So maybe I'll go ahead and get started. Welcome to the Hitchcock Center, everybody. My name is Jessica Schultz. I am Communication and Living Building Coordinator here at the Hitchcock Center. I've been here for about seven and a half years now. So I've been a part of this living building project for that entire time, pretty much. We've moved into the building about two and a half years ago, so we've been settling in and enjoying it ever since and providing tours twice a month to our community for free. We have tours, and I'm saying this for the video purpose. We have videos, tours, first Friday of the month at four and the third Wednesdays at noon, and those are free. So who is the Hitchcock Center? How many of you already are familiar with what we do and who we are? Most people, but not everybody. OK, the quick version is we are an environmental education center. We work with all ages starting at pre-K, up through adults. Obviously, we're all adults here today, so you're part of our community programs. We have a preschool program and several after-school programs. We have homeschool programs. We have field trips for local schools to come to us. We also have classroom programs, and our environmental educators go into the classrooms of local schools as well. What's next? In building, so before we moved to this site, we were just about three miles up the road. We were in an old carriage house, which was very homey and cozy, and in true New England fashion had the rope between the floorboards, as many of you may recall. But we were sort of stuffed into our little corners in our staff area, and we just had two classrooms in that building. We also leased that building from the town of Amherst, and when we decided to embark on this process of finding a new building for ourselves, we realized we weren't able to add on to that building in that location. There were some wetlands restrictions, some property line restrictions, things that made it a little bit challenging. So we decided to find a new building, and we were invited to consider this location at Hampshire College. We do lease our land from Hampshire, and we own our own building, but we have joined the cultural village here at Hampshire. So the cultural village is the Eric Carle Museum, the Yiddish Book Center, and the Hitchcock Center as well. So we're in our visitor center today. We welcome the community and families here. We start with our welcome wall, which I'm not going to go into detail on, but just briefly. We welcome people to think about how our energy comes from the sun and how composting toilets here at the Hitchcock Center are normal. Maybe they could be normal in more places than just the Hitchcock Center. There are others, of course, in the state, but all of the kids, everybody who comes here, of course, composting toilets are normal. We have a series of ecological principles that form the foundation of all of the programs that we do here at Hitchcock. They also form the foundation of the Living Building Challenge, which is the building certification that we are hoping to achieve with this building. So we're going to talk about the Living Building Challenge as we go on the tour today. I'm not going to go into a great depth on all of it, but we are going to touch on some of the more important pieces of it. So our visitor center, we have several different live animals. We have a painted turtle. We have a spotted turtle who's rarely seen. We have two three-toed box turtles, and we have a corn snake in the front. All of these animals are ambassador teaching animals, and we do take some of them to classrooms to teach from in our various curricula. We have all kinds of drawers and things to investigate for families and kids who come to visit. We have a library. We've got puzzles, games. We often have parents and small children coming in just to spend an afternoon or a few hours exploring here at the Hitchcock Center. We also have a basking boulder in our south-facing front window. It was a boulder that we excavated from the site here, and we placed in that south-facing window just to kind of help everyone envision if these animals were to come out into the sun and bask in the solar energy and get that passive solar gain. What would that look like and what would that feel like? It doesn't quite have that functionality for our building, but it does allow the kids to crawl on it and get that sort of sense of what that's like. So during our tour today, we're going to start with water. We're going to look at some of the building systems in our basement. We're going to talk about energy. We're going to talk about building envelope. And then we're going to talk a little bit more about water at the very end. So I think we're going to, unless there are questions at this moment, I'm going to transition us to the next space and we'll start the conversation about water. There is no wood turtle here. No. They're either special concern or endangered. I don't remember the designation. Yes. OK. Follow me, please. OK. So we call this room our ecotone. An ecotone in ecological terms is a transition between different habitats. And here at the Hitchcock Center, it represents the transition from our south wing, where we have our open office area, our community meeting room, and our visitor center, to our north wing, which is our classroom wing, and also the wing that has most of our building mechanicals in it as well. But we thought this would be a really great space to start the conversation about water. And one thing I will say as we transition, you'll feel that it's colder in here. This is an unconditioned space, which means it has no mechanical heating or cooling, except for some passive ventilation up over this beam. So we do have some rooms in the Hitchcock Center that are similar to this. The bathrooms have no heating and cooling, the ecotone, no heating and cooling, and our storage area and our basement, no heating and cooling. So we were able to save some energy on those spaces. So here in the ecotone, we decided to start the conversation about water on the floor under our feet. We walk around outside, and we have a whole ecosystem under our feet. And here under our feet is the watershed that we live within, which is, of course, the Connecticut River Watershed, or a portion of it. We start in the south with the Westfield and Chickapee Rivers. We move up to the north. This is the oxbow in the North Hampton and East Hampton area. And just by your shoe there is the salamander, which is where we're located here at the Hitchcock Center, in that watershed. Quab and reservoir in the corner, which of course is in our watershed, but supplies water for the city of Boston all the way across the state. And then we move north to the Deerfield and Millers Rivers in the Greenfield Montague, that area, and then on up into Vermont and New Hampshire. We do have a larger display of a little bit more of the watershed on the glass in the corner, but it's, of course, a very expansive watershed. So from the watershed we live within in the region to our local watershed right here on our site, when it rains at the Hitchcock Center, it rains into the building. Water comes in via the yellow pipe on either side from two different roofs. It goes into a black centrifugal filter in the corner, which takes out leafy debris, seeds, anything that might get through our roof drains. It goes into the green pipe and starts to fill these translucent tanks. We call these translucent tanks our first flush tanks. And the purpose of the first flush inside the building when it fills these tanks primarily is to give us a sense of how much rain we can collect.  When these tanks fill, the water pressure pushes back against the green pipe, and water can be diverted into the blue pipe and into our reservoir. We have a 6,000 gallon reservoir under the front lawn of our building. And that will be eventually the water supply for our building. Because we've had very rainy weather this fall, you all probably know we've had the rainiest fall in about 200 years. So we get some very heavy rains. So of course we have more than 6,000 gallons coming down. So water can also be diverted into the bioswale. And the bioswale is an engineered structure that allows water to naturally filtrate back into the earth. So for the purposes of living building challenge, we cannot push water away from our site. We must manage everything that falls on our site on site because there is no a way. We don't wanna push it into a wetland or a sewer system. We wanted the water to be managed on this site as if our building was not here. So putting it back into the bioswale is our closest approximation to doing that. Any questions? How many gallons in the reservoir? You may have said that. 6,000. 6,000. And you said eventually we'll be the water supply? Yes. So we're gonna talk about our drinking water when we go down to the basement. Yes. Now this is an unheated space. That's correct. But everything is insulated. The windows are insulated. I'm suing the roof since. Yes. A lot of water in here. So it never, when we get down to minus two degrees, it never freezes in here? So when these tanks fill with meltwater, which has to happen when the temperature on the roof is at a melting point, right? Then water will fill in here. So we've had some melting this week because we've had some like 40 degree temperatures. And then the water will go down over a period of say six hours in these tanks. So it's never actually sitting in these tanks for long enough to freeze. So it's constantly circulating a little bit so it won't freeze. Yes, exactly. But it's never gonna get that cold in here anyway if you've got these air coming. It shouldn't, but I can't tell you what the coldest temperature, you know, if I was here at maybe three or four in the morning on our coldest night, I don't know what the temperature. We haven't tracked that. So I don't have that information. Any other questions at this point? Can you get these to be all the way empty? They, they're not at the bottom. They're not at the bottom. Take a look inside. So these tanks were designed, they're custom designed by our architect. We had design lab architects from Cambridge or Boston who designed our building. And our architect, Sam Batchelor, made a prototype in his backyard, connected it to his downspout and started testing it. Several months before he actually suggested that we do this display here. And then he said, hey, I've got this great idea.  We all want to know. And when we first moved into the building and even now when kids are new to the center and it's raining, they come running in here because you can hear the rain coming into the tanks and what does that look like? And you know, how much can we collect? Because we can all see the puddles filling. We can all see the rivers. There was more water rushing. But what actually is that? How much is it? And none of us knew when we started this project. These are demonstrations. These are. This is our actual water system in the building. This is from all of the roofs. This is from the north facing roof on the south wing and the south facing slope of the north wing. So if you look at our building in profile, you'll see a short and then a long. Well, for the south wing, it's short, short, long. And so this is the long. And then it's reversed for the north wing. So the long sides are the collectors for our water system. So this is an unheated space. Yes. Per coat, you have to have insulation, solid insulation throughout between unheated and the heated space, which you don't have. Plus that over there doesn't bring any heat in here. Because heat rises. It's going to be right up there. It's never going to bring heat down here. So I find that kind of interesting. That's a good question. And I'm not an expert on the code, so I can't respond to that in detail. But that's a great question. I think the code requires the exterior walls to be. No, between a non-heated and a heated or a non-heated and a cooled, you still have to meet. I'll be done. You still have to have. And the glass that we have here, I mean, this is not. This would not be insulated glass.  No, there's a gap. There's a hole. That's what she said. That's where the ventilation here supposedly comes in. But also, the beam there is a wooden beam. That would not be insulated because there would be a lot of thermal. Yeah. I just find it interesting. Probably don't tell anybody about it. No, it's not. No, it's not. You might have to put up grapes. There's some blowing polyurethane. Something to blow the heat down? Yeah. All right. I don't want to cut the conversation short on this. I'm not trying to hide from anything, but I am going to move us along. So feel free to keep talking about it. So I mentioned upstairs that the water system we saw up there was the beginning of our water system in the building. It will be because our own water system is not up and functioning. But I'm going to take you through it as if it is. So we have the reservoir under the lawn. The piping is going to come into the basement along that wall. It's going to come across the ceiling. You'll see two pipes across the ceiling. And one of those will have our reservoir water in it. It will come down and be brought into the filtration system via the pump here. We have a five micron filter, which is our first physical treatment of the water. We have calcite treatment, which changes the pH if our rainwater maybe is a little bit acidic. We have activated carbon filtration. We have one micron filtration. And then the primary treatment on the system that we're aiming for is ultraviolet light. Ultraviolet light renders bacteria incapable of reproducing. So we're still able to consume the water. Now, you might be asking the question, well, why not chlorination? Because every water system across the country depends on chlorination, unless even if they're using ultraviolet light or any other type of treatment. So the Living Building Challenge asks us to do whatever we can in this building without the use of chemicals. So that extends to our water system as well, unless the local permitting authority says no. So we have to advocate to do it differently, which is part of the Living Building Challenge. They have an advocacy piece. And if they say no, then we have to go with chlorination. But if they say, well, try an alternative. If it works, then great. If it doesn't work, then you're going to go the traditional route. So we've been in the building two and a half years. Why have we not gotten our water system up and running? Certainly, we've had lots of rain. We have lots of water. That's not an issue for us here in New England. So there's a couple of things. And I'm going to branch out to the Kern Center next door, which is also a living building here on Hampshire's campus. And they've been working on their water system. They've had theirs up and running. And they've had several months in a row where they've had something called high HPC counts. What is high HPC? HPC is a measurement of the effectiveness of the treatment of chlorine on the water. So it's a count of colonies of bacteria and then the effectiveness of the chlorine on those colonies. And so there's a standard that's set for a public water supply. We have a public water supply here because we have more than 25 people in the building. So we're held accountable to that standard. And so for the Kern Center, they had these high counts, and they had to come back off of their water and onto town water. And we saw that happening. And we thought, hmm, well, we wonder if we're going to have the same problem as well. So we just thought we would wait and see how that works out before we bring our water system online. So we're still in the process because treating water is a difficult thing to do. And treating it with ultraviolet light is a difficult thing to do because what happens with chlorine is you start the treatment at the source, the water treatment plant, like here. And then there's a chlorine residual all the way to the tap so that those colonies of bacteria are being treated and addressed all the way to the tap. But if you don't have that treatment all the way to the tap, then you can have colonies of bacteria building up at the tap. So that's one thing that we're resolving. Good questions. And I don't know exactly. Maybe boiling it takes additional energy that didn't meet our energy goal. And I'm not fully up to speed on reverse osmosis to speak to that. But then you still have the same issue that between our O filter and the balsam, you could still have bacteria build up. It's possible. And did you say so? Well, I assume if there's no bacteria that makes its past the UV, then there's no bacteria to grow downstream from it. Is there? Right. But it could enter from the faucets, go backwards. So if you were to sample water from your system, how would it compare to town water? Or Poland spring water. That's a great question. And actually, we're really looking forward to the day when we do bring our water online so we can actually do a taste test and maybe a sampling test to see what the sampling. Another thing that's weird about it is we actually don't end up drinking most of the water. Yes. And so you could have a final end stage process just to drink it right in the faucet. But if you're feeding it to your toilets or even your dishwasher, you probably will. Yes. But then that would be easier to just do a set for grape waters or something like that. Well, the interesting thing for me here is that this is a public water supply areas. And if functions in the same regulations, in the same set of supervision and regulations from the DEP that Amherst water supply at the Atkins Reservoir does or anything like that. So you're taking hardware designed for acre feet of water and you're putting a gallon there too. And if the systems are not, we're reinventing a whole new system here that can provide the same water quality standards as the Atkins Reservoir or whatever, the public water supply, but the hardware to do it at this tiny scale. That's a great point, Chris. And I just want to, maybe everybody knows Chris, but Chris Riddle was our owner's project manager on the project. So Chris is very knowledgeable about our project. But I will take that point and transition to the fact that we have these filter housings. So the filters that go inside them, this is the activated carbon filter. So Massachusetts DEP would require us to change this filter three times a year. I believe if I remember my statistics correctly that this filter can handle 150 gallons a minute. So obviously we're a net zero building that is net zero energy, net zero water. So our average water use in the building is roughly 35 gallons a day. So why did our engineers design a filter for our system that can manage 150 gallons a minute? Seems like a little over design. So our system, the system next door at the Kern Center has filter housings that are this big and the filters are under $100 each. So when we discovered this, we said, uh-oh, we might want to do a slight redesign. So we have invited the engineer who designed the water system for the Kern Center to come on board to our project. He didn't originally design this water treatment system but his knowledge is being built so much. He's become a local expert and this is part of Living Building Challenge to build local expertise in these alternative systems. So we're working with him and hopefully going through a redesign. But if this system were in our home, it would be, because we don't have 25 people living in our homes. Yeah, so you still wouldn't use that much. Oh no, you're right, right. But if this would be overkill, I mean. Yeah, because I mean, this is a surface, this is a surface water supply, which is a little bit different. I mean, you could do that at your home too but obviously many of us who live in Merle areas like myself have well water and I don't test my well water on a regular basis. Maybe I should, but there is a difference there. So there could be some contaminants coming in as well. Is there something like 150 building challenge buildings that have their plaques on the wall now? There are 22 fully certified buildings in the world. Wow, and two of them in Amherst. Two in Amherst, yes. Within five miles of here. This is a hotbed of living buildings. We have four in Western Mass. Four living buildings in Western Mass. There's one in Jamaica Plain. There's one being built in Dartmouth, South Dartmouth right now on the South Coast. I can't remember the other projects in Massachusetts. Those are the ones that come to mind. Is that a UMass Dartmouth? No, it's at the Lloyd Center for the Environment, another environmental education center. What you think about it was that the one in the Smith College, but it's not on the Smith College campus, it's north in Hatfield, West Hatfield. Waitly. And it has enough land area that it could have a well. And so they have a conventional well system. They didn't have to go through this whole roll-around with the public water supply. John Oliver building is not a living building. It is not. They were aiming for a LEED certification. I don't know if they have it yet. The John Oliver design building is at UMass. So if you haven't seen that building, I do recommend it. It's phenomenal. And it also, I will add to that point while we're on it. It's going to the UMass. The John Oliver design building. At UMass? Yeah. It's at John Oliver train station. No. So the Hitchcock Center and the John Oliver design building have recently received honor awards for sustainable design from the Boston Society of Architects. So it's a very exciting new development. So I'm going to move us on just a little bit here to say that one of the main ways that we save water, conserve water in a commercial building like this is through our toilets. How many of you used the toilets already since you've been here? Everybody. Awesome. So you're all familiar with foam flush toilets and you're all experts. It's super because that's one of the requirements of coming to our building that you all contribute to our composting system. So if you, thank you for doing that. So as you know, there's two toilets in each bathroom upstairs. The waste comes down via the diagonal pipe into the Clivus Composter below. The solid waste is composted in here. There's pine shavings. Then the human waste is contributed. We have a beneficial bacteria that are added every three months. Clivus services these. So they do come out and add those. We did have worms added as well. I haven't checked in with them recently to see if they've continued to find the worms. But sometimes the worms don't make it and then we have worms come from another composter and we try again. So the solid waste is in the composter here. The liquid waste gets pumped out into these leachate tanks here. I have a question for you all, which is why is this leachate tank more full than this one? Exactly. So we have more women that use the building than men and so when we do have to have these tanks pumped out, we do pump on the schedule of the women's tank. Maybe we would have designed it a little bit differently had we known, but hey, minor details. So I just wanna show you our building dashboard briefly. Many green buildings have building dashboards so you can see how they function. And we do have this one up on our website so you can access it there at any time if you wanna see it. We did organize ours through the framework of Living Building Challenge. The challenge has seven pedals or categories, but they like to use the image of the flower so they call them pedals. And within each of these pedals, there are a series of imperatives for a total of 20 imperatives. And each building that's fully certified has to meet all 20 of those imperatives. So I'm just gonna touch on three of them because we don't really have time today to talk about all of them, but Living Building Challenge does aim to be a holistic building approach. So you'll see we have equity in place, health and happiness and beauty here as well as energy, water and materials that I'm gonna talk about. So just to touch on energy, you can see that we've generated some solar energy in the last hour. We've borrowed some from the grid and what we've used in the building. And of course, today it's pretty gray. We've probably still got some snow on these panels above our heads. So we haven't loaned any. We're not net positive right now. We can dig into that data a little more. You can see in the green where our HVAC system starts up in the morning. The orange is our solar energy generation through the day. We can see that hourly. We can see it daily. You can see those two, three-ish warm days we had in February when our HVAC system actually turned off, which was very nice. And then we can see that monthly and so you can see the height of the solar gain in the summer and then the low point in the winter. So just popping over to water briefly. We're gonna have a similar thing here. We didn't have any rainfall yesterday. We don't have an update on our water because the information that goes there I actually read manually from our town meter downstairs. And I give it to the person who manages the algorithms for our site. So I didn't do that today. He's not on the job and I'm not on that job right now. So, but you can see we have 6,000 gallons in our reservoir, a full reservoir. And because we've been reading the meter for almost a year now, I'm getting close to having a total on that. And I think we're gonna be close to about two reservoirs for an entire year for our building. 12,000 gallons. We did have an anomaly. So right now my total is about at 14,000. And that anomaly of 4,000 gallons was because we had a oops with our janitorial sink that got left on for about 24 hours at full force. So that was 4,000 gallons drained in 24 hours from our, well not from our reservoir. But if it had been our reservoir it could have been a little bit of a crisis for us. So, I wanna jump over to materials. We haven't really talked about materials in our building yet. For me, energy and water are certainly very important but I think materials as equally as important. Our materials have to be sourced as locally as possible to our site to reduce carbon emissions and also to support local economies. Not everything is sourced locally but for the most part there's a certain percentage within a certain radii. But the most important thing for me with materials is the red list. And for those of you who've gotten your Daily Hampshire Gazette today you'll see my Earth Matters column on materials in the Gazette. Every material in the building has to be vetted against this red list of toxic no use chemicals and chemical families in the building unless there's absolutely nothing else available. So when we were down in the basement we talked a little bit about policy advocacy to change how we're managing some of our building systems. This is the market based advocacy to change the building industry and to change the materials that we're using in our building. So, just an example, I mean, we all know about asbestos, we know about lead and mercury. Some of these others might be a little bit newer to us. We see a lot of things now that are BPA free. BPA free might be great but then you need to ask yourself, well, what do they use instead? Because this is chemistry and chemistry is, well, it has a lot of alternatives. So instead of BPA it might be BPF or BPS and those chemicals may or may not be any better than what we're now free of. Formaldehyde, for an example, there's a case study with Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans where FEMA brought in trailers to house people who needed temporary housing. The materials in the trailer, I don't know, I don't remember whether it was the composite wood board or the insulation had formaldehyde in it. In hot climates, formaldehyde volatilizes. You cannot dissipate that with air conditioning. So people in these small confined spaces were exposed to extreme levels of formaldehyde. They developed respiratory illnesses and in some cases, cancers as a result. Another one. A woman shipped to Alaska or something like that. Until what? Where they were in use, I mean they just shipped them somewhere else. They have a lifetime and then they go on to I guess a secondary or tertiary market and they're supposed to contain a little sticker that says not for home occupancy or something like that. The little sticker is the case. But, well, frankly it doesn't matter what the size of the sticker is because if that's all you can afford then that's what you're gonna buy and you're gonna live there. So those things can propagate themselves in time. I just wanna mention one other while we're here which is this perfluorinated compounds. Is anybody familiar with perfluorinated compounds? Little bit, yeah? Okay, so anybody familiar with Teflon? Yeah. Yeah, stain resistance, stain resistance, water resistance, carpets, fabrics on your couches on anything you might have in your home. So perfluorinated compounds are behind all of those chemicals. They're also behind firefighting foams. So one of the big things that's happening right now is institutions like Harvard, Google, these big institutions who are purchasing a lot of products, a lot of fabrics are trying to eliminate the purchasing of stain resistant and water resistant fabrics from their supply chains to get these products out of the supply chain. Fire resistant pajamas for kids? Yikes, that sounds a little scary. But just you'll see these in the news. We have contamination sites here in Massachusetts in New York, in New Hampshire. There are sites across the country. You'll see these as PFAS, PFOA, and PFOS. And right now there's a very good documentary I recommend called The Devil We Know which really gets at some of the clats. What the chemical companies knew about these compounds and the class action lawsuit that sort of brought it out into the public sphere and how everybody in the world may have these products contaminating their bodies. We're seeing a lot of problems with firefighters. Yes, yes. And these burning buildings and the chemicals collect. Is it Boston that has the highest level of or is it just Boston that's been, or Cambridge that's been researched, the firefighters? I'm not sure, but I do know that in Cambridge. Yes, yes, yes, yes. What's the foam in the foam flush toilet? It's, I don't know exactly except to tell you that it's a napanol biodegradable alcohol-based soap. But napanol doesn't really tell you much because that's the brand, the brand of the toilet is napan toilet. So it does need to be a biodegradable soap to be in our composters. And I just talked briefly about the struggle it is to try to build a whole building without using any of those fabulous compounds. One of them was PVC. Try finding something that anywhere that doesn't have PVC in it. Text. What? Text. Is that PVC-free? Yeah, I think it's PVC-free. Oh, it's everywhere in the building industry. And so the, but right builders, our builder had to do was looking at the architectures. Find suitable substitutes for all of those things and they're everywhere. It's a monumental project. Delivering a building like this that's a healthy building that will not hurt either the occupants or the construction crew. What did it increase in the cost? We don't know. I mean, there's no, it's hard to really tangibly say. It's a, I've heard numbers from five to 20%. I don't know. It's certainly, there's certainly a cost premium because the administrator cost it for no other reason. The time it takes to, through the contractor to specify a product, to choose a product that's going to meet the specs and it doesn't have a red list and then it goes through an approval process for every little thing in the whole building. And this is part of where Living Building Challenge is trying to change how buildings are built not only in meeting the standard but in doing so building teams, the builders and the architects have to work together much sooner in the process because if the architect is specifying 20 lighting fixtures throughout the building and that building team is gonna have to vet all those 20 lighting fixtures and every piece of that lighting fixture has to be vetted. That's a huge burden. If they can reduce that number to 15 or 10 and simplify the building, then the burden of vetting all of those products becomes much easier. When I talk about the declare list, that's important. Yeah, so Living Building Challenge also has put together something they call the declare list, declare label, which allows manufacturers to step forward on their own initiative to put together basically an ingredient label for their product. It doesn't necessarily mean that it meets the red list and doesn't have any of those chemicals but it does allow the industry to self-declare. And it's a starting point for teams. So to talk about the building structure, the timber framing of the structure is glue lamb or Nordic lamb. It's made of black spruce and it's made of small pieces of trees that are glued together with a water-based glue to make a super strong engineered structure. We now have at least three buildings in Amherst that are made with this timber framing. The other buildings are all more than one story so the timber framing in those buildings is much bigger and beefier than it is here. We have press plate trusses holding up our roof, very standard in construction, not finished carpentry, but again, we're a teaching building and so we wanted everything to be visible. We have a tongue and groove spruce product on the walls and on the ceiling. On the outside of our walls and roof, we have six inches of reclaimed polyaso rigid insulation. And then on the outside of our walls, we have cedar siding. Underneath our slab, we have four inches of insulation so we have a very tightly wrapped building envelope. And because all of our mechanicals are on the inside of the building, then our walls and our roof for the most part can be solid and we have very few penetrations that can transfer energy in those wall systems. I just wanna say that we've talked about our drinking water in the building, we talked about our black water in the building, we talked a little bit about storm water in the building or outside the building, hopefully. But we did not talk about gray water in the building. So we do have a gray water system here, so obviously that's the water that goes down our sinks. It goes into a septic system outside, to a sand trap filter and then gravity feeds into our constructed wetland. From the constructed wetland, if there's an overflow or an excess of water, it can go into our leech field. So that is a pilot system for us, so we do have the septic tank and the leech field and it's interrupted by the constructed wetland. So you don't use it for flushing the toilets? We do not. So what do you do? Spray water into the compost or downstairs? Nope, it only goes back and transpires back into the environment. Or we don't use the gray water. I mean, it's from our, right, when we get our water system up and running, it will be from our rainwater to the sinks and then back into the gray water system. And then either transpired or if excess goes into the leech field, down into the ground. So we're just letting it go. The excess for your reservoir now goes into the leech field too. The excess from our reservoir. So our reservoir does have a flow through capability, so we don't have standing water in there. And so that overflow goes into our bioswale. So then it just filtrates back into the ground. So one last thing. When we did move here to this site at Hampshire, as much of this part of Amherst was, it was an apple orchard at one time. And they used a lead arsenic spray on the orchards. And so we had arsenic contamination in our soil here.  We did bury it in our parking lot. So it's here on site, we didn't have to spend time or money or energy chalking it away. But then we had to bring in clean fill to replace what we had taken away. And then we've been planting native species to do a recovery on our site.  So we do have trails that go out into Hampshire's campus, which all of our programs use. We do have around this play area here, we have a mud kitchen, we've got some uneven logs. We have some willow structures. So we're growing some willow trees. We planted stakes last year, last spring. So they'll be growing into willows and then we'll weave them together to form a structure so that the kids can go inside and have a little play space. And then we're finishing up with some additional teaching areas outside, which are yet to come. So thank you for coming on the tour today. I'm happy to hang out and answer any questions or you can challenge me on things that I have yet to learn still, but you're also free to head out if you'd like to. Thank you. Yeah.


Well for condos. Oh, it's really starting. I got to start thinking now.  I quit. Aloha and welcome to another edition of Condo Insider, a wise show about association living. Whether you're a board member or owner, you should find interest in many of the topics we have to help make your experience in your association better. Anyway, one thing that I would tell you about is that tomorrow is an important day. It's called first decking in our legislature. What that means is the bill hasn't gotten through all of the committees, it's dead. So of the 4,000 to 5,000 bills that were introduced this year, probably 200 or 300 remain as of tomorrow, making my job a lot easier. But it's also annual meeting season for associations, particularly condos. And so I'm invited as our guest today, Scott Shirley, director of training of associate, to talk about annual meetings and kind of the things we don't really ever talk about annual meeting, the most common questions. But Scott, welcome back to the show. Well, thank you for cornering me again onto the show. Tell me what you've been up to, and I understand you have a new job since I see a new title. Yeah, I've been appointed director of training for Associate Hawaii, helped the community managers and such, understand the statutes, the rules, the laws. We've hit the ground running already talking about emotional support animals, which seems to be still an issue for some reason. But looking forward to doing a lot of training, good people over there. Well, I have an emotional support wife, and I'm not sure that's quite the same thing. She's the same emotional support wife that wouldn't let you have your emotional support miniature elephant. So she's good. All right, all kidding aside. It is time for annual meetings for condo associations. Where does an annual meeting come from? Why do they have an annual meeting? Well, actually by statute you are supposed to have an annual meeting. In this, we call it an annual meeting, but in my opinion, the real name is it's the owner's meeting. Because it's a meeting of all the owners with the board and going over everything that happened good or bad over the last year and voting on issues and things like that. It's my opinion, one of the most important meetings of the association. And I know we're going to talk about some technical aspects of it, but I want to tell everybody that the things we talk about for the annual meeting also would apply to a special meeting of homeowners. Yes. So we talk about some technical laws and requirements. It also applies to special meetings of the homeowners because sometime during the years, boards will call a special meeting of the homeowners for a special purpose. And so what we're talking about will apply to that as well. So you go into the meeting and they give you an agenda. Where does the agenda come from? Oh, it's just made up. The agenda, well you would indicate in the bylaws or the governing documents the way the meeting is supposed to be run. If it's not a new project, then you're also going to have old business and new business, whatever was carried over from the last annual meeting. And of course, very important to vote on everything that the board did over the last year, approving of everything that they had done. Well, I know that just for clarification that the bylaws do require the order of business. So when you see the says call the meeting order, proof of notice, quorum, that's specified in the bylaws. So boards really don't have a choice. That's the order of business. Although Robert Schultz does provide for ways to amend the agenda, but without an amendment, proper amendment from the floor, the order of business will always be done in that order that's specified in the bylaws. And what would you say the major reasons you have annual meetings? Well, annual meetings are very important so that the owners can know what was going on during the course of the year. They may be reading the minutes or not, but it's for also their involvement in what's going on in the association. It is the owner's meeting. It is their meeting. They can actually make motions from the floor. That's not even on the agenda at that particular time. But you have certain things that have to be done. You might have an IRS rollover to do or appointing the auditor, voting on certain things that require a percentage of the ownership to vote on. That's beyond what the board could normally vote on. And it's a very important meeting to have that. Let's talk about some of the misunderstood things. And I think we'll do this in kind of a logical order from my perspective. So the board knows that it has to have an annual meeting, both by statute and by their governing documents. And so they want to call the annual meeting. And of course they need to have a quorum of 50% of the owners by person or by proxy. So the first step, as I understand it, is they're going to want to have proxies because absentee owners, people can't make it. And certainly proxies are a valid tool they're used in corporations to make sure that owners can be represented whether they can be there in person or not. The first notice is the notice solicit proxies, is that right? Yes. And you remember what that's about? Well, the notice to solicit proxies, if the board itself is going to solicit proxies, they have to follow a certain rule. You probably know it better than I even know it, that it has to be on 8.5 by 11 paper and why you're soliciting the proxies, what do you want to use it for and things like that. And that has to go out in advance. And because I probably ask it in a confusing way, I'm going to kind of read address this issue. The proxy form itself is established by law. Yes. If the board wants to use a proxy, it's established by law.  And we'll go back to the four boxes later in our discussion. And because the board has decided to solicit proxies, they must give the owners the right to include in the proxy solicitation an 8.5 by 11 sheet of paper that would say why maybe they should get the proxy instead of the board. Exactly. And so that has to be included in the same mailing as the proxy. And that's on the statute. And that has to be done 30 days before the notice of the annual meeting. So when you think about this and you back that up, the statute requires a minimum 14 days notice of an annual meeting. Yes. So if you have to give 30 days notice in the proxies, you're at 45 days. When you assume mailing time and everything else, most annual meetings, the solicitation begins about 75 days before the annual meeting, beginning with a notice at the property saying the board is going to solicit proxies. They have to use that form with the four boxes ultimately when the proxies go out. And saying to owners that if you want to solicit proxies or you want to say something, it doesn't have to be for the board. You may solicit it because you don't want to have a bylaw amendment. You have a right to include at no cost in the annual association mailing an eight and a half by 11 sheet of paper. That's right. Because I remember the old days where before the statute was changed two or three years ago, it used to say 100 words. 100 words. And I remember often owners because they made this political fight. They'd say, well, does the date February 9th count as one word or two words? And does the telephone number, does the area code count as a word plus the number of a word? Because it gets so menini on this whole thing on the 100 words. That's really 102 words. You can't mail it out. But the industry went and had the law change to read one side of eight and a half by 11 sheet of paper. And now the print type can be two-point print in order to fit everything on there. You can't read it, but it can be. You can have cartoons or photographs or whatever you want on an eight and a half by 11 sheet of paper. Political cartoons, yes. The interesting, the dynamic history for this is that why is it an eight and a half by 11 sheet of paper? Well, do you want to have an owner submitting 3,000 sheets of paper with their legal interpretation and all these documents that go off the internet as a major expense to the association? Yes. So they pretty much drew a line that said that an eight and a half by 11 sheet of paper as of two or three years ago. Once they do that, then the annual meeting goes out minimum 14 days, but usually around 30 days in advance because you have people going to the mainland or the addresses to the mainland and when they get the official proxy and then they get to submit that and choose who they want to have it. So anyway, let's talk about the proxy for a second. I've already said that the four boxes is mandated by law. Yep.  If all the material that needs to be on that piece of toilet paper, if we're supposing that, is there and signed, I would imagine it's still be, it's like many, many years back when I took my real estate exam through John Stapleton, he used to wave his arm around and say you could write a contract on a napkin on the hood of a car, which is true. You didn't have to use a standardized form. Yeah, that's an important point because if an owner put the minimum information, that is the date, their name and their signature and their unit number, and saying I'm given, Scott Shirley, my proxy for the annual meeting of ABC Association on March 10th, 2017 and signed it, the board would have to accept it because it's not their right to prohibit a person's free will to choose who they want to represent them. But when the board's list of proxies, because you have the quorum only, the board majority, the board equal, these other options, if the board proxy, the one that association mails, must include those four items. Yes. And those four items are? For quorum purposes only, to be given to an individual, which they would write their name into that individual, to be given to the board as a whole. And my least favorite is to be given to the board equally. Explain the four differences. Well, of course, quorum is, and I always recommend people, even if they're going to attend the meeting, send that proxy form in for quorum purposes only. You don't know if you're going to get sick, have an accident, and then suddenly not be able to make it to the meeting, and then because you didn't make it, there wasn't a quorum. At least they have a proxy that says for quorum purposes only, so that they can at least use that to establish a quorum. Then the other box is, and I probably don't even have these in order, but the other box is I give my proxy two, and then you would indicate who you're giving your proxy to. And you can give it to anybody. A friend, relative, a guy on the corner that you just met standing, waiting for the walk sign and all that kind of stuff. Then you can give it to the board where the board uses it equally, or as a whole, they all decide together, this is where we're going to put the votes, let's say, on the proxy. And then the last one is to be divided equally among the board members. So if you have a 1% ownership and seven board members, it's going to be split between those seven board members. So you're breaking that percentage down to even a smaller percentage for each board member. And to drill down on that, what people have to understand, if you had a seven-member board in your example, and only five board members were present, then you would take that percentage of ownership, the 1% hypothetically that you owned, and divide it by five, and each owner would be voting 0.2%, or one-fifth of your percentage of ownership. The board majority is that it's also common, with being of those five board members there, three of the two or the majority would then say, I want that whole 1% voted this way. Yeah, exactly. And that's those that afford choices, afford choices that are mandated by law, again recognizing that an owner could write on a piece of toilet paper with all the necessary information, I give my proxy to the board majority, or I give it to Scott Shirley, or I give my proxy for quorum only, and that would still be an acceptable and valid proxy. I think the other important thing to remember, too, say I gave my proxy to you, that doesn't mean I can't go to the annual meeting. Right. You can still vote my proxy, and I can just be sitting in the audience watching to make sure you vote the way I wanted you to vote, or something to that effect. As an owner, you have a right to attend a meeting, but you can still give someone your authority to vote and do a proxy at the annual meeting. Okay, this is quite interesting. Probably more than others on UNI who've done this many times. Too many times. We're going to take a short break from Condo Insider, and we'll be right back. Hello, I'm Marianne Sasaki. Welcome to Think Tech Hawaii, where some of the most interesting conversations in Honolulu go on. I have a show on Wednesdays from one to two called Life in the Law, where we discuss legal issues, politics, governmental topics, and a whole host of issues. I hope you'll join me. Hello, this is Martin Despeng. I want to get you excited about my new show, which is Humane Architecture for Hawaii and Beyond. We're going to broadcast on Tuesdays, 5 p.m. here on Think Tech Hawaii. Aloha, Kako. I'm Marcia Joyner, inviting you to navigate the journey with us. We are here every Wednesday morning at 11 a.m., and we really want you to be with us where we look at the options and choices of End of Life Care. Aloha. Welcome back to Condo Insider. We're going through annual meeting tips of some of the most misunderstood issues at annual meetings. We've already discussed the fact to have an annual meeting, you have to give notice, and certain owners have rights to have and sheet of paper with their request for your proxy by statute to balance the playing field. And once the call of the meeting is made, people go and it can be represented by person or by proxy, and Scott has told us that you can still give your proxy and go to the annual meeting. So now you're in the annual meeting and we're going to go through this order of business which is prescribed into bylaws, but probably the number one thing is that you're going to elect directors. Yes. And often they're usually elected by what we call percentage of common interest. So every unit has a different value based on maybe its size or whatever the developer chose its rationale, but you might have a 1% ownership interest or a 1.2% ownership. You're voting that number, you're not voting like one for your unit. You're voting this percentage of common interest. And bylaws will have differences. What's the difference? Well, straight voting is let's just say for example you have two positions coming open that are going to be elected on and you have three people running. That means on the ballot whoever has the proxy or whoever is voting will mark one to one name and one to another name and then of course one name is going to be left blank because they only have two votes because there's only two positions available. So straight regular voting. Cumulative voting however which I don't personally particularly care for because it's open for abuse in my opinion is you have two positions open three people running and instead of taking one vote to one name one vote to another name you can apply all your votes to just one name and that's what they mean by cumulative voting and that sometimes can cause some problems. Even the National Association of Parliamentarians doesn't recommend cumulative voting but the idea behind it is to give minority interests a way to stack their votes to get representation. Although I can tell you from experience I've been to meetings where an owner wanted to vote one and a half votes for one person and a half votes you have to use whole numbers when you do this. It gets really complicated particularly when you have an association with a percentage of audiences it can really be a bear to do that. So you go into the voting and certainly the people who either are there in person to vote or have a proxy get the vote and for the election of directors this can be the majority basically wins and if there's a tie somehow then there's going to be another ballot to maybe it's a limited one of the people not just in your example but in the whole thing. What meetings to vote on at the end of the week? There could be simple things let's say you had money left over from your budget at the end of the year you would normally do what is called an IRS rollover to roll that money into the next fiscal or calendar year that the association operates under so that they don't have to pay taxes on it. You are a non-profit organization might be voting on who to hire as the auditor for the association or maybe there's a bylaw amendment that's going to be put forth that would be taken as a vote as well. Because in general terms the IRS tax rollover resolution comes back from a situation I think it goes back in the 50s where you collected money and certainly some of the money you collect is reserves for like a future roof that back in the late 50s IRS filed a lawsuit trying to claim that was excess cash it was taxable and what was ruled at the end of the day or however that turned out in the end is that if the assembly meaning the owners votes to roll that over for a future year of use it becomes non-taxable and I've never seen that resolution defeated I don't think you've ever seen a no vote on it except for maybe somebody who didn't understand it but that's kind of almost every condominium year does the tax rollover and some bylaws will provide a position where you have to either prove the managing agents contract or select the auditor and those types of things but then comes up the issue of amending well let me give you before I go to this let's just say I'm an owner and I'm sending a meeting I make a motion I move that the board of directors be prohibited from raising the maintenance fees this year and if that motion comes up everyone's going to vote in favor of it probably is that legal it's not legal in the fact that you cannot make a motion that restricts the board or the association from doing what it is required to do both under statute and the bylaws right most people look at it as an amendment to the bylaws because the bylaws say the board has this authority and by you saying I'm limiting your authority that it's an amendment to the bylaws and therefore it's out of order let me reverse the motion a little bit I move that the board be advised by the owners present this meeting we would like you to try everything in your power not to raise the maintenance fees this year is that legal what it is is sort of like a resolution that this is what you're going to try your best to do over the next year is not raise maintenance fees but it doesn't tell you you can't it's advisory and non-biasing is what it is I think that's an important thing because I see you all the time at meetings not that example because everybody knows that's far fetched the owners want to make a motion to force the board to do something where in fact it either is a board decision or may even be contrary to the law so you couldn't vote on it you have to understand what's in the statute and what's in your own governing documents as well other motions which are usually the appointment of managing agents contract and the auditor doesn't appear in all bylaws it appears in some but whatever it is you would need to do and now we get to my favorite which is amending the governing documents so at a meeting of the owners you could amend the governing documents yes you could and if the board had a bylaw amendment to proffer to the owners can they do that or do they have to give notice if they're going to make a change to the bylaw and they'd probably go out with the proxy notice and everything explaining what the bylaw change is so that everybody understands it when they come to vote on it either by ballot or raising hands at the meeting or yay or nay whatever the case may be as long as it's the proper percentage right and so let's just say an owner who's not on the board says I want to make a motion and they have a very clever written out and when I've actually seen I'd like to amend the bylaws and strike the authority to vote for criminal voting is that a legal motion made by an owner it is because it is the owner's meeting and motions can come from the floor just like even in the voting for directors three people have volunteered to run for a director you could still have somebody nominated from the floor to be added to that list an owner making a motion to amend allows a certain way at the meeting does not require notice but with the board doing it it does require notice the statute says the board has to give notice to the owners that are proposed by a law and the reason why they're recommending it but doesn't prohibit an owner at a meeting for making their own motion he'll either have the 65 67% yeah for 514B it's 65 for 514A but they will either have the requisite percentage of the people one of the things that people have to understand owners have to understand is that this meeting of the owners is a lawful meeting and things can happen and when you get someone in their proxy you're trusting in their judgment to either vote for or against whatever comes up at the meeting and frankly it very rarely comes up bylaw and declaration amendments that the board hasn't noticed they haven't gone through something but to tell you I haven't seen it would not be true because I know an association that hated cumulative voting and they knew all the owners hated cumulative voting except for the one guy who got elected every time from cumulative voting and so they planned on their own to go to the meeting and an owner on his own to plan this motion to do away with cumulative voting which was adopted like 10 or whatever it was and it got adopted and went through I don't want to say litigation but some kind of mediation whatever which resolved that yes the owners can do that and which is again another you know the statute says you'll run your meetings by parliamentary procedure and that's why I think especially when you're having a large group maybe you have 100, 200 or more at that annual meeting to have a parliamentarian or somebody with parliamentary procedures helping and assisting that meeting run because they know how the motions are supposed to be made and what to do and a lot of time in this proxy solicitation process owners will call the management company and say I want to see all the proxies before the meeting who's giving who what can they see that that's a good question can they no they can't because I've actually had people call me before and say I want to see who has that proxy what they can do is see the proxies that are given to them so four or five people gave them a proxy they can say these four or five people gave you a proxy so if they were looking for others they could be calling that person say did you send it realizing that some people just brush them off and say okay they have no intention of giving them a proxy but the statute does provide that after the meeting owners for 30 days have the right to inspect the proxies and inspect the tabulation which would mean the calculation of who won or lost and inspect the actual ballots which still maintains the secret ballot provision because most of these ballots don't have any identifying factor on the whole thing another question so at the meeting I should give you a test I should have done a test here for some kind of prize or something on this that's right so owners at the meeting say I want to know how many proxies the board has before the meeting and before the voting do they have an obligation to disclose that I think it would be up to the board whether they wanted to disclose that or not well it's up to the board but factually speaking no because the ballot is the secret ballot provision that the board has the right to vote its representation just like the owners with proxies don't have to disclose it in theory the board doesn't have to say what percentage of proxies they have before the vote and the vote is secret so like you mentioned most people don't have their name on it but it could be based on a percentage ownership of course that's what your vote is going to be and actually somebody would have to do a hell of a lot of work to figure out how many owned in this percentage ownership how many sent in proxies to try to figure out who those proxies belong to in the long run it's not worth it because we only have one minute left I just want to add one thing so I'm not going to ask the question I'm going to give you the answer oh good tell me that say what is the answer sometimes people miscalculate the votes and they're afterwards they find out the vote wasn't added correctly the board can't change the vote that was announced at the annual meeting if in fact they have found an error people will have to notice a special meeting for the purposes of having a recount it has to be done within I think it's don't hold me to this but I think it's within 90 days of the meeting I believe you're correct and with respect to that so the board just can't change it they would actually have to call a meeting of the homeowners and they would have to have the homeowners vote to have a recount and I've been in meetings where they voted not to have the recount which means you're stuck with the original amount of the who was elected and I think in the long run even if they did a recount it probably wouldn't affect a change well there's a lot of stories but we're down to our last minute on a very exciting topic you and I can spend days discussing this but they only give me 28 minutes for a show so I'm going to thank Scott Shirley for being here today thanks for having me again thank all of you for watching Condo Insider we'll be back with more annual meeting special meeting tips in the future we just got on the surface of this topic but thank you for watching Condo Insider welcome


What's the word y'all welcome back to Kenny for real man the off-season is here man this morning shams and wolds You're breaking news and that free agency starts. I'm not not free at C NBA trades can go through tomorrow And though I love watching the game of basketball is very satisfying to see the ball go through the net here in the squeaking of the shoes The most important part to me or the most fascinating part to me is the building of teams Orchestrating teams to win basketball games is so fun. So the off-season is super super exciting to me So it's officially starting. I guess now because we already have a trade We all know that tampering happens in the NBA all the time How the hell does Tim and fake Moscow get a contract at 1201 and I think that was 2015 2016 They had to be talking way before him So we know that tampering goes down and we know that GM's are calling other GM's maybe when they not supposed to Nobody cares about that because it makes for great conversation and we have our first official trade Be sure to leave a like on the video subscribe if you're new and use that comment section because this is my channel And I'm just giving out my opinions, but it is a discussion at the end of the day So let me know what you think about the trade, which was Dennis Schroeder for 28 and Danny green On paper It looks like someone may have got finessed Once it went down I think the overall consensus on NBA Twitter was like that's all they got for Dennis Schroeder Let me read y'all or tell y'all how good Dennis Schroeder was last season He was my pick for six man of the year Even though he played starter tight minutes He was a part of the okc team where they run in a three-guard lineup That was one of the best lineups in the league He had just come off his best statistical season of his career average in 20 points per game off the season Shooting the three ball like his three-point shot actually looked good And one of my favorite plays from the season had to do with Dennis Schroeder with Steven Adams launch that thing Got full court pass to Dennis Schroeder alley you well I guess it was an alley you touchdown pass to send it to overtime in that game where Chris Paul was snitching on somebody having His jersey untucked one of the best games of the season Dennis Schroeder was a big part of that My six man of the year We knew that okc was a team that was selling and that might be one of the reasons why they didn't get Everything back that maybe me or you were thinking they could it is known to the whole world That all the veterans on that okc roster are available and they didn't want them back Not that they didn't like Dennis Schroeder not that they didn't like Chris Paul But they're going to a different direction in their franchise. So we know CP's gonna get traded We know Gallinari's not gonna come back Maybe it's a sign of trade situation or maybe he just completely walks a free agency and we knew that Dennis Schroeder And maybe Steven Adams will be out the door So what I'll let you know if I know it that means all the other 29 general managers in the league know that hey Dennis Schroeder is available and we may not have to give up too much and the Lakers pounced on that and the Lakers look great right now They gave up Danny Green and listen.  I'm in that campus. Well But Danny Green is still a very good NBA player. There's a reason he is a back-to-back NBA champion He does contribute to good level defense and knocking down shots. That's he's always gonna be able to do that But they didn't need him in LA let's be honest They didn't need him in LA last year his contract and he wasn't amazing He's good at it But he wasn't amazing and this is looked at to be an upgrade me and my guys were talking about this on a podcast You should listen to that by the way I'm talking about the Lakers in the 28th overall pick in this year's draft And what could the Lakers be looking to do if they didn't trade it and basically we came to the consistency of They're probably gonna have to draft a point guard like a veteran college veteran point guard That spent three to four years because they need somebody to come in and help them now because they're the damn Lakers They just won a championship is gonna be harder to win a championship this year They need players that could come in and help now they didn't even know projects So we were trying to figure out the point guards to do that and they turned that into a veteran point guard Who's really really good now didn't sure to had said just a couple days ago that his agent was talking to To the LA teams and he didn't really like the idea of playing in LA well Sorry brother, and it's not that I don't think it's that The opportunity he's not thinking about opportunity. I mean RJ RJ Richard Jefferson Cheney Fry Who was did Jared Dudley? These are all guys that have come out and said that like It takes more than just being a good NBA player to play alongside LeBron James You have to completely remote the way you play basketball to accommodate LeBron James and not everybody's built for that And maybe that's what then it's true to say like man I'm just coming off a 20 point per game season off the bench and now I got to turn it to somebody different to play alongside LeBron I mean, it's like a give or take right that could potentially get you a championship if you can mold yourself Or you could look weird to like you remember when Derek Rose was sitting in the corner with the Cleveland Cavaliers Why the hell was Derek Rose is sitting in the corner waiting to get three pointers? It's just weird at the end of the day the Lakers look great because Rondo it's already been expressed that he was going to opt out and the way he played in the bubble and the way he played In the playoffs they're gonna be a lot of contending teams that are looking at Rizan Rondo to either be their point guard or their backup point guard So a market is heavy for Rizan Rondo KCP with Danny Green being gone This is a place where KC people like y'all really need me now Y'all really need this wing defense y'all really need this three-point shooting and he might get a nice little paycheck But it was also rumored that he might go and play to play in Atlanta So it's a lot of different things that the Lakers are going to have to deal with and they just dealt with the first thing And it happens to be getting dinner shooter now. I like dinner shooter as a six-man role I don't know what they're playing is to is he's coming back to a start because though He did put up good counting numbers with the Atlanta Hawks as a starter It just didn't really look great and maybe he's older He's more wise and he's just a better player now and he can be a starting point guard again But I did like when he was a six-man it just worked to to perfection to perfection now. Okay C's part I Think we are about to see With the trade starting and in Trade markets up there. We might be seeing a bunch of different trades. They're like we come to the conclusion They're like that might have been Less than what we thought his value was right because dinner shooter again all things I said about dinner shooter being positive He is still Making a decent amount of money like as much as you want to put him on another really good team for more of a package Another contender for more of a package the market may not have really been there for dinner shooter as good as he is He's still making 15 plus million dollars a year So and Sam Presti and the OKC Thunder has said with with the Chris Paul trade. They were looking to get additional contracts Danny Green is coming to OKC But he's only on the last year of his deal, right? So there might have been teams calling for dinner shooter that we're giving up two three-year contracts and Impressing them don't really want that but as a second year in a row where They traded us a really good road player for a late first-round pick If you do not remember Jeremy Grant was traded to the Denver Nuggets for a pick that turned out to be I think 25 in this year's draft and now dinner shooters gone for 28 now These are places in the draft for you can hit a home run or get good solid role players But at the end of the day It is a late first-round pick and a lot of these players don't pan out So hopefully they got a great scouting team or whatever to to make things work But they do have two late first-round picks Maybe they're gonna try to package those to move up to a team is trying to move back I don't know this office is about to be about to be crazy But as I mentioned earlier, we're talking about OKC. That was a known selling team So even when we get to the Chris Paul trade, we might look at it and be like man Don't you think they could have got more? Right Don't because they had already they told Chris Paul you are getting traded They gave Chris Paul the opportunity to talk to other franchises. He's out the door So why the hell if I'm the Phoenix sons I give up this and that and I know that they promised him he is going to get traded So that might have been a situation within the shooter. Okay. See fans I I can understand you being kind of frustrated with this again You knew that you were going to have to trade in the shooter But maybe you want a little bit more and maybe you hit on 28 and you don't care anymore But I've been seeing okay sees fans like saying like they don't want Danny Green there and I can understand that I Thought that this was gonna be a trade that was going to need a third team to take Danny green Because he can contribute on a contender It'll be weird to see him there and even I do think he'll probably only be there for half a season And they'll trade him at the deadline. That just feels like a type of thing Okay, see what do but Danny green is a type of player that'll still come in give you good rotational minutes They already have a lot of like wing players and like Shay Lou door There's bases more like a 3-4 more than a 2-3, but like you give him saying there's they have a lot of young depth there And Danny green just be taken like 25 minutes a game from somebody So I can understand you not wanted Danny green in the roster and probably wanted a little bit more But again, this could be just the first trade of many that we look on and be like I thought they was going to get more Right Chris Paul trade Russell Westbrook trade is a good one like we I feel like these are going to be Big name players that get traded for less than what we may see their value as at the end of the day The reason these general managers have this job is because they're they can understand the talent Evaluation part of things that may be me as an outsider camp Sam Presti is known as one of the best general managers in the general managers in the league So I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt at the end of the day But right now I look like They didn't get that much for one of the best backup point guards in the league, you know But it's just the first trade of many. Oh the Lakers and Thunder Have an agreement and principles on the deal with Dennis Schroeder in the 28th pick league sources to okay So it's official official now. It's official official. It's not writing But it's official official that it's done with Dennis Schroeder the Lakers could get another solid playmaker Who has become a effective catch a shoot? Yes. He has done that. So that's it y'all Let me know what you think about this trade It's just the first one and there's more trades break if it's at this level I will make a video if we talk about a lower end of a rotation player getting traded I'm not making a full video about that But Dennis Schroeder is good enough to help a team that is trying to win another championship So that's why this was important enough to make it. All right I'll see y'all probably tomorrow because we're gonna see more trades, baby. Peace


أنه هو سيوان هوكن ستيفون هوركينز is an English theoretical physicist a cosmologist and an author who wrote many books he occupied at a particular time the seat of the father of physics Isaac Newton and before Stephen Hawkins only 17 people actually occupied that seat as they say so it's highly respected in the academic world his field of expertise is two fields that he specialized in general relativity and quantum gravity Stephen Hawkins authored a book many years back and I managed to read it it's called The Grand Design and in this book he speaks about the history of scientific knowledge he also speaks about the universe and he also explains the 11 dimension the M theory basically and in this book he argues that invoking God is not necessary anymore we don't need to believe in God's existence especially we've now got answers for the origins of the universe so Isaac Mulchid is an atheist so why am I mentioning this I was reading some forums and social media outlets youngsters, youths, our brothers, our sisters who go to university and their discussion was revolving around two main points that is he might have died as a Muslim Allah might have forgiven him who are we to judge him and some Muslims will say he is a disbeliever he may even be from the kufar but may Allah forgive him Allah does as he wishes he forgives who he wants statements like this I want to speak regarding what the Shari'a believes this Allah says إن الذين كفروا من أهل الكتاب والمشركين في نار جهنم خالدين فيها أولائكهم شرروا البرية Allah tells us in this verse He says إن الذين are the ones كفروه disbelieve in Allah the Jews and the Christians الله سبحانه وتعالى He tells us that they are in the Hellfire في نار جهنم خالدين فيها that they are in the Hellfire they will stay there forever and then Allah tells us أولائكهم شرروا البرية and that they are the worst of people in another in a hadith sorry in a hadith collected by ألمام البخاري المسلم من حديث أبي هريرا the prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم he says لا يسمع بي أم أولادي نفسي بيده I swear by the Lord in which my soul is in his hand لا يسمع بي أحد no one hears of me من هذه الأمة from this ummah يهودين whether he is a Jew ولا نصراني or he can be a Christian ولم يؤمن بالذي أرسل to be he and he doesn't believe in that which I have been sent out with نبي الله محمد he doesn't believe in it he rejects it he is away from it إلا كان من أصحاب الناري except that person is going to be from the inhabitants of the Hellfire the Hellfire is going to be his final is going to be his final abode and as you can see from these نصوص which are all محكم crystal clear كالشبس وفي رابعة النهار that anybody who dies upon a way other than the prophet's way and does not believe in the prophet's message and does not believe in الله سبحانه و تعالى as oneness in worship is not a believer let alone a person who doesn't believe if الله سبحانه و تعالى exists or not is even worse الله سبحانه و تعالى he tells us he says in the nada'a و لقد ذرأنا لجهنم كثيرا من الجن والإنس لهم قلوب لا يفقهن بها ولهم أعين لا يبصرون بها ولهم آدان لا يسمعون بها أولائك كالأنعام بل أولائك كالأنعام أولائك كالأنعام بلهم أظل أولائك هم الغافلون الله سبحانه و تعالى he tells us that he is certainly الله سبحانه و تعالى has certainly prepared the Hellfire for many of the children of Adam and many of the jinn they have with them الله tells us لهم قلوب لا يفقهن بها they have hearts but they truly don't understand he might be the most smartest academic he might be a cosmologist he can be whatever he may be but he doesn't believe in Allah الله tells us لهم قلوب they have hearts but they don't understand وَلَهُمْ أَعْيُنُواْ لَا يُبُسِرُونَ بِهَا eyes but they can't see the truth وَلَهُمْ أَدَالُواْ they have ears لا يسمعون بها which they can't hear the truth when it comes to them الله سبحانه و تعالى he tells us أولائك كالأنعام those people are like the livestock they are like the cattle and Allah then tells us that they are even more astray than the cattle and Allah tells us that they are what that they are from the heedless ones in another ayah الله سبحانه و تعالى he tells us أفرأيت من اتخذ إلهه هوا أفأنت تكون عليه وكيلة أم تحسب أن أكثرهم يسمعون أو يعقلون إنهم إلا كالنعام بلهم أضلوا سبيلا الله سبحانه و تعالى he says do you not see Muhammad those who follow their desires they made their desires their Lord that's what governs them whatever their desires they follow it when it tells them stay away from they stay away from their إله is their desires then Allah says to the prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم are you going to be a wakil a representative for those individuals أم تحسبوا do you think أن أكثرهم that the majority of these people يسمعون that they hear or يعقلون or they even have عقل the intellects that they claim that they have do you think many of them have it are nothing except like the livestock even worse than it even more astrayer than it and the reason the watch with between them and the animals is that the animals as Allah says صلى الله عليه وسلم والذين كفروا the disbelievers يتمتعون ويأكلون كما تأكلوا أن عاموا والناروا مثلهم that they eat and they enjoy themselves in this world just like the animal but at least the animal doesn't have intellects he's الله سبحانه وتعالى تفاصد but these people were brains were given to them and they went astrayer so people who Allah has spoken about like that for a believer to come and then to justify their disbelief it's very worrying والذلك الشيخ الإسلام محمد من عبدالوهاب رحمه الله أثري بك where he called it نواقظ الإسلام one of the things that nullify a person's Islam and from the third ناقب the third nullifier he mentions من لم يكفر المشركين أو شك في كفرهم أو صحح مدهبهم كافر إجماعان الشيخ الإسلام محمد من عبدالوهاب he says the one who does not label the disbelievers the idol worshippers the polytheists he doesn't label them as disbelievers he doesn't see them he thinks الله علم he doesn't أو شك في كفرهم or he doubts their kufr and he said who are we to judge أو صحح مدهبهم or he justifies his belief and he says religions are like seas rivers lakes ponds they have different names but they all contain water religions are different names but they all contain the truth أو صحح مدهبهم كلام فلسفي أو صحح مدهبهم كافر إجماعان محمد من عبدالوهاب he says they are disbelievers by consents and he's not the first person to transmit that consents he was preceded in that consents before him قاد عياد he transmits إجماع in the second volume of his كتاب الشفاء شيخ الإسلامي بنو تيميا in his مجموعة الفتاة he brings the إجماع عبدالله ابن عبدالرحمان أبو بطين he brings it in الدورة السنية the إجماع that this matter is disbelief is known by consents so it's a very worrying matter that a person would do this the prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم wrote a letter to هرق العظيم الروم he wrote a letter to him and the prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم told him to come into Islam and from the things that the prophet said to him صلى الله عليه وسلم he said فإن توليت if you turn around and you dismiss what I have told you and you turn away from it فعليك إثم العريسيين upon you is the sin of your people your people's sin will be on your shoulders because you're the one who misguided them and as I said to you before this individual he wrote a book he called it the grand design and in this book of his he calls clearly to atheism and disbelief يحملون أوزارهم كاملة يوم القيامة ومن أوزار الذين يضلونهم بغير علم على سامة يزيرول they will not only take his own sins but he's going to take the sins of the millions of people or the thousands of the people in which he is calling to disbelief أقولوا ما تسمعون وأستغفروا الله لي ولكم والسائر المسلم من كل ذنب فاستغفرواه إنه هو الغفور الرحيل الحمد لله رب العالمين له الحمد الحسن والثناء الجميل وشدوا الله إلا الله وحده لا شريك له يقول الحق وهو يهد السبيل وشدوا النسيد ونبينا محمد صلى الله عليه وعلي وعاله وأصحابه والتابعين لهم بحسان إلى يوم الدين أما بعد وين الله سبحانه وتعالى وإنه مستنجا بلايس كفر علي لا one has the rights to come after that and to say if Allah wishes he will forgive them or these people الله أعلن if they disbelievers تكفير and labeling a person as a non-believer this is the rights of Allah and if he does it we do it and if his prophet labels a people disbelievers we also do the same الشيخ الإسلام ابن القيم رحمه الله he says القفر حق الله ثم رسوله بالنص يثبت لا بقول فلاني من كان رب العالمين ورسوله قد كفراه فداك فداك دول كفراني ابن القيم says القفر is the rights of Allah and his messenger القفر حق الله ثم رسوله it's Allah and his messenger's rights they can give it to whoever they wish بالنص يثبت لا بقول فلاني كفر can be established by a textual evidence not by the statement of a scholar however high a scholar is he's not the one who is able to give تكفير on a person it's the rights of Allah and his messenger رب العالمين anyone who Allah the Lord of the heavens and the earth place تكفير on him ورسوله and his messenger place تكفير on قد كفراه فداك دول كفراني then this person is a disbeliever the Jews and the Christians and the atheists and the communists and the socialists and all of them Allah and his messenger made تكفير on them we place تكفير on those people Allah and his messenger have I now move on to the second part in which I want to speak about in my خطب which is once we have proven that these individuals are disbelievers are we then allowed to say Oh Allah forgive them and can we do ترحم on the disbelievers do we have the rights to do so the messenger صلى الله عليه وسلم لما حضرت أبا طالبن الوفاة وان أبو طالب death came to him oh he was on his deathbed دخل عليه رسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلم the messenger entered on to him وعنده أبو جهل وعبد الله بن أبي أمية أبو جهل was on one side of abu طالب and the other side عبد الله بن أبي أمية was on the other side and so the messenger entered on to his uncle and he said to his uncle اي عم قل لا إله إلا الله كلمة أحاج لك عند الله say this word لا إله إلا الله أحاج لك I will argue on your behalf بها عند الله بساعد الله سبحانه وتعالى I will argue for you جس إله إلا الله فقال أبو جهل وعبد الله بن أبي أمية أبو جهل عبد الله بن أبي أمية فرعون هذه الأمة أبو جهل عبد الله بن أبي أمية they both said to the the prophet's uncle أبو طالب they said to him يا أبا طالب أو أبو طالب أترغب عن ملة عبد المطالب are you going to desire other than the religion of your granddad عبد المطالب is the religion of your father عبد المطالب are you going to take a religion other than his then the messenger صلى الله عليه وسلم looked over his uncle and his uncle responded by saying هو على ملة عبد المطالب أبو طالب is upon the religion of his father عبد المطالب so he died that way the messenger صلى الله عليه وسلم loving his uncle looked at the situation and he said the following he said لا أستغفرن لك ما لم أنه عن I will ask forgiveness for you ما لم أنه عنك as long as I am not prevented from it I will ask Allah to forgive you and I will ask الله سبحانه وتعالى to not hold you account for what you've said and done then the ayah came down ما كان للنري والذين آمنوا أن يستغفروا للمشركين ولو كانوا أولي قربا من بعد ما تبين لهم أنهم أصحاب الجحيم it is not permissible for the messenger صلى الله عليه وسلم and the believers after it becomes clear to them that this person is a disbeliever and he died upon that way that you ask forgiveness for that individual it is not permissible and then Allah reminds the believers just so they may not say what about Ibrahim who said to his father سأستغفرن لك I will ask Allah's forgiveness for you what about him then Allah responded by saying وما كان استغفار إبراهيم لأبيه إلا عن معظة وعدها إياه فلما تبين له أنه عدو لله تبرأ من إبراهيم his forgiveness for his Lord was only a period of time he was also told to stop it and then he breathed out from it so asking forgiveness for them is not permissible and Allah سبحانه و تعالى has already told us that these individuals Allah won't forgive them and this is from the sunnah of Allah it will not change for anybody Allah says إِنَّ اللَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا وَصَدُوا عَنْ سَبِيلِ اللَّهِ ثُمَّ مَمَاتُوا وَهُمْ كُفَّارُوا فَلَ يَغْفِرَ اللَّهُ لَهُمْ Allah tells us سبحانه و تعالى that those who died and they blocked the people from the path of Allah Allah is not going to forgive them and this is something that Allah has destined the most merciful the one that is more generous and kind to us than our mother is has told us فَلَنْ يَغْفِرَ اللَّهُ لَهُمْ Allah is not going to forgive them إِنَّ اللَّهِ لَا يَغْفِرُ عَنْ يُشْرَكَ بِهِ وَيَغْفِرُ مَا دُونَ دَالِكَ لِمَا يَشَاءَ Allah forgives anything below shirk as for the one who dies upon disbelief Allah doesn't forgive them إِنَّهُ مَا يُشْرِكِ بِي اللَّهِ فَقَدْ حَرَّمَ اللَّهُ عَالَيْهِ الْجَنَّةِ وَمَا أُواهُ الْنَارِ وَمَا لِذْ ظالِمِنَ مِنَا مِنْ أَنْصَارِ anyone who dies on that Allah has made جنة حرام from them so we need to believe in that we shouldn't be worried and concerned what others may say this is the religion of Allah سبحانه و تعالى and I want to also bring to the attention of many parents the parents generally nowadays they get concerned about their children who are on the streets who are selling drugs and alcohol who are up to no good those children they deserve us working on them guiding them and bringing them to the religion and making them practice their deen as they should do but there are also another group of youngsters and our children who are also in a situation sometimes even worse than those who are on the streets which is those who go to universities who are studying these academic sciences such as philosophy and they are studying these courses and they come out and some of them have atheistic beliefs and many of them have visited me in this message they told me not to tell their parents that they have doubts about Allah's existence سبحانه و تعالى whether he exists doubts have been thrown into their hearts I studied linguistics in university what has linguists got to do with religion but in the course that I was doing in the linguistics course I was being told does language is it an innate ability is it something that is built within us and so the teacher said that theory is wrong language is not innate ability and the reason I asked what was the reason she doesn't want to believe in the innate ability that we have of language because she wants to dismiss that there is a God that plays that language in you يا اخوة and the fight against Allah and the religion is very deep we need to be sharp we need to know what's taking place around us and we need to equip ourselves with our religion و الله سبحانه و تعالى his deen is calling us to الله مغفل لنا دنوبنا و إصرافنا في أمرنا و ثبت أقدامنا و انصرنا على القوم الكافرين الله مغفل لنا هزلنا و جدنا و خطأنا و عمدنا الله ملا تجعل دنيا أكبرها منا ولا مبلغا علمنا ولا تصلط علينا بدنوبنا ملا يخافك فينا ولا يرحمنا ربئات نفوسنا تقواها و زكها أنت خير من زكاها أنت وليها و مولاها ربنا آتنا في الدنيا حسنة و في الآخرة حسنة و قنا عذاب النار وأقن الصلاة