Today when you look at drought, forest fires, hurricanes, all kinds of catastrophes and you ask or the insect apocalypse, the global decline in insect populations, same things happening to plankton actually. And you say, well, what's the cause? We want to have a cause because then there is a solution or potentially a solution. It's comforting and fits into our mindset, into our, our, our customary ways of doing things as a society or even as individuals to find a culprit for something, find something to go to war against, find something to attack, find something to limit, find something to control. So we're very happy if there is a cause for things.  And now we know what to do. It's a lot less comfortable to not have a cause or for there to be hundreds of causes, a complex of causes, because then we don't know what to do. Then our customary way of, of attacking a problem no longer works because we are so fond and so comfortable with addressing the cause. We tend to project the cause, a singular cause onto situations that maybe do not have a singular cause. And then we go to war against the cause that we've projected and the problem isn't solved because we have misattributed the cause. And we tend to rush to the cause that fits into our already existing worldview. Therefore, to address problems on a deeper level, sometimes it's necessary to step back and to be in the space of maybe we don't understand this thing at all.  Let's not be so hasty as to rush into a cause and to activate the solutions that we already have available to us. Because what if these are part of the problem? When we say such and such a problem is urgent, we have to do something right now. We are giving power to the existing solutions and to the people who are already half, who are already in power and have the wherewithal to deploy solutions right now. Thereby, therefore, we perpetuate the status quo by rushing to a cause. And it can be a trap because often the cause that we ascribe to something is what fits comfortably into our existing worldview and validates the mindsets and methods that we currently employ. So you say, well, there's been a terrorist attack. What's the cause? It must be these terrorists. Yeah, now we've got something to kill.  Problem solved, right? By focusing on that, we never even ask what is breeding terrorism? Criminals. Crime is caused by criminals, right? Duh. So the solution is to lock them up. Problem solved. And thereby, never asking or not necessarily asking what are the conditions that breed crime. Because there's not one cause. You get into all kinds of messy stuff. Legacy trauma, legacy racism, economic inequality, the void of meaning in our society that doesn't give youthful energy, an outlet to go toward, I mean, there's not one cause. The cause is pretty much everything. And when we realize that, then we don't know what to do. That's uncomfortable, not knowing what to do. But I think we need to go there. And in fact, the failure of our solutions is going to take us there, whether we like it or not. Because any solution that ignores the deeper causes will only work temporarily. Yeah, I mean, you can temporarily stop crime or terrorism or immigration, you know, by building a wall. But the engine of these things, the engine of immigration, that's not affected by building a wall. The engine may be in this case being military imperialism and neoliberal economics that make life unlivable somewhere. You're never going to touch that when you're just focused on building the wall and the whole controversy becomes, do we build the wall or don't we? And that polarized political energy, that fury gets exhausted in something that doesn't touch the deeper cause.  When we rush to the cause, we end up doing things that don't touch the deeper problem and that even make it worse. One of the primary things being the cause is carbon. So let's bring down the carbon in whatever ways are easiest, most accessible. So you get gigantic hydropower plants that are currently inundating and destroying and draining vast wetlands in the Sahel. Like an area the size of Belgium, I think is what I read, is going to be destroyed, basically.  And it's going to look good. The numbers are going to look good. There's going to be x gigawatts of power generated. And therefore, you know, x amount of carbon saved, right? Well, not necessarily. The people living in that area, they're not actually using much electricity right now, but they're going to start using a lot. And what about the carbon sequestration of all of those wetlands and all of those life forms? Is that part of the calculation? That's very hard to calculate, so it gets left out. So this is one of the errors that comes from rushing to the cause. Same thing I can say about biofuels plantations, where vast tracts of land in Africa, Asia, South America are getting purchased by corporations and more and more, like getting leveled and the peasants getting kicked out, subsistence peasants getting kicked out and planted with Jochofa trees, you know, or eucalyptus trees, or palm oil, and some of which goes to fuel power plants that get carbon credits for carbon neutral energy. And are you calculating the subsistence peasants that got kicked out and the change in lifestyle that's going to be consuming more? You're not. That's not part of your calculations. So long story short, when our solution sets are part of the problem, when we are not even asking the right questions, but rushing to the solution that fits into our existing worldview, it's time to be a little less hasty in doing something right now and rushing to a cause.


It's funny. Yeah. All right, it's being recorded. Okay, thanks. So do you want to put Sean onto the panel? Sure, Sean, I'm going to promote you to panelists and then we can. Okay. Hi, Sean, for people who don't know, Sean is the finance director for the town. And I'm very pleased that he agreed to participate. Sean, at the moment, we're one short of a quorum. But I'm expecting other people to join us. And in the interest of kind of getting going. I really would appreciate if you're ready to begin talking. And then we can all ask questions once you have started with your initial presentation. I am. I was going to see if maybe we could bring Dave Z in here too. I just want to make sure I have no problem going for I just don't want to, because you don't have quorum I don't want to do anything that causes any issues for anybody so Dave might have more experience to know if there's any issue with me going forward with the presentation before you have quorum. Well, just joined us Sean so I think we just made it problem. You don't need them. Okay. We'll need them later. Do you want me to like, are you going to call your meeting to order before I start. I think I just did but I don't usually do that formally. But thanks, Sean. All right, so should I just go ahead. All right. So, do I have the right to share screen okay I do. So I'm going to share my screen. All right you should all see, hopefully the engage Amherst web page on the screen do you see that. Yep. So we set up a, we set up an engage Amherst page which is a project page on our town website, and you can get to engage Amherst org. I think it's forward slash ARPA. And it's actually just dedicated to our but it gives a little bit of a tutorial or introduction to what ARPA is. And it gives a timeline which over here on the right, you'll see that we did our initial presentation of our draft spending plan to council. We are now in a public engagement mode which this session tonight is part of. We've held to listening session so far we did that yesterday. We've been slightly attended but we did get some feedback and then we have another one next week, or the 21st I think that's next week, or we have two more next week to, to get more feedback. So if anybody's listening and wants to submit feedback through one of those listening sessions you certainly can do so. So on this Q&A, or also on this web page is a Q&A feature where you can ask a question about ARPA through this, this little tool in the middle, or you can even just provide feedback a lot of people have been using it just to submit feedback on the plan of what they like, they don't like. And then I'll get its catalogs down below which is nice breaking up. Again. Okay, if I break up again let me know I'll move to a, I'm in the farthest part of my house, away from, away from my kids who might distract me. But I can move closer to the Wi-Fi router if I need to. So, also here is the presentation to the council. And so I'm just going to go to the sections that relate to housing. The first section that relates to housing is homelessness and we earmarked a million dollars for this. I would say the two, the two areas that focus housing homelessness and then the affordable housing slide that's coming up next. There are two of the areas where we release details about what we want to do. And so we've set this up as we've earmarked funds for these initiatives, but we've sort of identified that we need to do more collaboration and more planning with you all and with staff and with others to develop the programs before we can be more specific about what programs we want to move forward with. So, in the homelessness area, we know we want to, we earmarked a million, and we know we want to explore transitional housing opportunities and to identify and implement solutions to some of our shelter problems that we have on an annual basis. Okay, if I could stop for a minute. Yeah. I understand that the town already bought an accessible shower. Is there a trailer that has an accessible shower? Am I incorrect about that?  So we bought a trailer that did not have an accessible shower. And we are looking at ways to either trade that that went in for one that has an accessible shower or just return it. And the other thing we are doing is we are looking to make modifications to a to another facility to put in an accessible shower. And we have a bid solicitation that I think might have closed today or closes tomorrow for basically to get proposals from contractors to modify a space to put an accessible shower and agree to be done in the next few weeks. Thanks. So again, so these, these prior proposals are on this page on the right based on the feedback I think some of this came from the housing trust and from others like Craig's doors and the survival center and other stakeholders on the left these were the impacts and issues that were identified and then these were the on the right side of the proposed spending allocations. So the next one is a separate $1 million specifically on the affordable housing side, and that's to look for opportunities to expand the affordable housing stock, and then to work collaboratively with the housing trust on housing assistance programs. And this is to sort of capture a lot of what a lot of the ideas that you all sent over, but again acknowledging that some of those ideas require a lot more thought and a lot more planning to see if we could possibly implement them. And again, the feedback that this is based on is on the left. And then there's a couple other areas that sort of relate. I'll just go too quickly. I know one of the, one of the proposals from the housing trust was around modifying apartment units to make them more efficient. So we, so there is funding in here for sustainability. I don't know if that type of program potentially could come out of this, this batch of funds this is the proposal here is for the environmental action or environmental climate action committee and the sustainability coordinator and others to work together to figure out how to use these funds to make the biggest impact on carbon reduction. So it's possible program like that could be funded from this area but they're going to have to do more work to see if that's, if that's how they, they want to allocate these funds. These at this point are our draft form. So that's why we're here tonight to get your feedback on it. And then in November. Oh sorry, go ahead. I was just so this is this money like in the purview of whoever you just said it was I mean so these do these different things actually pertain to different entities that are going to figure this out or could anybody put in a suggestion for this thing. So anybody right now, and I encourage you to if you have ideas to submit them. So now's the time if you have specific programs or ideas that you want the town to consider get them in now. Ultimately the town manager has to finalize the spending plan in November and we have to go back to the council and present a final spending plan. So these funds would be they'd be town funds that would be at the direction of the town manager and I'm sure the assistant town manager and the sustainability coordinator would guide them, but they would work with other stakeholders to determine the best way to allocate the funds. Yeah, I just because this one says ecac, and some other one said the housing trust and so I just wondered if it's already been established that the primary responsibility for these things is with who it says there on the right hand side or if that's still up in the air. I would say nothing is finalized at this point. Okay, that's sure. You know, they're sort of the, I think for this one in particular ecac was named because they came up with the resiliency plan. And there's a lot of ideas in there that that we would want to start making progress on. So I think they were the logical one here, but I don't think that precludes some of these funds being allocated for other other sustainability initiatives. Okay, thank you. And then other things you might just be interested in. We are also under the section resident emergency aid and support. We're proposing the creation of a new position, maybe a temporary position over a few years. The transition support coordinator. We envision this would be a position in town where one person would become sort of the expert on all the different assistance programs and services that exist in town. And this position would help walk people through some of the more complicated processes whether it be applying for rental assistance or applying for unemployment or accessing other types of benefits. And this position will also look to identify if we have gaps in our social, our social service network, and how we might be able to close those gaps. And then the next one here also related is a resident emergency fund. So if somebody is having a financial emergency or maybe another type of emergency caused by COVID, having a fund where, you know, we could provide temporary support for that person. And we did that through cares and it was seemed to be successful. And so, you know, sort of depends how the pandemic goes forward but we would continue something like that through this new grant as well. And so there's lots of other stuff I don't know if you want me to go through other things that we're proposing John or if you just want to focus on the ones that I've described so far. So what you've done as far as I'm personally concerned is fine. But if other people have questions I think they should raise them. John, do you have the slide showing the chart of the breakdown of the ARPA funds in general just. Yeah, so we, you know, this chart we can see we've broken up the funds into a lot of different categories of expenditures because we got a lot of impact or we got a lot of input from different groups. The impacts of the pandemic affected a lot of different areas, whether it be public health or housing or recreation opportunities for the youth. So the 12 million sounds like a lot when you when you look at the large number that the town received. But when you start actually trying to allocate it to all the different areas where the pandemic has impacted the town. It starts to shrink really quickly. Is that 12 million across three years. So it's 12 million and it has to be obligated by December 31 of 2024, and it has to be spent by December 31 of 2026. So that's that's fiscal year 27, but you know really could be five years potentially, you know, obligated if they if they follow the way they've done it with other grants obligated would mean we have to have a contract in place. In 2024 that could go on for another two years. Sean, this says round one allocates 80% of the grant funds. So the numbers that we just looked at like the 1 million for something is that does that mean there's still 20% left that isn't included in those numbers in the other pages. Yep, then that's a good question. So we intentionally with this first round we only allocated 80% about 9 million of the grants, and we held back 20% to do a with the thought that we would do a similar process one year from now. And the reason we would do that is one if there are any more revenue issues in town on the municipal side. These funds can help close revenue gaps so we had a big revenue issue last year with our enterprise funds water and sewer come in much lower because the college and universities closed. We didn't run money back for that potential. We wanted to hold it back in case there are other ideas that come up after this first round that we may want to fund. And then we're holding it back in case there are strategies that we were proposing here that ultimately we start working on. And if any of them are really successful or maybe cost a little bit more than we thought, we wanted to have funds that we could go back to and allocate a little bit more to those strategies so yeah this first round is 80% and we were thinking that 20% we would allocate a year from now. Or could be sooner, you know, depending on what what the need is. Sean Laura Baker asked in the chat if using our funds triggers, public bidding or prevailing wage. If it's for public construction, any type of construction yeah we would have to do prevailing wage. If it's over 10,000, we would you know we'd have to follow all the procurement rules that we would normally follow. This is not a criticism. It's a question under housing, you have really two bullets. One is for opportunities to expand affordable housing stock and the others were collaboratively with housing trust to develop housing assistance programs. Those are pretty open ended, which I think is a good thing. Does that mean you're looking to the housing trust to fresh out or kind of add additional detail to those general ideas. So I said at the council is that some of the proposed spending allocations are really specific, some of the other categories and then some are really broad. And the ones that are really broad like the housing one and the homeless homelessness one. It's because they're big problems and they're, they're big issues and that they're going to require more planning and collaboration with you all to develop what we actually want to do. So those funds will be sort of in the Dave Z Nate Moy world and I'm sure you know they're going to work collaboratively with you all to figure out the best way to use those funds. We submitted I can't remember seven or eight ideas related to both housing and homelessness. And they kind of look like they're represented here. I'm a little uncertain. Do you want to say any of those ideas so that so again we wrote it, we wrote it broadly so that the ideas that you have submitted are not. They're not impossible based on what we wrote here that what we wrote here can encompass those ideas, but that we just need more time to think about them and plan how we would do them. I guess I going back to the, the idea about retrofitting apartments and, and making them more energy efficient. It's a great idea just it's a really big program and and thinking about how we would set that up how we would structure it who we would work with how again operationally all that would work. It's just requires more planning time than what we had in order to get this first round of spending allocations ready. But with respect to those ideas. Do you want us to write something further about all of them subset of them. What would be helpful to you and your process at this point in time. I think a couple things. Well, one main thing I think looking at the funds I've been earmarked. You know how would you prioritize what you have submitted so far. So the programs and initiatives that you have submitted with development of new affordable housing be number one with the with the retrofits be you know what is the highest number or the top two or three priorities of the programs that you submitted I think would be helpful feedback for the town manager and this is a town manager. You know as we look to finalize a spending plan. Okay, and you said the spending plan would be presented to town council in November. Yeah, so this month of October is sort of all back on it. Okay, finalize a plan and make some adjustments to this and presented in November a final version. So we have a meeting, roughly a month from now. And we could try to make some decisions this evening, or we could make tentative decisions and then try to firm them up at our next meeting, which I think is November 11 is that soon enough for you or is that not. Maybe I'm trying to think of the meetings in November I think the 15th. I'm sure if there's a meeting before the 15th I know the 15th is the financial indicators meeting. So the 11th would probably be fine. I'll double check out to this and let you know if it's not but I would, I think based on what I know that meeting to be that that's that should be enough time. So we'll talk about this immediately. Among ourselves obviously you can stay for that discussion and also provide any advice that you might have, which certainly would be helpful. Yeah, but I think our goal would be to write out. A little bit more in the way of description and thinking a little bit more about the budget that might be allocated to each of these elements. Yeah, and I can give you I mean you, I'm sure you have done a little bit of review of it but I can also, based on your discussion give you guide, whether something might be eligible or not eligible. The ARPA rules. I think most of what you submitted had some had a category where it could be eligible but just in case it starts going into a if there's new ideas I can help with that. Yeah, that was my impression from looking at stuff that chap I had distributed that anything that we had thought of someone else in the country is already doing right planning to do. One caution I'll say is sometimes it depends where you're doing it, whether it's eligible or not. For example, there are things that we could do in Amherst where we could where we could say it's focusing on an area where there's a lot of poverty or a lot of the income levels are particularly low that another town might not be able to do that same project that they don't have that area. One of the things earlier in the, in the presentation is this qualified census tract. Whenever we spend the ARPA monies we have to justify for certain categories we have to justify that we're spending it on the hardest hit communities. If the ARPA does it as they say if you spend money in a qualified census tract, then it sort of pre qualifies it as hitting being spent on a hard hit community. If you spend it outside of a qualified census tract and you have to, we have to come up with an alternative rationale for, you know, how those funds are being targeted that way. So, you know, one of the things I talked with Nate before we work on this presentation is that you can see we've lost a qualified census tract from 2021 to 2022 and sort of a key area of the town. So, so it doesn't leave us a whole lot of room but again that doesn't mean we have to focus the money in this one purple area for 2022. It just means we have to be prepared with an alternative argument or data that can justify it being in another part of town. With respect to increasing affordable housing what if the trust or the town wanted to give money to a developer, you know, 300,000 or half a million to they already moving forward with a project is that eligible like just would we have to like RFP, you know, like, Yeah, I mean you'd have to probably do a request for proposals I don't see that that would be inherently not eligible again if the if you're using the money to expand affordable housing stock. I think, you know, if it's going towards construction essentially, then I think that's okay. It's hard to increase affordable housing without actually building units or preserving units so it's kind of a, you know, like a home buyer program perhaps with the deed restriction but there's probably a few ways to do it it's just, you know, typically the town wouldn't be doing those programs you know we'd be providing funds to an outside agency. I know again I think that's fine I think again, you know, if the effect of the funds is to build new units or expand units and I think that qualifies under the criteria. Unfortunately, when we've wanted to develop homeowner units. There seems to be a requirement that there be a deed restriction that often runs against the goal of allowing people to accumulate wealth. Because the whatever money has been spent has somehow got to go back to the town, or at least some portion of it, particularly with CPA funds do you see that as an issue with these funds. Um, I'm not sure I'd have to, I don't know I'd have to see, look into what you're talking about more to know if that would be an issue with this. Typically with like a CPA funds there's a permit restriction or there's like a resale provision so they have to, you know, basically give it get the money back so they really don't earn any equity, even as a homeowner, right so at the time of sale they really So we're talking about the units are instead of rent units for rent these would be for sale. I would have to look more into the the rules of the grant I don't I haven't seen anything that says that one of the things with ARPA that's different than cares is ARPA. There's really no there's not a lot of state technical support for ARPA like there was for cares cares they ran through the state and we there was a state office assigned to it and we could talk with people at the state and run and they would approve our ideas. With ARPA they're basically saying no you've got to go to the Treasury and the Treasury is not really weighing in on whether something's eligible or not they're saying just read the read the interim final rule and then eventually the final rule. And so I haven't seen anything like that in that in that data so far in that text but I'll take another look. We might use CPA or CBG funds right we have a certain year like that you might have a 15 or a permanent deed restriction but for instance I get with ARPA funds we need to even have a restriction or could it be a five year restriction. I mean so you know something like that would would make it a lot easier to use these funds for some programs possibly because it doesn't have, you know all the kind of the red tape associated with other funding programs. You know how you know if we're spending it under the under the eligibility criteria of affordable housing. You know is there a way to make sure that 10 years from now it's still affordable housing. That's probably what the, you know, from a grant perspective they would want to make sure that it's, you know, sort of affordable housing and perpetuity or at least for, you know, a lot longer than five years. That's on care. There are ways to write those things so that the whatever appreciation or whatever happens to the home, it's shared between the homeowner and getting the grant money back. I mean if the if the market tanks then I don't know what happens but in other circumstances. It's not like the homeowner necessarily gets nothing just because there's some kind of deed restriction depends somehow someone how the deed restriction works but yeah I don't, I don't know. Yeah we don't want the grant money back that's for sure especially after the grants over because if we get the grant money back it probably has to go back to the, to the federal government at that point so we definitely don't want the money back. Okay. Well that's certainly helpful to know. Any questions from Sean. I think this might be a really dumb question, but the way the housing thing is written right now because it says increase affordable housing stock, and at least our project of retrofitting rental units so that they're more efficient is not going to increase the stock, and yet it's a I, I at least, and I think we talked about a lot and really like to be able to have be a project, but I don't know where it fits exactly under the guidelines and maybe I don't have to worry about that but right now I'm like that's not going to increase housing stock and a lot of the things that would increase housing stock might take too long to be actually spent by the time they have to be spent by. Program in particular, I was thinking we would fall under the housing assistance program bullet. You know, not okay, that ball would be broader than just the traditional housing assistance like rental assistance that retrofitting apartments to reduce utility costs could also fall under that bucket if that's the direction we decided to go in. Okay. Well, also Carol if we could get the landlord or building owner to share the savings with the renter so that the rental amount is decreased to some extent that would increase affordable housing stock, particularly if that reduction and rent goes on for a number of years. Yeah, at least it would make it the same place that was affordable might be affordable to someone at a lower level of income. Exactly. Awesome. Thank you. That makes sense. I mean that's an interesting trick that we have to figure out how to do. It's certainly been part of my thinking with respect to that. Yeah, sorry. Representative Don is here and she suggested, you know, contacting the governor's office if we do need more assistance with guidance and also, you know, his wealth generation. Could that be a goal, you know, in addition to or, you know, affordable housing so does that make a difference in terms of housing. And how it's how it's targeted and what it's used for. I mean, I think I think the housing piece is just so broad it's really interesting, you know, you know, homeownership is expensive so you know on a per unit basis you don't get a lot in terms of dollars spent but it's really beneficial and then you know we have what we've done a lot of rental development and so, and I think there's a range of needs and so I guess, you know, I don't know if it's this you know staff in the trust to prioritize a few programs or a few ideas, because really the housing money, you know, it may not go that far right it sounds like a lot but you know, and then same with homelessness I mean if you know if there's an idea, you know, in terms of sheltering or transitional housing those are costly endeavors to so you know I just I just want to make sure, that we're realistic, right that maybe it's like there's four activities that are undertaken, right three or four and not, you know, we're not, you know, we had eight ideas which maybe some of those activities can satisfy a few of those, but not you know I don't know. That's a perfect segue Nate. What I wanted to do was put the set of eight ARPA ideas that we submitted to Sean in front of everybody and run the list to see if right here and now we can do two things one decide okay. We're the ones that we're most likely to have as a priority, as well as identifying individual members of the trust tour, willing and able to do a little bit more research on how to describe that initiative and what the budget might be. So if we could do that. And I might be able to share that on my screen. We've got it. Oh, you got it. Okay, you beat me to it. That's great because I'm not that proficient and sharing screen. Okay, so there we are a through J. That's what we submitted. From the point of view of the housing trust. There are two be and see that are already on Sean's list in the area of homelessness initiatives. We could cut those out. On the other hand, we could do separate descriptions of those in order to shore up whatever it is that Sean will have in thinking about what those could be. And then we have six more that we would put under the housing. As Nate was saying six is probably too many. So let me go through them. The first one is a weatherization and retrofitting heating systems for affordable housing units. Obviously I'm interested in that would be willing to write it up. I think that this would not be the end of what we would want to do in this area, but I think having getting the town to have some experience with pushing ahead on initiative like this would be worthwhile. So this may be something that we would set aside for a $500,000 or maybe a little bit less. But that's my view. And then B and C, I don't know if anybody wants to help to write those up so that we have additional feedback or information to provide to Sean on those two ideas. I mean we can do that it's already in his list so we don't necessarily have to, but it might strengthen it if somebody's interested in doing that. Isn't there a group meeting about this. There's a group meeting about that. It hasn't met with some of the staffing changes at town hall there hasn't been continuity and meeting, but I would not mind doing a little follow up. And at least seeing where Craig stores has landed with some of the work that they've been doing and that would be great if you could follow up with Kevin Noonan. Because Kevin may already be writing something. So there's no point in being redundant on either or both of those issues. Yeah, and we did just to jump in real quickly. Kevin spoke at one of the listening sessions and voiced support for B, well B and C really. Okay, document to that I can when I write up all the feedback that we have received that'll be part of it. Okay, well Allegra I appreciate your volunteering to look into this and if necessary collaborating with Kevin on writing something up. Okay, so we're up to D mortgage subsidies and grants for first time home buyers CPA has funded a program like this in the past. And actually, it is currently funding a program for which Valley Community Development is the grantee. So I could work with Laura to figure this one out. Yeah, more likely Donna than Laura Donna. Okay, yeah. All right, if you can just give me the contacts I will follow up on that one. Okay, yeah it's Donna cabana or DC at Valley Community Development. Yeah we can just use their CPA proposal from last year. And that to me. Yeah. Okay. Purchase property or construction of affordable housing for home ownership opportunities by coincidence. I was talking to Laura Baker today. And she has an idea that might fit with that. They're looking around town for a potential property to purchase. And she would want to follow through with that. If the property if there is property that's going to be available. They're not committed to that now but it's great to know that Valley Community Development is already looking in that direction. So yeah, say for instance say Valley, you know, or, you know, we, you know, we have proposals out for the East Street School Belcher town road site. And say a developer comes in, you know, would the ARPA money be available to go to that project. You know, how does it work to to use money that way. I think if the project doesn't happen without the ARPA funds. We could use ARPA funds in that way. Again, I'd have to, you know, once we get more specific on what we're going to do with it, I'll have to verify it's all eligible. But I think in general, based on what I've read, if that's what using the money is what creates the affordable housing and that would be an allowable use. So there are potentially two opportunities under E. Which means it's something we should probably want to include. We should work on it but not without a whole lot of help from somebody who knows what they're doing. Okay. I'm doing a lot of other stuff. Is there anybody else who could work with Carol on that. You could also contact Laura Baker. And see if she can provide any advice on writing that up without any specific information about the project she's looking to create. And of course you already know a lot about Belcher Town Road East Street School Carol. So I'm not sure you need to any help with that it's really more as Nate was saying, well if the developer needs another half a million dollars can we take it out of ARPA. I just don't have even the faintest idea how to start writing something like that but if somebody has any models or anything is vaguely like it or anything to give me I would greatly appreciate it because I'm the thing that's different about it from what we've done is that it's property for affordable home ownership opportunities which seems different that I mean habitat does that I guess but I don't I don't know so we're also thinking about a project on strong street. So if that town property is identified as developable that is there aren't problems with the property that would make it hard to do development there. That would be something else we wouldn't have to purchase the property, but we might need funds for construction. So I think we have three opportunities potentially under E. And while we can't commit to anyone at this moment in time. Just the fact that we have three opportunities should suggest that this is a strong candidate for support. The only downside is whether we can obligate and spend the money on the timeline that Shawn described. Yeah, we have our month. The ARPA money would was used to either buy the property or do something in the early stages of the project, and it's spent even though the project hasn't been completed yet. Does that count that it's spent before 26, even though the project's not finished. I don't know the answer I would, I'm leaning towards that would be okay as long as we can only spend money for services provided so you know we would be spending on work that's already done. I haven't seen anything that says the, I'll have to look and see if there's any clause in there that says we have to start receiving the beneficial use of the expenditure before a certain date. So we had some of the shares had some of that language in it which was a little shorter of a grant but they had language that said, we had to receive the benefit of whatever we spent the money on. But with things like affordable housing which, like you said take a lot longer out the look and just see if there's anything in the rules about that. Okay, thanks. Yeah I mean for instance we could just spend it. We could write the developer a check, and it's gone. But is that, you know, is that sufficient. Right. I mean, it's easy enough to obligate it and actually get it out the door but is it, it doesn't satisfy satisfied if the units actually aren't occupied or you know fully built I guess. Right. Yeah, I mean purchase of land would be relatively easy, right, it would be much easier but if it's for construction that's I can see where it would take longer. So hopefully we can write something up under E, and that will give Sean a better basis for judging whether there are any potential pitfalls in allocating ARPA funding for E. Okay, F. Home ownership funding to maintain or stay in property. We refresh my memory was this like if somebody had a COVID related loss and was behind on their mortgage or something like that we would provide funding. So they wouldn't go into foreclosure. I don't recall either but that makes sense to me as an explanation. I thought it was more were seniors actually many want to stay but sometimes the cost of, you know, the taxes and the maintenance maintenance of the house sometimes pushes people out of their homes. That's what I thought it was more about. We either or both of what you, the two of you are describing. John Lager mentioned the impacts of COVID ARPA funds. Do we have to explain or justify them as a because of an impact from COVID and that the use of funds are to mitigate that. For some things. Yeah, you do. I think I mean affordable housing is one that's explicitly outlined in the in the rules as, you know, the pandemic had an impact on housing and made the housing issue the housing problem worse. So that's why sort of affordable housing is an allowable initiative. In terms of the providing funding if there's an emergency situation I think that that's sort of covered under the the resident assistance page that I showed. And that's sort of what we did with cares as well where if somebody had a you know was out of work because they had a quarantine and they couldn't make a mortgage payment or something. So that was funds. That's what that pot of money was intended for. So we've got a little bit of this already in the spending plan. Right.  I mean you could say that.  I mean, we have to, like I said, no matter what we do we have to focus it on the, for the most part on the hardest hit community so we just, if we have to look into that type of program more to see. It wasn't really a big, I'm not sure how many people are jumping to to write about this one but. Yeah, I'm, I'm thinking that we do have to narrow and maybe this is a place to narrow. Back to G, I think we agreed that that is not a specific program, but it should be incorporated into the things we are going to propose. So G should be part of a G should be part of D and E, but not a separate initiative. I have a question just based on Nate and Sean we were just talking about up so in writing this we should use the coven 19 lens. Okay, so I think that's important because you know with a the same thing in terms of weatherization and retrofitting heating systems, you have to sort of think about okay. So I'm thinking about the 18 impact and a and I'm doing D, so I have to think about that as well. And that's going to be a little bit of a, maybe a little bit of a stretch. So maybe what I'll do, Erica and john is I'll send the, the group that this whole group the, the language from the interim rule, which talks about these types of programs. And what the, what the intent was for for this area and it's actually written in a, you know, easy to follow type of way. It's not too wordy. So I will, I'll send that to you all tomorrow so that you have it and that might help guide how you describe the programs. Okay, thanks, Sean that sounds really helpful. Okay, so I'm going to do take the lead on a. It sounds like Carol will take the lead on D. I'm sorry Erica will take the lead on D and Carol will take the lead on E. And I mean both of you consult with me or with Nate on how to try to structure that. And I'd probably do a review of anything before our next meeting in any case. Sure. And John Laura Baker has her hand raised. Okay. Hi Laura you can unmute yourself. Can you hear me. Yes. Sorry, comedy of errors I was trying to reply to Carol. No, I didn't mean to raise my hand. Okay. Can I say one final thing. Absolutely. One other thing just for everyone to keep in mind as we look at these programs and this is one of the things that Mindy helped with and some of the other legislators we've spoken to have advised is just be conscious of our money too. And they haven't really come out with their plan of how they're going to allocate those funds, but they have a lot. And so we want to do, we're not going to be able to do it perfectly, but as best we can we want to try to focus our funds on the things where there may not be state funding for in a few months. And so again, it's not going to be, we're not really going to have a ton of success with that potentially because they haven't come out with a plan and we sort of need to start moving forward with it. But just keep that in mind that the state is also going to have a lot of money. And I imagine it will trickle down and there will be some home home programs or housing programs that get funded from the state as well. Right. Yeah, I think that's an excellent point, Sean. And to some extent, some of these things that we're proposing. You know, you could increase or decrease or trade across the proposals depending upon what happens with the state because whatever we do, we're not going to spend it in December, even if you put it in your November for spending plan. Or I would be shocked if you did. If we find out the state's going to fund something yeah we can we can adjust accordingly. Yeah, that's great. So, I didn't mention that a leg was going to do B and C on my wrap up. But this is great. I think we've made a lot of progress here and shown I really appreciate your coming in talking with us. I think it's put us in a better position to try to support the town's process for deciding what to do going forward. Thank you all. Thank you. Okay, so I think we're ready to go on to the next agenda item. We're starting to kind of get squeezed a little bit but we'll get through as much of the agenda as we can before nine o'clock. I believe Nate the next agenda item is CPA see money right. Sure yeah I mean we said we might be able to wait I know Dave Zomax here. The housing authority doesn't look like they're in attendance but you know the agenda did have discussion of the FY 23 CPA proposal so we could, we could invite Dave and we should talk about what Dave has submitted. I know I have comments on it and other people may as well. So I don't think it's a mistake to give it some time this evening. And with respect to any of these things we might postpone until our November meeting, making actual decisions about what to recommend to CPA see. There could be changes in proposals. As you said the AHA is not here this evening we might want to invite them to our November meeting. Yeah I reached out to them for this meeting to I think they've been really busy so I didn't, I didn't hear back but. Okay, well I don't think there's a lot that we need to discuss about the trust proposals. I'll just briefly mention, because we've gone over these in some detail. A couple of months ago that there are two. There is half a million dollars. We're asking for to be allocated to the trust for support of future projects without necessarily saying, because we've done this in the past, exactly what those projects will be. And then the other thing which is small but very important is $30,000 for support of consulting services over two years. So I have no reason to believe that anybody has questions or concerns about those if they do, then we can talk about them at the next meeting. So I think we should just move on to focus on the two town proposals, particularly since Dave has graciously come to join us this evening. Sure, I will just say quickly, you know I spoke with Sonya today and the, you know, as always there's, you know, more money requested than available from CPA so I think there's probably, you know, twice as much money requested and proposals as is available so the CPA committee, you know, will need to make recommendations and then, you know, it goes through the council process so, you know, maybe all of them could be funded or partially funded or some may not be funded so I think you know there are quite a few proposals this year. Right. Well there are two town proposals. One is for half a million dollars for support of transitional housing, and the other is $100,000 for support of new part time housing staff over a period of three years. But I don't want to talk about them I want Dave to present them to us and then we can ask questions. Thanks John. I enjoyed listening to the previous conversation about our funds. And I did just want to comment there was, can everybody hear me okay. Yeah, there was some. There was reference to the committee. I don't know, recall the official name but the committee focused on homelessness that Mary Beth Fogel-Levitz was staffing. And I have yet to reestablish a regular meeting for that group. Honestly, as the fall has quickly approached in November 1 as quickly approached the real focus has been on getting a congregate shelter open and supporting Greg's so with just a couple of weeks till November 1 that has been our major focus but that group will meet again. And Mary Beth did provide me with some of the materials that she was developing before she left the town service. The town did put in two CBA proposals. When I told John I was coming tonight I did not think I would be presenting those to the to the trust tonight so I said I was coming to the meeting to listen and comment but I'm happy to discuss them in general. I don't know John did you share them with all the members. Yes, I did but kind of at a late date I shared them. I would like a formal presentation on them we I think Nate and I would be happy to obviously Nate is here with you each each meeting but I'd be happy to come back and and we could talk in more detail but I can quickly review them so first off. The town did put in a proposal for $100,000 to establish a housing coordinator position a part time housing coordinator position within the planning department of of the town would be for three years. And really this is all about capacity building. You know we've, we've had some good success working with the trust over the last year, moving forward on the belcher town road project which was a heavy lift for all of us but we got it done in in record time and very short order. We were able to then combine that with the street school property and and the feeling is that there's only so much of Nate to go around and we would very much like to have somebody working with me working with myself, working with the other planning staff and supporting the work that you all do. We're very excited to have a day to day here to try to really ramp up our efforts, you know the Council just approve their comprehensive housing policy for the entire town, and there's some pretty, you know, aggressive goals and timelines and, and it sets the bar very high. So, the feeling is that we'd like to bring some of that energy in in the building and really add to the work that Nate does and some of the other stuff. I don't think this would compete with the trust proposal for consulting support. I think it would only augment and supplement and complement the work that Rita does for you. So that was proposal one proposal to is as john mentioned. You know, and really it did come up in the ARPA discussion as well. You know I've been working closely with Greg's doors for a number of years I worked very hard with Mary Beth to to begin to identify some of the longer term needs. And, you know, I've been around the sheltering table for a long time and I think the bottom line is that we, we are concerned about the sustainability of the efforts at Greg's doors. And we really need to come up with a long term plan that moves people who are experiencing homelessness from that from where they are to supportive transitional housing, and Craig's doors mission is not to do that really that is not a comprehensive mission their mission is to save people's lives and shelter them during a six month period, and they've done a wonderful job doing that but we're really missing that piece of moving those people from where they are to getting them into some supportive housing. And so we asked for half a million dollars is really seed money to begin to look at a property or multiple properties that might serve two functions one would be for a modest congregate shelter with some long term supportive transitional housing attached or as part of that development. So it might, it might include looking at the UML, it might include looking at some other properties in Amherst and my staff and I have already started doing some of that assessment around town of buildings that might might work for that. It might also mean acquiring a property and either renovating or building new. So that's kind of where we are and I think it kind of dovetails nicely with some of the discussion that was had with Sean Mangano about the ARPA funds. So half a million dollars isn't going to get us there it would really be seed money to move us forward. So I think our concern and Mary Beth the Glovets identified really that the long term need is for transitional housing, and this year to year, this year to year rush this year to year struggle. You know, is is something that many communities are doing but we need more transitional housing in town, if we're going to make it make a dent in this challenge. So that's where we are. Thank you comment state. When you describe this to me verbally I was pretty enthusiastic, but honestly, after reading the details of the proposal to CPA see, I see some potential problems. And I'll begin with the program for transitional housing. I understand, and I could be wrong. I think that CPA funds can only be used to fund permanent affordable housing. I don't think they can be used for transitional housing. And I know you kind of use both language or both ideas in the proposal to CPA. I don't see, but I think you need to stick with the idea of permanent affordable housing for CPA funds now with ARPA. You may not have the same requirement with clearly some ambiguity ambiguity based on the conversation with Sean. You might be able to build a shelter or build transitional housing with ARPA funds, but I don't think it would be allowable under CPA funds. Thank you, John. Yeah, no, that's something that we've been talking about internally a little bit and, and before we go before CPA we will clarify that. Okay. Anybody can interrupt me. I was a little bit concerned that the trust in town proposals in some respect seem to be in direct competition. And let me express some of the specific reservations I have. We have gradually been losing the valuable time of Nate Boy over the last year, particularly. And that's because Nate has been asked to do work on new zoning proposals. I can understand entirely why you would ask him to do that. On the other hand, I think it's been a bit of a loss for the housing trust. And that's not a criticism of Nate. It's you know what he's been asked to do. And I'm concerned that if you bring in a new part time person who has the title of housing coordinator, we will continue to see an attrition in the time that Nate's the votes to the housing trust. And that may not be your intention, but I can easily see how the time could slide into that. Yeah, I don't see it as a, as a net loss I see it as a net gain John I mean all over the Commonwealth I mean I don't know how many communities are, are utilizing this model but a number of communities are adding our time or full time housing partners to their planning departments and I just, I just see it as an opportunity to add bandwidth energy time. Again I would go back to the belcher town road project and really say you know that was a short term heavy lift, and it took a lot of my time and Nate's time and Rob Morris time to make that happen. Because if we had more staff time. It's, it can only be a plus. All of our efforts. I definitely agree with that. So I guess what I would like for myself and the other trust members some assurance is that it is more. It's not going to be an opportunity to ask Nate to do more on zoning. You have my assurance know that that is not the intent here at all. I can't say what the, I can't say what 2022 is going to be like for zoning. A lot of that will be determined by the Council. The Council is the driver when it comes to zoning changes. I would say that some of that work in zoning is a good portion of it is about housing. So it's a little hard to tease these departs so you know we're either we're working on inclusionary zoning or simply adding to the housing stock in Amherst. So things have benefits for affordability so Nate's been right in the mix on housing every step of the way. But again, what what initiatives we work on with regard to zoning will largely be determined by the priorities of the, of the new council when they're sworn in on January 3. So this is intended to be a net gain John not a net loss. So it doesn't mean if we got this funding Nate would slip away and you would never see him again. Well that is exactly my concern. So I wanted to express it. This is a hard time letting go I will tell you that he holds on to things he holds on to things very dearly he I've been trying to get him to let go of some other things and honestly he won't let go of them so. I'll stick with the housing trust john. Yeah, I agree I mean I think that there are a lot of things happening in town, you know in the planning department so next year there's, you know, we hope to have a lot more products and activity so I see the housing coordinator position is helping. You know, even just administering CPA fund funding activities you know housing activities takes a little bit of time so you know there's a few home buyer programs that are happening there's a few housing programs that's that's just, you know that's a lot of staff time administering those so I think something like the housing coordinator could help with that. And as Dave said just be able we could then, you know, extend our capacity for other projects. Well that is the outcome I would like to say, just expressing my concern. Another area of concern by understand and I appreciated the fact Dave that you began with a discussion of the recent cooperation, and not only recent but really historical con cooperation between the town and the housing trust. There was absolutely no mention of that in either of your proposals. In fact, if anything there were some elements that led me to feel well, do you value the housing trust. Do you can see, continue to think that we need to have a housing trust in town, and I'll quote something directly from one of the proposals. He believes that housing a part time, having a part time staff person who works within the office of conservation and development, and specifically the planning department will be a more effective approach to help meet the housing goals of the community. And then it goes on to under to describe tasks that have been undertaken by both the trust and its consultant. Another concern is the message to see PAC is that the housing trust and its consultant may no longer be considered as necessary as it once was in the past. How do I answer that john. By promising to revise that paragraph. I need to read I need to read reread them all I need to reread your proposals as well. And it's, you know, I've known Rita for a long time I think I can be honest on this call but I think I honestly think Rita brings a different service to you than a housing coordinator would bring to the town and to you. I think we're talking about a particular set of skill sets. And I think we're talking about embedding this position within the planning department that's where I mean discussions go on daily, weekly, monthly, that neither Rita, nor you, nor the trust members can be part of. To increase that level of, of energy and focus and and products by bringing in additional hours of a professional so I just see these as, as complimentary positions not then, you know, we never intended these to be competing priorities to complement that work. And again, from a sustainability standpoint, I honestly and Rita's on the call I don't know how long Rita is going to consult with the trust. So my job is to try to build capacity within the town to continue the good work that the trust is currently doing Rita is doing I'm doing Nate is doing for many, many years to come. And I worry a little bit that we sometimes that we, it's hard to build capacity when you're when consultants can come and go right Rita whenever when when they want to so so I don't know how long I hope Rita stays with the trust in the town for many many years, but I can't guarantee that where whereas I think if we can build some additional capacity within the town focus specifically on affordable housing that to me seems like only a positive. Does that make sense. I have the proposals to me, you know, a few days ago or a week ago whenever it was. I saw it the same way, as I said my problem really has to do not with the way you're describing it now but the way that it is written up the way it's described on the pages going to see back. And I am concerned that the way it's described undermines both the position of the trust and the position of our consultant, which I personally highly value. I mean, as to as to I yeah, whenever, or whoever you're able to to find to fill this job. It's not going to be a person who has over 30 years of experience and affordable housing and valuable contracts among former colleagues and friends throughout the state of Massachusetts. We need to do nothing in my judgment to discourage Rita from continuing at or to discourage the Community Preservation Act committee from continuing to support that contract. Here's what I would say john to that is, you know, with all the discussion we've had as a community about affordable housing over the past five years. We should be you know, we should be advocating for a full time position never mind a 20 hour a week position in the planning department. I think we need Rita we need the trust we need Nate we need me, we need a full time position that is solely focused on affordable housing within the town. And I use the word sustainability earlier that I see having a position within the town as more sustainable but keep in mind funding it through CPA is not. It may be more sustainable but it's not, you know, this might only be for three years and then we'd have to go back to CPA as you do for Rita's position. But what I'm saying is, with all the meetings with all the reports with all of the urgency and, and, and, and, you know, crisis the word crisis is being used. I think we need a full time housing coordinator within the town of Amherst. So I was being cautious in asking for a part time but I think we should go together and say to the CPA committee we need both. We need a consultant like Rita Rita for the trust and we need this part time position and we might come back in a year or two and say it's working so well we need a full time position. That's where I, that's kind of I would certainly agree. I will say that I got a set of questions from CPA see from Sonya Aldrich this morning, and it includes the question, why don't you replace your consultant with a full time town employee. I saw that. So I think we should get together and we should make sure our responses to that are in sync and that we, you know, the CPA see needs to understand that this is a crisis this is one of the most urgent needs facing the town of Amherst and we shouldn't be quibbling over to, you know, to part time positions. We should, we should devote more resources to this to this crisis in our community. That's my approach. I agree absolutely with what you just said. My only concern is that I would like to see it represented in your submission to CPA see. You will review those. And honestly, I have not read them since they were submitted yours or ours. So we'll reread those jump, and we can convene before they before we present to CPA see. Okay, well I appreciate that. Thank you. Okay, I've been monopolizing the conversation here. Are there other questions that people have about the town proposals. Right about that email you just. I'm sorry. Carol. Just maybe I know the answer to this question from listening to what I just heard but I is it is it makes sense to fund a staff position on the kind of money that you get from CPA. What happens, you're hiring somebody. Usually when you hire somebody there's kind of expectation that you have the job until they don't, you're not doing it very well or something. The job is like for three years, become dependent on this position and then, and then it's not I mean Nate is funded out of whatever the general pot of money of the budget of the town, I presume.  And I, and I just want to say, along with what john has been saying. The need is great but a whole lot depends on how it's presented. Because we might know the need it's great but you're presenting it to people who don't have whatever it aren't coming from where we're coming from so I agree with john it makes a whole lot of it's very important. It looks like it's very important that it is very clear in the way everything is written that these are augment each other and as opposed to being duplicative or any kind of thing like that. So I agree with you I think the CPA see is a very friendly and very supportive group I presented to them dozens and dozens of times through the years and I think they fully understand the urgency of, and the need for more affordable categories in town. So the point or to your question about funding and short term funding. In all honesty, municipalities fund positions like this all the time we use CPA funds we use CDBG funds. And the additional area that I oversee have been paid for with CDBG funds for years which are not guaranteed and and actually we've lost those funds before. Now, is that the ideal. No, we would prefer to have these positions be fully funded through the city or there are many, many town employees who were funded through various enterprise funds which fluctuate as well as grants. So my goal would be is if we could show the CPA see the trust the council, how valuable a part time staff could be in those three years, then we would go back to them and say we'd like another three years or we'd like six years or whatever, you know, whatever the approach would be at that point. But we would be able to show the work product and the success we've had with that position. Thank you. Okay other comments in this area. If not, I'm going to move on to the next agenda item and we'll take this up again when we meet in a month. Okay, I believe the next agenda item is Hickory Ridge. Since I learned this from Dave he can second guess or re reclaim what he has to say but as I understand it, it looks like the town will close on a sale of Hickory Ridge in something like one to two months. I understand that's not guaranteed but that's the latest prediction. The town has held multiple onsite events, plus adding a place for public comment through the engage Amherst website. And again, I heard Dave say on Saturday when I was there that the plan is to write a master plan for Hickory Ridge within one year after the town acquires the property formally. So I think that's the plan for Hickory Ridge if people have had an opportunity to go to the engage Amherst website. I don't know what the number is today but there were probably at least 60 maybe 70 different comments that have been entered on that website. I would say a preponderance of them have to do with affordable housing. Not all on affordable housing for older adults but there were some significant number that focused on that as an idea as well. We know, and again Dave can correct me. There is a commitment to something like I think 40 acres to be leased back to what will be the former owners of Hickory Ridge for a solar field. There's additional large area that will be conservation, including a plan to do planting. Again, as quickly as the town can once it acquires control of the property around the Fort River which winds its way through the Hickory Ridge property. And then there have been a lot of other proposals, not the least of which is developing a proposal for adult affordable rental development at Hickory Ridge. So, are there comments or thoughts about what's going on there that based on observations that any of you have made. John, could I just clarify a couple of notes in there. Absolutely. Yeah, so thanks everybody. So yeah we held three information sessions last week it was called kind of discover Hickory Ridge. We're not we're dropping the golf course now it's the former golf course. We had over 200 people come to those three sessions last Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The staff led short walks and there was some introductory remarks by me and some of the other staff. We had what we thought was a great turnout lots of good questions comments. As John said we have the engage engage Hickory Ridge, which has I think close to 80 comments now, ranging from affordable housing to zip lines to gardens to dog parks to disc golf, and the list goes on and on full court basketball save all of the land don't do anything with it. Pollinator gardens you name it some great stuff and that's really where we are right now which is to gather lots of community input, and then create a structure for that input to kind of work its way into a master plan for the property. We do intend to do some additional outreach to particularly to the neighborhoods to the north. We were just talking about that in a meeting today to the Brooke to the boulders to help me out I'm a little tired tonight but there are two other apartment complexes point in mill valley thank you, because we really felt as though the residents there were underrepresented at these three information sessions so we're going to do some outreach there. In terms of solar john the numbers were a little high, there will be 26 acres of solar as part of the project, not 40. So we started with 150 acres total 26 acres will be solar. The town will lease that land we will own it the town will but will lease that land for solar will get between 50 and $60,000 a year and a pilot payment for that that least land. And as part of that project the state not the town, the state is requiring the solar company to mitigate for their impact so they will have to mitigate 17 acres of river front land along the four river will need to be restored to its former habitat. And that 17 acres will is required by the state to be permanently protected. So we go from 150 acres 26 solar 17 mitigation. And those are some of the layers we begin to Nate's put up a nice image showing the cross hatched solar areas, and then in green along the river you can see the 17 acres of mitigated habitat. So, from there we then begin to look at the property topography flood plain riverfront vernal pools, wetlands, anything that might limit the future uses. And then we'll kind of integrate all of that with some of the great ideas that were shared with us and continue to be shared so I think a master plan would take you know eight to 12 months to complete and we'll look to have housing and conservation commission and the recreation commission and any other boards and committees involved as this moves forward. So I think I'll stop there for questions or comments. Thanks Nate for finding that image. So questions or comments for me. So quickly that, you know, it's 150 acres but you know most of the developer land is, you know, I think there's less than 10 acres right so the clubhouse if you can see my cursor is here there's a parking lot and then there's some upland, you know, maybe along the road and over here near Amherst office park so. Do you want to orient, do you want to orient people street name and everything just in case they haven't seen this map. Yeah I mean this is West Pomeroy Lane so over in this corner, I can't see I don't know how much is visible is. Is the intersection. Oh yeah I mean, it's, I don't know, it's too bad that they have just just ends at the intersection so you know Pomeroy Lane and 116. And then this is heading west towards Hadley so on your right the north of West Pomeroy is the is the the former golf course and so you know it's a nice open area but you know my point I was going to make is that there you know maybe five to seven acres or could be a little bit more. That's available to be developed or redeveloped and so it's really not. You know I just want to make sure to trust those that when you hear 150 acres. Yeah, you know, it's not all not all of it's available for for housing. Much of it probably isn't. Could you also point out the apartment complexes, those community those neighborhoods to the north. Sure yeah here's mill valley up here so this is, you know he's how the road is just the north off the map so that you know this is you know mill valley apartments in this area. Other questions or comments. Well it seems like access to its predominantly in Pomeroy Lane. So that's probably going to be a question to in terms of what's going to be built there because there's, there seems to be some great ideas affordable housing and conservation area. And recreation area, but it seems like most of the access to the area that's going to be usable is on Pomeroy Lane. Yes I think your assessment is right it's some. It's next to impossible to cross to create a new crossing over a perennial stream like the Fort River so any development any, any active development whether it was affordable housing or. I don't know if you wanted to reuse the clubhouse for a senior center that was one of the ideas, you know, could we, could we have a senior center there, could we, somebody brought up could we have a fire station there any of those ideas would have to happen south of the river near where Nate was showing us the parking lot and the, the former clubhouse of building would be right in there. I will say I did mention, I think at the the info sessions that we did look at the site for a DPW and also for a fire station and the site was deemed not appropriate for either one of those. It was built in the south and west for a fire station, and to small, the buildable area is too small for a DPW the DPW needs 10 to 15 acres of upland buildable land for a new facility. Thanks Dave further. Very exciting. Or comments. Okay, I was just sorry I was just going to ask. So you said the ideas will be built into the master plan. Is there, you know, points given for all of the hits on affordable housing and all the comments on affordable housing so then they become more priority, because when I looked on it. There were great ideas. There was a lot around affordable housing and then there were a lot of like, you know, agree or agree or a little. I don't know if there were check marks whatever people just hit on the comments that they agreed with. So, are you going to use a system of prioritizing depending on how many people agree with something or, you know, what. That's a very good question and I don't think we've, we have not fully drafted even an outline for a master plan. I think it's going to be more of a, of a planning process than I don't want to say a popularity contest I mean it limited development there is possible we know that. I think limited development I mean a senior center affordable housing something could happen in those upland acres on the frontage on West Bummer Lane. I think we staff will be going out to you to various boards and committees, trying to gather more specific input than is available on engage Amherst that's a wonderful broad tool, but we will come to you and other boards and committees. I mean, I spend time with you I mean a meeting, an entire meeting focused on helping you understand the assets and resources and limitations of Hickory Ridge. And here from you and other other boards and committees what they would like to see there what does the planning board think I should go there. And if we arrive at affordable housing as one of the options, what kind of affordable housing should it, you know, there are many, many kinds of housing that could be built there what, what is the, what, what, what does the site call for there, you know, what, what is the, the, the location call for it's near a village center but there's no sidewalks it's not on a bus line all of those factors we'd love to work with you and hear more from you about where where we should land of affordable housing is part of the mix there. So I think winter of 22 is going to be the perfect time to do that. You know, January, February, March of 22. Does that sound does that sound like something the trust would want to be a part of. I think definitely we should be a part of that. I was going to suggest tonight that in preparation. I would begin writing, if only a brief description of what it would mean to put an affordable rental development for older adults on that site. I believe it's something that I've been thinking about. And I think it's something that not that I expect the town to settle on immediately, but that we kind of get ahead of things a little bit by putting in something that we at least as a group would agree upon. I also agree upon in general that it should be affordable housing. Honestly, the biggest question in my mind is, should it be for older adults, or should we be thinking about something for the, I don't know, 26 to 55 population, rather than older adults something about what we're proposing on Belcher town road and the East street school. So I think that's something that we should be discussing. But in general, I think we want to advocate for use of the site for affordable housing. As I said, I want to suggest that we begin to write up that idea and start to massage it and review a draft at the point at which we next meet next month, so we can continue to refine our collective ideas. John's great, John. I would just ask if you do arrive at a very specific targeted population that that be well researched and, you know, where, where, where does that come from where where does that idea come from and and what is the genesis of of being a specific say and over 55 affordable, you know, a development something like that or as you suggest maybe 26 to 50 or whatever. Just where where, where does that come from and why does the trust believe that that is the way the project or you understand. Yeah, that is something we need to come to. Perfect. Yeah, and I'm not sure there's an absolute right answer to that question under any circumstances. Given the overall huge need for affordable housing in town, you can almost justify either or both. So we need to kind of thrash that out among ourselves and decide what we as a group want to advocate for. I would suggest that if people are comfortable with this that Lucy and I start the process of writing something up that we can share with everybody in advance of our next meeting, and then that will leave us with an opportunity to say, we don't like this or no we don't like that, or really what's missing is any discussion of this, or whatever it is you all will have to say about this. Are people comfortable with that. Okay well I'll make it a formal vote. I move that we draft an initial proposal for affordable housing at the Hickory Ridge site. I'll go into that. Oh second. Okay, so I will do a quick run and see who's in favor, Allegra. Yes. Okay, thanks Erica. Yes. Let's see. Carol. Yes. Will. Yes. Sid. Yes. Yes. Okay, so we've gotten started. Are there any things that anybody would particularly like to see in this draft. I know we talked last time about mixed families in terms of affordable housing and there was some barriers regarding funding but maybe we could use some ARPA funding. Yep, that that would be. I guess it would be a possibility. I don't know for sure, but yes. That would be something to look into. Other comments or thoughts. Okay. Sorry. I can't hear you. I just like to agree with Erica I'd like it to be, you know, a range of ages and kinds of people. If it could be somehow. Good point. Any, any other comments or thoughts for what we should be addressing. Okay, well Lucy and I will get to work and hopefully we'll have something for you in two to three weeks. There's something else I put under this, although it didn't show up formally under the agenda, but I think it's important enough to mention. This has applied to become a quote unquote dementia friendly community. There's a state initiative on that and various cities and towns around the state are working on becoming dementia friendly communities in our region the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission is working with towns that have volunteered to do this. In order to kind of figure out what they need to do to make appropriate changes. One of the things that the commission is asking towns to do is a survey of older adults. I have not seen the content of the survey. So I can't really tell you much about it, but I know there's a base survey that exists that the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission has, I know that it's also possible for towns to make changes or not changes but additions to the survey. If they have questions they'd like to do. I know all this pretty much from talking to Mary Beth before she left. I was looking forward to our collaborating with her on this but that's not going to happen. At this point Marine I believe in the planning department is probably going to be taking the lead on that is that right Nate. Yeah, I believe so. Yeah. Okay, so I've communicated a little bit with her and with the Pioneer Valley planning person who is working on this initiative. There are a couple of things I'd like to see I want to be sure that there are questions in the survey that relate to the housing needs for older adults. I want this to be in a position once the data is collected to be able to estimate the number of adult older adults who may be seeking affordable housing, estimating those who may be intending to downsize from their current living situation, and estimating those who may need help to remain in their current homes. Those are three of the things I think we want to accomplish, or I would hope the town would want to accomplish with the survey. The other thing I wanted to mention is the sampling. For those of you who have any experience or training with methods. I think it's important to know that the plan from the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission is to do what is called a convenient sample. The plan is various groups in the town would try to identify places where elders meet or where they congregate and try to get as many people as possible, who are there to complete the survey. I really don't have a problem with that. Hopefully that's a process that leads to a lot of surveys. I would also like to see a part of the sample be a random sample of say 100 older adults who live in the town of Amherst, and that someone possibly us, or possibly people collaborating with us at the university, make an effort to do a as much of a true random sample as we could do so that we understand the differences between what you get with a random sample versus what you get from a convenient sample with respect to the representativeness of the adult of the results. So that's something I'd like us to pursue. And I said I've already talked to Marine and had some email exchange with Pioneer Valley Planning Commission. And I think that's something we should pursue. So that's what I had to say about it at this point in time. As we know more I'll bring back more information. I just wanted to give all of you an opportunity to say, that's a terrible idea, we shouldn't be involved in it, or that's a pretty good idea. And I think I could support it. And you're saying take and use the survey that would be developed and just using it to do a random sample in addition to the convenience sampling. That's exactly what I intended Nate yes thank you. I mean for the random sample John are you envisioning using like town records to, you know, then yeah, that's what that's what Mary Beth would have used she kept a copy of the town records for older adults. She had a file I assume the file still exists, or if not it can be updated, and we would sample from that list. Maybe maybe that would. I'm worried that that I guess maybe the random sample would mitigate against this but if you just go to the convenient the places where people congregate. Among other things I'm worried that you won't get very many BIPOC people. I mean if you have to be careful about where you pick the congregating people. It just seems like it could be a really, really skewed and so if, if that's what's going to happen then it seems like some effort needs to go into making sure that some of the places you consider congregating places that you be very careful how you pick them, and they're not you don't just end up with all of the white old people in Amherst because they're not the only old people here. And with COVID, you know I'm not sure. Yeah, person. Even now it's still you know the in person thing seems a little strange. I was going to mention that Erica shared a link in the chat to West Springfield to their agent dementia. Reporter document I wasn't sure exactly. It's their document. So, John. Sorry, Nate I just interrupted. That's all I wanted to say was just that. Yeah, so I didn't get a sense of what it actually meant. So I looked it up. And I wanted to see PVPC had something that explained what it means to be a town that is dementia friendly or supportive. This document actually has some good definitions and some good examples. So, I figured I'd share it with everybody else. Okay, maybe we can distribute it by email I appreciate that Erica. That sounds good. Yep. Other comments or thoughts about this. I mean done to your point. Depending on how the survey structured and results could be entered into, you know tabulated I mean is 100. The effort is 100 not a lot you know should we do 200, you know, or 150 I mean what you know what is appropriate. Honestly, I think it depends on how much stratification you want to do. And using the town date it's probably not easy to do a lot of stratification but for example, do you want the survey to equal you represent men and women. Do you want the survey to represent people between 55 and 6465 and 7475 and 84 and 85 and up in equal numbers. The more that we want to do that kind of stratification, the larger the sample needs to be. On the other hand, it could be too much of a challenge to our resources. In response to what Carol said, if we were to do a random sample of 100 older adults, it honestly would not solve the problem of represented patient of BIPOC persons in the community. My guess is among older adults that's probably no more than 15 to 20%. We have a relatively small number of those persons in the sample, and the only way to do better would be to have some strategy for oversampling, either in the convenience sample, or the random sample or both. But you make a good point Carol and everybody should be thinking about a way to overcome it. Everybody, especially Lucia. Okay, I'm going to close with that. Again, that's something we'll be working on. And I don't know maybe we should take a vote to see if everybody supports are working on developing a survey to collect this kind of information in concert with the town and with other people in the older adult community in town. So I move that we do this undertake this is there a second. But if there's no second then we're definitely not going to do it. I'm, I'm, I think I don't understand well enough what our purpose in doing it is to have an intelligent vote. I, I just don't quite get it. So, I'm sorry. Okay, that's perfectly reasonable Carol. And I sort of think I suggested that earlier and let me go over what I had to say, and people can then ask questions or make their own points. I think we should know the number of older adults to the extent that we can, who are seeking affordable housing in Amherst. Okay. And that would include an S an estimate of the number of older adults who may be intending to downsize from their current living situation, and would like a place to go that would be affordable. So those would be questions, those would just be questions because it says it's a dementia thing, which means like what does that have to do with affordable housing directly. The questions that you just said yes we should know those and if this survey is a way that we get that. Maybe along with some other bunch of stuff that somebody else wants but as long as the survey gets the answers to the questions that you're asking then yes we should do it. Okay, and I'll just mention my third point. That's okay estimating the number of older adults who may need help to remain in their current homes. Now, some of those people may have or will have dementia. So this isn't irrelevant to dementia, but it, it's a little bit broader brush I would I would agree. So those would be three sample goals for why we would want to get involved in this. And why I believe it would have value to the, at least the older adults in our community. John, we also want to add how many seniors want to age in place in their house, you know whether it's modifications to the structure or receiving services at home. Yeah, I agree that's kind of what I meant by the number of older adults who may need help to remain in their current homes. Yeah, so yeah what you're suggesting is a slightly specific or slightly different goal but I think it's basically the same. I'll second your motion. This is definitely information we need especially for if we're going to, you know, propose this for the Hickory Ridge specifically for older adults. Okay, well then I'll ask people to vote. Those in favor of the motion said. Yeah. Will. Yes. Allegra. Yes. Okay. Carol. Yes. Erica. Yes. And I'm a yes. So we have six people who are yes, which I think is close to unanimity because Francis is no longer a part of the group. I mentioned, I mentioned to say, I forgot to say before that. If you know of people who would be interested in joining the trust please reach out to them. I don't know exactly when the process for identifying a new member will occur but I'm hopeful that it occurs within the next month or so. Okay, so we've done that item and then the rest of the items are all updates. And most of them, I think will come from Nate. I'll just mention we, the town did organizing did organize a meeting of interested parties that is people who are interested in bidding on the RFP for East Street Belcher down road. And Nate organized it along with Rob Mora. I don't know how many people we had there but certainly all of the main not for product that developers in the valley were represented home city housing. Valley community development and wayfinders. Nate, do you want to add to that. Yeah, I mean, there was, you know, another there could have been enough, you know, a fourth entity or there was an architect that maybe working with one of those developers or someone else. So the site visit was mandatory so, you know, those entities who attended can respond to the proposal but you know they were, you know, a dozen or more took out proposals. In this interest, there are a lot of questions about keeping the school building, you know capacity of the site, there is wetlands on both sites. You know, East Street School probably has more a few neighbors that may, you know, have questions about a project so I think that's something that you know we may need to help with in terms of advocacy or outreach. So the questions are, you know, we saw a few more weeks of questions so we haven't received any questions. We, you know, except for what was at the site visit so proposals are due a month from now about November 19. So we're hoping that will, you know, at least be one or two proposals. But yeah, there hasn't been anything yet, you know, you know, I guess at the site visitors by about 15 questions but nothing seemed to alarming so. Okay, thanks. Okay, town council as people may know, did approve a policy comprehensive town housing policy. It was last Monday but a week ago Monday I believe it was. I'm not going to try to go over it now what I'm going to do is distribute the policy. Hopefully there's a final version because a few amendments were made during the meeting to everybody. And I'd like us to look at it with respect to a. What are we now doing that's consistent with policy or planning to do and be, is there anything else we should pull out of it. That we see us see ourselves doing. I think it's a, it's a good document. It's not a perfect document. There is a broad range of things to select from. Neither we nor anybody else is going to be able to do all of them. I think of it a little bit like a hunting license. There are a lot of things that are supported in there. And I think many if not all of them are important. And we should declare ourselves about what it is we want to push. So that will be my request to you for our next meeting. I also wanted Nate to give us an update on what's happening with the assessment of the property on strong street or really properties. Yeah, that's, that's a little slow. There's still a few consultants who I don't know they keep dogging them and they're having responded very well. Some of the neighbors have reached out to the town actually, because this has been mentioned at a few meetings and so I know David had said, I'd like to get out there again and meet with them because there's, you know, a bit of concern with the neighbors, you know, from the neighbors they have questions and we, you know, we just want to make sure, you know, we can include them in the process. And that's about it. I will say that, you know, the thought really is to run utilities to the site and, you know, it's probably it would be a difficult site for for well and septic and just, you know, it increases the cost so habitat, I've talked with habitat and a few different entities and you know they've asked if the town would be willing to pay for the utility costs and, you know, do the site work, which is what we did at Olympia Oaks through block rate and other funding but it just, not that it complicates the process but it you know it elongates a bit because you know we'd have a separate, a separate project essentially is bringing utilities and site work and then there's development of the site so yeah I'm curious just to see you know I've asked a few different landscape architects and engineers to provide quotes for services to see what they'd say about the site but Yeah well once we know what's necessary, again that could be a possible use of ARPA funds. It could. Assuming we're talking still talking about home ownership development on the site. Yes, but not least the shelter season begins I believe on November 1. I know for certain that the University Motor Lodge will definitely be in use to by Craves doors for sheltering, and I don't know exactly where this is but I'm quite sure that they were negotiating with a religious community, or a congregate congregation in town to do a congregate shelter. And I know who they were negotiating with but I don't feel at liberty to disclose that. Yeah I think the shelter may not open on the first it may be a little delayed. And I think that because there's different facilities. So I think the, the doors will have to, you know, I think the, the guests at the shelter will be moved around in the morning or evenings to different locations for certain services so, you know I think this is, you know probably an interim year, my thought is in terms, you know, of a sheltering approach right because I think that you know between meals showers, all these things I'm not sure they can all happen at one location.  Okay so it's all a work in progress at the moment. And maybe we'll have it wrapped up by the time we meet in November, even if the congregate shelter hasn't opened will know when it's likely to open and exactly what the plan is. I mentioned that our next meeting of the housing trust is on Thursday, November 11, so please put that in your calendars. The housing that's that's veterans day so we can't meet that day. Oh really that's a third Thursday is veterans day. Yep, 11th. Yeah. I guess we'll pull people to see if there's a better day that week that we can move our meeting time to. I guess we could do it right now. How many people could not do Wednesday the 10th. That's the closest day. I might not be able to. I've been meeting almost every Wednesday with the planning board or someone else for zoning. I don't have a discussion. Anybody else not able to meet on Wednesday the 10th. It's not scheduled right now but I just you know it often happens that the planning board had been meeting like almost every Wednesday. Well maybe they can take that day off and they ask in the sunshine on the 11th or something. Okay so the 10th is a possibility. I would not be able to the 10th. You can't do the 10th. No not at all. Okay. Who could not do the ninth. That's Tuesday of that week. So Allegra can't do the ninth. Anybody else cannot do the ninth. Okay so Allegra can't do the ninth. Sid can't do the 10th. And Nate may not be able to do the 10th. Well I'll do some further polling after this meeting and see if we can come closer to a solution. We could also postpone a week. Oh, maybe move it up a week to the fourth, because I do want to be mindful of that that Sean has a deadline when he needs feedback from us about what our priorities are for the ARPA funding. So let me go to the fourth, who cannot do it on the fourth. Fourth of November, that's a Thursday. Well that's looking pretty good. This just gives us less time to write up our pieces though. And I'm going to be on vacation next week away. So I perfectly do while you're on vacation, a little downtime. Yeah, that's my only reluctance is that it's sooner. Well, I think we'll have to bite the bullet because obviously it's a problem to do it on Tuesday, Wednesday, the following week. So I think for now our new date will be Thursday, November 4. I think, I mean, I would just want to show you that it doesn't have to be a long narrative about each activity and I think some of them might be just to help Sean present to the council. You know, if they ask, you know, I think he wants to keep the housing piece broad just so that they're not voting a specific activity but we could say well here are, you know, four or five things that trust is researching just so. And I think it might just be to that extent, John, unless they start asking questions but I know his hope is to not not have, you know, a very specific thing that's voted on at this time just because I think that's a good idea. But nonetheless, I'd like to see something so let's limit it to a page or two for each activity. No, my paragraph you win. John, you give us the structure and we'll fill it in for our pieces. Okay, I'll think about that. That's good idea I like that. Thanks Erica. Sorry. You're retired. I also wanted to mention two other things the housing coalition is meeting October 26, which is Tuesday later this month. I think at that time the housing coalition will talk about the responses to the survey that it's submitted to town council candidates regarding their supportive affordable housing. So having seen the survey or more importantly the responses of town council candidates. There is a website you can go to. I can't remember that I send out the website link to everybody. I think so. Okay, well if not somebody tell me and I'll fix that problem. Okay, thanks very much. Are there any last minute comments. Okay, I appreciate everybody's time and contributions. I think this has been a good meeting, not too longer than it needed to be. Since it's only 10 minutes after nine. Okay, thanks and Nate if you and I and Lucia could stay on for a few minutes to respond to a question that she asked.