All right, is it recording? Yes. So the way the town IT likes to have it work is that instead of a meeting it's a webinar and so when there's a webinar the committee members or board members become panelists and so you can unmute yourself and do your video and share things freely but then members of the public are attendees and they can only listen and we can promote them to panelists so they can be a part of the conversation or they can raise their hand so for the attendees it's like we have three of them. If you hover over your name as a participant in the attendees you can say raise your hand and then I'll see it and we can allow them to talk so that's really the difference. So if you have a meeting basically everyone is the same level of participation in terms of being able to talk freely but as a webinar the panelists are the ones who talk freely so you know we're not having for instance if we had 20 guests and they were all at the same level they could talk as you know throughout not that they would but the concern is that sometimes people like you know zoom bomb meetings and they host stuff they should in or they they do which has happened I guess to a few council meetings and other so I heard about a meditation zoom session today there got bombed why would someone form meditation I don't know yeah I know we I've had um yeah it's funny I've had some um I've had a happen where people call in it seems like they're they don't say much but they are not you know it's strange that they're there I don't think they're I think they just they listen but so I think we're ready we have a quorum at 7 0 7 now on my computer Tom you would uh I believe you're the vice chair so you can act as chair well I'm honored to have that title explode on me I don't recall but um I'm looking at the the agenda and I can look at the agenda wait a minute sure I can share my screen too well wait a minute I can sort of yeah I can sort of see everybody and look at it if I'd minimize the the agenda so um I did speak briefly with John he apologizes apparently he had a real close call and is now back at home and he's feeling better and he's resting and he is very grateful for that and wishes he could be with us but he did say that there were a couple things he wanted to make sure that we covered tonight and I'll make sure we we focus on those as we go through the agenda right the first thing is any announcements okay I think no um I was going to mention that you know a few members terms expire on June 30th and so that's just you know that's something that town managers are aware of and the town's aware of so we'll just you know there'll be an email I can send one out but we can just see if members are willing to you know remain on the on the trust I think there's a few that have terms that expire so I just wanted to mention that okay any other announcements okay the minutes right could I just see a show of hands of who is able to see all of the attachments that they that were distributed to people just raise their hand on the screen and just so I can see um so so Nate is sharing on his screen so we can whatever attachment you want us to look at he can post yeah okay but but I mean there's okay I guess we could do that we could just switch around good point Paul okay so um all right minutes um is there a motion to accept the minutes Carol second any discussion all those in favor of accepting the minutes oh you have a comment Paul yeah the all votes when you're meeting remotely have to be taken as a roll call take any motion to have all right Nate could you do that you'll be the sergeant at arms here or um yeah if we can um Tom maybe you do it I actually I'm actually taking notes too at by the old pen and paper here so I can um I'll write that down okay so Paul yes and Sid yes Carol yes and I'm not seeing uh wait a minute I don't have the full screen here Rob are you there yeah I'm here okay I don't know what oh okay now I see and um was there anyone else that Bill okay well yeah I don't know why it's not showing me everybody you can maybe drag in the corner you can make your grid uh panel bigger so you can see everyone oh that's very helpful thanks Nate okay um okay so we have unanimous uh next item on the agenda I'm gonna trust you Nate to sure I can go back to the agenda um yeah okay uh report from Craig's doors um so is is Kevin um with us I don't see Kevin as a um as an attendee I emailed him a little bit ago let me just check my email I don't see that he's here or that he's emailed me oh okay I know that John was um interested in hearing from Kevin that uh there's a lot going on and he had some interest in asking to see whether the um whether the shelter could remain open after the end of April um and I don't know if you have any information on that Nate or Paul do you know what issues they might have or should we just table this until we hear from Kevin yeah I don't have much information you know what um John had shared a while ago and I'll just pull it up on the screen you know it's like it's from Jay Levy it was the you know the 2020 count of persons who are experiencing homelessness so the um you know just to help show the need I don't I don't have any more about what Kevin was going to report on you know possibly just the season and where they're going uh in the future are you waving your hand Sid I I thought no my my my understanding Tom is that um the shelter's going to be closing on April 30th this schedule I think that's the arrangement they've always had with the church yeah but I guess there was John had heard that there was some uh issue considered considering the increased number of homeless whether there might be some uh need to try to find some alternate space or expand it or extend it or okay well I'm just speculating here uh I was hoping for Kevin to report on that so unless we hear from him later we'll have to table that one okay John uh Nate back to the agenda sure yeah I'm surprised I haven't heard from Kevin um yeah if he comes if he comes in later we can just uh you know have him join the um yeah so next on the agenda was I hope can everyone see that clearly enough I'm I never know the way I I can see it okay um so the short term emergency rental program that was an important one that John wanted us to discuss consider and um if favorable to to approve it um yeah I think he said that you helped with that Rita with that could you talk about a little bit sure um I mean I mean I have um so we have a few things that were emailed out that are also shared tonight one is a draft program guideline okay we can uh have that up here so I'm not sure where the um you know who is John or or somebody in that the town that um kind of initiated this idea of um looking at how the town might serve households who are affected by the COVID-19 pandemic particularly renters and it's a issue that's being discussed kind of statewide yesterday there was a um a workshop a Zoom workshop held by MHP my former employer and CHAPA which is a statewide housing advocacy organization there were more than 400 people who um who participated and what the what the whole training what the workshop was about is that there have been a lot of communities stepped up to say we're really concerned with um just interrupt a second there's some there's some bunch of background noise from someplace that is uh if everybody who's not talking could mute maybe we could make a go away including me which I'm sure okay I don't know if someone was playing music goes into the radio or maybe it's just like a necko I can okay do you need me to start over Carol oh maybe I can't see you so I'll just I'll keep going keep going it's okay I just want to be before it got worse or somewhere I just want to point it out thank you okay so um a lot of communities are very concerned about low and moderate income renters I mean low and moderate income homeowners too but um renters uh for people who are who are renting there's um kind of an you know program that was um that that the CPA program is particularly suited to assisting people who are having trouble paying their rent so I um uh I took some of the the outline so MHP had done kind of a basic pro you know communities are interested they had done sort of a an outline of what the program might look like and what it should incorporate and I went beyond that and actually um developed a set of draft program guidelines and looked at what a scope of services might be for the administrator and then what the qualifications that we would be looking for the administrator um the thinking is that the trust currently has money in its coffers that could be reprogrammed for an emergency rental assistance program and that um ideally that could be increased with some additional CPA funds but obviously the community preservation committee has gone through its process and has made its initial recommendations whether um the we could reprogram the the trust money that they've already approved or look at some other funding from the CPC but that would have to go through the process of going to the CPC then going to town council for approval um so what what you're seeing in front of you are some draft program guidelines starting with um eligibility and uh I think John feels pretty strongly about this being um a program that serves um households that have children it's not that's not specified here but what is specified is um a number of things and I don't know if you want me to I'll kind of go through them not line by line but kind of just give you the the highlights um so what we're talking about is um serving households people who are currently residing in the town of Amherst um they have reduced or no income um because of COVID-19 their immigration status is not a bar to receiving assistance they have to earn less than 80 of AMI which is in number two gives you those actual figures um this would be targeted to families who are not currently living in um state or federally subsidized public housing or who are currently receiving section aid um mass rental voucher program or raft because those families who are living either living in public housing or who have um section aid assistance they can do an income recertification so if you had a family that whose income was significantly reduced their rent can be reduced by the um whoever's providing the substrate for them um a question that came up right away of course is what about students and um my recommendation although this can certainly be changed is that um that we follow the same rules that govern the um low income housing tax credit program and I have those um in front of me and I can go through them it's it's pretty much you know you can't have like undergraduates it would have to be a family they would have to be um they'd have to be sort of say if the parent was a full-time student and then you have children in the house so they're pretty it's very limited about um serving students um why don't I stop there and see if you have any questions um about what I've talked about so far in terms of eligibility sorry I do have a dog in the background Carol Carol you should we should unmute Carol I think you unmute yourself if you'd like right Carol I'm unmuted I was just trying to I would just uh a matter of well two things one of them is what does it mean immigration status is not a bar what would be a what what so if you're if you're undocumented that that you would it be eligible would be eligible you would not would be yes would be okay super and the other thing is I'm I'm just remembering from that thing that uh I was one of the 400 people at yesterday it seemed like they were saying it was uh you should be careful making criteria that weren't clearly economic or that weren't about where you live right now which makes me wonder about the thing about people with children how I just don't even I don't even know if that I don't know I just only understand how that would happen or if it's possible to have it happen without running afoul of some kind of fair housing law yeah and that's a very good point I think um uh you can certainly as a community um say it's to serve a household um fair housing you might get into a situation where you said only individuals who work in a certain industry or you know laid off by whatever it could very well be that yes if you were to say households with children that that could be construed as a fair housing and I will follow up on that I do think right now Carol um just say the the right the eligible criteria doesn't say that um not I know I was saying sort of what John was right you know if you if I read that I don't see I do think you know we try to define a household um we have that in our zoning bylaw but it doesn't the eligibility doesn't really say families with children so I think the idea is John hopes that'll help families with children um but you know any household really can apply uh you know students are difficult because they don't meet the eligibility most of them through the low income housing tax credit program criteria but um so I just may I know we'll have a question I just had a question is the AMI calculation based on 2019 earnings or is it 2020 okay so it's they they were just updated okay well so yeah I'm just I'm just curious I mean like I know for example like in my business we hired a bunch of people and then we had a furlough a number of them and their projected 2020 earnings are way less you know it's like so if you looked at their paystats for the first three months of the year they I mean they would qualify but like it's conceivable that they wouldn't qualify as they said wear it prospectively I don't know it's just no it's a good it's a good question and a question that a lot of communities have asked so um it's it's addressed in the next um section and income certification um what a lot of communities have been talking about is um is looking from the you know the point that the time of application or um yeah so from the time of application and then trying to project forward um for three months so not looking backward um because we have a lot of people that um were gainfully employed and you know didn't have a lot of savings might have been slightly over this and then boom they don't have anything um one thing that I know that the city of Boston which kind of jumped on a rental assistance program right away is they did do a um kind of an asset test and I don't know what um figures they were using because it's it's a there's not a whole lot of detail when I went to research what they're qualified you know what their criteria were but you know I I think that's where we might need to do some more refining is you know how is the income certification done and if you have a household that has other options I think you know we should be serving the most um the the folks who have the greatest need and so if you have other options then um either maybe you know family support or a whole lot of savings um you know I think they they should take a backseat to to a household that has um really limited no savings um and no income so it again it's um um I could probably write a paper on this an income certification uh the range yesterday I don't know Carol if you were in on the whole thing or any of the rest of you um listened but you know there's uh one school of thought about make this as simple and straightforward and fast as possible because we're serving households in um in an emergency you know camp with a rent um the other school of thought or another school of thought is look this is this is public money we have to be good stewards of these funds and we have to make sure we're you know being um thoughtful and not you know not delaying not taking three months to do some income certification but by the same token being you know being responsible about um that so I think there's kind of a fine line here and we just have to you have to figure out how you get enough information without creating um a huge amount of paperwork because if you were going to go in for section 8 certificate I mean you'd be getting all kinds of documentation we're not um we're not thinking in in those terms um so but you know be good to hear any of your your thoughts about this my only oh sorry Rob go ahead I would suggest um making the first three months easy then for recertification they have you have time to do a deeper dive if there if there has to be more um another extension or something thank you that's what this is this is what I was going to suggest too that you know we could do like really quick when they first apply but given them a certain amount of time to provide documentation right and then if they prove that they had substantial you know um savings or things like that then they would be disqualified and they may have to pay back some of the whatever language we should be on but I think that definitely making it quick because there's definitely a lot of people out there in need that's there has to be a system to make it quick and then get the documentation later if we can right so I think there's a certain amount of documentation you want up front um you know things like knowing that they're rent they're they're living in an apartment in or a house whatever in in Amherst what the rent is um uh documentation that their um income has uh changed either they've lost their jobs and are not we you know we would be counting unemployment so um so we'd have to you know that's that's income so that they don't what income do they have um and so do they fall underneath these limits Rita the only comment I had was well two of them one was that I've seen where um I was with someone getting snap benefits yeah they signed an affidavit boom that was it maybe 20 minutes to get the get the approval and get their card yeah um so if you put this all in all of these conditions in the form of a affidavit that they signed that says I swear that as much income I have only this much assets I have only this much you know yada yada yada and then they sign it and if it later proves not to be true then they also have to sign that they owe that money back yeah I think it's yeah you know so I think there's a happy medium not just a self-certification but a little bit more than that um and uh well make it simple and I I agree uh it said that you know make it easy for the first three months and then go forward and the other comment I had was that I think a lot of this is going to hinge on who is the administrator or contractor of this yeah experience with this sort of stuff and they've done certifications for all sorts of things that are very similar they are going to know about fair housing they're going to know about all of these restrictions and what these student you know requirements are for housing tax credits and and uh you'll save a whole lot of time trying to design this because you know these assistance programs take years to develop yeah yeah yeah and everybody is is uh yeah hi hi gear doing this so yeah no that's um very good and and I think you know with the other document the next document we'll just take a look at is um what the responsibility is of an administrator but I think definitely the town doesn't want to be the administrator of this we will have to go through through some sort of procurement process to um to get an administrator and absolutely having somebody who has that has experience um in these times and things I just want to um but in and say that Kevin's joined us as an attendee and Janet McGowan has raised her hand tell him if you want to let her speak I can I can acknowledge her in a minute the um yeah will I just want to make sure that we answered your question clearly so HUD updates income levels every March April and March and April every year so the income limits that are shown here are the current income limits from 2020 so those have been updated but then the income is based on you know a three month forecast um you know starting in March or something so you know we're not going to ask for um payroll for 2019 we'd have households you know based on how they're impacted with with COVID and what their earnings are now and um I'm going to say Tom quickly for self declarations for for a CDBG if it's a presumed lower mod income population you can self declare but if it's I think what's difficult here is that so many different types of households will be impacted self declaration gets a little fuzzy because um you know anyone could could claim a hardship and so um usually we'd ask for a little bit more documentation I'm hoping that I agree that if we have a an experienced administrator if they you know if they're very familiar with it they can set it up so that they can receive documents and it won't take very long but usually we do want some type of documentation for income or or loss of income or loss of income right um I just want to say I think the biggest challenge here is timing I think yeah can we do a two-week procurement for instance can we do a you know a certification in two weeks I mean I mean it could be August before we were able to get out of single penny you know yeah I think they're holding off on evictions in many cases but not necessarily in the private sector so well I think the new state law that was just passed does um provide for um you know holding uh people harmless on evictions and for closures so um it's you know we do have a little bit of time but absolutely I think there's an interest in getting this underway because um and John and Nate and I have been talking and I know Nate's been uh speaking with other folks within town hall um about the procurement requirement so if in this instance the um what we're procuring is services and the um assistance amount would not be servicing it would not be included in that in those procurement limits so if um the range for doing just three quotes is from $10,000 to $50,000 um procurement once you're over $50,000 this is for goods and services then you have to um go through an RFQ RFP process which is a much longer um kind of more involved so you know my sense is that if we're starting with just some funds from um from the trust that we could it's conceivable we could get this underway with doing that um that shorter procurement which just involves um it's it's you know it can be turned around relatively quickly right hey Tom I just want to mention that uh Jan McGowan has our hand raised would you like to acknowledge her to speak um well um Paul and Carol also have their hand here okay we should stick with our uh board first okay if Jen that's fine yeah Carol you were the first to have your hand raised I forgot what I was going to say maybe I'll be talking it's my background just drafting isn't it that's it go ahead Paul thank you um so for Rita I assume I mean other communities are already thinking about this someone's already invented the wheel and I think it would make sense for us to just take the one that we think is best and move for it move forward with it I think the RFP for administering it should be pretty straightforward it's just the design of the program uh should be pretty vanilla I think and I know we want to craft it very narrowly but I think that that's going to make it more and more complex so I think the the benefit to us is speed and getting something simple and fast out the door as opposed to trying to carve the money to people who live in town with children who I think we're just going to tie ourselves up in the knots trying to hit all those marks um I wouldn't make it much simpler than this and I and you know if you kind of go by the guidance that's been put out there um based on CPA the CPA statute as well as just you know what is good public policy this pretty much follows it I I I think there are other communities that have made it much more complex but we have to do things like household income we have to you know do some sort of income certification and I think setting up some program guidelines because we don't want to we can't hand this off to an administrator who's making decisions um that you know could come back to haunt everybody um so this these guidelines are uh pretty straightforward um and and conform I I think there's uh the difference and nobody's really that far ahead of us honestly um Boston had its own program which had kind of went off and they had a lot of requirements I'm really curious about how um uh they put three million dollars up to get a program started the only other program that's operating right now is um out in Lenox and Great Barrington and they haven't been very responsive to neither to either me or John about how they did things but everybody else is just talking about this um has some quiz Quincy done stuff um they might have done stuff but I don't know that they have a program operating and I'm not sure if they're using CPA funds either I'm gonna let Carol speak and then um I want to let Rita finish with her presentation um just in interest of closing out the time then and then we'll recognize Janet I didn't want one quick quick quick comment which was that in the thing yesterday they they had a draft that looked much like this actually western mass something or other had something with being used by several towns it looked very like this and the town that was the quickest that was really on top of everything thought they'd get started by July 1st newton so just as a vague timeline of of what seemed to be possible and my other questions will probably come up when Rita talks some more so I'll wait I just want to say quickly um there's you know there's a it's a multi-step process so the town has to procure an administrator and through the mass housing partnership workshop you know it's clear that you want you know you want to get an you know an experienced administrator and I think the program guidelines help provide you know the framework on how the administrator would would go through the program the other one is um more than likely we'll have to run a lottery for people applying for this assistance it's would be really difficult to do a first come first serve basis and um you know we might might run afoul of fair housing um law you know laws and regulations and so that's something else to consider you know we I always thought we could try to get this going before July 1 because the trust has money in in the bank account now so it doesn't take a town council vote to authorize or allocate the money it's already there um it takes you know some you know the trust to authorize it and then the town to go through some steps it will still take some time and then if there's a lottery not that that takes a little bit more time but you know we may have enough funding say for 100 households and we may have hundreds of households that apply and so we have to consider how to you know how to be equitable in that distribution of funds because we don't have enough to help everyone and if we're have a target number of households and we want to do it for three months or six months um you know we have to be careful in terms of how much money we have and how many households we can help so just wanted to say that quickly thanks you want to scroll on there here we can uh this is probably important oh i think it was another question right from did you want to um no i don't think i think we want to hear your your uh wrap up here okay um so uh this was a little bit of just uh thinking through what what are rents and amersed assuming we're not going to be able to cover you know we're trying to reach as many people make a difference to as many people as as possible but not expend all the funds on just a small number of households so um thinking through kind of what you know what are the current you know what are the the rents um they came up with this maximum subsidy amount and it was not um it's not i have to say it wasn't scientific it was more kind of knowing uh just guessing sort of what what are the rents out there and um these certainly these numbers could be revised we are talking about um three months and uh you know one decision that would have to be made is is that would that be retroactive or is that um just going forward some communities are talking about doing it retroactively um so um kind of based on everybody's knowledge to does this seem like the right amount of money so for people if they can't see it you know we're uh you know it's the subsidy would be a maximum of five hundred dollars for an efficiency or one bedroom six fifty for a two bedroom and eight hundred fifty a month for a three or you know three bedroom or greater and you know that's that's a maximum amount and the um just so you know in the case of um the subsidy it has to go directly then this is a cpa requirement it goes directly to the landlord it does not go to the household and there will be either an addendum if there's an existing lease there can be an addendum to lease or there's a contract um essentially a grant agreement between the administrator and the um landlord to pay x number of dollars per month for three months um on behalf of x tenants so we already do have kind of um templates for that agreement i just need to do a little bit more work on it but so in terms of the numbers Rita this is two thousand five hundred and fifty is the maximum for three months for a three bedroom plus um apartment so if you had say four hundred thousand dollars available um assuming two hundred thousand dollars from the trust and two hundred thousand then we would have uh approximately i don't know one hundred and fifty or more uh households okay for three months you wouldn't yeah three months right that's the max so maybe you could serve two hundred carol you had your hand up i one of the things that that it suggests in one of these other things is to work with the landlord to see if there's any possibility of hey if we're going to do this can you do something too can you reduce the rent a little bit for this period of time since we're going to be subsidizing it so that might make some difference and my only comment about the amounts because i don't know is it needs to be enough so it really does let the person stay there and they don't end up not being able to pay whatever their part of it is and they're still in danger of being kicked out that would be horrible if we do all this and then we still haven't provided people uh a place to live so i don't know how to figure out those numbers i would like to be able to kind of get some more information about what would what would it what will it really take to make it so that the people that get the subsidies really do get to stay there without without just make it more make sure that we're really making it possible for people to stay there with the amount of money so the the state law that was um just passed i was just signed by the governor this week you know does provide a lot of protections for um uh vis-a-vis eviction and there are two dates um it's uh the the shorter of it it it stops any evictions for um during the state of emergency and um i think it's 120 days beyond the end fell by 120 days from the signing of the of the law or 45 days after the state of emergency is lifted so there cannot be any evictions and um so people are not paying the rent they can't be evicted um what does happen is you know the household is still responsible for having you know for for paying it's just the same with the mortgage with you know the the freeze on foreclosures you're still going to be owing that that money so yeah this is a short term i mean what what this does is uh it doesn't it doesn't solve all the problems for the lack of income and i think we um you know in looking for an administrator need to be thinking about what other kinds of services that administrator provides you know to really assist the families as far as negotiating the rents with the um you know asking for a reduction in rent um i'm not sure that's uh that's a lot to ask of the administrator i think you know that would be a whole other um addition of the services that could could complicate and slow things down well rita let me just ask you so it shows the maximum amount of the rent is that the maximum amount of the the subsidy calculation or is that subsidy dollar that's not the rent okay so the rent could be significantly higher yes yes that you'd have there yes in fact you know for a three-bed room unit you could have somebody paying twenty five hundred dollars a month now right right we could do some sort of rent reasonableness uh test i guess um that gets pretty um tricky again that gets more complex and as paul's pointing out you know we're trying we're trying to kind of keep this as um as basic as possible um but still not being not being irresponsible so that's the again that kind of fine line we're trying to walk here i think um carol just to your point about forgiveness i mean that's something that has been you know staff has also discussed is there you know is there a possibility of asking some landlords to you know either forgive rent or have a reduced rent and you know i agree with rita that that's something that necessarily wouldn't fall i wouldn't ask it of the administrator i think it's beyond you know just administering a you know a rental assistance program but you know i think it's a good point i think um you know we're calling this kind of like a gap funding and you know we don't have you know four hundred thousand dollars sounds like a lot but if you you know the rents and amers are quite high and you know if we want to help a number of households it it will go fast um but i think it's a good point yeah i want to make sure i'd like to know that the money we're providing to households that they're staying in their unit right yeah i i would feel so sad that we would help a household and then they still face eviction after they receive our payments um yeah yeah okay in the interest of time i just want to ask rita to finish your presentation sure um you just scroll up again just to make sure i did i cover everything up there selection process i didn't put the lottery in here but i was pretty convinced after listening to that presentation um yesterday that uh that we would definitely do a lottery because i think that there's going to be a really big demand we don't want to have happen what happened with the the small business loan program from the feds which was you know a bunch of the high rollers got the money got in there first and and ate it all up so this way you know having a lottery is just a fair fair way give people an equal footing get the applications in probably you know release the money in in two um two phases so that if somebody missed out in the first um phase that they would uh you know there'd be a second application period because i do worry that information doesn't get out there and even though we'll it will be marketed um so the lease we kind of already talked about that or some alternate documentation the program administrator um 30b and then the role and responsibility kind of they would have um they would do everything from marking intake application review um and then be reporting back to the town and then there is a separate document that um we can go over if we want to skip to kevin um and then go over that or if you just want to give me comments the one thing i do want to just mention because um it relates to um what we've been talking about with landlord so nancy schroeder who has resigned from the trust unfortunately what is still very interested in doing some work with the trust um actually did a did a survey of of landlords and had sent out some of the basic parameters of a rental assistance program the stuff that mhp had prepared and she got two responses one from roland green and one from um camons from from pat camons and um not unsurprisingly well i was a little bit surprised for their their immediate concern is about students who have moved out and are not paying their rent and are not planning on paying their rent so those are a couple of big landlords um and um even when stuff has been cosigned i guess by parents they're saying we can't pay so uh it's it's not only going to be um they're not only facing um you know families and households where there's been a job loss but all the students moving out and just walking away and saying we're not paying we're not there we're not going to pay the rent um so she's she's going to keep um and talk to some more landlords but this uh this pandemic really just shaken the whole world up you know so quickly um you know i think rita gave a good overview the one thing we had to mention is that most administrators will charge you know a percentage cost for their you know a fee so yeah you know um rita and john have talked with few people you know and through you know i mean it could be anywhere from 20 to 30 percent so you know if we're saying that we have you know $400,000 and and subsidy you know it may be that you know their fee is $80,000 and you know so i think you know the discussion has to be you know would we um in our program guidelines or in our procurement uh have a cap you know a percentage cap and you know what what do we think is reasonable you know we're hoping to have get an administrator who has staff in the capacity to to really work with work with the town um you know valley cdc when they did their small business program uh in north hampton they they actually hired someone part-time just to help with all the applications and intakes so it may be that you know we don't necessarily want to be supporting a lot of overhead for an administrator but there are you know this is pretty um can be time intensive and and you know it takes a lot of effort to do all the paperwork and process everything so you know just you know so people are aware that you know there's the rental amount the subsidies and there's the program fee that you know is built into this and that's what we'll be procuring is the program fee so if we think that you know it's going to be over $50,000 it's one type of procurement if it's under $50,000 it's something you know a quote process um but I think if we are anticipating you know a few hundred thousand dollars in subsidy then you know it'll be a fair amount of an administrative fee well I think that the $50,000 limit is a good one uh I think just because of the procurement issues and you know it may be that that's not enough um but if you go over $50,000 it's a lot longer process and it would be better if we could avoid that I will say that you know for a short term project like this this is investment for any agency to get involved in and you said that again Tom I kind of missed what you said I think it's it's a lot of investment for any agency to get involved in setting up a whole new program for just a couple of months you know it's uh it's going to be a lot of work and you're not going to get a lot in one run so you might have a little challenge in attracting to come in but $50,000 will be enough yeah so other reason for keeping it simple yeah and we have been um uh John and I have been just um kind of scouting it out with some organizations just uh uh kind of run by the basics and see whether or not there's there's definitely interest out there so and I think um and and there are organizations that do have that have done similar you know do check writing to kind of administration where we could plug in without a whole lot of um I think the intake and the application review will be um new but there's certainly there's certainly some experience out there which was encouraging so I think we could find somebody okay all right so we wanted to Carol just we we wanted to let Janet have a come we yeah go ahead please do let her I'll uh Janet you are unmuted if you can hear me I think we had her waiting so long she's can you hear me now yes okay so actually my comment was um basically the idea that um Carol and Nate and the town staff have been talking about in terms of talking to landlords about reducing their rents and um because that would stretch your dollars obviously um UMass and Amherst College may be virtual in the fall or partially first virtual I was talking to someone from Amherst College and they might only bring some students back on campus um because they're looking at maybe having only one student per dorm room and things like that and so I think that really will shift the landscape for landlords from having a very low vacancy rate to maybe really scrambling for tenants and that might be an opportunity for landlords to a temporary to agree to temporarily temporarily reduce rents and I'm not sure who would ask that or what you know the next step would be but I think it would be an incentive to landlords you know to get you know 80 percent of your rent or 60 versus um having people not able to pay and then you know if you can't pay for three or four months and you get a job you it's going to be difficult for people to make up that back rent and then it's difficult to go get that money out of people through you know a legal process so I think maybe kind of in a spree decor or just you know hard facts that landlords would start reducing rents or the town could ask them or I don't know if you would have mediators work with people or how that program will be set up but I think it's a viable idea to ask people to reduce rents until the crisis is over that's it thanks thank you Janet um so discussion um I think we have had a lot of discussion as we went through all of this I think what John was looking for was a vote to move forward with this and to give John and Nate and Rita approval to proceed with this program and try to finalize it and I don't know if we're ready for a motion but I would entertain one if there was one Carol it's an emotion it's just a point of clarification I think you have said there's $400,000 here I would like to be sort of clear in any way that we do this about what money we're saying we're willing to use and how much it is and where it is and I just think that should be part of whatever we say here I think I can answer that so the trust um I don't think has $400,000 you know originally John would have liked the trust to put in $200,000 and then for CPA to try to um vote and you know recommend another $200,000 per town council um you know what I've heard is that there there is no CPA money that's that is available at least until after July 1 and there's some you know caution about how soon after July 1 that would be available so really all that's available is what's in the trust fund right now and you know there's probably about $300,000 that could be put to this um right now and that's from you know that's all you know that's the trust money that has been um you know some has been donated and most of it's CPA money so it's really what is available in the trust right now but John was um I wouldn't say he was confident but he was um uh hopeful he was hopeful thank you there would be more uh CPA money go ahead Paul thank you so I think the trust can only act on funds that it possesses it can't you can't put on hope so I think I mean the action should be what the trust is doing versus what somebody else might be contributing there but I I think we can say that we encourage the the team here to seek additional funds from CPA wherever um and that uh we would be willing to commit up to um 300,000 um I think that's a lot I would have limited it to 200 but that's just my vote um so is there any other considerations before we tonight I'm it's a uh budgetary question but I have a budget thing that I thought it's from the end of last year but I thought it told me how much the trust had and it was on more like almost $500,000 I don't necessarily want to spend it all but I just could we get some updated thing about where so we can see the same number not right this minute but at some point Nate whatever so we can see what you're sure I can send that the accurate I mean some of the money for CPA was voted for consultants or specific things and then some of it was for general development or you know just capitalization of the trust so you know about 70,000 has been was allocated and voted for consultants or specific things so that money can't necessarily be used for rental assistance got it thank you and I um yeah one thing I was gonna say uh Tom you know um you know if the trust ready to vote now I mean I could you know I would I you know say we could meet next week even if that gives everyone enough time to read documents if they're not comfortable voting tonight you know we don't I'll just say you know people are comfortable members are comfortable we don't have to wait a month but if people don't want to vote tonight you know if they're if people want to meet in a week just to just to have this as as an agenda item we could if that's you know reasonable for people I just want to mention that as an option just in case people aren't vote tonight well um does anybody want to offer a motion I would offer the motion that we continue to develop this idea it's a good idea and we should continue to develop it we will approve it in some fashion I or I think it's been turning into a motion but we would like to pursue this with the intent of approving something soon even though it's not all worked out yet so we don't want to approve it exactly how it is so that make any sense so it's a motion to move forward with the planning for this program without any specific approval of the particulars that being worked on are there any reservations about what we have seen so far does anybody want to say don't do this or you must do that as guidance to the team doing this okay yeah I guess carol I'm not sure based on what we've talked about so far what other changes are being looked for what further I mean there's some things that would be tweaked but they might be tweaked once we have an administrator but in terms of the program design just like some guidance I got I get the sense that this was not the final draft but is it really in a final it's it's a you know the incorporating the lottery in there yeah I guess I didn't hear that much more tonight that would lead me to editing this I mean you know I guess we could leave that option open of people providing comments and then if the if the trust is going to read again come back with an edited version but uh okay I I didn't realize that we were that far along carol you had a comment and then paul I only was going to say the things that seem left the things that I'm unclear about our eyes hope maybe we could get a little more clarity on whether these amounts of money that would be the the subsidy amounts really are going to do what we want them to do and get some clarity yes on something or other about um lottery at least that we do want to use a lottery I would hope that would be part of what we asked from an administrator and some idea hopefully of yes let's try and keep the amount the request to be less than $50,000 or have a very good reason why it's got to be more and maybe in the course of figuring that out we could check with some of the people who are already trying to do this to see what seems reasonable to other people so it just seems like there's maybe a little more research in a few places that could go into it the basic outline of the thing is great but that's why it seems hard right now to vote on it to me because there are these things that just aren't really quite all the way there it's a good idea all the parts of it are a good idea but that for me those are the things that stand out so um okay so carol's had made a motion that we proceed and uh have it further developed by rita and nate and john and whoever else uh on staff paul you you had a comment i'm sorry actually i i just support carol's motion with the with the understanding that a firm dollar sum would be attached to whatever the next the next time we look at it what that look with that dollar amount is okay we want to confirm the the addition of the lottery we want to confirm that the the bid amount will be less than 50 000 set less than 50 000 we want to confirm the amount of the commitment from uh the trust and i would say and whether we make that contingent upon commitment of other funds from others whether there's any kind of additional leveraging um maybe not but uh i thought i heard john say that he was counting on some additional money he wasn't just going to do this solely with uh with trust funds so that would be as another issue paul so i wouldn't say it's contingent on other funds i would say with the prospect of securing other funds i mean if cpa doesn't act or the council doesn't act it doesn't prevent the trust from moving forward on this with the money that we have well i guess i just i don't know whether that's that's something that um i'm i'm trying to relay what i had heard from john and he seemed pretty certain that this wasn't going to work unless there was other funds and it couldn't solely be cpa but it was a very brief conversation so i may have maybe misspeaking yeah i think um quickly to that you know we can't um award a contract on funds that aren't even you know allocated so you know to that point the trust has money you know if we said 300 000 that's the amount um you know i can send an updated budget um and then really the procurement or the the the services would be would be based on that amount and if cpa votes or recommends and town council votes later this year you know we have a second phase that may be um procured and implemented in the fall but we can't you know i wouldn't want to wait until the cpa process because that might not be until september right if the state slow getting money out so i think the trust has the ability to um move forward now it may not be exactly how john wanted to you know say we have this large pot of money but i think the timing is such that we necessarily don't want to wait for cpa to be able to make a contract award i understand the timing issue i just you know there's a limited amount of money and sometimes using your money to leverage other money is uh is a good uh strategy okay so um we want to see confirmation of the lottery the bid amount less than 50 000 an amount of trust money to be committed and was there anything else we wanted to make sure i fact i had a point of you know are the amounts sufficient to keep households in their unit so i think right i you know i you know i you can guarantee that carol i yeah i don't i don't see how we can guarantee that i know i'm yeah you can't guarantee it there's no way to guarantee it but you could have i you could have some idea of how many if people are paying 35 percent what is this thing they're supposed to pay 35 percent of their income and you're going to pay as as much as 500 to try to make up the difference is there any way to have any idea how much how in what number of circumstances the 500 will make up the difference as opposed to there still being a gap we have no idea i mean i mean so i would imagine that there may be people for whom the 500 so let's say you're in a place and it's a thousand dollars a month and the the subsidy and you have no income at all right and uh you know so it's zero so 35 percent of zero is zero um and so they the if it's uh it's it's a 500 for an efficiency or one bedroom what a lot of efficiency and one bedroom and one bedroom so so you've got a one bedroom unit it's costing you a thousand but all you're gonna get from the trust is five hundred dollars and if you don't have the other five hundred dollars to pay um you're going to be that far behind but um you know i don't know that there's anything more that that we can say um maybe the maybe the issue is in the in the uh agreement that is between the person and the landlord and the administrator that says if i get this money for these months this person can i mean they can't get kicked out now anyway because they can't be evicted because of the law it's a tough situation carol i mean yes no question about that yeah i mean carol i mean to to extend your ideas like would we would the landlords be willing if we said in the tribe party agreement that you can't evict someone um you know through 2020 or we anticipate a deadline if the state of emergency ends in the fall you know i mean i'm not sure if they'd be willing to do that but i mean my thought is that's the only way is if we could factor in something into this agreement but um you know i'm not sure who'd be willing to sign it uh no i don't i don't really don't want to make it more complicated and maybe just my lack of information that makes me slightly uncomfortable with these numbers but we're going to look at it again and so that's fine so maybe we can talk to a couple of more landlords john page had a question i was just going to read the motion as i think where it's fallen vote to empower staff to develop and present a final draft of a program designed for an emergency subsidy program that includes selection by lotter lottery a procurement cost limit of $50,000 and a discreet amount of trust funds to be allocated is that accurate sounds good okay carol okay do we have a second anyone second rob rob is any discussion any further discussion all in favor i'll do the roll call tom roll call sorry okay uh so carol hi rob hi will hi paul hi did hi and i do too okay okay can we get back thank you so kevin noonan is uh is an attendee we can have him speak now if you'd like sure that's fine with me all right kevin i'm going to uh allow you to talk i think you can uh you're all set you can also video yourself in if you'd like can i can you hear me now i can hear yes okay so uh sorry i'm late to the meeting what is the question that you you wanted an update on the shelter i guess uh right uh john had uh heard i thought did he ask you or you asked him yeah he asked me and it's so long ago now because there were some we were originally going to do this in march and then so i'm not a hundred percent sure but i assume it was an update on where the shelter is but and he had mentioned to me there was some discussion about trying to extend the closing date but uh i may well that but yeah back then they're probably i mean sorry more recently there was but not now no because now we're we're about we're so that's a good segment we're about to test the entire shelter population at craig's place in the basement of the baptist church and the staff that have been working with those people in the basement of the church and that's going to take place on tuesday and then based on that once once the results are back to us there will be two options if someone is covid positive they will be offered a motel it's funded by the state handled by mima the massachusetts emergency management agency and there is a mima funded hotel at the quality in in north hampton but coincidentally the same day that we're testing north hampton is testing that afternoon at the north hampton high school they have 58 beds there so it'd also be possible that uh people will have to travel to pitfield or uh i believe lexington was another place where there are motels that are funded for people who are homeless uh but are covid positive for those who are just exposed to those positive cases the town has a broker to deal which i think was in the hamstring is that in earlier this month and with hamstring college and um so we're going to immediately close craig's place maybe a day or two early but once we have those results we'll close the shelter and transfer the operation down to the hamstring college uh dakin dorm and then we will uh we will function from there as a quarantine site not as a shelter okay so we're really pleased that the town was to be able to do this because you know this has been a problem but there's an important statistic that i probably should have prefaced this all with that uh pine street in in boston last week checked um i believe it was just under 400 people in the shelter and 126 of those were covid positive and 100 of the covid positive cases were asymptomatic so this suggests that the screening that we've been doing and other shelters have been doing throughout the state throughout the country is not really helpful it's we're screening for temperature we're asking questions about the other caught well do you have can we listen for a call for if we ask them if they've been around anybody with covid positive right none of those screening tools are really uh helpful in identifying who's covid positive so the tests which will be done by dr bossy from healthcare for the homeless these should be more definitive and so unfortunately it'll look like a spike in in covid positive cases among the homeless population but it's really more linked to the fact that we have testing now and that's why we have the testing because when the boston results came out there was a statewide push to and not just a statewide a countrywide push to to get the testing into the shelters okay wow thanks kevin was there anything that you wanted to report no i i just thank you for what you were just talking about that's that's very positive thing and and obviously more money for housing is is key especially in the town like amherst where the rents are so high um normally at this time we'd be trying to get people in their housing you know as fast as possible but we don't know what the results of the tests are going to be on tuesday so we're sort of an over holding period pattern okay kevin this is nat did you can you imagine how many people are in the shelter now i don't know if you did yeah we're full every night um the problem is everybody there was a lot of consolidation there was a what was called a warming center operating out of the old out of the salvation army in greenfield that got closed and consolidated with the well street shelter in greenfield then there was the closure of uh grow street in in north hampton as well as the cot shelter in north hampton and they were consolidated into the north hampton high school and i believe the east hampton overflow shelter was closed as well so with this consolidation there's fewer and fewer beds so we're getting calls from throughout the county in beyond uh to you know do you have a bed and our standard answer is anybody who had a bed last night gets the bed tonight if they show up at 9 30 so you're you're sort of taking your chances if you come up here and you don't have an option b right and that's usually enough to dissuade people from coming all the way up to amherst if they're calling say from holyoke or springfield but uh when when all of a sudden done we try to deal with what's on the doorstep at 9 30 at night yeah paul you had a couple things so i just want to first thank craig stores specifically kevin for providing the lead on this especially with the testing i think that's a critical component even though that the shelter scheduled to close on april 30th it's really important for all these congregate shelters and it's not just homeless it's also any place where there's congregate housing like senior centers um and you know the soldier some all these different places when you live in a congregate setting like that they're the likelihood of spread is very easy so i think that this is a really good thing he just kevin described it perfectly the second thing i wanted just i just want to throw a shout out to hansher college for opening up their dorms for this um you know i've been talking with the president there about a contract uh i put in a section for how much do you want us to pay you for this and he just crossed out the entire section for pay uh and it's really a real commitment on their part to to our community i think so um i am an alum so i pulled disclosure but i do think this is something that at a moment when we really needed support they step forward and they are have been saying let's go let's go every step of the way so just want to thank them for that too thank you paul sounds great anything else kevin well no i mean i just want to echo what paul said that's something that we're really happy to that hampshire college stepped us to the plate and and we're looking forward to hanging out on their campus uh as of wednesday possibly and we appreciate the fact that paul was able to put it together i don't know if it matters that he was an alum but it probably didn't hurt and um it's it's it's a really eucolic setting down there i forgot i mean i've been there many times which has been there recently and now with the um with the stay at home order it's so quiet it's a really beautiful setting so um we're looking forward and i think some of the people are kind of some of the news is trickling out and they're hearing what i get my own room in a bed in a door which is the whole reason we call this place craigs doors people who are homeless don't have a door so we really appreciate what the town has done okay any other questions or comments for kevin okay thanks kevin appreciate you tom i appreciate for all your work all right if it's okay i'll sign off because i gotta get busy on the budget for the town here okay all right bye bye okay so the next items were the east street school assessments and strong street hickory ridge you man um uh i don't know do we have information on any of these um i don't um have any individual information does anyone i can um say that on a and b there isn't much you know we're still um i had reached out to wetland consultants and i plan to do that again soon so you know that had stopped um you know over the winter and i reached out to you know three of them and they were interested in we said we check back however with the you know with the health crisis i'm not sure um you know outside work may be okay on site but nothing you know east street school we wanted someone to come in and do you know hazardous materials um in the building which isn't happening um i think it was um um acutech or a company had been doing you know annual surveys of just a few places on east street school and i've been asking them if they could dig through their files to see if they actually did a full report and um you know email them a while ago when we've been going back and forth every few weeks and they're still looking but they haven't found anything i was i was hoping would be as easy as you know here it is on our server but um nothing there you know so that's it on a and b okay anything on hickory rich uh i don't have anything you have anything paul yeah still in negotiations with the owners there um you know they continue to evaluate the land and different aspects of it so that no deal has been done with that yet are you expecting that this uh crisis is with uh financial implications could affect this uh negotiation uh it doesn't affect the negotiations but it may affect what the count if the council wants to continue moving forward on this or not okay i think what i heard from john just briefly was that uh maybe some of that money that we have that would make a difference if there was if there was a set aside of some land for affordable housing that was part of that acquisition and some of the trust money so um obviously the whole committee will have to have that conversation but um do people understand what is going on there there's a large parcel of land that is a discussion and this town is possibly going to acquire it and some of that land could be made available for affordable housing and that's something we'd be very interested in so do you think there's anything coming up any votes any conversation formally uh there are no votes um you know with any it's a property transaction so you've all been involved in property transaction there are a lot of details and things that pop up in the course of negotiating a piece of property to sale so just working through a month number of those different things environmental assessments things like that i see all right we'll keep us posted um um UMass residential development john had sent out a um notes on conversations he was having with tony and um tony merulis yeah they're right here i don't yeah i mean i don't really have much to say either i think it was just you know just to see how the you know the whole north village and um linkin av is going the i did notice i did read through it and john had pushed back on his unwillingness to define what they meant by um affordability they had stated in their statements that the affordability was going to be important in north village and when he said well what do you mean by affordability um he basically came back and said well you know we don't have to make the portal um so kind of screwed at the issue i thought anybody else had any reaction to that yeah i think that's tough because um you know it seems like there will be no public subsidy right so um there may not be you know tax credit funding or things that would you know require affordability so i you know i think that's i yeah i think it's i'm glad john's just saying on top of that just because you know maybe by virtue of their of their um their condition you know the apartments were were you know a lower rent um but you know if they're these are all brand new units you know is they're going to be you know john showed us kind of the prospectus that they were they put online is there going to be a push to have much more expensive rental units yeah yeah yeah it doesn't it doesn't look very encouraging and i don't know if there's anything we want to do to try to apply any pressure um i know the relationship that you pass um doesn't give us a huge amount of leverage but uh i have to defer to others who've been involved in this over the years fall is there any point in us trying to make any any overture from university to pressure them to better define what they mean by affordability and what their commitment is to affordability in these new units um i'm always for pressuring the university to do more on everything so it's up to the trust to uh advocate for that i think um i always always feel there can make me more done on these issues all right so uh we will continue to press um i had actually wondered if um we could bring tony and and whoever else maybe somebody more senior here at UMass come before the committee and maybe even a joint uh town council and housing committee meeting although now that we're doing this all virtually i don't know that it was this effect but actually just have them come and tell us you know directly and in base questions uh is that is there a precedent for that ball asking them to come and speak to the council oh i i think it's perfectly uh reasonable to ask tony morales to come that's sort of his job i don't think you'd see it the council is just going to be swamped with budget issues over the next two months i don't think you'll see them able to take this anything like this on at this point in time all right okay um well then let me ask so um would anybody like to suggest that we invite tony um i think john sort of did that and know he got the answer yeah there was there was last meeting we had we we suggested that and there there was supposed to come to the following meeting and since it never happened i guess that's why john put this these questions together for for tony and and uh and nancy nancy elbow phone so okay but we could we could have him virtually i'm pretty sure if john invited him yeah i don't see we don't know that there's a vote necessarily but maybe um we should go back to john and tell him that the sense of the meeting was that we'd really like to keep pressuring them to to answer the question about affordability and if possible get them to come i guess to the extent we can do it in person virtually yeah no i think yeah we can i can relate that to john and you know he he can extend an invitation for the next meeting too i think that yeah yeah we'd really the folks would really like to hear them and and ask questions sure okay all right next item was uh northampton road is there anyone from valley uh in the audience no i thought laura maybe i'd said she was going to make it but um i can give an update you know they um valley received their project eligibility approval uh which means that you know they can submit their comprehensive permit when they're ready and they've indicated to the town that they're trying to get it in it'll probably be in early may so they are you know they're still moving forward with their architects and engineers and they're they're hoping to submit a comprehensive permit by the end of may or um by early may um you know the meetings will probably be held virtually and you know typically a comprehensive permit allows um requires an expedited permitting process so the hearing has to be opened within um 30 days so this you know with the state orders we have some flexibility so we're going to you know ask for a bit of an extension from that 30 days just so we can allow material to get online and be able to um you know have a zoom meeting essentially in a way that if a lot of public are interested we can have material available so you know we've been talking to valley about that but they're they're still hoping that they can you know apply for a comprehensive permit go through the permitting this year and then still have you know if all the you know the way the tax credits and funding work you know be ready for fall winter to apply for you know funding but you know so they're hoping for permitting this year just one comment I know that the governor's order says that 45 days after the thing of the emergency restrictions are when the public process can proceed so if they submit something you know the day that the um the emergency order is lifted the earliest there could be a hearing would be 45 days as far as that's my interpretation but okay legislative issues I'm not sure which one meant by this is anybody have any comments or I'm not sure why he brought that up okay 40 our district any news on that yes I think the um you know the consultants had planned to come out and give a final presentation to um you know the planning board and have a public meeting the um you know then with the the health crisis it's been postponed we are looking at having them come back either on May 6th or May 20th to the planning board um and then you know it's nice about the idea is to use the planning board as the as the public meeting because it's um broadcast live and you know through Amherst media and then it's also a virtual meeting through zoom so the idea is to have the consultants come back in May they would present um you know in their terms would be a for you know a final boundary uh you know district um design guidelines and a zoning bylaw so you know it would conclude their work in terms of what it means for Amherst it's really just kind of you know a first draft of of those three pieces of a 40 r and then it's really up the planning board and others to determine is that you know appropriate to move forward so you know the consultant's task was really to develop something that is in um is in shape that the planning board could adopt it if they wanted or you know propose it be adopted and so they're really writing it as if it's a you know um you know natural zoning bylaw and design guidelines but for us it you know we can take it and then use it as as needed any comments or questions yes carol i just want i just want to say that i at least if if the next step on the uh emergency funding for housing thing that we just talked about if that is ready and needs us to do something sooner than a month from now i would certainly consider coming back to some special meeting in order to address that to keep it moving forward so exactly what i was going to suggest so next time we go forward and say should we set another uh because i don't think there's a huge amount of work to do to get this to the point where we could vote on it do we want to suggest a next meeting date that's sooner than a month yeah and then i would also ask that there were two other documents that were attached one was a scope of services for the administrator and then one was a kind of minimum requirements so if anybody has comments on those that would be great to see advance of the next meeting and you can just email nato's comments and then we can get them incorporated okay does anybody have any reservations about doing this like week from now that that too soon okay will says yes that's the carol carol i can't hear you said says yes okay carol you're muted if you're talking i just said i have something scheduled for a week from now but i will try to change it if it's actually going to happen a week from now well i you know thursday night is what we've been doing and um is that that's not going to work for you a carol if it works for everyone else i will make it work i can i think i can do that i i'll yeah i mean not that i have to be at the meeting but i will i have something for five to seven it may go late i probably will go later so i do have a meeting that evening does anybody want to suggest another time uh a wednesday night is that easier oh taking your head carol no it's not easier all right well that's the problem right i mean you know set up these meetings so let me see by a raise of hands of who thinks they can make next thursday and seven don't make it work all right looks pretty good carol i'm raising one finger i think i can make it work well hopefully john will be we will have it all right so you can say you can say may 30th at seven that could just be a one item um agenda and then if we do our typical meeting what will be the next meeting date for everyone like may 21st or may 28th is that the april 30th right next wednesday next thursday sorry sorry did i say may right april so april 30th and then our regularly yes there'll only be the one agenda item and then our regular it's the fourth thursday is that be the 28th of may i thought it was the fourth i think you know a little world you know with it with this uh we're a little off schedule but i'm you know what we need to meet on the 14th given our meeting tonight i'm sorry is what are you what's our regular uh thursday night i think it was usually the second thursday and the monday it's the second thursday yes okay so the 14th would be the regular schedule time correct okay does anybody have any problem with may 14th is the uh next regular schedule meeting okay that's fine would we for may 14th would we want to say 6 p.m for people i mean we can if it's virtual if that works better um just throwing it out there why i can do six did anybody object to may 14th i think we're good Nate oh yeah but i mean do we you want to have a seven o'clock start or do you want to do a six or six thirty i can do six this is it do people want to start earlier earlier it's always better for me okay anybody else want to start earlier six o'clock yes it would rather rob is okay carol whatever whatever will he's good okay all right so um six o'clock on the 14th and um and and next thursday also six o'clock on the 30th that's a problem for you it is i mean i don't i don't necessarily have to be there but i can't i can't make that time well we need you to run this whole show here so right so we can do seven how's that okay all right seven on the 30th yep okay yes maybe on the maybe on the 14th we compromise at 6 30 since paul said it was harder for him to get there earlier paul i could meet whenever you guys meet i can be there don't worry about me okay i'm sorry so six o'clock on the 14th seven o'clock on the 30th all right anything else i don't see anything do i have a move to adjourn i guess we could take public comment tom if we have any i didn't see that on the agenda yes yeah it should have been on there public comments do we have any we have two members of the public still attending okay have there is anybody raise their hand not that i see okay having heard no public comment do i have a motion to adjourn so moved and i hear a second paul is seconded i thought we were gonna stay here all night did made the motion paul seconded any discussion all in favor i oh we got a roll call sorry okay carol hi he says yes will i yes paul i did i okay and i say i as well so we are adjourned all right thanks everyone i do thank you i appreciate it okay bye bye


The Appalachian Advantage plan is the simpler, better way to get the phone you actually want instead of paying hundreds of dollars up front.  It's called the Appalachian Advantage available at Appalachian Wireless. On November 19th, Kentucky State Police is hosting a cornhole tournament at Cage Den Athletics in Coal Run. Teams of two will enter to compete against our troopers for a cash prize. All of the funds will go towards this year's Shop with the Trooper Christmas program. On November 19th we're going to have our first annual KSP cornhole tournament to benefit our Shop with the Trooper program. It's going to be at the Cage Den Athletics there in Pikeville and it's going to be $50 per team for $18 and over and $40 per team for $18 and under. We're going to give away a first place cash prize for both divisions. They'll also have a set of cornhole boards there that are going to be raffling off and giving away and basically just come out to have a good time, enjoy the sport and know that all the money is going to a good cause. Hosting a cornhole tournament is one way for KSP to raise funds while participating in friendly competition. Everyone who enters will be contributing towards a child's Christmas. We're coming out having a good time. Anytime you can get the community together and all the money is going to go to benefit the kids, it's usually turned out to be a good time. People are there for a good reason. So you know our Shop with the Trooper program is we take kids from all over the five counties that we covered post non-district and take them on a shopping spree. So we'll give them a lot of money they'll be able to go out, go buy toys, make sure they have winter jackets and everything.  Just kind of be able to get that bond with them, build a relationship and then we send them all home with a Christmas dinner so that when they get home with their gifts their families can cook that dinner and they'll be able to sit down and have a good dinner together.  They got a good chance of winning that first place cash prize and even if they don't win they know that all the money is going to go to benefit the kids. Reporting from Mountain Top News, I'm Nick Colum.


As we know the Prophet, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him described Ramadan with three unique qualities and he said that the beginning of it is mercy and the middle of it is forgiveness and the end of it is freedom from the fire. And so as we approach the end of Ramadan the meaning that should perhaps be most present before us the goal that should be most immediate before us the grand prize as it were of Ramadan that we should all be after is liberation from the torment of the Hellfire we hope and pray and beg Allah that he grant us that Ya Rabbi al-Amin and that despite our shortcomings, despite our bad manners despite our heedlessness because of his grace, his sublimity his kindness that he gaze upon us and the rest of the Ummah and write for us freedom from the Hellfire Ya Rabbi al-Amin And we know that Allah created a world of means He created a world in which He makes ways for things to come about like He created that He made the door so you can come into the house so to speak He created means for things to happen He is the ultimate uncaused cause of all things but He created a world in which if you want something to happen you do something to get that thing to happen and fasting Ramadan and standing at night and giving charity and all of these things that we've been blessed to do of devotional activities is one of the ways that we do that but a reminder for us as we begin to wrap up Ramadan about some things that we can do throughout the rest of Ramadan to hopefully save ourselves from the torment of the fire there's a hadith where the Prophet peace and blessings of Allah be upon him I've reported to him said When he walked in his brother's house it was a good thing for him since he came here for ten years and when he walked in his brother's house Allah made between him and between the fire three windows all the windows were far from each other as the Prophet peace and blessings of Allah be upon him and his companions Everything the Prophet said was fascinating this is a fascinating thing that the Prophet has reported to have said that whoever goes to fulfill the need of their brother and we understand by language that this includes their sister the Arabic language defaults to the masculine like many other languages do but it doesn't obviously suggest that it's gender specific so as I translate the rest of the hadith we'll just say it with the masculine default whoever goes to fulfill the need of their brother it's better than making Yertikaf than engaging in spiritual retreat for ten years men mashaf yihad yatiyahi who just goes to fulfill the need of their brother or their sister it's better than spending ten years in Yertikaf and whoever spends one day in Yertikaf sincerely for the sake of God God will place between them and the Hellfire three trenches each of them is further than that which is between the heavens and the earth or the east and the west if you will look how beautiful Allah is it's almost like you only don't get forgiven if you really really don't want to be forgiven it's almost like only if you refuse forgiveness will you not be forgiven whoever fasts Ramadan will be forgiven their past sins believing in Allah, anticipating reward will be forgiven their past sins whoever stands at night in Ramadan will be forgiven their past sins whoever gives someone to break their fast will be forgiven whoever stands on the night of power believing in Allah, anticipating reward will be forgiven their past sins and he says whoever makes Yertikaf for one day sincerely for the sake of Allah it's hyperbole right when he says that he puts three spaces between him and the Hellfire each of them further than the heavens and the earth it's hyperbole meaning that he doesn't even get anywhere near Hellfire if he does his Yertikaf sincerely for the sake of Allah but at the beginning he says what to go fulfill the need of your brother or sister is better than making Yertikaf for ten years so the good news is as Ramadan wraps up is back to life back to reality it's time to get to work it's time to look at if whether the spiritual energy that we got in Ramadan is going to fuel anything meaningful in the world are we going to be people who fulfill the needs of those around us immediately and then by extension anywhere people may have a need and one of the fascinating things about our Prophet ﷺ is that he always may ruin for whatever lane you're going to be in in other words if you're someone who is able to do a lot of devotional work Alhamdulillah you have the devotional side and you get to be rewarded for doing that but many of us especially the outside of Ramadan are extremely busy extremely busy but when the brother or the sister need help all of the sudden we become even more busy Qari Amr Hafidullah may Allah reward him abundantly and bless him and protect him and give him good health and bless his family to think that a man who just spent the last 27 days leading us in prayer the first thing he says when he's done is pray for the volunteers if I was him I'd say pray for me alright pray for me but he says pray for the volunteers what happens when we need help in the community say brother there's an event we need help Alhamdulillah community like this the volunteers are very generous but sometimes when it comes time to help we get even extra busy I remember one time a brother who was active in the community outside of the bay area he complained and he said every time I call the brothers and say that we we need help we need help with the masjid nobody shows up we come at 7 or 8 o'clock we need to help so and so do such and such nobody shows up he said so one day I wanted to trick them and I told them we have a meeting at the masjid at 7 o'clock for dinner and all of them came but there was no dinner so they came and said masha'Allah where's dinner he said there's no dinner I just wanted to show you where our hearts are at Alhamdulillah said if you find it hard to go to the masjid for Fajr but then someone told you tomorrow there will be a wealthy person at the masjid distributing wealth giving out gifts and you showed up to Fajr you know how sincere you really are may Allah give us sincerity my father one time who's a Christian he said to me son do you think you could ask a few of the brothers at the masjid to help me move I said insha'Allah probably hopefully but in my mind I thought what insha'Allah so I called a couple brothers brother Akhi my dad's moving can you help me oh I'm work right wife kids I'm busy and I started to think subhanallah I can't find anybody but then luckily I found one or two brothers who was willing to help so I called my dad I said Alhamdulillah good news I have brothers over he said no no don't worry he said the people at church found out that I was moving they have a moving committee a moving committee that's there all the time whenever anyone in the community is getting ready to move you just let us know and we're ready to help so in our community we have some room for improvement when it comes to willingness to help one another however big or however small but even deeper than that is to do a gut check about how we think about these advices of our beloved son of Allah wa alayhi wa alayhi wa salam salawat wa rabbi wa salam wa alayhi wa alayhi wa salam he said to go help your brother and I automatically think of brother Zaid at the masjid or brother Amr at the masjid hypothetical Zaid or Amr I said Alhamdulillah this hadith next time I said by forces me to give a talk even though I came just to pray Alhamdulillah insha'Allah the hadith applies but more important even than that is for us to remember that our parents our spouses our siblings our children they're included in the idea of someone being your brother our families are Muslim Alhamdulillah and it will apply insha'Allah even if our families are not Muslim our families are Muslim so when the prophet says whoever goes to help his brother it applies to our families as well so to think when your wife makes that ridiculous request that absurd request that insane request for you to stop on the way home and pick something up at the grocery store right do you think you can stop on the way home and get some milk long day of work right I don't have time for this I need to get home watch the game remember the hadith of the prophet and it applies insha'Allah and it applies insha'Allah when your husband makes that ridiculous request of kindly preparing a salt bath for his feet or whatever when he gets home because he had a long day at work she doesn't say I'm busy with the kids insha'Allah and what did the prophet say what did the prophet say Allah will continue to help a servant as long as that servant is helping their brother helping their sister so we say how does a child help their parent how does a child help their parent a child helps their parent by remembering that the frame of reference and the experience that their parent helps their parent and the experience that their parent is drawing from is very different than the frame of reference in the experience that you have so you're patient with your parent be a little more thick skin don't be so reactionary don't flip out every time your parent asks you to do something don't flip out every time your parent doesn't understand they just don't understand maybe they don't just understand but even if they don't be a little more thick skin a little bit more patient try to be more understanding try to be more merciful how does the parent help the child in addition to all the ways that the parent is helping the child already help the child by remembering that the frame of reference that your child and the experience that your child is drawing from is so different than the one that you're drawing from somebody came up to me the other day they said the reason we need young people to be the lingo of the youth and Ali John can relate to the fact that I asked myself do I really? because even me I don't speak, I don't know I was with a young person in our community a few weeks ago they said are you going to be at such and such place at such and such time I said I'm not really sure she said to me okay JW I said JW what does that mean she said just wondering I said JW I said JW I said JW JW different language, different experience even in a few years so if I'm out of touch Subhanallah so to be patient one of the salaf Allah be well pleased with them said I never asked my son and don't get any ideas here but this is just to speak in hyperbole that I never asked my son for 30 years because I was afraid that he might disobey me I was afraid that he might say no and then give him shabu it doesn't mean we're not going to ask our children to help us but it means what to help your child by remembering that drawing from a different experience and we have to remember that our prophet was the best example when it came to accessibility and I'll leave you with one story because it's a story that is moving when your beloved was in the marketplace and he went to buy something for himself and he only had a few coins he didn't have very much money and he came and saw this young slave girl in the marketplace weeping and he said to her and he said to her what's wrong miss what's wrong miss what's wrong when the Arabs say yahadah or yahadihi it's either kind of an affront or to speak in an endearing way if you say yahadah it's either saying hey or it's like saying hey so he says malik yahadihi what's wrong miss and she says O messenger of Allah these people who own me they sent me to the marketplace to buy something and I spent the money so what happens does he give her a khutbah inna alhamdulillah nahmaduhu wa nasta'inuhu what does he do sallallahu alayhi wa alayhi wa sallam he gives you the little bit of money that he had left for himself and he says here you go so she goes on her way sallallahu alayhi wa alayhi wa sallam and he comes back a little while later and he finds that she's still sitting there and she's still crying so he says what's wrong did I give you the money did it and she says yahadah I bought the thing that I was told to buy but now I'm late and I'm afraid that when I go home I'm gonna get punished for being late and she said oh messenger of Allah would you do me a favor and he said khubban wa qarama I would be honored to what do we say it depends on what it is huh that's why you have to write before you say yes you say what it depends on what it is he said I'd be honored to and she said oh messenger of Allah would you walk me home and so the prophet of Allah a leader of a community and a father to children and a husband to his family sallallahu alaihi wa sallam took time to walk this young lady halfway across town they said she lived in the furthest part of el-madina and when they came to the door of the house the prophet said assalamu alaikum and nobody responded so he said again assalamu alaikum and nobody responded and then he said a third time assalamu alaikum and then they said so the prophet came and he said why why didn't you respond the first two times they said salam they said oh messenger of Allah we knew that if somebody if you greeted somebody and they didn't respond that you would just keep saying salam and we wanted you to just keep saying salam to us so then what did he do the young lady asked me to come with her I'm paraphrasing obviously for time sake he said that this young lady asked me to come with her and she's worried because she's late and they said oh messenger of Allah since you brought her she's free she's free and they freed her this is how the prophet was sallallahu alaihi wa sallam how could you be the one who says my eyes sleeps but my heart never sleeps my eyes sleeps but my heart never sleeps sallallahu alaihi wa sallam how can you be the one had he said how can you be the one who remembers Allah in every situation how could you be the one he never got angry for himself sallallahu alaihi wa sallam how could you be the one if I look into his eyes How could you be the one that never said no? As it farasda describes him in praising his great grandson, Sayyidina Ali Zayn, Ibn Hussain. He never said no except when he said there's no God but Allah. And if it wasn't for that testimony, his no would have been a yes. One of the sahaba as we close, one time they saw the messenger of Allah wearing a burda, a mantle, like a cloak. And they said that he looked exceptionally handsome in it. And he was always exceptionally handsome. I see some of the mouse not moving. It's like you didn't hear the name of the Habib. I know it's late but it's never too late for Sayyidina Muhammad. They saw the prophet wearing this burda and it had a reddish tone to it. And one of the sahaba came and he said, Ya Rasulullah, can I have that? Can I have your coat? Imagine, be careful on the way out somebody because you heard what he said. He said, Ya Rasulullah, can I have your jacket? Can I have your cloak? And he said, No, of course, yes. And he gave the sahabi to wear the cloak. But then the companions were bothered by that. They didn't like the fact that he took the prophet's cloak. So they came and they said, Why did you take it? The prophet looked exceptionally beautiful in it. And he said, I only took it because I know he would never be asked something and say no. And I didn't want it for myself but I wanted it so they could bury me in it. So I could be buried in something that touched the body of the Messenger of Allah, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. How could you be all of those things and then still be in the menial service of the people in your community? Still be the one, it was narrated about him that never did one of his family members or his community or a young person or an old person in his community call him except that he responded by saying, Labbaik. Here I am at your service. Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. So we pray that Allah will make us service-minded people. Now some of you may say that doesn't sound spiritual enough. That doesn't sound Ramadan-y enough. But it's actually at the core of Ramadan. For those of you who came late, he said, Whoever goes to fulfill the need of his brother is better than being in Ertikah for 10 years. And whoever spends one day in Ertikah sincerely for the sake of Allah. Allah will put three trenches between him and the Hellfire, each of them further than that which is between the heavens and the earth. May Allah free us from the fire, Ya Rabbil Alameen. And may Allah continue to bless this community, Ya Rabbil Alameen. Bless this masjid and bless the people who care for it and bless the people who spend them and bless this young man who is knocking over the microphone.


Here we see a snail making good time across the tile. We can measure the distance traveled and the amount of time it took. We define speed as the distance divided by the time. Here we have 14 centimeters traveled in 35 seconds. That's 0.4 centimeters per second. If we plot this on the time versus distance graph with time in seconds for the vertical axis and distance in meters for the horizontal axis we see that slow is a very steep slope. Standing still would be straight up. Here's a wild tiger angelfish. They have been seen to move at around 1.3 meters per second. Of course people can move a lot faster than this. The fastest man alive is Jamaican Usan Bolt who ran the 200 meters in 19.19 seconds or 10.4 meters per second. But that's slow compared to cheetahs. They're the fastest mammal topping 27.8 meters per second. That's a hundred kilometers per hour. But the Peregrine Falcon puts that to shame. They are the fastest animal on the planet soaring up to 389 kilometers per hour. That's 25,000 times faster than the snail. Graphing these speeds against the snail's almost vertical line shows how horizontal the lines can get at faster velocities. Of course we have cars that can travel faster than any of these animals. Arthur McDonald was one of the first to capture the land speed record at Daytona Beach in a nap here back in 1905. It set the record with 168.4 kilometers per hour. Malcolm Campbell took the record in 1935 in his bluebird. It recorded a top speed of 484.6 kilometers per hour. Craig Breedlove streaked his jet-powered spirit of America across the western Utah desert flats October 13, 1964 to set a whirlland speed record of 754.3 kilometers per hour. Gary Gabelik smashed the record at Bonneville Salt Flats with the blue flame reaching the record speed of 1066 kilometers per hour. And in 1997 Andy Green drove the thrust SSC through the sound barrier to 1228 kilometers per hour. This is the current world record for ground speed. Let's listen to what breaking the sound barrier sounds like. To graph these speeds we recalibrate the x-axis intervals from 1 meter per mark to 100 meters per mark.