Okay, it is 12.15 in London on the 14th of November 2016. Thank you very much for attending this CMC Markets weekly charting analysis with myself Jasper Lawler. As per usual, just going to run through the risk warning screens, please have a quick browse through those. Well obviously, been quite the wild week in markets to say the very least, shock US election result caught many people unawares. Obviously we want to discuss where things head from here. Many people surprised at the positive secondary reaction in markets. We've got the initial sell-off in the dollar and in stocks, but it didn't last too long. And now we're talking about a fresh record high for the Dow Jones industrial average today on Monday. We already saw one last week. Now things are looking slightly different in European stocks. Politics obviously playing an increasing role, interestingly though the British pound was not on the awkward end of the politics at the moment. It's already had its fair share. And now markets looking ahead to things like the Italian referendum next month and the French and German elections next year. Just quickly, this is obviously the CMC Markets platform we've got going here, but just quickly in terms of a look ahead to next week, this is on our CMC Markets news analysis page. We've got our weekly earnings calendar here. So if you're interested in the big corporate news, we had that all set up here today on the foot of Taylor Wimpy amongst the big ones reporting, but obviously still the tail end of the U.S. reporting season to go. Mostly the big U.S. retailers alongside Salesforce, one of the interesting tech names. We've done a small write-up on some of those and obviously we've got Royal Mail as well. Probably the biggest U.K. company to report this week. On the economic side, obviously always revert to our market calendar here. I'm not going to go through it here, but the main economic data this week will be U.S. retail sales and U.S. inflation and a flood of U.K. data, which for whatever reason in the last couple of months all the U.K. data seems to have congregated into one week. So we've got retail sales, inflation and unemployment and wages data all for the U.K. this week. Giving you a bit of context to that in terms of market, let's just quickly pull up this dollar index chart. So here we are, we've hit 100 today in the dollar index. That's obviously a huge psychological level and not surprisingly short-term sell-off from there. So benefit if I inside, you've had a cheeky little sell order in at 100, but it's such a big round number, you'd have gamed yourself 30 pips off that. But obviously the trend is higher in the dollar now. This was obviously the initial sell-off in the dollar reaction and subsequently we've been moving higher post the election. The general idea here being that while obviously Donald Trump is controversial in many ways, if you strip out what he is likely to push for, what he can actually kind of get through in Congress, actually a lot of the proposed policies are quite business-friendly. Tax cuts being the first and foremost obvious one, the U.S. has needed some tax reform for a while now, that's been difficult under a democratic president which obviously left and right politics on the left generally preferring more efforts at redistribution of income through higher taxes on the right of the spectrum, not so much, more in favor of tax cuts, lower taxes, typically lower spending as well, so it's the spending side of things that's getting a lot of attention at the moment. The possibility of infrastructure spending has been one of the reasons why the Dow has been doing way, very well. It's been companies like Caterpillar that have really taken off on the prospect of more fiscal stimulus from the government, that I would argue is probably one area that's going to be a little bit difficult for the Donald to get through because as I said the nature of the Republican Party is generally a bit more fiscally conservative, small government style thinking and that's what they're elected on so they're not necessarily going to give that all up just because it's a Republican president. Obviously one of the biggest concerns being trade barriers and I would say one of the some of the biggest gainers, some of the biggest forlors rather are things like Ford and GMs, the big autos, companies also like the big technology companies, Apple etc. that are trying to push into China which obviously was at the receiving end of a lot of the Donald Trump rhetoric during the campaign if he actually follows through on those promises which I think is on the China front I just think will be difficult because it's basically it's not all one way between the US and China. China buy a lot of US treasuries, obviously US consumers benefit from cheap Chinese goods, obviously they lose out because the manufacturing of those goods, the jobs have shipped abroad which is a lot of what Donald got in on so maybe tariffs on imports from China would possibly lead to more jobs at home but would also lead to huge higher prices and the average US consumer would not be too happy about that and it would be that negative effect which would hit through first and does Donald Trump like any other politician really have the gumption to follow through on something that's going to be negative in the short term for potentially long term benefits which a lot of people dispute the long term benefits, the general economics consensus is that free trade is best. So a lot of question marks but still at the end of the day, this is the price action in the US 30, this was the range that we contained in obviously huge volatile breakout that just made it to the, we could probably draw a line, draw our support through here and this was obviously this low here, little false breakout there, the touch there and obviously we perfectly stopped there. You'll notice I actually literally drew my line on this low first and that is perfectly where the market stopped so congrats and I'm going to show you a few of these, I'm sure you'll have seen them already but there's a few examples where if you just had a little resting order in and a decent few percentage points away from the market you'd be loving life, Dolly Yen being another really stand out example. So at the moment it's a little bit hard to see where we go from here, obviously it's been such a volatile movement but my bias here is that okay in terms of the US markets the bias has flipped to the upside here, now obviously we're looking fairly overbought but that can happen for a sustained period in an uptrend, you know I'd imagine that we'd do a bit of a pullback but it probably won't be go too much further than these old highs. You know we're still very much in an uptrend with the break of these highs but what we have to be aware of here is that we have kind of broken a trend but we've pushed back above it so it's a bit, you know the uptrend was thrown into question by the break of this trend but obviously it's kind of unwound that now so you know things could head both ways obviously they always can but you know my bias is with a break of new highs that's showing the market strength I'm expecting it to continue. Maybe we do take out these these peaks here because it wouldn't take a massive retracement just to drop back to maybe 18-650 but then that 18-370 which was the top of this range that we were chopping around in for a number of weeks that I would be looking to hold so again looking for potential bounces from here and then here below there then it looks like we're back into range trading and you can see us coming right back down to these lows and you know but then back and forth again so I've jumped straight across to the US obviously with the Trumpomania that was always natural but if I do go back to the UK stocks a slightly different picture obviously and again the technicals have held up quite well you know we've had this line of support on here for a while this was what I first highlighted where the you know a swing low had been taken out to the downside and I was looking for the for the drop you know that drop did take place didn't end up taking out the lows found some support on this rising trend line went right back up to that very same line you can say this line you know this area of support here also kind of works but obviously we've got that big volatile spike up in the election last week so again it's it's slightly different to the nature of the US move where we're much closer we obviously we took out the highs we never took out the highs and we respected this downslaping trend line and we've now eaten up a fair bit of that rebound so based on the current market structure I'm imagining that we're probably going to come back to trust it test this trend line again and it's just going to be a test of us to how far we come back down from that big move higher we took out the this peak here but are we yeah we found quite nice resistance so I think probably what we're looking for here is just some some way to assume that the breakout higher is going to continue so it's we've obviously found support thereabouts at the 61.8 we're back into filling this little small gap at the moment so it's going to be probably somewhere in here if the market is going to hold up is where we're looking for you know that's that's our kind of main support zone you know why are we looking for the market to push higher well more you know I would say that probably US stocks are in a position to outperform at the moment but you know it will be unlikely for the FTSE 100 to fall off a cliff while US markets are pushing into record highs these things generally correlate a bit more strongly than that you know that is unless the European markets are you know kind of telling the truth here and you know the US stocks are you know just a bit late to the tail of the markets rolling over that could prove to be the case one of the things obviously we're watching at the moment if I just jump away from stocks at the moment is this move in bond markets most pronounced in in guilt you know we've obviously had a big drop here into the support zone if I go even further out you can see it's this long-term zone of support here that we're now sitting in just above this rising trend line so we could be nearing the end of this correction but if this this bond set off keeps gathering pace that you know that the correlation between bonds and equities has been positive over the last couple of years so you know this you know bonds could be about to lead equities over the edge and it's not just you know a lot of people referencing guilt and brexit and things but really it's not it's not just guilt you can see that actually treasuries and guilt's moving pretty much at the same lick at the moment treasuries the nice little trend line bounce example there you know we had the rising trend line broke the trend line came back test didn't work that time did work that time Marcus have rolled over so congrats to anyone who sold on that one I can't say I can't say I did but obviously now we're pushing back down into a fairly clear cut support down at 126 in treasuries so this will where we've already approached now is an area to expect potentially some sort of support coming back into the market just have a look at Germany again I mean we've we're still in this trading range and it's it's it's worked remarkably well we've come we've come off the top of the range at the moment for a second time obviously that the volatile election day took us down out of the range so it took us below this the support here below the moving average so anyone buying at the bottom down here theoretically would have already taken profits up here so well I suppose yeah if you look into TP at the top of the range here you would have suffered this big drawdown before you got there I believe yeah so that's you know it's just an example of sometimes you can get the idea right but you know when you're trading around a big volatile day like the election you know suddenly the technicals can be thrown off temporarily and so if you were long down here made it this far but you know you got stopped out maybe at the bottom of the range before eventually went to where you expected that's definitely a tough one I'm going to jump over to dolly end just because that's another example I'm interesting to kind of show you in terms of where orders could be in place but again it's a would have been difficult in reality to play it and I certainly can't say I did so we would I was talking about Dolly and pushing higher you know we're talking about the triangle breakout here here's the height of the triangle here's the breakout the projected target for that is 110 as we mentioned in the last week's webinar you know we talked about the fact the moving averages were spreading out they looked like the trend was pushing higher but you know what ended up happening is that the market dropped below this support that had held here dropped right back to the 78.6 fib you know and this little breakout right here within the triangle so had you had a resting order down there you know you'd have made several hundred pips in just the space of a few hours you know had you been long from down here with a stop beneath the low you obviously this is this is a complete disaster because you know you we're up there towards the target already but you got wiped out by those volatile conditions so it's you know if that did happen to you I'm sorry if you had the order resting well done the lessons take away is that you know when we have a big volatile event coming up you need to adjust your stop placement or just you know take yourself out of the market but obviously the when doings that when you doing that you you minimize the opportunity for taking advantage the other the other factor here is I suppose that you know if you are expecting that bigger range of volatility you know when you're buying naturally you just push your buy order lower you know if there is that possibility of the market swinging around in that bigger band so if you did originally have your buy position at the 50% of the 61.8 you think well okay we've got the US election that really could send markets haywire you know let me push it down to the 78.6 but as we stand I mean things playing out quite well we're in a clear up trend as the as the the moving averages and the in the higher prices would tell us we're obviously at this key level of resistance the moment you know the top of this triangle so wouldn't be surprised to see a pullback from the kind of 108 area but I'm still imagining that we we do get to this 61.8 extension from this you know if we're looking at this is a hundred percent that's 61.8 percent of that then we've got the triangle is 100% extension the middle and beyond that for the more aggressive target around 111 we've got this move measured from the breakout above so with this with the dollar hitting 100 and obviously Dolly Yen breaking out Euro dollar breaking down which we'll have a look at in a sec the the US CPI data I think could be very significant this week because part of the idea here is that Donald Trump's infrastructure spending is going to add to already a kind of reflationary trend inflation generally quite good for stocks not so good for for the bond market typically you know you'd expect that the Fed to start raising rates at a quicker pace you know higher yields obviously bond prices go down so if we do see inflation continue to move higher in the US obviously that supports the case for US rate rise and also supports the case for higher inflation generally and maybe a faster pace of rate rises next year from the Fed and obviously they can they can afford to do more rate rises without the risk of sending the economy lower if the economy is being propped up by fiscal spending and like an infrastructure program but by the Donald so if we look at the euro here now the euro sparked into the life of the months of us talking about it being very difficult to trade and it's still but sort of in a range but you know see the this move down here got heavily retraced characteristic of a kind of range market but we've taken out the lows and and this now starting to look like a market turning lower you know if you take this kind of broad section of price action we're still kind of within it so we can't get too excited yet you know really when the euro can really spark into into life is if we're gonna get down below that 105 while we're above 105 we're still kind of in range bound conditions but I would say just this we're in that sort of we're still in that 105 to maybe 116 on the top side price range but if you if you just kind of draw a trend through something like this you have to say that the slight bias was higher came down and then you would expect higher prices from here but that didn't happen actually what we got was more like a lower highs and obviously eventually we came off these peaks here off the trend line and we've rolled lower so this to me at least is how I'm gonna stand to to 105 because the from this generally bullish bias we've turned it now into a lower bias now why is that well obviously the dollar is strengthening you know if you just look at today I think they moved down in the euro that's just a bit less I think it was was in line but the strengthening of the dollar kind of in line with the the weakness in the euro so to some extent just pure dollar strength also you could argue to some extent some political uncertainty shifting to Europe notice how the euro is down 0.6 the pounds only down 0.3 and change so the pound relatively stronger obviously euro pound falling you know I think that's maybe a read readdressing of the political shift from the UK where the pounders felt felt the brunt of uncertainty around Brexit now we're looking ahead as I mentioned to start the webinar today the Italian referendum and and to the France and German elections next year I'm just thinking well okay we've had to arguably the beginnings of a trend towards popular results where with with Brexit and the US election you know that same trend is going to continue into Europe which clearly there's a risk there a lot of populist parties on the rise in Europe even before those two election results then really the political risk is is now with Europe and that would mean a week a euro so let's have a quick look at Sterling why we were mentioning it so obviously here's the flash crash so we're back we were back above flash crash type levels is that right or when did that start we're in that sort of vicinity anyway you know this was the big flash crash we're now looking a bit more orderly to the upside we obviously took out this little into rim high came down we've up we're testing that old level now we're down through this resistance area so it's chance that we perhaps drift down to it's not what I didn't mind we've got a bit of a kind of supportive trend through here so you would be looking for the market to you know if you're looking for this uptrend to continue to find a base somewhere in the vicinity that's already tested in order for a move through 127 and I'm fully recouping that the flash crash given that the 61.8 worked quite well as a an area to pull back from this drop you know I was also using these lows over here you'd like maybe just above 127 and change if using that you know if you're using this peak over here or even this peak then you're putting your next potential resistance up around 120 or just above 128 really okay and yeah one of the completely I would say almost unrelated to the election though accelerated by their strength in the dollar has been the the moves in the all market been looking really soft so obviously we weren't able to take up those two highs we were mentioning that for a couple of weeks now this was a this was a big level at 45 in Brent we dip through it got a little bit of a bounce and now we've just dropped straight through it so this is looking pretty pretty bearish to me yes there will be some Fibonacci's in this area the 78.6 but to me the fact that we've taken out this low here in the context of this this trend break with the the shorter term moving average now dropping below the longer term it looks to me like we're heading down to test these lows here and and potentially below that it obviously depends on how things pan out with OPEC but it's increasingly that that OPEC deal starting to unravel at the moment and and there are signs that US production is on on the up to gold was obviously one of the the standout ones for trading much pretty much the opposite to to equities where we had the initial flight to safety but we hit hit the highs here from September and the market rolled over pretty quickly and now we're at the the weakest we've been in in several months this was the Brexit jump obviously we've got some pullback from that Brexit move but we're now lower and it does look like we're heading down for a test of one two hundred and really that's just the big line in the sand is is is the 1200 mark through there then the gold doesn't have too much in the way of support before 1100 so signs that gold looking pretty soft here I mean just again moving averages are a lagging indicator they're not perfect by any stretch but you can see that when this short-term is above the the longer term average you get some some chop in a sideways market that's when they stop working but when it's above you know okay you can sort of generally see that we've turned lower here and we've had some bounces but they've been sold into and the trend continues to go down with this shorter term below the the but the the higher-term moving average so not all the short trades are going to work goes without saying but to me my my bias moment is is to the short side but obviously that's you know how long that can sustain will depend on 1200 the one that I don't always mention in these webinars but certainly worth mentioning this time is the price of copper this is a short-term chart so I'll actually start with I'll do a bit opposite time normally this was a huge move lower intraday so we're up there we're at 7% at one point on Friday we ended up closing the day down I think we maybe actually finished the day roughly positive or at one point it was down one and a half percent on Friday from a move of up 7% an 8 plus percent daily range is is pretty huge and it's certainly something worth standing up and paying attention to there'll be people buying the dip here assuming that the higher prices continue but to my mind this is a sign that sellers came in on mass and sold the market down now and it's going to recuperate to you know to get the prices back to where those sellers want to sell again now it could get up to our kind of sell zone up here in the 61 to 78 percent retracement area but at the moment it's not got through that that previous peak you know we've we've come away from there you know this is the support so we bounce from there we're in this range any opportunities up here you know that could again call the top should we go through then you know then obviously we're looking back back up into this sort of two six six 67 to a barrier maybe but then if we so okay we don't take price action by itself in this case I almost would you know we saw a big move down we took out that short-term support you know now we've kind of taken out some of those immediate short sellers down here looking for more liquidity to sell but if we do look at where we're generally at with this this is our this is a nice nice little triangle that we had in copper taking that as the height of the triangle the height of the trunk the the full 100% extension of that height was here so we went a bit above it you know the momentum was so extreme it's not you know we're not expecting this to turn on a dime necessarily but you know once we did exceed that level we didn't go much further and the market turned around massively so that's one one area to believe that this is significant if we pull out to the weekly chart there's no obvious highs and lows I would say but if we do pull out the good old Fibonacci again then you know we're pretty pretty darn close to the 78.6 and you know if you're using you know a 76% Fibonacci it's almost bang on that so couple of Fibonacci pattern based reasons to think that this would have been an area of resistance in copper and we've seen a big sharp reaction down taking out some short-term support so my default assumption here is that we push a bit higher and then roll over again this is a strong pattern you know you could go to say that the the trend for copper has very much shifted but I'm just talking about you know where do we move in the next few days you know I think we're going to get a bit of a pullback in this what was a very big move I think it was the biggest it ended up being the biggest weekly moving copper in 30 years so understandable that we'd have a volatile finish to it so I'm going to call it a day there thank you very much for attending everyone good luck with trading this week we'll obviously all be Donald watching let's let's see what happens next now look forward to talking to you next Monday Jasper's owning up


Good afternoon everybody and thank you for joining us on another weekly edition of condo insider that is put on by Hawaii Council of Community Associations, also known as a CCA. So this week, my guest is Wanda and they only she with the state of Hawaii, the state health insurance assistant program, also known as ship. For some of you probably familiar with the commercials that are on TV. They do put a lot of commercials on TV regarding ship, which is insurance assistance program. So, with condos, you know, we're always trying to, you know, we have the big mate the maintenance fees that needs to be paid. So one of the thoughts of this is as seniors age, and you're now on fixed incomes. You know, it's kind of hard sometimes as board members that will, you know, we have people here on fixed income we can't raise maintenance fees. So really this whole series is about other ways that individuals seniors can help by by checking their, all their services that they get under Medicare or one of the other other options that they have that for services that they can probably get for free. Within the insurance that they already pay for. So, last time we did it on on the SMP, and that had some money saving tips, especially for fraud and scams and things of that nature. So, one is going to explain to us today about ship, the state health insurance assistance program. So, Wanda, thank you for being with me on the show. So, I hope we can uncover some opportunities for seniors to take advantage of some services that they are qualified under their programs insurance programs that they don't have to pay out of pocket, or other alternatives where they don't have to pay out of pocket so they can still keep money in their own pocket rather than it going out. So, explain to us what ship is. So, the state health insurance assistance program Hawaii ship we are a volunteer based program that helps people understand Medicare. I mean, basically that's what we do we are part of the Department of Health Executive Office on aging, we're federally funded, and we provide free services such as counseling assistance. We offer presentations and you'll often see us at health fairs where we can talk to you one on one about your Medicare questions and we are free or unbiased. We're not affiliated with any of insurance health insurance plan. So we're not going to steer you toward purchasing a certain plan and we also don't sell insurance. We're just here to give you some information. Because Medicare in general is just confusing. Yeah, it is yeah. So let's pull up the first slide on the PowerPoint because I think everybody would recognize the logo, because you know we see that on the TV commercials right. So, here we have the ship logo, and it's tied to Medicare the Medicare insurance. So let's kind of like talk about the, the items that you guys participate in and what exactly the insurance assistance program is all about and how is it funded, because it's in every single state right. Yes it is and in four territories, District of Columbia, the US Virgin Islands, Guam and Puerto Rico. So the whole purpose is to really educate and empower our seniors and then ship will also have we call if I called in and say hey I you know I need to understand how to do this or, or. Okay, so when I get to the point where I have to start getting into Medicare signing up for the, for that when you reach that age. So I could actually call your office. You could what we have as a helpline. It's not a call center so you'll hear a recorded message. We'll ask you to leave your name, your contact information, your zip code. The best times to call you back and the reason why you're calling and we're going to assign a counselor to who has the most knowledge about your specific concern to just talk you through whatever questions you have.  Okay great let's pull up slide number two, number three because it has some great statistics on here. So, you know look at that Medicare population. It's almost 300,000 in in Hawaii. You know they ship does a lot of out besides the commercials they do a lot of outreach. They've counseled or helped at least almost 3000 Medicare recipients. And I've seen them in fairs little pop up tents at different events. But it's quite, it's quite a unique outreach service that really caters only to seniors. So we really want to explore and educate the seniors on the opportunities to take advantage of this service because it is for free. Right. Yes. Okay. So someone calls in. So your services will include counseling and like on what kind of what what what does a senior need to have in front of them in order to have a conversation with you. Well, our typical calls are I'm aging into Medicare. I'm turning 65 in a couple of months. What do I do. Or I during our open enrollment period, which happens every fall. People want to shop around for new plans. Maybe they're on a part. They have a part C with one provider health insurance provider and. There may be better deals for them better cost savings for them. We offer a plan comparison service where we would send a plan comparison form to the client who would fill it out with their prescriptions the pharmacies they go to. What kind of plans they're interested in, whether it be a part C, which is a Medicare Advantage or part D, which is a standalone prescription drug plan. That's also Medicare. Or a Medicare plan, which is Medicare supplement insurance. And our specialists will run the comparisons for them. There are tools available from Medicare.gov to do this. On their own for people who are very tech savvy and feel that they feel very comfortable with just navigating the internet on their own Medicare.gov offers a great plan finder tool. But we are specialists will take whatever results. Are posted after a person fills in all the questions. And all the fields and hits submit. You usually get 20 plans. But what our specialists will do is they'll narrow those 20 plans down to 3 based on the information that was provided on the form. And they'll do the shopping comparisons. If a person wants dental vision hearing, which original Medicare doesn't offer, but a Medicare Advantage plan does. They can look into those benefit extra benefits, compare costs and services that are available through that particular Medicare Advantage plan. So for some of you that aren't aware at what age do you have to register for Medicare. So that's 65. There's an initial enrollment period, 3 months before the 65th birthday, the birth month and 3 months after. And within that period, if they sign up for Medicare, they'll get coverage either by the birth month or if they sign up in the 3 months after. It's the month following when they sign up and they'll avoid that late enrollment penalty, which is tacked on if somebody decides to. Feel they need Medicare when they're 68. And they didn't sign up in time. So those are the kinds of things that people need to look out for because nobody wants to pay more than they have to. And the initial enrollment period is for people who want Medicare or have to be on Medicare because their employer requires it and they're going to retire. And in order to keep those retiree benefits, they need to have Medicare and be like people who work for the state or counties. And then they sign up, they avoid that late enrollment period penalty, and they will just have to pay what the premium is. It's the monthly premium for Part B. Yeah. Okay, so you have to register. Enroll into Medicare 3 months prior to your 65th birthday month. Yeah, but you can still enroll in your birth month. You'll get coverage the following month. And then you have that 3 months after. So, let's say my birth month is May, but I decide to enroll in June. My coverage will start in July. And what, and the penalties, there's like a hefty penalty or what is that? Well, it adds up. So, most people are eligible for premium free Part A, which is the inpatient. And that's because they work 40 quarters and paid into the Social Security taxes and that's equivalent to 10 years. Part B, which is your outpatient services, your doctor visits, your lab tests. A lot of your vaccinations will fall under Part B. That has a monthly premium this year is $164.90. So, if you waited, let's say 2 years after you turn 67 decide, okay, now I really want to get Medicare because my health costs are rising. Then they would pay a 10% on whatever the premium base premium is that year. And for 12 month period. So, let's say they sign, they're 67 now. They're signing up this year. The, the premium is $165 just rounding it off. So it's 1650 times 2 plus the 164. 90 that there would pay monthly and the more that they delay. That's another year that's added on of 10% with whatever the premium is at that time. So, even for prescription part prescription drug plan, the Part D. If someone decides to stay on original Medicare, just take A and B. And then they're not taking any drugs when they turn 65, but at age 70, they have to take prescription drugs. Then there's a penalty for Part D. So we encourage people who are want to stay on original Medicare because their lifestyle, it's more beneficial to them. Let's say they're snowbirds, they spend part of the year in Hawaii part of the year in another state. They're able to see providers in either state. That original Medicare would probably be the best for them. We encourage them, even if they're not taking prescription drugs at the time to just sign up for a prescription drug plan because there are very low premiums in comparison to the Part B premium. Wow. Yeah, there's a lot. There's a lot, but fortunately in Hawaii ship will walk you through it. We have trained counselors that either they come from the health care background or insurance background fully retired. They live in all of our counties. They're very familiar with the options there because a lot of them are on Medicare. So, if a person were to request the counseling appointment, then the counselor would give them a call and they'll just have a conversation. And often, while they're just talking, other issues will arise like, oh, wait a minute. I need to ask you a question about this regarding Medicare and the counselor if they don't know the answer, they do the research and then they call back. Oh, that's great. And let's talk about your website. Because you have resources for different languages also. Yes. So, you can see on the slide, we have from Chinese to Ilkano, Samoan, Vietnamese, and a lot of the resources there are put out by either Social Security or the center of Medicare and Medicaid services. And we also have our own brochures and flyers that we have our volunteers translate into different languages to help our multilingual community understand what's available to them. So, some of the volunteers might be proficient in a different language so they'll be an awesome resource to communicate with all clients. We have a few but we're always trying to encourage other people who speak different languages that are common in Hawaii to join our team and help your loved ones who speak the same language that you do that may not be English and understand Medicare so they can help them. So, how is it like I called in because like my mom is having an issue, and I called in so would there just be like a consent agreement that I could represent her in the conversation. Definitely. A lot of our clients are children of older adults who maybe in their stage of life aren't able to voice their concerns. Some have dementia, you know, it's the caregiver often is a family member who needs that extra help. And we provide what we can through the Medicare counseling. Okay, so we you. So like for me, I would I would gather all my, my, my parents, medical information or their card and coverages and all of that. And then we would sit down, have a conversation with ship, say, look, this is the meds that they take. This is our current coverage, which probably would be on their, their card. They would have either. Well, the Medicare card will just say if they're on part A and part B. But then if they have a Medicare Advantage plan through a private health insurance company like Kaiser H and the say United healthcare. They those plans will send a card.  From Social Security, she'll have the Medicare Advantage card, or if she was on. Just the original Medicare and had a prescription drug plan, then she'll probably have that card too. So there's a whole bunch of cards that people need to keep track of. And keep safe because they're like you learn from SMP. There are people who want to steal your Medicare. So you have to take a number and charge a lot toward toward our Medicare trust fund, which is how we keep this benefit going. Yeah. Yeah, it was interesting to learn how all they needed your date of birth and last four digits and they can go crazy. That was, that was an eye opener. Give me like, give me an example or give us an example of like a case that you can remember how it had had some eye opening experiences with a client. A recent case was there was a there is a health plan that offers extra benefits. This is a Medicare Advantage. So let me backtrack. So Medicare Advantage has to offer everything part A inpatient and part B outpatient offers. But the health plan can offer additional benefits. It's not required, but they can. And it makes it a more attractive plan for people. You can think of original Medicare is all a cart where there's the A and the B, maybe you'll get a medicap gap. You should get a prescription drug plan part D. But with a Medicare Advantage plan, it's like that entire meal all at once. You know what you're going to get for your soup, your entree and your dessert. So you'll have your part A part B. A lot of the plans offer vision, hearing dental, as well as extra benefits. Like, for instance, one was paying utility bills. A recent client had trouble with getting the bills paid and what how we resolved it was to work with the plan because we do have partners at the health plans. And they were able to address it correct this person's situation, which had been going on for months and they tried to resolve it themselves. But decided, okay, why don't we give this Hawaii ship a chance? We always see them on TV. And we were able to just by working with the plan to address this person's problems. And now the person the client has had all of the utility bills reimbursed for what he had to pay out of pocket and they've made it a better benefit for this individual. So that's like the extreme. A lot of times it's either people just losing their Medicaid because the COVID unwinding. And they're getting a letter from MedQuest saying that they're not eligible anymore. So if someone gives us a call, we can talk to them about the marketplace health insurance plans that they could be eligible for. Talking to them about enrolling into Medicare. You know, just so that there's no gap in coverage.  There should be, there's always an opportunity for some kind of health coverage. Yes. So Medicare is one. And then if they qualify for because their income is low and their assets are low, they could qualify for Medicaid. And then if their income and assets are just slightly above that Medicaid threshold, there's also the Medicare savings program, which will help to pay the. Co-payments, coinsurance and premiums for parts A and B, or there's the extra help plan from Social Security that will help pay prescription drug costs for people who qualify because their income and assets are low. So that's another way to save money. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. So essentially there should be. Essentially, there should be no senior that has zero coverage. I mean, there's always a coverage available. Yeah. For any senior versus, you know, your young adults, sometimes they're like in a little limbo status about having some kind of coverage when they are no longer covered under their parents and now they got to figure out what they're going to do with their coverage. So this is really good information. I'm learning a lot. And I think a lot of seniors should take the opportunity to reevaluate their Medicare needs and give ship that call to see if there's other services that you're missing out on that you're eligible for at no cost to the senior. I think that's one thing that's going to be very good and also give them the opportunity to do the legwork, the shopping to make sure you're getting the maximum benefit allowed for yourself and also the cost, just the cost alone and it's a free service. You know, they lost the senior anything to have their server to have their plans reevaluated. But that would be so awesome for any senior to take advantage of this free service. So the two peer enrollment periods. I want to highlight before we go is that initial enrollment period for people trading 65. That seven months window where they can enroll into Medicare through Social Security. And then there's always that annual open enrollment. It starts October 15 and runs through December 7. And that's the time when you can shop around for new plans. Usually that is when a lot of people get the mailers from different health insurance plans because they're trying to show you what new features the plan offers. And maybe this is a better plan for them.  Oh, so let's pull up the last slide that shows a lot of the contact information. Also the website. So you have Hawaii ship.org, which is a really easy website to remember, and your wahu number you have your toll free numbers. But there's always help available. And because of the way it's a strictly volunteer. So you may not get a live person answer the phone you just leave a voicemail, and you'll get a return phone call. But one of the key things to remember is make sure you got to kind of get some of the paperwork in order so that when they ask questions you're able to respond. And hopefully get everything covered. But you know, the ship organization of volunteers need to get information from the senior, or from their caregiver, so that they can fully maximize the services that ship does. Awesome. How long has ship been in Hawaii. A little over 30 years of the executive office on aging where we're located got the first ship grant in 1992. They built the program. It was called sage plus at the time. And then right around the two 2010s we rebranded and now we're called Hawaii ship. And we're just trying to build our. Make a way ship a household world because you could see from the numbers that we shared you have close to 300,000 Medicare beneficiaries in 2022, but we only service 3000. So, there's so many more people not aware that of what we do that need the help and. Through our marketing efforts and through think tech, which so grateful that you're giving us this opportunity to share what we do that more people will learn about Hawaii ship and what they we can do for them. And if I remember right the aging population is is projected to grow within the next, I think 10 years. It grew just from the time we took those stats at the end of the year till now we're over 300,000 Medicare beneficiaries in Hawaii alone. Wow. Wow. I think it was like a part of me. I think it was like a, it's projected to be like a third of the population. Very soon. Yeah, if I remember right. Yeah, it was all of us baby boomers, you know, aging into Medicare is only going to grow and grow. Yeah. Yeah. So thank you Wanda we're kind of nearing the end of our time. So I really want to thank you for this opportunity to be on our show and really explain what ship is all about and you know I see the commercials on TV. But for everybody. Listening and watching the show. The service is a valuable service is for free. We got to maximize what we can for free. And just don't let them do the hard work, let them do the investigation, because it can be complex and can be confusing. So at least we have people that are that they themselves are volunteers but that's what they do. So they know the ins and outs, you know, and I think I think that ship is going to be awesome is just for I mean I'm reaching that age so I'm like, okay, I got to get on this bandwagon here. I don't know how to call. Yeah, so I'll be bumping into you guys pretty soon. So again thank you Wanda for this opportunity, and look forward to more happenings with ship. Great. I'm so grateful for you giving us this opportunity as well. Thank you. Have a good rest of your week. Thank you too. Thank you Wanda. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please click the like and subscribe button on YouTube. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. Check out our website thinktechawaii.com. Mahalo.


Hey guys shave her 1,000 here Today's just gonna be a short video of Some clips that didn't actually make it into a video so Kind of like an outtakes, but there's some pretty neat things and I hope you enjoy it But yeah, it's just it's gonna be it's just gonna be some video clips of Things that didn't make it into a video. So sit back and enjoy What does that look for? It's a Bruno knife. He don't like it But he's doing better What's up Bruno? We're vlogging Saturday vlog Bruno vlog. I'll mount this up here Bruno cam Come here. I thought it'd come with monkey today She only had like three patients One in the morning which I stayed home then We left to do two more. She's at the last one now It's 11 minutes after three Today we're at monkey's parents house and We're having while they're having trouble with their washing machine. It doesn't want to spin The motor's running pumps running As you can see we've got it on spin here Pumps running, but It's not spinning So let's see if we can get this straight now. How does that? Where? Across the bay and to varies. Right. We just left Ustas Because we were Man that camera was only happily zoomed in man. Yeah I could see it in people's windows of people taking showers.  Was he? Yeah, you're allowed to eaters in here, you know They might don't you know, I guess people don't think about that. They just go swimming. They're hot They want to go swimming. Each of your mating season if they're hungry. No, they're only gonna eat you if they're hungry period But he's got Well, maybe the city or state or town or whatever Because most of these are probably on the crosser Good swimming right there. That's what I wouldn't like is house across the road and then have to you know You have to walk across the road to your dock. I guess it'd be better than where we're at But still I mean, you know, I wouldn't complain too much, but I mean, I wouldn't just buy one like that, you know Yeah, this is becoming a very busy road to a lot of people use this for cutoff Well, it's too hazy That's a cool-looking Hooking a shot out through there. Yeah, isn't it just have my canoe. I'd be fine.  Yeah, they don't bite.  Oh guys, thanks for watching. Hope you enjoyed that the clips Appreciate you watching. Don't forget to comment rate and subscribe and Remember shea better the myth of me and the legend gone for now. Bye. Bye guys


I think Bruce would be here. No, he's, he's emailed today. Okay. So we're just missing Bruce and Karen and Greta. Greta's in Belgium. Okay. She's not going to be here. Well, welcome to this hearing of the historic district commission. The LTC. We're going to talk about the historic district bylaw. And our purpose, as you know, is to aid property owners in the town of Amherst and the preservation and protection of the distinctive characteristics and architecture of buildings and places significant in the history of our town. Today's hearing is we're not considering any special properties, but we are going to talk about the East village LD. LHD. We're going to talk about parking during project hearings, and we're going to talk about officers. So let's begin with a consideration of the East village LHD. Steve, you had a, you had a thought. I had a thought. I don't know what thought that was. I guess should we make a motion to like. To proceed or not proceed with. The East and hers LHD. Is that how it works? Yeah, I think if. You know, I think what the commission has done is that, you know, two site visits and then, you know, we're kind of discussing if that area is worth pursuing as a local district. And if so, you know, the commission could vote itself, the study committee, or we could recommend that the town appoint a new study committee. So I think that's kind of where we are. You know, is it. You know, is the area worth pursuing? And then who would be the study committee? And then, um, And then just moving forward. With that, I think part of the process or discussion could be, I think Bruce's term ends. At the end of the month. And then I'm not sure he'll. Continue. And so then.  We could start, but then we'd want to get an architect. Or try to find an architect also on the commission for the process. So. But. I guess I should ask Nate. Nate. Am I automatically off at the end of the month? Or am I on until replaced? I think once upon a time, I remember. No. After three years. I, uh, I became concerned that we were. Without my having been reappointed and I wanted to make sure that the. That that we were making decisions. Uh, with somebody who was empowered to do so. Me, meaning me. Oh, and I seem to remember at the time, but I may be. That that that I, I continued. Um, For some months without actually formally being reappointed. So I'm prepared to keep on going until. I'm replaced. Um, unless of course. I am automatically, uh, ineligible at the end of, uh, Whenever the term is. Right. Um, so Bruce and Steve, it looks like your term. Would end. At the end of this month has the town manager's office reached out to you to confirm whether you continue or. Or not. Yes. No, I, well, first of all, I didn't, I was just, I just joined like in November. So I was like. But no, I've been in communication with Paul and Paul. Um, said that he was going to re nominate me. And he said that he was going to re nominate me. So, uh, Is that the way it works? Yeah. I mean, I think for Bruce, you too. I mean, I can reach out to the town manager's office and, and confirm that they will ask you. Um, And it could be that you get reappointed. And then, you know, if. At the same time as you're sitting, we can then try to reach out to. You know, to find architects, if you know, if you find that. You know, you wouldn't want to continue, say on for another six months or a year or whatever it be, but. Um, typically I thought the, I thought, you know, appointments would just.  Reoccur. And then, um, unless you said otherwise, it would just be reappointed to a kind of a perfunctory process. But I should confirm that. If you would, yes, please. Yeah, the question I had was about the study committee. I'm assuming it would be some members from this group, but also do you appoint members of the public? Or do you invite participation from others? Um, yes and no. I mean, they, they're typically the, the guidelines would add to that. Um, I mean, that's something that you're talking about that. I'm just wondering if you could just say yes or no. And I think that would be from others. Um, yes and no. I mean, they, that typically the, the guidelines would ask for a similar composition to this commission. So you know, an architect, realtor, someone with a historical society or. And then residents. And so it's really the, it's really up to the commission. Now, if you'd like to undertake that. That process. So. You know, some of it would be determining the boundaries, I mean, I don't want to downplay the amount of work that could go into it.  The public's always welcome. It's a public meeting. So even if this commission were to. Vote itself a study committee. We could, you know, part of the agenda. It would be, you know, discussion of the samurts and we would, it would be open to the public. So we could always invite people to come and attend. So the committee. Meetings are open to the public. Is that what you're saying? Yeah. Not our committee, but the study committee. Right. Even if you're right. Okay. Steve. A couple of things. First of all, I reviewed the handbook. And I think the next thing we have to do. Is gauge. The property owner's interest. So we sent out the. I mean, I'm happy to type up. The sample letter. Can we send it out to. At least the national disc owners of the 46. Properties. In the national. District. Nate. Yeah. I mean, I think first I'd want just a motion, you know, some discussion by this commission. If you, if you would want to be the study committee. You know, You know, You know, then we have to go through the process of getting one appointed. And then roughly what are the boundaries? So. First, the commission or the site committee would do a little, you know, as we've been doing some field study and information gathering to determine what are the approximate boundaries. And then notify property owners. So. I'm not sure we're actually at that point yet to notify property owners. Okay. Right. So. So I look at the form B's and there's, there's like nothing on the form B's. I can type up stuff from the national red, the start doing. Template form B's. There seems like there's a property descriptions of like 10 or 12 properties. And actually the significant sections already been done. The thing I was going to ask you is. When is the CPA. The deadline, is that already. For this calendar year that's coming gone. Yeah. So the funding that's available for July one has been, you know, it was voted on. You know, over the winter. So the funding round for next year, you know, for funding next July would start actually probably in August. So in a few months. You know, they would ask for applications that would be doing September or something, but the money doesn't become available until the following July. So. Okay. Well, I was going to just one say Dorothy Pan suggested to me that. Because it's going to be a lot of research required on this. And she suggested that heading startup. You get a grant and try to get heading startup with a train who does this stuff and serving on the historical commission. So I'm wondering if we should, you know, plan on, I'm happy to fill out a CPA. You know, application in August to try to raise funding. To get her on board with everyone's fine with that. The only thing is the work can't start that until next July. Well, next July. Yeah, we can't reimburse work start, you know, doing this fall. Or over the winter. Are there any other places we could get grants from for this kind of work. Yeah. I think we could just do, I think usually in the spring winter spring. I'm not sure of many others actually. Yeah. Bruce, did you have something you want to say. Yes, I think it's probably appropriate that we create a motion that makes this conversation. Was having, I mean, we're having a discussion on the, on a motion that hasn't yet been proposed. So there seems to be a. So I thought that on Steve, we could help. So I think I'm moving that this, that the commission. Recommend the appointment of a study committee. To investigate the. The committee to move forward with the. The consideration of establishing the. A local historic district in North. In East Amist. And I guess when we were walking around, we were thinking that it would be. Well, let's say, as defined in red. I don't know how to, how to put in words that, that. That limit, but I'll, I'll stop the motion by proposing that it's, that it be defined by the area. It'd be the area defined in red on the. On our. Our plan that we were using. So that, that. So that wording needs to be refined so that it actually means something. But basically move that, I guess, Nate where. Moving that this commission is moving to a point. A study committee. Is that the correct wording? Yeah, that the commission would act as the study committee. Yeah. Okay. Well, where would appoint that study committee and. And it's to consider creating the, an historic district in East Amist. Correct. And as defined by, and then I just need the words that define the area in red. And then we've got a motion and then we can talk about it. Because I think we need to talk about whether we want it to be the red area or the blue area. I mean, red, red or red and blue, right? Yeah, on that point, I'd like to make, can you go, I found a great, I know a little bit was frustrating because we didn't have a good map and I found a great map. Which I think we could refer to in Bruce's motion. Okay.  Of the national registry, the national registry, not the extension, but the actual original one. Can you use that possible for you to do. Yeah, I was actually going to do the map that looks like this. They can't. It literally has all 46 properties, but it's labeled. And the boundaries are clear. It's really easy to read. It's much easier than the map that you're writing. Page 19 of. Not that. So here's, here's the, the macros maps. And what Bruce is referring to as this red here, that's now orange. So it's, I can zoom in, but. You know, here's the, here's the use dam or school right here. Here's main street. Here's Southeast street. Here's the, if my Konky house over here. You can't find. And this is the, is the farm up in Northeast street included. Or is it because it's a funny. Yeah. They included all the, you know, in some of the outbuilding. So here's head row lane. And here's the farm. Okay. So there are two oranges here then. We have to be.  They didn't include all of it. And so. Yeah. I mean, there's a blue line separating. There's a, there are two defined areas in that, that's that area there and then below it. There's the, that, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's all one. You know, this property is also in another, you know, it's not supposed to be in a next expanded district. So that's why it's. Oh, it comes up twice. Well, so Steve's trying to get the terminology. I'm just saying, Nate, you have this. Materials that you sent us. If you go to the one that's national register of historic places, inventory. And you scroll down is like a fantastic map. Yeah. I don't have that ready right now. Okay. I have the expansion one ready, but not the other one. Well, if this one that Nate pulled up is a. Is a, is a, is a definable. And I see. It may see our IS maps. Yeah. Massachusetts something. Yeah, this is macros. So this is the state inventory database. They put, you know, created an online mapping system. So this is right here. This is. The official map. Well, if you can, if you can put in words, the death, the descriptor, the description of the orange area, then the motion can be completed. Yeah. I mean, I would say just the East Amherst national register district. Okay. East Amherst national register districts. That's the motion. I second. Okay. So. We'll do a voice vote. Hold on. I propose the motion in order to focus the discussion on the motion. So I'm not sure we're ready to. All of the conversation we were having. Was. Kind of implying that there was an intention to proceed. And I thought we should formalize the intention to proceed. So we have formalized the intention, at least so far as emotion has been proposed and seconded, but we want to make sure I think that the motion is. Is, is, is as complete as it should be. So I think that we. We satisfied that the blue area that we looked at or that we didn't look at, but we kind of. Thought about looking at. Are we, are we satisfied that that, that this study committee would, would not be. Would not attend to the, the, the, the, the blue parts. I think when. Oh, do I have to signal. Do I have to signal to my hand? I think that when we were taking a look at, we were out in the landscape, taking a look at this. I think it became clear to us that. The. She had emailed me saying there is spotty internet. So I think, you know. Oh, she seems to have frozen. I wonder if she was going to say that we had decided that. I think it might. A larger district was going to be too much work for us to try to define. And deal with, and that we should stick with what had already been done. Nate, I sent you that map. Yeah, I actually just got a screenshot of myself and is available. Yeah. I'm inclined to agree, but. But I know less about this than some of you. Elizabeth, did you want to say something now? Yeah, she's disappeared. You might phone in next. I thought she had maybe phoned in, but. I'm sharing the screen right now. Here's the map. You know, this is the district that I've shown in red just in a different. On a different map. That's, yeah, that's quite good. And when I look at the actual. They have an explanation of why they chose those borders in their. You know, in the inventory, which I think make a lot of sense. It says. Which I wait for Elizabeth to get back on.  She wanted to. Yeah, watch it here and there. Yeah, no, what it says is the. The bounds of the East village of start district were drawn to include a concentration of residences and institutional buildings associated with the industrial villages. Hey, Dave, prior to the Civil War. And it basically is a long explanation, which I think. Very cogent, which is why they chose these 46 properties. Which includes 12 intrusion. So. We do have a rationale for it. Okay. The. The. The properties of the color, the colored brown, but are. Inside the, the district among the top. Or upon the left hand top side there. They're, they look like apartment blocks. In from. It does include 12 intrusion. Yes. Yeah. So those are included, how they. Yeah. So they would be contributing. They're considered non-contributing. So the NC and red. Yeah, which if we zoom in, there's, as Steve was talking about, there is. A number of properties that are considered. You know, non-contributing. Okay. And the, and the rationale for including them is. I guess that's a question. Yeah. I mean, I think it's to protect them from doing something else to the property. Oh. Like if they could pull it down and put something else there. Okay. So they're, they're not contributing, but they, we want them to stay non-contributing rather than becoming negative contributors. There must, there might be some sort of geographical. I mean, if you look at the bottom here. There's other NC's and you can see why they are. I think it's just that area you're talking about. There's a property. There's usually some explanation for it. With either streets or, or geographic.  Definitely try to find that out. Interesting. It looks like the school. There's a non-contributing. Consider the non-contributing building. Is that possible? Yes. Is that because it's more. No, no, no, not the Fort River. Right here. The East River, the, this guy here. Yeah, they may have done that because there was a fire in the 30s and the roof was changed. And so the original, you know, what it looks like now is not. Related to the significance that Steve referenced. Yeah. You know, I'm sorry, I should raise my hand each time. I think it's a nodding. It's not contributing because of a different era. I mean, most all these other properties are the late 1700s to like the 1850s. And I think the school was built in like the early 1900s. Yes. I didn't choose specifically say that these were pre-civil war. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I got it. Thank you. Yeah.  The Amethyst Brook, right? And so, you know, it could be that this is all, this is a natural boundary or that we include a few more properties. And so that's kind of the, and to me, those are the discussion points. I feel like, you know, also going north a bit, is that a good logical break here?  It becomes slightly different character, right?  You know, this could be a starting point. I would, I still think there should be some discussion in the, um, in the preliminary study report that we'd submit to mass historic, we'd try to justify the boundaries. And it could be that we rely on the national register nomination, but that's pretty old. And we could say that we researched it again, and we still think those boundaries are, you know, are legitimate because of these factors. And that's why we didn't expand them. So I do think there has to be some consideration for what, you know, you know, do we expand in any direction? And so, Well, we didn't go looking at the, let's say, Salem Street, for example, there are two properties on the corner of Main Street. I kind of remember them. I think one of them is that extraordinary building with the, this 694 is that extraordinary building that, a very lovely old building that's had a full dormer put on either side, which basically just raised the whole building through the roof, so that the roof has really been just a bunch of eaves at this point. So if we, but I, we didn't look at the buildings further up Salem Street and so forth, but I imagine that the people that have set this up in the first place would have done that, but maybe we should make sure that there's, that the building, the buildings in the side streets are, are not, are not of equivalent date. Or has that already been done, do you think, Nate? If it was done and it wasn't documented in the nomination, then we'd have to just kind of, we'd have to do it again. You know, we didn't think there is, I'm going to go back to the Makris map. So in the proposed East Amherst expansion, which is now orange, you know, the PVPC did look at Salem's place, you know, the Salem Street and more of Spalding and some other ones down Main Street. So that work has been done. So I think we just have to, you know, look at the expansion report and see if it's similar to the original nomination here. Yeah, I looked at, I have it right in front of me. And if we were to do that and find that all of, that the houses substantially in blue were post civil war, that sounds like it would be, I mean, we could, of course, as we are thinking of doing in, in the Dickinson Lincoln area, expanding the, the district, I guess one can always just think to expand the district. But I'm kind of inclined to tackle the, the, the, the pre civil war concentration, which seems to be the orange. And then I guess the study committee would, would, would confirm the relevance of the area and make sure there were no anomalies. And if there were, then we, they would come back and we would talk more about it. Okay. Steve. Oh, I just have it. First of all, Elizabeth's back. So if you can see that other map that was, I'm just looking at, I have the inventory of the extension properties. And there are probably five or six that are pre civil war. Pellum Road 1850 bunch on Pellum Road 1830 1840 1847 on Pellum Road. North East street. This one 1840. Balding. But actually the ones on. Yeah. The other ones on main street are of a different era. My 1890 and above. More current. Elizabeth. Yeah. I'm sorry, everybody. I told me that are building back here by lightning and it's the internet's coming and going here. Is it possible for the committee, the commission, the study commission to make that final determination? It seems like. There may be some things that are in blue that want to be considered for this, but not all of them. So could that committee make that. Determination after, you know, after careful thought. Yeah. I mean the motion. You know, it could be amended to say, you know, starting with. Current National Register District for East. And it's, you know, and then it's really right. The study committee. Could add a property or two or, you know, just make. Yeah. Small modifications if necessary. Yeah. Cause I think. Oh, yeah. You may, it may not be in the period of some of the others, but it forms a cohesive center for the 20th century. I think. Be included. Maybe not. Right. I mean, the local historic district isn't necessarily. Trying to bring back the period of significant. So it could be two that later homes are modeled after. You know, earlier one. So if they're the same architectural style, it may be. From a local historic district standpoint worth. Including those. So yes, I would therefore modify my motion. And Steve, if you agree. As Nate mentioned, which triggered by what Elizabeth said, which is that he studied completely the area bounded by the. By the, by the. The macros map or whatever. And. And that the committee would. Look at the adjacent areas. In blue with a view to. Adding appropriate. I'm not recommending expanding the area. With, with, and consider any. And consider the case for the expanding the area. And specifically. Who's taking minutes. You said you made it. You're doing. You're making sense. I'm trying to say. If you could amend the, the, the motion that gives the study commission. The charge is the study committee to. Also look at the. The surrounding. District defined in blue. For adding appropriately. Adding any appropriate properties. And, and explaining and making a case for doing so. You good with that state? Oh, yes, I am. Okay. Does anybody else have anything to say about. This before we go, move to a vote. I guess I'm just wondering the timeline in the funding and things like that. Is that part of this discussion or that's like part of. Step two. I was thinking that was step two, but what do you think. Well, you know, if the committee wants to move this forward now. You know, waiting for CPA funding or a grant from mass historic, you know, is basically we'd be sitting for another year. The CPA does have the capacity to release funds for. Specific. Short-term or emergency purposes. I seem to recall from my. Time. As we just fit that category. No. Well, it could, but I think they've already obligated all the funding available for FY 23 and 24. So they really don't have any. Any funding. That would that could be. Allocated now. There might be some administrative funds. We could look into that. I could look into that, but. Typically, they, you know, they allocate all the funding for each fiscal year and don't leave a reserve. So. So then we would appoint the committee. And that committee can start on its own with its own resources. And move as far as it can on its own resources. At the same time as it's putting together an application for the CPA. Or making a case to the CPA and waiting and then continuing to. Do the, do whatever work it can. But I do recall that. Sadly, the CPA is quite strident about not reimbursing. I wonder if there's a possibility of getting. Student help from the university. Is that something that do we, do we have contacts here that might. Consider that. Yeah. I mean, I think we'd have to, you know, we could reach out now to see if it could be a fall semester project. Yeah.  So sometimes the difficulties we don't have funding to say, have it be an internship or to find, to be, to have it be a research project would have to be something that would align with a class project. Yeah. It's not going to have to be a project. It's going to have to be directed. Someone has to tell them how to do it. And sometimes that takes longer than doing it. That's my experience. Well, I mean, what I was going to do, I mean, I've done this before. What I did last time was I, I have a, I had everything on drop. I've already taken pictures of like 40 of the things that I put it on a drop off to count. And last time we did this for the Lincoln sunset, And then everyone could like work on different parts of the Form Bs. But because of open meeting law, I mean, it was so useful because we had three or four people working on Form Bs according to their expertise in the committee. But now I would love to have that back because we could start doing it. I mean, I, what I, what I could do like starting tomorrow is I can look at the National Registry and this is what I did before. And type it up on Form Bs and put the pictures up and, you know, it had like 10 of the properties have very specific, very detailed physical descriptions which are great. And there are some historical stuff in the natural natural registry and I would already type that up and then other people with certain, you know, expertise like Elizabeth, for example, could go into the same forms and just fill out, you know, what they can add to it. And until we get a Dropbox or some sort of system where we can all access it, you know, we can't do that. And in terms of students, I can immediately contact Max, we had three, we had a number of student interns before, and I can just email Max Page and, you know, he'll recruit somebody. There's no race on this, but we don't finish it in a year that's like, you know, that's fine too. We just want to do it right. So, Nate, do we have access to Dropbox through the town or do we need to set up a separate account for that? Yeah, no, I think the town clerk's office had recommended not using something like that because there could be a violation of open meeting law in terms of having discussions or information that's not publicly available. So, I'll look into it. I mean, what I had done was with the e-amorous information I put it through, you know, available on the town's website through the local historic district commission webpage. And so, you know, it could be something like that. It does become tricky when you have working documents and how to post them and keep them from, you know, having it be something that looks like a conversation. So, you know, the last time that Ben Breger, you know, before me had asked for this commission, they had recommended not using Dropbox but using just putting it on the town's website or putting it somewhere where all the information is public. So that way, you know, there's no, there could be, you know, no risk of violating open meeting law. I think that's an easy way to create access to that town website because it seems a little complicated and disorganized at the moment. Yeah, we could set up, I'm just thinking. Yeah, I think we can set up some folders and a directory. And we could probably organize documents a little better. We can check with town council again about Dropbox. We're not like we're deliberating, we're just doing research and you can make it accessible to anyone who wants to look at it, although I doubt anyone will. Yes, and if it was simply a repository and it didn't have any documents in it that were being edited if it was a place where we collected information and put it in. You could perhaps, if Steve was operating it, if we were operating as simply as a repository. I didn't see how that, well, that wouldn't violate the open meeting law, but I can see that some people might think that different people had a different idea of what the word repository meant and that that would be the risk. But if we would all sign a document that the acknowledge that we understood had a common understanding of what that word repository meant, and that we would commit to using it such and no more. Then I think a lot of what Steve's trying to do could be achieved. Plus, I was just going to try to go quickly through my email. I don't see anything but yeah I think, I mean they had provided something in writing to Ben, recommending not to so I guess it's just a matter of, you know, what, how do we, how can we manage it. Yes, I think folks are just, it's easy to say no basically, and we want to get to yes, and getting to yes might take a bit of effort but if we are committed to demonstrating an understanding. Hopefully, and the purposes are clear. Then the blanket no, hopefully with can be adjusted. Yeah, I think it was just a repository and we're not having conversation outside of these meetings about what's in that repository I don't see how can be considered a violation of the open meeting law. Well just the, you know, I think the concern is right that there could be some communication there that isn't available to the public. That never happened when we were doing that before it would literally be like I would do transcribing and then Marianne or.  Right. Yeah, I'll follow up with the clerk's office and just see I guess I was trying to find an email right now and I don't not seeing it. So, Elizabeth did you want to say something. I was just, I was just going to ask how do you work on a joint project. If you can't do that, you know, how do you have something together. I can type it up and, you know, so I don't know it just it seems like whether it's Google Drive or Dropbox or something that it's not deliberation it's it's work and we're working collaborating on one form. Yeah, I mean I'm not I don't disagree I just think though that you know the same the state law regulations haven't caught up with the way technology is being used so I'm not you know typically we'd say email me or information I spend the time synthesizing and then I email it back out and it's just it becomes pretty laborious on everyone's part so. Yes, I'm sorry. It's Google Drive also verboten. So I think I can ask like what you know how to do this right so whether I think the concern is that, whether it's Google or Dropbox you need an account to access it so it's not necessarily available to the public. That's all whereas if we posted it on the town's website through a folder directory. Anyone can download it and access it. Yeah, I can ask the clerk and I can try to get some clarification on that. Okay, because last time it was fine we didn't have any this is a new thing. You people. Yeah, but you know I think some of it is the sense then it's been a few years I think the clerk has either different interpretation or has received new information or guidance say from the state so it's not. We can't rely on you know, I agree I thought last time it worked pretty well. All right, well I think let's set that aside for the moment and talk about whether we would like to proceed with this motion to recommend that a study committee begin to consider the establishment of a local historic district in East Amherst as defined by the MACRAS map. I'm ready to vote. Is everybody is everybody ready to vote. Yep. Okay, Bruce. Hi. I think we have a full. Yes. Steve. Yes. Karen. Yes. Elizabeth. She's lost her connection again. And I'm in favor of it well I think we have a majority in favor and actually agreed I had said before the meeting that she would favor this basic idea so I think we have a full majority in favor. The point is to think about what we can do without moving forward to do the full, all of the research but we need to, don't we need to start by asking the property owners if they would support such a thing. Point of order that we need to appoint the committee. I think that I think well I think the. I thought the motion really was that this commission is acting as the study committee and is looking into it. Oh, well, okay. That wasn't what I said, but that was because I understood that we had to appoint a committee. So maybe I miss on, you know, because you said we would study the area around East Amherst and you know possible new properties. So defining who is doing that work. Well, I thought the, I thought we, I thought the commission appointed the study committee that's what I thought I heard your state as being the process. But if it's the motion, if everybody believed the motion said that the commission is the study committee, then that's fine by me. Is that is that is that what we. That was my understanding and that if we need additional help, which I think we probably will, we'll try to seek it out as we go. Steve, are you good with that. Is that your understanding. I look this up today and there's two different ways to do it. One is to like go before the town council request the formation of the study committee. And that's, you know, when I did it before. I recruited everyone. And I went to the town to the select board with the study committee intact already, you know, it's like the different elements, the architect member that has to be a member of the historical society. And I went there with a ready made thing but then when I look at the handful today. And how we, if there's already an existing local store district commission, which there was before, you know, we could just act as the committee if we want. I mean, they have to clarify that. I'm not quite sure. Yeah, as far as the motion that we voted on was your understanding that we were that we that we, the commission was the study committee. I just thought we were just deciding to pursue it in that, you know, pursuing. Not necessarily forming a study committee of ourselves if we can do that, that certainly saves some time, but I just thought we were voting to like continue to pursue a study. Whatever local district and he stands. Yeah, okay, I know right so yeah Bruce's motion is really that it's worth pursuing the study of it not. Yeah. But if we can be the study committee make we have to go from the formal process, or we disappoint ourselves with study committee. There's been another motion and vote and we relay that to the town manager. I don't, I don't see that right the guidelines and the way the I read it to is that if there's already existing commission.  So moved that we appoint ourselves the commission as the study committee. Second. Is there discussion of this motion. Further discussion. Okay, let's move to vote then Nicole. Sure. Steve. Yes. Bruce. Yes. Karen. Yes. And I'm in favor and we lost Elizabeth. So, what's next Nate what do we have to do next for that or do you want to move on to the next item on the agenda. Yeah, I mean we could continue the discussion to about the boundaries or maybe next meeting. You know, we have the information online. We could decide are there a few additional properties or, you know, even if individually just drive down the streets to see if there's one or two properties that architecturally are similar. And then once you kind of have a basic boundary. I think Steve's right the next step would be to get all the inventory forms and that in the current. You know, we have a template. And then also notify property owners. So, you know, PVPC had done some work updating inventory forms, but not. Not all of it. So it's going to take, you know, essentially taking the template form and transcribing information into the new ones for every property with a new picture and new map.  How do I get it every right. Yeah, the, you know, some of the properties that Steve mentioned have very little information about them and so some of it would then be once the forms have been updated, determining, you know, how many properties need to have a little bit more research done on them, or have an architectural description on them. You know, some just say, you know, it's like a one liner and others might have a paragraph so it's really inconsistent in terms of how much research was done on each property. And I think I went to like five of them on that person knows like nothing to just a number of picture, no description. So, a lot of going to be a lot of work. Right, and I think some of that was to become a national register district you had to individually nominate the properties but they're doing it for the district and so they relied on the district nomination, and not each individual form so much and so that's slightly different now. But yeah, I think, you know, we could wait till next meeting and then come back and have, you know, some discussion about what we think is the right boundary to start with. Okay, let's move then to the next item on the agenda which was a discussion of including parking lots in project reviews and this was something Steve had asked to discuss. And I, I called the mask, you know, when we were dealing with 96 or 98 parent street, you know, it wasn't clear whether our purview included parking lots. So I called the Massachusetts Historical Commission, and they said that it varies from town to town. And it turns out that we, the town that just used the boilerplate language that the Massachusetts Historical Commission had. So the question is, should we try to exempt explicitly parking lots, unexempt I mean parking lots, you know what I'm saying, right now parking lots are exempt, we want to unexempt them. And then when I had a brief conversation with Nate, he said that he talked a lot more, and he wasn't sure whether that was really necessary so that's just what I wanted to see if Nate could elaborate on that and discuss it. Steve's right it's interesting the, the bylaw, or the state statute and then their guidelines, you know lists like 12 exemptions and one is parking lots but it's not necessary. I mean, the way the state statute is written you can include them under your review but the state tells communities, you know in their template to exclude them. You know, you have to kind of read the really fine print to determine that you could include that. And so, you know, what I what I've said before is that the commission can regulate parking and so much as the placement of buildings can shape apart you know, if someone wants to put a parking lot in a location that then the location of the building and amassing the building isn't appropriate, then really the commission's discussion as well move the building forward and then it's really the, you know, the parking has to become secondary to say the building, as opposed to you know, the developer having the building where the parking wherever they want it and then, you know, but if parking was not, you know, was not exempt. The commission could, you know, it's two things one is could feel more comfortable, you know, saying we want the building here, or it could just say that it doesn't want parking in front of a building because cars are parked there it obscures the view. And so it does give the commission a little bit more ability to, you know, look at a site plan and move parking. And then finally, yeah, you know, my thing would be, you know, is there, does that mean anytime someone changes a part of parking lot or a driveway, does it need to go to a public hearing so, you know, that's typically the way it would work right if they're adding cars or moving to a public hearing. So, sometimes we've done in our rules and regs some further exclusions right that we found were, for instance, like putting in plumbing vent stacks where there's already some located or right in a track equipment if it's already where that equipment is located on a property. So it could be that we include parking under review and maybe there's, you know, some standards of criteria we could put in so that things don't have to always come to a hearing right like if parking is behind the building, then it doesn't need to or, you know, whatever it is right that that way someone, you know, we can kind of get at what we want, want it to be kind of standard we're using. If I recall from the conversation of the other presentation of the property. It was also about how large and how much like that you know that so obviously if they're putting in multi units they need a certain amount of parking but then from our perspective. It was twice as much parking as building or something, you know, kind of green space and green spaces also exempt so it was like we were getting caught in what we can't comment on the green space we can't comment on the parking space we're only limited to the buildings and they were kind of putting in how much they needed of each as exemptions I mean maybe I was misinterpreting kind of what was going on but it kind of felt like it was easy to kind of say you can't comment on how much parking space there is or anything like that like I know they need a certain amount whenever there's multi families like you have to have a certain amount of space for residents and units and things like that but I think it was, I guess, not just the location of where that parking is but how much. Yes, I was say something very similar when, when I said, I think my stated basis for moving that this was not appropriate or that that project was was not appropriate was all to do with scale. I think that we the guidelines or the bylaw I'm not sure exactly where in the structure but it's it talks about fitness in terms of scale and other things and it seemed to me that that the parking more than even the buildings were violated the sense of appropriateness of scale. And that was the way I was thinking of the parking through the wording of the bylaw is was that is that legitimate. Do you think, Nate. I think now it isn't. There were under review it would be right so the way I will look at it now is parking is exempt, but if a building is located or designed in a way. Because of parking and the commission finds that the building's location on a property or it's massing or something isn't appropriate. And the commission can say move the building forward and that's really the developer or applicants response to move the parking right to adjust for what the commission wants in terms of the building. Yeah, but I would say that that's that's not I mean, given the example that we were shown. It demonstrates to me that parking should be an element of consideration. Yeah, and I think right and so it could be that. I think that in other local historic districts, or other communities you know they, the way they regulate parking whether it's rezoning or other regulations is different than the way Amherst does or they just don't have the demand, kind of the, say the student rental demand, where there needs to be that much parking and so Amherst and Amherst case parking, you know, is justifiably regulated could be regulated by local historic district so I'm okay with that I think we just I would have to. You know then amend the bylaw, and the way the bylaw works is every local historic district is under the same bylaw sometimes a community might have an appendix that regulates each district differently say with design standards or something but if we you know we don't do that so it could be that we would say parking is now regulated and we change some language and then it applies to all districts, you know if that were enacted. I would love to do that. I think we've been shown it seems like we we've been once warned. Do we have a motion to amend the bylaws to. Well the first thing before we go there and make you. Can you do that can you draw the amendment because I don't think any of us are or even or point us out where in the bylaw, we should try to do it and. Yeah, I think I can work with staff. Yeah, I mean I could do that I could come up with a proposed amendment. Okay I'd love to have the honor of proposing amendment which is unexample parking. From the purview of the LHBC. And I think given that I think the basis for this if there's a necessary preamble Nate that that makes the argument as to why, you know, kind of a defensible statement. It would be that the that with the zoning boards. Recent determinations of multiple primary or compatible primary uses. It has enlarged the development potential of many of the sites in the district, beyond that which was anticipated when the bylaw was enacted, because many of these properties are very big. And that we thought. I mean, I years as an architect and so forth that never occurred to me that you could load up these sites in the way that we've now recently been advised that that we might. So, I think, knowing that that piece of new information changes how we should changes everything and it certainly changes, I believe that we should be considering parking lots as an element of appropriate as an element in consideration of appropriateness. I think we're hearing everybody is in favor of you researching the language for an amendment to the bylaw. Yeah. Great, thank you. Great, thank you. So, we also are supposed to have a discussion of chair vice chair and Clark. Should we be waiting to do that until we know the status of Bruce and Steve. It's not imminent. I was just thinking, you know, I mean, I think Nancy, you were voted not too long ago, but typically we'd asked boards and committees, you know, once a year to, you know, to do this and that mean, it could be that the commission is comfortable and we don't need to I just wanted to put it on the agenda so I've been asking every board and committee just to have that discussion in the next few months, and you know you can just reaffirm the current status or you know so that's all it's just a matter of typically the town manager's office or the town clerk, the town clerk's office will ask if boards and committees have done that on an annual basis so Any thoughts from the committee. I'm comfortable waiting I think we have a chair, and that's the key. And we have a vice chair, Steve is serving as our vice chair, but we don't have a clerk. What is the role of the clerk. Yeah, I mean, typically the clerk would say be could be taking minutes to be helping with, you know, administration of the of the of the public body, we have staff for that. And then they're, you know, they're kind of like third in line to chair a meeting if the chair and vice chair are not present. However, I feel like if you get down to the level of the clerk you probably also have issues with quorum. Yeah, so I, you know, it's, it's, I don't know, I think it's kind of like an outdated, you know, position, or that some boards and committees have. Okay. All right, then it sounds to me like we have run through the various things on our agenda and we could move to adjournment unless there are other things that people would like to discuss is there any new business or old business that figure out where our next meeting. Right. If we not typically waited for Nate to advise on the inflow of applications. Yeah, I mean, interesting, you mentioned Fearing Street, you know, they've contacted the town to have a meeting again. So I think they'd like to either submit an application soon or, you know, have another meeting.  And usually what happens is, for instance, they're, they're kind of minor for installation of say a mini split system. And when we tell the contractor that if you locate the, you know, outdoor equipment that's either out of view or next to say like the electrical box near where the existing utility boxes, then it's excluded from review that sometimes they change their plans to do that. And so recently we've got to, you know, there's been a number of applications received for, you know, a few for mini splits for solar on a few things and we're still working with the contractors and oftentimes it ends up being that they don't need to go to review because they move things around or, you know, they can make small modifications but So I think we could try to schedule one for like mid mid July or whenever we think is good, you know, it could be that there's an application or two received and then that meeting, if we give ourselves enough time it could become a public hearing as well. You know, say for instance something is submitted this week or next week, we could post we could post a legal ad and still have that meeting be also a public hearing for a project. Okay. So I was going to ask Nate. In that example you gave me where contractors are moving there or applicants are moving their equipment around to places where it dodges the bullet so to speak. What happens if they then still run their line sets, you know which are the refrigerant lines which they then cover in these white basically PVC insulated coatings. And is the commissioner, if they run that kind of thing across the face of the, the front of the house. I assume that would trigger an appearance here. Would that be true or not. In our bylaw we say that, you know, the condenser unit has to be, you know, no more than like five feet off the ground, you know, the top of it can be has to be less than five feet screen from view and then there can be no more than 15 linear feet of line visible. And so, typically when we talk to a contractor that's what we communicate so.  And, you know, the project is excluded from review because the unit itself wasn't visible. And so, you know, in the end they just they say we'll run the lines. You know they amend their say electrical permit or whatever permit and say they'll run the lines in the back of the house and so then it just isn't right. You know, we kind of good. Thank you. Thank you for interceding on our behalf. We have a new permitting software so I mean I think today I just got four new notifications of projects that need review. And so, you know, it was things like this we're talking about here someone wants to put in a fence and then I say well here's you know, one was a mini split one was solar and one is some electrical work that may affect the exterior so you know it's. We do look at almost every application that comes in building or electrical or plumbing. And usually we try to get ahead of it. I mean to me the best option is to have them do it so it's not visible or it doesn't need a hearing. So we should then set up a meeting for July and I guess the third or the fourth week of July are people around then. I think I am. Karen is not. I don't know. Are you around. Yeah, I'm around. Nicole. If I just say, if I say Monday July 17. Does that work for for most of us. Works for me. It depends on when my son leaves but it's probably is fine for me the Tuesday the 18th. Nicole Monday's bed for you. Good. It was a pottery class that my daughter won't be taking over the summer. Okay. I mean I suggested that because if for instance, we need to have a hearing we need a two week notice we need to like almost like a three week lead time. And that way, if, if that's the case, it gives us, you know, a week and a half to receive application so then that that, you know, the 17th or 18th or that week and also serve as a hearing. It's a better for me because I'm become very active in habitat. I'm being active and have it had for years but but now I'm a build team project leader for a project in North Hampton and and that will put me likely active on Tuesdays Wednesdays and Thursdays and Mondays always going to be a better day for me. All right, so let's set up Monday the 17th then is that three o'clock. Yeah. Okay. Any other business. Do we have a move to adjourn. They moved. I will, I will second by clicking the red button. Right. Thanks everyone. Thank you everyone. Thank you. Bye bye.