwelling units that could mean a something added on to a house that would be as essentially a standalone or not a standalone but an additional dwelling unit which could be a studio or could be a one bedroom. Could be any of a number of things as long as it's within reasonable size, which I think is a thousand square feet roughly, or it could be something else that's physically separate on the property of similar size. So the planning board is taking those up and the other thing that I believe is going to come before the planning board are changes to the inclusionary zoning provisions. But to be honest, I'm not sure of any of it. I think something's going to happen within the next month and we'll definitely make it a part of our next meeting and give everybody enough notice to prepare for some discussion. Let me follow up with that quickly. The, you know, planning staff developed a few there's that yeah, John mentioned most of them there's the mixed use building standard. That proposal to and maybe an overlay in the limited business district and those were presented to the CRC, the Community Resource Committee, the planning board seen them as well. I think the CRC kind of has to prioritize what they want to, you know, move forward at this time there was a mention of the inclusionary zoning bylaw and maybe the accessory dwelling unit and possibly another one that isn't hasn't been worked on too much as a new definition of an apartment building. But I do think that the inclusionary zoning one would try to capture most projects that may that produce 10 or more units so take away the requirement for special permits. So essentially, you know, the idea is that any development except for a residential subdivision or a fraternity or like a residence hall would have to provide affordable units if they created 10 or more new units. So the council at the CRC meeting, you know, some members of town council is a subcommittee of the town council they they were interested in, you know, pushing that one forward so it's pretty simple. I can send you the draft language. It's really just taking out language and the existing bylaw and making it apply to a broader set of projects but you know I'm sure there's going to be a little bit more discussion of it but that balance seems like an accessory dwelling unit are ones that seem pretty ready that you know they could. It's not the CRC you know the ideas at the CRC and the planning board would discuss it and then they would. And then it would go to town council as a formal zoning amendment and then town council would essentially refer it back, but the CRC is kind of, you know, thing that those two, the accessory dwelling and inclusionary zoning might be ready to go to council as a formal zoning amendments. So I think if we hold off any significant discussion of this tool, our next meeting it will still be timely would you agree with that Nate. Oh yeah yeah I mean what I'm saying is ready to go I mean my thought is a vote might not happen for like three months, you know, but that's pretty quick. It's consistent what I think I told you Francis. Okay. Any other announcements. Okay welcome Erica, I see that you've joined us. Sorry my camera doesn't work. Oh, okay. Sometimes to actually what happens with me is if you, if you use WebEx and then zoom zoom gets cut off I don't know why. Yeah yeah I have to restart my computer. That's great. Doesn't work for me. Sorry. Okay, our first agenda item is reviewing the minutes from January and February, if you may recall I sent the January minutes with less than 24 hours to review at our last meeting. And then I sent the February minutes about a week or so ago. So, we are theoretically ready to discuss either or both of those. We should probably take them one at a time. Our rate looks like Nate's got the February minutes up on the screen. Are there any comments on that or concerns that anyone has. Okay, we're just some typos, but I don't think it's a big deal. Okay. What did you say? Erica, feel free to send those to me I can fix them. Okay, I will do that. Okay, so what can we switch back to the January minutes. I don't know if I have those ready to show I'd have to. Let's see. I don't know if I have them open right now. Let's see. I might be able to send them to you. That's always tricky for me but. Yeah, I'll just stop sharing for now I don't know if does anyone have any other comments on the February ones though are they. Sorry, John actually when you said the January minutes on your email I think it was the February ones that you had attached. It was just a February minutes a week ago. But at our last meeting. Right. Which was in February. I had sent the January minutes just before the meeting which. So theoretically everybody has them and has been pouring over them. For sure. Okay, we'll. We'll get them to you again and maybe take it up next time with the March minutes. Okay, the next item of business I had with the update on the urge emergency rental assistance program. Again, I sent out late this afternoon. Two tables from. I'm going to tell you I honestly didn't see anything startling or unusual about those. It looks like they are continuing to roll enroll people at a steady, but slow pace, which is what we've seen since certainly since December, although it really wasn't that quick before that. Anyway, from what we see, it looks like what they're, well, Janice is counting the number of applications a little differently than she did before. She's basically eliminating those that were immediately ineligible, for example, ones that people from communities other than Amherst applied from. So that it looks like the total number of applications are down, but that's not strictly speaking true. It's just she's she was saying, well, I was over counting before, because we had these applications that were obviously ineligible. So now she's only including the ones that had a chance of being eligible. Obviously still we're not saying all of them get approved. So at this point, it looks like, let's see. We've got. I don't remember something like 42 applications total that have been approved, and the proportion approved is, I can't remember I can't see it could you pull that thing down a little bit Nate so I could see the percentage approved. Oh yeah, I can see what you guys see so I'm. Oh, okay. Well, actually it looks like it's a little over 20% that get that have been approved in both rounds. Yeah, not that much. Not that much, but there's a total of 42. My guess is if applications continue to go in at the rate that they have will end up with somewhere between 50 and 60 applications approved. Maybe say 55 if you want to put a specific number on it. Also, again, if you look at the money that has been spent so far you're looking at just under $80,000. Again, my guess would be the total by the time June rolls around is going to be about $40,000 higher or $120,000. And a lot of the, where most of the money has already been covered, not by our commitment, but by money that came from the federal government through DHC D as part of the cares act. And we may actually get additional money. And that's under the newest federal legislation which the president just signed literally this afternoon. So, as of now, of our $250,000 commitment of money that we add in the trust. I have no idea how much we are going to spend, but it could be well under $100,000 it could be zero. Depending on whether the town gets new money from the latest legislation. So I guess all of that is good news for us. And it's nice that we've been able to already serve 42 families, hopefully that number does go up to between 50 and 60. I think we can certainly say that it's been a modestly successful successful program. I'm glad we did it. But I think our expectations originally were that the number to serve and the amount of money we're going to spend would be considerably higher. So that's the story. Are there any questions or comments. I got a question. Looking at the incomplete applications which, you know, it was high on the first one and then it went a little lower. Are we able to quantify what what incomplete means. And did we do any follow up with those incomplete applications. You know, just to try to figure out if there was anything more we could do with those incomplete applications. I don't have all the details in front of me, but one of the things I do know that Jenna and her staff did try to follow up with people who didn't complete their applications. They followed up at least once for every person, once by email, once by telephone, and once by us mail. So essentially they made at least three follow up attempts. And usually with this kind of stuff, I think you may get a little bit more with more than three follow ups, but there's definitely diminishing returns beyond that. Most of my experiences with male surveys and there's some literature that suggests people should go out to three call six call backs. But three is pretty good. And it should capture the people who are eventually going to complete for the most part. You know, there may be a few that you'll lose but I don't think it's that many. I just wanted to ask John, you know, ask any action to reach back out so it is a high percentage I mean it's like 38% and then it's the number who have withdrawn, which is different than incomplete and so. I mean I will say I'm probably one of those incomplete applications just because I wanted to test it. You know, once you once you enter at one field. And you save it or it automatically saves you then you're considered an incomplete application so. But yeah, I mean it is a high percentage so I, I, it is, I mean, I, yeah, I feel like we could ask ask your john to look into it because I mean it could be that you know sometimes she said people, you know, they thought they were ineligible so they just don't finish it because their income, you know, their income was too high or, I don't know for whatever reason they didn't think they needed it so I'm, I mean, well in previous reports, Jan has given us more of the chapter and verse, specifically wasn't complete. So for example, for whatever reason people are not able to get together pay stubs or other financial information that is required for the application to be reviewed. Well, another significant reason is missing information, I can look at prior notes from Jenna, because I tend to save everything that comes into me for better or worse, and send a note out said to everybody about what the sources of incompleteness of these applications are. And it'll be great to see, you know, it's wonderful. Yep. Yeah, and I can also ask Janet to come to the next meeting and we can have more discussion of it but as I said I think she has already given us some information and I'll pull that back out and share it again with everybody. Thank you. Any other questions or comments. John as I remembered I think we made changes based on what they were seeing as barriers. So hopefully things get easier. Yeah, I mean we did make some changes. There are now circumstances where people could self declare the loss of income so they wouldn't have to show paperwork. We also made it possible for people to get a second award so that if they continue to have problems paying rent, they could apply for an additional three month period. On top of the three months that they were already granted. So you're right Erica, we did make some changes. Those are the two that I remember right off the top of my head that were intended to make it a bit easier. Any other comments or questions. One thing I think you know, you know we did extend community actions contract through June. I'm not sure how much we can extend it beyond that or if they'd be willing so I think as a trust maybe you know when this program ends we could. If there is money left over we could discuss you know what if we want to do another type of rental assistance program or what do we do with the funding I mean it can you know close back to the trust we don't have to spend it, necessarily on a rental program rental assistance program but you know we had talked about doing something like a local voucher program or something so you know I think this is a good this is a you know anything good experience and we can talk to the action see what they think I mean I I'm so wondering if some of the eviction piece and just the backup in the courts if you know if like what if next summer it actually gets busier I mean I don't know. It doesn't happen now but it isn't and you know but you know when when you start turning over again you know June through September is that going to be a busy time or landlords just, you know, don't renew leases because they just, you know, we can go to the housing the clerk of the housing court of Western Massachusetts and see what he thinks because he follows eviction data, and we can also ask for the opinion of people at community legal aid. I think it's Jen Barringer there I can't remember who's head of the Northampton office who I've talked to. So we could follow up with either or both of those sources. There haven't been many evictions and Amherst. There's a statewide group that has chapter in Springfield, and I'm not remembering the name. I don't remember the person who represents that group on Pamela Schwartz's meetings has given me numbers about evictions and Amherst and they've been pretty low. These are evictions that have been filed or notices to quit and they've generally been literally less than 10. So I don't know Nate. No, I don't know. I mean, yeah, I think the cares funding reverse quite a bit as you said so. So we have money to burn. Okay, anything else or should we go on to the next item. Okay, going on. Okay. The next item is the work that we've been doing on the draft requests for proposals. The working group met again two weeks ago on Thursday. It'll meet again on Thursday night, March 25. We've made quite a bit of progress at this point. We've pretty much completed review and discussion of all of the evaluation criteria. We'll probably end up making a few more changes, but right now, mostly Rita, a little bit of contributions from me and eventually Nate are occurring so that by the next meeting of that group. We'll have what you will see in a minute, which are the evaluation criteria that have been developed so far. But then on top of that the parts that go earlier in the RFP that describe both what the housing trust and the town's goals and objectives are for this procurement. And also what it is we specifically expect that the developers who are bidding will give us in the way of information as part of their proposals. So, we're pretty far along really, as I said, well, I don't think this is exactly done. I think we'll probably continue to tinker a little bit with it. It's substantially completed. And those other two sections are intended to set this up. So most of the thinking about what we're doing and what we're doing it has now occurred in that group. So I don't know, Rita, do you want to take us through some of the key things that. Yeah, well there maybe they're up on the screen I don't want to just sit here and. Yeah, no, they put them up on the screen. Yeah. Yeah, what I'd say just to add to what the your presentation john is that we we really have been working backwards which I was john suggestion and I think was really was was a good one it's not the way I typically have approached an RFP but we've developed these the criteria and then what will happen is. This will get incorporated into the narrative of the RFP. So as you see this is an appendix appendix to the the actual request for proposals itself, but it lays out how the trust will look at the proposals that they receive so it's the you have the priorities around affordability unit and bedroom configuration that kind of goes into design, you know, a bunch of other things and and it's been great to have the working group. So that is Erica Francis and Carol. John and I and john page to have been kind of going through this and talking about all these, you know, the different criteria and I think we've, we've gotten to a good place, it needs to be. We've looked at, you know, back, you know as I'm starting now to write the actual RFP itself, and integrating all of this, and then just the very just before this meeting was starting, Nate and john and I were talking about having a meeting with with town staff kind of preview where we're going with the RFP to see if there's any other concerns on the on the town's heart about where the where the trust is is going so I don't know if you want to scroll down. You know the affordability we did the unit and bedroom configuration we're talking about one to three bedrooms but with an emphasis on larger bedroom sizes. I think we're allowing for, you know, affordability but some potential for having above 60% of the area median income so having a little bit more of an income mix if that works with on the belcher town roadside we can go up to 100% of the area median income, and potentially could have some market units but I think it was, you know there was interest certainly on the part of the working group to have some mixed income obviously the emphasis is on getting the affordable units but if we can get some other units in there to that would be some advantageous, highly advantageous. So if you want to keep scrolling down. I would have one comment on the first line that also affects other things that we've done. If you look at the difference between advantageous and highly advantageous. It doesn't look like there's much of a difference, but advantageous basically lays out what the minimum criteria are. We struggled with this a bit and said okay well how many units would we say they should do for highly advantageous at 60%. And then what should the percentage be at 30%. And we ended up deciding not to put in specific numbers under highly advantageous, but in essence to challenge the developers to see how much better they could do. If they're highly advantageous, then we expect them to do other advantageous. So if they can figure out how to finance more than 40 units. And if they can figure out how to finance more than 13% of the units at 30% am I, then we'd be really pleased. And we decided not to put in specific targets, but to just say, do what you can to do better. And I guess the yelp only other thing I would add because of 13% of the units affordable at 30% am I seems like such an odd figure, but that is taken directly from the state's qualified action plan, which is the Department of Education and Community Development's guidance for getting financing through the low income housing tax credit program and their other programs. So that's, those are their requirements and we just incorporated those into into our proposal, our criteria here. And we're expecting the 40 units to across both sites. So that's correct. So, yeah, so this is, um, yeah, we're, what we're doing in the RFP is we're the property as I've been talking about it is a is the East street and Belcher town road sites combined. You could keep scrolling down I think unless there are other other questions. Yeah, we'll be going, we're going to go back over this John right when the whole RFP is done. Yes, we will next two weeks from today. Okay, for the working group, but then it's going to come back to the trust. Yeah, come back to the full trust. Okay. All right. Um, so I think we did the unit bedroom configuration you can yeah and that's going to be the same highly advantageous is can you do better. Right, give us more two and three bedroom units. Right. Then what's under advantageous. So, again, we're looking at the developer track record. And the difference between the advantageous and, and highly advantageous is the amount of experience and then we added demonstrated experience dealing with publicly owned land questions about any of these criteria. Yeah, that's a good one. No, I would we require that they submit references for this right so we would have them submit. Yes. Yes, references. Yeah. I don't know why the, some of the charts. Yeah, I think that just the formatting gets a little yeah funky the amount of number of times it's been edited. The financial feasibility is, you know, we are looking to understand whether or not the developer who's submitting a proposal has a is coming up with a development that is viable financially feasible, meaning can they for what they are proposing to and they secure the financing to do it so you look at what's called their development budget, which is composed of all the sources that they are the financing sources and then the uses which is how they're going to spend the money. And there are kind of standards. So, you know, for these, these developments and your sources have to equaled your uses. And you have to demonstrate also that you, you know, have an operating budget. And so, you know, this is all pretty prescribed things. And looking at a sources and uses will be evaluating is there's, you know, where they're saying they're going to get money from and looking at whether or not that's realistic and whether or not they're operating budget kind of falls in line with the standards for development. So it looks like we're going to have to for a rent schedule by bedroom. Yes. Yeah. So they, you know, they provide a whole breakdown of rents by unit size, and we verify that it, you know, falls within the guidelines that we've already set forth. And then understanding, you know, it's what they're proposing reasonable and financeable. The towns and we mentioned in there as a possible source. Go for more CPA money. Yeah, well, there's actually a section in the RFP narrative about that that we have to revisit because we did say with the East when we when we put an RFP out, which we did for those of you who were not on the trust at the time. A couple of years ago we did a request for proposals for as a standalone with the East Street school. And one of the things that we did say in that RFP was that we, there was an expectation that the developers would come back and potentially seek CPA money because at that point, the only CPA money, the only trust money that we put into the East Street school before that RFP was to do the due diligence to look at the, you know, get some design worked on do some initial wetlands evaluation. Well, we're in a very different position, because we used a significant amount of money for the acquisition of significant amount of CPA funds for the acquisition of belcher town road. And I think, you know, this is a very, it's different now that we're putting something out that's much more, much more significant can be quite a few more units than East Street was as a standalone so we really need to think about, what conditions might the town want to consider any additional CPA funds for when the developer puts their financing together, are they going to be looking for more money from the trust and or from the community preservation committee. The projected schedule is just the developer telling us how long it's going to be. And I'm just looking at this again, the trust. It's just six months is pretty. Yeah. I don't know why that doesn't seem right to me. I think it's too quick. Oh, it's a timetable is it's just a zoning application. Yeah. So, I was thinking it was a financing application. So basically what's going to happen is will go through the RFP the RFP gets gets issued and I think john has, you know, we have kind of a tentative schedule worked out but the once we get proposals back in from developers they those will get reviewed by a community, and a developer will be awarded designated for this development. And then what happens after that is that the town will negotiate, what's called an LDA or land development agreement with the, with the developer. And what that does in effect is it will give the developer kind of standing to go before the zoning board of appeals. So, which we assume they're going to need to get probably a 40 be in order to do the kind of density, and the type of housing that we expect. So it's a land disposition agreement and that actually leads into a, into a lease, the lease to. So what we're trying to do here is make sure that once we've designated a developer that the process keeps moving. And that it doesn't languish that we have a developer who's been designated, but then decides well I have a lot of other things on my plate and this is not a high priority and I'll put Amherst on the back. On the back burner so we're trying to keep them to a pretty ambitious schedule and that's what, that's what this projected schedule is, is attempting to do. People have questions about any of us please stop us and ask, because, I mean, I've been through this once before. So I have some sense of what's going on, but not everybody may share that experience so if you have questions don't be reluctant to ask them. John, you have someone in the audience but I think one thing just for the trust to the, I think the town plans to lease the properties and not, you know, not sell them so you know the properties would be would be leased to the developer. So you have a question from the audience. Somebody from Valley Valley has their hand raised. Sure. Hi, it's Laura. So just a quick comment about the timeline. If you assume that comp permits are needed for the sites. It does there was a preceding step of going to get a project eligibility letter from a state agency, which as a developer you don't have a lot of control over how long that takes and can easily I've had it to take up to nine months to get one of those letters so that's an FYI that can't go direct into the zoning process. I've never I haven't heard that Laura that's pretty sobering to say it gets nine months to get a project eligibility letter from MHP actually was the one that isn't good. No, it was awful. Yeah, I mean I think yeah it was interesting I guess, Laura to your point I was wondering when, when I was reading this right what do we consider the zoning application is it the beginning so is it the project eligibility or is it the actual 40 B application because sometimes we consider that all one process because yeah I mean even a quick. The project eligibility is probably like two or three months. 30 days to comment, you know there's a few weeks or two ahead of that and a few weeks you know it could be a month after that for the site visit I mean so. Right. And we found, obviously the Northampton Road project we were encouraged to keep delaying the submission of the PL, so that there could be more community input. It could become a much more extended process. Okay, so we'll take, take a look at that. Again, you know it's trying to achieve this balance of not of allowing enough time but not so much time that some urgency to your. I guess we define the zone, I mean we just had a definition for zoning application right if we define where. Okay, I want to keep, keep moving through there there are typos in here that I'm seeing as I'm reading this so like rationale will catch the. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the development design we actually had a lot of discussion about with the with the working group. Some of the language here is language that's taken directly from the qualified action plan. Some is language that we discussed such as the building massing that we had the group certainly had interest and not one. And then monolithic building so that there was some kind of design thoughtful that thought going into the, you know, the appearance of the, of the buildings on both of the, both of the sites. And then a lot of discussion about the East Street School, and whether or not the East Street School is retained or not. And I know from the town's perspective, there's real interest in seeing the East Street School incorporated into the new development and discussion about, you know what else what other sources of financing the town might provide if the East Street School is retained if it's not retained then we talked about how any new building could incorporate elements of the original East Street School into the, into the design. Yeah, and that's my now clue. Just the look and feel of the new building, maybe some elements of the East Street School are mimicked in the design. It could include taking away for example, or saving doors or windows from the school and reusing them. There are beautiful wood doors that were part of the original entrance of the school. Maybe somebody could figure out a way to make use of those there are these large classroom buildings this may be impractical, but essentially we want to encourage developers. If they don't think there's a way to reuse the school to basically honor the history of the school, and it's former presidents on this land questions. No, I do think that the. Yeah, the design standards will. I like that, you know, the monolithic. That description, you know, if anyone's seen the newspaper the new proposed mixed use building in downtown Amherst is not in that with appreciation so I think the 132 North Hampton Road has a nice. You know, nice, nice plan. So, you know, there are examples of how it can work so. You know, I think, yeah, I mean my thought is, if we want to have any other kind of qualifications other than monolithic, then, you know, we could might want to just consider those like what else are we looking for in a design if people have any interest. You know, I mean, I think. I mean Amherst character maybe, I mean, kind of says it but. Yeah, it was surprisingly challenging to come up with words. If anybody has any other ideas, please. So you'll know it when you see it Francis. Yes, that's right. And it is, it is. When we get to prescriptive, then it can become a problem. Yeah, yeah, I will say the right the mixed use building standards zoning amendment that was proposed the planning board discussed at the other week and one of the members said well looks like you can still build ugly. And it's like, well, yeah, I mean they only have some basic things about how to break up a facade with architectural relief it's not describing materials or size of windows and so materials and yeah I agree I think it is hard unless you want to just come out and say this is what I want to look like, and you don't give any. interpretation of it so, but yeah, I haven't, you know, I don't have any ideas right now I do like that. I like the way it's described I was just wondering if people have any other comments about that this would be your chance to you know put it in there as part of the review criteria. Well, this is not the last time we're going to be seeing this so it won't be going through a couple more reviews. So we previously on the East street school we actually had incorporated or combined design with sustainability and we decided to break that out just to kind of highlight it because it is something that is highlighted in the qualified action plan to. So this is around elements green climate resilient conservation of energy resources and then also, you know we have both sites have wetlands. And so, that's going to that it's going to impact what you know how the site can be designed. And make sure that's done in a thoughtful way. Questions. Let's keep going. So, Laura, I would be interested, Laura from from Valley or if there's any other developers here I see Jim Linfield here too. We, you know we have gone through this discussion about management and the management plan and I think there's a lot of, you know, been a lot of discussion about things around eviction procedures and you know some some details that you typically wouldn't have in an RFP. So, I guess my my question from the from the development community is, we are putting here preliminary plan for the ongoing management and maintenance of the development so not requiring a final management and maintenance plan. I just wanted to get a reaction to that, if you're willing to offer it. See an eager beaver. I think both Valley. Laura you're. And Rachel. One of my comments is that when you go through the 40 v processes the zoning board they'll also require a very specific management plan. So I would just be aware of that. I would be concerned about this provision for 60 day notice. It's very specific. And honestly, if you have a problem tenant who's endangering other tenants. This becomes a safety issue for the building so I just, you know, it seems a little too prescriptive and might not just be what everybody wants in every situation. But definitely be looking for something preliminary at this stage because DHCV is going to go through the management plan the zoning boards going to go through the management plan. Personally I'm more interested in what kind of services are being brought to tenants to support them. Rather than just notifications longer notice that they're going to be evicted and things like that. We have another hand raised. Hi, this is Rachel Belanger from Wayfinders. Just wanted to echo that I really appreciate the attention to this topic and emphasis on on good property management. I do think it's it's a bit early to delve into some of these details, not knowing exactly which funding sources will be used and which types of rental assistance. It feels premature to lock in some of the details. But I think that said I would as a developer I'd be perfectly happy to respond to a criteria, explaining that the trust would have the rights to pursue to review these documents at a later stage. So for for x, y and z to ensure that they're meeting certain goals and just kind of go through that process when the time is right for the project and when the other parties at DHCD and and others are are also focused on these documents at the same time. It can be a more productive discussion when everyone's looking at them at once. I did the 60 day notice to circumstances in which someone was unable to pay rent as opposed to behavioral problems. With that feel more comfortable for me personally I think another approach to get good responses could be to ask the respondents to explain their their eviction policies and history of, of using eviction. Sometimes the practice can be more progressive if you will that then the policy that's in writing. And so just kind of maybe asking for a narrative to find out how they've approached it in practice in the past might might provide enough information. I mean what one thought I had here is we were asking for a management plan for this specific project but we could ask for a sample, or you know, one or two right of recent or what they think are good management plans from their projects. I just, you know, not that it's me it's just me because we're asking for me really it's for this project and maybe it is too early to have something that's so detailed for. Yeah, well, I think what we don't want to do is say what is the management plan for this project. That is premature and will be developed over time but so I think by putting in a preliminary plan or an outline or kind of the, you know, the guiding principles or, you know, something like that that we want to know kind of how do you approach management and maintenance but that you're not absolutely locked in and I think, you know, we could. I would suggest to the working group that we revisit some of the language and some suggestions made here tonight might be. We might find a way to kind of be a little bit less prescriptive but achieve the same, our same goals. That was another raised hand. I, yeah, I would agree with the same is that it put it you know you could put it in this is our intention these are the things. Examining. I mean, by their you know whoever is applying will know hey we're going to look at your management plan we're going to look at how you treat evictions doesn't lock anyone into someone and you find the best again I think what Rachel said you find someone to be more progressive in their approach as opposed to limiting. I also don't know for me and Rachel we're not willing to make any commitments without review by our management team and you know the way finders management team where we're just the project managers. Okay, thanks. I keep keep going. So community support I think this is really similar to what we used when with the East street proposal. Basically just what we want the developer to demonstrate that they've actually done community process before how did they address. concerns and edit they had it they work through it. And I think, at least for the developers who are represented in the audience here tonight. They've had this experience so they'll be able to tell us there how they've done it. And then for your housing and equal opportunity. This is pretty standard language and a lot of it comes again out of the qualified action plan are very things that the developers are going to have to be answering for in their applications for financing. I do want to say under highly advantageous we hope to challenge prospective bidders to go a little beyond what the requirements are for DHCD under the qualified app action plan. We don't want to have people just sort of go round up the usual suspects so to speak in doing outreach. We hope that more can be done in that vein to assure that communities or color are well represented in the pools that end up being the basis for selecting who gets into these developments. Any questions from the trust. I think that's it Nate. Fantastic. Yeah. Yeah, as we both said we think we've made great progress on this and this pretty well defines the sections that have yet to be presented the major sections, outlining goals and objectives and what specifically we're asking developers to include with their proposals. You know this it's good I mean I think that, you know that's a lot actually as part of the review I mean there's, although six categories there's a lot within each to look at so. Yeah, yeah, that's really thorough. And yeah the working group has done a phenomenal job. Yeah, and then I guess for the rest of it is just, yeah I mean I think, you know I thought that we could set up a web page put documents on there, you know surveys, plans reports. You know the GIS that is available for download the link to it if anyone needs that so what you know we can just try to make it easy to get information on the properties. Yeah that's all in the in the narrative and I think we did that with East Street where there was a link to the, you know, having a there's a folder with all the information. So the working properties, the working group will see that in two weeks, or actually a bit before, and you all will see that in roughly a month. And what we hope is the penultimate draft, or not that final draft. Let's see, there are a couple of the things that came up the main one was that we need some authorization from the housing trust for some additional expenditures, the couple of things that have come up. One has to do with people who are already living on the property. As you may recall there are two houses. One's unoccupied but the other one apparently includes for undergraduates who are expected to graduate in May. For any reason, they wanted to say stay and we're going to want them out to make the property free included developers, then we would have to take some actions to work with them to assist them to move. And that includes hiring a consultant to manage that process to be sure all the eyes are dotted and the teaser crossed, and potentially to pay for some costs related to their moving out. And if they're undergraduates they're graduating and they're just moving out of state somewhere or moving to Boston or whatever, then I don't believe we have any obligation to do that. But if for some reason they're going to go on to graduate school they want to stay in the community, and their preference would have been to stay in this housing, then we may need to provide them with financial assistance and our consultant will help to determine that. We need authorization to pay our consultant and potentially to pay expenses, pretend related to moving, if we're obligated to do that we may not be. Things looking pretty good when we learned that, as I said all of the occupants of the house are people graduating in May. And Nate you had a couple of other potential. So one is ongoing property maintenance so right, you know the, we can't use CPA funds to for that, evidently. And, but the trust has some non CPA funds that could help with that so even just like you know, like trash and recycling, while the tenants are there for the next few months and you know that type of thing so I don't, I'm not sure. You know we just had for instance a snow plow bill for the storm the other week and I mean, you know those kind of minor things but you know those kind of carrying costs are not typical, you know I think when the trust voted it was more for like affordable housing pieces not maybe something like property maintenance or relocation so I just wanted to have, you know a vote on that and I think you know john I mean we could say up to 20,000 for these pieces and you know some amount and then that that authorizes the trust and john to approve invoices for you know any expenditures for that so right now we have, you know, I wouldn't feel comfortable billing the trust for some of these expenses just because I can't say the vote was clear enough earlier. Yeah, I think 20,000 is a good upper limit. I can't imagine. It'll be more than 10, unless something really unexpected happens. So I guess I can move that we authorize the use of additional trust funds for up to $20,000 for expenses related to property management for expenses relating to potential relocation of tenants and I guess anything else that we haven't anticipated that might come along. Are people comfortable with that. I have a question. Sorry, Erica yes. Yes, so the assumption is is that they have extended leases and that's why we're responsible for them. No, their leases run out in May. There is a uniform relocation act, both the federal and a state statute that obligates us in to provide alternative housing or to system with moving expenses or whatever, if they would otherwise be in be wanting to stay in that housing. Even with an expired lease. Yes, I read it can second guess we are saying anything further but I believe the answer is yes. Yeah, as a municipality or part of you know public government where as the owner now we're responsible even though the leases were said to expire. Yeah, I mean that would be true. For example, if a private developer takes over a building where there are people living and intends to knock the building down and build something new on the property. Those obligations I believe would be there under these statutes. So you can Google the uniform relocation act to get further information but having heard some discussion of it. I don't consider myself an expert probably have enough information to be dangerous. But my understanding is that that is what we were required to do. And I want to add that the town's going to continue to collect rent on the house and 80 belcher town road, correct, but those funds go back into the CPA. Yeah, so you know there's the town will receive funds but we can't put them into the trust or recycle them just for this property so they go back into the general CPA. You know, pot of money, which is a, you know, we originally were thinking that the rental amounts would just cover all of these costs that we could just, you know, recycle it into the carrying costs for the property but we were told that that can't happen so. I don't want to say that happened late in the process but I think when we found out we are already assuming we, you know, we weren't told otherwise I guess I guess we just hadn't asked the question clearly enough I don't know just those things that was kind of wasn't considered. Okay, was there a second to my motion. A second will. Okay, so we should do a roll call quickly. Will, you're in favor, I guess. Allegra. Yes. Erica. Yes. Francis. Yes. And Sid. Yes. And I'm a yes. So the motion passes. I believe that's six to zero. That's a comfortable margin. Thank you all. Okay, so I think we're ready to go on to the next. Discussion of business. And that is our strategic action plan. At this point we have an amended a strategic action plan. There are some new things that are in it that weren't there before. I will say without asking anybody's permission. I initiated something that relates to one of those areas, which is the one that would have to do with finding new potential sources of revenue or financing for affordable housing. And finally, literally. I think it was a week or two weeks ago. The mass housing partnership came out with a request for applications for people seeking technical assistance. Either for an existing housing trust or for a housing trust that wants to come into existence. I sent in an application, which I copied or I included as an attachment. And one of my notes for all of you to ask for technical technical assistance on improving our ability to finance affordable housing. Actually, I may hear about that tomorrow. It went to Shelley Goring, who I know at MHP, who has been responsible there for trying to for the care and feeding of housing trusts around the state, as well as developing new ones. So with any luck. We may get approved for some technical assistance around improving financing. One of the things that I did say in the application is that I thought we would have a small subcommittee that would work with Shelley and whatever additional consultants, we might get through this process to work on this issue. So, because the application was due last Friday, I did not have a mechanism to seek everybody's input. I guess I asked for Erica's input because I know she was the author of this provision. She seemed to be cool with it. So, hopefully everybody's okay with that as well. Okay, so I, in my note to you all, I focused on the things that were newest. And so I thought we should talk a little bit about those and try to identify what we might already be doing. And what we wanted to do further and really how to set some priorities and organize ourselves post RFP to begin to address that. So we put up the five year goals, which I appreciate. And if we go down a little bit we'll see what the completed initiatives have been. And we've obviously done pretty well in securing some town property the streets property. And then we got the town support for the purchase of the Belcher town road property. And now we're putting those two together, which is great. We've done those other things so now we're up to priorities for 2020 through 2022. 2020 is over, I think. So we're talking about the next two years and possibly beyond as things that we want to work on, according to our strategic action plan. And the one that I mentioned already is shown as number nine, explore new and existing revenue sources, including institutional sources, etc. John, I think we a number eight we were going to take COVID out of there. So we had to say kind of any, any pandemic or I don't know national emergency I don't we had some other language in there. Yeah. And actually I did something with respect to number seven, or the housing coalition did that. And I was going to mention a little bit later but I'll just note it now. And that is the housing coalition is setting up three really 90 minute meetings. The first one will occur on March 30, and I'm highlighting that right now, because it's a meeting that will focus on creating a path to home ownership and Amherst for low income households. The primary presenters of that meeting will be Valley Community Development, which does have a home ownership program that's been funded by the Community Preservation Act committee. The Amherst Community Land Trust and Pioneer Valley Habitat for Humanity. So they're the groups that have been involved already in doing home ownership projects in, in Amherst. And so they're going to be the major contributors or participants to this meeting on the 30th. We're also inviting other people to participate but mostly we also hope that there'll be an audience that has ideas about this, or concerns or things they'd like to see happen. So hopefully we come out of that with some goals for how to expand the existing home ownership assistance programs. Basically how to do better than we've done in the past. They're small programs. You know, they probably amount to less than, or maybe about 10 new home ownerships. Sorry, more than 10, 10 and about every three years. Because Pioneer Valley will do a couple, and then they're waiting to do another one potentially in Amherst, but they don't have anything on the books right now. Amherst Community Land Trust has money to do two home ownership properties now and they're trying to get those started. And I believe Valley has still four from the last Community Preservation Act allocation that they're working on. You know, and those will take at least two or three years to come to fruition. Yeah, I think this is an interesting topic when we, again, going back when we presented some of this, the zoning to the Plenty Board and CRC, the Community Resource Committee and a lot of the members asked, well, can we get more home ownership and I said, well, the town, we can't, we can't, the town's not a developer. So we can't make a developer do home ownership projects, but it is interesting that people are asking about it. So they're saying, oh, it'd be great to get, you know, more cottage style development, you know, or townhouses that are ownership or, you know, somehow like condominiumized or something. But I don't, I mean, I agree it's a good idea, but it's interesting. I don't, I think they feel like the town or the trust should be able to just do that. I think it's more complicated. I think the financing is really difficult there. So, yeah, that's why the numbers have been so small, Nate. Yeah, yeah, I think it's a good, I think it's a good topic. I just, you know, yeah, the town had more money and could subsidize home ownership, then I think that would be a possibility, but, you know, it's just interesting that that's, you know, when Valley did their strategic visioning a few years ago, a lot of people said they'd love to see, you know, 12 to 20 unit developments with more home ownership but it's like they're just not, the funding isn't there. My only thought is, my only thought, number 12, the ongoing one, actively advocate for initiatives that address homelessness and support homelessness prevention. I think that might, you know, I know the Craig's Doors I think is really looking for a permanent location and I think that, you know, the town council has voted that that become a priority. So, I know it's under ongoing but it may be something that the trust either gets pulled into or may, you know, want to, you know, just stay abreast of like, I don't know where that conversation is but I think the thought was that by next shelter season there might be some more, you know, or, you know, their ball gets rolling on that, you know, that it's not just a, you know, every shelter season figure out what's happening will come up with a better plan for the shelter or, you know, things like that so they were able to get by this year. You know, I don't know what it looks like for next year. So, any other comments or expressions of interest on these initiatives. John, I just have one comment on number seven. I'm wondering if we want to add production in there because housing assistance only sounds like it's like rental assistance where you're, but we're actually promoting rental production and perhaps, you know, should be thinking forward to is there a way to promote home ownership production too. Yeah, fine with me. I mean, I've been thinking that if we can get approval to use the strong street property that that could be potentially a place where we could do home ownership production. You know, maybe we can put some condominiums up on that property or small houses or something else. Because it's not on a main bus route, but it is something, you know, that might be reasonable for people from 60 to say 100% area median income. So could we just add housing assistance and production programs. Fine with me. Does anybody have any objection to that. And Francis since you're here. Wearing your other hat, you know, it would be wonderful. You know, I know people have been talking to mass housing about how to promote home ownership as a way of equity building or And it is the greatest wealth, wealth building opportunity. So I assume that there's some discussion, at least I've heard there is some discussion, both with mass mass housing and with some other of the of the quasi public housing agencies about how to put home ownership back out front. Yeah, we actually thank you. I was actually going to make a comment. But yeah, mass housing after we we did, you know, a lot of lobbying and stakeholder engagement and data gathering for about two years and the governor gave us $60 million to create home ownership opportunities in order to narrow the racial home ownership gap. So right now we're primarily working with Gateway cities in the city of Boston to create home ownership units that will have a shorter deed restriction on them. Because it's, you know, if it's if the deed restrictions are in perpetuity, you're not really building wealth over time and intergenerationally. So I did want to mention and I'm sorry I need to read over the whole action plan, but I think it would be important to think about how we are both supporting and advocating for narrowing the racial home ownership gap. And I think that should expand to communities of opportunity, like Amherst. Right. So I think it was specific. It's at Gateway cities. So it's no so it was its own the money we got what was its own thing it was from the sale of I think GE was going to develop something and then it didn't. So that's how we received the money. But we want to yeah and it's the first time in a long time that any quasi or state has been involved in home ownership. So it's, but I think that we wanted to start primarily with places where households of color are buying and live and have communities. But yes, I mean I think as the trust we should think about not just rental but how are we supporting down payment assistance, closing cost assistance and anything else that can help support home ownership. Yeah, I mean, the land trust and rescue land trust work, you know had see how CPA money and they're, you know, supporting to home ownership units but not a pre unit basis it's like 150,000 a unit so you know with with Valley we've been able to do it. I don't know maybe it's like 70,000 unit is what I get you know if you factor in I don't know you know with admin other costs but you know it is it is it is pretty expensive and I mean we've done it for about 50 55,000 is the lowest we're doing it right now for as a, you know, assistance for down payment or something but it does get a little tricky. It's definitely not cheap, especially with housing costs that continue to increase because they're just visited of supply. But yeah I think that it's one of those things that we have to keep advocating because if, if nobody's talking about it that nobody's doing it in a way right. Yeah, John that can go hand in hand with your exploring new existing revenue sources. I guess yeah. I mean it's interesting though it's like the conservation world for you know conserving land it's like you know homeowners like just property owners I mean the town has like probably like a queue of them who are willing to donate land, but when it comes to housing it's just, I don't know for whatever reason that isn't there you know just as it hasn't reached that same same kind of level or profile so you know and it could happen it's just interesting that it doesn't so I mean I'm always surprised that hearing like oh this homeowner is willing to donate their land to the town for conservation. It's like they don't even, it's like, it's like they just don't even think you know I don't even blink like okay yeah let's donate our land. Yeah, well, we should look and see whether a piece of that land if it's on a public way can be basically separated from the larger property. Right should go into conservation and and and be used for housing. I mean that's the properties are, you know, outlying residential areas but yeah. Yeah, I mean, I do think we had talked about the homelessness piece I was just go back to that I mean I just don't want to lose it you know I do like I said I think it was in. You know it isn't the trust by a lot to yeah, you know one of the areas of responsibility so yeah I had sent actually you Dave and Kevin and Jerry all a note about a piece of property on Fearing Street. Janet McGowan alerted me to that I thought might potentially be a location for a for Craig stores and nobody responded to me. But I agree Nate we, we should continue to look for things we can do to support Craig stores and going beyond shelter. But then we're doing that when we try to develop the kinds of new housing that we're working on for Belcher Town Road and East Street. Right. And we'll say for the zoning piece you know they're, you know, with the mixies buildings downtown you know they know them provided affordable units because they didn't trigger inclusionary zoning and there's some rumblings that you know more products are going to be, you know, the next year will be proposed downtown and so if you want, you know affordable units and those to, you know, get the inclusionary zoning by a law amended would be important because you know otherwise they're not there's no mechanism to have them provide affordable units so the, you know I think the zoning piece. You know, even I know Rob crown and I said we're going to work on and we've talked about if we haven't put pen to paper, I mean there's a number of things that town is also talking about just you know redefining certain housing uses and how they're permitted but I do think inclusionary zoning is something if the trust, you know if you all send you the link to the all the documents but if we think that that is a high priority we could write a memo encouraging the planning board and everyone to, you know, in a council to make that something that they review first as opposed to waiting. You know, I do feel like it's somewhat of a missed opportunity if we have four new buildings proposed downtown and we get you know, hundreds of new units and we don't have any affordable. And my understanding is, if the planning board is considering those bylaws. And that happens before the new proposals come in, then the new proposals would be bound by those bylaws assuming they eventually are passed by town council. I don't know if I got that quite right but you know the legal ad for the public hearing for the zoning amendment if that's published. I don't know if I got that one. But essentially if if if council on the plane where I think the zoning amendments ready to go to like a public hearing to be reviewed to be adopted. And that public notices is made before a permit is in hand the land use permit then the development would be subject to the that provision. So, so there is some reason to want to move quickly on changing the inclusionary zoning bylaw. Just remind me because I wasn't working with the town when this happened but you know there was a, wasn't it Judy Barrett, who did a lot of examination of the inclusionary zoning and made recommendations so she was an outside zoning expert made recommendations, whatever, you know are those still relevant. They, I think that the trust which doesn't have any real zoning expertise, including me I'm not that's not my, it's not my forte. You know you can say we encourage you to do inclusionary zoning but the exact, you know language that needs to be changed is. So I, yeah, I mean, so I worked on the new inclusionary zoning draft bylaw, and I think it's great. No. So Judy Barrett, you know as a consultant for RKG in the town of Hireger in 2014. And she researched what other other communities had done. And there was a proposal at the 2016 1516 annual town meeting. And it wasn't, it wasn't adopted I think a lot of people felt that she was giving too much to a developer so there's you know density bonuses or things like they provide affordable units they can get another floor or things like that and it just, it's over well but then two years later the town did adopt, kind of recycled some of her material and, you know, adopted some more updated inclusionary zoning bylaw so it does now allow for, you know, offsite units. If, you know, certain things are met and also has a payment in lieu of two so I think that the language and inclusionary zoning bylaw is pretty good you know it has a percentage calculation for a number of affordable units and has these two provisions for not providing the units in the development and you know it used to have all these waivers like if you did this you didn't have to provide them or if it wasn't a special permit use so I think now it's really just saying any development that that creates 10 or more new units. Judy Barrett's was a little more complicated I don't think it needs to be more complicated. You know, Cambridge and others have like square footed requirements and percentages and this is just you know if you make 10 more units you have 10 to 14 units you have to provide one affordable 15 to 20 is too affordable, greater than 21 units net new units is 12% have to be affordable. And, you know, and that's, you know, that's, that's pretty much it. Are you suggesting that the trust to do a letter to. I can send you the link to the materials and we can talk about it at another future meeting but okay. Yeah, I mean I don't. You know, there's been some discussion about lowering it to less than 10 like, you know, but most communities don't, you know, I mean, at some point there's a cost burden to the developer so if we're saying you know like at six units you have to you know, that's a pretty to me that's a, you know, some people may want that but that to me that's a really low threshold. I think 10 units is fine. You know, I, you know, so someone develops eight new units they don't have to provide affordable units I mean, you know it's really capturing anything with 10 or more units so I mean the trust can talk about it too it's just. Yeah I think I said that we take up these issues. And then our next meeting. Yeah, you can talk about specific things that we want to advocate for among the zoning amendments that are being considered. I'll send, I'll send you a link to everything the new zoning amendments and if you have staff, the trust has questions you can ask me and. Yeah I mean you know Cambridge has a pretty and Brookline has some pretty, you know, more complicated inclusionary zoning bylaws. I don't, I feel like it doesn't have to be, you know, but, and then maybe we'll get pushed back from someone saying we're asking too much too many affordable units. Undoubtedly we're going to see that. Yeah. Well, okay so we've had this list up in front of us of things that we could and should be doing. So, 12 we talked a little bit about 13 is really what we've just been discussing town policy and zoning. Is there anybody who wants to jump in on any of these others to say yeah we really should be doing X, Y or Z. And I'm quite willing to. Sorry Erica. That wasn't me was France. Oh, Allegra sorry. I'll go after Allegra. I was just going to say in terms of number 12 and thinking about initiatives to dress on house population. In addition to shelter I think it would be worthwhile to think about. Is there the possibility of creating short term subsidies instead of putting a person in shelter to have a more housing based solution. So that's, that's what I wanted to add. I mean, if we can imagine the program and think about how to finance it. There's no question that we could propose it. If it's housing, unlike shelter, then it could come out of Community Preservation Act funding. Yeah, I mean, every community connections is doing that. Now the CPA is given, you know money for send subsidy for people to enter into, but really it's kind of like transitional housing but you know, that's through one organization it's not something that the trust has designed or, you know, worked with but yeah, I think CPA would, you know, can fund that. Yes, I'm sorry. Go ahead Erica. No, I was going to say that, you know, looking at all of this. I mean it's hard not to want to be involved in at all because I think it's all interlocked and interlinked in terms of trying to create a good foundation from homelessness all the way to stability and housing. But it's it's hard to clone oneself there's only so much one person can do in terms of multiple areas so I think we really have to think about. I think we had talked about this and writing the strategic plan that we have standing committees and everybody has to make a commitment to at least one committee. Well, the way I look at something like this is that this is an opportunity for us to vote with our feet. That is to say, we don't have to, we've already agreed in principle to have all of these things as part of our strategic action plan. So we've taken that vote that's over. And when I talk about voting with your feet, I mean saying, Okay, this is a chunk I'd really be interested in and would help if there were one or two other people are really interested in that. And then we could form a trust subcommittee to to work on that. Well, I'm really interested in the number 14 promoting awareness I think that it's, you know, usually when you read about things about housing, whether it's on next door or elsewhere it's primarily very negative, or sometimes misinformed. You know, if there's something and I think this would take coordination with city staff and, you know, to appoint developers to if we agree on the proposals, but, you know, being able to communicate with community members that may be opposed to something just because I heard somebody else say something and being able to be the first ones or, you know, be part of the conversation when it's happening, I think is really important. And like bringing awareness to the town needs around housing, etc. Yeah, I agree, Francis say the housing coalition is already doing some of this but not nearly enough. Yeah, when you mentioned that it also I wrote down the housing coalition and then the town also started the council really wanted some some platform way to engage the community so they launched to engage Amherst it's a new website. Oh, yeah. It's kind of a as like a soft as a soft launch but yeah, there's, you know, I think there's probably some tools that the town should, you know, use with, you know, as if this were to move forward, you know, we could use some of the town's resources and other ideas. So, I think that quite holds it pretty nicely. Yeah, and maybe it's just, you know, better coordination between all these entities and like, I didn't know we had this website. It's pretty cool. So just being able to learn about things and so that we can then share them with other people or something. Sorry that housing coalition has a Facebook site in which John Page has taken responsibility for posting a variety of things, all related to advocating for affordable housing. And there are additional things that we can do. But John's really had a nice start on getting that going. And maybe it's just supporting people that are promoting public awareness. No, I do think that it's interesting. I do think that there is a missing piece though I do think a lot of property owners aren't aware of things and they're caught off guard. When there's a project or if there's different changes and so, you know, I don't know how to, you know, I'm not, I don't know how to do. That's really better outreach but if there were some more tools that we could, you know, use and I think the counselors I've even talked about, you know, at their district meetings if they could have some things that they could then use and and share or share so you know if we did build, you know, some references or a library of things and we could have them have them share that then you know just it starts getting out to more people. Actually, CHAP has a good set of references on making the case for affordable housing, which I can make available to people, or maybe at least to Francis. But anybody else could be interested as well. But yeah that's one of the things that CHAP has done as part of its larger municipal engagement initiative. That's awesome. If we get funded for TM willing to be part of that subcommittee for looking at new resources to ensure we have stable funding. Great. Okay, well I'll leave everybody to think further about that, and maybe bring that back next meeting for a little bit of review. And else we go further. Okay, so now the next agenda item was of the comprehensive housing policy. Carol has taken a close look at that. And she drafted some comments about it. Most of which I probably agree with although honestly I've only scanned the policy, the draft policy and really need to do more work myself to make comments on it I don't know as anybody else, other than Carol had a chance to look at that. I read it. And I agreed with most of Carol's comments as well. There were some things in particular. I think that that had as a low priority finding new funding streams for. Yeah, that's a clear concern. We had earlier submitted. And this is before the town decided to do this comprehensive housing policy, a plan for affordable housing, which included ideas about fint financing and some specific development goals. And that looks like it's pretty well been ignored in the work that we now have on the new town comprehensive policy. So while it's very comprehensive it doesn't seem to include affordable housing. The words may be there but there's not much behind it. The staff is john Dave and Dave Zomek the assistant town manager myself are. We presented once to the Community Resource Committee and we're presenting again in a few weeks to them with staff comments on the policy. And then the Community Resource Committee just started taking up zoning so they had wanted boards and committees to provide comments by April. So I think it would be good to have that first and that may be pushed back so I do think it's not this meeting in the next meeting I think it'd be good to have the trust, you know, either develop a memo or talking points if you think there are some to provide to the Community Resource Committee on the policy. So at one point, I think they were trying to adopt it by, you know, or send it to the council with recommendations to adopt it by July one or in June or by June or something so. At one point I would advocate for not adopting it. Allegra do you have further comments I'm sorry I cut you off. Oh no yeah I mean I took some notes and if, if you want I can type them up kind of like Carol didn't send them to you if that that would be great definitely. I can share them with the entire group as I did with Carol's before the next meeting. And certainly if other people have comments. I think we should put them together. One thing I did like was it did say, you know, ideas about different ways to incentivize including affordable units like waving or reducing fees for permitting or connections to make it more attractive for developers so. And one of my thoughts though I think I don't I think I don't have other staff shared is it's a long policy and it almost reads like an action plan and so I guess, John I know the trust policy got kind of long to and so the question for me is you know what, you know what do we see as a policy document is it you know is it a policy statement or is it a document and then what becomes the adopted policy because you know they basically have strategies and actions which are pretty detailed and so I've never thought of a policy as getting down to that level of detail on what Allegro you just said. I mean I think there's a lot of I think, I think the document has a great summary of the housing studies that have been done the last few years and a lot of, you know they, you know they they synthesize the master plan and they have a lot of action steps but to me is like is is that whole thing the policy, or is the policy something a little simpler and then all this are things to get to it just because you know if that's adopted what what does that mean, like you know what the affordable housing policy the trust had reduced the actual policy down to four pages. Right. And I remember a list of brewers said that was too long. Next right now the documents like 13 or 14 pages. And so. Hey john what's up. I was just going to say I really I really weigh in but since we I helped john with the final version I did compare the two and what's funny like john said is the text is actually reflected quite a bit, but maybe because it's so long. It's diluted. So our policy is actually is really reflected in there but it doesn't come out substantively so I don't know what the solution to that is, but when I compared them are words were there they just got lost a little bit. I think they didn't include the specific numerical goals that that we had which are really the heart of the policy. I mean if you make a vague promise to do something that's nice. But for me it doesn't really resonate. Okay well I would urge as many of you as possible to take another look at that. And to send, I guess you can send comments to me or to Nate, and we'll make sure that a week or so before our next meeting will have consolidated those so we can look at them, and then maybe have some proposal together for how to formally respond to the CRC. And then I guess yeah I think it's a, you know they have a lot of information that document I'm, but it's a pretty in depth policy. Yeah. Okay so will did I give you enough time to talk about what's going on with the state legislature. A lot and nothing right. Yeah, seriously. Yeah I mean I think there's, yeah quite the laundry list of things that are on the menu but unclear exactly when that all it's all going to be going down. Everybody get a chance to read out the links of john sent out for the Western, the coalition and homelessness and choppa. Well it's, it's a pretty long list of things I hesitate to go through them all sort of one by one here there was one thing though one difference between them. John I just want to highlight this for you and I don't know if it's something we want to discuss with the trust. Pam Schwartz is miller had had listed a local option transfer tax legislation, which was not listed in choppas, and I don't know if that's like a. I don't know why choppa is not reporting that if they're maybe they don't think it's something that they're interested in but for those of you who don't know the proposed legislation is for. I'm actually sponsored by Joe Comerford. And what the proposing is a bill in the State House that would allow different town, allow towns on a town by town basis to pass their own. A local option transfer tax would basically allow for towns to basically put a tax on luxury sales of, you know, high, high, high value properties and have the tax go directly towards funding of housing trust, or other sort of whatever that specifically designated for housing trust so I know that's something that john you and I had spoken about briefly before and then I was something that you didn't think it was particularly telling but I just wasn't sure what the, if you were aware of what the background was between like why. Pamela would be advocating that choppa wouldn't or whatever but. I actually sent a note to choppa asking why they weren't advocating for some of the things that were on Pam's list. We're talking about Pamela Schwartz's list. She's the executive director of the Pioneer Valley, something to end homelessness. I'm losing the full name in any event. And I got a note back saying that choppa would be considering additional things to add to the list in the future. Nothing more specific than that. I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't just like they ran out of, they ran out of space on the paper or something like that. It could be they said okay we're going to put down whatever it is six or seven things that are the highest on our priority list and that's what we're going to go to work on. And while there may be other things that are equally worthwhile or almost as worthwhile. We're not putting them on our list for now. As a way of kind of conserving or recognizing the limitations of their resources. You know just as we have to decide what we're actually going to work on. We can't do all the things that are on our list. So they're in the same position as obviously is any other organization. So I think that may be the best explanation, but certainly from our point of view. If we're looking for additional revenue sources. We'd like to see that passed. Yeah, for sure. And we can continue to thank Joe for her support of it and ask Linda Mindy to put that on the list of things that she's also advocating. So I think that's a good thing to flag. Well, are there other things that you wanted to flag for us because I agree. There's no point in going through over the entire list. Well, I guess just one, one point of order is I think two months ago or two meetings ago I had mentioned that the, the eviction ceiling proposal had actually passed but it hadn't. And that is actually on the list of things that are, I think both Chapa and Pamela's, I was called Pam's group have listed for proposing eviction record ceiling be moving forward. I think it half passed. That is, yes, I think there are some provisions that made it through and others that didn't. For example, I think if there's a child in a household that's evicted, the eviction ceiling is good for children. If I recall correctly, but honestly I'm not sure just my recollection is that there were elements that passed and elements that were taken out of the bill before the legislature passed it. And we need to look back at the detail. But I think that's why it's still on the list because not all of the provisions that people were looking for were included in the bill that the legislature did pass. Right. Well, so there's that which I think actually would be huge and awesome. There's also the, you know, a tenant right to counsel is on there as well which would be very cool. I mean, I know that, you know, as we're talking about earlier evictions and Amherst aren't exactly common, but still it's sort of just like standing for, you know, people, you know, opportunity to affordable housing and to, you know, balancing the playing field between tenants and landlords. That's a pretty huge, huge piece of legislation. But then more specifically, I mean, as far as just like the budgetary concerns. Yeah, I don't, there's, there's just a lot of specific. I would say like, as far as like what the trust can do moving forward, I mean, I would say that like, you know, the back from the proposed that we, you know, endorse both Pam's list and Chava's list of priorities and we, you know, we can either send a letter to with both Mindy and Joe, I'm sure they support it anyway but you know we can, I don't know if sending them a letter will be fruitful or you know, right into the governor. But beyond that, yeah, I'm not sure there's much more appropriate we can do at this time. A couple of comments. It doesn't hurt for us to send Joe and Mindy letters because it may push something that they may be in favor of anyway, just a little bit higher on their priority list, something to be aware of. It's not as good as we as actually we had letters with cases of people who were harmed by the current status. But nonetheless, I think it helps. The other thing I was going to say is I think two years ago now, when evictions seal ceiling and right to tenants to be represented came up. We not only endorsed it but we asked Amherstown Council to endorse it. And they endorsed both of those bills, which I think helps a little bit more again, it means that Joe and Mindy will pay a little bit more attention to it. If the town council was always also recommended and in addition to ourselves. So I think it's it's useful for you to point out things like that and say, okay, you know, let's endorse them as a group, and let's also ask town council to endorse some specific bills. Yeah, I love that idea of, you know, trying to lasso in town council. So again, if people look over those lists, and as well as done, there are specific things that you identify that you think we should push. Bring them back to our next meeting. I mean the immediate focus of the legislature is going to be on the budget. And there have been various concerns raised by both Chapa and Pamela Schwartz about shortcomings in the budget. Governor has apparently replaced past state funds with expected or anticipated federal revenues, which is not the best idea in the long term. So, again, those are things to be looking for. They are the things that the legislature will take up next they do the budget before they do. Generally, most of those other bills. So making some choices will be good for us going forward. Any other comments. Okay, the next item and pretty much the last item on the agenda is asking the housing trust to co-sponsor potentially three evenings that the housing coalition is organizing. I also already mentioned the first one on March 30, there will be the event on creating a path to home ownership and Amherst for low income households. I can answer some more questions about the planning that's gone on for that if people have them. The second one is less far along, but it would probably be on March 20. And it might have the title racial equity and housing. And that's gotten started with the reparations for Amherst group. I know other people who are, I'm expecting would participate. But at this point, they're the core group that I think would be presenting at that meeting. I've also asked Whitney Demetrius, who we've been working with through Chapa as part of the housing coalition to participate in that Whitney as recently become. She's the director of fair housing now. Yeah, director. Go to person isn't quite precise. And before that she worked for the Boston, I think it's Fair Housing Committee or Fair Housing Commission. So, Whitney will be available to talk about those issues and particularly to talk about Chapa's legislative agenda on fair housing, which I think is great. And I'm not quite sure what else that evening will focus on. But I do expect to be doing further planning with Michelle Miller and others who are part of reparations for Amherst. And then the third one, which would be in May, probably May 25th would be climate change, sustainability and housing. And through Evan Ross, I am making contact with two people who are part of town councils, ECAC, which is, which is ECAC. I am not coming up with those initials stand for but it's the group that was started by Darcy Darcy Dumont, who is a town counselor, and is focusing on exactly those issues. And they're becoming becoming out with a report making recommendations to the town on climate change and sustainability, including on housing, probably in April. Although I'm not absolutely sure that date, and they may not be either but that's my expectation. So that would be on May 25th. And these are kind of in lieu of our housing, having or not having a housing forum this year. And there may be other kinds of events like this, that we can ask the housing coalition to work on that we can also becomes co sponsors. I also have agreement from the League of Women Voters of Amherst to be a co sponsor of at least the first event, and I anticipate the others as well. So I move at the housing trust. Agree to become co sponsors of these three events with the housing coalition and the League of Women Voters of Amherst. Is there a second. And is there discussion. Sure. What does it mean to collaborate. I mean, what is our commitment. Do you expect people to be there at these events at least have some representation do you want to need for us to speak. So before agreeing because I think it's a good idea I just wanted to know what our role of responsibility is. Mostly it will means that our name is on the advertising for the event. As I drafted it and John Page is working on this at the top it will say, please come to an interactive forum sponsored by the housing coalition, the housing trust and the League of Women Voters at Amherst. And then we'll give the title and it will mention the three key organizations that are participating and then a little bit more information like the date and time. And that'll be it. Beyond that it would be great if people can at least participate as listeners. I think it's called an interactive forum because the idea is that we're going to set time. Aside on and off during the meeting for people to provide their own opinions and their own ideas, their own recommendations for what we should do on these issues. I'm not asking anybody here to do anything specific, but certainly if anybody wants to become more involved. You know, just let me know. And there are other events I'd like to do. Sid and I talked about an event in which we would highlight people who are in need of affordable housing in town. And again, that kind of consistent with what Francis was asking for, how do we do things that create more interest and understanding about affordable housing. So we'll see if other people have ideas, then we can put those together. As I said, from my point of view, it's kind of in lieu of having a housing forum. Although maybe it's a good strategy for us to be doing to some extent off into the future. Other comments or questions. Are we ready to come. Sorry. It's the end of the month right. Yeah, March 30. And actually I was wondering whether the town would be a sponsor. So we could use the town's webinar services or maybe that means your services Nate to manage the event. And to record it. And I would ask Amherst media to make do the recording and to make it available on their website. Yeah, I can ask and then I was thinking we can at least post it on the town's calendar, even now right to put on the community calendar and then we do have the boards and committee calendar that way there's a notice that gets pushed out to people who register to receive that. Yeah, John will have completed the flyer that will be sending out. I'm not trying to gather as many cosponsors as I've had in the past. Had 15 or 20 cosponsors I think we'll just send a note to those organizations asking them to alert their members and to invite them to participate in the event. Other questions or comments. Okay, then we need to vote on this and as usual needs to be a roll call vote. So, Sid, I see you down in the lower corner so I'll ask you first. Yes. Will. Yes, Francis. Yes. Allegra. Yes. Erica. Yes. And I'm a yes. Okay, I think that the only other items on the agenda are other any public comments. Anybody on our other attendees who want to make a comment, or anybody on the housing trust. Have an additional comment. Okay. I see Kathleen Anderson among our attendees. Kathleen, I want to talk to you about participating in these special events. But I don't have to do that right now. Yeah. Okay. Let's see upcoming meetings. I mentioned the meeting on the 30th. Our next meeting will be on April 8. So it's coming right up. And again, a highlight of that meeting will be looking at some of the zoning issues. And also looking at a penultimate draft of the request for proposals. Anybody have anything else. Okay. Okay. Let's take a motion to adjourn. Is it seconded? I think that's the second from Erica. Put your thumb up if you're in favor of. Being able to sign off. Okay. Thanks everybody. I appreciate everybody's participation. This has been a very productive meeting. Thanks.