Hello. Welcome to Historic Tax Credits, How to Develop a Financial Plan for Real Estate Development. My name is Lorraine Minatoishi. We are speaking from Honolulu, Hawaii. This is Dr. Alan Downer. He is the Deputy Shippo for Hawaii. And I am an architect, also historic architect here. And we'd like to present to you this webinar. Here are some learning objectives, how to apply for Historic Tax Credit, learning about condition assessment for historic structures, and some financial criteria for long range planning. So this is going to be an hour presentation. Dr. Downer is going to be speaking first and I will be speaking second. Cool. So I want to talk a little bit about the Historic Tax Credit. Just to give you some sort of an overview of it, the Tax Credit Program was established in 1977 by Congress. I think the first regulations came out in 1978. The regulations, the guidelines have been fairly consistent, but they do evolve over time. So it is important while we are talking about the most current standards today. When you get to the point of considering a project of your own, you need to make sure that you are working off the most recent stuff. So let me consult with your State of Start Preservation Office. They are a resource of assistance on this. I will also offer up our disclaimer here. A lot of this is that we are going to talk a little bit about the tax card. We are going to talk specifically some things that are really, we are not going to talk specifically, I should say that. We are not going to talk about accounting issues in detail. We are not going to talk about tax issues in detail. Frankly, when you get to that point, you are developing a project. You need to go talk to your tax accountant. You need to talk to your accountant generally because a lot of these things, while you can read the standards, you can read the IRS rules, but unless you happen to be an accountant, you don't want to be on your own doing this. So I guess the last comment here is that the tax credit is 20% of the qualifying rehabilitation expenditures. That is a very large tax credit. I will say that although Congress and the IRS generally hate tax credits, this has survived several rewrites of the tax code that eliminated many, many tax credits. This one endures. This gives you some idea. I think of the purpose of this obviously was to preserve the character of historic downtowns, to reuse, adaptively reuse important historic buildings that had fallen out of into disuse or which had no longer served their initial purpose. Most of the benefits of tax credits are local. They go into jobs and purchases in the local community. And then honestly, as most people realize, doing work by historic buildings tends to be more labor-intensive than working on more modern buildings. But the end result is the reuse of historic assets. And the truth of the matter is, the greenest building is the building that already exists. When people look at these calculations, we build this brand new building with all of the energy savings and what not. 50 years ago, from now, we have recouped all of the energy costs in the construction. Well, in the historic building, all those energy costs have already been recouped. I don't know if I want to say a great deal here. The whole purpose of this is to reuse historic buildings, to preserve the distinctive character of historic communities. It is jointly administered by the National Park Service and the Internal Revenue Service, our pals at the IRS. It is done in partnership with the State Historic Preservation Officers. The SHPO is an important resource, but it is important to remember that at the end of the day, it's the National Park Service and the IRS that's the decision-maker. So, the federal tax credit, historic rehabilitation tax credit, is available only to buildings that are to commercial buildings.  Qualified, we'll talk a little bit more in detail about this, but what's covered, you know, it's not all of the expenses involved in taking a historic building, you know, bringing it back to the point where it can be used for contemporary processes, but it is, you know, so not all of the expenses involved in that are allowed and cost for the purposes of the tax credit. They're all business costs, they are all being dealt with as business expenses on the project itself, but they may or you know, they have to meet certain standards to qualify as recoverable costs for the tax credit. So, it has to be a commercial building of some sort and, you know, whatever the expenses involved have to be, you know, recovered or depreciated through straight straight line depreciation. One of the things that I think it should be clear to everybody is that, you know, all, you know, you're dealing with tax credit issues, you're dealing with the financial aspects of rehabilitation, but, you know, you're doing, you're talking about design, you're talking about a historic preservation. All of those things have to work together. On the financial side, one of the things that the tax credit can do is it can take, you know, if you think of a development project as one in which there's a risk and a reward, and, you know, just in this slide here illustrates sort of purely as an abstraction, the top line there, you know, that the risk above that is, you know, suggest the project in that area is probably too risky for the level of reward. What the tax credit can do is shift the project that may be above the line, you know, just sort of this ordinary reward to go in the area. We're going to renovate this building and, you know, put it back into service. Well, it may not be cost effective or it may be too risky, whereas when you factor in the tax credit, it can push that either closer to the line or below the line so that, you know, it makes more financial sense to go ahead and do that. So, there are federal credits, obviously applicable to federal income tax. There are also 27 states, I believe, that have state credits. I'm not going to talk about that simply because when we did our tax credit bill here in Hawaii, I looked at most of the other states and there's just no way to generalize about the state credits. They are all different. Hawaii, for example, you know, it covers both commercial and non-commercial structures so private residents could qualify. It's a 30% tax credit. We do use exactly the same forms and the same standards of the park service applies, but, you know, the tax structure and the financial structure is different. So, applying for the tax credit, the first step is you have to, you know, the park service is a form you can see here on the screen, which is part one, which is to certify that the project is, you know, building that is historic. And that can be, you know, sort of the simple, simple way is it is already listed in the National Register of Historic Places or it is a contributing building in a historic district. Now, buildings that are not in those two categories can still be, you know, can still earn the tax credit. However, there's, you know, the process is slightly different and that's where part one, the part one comes in, you take a building and you basically put together a narrative that says this is why this building is historic and here are the features that characterize it as a historic building. And then you can then proceed as we talk about the process a little bit further on, into the process, but understand that the building has to be listed by the time the project goes back into service. And so that means that, you know, until the keeper of the National Register actually says, yes, this is on the Register, the developer is at risk. And just because the park service and the SH will agree at this initial stage that they believe a building is eligible, that's not sufficient to guarantee, you know, that's no guarantee that you will get the tax credit at the end. So there is a little bit more risk involved. There's also more work because somebody is going to have to do the National Register nomination and run it to the process. So part two of the application is essentially a description of what the rehabilitation work will consist of. And, you know, and there needs to be in their consideration of how are we going to apply the secretary's standards for rehabilitation projects. And to this particular project, what are we actually going to do? And, you know, what are the qualifying elements of the project? And then that has to be reviewed by the SHPO. We look at it, apply the standards and say, yeah, we think it looks good. We think this meets the requirements. If not, the SHPO is going to sit down with the applicant and, you know, talk about, well, could you do this instead of what you're proposing?  That then gets sent to the National Park Service. They look at it and, you know, go through the same process of saying, yes, this project as designed, as described here, you know, meets the standards.  A couple points here. There's more work to come and we'll talk about that. But one of the things the Park Service talks about in their rules is that, you know, they view each project as a unique project. And you cannot rely on knowing that a very similar project that a very similar building received approval by the Park Service. You can't rely on that as precedent. They will not, they will not, you know, you're looking at a building that's right next to a building you just finished. You're going to do the same things. You should not go into the park service. You're assuming that the Park Service is going to sign off on the way they did before. Let's see. So, you know, the Park Service, the secretary here, has standards. Those standards, you know, you can find them online, sort of in some reform on the National Park Service website. They are also in regulation. And that's, you know, that's the definitive source for information. Although I think the Park Service's website summarizes, I think, almost the data. You know, if you are doing a project, you really need to go to the regulations because the regulations are wrong. And then, you know, that's 36 CFRs, let's codify the regulations, Part 67. So, you know, the Parks, the Secretary's standards, you know, understand that while the standards read as if they're definitive, there is flexibility in how these get acquired. So, the first standard is the building ideally is going to be put into a use that has minimal changes to the character of defining features of the building, to its site and to its environment. So, that's particularly important if you're doing a building, for example, Historic District. The historic character is, say, the character defining features of the building are supposed to be retained. Removal of historic materials or alteration of those character defining features is to be avoided as far as possible. Each property is to be recognized as a physical record of its time and points and changes that create a false sense of historical identity are not allowable. So, you can't take a project, a building, and it's like, well, you know, it'd be really pretty if it was, you know, if it looked more like this, because that's the historic character I really wanted. That's not accepted. The standards recognize that the buildings change over time and in some cases, the alterations to a building have in and of themselves acquired historical character and to the extent that that's true, those need to be preserved. The state of features of the buildings, types of, you know, finishes, types of construction examples of particular craft specializations, those need to be preserved. The interior feature deteriorated features are to be repaired rather replaced where the deterioration is so bad that they can't be. There's a very strong preference that they need replaced with features that match the original design, the color, texture and other qualities of it and wherever it's possible. Excuse me. To do so, using the same, the same materials. Cleaning of historic features, you know, using physical treatments or chemical treatments are to be avoided. You don't sand the last brick, for example. And interior alterations are new construction should be done in a manner that doesn't affect, doesn't destroy the historic materials at all, you know, as far as possible. And the work new work needs to be differentiated from old needs to be compatible in size, mass and so on. And, you know, part of the part of the deal has to be that if those features are removed, at some point in the future, that it will not affect the historical integrity. Excuse me. Okay. So then the final step in the process is you have done your project. Now you have to report to the SHPO, the park service, that, you know, here's what we did. Here's, you know, in essence, we said we're going to do a certain thing, we're going to do it a certain way. Here's our documentation to prove we did it. And then, you know, let's get reviewed at the SHPO and look at it and say, yep, they did what they said they were going to do. We liked it before, we like it now. Park Service will look at it the same way. And then they will certify that the work that was done meets the standards and, you know, the qualifying expenditures can be used to claim the tax credit. Do you want to add anything to that? No, thank you. Okay. So talk a little bit about, this is just a reminder. The Secretary of Interior's administration standards are to be founded 36 CFR Park 67. As I said, those aren't those are rules, they are federal regulations, they are the law when it comes to what standards historic property, historic rehabilitation projects need to, excuse me, need to be met. So they are, you know, let's look a little bit again, I'll repeat the disclaimer, we're not accountants, we're not tax experts. When you get to the point of actually thinking seriously about a project like this, you need to make sure that you are involved in tax experts. I think on this one we were, we went through the IRS questions. And even though they are answered, we thought it would be best to share in layman's terms, what these explanations really mean. So I think first of all, just along those lines, just as a pointer here, if you search on the web for, you know, IRS rehabilitation tax credit, or historic tax credit, it'll take you to an IRS frequently asked questions page. That will give you some idea, you know, particularly if you're an accountant, some of it, some of it's a little bit hard to understand if you're not an accountant. But to begin with, so, you know, just to summarize some of this stuff for you. Rebuildation credit can be, you know, is to be claimed in the year, you know, initially, for the first year that the building was going to serve. Qualified rehabilitation, the rehabilitated building is, you know, a building that goes back to the part one, it's either a listed building, it's a contributing building in a historic district, or, you know, it was not necessarily listed, but did get listed before the building went into service. The taxable year, you know, usually the, you're able to claim the rehabilitation tax credit after the building goes into service.  But understand that all of the paperwork's got to be done before you, you know, you've got to have the approval from the Park Service on the Park 3. Okay, so it's a 20% credit, and it has to do with, you know, what's eligible for the qualified rehabilitation expenditures. So you can't take the 20% as a lump sum, it has to be claimed over a five-year period. So it's 4% per year. To qualify as a qualified rehabilitation expenditure, so the building has to be substantially rehabilitated. So if you have a historic building, and all you have to do is paint it to make it look serviceable, but it's not going to be substantial. The building is substantially rehabilitated when you've done some, you know, significant amount of work on it. As far as I can tell, there are no standards. You know, the state of Hawaii has a written standard for what is the minimum amount of work that has to be done, and that's against the total value of the building itself, but you don't find that in the federal guidelines. So the building has to be a certified historic structure. So I have said that's a national registered building, or a building in a national registered district that is a continuing structure. The depreciation has to be based on a straight line depreciation, and it must be a capital expense. Now, this is one of those things. This is really an accountant, and a tax accountant question. You know, businesses sometimes define certain expenses as capital expenses, because they're very large. They may not be capital expenses for the purposes of this tax credit and the IRS code. That's really something you need to work with your accountant on. You know, we're simply not qualified to comment on that. Okay, this is, you know, a building, I don't know, the IRS needs to define this in detail, so you can get some information on that here. The rehabilitation period can take as long as it takes.   Understanding that according to the Park Service, roughly half of the projects that, that, you know, have gotten the tax credit are under a million dollars. So, you know, well, I think in our mind, a lot of us, certainly I do, think of these as tending to be very large projects, but in fact, they are not, not necessarily. I have a question. Yeah.  So, you've done maybe three out of the 10 points that you wanted to complete. Can you at that point change part two, redact some of it and basically complete the project as such? So, if you're, if you make changes, if you make substantial changes to what the, to the nature of the project, you need to go back and amend your part two, and then, you know, it'll be subject to the review and approval of the State Historic Preservation Office and the Park Service. So, you know, in theory, I would say there's no reason to say that that can't be done. I think it's going to be partly a matter of scale. So, to get to the, you know, the question of the substantial, whether it still is a substantial rehabilitation. So, generally, you know, the buyer can't, you know, so kind of buyer claim the credit for a rehabilitation expenditure incurred by the seller. You know, the answer is yes. But that's, that is their conditions here, obviously. The portion of the building has to be, that is acquired, you know, has to be acquired, has to go into service after the acquisition. So, in other words, the rehabilitation project could be ongoing, but it's not necessarily, you know, it's hadn't received certificate of occupancy until after the sale closes. Okay. So, the credit cannot be claimed by the buyer if they haven't been, you know, if someone else has claimed it. So, if the developer has claimed the credit, the buyer can't do this, can't also do it. No doubt about that. And those can only claim expenses that are incurred after the acquisition. Oh, I have a question. So, you're saying that a seller has done a substantial amount of work on the building they want to sell. And that's very typical because you do want to make sure the building looks nice before you sell a lot of times.  That buyer now can get all of the receipts from the contractor that you've paid to the contractor and then use that amount for a tax credit, but they still have to go through part one, part two, and part three. How does that work? Well, I think some of that is. So, certainly, you know, if the developer has not done part one, two, and part one and two, then somebody's going to have to hurry up and do that. You know, I also think that, I mean, I think part of this is the question for your tax account. I also think that that's going to, that how you, how the buyer incorporates that into the actual purchase agreement is going to be critical to their ability to make claim there. So, somehow or the other, they're going to have to be able to claim that they, they, in effect, pay for those costs. And that's going to have to be, I think, in the purchase agreement. I see. So, you know, I just added, there is throughout the IRS, we've talked a little bit about it here, but in the frequently asked questions and in the regulations itself, it talks about qualified rehabilitation expenditures. And it's a qualified rehabilitation expenditure. If it's something that's in the part two that's been approved and that has, you know, has been documented to have been done in part three. So, you know, you don't have to go, there are certain kinds of things that you cannot claim. You can't claim, for example, the acquisition cost of the building. You can only claim things, you can only claim them on capital expenditures, I said that already. You have to be using the, the straight line deduction method. And, you know, I think that's the basic thing is, if it's a building that, you know, has some tax exemptions, you can't apply the credit to the portion of the building. So, you have to parcel out the portion that's used for tax, you know, tax exempt purposes, would not be such a thing. It's going to have to be that. I think that's it. We thought it would be a good exercise to review an example of a building that would go through this tax credit process. This is the Hawaiian Electric Company building in Honolulu. It is a four-story building, and it's constructed of reinforced concrete and steel framing. The roof form is a composite of HIP, gable, and flat-width parapet. The hip gable roof sections are surfaced with straight line barrel mission tile. There's a richness of decorated plaster, sculptor, and hand-painted ceilings, and fine detail of the Chirikura stonework. There's a combination of wrought iron and brass fitting grillwork and gates used throughout the building, which lend a character of refinement to the structure of the building that is not typically seen in commercial architecture. It's a rare and intelligently articulated example of Spanish colonial architecture. It is, like I said, it's listed as a contributing building in the capital historic district in Honolulu, Hawaii. This is the historic district outline, which you can see a little better here in the Google map view. So it's basically this area, this green area here, and the Hiko building is located right here. This is the Hiko building. This is the state capital. This is a historic post office, and this is the Ilani Palace right here. And here's another view of it. The state capital is here. The Hiko building is here. The Ilani Palace, it's right in front here. And this is the ocean front, very nearby, as you can see, three blocks away. And just to give you an idea, here are some photos from the historic nomination of the capital district buildings. This is the state capital. I guess it's the only capital in our nation that is not of the Greek or Roman style architecture. It's a modern, very modern building. This is the this is the YMCA building. Here's the Ilani Palace, which is the only palace in the nation. It's located kitty corner to the Hawaiian Electric building, which is I think the reason that why the Hawaiian Electric building is located here is because it was the first electrified building in America, the Ilani Palace, so they needed power. This is the Kinkameha statue. And here is the Hawaiian Electric building, Hiko building located nearby in the capital district. There are many upgrades required of this building. And we will go through these required required upgrades. First, there's an exterior stucco repair that's required. As you can see in the pictures, there's degradation of the stucco over time. There's beautiful painted ceilings, both exterior and interior, yet these are these need to be redone completely because they've just been degradated over time. There's terracotta work that is also needs to be refurbished. So there's quite a bit of exterior work that needs to happen. There are window repairs. These windows are steel windows. And as you can see, there's quite a bit of rot and rust in these windows. The paint is also peeling. So there's quite a bit of hazardous waste material that needs to be abated properly. And there's interior repairs such as the lobby area. You can see that the original tiles are in very poor condition. Those would need to be replaced. And just this is a stairway that's leading up. It's just very, it hasn't been renovated in the last 100 years, I guess, close to 100 years. So all of these need to be renovated or rehabilitated. This is the basement view. And there's a lift here. And that is no longer there. That needs to be included in the rehabilitation, a new lift, repainting, cleaning of the walls, abatement of all these hazardous materials, just general cleaning of the basement area. A lot of items are still here left in the basement. You can see the fluorescent lights are just exposed. There's some water damage along the basement walls. This is the interior office areas. We have carpet that needs to be removed, ceiling tiles, most of which also are hazardous materials. General look of the interiors have to be refurbished. There's a drop ceiling that needs to be removed. The elevator that you can see here beyond also needs to be rehabilitated. Again, the lift needs to be redone. And here are the bathrooms. You see the lead paint all have to be removed, abated properly. And the utilities of electric and plumbing also have to be redone. Fire sprinklers need to be installed. And wastewater as well as stormwater needs to be analyzed. So looking at, I'm sorry, this is very hard to see, I know. But what we've done is calculated on our Excel spreadsheet, all of the hard costs up here and soft costs. So hard costs include the actual capital expenditures for rehabilitation. This includes the sanitary sewer system, first water distribution, $375,000. We have sanitary, sewer, lead paint disposal, photovoltaic panels that we'd like to integrate into the roof. HVAC upgrades, which is heating ventilation, air conditioning, those needs to be upgraded. Electrical upgrades needs to happen. We have the lobby repairs and bathroom repairs, window replacement, exterior stucco repair, new lift to basement, and elevator motor replacement. Also there's interior decorative painting that needs to happen. Offsite work includes water distribution, storm drains, sanitary sewer replacement. So there's a total site work and onsite as well as offsite site work costs of $8,800,000. There's some demo costs. Then there's interior new construction. We're planning to create living units on the upper floor. That is estimated to be $100 a square foot for $1.1 million. The footprint of the building is about 10,000 square feet. And so each level is about 10,000 square feet. So we have the second and third levels that we would convert to office. And a first floor, which would be retail, that would also be at $100 a square foot. So we're looking at interior modifications of about $3 million for a total hard cost of $11 million. Now we would list these in parts, in part two. And we believe, I guess it still has to be checked, but I would say all of these costs would be qualifying expenditures. Would you agree with that? I think almost all of them certainly would be. Obviously part of that determination is how the work will actually be conducted. But I think certainly all of those costs sound like that the only, this may be something that has to be worked out with the part service and with the IRS is that they generally found on doing anything that's outside the envelope of the building. So if you're having to replace the silver lines exterior of the building, there may be a problem there. I don't really know the answer to that. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Now as far as soft costs, there's permits, permitting fees, architecture, and engineering fees, and then financing fees. Now my understanding is that architecture and engineering fees can be included in the costs. You can also include interest payments, not acquisition, but if you have, if you're getting a loan to do this work, the interest costs on that are also a lot. Wow. Okay. That's good to know because we have on 6.5 percent, we have a 6.5 percent construction insurance, and then we have 8 percent of construction interest. So that is about a million dollars total of financing costs, including a construction loan origination fee of 1 percent of the borrowed amount, which is just over $100,000. And there are bonds, financing, can bonding also be included in the costs? Issuing, somebody, somebody wish it, somebody issuing a bond for, what do you mean there? Contracting, but contractors won't know. I don't know about that. Okay. We also have attorneys fees for the CCNRs and contract review, shifty review fees, and other consultant project manager third party review fees for the bank. Are all of those qualifying expenses? I think some of them are. I'm not sure that they are. Okay. Great. So we have a total soft project cost of 2.6 million dollars, a lot of which would actually be attributed to qualifying costs and a total development project of $14 million. We have hard costs of 11 million as well as soft costs of about 3 million. So a total of 14 million. Okay. I think we're done with our presentation. Thanks for bearing with us through this. Okay. Great. So yeah, thank you so much.


Personal Finance PowerPoint Presentation, simple will. Prepare to get financially fit by practicing personal finance. Support accounting instruction by clicking the link below, giving you a free month membership to all of the content on our website, broken out by category, further broken out by course, each course then organized in a logical, reasonable fashion, making it much more easy to find what you need then can be done on a YouTube page. We also include added resources such as Excel practice problems, PDF files and more like QuickBooks backup files when applicable. So once again, click the link below for a free month membership to our website and all the content on it. Most of this information comes from Investopedia, how to write a simple will which you could find online. Take a look at the references, resources continue your research from there. This by Amy Fontenier updated April 29, 2022. In prior presentations, we looked at retirement planning, then moved to estate planning. Now looking at a specific component of estate planning, the simple will, how to write a simple will.  So if we look at the timeframe that we went through in overview in a prior presentation of the estate planning process, we are before death here planning what we want to do with our assets in the will, laying that out in the will because at the point of death, of course we won't be able to manage our assets. We would like to have those assets allocated in accordance with our wishes and we would like to make it as easy as possible for our loved ones after the point of death. If there's no kind of organization you can imagine after the point of death, it could cause some chaos to determine what assets are there and then what to do or how to be allocating those assets. So if you're ever worried about who will get your wedding ring, inherit your house or take care of your cat after you die, it might be time to create a will or update an existing will that's out of date. So clearly we want to put our wishes down in the will. If it's been a while since we've looked at the will, then we might want to update it as circumstances, situation assets have changed. What is a simple will?  Your stuff might include everything from your great-grandmother's cuckoo clock to your adolescent journals, to your car, house, and bank accounts. You might be surprised to learn that your pets are considered property so you'll need to leave them to someone to ensure their care. As its name implies, a simple will is best for people with simple situations. You may need a trust and perhaps a permanent life insurance policy if you have a lot of assets, have assets in multiple states, have gotten divorced or remarried, have stepchildren or own a business to name a few examples. So in other words, there's some questions in terms of how basic the needs are at the point of death. So obviously a simple will, as implied, is gonna be on the simple side of things, assigning what you want to be done at the point of death. As people's assets go up, for example, or as we have some of these other complexities, then you might need some other things going on. For example, estate planning, if assets are large enough to be subject to estate taxes, can be an important factor, something worth getting more complex strategies for that we might talk about in future presentation. So what makes a simple will valid? Besides not wanting to think about death and not knowing where to start, fear of making a will that won't hold up after they're gone might be one of the biggest reasons why people put off creating their last will and testament.  One of the most important things to know is that the requirements to make a simple will valid depend on the state where you reside. So note we have some things that fall under the federal law, some things that fall under the state law, so a lot of this stuff is gonna fall under state law, so it could be slightly different from place to place depending on where you are at, general concept, you would think of course being somewhat similar with regards to a will in general. Generally, you must be at least 18 years old, create the will when you are of sound mind and not under duress, so people can't be threatening you, gun to your head or something. Put your will in writing, so we wanna have the will typically in writing and sign it. So you will typically need two or three adults to watch you sign your will, then sign it themselves as witnesses. So in some cases, you may need to have a notary public as a witness, so you might have to get a notary to verify the signature process and so on. Information to include in a simple will.  So clearly you need those things in there to identify it's your will. It should state that you understand the document you're signing and that no one is pressuring you to sign it. That would be if they were, that you were under duress when you signed it and that would make it invalid. So it should also state that any previous wills you've created are invalid and superseded by this new one. So as things change over time, then the question could be, well, if you have multiple documents that say conflicting things, which is gonna be the most valid, if you're making the latest and greatest will, you wanna make sure that that will is the one that's gonna be used, that it's gonna be superseding the prior will. So you'll name a personal representative, often called an executor. That's gonna be the person that's gonna be executing the will following the will's instructions to the best that they can at the point of death to carry out your wishes. You'll also name an alternative in case your first choice can't serve. If you have a minor children, you'll name who you would want to become their legal guardians and include alternatives there as well. Next, you'll name beneficiaries and alternates to receive specific assets. Identify them by their full name, current address and relationship to you, then describe in detail what you're leaving to them. You may also want to include instructions authorizing your personal representative to take certain financial actions to settle your estate, such as paying debts, paying taxes, hiring an attorney or accountant to help and selling investments. So clearly this will be dependent on your personal financial situations, right? So we're gonna have at the point of death, you might have some assets that have accumulated, you might still have some liabilities. And then clearly you would think what needs to happen is the liabilities are generally gonna be needed to be paid off, you would think. And then the assets would need to be distributed. And then there's questions in terms of how those assets are gonna be distributed. You can try to list out those assets. You might have a big assets like a home, which could make it a little bit more difficult to say pay off the liabilities with the home. You might have to actually sell the home or something like that. So it depends on the situation. Making things official. Once you've drafted your will, it's time to make it official. Sign it in front or whatever witness your state requires. That might be two or three disinterested parties who won't inherit anything from you or a notary public or both. So you can see why some of these regulations might be there because if someone's gonna be inheriting significant stuff and they're the one that watched you sign it, then that doesn't look good holding up in court because they have a motive to be deceptive about it. A notary public might be necessary depending on the state. Make copies of your will and store the original in a secure place that your executor will be able to access when needed. Tell them where it's stored. So clearly at the point of death, you wanna make sure that your executor can access the latest and greatest will in order for them to be able to put that in place. Finally, make sure to revisit your will every few years or after a major life change. Clearly things happen as time passes, you might have different assets and so on and so you wanna change your will or update it when necessary. If it no longer reflects your wishes, find out the best way to update it which might mean redoing it. Do I need a will? Yes, for your own peace of mind and to make life easier for the loved ones who you leave behind you should have a will. It becomes extra important if you have dependence. So obviously if you don't have a lot of assets, the will might not be as big of a problem but everybody has something that they need to manage generally after the point of death and you wanna be able to list that out, you wanna be able to allocate your assets as best you can. Clearly the more complex your situation, usually more complexity happens possibly with the family structure, marital structure, divorces and that kind of stuff but also children dependence but also with income. As income goes up, you've got more assets that need to be allocated. If you don't list how that's gonna happen, you can imagine just chaos, more chaos happening after the point of death when you're trying to be nice to make things as easy as possible. So if you don't have dependence or significant assets however, you might not need a will. Set up these beneficiaries designations on your accounts So if you don't have a will, then whatever assets you have, you might be able to set up on your accounts who the beneficiaries are at the point of death and make that kind of like the automatic process. How much does a simple will cost? Nothing, if it's a simple will that you type up yourself, create with a free online template and don't need notarized. So you could look up online templates for setting up the will and that of course would be a free process for it if you get the template for free and you can create the will but of course you still have to deal with the signing process which could include some notarization of it. So if you're afraid that you'll make a mistake that would make your will unclear or invalid or if you just feel confused or overwhelmed by the process which is totally normal, consider upgrading to a paid option. Plenty of online services will walk you through the creating a will specific to your state and your circumstances. Some can even help you identify whether a simple will is the best document for your needs. The cost generally ranges from $50 to $200. As for getting your will notarized, your bank may offer free notary services. You can also find inexpensive notaries at UPS stores as well as mobile notaries who will come to your house. So those are becoming a bit more common I think in the whole pandemic time. So they won't review your will or tell you if it will hold up in court. Their only job is to verify your identity, witness your signature and record the transaction in their notary book. The cost of hiring an attorney to prepare your will generally can range anywhere from $300 to $1,200 depending on the going rate in your area, the attorney's experience and the complexity of your situation. Many people are intimidated by the thought of hiring an attorney. Concerns include not knowing how to find one who you can trust and assuring you won't be able to afford their fee. The State Bar Association is a good place to start your search. A small but interesting study of wills in Alameda and San Francisco counties by the University of California Davis Law Professor David Horton found that lawyer drafted wills may be less likely to be contested in court, homemade and holographic wills are more likely to be contested. So obviously you would think that a lawyer would be able to structure the will in such a way that it would be more legally clear and tight but again, you gotta weigh the pros and cons. What happens if I die without a will? So what if you don't have a will? What's gonna happen?  So if you die without a will, trust or other legal documents stating what should happen to your assets when you die, you are said to have died in testate and your state's law will determine how the probate court distributes your assets. So we talked about the process in general in a prior presentation. Basically you set up a will, the will in probates gonna determine the validity of it, an executor is assigned and so on and so forth. Obviously if you don't have a will, then you gotta go through that process but they don't have the will.  This process can be relatively simple or take months depending on your state and how complex your situation is. The court charges a probate fee for its service. What's the bottom line? Don't be afraid to tackle your will. Pick a day, put it on your calendar and get it done. It won't be as bad as you think.


Well, um, we've got a quarry in here. Maybe I'll dive in. I know Lauren can't make it. I haven't heard anything about Jennifer. Jennifer Morton's on vacation this great month. Awesome. Um, maybe that's why I was thinking with them. I don't know. I'm making stuff that never mind. Hi Cameron. Um, so not a lot on our agenda. Um, and so I think I'll just drive us right in if that's okay. Um, of, you know, going over our minutes for doing the equity project matrix from the equity report. Um, I think it could be helpful to do, like, have a little bit of a conversation right next steps and talking about VR, VCRD, which will roll us into time and grand opportunities. And then looking at the Vermont League of Cities and Towns equity plan and then the council equity plan update report. Um, and then it's after June for July 1. So we can talk about more about the, um, the stipend outreach. And then recognizing the workshop tonight that Michael shared about and anything else that we want to make sure we hit on this call. And, um, yeah, anything else to add to the agenda or move around. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of this is on you Cameron. So sorry to, yeah, there we go. Thanks for being our staff. That's what I mean to say. Okay. Um, okay, so should we pull up the minutes from the June 15th meeting and see if there's any. Anyone wants to make a motion. I'll make a motion to approve the minutes. Okay. All in favor. Hi. Any opposed. All right. Um, sorry, I'm still having my breakfast here. I'm talking here too. Right. Okay. I could be project matrix was I actually forgot to link it in the regular thing, but it's a link in the minutes. So folks want to pull that back up. Or I can drop it in a chat or both. Um, And I think we kind of left off on thinking about the policing components.  So I'm trying to, if, if anyone wants to dive in with. Oh, that was camera. Yeah. So Cameron checking in with the police department. The police issues. Recognizing that there's been a lot that's happened there and how much is that our responsibility for kind of keeping that up to the, if there's no longer police review committee. Yeah, anyone have any thoughts on that. So I updated that in the report. Not so much you're in this document. So I, I figured that that is something that you'll couldn't transfer over or if you want to up to y'all. Anything else at the matrix. I'm like, I can't remember if we were going to everything about that is updated as like in progress complete. Kind of where we're at. Hold on a minute here. Is there any note we want to put in the committee stipends row. It's operational. We can do it. One person. I mean, I guess I could go into it when we're talking about this. I've been up for each, but I've gotten one application. That's really good. Sounds like a little while, but let's dive into it. Yeah. Um, I know, yeah, can't Jeremy posted on course. They will be continuing to do that posting. To all the committee chairs. But then, yeah, I mean, how, how is it? Well, first one, that's when I also am I going to go. I don't know if folks can mute. Yeah, no, I, I, I haven't heard anything other than the one application I've received so far. So I'll probably try to do another push internally as well. I'll send another email out to the membership of committees. And let them know that that is active and live and they can apply for that. Cameron, is there a, is there a single place on the website that lists all of the vacant or city committee opportunities? Um, we do have a like vacancy page. But I will be honest with you, it's not the most updated thing. So, no, but I can ask staff to prioritize that and probably be. Yeah, I was thinking as I was crafting the thing, I posted a front porch forum. It would be nice to do a kind of a to a double kind of plug, you know, one here's all these committees you can possibly serve on. And there's this stipend available for you to help you do that. We will prioritize that. Thank you. And I mean, should we just kind of continually be posting on front porch forum social media? We have any kind of a schedule we need to make for that or is it just kind of make it up as we go? Yeah, I was initializing like once a week. And then I'm now that we're there, I'm like, I feel like you need to, there's like four front porch firms a day on Montpelier. So should we try to like do more concerted pushes or something. That was a thought that I was having, but I haven't done anything about because they also max you out on what you can post on to and so, you know, if we were to all post one week, then we would have to wait a couple weeks to do that again. Okay, you can only post like four times a month or something. Oh really. So why don't I since I did the first post one and I maybe do max out my four and like over the next week or so. Right. Yeah. See what, see what we got. And then, yeah, I'm telling or Michael do either of you guys want to like take a week to just like post four times in a week. Does that make sense. Just like push it out. Yeah, if you create a like a schedule table or something. So people can see, you know what day is their day. And it will be okay for me just to remind all of us right. You want me to do that Shayna, I can do that. That's amazing. Yeah, I was just like, I don't know if people aren't wondering people are out and things like that but Jeremy if you like do it over the next week and then Helen if you like take over on the 20th. Would that make sense like the 20th to the 27th. Actually, I will be in Miami until 26. I'm leaving this Saturday. Yeah, it's a family vacation, but I can do after 26. It works. What do you I don't I'm not planning to bring my computer. If I can do yeah, thanks. Don't start on the 27th, and then I could do next week then, and then Michael I know you just stepped away, but then to do the week after that. Does that make sense. And then it's been a month so we can start over again. Yeah. I'll do a quick table of that. Should I put Lauren and Jennifer in the mix on that they can do that right. Great. Yeah, there are the people that I messaged being like after you for just a posting over the last couple of weeks and I hadn't seen anything from them or heard anything back from them so. Yeah, I couldn't just be because they posted that they're on vacation and they can't go and come to this meeting so maybe that's why. Yeah, let's add them in. Um, Michael you are muted. I'm so sorry. This is just about the stipends that we're posting. Okay. So we can use the same message that whatever is going out, right. And then Michael do you saw their press contact. So do we want to circle back to try to get the media. Who was that address to to you Michael. Yeah, only go Tom or others. Tom is going, he said he's given he's given us a lot of space and he really can't, you know, his editor to get on to other things so. Okay. I think we have to leave him alone for a while and until we have something there's something new going on. Great. What are my other media contacts. Well I know Steve Pappas at the editor of the Times August so I could contact him. Sounds great. So what now what we I'm sorry I stepped away so what we get my doing the posting on front porch for them for him. I think it's August 3rd to 11th. I haven't read any of this down. No, I'm looking at Michael for you. The first week of July 31st through August 6. Okay. Did you say that. No, I was looking at different days but that looks great. Okay. And you're allowed to do it for so four times a week. It's something like that or four times a month.  Which is like great for discourse reasons and makes it hard to do these things for your like, everyone should know about this thing. Yeah. And then camera and let all the committee chairs now. Yes. Any other places. Well, have we contacted. Well, I guess that the bridges. Tom McCown does that. What about. Right at the bridge or something. I don't know if we could do that. We could just take the same text for the front porch form and send it out to the bridge. Okay. What about Washington world? I mean, it's that reaches beyond Montpelier, but. You used to work there, right? No, my kid used to deliver deliver. It was a long time ago. So I think, I don't know how it works. I think you could do it as a, you know, send in things without pay being paid something we pay for. Yeah. We can just let, let them know about that. Okay. I'll put that on my list of things to do. And I think also if we like presented at the July 20th city council meeting that could be powerful too. Right. Yeah. So I think we should be able to hear about it there and then make cover it from there. We're going to talk about the council meeting. Should we dive into talking about that? Is that cool? Or I think first, you know, looking at the equity assessment, recommendations, progress updates. Like Cameron sent out on the 24th. That's attached here. So we've got these. So is it okay to transition to that or anything else with stipend average? Okay. Yeah. I think we should post here, like just do it. And then that'll, that'll be great. It's okay if there's duplicates getting the word out. All right, Cameron. The status report. Yeah. So I had sent out the draft of the report to send a council. I don't know when you said the 24th. If you don't mind pulling that up. Okay. So I hope that address the concerns that you'll had at your last meeting. The police department has looked at it. It isn't done in a vacuum. So they helped with that as well. And took a lot of the updates also from what the police review committee was doing. So again, this isn't happening in a vacuum. And this isn't new information. I think for council, but it's important for y'all to have that information as well. So you're still scheduled to present on the 20th. We have you right now in the beginning part of the agenda. So it's as soon as we can get to it. So. I, I don't have on any sort of presentation done for y'all. If you want to have slides or anything like that. If you want to walk them through just sort of your work update, that's on y'all what you want to do there. But this report is ready to go to them as soon as y'all are comfortable with it. Great. Thank you so much. Um, So yeah, what do folks think? Do we want to have some sort of like, and how long do you. Oh, as long as you make it a shorter as long as you make it. I don't think you would mind one way or the other. I think slides would be a helpful. Document to summarize. And structure the presentation. It's kind of going through the different pieces. Um, yeah. Making a big plug for the stipend. Go ahead, Cameron. Oh, I'm just, I'm just typing. Sorry. Sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. My house is loud. Sorry. How did you, how are you thinking about handling the presentation? I mean, I haven't really been thinking. I was like, well, does present. I don't know. Yeah. Does it. Do folks want to take different sections? I'm sorry. I haven't, I haven't thought this through at all. Um, even though it's been on our agenda for a couple of, a couple of years now, I don't know if that does that. Can folks make it? Uh, you know, six 30, let's say six 30 to seven 30 for first thing on the agenda. On the 20th. And, um, Is there a section that you want to. Present on. Cause I think it'd be great if we can. You have any voices up there. I can attend and I can. Help present. I don't have a strong opinion. About. Which items, because I'm really just looking at this now. I don't have a strong opinion. But it does seem like a lot for one person to have to carry. So I'm happy to help. This is going to be circulated in advance to the city council, right? So it's not as if it's. Well, we can assume that they will have at least scanned it. Yeah. Skimmed it skimmed it. Well, since I was on the police review committee, I'll take the police review part. Beautiful. Okay. I'm going to be in Miami that week. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I can. I can have the preparation. Tell me what to do. But unfortunately I cannot attend the meeting. Yeah. I mean, I think. I'm kind of thinking about this. We're going to go with a big picture overview. And then we let them ask questions, right? Like. Does that. Like I'm even thinking about it. Like I could.  And then Jeremy, if you wanted to go over the. Creative discourse recommendations, although that's also a lot. Michael go over the police review committee recommendations, which is a lot. Kind of like the big picture and then be able to. You know, answer questions and then kind of make the pitch for the stipends. That. I think that makes sense. I think. I think focusing on kind of like. Really the high level stuff, like not too much in the details to begin, like you say, an overview. I don't think that's too much to bear for us. But I think we have specific questions. So what prep should we assign to Pellan? So. Do you want to make the first cut of the PowerPoint to share? Does that make sense? Okay. Awesome. And just share that by email. Cool. Just as I'm looking through the police thing. I can never remember acronyms. What is L E O. Law enforcement. Oh, law enforcement officers. Oh, I can. I do that a lot and I'm sorry, I will go through the presence. I will go through the report and I will take out. The whatever they're called an acronym. I will. I will write them out. I will do that today. Send it back. No, you don't have to the most of them actually most of them. Most of the acronyms. Have something that shows what they are, but that one doesn't. Okay. Well, I assume one of the questions that they're going to ask is like, so what's next, you know, like, what is our next priority? And so I'm wondering if you can dive into that for like 15 minutes. Cause I did have a conversation with Vermont. Yeah. And just kind of to learn more about what their process is and how they think about their work and how it could overlap or intersect with our potential next steps. Okay. Okay to dive. I have one logistical question about council next week. Are folks planning to be there in person or are we doing this all? We decided to be remote. What's the feeling about that? It is next week, isn't it? Ah, I was like, it's not next week. Well, I guess the question could go to Cameron. Do the council members really prefer to have us there live or are they happier and need to let us do this remotely? It definitely does not matter. It is all your comfort level. It is easier if, well, you know, honestly it honestly doesn't really matter. It's worked out well with people in person and online both. So it really does have to do with your schedules and your comfort level. We can make it work no matter what. I am facilitating our other call at eight and so either we would act like if we can actually be done at seven thirty or I feel like sometimes things get late and then I can just go boop, boop from one call to the next is my preference, but all totally flexible. Yeah, I don't have a strong opinion either way. I think it does sound smoother for all in the same channel. So I'm totally comfortable with doing it remote. OK, you too. Great. Thanks, team. Awesome. And we can just present or have Cameron present in in person. Things like that. Cool. Thanks for asking. So, yeah, I was I didn't know really how Vermont Council of Rural Development thought about their work and it really seems like there's a lot of overlap with what we were doing with Creative Discourse. And so I wish we'd had this presentation, you know, three years ago. So, yeah, so we're not Council of Rural Development for municipalities. They do this like community visit process where they go at the invitation of like this look for the city council, things like that. And they have a three step process where they bring the community together to bring kind of all the ideas out onto the table. They kind of do a pitch and a vote to narrow it down to a handful of priorities, like four or five priorities. And then they create task force and committee to get the resources needed to get started or to continue on doing this work. So they are very clear that they do not have capacity to take on doing this like this big, you know, deep dive in with on this first cities or towns this year or next year. But they did say that they also and that they were like, and it doesn't make sense to because it sounds like you guys have done a lot of this work already of like you've like created, you know, like their work has led to see jack equivalent committees in other cities, other towns in Vermont. But that that there's like a lot of overlap kind of with what we have done already. So they also do these like one off this. So they have a couple of different options. They also do these one off facilitation, which are where they bring in kind of different like resources. And they and they have those like this community leadership guide. And then they can also be like consultants for doing this work. So they can like more just like work with us who are organizing the, you know, convening or convergences kind of as the people on the ground. And they can just kind of like provide more of the consulting stuff like what we were doing with creative discourses. They have never worked in Montpelier. They did just do the kind of a full community visit process in very last year. And they have worked in Montpelier. They did them one off in Montpelier. So this kind of like, you know, the one off facilitation process previously.  Yeah, so they want it really wanted to caution for the full process because they said, you know, like we have our marching orders. Like we know what issues that we want to work on. So thinking that like there's more of the options that would make sense for them to support us on. And like this one one time facilitation, like a really scaled back version just because they don't really have the capacity right now, but they could kind of like swoop in and kind of do a one off on one of these priorities or they where they could like then like facilitate and like do the work or they could be more of like a consulting role and helping us to like be able to pull something like this off. They do they are fee for service. So they do for the one offs for the deep dives. They do get like their own grants to be able to do that work. And so it's like an hourly rate set by staff. And that includes like setting the agenda, facilitating the meeting, like doing doing all of that stuff. And then they were also just like they like want to make sure it's like invited in with the city and town leadership.  It was like, no, no, no, I really feel like we're deeply embedded in city government. Like this is not a surprise to anyone. And so then they also referenced when new skis committed commission on equity and and they have been kind of in communication with like Susanna Davis's office and partnership and also reference looking at Milton as another place where they could be parallels to like what we're trying to do with our work. But yeah, just like, you know, I said, we're interested in learning some like best practices and holding large open meetings to hear from the public about how to take on these next steps. And they were definitely interested in talking to us more about these different options. And I like back in this meeting was going to be two weeks ago, I was like, let's just like touch base as a team to talk about what the next step would be. And then if like, we're like, OK, we want to invite them in to do a one off then they could come to the next call to like talk more about what that would mean or for doing consulting or something like that. Or if you're like, this may this is maybe not the right next step for us because we are focusing on something else. So let me pause there. How does that all sound? I guess I didn't know that they did this work. And I was like, Bummer, why did we go through this whole very little process of RFP? Well, they could have helped us out by responding to the RFP. But sure, yeah, that's yeah. Well, anyway, that's that's water over the dam, right? Now, I didn't think about that. Yeah, but that's I could just hear my. Well, do we, you know, as I look through all these, do we as a committee have a priority among these various areas of recommendation? And and and I ask that because, you know, they're all over the place and there are now or there are new committees that the city has created like the homeless committee, almost. Who is this? Which is taking on a big, a big chunk of the most important issue, I guess. And that that raises in my mind the question. Well, what do we do next? What's our what's our role in any of what's going on? Yeah, I mean, I think there's like they can stop her. Yeah, I mean, I think that they're kind of like they're reviewing the existing policies through an equity lens. I know that City Council was doing that pre-pandemic and so I don't know kind of where that stands. And then I think also the piece on language access, where is that? Like, I don't think those aren't like being owned or like by any external thing other than city staff. And I don't know if that is a particularly helpful angle or something else. Yeah, but thanks for really testing my goal. I will say we that to me, for for me as a staff perspective, that one's a huge one. We just hired a communications person. She's part time. I know we're very excited. So you should be seeing probably some aggressively upgraded communication out of our office. But I think that's something that I would really like her to help with. That is something we it's just been on my plate, right? And I hate to sound like a complainer, but it's one of many things on my plate, right? So it's hard to it's hard. And so to me, that would be that's a huge one internally. Like, I think that would be a big deal. We have a lot of folks in our community that we don't think about who are English, a second language and how do we get our materials and get our staff in a place that they can support that and work with folks. And I don't think we're in a really great place. We have a translation line. So that is set up and ready for folks if they need it. But that doesn't make our offices, our materials more welcoming, right? How do people even know we have that? So to me, that one's really important. But I do think it would require some assistance. So hopefully when our new communications person is ready, we can get her to help us with that. But to me, that one's a big deal. Thank you. On a related point, and I'm trying to find where that is. Like I saw an advertisement for a workshop on social justice art posters. Yeah. Did I send that along? I think I sent it along. I'm planning on going. Well, it's cool. Thanks for sharing. And that could have some really interesting possibilities in terms of trying to find all the artists. There are so many artists around in our community that maybe we can. There's some opportunity for initiative. Either the city does a request, invites people to do it, and or commissions artists to do some work at some rate. I mean, I think you have to build in a budget for that. If you're going to really do a serious campaign. I think I'm planning to go to that. And I'll find out more about it when I can find a date for it. But with my computer gone, most of the last couple of weeks, I'm not sure where anything is anymore. But I will. Is anyone else planning to go to that? I'll see you there. Is it in October? I'll meet between our houses. Do you remember what date it is? Tomorrow. It's tomorrow. Yeah. Oh, yeah, there it is. 6.30. OK, well, I'll take notes and bring that back to us in our next meeting. And so I think I have two questions here, I guess, is one, we could also alternatively say, all right, VCRD, here's what we have done. Ken, here's where our recommendations are. What do you recommend that we focus on next, kind of in that more consultant role? Or can we kind of hit refresh and say, we know you can't do it this year, but let's look at next year, 18 months from now, start making plans for doing this kind of analysis again. Well, I like that because we need to, I think we should give ourselves some time. We had a big menu of things to do here. If we give ourselves another year, we can go back to the rural development, rural fund, and say, here's what we were, was the agenda that was given to us as a result of our work two years ago. And here's what we've done. What do you think we, where should we go? I like that idea. I think this is, a lot is happening very quickly, and that's very encouraging. But I think we also need to give it time. It was a very big set of recommendations. And Shayna, they will measure what we have done, right? What do you mean? Do that. Like you said, we have done so many things, right? Based on their recommendation, but how do we know that it's those things reach out to people? So can they measure this, right? Do people know, at least the people who they talked before, right? You know, if we were able to inform people or change something for them, then it will make sense, right? All the things we made, if we don't know the results, then it will be just things on paper. I mean, I think that's maybe where my question is coming from is like, right, do we have them help us in saying, here's where recommendations are at, and then like help us come up with a process to know when things are completed, when we can move them on this spreadsheet from in progress to completed, and like when to kind of wrap things up there. I think I was thinking of it, or have them come back in 18 months and not do an analysis of our problem, but we could also do in hand. But it sounds like maybe it would be helpful to have them come coming up to talk about what, like have them read over our status report and to have them make a proposal for what their next steps could be. Does that sound right? We'll kind of put it on them. That's the easy way out for us. Yeah, right. Okay. Because I kind of just like talked to them about what we had done, but not the like here's what the actual steps were, just more of like here's this thing that we did. Okay, great. That was easy. Love hunting, answering these questions to other people. All right. We're doing great on time. Here we go. Do we want to talk about grant opportunities? I think Cameron, you had shared this one from Vermont Community Foundation. Yeah, I just didn't, you know, those are the things that if you want to work with the Vermont Council on Rural Development or whatever, that would be how we would get funding for it. So we're still, I mean, it's still not great budget wise right now for the city. We're doing better, but we're not doing great. ARPA money is a one time thing. So it's not like a continuous infusion of ARPA money. So my continued recommendation for y'all would be to find, if you want to continue to do this work, in addition to the money we had for the creative discourse contract, if you want to do more and we want to work with other groups, we need to try to find grant funding. And so, you know, some of these are smaller and are easily doable by staff. Some of them might take longer. So, you know, it's up to y'all. If you have the time right now, we can certainly talk about this after your presentation at council, after we get sort of an insight from them on maybe where they want to go next. And that might be a question.  Is there a new fiscal year? They might have, like we want you to spend time doing X. It might even be if you ask them what they want you to focus on next, it might be something completely not even on our equity assessment, right? So, that would be my suggestion. And also, you know, I just wanted to start adding this back to y'all's agendas if you're okay with that, because I think you're sort of all looking for what's next and like how you can, and I really heard what Pelin just said about like how do we prove things, right? Like how do we say the work that y'all have done, which I would argue has gone beyond just paper updates, but how do you prove that? And I think that kind of work can be really helpful from outside groups. So, that would, I just sort of wanted to keep that on people's radars. So, I did send a grant opportunity. It was the last one. I can certainly ask them if they would be willing to sort of fund a continuation of a project instead of like a new project and see what they say. And if they say yes, then I can certainly just throw an application together for that, but just, so all that rambling was just to say I really want to keep that on y'all's radar. When I saw that, I thought to myself, well, we're just a little bit late to get this, get the stipend project off the ground with grant money, but it might be that if they would fund an ongoing that we can go back with some results about how many people applied for the stipend at the end of the year and maybe did some relief leave the city budget. That I particularly welcome by getting a grant for it to continue it. Great. I'll put that on my list to do ASAP. It's just to ask them if they would fund something continuing. I feel like we could frame things as like, what are we looking for funding for as the next thing could be it's on projects, right? Like I, yeah, I don't know. Because we don't have a pitch of what that would be quite yet. I think we can, we're gonna ask, but I don't think we need to action on that yet. Is that, that's okay. Yeah, that's right. And then Darry say it, I think we're gonna get through our agenda early because I think the last thing to look at is the Vermont League of Cities and Towns equity plan review, which I will say I have not spent a lot of time on, but that Cameron shared, and by not spent a lot of time on, meaning I have opened the documents, but I have not read it through, so full disclosure. But Cameron, yeah, do you know any of the contacts or backgrounds of this? VLCT sort of created their own equity committee very similar to what y'all are doing to sort of at general processes and things that could be addressed. And I just wanted to include this on your agenda because I didn't know if you wanted to steal Barra or whatever any of their verbiage, or if you liked, if anything struck up a nerve that we wanted to address or start working on. Mostly I think it was a policy driven investigation, but I did think it was interesting. So I mean, if y'all haven't looked it over, that's also fine. Just thought it was an interesting document and wanted to bring it sort of to the fore and to the public as well. I'm wondering, Cameron, how you found this useful, because as I read some of the goals in some ways, they filled more within the purview of the city to implement like I'm looking at, and these are things that you've already started to do, like I'm looking at develop workforce awareness, knowledge and skills necessary to be active partners in creating a diverse, equitable, inclusive organization. So some of these, I'm not sure how we would take some of these as an advisory committee. So I'm curious how you're seeing the specifics of this as related to the city efforts. Well, to be perfectly honest, I think some of these things are hard. I was talking to one of my staff members who is a black woman and she was talking about like how hard it is in Vermont to be needing to represent an all, right? Like all BIPOC women or all BIPOC people because she's like one of the few that we have in our workforce. And so I don't know, I'm sorry. I'm gonna be really like esoteric about my answer there because I think a lot of these things are actionable, but they don't say how to make actions, right? Like they're not, they're like, make your workforce more diverse. And I'm like, okay, great, thank you. That's very helpful. I am trying. And so, and you know, but I was talking to the staff member and I'm bringing that up because to me, some of those recommendations aren't helpful because what's really actually important is retention, not recruitment. And that's honestly less about, I mean, obviously I can control what I can control internally, but it's also external as well. And so I think a lot of these recommendations are really great if someone is just trying to start out. But I think because we have y'all as a committee, we've already sort of taken a lot of these, I feel are like kind of baseline. Like I think these would be a great recommendation for a community that hasn't started to dig into this work. And I think because we have been digging into this work for a couple of years now, some of these are like, yes and what, right? Yes and. And I think where Montpelier is at that and stage, like and how do we make that happen and how do we keep that, how do we make that stick? So, you know, one of the things that I really wanted to come out of this conversation with y'all is did we miss anything, right? Like these are so big and broad to me, like did we miss any of these big broad things? And how if so, you do say, yes, we missed X and how do we bring that into our plans as well? So, you know, I really haven't done that work on my, I can admit that I haven't done that work either to look and see like, what do I consider something as missing? But I think there's a really good time too because we're starting to look at our strategic planning process for the next few years. And if there is a big gap in our equity plan, I would like to know, you know, I really need to do that work and would love assistance doing that work so that that can be included in the next strategic plan so that we can say like right now, my biggest thing is retention. Like how do we make, what kind of training do we give staff that isn't about like recruitment, but about how do you create equitable places for people to actually work in, right? Like we are piloting that whiteness at work program. And I think that's gonna be really important for our staff to take as a larger group. So my goal for the next strategic plan is to build out those sort of trainings and recruit like tools to keep us, like to make sure we're retaining a diverse workforce because our organization is one built on inclusion instead of it being a recruiting afterthought. You know what I mean? I'm sorry, I feel like I'm being very esoteric this morning but like I really want to make sure that we're not missing any of these bigger picture things. No, that's super helpful. I don't think you're being esoteric at all. I think that's the wrong word for what I'm trying to say. But yeah, thank you. You're being very specific. I think you're focused on retention. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense to me. Like it's like the sustainability of all these great like, you know, declarations we're making about diversity, equity and inclusion. Like the other day, this is like a big thing and I haven't been able to like share it. We sort of missed the boat on sharing it publicly but we had our very first all women police shift the other day that everyone on shift was a woman and that's a huge deal. I don't think we've ever had that before. And that's a huge deal for us.  It's very cool. Yeah, like all of the stuff that you were just talking about, I feel like it's all under this, you know, 8-2 of like offering an equity awareness curriculum offering, you know, like equity, you know, tool kits and having reached like that, that eight section but that it's also like kind of threw out and right. And that's, I'm like, is that, I don't think that's the role of feedback but it could be down. You know, that's the thing though, it's like so many people have different ideas of what that is, like what that toolkit is. Like I can hand out people like a pamphlet that says accept others, but that means nothing, you know? Like it might just be dated, that means nothing. So it's harder than that. It has to come from the both the bottom and the top and people really need to buy into that, you know, that it's like, how does this benefit them? And that's like the big, that's the big question. I think, you know, saying that, Shayna, like you're saying like, yeah, I do see it in there but I also don't see any specificity that says what that is. And so like, y'all have been really helpful to help determine like what that thing is and what that training is and what it should look like, right? That toolkit for the budget has been super helpful and that because that was a specific thing instead of just saying, have like look at your budget through an equity lens, you guys gave us like a tool to use to do that. And that's really helpful. And I don't think sometimes that gets, these kind of things don't really get down into that sort of nitty gritty. Yeah, and I don't know, I'm just like doing this in my current workplace now too is like going through like how is like white supremacy culture showing up at our work is like so much different. Like to look at retention, it's like looking at like what are our current practices? How are they reinforcing this status quo? How are they making this like an inhospitable work environment for other folks that even if like we don't have like the like language elements to be able to talk about it. Sorry, this is like having me go down a rabbit hole but yeah, that's like a very different practice and a tool kit for looking at it. Okay. There's one other thing that's catching my mind in their equity plan, which is around it's the meaningful partnerships pillar, develop positive and respectful internal and external partnerships that contribute to inclusive decision making. And I guess what's coming up for me, especially in a place like Vermont and small community like Montpelier, who are the kind of other partners in this work that we could be calling into it more than we are? You know, I'm thinking of, I'm thinking of like, you know, the central Vermont chapter of SIRG showing up for racial justice and I think that our kind of applied organization how do we, this is a question, how do we build more connections between those groups and Montpelier city government just to like coordinate but also relying on each other? That's a big question, but I'm curious about how we can strengthen that. Shayna, can we add that conversation to a future agenda because I also would really love to talk about that. I think we should invite someone from school board. I know that high school does so many things on DEI and they also have this restorative practice. So this club and they even ask administration to offer workshop to teachers how to deal with international students and students who have two different culture in their house. You know, so I will be curious to hear from school board what kind of things they are doing because I think one of the strength of Montpelier it's education system at schools. So I think we can learn and we can work with Morph. So I think like if next meeting we kind of debrief the city council presentation and we have really good cities in town, after really good cities, so Montpelier Development pitch us on what we could be doing and then maybe the next meeting. I mean, depending on how this all works out more talk about these partnerships and setting schools. So is that okay? Excuse me, Jan. Yes, and I want to say thank you to Pellin for that idea. I think that's great. Yeah, I'm good. All right, I want to make sure we can close this out here on time. But so I think for next meeting I'm going to reach out to VCRD about having some sort of pitch and then we'll also ask the city council and the interim if what, where we should be focusing our efforts. Jeremy's going to send out the front porch form updates that are built by timeline. Cameron's going to post on the vacancy page and Michael will reach out to Times Argus and the world and email them our status report. Oh, that's for VCRD too. And then for the city council Pellin's going to make the PowerPoint. I'll provide the context. Jeremy will kind of go over what we've done. But Michael will go over the place review committee and then talk about what we can do next and make the stipends pitch as kind of the pieces that I'll do. And is that all of the next steps? I'm missing anything? Sounds great. Cool. Thank you all. Well, I'll see you tomorrow, Michael. And then the rest of you on the 20th to do Sunday. On the computer. Bye. Thank you.


In this video, I'm going to be doing a walkthrough of a parallel RLC circuit. Now, in series circuits, it was all about the impedance triangle. In a parallel circuit, we don't want to use impedance triangle.  It can be done, but it's so hard and convoluted it is not even worth my time to talk about. What does work is power. And remember this statement, power is my friend. What we can do, and what you'll see we're going to do is we're going to build a power triangle. We're going to build a resistive element here. We'll get our inductive bars going up. We'll get our capacitive bars pushing back down on it. Then from that, we'll build an overall triangle over here and we'll figure out our VA, get our current, then get our impedance from that. So there's a bit more of a process to it than there was in a series circuit, but it's not that bad once you get the rhythm of it. So let's assign some values to this and let's get started. Okay, here's the circuit we're going to be playing with. I got five ohms of resistance. I've got 10 ohms of inductive reactants. I got 20 ohms of capacitive reactants. I got a source voltage of 600 volts at 60 Hertz. And what we're going to be trying to solve for is the impedance of the circuit and the current, the eye line of the circuit. Now, again, you could in this case figure out by building a current triangle. You could figure out the current going through here, the current going through here, the current going through here and build yourself a current triangle. Again, I don't like to do that because that only works when you have a fully resistive leg, a fully inductive leg with no resistance and a purely capacitive leg. Again, you could do that in this case, but just get in the habit of building yourself a power triangle and you'll be safe no matter what. So our first step is let's figure out what the resistive power is across this guy. I've got 600 volts from that point to that point, from that point straight to that point. I can go ahead and I can use E squared over R to get my power being dissipated through this resistor, which works out to be 72 kilowatts. Then what I can do is take the same voltage because I've got 600 volts from that point to that point. 600 squared divided by the inductive reactants of 10 ohms will give me my inductive power or my bars, my reactive power of 36 k bar. Now I've got 36 k bars heading up this way. I've got this capacitor here. I'm going to do the same thing because I've got 600 volts from there to there, which means I can go 600 squared over 20 ohms and I get 18 k bar capacitive. So I've got all my powers worked out now. I've got my kilowatts on the bottom there. I've got my k bars inductive and I've got my k bars capacitive. Let's get together and build ourselves a little or nice sized power triangle. So again, just like every power triangle we've ever built, power goes on the bottom, resistive power, 72 kilowatts. In this case here, I've got, let me just get my pen out here, I've got 36 inductive bars heading up. So I've got 36 bars heading this way. But then I've got the capacitive bars which are pushing down 18 k bar that way. So I end up with a net k bar of 36 minus 18 gives me a net of 18 k bar. Now I can use that k bar, that 18 k bar and those kilowatts to figure out what my BA is using Pythagoras because we love the triangle and I go 18 squared plus 72 squared gives me 74.2 squared over there. And that's my KBA. So let's go through that back in our circuit and see how this all plays out. So now we've got this 74.2 KBA, we've got 600 volts here. The first thing we're going to do is try to work out what our current is. We've got a source voltage of 600 volts, we've got your kilovolt amps over here, your apparent power. So I'm going to take 74,200, divide that by 600 because its power divided by voltage gives me current. In this case that works out to be 124 amps. Now we have one more step to take here, we need to figure out what the impedance of the circuit is. Well again, if we have source voltage and line current, why don't we just take the source voltage, 600 volts, divide it by 124 amps and then we will get our overall impedance of the circuit. In this case it works out to be 4.83 ohms. And there you go, we've figured it out. Again, I just caution you whenever you're dealing with a parallel circuit, use power triangles. There will always be enough information for you to have a power triangle. Do not use impedance as a bully. Do not use current, current will eventually let you down. Power is your friend.


Now we get to the third question on our worksheet. In the space below, draw a vector that is equal to 2 times d. And here's our d vector up here. I'm going to do the same sort of thing up here where I go through and say, reading this equation, the 4 i hat means that's 4 to the right because it's positive i. And the minus 2 means it's going to be 2 downwards. So that's what I'm expecting for d. I'm going to again just sort of drag this down so that we can talk a little bit more about it. When I've got 2d, I can either think of it as I'm going to go twice this d vector, or I can think about it as taking this d equation and going twice as far. So let me think about it in terms of drawing my vectors. So I'm going to start off here and I've got a vector which goes 4 to the right, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 2 downwards. And again, I'll just make that a little bolder so it's easier to see. That's vector d. Well, if I want a vector that's twice as long, I can make a copy of that and paste it over here. Sorry, it keeps jumping back and forth. So I've got d vector and another d vector, so it goes twice as far. Now if I were to draw this as just a single vector, I would want it to go that full distance as a single arrow. Now let's think about it in terms of the equation and the math. If I'm going to have 2d, it's like I've gone in and multiplied each one of these numbers times 2. Don't worry, I'll change my spacing so you can see it all here in a moment. And this spacing that I've got here shows us that I've got 2 times 4 and then 2 times 2. I could simplify that and that 2 times 4 is going to become 8 and the 2 times 2 is going to become 4. So my vector 2 times d is going to be 8i hat minus 4j hat. Or I have to go 8 to the right, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and down 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. So this single long vector represents 2 times d and it's exactly equal to taking d twice. I just don't have everything lined up perfectly there. So this is what happens if you multiply a number times a vector. It means you've got a vector that's that much longer or you multiply each of the components by that amount.


Hello friends, welcome back to the channel, a brand new spotlight terror event has just been announced for Pokemon Scarlet and Violet. I'm going to cover all of the details in today's video. So as of midnight on the 14th of May, the Walking Week and Iron Leaves spotlight terror event that's been running for the last two weeks in game has come to an end. So if you haven't got that Pokemon already, unfortunately, you're going to have to wait until another event comes around or potentially into the DLCs before you get these new exclusive paradox Pokemon. But on that note, with that event ending, we've just had the announcement of our next spotlight terror event, which will be happening later this week. And hot off the press, if we hop over to Sarabee, we can see that it is going to feature two more paradox Pokemon in Great Tusk and Iron Treads. Really nice to see these paradox Pokemon coming to the games. These will be five star terorids, as always, with the spotlight terror event, and they will be running alongside the return, the second phase of that seven star chest note event that will be running again in conjunction with it over the weekend of May the 19th through to the 21st, like it says, alongside that chest note raid. There isn't much more information that we've got right now on this terror event. So it just looks like it will be featuring these two Pokemon as of yet. If there's any more updates, of course, we'll cover those as and when that news does come. The event will feature a focus on Great Tusk in Pokemon Scarlet and Iron Treads in Pokemon Violet, and it will commence as usual at midnight UTC on May the 19th through to midnight on the 21st of May, so over that entire weekend. And it's going to give players a chance to get these paradox Pokemon without having to go into area zero, where you would normally get them, which is pretty exciting. And you're also going to have the opportunity to get them with a variety of different terror types, which is super exciting. And I feel like this kind of starts to pave the way for what future spotlight terror events will be seeing in these games as we go forward. If they do all of the exclusive paradox Pokemon going forward, that would lead us probably right up to when the DLCs will be launching because you've got a bunch of them that are exclusive, obviously, to Scarlet and then to Violet. So there's a bunch of them to go through that are going to run alongside these seven star turrets that we currently have going on. Of course, we've already mentioned that the Chestnut will be running this weekend as well, so that'll be its second phase. And on the Sunday evening of this week, we should get the announcement of our next seven star terroid, whether that's Del Fox, which has been talked about quite a bit and what I think it will be, or whether it's Rillaboom, one of those others, or something completely different than what we don't expect. But I'd love to hear your thoughts on what you think of this new spotlight terror event for these paradox Pokemon. And also what you think the next seven star terror would will be in these games when we get the announcement after the second phase of that seven star Chestnut. Very quick update today, friends, but thank you so much for tuning in. We will do a best build if you would like to see this later in the week for these five star Pokemon. Obviously, the great tusks is a fighting and a grand type. So they're the stabs that it will carry. And then the iron treads is a steel and grand type. So they're the sort of attacks that you will basically see coming off them. But again, they're only going to be five star raids. I wouldn't have thought too difficult, but there are going to be Pokemon that are going to be specifically built to get through these raids pretty quickly, farm them for the good item drops that they normally give with them. So it'll be interesting to see what item drops we get from these raids as well, but we'll leave it there and we'll update if anything else comes out later in the week. Hopefully we get some news about Pokemon Home as well. That is something on the cards that everyone's kind of expecting maybe to drop later this week. So fingers crossed, we do get something. And of course, if anything does come out, we'll cover it straight away here on the channel. So thank you so much for taking the time to watch today's video. Have a great rest of your day and I'll see you all in another video very soon. So until then, friends, take care of yourselves and bye bye.


what's going on everybody welcome back to another breaking news story and the WTA have finally released their calendar we just got the ATP released their first two months worth of tournaments up until the Australian Open now the WTA have just done the same so let's go through before we start the tournaments that have been cancelled slash postponed so Brisbane International cancelled Auckland Open cancelled Shenzhen Open cancelled Adelaide International has been moved to Melbourne exactly like the men's tournament the Hobart International that's been cancelled also Thailand Open has been cancelled and Acapulco has been cancelled still on for the men at this stage but it's been cancelled for the women and then two tournaments that have been postponed into the later parts of the year we have the Doha Open which is a big tournament and also St. Petersburg Open as well which has been postponed so those tournaments are going to be played later in the year maybe in March we know there's a big spot in March because of Indian Wells being cancelled there but a lot of tournaments cancelled on the WTA but here are the tournaments that are going to be played in the next couple of weeks or the first couple of weeks of the season so the women are going to start off in Abu Dhabi which is going to be a WTA 500 remember the WTA have started structuring their tournaments very similar to the ATP WTA 500 Abu Dhabi that's the first tournament of the season then they're going to have a couple of weeks off while the players can you know qualify for the tournament remember qualifying in the Australian Open is going to be in Doha this year then the players are going to come over they're going to quarantine first tournament in Australia is going to be called Melbourne One which is a WTA 500 event and also Melbourne Two which is a WTA 500 event same as the men the men have the exact same structure of tournament both called Melbourne One and Melbourne Two but they're smaller tournaments I think for the men then the Australian Open the first week of the Australian Open of course starting on the 8th of February then we've got in the second week of the Australian Open another tournament in Melbourne for the WTA it's going to be a WTA 250 event which is going to be played for all the players that didn't make it through that first week of the Oz Open so all the first second and third round losers of the tournament get a second chance to play another tournament in Melbourne and then later on after the Australian Open we have a WTA 1000 event at one of the biggest tournaments on the schedule for the women and it's in Dubai and last year Simone Halif won the whole thing so it's a big tournament big players play that so we've got the Australian Open final on the 21st of February and then on the 22nd of February in Dubai we have a big WTA 1000 event so there you have it the WTA schedule for the first month and a half maybe two months of course we know that Indian Wells is not going to be played in March it's going to be either played later in the year or not at all and Miami's still up in the air we don't know 100% if Miami's going to be played in the end of March so we don't have confirmation from March onwards into the clay season but we do have confirmation January February WTA ATP they're locked in a lot of tournaments happening in Melbourne a lot of tournaments happening in the Middle East as well let me know in the comments below do you think it's too much do you think these tournaments is too many you think WTA 500's all over the place and then Australian Open going straight to Dubai you think it's too much too soon they're trying to cram too much in it's a little bit of a tough schedule for the women to start but it doesn't matter we're getting tennis starting in January