I'm going to call this meeting to order so if everyone would please take any conversations outside, that would be very helpful. Good evening and welcome to the Monday, February 6th, 2017, select board meeting being held in the town room at Town Hall at 6.34 p.m. There should be copies of the agenda in the back of the room. There are a large number of items on our agenda tonight, so we will be trying to move at a fairly rapid pace. Is there anything the select board needed to bring to my attention in terms of the agenda tonight or the town manager? Thank you. Excellent. And so we are going to dive right in. We normally have the press with us, although I suspect they might be elsewhere in town tonight. And we are definitely being taped and broadcast by Amherst Media, which you can watch later as always, so thank you to them. And we are going to start with public comment. Now the way public comment works for those of you who may not have joined us in the past is that if it's an agenda item, meaning it's on that agenda in the back of the room under action and discussion items or licenses, etc., then that's not being covered during the public comment period. So if there's anything that's not on this agenda that someone was here to speak during public comment, if you could please raise your hand so that I would know that. So we'd have a sense of how long public comment needs to be. Yes, you have something that's not related to the agenda, sir? Okay. And is there anyone else who has anything? Okay. Well, then it looks like we just have one this evening on a non-agenda topic. If you would please come forward, sir. Once you get settled in with the mic, please feel free to push the keyboard out of the way since we're not doing a presentation right now so you can get the mic nice and close and identify yourselves for the folks at home. So Vince O'Connor, Precinct One, town meeting member, and I'm here to express a concern regarding the, we have yet to hear any public or see anything in writing about whatever progress has been made in getting the university to pay for the cost of the, especially the 45 to 50 elementary students that it sends to the Amherst schools each year, which is a number I think that probably is greater than all of the colleges in other colleges in Massachusetts send to their, the elementary schools in the towns in which they are located, simply because they don't, most schools do not have the kind of family housing arrangement that Amherst, that UMass does. And that doesn't take into account, of course, students from UMass who may have tend the Chinese Immersion School or who, school choice out of Amherst to another school district. So that's my first concern. My second concern is the, although I really, and I think everyone admires the efforts of the town officials in the past, I think decade really to secure meaningful contributions for ambulance service. We still have yet to get from any of the large non-profit institutions contributions for fire protection. It's, I think it's important thing and this could be the source from my perspective of the money necessary to increase our staffing in the fire department in EMT and could allow us, in my opinion, to have a third fire station appropriately located in South Amherst. The final concern that I have regarding the, this matter of obtaining more funds to support the towns of services is the fact that Amherst College, both in comparison to other universities and colleges in Boston, Williams College and so forth, makes, does not make a meaningful contribution. And I think it is most important to understand that, in fact, all of the dormitories of Amherst College were once fraternities until they were bought out in the early 80s by Amherst College when they proved to be not consistent with the college's co-ed direction and as a result, those fraternities became dormitories which fulfilled the Amherst colleges and were part of the Amherst College educational mission and as such, they became tax exempt officially, but Amherst College did a 100%, 80%, 60%, 40%, et cetera, declining block payment. If those institutions which surround our downtown and so forth were still tax paying, we would be receiving hundreds of thousands, if not over a million dollars in taxes and I think that that's an appropriate amount for the town to be shooting for and I think it is really, since the 1980s, one of the sources along with the university of the town's structural deficit, a deficit that is not unique to Amherst but is basically consistent with the kind of deficits that are run by other communities that have large educational institutions and other nonprofit entities in it that do not make consequential payments and lieu of taxes. So that's my concern. I would hope and ask that the select board and the town manager prepare some kind of presentation and writing so that as we enter into the budget discussion, people can be aware of what progress is being made on these matters. Thank you. Thank you. We established earlier that there was no public comment not related to an item, that there was not any public comment that was unrelated to any item on our agenda. So we are going to skip past town manager report and select board member reports for now. We will come back to committee appointments later on in the evening and we will move into section six, the action and discussion items. The first item listed is local access contract Amherst media update and it stated 12-1 because that's the last time we had a substantive update on that. And I just need to go over where we're at associated with this beyond the December 1st last discussion we had. So the first thing I want to do is make sure it's clear that everyone's aware that I still have on file a disclosure of an issue of a conflict of interest back from March of 2015 referring to the fact that my spouse Steven Brewer an employee of UMass Amherst is not only a member of the Amherst media board of directors but currently serves as president. However, he has no financial interest in Amherst media and there is not actually a financial conflict. However, given that we are now past the Comcast stage and that we are moving into the Amherst media stage while I am still organizing the meeting when it comes to anything that might seem to someone to be deliberation on a contract with Amherst media, I want to make sure I take myself out of that conversation. So here's how things are going to look tonight. We are going to have a presentation from the town manager. There will then be time for the select board to ask questions of the town manager and discuss issues among themselves. I believe Steven Brewer intends to make a statement shortly after that. There is going to be time for a statement from Jim Lesko, the Amherst media executive director. There will also be a statement from Disha Baz who served both as recent chair of our cable advisory committee and still serves on the Amherst media board. We definitely made time for Isaac Ben Ezra, our former select board representative to the board to have a chance to talk. And so those are all the things that are going to be happening.  There probably aren't enough for everyone, but it will give you a sense of the materials that we're working from that we've just received. There's an RFP process for peg services, which was in fact in our online packet. For those of you following along at home, you've probably seen that already. There was an amendment to the agreement with Amherst media. I will also be putting that in the back of the room, and also the IGR release. So see those handouts if you haven't seen them already. And Mr. Slaughter is going to take over from here, Amherst media, so you can focus on him. And then I will come back in the room once this section is over. So thank you. Thank you. So just to get started, one of the other things that we'll do is, you know, we have a series of people that, Ms. Brewer just sort of listed off. They're likely to speak. At that point, I'll probably ask to see who else would like to comment on it. I would suggest we'll probably only take three minutes for each person's opportunity to speak to us, but also get a sense of how many people are wanting to speak to it at that point, and also, you know, feel free to not speak if you choose not, you know, balance whether your points have been made by other people or not.  Don't want to be compelled to that. I will try to keep people fairly tight on time just because we have a few things. I'm perceiving that there might be several people that are interested in that, but we'll do a quick tally of who's interested in speaking when we get to that point and sort of see where we're at. But we'll start out with the manager first place. Thank you, Mr. Chair. As I reported to you earlier, there's an agreement between the town of Amherst and Amherst Community Television, which is Amherst Media. That was first executed on February 16, 2007. The contract was retroactive to October 11th, 2006. In essence, it expired on the same date as the expiration of the cable license by and between the town and Comcast, which was October 15th, October 11th, 2006. This contract with Amherst Media expired on October 15th, 2016, which is when we renewed our contract with Comcast. Under the normal procedures, we would have entered into negotiations with Amherst Media which I'll say instead of Amherst Community Television Inc. so everybody knows what I'm talking about and have executed a contract. But the rules of the game changed and we have had to comply with new rules issued by the state. In the meantime, the town continues to honor all terms and conditions of the contract including all payments to Amherst Media. And Amherst Media continues to honor all terms and conditions of the contract including recording town government meetings such as this. And I'm grateful for Amherst Media's cooperation during this period. There is no change in any terms of this business relationship. So first some background. In January of 2016, over a year ago, the Massachusetts Department of Revenue Division of Local Services issued IGR 16-102, which is in the back of the room, which requires the town to account for peg fees in a different way than we had in the past. We reviewed this guidelines with our auditing firm, Mellons and Heath, and with our Department of Revenue Representative. This is before my time. I didn't start until August, so this is during the summer of 2016. We asked explicitly if we could simply continue as we had in the past since we viewed the funds as a pass-through and were not on our balance sheet at year end. Both parties, the auditor and the Department of Revenue, rejected this approach and said we would need to comply effective July 1, 2017 for fiscal year 2018. They allowed us basically a year to get this ready. In my FY'18 budget presentation, I presented the estimated revenue for peg from Comcast as a local receipt, and I have budgeted an equivalent expenditure on the expense side of the budget. The goal is to replicate our existing business relationship with Amherst Media. In short, we are working to find a way to ensure that the designated funds received by the town from Comcast can be transmitted in whole to the organization awarded the bid. Unfortunately, complying with the law means that because we have money coming in, we can't just send it out. We need to follow procurement laws and publicly bid for the services that Amherst Media has been providing for the town for 40 years. This is a significant change in our past practice. We contacted the Inspector General's office to see if this category was exempt in any way. They said it was not. We were required to follow the state's procurement laws. We then asked if Amherst Media could be considered an intergovernmental agency of the town, but the answer was that they are not and could not be treated that way. That would have allowed us to transfer the funds automatically. So seeing that this is the lay of the land, we are preparing a request for proposals which will move this process forward so that a contract will be finalized as soon as practicable and our accounting will be in compliance with July 1, 2017. I will assemble a committee to review the proposal. That will include our procurement officer, our IT director, a member of the select board, and we will request the presence of the select board's Amherst Community Television Board liaison. We have set a proposed timeline. The final timeline will be distributed upon the release of the RFP. But right now we're looking at, we would advertise the RFP on February 28th. We would ask for proposals to be delivered to the town by March 17th. We would review the proposals the week of March 20th in hopes to make a final decision by March 29th and have a contract signed by April 14th. In the meantime, I've offered a contract extension on the exact same terms and conditions to Amherst Media through June 30th, 2017, to secure any concern that Amherst Media has about the existing relationship. So that's my report. All right, thank you. Are there questions from select board specifically for the manager or comments? I will have, I do have some comments and then I have a question for the manager. But I first wanted to start by making a general comment because I've been one of the two people who was designated by the select board to work with the manager on this project and the lead person to work with the manager on this project, which I have been doing. And in that regard, I want to just start out by saying that the select board very much appreciates Amherst Media in all respects, including Amherst Media's right for free speech and to express its opinions. And it has an avenue to do so, which is above and beyond most members of the community because it is a media outlet. And so it has used its media, including a stream on the bottom of the town meeting presentation of last week's town meeting to start stating its opinion. Of course, while respecting that right, I'm distressed by several things. I think that there have been a number of inaccurate statements made or misleading statements that have been made and the creation of fear that is unwarranted amongst a large number of members of the public that something has been intended or inadvertently will have the result of somehow damaging a very valuable institution, which is the institution to provide public access, education, and government programming. And that it flies in the face of decades of working relationship between the town and Amherst Media. And I think that it was unnecessary that that happened. We appreciate the fact, as noted by the manager, that Amherst Media has continued to provide programming on channels 12, 15, and 17. And the town has, as also noted, continued to provide funding as in the past as it comes in from Comcast to Amherst Media. The town, as also noted, offered to extend the written contract. But the fact of the matter is a couple of things. We can't ignore the fact that the Department of Revenue issued the regulation IGR 16102 that it does specifically state that there are two mechanisms. We appreciate the fact that the director of Amherst Media has come and suggested that there might be another approach to take. We have not seen that from conversations with either the Department of Revenue or with our accountant sets up a viable mechanism. And so we need to proceed with the reality of what the law provides to us, which is the RFP process that has been recommended. The other thing that I would note is that we met last week, Mr. Slaughter and I, who are the two select board people who are the designated people to work with the town manager on this with two members of the board for about an hour, the Amherst Media board for about an hour and a half, talked about a variety of topics. And one of the things we pointed out was that it's not unprecedented in Massachusetts to have RFPs for the issuance of PEG services and that there are two towns which we provided the names of that have existing contracts with their PEG provider through an RFP process and that it has been, from all we can detect, worked very smoothly in the issuance and the contract, the execution of the contract, and the provision of services. And all of that information, we hope that everybody recognizes because this idea that something horrible happens with RFPs is evident from all of the buttons that are around the room that say slash no RFP creates this impression that it is somehow an unacceptable mechanism for procurement when it is a standard required mechanism for procurement and one that has been used in this very circumstances in other Massachusetts communities with great success and without problems for either the PEG provider or for the community. So turning to my question for the manager, I assume that since the group that you're asking to meet with to provide advice on the contract is only advisory in nature that it is not a problem to have a member of the Amherst Media Board of Directors as a participant in that process, but our liaison to Amherst Media is a member of their Board of Directors and has the requirements of a member of the board. So it's not a question that needs to be responded to immediately, but before you do that, I would urge that issue be just confirmed that given the nature of how you want to use this group, that that in fact is not a problem. So thank you. Connie? Thank you, Mr. Steinberg. I think you raised some really good points and I just wanted to add because I've said this in prior meetings a little bit when we discussed this. I've done a lot of work with Request for Reposals, not in this context more around development, procuring consultants and housing development projects, and I actually support the Request for Reposal process because I think it helps the town in clarifying what it's looking for and it's an important statement about the direction we're going with our media services. That's not to say about controlling the broadcast or the free speech issues, but I find the Request for Reposal not a threatening process. It takes a little bit of work to craft it, but I think a useful exercise. And so I was taken aback that this was perceived as a hostile measure because I think I saw this as a sort of normal course of business and one that could be good for the town and perhaps including good for the Amherst media or the awardee of the contract. So I hope that people understand we're entering into this process in good faith and the manager's done a very thorough job of seeing what the legal options were, the regulatory options, and I think we're proceeding. We have a little bit of a broader responsibility than just one vendor or one contractor. We're trying to keep the town in good standing and in good compliance with lots of requirements that we face all the time. So if there aren't any other questions for the manager or comments that need to be made from select board at this point, if Mr. Brewer would like to come up and make his comment, please. Thank you. I'm Stephen Brewer. I'm the president of the board of Amherst media. I'm also the husband of Ms. Brewer who's the chair of the select board and I wanted to take just a brief moment to explain something that I think is important for people to understand. As with my wife, I wanted to when the town, when Amherst media entered into negotiations with the town, I thought it was important to recuse myself to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest and had discussed doing that in consultation with the board and for that purpose, I have delegated to the executive committee of Amherst media the responsibility of representing Amherst media in these negotiations and I wanted to make clear that my lack of participation in the negotiation or making public statements was not misconstrued as taking any kind of position on the activities of the organization during this process. Thank you. And at this point, if Mr. Lesko could come up and please. I guess Mr. Ben... Yeah. Okay, thank you. Yeah, that's fine. Yeah. Yeah, that's all right. And just as a reminder, if you'll make sure to stick with me. Good evening. I'm Isaac Beneser. I've been your representative. Representative Select Board on the board of Amherst media and formerly known as ACTV for nine years. Nobody gets to be appointed for nine years in the town unless they're crazy. But I have to say that in my retirement has been a wonderful, wonderful marital relationship and I almost felt, I have to say this together with my chest. When I heard about it, we don't want a divorce but we want to look at other opportunities as a form of mediation. So, can you blame me for feeling that way? I feel jilted. I feel jilted because the relationship that I've enjoyed with the town and its representatives have been one of working together. I feel like the bride that's being told you know you've done a good job but I've got to look around and I think you need to look at what we have before you look around because you might say to yourself, gee what's keeping her from leaving the relationship let alone being, I mean the feeling I think we're going to be scrutinized and because I don't look at this as a one of conflict I have to start out by saying I love you guys. I'm not here to fight. I'm here to protect something that we have worked so hard to develop and I've been fortunate to be on the board and to represent the select board for nine years and I have to tell you ten years ago to make ACTV a subcommittee of one of the groups in the town. The recreation department everybody was handed their resignation. I just came on to the board and they're leaving. I'm not having a lot of luck but fortunately I believed in what we were doing and smarter and more thoughtful heads prevailed. So now whatever happens down the road I want you to know the only thing I'm interested in in my retirement is to see the young people and the old people and the people in the community who have been participating in making ACTV what it is continue to be what it is and I'm glad to hear that we shouldn't worry about the future. Well, I have to tell you as a former mediator the voice mediator when I hear somebody say that that makes me worry because it means that maybe I'm not doing so good so I would ask you to investigate your relationship with us a little more deeply. Maybe we've lost touch with each other we've gone our separate ways and a few people come in and I can't blame them they don't have a history but the people around this table have a history. Everybody has been a participant for a long time and I say that and I just want to wind up saying this is this contract that we've been living in for ten years check out it has my name on it President the manager at the time Lawrence Shaffer came in and he was new too and the first thing he did was to get to know us and I think that I would welcome that we find ways of making as part of the process of getting to know us and that might help to realize what a gem we have one that's revered by this whole town and one other thing it's very hard to get good people we are blessed with the kind of staff that we have we're working on a minimum budget with a minimum amount of people and when you say we're looking around in this job market now is the time for them to jump we've been training people they've gone to CBS NBC it's a shame enough to keep them but one of the things we should be talking about is why can't we bring more resources so we can keep the people we've trained who are members of this community now I'm going to finalize because I know you have a lot of big budget but if you look at this contract this contract was developed not by lawyers getting together but two people from ACTV late Paulette Brooks and myself who got our own lawyer and then we sat down with the manager and he came in with another plan which would have made us a subcommittee of the recreation department and and I said who are you negotiating with that's what I told Shaper and he said well let's talk about our contract that we have now and build the things that we think we need to add and so that was a partnership from the beginning and for years I met with Lawrence every two weeks for lunch and we talked about issues that's why I became the town representative now if I wasn't doing a decent job you either wouldn't neglect and not pay attention to my responsibilities to you or I was doing a good job but you didn't have time you didn't have to worry about what was going on but we've never stolen a nickel everything's been awarded we have a community by the hundreds that have come into that place young and old and we have created a gem and I think it's not a matter of assuring us that we'll be okay until June if you have an idea of what it is to recreate this let us know let the community know but I think we're acting not defensively but we're acting to protect the interests of the town and we need to put our heads together to resolve this quickly not to continue to have this kind of stuff going on and you'll forgive me I have to leave because my handle is saying I can't do it thank you for hearing thank you thank you thank you there'll be no outcry I know you know how to drive what's that I'm sorry yeah that's perfect so hello my name is Demetria Shabazz and I'm not only the VP of the board for Amherst media I'm also a faculty member at UMass and the Department of Communication so one moment so thank you town manager for your attention to our contractual needs I have communicated your offer to the to the board about the extended contract that arrived Friday afternoon at 4.30 we have not had an opportunity to look at it however February the 11th we will be meeting and I'm sure the extension that you're offering will be topic of conversation so first I'd like to address my response to the offer that you have sent to us just real quick Chair Brewer said if I went over three minutes to ask for more time it just it might be about four I will try to be brief but the reason why I am asking for at least another minute is that I think what has happened is that there's lots of confusion and things have gotten a bit convoluted so first the memo also given today by the town manager to the select board has set up and proposed a timeline and next steps for the contract this memo has as the person to assist in the process Adrian Tourette which is the town's liaison and I've told Adrian this after serving with her on the cable advisory committee I don't go with her anywhere and we will be in war together but because I have so much faith in her abilities and what she's able to do I think it is unfair to split her position in terms of representing either the select board or will she represent Amherst media and I can say after working with her on the CAC after both the town's interest and Amherst media and not having representation of Amherst media on any committee that will decide our fate I think is a misstep in addition in negotiations past community members have provided review of contracts regarding the access center and this RFP process would circumvent that after going through the ascertainment process and seeing how the subscribers and people of the town really feel positively about the services that we provide they had lots of criticism for Comcast but for us they really had faith in what we were able to deliver for the last 10 years I would again hate to circumvent that process by putting in place RFP or an enterprise fund that does not allow for the input of the community members the other item that I wish to raise tonight concerns a need for clarification regarding the information you've presented pertaining to the RFP you've also discussed town manager in the media the first article appearing December 26 and in various meetings held with the executive director Jim Lesko at Severance Adrian Turretzi, Steven Brewer and myself there seems to be a bit of confusion regarding the requirement that you have articulated as this request for proposal or a setup of an enterprise fund for payment of services to Amherst media as the board of Amherst media we have been really immersed in these documents pertaining to enterprise funds, RFPs, etc for some time and it has become clear that what you are presenting as a requirement and as a required change from our vantage point and from our research is a recommendation Historically enterprise funds and RFP processes for access centers emerged as a means of making sure that access centers were paid by municipalities that for whatever reason co-mingled their funds or misappropriated them however we have faith that this is not occurred and we have worked in partnership with you so these guidelines were meant not necessarily to determine or require that the towns pay through an RFP for the access centers through an RFP but it was meant as an option and I think the language within the informational guideline release for January 2016 under the summary the third paragraph states that this is a guideline and not a requirement so just an example and I'm reading one of the very short paragraphs here cities and towns may now designate cable, peg access operations or services as an enterprise or separately account for all franchise fees and other revenues derived from enterprise activities in the same manner as other enterprise funds and throughout this document it stipulates guidelines and it says may may do this and it doesn't say they are required furthermore mass access which is our policy group within the state of Massachusetts advises us that if we are already receiving direct payment and there isn't a problem with direct payment again it's for misappropriation mishandling of funds that we should continue that process so again this is a choice we would like to offer you that if you revisit and I'm so glad to see Isaac bringing up the 2007-2006 contract as our starting point we recognize how constructive our relationship has been in bringing services to the town of Amherst consistently we have provided you services at if we look at our report that we gave to you a couple of weeks ago you can see all the many hours that our staff and our volunteers have provided in terms of providing services having to do with education, government and public looking at the next 10 years how might we think and plan to go forward the positive reasons I think we should look at why we as a board support the continued direct payment option is that it insures continued stability excellence and responsiveness to community in our mantra providing excellence stability and services responsiveness to services above all this arrangement has allowed us autonomy yes something that we value and an independence in terms of services that we provide that are transparent and that when needed we are always there to serve indeed we have gone beyond whatever was stipulated within our 2006 contract placing the town always at the highest priority based on our knowledge of other communities around the country with RFPs Andy Steinberg points out you know I appreciate that again we've done our research since about 2006 actually beginning on the west coast in California when RFPs and enterprise funds were introduced so went those access stations one of the best examples is Austin access in the state of Texas my home state Austin access had one of the most successful access centers fully networked within the town once RFPs were introduced a film group took it over nothing against film people I study film but the public part and the government part of access Austin went away now it's run by a bunch of folks who are into film wonderful but that's not an access center that's not a center that invites the public in to have their own shows to have their own voice really be shared with others in the community that's not a place where you get government transparency so I'm going to to wind this up so for us we have nothing monetary to gain in this endeavor but as consumers, citizens of Amherst and of the commonwealth we wish only to continue to make available the means for others to produce their shows have transparency in terms of the government and remain informed regarding their community so I just want to end with if an A broke why fix it and if we try to fix something that does not need repair however we may do more harm than good and go the way of other access centers that are no longer here thank you thank you I'm sorry I would prefer not to have sort of applause at statements but we're trying to acquire information do our work here and so we'll try to refrain from expressions of support or dismay or those sort of things if you would please thank you my name is Jim Lesko I'm the executive director of Amherst media thank you for allowing us this time to address you I'd like to first thank the both Isaac and Demetria for coming in speaking tonight and all the others that have shown up that would like to show their support also we've received numerous emails in support of what we do I believe the town has also received some I'd like to recap I'm not going to really go into great detail because I've sent you many things in writing I've been before you before so I would just like to recap if I may the community here is as IGR16-102 which sounds like some kind of space shot but there's more options out there I've said this before you just heard but there's also exists that option that cable companies directly fund the peg provider in this case it would be Amherst media the funding mechanism is currently being implemented in 17 western mass communities as select board members you have never acknowledged this existing option being utilized in neighboring Northampton, Holyoke Springfield, Deerfield and 13 others but the town manager continues to put forth written material to you and to the media as though the town is being forced by the Department of Revenue with no other alternatives recently we were told to look at the towns of Lexington and Concord to see what the city's RFPs look like since our town officials are using those for guidance I did just that Lexington's RFP was formulated 13 years ago when the town decided to start a community access center instead of the one historically run by the cable company this process is always used when initiating a new access center reminder as a nonprofit organization we have been servicing this community for 41 years in Amherst the select board is the cable licensing issuing authority for the cable contract in Concord the town manager has full control Concord's town manager is currently moving forward to making the once independent nonprofit peg access center into a municipal department obviously neither of these two examples makes me feel any better about an RFP my two questions for the select board are these are you voting tonight or have you voted previously on instituting the town manager's proposed new procurement procedure if I could get an answer I'd appreciate that are you voting tonight or have you voted previously on instituting the town manager's proposed new procurement procedure well well you know I mean have you voted on it you haven't I take it or no we haven't voted on it in the past I mean we've only had it but oh okay I'm sorry I was under the impression we could have a dialogue I'm sorry no it's a question well just to sort of clarify I think that no I mean the procurement rules I mean just you know as far as that goes are dictated by state law and are generally under the purview of the manager so we don't generally take a vote so like you know he procures a service like we'll hear about later on tonight we'll hear a third party to provide some support around a different topic that's on our agenda this evening we weren't involved in that process because that's still under his purview in that regard obviously in things of a higher visibility we'll suggest our advice and you know we'll work our way through it but we have not taken any sort of formal vote I guess it's the simplest answer not if you would real quick if you wanted sorry but I from where I sit we're looking to our town manager to advise us and certainly have had lots of opportunities to hear input other opinions about how statutory requirements might affect us but I very much look to the manager for that we haven't actually discussed maybe the negotiating you know group as more our preferences or balancing but I think it's absolutely appropriate as a select board member for me to look to the manager to filter the information and make that recommendation it's a different kind of standing than an informed opinion of a potential applicant in a RFP process and my understanding about Lexington and Concord is we're talking about RFP as to form here's a form of structure something if you're going to go the RFP I'm not sure the fact that their end result or their situations are different and I'm just I would like us to have that kind of dialogue and I feel like we're squaring off and as much as you well that's just how I feel maybe it's a couple hundred emails bringing that to this I don't think we're doing something out of the ordinary or particularly offensive but it is appropriate for us to look to the manager for advice absolutely and if I may thank you for the clarifications and I'm very close to wrapping up the town manager told Amherst media personnel at a meeting that he had asked one of the select board members to see if the town could run the peg channels he was told that yes there's enough money for two people to run it for the town but the town manager stated he didn't feel that the town was ready yet yet perhaps the time will be right for the town manager in the town of Amherst when in three years the RFP must go out to bid again I will not excuse me I will not highlight again for you the many services beyond government coverage we do for the community organizations and the residents that was highlighted for you in our annual report I will not repeat the number of 188 meetings we covered or the number of hours our interns staff and members worked to provide you that coverage but I guarantee you no two town employees could ever service all the community as the independent Amherst media does every day and has done for the past 41 years I believe you still can change the course you're on I believe that you can immediately create contract negotiations with Amherst media and I encourage you to consider so thank you thank you I think at this point let me see if so we've heard from a few folks are there others in the audience that would like to speak and add public comment and again I would suggest we're looking for information that would be new that you haven't sent us to via email so if you just have a quick show of hands to see how many folks are interested all right one two three so I've got three on this side it looks like four on this side and I'll start on this side we'll take about three minutes I'd like you to keep it to about three minutes I'll be a little firmer on time than we were with the previous speakers only yeah you don't have to take three minutes obviously but I mean but obviously also if someone sort of states the same thing you were planning on saying you know you can defer and just state that quickly and we can go to the next person so so we'll start on this side if you want to come up to state your name with the microphone and and give us your remarks please my name is Gabriel Fuentes I'm from the city of Chickpea I used to be an intern with Amherst media and this is why I'm here to speak to you today first of all I'd like to say thank you for having me and I also want to say that I'm very grateful that we have the ability to have transparency in this room there's something that concerns me and I think this is something that hasn't been mentioned before is the way that the dialogue is happening in this room right now I heard that there was this culture of fear from you guys that you believe that Amherst media is overstating the facts if you will but what I didn't hear from you guys is why you believe that RFP that our discussion about RFPs is fearful I didn't understand how it actually will benefit Amherst media that is not something I heard in this room tonight what also concerns me is that one of the select board believes that receiving emails from the public is some sort of confrontation as opposed to a dialogue that truly is very worrisome because what I'm hearing from this side of the room is that this is supposed to be a partnership between the city of Amherst and the people that it represents and it doesn't just represent the people of Amherst like I said I am from Chickpea I've lived in Holyoke I've lived in Northampton but Amherst media has always been there for me as an immigrant it has given me a voice that has not been offered in a lot of other ways and I think that what we're seeing in this country right now is the pocket of people that get to have a voice is growing smaller and smaller and we're seeing that in the media but we're also seeing that in the loss of public spaces and so we can't just see Amherst media as what it offers digitally we have to see what it offers in the physical sense where it has the ability to congregate all sorts of people from the community so that they can communicate with each other and offer a multitude of voices I truly believe that a monoculture of thought is destructive to any sort of community I also found it interesting that the city of Austin was mentioned earlier today because we have to realize how Amherst media can be beneficial to the economy of Amherst as well it offers the ability to to create an identity in the town and that's what it did in Austin it helped a lot of artists expose themselves and it's what has allowed that city to be so vibrant and so I think I'll conclude with that but thank you very much that was exactly three minutes by the way so on this side who was next on this side or in the front if you would please can you please state your name my name is Kathleen Lynch I'm the executive director of East Hampton media East Hampton media serves the city of East Hampton we also serve the town of South Hampton with the Select Board in addition to that my experience I also count to my experience being a member of the Montague Cable Advisory Committee that was possibly the most unpleasant experience I've ever had in my life let me tell you why this issue this is the issue RFP and so I understand RFP in how it relates to the procurement law I understand everyone in municipal government wants to do their due diligence I do not believe it applies in this area I think that RFPs are intended for new things or for changes of things services for example should the performance evaluation of the access center come up wanting and the town chooses not to renew that contract would then at that point put out an RFP for service there's been a lot of buzz in municipal administration about the enterprise fund I've been hearing about it already for two years let's not get too excited about it because I have a really strong feeling that there's an addendum law that addresses specifically what we're talking about here coming down the pike because 30B was supposed to have this addendum law with it and our legislature failed to pass that measure in package now I want you to understand that as a person who is not from this community but interacts with this community a lot I drive through here I dump a ton of money into the restaurants here my kids went to school down the street I want you to understand that Amherst being the kind of community that it is and the national climate being the kind of climate that it is this particular issue gains exceptional relevance because it happens here in Amherst and I want the municipality to try and understand that there is in this day and age no issue that can happen around the people's right and access to free speech that will not and gender civil rights issues and now feels honestly in this community not the time to fight this battle it does not feel like it is the time to fight this battle it feels to me like an incredible display of leadership to extend a magnanimous branch from the administrative office with our non-profits who have already sunk an incredible amount of time energy resourcing and intellect to secure an excellent contract much better contract for the citizens and for the town of Amherst than probably you would have gotten on your own and I want you to try to look at these relationships with the non-profits and especially non-profits that you partner with as true partnerships because you serve each other as a good partnership you're serving each other well I do not believe that the 30B restrictions require you to put out an RFP at this time and I really urge you to do that in addition I also have a prepared statement that I know was emailed into the board today and I would like to read it if you could finish it please it's a separate person who has a stomach flu and couldn't be here today can I read it into the record it's emailed to us we'll have it as part of our record okay well then this is from a formal municipal leader of 16 and a half years who is asking you to do the right thing and please examine that thank you I appreciate it, thank you Sophie please Hi, I'm Sarah Littlecaress I'm a resident of North Amherst myself and my husband Matthew King and pay Amherst taxes because of the services that our taxes buy and that was really important to us it was important to us for wanting to raise our families here it's important as far as long term really wanting to be part of this community for decades a couple of questions that I have of the 17 communities that you know where they have this other model right where they haven't gone through the RFP process I'm really wondering how you've looked into how that process has happened what have been some of the best practices and really some way to kind of break out some of those pros and cons as well as kind of wondering what your general counsel's opinion has sort of been as far as whether or not this RFP process is in fact required it sounds like there's been some question back and forth from folks and just really being able to have that I think would be really helpful and really ultimately you know as finance you know my husband will tell you I'm always keeping an eye on the household budget but money is really important but money isn't the vision right money supports the vision and I just hope as our financial manager that you kind of can see that our taxes and the money that comes into this town is part of trying to build that vision of what Amherst is to be because it's really easy just to get lost in the bottom line and what kind of looks good in a balance sheet but there's a context here and you know where Amherst only the H is silent you can't take away our voice but thank you just as a quick reminder while she makes her way up in general when we take public comment we'll so if you have questions that sort of thing we'll take them we don't generally respond in a back and forth in general there might be a clarifying question we ask just to make sure we're understanding but that's about it so we're generally not going to do a dialogue back and forth so I don't want to sort of set expectations for people as they provide us with their comments Hello I'm Brenda Bush House joining the Amherst media board in August as the higher education representative but what I do at UMass is I teach non-profit management and I wanted to speak to it from that perspective and also someone that's taught urban politics for many years so a 501c3 like Amherst media needs to have independence to fulfill its mission once the town takes the RFP approach which it's not required to do it will have control over that mission right now the board is made up of those that are appointed we have very slots that are appointed like me from higher ed Rick Hood from the school committee and then we have others we have a pretty broad perspective of the community and I think the board has to be operating in a policy position to fulfill the mission to make strategic decisions for the organization now the RFP that could be put forward for Amherst media through the town will be what the town wants what happens then to a 501c3 board I would really really encourage you to consider that and I think I'm very familiar with public management and the need for a partnership but with you have an organization like Amherst media who most of its budget is coming through this contract with Comcast it's not like a housing or RFP like service net it has up to who knows how many RFPs they go after to get the contracts this is a 501c3 that is financially dependent on this contract and so I'm very, very alarmed at the distortion that could happen to Amherst media's board in its role in an independent 501c3 non-profit anyone else on this side not then we'll switch to this side let's start here in the front second row there, thank you my name is Stanley Marin and I moved to Amherst 11 years ago and just a couple of months ago we moved to Lathrop retirement in Northampton but anyway I have done some work with Amherst media on a minor level and I found them to be very cooperative and understanding and one thing is on my mind, wherever I go there's a problem of austerity on the world level, on the global level countries have been asked to become spend less, more austerity in the community all the way from global down to here they want to cut and what are they cutting from the lady who owns Broadside bookstore in Northampton told me that George Orwell's book 1984 sold out people are a lot of people are beginning to question what kind of a society we live in as a matter of fact right now I feel as if I'm talking to the people's board of understanding and you understand me but the Comcast people and the 1% and the people who run the society with the greater inequality that's taken place don't understand so I talk just to end as a viewer when I turn on channel 12 in the morning I enjoy Amy Goodman that's the best journalist I know that tells you things that are happening that you don't find anywhere after that I hear discussions very often it's people who are my age now you don't see a talking head on any of the channels they're one third of my age so I begin to feel as if I belong somewhere and I hear labor programs rap shows serious shows all kinds of things on Amherst media that I don't hear elsewhere and I think that we should make it a priority not to as the woman said not to fix it it's pretty good now it's real good now thank you thank you let's go here next Jeff Lee I was on the board of ACTV shortly after the current previous contract was started like to express my appreciation for what Amherst media has provided over the past 10 years in my view the direct payment model with appropriate oversight and the services being provided by an independent non-profit have worked quite well I think among the biggest achievements of Amherst media over the past 10 years are totally renovating the studio space and bringing new equipment in starting new training programs getting a cross section of the community involved in production and I'm just grateful for that I think I'd worry about the problems transitioning to a new model and a new perhaps a new entity providing the services I don't, you know, I seriously doubt that they could do a better job I think by and large Amherst media does a great job and I'm not sure if the vision is bringing the peg services into town government but if that is I think it would be a mistake I think independence is important for ensuring creativity and balance so thank you thank you so we'll go, we're confronted back so we'll go here next, sorry my name is Santa Carter I was on the executive committee with Isaac Benesra and served for three years and one thing I learned was that it was a messy and not always fun but it includes everybody everyone has a voice and that's one reason I decided to serve on ACTV and now it's called Amherst media but it was called ACTV then one question I have from listening to all this discussion is I hear that the select board feels that they're compelled it's ordained by the state law but I'm hearing that other people have researched and feel that it's not mandatory so my question to the select board is if you have other reasons for feeling that you have to do an RFP besides that it's compelled by law can you please be transparent with the community of why it's important to go out for an RFP because I pretty much agree it may not be perfect but if it ain't broke why fix it so I'm hoping that you can be transparent with the community as you are also servants to the community just as I was when I served on ACTV and as anyone in a controlling board is a service to the community and the other thing that I just want to it's very obvious but it's the citizens of Amherst who pay Comcast it's the citizens money that is providing the funds that in turn the least we can do is control our cable access station so thank you very much. Thank you. So Vince if you would please Mr. O'Connor I should say. So in this situation I think I sort of have a nuts and bolts approach the first thing I think that the board needs to say is if there's been no decision for the RFP process and you have four members before anything happens I think the board needs to make a decision whether to go forward not everything the town manager a town manager recommends gets approved by the select board been here 40 years I watched it happen a lot sometimes the manager strikes out and I guess it concerns me that we've gone this far since the contract with Comcast was signed and you know maybe I'm wrong but I understand that the people who work at Amherst media have not gotten paid which I think is not a good thing we should this should not have gone this far without that happening the second thing is that at the point where there is a genuine public dispute about whether there is a may or shall in the thing that somebody says a requirement other says is an option then it I think the select board goes from relying on the manager to provide information to becoming responsible for knowing the information directly themselves and making the judgment themselves what Amherst media does for this community with our money from Comcast seems to be really important thing to this community and so the board I think needs to do those two things can't rely I mean there's clearly a dispute the board needs to each individual member of this board needs to personally know whether in fact it is a requirement and I think it's it would be a tragedy to destroy this organization for the the reasons that appear not to be really meaningful I haven't heard anything this this process doesn't seem to be being moved by anything by what some one person says is a requirement and other people say is not and I just you've got to resolve this this is not a something you can rely on somebody else for this is too important an organization in this community to to say well they say this the manager says that we'll just rely on what the manager says okay you can't do that anymore thank you good evening I'm Adrian Terizzi and I am your current representative to the Amherst media board I would like to be gracious in my appreciation for you taking the amount of time you have tonight I also served as you well know on the Comcast negotiation team I was one of five members that happily delivered with the help of Amherst media and its staff the 1.125 million that we were planning to use for addressing our government channels our public channels and our educational channels I still look forward to that and I do want to say that following the completion of our negotiations we were very hopeful before the select board stepped in to complete those negotiations that we would have an opportunity to have a public hearing I think that's very much what we're getting tonight and I do thank you for listening to everyone who has come forward to speak I'm not going to go back over all the reasons you heard tonight but I would like to leave you with one thought I've taken my responsibilities in representing the town and being the liaison to the town and trying to balance that with what I need to bring to the Amherst media board as a fully functioning equitable partner I have to say that I am unconvinced that the route that you believe must be sought by the new DOR requirements is in the best interest of either so I would appreciate your inspiration tonight I would like to stay around and hear all of it and thank you again thank you so I'm not seeing any other hands in a moment sure this by the way will be our last speaker I'm MJ Donahue living Amherst I just want to speak to the education I got when I went to high school in Amherst and was an intern at Amherst community television the director at the time was nice enough to sit down with me and give me one-on-one instruction on how to be a video editor and I was able to leave school early and get school credit for that internship and after going to college and taking video classes there and also using Amherst high schools video class I have to say that was the only place available for me to get that type of one-on-one instruction and as somebody who did not continue with my college that type of instruction and the knowledge I got from it was invaluable to me getting further positions working in community media centers I've also been a member of Cambridge community television in 2015 and I'm currently a member of Amherst media and would like to be a part of them continuing on with the mission that they have been for so many years holding up for the community and I also want to say this is an opportunity for us to think about what kind of community this is and who we are serving I see the select board has a lot of Apple products not everybody has that ability to get access to a laptop or their own technology to create media and Amherst media is one place to go and for a very affordable fee be able to create their own media have their own voice and not have any government getting in the way of that relationship and also are any nonprofits going to want to be in this town if there is this type of hostility towards their functioning on a regular basis so that has been my experience with Amherst media always very supportive and giving me another way when some of the traditional methods even though I know this is a college town but not everybody is involved with the colleges or has access to those resources Amherst media provides that for people so I just want to point that out thank you and I would like to say that we appreciate the comments of the community on this issue and we take your comments seriously and under advisement to us I think at this point does the select board have another comment just a couple of people had asked are we going to deliberate tonight on our agenda it actually says update which I didn't realize we were going to do something similar to a hearing we have a lot of other things maybe we could decide tonight because I would like as we always do to go back and reconsider the information I know as members we have also done our own research and reading about the requirements some of it might be a judgment call and some of it might be more on the line of requirement I think warrants further exploration as people had mentioned so I wouldn't want us to make a decision tonight but we might go around so people know where we're at for the sake of transparency kind of how we're approaching it very quickly so that we can while everybody's here on this issue say a few words about what we're thinking and what our process is going to be but I am not ready to vote a decision about our process right now thank you for that and I do think that's a good idea to sort of have each of us kind of give a sense of where we're at with regard to this issue and so I'll look to either your sign burger Mr. Wald who would like to go first I've been talking tonight I mean first of all I think this is a good example of a good process and Emerson is a town that's known for civic engagement so I'm very glad that people came out to talk to us and I'm sorry if it seemed confrontational at times I think we were responding in some sense to the fact that we were in the sense being accused of doing something improper whether by designer by omission and I want to assure it when that's not the case that we wouldn't be considering the RFP issue as I understand it unless we've been advised by professional staff with expertise in the field and after considerable research that we have to take this course so and as I understand it too the RFP does not obviously RFP does not entail a given outcome anyone can apply although I understand the concerns of the public I think the public I would ask them to understand the process that we're going through and the due diligence the transparency the fiduciary responsibility and as Ms. Kriber said the possibility is to state for the public what it is we're looking for here so I guess there are two questions there's the abstract question whether one would issuing an RFP is the best way to go forward in finding a provider for this especially given the excellent service by a beloved community organization and there's the legal absolute requirement there and I guess I'm a little taken aback by the suggestion of government by Google that we're all supposed to go look up things on our own I mean I'm accustomed not to giving rubber stamp but to respecting the expertise of the town manager who is a trained professional and who has corresponded with people in the field including our town council we retain at the taxpayers dollar to give us an opportunity to take that as having a fair amount of weight I given that we have time I think it is fine as Ms. Kriber said to do further investigation and be absolutely sure about the shales maze cans and so forth and looking at the calendar I see that we're asking to advertise an RFP by February 28th so basically three weeks from now and I wonder whether the process we could follow a two track process that as we could prepare an RFP as we can continue to consider the legal questions we go forward. I guess I want to do several things one first of all I want to thank several groups of people who are in the room who have really committed themselves to this community and to the importance of the services provided for public programming educational programming government programming and that's of course people who served on the cable advisory committee who did a tremendous job of helping us to get to the point where we are now which is taking a very good contract that would have not have been achieved but for the hard work of the CAC working in partnership with the select board so I want to thank all of you who have contributed to this project and the select board so I want to recognize all of that and we are all about the same thing we are talking about how we benefit the community I do want to close with a couple of observations that I made at the beginning one is that this is a new regulation it was issued and it does just offer two options and it's not two options and some vague other that you can create it states what it states and the point that has been raised and I have thought about significantly previously is that there are other communities that do what we have done in the past of a direct pass through but what's missing is where those arrangements made subsequent to the enactment of a regulation that isn't even enforceable until July 1 of 17 so it's sort of this unknown piece of information is on those communities if we didn't have the unhappy coincidence as it is that our contract renewal with Comcast was up when it was at we would probably be in the same position as those other communities in trying to figure out what to do in mid contract when there has been this new requirement but we do have to deal with the fact as it is we have a new requirement that has been put in place and we are about to issue a contract and we have not just tripped upon this on our own but have consulted with staff at Department of Revenue and at our certified public accountant and the last comment that I want to make is that I was a director of a non-profit organization for better than 25 years and we provided legal assistance to low income people and almost all of our funds was by grants and contracts that came through a process that had some type of RFP to it and you know that is just the nature of how non-profits function and well designed RFPs which is what we were always advocating for and I certainly understand Amherst Media's board and staff arguing for too for the same reason are looking for an RFP that reasonably serves the public interest for the service that is the mission of the organization but it is a common process and I think that that's something that is therefore one that seems to just from my own personal experience to be a logical way to proceed in addition to the fact that now that I'm on this side of it on the select board the law requires it the town cannot issue a contract without going through the requirements of a procurement process which is different from where we were in the last round so thank you thank you I think I'll conclude this section I'll just say that I appreciate everyone coming out tonight and sharing their thoughts with us because I can't speak for my colleagues but I'm sure that they like me will take your thoughts and concerns under consideration as we move ahead with this and and again we appreciate you coming out tonight and letting us know your opinions and thoughts on the matter thank you and I think we'll take a short recess so that we can what's that? I wasn't included in the go round but I have said a lot already I'm sorry I thought that initiating you would have sort of said what you needed to say would you like to add some more I actually think I have said a lot tonight let's clarify it's certainly a healthy thing when people correspond with us people don't know what some people wrote and sometimes I know we're public officials so I have to take the heat but most people were quite respectful to the point but I was reacting to a couple of them I just wanted to say about the RFP process that whether it's a requirement or not I haven't decided yet for myself which is preferable for the town but I just want to say from my own experience it's a competitive process so it's a little hard to sit here and say well you guys have it hand down because you can't hands down because you can't do that because we're designing a competitive process by law but people write letters of support for proposals and kind of a response we've gotten as any show of support I would say it certainly would be invaluable in responding to a request for proposal as well thank you any communication about this matter you posted online along with the material I think it has been I'm sorry I presume that not to your individual take it under advisement we'll certainly take it under advisement we'll check with the chair as far as general process and procedure generally things that we do put out in general to be made available publicly so barring it being onerous to folks to do I think we probably would likely do that but it's a fear of volume I don't want to diminish that at all but we'll take it under advisement in that regard so we'll take a short recess so we can find our chair and bring her back to chair the rest of the meeting okay so it is now 8.15 p.m. we had a brief recess I want to thank Mr. Slaughter for taking all of that on I appreciate that and we are now going to move into our next action and discussion item however we are going to have a slight change in the order in that we are going to move to item C which is the senior tax work off abatement request to increase from $1,000 to $1,500 under general law chapter 59 section 5 and K and if you would just give us the intro Mr. Bakker. Thank you Madam Chair so currently we have a tax work off program for seniors of up to $1,000 and the state law has changed that allows a community to increase that amount from $1,000 to $1,500 we have our director of senior services Nancy Pogano here we have Mara Plant our program director and we have our principal assessor who happens to be here as well who could also address any questions you may have right now we limited to 35 people and if you were to increase it it would have a potential increase of $13,000 annually and Ms. Plant was really the one who has been pushing this or promoting it I won't be pushing it but her interest on behalf of seniors is pretty strong as is the whole senior team there so great so why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself for the folks at home and bend the mic really close down to your face my name is Mara Plant I'm the program director for services at the senior center excellent and we have a memo here from you which is in our packet for those of you following along at home along with a copy of this we have a motion in front of us tonight on our motion sheet to increase the maximum gross abatement to a certain amount per year now this is something that does not need to be approved by town meeting this is something we do here that's correct okay only alright questions from the select board from Ms. Plant otherwise I'm going to ask somebody to read a motion for the third you've got the motion I'd like to read the motion and then have a very short comment discussion afterwards I move to amend the program rules for senior citizen property tax abatements under master general law chapter 59 section 5 K as amended November 7, 2016 by increasing the maximum gross abatement for the tax from $1 a year to $1,500 a year and you said you had a comment well just a couple things I number of years ago served on the board of assessors and I was very proud that Amherst had by local option pretty much maximized the amount of tax benefits we could offer people in different need categories and I think the senior citizen property tax on the work off program is really important and when you just look at the dollars for our properties going from $1,000 to $1,500 is a meaningful help for people who may have houses valued or assessed it quite a bit because they've been there quite a long time but their income has pretty much stagnated because it's fixed whether it's social security or other forms so their opportunity to increase that income really diminishes as they get older but our tax assessment is based on value so I think this is a modest way to help people stay in town and afford their homes I was very pleased to see this before us and I think it's a modest and important step right Mr. Steinberg several questions I do need to ask one is right now it's your memo indicated we have 35 slots and only 26 participants in the program I was wondering if you had a why we have the vacancies and whether you think the increase will fill those vacancies so that's question one and then I have a couple of follow ups but I'll stop last year there were 34 participants in the program this year there are some people who had been in the program for you know 6, 7, 8 years and they have decided that they wanted to do something different in addition to they were not financially eligible due to excuse me income they were above the income guidelines and then there was a person who moved from her home to an assisted living facility and then there was unfortunately a person who passed away so I am hoping that if the increase is passed that that will also make it more appealing to other folks okay thank you it's also a question of what is fair compensation for fair stipend to pay which then gets to the second question to ask either the town manager or the assessor is this money that ultimately comes from the overlay account yes it is it comes from the overlay account so the third question I have in the sequence is given the fact that we're also going into a year of assessments which we have known in the past is a year that puts strain on the overlay accounts is there any concern that there may not be adequate funding in the overlay account Principal Assessors eager to answer this question thank you I'm willing I don't believe there will be any excess burden on the overlay accounts we will go into revaluation year but we have been very good recently keeping the overlay at a relatively good level and there has also been a change in the way we use the overlay when the modernization act came in this earlier this year the overlay is on the overlay and we have a good balance so we can carry that forward so there will always be money there's money there that we can use if there is any need for it Amherst is a very strong overlay we have about 1% of the levy that we use and we very very sell them in 25 years have we gone over it so I'm very confident we're fine thank you excellent other questions I know in the past some years ago there had been concern as to whether there were enough hours per person should there be more slots and fewer hours etc but it looks like given that there are some vacancies right now that that's not a pressure you're currently facing correct simplifies great other questions are we ready to come to a vote all those in favor of the motion please say I and that passes unanimously thank you for coming in thank you for your patience and waiting for us to get to that agenda item and thank you for championing the cost not pushing it but championing so now we will move to item B which is the 2017 CDBG also known as community development block grant recommendations where we review the town managers recommendation this is the town managers decision we have a memo from them from the community development block grant advisory committee and we have a memo from them in our packet as well so I'll turn it to Mr. Thank you Madam Chair so the CDBG advisory committee as is usual has reviewed all the applications for the 2017 CDBG funds they reviewed seven very strong social service proposals and three non-social service proposals the grant does not have to include funding for social services but this is a requirement of other this is not a requirement of other communities but the town has historically done this and the committee recommends has been recommending to me five proposals at 20% of the grant application which is the maximum you're allowed in short you have a list of the eight recipients of the proposed funding we have a lot of comments Mr. Malloy our senior planner is here to answer any questions you may have thank you questions from the select board we do we are fortunate enough when we can do this every year because we qualify for block grant money questions otherwise I'm going to entertain a motion from somebody it is actually there is no motion because this is up to you right this is up to you so this is a motion to do this or that looks great and some years we have those conversations and other years we don't yes just a sort of a question comment I know that the advisory committee works really diligently on this as does the staff support Mr. Malloy in particular so I don't really question what's been brought forward but when I was looking at the social service recommendations I did wonder some of these we have funded it's not the program the organization for many years and it might be useful at some point to look at how many years a particular recipient has been funded and whether there was opportunities there were for sort of new programs to come in and how the committee looks at that so just curious I'm sure that has come up in the conversation for this year that was a topic of discussion in the fall of 16 in the committee discuss whether or not they would you know have a system where organizations that were funded in consecutive years would get reduced funding or you know if maybe they would try to encourage new applicants but they decided that each year or at least for this year they would look at it just you know for this current year and the fact that they wouldn't give any extra weight to someone who's been funded before or who hasn't been funded and if they've received funding in the past I think moving forward it's something they will consider probably every year you know do they have some criteria where they can rank the points so maybe they try to you know I don't want to say penalize but you know they give weight to other communities or other proposals that don't have consistent funding year after year it's a difficult thing because as a many entitlement community DHCDs already determined that Amherst has the need and we have the population and the services the committee was trying to determine you know what is the best route there, if DHCD already has determined we have the need and the population and we have all these services that are you know as long as they're eligible they could get funding how do you start determining you know which one does a need go away for instance so if we funded an organization 10 years in a row has the need gone away if they can document the need and so the committee determined this year not to use that criteria as something that they did consider Thank you and that's one of the things that comes up at their public meetings also reflecting to just fairly recently in terms of our homeless shelter a large portion of the social service money was going there for a number of years and so there had been agencies that had previously received block grant many entitlement money then didn't because we were spending most of it on the shelter then as we transitioned from spending from paying from the vast majority of the shelter's operations then they were able to come in so it's always this ebb and flow Mr. Steinberg I guess the one question that I would have of Mr. Maloy is that I noticed that the amount recommended for the East Hadley Road pedestrian improvements multi-use path was significantly reduced from the funding request and if you could just let us have some idea of what was diminished in what's going to be offered as a result of that reduction in funding Sure, yeah the actual project to create a multi-use path the proposal the budget was much higher than this so we had determined it could be done in phases and so the amount allocated about 50,000 would just diminish the length of the proposal we'd still want to get from 116 to the first entrance of the apartment complexes and the first bus stop but the original idea was to try to get further along on the road and maybe have some other improvements site amenities or things but with this budget would be at least to get a continuous path on the ground and if that meant that maybe we wouldn't have benches in place but we'd still provide concrete pads for bus shelters you know there would be some give and take there with the budget so that was really it we were hoping was to get a sidewalk along the whole length of East Hadley Road and the amount here will mean it has to be shortened but we're seeing it as you know a phase one now of maybe a phase two phase project Thank you That's always a helpful question and also applies when social service agencies have a substantially different amount because sometimes they simply can't run the program anymore if we cut it by depending on what fractions it gets cut by so some years when we get this report we have a cover letter from the town manager that says this is why I disagree with the block grant advisory committee's recommendations we don't have that memo this year so I guess that means you don't That's correct We would have made for a very short memo I trust the process Excellent alright other questions Next stage in the process if you'll just since you have the moment to give the commercial as to what happens now Applications are due March 10th we have a public hearing this Thursday the block grant committee will hold a public hearing to receive comments on the recommendations for funding this is a DHCD requirement and then that leaves the town enough time to put together an application I feel good about that sometimes we give ourselves less time than we have now so we're in a good position this year Fortunately great well they the state gave you until March and stuff February which is kind of nice a nice change alright so do we have any further comments from the southport and I don't believe there are any from the audience so we are going to say thank you and make it so and thank you Mr. Molloy and please pass our thanks along to the community block grant advisory committee I know it's difficult for them to have to say thank you to those people so thank you and let's see we are now at 831 going to move to item D for those of you following along at home we have lots more to do after that but we are going to now move to the affordable housing property tax incentive based on annual town meeting action of May 11th 2015 article 21 North Square at the Mill District also known as Beacon and I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Molloy and I'm going to take some handouts to the back of the room you don't mind they're separate they're separate clip together so they're just separate piles separate piles yes people can call it themselves and the select board should have that on their desk tonight thank you Madam Chair so in the back of the room is my memo and that will be uploaded tomorrow along with the consultants report and additional materials this development LLC has requested an affordable housing tax incentive estimated to be $2,795,009 over the 10 year life of the incentive for North Square at the Mill District this is the town's first opportunity to utilize this new tool the affordable housing tax incentive for the development of affordable housing and Amherst after careful consideration and the assistance of staff and a third party consultant I'm recommending the select board approve this request this the memo that you have in front of you summarizes the analysis of the request and further explains the recommendation tonight we have the support of several experts who can help us in our decision making we have Peter Graham and Tillman Lucas from MBL Housing Development Inc and you have their credentials as part of your packet we have Principal Assessor David Burgess and Senior Planner Nate Molloy and just in reference we also had Town Council review and the proposed motion so the you're well familiar with this project the North Square at Mill District proposed by Beacon Communities would create a mixed use mixed income development consisting of two new buildings containing 130 residential units including 20% or 26 affordable units at 50% area median income 22,000 square feet of non residential space in approximately 304 parking spaces including site improvements on an approximately 5.3 acre least site on a 13 acre property in North Amherst when I was writing this the ZBA was still considering the project but as my understanding Mr. Molloy confirmed this for Miss Krueger who were there that they have voted the comprehensive permit and waivers and conditions before your meeting tonight at 6pm I believe. So as I said you're very familiar with this the public participation in the process has been extensive it began back in May of 2016 when the developers met with neighbors I think their original plan showed 140 units when I read the newspaper articles and there has been extensive public comment at the ZBA level and at your meetings you've had at least 6 meetings where you've had this opportunity to talk about it you've walked the site on a site visit prior to the DHCD letter that you wrote ZBA has had 7 public hearings on the program so what is the affordable housing tax incentive and it's a unique tool and it's the first time we're able to utilize it and at the annual town meeting it was approved which authorized the select board to file a special act with the general court the special act authorized the select board to enter into agreements allowing for the phasing in of the increase and assessed property value resulting from development of residential or mixed uses with 10 or more dwelling units and in which at least 10% of the units are below or moderate income housing and subject to an affordable housing restriction so the plan the program was that this would be a way to provide financial support for a project without an appropriation from the town that would compete with other resources or the projects the town was trying to do it was seen as being a tool and a set of tools to encourage the development of affordable housing developing affordable housing in this market and in this community is a big challenge the amount is a very broad legislation that was passed the amount and length of reduction would be determined based on the economics of each eligible development and negotiated on a case by case basis the general court which is the legislature passed and the governor signed this act in December 4th 2015 so how does it work basically what we do is we look at a base year of when the project upon issuance of an occupancy permit by the building commissioner and then increase that that benefit and the taxes by we estimate two and a half percent a year it's not guaranteed it will be two and a half percent it could be higher could be lower and then that would be and we can do that for ten years we continue to collect taxes during the construction period and the CPA charge would continue to be paid and the commercial elements of the project of the development would pay their full weight of taxes they get they don't get any relief the interesting thing about this is that because it's not an appropriation it's foregone revenue so it's not money we have already that we're taking out of our budget it's just that we're getting less revenue than we otherwise would have had and the other good thing about this is that if the project doesn't move forward it doesn't receive funding from other the other elements of the financing package or there's construction delays or anything like that there's no investment by the town the town only starts we start to receive funding revenue but also the reductions don't start until the occupancy permit has been issued and the building the structure is up and running this is not an abatement which is a good thing from the principal assessor's point of view and he finds out a valuable information so since it was the first time that we were looking at this I had a lot of questions and our staff had a lot of questions because we looked at all the information that was considered at the annual town meeting that was delivered to the state house and tried to grapple with how we would analyze this for your consideration and the first thing we did is we thought we should get somebody who knew a little bit more about it than we did and we contacted with MBL Housing and Development of Amherst who have had extensive experience in reviewing projects like this and doing development they're very familiar with large developments they're very familiar with affordable housing structures and with affordable housing financing packages we asked them to do three things first off did this project did this development qualify for the community to meet the bar the threshold to become considered for this tool second is the request by the developer within the bounds of the tax incentive where they're asking for too much more than the tax incentive could offer and thirdly and this is probably the most important thing from my point of view is determine if the development budget which is called a pro forma was reasonable were the assumptions that they built into the development budget inflated in any way where they're based on real life examples in our community in this part of the state the MBL's full report has been you have copies of that and their statement of qualifications is attached as well so I'm going to summarize this because you can read the report the answers were that the North Square district development does qualify for affordable housing tax incentives under the special act second the calculation method recommended by the town's principal assessor and used by beacon in their request produced the lowest tax incentive and highest taxes paid over the course of the 10-year life of the tax incentive there are other assumptions that would be could be reasonably built into calculations that would have projected a larger tax incentive but these seem to be the most rational ones and third the MBL's assumptions in the development's proposed budget were consistent with industry standards based on MBL's consultants knowledge and experience there are many there the memo goes into a number of questions like is the development feasible what are the possible benefits of the development I mean some of the benefits are it produces deep affordability has subsidized increases the number of units in our subsidized housing inventory which is very critical to our future as a community I think an important item is that it's a mixed use development but it's a high quality mixed use development and sets a high standard for development going forward in this area where we anticipate there will be more development so the finishes on the building the site amenities are require a large investment and we want that as part of our community the the we looked at whether this public subsidy was in line with other public subsidies for other affordable housing developments and new construction for development of this can be in $350,000 we can look to our consultants for what that would look to be this subsidy would turn out to be about $108,000 per unit and that is higher than some developments that we've had in town but lower than others for instance the town has contributed $160,000 per unit to the Hawthorne farm habitat for humanity the town has invested significant funds into affordable housing and it has determined that this is an efficient way to build affordable housing using private developers versus the town or some other public entity building these units totally we looked at the impact on the town's finances as you all know we are struggling with managing increasing expenses for our fixed costs like OPEB and health insurance and things like that and retirement and we also have a great demand to maintain our existing services and often many requests to increase services for public safety in other areas our tax base is constrained because we're a highly residential community and we rely 90% on residential taxes new tax growth and new development is important to the lifeblood of our community as we look to maintain our services currently this site pays about $10,000 a year in taxes we looked at what would the site produce in taxes if it were built just with under existing zoning and it was estimated that 61 residential units could be constructed and if fully taxed these 61 residential units would generate about $212,000 in taxes annually and that would inflate again that 2.5% every year plus or minus would inflate by year 11 to $265,000 a year at maturity when this project gets to year 11 we estimate that the residential portion will generate $486,000 in residential taxes plus another $87,000 in commercial taxes for a total of $574,000 in taxes annually nearly twice what a $5,000 by right development would produce so I'm not going to read the entire memo and we have people here who are willing to comment on it if you have questions so I want to give you a little background on how I came to recommend this project to you this tax incentive we looked at this tool as a tool that was available to the town to encourage affordable housing it's a flexible tool the board could use it to support a project without having a negative impact on the budget of the town one of the other things we considered was the strength of the developer the developer has a strong market presence and knows the market and knows the community and I felt that that was an important for you something for you to consider we felt that the developer would produce quality affordable units we believe that this is not high end but very good construction and by nature that increases development costs and sets up a high bar for the standard of construction in this area and so I think it's a unique opportunity to work with a quality developer so I put a chart in here in your packet on the last page that shows the year by year taxes that would be paid and I think the headers are on the wrong page unfortunately and I apologize for that I didn't realize that until I just looked at it now so the first column is the year year 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 first looks okay I printed out mine I did mine it should be easy to follow so so again I think it's really important to note two things first the development would continue to pay its full taxes for its portion share of the CPA tax and second that the taxes on the commercial component are not included in the affordable housing tax incentive and taxes for the commercial component would be assessed in addition to the residential tax assessment and you have a motion there that's been reviewed by town council and if you have any questions or any of us or consultants we stand ready to answer them for you great so a couple of more logistical type things Ms. Kruger you said you wanted to make a statement okay all right and then the other thing I wanted to say is because a good bit of this material was only provided to the select board this afternoon email that doesn't mean all of us had time to actually read it this afternoon and so that we indicated we are very aware of what brought us to this point because we've talked about a lot of different times but we hadn't seen some of the exact figures or comments until this afternoon so does anyone on the select board need some time to look over the documentation more before we turn to questions and answers brief presentations whatever we want to do I just want to give people the opportunity to have time to look at it if you felt like you didn't have any I appreciate that people made the time to work in amongst their various other jobs to make this happen this afternoon so hearing no request for some silent reading time which always makes for fascinating viewing at home we will go ahead and move on then and so we haven't quite a number of people here as you've indicated and so how might you suggest we proceed well maybe Peter Graham if you want to talk about your process for your how you did the analysis that would be helpful I think that'd be great thank you and just make sure you have the mic really close to you close enough so I I guess to start with a lot of the you know the general analysis on the preforma and it's fit and based on our industry knowledge of family developments of this nature in the region and across the state and otherwise was a pretty pretty straightforward analysis of looking at what we're seeing in the industry for operating costs for development costs we had access to the to the preliminary plans and specifications that were made public through the comprehensive permit process and you know had access to any other information we requested from Beacon communities and really it you know it's the other real we weren't in a position to second gas the state and the other regulatory bodies who are going to have eyes on this project and review the the cost assumptions and the sources and uses this is a highly regulated industry where many people are vetting these assumptions so in that sense it made it easy for us to compare with our knowledge and our we have a pretty broad access to a lot of deals in a lot of through many years to see how that all you know shook out for these assumptions and it made for pretty quick work to see that there wasn't anything outside the pale in terms of a review on the tax calculation we started with of course the methodology provided by the principal assessor made sure we had a good grasp on understanding where that was coming from what the triggers were for making that calculation work and then we decided to take a look at a few different options for how could this logically be thought of differently or were there any assumptions that we should you know review in terms specifically around the separating out the bonus units that the comprehensive permit provided and in that sense after a lot of you know looking at different possible analyses we settled on one that basically carved out the 69 bonus units taxed and took the tax on that again using the same methodology that the principal assessor provided and added that to a comparison between the 61 full market and 61 mixed deal so that you could kind of get a little more of a apples to apples if you will comparison between 61 all market and 61 of the mixed and then add the 69 market bonus units on top of that and that calculation really came up incredibly close to where the town's calculation was at but it was still required a more generous incentive we also looked at the expense ratio used in the analyses and that really was the biggest trigger for making for different tax incentives so much of the language of the act and the what is going to create the size of the tax incentive is based on the NOI differences and the assumption you use going into those expense ratios is going to make the biggest the biggest change on how that lays out so we wanted to look at a more realistic expense ratio or expense per unit calculation because we felt that the 50% expense ratio for the affordable units was well under what a reasonable project like this would see in real life and so as we were looking at that whether you use 9,000 8,000 or 7,000 a unit per year for expenses you would have a different size incentive while the incentive would actually stay somewhat the same what it would net out to the town changed because with the cost ratios different you'd have a different valuation and more taxes paid but you'd have a higher incentive but as it nets out you can see in the calculations that it there's a direct relationship between the two so when looking at the towns prescribed method it really worked out in the favor of town by using the 50% ratio to limit the size of the incentive if you would identify yourself again for the folks at home that would be helpful Peter Graham with MBL housing and development did anyone have any questions from Mr. Graham at this point we can always ask him to come back up front but while he's there you guys are pointing at each other I have one because I keep asking it every time I guess I'm still a little bit confused by some aspects of how the pro forma is calculated and how it's determined that it's reasonable just knowing that state regulators are looking at it as comforting but it doesn't really answer all of the questions that one might have about whether all of the costs that are estimated are reasonable costs and I've picked on one because it's sort of easy more than anything else not that I'm trying to single it out and that's the ground rent question obviously the property does not carry a high value now in its current form because I think we have $10,000 a year in taxation from it so something right there but where it's going to and what is the and how that bears against the ground rent and how that is determined to be a reasonable and fair amount because it's a matter that was ultimately achieved by negotiations between landowner who had an interest and developer who had an interest so if you could say anything would be helpful sure well we also the commercial condominium but the commercial portion of the development is it will be is part of that acquisition negotiation so turning over the commercial units to the landowner or the party that they have entered the ground lease with is part of the part of the acquisition or can be viewed as part of the acquisition amount so the appraisal that we were provided with which is done by the state in the process of the 40B and the application for the amount of subsidies that are being drawn from the state for this deal are very close to the cost of the construction of that commercial combined with that that ground lease and you could and that wasn't necessarily part of our purview to review the variety of assumptions for you know the present cost of that future value of all that commercial but when you look at just the soft costs and hard cost for building it and then turning it over combined with the ground lease that is in the preforma it's right it's right there with the appraised value as which was an independent appraisal that pretty much is where we left that so the appraisal is looking at the estimated finished value as a whole yeah it would be an as complete appraisal yes or actually I'd have to I don't believe it was an as complete appraisal but I'd have to check and get back to you I was just curious thank you I think it was an as complete appraisal would you like them too? okay I think this is a representative from beacon who can give a little more information on great if you want to just shift over and let them pull up a chair no microphone will probably not pick you up properly they'll just the people at home will just see your mouth moving good evening everyone Darcy Jameson with beacon communities so as part of the site eligibility as is appraisal so they look at the land value in its existing condition before any kind of a comprehensive permit is issued and so that's what was provided to MBL as the independent appraisal done by DHCD looking at the as is value so looking at the value of the land as is as compared to as Peter was saying the payment to for it is your area yeah I've still left a little bit uncertain because the as is is where it is now and how you determine a reasonable valuation after development is kind of a different piece so I just because it's something that doesn't exist but it's a hypothetical value you know it's an assessment of where it's going and so that's why I was raising that question but yeah I don't I don't know that I could really add anything to that in the sense that I mean that's the point of the appraisal was for the as is it's a it really it's similar to kind of I think any real estate transaction what somebody might do with it is you know the value is going to be quite different but that's not what they're purchasing now sure just introduce yourself for the folks at home too my name is Tillman Lucas I'm also with MBL Housing and Development as part of the process what we also did was we looked at the income stream for the property less the expenses and we determine what the actual NOIs which is a net operating income and the formula that's used in determining value for real estate we worked very closely with the principal assessor in making that determination you look at the value of that net operating income and you do what's called a capitalization rate and that capitalization rate which in this case was at 10.25% with that you established what the assessed value will be in the future so that's how we came up with the assessed value and then we compared the values between the different options that Peter described which is the project all by itself as 130 units and then we compared it with what the comprehensive permit allows which is 69 bonus units versus 61 affordable mixed units both 26 affordable units and 35 affordable units and we did the same evaluation for each one of those scenarios by looking at what each individual component would be worth on an assessed value using that same formula of the net operating income. Now clearly what happens and which is allowed under your article is that the difference between the losses of income that those affordable units create and that's quite substantial because affordable units do not generate the sufficient income to be able to basically pay for their expenses pay for additional taxes and I think we came up with that formula and I'm just going off the top of my head but I believe the actual value on a taxable basis for those affordable units was about $5,000 so basically no tax revenues could be generated from that but as the comparison we compared all of that to the value of the taxes and we subtracted it we added we took the value of the tax added it to the losses to reduce the amount of losses and came up with what we considered to be the tax incentive and this once again is a formula that was described in the article and we used that same pro-ration. Thank you. Thank you. I wanted to make a small disclosure and I don't know if I am required but I've known Mr. Lucas for many years and last year as a consultant I did work on a project for the town of Pelham and he's I think was the chair I don't know if you still are of the affordable or the housing committee for Pelham so I do have that relationship but I was engaged in that and I wanted to disclose that I had that prior relationship with Mr. Lucas but not with MBL and my question is I've participated I've been attending the zoning board of appeals hearings all seven of them it was really informative and along the way and also some of the comments we received as e-mails and some residents said yeah use the tax incentive program but use it to reduce the size of the project use it as your sort of fulcrum for making a smaller project because that's what we in their opinion was better and you know another so I'm wondering or I'd like you to kind of answer for us and for the public who might be listening why the size the density of 130 units is needed and it wasn't really your job to look at kind of you know what if it was 120 110 but I kind of approached this request from Beacon Communities as a necessary financial component to make this work but not everybody agrees or views it that way and having you assist us is really invaluable for us to be able to say you know the whole project bears the cost of being an affordable development and what does that mean for the result and size so either or both of you to if you could help us with that question Peter Graham I think this is where this as Mr. Balkerman mentioned the different tools that are available the comprehensive permit being one when we look at comprehensive permits used by and large where they're using significant density to achieve the income needed to minimize the affordables we're talking much higher level of density than we see in this project and did you give some examples what that would be well we're I mean there you know in the several hundreds of units and mostly the aggressive 40B projects in the greater Boston area would be the closest I don't have any we can provide could you just explain what you mean when you say cross subsidy sure well in the idea that you have enough units to and income usually in much higher rent higher rent communities where 250 market rate units affordable housing that's going into the into the development so that and again in many cases with where the 40B may be at 80% area median income for the units that are created the delta to kind of make up the loss that the developer would would have in their is much smaller than with a project as proposed here where you're going to a much deeper level of affordability with far fewer units to kind of cover that loss as well as the fact that you don't really have 200 units covering the cost of 20 units you only have the 104 units and I think the other piece as far as to speak of a little bit is the significant leveraging that this project is proposed to bring of state and federal resources through the low income housing tax credit these are you know there's tremendous as is described in Beacon's letter you know several million million dollars almost half the development cost is being supported by leveraging state available subsidies so it isn't really in a situation of using the tax to make the program or to make the project smaller it's really covering as was articulated in the proposal the operating pro forma needs to have a certain amount of private debt to make this doable and this level of tax incentive is going to allow them to leverage to that level of debt there is no real cushion here thank you that's helpful other questions from the select board why don't you tell us a little bit about our motion because we have a longer motion on the end of your memo than we had on our motion shoot because that was Thursday and this is now Monday so what's the real motion it's at the end of our memo on page so the motion the motion the motion does two things when it approves the affordable housing tax credit do you want me to read it or do you want me to describe what it says why don't we have somebody read it so it's moved and then we but not you and so Mr. Steinberg you got it in front of you I move that under the authority provided to the select board by statutes of 2015 chapter 148 the select board vote to one approve an affordable housing tax incentive for Beacon community's development LLC for the development known as north square at the mill district which is to be located north Amherst on property 2 as 92 and 134 Montague Road and as the development has been approved with conditions and waivers by the zoning board of appeals provided however that Beacon shall provide a satisfactory permanent affordable housing restriction is defined under general laws chapter 184 section 31 to the town as is required under statutes 2015 chapter 148 section 3 before any tax relief granted here under shall become effective and 2 for the direct that the town manager shall develop an affordable housing tax incentive agreement with Beacon community's development LLC or its successor or a sign in accordance with the financial terms set forth in the town managers February 5 2017 memorandum a copy which is attached here to such tax incentives shall only apply to the residential portion of the development and will not be applied to the commercial portion of the development. Second. One correction as a typo should be February 6 2017. That's a Sunday. Right. So we made that correction. I would note that the after the first mention of Beacon community's development LLC to add or its successors and or a sign because as far as the entity that will own the development will be a special purpose entity. It might just be best to cover that as well there. I know it's listed below but where should it also be? In the third line after the word LLC each time it says Beacon community's development LLC. So I will propose those two amendments as noted the change in the date and the addition of the word successor or sign after the word LLC in the third line. Seconders agree. Yeah. Excellent. And I would just like us to double this is completely too boring for you. But in the first line the ST period 2015 we never refer to it that way anyplace else in town government. So they refer to the acts of 1995 so ST doesn't mean anything. And that's for our own statute. Yeah. That's no. That's referring to the special legislation so it was chapter 148 of the acts of 2015 taken by the state as opposed to by ST period 2015. There might be some other slight variation that council was maybe council uses it that way but when we talk about it in our that's not my word. I appreciate that but they refer to things different ways. It is actually a citation to session laws of the Massachusetts legislature and I think that probably both are appropriate citation maybe put it in parentheses if we want to be more comfortable because if ST 2015 is what some people are going to be looking for but anybody who's Googling it is more likely to be looking for the acts of 2015. When we talk about it in our town government act it talks about various chapters of the acts of various years. It will in parentheses after the ST period 2015 comma C period 148 you'll see parentheses chapter 148 of the acts of 2015. Yes. Thank you. That way we cover both the plain English version and the legal council version. That's helpful. Thank you and then that will repeat down in the middle. We have two parenthetical editions where it says chapters 148 of the acts of 2015 one edition of or its successors or assigned and then the changing the date from February 5th to February 6th. Since it's parenthetical on the or its success or assigned it should be parenthetical as well for consistency if nothing else. Right. Was there anyone here from the public who was planning to speak during this item because that's one of the things I do is public comment I say if it's on the agenda then you can't speak during public comment you can speak during the agenda item. So is there anyone from the public not affiliated with this? Okay. Then I see at least one good and then after that I can I will also turn back to any of the representatives that are here for this particular agenda item and see if you wanted to make a comment. But yes member of the public please come forward you waited all this time I saw you in the hallway hours ago. It seems to me that you have moved so quickly in here and done so much that I'm not sure that anything that I had just had intended to say will make any a difference in what's going on. Maybe I will add a little bit of levity to the process this evening. I forgot to introduce yourself even though we know who you are. Everyone shouldn't. My name is John Hoover. I live at 1333 West Street Amherst and I might add just a little levity to the process this evening. This is the first time I've lived in Amherst for those years were spent in the Massachusetts legislature and then the Congress of the United States and this is the first time that I have appeared before this August body as a petitioner in essence and much of what I was going to say is now irrelevant really because you've moved on so quickly. I did send letters to the zoning board of appeals and a copy to Madam Chairman, you made a couple of weeks ago and I had made six copies. I didn't realize that I had you're going to handle them now. I was supposed to give them to I told him Mr. Steinberg. To Steinberg. In case anybody thought that they would be they might get some amusement out of reading them now after all the work has been done. But in each of these the second one is a op-ed a guest column in the bulletin which was printed on Friday just following Friday I thought all the work would have been done before that and it does seem to have been done quite quickly. In my comments there the letter you'll see that I give fairly high marks very high marks to the carefully listening and planning and betting process that the landowner W.D. Coles and the Beacon community development team and the town committees all the town committees of jurisdiction have fallowed in this whole process over the past year and more. And you all know as I now recognize that the town has had drafted the the petition the petition for the home rule action by the legislature are very good representatives Senators Stan and Ellen and Representative Ellen move that process along to its completion the incentive that is now available to the town of Amherst under that home rule petition in its lawful form has not yet been used and that there is a request for the use of that petition here at this time. So all of that I can I don't have to say anything more about. I simply want to urge the board to approve the request to use the real estate tax incentive tool in this instance I am confident that that would produce a double win for the town of Amherst the first win is that it the fairly urgently needed housing and commercial development in the north village center almost it's more than I think more than 40 million dollar investment by one of the most reliable developers in Massachusetts one that has been used by Amherst in dealing with the rolling green program to a gain of the community as a whole and and win number two is that that will set a high standard example for future other proposed projects for our other village centers and that I think is equally important and I leave it to you to make your decision. Thank you and thank you very much for providing these letters to us in addition to having sent them to us before and for waiting this long to talk to us with the examples you gave of Beacons we keep talking about rolling green here but you also as you point out here other local communities as well that Beacons has worked well with. They have a huge investment in Massachusetts there are at least at least 80 projects I think in at least 20 million communities in the state of Massachusetts covering about 12,000 managed units that they have developed they are a very good developer that can be relied upon to produce what they promise to produce. Thank you very much. No questions? Should we be grilling a little bit? Thank you very much. Wonderful. Okay. At this point I'm going to see if anyone else associated with the project since I saw no other members of the public here with us at this time who would like to make a remark you're under no pressure to do so but if you would like to make a statement you are certainly welcome. I know that you've had a very long day and we're before the ZVA earlier with the ZVA I'm Laura Covel with Beacon Communities honorable chair, select board thanks for having us. I'm really, that was a hard act to follow I really should have let the honorable representatives words be the last but I did want to get up here and say thank you. We've been working for over a year and a quarter on this project from the first conversations about the site all of Beacon's experience and my experience we haven't had as positive a partnering with a town in a very long time as we've experienced here with your staff and your teams across the boards that we've worked with and within the town itself and we're very grateful for the effort that was made while it has been a good experience, it hasn't been an easy experience it's been very intensive and rigorous and your group of staff have really demonstrated a huge amount of professionalism and also problem solving and stick-to-itiveness to get us where we are today so we're very grateful for that having wrapped up the ZVA process we couldn't be happier having gotten through those seven hearings and are very pleased with the outcome there and we're now a week and a little away from submitting our big request to the state for funding so if all goes well we'll be back to the races with that and we are so excited to be working again with the town of Amherst and to bring you this what we think is going to be just a stellar example of a project that we hope you can all be proud of in the many years going forward so thank you Thank you very much and in light of that perhaps if we could just if you could indicate to us again like so many things this has been unfolding over the course of the day today we just referenced approved the permit with conditions one of the things we had talked about when we started talking about this in general terms is we said well depending on what the ZVA conditions are that would seem to influence potentially what the trade-offs are and so given what happened hours ago today but shortly after you wrote the rest of this memo is there anything that we need to be aware of associated with that? I wasn't part of the meeting Mr. Molloy was there any changes that were made that we weren't aware of in their conditions? Nice try Mr. Molloy Nate Molloy senior planner no I think the ZVA did include about 130 conditions on the project nothing that would change it drastically I think they those conditions are to ensure a high quality development that was proposed so in terms of the site plan design even down to materials used landscaping all those standards were kept and maintained and the applicant has agreed to that so the conditions really are to put that in writing and to capture what was presented at all the hearing so I think what is presented is a high quality design with a good site plan and a lot of amenities so it's things that they don't necessarily have to do so they include a dog run they have all utilities are going to be underground in the buildings they have resident amenities in the building they are providing a mixed use development so there will be attractions right there on site for both the residents and for neighbors there's a pedestrian path to lead to the village center so they have different ways of transportation they'll help with a crosswalk across coal so the bus stop they'll work with the town to submit a mass works application again in the future for any improvements on that part of the village center and town and I think just the overall aesthetics of the architecture so they responded to concerns of community and the ZBA and the housing and sheltering committee and the trust to go for a deeper level of affordability I think originally it wasn't at that level and their response was to go for a more competitive project and so I think that is a good attribute of the project great thank you that's very helpful miss Krueger it is helpful I could just add one thing they have also communities also has agreed to stay in dialogue with the disability access advisory committee and to provide accessible play equipment or at least in part accessible so that was something that had come up I think in our meetings and it's always a set of recommendations or group that we look to be included in making recommendations and they did make comments and the applicant was quite responsive to that so just you had a long list there and I just wanted to add that one great thank you that's helpful other questions or comments it's only 9.30 Mr. Wal. I just want to reiterate some of what was said but not quite the same thing because we don't have much time but to thank representative Older for his letter I think there are two points that really stood out to me and in that and as oral comments number one there's the historical perspective from someone who's been involved in the town watching the town grow and it's master planning through the 1970s and some of us were thinking that the master plan ideal was to develop village centers beyond the downtown and to date North Amherst is the only one in which nothing has happened and we've all been through attempts to rezone North Amherst and to do projects there and so something is finally happening in the area that also calls a site the nearest thing to Blight which can't be found in any other village centers in Amherst. So this is really a major thing and I think as MBL stressed and Mr. Olver stressed and representative Beacon stressed you know that the high quality of the project is very important too because it sends a message that affordable housing doesn't have to be cheap and ugly you know we're taking this seriously we're providing something that's good for all people with the amenities the finishes the response to design requests from the residents and so forth so this is really important and I know that a lot of people in North Amherst have had concerns about this project for all sorts of reasons so far with other projects that have gone up you know there is fear the sky would fall the world would end and there'd be all sorts of deleterious consequences and so far that hasn't been the case with our downtown projects and I'm hoping and reasonably sure that will not be the case here either so I think this is a step forward and I hope we can all look forward to it and expect and find a positive result and that the fears will prove to be unfounded. Thank you. Congressman Olbers much appreciated comments in prior times when it was sort of on the other side of the table for me and I was coming to you to ask for something it was usually about recognizing the needs of low income people and one of the major needs that I and my colleagues would often talk about is the need for affordable housing and you were always very responsive to those conversations and in that vein I want to just recognize that this has been a magnificent team effort by a lot of people to try and do something for increasing not just affordable housing but affordable housing with a very favorable income limits and for prospective tenants and you know we're in the fortunate position as we sit here to recognize that yes we are offering something in the tax incentive but as was pointed out I think Mr. Bachmann's memorandum it is funds that are really not anything that's coming from the budget because if we didn't approve it the funds wouldn't be collected anyway so this is really from my perspective the possibility of a win for low income people and a win for the town of Amherst and being able to do this without an actual expenditure of funds collected in taxes and actually we know that it will increase taxation on the property and now and much more in the future but it is ultimately the right thing to do for the reason stated thank you thank you I want to also make sure we point out again our thanks to staff as well for all the material they've pulled together for many months that's been in development but particularly over the last few weeks as we know we've been looking toward this conversation including the report about our subsidized housing inventory found in our packet online and previously provided to us in a slightly different format and then a long list of various projects and what we've invested in them and what kind of funds we invested in them over the years because we've talked some about our investments that we've made over the years and that was covered also in the memo in terms of how much per unit because it varies considerably obviously given the circumstances there is not X formula for that for us here in town either but it helped to place it in context of the investments we've made with CPA dollars and block grant dollars and so those two in particular funds that people are familiar with us paying for affordable housing out of means we can do other housing things with those funds and again we are not gaining immediate tax benefit at this moment but on the other hand we wouldn't be getting it anyway so yes it does seem like a win-win-win all the way around in terms of maintaining the viability of our other funding sources like CPA and block grant for other housing projects as well Mr. Slaughter did you have anything to say? I do want to take this opportunity to thank our staff because an enormous amount of staff went into this project both at the ZBA level and the principal assessor and the town manager staff to think about the project at the ZBA level and to ask the critical question and gather the information needed so the ZBA could make an informed decision and then for this tax incentive I really want to commend Mr. Burgess for being the person who helped this is the first time we really thought about this and Joel Bard was helpful to us because he was there at the crafting of it as we struggled with this so I think that because we really needed to understand how this tool could be used for a project like this and so Mr. Burgess was he would suggest something we would circle around and talk to consultants and come back usually where he had said something in the first place so he had his knowledge