Welcome everyone to this meeting of the Community Preservation Act committee on Thursday, December 14, 2023. I am calling the meeting to order at 604 p.m. We're meeting remotely via Zoom, which is permitted by the town of the state. This meeting is being recorded and will appear on the town of Amherst CPA webpage. I'm going to call on committee members now to make sure that everyone can be heard and can hear us. I'm Sam. Tim. Present. Bob. Here. Matt. Present. Katie. Here. Doug. Present. Michelle. Present. David. Here. Robin. Present. So that's our full committee. We do need to have a meeting, a minute taker for every meeting. Would someone wish to volunteer to do so for this meeting? I can volunteer. Matt, thank you. So I'll get right onto our agenda. The first meeting agenda item is to approve any outstanding minutes. Now. We did receive in our packet and earlier in the week. Minutes from Bob. I was able to look at them and sent him. I'm not sure who else has had an opportunity to look at minutes as of yet. Does, does anyone have. I'll open it up to the committee. Anyone who has suggested edits to the minutes. Matt. I have a couple of. Minor and one. A little bit less minor edit for. December 7th. Minutes from, I think that was from Bob. So a couple of minor things. Normally we say at the end of the minutes who wrote the minutes. And he didn't. And secondly, on. The second page. In the review of the financials. He has. 1,664,000 K. I don't think it's if you probably take the three zeros and just leave the K. And then a little bit more. Did you get both of those Bob? One more, a little bit more substantial. On the first page. Dave. Comment about pickleball. I think he said something about. Sort of pausing and we. The town might come back with a little bit of a different. Idea about. So, so you just said in your, in your minutes, it just says that he met with the many stakeholders, which is true. And that he's gathering more information, which is true. But I think he also said. That he's going, the town is sort of reconsidering the plan. Okay. Is there a way you'd like to phrase that, Matt? Or suggested phrase. Dave. And he may have just joined and not heard you. We could, we could do that. I think, I think something like. The town is reconsidering the plan. That works. Okay. Okay, that's it. Others. Any others. I don't know if I put it in my edits that I had sent you early. Earlier or not. Bob. Under the approval of minutes. The motion passed. Eight in favor. Zero against and one absent. I don't recall if I put the one absent in or not. But it needs to be a vote of eight, zero and one absent. Okay. Jim. I had done in looking these over. Number one, the chart on the straw poll. Okay. I am not necessarily sure we need to include that in the minutes. And B, if we did. It just lists the numbers of the projects and doesn't list what the title of those projects are. So a reader, we have no idea what number four is. But I frankly don't think we need to include that detail of all the straw poll results. So that would be my only comment. That included them in years past. Right. Like you could just say the committee undertook a straw vote. Or something like that period. Without all that detail. That would make sense from my perspective. What do you think about that, Bob? It sounds good to me. Okay. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what number is better. And it is in the recording. So. Right. Right. It's all there for anyone to see. So that's good. Any other comments to edits? And Sam, you're just speaking about that. There were two sets of minutes. The November 30th as well. We're discussing the. December 7th ones right now. We're discussing the December 7th. We're discussing the December 7th. Distinguished between the two. And we jumped right into the 30th. So I was referring to the December 7th. I haven't seen the 30th. Has anyone else not seen the 30th? No comment. Well, let's let's go in the first packet. The first. Let's complete the discussion on the minutes of December 7th. Are there any other. Comments related to the minutes of last week's meeting. December 7th. I move that December 7th minutes with the amendments be approved. Second. We have a motion. We have a second. Is there any discussion? I don't see any discussion. I'll go ahead for a roll call vote. This is to approve. The minutes of December 7th as edited. I will vote. I. Bob. Hi. Tim. Hi. Matt. Hi. David. Can you unmute unmute your microphone, please? I will abstain. I was not present. Michelle. Hi. Robin. Hi. Katie. Hi. Doug. This is last week's meeting. I was not present. Okay. So we, the motion passes. I assume that's an abstention, Doug. So the motion passes seven in favor. Zero opposed to abstentions. Now there were other minutes. Yes, Tim. David said he was not at the meeting and I'm just looking at the members present. His name is present and not. Absent. He was David, that was last week you were with us for the straw poll. But the week before, I think you were absent. Okay. Seven meeting David was there because he's a part of the straw poll. I agree with that. Yeah. Okay. You can still retain your abstention vote, David. There's only only change it if you wish. So by my understanding of the vote, the motion passes with seven in favor, zero opposed and two abstentions. And thank you, Tim. The other minutes that have yet to be discussed are minutes of. I believe November 30 November 30th. And am I correct that we did not. Receive those prior to our last meeting. I. That's correct. We receive them in the first packet this week. Okay. So we have not voted on those yet. Does anyone have any edits to the minutes of. November 30th. I do recall looking at them and I only found. Like a name spelling edit. I believe I emailed you on that Katie. Other than that, they seemed accurate to me. Does anyone wish to make any comments on the minutes. As submitted from. November 30th. Okay. Well, Would anyone like to make a motion on the minutes related to November 30th. I moved to approve the minutes from November 30th. Is there a second that. We have a motion and we have a second. Is there any discussion? I've seen no hands raised. So we have a motion to, and a second to approve the minutes. November 30th. Okay. So we have a motion to approve the minutes of November 30th. We proceed to a roll call vote if there's no discussion. I see no discussion. I will vote. I. Tim. I apologize. I do remember them now. So I will vote. I. Bob. I. Matt. I. David. Doug. Hi. Katie. Hi. Robin. Hi. Michelle. Hi. The motion passes. Eight in favor. Zero closed. One abstention. Okay. The next. Item on our agenda is. Public comment. This is an opportunity for members of the community. To have their comments heard by our committee. We're here to listen. The community preservation at committee. If anyone who is attending. Wishes to make a comment at this time. We welcome. Your input. Or. Comments. Please raise your hand if you wish to. I'm not seeing any hands raised from the audience. I will wait another minute. If anyone in the audience, any of the attendees. Participating at home wish to. Make a public comment. We're here to listen. Again, I'm not seeing any hands raised. I will close the public comment portion of our agenda. No public comments. So. We left off at our last meeting. We had a discussion. After having a discussion of our. Straw hole ratings for the purposes of getting an idea. Of discussion on the, on the proposals that were before us. And we also. Recognize that. The current volume of funding requested for the existing projects. Exceeds are available funds. So. At this meeting, our next agenda item is to continue to discuss. And vote recommendations to the town council. That means. We deliberate. I think it would be helpful. Holly. If you're able to bring the. Spreadsheet onto the screen. I do see a hand raised from Dave. I think that's a good point. I'm going to call out the spreadsheet. I know that's something that is available to us. It's a small Mac Dave.  Have something to say. Or Sam, I know you're, you're going to, you're going to call out that spreadsheet. When the time is appropriate, I just wanted to report out that. Holly and I did meet with town staff. And we wanted to share some of the information that we. direct bearing on some of the projects that the town has proposed. Holly and I also met with the two chairs of the housing trust and had a very good discussion. The spirit of these conversations were very similar to what happened last year when deliberations began and a straw poll came out with rankings and there was a need to close the gap. So what staff did was meet with other town staff and I see Amy Rusecki is in the audience. I'd like to bring her in or I'd like to ask you to bring her in when the time is right to talk about some of these projects. But I also see that one or more of the co-chairs of the housing trust are in the audience. So our goal was to try to help you both by answering some of the questions you had about the proposals from the town and the trust and also help you close that funding gap. So when the time is right I'd be happy to kind of go in more detail on that and just let me know. You're referring to the town submitted proposals? Yes and also I don't want to speak for the trust because I know that Carol and Eric are in the audience but we did have a very productive conversation with them as well. Well, the questions were raised during the discussion of our last meeting regarding some of the larger dollar amount items and where and if they might be reduced. It's certainly pertinent to hear of any changes in proposal requested amounts. However, however you'd like to go through it, if you'd like to start with the housing proposals, we could start there and work our way through. I imagine members will have questions, but it's up to you, Sam. We could also start with the other town projects and work our way through those. My thought was it might make sense if there were, as a starter, if there were any proposals that anyone thought had portions of which were not qualified. That is to say, to start with those that we may not wish to fund and then go project by project. Then I'll just wait and when you get to a project, happy to speak to it. And that could be relatively soon here. Yes, Matt. Yeah, well, given that everyone rated project number nine the historic mouse house move of one out of five. I don't think we're going to fund that. I agree. I'd like to ask committee members. As with any of our projects the straw poll rating here is not a firm rating. It's a, it's there for the purposes of discussions. I'd like to ask the committee members if anyone has a change in thoughts on the project that Matt just brought up, which is the historic house move. I see that your hand is raised.  I just wanted before my, my ranking remains the same. But in terms of where the town and the historical commission and the CPA is going in, in regard to historic private private owned historic properties, particularly home owners. I would like to have some of it. I would request that we move forward within the next year to create guidelines that establish kind of clear reasoning between why a project might be accepted and my why it might be rejected on the basis of significance and urgency and I guess availability of funds to the property owner, but I just want to make sure that our applicants understand that understand that there's clear reasoning behind it. So that doesn't seem arbitrary. And in particular for this house, I would say I'm going to be voting not to fund it, but that's for this round. I don't necessarily think it's inappropriate for further round if those guidelines were created and we could, we could review it more substantially in that regard and maybe in a year with more available funding. Let me follow up Robin. Are you referring to historical commission guidelines? No, we just don't have any guide. We don't really have a sense of guidelines on how to compare, you know, why would we fund one historic property and not another in terms of understanding what the specific pieces are related to historic significance. How we evaluate urgency, just for a clearer sense. I mean, I would like to see, I don't think that I can vote for this project to go forward this year, but I don't think that it's a no for me that it's not appropriate to fund it. Okay, thank you. Yeah, at present we review the CPA plan with the eligibility requirements and internal discussion and commentary. We don't have specific determinations regarding the details of what you're suggesting. I think for tonight's meeting it makes sense to focus on the projects that are before us. And if I understand correctly you're indicating, aside from your thoughts for the future that you're not in support of funding this project and changing the general rating or disposition on it. Tim. Yes, I 100% agree with that we need criteria so with in the future we have other private individuals asked for public CPA funds we need better criteria as to whether yay or nay it's not just who decides to make an application. But having said that, I'm going to propose that this committee for this round deny this request the historic House move number nine in full. So I would suggest we fund it at zero. Thank you, Tim. Katie. Yeah, I appreciate what Robin suggesting and I would just add and I agree with that we need some sort of criteria like Tim said with some guidance around funding privately owned properties with historic value. For the CPA committee, especially since committee members change over time and it would be just valuable to rely on something like that. I would also add. I think Dave mentioned this a couple of weeks ago but we've toyed around in the three years I've been on the committee with what does requiring a preservation restriction mean and look like at what level and so I would just add add to that as another element of guidance or criteria around funding historic preservation work. That would be helpful for us as a committee to define in in the year going forward so next year we have that to rely on and I agree with him for now. So we have that guidance, not funding this project but potentially that person could apply next time if we have the guidance. Thank you, Katie. Robin I see your hand is raised again. Yeah, I just wanted to follow up to Katie's comment to say yeah I would love to see guidance that actually gets that can be provided to the applicants beforehand so that they really see what the preservation restriction entails at the application point that it might it might help clarify whether they want to apply or not. Thank you, Robin. Michelle. Just to piggyback on that that's not just specific to the historical content so for anything probably that needs a conservation restriction approach associated with it. I think that'd be great guidance. I'm indicating if I understand correctly Michelle that there are specific language requirements related to conservation restrictions. Yeah, anything with a restriction that comes along with any kind of application. And forgive me but is it typical that there are restrictions required for conservation. Applications that relate to conservation. Probably Dave's omic could answer that better but I think there's probably a lot more private proponents of historical projects then conservation projects but I think they both have like restrictions associated the projects under the CPAC guidance. Again, we can discuss these these items in a different time and thank you Michelle. So it seems, let me let me say this way is there anyone on the committee that would desire to provide any funding for proposal number nine, which is the historic house move as submitted this cycle. Anyone who would wish to provide funded on the committee. I'm not seeing any hands. For now, Holly if we could put a zero in the total amount in column K adjacent to the historic house move on the right hand column where it says total recommended. It's a dash. No dashes a zero. Thank you. So I asked the committee if there are any projects that we see in front of us that committee members thought might have issues of meeting the requirements and or that they were certain they didn't want to provide any funding. I think that this move seemed to be a fairly clear one based on the discussion from the other week as well as the votes. I do have one that I'd like to bring up. But which is the, I have a question related to the qualifications related to the north south cemeteries, the fencing. And if the fencing related to the north cemetery, the removal of fencing fencing would qualify under historic preservation. Because the portion of the S of the proposal as submitted doesn't seem to me to fall within the parameters of historic preservation. I think that referenced a dollar amount of 50,000 for that particular task with the remaining 100,000 being split between the north and south cemetery for repair. So I just wanted to raise that to committee I'm curious if other members have thoughts and what I just said there. I'm going to go ahead and call on Robin I see your hand if Robin. He let Dave go first I'm actually. Okay, Dave. Um, so I would defer to Robin on this on the historic side but but I believe we actually have funded fences in the past that were surrounding cemeteries but not historic I believe we did that at West Cemetery. But in fact this is, and this is why insert just jumped in a few minutes ago Sam. Staff have discussed many of the proposals, including the cemetery proposals, and we, we have some adjustments to those, and one of them happened to be you, you pick the cemetery was to actually remove the fence side of this and focus on headstone restoration. So it removed the fence and reduce the ask. And I think, you know, we've got five or six of these maybe more to go through and I think it would be good context to kind of go through what staff is proposing and the trust is proposing because I think we together closed much of the gap that you are facing by reducing some of the Thank you Dave I agree with you, I wanted to get that one out because from my perspective it's a qualification issue as opposed to a funding issue. Because it's the removal from my perspective of offense, which I'm not sure how that is a preservation related expense, but I thank you for your suggestion Dave and I agree, I'd be glad to but Before I call on you again to commence with your informing our committee, I do see a committee members have their hands back up, and I'd like to call on the committee members first was Robin. Yeah, since it might, even if the fence has removed since it might come up in the following year I think the, the removal of the existing fencing was paired with them replacing it with historically specific granite markers if I have that right so in that sense it would be a restoration of something historical so when when bundled together but I think in this circumstance where we were looking at cutting that from from the ask anyway so Thank you Robin. Doug is your hand, you still interested in speaking. Well I was just going to make a similar argument if you took, if you if you were restoring an existing structure that had some sort of modern, you know, vinyl siding on it, and you wanted to take off the vinyl siding and put wood siding that was stained to the historic period. That would be similar to me as removing a fence that's modern and putting in the historic period fencing. Or, or I think it's cement posts but I hear what you're saying both of you and thank you. If there are no further comments on this. Let me ask, let me ask the committee members, are there any other of the existing slate of proposals, funding aside for which the members think there's an issue related to qualifications that is to say that the projects. They fall within our categories the town had initially reviewed these before they submitted them to us. The fence rate, you know raise my antenna which is why I brought it up. And before we start talking hearing from the town I just wanted to continue with the item I brought up if any of the committee members have anything related to. If they have concerns with any particular projects qualification under whatever category, not seen any hands so like to call on you again Dave and take you up on your suggestion and your and thank you for volunteering to assist with discussions with town staff at the last meeting. So, like to hear, I'm sure the committee members would like to hear what you have to say. Sure, thanks Sam. And I think we can go through these fairly quickly I imagine that committee members may have questions and I guess it probably makes sense to start at the top, if, if it's okay with you Sam and bring in Erica and Carol. Again, the goal that we set out similar to last year was, was to really talk with staff and this and also talk with the trust about our proposals and we did this, you know, with with some reluctance and and it's, it was hard work if you will to pair some of these on because these are truly needs of the town, but we also recognize the difficult situation that the CPAC is in, as you prepare to decide on funding and then make those recommendations to the town council but I think we did it in the spirit of collaboration cooperation and some of these proposals, or parts of them may come back in future years. And why don't we start with the two housing proposals. I will just say that on the town side. Before Carol and Erica speak. And that with with Polly Drake and Nate Molloy who does a lot of our affordable housing projects and planning, and we determined that we could reduce the town's ask from 275 this year to 150, and that would still give us enough room to work on the projects that we have in the pipeline. So, again, that's from two fifth, excuse me 275 to 150. And I would, I would then look to, since it's a, you know, since we collaborate with the trust I guess I would, I would like to hear from Erica and Carol as to their thinking on the $500,000. And for one moment Dave, Holly, is it possible for you to zoom out on the spreadsheet that we're seeing perhaps by eliminating or shrinking columns e through I, and then enlarge it it's it's a bit hard for me to see I assume it's difficult for others certainly those in attendance. And I'm wondering if we can keep, we're not doing the voting right now so if we can enlarge the sort of the left hand portions, we go any larger seems similar to where it was. That's better from my perspective. Can everyone on the committee see this or let me restate it. Is there anyone in the committee who would like to see this larger. I assume that we can see it so sorry to interrupt you there, Dave, if I bridge you directly you were indicating that for the town of the Amherst affordable housing development funds that you felt after discussing internally with staff and others that you'd still be able to move forward in the right direction with a reduced dollar amount of 150,000 is that correct. I think it makes sense Holly for us, perhaps to change the word recommended. At the top of column K to draft. We're not yet recommending it but a draft for a draft discussion. If we could put 150,000 in call in row number six of column K. Before we continue further I see that Tim has his hand up I'd like to call on Tim. Yes, while Holly is working in the spreadsheet. For my mind, we have to shave about 600,000 so I'd be interested if we could maybe add one other column after K in between K and L for what the difference is between the ask and the draft. But at some total of all those differences should actually add up to 600 or so thousand I don't know if that's easy to do, but then we can just sort of visually see how we're doing does that make sense. That's, that's exactly what we did Tim. So, okay, we were and having just a much the same. Yeah, and having just said that Dave. I'm assuming that should there if there were enough funds, the town still would like to have 275 rather than 150 and as you go and talk about all the various town proposals. I'd be interested knowing what your opinions are on that. It's nice that you're able to shave some off because you understand we have to shave some money off, but I'd be curious to say after those discussions you've had with all the town officials. If you think 150 is the reasonable number that's different than you think 275 is the regional number but you're coming up with 150 just so you can help the committee out. Well again I'd love to get Erica and Errol in because these two really go together to and. Last year. Okay. Yeah, but but I will say, you know, we did this with some reluctance. We know that there is a housing crisis in Amherst there's a housing crisis in the valley in Massachusetts, broadening it out to the state. Does the trust know that they can spend, you know, that that they can spend 500 or the town can spend 275. We clearly can we have to be careful we have to be proactive we have to be, you know, vigilant in reviewing those proposals that come before us. 150 there is, there's not a tremendous magic to 150 we definitely we're trying to think outside the box and creatively to help the CPA see get to that number of roughly $600,000 so with ARPA funds we have some previously allocated funds from from see back in previous years so we're going to do the very best we can with 150,000 and there's no question the trust and the town will be back next year, because housing is such an urgent need in town. So that's really all I wanted to say about the towns request and our reduction, and I'll leave it to Erica and Carol to speak for the trust. Thank you Dave and thank you Tim for your suggestion. Tim the concept of having some indication of the remaining gap for lack of a better term makes sense. We did it last year by having a spreadsheet field that was the cumulative level of the, the ask and the recommended amounts. But your comment of having the reduced amount and a total on the bottom which I see Holly has done here is also it's not the negative but we get the concept of what you're discussing. I understand correctly Dave you're indicating you had some conversations with town staff as well as members of the municipal affordable housing trust, who have some information to share with the committee related to the funding requested amount, or that initially was at $500,000 is that correct Dave so Mac. Yes, and I see Carol and Erica in the audience and I see. Enable. I've already brought them into the room. Okay, wonderful. So, Carol and or Erica. Thank you for joining our meeting and we'd like to hear what you have to say regarding your proposal that might be distinct from what we might have heard previously. It's a hard time hearing you. Can we do something about the. Yeah, is that better. That's better. I have a headphone on and I hadn't flipped the microphone down sorry. So, I, you know, we get to we get whatever we get from you and it basically is the funding for whatever we do for whatever the things are that come up that might have been unexpected. We have sometimes been getting helping at least to get a piece of property so that it doesn't disappear from the possibility of being affordable housing. Frequently a lot of times it has been more than someone thought they might have asked for because of increases in construction costs. So the first thing I have to say is, I don't really know, and there isn't a way that we can know. The couple of things we do know is that some of the things that are right now in the east street Belcher town road, it doesn't look like construction is going to start perhaps until we get another shot at this. Although there may be things that they need before construction starts. Any of the other projects that we are aware of, especially with the town just having dropped what it's asking for to 150. We would not be at all surprised of some of the things that were in their 275 turn out to need a little bit more than the 150 that they have now asked for and then we will be the ones that they are likely to come to when they need more. But all that said, we think that we could do with 300 instead of 500. We will just have to make it last better. So much of it is indeterminate and I think the thing that is the biggest challenge at least to me is. I don't want. I hope that 300 will be enough so that we will not by any stretch of the imagination have to miss. Therefore, an opportunity to create some kind of affordable housing. That we really want to see happen because as Dave has said, and as all of you know that we're in a crisis in Amherst and Massachusetts and kind of everywhere else. So, but in with great difficulty and talking with Dave and Polly was there and trying to figure out what in the world would make sense knowing that. Knowing that you probably aren't going to want to capitalize anything because you don't want all your money to be going into debt service next time. For instance. We thought we could do 300. And I would like to hear what Erica wants to add. Thank you very much for listening. Erica, I'd like to invite you to share any thoughts you have with our committee. If you can hear us, we can't hear you at the moment. We're still not hearing any comments. I'm not sure if you have something to add Erica. I assume that you do. So, maybe what we can do is continue on with the discussion and then if there's something you wish to if you get your microphone working to let us know. I've not done the telephoning in. I'm not sure how effective that is via the zoom meeting. So, so we can't hear from Erica if she has something to say Carol, is there anything you'd like to say at the moment before we move and then invite Erica back another time if there's something she wishes to say. Can you hear me? I don't, I don't think. I don't know. I don't know exactly what Erica was going to say. I feel like I said what I wanted to say thanks for the opportunity though. Can you hear me now? I just removed, I'm sorry folks, I just removed her and brought her back in. So hopefully that sounds like it might have worked. Thank you. I'm sorry that I had difficulties here. I don't have too much more to add in terms of what Carol stated, but I what I do want to say is, when we had this discussion, we really wanted to be balanced and fair. One of the things that we Carol and I really appreciated was the balance between creating a really good quality of life for those who are here already in Amherst, with those who want to be part of Amherst who, you know, who work in Amherst and can't find affordable apartments here, elders who are downsizing, who can't find affordable apartments may need to think about moving out of Amherst. So there's a real balance of trying to maintain both, you know, the ability to get pipelines down because as you know, any development takes anywhere from, you know, three to five years to to get into the pipeline and to actually get up and running and be opened. And so, you know, really appreciated the conversation last week and listening to how fair and balanced all of you are and wanting to ensure that we do address the critical need of affordable housing but at the same time also address the real need of ensuring that Amherst is a place where quality of life is important for families and for young people and for elders as well. So saying that, you know, we thought, you know, okay, we're willing to go with 40% reduction, knowing that we are in partnership with the town, knowing that this year we're really going to spend very judicious amount of time in strategizing about where we can make the biggest impact without funds that's sometimes hard to make an impact but at the same time there are other ways to make an impact in terms of affordable housing and to start, you know, putting ourselves in a place to really think about how we use our funding judiciously. And so we're willing to this year go with 300,000. But as Dave and Carol said before, we will be back next year, and hopefully we'll also be able to show you how innovative we've been this year with the funding. But as you know that there are just so many opportunities which includes maybe subsidizing vouchers, subsidizing mortgages, because the housing and the rental properties here in Amherst are just really out of reach for most families, individuals and elders who may want to downsize or may want to move in just to be with friends or our community. So that's all I wanted to say but I really wanted to appreciate the fact that all of you have been so careful and committed to ensuring that Amherst is a just and very good place to live so we will go ahead and ask for 300,000. Thank you, Erica, for your perseverance in being able to share your comments with us and thank you for what you what you've said. I guess it makes sense then for Dave Zomac if you have further comments related to the town submitted proposals yourself and or if there's another representative from the town, who you think would be ready to comment on the funding request for those town proposals. I'd be great if Holly could bring in Amy Rusecki our Assistant Superintendent of Public Works, whom you all know. Before we leave housing. I just think, you know, it's really great that Carol, Erica, Nate Maloy and I could get together and discuss this I just, you know wanted to reiterate it, you know there's no need out there that we can we can certainly cover with CPA or ARPA funds. But the critical piece of these are that they can be used for pre development they can see the projects, you know, at 350 to $500,000 per unit. These are these are big numbers on our CPA spreadsheet but when it comes right down to it. That's what a per unit cost is in Massachusetts and Amherst for for an affordable unit. But the other thing I want to point out is we do appreciate I think we all appreciate that if you look at the debt service, you know we're still, we're still investing in affordable housing there's Belcher town road in the third of 10 years there's rolling and there will come off at 81610 of 10 in the 10th year, and then there's Valley CDC's project there so so you know we've invested as a community, we're investing more funds through debt service as well so we we appreciate that. But if Amy's with us, I think we can go through some of the recreation projects. I think I'd like to start with maybe some of the easier ones I say easy, they may not be so easy but I think I'd maybe like to end with the war memorial because I think Amy has a few slides if it's possible to show those in a minute but so Amy is in the room that's great. Maybe we should start with pickleball, because that that was $100,000 ask, and really nothing has changed from last week. We accept this we we are hitting the pause button on pickleball, and we, to be honest, we'd like to withdraw the $100,000 request. We need more time we need more time to work with with the community both in East Amherst as well as in North Amherst. And we think the time now is is not to request this money, we will be right up front and say that you know the 220 that we were asking for I want to be clear and happy to have Amy comment on this but the money was really to build a three pickleball courts at Kiwanis Park, and that was a package. So, it would be nice if we could just find another place in town where to 220,000 build you three pickleball courts, but to be honest, that is not the case. So where we go, we are going to be challenged by a couple of things one is the distance that is required the distance issue that we've we've heard a lot about and we understand about the noise, but every site is different. I've done some analysis of different sites in town, and I will be upfront, some of those costs like at gruff park probably are closer to half a million dollars to build courts at gruff park. And some of you may have caught in the last week, North Hampton is developing courts that one of their recreation areas. I think they asked for on the in the neighborhood of $300,000, with the full expectation that they were going to come back for more and I believe that they were in the range of half a million to maybe 600,000 so I just put it out there that we've looked at the other, the other sites in town where pickleball courts could go, and the noise concerns are real and we hear that, and the cost would be far exceed 220,000. So we're going to, we're going to withdraw this request for this year and we may come back to you next year. Amy happy to, if it's okay with Sam if Amy wants to add anything that's where we are. That would be fine. Amy. Yeah, I mean Dave, Dave gave a pretty good summary there. Yeah, I mean the biggest thing it's it's not that we don't want to see pickleball and I think you know we all agree we want to make this happen but just, you know the 220 was without noise mitigation but without any other associated costs and so it just kind of with you guys making the belt we, we couldn't continue to ask for 100 knowing that with an unknown location we might have to come back and ask for more so happy to answer any questions about it at this time. I don't have any questions at this time myself. Is there anyone from the committee who has a question on what was communicated to us by Dave or Amy relating to the pickleball courts. I'm not seeing any questions I believe the committee members are paying attention. So I think that the default means that you both spoke very clearly for us to understand. Thank you Amy relating to the pickleball courts and I see that Holly has made an edit in the draft dollar amounts related to that. Yeah, if I could say I just want to end on a positive note and Amy, Amy said very clearly. We all, I think we all want pickleball courts and Amherst we all support this. I think, collectively we receive the seat back and the town received dozens of supportive emails and letters and comments about pickleball so we haven't given up. We're going to continue our conversations with the neighbors and the butters to Kiwanis, and we're also going to talk to other neighborhoods that a but some of our other conservation area, excuse me recreation areas, like Mill River and so we haven't given up we're just going to regroup and see if we can come back with a stronger proposal. And again, it might be more than an additional $100,000 ask and we'll see where that goes so that's pickleball. Thank you Dave, certainly there was a lot of community interest in having pickleball courts exist somewhere in the town we, we've heard that from the last two cycles. Thank you. Let me, let me move on to cemeteries I think we briefly covered cemeteries and what staff we met with again Nate Maloy, Amy myself. We also included Alan snow who is our division director for parks and trees and also cover cemeteries and we agree that removing the fence piece of this makes sense and we, we wanted to reduce the price there to $100,000 to do headstone restoration at the North Cemetery and the South Emerson Cemetery. Again Nate Maloy is kind of an expert and has worked with a number of the best contractors to do this work and working in, you know with the support of the Historical Commission. It's interesting that you know some of these headstones, the range is quite dramatic I mean based on the size, the age, the damage, you know it can be as little as $250 depending on the damage, you know and some of them may be, you may have $3,000 depending on the size of the monument, the headstone and the damage and how delicate they are how thin they are how much they weigh etc so we're reducing that by 50,000. Thank you Dave does anyone on the committee have any question or comment related or as a follow up to Dave's comments on the north and south cemeteries. I just, I assume it's sort of a package deal so if you're going to hire a contractor it's most effective if they inefficient if they just do both at the same time rather than split north and south between years. It's true there are very few qualified contractors and Robin may certainly know more about this because this is, you know, part of her area of expertise so happy to defer to her but what I've learned is there are very few contractors who do this. We've found a couple of those and have been using them through the years for West Cemetery, but yes we would try to be as cost effective and efficient as possible bring them on, and their scope of services would include a certain number of headstones in each. I don't we don't know that right now Alan snow did identify a number of areas of both cemeteries that need work. Thank you, Dave Robin I see that your hand is raised. Yeah, I just wanted to say that actually any expertise of mine around cemeteries comes from the town working on these projects over the year so I defer to their judgments and I'd suggest to anybody on the committee if they know somebody who wants to train and in headstone restoration they'll be some job openings coming soon. Dave, I had a question on the cemeteries in the in terms of the reduction of the dollar amount was that the assumption that the scope of work and the proposal remains the same, or was it of the assumption that the town would focus on the headstones as opposed to the fence. It removes really the fence piece from the proposal. I think what we would try to do and Amy feel free to jump in here but I believe what Alan said is he would lug away at the fence removal as time permits with his division within DPW. And that's how we would do that. Thank you. I believe there are other town proposals as well. Yes, what did I move on to softball. So we did hear some questions and comments about priorities on the softball proposal and the staff again with Alan and Amy and Nate and myself and Holly in the room. We decided that we should really focus on two fields, obviously one a community field which primarily functions as the girls varsity and junior varsity softball field. So we would focus on that field and the field that grow off park, which is used extensively by adult leagues and and immerse recreation and we would, we would hold off for this year and perhaps future years on the field back on this park. So we were reducing that by $20,000 to $65,000 and we would apply those funds judiciously, you know, to both those fields getting them up to a much better level you may recall those fields have serious issues with the tips on the infield holes in the outfield and of course the back stops need either repair or replacement I don't off the top of my head know the details of that one right at this moment but Amy may know that a little better than I perhaps. So we will reduce that by $20,000. Thank you Tim I see your hand raised. Yes, so I have a comment about that and I think it would probably be better for us to comment after Dave's finished on each of these things, unless you want to have committee member comments on each project that Dave brings up. It would be fine to do it later if it's a comment from because I might have some comments about some of the other. I understand. Thanks. So I just, I think it's more efficient if we wait, if that's okay but just for the record I have a comment about the softball fields. That was great the the only question I would, the only comment I would make is if a committee member has a question in terms of understanding what the communication is from town staff here. I would say that questions related to clarifying what the communication is would be appropriate at this time as opposed to comments related to the impact, etc. Okay, well then I do, then I do have a question Dave. Efficiencies. If you're going to attend to two or three fields is it more efficient to do all three fields or does that make no difference because they're in different parts of town. I'm in terms of the improvements. Yeah, like, if we decide to hold on the corners field, does that mean that it's going to be a less efficient use of dollars because you have to bring in certain I don't know experts who handle restoration of softball fields and while they're on site. They might as well handle the three fields rather two fields and just saving $20,000 may not be a more efficient way to address that that's my question. I think I would defer to Amy on that, if possible Amy. Yeah. Yeah, no I can answer that so that's a good question Dave. There's not a huge economy of scale savings on this account so. Yeah, you're not it's not going to be, you know, twice the cost to have them only come in and do one field in a subsequent year. And another question. The assumption is that Qantas field is still in need, but maybe less of a need to the other two fields and the only reason you're doing this is to help us out by saving 20 you'd rather do all three fields. But you're being generous and deciding to only two to is that fair. Yes. All right, let's let's move on. I just needed to have the answer to that. Yeah, can I speak to that just for another second. No, I do want to be clear that, you know, all three of these fields do need work. And I do have concerns if we only are able to fund two of them as opposed to three of them because we do have Fort River going off this year.  So the other thing, Tim, if I could just add is that these weren't arbitrary. I mean, we looked at, you know, really, they're ranked, right. They're ranked. I mean, community field, as I said, is the varsity field Amherst baseball, which is also Amherst baseball and Amherst softball field, you know, uses that field for girls softball. And it's, it should be our best field, growth. You know, growth has parking growth has many other amenities. Kiwanis, you know, does not have as many things going for it because it's it is a quieter less developed area at this time. So that was part of our we weren't just trying to meet the funding goal but we were prioritizing and saying if we can only have a certain amount of money, we should put that money in the two fields that make the most sense. So, can I move on Sam just yes. The other project that we discussed reducing is the trail restoration and enhancement. Again, I can speak to that Aaron jock, who is a staff member in my department, one of my departments with that proposal together. Again, there's clearly $100,000 worth of worth of trail work out there bridge work. And we propose reducing that by $20,000 as well to $80,000. Okay. With that said, I believe and correct me Holly and Amy if I missed something, we wanted to end by talking about the rehabilitation of the area around War Memorial pool but I believe those were the reductions that we were coming to the table with tonight did I miss any. So I just want to confirm Dave so and I. Mil River tennis court is going to stay at the 60,000 it was not going to make any changes to that particular request. That is my belief if we like to not make any changes to that particular request. That that's correct that's there wasn't anything to really shave off that that's a you either do the project in full or you don't. So thank you Dave so far and if I understand correctly you had some comments related to the War Memorial. Amy, Amy has a very short slide deck that she because there are a lot of questions about that project. Amy put together just a couple of slides to show the group if that would help explain the, the connection between grants etc if that would be possible. It would be helpful there were some questions related to the funding relationship to the potential for grants. So, if you're able, Amy, I'm sure the committee would appreciate as well as any attending members or viewers. Again, Holly just has to promote me to a panelist to be able to share a screen.  I'm going to steal a little of Amy's thunder we've been working, you know we work hard to reduce some of these proposals. We are not proposing to reduce the War Memorial ask so the reductions that we're coming to the table with are done at this point. But, but we want to stay firm at the 754 War Memorial and Amy is going to tell you why. There we go. All right, I am going to just show this quickly we. Sorry, these aren't even fancy looking or anything but just kind of wanted to go through, you know, as we're looking at this project in total so this is we're anticipating that this is going to be about a $2 million project total and so it's for the end redoing the whole area. And a couple of the other recent projects, just to kind of give you a frame of mind of, you know, how we came up with this anticipated cost and, you know, obviously we'll firm that number up as we're going through the design process but the grot Park splash pad Kendrick Park Playground and North Common rehab or all three projects that we've done recently and you can see the cost there. There's two grants that we're going to be actively going after for this. One of them is the park grant stands for Parkland acquisition and renovations for communities. And you can see the description of what exactly that includes but improvement of existing parks that's the portion of it that we're going after. Or that's kind of how we qualify for this I should say this is a Massachusetts specific grant. The maximum award amount is 500,000 and they reimbursed up to 70%. So it means that on a local level, we would at least need to have 250 or sorry 215,000 as a local match to maximize the award. Obviously we saw in the last slide the project is going to cost much more than that but and this is one where the application is in July. And so by you know if we want to apply for it this year, we're going to need to have at least 215 of what we're ultimately going to need in local match allocated at that time. And Amherst has been successful with park grants in the past so Kendrick Park, Hickory Ridge and Mill River pool are all examples of projects that we've gotten park grants for. The other one that we're looking at is the land and water conservation fund grant. And this is one that it's federally funded but it's administered on the state level out of the, the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs. And the projects, you can see the range of projects but how we qualify as renovation of a park. And this one, it does have a maximum award of up to a million. And the reimbursement rate is up to 50% of that. So that would mean in order for us to qualify for a million, you know, up to a million in grant funding, we would need to have a million dollars in local match to maximize that. This one, the application process happens right around now so if we were to apply for this we would be applying for it next January, which means, you know, around this time next year we would need to have a million dollars in funding allocated to maximize that match. And a couple of the past projects that have been funded that we have gotten for this are North Common, Groff Park and Puppers Pond. So we have, we do have success with both of these grants in the past. And so just kind of doing the math, this is the snapshot that helped me kind of wrap my head around it is, you know, we're looking at a $2 million project. We're requesting $750,000. Potentially that gives us anywhere from 500,000 to up, you know, up to a million in grant funding, we're still going to have this remaining project costs that we're going to have to have the town either go through a capital request for it or find some other, you know, grant or funding mechanism for it. So I do put this out there just so that you know people understand we're not 100% relying on CPA to fund this or to do the local match but we are hoping that it's part of what can ultimately come together part of the many sources of funding that can be placed together to make the War Memorial area project happen. Thank you, Amy. I think the chart that we're looking at is helpful for me and probably others. Matt, I see you have your hand raised. Yeah, Amy. So, are you saying that you only get one of Park or else WCF you don't get both that that is correct. I see. Yeah, you're not allowed to like, use the grant funding from one to be the match for the other and so it's. Okay, well that was one question that so that's fine, but you're also saying that you don't get both grants. Correct. You only get one grant or the other grant or say if you get Park and then later on you get more from LWCF then you have to return the park. So I could jump in, Amy. Highly unlikely because Land and Water Conservation or Federal funds that come through the same office as the Park grant, it's highly unlikely to get both. I don't know if we've ever gotten both or one project. So, it's kind of like the state I think looks at it as kind of like double dipping. We've kind of got to decide which one to go for or we put in for both, but because it comes through the same office. I don't know the community you've gotten both grants or the same project. Right. Okay. And if for some reason the grants don't come through or additional funding for project will need to be obtained elsewhere. Is this project something that can be done in parts. Aside from what is awarded by the CPA committee. Yeah, absolutely. You know the the big kind of driver for this project is the the bath house that does need replacement. You know that being said, it's looking at the whole project so looking at kind of revitalizing the rest of the area that's part of pushing that forward at the same time is it's going to make it a stronger application for some of these grants, but also. Yeah, anyway, so it can be broken apart into a couple of phases if it needs to. A reminder to the committee that you know, the committee has already funded the design of the of the bath house and the area around the bath house. And to answer your question Sam I think. Yeah, there's kind of a, if once we have that design, we could incrementally develop that space now we're not talking about acres and acres and acres and acres you know how big the space is around war Memorial. But we could phase that in over time but as Amy said the bath house is the linchpin that is the pivotal piece. It also our goal is to provide changing space and most importantly comfort stations restrooms for those people visiting and on hopefully a new track and field and and the other fields at the, at the high school, but we can develop the area around it in phases, once we have the plan. Thank you Dave, and thank you, Amy.  Yeah, excuse my COVID lace soprano voice. I'm a little confused about why you didn't ask for either a million or a half million just to leverage one of those grants fully. It seems like 750 is sort of this compromise number is that what I'm picking up. Potentially. But I also think you know even if we go after the grant that gives us half a million. It seems that then we have to cover one and a half million for, you know, in other funding and so the 750 was kind of a strategic it allows us to have a really good local match for either option and helps us cover the bigger gap if we ultimately get the one that has the smaller grant on the end of it. Thanks. Thank you, Bob and Amy. I did see a hand up earlier, although not currently. Does anyone on the committee have any questions related to understanding what was communicated. Relating to the war memorial pool request and grant potential. Not seeing any hands. So great. Thank you for sharing that information with our committee. And for describing the distinctions and the details portions of the details related to that. Very good. Holly, could we bring back the spreadsheet of projects. Matt, I see that your hand is raised go ahead. Yeah, so that the discussion on the spreadsheet is a little more helpful if Holly could for the projects that we haven't discussed, make column K equal column J. Yeah, so it's like every this one. Stop. Is that a staff member Holly. No, that's some she could be new comfort dog in town hall. Yeah, Holly, if you use the formula and just copy the formula would go faster. I know but I just want to make sure that I'm not. I'm going to change all my. I'm not changing the ones that we already did. They're doubling up. Glad I don't have to do spreadsheeting live in front of an audience. Yeah, I know isn't that great. I do this at home and encountered the same situation where I wrote them in by hand for method would have been a little different here but I'm trying to. I think that's all of them. Excuse me. Pardon. I was just going to say just as Holly is doing that just FYI added up the reductions so far add up to 613,000 and our target was about 618 so just FYI. So, Matt your hand is still raised is there a follow up comment. Yes, there's a second question. So I'm wondering if we could discuss the administration number and what these balances and administration because the outstanding gap is 5,432. So, yeah, it's I think we can discuss that one and there's another one that seems to make sense as well. And then the question also is confirming the committee's interest in allocating fiscal year 2024 cat reserves towards fiscal year 2025 projects or house so we've already assumed that. Well, it's, it's a factor in the spreadsheet if we go to the bottom there it's an additional item on the. On the gap. Well, the only way in which we're close to closing the gap is if we apply the budget a reserve to this year's projects. I understand. So there's a number of projects we've received information from the town. After their thorough discussions internally which brings it to a closer gap. I do want us to be able to talk about a few of the projects and administrative is certainly one of them. There's about, aside from the town input that we just received, there are some private proposals as well. Two of them that I think warrant some discussion at this point in time are the administrative budget that Matt referenced and I also think the Zion church request for two reasons one is the HPR requirement of $5,000. And also, is there a desire for a contingency amount given that their estimated estimate is based on a previous year but let's commence with what Matt has suggested which is to discuss the administration fee and a question related to that I'm not sure if you know or not. Do we know what our current balance is as it relates to administrative fees. And secondly, do we know approximately what's apt to get us served or utilized encumbered in a given year cycle. I'm looking at right now so we actually have and I was going to bring this up when we got to this this point more or less. So there is currently a balance of approximately just over $36,000 in the administrative funds portion. But we are required to and what we have to pay every year are advertising and our community preservation coalition dues. Those things, typically, I would say are around the $5,000 mark, but what had happened was a couple of years back and Sam may recall this better than I because I was not the staff liaison at that time is that additional monies were put into the administrative fees for, I believe, helping with some of those restrictions historic restrictions conservation restrictions open space restrictions etc. So that is the piece of it that I'm not really that familiar with on how much was designated for that when will we need that how much those those costs would be. So, I know that Dave Z has followed as well Dave so Mac has followed CPA for a while as well so that's the piece that I'm just unclear of there. There is a lot of money right now but I don't know how much of it. Folks think that will be used. We did Holly put money in a number of cycles ago, perhaps three or four, and a portion of it was intended to be used for signage. And there for those who may not have seen there. There are some large banners around the center town common. There used to be some at the Kendrick Park, as well as at the dog park we have these banners that were put up to call attention to the existence of CPA and the usage of funds. Dave, Dave, you can correct me if I'm incorrect here that some of the funding was used for some of the kiosks at these locations as they come into existence Kiwanis, excuse me, Kendrick Park and dog park I believe and possibly the golf park. And there was discussion at one point Dave you had indicated we would be adding signage to the existing references of the many of the trails that would indicate that they had been partially funded by CPA. So that was the origin of the earlier dollar amounts. If I miss spoke Dave Zomac, please, please jump in. Yes, sorry I stepped away for one second there but I think in general you're, you were, you covered a lot of the ground there Sam. I don't. Yeah, I'm not as up to date on on balances per se, but those are the general categories. Okay. Thank you. I do see hands raised by I don't know the order I think you were first Robin. Yeah, I just had a question and it might not be answerable in this meeting. It seems to me like I remember a historic commission meeting where there was a discussion of CPA funds for survey that might be hanging out there without a specific project attached to them but I could be remembering that completely wrong. I'm just looking at this East Amherst, a local historic district and wondering if there are other funds that aren't spoken for that could go toward that. So. Oh, interesting Robin I will have to look into I understand what you're saying now is I'm saying no you cannot use funds that were given to somebody else for something. We can't, we can't change the purpose of the original but there were some due diligence funds. I believe for the town of Amherst, but that's what I was thinking of. It would have to be under historic and I don't, I can double check on that and maybe get back to you tonight if not, it would have to be in a subsequent meeting but let me take a peek. I understand your question now hang on. Michelle. So Holly mentioned advertisement as part of this 5k allocation. And I don't remember talking about that before but as far as I know it's just sort of on the town website maybe Facebook is, is that the signage that you were talking about or is there actually a budget for town advertisement. So as part of the public hearing any public hearing must be by state law advertised in a local newspaper. So we have to put an advertisement we put an advertisement in the daily have sugars that in the Amherst bulleted and unfortunately those costs are getting increasing as with everything else. So it's just once a year. So Matt had raised the discussion relating to the administration fees we currently have a significant balance so I think I saw that Holly you put a $0 amount in the draft which seems appropriate. I did want to bring up the Zion church, the North Church, excuse me. This was another one for me, where I had an asterisk and my asterisk and me on my own thoughts on this project was the, the additional expenses for HP ours. I recall last year that we added $5,000 to each of the historic preservation projects that related to altering existing building because there's a requirement for that and town staff estimated that it would be $5,000. So I believe for the Zion Church request as it currently exists, distinct from what we award, or if we award for that projects work, there's going to be an additional $5,000 for HP ours if it's recommended and approved. And the other item affiliated with that they came to my mind related to contingencies. Otherwise we're jumping around, but I, it seems, given our general ratings and gaps funding which is close that it's, it's warranted to discuss this one because I think it's one of the ones that has a variance. Anyone else have thoughts regarding the HPR expense related to the Zion church, which I believe is 5,000 years past and or a contingency fund Robin. Yeah, I had the same concerns. And I know that the applicants in a chamber for us and said that they had had sought guidance on taking out a loan if there was a contingency issue, but I agree with you Sam. I think it would be who be of us to fund that amount so that the project can can go forward more smoothly and not be at risk of running into trouble down the road. So, yep, those are my comments. You say that amount. What, what are you sorry whatever I mean whatever I'm not as familiar with, you know, what an appropriate contingency amount would be but it's I think it merits discussion. Okay. Matt. Yeah, so regarding the contingency. I think that the applicant last week in the questions discussed that and also in the packet we had the the budget from the North Church, which was in Korean, but it was fairly comprehensible. I don't know if other committee members were able to review that. I did notice with their budget. They have it does look like they have changed their budget to specifically raise money to support this. And they, they had $20,000 budget specifically for this plus they have also increased their general maintenance budget I think. So, if I pull up the packet. Yeah, so they've got in their expenses budget 31,118 for maintenance in addition to 22,000 in the building fund. I think that's how in addition to their option to get a loan. I think that's, that's their approach. So, I feel like they, they are trying to handle the contingency themselves through their own fundraising. And also they have to increase their fundraising because they are aware as we are to that there are other maintenance issues with the building beyond just the roof. Kenny. You know, thanks, Sam. I agree with Matt, having looked at their budget. I thought the contingency, you know, they, they responded to that. My question is around the use of administrative. If we have $36,000 and administrative fee, could that be, you know, $5,000 from there be put to use for the. Restriction that has their preservation restriction as opposed to coming out of. Paulie, I guess the question is, can, can funds that are currently allocated and previously voted for. In the town of the Emerson administration be. For lack of better term return to the pot. Well, I wouldn't. Not return to the partners whether or not preservation restriction is an appropriate administrative expense. And once again, I'm going to have to look into that. I believe that was a discussion that you guys had to the 2 or 3 years ago when we. In and I may be mistaken, but I believe the answer was no, but I will double check into that. I'd seem to recall that discussion as well, Holly. Yeah, I believe the answer is no, but I will double check. And if the answer were no. If it were not available for an HPR. Can it be reallocated I guess that would be the procedural way if that's even an option. So that's something to check, I guess. So you would officially reduce your administrative costs and then add them back to the pot to. Is that allocate them out. Okay. You know a portion of it, but I guess regardless of where funding sources arrives from. It's my opinion that there's a need for. A set of funds to accommodate HPR restrictions on this property. And I believe it makes sense to include that in our draft amount. We set up. I think we've utilized a dollar amount of 5000. Last year for any of these types of projects based on feedback from the town. I would recommend that we do so, but I'd like to hear what the committee thinks. Tim. I agree with that and my recollection is that. I think the county's restricted for the restriction funds would coming out of the general town budget, not CPA funds or past CPA administrative funds. And we take the burden off the town budget we elected to add for each project $5000 of which we started last year. And that was this number be 182 911 I think is what your intent is, which includes the $5000 for the. I agree with that. As a means of resolving for discussion purposes, the issue of PR. Contingency amount is a separate discussion we've heard from Matt and from Katie on that as well as from Robin. I do have a question Holly. At present, we can see on the screen. The upper portion of the, or at least I can see on the screen, the projects and a portion of the debt, but I cannot see the implications of those dollar amounts in some on the bottom. There are a field that exists on this spreadsheet that incorporates the draft dollar amounts that are referenced on column K, as well as the existing funds and balances. Can you hear me Holly. I'm sorry, what was that no I'm sorry I had to step away for a second. Yes, no problem. You're in the hot seat. We all depend on you so sorry. No, no, that's fine. I appreciate very much all that you do. It makes things this it makes it so helpful for us. But the question is, given that we have draft dollar amounts in column K. We can see the implications of that column K those changes those draft changes in as it relates to the available funds and the existing and the debt so in other words lower in this spreadsheet on the left hand side. So we've figured out with a gap further down probably on line number 33 or so in row number 33 or 36 right there we had the estimated surplus and the estimated expense. So, did you am I correct that you have created a formula that incorporates everything and places it into column, the column E line number row number 45 currently $432 row number 45 column E. Yes, that's correct. So, can we highlight that please, and maybe put a shaded background of some color on it. So it stands out. Could you explain to me and or others, what's incorporated in that $432 I assume that's a deficit. I guess I'm not sure what you're, what you're asking with the dollar amounts that we just with the dollar amounts that we just discussed and the debt that we must pay in the using the 164 463. We are short for $132. So if you were to change as an example, the estimated surplus deficit of 164 a dollar that would change a dollar as well so does the committee understand what that that field indicates. In other words, it appears if we if we go with the draft dollar amounts and column K were within $432 of fulfilling those dollar amounts. Is that correct Holly. Yeah, there you go. So Holly had just to test it out had lowered one of the projects by $432 and it became a zero. Okay. I think that's a helpful field as we discussed these, these items can we scroll back up and show the left hand side. I'm going to request it one more field column. Yeah, there we go. I guess I guess it's just column J. For some reason column J has changed to it no longer shows the initial requested amount it just shows what we have. There we go. Okay, let's see that your hand is raised Dave so Mac. Yeah, I just getting back to the contingency for the Zion church, and I don't know if Holly can comment on this or not but it strikes me that you know, every, every non town, well, every every applicant will have some sort of grant agreement with the town, particularly for that large of a sum, they will have a grant agreement with us. And I don't know Holly in the past, if we have had something in that grant agreement about requiring those funds. Somebody made a comment which was a very good comment, you don't want to get three quarters of the way through this project with CPA town CPA funds and realize, you know, you, you overshot your budget and there isn't $30,000 to finish it so I think the grant agreement can, you know, cover and require those funds to be, you know, in the bank in the house if you will, when the project starts and Holly correct me if I'm off base on that, but you know the project. You have to have those funds to start the project. It can't be kind of aspirational.  I think we can require that if I'm not mistaken, I can check with Nate Maloy but I think it's, you know, you have to have, you have to have the money available because they're often, you know, cost overruns and labor overruns and whatnot. I think Matt and others spoke to and Katie spoke to the Zion Church's budget, and they've identified those funds but I think in our grant agreement we can solidify that. Thank you. The reason I had brought up the contingency as my understanding is their estimate was based on previous time period. In other words, it was done and submitted based on numbers prior to September of this year. So it came into my mind that it could be an issue and they their budget which I did read. And it was good to see that the church responded to the request from the committee. And some of those funds in their budget were to be raised. In other words, not existing funds, which is why I brought up the topic. Holly. So I'm not 100% sure on that one Dave that would definitely be a question for Nate Maloy who typically works with the applicants to draft that. There clearly is in the contracts that it is only up to X dollars any cost overruns it is is very clearly born by the applicant there is no more. We need another $1000 $10,000 $20,000 that that's not possible without waiting a year and going through another round of CPA. That piece is certainly clear but in terms of any matching funds, I don't I'm not familiar with those contracts so we would definitely want to check with me. Okay, Robin. So, so hypothetically then, if we were to award the hundred and well it's 182 with the preservation restriction but the award about to the church, and they have a cost overrun that they can't cover. And we don't have anything left in reserves because we're not bonding anything. Yes, my concern is with the uncertainty of all that, we're going to be deferring this, we could potentially be deferring the project, another year, or want to whatever that contingency as that's my only thinking that with the situation, especially I didn't look at the budget. You know, to not have those funds secured and locked down. I mean, I'm just, I'm uneasy on some level with what you know the potential for it just not to go forward again. And then, you know, we have another $170,000 that's sitting there for the next round, but the church continues to face the weather. Doug. Yeah. Thanks, Sam. You know, I had been interested in seeing their budget, because I wasn't sure how strong a partner they are on keeping that building going. And, you know, I guess my impression is mostly formed by driving by it and seeing how the paint is peeling off the building. And it just looks like it's not being maintained. So, having this grant request come in for essentially 100% of a construction project made me feel like, well, if we give them 177 this year, you know, what's the next capital project that the building needs, and are they going to come back. And are we over time, essentially going to become the ones who fund the continued existence of the building. Which may be what the CPAC group, you know, committee and the town want to do. I appreciate that it's a landmark building in North Amherst. I saw that many members of this group rated this project as a five and, you know, I mean, I have no objection to keeping the building. But I think we need to be careful about how we partner with entities, especially if they are actually struggling to keep their buildings. So, you know, I know once you make a grant, that's decided and the next time it comes in, you can't think about how much money you already invested in it, that's a sunk cost. But I guess, you know, this may not be the only institutional entity in town that has its house poor. And do we want to have a precedent of taking care of the buildings that the occupants don't have the wherewithal to support anymore. So, that may be a bigger question than we need to deal with tonight. You know, I saw that we had to reserve from last year which basically a gather was put aside for this purpose for this church. I have no objection to going forward with granting them this money. But I, you know, in light of the conversation tonight. I think it would be good for us to encourage applicants to bring some money to the table to show us a project budget that has a significant amount that is funded by the applicant and not 100% by us. Thank you. Thank you, Doug, Robin. I think I agree pretty much with Doug on everything there. The only thing that I would add to the conversation is, is the issue that with the type of damage in particular right now with the building. And having owned a historic home previously to the one that I lived in now and been a little bit over. Because I couldn't afford to that sort of upkeep the issue right the issue before us is that there's damage that is at risk of further damage and the further historic structure is damaged, the more potential it is to be lost forever. So, I think the, the, the peeling paint is not as, as frightening of an issue going forward and something that, you know, could essentially be deferred down the line but this particular particular. I wouldn't even call it maintenance repair is critical to prevent further destruction of a really significant building. And so that's kind of where my support comes from. Thank you, Robin. Katie. Thanks, Sam. And I, I too agree, Doug, with your concerns and comments. It is a risk. And I would say that having been on the committee last year and seeing this progress, I feel that the Zion church has shown really good faith and a lot of progress in response to our questions. And in terms of having zero contingency and sort of zero building maintenance and is really building that forward, which I think the process has inspired and I do think those that need funding most can be risky. And yet that, you know, we sort of are here to, I think serve those who need that need it and potentially create some momentum for them in fundraising and sort of future maintenance. But I think to Robin's point, you know, sort of like stopping the further deterioration is a great first step and certainly wouldn't harm things in terms of the building and, you know, whatever future it has it may not be. But hopefully it would be beginning to preserve that building for many more years to come, no matter who is who owns it.  I have seen a lot of demonstrated good faith and progress in their approach to this and feels like a great partnership and the questions that we've asked and in their response and in the work that they've done. To move things forward. So I just wanted to add that in. Thank you, Katie. Dave Zomac. Yeah, I just want to say I think this is a great conversation I, I, I fully understand and agree with many of the points that Doug made a few minutes ago I think staff has talked about many of them. I just we don't probably want to go into this level of detail but I in the future I do think that the CPAC and staff and working with the Historical Commission we want to have these kind of deeper conversations around kind of direction and maybe even as far as policy on how far we, we can go and how much we can invest in essentially these private structures, you know, moments ago, you know, you were talking about the house on on Northampton Road. You know, I, I think this is a very significant structure in North Amherst. But the question is, you know, one it is a house of worship at this time. We've invested in other houses of worship in town, as recently as the South Amherst Church, the JCA down on Main Street. Other communities have actually put dollar amount limits on what they do invest in private structures of all kinds so you know I think the Historical Commission has had some preliminary conversations on that and, and it's, I think it'd be a fruitful conversation to have in the future I'm not saying it's now is the time but I think there are a lot of questions about this I will investigate with Nate, just whether we can. There has to be some guarantee that contingency funds are available if needed. You know these funds if the town county if you recommend this to town council town council votes in favor of this funding these funds, they wouldn't be available until July 1 of 24. You know, Sam's point earlier there. That's a long time to wait and costs may rise at the you know when they go to bid this job so if all of that, you know, falls into place. So, they are going to likely need some funds in hand to move this forward and there may be a way for us to put that in their, their grant agreement with the town so I think in the future we do want to have a conversation about, about how much the town can invest in private structures of all kinds. Thanks. Yeah, sorry, Dave, that policy conversation does need to happen. We were talking about that earlier. I think that absolutely. You know, but we can't make our decisions now and something we haven't yet done right and you agree with that. So, I do think that has to happen. I do want to go on record that I love the idea of contingencies because I think it does help mitigate risk. And we have done that in the past and I think we certainly can do that with this. We do have 164,000 that could be used this year, potentially because it's in the reserves. So, you know, we could have some flexibility to get that work moving potentially with the remainder coming in the next year. And that might also help with contingency just another option. I do like the idea of having and want to go on record of having, you know, engine on having some additional funds raised and in hand. Thank you, Katie. For the discussion purposes I raised the Zion church because of the issues that we're discussing I think it's one of the few projects that has that issue. I broached the question to the committee of what do committee members think about increasing the requested dollar amount to cover a portion of potential contingencies. In terms of that response, distinct from financial viability and distinct from anything that would be potentially written into any agreements. The question, which seems to make sense to pose to committee is what thoughts do committee members have on the requested dollar amount of 177 plus the HPR of the committee considering a higher dollar amount if they were in favor of it. I've heard, we heard, I believe from Matt and Katie indicating that they address that might be addressed by their budget that they responded to I'm wondering if other committee members have any thoughts specific to the 177 911 request and any implications of a contingencies related to that. I see Robin your hand was here first Bob I see you. Bob Robin first. Oh, sorry. Yeah, I think I would just like confirmation one way or another with a clear understanding with the church that either they do have the funds or, or I would be in favor of voting for an appropriate contingency amount with CPA funds. And if there was support for that. My concern is just that this session will close and they'll get stuck and the project won't go forward. Bob. I'm of, I'm of two minds I guess to the previous points about their fundraising past the budgeting skin in the game if you will, it might make sense just to fund the lower amount and let them. I guess, flex their fundraising or budget muscles up with the other amount just as sort of a starter exercise. Thank you. Searching on the list here. Doug. Yeah, I would. I feel pretty much the way Paul does. I would fund what they asked and rely on them to make the project a success. Thank you, Doug. Other comments. Yeah, I just wanted to add I know that Nate Malloy is in another meeting he's meeting with the housing trust right now and we were just exchanging information and he did confirm that we can put in a condition in the contract agreement. Typically, we have a condition that the agreement that the entire project budget is documented before CPA funds are released and could could include a percent of contingency. And I just wanted to go back to something Doug said a few minutes ago. That I agree with which is and and Bob said it a different way which is, you know, I do think applicants need to have some skin in the game and and it is. I don't know if it's unprecedented, but I'd say it's a very unusual for CPAC to fund 100% of a project, including the contingency. We don't even know what the contingency is at this point because this work hasn't been bid out. I do think CPAC. Your committee in the past has incentivized applicants to try to go for other funding private grants. I mean, you know, you've, you've been very clear even with the town find other monies to match these funds so I just would caution a little bit. To take that out of this proposal. The Zion Church didn't ask for the contingency. They asked for 177.911. And so that's just my advice to the committee is stay at that number and, you know, the town staff will work with them to create a grant agreement that builds in the contingency. And what that will be is anybody's guess once this is did out in sometime in the late summer, probably of 24. Michelle. Sorry, Holly, you probably have something more formative to say. I'll just sneak in. So they, so that 21,000 I think is what they showed in their new budget for their new building costs. So I don't, I wasn't clear when that money is available, like what their fiscal year is and if it would mesh well with the grant agreements that Dave is talking about, but that's at least 10% contingency, but not adjusting for any kind of inflation. So if that was meant to represent it, it seems like they might have that on hand. That's all. Thank you, Michelle Holly. I'm not even 100% sure that I should say this the way I'm going to say it, but every project out here. Could possibly run over budget. I think it's a, I'm not sure that it's a good practice to anticipate other people's needs and, and fund for things that they're not even asking for at this point and that may not be the best way I guess I'm just not sure how to say that. There's, there's a lot of projects out here that people have asked for that they're basing on costs right now when it comes down to it. They may be short as well. So, is that a practice we want to get into maybe is a better way of asking that question. Thank you. Holly, can you let Tim Neil back into the meeting he's he's an attendee at present, and he must have gotten disconnected. And it may be that Tim has something to say on this as well. I'm going to see if we can get him back in here. He is back in if your hand was raised to say something, Tim, please raise it again Robin I see that your hand is raised. Yeah, I just, sorry. Okay, I just wanted to. I appreciate the direction from everyone I'm not really as familiar with this aspect of things I think part of my reasoning was that I felt like a year ago or two years ago maybe. I remember somebody's project amount being increased by us but that might be just faulty memory on my part so I appreciate all the direction from everybody and, and I pretty much agree with all the reasoning that's going on. Thank you. So there, there are lots of projects here, I see you Tim and we've made. We have not talked about all of them, but we have received budget draft amounts that bring us closer to a potential funding solution. And share again holly with the current draft amounts where we're at in terms of gaps. So above here. So here we have saved the $618,000. Our gap was 618 432 so we are within $432 being able to. That's inclusive of the display or 24 budgeted reserves that correct that includes a budgeted reserve this is the deficit if we do not use the budgeted reserve. So in which case we'd have to. Okay, I see your hand Tim. The reason I'm bringing that up it's currently close to 815. And it seems to me that it may make sense for us to get a couple of responses to some inquiries regarding administration funds, and then come back next week to conclude our discussions and deliberations or at least hopefully do so on a project by project basis. I bring this up because I recall last year. We had a meeting that extended for a good duration and concentration started to wane among participants which may not be desirable when we're talking about significant funds. And that's my mindset at the moment. Tim, I'd like to call on you, please. Yeah, so yes, I somehow I got disconnected and I couldn't get back to speak. But I agree with the previous comments regarding contingencies my feeling is we shouldn't guess that the applicants numbers are wrong and and us add them add to it just because we think they may have miscalculated it I agree with Holly that many of these projects, when the rubber hits the road they may not meet the original applicant request so that's my opinion on that one. As for the further projects Sam I do think, even though we in effect reached our targets we do and should talk about each one I think we got a sense last week that we were going three hours and I for one would prefer to keep it rather than wait till next week. So that's my opinion on that one. I'm fine with going, depending on the committee. Let me ask it this way are there committee members who would not wish to continue at this time and rather meet again next time. Michelle. Normally I'm up for a late night but last night was like, like con con meeting and I really want to put my kids to bed tonight so that's just my, my personal two cents on that. So, I'm in the throes of COVID so I'm not going to volunteer to keep going. Katie. Well, those are two very good reasons not to keep going but I, I'm not sure I don't, I'm not available next week. Until after seven, maybe closer to 730 so I'm just concerned about that. Yeah. We had scheduled our time from six to eight for today, although I thought it might go longer than that. I don't have a problem continuing. I'm not certain that we would conclude discussions on all of the proposals, as well as conclude voting on all of the proposals. It seems like a lot to do in the next 45 minutes. Why don't why don't we continue for another 15 minutes which is what I had referenced the other week that we might go to 830 even though it was listed as eight and see where we where we are. Tim, your hand is still raised is that. Yeah, I just was going to make a quick suggestion. I think it would be helpful for us to have dollar amounts or propose new dollar amounts and my request is, if we could just quickly, if anyone has a proposed suggested lower amount for those projects that are already on the table, just to introduce that, if everybody thinks the projects on the table are okay with the dollar amounts listed, then we can just have more substantive discussion next week. That would be that would be a time savers sort of alternative. Michelle. I saw an email from the mill river project about some additional match they were providing does that just fill the match they had previously provided or is that potentially a reduction in the cost they had. My understanding Michelle is that their application referenced their intent to raise that money, and they were providing a progress report to us to indicate that they are on track for what they expected, and assuming that they were successful that they would still have this request, in other words, they lowered their requested amount to 46,000 46,875 on the hope and assumption that they would meet that and so they're letting us know that it's going well. So it would not impact their request based on my reading of what they they referenced. Well Tim you had the suggestion does anyone have any discussions on particular dollar amounts that they might wish to lower. We have $432 difference I don't think we need to worry about that amount at this moment. We may or may not be able to, you know, we don't, we have not allocated any from a town of Amherst administration, so we can could not take anything from there. So I guess a question if we're going to continue this evening, one that would be pertinent is this. On the assumption that we were to approve dollar amounts whatever they might be for all of the listed proposals here in column K, with some variations. Any committee members have an issue. Or how would the committee members wish to allocate the fiscal year 2024 balance. We had set aside and Matt raised the point that these numbers that we're talking about assume the inclusion of the 164,000 that's currently set aside as a reserve a budgeted reserve for fiscal year 2024. We're discussing fiscal year 2025 projects right now. So, does anyone have an issue or comments related to the allocation and inclusion of fiscal year 2024 budgeted funds to meet the need. We have assumed it essentially in our discussions here, and the only proposal that the amount was set aside for the purposes or the intent of providing flexibility for the tabled Zion church proposal from last year. So, I'd like to call on members if they have thoughts or comments on the question I posed. Doug. I support allocating the fiscal year 2024 reserve in majority support of the proposal from the Amherst Zion church. Bob. I, I do too, but I guess I had a question is this what we usually do at CPAC do we usually allocate the reserves to the following fiscal year. There hasn't been a time on the committee there hasn't been a standard. Early on we had significant budgeted reserves which carried over, depending on the volume of requests. We've utilized them at times for in fiscal year needs, if something came up in fiscal year 2024. That means between now and next June 30. Allocate them. There are other years where we've in fact last year we appropriated or moved a large portion of our reserves we had 500,000 reserves, we moved the majority of it into last year cycle to accommodate the requests. So there, there's been no standard during my time the funds exist for CPA to determine how to recommend them and we wouldn't any recommendations we make go to the town council, which, excuse me, go to the finance committee and then to the town council. Tim. Yeah, I don't think by default, we have already allocated those funds by moving them into 2025 to get to our 632 if we haven't, we're off by 625 I mean the hundred and whatever it is the hundred and the reserves 164,000 so my opinion is if we really want to hold them in case there's something unusual that comes up before this year we're going to have to increase our fiscal 25 budget. A little bit more. So I'm concerned about that. We'd have to reduce other projects more. Yes, we'd have to reduce other projects if instead, we feel we don't want to spend those reserves either this year or next year, but instead use them for hold off on those, but instead use them for projects, I would support assigning it to the North Church, because of the immediacy they could get that roof repaired sooner than later. Yeah, I'm in favor of what Doug suggested using all the reserves and directing it to the Amherstion church. Using them as a component of fiscal year 2025. No, I would, I would suggest since this was a holdover from last year to provide them in this current fiscal year, because we're allowed to do that. Holly, are you still with us? Are you still? Where are you? I am for another moment or two. I'm going to have to leave very shortly, but yes. We'll go to late 30s. So Holly, I had asked this the previous week. If fiscal year 2024 budgeted reserve funds are allocated to fiscal year 2025, that's a component of our regular cycle. If they were desired to be utilized specifically for the Zion church in fiscal year 2024, would that not be a different process with the Finance Committee and Town Council? That would be absolutely would be a separate process. You would have to do a report. You would have to go before the Finance Committee. You would have to go before Town Council and it would need to be approved and voted in this year. Yeah. That's what I thought. My, my own opinion as one of the many committee members here would be that, although I like the idea of having some work commenced earlier, I like the, given the variables of, given that it's already December and that funds would not become available. I don't believe until things go through Finance and Town Council, which last year took until February. June 30th and July 1st come around fairly quickly. My own thought would be it may make sense to just keep everything in the fiscal year 2025 cycle. Yeah, Sam I retract that knowing now I misunderstood. That the reserves could be used. So I, I agree with you. Is there anyone, let me phrase the question the other way is there anyone on the committee who, and I don't believe there is, but I like it's warranted to discuss. Does anyone have an issue of spending fiscal year 2024 reserves to meet fiscal year 2025 proposal funding needs, which is what we've been discussing on this spreadsheet. So, Holly, if I understand correctly, it's, you're going to have to depart shortly. Is that correct? Yes. Now, we as a committee had allocated our time through eight or I need to step away for a little bit. I could be back, but I, I. I have to step away shortly. I don't see us completing this this evening, which to me means I think we should return next week in AD I heard you but I also heard from Bob and from Michelle. I'm hesitant to extend us beyond what we had referenced in advance for committee members. Just because, you know, it may take us a little bit more time than we think and although I would be able to do so. I think it makes sense to have a tentative committee as well. Who's able to be here. I believe we've made significant progress based on the input from the town in particular in terms of the challenge that was before us. And the remaining question questions are any unique discussions and Tim raised the point. Is there any, is there anyone who wants to reduce it, although we might be able to just go through everything quickly at this point, I think it probably makes sense to meet for a little while next week. Instead, I'm seeing nods from committee members. I'm going to go ahead. I'll call on the people that raised their hands. Tim, I think you were first. Yeah, well, go ahead, Doug. I just have a proposal or a motion but I'll do that in a second. All right. Well, I heard one member. I can't remember exactly who said she was not available until seven o'clock next week. And it just suggested to me that if we're going to meet next week, that we started seven. Good suggestion. Tim. I didn't thought of that, but I 100% agree with that. What I was going to do is make a proposal, a formal motion regarding the 2024 or fiscal 24 reserves, but I see Katie has her hand up. Yeah, Tim, sorry, I just want to say that I'm happy to accommodate whatever needs I think we should move forward with meeting next week and I can either. I might my. My input to Sam ahead of time or join in whenever I can. Seven would be better than seven 30 for you than six, excuse me. Next week. I think any votes have to be voice vote in person. I'm not sure about that. Katie. I hear you, Tim. So, so here's my, here's my motion. I don't feel comfortable with this, including the 124 without officially doing it. So I am going to make a motion that this committee officially allocate the current fiscal 24 reserves of $164,463 to use in the fiscal 25 budget requests. I will second that. Prior to opening it to discussion is that the correct phraseology Holly for placing reserves into. In other words, a financial term for placing budgeted reserves funds into the subsequent fiscal year. I think Holly is. I, I don't know any technical terms now. So, as long as your intent is clear that you are going to use the, you could say you were going to reallocate the FY 24 budgeted reserve to FY 25. I think that's sufficient. We have a motion in a second. Is there any discussion from committee members on the motion. I guess I would raise the discussion which is does anyone have an issue with it, which is essentially what's being asked by the motion. I'm not hearing or seeing any hands raised from committee members. The motion on the floor is to reallocate the fiscal year 2024 budgeted reserves, the full amount, which is $164,000. And some hundreds I believe it was 500 to fiscal year 2025 for inclusion in the fiscal year 2025 funding of proposals. Without any seeing any further discussion I'll call a vote. Tim. I, Matt. I, Katie. I. Bob. Hi, David Williams. Hi. Robin. Hi, Doug. Hi, Michelle. Couldn't hear you. Hi. I will vote I as well. Did I miss anyone. So the motion passes nine in favor. Zero. Opposed zero abstentions. I believe so here's a separate question. With the committee members. Be available to meet next week. At 7pm on Thursday the 21st, as opposed to 6pm. And I guess that's a question for you as well, Holly. You could also go 636 30 p.m. to shave the difference. I thought it was a good suggestion. Does anyone have any comments or opinions on the matter. Doug. No objection. Holly, are you available next week at 7pm. Yes, I can be available. Okay. I'm not seeing any objections from committee members. My inclination is to schedule the meeting next week a little bit later. It's apt to be a shorter meeting given the progress that we've made today. So I'll just pose it one more time. Does anyone a year have any objections to our meeting next week at 7pm as opposed to 6. If you do raise your hand or speak up, whether it be availability or other issues. Okay, so that will be the game plan. I think this has been a good meeting. I think the input from applicants and town staff has been. As it was last year. Very helpful. And I'd like to thank Matt retroactively again for positing that question last week about soliciting feedback, as well as Tim soliciting feedback from the applicants. I don't the only. Well, if we're going to meet next week, I can ask it next week. So I don't have any topics that I did not anticipate 48 hours before the meeting and the intent next week will be to hopefully conclude with our voting on recommendations for the fiscal year 2025 applications. So I am going to adjourn the meeting. Without hearing any objections at 835pm. And we'll see everyone next week. Thank you all. Thanks, Sam. Take care. Thanks, Sam. Thanks very much. Thank you all. Okay.