 using a church and turning it into apartment buildings, for example, you know, they're not knocking it down. So it's just a question on a, if we fix a part of a giant building that they couldn't afford to do, what else is going on? Those are my two projects. And I, the set was terrific. And Sam, if we're more than glad to have you respond to those now if you wanted to wait until the finance committee takes that up, you could also do that. Okay, please go ahead. I'll say what I have to say here. Thank you all. Good to see you back. Welcome to returning. Welcome to returning and new members and to our liaisons and to Town Council for all the hard work. The presentation and report have already been submitted there in the packet. So anyone who wishes to look who's watching or looking at this after the fact can find the material on the Town Council packet as well as on the CPA website relating to FY25 proposals. Regarding the Simeon Strong House, they're looking, they did have a study and I was on the CPAC committee at that time. That was limited in scope. They're looking to do a thorough top to bottom analysis to cover three different areas. Structural integrity, the topography on the outside to identify ADA compliance opportunities and excuse me, outside structural integrity and there's one other one, stay with me. So in other words, it extends beyond what they asked for the last. Yeah, and the interior, all the systems, all the mechanical systems, it's comprehensive. They wanna get it done prior to work that's about or soon to commence with their neighbor at the Jones Library and they hope to utilize this study for the purposes of a basis for applying for a future grant work. They believe and they already have other organizations within the state and federally that they have in line in this study from Coon Riddle will provide them what they need to make those applications. So we heard them thoroughly and the committee was very much in support of their intent behind this. Regarding the North Church, it's a very historic building. It's 200 year anniversary is gonna be next two years from now, the roof is in significantly bad shape as we can all see when we go by it. They took some time the previous year and went through our process with CBA but did not have the where with all to focus and the committee asked them to return this year with a more focused proposal, which they did. It's specific to the roof because the church members and the committee realized that that's the singular area of maintenance importance and the historical commission is very much in favor of proceeding recommending the project out of concern with demolition by neglect. In fact, I received a call or excuse me, an email from the representative of the church this past month that indicated that the roof started leeching in the middle of their service. So it's in need and the other items painting and otherwise in terms of their where with all to accomplish that, the committee is uncertain of that capacity, it hasn't been demonstrated but the committee and the historical commission also recognize that if nothing occurs with the building that it's in significant jeopardy. And I can say that from my own personal perspective having used to have been a contractor. So, which is part of the reason we asked for them to have a much more focused, prioritized project. They do indicate that they're willing to contribute church funds towards a contingency related to the roof aspect and that they had talked with a bank about getting a loan which they were led to believe would be able to be achieved if there was expenses beyond the estimate that was provided. And who's to say you're all familiar with the expenses in terms of the buildings staying a church or not, we did not delve into that. We are granting a recommendation to the council and finance committee to proceed with that project based upon the building itself, not regarding the nature of what is accomplished within the building. There are, there is something called historic preservation restrictions which I assume the council members are all familiar with. Audience members may not be, upon receipt of the funds, there is the requirement to enter into an HBR agreement with the town to prevent selling the property for profit. They would have to return the funds to the town. I don't know if interest is a factor or not, but we don't get into what can occur with the building into perpetuity. We do know that the town's interest would be protected by virtue of the HBR. And you may be familiar as a former liaison as well, but there is set aside for all historic preservation projects that are private were allocating as of this past year, certain amount added on to the requested total to accomplish the HBR expenses. Not sure if that answers your questions. Thank you. Bob Hagener? Yeah, I just want to point out that we will not be discussing CPA at tomorrow's meeting. Okay. Because it's not on the agenda. We'll put it on the agenda, I think for the 20th, is that correct? Okay. That's, that's the communication I received that it's about two weeks from now or so. All right, so we've, the council's already voted to refer this so we can move on to the next item, Sam, again. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. And thanks to the full committee for all of your work. Yes. They deserve a lot of credit as do town staff. Holly has been fantastic. Dave Zomac has been very helpful. Thank you. The next item is with regard to the track and the motion that I'm putting on the floor is to refer the January 23, 2024 regional school committee borrowing authorization to the finance committee for report and recommendation to the council by March 18, 2024. Is there a second? Second. Kathy, you have your hand up. No, Bob, you have your hand up. Kathy does have her hand up. I do have my hand up, but if Bob had his hand up because that was, that was my third question. We have three pieces of money tied up in the track. One was the straight 1.5 million, which was a, if they didn't raise enough money by a certain date, all they were gonna do was the track. So I think that is the rescind and replace that the school committee just did. So my question is, are we looking at changing the wording in all three? Because the second one, when we had free cash and allocated, we said option two or three. So we left open that it didn't have to be artificial turf. It's, we said this is for the bigger project. And that one was left to, with it to be determined. The third is the CPA money, which cannot be used for artificial turf. But when they discussed it, they were talking about option three, which was the one with artificial turf. So they were clear that their money could go for track and reorientation and irrigation, but not the turf. So I think in the instance of the CPA, because they said option three, is the wording we're looking at two or three or just larger project? Because the way the wording of the new school one is, it's reorientation, it tracks, it doesn't mention what the field will be made of. They just sidestepped it all together, which is not, I'm not, have no problem. So with CPA, if we change the wording, do we as a council change the wording or does it have to go back to CPA? So those are my three pieces. It came up from them, we said yes to it. Can we just say it's the same amount of money but redo the wording? So I had three, those were quite, because each is somewhat different. One seems already in line with what we're being asked to consider. It seems to me it would be the courteous thing to go back to CPA if you're going to do something with money the original recommended to us, but I do point out the council is the one that votes to authorize CPA. When you read the first sentence says option three, but then they're very clear, not a dime of this can go, they didn't, and since option three had the turf and it was saying you can use it for everything but that. So that was my just question on what's the route. Yeah, it's also, it's not just Amherst CPA money. No. So we, there's other towns involved. Right. Councilor Hanakie. Yeah. So my understanding is the town council cannot vote CPA money without a recommendation from CPA and that CPA only recommended that money if the track was both rotated and an artificial turf field was put in. That's the limitation on that money. And so I don't think we can change it. And it says it would be rescinded. In fact, the order says it's rescinded if artificial turf is not done. Item three is not done. So I think it would, I think the school would have to go back to CPA and request. And that's why I'm asking then what finance really can't, other than say, go to CPA pretty quickly so it can come back to us with, if they're supporting that allocation. That's what I thought Mandy that I have to go. I had other questions though. Yeah. I think what Mandy Joe's saying is that, I think I'm just gonna look at you. This does have to go back to CPA. The CPA order isn't in front of the council tonight. It's just the council can approve or disapprove the borrowing authorization that the original school committee voted. That's all that is in front of the council right now. So any conversation about what is and isn't happening with the CPA funds is for a later conversation. Okay. Mandy Joe, you had another question. Yeah. I have a ton of questions about this, but I'm on finance. So I'm not gonna take the time tonight. I'm just curious. I wanted to ask the finance chair, who from the school will be at finance tomorrow? If anyone, okay. Is there a way, obviously maybe we can't get there tomorrow, but that we can somehow schedule a second whenever it comes up a second time at finance to make sure school personnel that can answer questions are there. Yeah. I think we could ask them maybe for the next meeting, but we haven't invited anyone to this meeting. Okay. We didn't know it was referred to. All right. And that's the case. Then the motion's been made and seconded. We're gonna move to a vote. Mandy Joe, you're okay holding your questions till tomorrow. Okay. Thank you. And we're going to start with Kathy Shane. Yes. This is just the referral to finance. Okay. Andy Steinberg. All right. Jennifer, Tob. Yes. Councillor Walker. Yes. Pat DeAngeles. Aye. Anna Devon-Gother. Aye. Councillor Ate. Aye. Lynn Griesmerson. Aye. Councillor Hannacky. Aye. Bob Hegner. Aye. Councillor Apsin. Pam Rooney. Yes. Councillor Ryan. Aye. It's unanimous with one absent. We have one other vote, and that is to approve the warrant for the March. Oh, that was on consent. Excellent. We don't have one other vote. Well, because we also did minutes. Thank you very much. We are now up to committee and liaison reports. Is there, I can just quickly go down those. As soon as I find my sheet. CRC. Pam Rooney or Jennifer Tob? Pam. Okay. Elementary school building. Kathy Shane or Councillor Walker. The next meeting is the 16th, but the school is at its second round of planning board tomorrow night. And the bids I believe all are due back in for the first phase of it. So we're, the team is busily trying to get all the permits in order that it needs to move forward. Pam Rooney, you have a question. No, I was actually going to speak to the library. Oh, okay. I'm getting there. Finance committee, Bob Hagnar or Kathy Shane? Yeah. Bob is now the chair. Kathy Shane is the vice chair. Yeah. Basically we just set focused on electing the chair and the vice chair, set the schedule for meetings and then we reviewed the carryover items from last council. And they were the AHRA financing options, the streetlight policy, rental bylaw and fee structure, the waste hauler bylaw and the policy regarding disposal of surplus property. And the only one we could take action on is a surplus property one. So we're going to start, we're going to review that start, start the review tomorrow on that. Okay. GOL Anna Devlin-Goth here is chair of that. Councillor Frick, Ete is vice chair. Eanna? Well, as we know, GOL is by far the best committee. We started in on when I'm making our plan for what we're going to do in the coming year of reviewing our carryover memo. We looked at the resolution that we had regarding higher education access and started to think through, sorry, I pulled up the wrong thing. Right, right, there we go. Started to think about what we've got ahead including the appointments to the charter review committee and finance committee and we will be moving forward with those as well as recommendations regarding liaisons shortly. One quick thing out of GOL, one of the, we will not be proposing any blanket GOL changes to the rules until later on in the year as we have just completed that first round. So if councillors have individual rule changes they would like to make, please submit them in their final form, the language that you would like GOL to discuss to the council for referral, that's the word, to GOL. We will not be going through the rules again until enough time has passed since the last time that we've done that. Thank you. Jones Library Committee, Pam Rooney is our representative, Paul Bachman is also on that committee, Pam. Thank you. I was able to meet with the director, library director, and they are moving along looking for hoping to get settled on interim space. She did mention the $300,000 that was recently passed over to the town from, as she called it, miscellaneous pieces. I did not, I neglected to ask her about the timing of the first round of the $2 million that the finance schedule called for. So I was gonna ask Paul if he has knowledge of that, the timing of that $2 million payment and what is the impact to the borrow if we don't see that $2 million in the time frame that was being projected for our amount. And then thirdly, the very happy fact that the North Amherst Library was open to the public today. And there were lots of people there. Got that. Anything else to add, Mr. Bachman? Okay. Town Services and Outreach Committee, Andy Steinberg as chair, Councilor George Ryan as vice chair, Andy. Yes, the meeting, the one meeting that we've held so far was election of officers and review of the carryover in Ramo and then a little bit more extensive discussion of one item from the carryover, which was the waste hauler to get an understanding of where we were with the timetable on getting the RFI proposed review back because there had been responses to request for information and that was an essential backfinding piece that would benefit the committee in moving forward with that item. And I think the other thing that I'll just mention is that there was an excellent presentation made as a MMA conference session on waste hauler that actually was addressing the same issues that were the issues that were brought before the TSO and the TSO was considering. And I think Athena that we added that to the packet of the last TSO meeting. I, the slides from that are excellent. And so I would encourage anybody who has an interest in doing so to look at the packet for the meeting and pick that up. Thank you. And very quickly regarding liaisons. This is a matter that's now before TSO as I believe Councillor, Vice President, Devlin-Gothier suggested. I have now reached out to every committee and tried to include their staff liaison and I'm getting responses back. They're due back by the 15th and that will then go to TSO. They'll come back to the council with the recommendation and hope GOL, it'll go to, I'm sorry, it will go to GOL. Come back to the council with a recommendation as to which committees and at that point, councillors hopefully will sign up. We've done the minutes, town managers report. So you have a written town manager report. There's three things I want to mention. One thrilled that Sandy Pooler is back on the staff. I announced that last time. A little more detail in the report. We do work around his travel schedule, but he's available. He's very, has a lot of value to add. Second is just congratulations to our DEI department. They are having a ton of activities sort of started before Christmas and continues through February. So if you can see the, if you take time to look at the exhibit in town hall, it's just really educational. And the third is a congrats to our recreation department for a week long efforts of Winterfest that concluded on Saturday. And included also just want to mention there was a huge turnout at Amherst College that was organized by the college and also the recreation department and especially Angela Mills and our office to put on, it's a getting girls and student athletes at Amherst College to be connected to and they probably had 200 people there, girls and young women who are scholar athletes and trying every sport imaginable that they had just turned over the entire athletic facility to the program. So it was a huge turnout and really good event for them. So a lot of work went into the development. Are there any questions of the town manager, Anna? Paul, I don't know if you're gonna be able to answer this. So in your town manager, so I'm giving you an out if you don't know the answer. In your town manager report, you talked about under economic development and license suspension. When a bar or a restaurant has their license revoked, do they pick the date that they will be serving the sentence because to pick a Monday night feels not very impactful. And I know I'm not saying it needs to be impactful, but I'm curious how the date is picked. So they work with ABCC issued that suspension. So they work with the ABCC and choosing the date and usually if they have an attorney, they work it through what days, they know not to choose a day, they're not open. But they often will choose a less onerous date. Okay, thank you. Alicia. I'm sorry, Councillor Walker. Thank you. I'm not sure if this question should be for Paul or for Lynn, but I'm just wondering if we might expect ARPA funds to return for our next council meeting. Because I think we said we might address this sometime in February. So our goal is to get it on the agenda for the February 26th meeting. Okay, thank you. Are there any other questions? Just very quickly, we've already done the minutes and I'm sorry. At our next meeting on the 26th, both I and the vice president will have reports and we are polling. We've selected some additional dates and we'll be polling for retreat dates. Are there any other questions or comments for future agenda items or councilor comments? Seeing none, the meeting's adjourned at 11-11.