We call this meeting to order. We have three reports to act on today. We do have a quorum and the clerk is checking the attendance records to see who's entitled to vote on each of the reports. And first up we have Brenda Grieke, 10 Heaver Road. So you can come right up here. Right where you were sitting before, yep. You're getting set up. Do you want me to get the list here? Yes, please. Here's the list of folks who can vote on this one. Bob, me, Jack, Carrie, not here. Tim, Mark, Sal, Kim, Mary, Sarah, and Rosie. So if I didn't name you, then this particular one we can't vote on. Okay. And what we're going to do is we're going to hear from the committee that issued the report and we may have questions and then you can state your opinions or thoughts about that. And I should tell you that the members of the board have already read everything. So even if you don't get a lot of questions, that doesn't mean we're not paying attention or fully considering the arguments. And so the committee for this one is Sarah Carter, Kim Cheney, and Mary Hooper. Who would like to proceed? Do it since the one we wrote the report. Okay, I'll try to. I have hearing aid. We all have that problem in this room, I think. So as noted, the committee was Sarah, Kim, and myself. We visited the property and briefly looked in the house and viewed the exterior as well as the neighborhood. Ms. Grieka's principal reason for appealing the decision was the neighborhood conditions. And so we spent a good deal of time thinking about the neighborhood condition in her letter to us. She suggested three comparables or what we understood that she was offering as three comparables on George Street. We considered those. But as I said, we looked principally at the neighborhood conditions and because she had raised that as a concern, considered the houses on either side of her. And sorry, I probably ought to look at this rather than trying to do it by memory and jumping around. So the George, in summary, the George Street properties we really didn't feel were particularly comparable to Ms. Grieka's. And I'm not going to repeat myself. But we did, as I said, look at the two immediately adjacent. One on the right-hand side was remarkably similar and is valued at a higher rate than Ms. Grieka's. And on the left-hand side actually sold recently or sold sometime 21 for $310,000 and it was assessed a little bit less than that, but significantly, 20,000, almost 21,000 more than Ms. Grieka's. And based on that, it seemed to us that some sort of consideration had been given to the neighborhood issue that Ms. Grieka raised. I must say that upon our visit, we did not observe anything that gave us reason to be concerned. But I think our principal message was that, in fact, this property seemed to have been assessed at a slightly lower value than particularly the one immediately to the right, which was remarkably similar to Ms. Grieka's property. And based on that, we recommend that, we didn't feel that there was enough evidence that had been presented to dispute the assessor's finding and we recommend that it be upheld. Any questions from members of the board before we hear from Ms. Grieka? Okay, Ms. Grieka. And maybe just as a matter of explanation, we did receive, I think the whole board received the second piece of information that Ms. Grieka sent. That seemed to be offering additional testimony, which was not, I mean, we cannot consider that because it was outside of the hearing, you know, the parameters of the hearing. So I just, I wanted to acknowledge that, in fact, we received it. I certainly read it and thought about it, but at the end of the day, it was outside of the parameters of the hearing of what we could consider. And I would also suggest that given that the principal issue was the neighborhood, that our focus on properties in the immediate vicinity was our response to the appellant raising the issue of the neighborhood. Thank you for bringing that up. And I'll just say, as shared, given that the latest filing was not during the period when we've been able to take evidence, I will exclude any consideration of factual allegations in that filing. Anything that's simply her opinion of the impact is a different matter, but any new facts are not considered part of the record. And I apologize for that. I did not read it thoroughly and at a glance I thought it was real statement, but I should have looked more closely. I mostly just wanted Ms. Grica to know that we received it and, you know, what the constraints are of our process. So I'm hearing what's not fair. That's what I'm hearing, which I've heard before in my life. I had a brother who was murdered. The person who murdered him killed somebody when he was less than 21, so we couldn't bring that up because that doesn't matter. I'm hearing it all over again that life isn't fair. So there you go. Because I didn't do this at the right time and the right place, nothing matters and life isn't fair. I went home last Saturday. You read about that. I had a 1130 at night.  I had to get out of my car, walk into my house and this is not a neighborhood issue. I'm getting out and I'm like, I'm scared to death. I got to walk in front of this car to get home, to get into my house. But somehow everything's cool with the neighborhood. Everything's fine. And because I didn't do my paperwork on the right order, none of this is going to matter and life's not fair. That's what I'm hearing. And I do want to ask how do you come up with these other houses? And what are their negative influences of the other houses? Can somebody just explain that to me? What are the negative influences that are shown because it was said that all three of the city's houses have negative influences? What are the negative influences of these other houses that you're showing me? I can answer that question if you want. We have what's so negative about all these beautiful homes you're showing me in comparison to mine with the dumpster across the street and the people I fear? The high traffic. Do you agree to give that answer? They're located in high traffic areas. So that's something that someone has to consider when they buy it. It's an external obsolescence and they do as well. My external traffic comes from the apartments going in and out 27 times an hour. It's not road traffic. The road traffic of these houses is expected from where they live. It's that kind of road. It's expected to have traffic on it. The road traffic is the issue. It's the parking lot traffic in and out. 24 hours a day. Mary was at the opinion of the committee that whatever factors affected the appellant's home based on activity in the neighborhood affected the two adjacent homes. Essentially the same. Inferred from the assessments of the two adjacent homes. This was not a conversation with the assessor because it wouldn't have been appropriate. But we did feel it was appropriate to look at the two cards of the adjacent homes and understand what the factors were. You know what had been considered there and both of them are assessed at a higher value than Miss Greco's. And as I said the one on the right hand side as you're facing the appellant's property is remarkably similar to hers. The one on the left is a different style. It's slightly larger. I think it's a larger lot. Forgive me. I'm doing this from memory. So there are reasons to that it would have been valued at more. But it was in fact valued at quite a bit more. So we inferred from those two cards that in fact some sort of credit or acknowledgement had been given to the relationship of the appellant's property to the property across the street. Kenny said that at the time of our visit which was a week day after noon understandably when there wouldn't have been a lot of traffic anywhere in the neighborhood. It was quiet. But it was also that the adjacent property was being well picked up. It was no evidence. Again this is just our experience upon the visit and that's kind of the purpose of the visits that we need to make those assessments. Like when they bring your car to the garage and it doesn't make the noise that it's making. You know the dumpster's overflowing you could drive up there now and the dumpster's overflowing with trash. There's trash all over the place. You don't see it because you're not there when you say you know you can't be there. I'm there 24 hours or a lot longer than the hour you were sitting there. Sure. I see it you know. Anything from any other member of the board? Kim. I consider the neighborhood issues. And as Mary said when we were there it was calm. It was orderly. It was time and day when you wouldn't expect anything. On the other hand I processed in my mind and you meet this the criteria for a private nuisance. Was there enough data from what she said that I could infer there was a potential civil claim here? And I just didn't find the data that was submitted with support such a claim. And that wasn't exactly part of our consideration. I think I was the only one that cared about that particular issue. I wanted you to know that I didn't spit it through my head and reject it. Thanks. Can I just ask a totally off the wall question? Does anybody know how many feet away from my house a dumpster has to be? Because I think I do know. But I don't think that's right either where that dumpster is located. Okay. Anything else for any other member of the board? Is there a motion? I move that they accept the committee's recommendation. Any discussion? All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Thank you for coming in. I know it didn't go your way but I want to make sure that everyone gets a full hearing. So thank you for coming in. Looks like a better five to a gun. And you'll get a mailing from the clerk for, set this out including what rights you have to go with here. All right. Next up we have. I want to go home again. The car is in front of my house. Next up we have Cedar Hill. And it looks like the owner is not here. Correct. Committee was Mary, Tim and Sal. Who would like to present this? Can you tell us who? Let me tell you who it was. Okay. So we presented last, we have presented it before. So I think what's what happens because we withdrew it and we presented it. You're wrong. Can you pass out the one? Yes. I'm stable on the wrong side. For those who didn't read it or don't handle it. She can't read the whole thing. While that's going around. The folks who can vote on this are Jack and myself, Mark, Kerry who is not here, Lauren who is not here, Sal, Kim, Rosie, Tim and Mary. Okay. Thanks. What was the date of that one? The date of that was October 26th. I can double check. It's possible I missed some names there. I'll go back and check against. No, Donna, you had to be there. I see your reference to this. Excuse me? Donna, you must have been there because I see your reference. Yeah, I thought I was. Are you doing the immigration? Yeah. Yeah. You should check this out. You're not losing your mind. I thought it was Ricky. Yeah. Something like that. A guy drove up from Massachusetts. Bill McNamara. Yeah. Okay. I'll double check that again. Okay. Who's up? Sal? Yes. All right. I submitted a draft of our report and Cedar Hill came back with a response pointing out a number of errors and suggesting that we withdraw it and instead evaluate the assessment based on the criteria in their response. And that's what we've done. So we, in this report, we corrected a number of factual errors. Some inadvertent one about a parking lot that we described the property as having two parking lots. It actually has three that I know of, but one of them is on an adjacent lot and we were a little bit confused about that. We happened to walk through that parking lot and which is why we described it that way. So we've corrected things like that in this revised report. So the response had, I think, five points. We list six because we've split one of them. Let me just go through them really quickly. I've mentioned the parking lot. We've noted all of the incorrect and inaccurate information that was in this report. We pointed it out at the beginning that there were errors and then where those errors were corrected, we explained what the error was that we had made originally. The second point is a reiteration of an argument that the subject property is disproportionate. The assessment is disproportionate because it's 71.6% higher than its previous assessment. Whereas the overall increase in the total of all assessments in Montpelier is only 46.4% higher. We just don't think that's a valid comparison to compare this one property to the average of all properties in Montpelier. The third point was we made it a point in the original draft to note that the property was properly listed, the acreage was properly listed at just over eight acres. The appellant considered that to be incorrect information or inaccurate that they had never claimed that the property was incorrectly listed. That's true. They never really did claim that. We misinterpreted a discussion late in the proposal. Actually, we reviewed the video of the appellant's presentation late in that after the appellant had made their original argument and there was some discussion going on, but they mentioned that the original property had been divided. In fact, in our packet that we received that night and then one that the committee received when we visited the property was a map of a proposed subdivision that showed the correct acreage, which is in fact the acreage that has always been on the list. The error was that we stated that it had been presented in the hearing as a mistake and in fact it wasn't presented that way by the appellant. Just three more to go. This is a reiteration that the appellant's list of 20 comparable properties are more appropriate to the ones that the assessor presented. We're just simply not persuaded by that argument. Virtually all of those properties are in other parts of Vermont. None of them is closer than about 30 miles. We just think that those properties are in sort of a whole different world and in fact in reviewing the video of the appellant's presentation we noted that the appellant stated at the time that Burlington comparables were not used because the Burlington market is, quote, a whole different world and we agree and we believe that's true of many of the other comparables on that property and the income approach is what's most important. We agree with that statement as well. We mistakenly stated that the appellant's presentation of expenses included property taxes. It did not. And finally, probably the most important rewriting in the explanation of the income approach, we admit that our statement was inaccurate and in order to correct it, we consulted with the assessor. The point that the appellant was making was that the 9.35 cap rate was too low and that we should be adding a tax factor of 2.08, I believe, to that and using that to derive the assess value. In this response, the appellant stated that if, in fact, that either that 9.35 did not include a tax factor or if it did, that the base rate was too low. So we consulted with the assessor and found out that the 9.35, in fact, does include the tax rate. The base rate that was used was, and this number was established before the tax rate was available. So the base rate was 7.0 and the tax factor was 2.35, which was an estimate at the time. So it did include both a base rate and a tax factor. And as for it's being too low, we noted in our report that we feel the market, the Montpelier rental market is very strong, the rental vacancy rate of 1% or even a little bit less, suggesting that rental property is a good investment and that the capitalization of base rate is justified. And just to be sure, we noted that if we had not used a tax factor of 2.35 and used 2.208, the number would be lower still. So we conclude that the property is fairly assessed. Okay, does any member of the board have any questions? So I just want to confirm that the response that the committee is reacting to didn't present new information. It just took issue with the information that you had presented in the report and directed you back to information from the original hearing. And so all of your reactions and corrections are based on that, not based on any new evidence. Not any new evidence. Salton went back and watched the tapes again. Yeah, I believe that's true. It was the response pointed out errors. And we corrected those and reiterated some arguments about the 20 comparable and it reiterated the tax, the cap rate argument that it was really the core of the balance presentation. Any other thoughts or questions? Yeah, Martin. I get the response from McNamara recently, the email from them, from Cedar Hill. I have a second response to this. Yes. Oh, I haven't seen that. Well, there's a response to your report with an offer to withdraw. Oh. Have you not seen that? I haven't. I'm sorry. I haven't seen that. Sorry. Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. I did not. I was an offer to withdraw these emails. Yes. Yes. You let me go through all of that. In addition to the hours that it took me to. If he was here, he would then rebut with an offer to withdraw if an assessment of 2.945. Oh, I see. Oh. He was offering the cameras. Yes. Got it. I have to give you the information. It's a difference of $189,900. It would be a decrease in his tax load by $4,192 off the tax roll. And that would represent a 17% increase when they purchased the property in 2005 to that number. They are currently at a 25% increase from their purchase in 2005 till now. I present the information to you. You do with it what you want. That was their offer in order to avoid the next, the next step. I'm pretty confident in what we have. Did he offer any reason for a different number? He used what he claimed was his actual NOI, his net operating income of 2, hang on one second. Was that the original? Yes. Yes. The 275402, the actual NOI from 22 with the city's cap rate of 9.35. That's right. I don't see the e-mail. I know we discussed it in detail. For the group. What's the process, chair? Well, I think the process is we have a report. We have this response that is essentially an offer to compromise the appeal. Let me point out that the income approach that the assessor used using the 9.35 resulted in a property value of something like 3.7 or 3.6 million dollars. And the assessed value is 3.134. So there's a reduction of well over $500,000 has already been made based on the straight income approach. And that evidence was produced with the initial hearing as well. So yes, I know. Would be in order. Report. All right. Any further discussion? All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? We've accepted the report. Thank you. Boy, yeah. All right. Last but not least, we have national life tonight. Yeah. We have a report from the committee. Composed of Sal Alfano, Donna Bate, Sarah Carter, Kim Cheney, and Bob Gross. And a response from Scott Rogers for national life. Did everybody get to see the response? I do have paper questions. Sarah Carter, Kim Cheney, and Bob Gross are the committee members. And initially the appellant appeal was revised from a 66,246,600 value to 55,400,000 valuation. And when the committee did an inspection on November 20, the premise, as all described here, about the five-story office complex, the parking garage, plus several smaller buildings on the 239.51 acres, there was no dispute between the appellant and the lister on their income or the size or the condition of the buildings for other significant physical features. And I'm just going to read the base points, which cover all the ones that were discussed under the section of discussion. And the first one was the exclusion of property tax from the allowable expense. Is consistent. Oh, Sal, you used that word. Al, we're locked on. And Laura. Laura, thank you. So I had some editing help. Tax assessment practice for commercial properties. The property taxes are recognized through the use of the tax factor as a component of the cap rate to calculate the appraised value. And this is a point we just disagree on when I read their response. The building being not fully utilized because many workers have been allowed to work remote, we did not feel was relevant to the appraised value. And in their comments, they still do. Number three, the low cap rate was used because the office complex is one out of the floodplain. It is fully rented with long-term leases and the location is desirable. And number four, comparison with office buildings in rural areas is more reliable and appropriate than comparables in large cities as presented by the appellant. The appraiser for the city did make comments about comparables at his presentation, although they're not noted in the analysis report here. Number five, the average expense ratio of 55, which is my mistake, it should have been 51, which they corrected, used by the appraiser, is more reasonable than the unusually high expense ratio of 68.5 presented by the appellant. Six, these factors are consistent with the property tax appraisal, which is different from an appraisal for selling a property. We still feel that the city appraiser did a fair market value, but the approach is different. That's all we want to say. Okay, do you have any questions from members of the board or other members of the committee before we hear from the appellant? I have one question. Interexpert had a range of value, and he said it's just an appendant and you picked the higher value. Can you explain why you picked the fifth? Can't remember the exact number, 54,000 instead of... It started at 66 million, and after national life had given the appraisal he lowered his opinion to 55 million based on some of the information that was in the appraisal provided by Joseph Blake. Do you know what information that was? I mean, his testimony said there was a range... I don't have a firmly in mind, but about $10 million. He was basing that on, I believe, the cap... He was changing the cap rate, I think. I'm not sure I don't have his notes here in front of me. The quote of what he said, he actually thinks expenses should be between 51 and 55. But taking everything into account, he believes the real value between the 55 million and the 55.4. But taking everything in consideration, using the cap rate of nine, and it goes on anyway. So the range you're talking about, a $400,000 spread? Yes, but he felt he was coming down from the 66. That was... Rosie. So I just want to clarify, Donna, you just said when you were going through the report that on number five, the written report we have says the average expense ratio of 55% was used, and when you were speaking just now you said you would change that to 51%. Right. That's the number we picked up here on his analysis sheet. So it was this number than 55. His is actually 55,482,000, and he had rounded it off in his actual... Oh, maybe I'm looking at the wrong thing. I'm looking at where you say 55% on number five. Yes. You're saying 55 million. This has to do with the views here. 55 and 51, the ratio for expenses. Okay, that was right first time. But the number that we felt the value was very solid of the 55.4. Two different things, both using the numerals 55. Yes. Yes. All right. Just to make sure you understand. But if we were to adopt this report, we would want to make sure that the motion to adopt it... As a 51%. Amends the report to read 51% there instead of 55%. Okay. Any other comments or questions from the board before you hear from the appellant? Yeah, I'll just have one. I don't think our report deals adequately with the problem of people no longer wanting to come to work in offices. I think I'm not going to change my opinion in the value, but I think our report, I thought it was a serious argument because commercial real estate is being affected by people's view of society and how they want to live. I think a better argument for not paying attention to that is the long-term lease when national life has with the state. And I understood it was an eight-year lease. So that kind of takes out the issue of what they were raising, I thought. We were told that the National Life CEO was actively, as a businessman, trying to get people to come back in to work there. I know that is a commercial real estate, so I think that's very much up in the air. And it was a tantalizing argument to me, but I rejected his, didn't I, committee? And we don't know what the state of the world is going to be when they're considering renewing the lease in years and years. Yeah, but if you've got eight years solid rent. Yep. Donna. Well, we also have had some ideas that they could rent to more than just office people. I mean, they can be really creative. We can talk to Scott if you want to share some of those ideas. Really? Well, I did discuss, can we... I mean, even in the intro of the city, getting a city hall up, there's a possibility of having the city's rents and space, you know?  My vote to support this is because I know there's another more sophisticated process. Mary. That the city can follow. Oh, Bob, then Mary, sir. Yeah, I mean, when we look at the fair market value of a willing buyer and seller, we don't know what another buyer would do. They may use the property differently. They may have employees come in. I mean, that's nothing that should have a real effect at this point. Okay. Thanks, Mary. Thank you. I'm at the same point, maybe, a different way than what Bob was saying, but I want to be careful about speculating about what could be done or how this could be managed differently. And I think we need to just consider the facts in front of me. And yes, I understand the issue with occupancy of commercial real estate. But I am persuaded by the length of the lease that National Life has on that property with the state of Vermont. You know, maybe in a few years it will be a good argument for them to bring to us in the future. But given the facts that have been presented to us, the report of the committee makes sense to me. Okay. Thanks, Air Rosie. So I have just a procedural question which we haven't really dealt with so far. So when we accept the, if we are to accept the committee's report, if there's a future legal challenge, the report is, we're accepting the report on behalf and then that becomes the BCA's report. So I am persuaded by what Kim said that it would be, that's an important factor to me, that they did make an argument about, in general, there being less, that properties are less desirable because of work from home. But in this case, there is this long-term lease that seems very relevant to me. And I would like to see that incorporated into this report. It's here. It's on number two. Three. Three. The low cap rate. And that's why we said the low cap rate. The low cap rate is very rented with long-term leases. Okay. So I guess my question is, is it worth doing a little bit of amending to number two to kind of incorporate that there? Or is our discussion here enough for the record? If they appeal, they start all over. I think it's a de novo review. So what's appealed from is the decision because your assessment is X. And they appeal, and wherever they go, it's a de novo review, as I understand. They do review the materials, and I'm not sure exactly what they do with them, but it is either direction you go to the division of valuation or to the spirit of course. All right, let's give you guys a chance to hear. Do you like us to sit here and talk to you? Or do you want us to come up to the table? I think you'll hear from a few people. Why don't you just stay there so you don't need to be popping up and down? Okay, thanks. Will the mic speak? Just start with the mic. Thank you. Will the mic speak? Not very well. Okay. Come on up. Yeah. Good catch. Start with a quick introduction. I promise that won't take too long, and then people can really address the details of the memo that we submitted are here tonight to talk to you as well. Once again, I'm Frank Von Turchovich. I'm an outside lawyer working on this for national life. I can tell from the proceedings tonight that the board understands that there is a presumption in favor of the number that's first offered by the Listers or the Assessor. In this case, Montpelier has an Assessor, but then it's up to the property owner to offer information, credible information that would make the board consider that that presumption is now over, that it's vanished, that it's no longer in effect, and we're on an even playing field. Because tonight's discussion isn't a dispute or a disagreement between the property owner and the city of Montpelier. It's between the property owner's understanding of value of its property and the Assessor's explanation of what it, he believes the value of the property is. So what's interesting to me tonight and what I'd like to say before my colleagues speak to this is that I think that the board, because of that presumption and the presumption now being hopefully overcome if you agree that we've offered enough with the Blake appraisal to get past that, I guess I'd have to ask you, if you were coming to Montpelier and looking for office space and you needed a lot of office space and you say, wow, here's a big facility up here on the hill, it looks good, it'll fit our needs, would you, if you were a prudent buyer, would you just go to the city records and look at the assessment and say, oh, the Assessor says it's $66 million or $60 million or $56 million has its change to, or would you say, I think we should get a third party appraisal and find out what a current market value is for this property. I think that most people in that position would hire an appraiser and go through the process that it takes to rigorously look at the market, find comparables that are truly relevant to the property and then do that kind of rigorous analysis before you would make a decision like that. We have done that. We have hired the Joseph Blake Company to produce an appraisal that is, it's an MAI appraisal. It's an industry-compliant piece of work that really should carry a lot of weight, I hope, with the board tonight and I think it will under any other review. So knowing that and knowing that we're here tonight to try to have one last chance to talk to you about this before you make a decision, I would hope that we could focus on some of these key components like the cap rates and what's being considered an expense here and try to get a little closer to each other than we are tonight because the Blake appraisal's $36.7 million number is really something that we think is supportable and I'm really surprised that the BCA hasn't moved closer to that with all the information that it's had to work with for the past month. So if you'll give us a few minutes tonight to talk to you about those things, maybe we can try to get this conversation to be, maybe we can try to get closer to each other. If we could settle this tonight or soon after, we'd like to do that. Great. So you're... I would say Mark and Scott should come up and come together and work on this. Mark's like the play-by-play guy and the color commentary announcer. Thank you again for your time this evening. It would make sense to start right with the $55 million dollar value and kind of unpack. Yeah, probably for the... Oh, I'm sorry. Mark Overadie, I'm the director of real estate management with the National Life Group. I'm Scott Rogers, the head of facilities for National Life. And I'm not having you swear in because you're not presenting any evidence. No, no. Also the same thing. So from my understanding, I believe the $55 million was at the consultant's handout and it was a cap rate of 8% plus the tax load and using a 51% expense ratio. When he developed the 51% expense ratio, he used the taxes of $792,000, which equates to about a $36 million dollar value to divide that by the tax rate. How can you have a $55 million dollar value when you're only using $792,000 for taxes? Because at $55 million dollars, the taxes are about $1.3 million dollars. So if you're going to use a 51% expense ratio, you've got to know what's in there. And our taxes at $60 million dollars are 16.5% of effective gross income. Using expense ratios are not the way to do it. It's individual expenses. Analyze them individually, not blanket them. Because again, the taxes are 16.5% at our current tax load. And the consultant himself used $792,000. It's right in his work. So if he's going to value the property using $792,000, why is our assessment $55 million dollars, not $38 million dollars, as he's suggesting right here? It's page one all the way down at the bottom. The appraiser was at that meeting and they changed. And so now we're reevaluating the appraisals. We never had an opportunity to look at this until that night. Okay. We're having your commentary on the evidence. Just commentary and new evidence. Yeah, I think it's commentary on the evidence. You know, it's in our memo that we provided. And we can use the cap rate as well, the appraiser consultant that we hired, Joseph J. Blake, they extracted all the sales from the market, which is customary and appropriate. And analyze them and came up with a 9% cap rate, which is reasonable. The city's consultant used 8% with no supporting data. I don't know where he came up with his 8%. But I do know if you were financing this property and you were looking at a 20-year amortization at 7%, you know, as 8% cap rate would provide you about 4% return on your money. That's not enough to attract an investor because you'd have to put that $55 million. You'd be putting about $14 million of your own money down, tying it up, and there's only eight years left. We're talking about eight years as being a long-term lease and we're talking about the lease, but we're never looking at the lease's expenses. We're just saying we're brushing over, calling 51% reasonable. That's not reasonable. If you use the cap rate at 9%, if you're going to put down $14 million of your money, again, same terms, that provides you an 8.1% return to your money. It's almost double. It makes a big difference. You can't just on a whim select a number without any market support. Again, the Joseph J. Blake, all his cap rates were abstracted from sales of similar scale, similar income characteristics, and they're all within the last year. That's relevant market data. It's not selected out of nowhere. So this is all very important data when providing a credible value opinion. And it makes a huge difference when you move that number around. Huge difference. As to your question, you said they're all within the last year. Were they before April 1st? I don't know. They're in the appraisal report. I can tell you the page. It could be within the last 15 months, 16 months. I just found it really interesting having had the opportunity to digest the handout that was provided to us when the consultant themselves are saying that $792,000 is a reasonable taxes. And that equates you just to buy by the 0.2208 and come up with about $36 million for the property. His number is not mine. Scott, did you want to make any points? Well, I think I'd like to step through our responses to the six findings really quickly if I could. And I just want to be clear. On the first one, we're not disagreeing that using tax factors component of cap rate to calculate an appraisal value is appropriate. We agree with that. It just has to be done correctly. And the city's consultant failed to do that because they failed to account for the actual terms of the lease with the state of Vermont. Do you have any comment on that? Yes. So when Joseph J. Blake forecasted the revenue for the state of for the national life, the owner occupied portion of the income, he recovered the expenses, the recovered the tax expenses. When the consultant forecasted the income or he just reused the income, he never accounted for that 62% of the taxes being recovered so it's already baked in an income. So when you take that out it comes out right in line because he never took the taxes back out. You can't recover an expense that you're not charging for. And we do not charge the state to recover our expenses. They have a gross lease and not a triple net lease. And that is a meaningful error on the part of the city's consultant. That error is carried for because the income side of the house was never adjusted for throughout. Number two, the building not being fully utilized and the workers have been allowed to work remotely is not relevant to the appraisal value. And I think you touched on that a little earlier, Kim. We believe that's absolutely false. The values of commercial real estates are going down everywhere right now because nobody wants to be, and I'm being a little broad when I say nobody wants to be in the office. I want to be in the office. I kind of like it. But there are a lot of people that want to work from home and have since the pandemic and that results in landlords not being able to lease space, which impacts value. The other thing, you know, I can't remember in the previous testimony if we told you a little bit more about Mark's job, but he works on leases all across the country and he works with agents that sell our policies that sell national life policies and they enter into mostly, you know, four, five, six, seven year leases. And those are actually considered short term leases in the commercial industry. So with about seven, little over seven and a half years of long term lease, that's absolutely not considered a long term lease at this point. Especially for underwriting. Okay. The low cap rate, and we talked about that a little bit, Mark did a minute ago, but the thing that was confusing here is the city's consultant used a range of cap rates. So on the property cards, anywhere from 7.2 to 7.9%, and in the handout that we got at the last hearing, it was 8%. Those all deviate from each other, and they also deviate from the Joseph J. Blake appraisal, which was based on actual market data, what's really going on in the market. So that's just, that's one more way that the city's consultant didn't account for what's going on in the market. Under number four, comparison with office buildings, sales in rural areas is more reliable and appropriate than the COMPs and large cities presented by the appellant. The city's consultant didn't do any independent research. They didn't provide any COMPs. They did use some of the data from the Joseph J. Blake appraisal that we provided, which suggests that they found the COMPs used by Blake reliable. Can I take a comment? Yes, please. In the PVR guidelines, too, and I know that differs from USPAP, where it's obviously just a little bit different from what Kevin's bound to, which is USPAP. In the PVR guidelines, it's a little different, but they always, they all say that if you're going to admit an approach to value, you have to explain why. I don't feel like there was an adequate explanation provided by the consultant on why they omitted the sales approach. And I'll say just because there are no local sales doesn't mean the approach is not valid. It's very valid. It means you have to expand your search. Perhaps he wasn't capable of that. It just diminishes your credibility when you don't process an approach. We wanted Kevin to focus on similar sales, and he did. He scoured the entire country looking for sales that are in similar type locations. They're not everywhere, and they have to transact in order for us to use them as well. So he gathered the best data possible throughout the United States. But you can absolutely not omit an approach to value that is credible because it diminishes the entire credibility or evaluation. And we've never been provided with a good explanation as to why. I do recommend him saying it was something like it was hard. Well, yes, it's very hard. There was not a single the two appraisers that I contacted locally wanted nothing to do with it. Not that they're not good appraisers. They just understood the challenges of getting the appropriate market data to provide a credible value opinion. So under number five, it talks about the average expense ratio of 55%, and we corrected and agreed that that's 51%. But the committee felt that it was more reasonable than the high expense ratio that we presented. And again, ours is real data. We know what it takes to operate the building. The city's consultants value was based on an unsupported expense ratio forecast. I mentioned this before. I'll say it again though. The city's consultant didn't take into account that at least with the state of Vermont is fully gross. We don't throw up our expenses. So we don't recover those from the city expense ratio. And it means the city's 51% expense ratio is absolutely not achievable. Simply because of the terms and conditions of that lease. I also revisited our expenses earlier today line by line and compared them to the Joseph J. Blake appraisal and he uses expense comparables. For each line item, he has five properties. He doesn't compare the property taxes because those are outside of Vermont. They're really tough different municipalities but every other expense and he forecasts within the range for each line item. And so that's and that's the appropriate way to do it. It's a lot more granular than just blanketing it with an expense ratio. Expense ratios are fine if you have like kind leases of an apartment building. We had that Cedar Creek. Well, that's a large apartment complex that probably has leases similar to other complexes like Finney Crossing and Williston.  A lot of apartment complexes operate very slim similarly. But when you have leases that have different lease terms, triple net, modify gross, you can't just compare the income compared to the operating income because your expenses are completely different. The lease structures are different. The next point Mark mentioned but I think it bears repeating from the city's consultants two page handout. He suggests that our tax expense ratio should be similar to two Vermont comparables at 8.95% and 8.91% or approximately 792,734 dollars of tax burden. Our current real estate tax liability is 16.5% with an actual tax expense of $1.4 million. So if you were to take our tax bill for the proposed $55.4 million assessment under the current tax rate it would be about $1.2 million. Now, if the consultant based his numbers on $792,000, how can we end up at $1.2 million? How can the value be that? Yeah, that just suggests that the consultant's opinion of value was very wrong. And looking at I don't want to read all the numbers exactly. You've got the bullets in front of you but there's also an analysis on tax liability in terms of dollars per square foot of net rentable area and the two Vermont comparables were $1.87 dollars per square foot and $1.78 applied to our property would suggest real estate tax liability of $1.87 square feet times the $449,000 square feet of net rentable area which gives us a tax liability of $840,000. $840,000. $840,000. $840,000, yes. So that actually lines up fairly well with the consultant's forecast at $792,000. But that also results in assessments of $38 million and $36 million. So that's the range based on the consultant's numbers that the assessment should come out to using the real data. And then I don't know if you wanted to mention anything else. Just in closing, the finding six, you probably tell from hearing me talk I'm not an appraisal specialist. That's Mark. I'm a layperson but when I read bullet six that early I found that shocking for the board to state that I stated that yet, that a property tax appraisal is different from an appraisal for selling a property that's absolutely not correct. And we've quoted state statute below. I also cut and paste from the Vermont Department of Taxes website on the front that property is to be assessed at its fair market value and fair market value is defined as the price which the property will bring in the market when offered for sale and purchased by another taking into consideration other elements of the availability of the property. It's used both potential and perspective, any functional deficiencies and all other elements such as age and condition which combined to give a property market value. There can't be two different appraisals. One for property tax and one for property sale. They need to be the same thing. And we believe that number is $36.7 million has stated in the Joseph J. Blake appraisal which is supported by the state of the state of the state. And the company will be able to access the property's retail expense data. Any questions or comments. I'll report on these two witnesses. Or, Kevin. You said the first time you heard Mr. Kroczewski was when he testified in our last hearing. Correct. Is there no process for you to prior knowledge of this had no opportunity to digest it. No one did. Excuse me? No one did. No one did. No one did. And this was our first chance to do some of that data to respond. Actually Kim, there was the informals in May, which they attended, and the Krojeski crew were there for that. So there was a chance then, then we had a grievance meeting, which we didn't really talk much about that, which was here in late July, but as far as that handout from Bill's last testimony that was day of, he showed up right before I saw it at the same time that everyone else did. I believe folks come in here today and say you've made a lot of mistakes, and frankly, this is a report that apparently was written yesterday I saw three minutes ago. So I haven't had a chance to digest it, but I think you're entitled to have each of it. To have a fair crack at the other guy's expert and test his theory in some way. Blake, one seen to me, had a serious error because your comparables are in big cities with different tax rates, and your cap rate was based on the tax rate being the taxes deductive from your income instead of as an add-on. So it was hard to tell what the real numbers were, but I think, I just personally think that national life has been very important in this city, and I don't think you've been treated fairly. I'm not saying we got the wrong number. Can I comment on that, Kim? You're about the Blake appraisal.  It has nothing to do with taxes. Taxes are a line item as an expense item, and basically the investors looking at that number, the cap rate number, to say does this make sense as an investment with the taxes included. No one can assume they're going to be successful at a tax appeal, so you have to, when you're making that purchasing decision, there might be some entrepreneurial incentive in there that you might be able to lower your taxes, but you know when you're executing that purchase and selling that property, you're only entitled to the rights within the lease contracts for that income, and you're purchasing it with the expectation of income. So that's why, that's the important cap rate, it's not really designed to break taxes out of it. I thought both parties agreed on the income of some 800. Kageski said he used your income numbers. I believe he did in his analysis of the Blake appraisal, which was presented at our hearing. He was provided a copy of our appraisal, and then he went through and he provided his own opinion value based on our data, a new opinion value. And that's what caused him to lower it to 55. Correct. Donna. I just want to say that in general though, at the hearing, the city appraiser, and I'm sorry, I mixed up your last name, the city appraiser and the urban real estate appraiser had a lot of exchange about half the grade, so I feel there was a lot of opportunity that at the end of that argument, unanimously the committee felt that the city appraiser just solidly had better arguments that we could relate to and was more realistic with Vermont. And so I still stand behind what the report says. Now, do you have more argument to present or not really wrapped up? Okay. Does any other member of the committee or board have any questions of these, of the taxpayer? Mary. I don't know if I have a question and so I'm going to give you what's spinning in my mind. I want to have a better understanding of this argument about how the city's taxes should be baked into what we're considering. I'm a little bit lost on how to think about this. The length of the lease is the occupancy, the different comparables. I'm kind of done thinking about that, but I don't understand quite what is happening with the taxes. And maybe everybody else has got that straight in their mind and they're comfortable with that. I am thinking of the conversation that we had on the down street properties where there was a dispute about information in terms of how they came up with the assessment. I don't know if these are comparable situations and there were five folks on. Okay. Does the city appraiser accept it all their years as far as income? But baking in what the actual tax rate is, that's the one thing that I was hearing is that it sounds like there was an assumption on the city side that the taxes would be seven or 800,000, sorry for not having the numbers properly, versus what they would actually be if we set the assessment at the rate that it was. That's what the assessor says it should be. And that seems like, I understand that argument. And maybe you all considered that and I'm just not following it, but given that it's not a triple net lease, that in fact these are expenses that they have to pay, it seems like that should be taken into account or I'm totally misunderstanding that, but that's what's turning in my mind. I'm sorry to muddle this, but that's what's spinning around. And I'm sorry, I don't know where there is a question on that. Well, I think it's an invitation to any other member of the board to share their understanding of these concepts. This is not a concern previously stated. Can I make a quick comment on your comment about the city appraisers in Vermont? That is kind of the core of the problem right now is there is no data in Vermont for this property. You have to go outside the market to get data. There's no transactions of a half a million square foot office properties to get cap rates from or sale data. There's no, there's not 300,000 square foot office lease comparable to compare it to. That's why you have to go outside the market. And you can't compare, the scale is just so important for this property. You can't compare a 5,000 square foot lease in downtown or a 1,500 square foot lease with a 200,000 square foot office lease. They're not comparable. There's just so much more to it. That's why you have, that's why we hired Joseph J. Blake because he has, he does a ton of work in Vermont. He knows the market very, very well, but he has access to data outside the local market, which was huge in providing a credible value opinion. Okay. I'm also with Mary. I'm a little bit lost on the text. Pardon me. And I'm not sure what question to ask. Was it the argument that I made earlier? So you have in your, you've got a bullet in here, the third bullet down, the second bullet down. Maybe it was my explanation. Oh, so the city's assessor on the property cards, they add, they don't include property taxes and expense. They bake them into the rate. So if your reconciling rate is eight, you add the tax rate on its 11 point something. Well, I did just the opposite because the property cards that I have here, I did the same abstraction. And the initial cards that we have when we're valued at $66 million, what fell out the reverse engineering, he actually used 7.2 and 7.9% as cap rates when the initial values came out. And then all of a sudden he had a change of heart and he went to 8% with when he took the data from the Blake report, and he increased it to be with his handout. That's what the bullet three talks about. He explained a lot of time with the hearing explaining about that. And I couldn't, I can't tell it to you again. Yeah. But he did. I just don't know. And that's what he gave us these examples and put. And the 7.2 and that basically provides you what, 2% return on your $14 million if you were going to finance this property. I don't have $14 million lying around, so I'm not a buyer, but I would advise against it. And what we were mentioning earlier, the 792 as the tax burden, that's the consultant. He's saying that the property tax should be 792 thousand dollars. It's on page one of his handout. Yeah. And that's where I'm lost. Because if we said the taxes at 55, which is where we are, we're at our proposal, you're saying that in fact the taxes on that amount are over a million. 1.22. 1.2, not 700. Correct. And so I guess maybe my question for the committee is, did you consider that in coming up with what the fair members should be? Our number was all around property value. He did not dispute anything about the tax rate. It was not part of the appeal. It was not pointed out. I mean, Sal, he didn't talk about it. It wasn't. It wasn't. And so it's like it's a whole new evidence piece. It's a whole new. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. Oh. It's about property value. But how we erode as the property. Right. We got there. The different of the taxes on the property value. And if the only approach to value is the income approach, property taxes are a huge chunk of that expense. Huge. And as before the 55, it was 60.5% of our expenses. That's a big number. $3.27 a square foot. The properties in Burlington were transacting at $1.78 and $1.80 a square foot. It's a substantial difference. What are your other expenses for the state lease that aren't accounted for? All of them aren't accounted for in the state lease. So our utilities, our insurance, repairs and maintenance. Okay. All of them. It's a fully gross lease, Kim, with no true ups after each operating year. And those expenses were not included in the income? Well, they're included in the income that we did. Yes. They haven't the city accepted it? He put 51% down. I'm not sure how that itemizes out. I don't know. That's true. Any of the tax figure. But in the 55%, the taxes are included. In the 51%, the taxes are included again, that he has them in there at 8.95 to 8.91. The resulting value is 55 with a tax rate of, with a tax bill of over $1.2 million. I can't draw that correlation either. From the $7.92 to value of the property resulting in a $1.2 million tax bill. So we need to come to some kind of conclusion here. And so I'm going to ask right, I don't know. I'm going to ask right now if someone is prepared to move to approve the committee's report. And a member of the committee may do that. I'll make a motion to approve the committee's report. And is there a second? I'll second it. Okay. You get our charge. Is there any more discussion among members of the board want to have? I don't know. I've been to vote for this. But my reason is, I think that to know I'm hearing what proper preparation you're going to get a better result. I think this is very complex and very important to the city and to national life. And more examination in a different forum. That's what I'm going to vote for. Thank you. Does anybody else have anything to say? I know you're really wrestling with this, Mary. Yeah. I'm troubled. I want to support the committee because they have put the sort of deep thought into it. And I have not done that. But I have to say that I'm hearing this question about the differences in the taxes and how that was treated as an expense or not. And that is compelling. And I feel like maybe I'm missing. Well, if in fact this was never raised initially, and this is in fact new information, then I guess I have to stop hearing, listening, because we're not allowed to take new testimony at this time. And that's too bad. That's the reason I was thinking about the down street process where we just said, can you guys just go back and try to true up your numbers a little bit and come to see if there is a way to understand these numbers more solidly than I'm able to do that. But that doesn't seem to be gaining some traction here. And again, I just want to acknowledge the members of the committee, you know, have spent the time thinking about this. Whereas I'm just, you know, in the past half an hour or hour, I'm thinking about it.  I guess I'd like to be persuaded that I should vote in support of this. I'm just having a hard time getting there. I'm in a very similar place to Mary. If this is new evidence, then I agree that we can't really consider it. But I still don't really follow it, and that makes me uncomfortable. But I also want to defer to the work that the committee has done that's been our practice in general. We trust the committee to do good work, and so I'm feeling conflicted as well on that basis. One way to think about this, which is, you know, the process is very... The process works quite well for the ordinary residential or business property. It's very difficult for this process to work with the complicated issues we have here and of the elected board. It's also true that the burden of proof is on the appellant. And if the appellant can't make this... Make it so that members of the board can understand and say, yes, they're right, you know, that's a factor that we could potentially consider. Would you flush that out, Simon, or would you say in your conclusion? That if the appellant comes before us saying the city is wrong, and they've raised a bunch of arguments that I think few of the people in this room even understand what the arguments are. And does that give the members of the board the ability to say, I agree with you, what the city did this wrong, when people may not even understand what the argument is. That's convincing, Jack. I'll go along with that. Okay, I'm not trying to convince anyone, I'm just trying to help the thinking process along, but thank you. The state of Vermont also has this process in place for specific properties like this National Life in 2010. It ended up going to court to flush it out. And like Kim said, for more time to develop and digest all this information, I think it's very important that we come to a number that everybody can agree on because the state of Vermont is going to start doing this reappraisals five or six years, every five or six years. So it is important that we get this figured out, and I think at this point it's probably likely that we're going to go to the next step. Have everybody a chance to get together and get it worked out. That is another factor. This doesn't end tonight. How was it resolved in 2010? It ended up going to Superior Court, and there was a ruling on the city's favor, yes. The current, the previous success value, I don't remember how far off they were, but it was significant enough to end up going to court. Harry. So this conversation about essentially how the taxes were or were not baked into the city's number versus National Life's number is, this is essentially, this is New Testament? No, not that. We consider the tax, property tax, and the information is that they're looking at the property card and the tax rate here. That's what we did not consider. But I think this is part of the evidence that was before us, and it may not have been argued before this, but it's evidence that was received. Can we clarify what is new evidence here? Nothing. I don't think properly considered anything is new. I confused easily, and I was following everything up until that point. Like you heard one of the previous appellants say, talk about what happened at her house on some night after the hearing, and that was new evidence, and we didn't consider it. So are we ready for a vote on this? I don't think we rained out who kind of cannot vote on this. I know that I cannot. Really, you are the only one who cannot. I apologize. I missed the last one. Aren't you lucky? I don't think you're lucky. No, I mean for National Life. I'll check. I think you were. Jack, can you call the question? Well, we're getting ready to vote. I was going to tell us who's eligible to vote. I think we need Jack, Sarah, Mary, Kim, Rosie, Mary, Donna, Sal. So you're out, Mark? Yeah, you don't vote. Okay. All those, the motion is to adopt the committee report. With the correction. 51% at bullet number five on the second page. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed. Nay. With my apologies to the committee, I just personally just can't get there. Okay. I apologize. Totally fair. The motion carries. And you guys will get the next step. Thanks, guys. Thanks for coming in. This is a great take. I appreciate all your efforts to make this comprehensible. Donna, are we in recess or not? No. So, are we going to talk about the view of the abatement? Tim wanted to talk about abatement really. I want to take ten minutes to do that. Okay. You don't like it. We all still like it. I'm not sure Tim likes herself right now. You don't like it? Thanks, guys. Happy holidays. Thank you. Just what to expect.  I can run down what it's going to look like real quick for those of you who haven't seen it before. And it's another quasi-judicial process. Folks are sworn in. Just like this. But there's no, everything's decided and decided in there.  You've come up with what will come before and make your case for abatement, hopefully ask for a specific amount that they don't necessarily, and provide whatever supporting information they can. I always encourage them to provide as much as they can in advance so that they're not just coming there making an argument. But everything we're going to hear is on damage to property on the flood. So that stuff should be fairly quantifiable. And then the board can go into a deliberative session, or then and there don't have to go into a deliberative session. These things have been discussed out in the open a lot. I think when we usually do them, it just becomes a discussion then and there. Decision can be made. We looked into the idea of maybe going into one deliberative session for all of them at the end of the meeting. You can do that, too. And one thing that was said the other night at the council meeting was that there are hard and fast rules about abatement, and that's actually the opposite. There are no hard and fast rules. You can choose to abate any amount. You can choose to abate principal, penalties, interest, water and sewer. You can choose to abate nothing. I mean, under any rationale you want, you could say I don't think so, you didn't make your case, you could say I don't think the city can afford it, you can say I'm having a bad day, and whatever. Don't say that please. You can abate the current bill. Someone could theoretically ask for an abatement from two or three years ago. If they wanted to. If you can do installments, you can do all sorts of things. Yeah. And what I had put out there was a discussion I had sort of working with and having conversations with the various city clerk who was working on some of the same sort of stuff. But in your packets there's a general guideline that's just a suggestion based on our concerns about the education portion of the tax and being able to afford that. You don't necessarily have to abate an entire amount for a quarter. So I had some recommendations in there to look at it. If something's a total loss, then clearly the whole thing should be abated. That's only fair. If it's repairable or in the process of being repaired, then it might make sense simply to abate the municipal board of the portion of that taxes rather than the whole thing. Now that whole approach could be thrown out the window in the first couple weeks of the legislative session. They do what they're talking about doing and create some support for municipalities on that education part of it. So we're not on the hook for it. It's possible if they do that, then these guidelines throughout there don't matter. But there was something to think about as all. John, I have a question. I think the board's discretion is great. But I don't have a statute in front of me. I haven't gone back to review it yet. But I thought that there were some occasions in which the person is entitled to an abatement and they're required to be given. For instance, I think the statute doesn't talk about if the property is destroyed. That was my question for the flood. Well, we have. Or buyouts. So if you own a house and the house burns down, as a matter of law, are you entitled to? I don't think so. I think if you read the statute, it says that that's one of the things that if it is no longer exist, it is eligible for an abatement. But I don't think you're required to. It's just there's a list of five or six reasons why you can abate. It's pretty standard operating procedure, too, though. Yeah, that's not what I'm saying. But in terms of what the statute says, I believe it just lists that as one of the things that you can consider rather than an obligation to offer an abatement. And you all just have a statute in your finders, too, by the way. Did you give us these ones? Did you not get one? I had one. Donna. There's so many different situations with the flood, whether you have any guidelines for a house that has done an agreement with FEMA is going to do a buyout. Is there any? That's one question. And the other is, is there any partial time? Is there an attack to the past year they pay? But after the flood, then that's abated. I was keeping it very general. Because one of the things I was advised is my VLCT was don't try to put too much restriction on the board of abatement. You won't get to do what you want. A buyout is really sort of interesting. I'm just wondering if there was any precedent. If we have property that's destroyed, but we still have old land there, does the land still have a value and is there still tax on that part of the value? It's just a question here. Arguably yes. Well, other than if it's been a forced demolish from FEMA's point of view, they can't sell for anything to put a house on. I'm not talking about FEMA, just about property that we have land value, we have property value, and the property is still there. The house is washed away. The house is washed away. The land's still there. Someone could buy that, oh, now there's no house on that property. I'll buy it and build a house on stilts, or I'll buy it and build a house that I know that's not, I know we're not talking about a FEMA buyout, Donna. I'm just talking about if it's a vacant property that could be built on, there could be value. Sorry, Rosie, then Mary. So, given that all of these are likely to be the same incident, sounds like they are, I want to be really conscious of treating everybody fairly and not applying different standards to different people, understanding that some of them will be different situations, so I would feel much more comfortable about holding all the deliberation to the end for that reason, so that we can apply those same standards across everyone and not be in a situation where we gave something to somebody and continued to deliberate. We changed our minds, I think we should take them all once, because it is the same event. And if, John, if they're already that are not that event, then we'd want to take those separately. We've got one kicking around that may or may not come in. As soon as I created all those binders, we started getting another trickle of interest, so I actually have some updates for your binders. Now. Yeah, I mean, most of this is... Those handouts for tonight? Take home. These are pretty tonight. If you already have a binder, and these ones, I promise you, print it on both sides. Thank you. If you've already got a binder, just grab one of these clitting together and it'll replace some of the stuff you've gotten, add to it. Can you just got one? I'll get you. I can get your binder, too. And Kim, this is for yours. You picked up yours. No, it isn't for you. I can grab it. No, no. The current binders have been updated. You talked about the binder that you gave us last week. We have that to take this. Yeah, that'll replace some of that. It's got the schedule. And the ones that you can smell, that's all kind of too. This is the first of four. This is the last of four. Hey, folks. Yeah, I'm too. I think that's all. Just a couple of binders. I think that's all. Rosie, I'm sorry. Yeah, so I would love to also talk about the remaining things for the future. There was some mention of maybe we would meet next week or we wait until January. So we have a handle of outstanding reports. We have three regular ones and the jakers. We just have to be the generous folks. And we have two scheduled for that. So right now we have two meetings. I did not schedule for the next two weeks because it was so close to the holidays and then the meetings pick up again in January. We have two more, which is all and the state is going to need the final grand list on the paper. But we're scheduled for the 4th and the 11th. So yeah, I mean, Sherman is in. We're waiting on Wilner. I have most of it. And Zorzi. And Zorzi, thank you. And Zorzi is about ready to get in.  So if it's going to be a little bit anyway, maybe just makes us to stick with the schedule on the way until January. I think we could get you hold of it. I want to talk to you two about Wilner briefly. But I think we could get them in for Monday if we wanted to. But if we have time after, it makes sense. Yeah, we'll have two meetings on the 21st. That's it. Not meeting on the 21st or the 28th. So next meeting is on the whatever. 3rd, 4th, something like that. It's the 4th. And since it's the first Monday, the meeting on the 4th will be at the high school. Okay. With that, is everyone satisfied? All right. That's a big question. Oh, let me tell you one interesting thing about Bateman, too. The full Bateman Board is bigger, so the quorum is bigger, it's much bigger. However, even this committee used to be bigger. However, a majority of the city council, the assessor, if they're the only ones here, that makes a quorum, too. So there's a little gravy. Yes. Oh, yes. So anyway, there's my little trivial tidbit. Okay, folks. As of 8.13, we are in recess. We're going to be at the high school. We're in recess. Yes.


The overall emphasis of the 3GPP community was to increase data rate so that better voiceover IP and other multimedia services could be provisioned. But it had to be done in such a way that the overall mobile telephony largely remained available and the system actually improved in a comprehensive manner. So the standardization process is not unilateral but it is based on a widely based standardization activity. We would look at the emphasis of standardization areas and we'll see how different technologies and different standards blended into the LTE standardization process across the time. Starting off with the fundamental requirement for any data provider, the focus of standardization was to have high speed access and this meant a significant improvement in the radio access technology. Better modulation schemes, better codecs, more use and efficient use of wider and bigger spectrum. So some of these techniques actually proved to be very very useful in achieving significantly high data rates. The second area was the core services. The core network was circuit switched in 2G and 2.5G networks. But in 3G onwards into LTE, all service provisioning backend servers like controllers, the gateways, the databases such as the HLR, VLR, etc. All had to be enabled for IP and even their connections were supposed to be based on the IP routing framework. So this was another focus area that helped standardize and make it more easily integrable with the classical computer networks. And the last area is the provisioning of better user services. The user services which were otherwise limited and proprietary were thought to be offered as an overlay network in this LTE standardization process. What it means is that regardless of the underlying network for as long as standard interfaces could be provided, the services could be offered as application programming interfaces or APIs to users which have different gadgets, mobile phones and are coming through different service providers. An example is IP multimedia subsystem that connects users for various services like voice over IP, multimedia over IP, signaling, logging, CDRs, IPDRs, all these services. Now the users could be having totally disparate and diverse range of devices. But as long as IP multimedia subsystem as a functional entity is provided, then it offers services as an overlay. Looking at what the focus areas were, it's going to be interesting to look at how the data rate improved and some of the technologies that helped offer these increasing data rates. The first one is actually known as the generalized or general packet radio service. This was actually offered as an overlay by incorporating two additional nodes into the GSM network architecture, the serving gateway service node and the gateway service node. Now these two nodes specifically were meant to provide internet connectivity. Now these two nodes were the entry or exit point to the IP network. Incorporating such entities into the network meant now a GSM network was IP enabled that was using the same radio access network technology and the multiplexing scheme was also not changed much. It was still based on time division multiple access over frequency division multiple access. So this resulted in actually two core networks. The first network being a circuit switched network and the second network was now a packet switched network that was sitting in parallel to that service switched network. After GPRS it was thought to have better user data rates. So enhanced data rates for global evolution was proposed known as the edge services. Those of you who have been actively using internet over the course of technological evolution over the last decade might have experienced seeing G or GPRS on your mobile phones. E you might have seen as edge technology available on your mobile phone. In Pakistan it means that we actually have seen all these technologies with our very own eyes and have experienced these. So edge was meant to provide relatively better data rates. It incorporated new modulation scheme at the radio access networks such as the GMSK known as the Gaussian minimum shift keying. The initial two nodes the SGSN and the GGSN continued and there was a reason for that because these two nodes have now a slightly expanded role of carrying the user traffic as well as the control traffic. It means that whatever signaling has to happen. These two nodes have now an extended role to provide the signaling and once the bearer path is established to have the data connection between the endpoints. One IP enabled endpoint is now on the mobile side and the other one is on the internet side with edge performing better than GPRS. The effort continued to have more data rates. So WCDMA was put in place around the middle of the 2000 era. The 3G standardization had strongly established the standards and documentation for the circuit switch domain and the packet switch domain. Two technologies were incorporated on the core side since everything is IP enabled. So back in those days ATM was also a packet switch technology. In fact, it's known as a cell switching technology since it did not have such a wide deployment. So ATM literally lost this battle to IP and IP became the de facto and to be more exact the DGEOR standard for the core network. So coming back after edge WCDMA or wide band core division multiple access was an advancement again on the radio side. And it promised data rates up to megabits per second. Now core division multiple access not being the scope here is actually a technology that significantly improves the data rate because unlike frequency division multiple access and time division multiple access, which have to share either the frequency spectrum or the time slices. The WCDMA is based on coding having orthogonal codes means that theoretically speaking an innumerable number of users can be accommodated. So the carrier bandwidth for 3G for WCDMA was extended from 200 kHz as in 2G to 5 MHz for WCDMA it meant an increase of over 25 times.


The American common law seems uncertain, and in need of some high-level government support that it never really received. Not only has government tried its best to replace the common law with more certain legislation, but has attempted to actually replace it in its entirety with legal codes. In short, the government support of the common law has been much like the support it gives to the sovereignty of citizens. That speaks most eloquently to the potency and effectiveness of this systematic legal approach, where the government and its leaders have professionally assumed sovereignty that belongs to the people, so professions of creating and administering law stepped into authority over the American legal system. There is little to be learned about our common law authority from today's process-based legal training. They accept the fact that of the authority of legislators, of police, of judges, and lawyers, these are the oligarchs of the legal system. Professional leaders who decide what is legal and who may do it. These are the in-group who act as owners of our American legal system because it seems right that they do so. And why not? Nobody else understands what they have accomplished in their part of Beneficent Rule over the Nation and overweave the people. For any deeper understanding, we have to go back to the beginning. The common law of America began with the principles of the English common law, but stripped away any ability of the sovereign government to rule over the people's common law. The common law no longer answered to sovereign authority. There was no king's law to overrule it, nor legislation given authority to modify or remove it. The two existing principles behind all provision of the common law were personal justice and fairness in how people peacefully dealt with one another. The success of the colonial revolution achieved a startling new principle, that the citizens in the American colonies were the in-fact sovereigns. They, not government, had ultimate sovereignty. The new legal environment had to include the sovereignty of we the people. American law would have to include the new concept of the people's sovereign rights. Instead of privileges granted by government to citizens, it was government that had granted privileges instead from the sovereign people. With multiple sovereigns, there was also a need for a new legal principle, and it could be stated as a recognition that the rights of a citizen were limited only by the rights of other citizens. The rights of one citizen only ended where the rights of another citizen began. You will note this fits well into the original English common law structure. Our constitution documents this new relationship, one of sovereignty of the common citizen being the source of government. Our constitution reversed the system we had from England, where the government had recognized right to rule over the legal system. The American common law was not subservient to the new government of the United States. It was the government that was created for the stated purposes of providing justice and assuring domestic tranquility. That new government was bound within a written agreement by and among the sovereign citizens and delegated working potencies to this new government, and that set duties upon it. The power of the new government and the duty of it to legislate did not provide authority to override the common law. It was to run the government for the benefit of the people who owned and empowered it. For the sovereign people, their government had a new legal foundation. It was a required legal respect for citizens as the source of authority. The people were the source of all public authority for all those who were employed and running this new government. Rights were no longer subject to governmental limitation because such authority was not delegated in the constituting agreement. Indeed, no sovereign citizen had authority to override the sovereignty of their fellow citizens, and they could not legally empower a government to do what they had no power to do. Where did this leave the courts? What was the basis for laws that they were to apply? This is no mystery. The common law is no mystery. The sovereignty of the people is no mystery. Justice is not a mystery and neither is fairness. The challenge is not one of law, but one of privilege. How the judge can be truly an authority for applying this common law? That authority had been granted in the English courts by reference to the sovereign right of government to apply the law. In the American colonies, this was gone. It was wiped away through revolution. The authority of the judge was to be assured by continuing to deliver justice and support for domestic tranquility. When it came to the courts, the American experiment hit a solid wall. The judiciary accepted its duty to be based on legislation, and it still had legislation subject only to the supreme law of the land. It seemed no immediate impediment to continue what the courts had been doing. When the Constitution seemed to redirect it, it was still right to continue as the rest of government leadership was also ignoring and or misreading the Constitution. They misread it as necessary to assume themselves as replacements of the English aristocracy. In short, the courts continued applying legislation as the higher law, assuming that those who legislated were actually representing we the people. They honored the process of legislation instead of the purpose for having legislation. They rejected limitations on legislation that might have caused significant changes in the operation of the courts. And where the process of legislation failed, judges would step in, as if in the king's name, to do what they could to support the legislators in doing what the legislators had attempted to do. The common law base was treated as an honored part of history, worthy of respect, but no more the center of law in America than it had been in England. Our common law has not gone away. Our common law has not been replaced by legislation. Our common law is effectively the sovereign property of the people and is superior to all legislation. Our common law recognizes a sovereign citizen's right to practice the religion of his or her choice, so long as no other citizens are denied their right to practice. No law can be passed to change this. No regulation of the exercise of religious rights can be valid. No religion can have its tenants forced on any opposed, sovereign citizen, except to protect others from criminal behaviors. Offending others is not a common law crime. Neither is there any right where any religion gets to protect its adherence from the results of their actions, nor to relieve religious leaders from accountability for the results of their teachings that lead to criminal assault or torts against other citizens. The common law recognizes the sovereign citizen's right to speak in public and to write and publish freely. This right is supported only so long as their speech and writing do not defeat the rights of other sovereign citizens to speak and write. The common law recognizes the sovereign citizen's right to exercise authority over the property that they own, so long as it is not either to limit or interfere with the property ownership of others. The common law demands fairness in and through application of law that no law be applied to one citizen different than to another, nor applied to one and withheld from others. The common law demands justice in our courts, fairness to every citizen who comes within the jurisdiction of a court. The common law demands support for the peaceful pursuit of profession and livelihood, free from the authoritative regulation of rulers, except as necessary to protect the rights of other citizens. The common law demands support for the contracts and agreements that are the basis for much of our interaction between citizens. Justice and fairness are mandates, not the result of legislation. The common law demands police support for the peaceful and cooperative public use of public resources. It demands protection from aberrant behaviors that would threaten the health, lives or property of other citizens, and from our potential for aberrant actions against one another. There is no common law right to vote. The owner's right is to representative government. It is not limited to taking part in hiring actions to determine who will exercise authorities of some sovereign government as it rules over us. The right of the people is inherent in preventing the violations through misrepresentation, embezzlement, and bribery. The right of representation is denial of the corporate body actions that are not representative of we the people, laws that allow corporate bodies to influence legislation, or that support non-citizens are all laws at the expense of those who are entitled to representation. Giving charity in the name of the people is within the definition of embezzlement. It is taking the people's money and redirecting it to meet needs that are not the needs of the people. Taking money for projects that do not support the people who are taxed is embezzlement. It is misrepresenting the people through act of governance. There is no legal way to establish a fair share tax. The operation of government is at public expense and government services are not to be given to the wealthy above those who are not. Unequal government is offensive to the common law. Our common law is not mysterious, nor is fairness and justice in our courts to be dependent upon what legislators do in Congress. If they would codify law, it is to be honored subject to the purposes for which there are courts of law. That is a service to we the people who seek justice and fairness in our public and private activities. And finally, the common law is a law for the people, not a law for lawyers and legislators. If a law is such that the people cannot be expected to know and understand it, that it is not a law that arises from representing we the people. Judges are public officers, and judges should hold their offices of honor so long as they seek justice and fairness for sovereign citizens. But this is not descriptive of the courts that we have today. While those employed in our government seek to provide fairness and justice, they are bound by written codes and too often ordered to applications of laws that do not represent either justice or the sovereign citizen. In our modern legal environment, a citizen is all but required to have a legal process expert, a lawyer for support. For the citizen without a good lawyer, the courts are unable to assure justice. The common law is not gone, nor are the principles of justice and fairness. But those who rule have written their own law, even as the English government had done. For perspective, the very purpose for our American Revolution was to put an end to government legislation that interfered with justice and domestic tranquility. And yes, there will always be questions of justice and fairness that have to be submitted to the courts for answers. There will always be a need for determination of how justice and fairness are best to be served. The need for courts to provide protection of citizens and to peacefully settle disputes is both known and accepted by all. The courts are to be there to serve we the people and to have the aid and support of systems of juries of sovereign citizens at their call to represent the people whenever this is required to support their performance of public duties. Our unique common law is still there, but will not be given effect until we the people are agreed that this is to be accomplished. And when the leaders ask how they are to do this, the answer is that is their responsibility as public officers. Wherever we are agreed, we will also support what they must do to serve us.