Okay, we're recording Andy. Please go ahead. Okay. So I'm going to call the finance committee meeting to order for November 17, 2023. And then after I do that, I'm going to ask Austin to call the meeting of the trustees to get order because he is the forum of his committee president and Lynn is keeping an eye out to see if we end up with a forum of the council and then we'll have to pause to do that too. But this meeting is being recorded. We are holding it virtually as is permitted by the open meeting law, but it's being recorded both for audio and visual purposes. So you should be aware that we are doing recording of this meeting and I'm going to call on the members of the finance committee to make sure that they can hear and we can hear them and then we will I'll turn it over to Austin for a moment to call the trustees to order. So I think we still don't have Anna here. You do have a quorum. We do have a quorum. Okay, so Lynn is going to have to in a minute, I'll call in too. But Lynn, we can hear you, I assume. Yes. Okay. Bob Hegner. Here. Matt Holloway. Here. Bernie Kubiak. Here. Getty Shane. Here. Deletia Walker. Here. Okay, so I'll note that all of the current, all of the members of the committee who are present, which is all but one at this point in here and be heard. And I'm in it since we now have a quorum of the council present, I'll turn it over to Lynn for a moment. Seeing that we have a quorum of the council present, I'm calling the town council to order on November 17th, 2023 at 105. I want to make sure that Mandy Johanicki, you can hear us. Present. And Michelle Miller, you can hear us. Present. And Shalini Balmill. Present. Okay. Thank you. No, Austin. Thank you. Thank you, Andy, calling the meeting of the Jones Library Board of Trustees to order of forum. Here. Bob. Bob Pam, you need to unmute. Thank you, Bob. Thank you. Thank you, Bob. Lee Edwards. Present. And Austin, Sarah, I'm here. Okay. Tammy's here too. Oh, I didn't see Tammy. And Lynn, Pam, Rooney just joined. Okay. Tammy, you want to indicate that you're here? Unmute. Tammy, please unmute. Can you speak, Tammy? Okay.  I can. Thank you. Okay, so let me explain. Thank everybody for attending. And this meeting is going to really focus on the question of. This being presented regarding library and bond authorization. I'm going to turn it over to Paul in a minute who's going to lay the context based on the memorandum that he gave to the council on Monday. Is sort of the first part of the introduction. And then we'll, we have an order that we're going to proceed with. But as I said, the finance committee is probably not going to be able to do much afterwards, because I think this is going to be a fairly thorough discussion. Of one item. So. When were you going to add anything? Yes. First of all, Tammy, could you lower your hand please? So, given that we have not been able to put all of the documents into the packet until the last hour. We are not expecting the finance committee to take a vote to recommend to the council today. Which means on the 20th of November, while there will still be a public forum with regard to the library at seven o'clock along with the other financial orders. The actual any further vote on the library. The earliest that it would happen is December 4th, when the council meets again. In the meantime, the finance committee is meeting again on November 20th at 2 o'clock and on December 1st at 1 o'clock. Thank you. I think it was at the 20th, Lynn. Yeah, or 28th. I'm sorry November 28th. Thank you at. At 2 and December 1st at 1. And I believe somebody else just joined, but I'm trying to see. Who it might be and I don't see anybody. So, as Paul, did you want to do anything the way of introduction in your presentation? Sure. Excuse me, Paul, Anna has joined you want to make sure Andy, she can hear. Okay, which is one of the confirm that. Thank you. Sorry for my lateness. I'm present. It's fine. Sorry. Thank you. Great. Thank you. So this is thank you for considering this order and for the council and for all of the elected officials and appoint officials who are here today. It's really appreciate the effort you're putting in on a Friday afternoon. This is a request for an appropriate the sum of $9,860,100 for the expansion and renovation of the Jones library. This is on top of the original. The cost of $36,279, which included a local share of $15,751,810 that local share is not changing in terms of the appropriation. I don't want to I don't need to go into details. Everybody's very familiar with the library project. And these this number of the $46 million number is from the most recent cost estimates that we have from two different cost estimators and Bob parent our special capital projects person is here to help if there are any questions about how we arrived at that number. And it's and it's we think it's pretty solid and it includes all the inflationary projections that we can possibly include and and also incorporates all the inflation that happened mostly because of the pandemic. And so we think that this is is the number. It's the number we are asking you to approve. And and then with this vote, this project can proceed to the next phase, which is bidding the project and then contracting with someone to start to build. And I think I'll just leave it there. We have more information to share about the cost projections and things like that, but that's the next phase. Thank you, Paul. There are, there is new material that has been produced today as Lynn previously indicated that has been added to the finance committee packet for today's meeting. Athena is also going into any Council packet or other locations for people who are looking for it. I haven't added the last minute items from the finance committee meeting to the council packet on Monday yet, but everything is in the finance committee packet for today. And that is available on the website and for committee members it's available on the finance committee share point for everybody. It's available, including the public it's available on the finance committee page of the town website. So with that, what we're going to do is next talk about one of the new items, which is a new cash flow analysis, which really responds to a number of the questions that were asked. And I'm going to ask Lynn, who was working with our staff, and with our date. Paul to produce it. So, I, Lynn, I'm turning the meeting over to you for the moment so that we can get an introduction and make that presentation. And I guess I should ask Pam, do you have your hands up for a question. Yes. Could someone point me to that document in the packet. I'm not seeing it and I would like to see it in a screen that's large enough to read. This is the title of it. It is. Hold on one second. It is called finance Jones library projection revision to November 17, 2023.  You need to make me co host. You should be able to share your screen. Okay. The next thing I want to show you is actually. Hold on. Just be patient with me is the following breakdown. The reason I'm showing you this is because in the sheet I'm going to show you in a minute it's not exactly in this order. The cost of the project as we've discussed is 46.1 million. The town share is and remains at 15.751 million and BLC share which started out somewhere in around 13 something is now increased, because there is a sixth payment, and that is 15 million The CPA is a million. That leaves the trustees with the goal of raising 13 822 million 13.8 22 million being fair to the trustees however I want to make sure you understand they have been extremely active in increasing the amount for mblc and they wrote the proposal for CPA. So in many ways the dollars that are included here, and in here, belong to the trustees as well to the whole town. Again, the total project is as follows, going to take that down and we're going to go to the cash flow. And I will try to make this as large as I can, but I also want to ask Jennifer LaFontaine, who is one of the co finance directors and thank her for her work today and yesterday and the days before. And also David Eisenstuhl, who is our financial advisor to the town. I'm going to try to increase the size of this in a moment. Are you still seeing it on the screen and is it any bigger. Yes, yes. Okay, great. Okay, so one of the things I want to point out on this is a couple things. First of all, we're going to go through. What the mblc is going to give us and when it's expected they will give us when will the CPA money kick in. When will the other donations kick in and I want to point out that this is an estimate and needs to be further checked with the trustees, but it does not change the bottom line. I also want to point out that as you will see exact actual expenditures are just beginning, if you will, in in this line right here. So, while we have been receiving money, we haven't been spending any money. And that is because mblc and the library have started paying us in advance. And they continue to pay us in advance as they have money so you know mblc sometime around. February of next year gives us another 2.7 million. We estimate that the library sometime around here will give us another million. So we don't actually get to the point that we are borrowing any money until April 30 of 2024 based on this spreadsheet. And that's important because when you're not borrowing money, you're not recruiting you're not incurring any interest. So at any time for the mblc money and any other money given to us by the library, we will actually be earning interest, and it is requirement that that interest has to then be placed back into the project. So just to give you an example we have an accounted for here, but we've already earned about $60,000 on the money that the mblc has given us. Keeping in mind, we don't even have to start borrowing until we are out of the money that people have given us. And that is not again until April of 2024. So as you go through the cash flow, you'll see CPA money comes in here. I'm sorry CPA is here. Here's estimated donations from the library. The way this has been structured from the very beginning is that by the time we finished the project, and the library takes occupancy, and we finished the last payment from mblc. At this point, mblc will have have provided us with a total of 15.56. We will have the million of the CPA and the library, because they have now dealt with banks and had a discussion with banks and with mass development. They will not be asking the town to float their debt. They will float their own debt, whatever is left for the fundraising, and in floating their own debt, they will not be putting their endowment at risk. So when you get done at that point. What we have is the only thing that we are borrowing on is in fact the money that the town is lending. So let me just mention again, as construction happens, you keep borrowing but only as you need it. And at some point you then consolidate usually at the end of construction, you consolidate your loans into one final loan. If more favorable interest rates are available, you can refinance that depend on the depending on the conditions of the loan. So when you go down to this page on this, you actually can see that the actual interest on the loan is $7,944,380. This is million. Million. Thank you. 7 million. Thank you. And that is, that's if there's any difference between that and what we estimated in the past. It's only because interest rates are different. So one of the big questions that people have been asking is, well, how much it more how much is this additional cost going to cost the town. And the reason that the reality is because the library will be paying the town all of their share by 2027 and BLC will be paying all of their share by 2010 2027. The town will not be paying on any more interest on anybody else's money, but ours. And that's the number right there that's estimated. this down for the minute unless and you can be on the alert for questions if people have them since this was one of the most interesting. I also want to ask Jennifer Lafontaine and David if they would like to state add any comments to this. Well you know I think that you it's before I can respond to you I'm sorry go ahead David yeah I mean I think my understanding of this is that in fact there will perhaps be a need for cash flow borrowing by the town in you know to in advance of when MBLC grants and donations are received the column on the on the first page that shows bands you know that the town did it would issue if you go so the 15 million 751 810 that's the town's local share the next column to the right shows bands that I'm understanding would be issued by the town in advance of the grants from MBLC and donations being received so there they're my understanding is there would be short-term interest payable on that but that ultimately the principal on that would be paid entirely from those donations and MBLC grants and that's reflected on the next page. And David it might be good for you to introduce yourself in terms of how many years you've been with the town and what you're who you work for so people understand sure sure who you are I think many of you probably know me but I'll do that my name is David Eisenfall I'm a vice president with Unibank fiscal advisory services I've worked with the town for literally decades helping the town finance capital projects and you know I've been working with Paul and Jennifer for on this project and other projects that are coming down the road here for a couple of years anyway so these are we've been running a lot of numbers and you know a lot of iterations but you know well that's you know the I think the numbers are coming together at this point so I guess the only thing just in anybody who doesn't know a band is a bond anticipation of yes and if I use acronyms unnecessarily please call me out on that I'm I do want to make this as user-friendly as possible and those are shorter-term notes that are issued so that cash is available during construction and then at the end of the construction everything can be rolled into one single financing instrument that can be sold in an appropriate fashion and that's what David our expert on right and I'll just say that because I will point out that what we're assuming here is that the local share financing is act would actually be done reasonably early in the project you know in the spring of 2024 and I don't know that you know we can look at different ways to structure this but I'm assuming that we that the town could do a permanent financing at that point because the permit the local share financing isn't financing the last dollars of the project in fact you're going to be receiving the last dollars really are going to be financed by the donations and the MVLC grants and with the town stepping up on a short-term basis that you know as mr. Steinberg points out yet the bond anticipation notes are usually issued in advance of bonds but in this case the expectation is that these would be paid off with proceeds at the donations and the MVLC grants so with that I'm going to turn to questions on this aspect of it we did not do public comment and I will get back to public comment later but I will go ahead and do a couple of presentations before we do public comment but I just want to assure anybody who's watching and was intended to comment that they have not been forgotten. Kathy your hand up and I wanted to recognize people from the council and finance committee and the council and actually trustees if anybody has questions from the group that's present at the meeting please let me know but we'll start with Kathy. Thank you Len unless I missed it the document I'm looking at is not in the packet yet so I have every just a general request so that I can scroll if you could put it in the packet so now I'll ask specifics on what I can see on the screen one is you said the library will be making us whole by taking a bank loan against presumably their endowment so they're going to use the term float the debt so I'd like to know how much they're going to take on and what that means in terms of the draw on the library endowment in the Q&As I saw that you told us that the endowment is about eight million dollars a little bit under and that each that we're expecting to take about 350,000 of it toward the operating budget so my first question is about the library floating the loan for us against their endowment with a bank loan so I want to understand that better my second if you can scroll down to the first line that David referred to on the bands just way up at top is where you see the band go up a little bit more it goes it's up there too there's a line on the fifth it's or maybe it's down it's the next page that's the page just freeze it there so what he said is taking out actually three fairly substantial bands when we looked at this in 2021 the band total was around five million dollars and we never saw the interest on that so who pays these are very short they're actually a little bit long don't who who pays the interest on the 17.1 million the 12.8 million and the 1.7 million so the principal as I understand it is going to be paid back to the town by this flow of money into it but in the meantime it's carrying a 4% interest and the first one the biggest is carrying it for a year the second is carrying it for a year and the third is carrying it for a year last time David you did these last time I think working with Sean they were six month notes they were when you say short term they were really short so if I do 4% times these bases I can get what the interest rate roughly would be who's paying that interest that's my second question I think I understand the rest of the presentation uh Paul do you want to go into that or shall I Kathy I sent you the link to the document in the packet it is posted okay thank you so this this is built into our capital comes out of our 10.5 capital fund basically is where it comes from and that's in I think Sean included the pretty close to these numbers in the projection that's in the capital improvement program so so Paul you're telling me the interest on the bands is you know in JCP what we've been carrying was the 36 million with the 15.8 and at the point since I'm on JCP see I've been looking at that line the 15.8 was an interest rate of 2.8 and I realized we can't do anything about that and then the bands were very short term being carried at 2 so this the combination of these two things and I'm going to ignore the 15.8 right now that's our observation I'm just focusing on the bands so we're taking on if I add them up a pretty substantial short term with interest on it so are you saying that the town will be paying that interest typically that's how it would work and I should you said it's a one-year band and then it's a six-month band and then it's a almost a year 11 month yeah that's what I'm looking at so one-year band I can just say four percent is this the second one can take half of it I mean I can do the rough math on that to say we can work on that for you as well and also address your question on that so with that answer is there any way the library could be at risk for that interest since in effect the town is at risk not just for the 15.7 total principal and debt but for the interest on this this is just the reason I'm remarking on it is last time it was it's a much bigger number and it's carrying a much higher interest so could we separate that and make that an obligation a library and that goes with my first question on how much of an obligation is the library already taking on infloting the debt so Paul if I could enter into this the amount of money that needs to be taken out will depend on how fast the library collects their promises on their various things including their grants and including their historic tax credits if they collect it faster and they give it to us faster then these aren't aren't going to be as large so that's number one the second thing is this is the same way it works with the school Catholic we continue to carry the debt and we only reduce the debt as we get money from MVLC so if I mean from MSBA so this is how it works with any other project with when the source of funds are being given to you over time the town carries the debt leaving the issue of the library loan Austin you have your hand up did you want to answer that or do you want to wait until later happy to answer it now okay so Kathy thank you for the question it's a it's a very good question it's one that we have thought about a lot and the answer the question is of course it depends so we don't yet know how much we're going to need to borrow so how we carry that debt and what it does to the financing the library will ultimately depend on how much we need to borrow what the interest rate we can get on what we need to borrow and how long we can borrow it for the trustees are operating a little bit of the you know an information deficit because we don't know how much we are going to need to borrow that will depend upon the success of the capital campaign it's our hope that and our expectation that we can carry debt and do the debt service without significantly adversely affecting the operations of the library it's our hope that we can carry the loan and do the debt service without having to further obligate or further diminish the endowment why is that again as you know the endowment grows and we want to keep the growth in the endowment and some of this also Kathy as you know is affected by what's in the endowment at the time that we need to do this financing so the market goes up the market goes down we have a conservatively relatively conservatively managed endowment and are confident that we have the right management strategy so I can't give you the exact answer because I don't know what the exact figures will will be Andy if am I allowed to follow up I just what I'm I got the answer to that what I'm trying to get at is the financial risk to the town so I understand you hope all of these pieces so just keep that question in mind you know I'm not going to ask you for more information I mean really so I'm trying to grapple with the financial risk to the town given that 15.8 is what we said we would do and we know we're going to pay interested on that the short term obligations have gone up a lot because of the flow of funds and we always said we weren't going to go more than 15.8 and the big difference here Lynn on the school is quite traumatic I mean we presented the whole thing and 98 has not gone up it's been great and I think we've got enough contingencies so I'm going to stop there so I'm just trying to get at the risk the financial risk to the town meaning dollars I'm not you know both known dollars and potential dollars if the library can't do what you're hoping to do on the endowment or the funds don't come in quite as quickly you know how much can you Bob said 1.5 million could be taken out of the endowment but he cringed at the word of five million you know so and I can see with an eight million you want to be really careful so I'll just leave it at that and seed my term okay so I'm going to continue on with members of the committee and the council and Matt thanks Andy and thank you Kathy for drawing the attention to this I was I had similar questions about the bands and the interest rate so I think you know I think I've heard what I needed to hear on on that I just want to thank all and the staff for for getting this in our hands and I realize that we haven't had a ton of time to study it but I do think that you know a lot of the conversation that we've had so far has been you know looking at everything as a instantaneous when of course you know so much of this borrowing is structured over time and I just find it to be very very helpful to see it on the timeline like this and glad it's going to get publicly posted so I just I wanted to just ask about the the final the final payment coming from the donations other from the trustees so that's the July 31st 2026 eight million three hundred thousand and changed there that number is is the result of some of the assumptions that we made around the payment over time just Paul or others who wish to speak to it so how do we come to that to that final number for the for the trustees as opposed to moving some of their spending up earlier in the in the timeline I think the trustees can answer this but it's based on their fundraising schedule and what they think they can reason when they can raise it and there's the that bottom number is that's sort of the catchall number where they hope that they most of the grants come in and if not that's where the the trust fund is the security blanket for the town and I think from the trustees point of view to not to speak for them but you know they have said well how do we protect our endowment and that's why Mr. Pam has gone to banks and secured had positive conversations with them about suppose we didn't want to just jeopardize our endowment how would we manage that over time and time is our friend on these things that's how you manage debt like this and you know what the town has said is where we want to we want to end our we want to our financing ends with the 15.8 and it's on June 30th 2027 and then it slips to this to the trustees Andy quickly before you move to the next question can we please confirm that Dorothy Pam can hear and be heard she joined us recently Dorothy really a question that Lynn needs to know because Dorothy can you hear uh yes I can hear okay uh because Lynn is keeping track we have the form of the council present also um but I but I have a previous meeting that I must go to at two o'clock okay okay scheduled months ago uh Austin there are a couple people in the audience who have been involved in the fundraising Ken Farber and Jenny Hamilton if you would like any of them brought into the meeting to respond to any questions you should just let me know I'm going to leave that to your discretion we'll do thank you Bob Hegner and please unmute sorry about that um this has been very helpful for for me personally um I have a question about the impact of this borrowing on our ability to do other capital projects um in other words I presume that the borrowing that we're doing for the elementary school is going to be paid for by the debt exclusion tax increases that we have that we voted on um tell me if that's not a correct assumption um but um would this borrowing in any way impact our ability to do the other capital projects um in the you know in the in the sort of near term uh you know in the next five years could we start one of one of the other two projects right so it's so yes it does have an impact because it's more money um so clearly that that is the case I think we have not program I have not we have haven't placed this on the entire schedule because the other two projects are still in flux as well and you know uh you know Sean had worked up a different plan you know to a certain extent where in one of the reasons we established the capital um stabilization plan was to develop a a savings account to try to pay as much cash as possible for one of those two projects um so I don't think this has significant impact on that because again we built we've our strategies are solid of building up our capital contribution to 10 and a half percent and that is the reason we've done that is to be able to take on this additional debt um and that that will grow over time as well the 10 and a half percent okay thank you so there are other questions on the topic we're on show me um and you can let me know if this is not the right time to ask this question but as I'm trying to grapple with all of these numbers um like we know there have been delays as being COVID all of these things that have led to the increase in the costs that were outside of the control of the library trustees and and now they have to face the consequences of that some of which is not their fault but this is where we are so my question though is the repairs cost has also gone up and so wouldn't us paying for the repairs have a similar cash flow impact uh we're actually going to be talking about the repairs with the next presentation because we've also had somebody who's uh developed that information for us so might want to just let uh Bob parent know note that question and maybe he can come back to it when he makes the next presentation thank you Bernie yeah indy as we move along and launch into the question of repairs that one uh just ask that everyone keep in mind that uh essentially two thirds of the voters of town um agreed that the library needs the renovations and expansion and I think uh this is all helpful because we want to keep moving towards meeting that goal that the voters have supported you know we're looking at interest costs two years out if everything works the way it's supposed to work and all the all the all the the tea leaves are read those interest rates are likely to come down but it seems to me that you know looking at the bands doing back at the end of the calculation that's uh a million dollars over two years three years so not horrible not welcome but but not horrible so thank you so uh seeing other hands right now um all would uh I guess it is sort of at the before you have a question before I make go to the repair question yeah I just want to build a little bit on bob haggner's question so bob you asked with a reference to dbw and the big capital but this the 10.5 we're putting into the capital cash flows this has a big impact on that and that's the that cash flow is what does building repairs buys vehicles and does roads and so um as everyone has said we can't really do anything about the fact that interest rates are higher than they were before but I just did a quick calculation on those three bands which are also much higher so it's another 682,000 in the first year another 255 in the second year and 67 in the third year on top of the principal in interest for jones so when we get the jcp world when we get our revised how much left do we have to spend out of the 10.5 percent um it's going to be less you know it'll just be less and and so I just that I just want to say that it's not just the pulling down on reserves we had a financing plan that was paying principal and interest so it's real money is another way and my last question paul uh andi and as far as I can see the furniture and equipment budget is a lot lower than when we saw it in 2021 and when I say a lot almost a million dollars so I'm I'm my the bluntest way is is the library coming planning on coming back to us to supplement the furniture and when I say furniture and equipment AV others um so I went back to look the 21 numbers and those had been lowered by 400,000 and now they're down again so these are just pure budgets so it's a question again I'm just focused on risk to the town on you know what uh what kind of cost recovery that's it well if you don't have anything I would turn to lee edwards just all right now you can see my face I mean at the risk of seeming unconscionably naive I will repeat what the trustees have been saying since forever we are obligated to raise the money for everything beyond what the town has already committed and that includes for furnishings and fixtures and beyond that the town will always have needs ongoing I think the question where we began is there were four capital projects and can the town commit to having the resources to deal with those four capital campaign projects I have heard before that the answer was yes I think in this discussion the answer is still yes although it would be helpful to hear it reiterated the other needs the ongoing needs of the town or to me kind of outside this discussion but to repeat where I started the trustees and the fundraising committee are in with all four feet to raise the money beyond what the town has committed and based on our track record to date I'm confident we'll do this thank you thank you lee Dorothy okay um I may have missed this but is the plan to turn the historic director's office into the place for the new four hundred thousand dollar book sorter still there this is related to Kathy's questions about the money for furniture which keeps getting cut and cut and the furniture isn't just furniture so that we can't just say I'll lend you a chair or give you a couch the costs have gone up I see nothing that suggests the cost will go down that has not been the direction and when people talked about ongoing project problems related to the four capital projects um I was reading somebody's testimony recently about the state of our sewer pipes and there is just so much maintenance in this town which needs to be done not that doesn't even include the new fire department or the new dpw but the maintenance so I am quite concerned and I'm hoping to see some efforts to scale back the project um we know the town wants the library fixed I agree with that okay and I think we all appreciate the work that the fundraising committee has been doing but the ongoing fiscal situation suggests that there's not going to be any magic coming and today when I heard on the plan that the loan from the library endowment was being counted on I thought that was a backup plan I didn't know it was something was being counted on from the beginning so that was quite a shock to me so my answer is are some adjustments being made in the plan in order to deal with the fiscal realities thank you Austin so um again I appreciate the um I appreciate the question uh let's start with the book's order uh the book's order was moved as the plan developed the location of the book's order has been reviewed by the Amherst Historical Commission they had no problem with it with the location of the book slot is they actually preferred it so from the point of view of historic preservation the historical commission has no problem with what our plan is for the for the book's order so that's number that's number one we thoroughly investigated the book's order issue should we use it should we not use it and we've come to the conclusion that it is a prudent thing to do over time the book's order will save on costs that would have had to go to staff so that's I think about the about the book's order second the phrase is scale back the project so the building committee of which the town manager and others serve went through a value engineering of exercise which involved scaling back on the project we've come to the point where we believe that the project that we have is the project that both the library needs and the town needs and that further cuts would not be prudent uh on the furniture budget we believe that the furniture budget is adequate why do we believe that uh between the budgets that you saw we consulted with uh experts who work with our architects on what the furniture needs would be and we've come up with a plan that will allow us to reuse some of the furniture that is currently in um that currently in the library the library is a library which serves the town so over time I think this was Kathy's question you can anticipate just the same way you can anticipate from the schools or dbw anything else that there will be requests to jcpc and those requests will come in the the the normal way we hope because we'll have a renovated expanded library that the scale and scope of those requests will be smaller than they will be if we do not repair uh if we do not renovate and expand so we looked right from the beginning at the repair option I know we're going to talk about that in a minute we thought what we could do about repairs would not be adequate to serve the needs of the library and the needs of the town we looked at it at the beginning we looked at it again when we got an estimate for the last town council uh discussion so I hope those are helpful in answering your questions thank you thank you Paul did you have anything sure so uh in in response to Dorothy's question about the capital projects we have to do the four capital projects that's not a should we or shouldn't we have to and the library is one of them we're going to have to make an investment into the library either through the way we have planned it so far and you know it has gone through every elected body in the town uh town vote or it's going to need significant investment in repairs over in the near future and um so I think there is going to there has to be an investment in the library and there has to be um investments in both the fire and the dpw the town has made some decisions that have delayed projects that have made them cost more um COVID has impacted the cost of things there's a lot of variables at play interest rates are an important variable as well so all these variables are coming into play and the as and we but the one thing we do know is that as we continue to wait interest rates are going up they aren't going down we know that but the interest every every month is going to be more expensive more expensive whether we go the repair route or the um the the repairing the renovation and replacement route um and I think we have I think Austin said this we have looked at the two options in the past several times and every time have come down to the conclusion that this is the best best path forward given the amount of um outside funding that is coming to this particular project so um so I think that it's not a question like oh does that mean we can't do blank we are we have to do them all it just might mean a different shape or a longer period of time thanks Paul um which gets me to the point of an array so we have three people who have their hands up for uh counselors and so I'm going to ask a question of the three of you and that is the next thing that we wanted to do was to get the presentation of the updated repair estimates um and uh if you're it might be helpful for this conversation to get both presentations done so um if you don't um think that if we if you can wait until after that presentation ask the question um that you're about to ask lower your hand because I will recognize you if you don't lower your hand and otherwise we'll go onto that presentation so Michelle sorry to not be able to wait um I this is a more general question and it isn't related to the repair um and I think it's for Paul to two-part question so the the first part is the mblc requires a bond authorization for the full amount is how I'm understanding it so they require us to authorize the 46 million and I'm curious what the reason for that is um and then the second part of that question is if the library is unable to raise the necessary funds do we have some legal obligation uh to cover that shortfall so I I've been trying to take in as much information as possible um and one of the pieces of information I received recently indicated that we would be on the hook for for that for that shortfall and and I I think I've been vocal about my support for the expansion um so this this is the one uh piece that gave me some pause um if there is some legal obligation on our part to cover that shortfall I I do have concerns for how we would manage that good so yes most capital projects require you to have the full appropriation before we go out to bid so you have that you have the authorization from the council whether it's a school building project or whatever whichever project you have before we go out to bid we like then we have to have the authority to be able to contract with the with the bidder who comes in and that's also um by understanding is an mblc uh requirement as well and that's that's a typical um condition for grants and david may want to jump on this if you if you want to on that piece david sure I'm sorry go ahead david uh sure uh yes that it is very typical for uh projects where the kit where there is funding from other sources from the commonwealth that the requirement uh by the state agency whether it's uh mblc or msba will require that the full amount uh be authorized now the um the question of how the town you know will assure that assure that uh it ultimately doesn't finance more than the 15.8 that's covered by other uh parts of the uh you know of the financing plan which other folks can talk to but it is very usual to have the entire amount authorized and so i think we i talked a little bit earlier maybe i'm not sure if you were here michelle about how how our um security blanket is the endowment and that's the agreement we have with the trustees um and and so i think that that and then that's and then it flips to the trustees what is their protection what is their role as the trustees of the library but from the town's point of view which is what my concern is i feel pretty secure in the fact that um yes we are authorizing this these funds um the you know we're confident that the mblc is going to fulfill its commitment you know barring them just like we never know maybe they go out of business maybe because who knows what but i mean we're pretty sure that the msba for their part they're gonna fulfill their commitment we're on the hook for those if they decide not to pay us i mean but that's unreal i don't think that's realistic um and then for the um and for these trustees portion which is the other big portion you know we have secured an agreement with them about what they promise to do and i think you know they are elected officials they have they have a resource that most elected officials which is an endowment that is able to secure this and they've also proven recently at the ability to bring in significant commitments i mean they have a written commitment from amherst college i think the amherst college will not back off of that so i think they have commitments from you know federals and and locals so that gives me enough comfort and the fact that they've also backstopped that with their endowment um i think we should feel pretty secure in this andy can i just ask one quick follow-up um sorry i'm just gonna take it out just a bit further thank you paul that was really helpful um if for some reason the library was to default on that uh agreement that you spoke about um would there be some recourse on the part of the town uh to deal with that and maybe that's you know a little far thinking and i and i don't expect that to be the case but i'm just thinking about the the legal um responsibility yeah so so our attorneys looked at it and there are there is recourse in there for us the town to enforce the agreement excellent okay thank you and i see bob hams hand up so i run the pod thank you um i guess i would like to say a couple of things one is that you know the trustees are elected townwide we actually think of ourselves not just as library but also as town officials um so it is not that we are thinking only about the library second is that it has been my hope and expectation that the point at which we would be making our payment would be at the point where the the mblc had made its final payment that we had had our opportunity to to do the fundraising that we had anticipated all of which meant that although this i i could only look at it on the screen but it looked like you were looking for a payment in july of 27 and that that might work fine if the construction has been completed in in july of 26 but if that has not been true then my understanding has been that what we're looking at is a payment which is essentially within one year after the c of o has been issued and so i'm just trying to make sure that the timing on this makes sense from our perspective the second or a third point i guess is that we have until the project is approved at this point whether it's next week or the following week or the third week after that we have not tried to receive actual cash from a number of our donors and my anticipation would be that the flow of funds would in fact begin somewhat faster than this cash flow projection but it's also true that many of the people who have been providing it in institutions as well have said that they would do it over a period of time so we might get 25 percent of it in year one and 25 percent in year two and so on so you know there is potentially a cash flow question that would has two implications one is that a i think we will be providing money sooner in some ways than you are currently projecting in which case perhaps the bands would not have to be quite as large but be that there might be some delay on the last payments and i just need to worry about that because i don't believe that we are going to be in a position where we need to get a loan of eight million dollars i would find that horrendous frankly but i do believe that that it is probable i'm not sure i want to say probable but but i will say it anyway probable that we will have to get a loan of some kind but i'm certainly hoping that it will be a lot less than eight million dollars and i would certainly hope that it would be something around or less than four million thank you boston i just i just wanted to respond to council miller um you're you're you're very good questions direct back to the original memorandum of understanding there are two and if you look at the memorandum of understanding it is very clear what the library share is and library share is anything above the town share and the memorand understanding is an so to speak irrevocable commitment that we have to pay the town share the memorandum of understanding and bob just referenced it contains a due date provision so again you can look at that due date provision it says the due date for our share is uh 2026 or later if the mblc comes in later or as bob said one year even beyond that so it's very clear about what our obligation is it's very clear about what the remedies are and it's very clear about when we are expected to provide the provide the funds that's the first memorandum of understanding the second memorandum of understanding will go to the compensation that we're going to have next which is if the town council would decide not to go forward uh with the barring the additional barring authorization the second memorandum of understanding commits the library to spend i believe 1.8 million dollars to help fund the repair option so if one is concerned as one should be about the impact of all of this on library operations if of the town council does not go forward with the additional appropriation uh the library is still going to face an obligation of 1.8 million dollars uh to help fund the repairs that don't need to be done and we'll be again in the position of where does that money come from so it's not a case where if you don't go forward with the barring up authorization there'll be no impact on the question of library operations there will be thank you austin so i'm going to turn to the next topic that we wanted to um address and when um i don't know if you have the slide available if but it's needed and i want to um introduce uh for those who uh haven't met him uh my parent you hear yes i'm here so good afternoon so i don't know who's going to do the major uh presentation about this but um we wanted to get the subject of the repair options and the the current cost analysis that you did and reviewed base uh for the larger group so do you want to take over let me just so people know bob parent is our special capital projects person who who is coming in working on lots of projects engaged with the school building with the library building um long time town engineer ahead of public works um worked for tine bond for a private engineering firm incredible professional engineer incredible experience so we've really appreciated his involvement in this because he really brings a keen eye to the work and so we had him look at the repair option and tell us what does that look like today and what in terms of how we can update that so that so you're looking at apples to apples when you are reviewing things so bob certainly thank you paul um what i did was i started with an estimate that kuhn riddle had put together in june of 2020 they had developed two options for repairing the library um option number one had an estimate of 19.4 million dollars excuse me option number one had an estimate of 21.7 million and option number two had a an estimate of 19.4 million uh the two options were primarily split into three versus two phases option one had three phases to be completed over five years option two had two phases to be completed over three years what i did was i started with the cost of those projects in june of 2020 dollars and i escalated those costs to today excuse me actually to october um because that was when i did this and using um engineering news record building cost index data which is a standard approach where you they they tabulate what building costs are in a month by month by month basis and then your ratio what the current index is to what the index was at the point when the original construction cost was was developed um that by itself resulted in a 28.7 increase from june of 2020 to october of 2023 what i then did was i then based uh projections going forward on a construction start date of 2025 for either option and as i indicated previously one option was to be built out over five years the other option was to be built out over three years i projected those numbers forward at four percent uh with the with the hope that we're going to start to see inflation stabilizing those numbers could be higher you know we we'll see where where things go in the future but you know assuming we have a four percent average inflation rate which is certainly higher than the cpi has been looking backwards um that that may be a conservative look forward one thing i did want to note and i confirm with this with a long ternary at coon riddle was when these estimates were developed back in 2020 they did not anticipate and because they had no ability to anticipate that the statewide stretch energy code requirements that took effect this year took effect in july of 2023 which our current project is based on has been updated to include were not included in their estimates nor were they able to benefit from the additional due diligence that we've done in terms of additional asbestos testing to confirm where we have asbestos primarily it beyond areas that we anticipated but also in some of the ceilings and some of the walls uh that is one of the reasons why this project cost has increased as it has neither one of those were anticipated back in june of 2020 so the point to be made that the escalated numbers going forward uh based on my analysis which are 21.7 million excuse me i i misspoke just a moment ago i apologize i i cited the the going forward numbers when i mentioned cost estimates the going forward numbers are 21.7 for option one and 19.4 for option two they are up from what had been 16 million and 14 million in 2020 those numbers are do not include again the current stretch energy code changes that took effect in july of 2023 and are part of the current project nor do they take in effect the the asbestos additional asbestos cost that we've we've discovered through the additional due diligence to make certain that we remove as much uncertainty as we can in the project going forward so i i think that's in a nutshell um you can see what's on the screen right now is option number one three phases again as i indicated to be constructed over five years two of the phases would require relocation of of the library one of the phases would not when the the exterior improvements are underway they at that point anticipated that the library could continue to be in function but during the other two phases it couldn't similar type of thing for option two they anticipated that the second phase would not require a full closure of the library but the first phase would and therefore the relocation cost would have to be carried as well i think now that i made a correction i i think that's you know that's what had been presented in paul's memo on november 13th and certainly if you have any questions um to the extent that i can um i will try to answer them okay um i think you have questions about the repair estimate so um we do that and then i'm going to go to pan because she had questions from before and now so i want to get pan go then after you okay uh thank you bob um as i read this so i'm just confirming you used coon riddle and just so you know coon riddle for everything but ada and design cost used western builders which was done a couple years before that so your uh mep numbers and the elevator numbers and thing originally came and then you just escalate them you did you at all look at the h vac system and say suppose we don't want to replace h vac with fossil fuels we want to go a different route um or did you just use because that wasn't asked of western builders um so that i'm assuming is not in this then the other question this was asked during this presentation by coon riddle on did we have to replace the south elevator for ada compliance and it's partially compliant you can go in and out of it and the answer was maybe not because it's in the historic part of the building but i think what you've done is just build up the existing numbers rather than use your building and construction hat to say um wait a minute you know can we rethink this or what goes into h vac because we now know a lot about the jones building in terms of its wiring its plumbing i mean there's been a whole lot lot more work done than what when western builders looked at this so those are my questions on these numbers you know i don't doubt that the number is higher but i just want to know what's whether any more work went into uh thinking through what this would really look like you are correct in in terms of what i did i started with the assumptions that had been made back in 2020 and projected them forward you know to your point of looking at other hvac alternatives like you know certainly if if this project it had to go to repair i would expect that that would be part of the work that would be done at that point and i expect that would probably further add to at least the construction cost but hopefully over you know lifespan of the building perhaps reduce the life cycle costs um but i would imagine going you know going with anything different than was assumed by coon riddle could actually increase the cost not decrease it i just want to make the point i don't even know whether coon riddle made any assumptions it was the one before that because they really were asked to come in and do the ada so they took what was on a page mep they had to even look up what mep went but i figured that's where hvac and wiring that's all the internal systems as far as i could see um that was handed to coon riddle to then build up to add ada and design design fees to to get this all done thank you pan thank you for being so patient thank you thanks for the information um back in the spring the conversation between the town manager and the library director uh was a conversation about bare minimum work and i think for folks benefit it would be helpful to understand as a comparison what was the what was the cost if if bob has actually looked at that what is the cost of that bare minimum repair work that was that was discussed um with hvac and the roof if you were to pull that out only and i understand this is not what anybody wants but i think we we need to be able to understand what the bare minimum uh contribution from the town to the renovation of this building would be in comparison with the the 194 or the 217 that is a good question that i wish i could answer and fortunately um as i stated previously i started with the same assumptions that were made back in 2020 and then projected those forward yeah i i think you know i i'm sorry pan i i think bob morrow had worked on that so i can try and find that information if we have that i was going to ask if if it's not available today would that be possible to pull out as a separate item i think we had talked about the hvc was a high priority and the roof was a high priority right those two projects right yeah that would be very helpful thank you the other thing that uh bob and i talked about yesterday is is that uh uh when you start doing this you trigger into the requirements of ada accessibility which is um substantial addition to cost uh sharing this review of anything on this particular point yeah i just wanted to quickly input so hvc roof and now the fire alert system so that whole the the fire the sprinkler system all of that needs to be replaced too um which we i mean we knew it was it was at the end of its life but we're um living on borrowed time now thank you me andy thank you for your patience thank thank you um and i'm going to stick to some comments and questions uh regarding this this repair which is said to be an option i'm not so sure it is um so so as um it was said i just want to make sure i understand that this does this these costs don't include additional asbestos work that was not known at the time the original estimates were made and therefore those would add to the repair costs um of these numbers of 19 to 21 million um and and it was referenced that it doesn't include compliance with the new um stretch code that went into effect this past june whereas the current plan for renovation and expansion and the request to increase the borrowing does but the count town council just passed a new bylaw um implementing the specialized code as of june of next year and looking at these numbers and the assumption is to when the project would start on this i believe and i just want to clarify that that means the repair numbers would actually need to be changed and if we if this was the um default option because the town council does not vote to increase the borrowing that these numbers would increase even more because it wouldn't be the stretch code that would need to be complied with it would be the specialized code that would need to be complied with um is that correct um and is it does that mean in my brief understanding of the specialized code as we were doing it it means that if we were to put in a fossil fuel HVAC system we would also have to prewire i think or would we have to prewire for a non-fossil fuel HVAC system um or how would that work with a repair only HVAC system under the specialized code um this project if we did not put an electric HVAC system in if we kept a fossil fuel gas-fired HVAC system that means we would not get any closer to meeting our climate action goals um and if we wanted to that means it would be higher than this 19 to 21 million i'm just making sure i understand what this 19 to 21 million includes and what it doesn't um and it also doesn't include any change of use or additional space usage um it would keep the library use space usage exactly the same as just now which we've heard is not working um or compatible with how the library needs to be used going forward so i that that's sort of part of my question is to what doesn't this include that would need to be added in to better meet our climate action goals to meet the required specialized code that we just adopted that would go into effect in June of 2023 and to address issues in building that we didn't know existed when these numbers were done and then to address Pam Rooney's question about the bare minimum that might be what we have to do in the next year and a half but it's not like we're not going to have to do the rest of what's in this estimate the longer we wait to if we do not increase the bond the longer we wait to address all of the deferred maintenance the higher the cost will be and it will not ever be cheaper than 19 million in this or 15.6 million in what the town share of the um project as we are asked to be fully bond out is is that also correct that it's not like HVAC fire suppression and roof is the only thing the library would come to us and request at JCPC in the next five to ten years if we were if we do not have bond out the additional nine million for the renovation and expansion project thank you i see we have a member of the finance committee and who hasn't had a chance to ask questions before lisha can i excuse me can i just follow up on on that conversation based on the question that i could ask okay that's okay with you yeah that's okay thank you sorry sorry to cut off there um i think i think the overlying overarching question there though is rather than getting into the details of of that the nuances and the cost escalations and the specific items that may or may not be included in those repair estimates is what is the town obligated to cover in terms of basic repairs to the building and i think that's what i'm asking for in terms of what is the bare minimum repair cost with the the several different items in comparison with whatever the projected fuller scope of repair or renovation might be so let's let's let's talk about what is the town obligated to cover thank you i'm waiting to see if anybody else i've you know from the general principle that we have the repair of buildings including the john's library is goes through the jcpc process and is a town obligation and historically that's what happened and what the library was very patient in not making requests for the number of years in it because they were anticipating that they were going to make this proposal to do a major renovation and construction as a single piece and they only asked for jcpc allocations that would address specific and emergent problems and said that because i was on jcpc at that point in time and so i think that it still is going to fall back to the town largely though there is a part of as austin said the second mou that the library did make some commitment i don't know if anyone else if no one else has anything else i'm going to add to that i'll go back to alisha alisha um yes thank you my question is kind of similar to pams but i'm just wondering in terms of the repair option would the town be responsible for covering the entire cost you know i can only say what i said before that historically we've taken on the responsibility of our uh of doing the repairs on the john's library through the regular jcpc process um and the only thing that's additional is uh the second mou no paul is there anything that or lin did have anything else to add to that no i think the i think the important point also is that the trust the director and the trustees did not bring forward capital projects over the last few years in anticipation knowing that they're they weren't going to be making improvements to the fire alarm suppression system and things like that until we you know in anticipation of this construction going forward so i think we have to recognize that they they have a backlog um and most likely if if we go to the repair option they're going to be coming forward with some significant repair option requests through jcpc and of course we couldn't really um thank you if i might just sorry andy go ahead i'll stop i just wanted to follow up because i i think there might have been i might not have been super clear in my question i'm meaning more like so there aren't opportunities for contributions from trustees via fundraising or donations or endowment or anything else if we switch to the repair option we all turn to us to on that one yeah this is good thank you very much again a very good question a very helpful question um we pledged 1.8 million dollars towards the repair uh that's what we that's what we pledged uh we we did that again considering the impact over what period of time on our operations the town could come back to us and say we want more from from the library at this point there's no commitment from the library to add more nor do i believe it would be appropriate to ask the library to commit more of its endowment or to go out and take a loan uh the library is a town facility and what bob pamp said i just want to reiterate which is the library doesn't have a source of funds it has an endowment but we have and would continue to work with the town uh to be good stewards of this facility the second thing is um we do not know uh what available sources of funds there are out there that might help us do an hvac system or a roof the experience so far in the fundraising and lee edward is going to speak to that in a minute suggest that the enthusiasm that has been generated has been generated by the plan and the plan is for a renovation and an addition the third thing is we've asked the development community of the friends to do a particular thing and they have now spent years doing it and that is to go out and solicit funds raise funds for repair and renovation excuse me for renovation and expansion project people are really enthusiastic about it because it does things like makes the building in much more environmentally sustainable than it has been it offers facilities that are not now present in the library for a team space and for english as a second language it offers uh what has been a priority of the town space for the civil war tablets and uh what we call a humanity center which is basically the space for the civil war tablets special collections and the art gallery so uh i think what we know is that there's considerable enthusiasm for the plan that we have uh i don't know that there's enthusiasm to contribute to repairs of the building but again lee would be in a better position to actually answer that lee i think my hand is up yeah go ahead good thank you um yes indeed the the capital campaign committee has been very vigorously working to raise money for the project to renovate and expand the jones library and we have succeeded remarkably in raising funds for that project in the unlikely i hope event that that project does not go through all the funds that have been raised including from the mblc and from private donations and from the federal and state funds they are not committed to anything other than this project and i have to assume that they will go away the many of them will definitely go away so that's about 23 million dollars by my account thank you lee i'm going to um recognize anna and bernie and then we did promise that we would take public comment it's a point during the meeting and i don't want to back off on that because it is a policy of the council and then we had questions from the council that were presented to the forward to the library and so we want to spend some time with that too um and uh i know lin if you think that that um is uh a reasonable plan now for the next portions of the meeting and paul go ahead i just want to note that um i know about parent has to leave at three and i'm assuming david ison thought we promised him a two-hour window so just you just may see them disappear from the screen at some point just so you know okay um let me just say to the entire group if anybody has questions of either of them please ask get your hand up immediately us so that we know in the meantime i'm going to see anna who hasn't spoken yet today um thanks andy um yeah i think i i just wanted to affirm what austin and lee were just saying because i that was why i had initially raised my hand was to make the comment to alicia's point that folks have committed fundraising pledges and to a specific project and to spend it on something other than that project wouldn't be ethical but the trustees can't do that so those are significant donations they come with mo use they come with agreements right they're not just they're not they're not you know well some of them i guarantee are probably $25 checks but some of them are a lot bigger and um that's not something that can simply just be reassigned at the will of the the town or the trustees and so that funders and goes away and that's significant all those the the grants were for a project they go away they have to start over and so um that for me is is one of the really indicative uh indicative one of the things that is very indicative of this project not being able to be rethought in that way because of how how those things are not able to be reused right they're not able to be those donations aren't able to be repurposed in that in that sense so i wanted to thank lee and austin for stating that so succinctly thank you bernie yeah and thank you indy um i'm um a little bit amazed because we we keep talking as if the library isn't an essential part of this town it is it's very much in the fabric of amherst it's very much in what we do we're the town of the book in the plow remember so um you know we we really need to pay attention to what is a very valuable and literally central resource for the community uh the library is a social resource it's an educational resource it's open to everyone and everybody you don't have to have anything special you just walk in and you you're accepted it's an amazing service um it's also a trip generator it brings people into the town brings people downtown where they stick around and shop and do other things um i just noticed in terms of paul's presentation the other night when we did the budget overview that town support for the the support for the library has gone from three percent of the town's budget to two percent of the town's budget um i don't know not a mathematician or but it seems to be that that's a reduction by 33 percent um so we we need to keep that in mind we're we also have to keep in mind that we're once again joined with turning down state money uh dissing our congressman who's gone out and gotten extra money for us um ignoring the efforts of of our state senator and state representative who managed to get extra money for us uh and i also want to repeat a point that indy made very briefly is that um if you if you repair the roof you're gonna be hearing the ADA requirements so there's no such thing as a minimum you're going to have to do a lot of work and then you're going to have to do some more work to to finish off the repairs that are necessary for the building thanks yeah i have one thing i want to say bernie just because you make me defensive is the uh one who always is looking over the budget for the uh council and for the former former government we've had a continuous policy of increasing by equal percentages each year the major functional areas of town services library schools new regional schools and uh except for one year blips for a couple for small amounts we have stuck with that the increase in other sections of the budget um affects a little bit the percentage so i think that uh you have to be very careful how you phrase that point that you are making i think that we've we've maintained the same commitment of equal percentage increase for a long period of time um and we've got a michelle and i really do think that uh we owe it to the public to allow a little bit of public uh a little period for public comment and then i want to turn to the questions the counselors forwarded to through lin to the trustees and the library staff so michelle this will be brief and i want to appreciate bernie's comments but i also want to say that you know historically the library doesn't feel to everybody like a place they can walk in and be accepted and i think that the library and the the the staff the trustees the folks who are fundraising the people on the building committee um the task force that are associated with the building committee are all doing a lot of work to change that and so i just really want to uplift that and acknowledge um that it isn't it hasn't always been that space i get it it's a public library that's our intention um but i i want to acknowledge that it hasn't always been and and we're doing um i think some good work to to change that thank you thank you michelle so um i'm going to take a couple minutes to uh see if there's anybody from the public who wishes to make comment um and i'm going to ask that anybody who has an interest to please raise your hand now because i'm not going to expand the list what i'm going to do is the amount of time i'm giving i want to give to people will depend upon the number of hands to go up so um i i don't want to expand the listing uh as we go through public comment so um at this point i'm giving it a moment because i don't want to cut it off too quickly um but if we're around the number that we're at i think we can do three minutes i don't know if uh we can have the timer available to us or um from a theme that or not yes i'm ready with okay so um i think we've now had six people so i'm going to assume that seven gets what it's like uh okay so i'm going to cut it off again um but um the first uh and i'm going to take it just take an order that they came in so uh sarah marshall and is the uh should be brought into the room and uh state your name and uh what district you live in so we have a rough idea and then please go it's three minutes and uh we appreciate it thank you can you hear me yes yes sarah marshall eames avenue and district four speaking in support of the supplemental bond authorization your term on amherst second town council is nearly over what will be your legacy council has moved our town forward over the past five years in many significant ways including backing the jones library renovation and expansion project and the new elementary school you are now asked to authorize because state law requires it the additional borrowing needed to allow the library project to proceed that project was not only approved by council two and a half years ago but approved decisively by voters at this moment in time you should not revert to square one and relitigate the pros and cons of the project rather you should carry out the will of the voters unless there is significant downside to doing so some residents who have worked tirelessly to kill this project are now trying to persuade you that the remaining funding gap of about 15 percent of the project cost presents an intolerable risk to the town i strongly disagree i do not see the fundraising glass is half empty rather i see it is impressively half full it is extremely difficult to raise funds during times of uncertainty such as we have been in recently but you can make the difference it will be town councils continued strong support for the project that will supercharge the private fundraising by throwing the weight of the town behind the library i urge you to be the leaders we need at this moment do not be so focused on the potential risks that you cannot see the influence your yes vote will have on fundraising do not reject the work of volunteers who have landed significant donations during an uncertain time do not reject the work and support of our state delegation representative dom and senate senator comerford and our representative in congress jim mcgovern who have obtained an increased commitment from mblc and federal funding do not cement emerson's reputation as the city that can't say yes by rejecting another multimillion dollar state grant along with millions of dollars in privately raised funds don't be penny wise and pound foolish please leave a legacy of two significant public infrastructure projects thank you thank you sarah and jeff lee is going to be next and amber i'm not sure we're going to be able to get to you because he had raised your hand later i actually for everybody president i'll wait and see what happens but the council has a forum scheduled for monday that is going to also be another opportunity for public input on this and so i want to encourage anybody who would like to make further comment also recognize that there is that forum and participate in it but it's part of the council meeting and i think it's scheduled for 6 30 in combination with the general budget if i'm correct um it's actually scheduled for seven seven okay thank you uh jeff have you did you bring jeff lee in am i in yes thank you jeff lee district five um yeah i wanted to ask you andy i know in the past you've recused yourself from library deliberations on the finance committee and you've acknowledged that you have a family member who works at the library i wondered if that is still the case and if you intend to once again recuse yourself on this issue um also wanted to talk about the repairs that are being presented as the option to uh or the alternative to not going through the supplemental bond authorization i think it's wrong to imply that the town has to pick up the entire cost for that and in fact that it's entirely repairs if you look at the uh cune riddle document there are six sections of what needs to be done four of them are called improvements not repairs uh cune riddles clear that much of the cost comes from triggering a requirement to bring everything up to uh building codes for accessibility which is a worthy goal but there are um variances for historic buildings and if you don't if the work being done is less than 30 of the appraised value of the building you don't aren't required to do it so i think if we went to a smaller uh repair repair option we could do it for much less money especially the one that was described as plan b which was the h-fax system and the roof um and how can we say that the library will pay for half of the renovation expansion but only 1.8 million towards repairs that doesn't make sense to me and i think you're being pretty generous with taxpayer money to uh to claim that um and lastly uh i know people who want the project to go forward or will be quick to say that we lose all the raised funds if we don't do the full expansion but i would like that confirmed uh it seems like the good thing to do can we build a humanity center without expanding the building and get the one million dollar grant we got from the federal government i think they all need to be checked and you know excuse me uh that's it thank you thank you jess okay i'm gonna uh ask that uh i think maria kopecki is next thank you this is a finance committee meeting to discuss the 46 million dollar project so i think that we should be talking about that um the fact that the documents that were some that talked about in the beginning were not provided to the finance committee the town council the public prior to 20 minutes before excuse me can um whoever that is mute i'm gonna i'm gonna want my three minutes could that person please mute lee lee lee edwards mute please oh that's amazing because i thought mute i could not no let me assure you wait wait lee lee lee stop we do not respond during public comment i'm sorry i'm sorry i thought i will right no i'm sorry that i might have gone away and will agree i'm going away i'm maria go ahead please i'm sorry thanks andy um i think that it's it's really indicative of the problems of this process that those documents were not made available so that the finance committee could vet them can just could understand them and can talk about them here in committee which is what you're supposed to be doing i was pleased to hear bob ask to understand the impact on other capital projects and it's not just the quote for capital projects it's all the annual expenses and i do appreciate that some other counselors tried to get to that i was very concerned um but not surprised to hear that uh some members of the library trustees felt that the quote other needs of the town are outside the consideration of this project that um that may be true for library trustees but the town counselors are here to ensure the health of the entire town and that includes what will be the impact which was not provided in the documents to the annual capital budget as over these next five years when these very large 30 million dollars of short-term loans are going to be having an impact and the interest on that um if you look at i mean what i could briefly see from the cash flow analysis is that we're going to be paying contractors but almost three million dollars a month so when we sign a contract the contractors are not don't want to hear about promises and information deficits and hope that austin sarat was talking about when you sign a contract they're going to want to be paid for the labor that they're doing and for the materials that they're using and they're going to want to be paid as they should as that is happening and as was finally admitted in this meeting that's going to be on the town the town is paying that the town is paying the interest on that and that is unless and until or maybe until and unless that seven point five million dollars that is still outstanding actually materializes after occupancy after this decision is made and this is all built on the house of cards that says that this project is going to cost 46 million dollars and i don't believe that you have received i don't haven't seen it publicly the actual detailed cost estimates that would give some more inclination about whether that is a reasonable statement not to mention looking at other projects that have gone over budget thank you thank you maria rudy perkins thanks andy can you hear me yes uh chair mr chairman uh rudy perkins cherry lane amherst um i've sent the town council a letter when you were debating this in 2021 and i observed based on the numbers we saw then on capital projects that we had already jeopardized our progressive climate commitments for later buildings by severe caps on those capital budgets um i hope that's going to be defended that those won't that those won't be impaired by what we do borrowing for the library um i thought at the time the the scope of the project and the budgeting process were were flawed but here we are so i'm not going to relitigate all that i would like to suggest some things that the finance committee and the town council can do in a new amendment to the memorandum of agreement that would address some of the questions i thought thought were implied in some of the comments earlier first is the money from the library has to come in earlier in the construction cycle so that we're not borrowing so much um and sort of under the table subsidizing the library project further and so that that should be adjusted in the in fact i think the amendment actually made it worse because it redefined um how much of the library share was due on the library share date if i read it right i'm making it all do at the library share date that's that's a mistake um we should have it come in earlier we should have the library responsible for any interest payments that we have to make because of interim borrowing to wait for their contribution um coming in and um we should make sure that their share is defined not by a dollar figure but by their obligation to pay for all of the total project costs that are in excess of the mblc share and the town share as stated that's not very clear in the memorandum of agreement it should be made expressly clear so that no one has a misunderstanding that the town's supposed to pick up the tab if costs keep going up so those things would help reassure that the deal is as people understood it uh previously and as it's being presented now and that should be defined in a further amendment to the memorandum of agreement we all really love the the libraries in our town um the jones is a little different though because it's because it's owned by a different entity it has its own endowment it's only committing to 30 years of public use at minimum in the mou and it was exempted from our net zero bylaw because it was owned by another entity so as much as i i'm from a big family of librarians going way back i love libraries i really support our libraries i'm glad we're kicking in the 15 million um and i'm not going to recommend one way or the other on your vote on this but i hope you will take this opportunity tighten up that mou m or moa and make sure that the commitments are clear and the obligations understood and that they reduce the cost of the shop thank you thank you um myra ross do you hear me yes i can myra okay um it'll be very brief i'd like to agree with sarah marshal i'd like to also say that bernie raised some very good questions um and made a very good point actually which is um and it's what propelled me to try to raise my hand earlier i speak as the chair of the disability access advisory committee ADA improvements are not an afterthought ADA improvements are part of what has to be done just like the roof you can say oh well we could get out of it because of the historical commission that's not the way to go people don't think about ad improvements until they need them and then when you need them you say oh my god why can't i access this why can't i get in why can't i find a way to be a part of this um for me it has to do with web access more than getting in but when you make a website you are supposed to make it accessible from the get go not as an afterthought and everyone thinks about accessibility as an afterthought until it's it's something that they need and then they wish somebody hadn't thought about it as an afterthought so 30 you can get under it whatever it is um that's not the way to think about this and i really urge the town to do it right i think that the points made by the previous speaker about making sure that the funding sources are crystal clear and the funding obligations are crystal clear is a good point but i i would hate to see you go to uh a rent a repair uh scenario because that's not going to achieve anything except spend a lot of money that's it thank you maro and ken thank you mr chairman um i want to begin by thanking all of you for working so hard on this project i know it's not easy and especially when you have to deal with characters like me who raise questions and objections um in hammers i want to begin by saying we're not those of us like me who think this project is not going to be able to go forward as designed are not trying to torpedo the library we're trying to find a library that we can all afford and love and use and that will work for the citizens of hammers so please understand my questions are raised on that in that spirit i'd like to ask about the interest rates that's assumed in the interest number that president kreisler read of seven million nine hundred and forty four thousand dollars call that eight million dollars um i wasn't able to see on that paper what the interest rate was but i've heard the use of the word of the interest rate four percent for the bands and if that four percent has been used to calculate the uh long term debt then i think it may be a little understated because from what i can find online other towns in massachusetts recently have had to pay as much as four and a half or five percent and if those numbers are used then that's an additional one or two million dollars in interest i don't think it's going to be that high but i'd like to know what interest rates you were using i also would like to see if by monday you could ask somebody to give you estimates about the asbestos and the uh meeting the stretch energy costs because we keep hearing about those as not being budgeted or or not being projected but they would be actual costs if we had to have them and i'd like to know that so we can know what a total repair cost would be and finally i would like to say donors to this library may be donating specifically to a particular project and that might be true with some of the grants but some of the private donors are donating to a library they believe in and they want to support they're not donating to just a project so if if this project doesn't go through as presently designed and if you have to go back to see just to the donors who have committed so far or pledged so far i think you would find that they would be contributing and at the risk uh president serrat of putting you in an awkward position let me say i suspect that if you had to go back to amherst college and say we're not going forward as planned but we're going to have a wonderful repair project for you that you would simply walk across the hall to president michael elliot and say mr president could you please be sure that that million dollars is still available for the library honestly amherst college is not committing to a project it's committing to the town of amherst through the library that million dollars would be there and so would hundreds of thousands of others money i'll have more to say on money and thank you very much for this opportunity today thank you um with that i had said at the beginning that people needed to raise their hands um when so that we passed out the time we would know um how many people were asking to be recognized and i apologize that we've had to do that in order to control the meeting because i know that there's a couple of people who raised their hands since then but um to just keep adding on and um invites that and then it becomes impossible to enforce but i also want to again repeat that um this is not the last the most important public comment period that we do have a budget forum scheduled and the forum on this particular topic at the monday night council meeting and um it's the forum is scheduled i was corrected it is 7 p.m and it is a part of the council meeting and with budget forum it's a very kind of different format than we do for public comment and so i don't know when if you want to say anything else about the plans for monday but uh when you do have to thank you a couple things um there is a detailed cost comparison in the packet uh and there is also a discussion uh about the contingency which is three million dollars in the memo from the town manager um this has been a very informative discussion from my perspective but i do want to mention that on monday night the town council will actually convene at five o'clock however we will be reading the town manager evaluations that each of us have written and hopefully a draft evaluation that i have written um at six thirty we begin the forum um for the budget for next year and at seven o'clock we begin the public forum for the um financial orders that the town manager gave us last week which the town count the finance committee have voted on to recommend to the council and we also have a public forum and that in that same public forum we will also deal with the library we will not be taking a vote on the library on monday the earliest we will be taking a vote on the library is the fourth of december so this is not the last opportunity i also want to encourage anybody else who has questions or suggestions uh like we received for example from um rudy perkins about the mlu um please make sure you send that to the town council uh and we will do everything we can to address those i have other comments but i'm going to stop with that paul would andy would it be permissible for me to ask david eisenthal before he has to get off to um address what what kind of assumptions he built into his percentage his interest rates certainly okay uh thank you mr chairman thank you paul uh on the long-term bond issue we i assumed uh four and a quarter percent rate which i think is consistent with a 20-year um term that uh where we were talking about here uh we had looked at actually four and a half percent for a 30-year term so we are you know it really is based on the term and i think that that's consistent with what we're seeing in the current marketplace thank you um there were a series of questions that were posed and the reason we wanted to make sure we had time to complete our agenda for today for this topic there were a series of questions that were presented um there i believe in the packet for the meeting uh questions from counselors regarding the library renovations in additions i don't know sure that they're there but i can check that uh in any event i think we should spend a few minutes uh because they we don't have responses to all of them i think there was only a response to the very first question and uh but uh the first question is when will jones come back to the council for a decision on whether or not to move forward including documentation on the financing plan and we'll keep the town taxpayer share of 15.8 million dollars of the precise amount and i that was responded to and that's been the subject of a lot of the discussion today um okay i see that there is some more information lind do you want since you've been the keeper of this do you want to take over for a few minutes yeah but this is also answers that came from the trustees so uh on the very first one as andy has mentioned um this we will come back to the council at the earliest on the fourth of december and it does require a two-thirds vote of the council regardless of how many counselors are present so it's nine counselors must vote for the project uh the latest cost estimates the one that is being we are dealing with is this one this was the other cost estimate that came in but when reconciled it ended up being this one um i'm going to ask sharon to jump in on number three which we all partially addressed before is there anything else to add to that no i don't think so okay the next question was regarding the book sorter and sharon uh any further comments on this no i just want to highlight my conversation with the you know greenfield public library director um the the book sorter is very much a part of our it's it's an integral part of our service model um our usage is going to skyrocket in a very good way and what we want is for staff to be on the front lines um doing what they do best which is you know serve the public the the customer service aspect the technology is is meant to just checkbooks in um and does it's it's coming in at a cost of 230 000 because it's on the statement list so it's just it's a really important piece of this project and you have a comment here about talking with forbs uh i so i haven't spoken with forbs but i invite any of you to go and chat with lisa i would think that if she were going through a building project she would switch over to rfid and harpy the next question was really dealing with what happens to the operational plans when the jones is closed and sharon i'm going to go come back to you sure um so we don't know yet and so much of it depends on how much square footage we're going to have and the location and it will it be in more than one building but staff are ready to make those decisions based on whatever site is chosen and um no one knows better than the staff what the needs of the patrons are and they will absolutely you know we've we've discussed with the town manager that we would love a central location for uh you know pickup of holds as well as esl that's an important piece um a lot of a lot of those users take the bus and and so um not having to transfer bus lines is really important um so yeah it's uh to be determined okay let me i'm going to go through all the questions and then come back okay um um sharon uh can you talk about where you are in seeking a temporary home and what you anticipate for cost and location uh we we uh bob parent and i were just working with samon on this we did just have to reject the um the bids that came in because there uh wasn't enough square footage being offered so uh samon will put out a new rfp possibly after Thanksgiving i think and and responses will be due some sometime end of january beginning of february um and so yeah that's all i can say about that um number seven bob pam you really are the one that deals with the current endowment i can't see who else is um well the the answer is correct it is four percent draw rate um for this year it was 351 501 um that is the highest it's been in a while it's generally been between 300 and 320 330 um those have been adequate to service the the needs of the library um i can't tell you why it will be in the immediate future um but you know for next year it is going to include you know a very good year when when it had reached 10 million dollars but you know that doesn't mean that you know in future years it will always be up so that is where we are thank you lind i just want to add the draw rate is set by a policy of the board if the board found that we needed more money from the endowment we could raise the draw rate at colleges they go as high as five or sometimes six percent on a draw on their endowment so just we all ought to remember this is uh set by a policy of the board uh over several years with good stewardship of our trustees and our treasurer we've lowered the draw rate so as to preserve the value of the endowment but but that's a variable figure it can be changed as needed thank you both for that more thorough answer um number eight Sharon I believe this is you again yeah so we have already in our our budget for this fiscal year um we have money to hire another custodian um to you know handle the increased uh usage and because of the automated materials handling system we're not planning on any additional staff okay uh number nine is really uh I believe either Kent Farber or Jenny Hamilton do either one of them I don't or either of them in the room Lynn this question Lee Edwards answered this question okay so it's our joke go ahead Austin please this question has been answered um on the basis of what we know uh the funds that we have available are not transferable to a repair um option and uh you know I can walk across the hall and pitch the president of the college on um repair but I'm gonna say just repeat what Lee Edwards said and that is you all know this if you've done fundraising people contribute funds to a project it's different from annual funds annual funds I think right people contribute because they love the library so I think what Lee Edwards said is the is is the right answer which is if we say no to this millions of dollars go away what is the plan if we cannot go forward and this is the renovation question that I think we spend a lot of time on so I'm not sure that we need to spend any more time on that um it's cost to repair we've had quite a discussion about that including what that cost estimate does not include and then we get to the timing on the library and that is before you and I if there are other people from associated with the building project that would like to answer this please jump in yeah so the plan is to go out to bed in January um in March we would sign a contract with a general contractor uh and what Paul has said is that as of June 30th of 2024 that's when the new one's common is going to be complete um construction we will go from April of 24 to November of December of 25 ish and then a grand reopening in December of 25 this is the whole issue of the financial risk and it's a combination of issues related to fundraising confidence that the town will fund this which then actually convinces bidders responsible bidders to bid and also the issue of how to deal with slightly higher budgets is there any Austin would you or anyone else want to speak to this one other thing that I'd like to add is the fact that so a vote now will allow donors to donate cap to the capital campaign at you know in this in this calendar year which is really important otherwise they're probably they'll probably wait until December of of next year um it this is this is an important question um we do have a strict deadline with the mblc to sign a contract with a general contractor by June of next year um and I'm we are all very worried that if we put off a town council vote till January or February it will risk that piece we also need time to outfit the swing space and you know move into it so those are all the reasons along with having the money in place for bidders thank you and then um this was a piece of information that was provided in the packet on Monday and then the issue of the money being turned over to the town and so the goal is um the minute we get it we will turn it over to the town the reason we haven't been doing that now is because um we know we need another town council vote and honestly the logistics of sending it over to the town and then the town giving it back to us and then us you know cutting checks for all all of these donors as a bit of a logistical nightmare so I have a feeling the town's accounting department is happy that we have not given the money yet not until we know that the the project is in place um may I just say Lynn again this it's really important to be clear about this what the what our capital campaign folks have been doing is they've been asking people to to pledge and they've been asking people to pledge because if the project doesn't go forward it eliminates returning money to to uh folks and the longer that we uh continue with the uncertainty uh the longer it's going to be before the town actually gets money from the library so having a having a you know a decision now to raise the bond authorization is going to be important in being able to say to people we now know this project is going forward turn your turn your pledges into contributions and as Sharon said we turn those pledges over to the town one other thing this issue of fundraising expenses have been raised uh every capital campaign should be run as efficiently and with as low overhead as this one um has been uh if you go and you talk to the to the fundraisers at Amherst or UMass you find that what they'll tell you is that the fundraising expenses are usually in the neighborhood of seven percent or eight percent uh our fundraising expenses are de minimis in comparison with what they are for other capital campaigns thank you for that Lee you have your hand up well yeah no can you hear me yes oh yeah I want to reiterate what Austin has said and also the funds that the capital campaign committee has raised are not wonderful they will not be turned over for any prepared activities and that's about but my account 23 million dollars so thank you thank you uh this was it's more work our question regarding the federal grants and when do we receive them one of the things that I wanted to say in addition to what's in front of you you know every grant is different and um so the jones library Inc had to apply for these grants so the money has to come to the library it can't go to the town um and honestly uh the town accounting department is lucky that it doesn't have to go through them because these are very complicated um grants to to oversee um so it's because we are also our own 501c3 that we were able to um apply for these and so here's the list about you know when the money will come in thank you um library endowment here's information on it we discussed it earlier but here's more detail and then we have further questions about the ffne and um the assurance that it's all in the budget here's some pictures of what the building looks like now as the public can see if they're in the library and here's information we shared with you earlier about option one and two and this is in the packet so are there questions about this so i'll bring it up to the back to the committee and the council if there are additional questions if not then we'll close out this portion of the finance committee meeting in state for a couple minutes says the finance committee to just uh make sure that we are planning for going forward Kathy though this is not so much a question is a comment i shared this with paul i noticed that greenfield um when it closed their library to build a new one they got some kind of dispensation that they could do a lot of the services online so it was a question if you run into you can't find the ideal space um can you still move forward so it was just a and paul said people knew that already but i just wanted to bring that up that it's to me it's it allows you a little wiggle room hey mute please please please mute me uh yes just a quick comment um if you add up all of the money that the library has committed to raise it has been of the order of 15 to 17 million dollars that is not something that one can easily say why don't you just add another million dollars here another half million dollars there that is that is not asking something that is reasonable so i just want to to be clear that although there may still be a gap of seven and a half eight eight and a half whatever that number will turn out to be um it is not something that one can continually say why don't you just add a few more dollars because it's it's a lot of money and i don't know that there are very many public projects of this kind which have had that kind of contribution from local citizens as well as uh state and federal grants that have been given at the request of the fundraising committee thank you andy hey um i don't see any well i don't see any other hands from counselors or any blend your hand is up so yeah i want to make sure that if there are any counselors who have additional questions or information they would like that they tell us now or they contact us within the next day or two so that we can try our best to get it and also recognize that there are some things we just not may not be able to get yeah thank you i would like to ask for a snapshot of the um capital plan the five-year capital plan with the interest that we're talking about um in the right year and in the in the correct amount so that we actually see the ramifications of any of the borrowing uh against our capital plan thank you um i'm going to ask paul if that is feasible i believe so thank you okay pan is anything else okay so um i think that we can close out this portion of the meeting and uh um then just stay with for the anybody's welcome to stay for the rest of the finance committee meeting though probably uh you would want to move to the audience not we're not going to be meeting for very long and uh it's just generally to make sure we're together on process more than anything else given uh but this has been a pretty exhausting meeting but i really want to thank the trustees for having been here and being in the information that you provided and uh it's been very helpful to help the finance committee and the council to understand what the request is and the process the information so a big big thank you to our friends and trustees and the library staff and i want to um thank the everybody else who participated in the presentation even though i think that our two consultants uh are gone now but uh paul please convey to them our appreciation and uh with that um i don't uh i don't know if you want to adjourn your meeting yeah andy if it would be okay with you i'd like to adjourn the meeting of the johns library board of trustees and again thank you thank you very much to the counselors and the members of the finance committee thank you and blend i don't know we still have uh we're going to adjourn the council meeting then uh have to uh move other counselors uh into the audience here i'm at this point i'm going to adjourn the full council meeting but not the finance committee thank you at eight thirty at eight twenty i mean at three twenty eight okay thank you so uh to be really quick about things uh one thing because i see that mandy is still here uh the uh we we had originally had the funding schedule for the rental registration bylaw on the agenda today um i think that we uh concluded that um it was it's a big topic to get in this late hethie has done some um thoughts about some beyond thoughts actually significant analysis um and without getting into the detail she might tell us about uh just generally what the what she did but um they it's not something that i think we're in a position to talk about today and we're going to have to factor that into our planning for our next meeting um to really come back to the discussion because of the uncertainty about today rob morrow is not present um and uh it really limits our ability to have that conversation anyway even if there was uh energy and willingness to put the time in at this point um but uh i don't know if um they would lin had said at the beginning of the meeting i would repeat which is that there's nothing to um do we get in the way of if if there's a first reading of the uh proposed bylaw um it's not contingent upon uh the uh the schedule uh i don't know if uh mandy if you have any comments about that or if you want me to just go ahead and uh let kathy describe what she was what she sent to you earlier and sent the several others of us you can let kathy go okay kathy yeah i'm i don't want to take time um i sent it it's what we agreed to when we met when we meet on tuesday that um i had played with played i looked at the ski fee schedule a bit and tried different a different fee for permit a different fee for inspection i also took a look at the bylaw regulations for the frequency of inspections and i was working off the kp law version and i was just focused on how often and how many so i had some changes that would potentially lower the inspection cost number so i was in the fees i was trying to get to the same revenues that we needed to cover it so i sent them to mandy and andy very late today and i thought it probably needs to be discussed at crc so people can say you're crazy or that's a viable option and i didn't send it to anyone else on the committee other than athena i think just a record so i did i did a spreadsheet i used the spreadsheet to calculate um to do a calculation and did a memo on what the changes were and that's it andy because i think without getting into the detail of what i look like people can't respond and we don't have time for that so i'd rather work first with mandy and people have been looking at this a lot um and uh i'll end okay so um i was just trying to figure out one additional thing and that is whether uh it should go in the packet for today's meeting or whether you would prefer to talk to mandy and then make the decision is to whether you want to share it with the committee and put it in the packet then well as far as i'm concerned since we're not talking about it today it doesn't need to be in today's packet but i would like to be able like i don't have a way to share it with other committee members without violating that we should only do it in a public meeting so uh mandy can weigh in on this um okay andy so it might be wise with kathy having just summarized it to put it in today's finance committee packet and town council packet um simply because um as andy indicated i believe this the regulations and bylaws will be on monday's council agenda for first reading um and i haven't i all honesty i haven't looked at what kathy sent me yet but she sent some marked up versions of a of a regulations i believe um and they're on for first reading on monday because gol in on wednesday voted clear consistent and actionable a revised version of the regulations and bylaws based on the kp law opinion um having revised it for clarity consistency and actionability um so that would if it goes in today's packet that would allow it to potentially go in monday's packet for the council if the president deemed so and like i said i haven't looked at it so that other counselors could see what kathy might be bringing up as potential discussion and requests for revision after the first reading or at the first reading that that works for me and mandy i didn't actually redline it i put a comment bubble because i was working off kp law so it's two specific places and if lin's okay with that that's fine with me so that's just focused on the wording of the regulation not not the fee schedule but i can put my memo the reason i question the wording and the fee schedule in today's finance packet and then lin you can decide which pieces belong in the council packet okay okay and um my question i was going to ask rob morrow and mandy might have access to the information already um it was simply that i don't think that the committee that our committee has ever been told what the current fees are uh are reminded of what the current fees are and um i think that that would be helpful to know and full for both um so mandy give me a second so i can look up that document but um no it it is $250 per permit so per parcel for all non-owner occupied um dwellings uh non-owner occupied rental parcels um this is what the council voted a year and a two years ago maybe um so owner occupied permits for owner occupied dwelling rentals with owner occupancy involved up to six rental units um is i believe $100 $250 for all other rentals but it's on a per parcel basis not a per unit basis um and a inspection fee of $150 um and since the current bylaw does not require well since within the current bylaw inspections only occur upon complaint not um there that that fee is only charged if there is a complaint and rob i believe has talked about whether they actually do that or not but it is allowable to be charged um but because there are no town inspections other than after complaints are received i'm not sure there's been a lot of collection of inspection fees i i don't know the answer to that but there is an inspection fee of $150 right now so thank you mandy so the reason i wanted to bring that up was that um if any members of the committee want to take the spreadsheet which we all have or have access to in the excel version and um sort of work with it a little bit to understand it better um it's um helpful to know the what the comparison is um we've had several comments from one resident member who um is uh not happy with the $250 number um but we should remember the $250 is what the current fee is so um just to bear that in mind um when you work with the spreadsheet the one big factor is that inspections on a routine basis are um assumed on the five-year schedule because uh once there's um there's an inspection if there are no problems and that there can be resolved uh promptly um then there's no inspection again for a five-year period so that uh when you work with it and you increase the um inspection fees it actually has a very different effect on the bottom line total than when you increase the registration fee and uh so uh make sure that that was that's a challenge to just have to work with if you're gonna as you work with that spreadsheet i don't know if there are any other questions that people have of mandate or generally bernie just a reminder um for whatever reason sharepoint doesn't like me doesn't want to share it doesn't play nice so if it's by going in the packet you mean sharepoint i haven't seen it and i haven't gotten a copy yet so i don't have access to the spreadsheet i don't think i need it i'm not gonna um take take the time to to do what ifs on the spreadsheet but if uh anything that kathy has generated for future discussions um a theme is usually very good about getting stuff to me but um you can just if you're gonna put it in a sharepoint packet then just email me separately thanks okay and uh i think that the spreadsheet i did email if you'd like the spreadsheet i'll email it again i'll check it i'll check again i don't i don't intend to do what ifs on the on the schedule okay schedule so is there anything else that anybody wants to say because i promised this is going to be about scheduling and process and not about uh substance but uh that is what we've been pretty much doing in this conversation if not um bandy thank you for your patience and your support and helping us get through this uh um assignment appreciate it thank you um so the other thing that i just wanted to touch on quickly is that um i did the best that i could with uh getting started on a finance committee report because we have to do a report for monday and the monday report in a minimum has to cover the financial orders but i felt like council hasn't heard seen a written report from finance committee in quite a while so i wanted to sort of bring the council up to date on what we're doing um simply because we haven't done it in a while um but uh the first part of it i tried to um is about the supplemental budget appropriation request and it is based entirely upon our discussion at the last meeting and um that's an essential part so when we look at the graph that i sent you any comments about that i want to put that in context um i'm probably gonna be very brief about the library um in rental registration because uh that uh just to give the council some sense that we had what we're doing though i think that the council pretty well knows or about the library because they've been as involved with everybody else in those discussions um so that's why there's nothing there is i didn't want to write either one of them until after today's meeting um going on through the rest of the report quickly the budget guidelines discussion um is really just uh for paragraphs and there are a couple of them are very short paragraphs um but uh should be looked at for accuracy and accuracy of comments and get any comments back to me about it because it's really just to acknowledge that we've started and to give a sense of what what we're doing and to give the piece moving forward um the items on surplus real property um streetlight policy waste hauler um are going to be um extraordinarily brief because they're just to acknowledge that we were assigned these that we've taken various levels of work done various levels of work on them that are essentially we're waiting for uh at least for uh streetlight waste hauler tso to make recommendations they have decided to put them both of those policies on their carryover list to the next council term and so i'm going to propose that we put it on our carryover list to the next council term too because we don't have the final product to work with for discussion so um there isn't much reason to say anything about that the a h r a report um i did have a discussion with um michelle miller about this and because it was also assigned to um gel for different sections of the report and uh gel had the same problem that we did that there were a number of questions to the gel and we asked um that needed to be uh to get information from the town attorney from town staff in our case we also mentioned possibilities of asking for some information from our cpa firm that works for the town markham and from tls all of that is just not going to be able to happen within this period of time and uh so michelle's uh agreement was that she has no problem with us putting this on the carryover list to go to the next council term but she would just like to be able to comment on what each of the committees is putting into its its memo and i thought that was a fair and reasonable request so i'm proposing that our carryover memo which is the last topic of our surplus real property street lights waste hauler and h r a because those are items that were assigned to us that we're going to not get to and uh we do need to do a draft and get the carryover memo uh to the council uh there is a schedule for that and i think we're actually a little behind on the schedule but that's what the what i was proposing so i uh it was you know just wanted to report that and see if there were any comments and then i don't really have anything else for today lune you know just i'm sorry just a quick reminder that after we finish the public forum on the financial orders that we just need to do a quick check in with the finance committee to make sure that there's no change in the vote and you did that very smoothly last time andy and we determined at the end of the public forum that they didn't need to stay convened so i just want to mention that okay it has been posted as a council meeting at a joint meeting joint meeting yes i mean a finance committee meeting yes for five o'clock when no not for five for six thirty six thirty and seven yeah um five o'clock is the time manager evaluation period so not before six thirty that this is a silly question but um maybe it's not silly i was i was surprised today i know we i know public comment is going to be what it is but i was surprised today when we when we convened sort of a quorum of the council that the finance committee meeting felt as though it became a full-fledged town council meeting sort of just by virtue of the quorum and and the conversation was kind of very wide-ranging about the merits of libraries as a democratic institution and all these things and it felt like a kind of lost track of our typical sort of focused discussions and i'm just curious from those who are sort of in leadership is this how i mean is this how it always is in other words if we if we had a quorum of counselors come to finance would this all of a sudden just is no longer a finance committee meeting it's just a town council meeting um yeah i mean we we run into this every year at the uh budget process where we post most of the meetings as council meetings in this councilor show and counselors frequently are not asking um straight budget questions they're asking programmatic questions but we tend to go back and forth a little bit between programmatic this was a little bit more in that direction that you were describing because people were just asking programmatic questions which would be equivalent to tell me why a books order is important which would have been more typically what would be but we're getting into the general pros and cons of libraries purposes of libraries and things like that so it was a little bit more i acknowledge that and so we really don't have a track record because this is kind of became a one-off problem that we've not really had a lot of experience with and a good preview for what the council meeting will be like on monday i think safe to say uh when you get to the point with budget forum uh you know the forum is really for the public to comment to us so that we don't really comment back to them and on the financial orders i think it will be pretty straightforward within the context of our normal work and uh so because there are uh you know multiple parts to this public forums are actually three parts if i'm correct uh one is the uh there's a requirement in there's a requirement in charter that there has to be a public forum about the budget every year and allow the public to talk about what they think they're they would like to see us considering in the budget and uh we could get a wide range of comments and suggestions and in that that's really for us for thinking about so that we have it as we talk about the guidelines then we might that's why it's being scheduled at the time it is the second part is the since that's what we did at the last meeting was all of the orders there um budget supplementals that's a supplemental budget for fiscal year so that's required to have a forum attached to it but that will be very specific to the um what we just did at our last meeting which is why um it's convened and what i'll just say is if based upon the public forum any members of the committee feel that we need to revisit the reconsider prior decisions made to recommend these orders then i need a motion to postpone consideration of that particular order if nobody makes a motion then i just say well then we have no action to take in adjourn which i think is what has universally happened in the third part is the public forum on the library request itself which is also because it's a new budget request a new budget amount and i think that will be more similar to what we heard happy uh yeah i'm getting off that topic and just asking for um clarification lin at the very beginning said we have a meeting on november 28th and then i heard you lin say also december 1st december 1st is not on my calendar so if we're going to do that someone needs to put it on my calendar so that's that request and my understanding and i started working on it today and i will get it done this weekend i started marking up the guidelines because we've got what you asked last time matt is when are we going to do the guidelines they are in theory being first draft is being read by the council on the fourth of december so which is why the first of december is on the list so um i started working on both looking at a year ago in the most recent past year redlining and i think i'll be done with it andy by the beginning of next week just because once i started thinking about it i could go through with it but i really urge everyone to look at the most recent he sent us the word document you know whether you hand write on it or do anything else with it because it would be great if we could get to a pretty good draft by going through it page by page on the 28th um you know maybe we don't get to final but we at least don't sit there talk about generalities but really go okay page one page two which is matt i think those of you who were with us last year that's the way we went through it but i'd like to not do a lot of prelude to it just like dive in because my uh the meeting otherwise will go really long and we need to get to a draft and i think that's the main business for the andy i'm right the main business on the 28th and if we also have a meeting on the first that's the big one i mean no we have a lot of little carryovers a lot of little carryovers but so that's yeah so that was just a are we having a meeting on the first and a plea to mark up that draft matt's got his hand up i did the same thing kathy earlier this week i started i started marking last years and i realized i had more questions than answers though when it came to um you know net our gross income and things like that so i don't know if there's any there's probably no way to streamline that problem i mean that information is going to have to come out in public meetings so yeah so the marker to me is both questions i need to know more here and it would be helpful paul if we could get the um final tables that are in the guidelines that showed us the actual flow of funds yeah exactly yeah you know just separated out as a document so i don't have to go to the end of the presentation um because the guideline document refers to those tables and it would just be good to have them as their own entity um again this is for the 28th you know i can go back and look at what we what we did but we always refer as shown in this thing as as shown in that thing and it's easier to have something to look at when we're writing so thank you um so indy i'm sending out a thing for people's calendar since etina is not here but it won't have a um the zoom link it'll just be to get it on people's calendars okay for the 28th and the first for yes for committee meetings yes you got it yes remember my request was we started at two on the 28th because i have another i think i might be able to make the one but i know i can make two a clock we started it at two okay great because of that camp yeah so um and people uh everybody's okay with the harry auger proposals for the next term so um that said is there anybody else who's uh any process or other questions that they would like to bring up if not it's been an exhausting day for all of us it's an exhausting week so uh maybe we should call it puts and say it's time to adjourn thank you andy thank you all andy for sharing everybody thanks