We, all right, we're recording Lynn. Okay. Everybody should raise their hands. Okay. It is September 12th, 2020. There's a variety of hands up that I'm seeing and they can't hear me. We can hear you. You can't hear us. We can't hear them. They can't hear them. Okay, let's do chat. How do I do chat? You have to unmute and we're going to check it. We're unmuted. We're unmuted. Okay. Okay. Alicia, I like your hair. There we go. Pat, thank you. They can hear us. Thank you. We can hear you. Okay. All right. Thanks. We're going to restart. It is September 12th, 2022. And based on an act passed back in July, they extended the open meeting law provisions that allow us to continue meeting remotely without a quorum of the council physically present at the meeting location while providing the public with adequate alternative access to the meeting. This meeting is accessible in real time via zoom, the phone and on Amherst media. And I want to note that we do have a quorum in the room. Given that we have a quorum of the council present, both in the room and on zoom, I am calling the September 12th, 2022 regular meeting of the town council to order at 6 36. I'll call upon each counselor by name. At that time, you should unmute your mic and say present and then make sure you mute it again. We want to do this so that we can make sure we can hear you and you can hear us. Shalini Belmilne. Present. Pat DeAngeles. Present. Anna Devlin-Goth here. Present. Lynn Griesmer is present. Mandy Johannikey. Present. Annika Lopes. Present. Michelle Miller. Present. Dorothy Pam. Here. Pam Rooney. Present. Kathy Shane. Here. Andy Steinberg. Present. Jennifer Todd. Present. Alicia Walker. Present. The record showed that all 13 counselors are present this evening. There is no chat room for this meeting. If you have technical issues, please let Athena and me know. And we will make sure that we decide what we're going to do at that point. To make a comment or ask a question, you're going to use the raise hand button. And we will suspend discussion if there are technical difficulties. We're going to quickly go through the announcements that are in your thing in your packet. They are up here. But while you're looking at that, let me add to this list. There is a budget coordinating group on Wednesday, September 21st at 4.30. The big block party is this Thursday at five o'clock. And it will be up and down the entire main area of downtown. And the 50th anniversary of the Amherst Farmers Market is this Saturday with comments and events being all morning into the afternoon, but a program at 10 o'clock. Senator Joe Comford will be at the Jones Library on Saturday, September 17th. Also starting at 10 30 on September 23rd. We will be celebrating Puerto Rican Heritage Day. And that will be in front of Town Hall at 10 o'clock. And please keep watch for notices of the beginning of the town manager's annual evaluation. We have no hearings tonight. I want to note that there are 14 people in the audience. And I'm now going to move to general public comment and ask people who would like to make comment. This is the only public comment this evening. If you would like to make public comment, please raise your hand. At present, I'm not seeing any hands being raised. And we are going to go on to the consent agenda, which is item five of our agenda. The following items were selected because they were considered to be routine and reasonable to expect they would pass with no controversy. If you would like to remove an item, please let me know after I read the initial motion, the original motion. That does not require a second to move the following items and the printed motions. They are under and approve those items as a single unit. Six, a adoption of Puerto Rican Heritage Day proclamation, eight C referral of general bylaw three point four zero snow and ice removal. Let me note that this is a referral to GOL who would like to look at it more thoroughly than initially referred back in 2018, 19 on the list. So it's a referral, eight E adoption of amendments to general bylaws three point eight license fees in holders, common vitulars and lunch carts. Tonight will be the second reading. We've already had the first reading. The rescission of general bylaw eight F the rescission of general bylaw three point two three peaking or peering into the place of habitation. And again, this is second reading tonight. We had the first reading back in August. Eleven eight F approval of the following town council meeting minutes June 6 2022 special town council meeting minutes public form on the capital improvement plan June 6 2022 regular town council meeting minutes June 13 2022 special town council meeting minutes public form on Centennial Water Treatment Facility Funding June 13 2022 regular town council meeting minutes June 27 2022 special town council meeting minutes public form on appropriation for North Common Improvements June 27 2022 regular town council meeting minutes. Are there any questions or I'm sorry. Are there any items that councillors would like removed? Please raise your hand. Seeing none, I'm going to seek a second to that motion. Second. Devlin got here. Thank you. Any further comments? And we're going to move on to the roll call vote. We'll begin with Pat D'Angeles. Hi. Anna Devlin, got here. Hi. Lynn Griespers and I'm Andy Joe. Hannity. Hi. Anika Lopes. Hi. Michelle Miller. Hi. Dorothy Pam. Yes. Pam Rooney. Yes. Kathy Shane. Yes. Jennifer Togg. I'm sorry. Andy Steinberg. Hi. Jennifer Togg. Hi. Alicia Walker. Hi. Shalini Balmille. Yes. OK. Thank you. I'd like to ask at this time that Pam Rooney read the final paragraph of the resolution regard or the proclamation regarding Puerto Rican Heritage Day. Thank you. It says now, therefore, we, the Amherstown Council, officially proclaim September 23, 2022 as Puerto Rican Heritage Day and further recognizing this proclamation by raising the Puerto Rican flag from September 23 to September 29, 2022 to help cultivate awareness for all residents of Amherst. Thank you. And if any of you have joined us in the past, it's a very colorful day and various schools bring students in to help celebrate that. We're going on to the presentations and discussions. And I want to note this is one of two changes in the order of the agenda. The items will still happen. They just won't happen in the same order. We're going to do the Jones Building Project first. And then later on in the evening, we will actually talk about the town manager's evaluation time. So with that, Athena, we sent you a very late presentation that we were updating. And Paul, did you have anything you wanted to say to begin with? OK. Let me just also start while we're getting that. We are not taking any action tonight. There is a finance committee meeting tomorrow at which point this will be the topic of discussion. And we will be meeting again next Monday night, at which point we will possibly conclude discussion of this topic for the moment. Tonight, we're going to begin to answer but not complete all of the answers to the questions even remotely. In fact, we have not received written answers to the questions. So if you still have questions, you would like to ask. You can raise them this evening or you can email them to me. But please finish emailing me any additional questions by no later than probably noon tomorrow. OK. So I think it's important for all of us on the council, especially those counselors who were not on the council back in April of 2021 to understand the timeline for the library. I've derived this from all of the materials that you've been given and checked it with the library director. Please move to the next slide. So this history for the Jones goes all the way back to 2013-14. MBLC put out an RFP. The town approved or applying to that. It was for planning and design grant. The initial amount awarded by MBLC or Mass Board of Library commissioners was 50 K and the town matched that with another 25 K. There's a lot of things that took place then between 2013 and 14 all the way to 2017. But I didn't want to give you all of that in these slides. You've been sent all of that and it is in your links to it is in our in your packet. In 2017, town meeting approved the preliminary design and authorized a construction grant proposal. And MBLC did award that grant provisionally. We were on a waitlist. We moved up to number two on that waitlist in 2019. Repair estimates were then asked for by the town and they updated existing repair estimates and added to it the accessibility study because those repairs would trigger the need to add accessible access. On April 5th of 2021, the town council voted to authorize the bond. We voted CPA money and we voted to authorize the town manager to enter into an MOU. After a variety of different events on November 2nd, 2021, we did place a question on the ballot and affirming the town council's vote and 75% of those voting voted in favor. Just this past summer, we've received new estimates and there has been a serious increase in costs. In a moment, Sean McGona will speak to that. The next step in this process is the preparation of schematic design and bids and construction documents. Those would go out to bid and there would not be an estimate that is reliable until the summer of 2023 when the bids are received. Next slide. This is just a summarization of the three votes that the council took on April 5th of 2021. One was a million dollars for the CPA. The second was the bond authorization for the total project. And the third was authorizing the town manager to enter into an MOU based on the fundraising that the library is in process of doing. Next slide. Sean, this is yours. Sean, in the room, I don't think so. I believe he's in attendees. Yeah, please bring Sean into the room. Hi, can you hear me? We can, Sean. Sorry about that. I was screaming from the audience, but nobody let me in. That's all right. Thank you, Lynn. So I'm just going to start from the bottom and work up. So just in terms, you'll see on the coming charts, soft costs are part of the total project budget. This includes things like designer fees, OPM fees, fee permits and relocation costs, estimate surveys, pretty much everything that's sort of non-actual construction falls under soft costs. Hard costs are the actual construct, the contract for construction and any related costs like site work. Those terms are important because what we currently have is two independent cost estimates for hard costs. We don't have an independent cost estimate for soft costs. We do have an estimate for soft costs provided by our OPM, but the estimates that we just recently obtained as part of schematic design were for just hard costs. So we did get two cost estimates, one by the architect's cost estimator, FENESY, and one by the town's cost estimator, RLB. And then the way it works is they kind of look at the two of them and find the midpoint to come up with a reconciled estimate. So the numbers you're going to see on the next two slides are that midpoint of the two cost estimates. And we have added in the OPM's cost estimate for soft costs to get to a total project cost. And then the last thing is the approved budget, which is basically what the town council has authorized in terms of debt so far, including CPA funding, the MBLC grant funds, and the original goal for fundraising. Next slide. So this chart compares sort of the cost side of the equation from the approved budget to the new reconciled cost estimate. So the approved budget total is 36.3 million, comprised of about 9.4 in soft costs and 26.9 million in hard costs. The new reconciled cost estimate again, which is sort of that midpoint between the two independent cost estimates is for 46.4 million. The growth is largely in the hard costs, going from 26.9 up to 36.3 at the midpoint. We've talked to the OPM about the soft costs and whether they should rise proportionally.  So a big chunk of that original 9.4 is sort of fixed since it's for those two contracts. Next slide. So one thing I should have mentioned on the prior slide. So that midpoint cost estimate has already been reduced for some reductions that the Jones Library Building Committee has approved. At their last meeting last Thursday, I think the 8th, the committee sort of gave tentative approval to about 1.9 million of cost reductions. And if it's not in this packet, it'll be in the packet for tomorrow, the breakdown of what those reductions are. So this chart shows the funding side of it. So again, approved budget, there was 1 million from CPA, 13.9 million MBLC grant, 15.8 was gonna be the town share funded by debt and then the trustees fundraising goal was 5.6, which includes the historic tax credits. With using the new reconciled estimate, basically the CPA, MBLC and town share stayed the same and the source that has to increase to cover the increased costs is the trustees fundraising target, which grows to 15.7 again at the midpoint. So best case scenario could come in a little bit lower, worst case scenario could come in higher. And Sean, you did point out that this actually is amended since you showed these slides to the finance committee last Tuesday. Yeah, so we shared a version of these slides with the finance committee on Tuesday. The next day, Wednesday, the OPM worked up a new cost estimate for soft costs, which has been included here. So you're seeing what he worked up. And then on Thursday, the Jones Library Billing Committee approved those additional cost reductions, which are reflected here. So there's been a couple of things that have happened since the last finance committee meeting that are reflected in these figures. Which are now lower than what we saw last Tuesday. Yeah, it's lower by about $2 million from the finance committee last Tuesday. Okay, I just wanna make sure the finance committee members and other counselors that have either were there or watched it since then that they knew of the difference. Kathy, we're gonna get to questions in a moment. Yeah, I'm just on this. Do we have in the packet exactly what those cuts were, Sean? If it, I'll double check if not, we'll make- The difference between what we saw last week and this week. Yeah, so we can provide a, so just to go over the sort of difference in methodology. So when I shared the numbers last Tuesday, a finance committee for soft costs, I just basically took the percentage from the original budget, the percentage of hard costs that were being, that were budgeted for soft costs, which is about 34% or so, was what was budgeted in our original approved budget. I then took the higher cost estimate and applied that same percentage.  So that's the biggest reason for the difference in why it's a little bit lower is lower soft costs from what you saw on Tuesday. Paul, did you have a comment on this? I just want to note that there's a typo on one of the early slides. The measure passed in November of 2021 by 65% of the vote, I believe not 75%. Thank you. Absolutely correct. Let's go to the last slide. So the question that therefore is, okay, where are we now? And this is a back and forth process with the library trustees. They met on August 21st, 2022, I believe the next day the building committee met. Our finance committee has already had an initial discussion that brings us to today, literally as we began our meeting, the trustees were coming toward the end of their meeting and then tonight we have our meeting. Our finance committee meeting tomorrow night, we'll focus on this and hopefully by September 19th, although we begin the town council meeting at 5.30, it'll actually be around the master plan. We actually won't begin the regular town council meeting until 6.30. With that, I'm gonna pause for questions if they're questions about what we've presented. And then we can get into other general questions. Kathy. I know we're gonna be taking up some of this in finance tomorrow, but I just wanna make sure if I take the slides from today and then the background information that I'll be able to track from where we were in 2021 to now along even soft cost lines because my memory and I double checked it is the soft costs have furnishing in it. And to get to 36 because it was a squeeze even to get to that amount because the building was supposed to originally built by forecast by 2019, but we took $400,000 out of furnishing. So I'd like to just see what the allocation in the budget is when we see it tomorrow or at least have an explanation for, and by furnishing, I mean literally desks and chairs, but also IT, there was a very expensive card sorter in the neighborhood of $400,000 for that one. So I just wanna know what is still in the budget that we're looking at versus what's been the reconciled numbers. That's one request. And then the other is a question on the MOU. Lynn, we have it in our packet, but the agreement has a date in it that the trustees would have had to give us all of their share. And what they put up against their share was the endowment. And so they knew some money might come in later like the historic tax credits, but we were gonna be made whole as a town by a certain date. And I think it was a year after final construction or a year after the date when the MS, the library, I just wanna have those be clear tomorrow too. So when we saw that large number, Sean just said, when would that have to be completed by to hold our share to the 15? And then my last question that I don't need to answer tonight is how certain is the historic tax credit? Cause that's part of the fundraising. And which libraries have received it and were they mainly a renovation? Were any of them similar to us? I just, I know no one can say it's a hundred percent, but are we like 60% sure we have a probability on it because it's a unusual source. And I would love to get it. So I'm not questioning it. I just wanna know what degree of certainty there is under that. Thanks. Thank you. Some of those questions were included in the draft questions that we have forwarded to the library, particularly the last piece with regard to the tax credits. But let me pause for a moment and ask Paul if you would speak to the discussions regarding the MOU. So the, I don't know what the library trustees were voted tonight or if they did vote at all. So that's a discussion I'm not alert to, but there would be a change to the MOU based on the changing circumstances because the MOU was written predicated on certain projections of funds. So that's something that we would be looking at before we move forward, before I sign any contracts basically. And Paul, the town council already authorized you to negotiate that MOU and I assume that you would continue to do that. Yes. Yes. Okay. Dorothy. Just a question about definitions. When I look at the trustees, 5 million to 15.7 million. And if that is called fundraising and I am very confused at the idea that the term fundraising includes using the endowment. Is that considered fundraising? The, let me try to explain this as simply as I can. The trustees have engaged on a robust fundraising effort in order to ensure that eventually the town would be paid. We authorized the town manager to negotiate an MOU that said if your fundraising effort falls short, then we want you to pay us from your endowment. But the assumption all along has been that they would never touch the endowment. But if we as a town council vote that, then we are saying that they can and should. That they can touch the endowment. If we support the idea of the MOU, then we as the town council are saying, although we don't want them to do it that they are liable to do it. And if the town says we need it, they would do it. I mean, I just want to know what we are saying when we vote, when we support this. Well, first of all, the present MOU doesn't cover the new levels, okay? So then the question is in terms of the previous MOU, what we were saying is if you don't, if you are not able to raise the money and live up to your fundraising goals as you have stated, then we want you to pay us at the end of a long period of time. I believe it's five years that balance from your endowment. But that means the town council is then asking for them to do that. We are asking them to make the town whole, yes, right? So we have to decide if we want to ask that. We actually already decided that last April. Okay. Andy? Yes, I just thought it would be helpful to have a little bit of additional clarification. If I may, there was a reference to council order FY 2106C to authorize the borrowing of $35,279,700 that is not the town share because we would have the responsibility as this goes forward and we'll have the responsibility if it goes forward of issuing bonds for the entire amount. But the amount includes the MBLC grant and it includes the Jones Library trustee commitment. So the town share in the order was actually 15751810 out of that 35 million. So it's important to recognize that what the towns share would be and what that order was are actually two different amounts. Andy, is there anything else from the finance committee meeting that you would like to make sure people have heard? No, I think that I really appreciate the summary that was given and I think that it was very helpful. What we tried to do is for those who were able to attend as attendees know or have watched it since that the purpose was to understand the history to make sure that we had opportunities for questions and then to formulate the questions that you've seen that were posed. We didn't write a report because everything that was done at the meeting there was no decision on recommendations there were no votes of any kind and work product of the committee was being provided to all of you anyway in the packet for this council meeting either by reference through that list of things that you could find by clicking on including the order I was just referring to or otherwise. So I think that it was complete but I just wanted to make sure that that one order which is a critical piece to the understanding was explained. Okay, Anna. I wanna be sure I'm clear here. So I'm gonna say something and then I hope that people will tell me if I'm incorrect but the trustees of the Jones library are quite literally the trustees of their money and of their endowment and of the library. We are saying that we support their ability to bring that money, their share of it forward. If they vote to use their endowment for it that's their prerogative. Maybe the language we should be sure to use is that that amount is the trustees share and I think some folks have been using that instead of the trustees fundraising amount. They're responsible for that amount. Ideally that's from fundraising but that's not the council's decision. We don't set their fundraising plan. We've authorized them. We agreed the endowment was the backstop. I believe that to vote based on how you personally believe that they should choose to spend or not spend their endowment would be misguided and inappropriate. I think that is their decision. We are here to make a different decision. Not, are they going to use their endowment or not? I also would note that both the town manager and the board of trustees members sign that MOU. Kathy, you asked some questions. So if you don't mind, I'm gonna go to Jennifer next. Thank you. So I just wanted to pick up on what Andy said just so I'm clear about. Oh, I'm sorry. Just so I'm clear about this moving forward. So the town has, we were authorized to take out a bond for the full amount of the 35 point, $36 million. So if at what point, so if it's determined that the costs have increased, we would have to take out a bond for the increased cost and would that be at the point that the bids come back or at some time prior to that? That's the first part of the question. And then I guess the second is then the town, so with the 36 point to that we've already taken the bond out for, we're responsible for that full amount and hopefully it will be reimbursed from the grant from the board of library commissioners, from the fundraising, we have the CPA and then what the town committed. So when we have to enter into an MOU for the increased cost, that's the town is responsible for repaying that, no matter is that correct? And so I guess I'm asking that question and at what point do we enter into a new MOU? And then I guess another question might be, is that a two thirds vote of the council at that point? I'm assuming it doesn't have to go out to the voters again. So three questions, thank you. Paul, I'm gonna call on you and Sean to address the financial sequence if you will, et cetera. So the MOU would be done sooner than later because when we're changing the MOU, you'll want to, and that would be a majority vote by the council. Once the bids come in and we get the firm price for what the construction project will cost, we will come back to the council for the additional authorization for the entire project cost. That's a two thirds vote to borrow the funds by the town council. But the earliest that vote would take place would be after we receive the construction bids. Yes, so you're voting on something certain. So it would not be until at the earliest next summer, 2023. Can I just add one caveat? We do have to adhere to whatever the MVLC requires. So I think our plan is to wait till we know the exact costs. At this time, we have reached up to the MVLC and what they've told us is in the past, when things like this have happened, when there's been significant increases in costs, they've done it after there will be another cost estimate after construction documents are done before bidding, but after construction documents are done. And in the past, they've seen the town or city, whoever it was at that time, get the increased funding at that point. So I think our plan is to go till bidding. So we have an exact number for the council, but we do have to just make sure that the MVLC allows that and is supportive of that. Sean, well, on the issue of borrowing, am I correct that we only borrow as we need it? Yeah, so just to, so we have the 36, we actually have a 36 point, something million dollar debt authorization between CPA and the general fund. They were both debt authorizations. The reason we did that was, A, the MVLC requires that you approve all eligible costs, which are a lot of the construction costs, but it's also for cashflow purposes. They recommended that sometimes the MVLC grants might be delayed because of the milestone and you don't want the project to stop because of that. We also did that because we know the time of the fundraising, some of that fundraising would come in after the fact. So we did authorize the whole amount. We will only borrow as needed, sort of taking a year, look at it at a time, whatever costs we think we'll incur for that year, that's how much we would borrow. So we are working with our owner project manager to update the cashflow for this project in light of the higher cost estimates. We have a good cashflow analysis based on the old cost estimates. Now we need to update that since we're gonna have higher construction costs. And we also have to update it because now the temporary borrowing we might have to do for the fundraising portion is gonna be greater. So the town share wouldn't necessarily increase, but the debt service cost might increase a little bit because we're gonna be doing a short-term borrowing for our larger amount. So we are working with the OPM on that and we hope to have something the next week or so. And Sean, one other question about borrowing, okay? And that is over the years, if interest rates go down, you will also refinance. Is that correct to get a lower interest rate? Yeah, so typically when you go out for municipal bonds, you can refinance after 10 years. So we were thinking of a 20- to 25-year financing for this project as it is. So usually our first opportunity would be after 10 years to refinance. Okay, Pam Rooney. Thanks. I think I understood Sean to say that we can't actually go out to bid until we have final construction documents. And I assume a bond ready to go or approved for the full total project cost amount. So it's interesting because maybe the cost will come down a little bit in June of next year or call it nine months out. But typically in construction projects, costs really don't go down. I'm looking at the school where even though they worked really hard to trim whatever they could out of it, that amount ended up being much higher than they expected as well. It seems that we would want to understand the project costs a lot sooner and have a gut reaction or a take by the council to see if we want to proceed with the amounts that we know will at least be what we're seeing today. So basic question is, aren't we required to have secured funding prior to going out to bid? So we can't really wait for the bids to come in and then say, oh, okay, we're only gonna have to bond X amount. Paul? So when they estimate construction costs, they say, when do you think you're gonna start construction? And you say, November of 2023, then they say, okay, assuming that that's the start date, they inflate everything. So they take into account the timing of when you're going to start. They don't estimate it as if it were bid today, they estimate it on when it's going to be bid. So that establishes the projected costs. I cannot sign a contract unless the funds are in place, which means the borrowing authority is in place. So that's the council, I can't sign a contract for construction until that borrowing authorization. And that's the sort of key point right then. But are you saying, Paul, that the borrowing authorization can come after we receive the bids, but before you sign the contract? So what I'm saying is I can't sign a contract unless the borrowing authorization is in place. And we'll finalize the answer to that, Lynn. We'll reach out to the NBLC and get a definitive answer if they will be supportive of us waiting till that point to bring it back for a vote. Oh, okay. Because the only reason we wouldn't wait till that point would be as if the NBLC said, we can't. Okay. Thank you. Alicia. And then I'm going back to Kathy. Thank you, Lynn. So my question was also about the timeline. So I think if what we all just talked about could be written down with even like a timeframe, if there aren't exact dates, just so I can get an understanding of the sequence that we are trying to follow here. Because I'm slightly confused in the order of which we are trying to get things done. So that was basically what I was going to ask for. Okay. So, do you feel comfortable now with this discussion on the timeline? No, I would like it written down if that's possible. You would like to... To have it written down, because I'm still slightly confused as to what needs to happen first, then second, then third. Okay. So my understanding, what has to happen first is the council, well, the board of library trustees have been very clear that they want to continue with the project. Okay. The town council needs to then look at all of the questions you've asked. And the MOU that the town manager is in the process of will be in the process of negotiating with the library and say, is that acceptable to us to go to the next step? That would happen as soon as we can make it happen. Okay. This fall. If we could possibly do it by the 19th, I'd love to make sure we're done and we move on to our other business. We'll see if we can. Then that if we decide at that point to go forward, then the process of schematic design and construction documents happened. And then those are put out to bid. And those bids would be received sometime in the summer of 2023. And it's at that point that we have the next decision point based on those bids. Do we continue agree to go forward or not? And if we do, then we have to authorize the new bond level. Does that help? We can write it down, but. Yes. I'm sorry. I'm writing it down as you're talking, but also, so what would be the first decision of the council would be to decide what. To decide whether or not we're willing to accept the new terms of the MOU from the board of library trustees. I mean, I'm sorry. The Jones library trustees would have with the town manager. Although we have authorized him in the past to negotiate that agreement. And it was a question then frankly as to whether we'd really needed to even vote. So it's that still what we're trying to decide right now. I think that's part of our discussion tonight too. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. I'm going to focus on the MOU. First of all, I want to go back to what Anna said about the trustees are in charge of the endowment. That's clearly true. But when we agreed to this a year ago. The treasurer came to us and said. We're going to go back to the endowment. And we're going to go back to the endowment. We're going to go back to the endowment. Without hurting its contribution to our operating budget. It currently contributes 12% of the library operating budget, which in our current year is $332,000. It's that's a rough. Lee. At that point, 4% draw. And when I say at that point, we're going to go back to the endowment. And we're going to go back to the endowment. That was more comfortable. The fiduciaries were comfortable that a 4% draw was doable. To continue. And when we agreed to take on the risk of the library. We were looking at $5.6 million of additional fundraising. endowment at that point, but said, you know, if the, I'll say it's 8.2 now, but if 8.2 went down to 2 million, but by 2 million went down to 6, they could tolerate that for a while because the expectation is over the next couple years, they would only be living with that shortfall or dipping into endowment for a few years. It was a very good discussion we had, and the expectation is they'd be able to get all the money and make the endowment whole. So the endowment was part of the agreement, even though the trustees are indeed in charge of it. And the reason it was part of it is because it pays 12% of the operating costs. So if it goes away, we have a hole in the town's operating budget by at least $332,000. And I think the other thing that's tied to that is state money that comes in, that some of that contribution that the endowment makes is for books and supplies. So it was a package deal around this. So I just want to, I mean, there's a good, people want to go back to the record, Bob Cam came in to allay our fears, those of us who are worried about financial risk, that we can tolerate this. This is a good bet that when we put up our endowment, we're only going to need a piece of it and not for very long. So that's number one. Number two, we voted on that MOU and I don't remember saying, here's the MOU, and go ahead and change it in any way we actually took a vote on it, and it has very specific language where the expectations $5.6 million. So I think what when Alicia is asking about this, the MOU would have to be saying that the trustees think they can raise another $10 million in addition to what they were saying they were raising before I'm just using rough numbers. So the MOU would have to have that kind of statement. And then we would have to have a collateral that held us harmless. And when I say held us harmless against financial risk, I mean both that the whole bond would have the townshare wouldn't go up the 15.8, but also worrying about the operating budget, because that was our understanding I understand now that we could make a different plan. But we were voting on the basis of those people who were the yes votes, and I believe the citizens and residents of the town were voting on a financially doable plan that and if we brought in the other projects too but this looked like a doable it looked like we could do it they could do it on and we thought this would all work so I think the question of what that, if we are willing to do an MOU, it's critical that we don't just tell Paul do whatever you feel is right. We give some explicit instructions and we see these numbers on how would the MOU change. I do not and the reason I asked about books and soft costs, as I'm really worried, the joint capital committee which I'm the chair of. We saw one set of bookshelves come to us and it made sense on a questioned it. Isn't that part of the budget. And they said this is just temporary because the roof is leaking on special collections and we're going to move these shelves in to where the exhibit room is and they're great shelves we're buying so we can use them in the new building. What I'm worried is that JCPC will suddenly see desk chair shelves, book sorter and other things coming to it over the next several years, and we're really excited that way we were really budgeted with the library project, giving us a new expanded renovated fully furnished library so if that's the if we're going to be faced with that I think we need to know it. I'm not signaling where I would go on this but I think we need to have all the cards on the table, because these aren't I wish it was only $500,000 there, the numbers are so big. Thanks. Okay, Dorothy. The building committee has an owner's project manager, and I'm beginning to ask who is the opm for the taxpayers of Amherst. The way this is being phrased the discussion it's just like it's just pulling us in sucking us in further and further, so that we have so much more sunk costs.  At some point somebody says, Listen, you've got this much money to make a wedding do it, because we're not going to just keep going on like this, and the whole discussion has made me feel like we're being led further and further and further to a year from now, before we make a decision, and then we're going to be told, well you can't go back. I'm not even happy about this. I don't like, I don't like the process. Maybe Paul is going to make a decision soon and we won't we'll find that we don't have to deal with it this way I don't know. But I, I just feel like we're being pulled in. Thank you. Jennifer. At the finance committee meeting last week there was a discussion about the $1.4 or so million dollars that it would take to get to the point of issuing an RFP. And the question was asked who who pays that and the town manager had said that would be the town. And then one of the trustees asked if the library trust the library could absorb that cost. And I realized we mean I don't know if that was something that was decided at the trustees meeting, if that even came up for about about today but I'm just. So that's another cost that I just want to put out on the table that what point are we going to discuss that. Paul did you want to speak to that particular issue. Knowing what the trustees said today, they hate to sort of speculate on what we've done. You know one of the questions was who takes that risk for that next $1.4 million. And the sense what in my sense was, if the trustees feel strongly enough about the project that they would backstop that decision those two contracts with it with the endowment, and that would get us to construction bid documents. But this is what part of what would be covered in an MOU amendment. Exactly. Okay. Then that MOU would come to us I mean will the council be able to weigh in on that. Next, and that next cost. I would certainly review that with the town council for sure. And did you. So I don't think we should forget, I think we should keep in mind that 65% of the residents supported this project. And while we have some estimates that the costs have increased, getting us to bid given what the town manager just said about potentially the trustees willingness to backstop the cost between now and bid means that until we see actual bids, the risk to the trustees, the risk to the town. Has changed. We need to modify an MOU to make that happen. That's the manager's prerogative to do that I certainly support the modification of an MOU. We didn't vote the language of the last MOU I don't see why we'd need to vote the language of this MOU that's the manager signs the MOUs. He's the executive not us. You know, we can move forward and we should move forward to those bids. Because the residents support it and as I just said, the new MOU keeps the town whole, at least until bedtime, as long as we can negotiate that and it doesn't doesn't risk any more endowment than as Kathy just said was previously thought with the MOU given those circumstances attempt what you could think of as a sort of a temporary MOU to get us to that point when we truly know the actual costs I mean the current estimate builds in 1% cost escalation a month. But that's already slowing down that will bring the cost down even though costs as Pam said always go up in construction, but if we've estimated the cost escalation too high, the new cost and the bid would be lower. We don't we shouldn't stop now, we need to keep going we need to get to that actual number that bid, and if we're not going to as a town risk any additional money because the trustees are willing to backstop the costs to get to that bid. That no more than what they were putting at risk, originally in their endowment, we should do it and we should just move on and move as quickly as possible, so that we can get this project going. Michelle. I guess I'm feeling a little bit of frustration. I did attend the trustee meeting tonight and so I'm feeling like there are several pieces of information that became available in that meeting. And here we're talking about this without having those pieces of information available to us. And I understand that the timing was very, very tight. What I ask is that the chair of our finance committee and the chair or someone else of the trustees have a conversation, if possible, before our finance committee meeting tomorrow, because if we're going to be asked to make a final finance committee meeting without having that information that was outlined in tonight's trustee meeting, I just think that we're wasting our time and so I really hope that I'm not going to try to go through everything that was agreed upon in that meeting tonight by any means, but there are really important nuggets of information that would I think help us move this forward. And then the other comment and then the other comment that I have is looking at the MOU it looks like it deals with lack of fundraising so if there's not enough money raised, but it doesn't look like it deals with cost escalation I'm wondering if the town manager has had any conversations with our legal counsel about what basically what I heard Mandy just say is that we are not responsible for the language in the MOU and that is nothing that we're on the hook for you with respect to what's in the MOU and but it doesn't take into account this cost escalation issue that we're dealing with and so I'm just wondering if there's been any legal discussion town manager that you've had that would give us better direction as counselors. Thank you Paul. And it does review the MOU before I sign it obviously that that's something I consult with them on in terms of the escalation. As I mentioned before the cost escalations should be built in. You know, when they, they estimate the cost, they say when do you think you're going to begin to construction, and then they estimate what they think construction inflation is going to look like over say you're going to say I'm going to start in a year. And what that cost is going to look like in a year from now. And at the time they did the bid, they did the quote the estimation. There's hyperinflation in the construction industry that has since tampered, tamped down a little bit. So it could if they whenever you make cost estimates, you take a point in time and you say this is our best guess. And you're going to build in 2023 this is what we think it's going to cost. So they build in that cost escalation there. And the number could be less, we don't know it's just an estimate, until we actually go out to bid, and there are contractors who look at the project look at the documents, look at the design, and then put their numbers on a piece of paper and give it to us and a sealed envelope. We won't know what the actual cost is. We hired just like, we've been doing this in a really thoughtful way, we had two estimators, look at the design and come to and come up with separate estimates. And then we had them sit down together and sort of paw through them and come up with a compromise between then there are a couple million dollars off from each other, but they're in the same ballpark. And so that's how we come to the estimate what do we think the cost is going to be. So we have people there there are people in the field, construction experts who make these cost estimates for a living. And they, they know the industry they know the supply chain issues and things like that. So hopefully, they're, they're pretty accurate in their projections. I'll answer your question for the moment. I mean, it doesn't take away the frustration that we had simultaneous meetings going on. Yeah, I guess I just have a follow up I just I have a feeling that it may come down to disagreement among the counselors on whether the MOU the next MOU is our responsibility to guide or not. And what I'm saying is I would like to know if there's anything in terms of my responsibility as a counselor that the MOU dictates I should be concerned with. And that's important for me to understand that because a lot of this like when when you're talking about bonds and this and that like, I think we're all trying to follow along as best we can but the end of the day. What's going to happen if the library isn't able to raise that money and is the MOU important for us to be evaluating now or as Mandy said, let's get us to that bid place. And make a decision and whatever else needs to be agreed upon in the interim like who's paying to get us to bid can be agreed upon. And so that's that's kind of where where I'm at right now. Thank you. Yeah, if we could. This was a crystal ball. It's not. And that's part of the problem. Andy. Do you want to go to the other city or whoever. Sure. Yeah, I was wondering if it would be helpful to hear from the library trustees today about the MOU, because I did also attend but I don't know if everyone got a chance to attend. I attended as well, although I had to stop attending because of this meeting. And unfortunately, I think it's best if those things are done as formal communications. Okay, and we did not. There are several trustees in the room. But that wasn't set up that way. Okay. Okay, so tomorrow we can tune into that. What I wanted to say was, you know, like, as I was thinking through this whole process and I'm like, okay, this is a really risky decision for the town it entails millions of dollars as everyone has talked about. But along with that, two other things that come to my mind that I wanted to share. One is the way the current Massachusetts Board of Library commissioners processes set up as was shared we started the process in 2013, when the cost estimates and along with inflation and all of that was done at some point. And now we're in 2022 when so anything can happen in between including pandemics. And so there is going to be that, that failure of those risks that are going to happen, even if we don't move ahead now and say, okay, let's back off and let's start again. It's risk would still be in the same position, because we're going to go down the road and we'll start all over again and we can see from the schools which could have been done in 2017 for $67 million and today we're talking about more than 100 million. So just because we backed away from that very important decision, we are now going to be spending the town is spending $33 million more because they waited for a better solution. So all I'm saying is just let's keep in mind that this system is not going to change we're still going to be back in the same situation if we don't move forward. The second thing that comes to my mind is what is the alternative. And the alternative is that the cost of repairs have also gone up. The alternative is we return the $1 million, along with the interest, and the costs which have gone up at like $16 to $19 and a half million, whereas that also then that's going to be the town bearing all of that cost. And so, meanwhile, we do have a really good, very experienced team of fundraisers who without even really starting have collected, I've raised institutional money of $1.3 million, they've got $1.79 million pledge from individuals. We have people at the state level with grants and so forth. I just want to say there's a whole fundraising plan with very experienced people willing to do this and the trustees are willing to with you change terms that will save confidence and we want to move forward. So, given that case, what is the, you know, looking alternative, we're going back and then sending all those $16 to $19 million in an not going to be environmentally friendly, that's not all for the programs that are new building for community building for youth, for teens, for BIPOC, all of the work that the trustees are doing in a very systematic manner, all of that will be shelved. I just want us all to keep all, you know, the alternatives in mind as well as we move forward. And I want to thank you for that. And I just want to pause and just say, they could, we could turn back on this grant from everything we can understand MBLC is ready to start a new competition round. And they already have 40 other libraries who said they'd like to be in that round. And the other thing is, even if we don't do this, we're still going to have to repair the existing library. And we have an estimate for repair, not remodel, not renovate repair. And those costs have gone up to so there, there is no good solution here. There is not a good solution. Just the challenge you begin to lay out the alternatives and those alternatives, each play against each other. And that, D'Angeles, you've not spoken. Thank you. I don't know where I'm coming down on this. Really, honestly, I'm listening to people here at the council I've been listening to residents. And the one thing I know is that the public library was an incredibly important asset asset in my growing up. I'm really trying to understand what's at risk here. And I'm not sure that I completely agree that it's, it's quite as simple as it's been laid out. I do have to consider what we're moving forward with. What's the impact of these increases for the library on the other building projects. I mean, when, when Sean Magano made his budget information available to us for, you know, he did the modeling, we noticed how tightly things were going. So these increases in costs affect the DPW and they affect the renovation of the firehouse. They affect who pays for the budget for the library. The concern is that we're looking at our workers and doing locking ourselves into a grandiose library and not paying any attention to what we need to do for DPW and fire. We can say that we will now. But there's minimal money. And it has been consistent policy of previous and town meetings and town managers to avoid maintaining things because in the future we're going to be doing this building. So I'm really concerned about how we make this decision and what, what we base it on. And I'm concerned. No, I don't, I can't tell the trustees what to do. But neither do I want to be locked into a position of paying more to operate the library because they failed to do what they said they're going to do. So there's not a simple solution. And I honestly still don't know where I will fall down on this decision or fall up to this decision. Anika, you've not spoken. Sorry, I was stuck on mute. Yeah, so I appreciate all of the comments that have been made. And they're across the board so I'm hopeful that we'll move to a space of bottom line so we have facts to, you know, really focus on what can be done to create the most good for the most good with this and all projects. I think that, you know, there are clearly efforts in the works that we would know how they could pan out and how they would affect this project, others in town before we would have to make a decision, even including us being clear we're having, you know, some counselors were questioning do we can we tell the trustees what to do or what that so just even within this discussion it's it's, it seems clear that there's still a lot of facts and bottom lines and even some, you know, both hard and soft costs that can be learned before we can make a decision that is really based on making the best decision for the residents of the town and taking out just a little bit of our personal opinions on what is what seems financially responsible or not at this point. I'm going to go back now to Andy. I've been taking notes as questions have come along and some of them have been responded to so I certainly am going to try and bear that in mind as I go through, for example, references made to the repair cost one of the things that was not mentioned earlier, was the first council that made the decision was looking at the repair costs, and was recognizing that that $15 million town share was pretty much equal to the amount that was being calculated by Coon Riddle is the likely amount and as Lynn said, both amounts for to increase since then. So that if we don't go forward with library. The, it falls back on the capital planning process to for the repairs and having been on JCPC for a number of those years when the library was being discussed for repair costs. You know, decision was made and I stand by that decision some people have criticized but I stand by it that we didn't want to invest money that was going to then be sort of more logically a part of a renovation and expansion project that it was not wise that unless it was really something that was essential to the safety and well being of the library itself. I think that it was not wise to do, but we are going to have to deal with that repair cost if we don't go forward. So to think that we're getting out of a responsibility to the library of, you know, 15 plus million dollars. I think that's not likely. I think about the endowment decision belonging to the trustees and it does. The question came up about operating expenses. I think that that's a very important question that was on the question list that we pose to the library, because, and we're hoping for a response to that tomorrow at the committee meeting because it is important to know if we go forward with the model of being willing to commit the entire endowment for this than what happens to the operating costs because in the end, the traditional approach that the town has taken towards operating budget increases is that we can make all of them equal. And there have been rare exceptions to that and so we're really looking for the library to explain how it is going to absorb those differences and that's really something I'm looking forward to tomorrow. I think that somebody else made the kind of comment that I was thinking about, which is, I'm not prepared to guess on the intent of voters. You know, we know that almost two thirds voted one way. We don't know how people would vote under different circumstances or what drove that vote, but it was a very strong vote. So the, you know, question has been made about the trustees meeting today I will send something out tonight to several trustees and to the library director requesting that they make a report tomorrow at the finance committee meeting. The best thing that I wanted to just conclude with is, you know, a lot of this I feel is a problem that we're having because of the mass board of library commissioners. There's sort of two different things one is is that they have defined what they think needs to be the scope of the library and are not allowing us to have free will be free to make significant changes in the size of the building of the program. And the other is that the MVLC committed an amount of money. We envisioned an amount of money. And then there was this huge increase in construction costs and MVLC has so far taken the position that the increase in construction costs is our problem not their problem. And that I think is a major major issue and one that I think that we need to be raising and I think that we actually are raising in different circles to try and address that issue. But I did want to at least point that out. I'm going to take a moment. Let me talk about the conversations that I'm aware of with the MVLC. And that is that Senator Comford and Representative Dom have been extremely interested in this. They have held a meeting with library. The library director I was invited to that meeting last week. It was to begin to try to form a coalition with the other towns that are in the same situation we are with the goal of trying to get the legislature to increase their appropriation to MVLC in order to give each of the projects more money to at least come up to the percentage that they originally were going to support. And I think that there are a lot of ifs in that. And the present up possible vehicle for that would be the supplemental which is being worked on right now. But that might not happen. It might happen. But if it does happen. The MVLC of course has to agree to all that. There's layers and layers around an effort like I've just described. But the efforts being made, and three of the libraries affected are in fact in Joe Comerford's district. So I think there's a total of 14 and three are in her district. There's, it's not to say we're not trying it's just that there's no guarantee to try to get MVLC to step to the plate with more money, because it means the legislature would have to yes. Just so you know to the, I think most people are aware that I'm on the Massachusetts Municipal Association Financial Policy Committee, and I have been raising this issue since probably June on regarding MVLC and I have been getting support from other members of the committee because they're representatives of other cities and towns statewide, who, as soon as I raised the issue said, Yeah, us too. And I am hopeful that we can make some progress on getting some some some major support out of the MMA this fall, I can't guarantee it, but I can assure you that I'm working on it. Great, thank you, Alicia. I think everybody's spoken, asked questions at least once so I'm going to start back around Alicia. So I'm just thinking about like the timeline of the process and saying that I know we started this a long time ago. Some of the things that are still unclear to me is why we would not think that there's a possibility of a project increase still. When we have gotten previous cost estimates that have been increased, for example, we voted on a certain number just last year that has increased and so what is the difference between those cost estimates and the one that we have now that we are expecting not to have an increase. So that's one of the things that is unclear to me. And also, if there is actually a such thing as a temporary mo or if that was just a figure of speech. So some of those things are slightly confusing to me, but I think that we've talked about a lot of things but I think that in reality, the framing of this conversation should be more shifted to like the total cost project. Because I think that is what the risk that we are looking at right now is with the total project cost and thinking that if we are making financially responsible decisions for the town that will still allow us to achieve other goals and other projects that we have going at the same time. And so my concerns are still not with just the cost of this project, like in a vacuum, but the cost of this project in relation to other projects and other things that we need to get done for the town. And thinking back to the presentation that Sean gave us a few months ago on the four capital projects. And like Pat said, seeing how close those numbers are and how we talked about how tight the budgets will be, and how increasingly tighter they will become, which will, which we talked about being worried about the firefighter positions that are being funded by ARPA money and we talked about being worried about money for crests if it needs to be increasing that budget in the years to come and not being certain that those things can be covered, but then making other large financial decisions in spite of those things and having uncertainty there. I'm not sure if that is a finite financially responsible position to be in and so I think that is the question now is if this is a financially responsible decision as a whole project cost. I feel like the conversation has shifted from what we were talking about before, because we know that there was a majority of people who wanted this project to move forward we know that because we had a vote so I don't think that is in question anymore. I think the question now is, is this for us as town counselors a responsible decision that we will be making on behalf of the residents in our town. And so I think it would be helpful to talk about it that way because it's very confusing when we talk when we frame it in other ways, and to be sure that we're making the best decision. And so I think some of the other things and I know that some of these might come up at tomorrow's finance committee meeting which is also why it's hard like having all these different meetings, like Michelle. And Anika said having the trustee meeting before and having all these different important pieces of information that don't get all put together at the same time but we're still making really important decisions makes it very difficult. But one of the questions that I think will be really important for me to know is that if like the worst case scenario because I think when we're assessing risk, we have to think about if the worst thing happened and how that would affect us so that we can be prepared. And so in the worst case scenario that the trustees are unable to meet their fundraising expectations and the endowment is used how that will then affect our operating budget for our town moving forward. And if that is something we can sustain and still cover things like the four firefighter position positions that are going to be not on our but in the years to come, and the possible expansion of crests or possible money for the resident oversight or other projects that we have in the pipeline. And so I think that it will be really important for me to know how those things directly affect our operating budget moving forward, and so that I can know exactly what is on the line with the risk that we are taking because this is a very big risk. Jennifer. I'm concerned, I get when I hear that the train is left the station and it's too late to pull back. I just think that's not a helpful way to frame the conversation and I think as good stewards of the public money that that's, I would like to, you know, refrain from that but we do have choices. And I guess some of I'm echoing what Pat and Alicia expressed very well, but we do have other choices. If it looks like the library where we initially thought it was going to be 36 million and now it's more like 50 million. We don't have to say well it's just going to keep escalating so we just this prices could keep escalating. And the train hasn't left the station, we, we can pivot and repair costs have no doubt increased but I still think and I'm not advocating for this I'm just saying that I think, you know, if we were to look at, you know something like repair and renovation costs have increased since 2013 2017 and even 2021, but they're probably not in the $50 million range. And I would, yes, very much, if, if we, if the, if we go ahead and the cost of the library is significantly higher as what the projections are which is why we're having this conversation now if they weren't. I think the projections would just continue, you know, at according to plan and it wouldn't have come back to the council. But if we need to know that if we increase the town's contribution beyond the 15 or so million dollars, how that will impact the other capital projects. Because I do think when the voters went to vote, they voted on the $36 million and the 15.8 from the town, and they may not feel comfortable with us. You know, committing five to 10 or more million dollars that take away from other capital projects. I would, I'm concerned that if we don't so if the if down the road we don't increase the town's contribution, and we're putting perhaps another $10 million on the library trustees to raise in addition to the almost $6 million they've committed to that makes that I think an unreasonable ask and expectation. So, and I am would be hopeful that the Board of Library commissioners, you know, might increase that the amount that they are going to give to the other towns in the consortium that are approaching them through our state representatives. But if you know from what I understand there's like eight to 13 towns in this situation similar to ours. So, that's a lot of money being asked from the Board of Library commissioners. So I would wonder if they increase it how much it will dent the whole. So those are my questions and my concerns. Thank you. I only want to add one qualification, there is at this time, no discussion on the table about us increasing our share. Okay, and that's why my concern is about asking the trustees to maybe raise $15 million. I understand that relationship but there, there is no discussion on the table about us increasing our share at this time. Thank you. Pam. Thanks. So, even at the time that the town allocated or approved the 15.8 million for the bond. That was a, as I understand it, it was sort of a maximum that they found acceptable that the council found acceptable in light of exactly what has just been said in light of the other four projects that that are the other three projects that are all tightly in sync with each other. The information that Kathy Shane brought up about the operating budget for the library, and that that was also very carefully constructed to not exceed their, their tipping point or their, their weakness. I'll just use that word. That was a really very interesting and important factor for me, because it means that in fact what was just said, there are, there are very likely going to be ramifications for operating budgets down, down the road. And one of those four projects when they started the light the school building was was thought to be a certain price, and it is clearly shown to be a much higher price than than originally expected. That is one of the four projects that is in fact the most project, these most important project that we are currently needing and and and desiring. Anything happen that would jeopardize the ability for the town to borrow money with it with a with an override to make that project happen so someone brought up earlier the idea of alternatives alternatives are a very real option. We have, we have cost of doing business between now and going out to bid of 1.4 million, whatever we have nine months of time, which is roughly the time that would go from conceptual design through schematic or schematic through conceptual and design documents to get those construction bid documents ready. And we have nine months that in fact could be spent looking at if it were the will of the Council, and maybe the trustees to in fact go back to that repair renovation and ADA improvement scenario, and in fact have a very solid building that is functional for the next several generations, more in line with $20 to $25 million. And I would just put that out there.  Yeah, I just want to clarify because I've heard a couple times. We're wrapping up schematic design at this point and the phases we're heading into our design development and construction documents and then eventually bidding. But we've been in schematic design and we're at the end of that phase. Dorothy. Okay, a comment and a question and I'll be quick. I agree that there is no discussion on the table about the town increasing our share. But if in fact the endowment is used, then we are because then there will be no money there for the operating expenses. And my question is, and I'm, I'm sure you already answered this but this gets so confusing. We had a vote, and the public went to vote and it was very clear what they voted on and there were numbers in that vote as to how many dollars here how many dollars there. Will the public be asked to vote with the new numbers. It's a very different issue now we're not talking the numbers, what the public supported is not what people are talking about now, they're talking about way more money. So will there be another vote for the public. That's my question. The, the vote that was held the last time was in response to a request a petition if you will for a vote. And even then that wasn't required. We did not, we did not have to go out to vote, we chose to go out to vote. Okay, so then there's no guarantee that the public will be given these new numbers and asked to weigh in on spending them. Council would have to decide to go out to vote. Okay, thank you very much. Shannon. I think there's a very important difference between DPW fire and school project and the light versus the library. In a good way, the library the increase for the increase, we have the library trustees we have people who are fundraising. The additional cost is not coming to us I mean we are in a very lucky situation that we have board of trustees who are so committed, and we have, and they have an excellent team of fundraisers who are doing so we have partners we're not alone in this process. I think we're in a position as well as we could, given the way the mblc system works, we are really positioned in a good place I it's not a good situation I agree. But, like I said the alternatives are bad, and I also want to just remind people that when Hitchcock Center raised $6 million in 2015, how many people even know about Hitchcock Center, and their cause was building a living building I definitely care about it. But they raised that money we have to give people who do this job for a living, give them a chance to do what they do. We have people in our town who have already committed one point I don't know how many million and institutional money and at the state level we have grants there's alpha money right now that could be utilized. We have all these different sources we have partners in town we have residents who are so committed to this project. And none of it is coming right at this point where the town is not being asked to take on the additional burden of the capital. So, I don't know, I do want to see the MOU and the discussion that happens to give us as a council the assurance that coming from the trustees that the town is not going to be liable. I want to take two more comments and then just remind us we're not coming to a vote tonight. The, we will have more information by next week, and the finance committee is meeting tomorrow. I hope I earn my spot as one of your last two comments here. So, the deja vu is so real today and I wasn't even at this table last time that this was all coming up so I'm having a lot of deja vu which is very strange for me but when we consider financially responsible decision we once again need to remember that regardless we're spending money on this library the current conditions are not acceptable we cannot keep the current conditions, not spending money is not an option, right. We know that from the entire first debate on this. The library, given the fact that with the updated modelings the town's contribution does not change, given that the trustees are capable of making informed decisions and understand their financial responsibility to the town with regards to their operating budget. I think it's very responsible to do what I think is being softball pitched out here and and turn down 13 point x million from MVLC that money can't go to anything else I can't go to schools I can't go to class I can't go to anything else right that's money that we would say no to I do not believe the trustees would vote to pledge their endowment without considering their operating budget commitments to the town. I want to follow up on my comment from finance. We need to support the trustees and seeking state and federal funds. I do not believe in having spoken to other folks who are engaged in those spaces and confident that the library project is different enough from other capital needs so seeking state and federal funds for the library would not be double dipping and removing that from the schools. We can still seek that in the future. I do not believe that we as a council need to send a strong statement along with repton and Senator Comerford that the MVLC should not be accepting new projects until they're until they are able to see the projects that they have committed to through to fruition. We need to be working together as a council with the other libraries that have that were brought into the MVLC program and strongly advocating for them to either proportionately increase the funds they've allocated. Bring us up to the same dollar amount that we were we were able to contribute last time these are the kind of the three options in my mind. Bring us up to the same dollar amount that we were going to have to contribute between the trustees and the town last time the same bond amount, or allow projects to adapt their designs. Those are the three ways that we I think all of the towns need to come together on this but our advocacy needs to be very strong. And that's what I'd like to see us discussing is what are we going to put in a letter how are we going to coordinate with these other groups. And what needs to shift here the MVLC need MVLC needs to move in our direction to be clear. Thanks. Mandy Joe. I agree with everything on it just said. But I do want to respond to Pam's comments which is I disagree that we should even be considering pulling the plug right now we shouldn't because we need to find out what the real number is we need to get to bid documents to find out what the real number is. You know, if, if we don't do that, we turn down the money, we have to repair a building you Pam just even estimated that those repair costs would be 20 to 25 million. We're trying to find a rent of an expansion cost at 15 million and you just said well maybe we should throw in 20 million to repair a building, but we can't find 20 million to, you know, it, no, no, you didn't say that I know you didn't think that maybe the repair costs would be up to 20 or 25 million and we could do that. But we're here struggling to say but should we pull project now when it's still at this point would only cost us 16 million. We know the repair costs are above that right now. We need to give this project and the trustees a chance to show us that it really will only cost us 16 million to see this project with fruition. And if we get to bid, and we haven't seen that from the trustees and the number is higher, and I mean, which right now they are not seeking more money than 16 million from us, then we can have that conversation as to whether increasing our contribution above 16 million makes sense, financially fiscally sense, or whether we move and turn down the fund raising that is going on and say we're just going to go on our own and repair this building and yet might cost 20 million but we'd rather repair for 20 million than spend 15 or 18 million to do a new project. That's when we can have that conversation having that now when we don't know the numbers. I think is fiscally irresponsible. Let's go forward, get to the bid projects. I think the numbers are, and let us not forget that if we turn down this money that repair number does not include any energy efficiency climate action changes, we would be installing a new HVAC system that uses oil under the repair costs if we would want to do that. Those numbers that we have for repair would go up because those repair numbers are only for an oil system. And so, don't lose our climate action goals in this debate here. Well before we even need to have the debate as to how much money we as a town should be putting in. Any beyond the money that we've already contributed. Let the trustees, let the, the fantastic fundraising team that is out there lobbying, do their work, give them the confidence that we're going to let them do that for the next nearly a year, and see where we are then see where the inflations are see where the actual bids are. That's the fiscally responsible thing to do right now. I was going to say that was the last comment, but you have your hand up. That's true because notice that I did not use the numbers 16 to 19 million for repairs and renovations and ADA improvements I use 20 to 25, which would then of course look at some of the energy improvements and, and perhaps even some planning that could reshape some of the, some of the usable spaces in the library and recognizing that the 15 eight that the town committed to would then be added to would then get the $1 million of CPAC money, plus the $2 million that the, that the library and the trustees is comfortable, you know, using of their, of their endowment without harming the towns, etc, etc. So you're very close. You, in fact, are almost there with your fundraising already in place. Thank you. All right, I believe we've taken this conversation as far as we can. We're going to be returning to it on the 19th, hopefully with a whole lot more information. And with that, I am going to suggest that we take a break. Let's do five minutes and be back and continue at that point. Please turn your mics off as well as your picture. How long is the break. Please turn, please turn your picture back on. So I know you're here. As you return, please turn your picture back on so I know you're here. Athena, we are going to be bringing two people in to make public to make comment. They're the petitioners. Okay. Please turn your picture back on when you return. Pam. All right, we're going to continue. Again, there is a change in the order order of the agenda. We are going to take up action item B, and then we will go back to a action item B is a petition for what has been a private road to be our private roads to be brought into the public way. This is something that this council, nor the previous council has ever dealt with. And so, I wanted to make sure as we start into this, we have good background, and I'm going to start by calling on Paul Bachman. We also have Christine Brestrup, our planning director and our town engineer, Jason Jason skills with us tonight. We also have two of the petitioners. One is Douglas DeNel, president of Meadows homeowners Association, and Connie Krueger who swore she'd never come to one of these meetings. Former select board, but also a resident of this area so Connie welcome back. Paul. Thank you, Lynn. So as you mentioned, we this is the first time we're doing a road acceptance in this way. So I think we went, as you said, take our steps carefully and make sure all of our bases are covered. This is your introductory meeting. We're going to ask you to refer it to the planning board and to the finance committee or whatever other committees you choose on the town council to refer it to. We'll give you a little bit of background. Proponents. Doug and Connie can speak to their request. They're the ones who initiated this request by writing a letter to the to the council. And then we'll go from there to Chris. Great. Chris. Good evening. I'm Chris Brestrup planning director. Hello everybody. So I'm going to tell you a little about the project we have written a memo to you Paul Backelman sent you a memo which outlines a lot of these things but I'll just go over them briefly. The town council has been asked to accept as public ways the subdivision roadways that were part of the meadow the Meadows subdivision. And the meadows is a neighborhood located off old farms road in the Amherst field section of Amherst. I would call it East Amherst and I live in East Amherst. Hopbrook Road and Kestrel Lane are the two roadways in question that the town council is being asked to accept. The roadways are shown on a definitive subdivision plan that was approved by the planning board in 1995 and you've received copies of the plans for this subdivision I think there are four of them all together. They should be in your packet. The plan was begun by Jeffrey flower in the late 1990s, and it was purchased by Doug Cole of Tafino associates and coal construction sometime after that. The roadways were constructed in the early 2000s, and they were substantially completed by about 2004, but there were punch list items that remain to be completed. In the last 16 years, the roadways have deteriorated town council may wish to seek a report from the superintendent of public works in the town engineer, and also their recommendation on several items. One being the status of the listed punch list items that have been completed to the satisfaction of the DPW. The report on the current condition of the road, and if there are any other items that need to be addressed. Three is an estimation of whether and when the roads will like likely need to be resurfaced. And for is a recommendation on the acceptance of the roads as public ways. The town's attorneys KP law prepared a memorandum to help cities and towns to create a public way, and you have a copy of this memorandum in your packet. We have outlined three steps to be taken, and the steps include the layout process, the acceptance, and the acquisition of interests in the land. At this time the town council is being asked to conduct the layout process. And the steps in the layout process are as follows. The petition to lay out the road as a public road, and we have you have received the petition from the Meadows homeowners Association Association, sorry. Second is the layout plan and or description. You're required to have either a plan or description and words of the land that you're being asked to accept. And in this case you have the definitive subdivision plan dated 1995. And that has been submitted to town council. The third thing that you need to do is a referral to the planning board. And as part of the referral to the planning with the town council needs to vote to the to vote its intention to lay out the ways as public ways, and then refer the plan to the planning board for a recommendation. And the planning board then has 45 days to submit a non binding report to the council. After that, there's a layout meeting where the town council then needs to vote to adopt the layout, as it's shown on the layout plan. After they're finished after you are finished with the layout process. Then the town council needs to vote to accept the ways by a majority vote. If you have accepted the ways you need to acquire an interest in the land. And we're going to be seeking guidance from KP law as to the form of interest that you will be asked to accept in the land. So these are essential steps that were outlined in the memorandum and I'm happy to answer questions. Chris, first of all, thank you. I, for both the memos and your work on this and that very straightforward explanation. Dorothy. After I went to the transfer station. A few days ago, I drove around the roads and I was trying to figure out, are we, you know, accepting roads that exist or making new roads and so it's the documents that have come since. It's the idea that the town would be accepting these existing roads as one that the town would be responsible for plowing and paving. Is that correct. Okay, well, it seemed it seemed reasonable to me, that's all I'll say. Thank you, Kathy. Just building on Dorothy's if I'd like to know what benefit. It would be to the town to accept the roads. So I can understand the benefit and switch that we might, we would be plowing them repairing them in the future. But just, I'd like that laid out to us and why we might want to do this. Secondly, the memo that was carefully written has a lot of maze in it. We may do this and may do that one of them was find out what the current condition of the roads are do they need to be repaired or not. I think it would be hard to make a decision on this till we did do that so I would want to change that to we will ask for that. I'd like to know whether the roads need to be repaired how how soon would they need to be resurfaced. There are other issues I saw the punch list that are and, and Guilford's comment in this there might have been others. Now we're going to hear from Jason. So my first is why might we want to do this what what benefit would there be to the town. And then what are the current conditions. Because I understand we take over. I guess now they're plowed by private plows we don't have to plow those roads. Or we plow them now. So Connie saying no we plow them now. So I just want to know what we take on when we take on the roads and I think then it's the repair and maintenance of the roads. So just, I would like it a little bit clearer on what we gain by it and to what extent we're taking on expenses.  I wanted to share a few thoughts about those questions and what benefit is it to the town. Well, I think the benefit is to be assured that those roads are passable passable for emergency vehicles and passable for school buses. The roads are allowed to deteriorate if the, you know, neighborhood association or the developer or some private entity is in charge of making sure that the roads are passable. We run the risk of not having them be passable. And so, you know, if you want to make sure that the buses and the ambulances can get to the people who live there. I would say that that is a benefit to the town in terms of what the current condition of the roads is I think that Jason skills the town engineer would be better able to answer that question. Jason, do you want to chime in on that at this time. We need to hear Jason you need to unmute or something. Turn your sound up maybe. It's not loud enough. Jason. Yeah, I think you need to turn your sound up. Thank you. It's better. We still can't hear you. If you go down on your bottom of your computer I don't know what kind of computer you're using and look for the little megaphone and go to it and move it so that we can hear you. Let me come back to Jason made Joe go ahead with your questions and then I also want to give Doug Douglas to now and Connie comment opportunity to comment because they may have some additional benefits that they would list as well. I don't expect any answers to these questions tonight but I'm putting them out there for finance committee in particular. I was wondering the plans right now show that there should be sewer and maintenance easements and so my question is do that does the town already have those sewer and maintenance easements that are listed on that subdivision definitive plan or would those are those also being asked to be adopted now, or obtained now who technically owns what would become the public way. Is it each homeowner the HOA the developer, the memo we got from KP law indicates that we might need legal agreements with all the homeowners even if the HOA or developer kept the ownership fee and the deeds. And so we should investigate how owners, all of that would be a question about why it's taken 20 to 25 years to ask for the acceptance. And that seems like a really delayed amount of time, and to finish this punch list that apparently was defined in 2004 and would we be seeking easements or the ownership fee interest. The memo talked about easements might be preferred for liability reasons I'm curious if we do easements or if we do the fee. Are we receiving property taxes on what is considered or what is a road right now and if so what, depending on how we go which way, what cost that would be. And what's the plan to cover the costs of the acceptance the easements the recording the negotiations. Has there been any proposal by the HOA or the developer to assist in paying those costs that the memo indicates could be substantial. I want to make sure that many people heard Mandy Joe preface this by saying these are questions for the finance committee. Okay, we're not going to try to answer them tonight. Given that Chris, can I go ahead. Yes. Well I could just answer one of these questions, which is why it's taken so long and I think there was an illusion to that in the memo that, first of all, in 2008, starting in 2007 I think we had a multi year economic downturn and the. So the developer didn't have enough money to finish the road and not as many people were buying lots, although Connie may have something to say about that. And then the other thing was Doug Cole passed away in 2010, and kind of threw everything into a cocked hat and to Fino has been struggling to meet its responsibilities since then so it was those two things that I identify as reasons for why it's taken so long I would say that the homeowners association has been having conversations with to Fino associates with the town engineer and with my office for at least. I don't know six or eight years about this and trying to move this forward and for whatever reasons it hasn't been really brought forward until this time. So that's my answer to question number two. Jason, are you able to now use your mic. Can you hear me now. Yes, but please speak loudly because. Let me turn it up a little bit more I found it under video settings. Excellent, thank you. Audio. That I'm going to turn it all the way up I hope I'm not screaming in anybody's ear. That's fine. No further. Okay, good. So, so the first question one of the first earlier questions was, how does the town benefit from this. And so the road mileage would count towards our chapter 90 allotment, once we accept it as a town way. It's a, it's a small fraction in a large, a large calculation, but it's a fraction. One more dollar we get is one more dollar we can spend. And then the road conditions. We actually had them driven in our pavement analysis last round 2021. And they came out. I think one was a 53 and one was a 60 something so they're, they're poor and fair conditions. And I do would need some sort of treatment soon to bring them back to like a drivable, and if we let them sit for much longer they'll need full depth reconstruction. So, and there's a much larger punch list than the 2004 punch list at this point. Okay, that's all I have to say about that for now I encourage people to try to walk the sidewalks there if you're really interested in, and seeing what condition the road. Would you mind if I go ahead and call on Douglas to now and Connie Krueger first. No, no, go ahead. Okay, I have a mini question that can wait. Oh, Douglas why don't you unmute and go ahead and welcome. Thank you Lynn. Thank you, Council members my name is Douglas to now. I live at 46 hop book. I'm the current president of the Meadows homeowners association. So, you, we're really happy to be able to, to be petitioning before the town council at this point. Members of our association have been working on this for a very long time. There have been a lot of obstacles to getting the road accepted. And I want to emphasize that the, the road was expected to be accepted as a public way, since it was initially developed as a subdivision. So, this is not a controversial or unexpected or sudden decision. This was an expectation that was created when the subdivision was created in the late 90s. The subdivision was finished in 2004. And it has taken 20 years for us as homeowners to get this presented to the town to be taken as a public way. So we are 28 households in the two roads. And everyone who purchased a home here purchase it under the expectation that they were living and going to live on a public way. So, it has never really been considered to be a private road it's a it's a road that was developed by a developer, and then when the development was completed the road would be transferred to the town, which was the basis of the original subdivision agreement. And from our perspective there's been a number of other factors than than those that have been outlined in the history that have also contributed to why this is taking so long. I don't really want to take up a lot of time with that here for you guys that can maybe get explored in the the finance committee or however you decide to further understand the situation. One of the things that did happen was the town had voted or the planning board had voted in 2001 to collect a hundred and $30,000 surety from the developer. That unfortunately never occurred. They collected $20,000 and there was, and that was the extent of it. There's now a $20,000 escrow account towards the costs of finishing the punch list that was developed in 2004. The $130,000 so that work was never completed. We, as the homeowners have been pursuing this for at least eight years, we've been actively pursuing this for the last five years. By actively I mean contacting whoever we can contact in particular to Fino, but also various, you know, department heads within the town. We've gotten estimates for having the roads fixed we've had numerous meetings of the Association and formed a subcommittee to do that. So that's a little bit of the background. We also understand as the homeowners Association that this is a first for you guys. So we just want you to know that we are here as cooperative partners in in doing this together we understand that this is your first time around for this so that there's a, you're going to have a lot of questions and there's going to be a certain amount of process involved just getting there. So we've maintained counts legal counsel. And but we've also intentionally chosen not to pursue litigation with the developer, and really want to see this resolved amicably, and cooperatively, both with the developer and with the town, and so that is our position, and we're looking forward to working with the town council to achieve that end. So thank you very much for hearing our petition. Thank you so much for those comments and that background. Connie. Yes. I'm Connie Krueger I live at 15 hot brick road and I just want to share my perspective as a long time homeowner in the meadows subdivision. In 1999, my partner Susan Tracy and I bought a building lot on hot brick road from Doug Cole to you know development cold construction. At the time I was employed as a senior planner in the town of Amherst. And I had seen the meadows subdivision plan go through the standard approval process by the planning board was reasonable to expect that the town would accept accept these roads within a few years of completion of the subdivision, as these roads were built in conformance with the approved subdivision plan and it's not unusual. It's just town meeting used to end the select board used to do the approval process. The town has consistently accepted roads that are built to the subdivision standards that's why people follow those requirements. However, the untimely death of Doug Cole due to complications from a liver transplant that this did not happen in a timely manner. As you heard from Doug Dennell on February 7 2001 the planning board voted to require to Fino associates to give the town $130,000 to cover completion of the remaining work that was going to be 10,000 a lot as each lot was released and sold. For whatever reason, the planning department at that time never collected these funds is currently a little over $20,000 being held by the town, not nearly enough to cover the remaining work. For about five years, a subcommittee of the Association has been working to get the town and the developer to resolve issues and complete this project. This project could be accepted. In October 2021. We were making progress there was a meeting held at the DPW offices with Guilford morning, Jason skills, Ted Parker of to Fino and three members of our association including myself. The final list of items to be completed was discussed and has yet to be produced as was promised in that meeting a year ago. So, we're still waiting to reflect you're right it does say may go for morning may require more items, but we don't know what those items are, and we've been waiting for a year, just for that list to be completed. So, I'll conclude as one of the original homeowners in this neighborhood. It's very important to me that to Fino and the town come together as soon as possible to resolve any remaining issues, and to have the town council finally vote to accept our roads putting us on an equal footing with most of the other homeowners in town. Thank you for hearing our petition. I just want to add, I think our letter was a joint petition with to Fino associates, and the Meadows homeowners Association so it actually I'm, you know to Fino could have been here as well. Any, any entity can be the petitioner and we are the joint petitioners. So, thanks for your time. Thank you Connie. Pat, I'm going to come back to you for your questions. This quick quick indulgence. There's a small driveway road dirt thing called Allen Mill Road and district Allen Mills Road in District two people use it to get access to Amethyst Brook but it's just a block from the actual entrance, but it. I've already been asked why it can't be a road. Why aren't we treating roads equally. Since this came out. So, I'm interested in is there a specific road mileage that is a requirement to make a public road. And what are, are there standards or conditions that the road needs to be into in to become a public road. That are taken on by the owners as they were originally here. So I, again, it's an indulgence but I do need the answers to those questions and if somebody could give me them now or email them to me it would help. Jason, did you have your hand up to answer that question. Yeah, I could answer it. And everybody hear me okay. All right, so the road would have would have had to have been built to the subdivision standards, which is a minimum width. There's typically a required turnaround at the end, usually a cul-de-sac, not necessarily, that's not hard and firm it could be a hammerhead style turnaround, and it would have to be to the minimum thickness, paved standards. So those are, those are, there's, there's a lot more requirements than just that but that sort of sums it up for where Alan Mills falls very short. Thank you very much. Let me just say, in Pat's and my district, we've had other discussions about other roads, very recently as well. So, one of the reasons why I think it's extremely important for the council to understand. First of all, what Meadows has gone through to get to this point, but also that we in fact do have requirements before we can accept a road or even begin to think about accepting a road. And that doesn't even get into all those financial questions that Mandy Joe asked, which I'll just be adding to when I get to the finance committee. Jennifer question. Yeah, so I, my question is, are the further negotiations between the town and Tofino, or with what I was hearing is the issue where the punch list isn't being maybe completed is with Tofino. So that is that who the town needs is continuing to work with Chris or Jason would are one of you able to answer that. Jason. I've created several punch lists over the years. Pretty much one every other year. I walked the entire road, note all the defects, but a list together. I believe those have been sent to Tofino. And then the last set of negotiations was at a planning board meeting that I was on vacation for. So and at some point that sort of referred back to the 2004 punch list items. And that was viewed as to how that occurred, since there's many more things that have arisen since 2004. Okay. Thank you, Chris. So it is a little bit murky I must admit. I received information from Ted Parker, telling me that he had spoken to Jason and they were essentially three items that needed to be completed. And those were given to me in an email and I put them into the email that I sent to the town manager that he, he sent to you all. So those were the three items that Ted Parker was definitive about that needed to be done. I have seen the punch list from a while ago and it does include many more things than that and it was unclear to me, whether the town or the DPW was going to require those things to be completed before accepting the road so it's, I wouldn't say I have a clear picture of this. I just need to build on your question. Although Paul you have your hand up. Go ahead. You can build on the question for well it. Bringing something to the town council where we still have issues to resolve. Makes me as a counselor want to say, get those issues resolved. And then we can deal with this. And I, because I feel like leaving residents hanging out there as this has happened now for any number of reasons not necessarily the towns is something we just can't continue to do so. I, I appreciate Chris's comment that it's murky, but somewhere in here, we need to get these resolved so that we aren't continuing to sit on this for the next 25 years. Paul. I don't have interest at play here. I think it almost always revolves around who's going to pay. So the understanding is that the developer pays, and that did not happen to be no is, you know, that's why, and to be no is somewhat out of the picture at this point in time, they've sold all their lots, but that's a question, but they're, they're still involved. I mean, Ted Parker still included so this is a broader conversation. The association brought the petition. So that's why it got before you. And so I think that was, you know, that this is going to help generate the solution. So that you're, you're, you're accepting this onto your agenda will move this forward. But essentially the question for the council is going to be, what, what kind of road do you want to accept it as a public way. You know, what kind of condition are you willing to accept it as a public way it's a choice you have from the property owners point of view they feel like they've paid what they feel should have been paid, and that they they're paying taxes, as if it were a public way so they feel like they have some entitlement. The town from its point of view is we've been paving we've been plowing the road, because it is treated as a public way in many ways. So I think there's a lot of different it's a it's a there's a lot of stuff at play. It seemed to makes and there was no easy resolution and barring going into litigation which I think the homeowners association is hoping not to do. Right. Maybe this is a way to move it forward.  Please unmute. Sorry, I'm not quick on that. Yeah, we, we are coming before the town because we were advised. We went to the planning board, and we were advised to petition the town as a way to move this process forward, even with the punch list unresolved in that meeting with the town was a somewhat informal agreement between the superintendent and the planning board and ourselves and to Fino that the three items that were mentioned in Chris's history, history were the punch list, quote unquote. We as homeowners find ourselves in this sort of catch 22 where we can't, we can't affect anything here we don't own anything we have we don't really have any agency. We are petitioning the we've we've gone to to Fino and to Fino has in 15 years been basically very unresponsive. And now we're coming to the town in an effort to make public our situation in an effort to just accomplish what from our perspective should have just been a fairly uncontroversial and somewhat standard transfer of the, the road as a development into the public way, you know, 20 years ago. So, just to add that to the, to the next and I thank you for that and I, it's my understanding that you're unfortunately not the only subdivision if you will in this situation, Chris. That is that is correct. I just wanted to clarify that it was really Guilford mooring the superintendent of public works who recommended that the residents file a petition letter. It wasn't really the planning board per se it was Guilford mooring so thanks that's I just wanted to clarify that. To be honest, I don't care who but it's now out in the public. So I think that's where the goal was of the homeowners association. Douglas did you have an additional comment you wanted to make it this time. Okay, Kathy. Yeah, I just. I have a question whether by bringing a petition to us does that increase the leverage against the developer because it feels like this is the issue that things haven't been done on even the short punch list and there may be a longer punch list that hasn't emerged so is the idea that by coming to us, it increases the leverage or Paul you said it's all about money by coming to us as a shift who will pay for the deficiencies of the road. And I know that's going to be a question of finance but does it, we're giving up that the developers never going to come up with 130,000 or 110 or, and therefore the town will take on that. I just, I don't need that answered right now but I think when the finance committee is looking at it if it's, it's not to get new leverage is just to shift the cost that's a, it's a different issue. And I'm totally sympathetic with buying a house with some assurance that you would have decent roads and doing everything you can for 20 years and there's an undone list. There's never been a state road so at least it gets done on some regularity. But anyway, I just want to understand does this increase leverage by the publicity of it by something I, I'm not sure I understand that. Paul did you want to comment on that. No. Okay. I kind of assumed that might be your answer. Connie did you want to comment on that. Let me, let me give it a try. It's not. It's not so much leverage it's trying to cut through the extreme length of time to get a resolution. I think to Fino has some ability to pay but no one's ever really finalized what that list is so here's two perspectives, but I can do this without muddying the water. And I think that this perspective might be if we had finished everything in 2004, we would have taken care of our obligation and the road could have been accepted and whatever deterioration, and, and falling apart, falling in storm drains and whatever would have been the town's and we would have been out of it so our, Fino's obligation they feel is to complete what they didn't do the first time. And the town might say now okay it's 2022. There's a lot more work that needs to be done because of deterioration that's happened in the last 15 years. So, to Fino should pay for that too to Fino saying we should pay to finish what we didn't finish the first time. I think as homeowners we understand if the town accepts the road it doesn't mean that town's going to come and repave and put everything ship shaped there are other roads in town that are actually in worse shape than ours it just means it becomes the town's responsibility on the long list of roads that need repair right now to Fino owns that road we couldn't even get repair work done on it if we wanted to. So it's, it's more trying to seek a resolution we don't know how to get the town into Fino to finally decide what that actual list is a little bit like the library conversation what is the cost, right now to make it acceptable, and we don't know. I just want to remind the Council that we've not put the motion in place on although I'm about to that this is a referral we are not going to resolve this this evening. Jennifer and Shalini I'm going to take your comments or questions and then I'm going to put the motion on the floor. This to be answered another time I'm just maybe water under the bridge but why wasn't the 100 and sounds like some before anybody who is with the town now was here somebody dropped the ball on collecting the $130,000 bond. I just a little curious about that. Thank you. There's probably nobody in this room that was in town government at that time except. I was Connie Krueger you were. And would you like to tell us the answer to the question. I think if you go back to the minutes of that meeting which I know cleaning director, this breast strip has, you can see who was responsible but it wasn't in my daily work at the time. Okay. Thank you. We could write a case study on this. Shalini. Um, so I'm completely sympathetic with the residents because when they bought the house or built the house, there was an expectation that there is an arrangement between to Fino and the sub to Fino and the town that this subdivision has been approved and the roads, once you take an over by the town. My question was that, you know, the murkiness is like if the town had taken it over 2004 than this deterioration wouldn't happen. But the reason the town didn't take the road or adopt the road in 2004 was because it wasn't completed at that point. And ever since it's not been completed and other things keep happening. So, is that accurate. I think that's the catch 22. No, what is the catch 22 about it like they were supposed to complete it and I understand there was, you know, there was economic downturns there were all those reasons that there are reasons for it and I'm not blaming them. Why, but we need it. We don't want to murky the, the responsibility the responsibility was of the developer to finish the roads up to a certain standard that has to be adopted by the town. And for whatever reasons they were not able to do it. Right. So, in my mind it's not murky it's like they're supposed to complete it. And the residents should be entitled to a finished road that the town takes over and then from then onwards the town is responsible we cannot say like oh we have other roads that are not done to let this be also but down the road it is going to be a responsibility to meet the potholes and I get calls all the time and emails all the time about potholes and so this really does not seem too murky to me in my mind it is something that, you know, it is unfortunate that we did not collect the guarantee money because if that was there, we could have used that to maybe do the repairs. So, a, Tofino did not give the guarantee, guaranteed money for whatever reason to they did not complete the roads to standard three they have delayed the process for so long. So, I don't see what is the murkiness like where does the town come in and become accountable for taking over that cost that should have been the developers. And he wants to try to go at it. Fine but I'm actually going to suggest that the finance committee try to sort that particular item out. So I'm going to make the motion and look for a second. And if we have to get questions later not so fast on. So the motion is to express the town council's intent to accept as public the roadways and easements of the Meadows at Amherst field division, as shown on the Huntley subdivision plans dated February 24 1995. That's the first motion is there a second. Okay, Dorothy, do you have a question on the motion. I just want to say how it happened why it happened. It's a long time ago, I just think we should solve this thing and not spend a whole lot of time we've got a lot of big problems to deal with. It seems reasonable for the town to take over the road. And I support that. We're not voting on that tonight. Okay, so I feel it sets a precedent for other developers to make commitments to do developments under certain standards and then not do it and hope that the town is going to pick up the undone work. I think we're going to resolve this at another meeting before we come back to the council. Okay. So the motion has been made and seconded as are there any other comments or questions. If not, we're going to move to the vote on a Devon got here. I was eating my snack. I. Sorry. I, I'll say it again well. And, thank you. I. Anika Los I Michelle Miller. Hey, Dorothy, Pam. Yes. Pam Rooney. Hi, Kathy Shane. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Jennifer Taw. I Alicia Walker. Hi, Shawny bone. Yes. Patrick Angelus. motion is related to this and it is to refer the proposed acceptance of the roadways and easements of the Meadows at Amherst Fields Division as shown on Huntley subdivision plans dated February 24th 1995 to the planning board and finance committee for review and recommendation to the town council by October 27th. Is there a second to the motion? Second, Hanneke. I just want to ask before we move on is there anybody that feels this needs to be referred to any other committee? Seeing no suggestion of that the motion's been made and seconded or are there any other questions? Seeing none we're going to move to the vote. The vote is we'll begin with Griezmer who's on the aye. Mandy Jo. Hi. Hanneke. Anika Lopes. Hi. Michelle Miller. Hi. Dorothy Pam. Yes. Pam Maroney. Yes. Gathie Shane. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Hi. Jennifer Todd. Hi. Alicia Walker. Hi. Shalini Balmille. Yes. Pat D'Angeloz. Hi. And Anna Devin-Goth here. I. Both motions were passed unanimously. Thank you. And Connie and Douglas thanks for joining us. We will be seeing you I'm sure at finance committee meetings at some point. Our next action item is actually A and it is the proposed special act on residential property transfer fees. You have a document in your packet and you also have a general doc a document that generally describes the filing of special acts. But with that I'm going to call on Devin-Goth here and Mandy Jo Hanneke who are the sponsors. All right. First off Mandy and I have agreed not to introduce any new chaos in your lives for a little while after this one. So this is the last thing that we co-wrote for a little bit. So this was something that I had in my head for a while and was figuring out the right way to bring to the council. And Mandy Jo agreed to jump in and work on it with me. I'm very grateful for that. So first I want to thank Mandy for tag teaming this. Essentially when we looked at what we're facing as a town we were realizing that well we weren't realizing we already knew it. We had a whole discussion on it earlier today. Capital costs are skyrocketing. We're seeing pressure on our operating capital budgets especially and we're also seeing an extreme need for both lowercase and capital A affordable housing meaning designated affordable housing with income limits but also middle income and lower income housing without necessarily a program running it. So looking at what other cities and towns have done across Massachusetts we saw that there were several towns and cities who have implemented a real estate transfer fee. This fee is it would be a special act and so it goes through the legislature but it allows cities and towns it's done differently in all of them to impose a specific fee on certain real estate transactions that benefits certain things. So kind of fill in the blanks there right. So what we have written is a special act that would impose a two percent fee on property transfers to be regulated by bylaw. So essentially what we're saying to kind of put it in plain English is we are asking the state legislature to allow us to have the right to impose a real estate transaction fee on certain property transfers and we have the right to to delineate that where that where that goes. What we are putting in our sample bylaw so what you have in your packet after the memo is the proposed special act and then a proposed bylaw. The bylaw we are we would wait until the special act was passed in order to formalize and work on as a as a council. However the goal of the bylaw is that and the special act is that there are two types of property transfers that would have this fee associated with them. The first is on on homes on the homes that sell for over 200 percent of the average assessed price of a single family home and that two percent fee would be on the amount over the 200 percent mark. So if the I included a super fun Excel spreadsheet for you with this but if the average median price were 300,000 is it fake numbers right now if the average assessed price for 300,000 200 percent of that would be 600 and we'd look at the fee on the amount over. The second would be a two percent property transfer fee on homes that did not qualify for a homestead certificate, which means that they are not owner occupied or not the primary home of the owner. So this would be second homes and non owner occupied rentals. So I threw some math at you. I did check my math with the with Sean Mangano and our wonderful assessor Kim. I believe that the second Excel sheet has the up numbers. I did the math right. I didn't have the right average assessed price. So if you look at the Excel sheets, those would those would be the numbers for 2021. Last thing is that what Mandy and I decided on is we looked at how to where to put the money right when it comes in. And I know that this council has had a hesitation around dedicated funding streams and I respect that. But one of the reasons to do this special act is to help to protect and expand affordable housing. So we have written it so that regardless of how much comes in the first 250,000 would be allocated to the affordable housing trust. Beyond that, the council can decide the percentage but we would be creating a capital stabilization fund and a and and then between that and the operating budget. So the capital stabilization fund would be to support the inflation impacts that we're seeing on our capital projects. And we all know what the general operating budget is. I know this is complicated. I know it's a lot and I know it's hard to kind of wrestle with the special act in the bylaw. The long and short of it is that we are writing this so that we as a council get to decide where this funding goes. And I will see if Mandy wants to add anything because I'm sure I left a lot out that I want to cover most of it. I just I just want to say the bylaw itself is truly a sample. Don't look at it and say this is what would get proposed if we're successful with the special act of the legislature. It's a sample to give you an idea of what a bylaw would look like and because the special act we've written very generally, it would it gives a better idea of where we're going with this whole concept. And the only the other thing I want to add is we wrote the special act generally because it's really hard number one to get a special act passed. And once it's passed, if it's in the special act you have to get the legislature to amend the special act to change anything that's in the special act. Whereas if you've written it so flexibly that you're putting it all in a bylaw once you get it passed, then you can more flexibly change things if you want to do stuff. So that's what we're going to need to look at. We hope you refer it that even things like the 250 we may want to change to more flexible numbers in the special act or something so that it's more flexible but that's the reason why if you just read the special act you're going to be like you're putting a 2% fee on everything. That's not the goal but the reason it's in there is so that we can see what works, see what number works, 2% might be too high, a half a percent might be fine. See what works and be able to tailor those exemptions. There's a lot more exemptions in the bylaw, the sample bylaw than there is in the special act. And there are more that many other towns have proposed in things that we would certainly look at when we got to the bylaw stage. So excited for all your questions. Kathy. Thank you. I like this idea a lot. So it's been, I wish I had thought of it, but just on terms of we need revenue so what you're looking for is revenue. So I think I'll reserve my specifics questions on percents and amounts as you said the bylaw could be written later. So the idea of a special act it's that the state legislature has to allow us to do something like this because this is not a property tax. So it's allowing us to get away from two and a half. We can impose other fees. So that I'm just wondering why my question is really why do we need special legislation? I'm sure there's a good answer to it because all the other towns that do this must have gotten their special legislation. Correct. Why doesn't the state just allow anyone who wants to do this to do this? Why do we have to do this step? May I answer that question? Please. Thank you. I'm so glad you asked. So there's actually a bill put forth by Senator Comerford right now that would do just that. So I'm going to mess up the number. I'm so sorry. So I'm not even going to try to get the number right. However, Senator Comerford has introduced and is continuing to work on a bill that would allow towns to impose a property transfer fee without needing to go through the legislature. But right now you do. So we should support that bill too. And to be clear, you know, in speaking with Senator Comerford, this only supports her bill. It is not in conflict with it. Thanks. The bottom line is we can't do this without legislative permission. That's what I was looking for. But it was also it just seems like to ask every town to do this is a very inefficient way of towns still would always have the option to do it or not do it. Correct. Yeah. Pam. So my only thank you again. Also, my only question is so does does the state accept this petition, if you will, with the draft bylaw as kind of a package? So they say we do this as a package a little bit like the MOU we discussed earlier with certain parameters will say yes. If the if the parameters change, we're going to come back and say no. But it basically special legislation requires that the town council vote to submit it to the legislature. And it and then it goes through its own process in the legislature and has to then also be approved by the governor before the town can do it. But that doesn't answer your question. No, I can. So the only thing that would get proposed in the legislature is the special act. The bylaw would not be trans the sample bylaw would not be transmitted over. So that's a separate thing. Our bylaw is based there were nine of these proposed special acts in the legislature this past this current term that is now in informal session. They varied from a page and a half about ours is about a page and a half about our length to about 10 pages. And some got very specific. We chose the non specific route to give us as much flexibility. And so the the non specific ones are very general like these, like the one we've proposed. Okay. Dorothy. Manager was partly answering in this. This is not a brand new idea. You other towns have been doing it. Do you want to share some of the successes or how you think it's working well in other towns? Sure. So I'm happy to point out some of the ones that I was most intrigued by. But I'm also happy to put together a document for the committees that this is going to and and share it with the council that I have a table that compares them. If that would be helpful. I think the two that I was particular the three I was particularly intrigued by were Somerville Cambridge and Nantucket. Okay. Thank you. And Mandy, I'm sure has her own interests. And those, those three are pending in the legislature now. I, I'm, I think Nantucket is potentially the only town that's been successful in getting some sort of special act related to this. But maybe it's not Nantucket. It's Martha's been here. Martha's been here. It's been been the only one that's been successful. I think in getting something actually passed. And I'm not sure it's exactly equivalent to this because it's a land bank of some sort. So it's similar. And this is, this is the method many towns have been towns and cities have been chosen to go since that success at Martha's vineyard on that similar matter. But yeah, nine and they all sat in committee. But we have wonderful legislators who are going to let that happen. Right. I hope so. We'll get to some other special acts later tonight. Pat DeAngelis. Thank you. First, I do not want Anna and Mandy Joe not to submit other legislation over this next year, please. Most of your work is excellent, even when I don't agree with it. This I happen to agree with very strongly. I am concerned about the limit, you know, 250,000 for the housing trust that really needs to be looked at. They need more money if you're going to set a specific figure, doubling it easily would would enable their work. But I think more you want to start thinking about percentages for the housing trust and for the general fund, et cetera. Thank you. Thank you, Pat. I will share our initial rationale behind setting the set number. We actually, we really appreciated how the reparations funding was established with the set number and then the remaining went elsewhere. And we modeled that. However, Mandy and I have talked about and we've also brought this to the housing trust. We're going to discuss it at their next meeting. And that was raised there as well as increasing that number. So Mandy and I have talked about we're open to that. This is, I mean, this is the beauty of committee process, right, is that we all now get to shape this. And I'll put kind of put our stamps on it in different ways. And thank you. Yeah. Michelle. Yeah, I really want to support increasing that 250 as well. I think that would be really powerful to do that. And I just really want to commend both of the counselors who put this together. I think it's it was an extraordinary amount of work. And you can tell just by looking at it. And I know it took a lot of thought. And so I just really want to share my appreciation. And I also wanted to ask, is it necessary in the special act to include the amounts as you have, or could you potentially leave the special special act more general? And then when the bylaw is written, you know, it would be it would be created off of the bylaw that split or whatever split. So various current applications do it differently. Many actually choose to just submit it to to have the money go to one place. And so then it's just in the file in the special act for one place. I do believe, though, that those towns and cities that start with choosing two places sometimes do not put the split in the special act. And so as we did with at least the stabilization fund and the general fund, I believe we could have a split three ways. They might want to see at least a percentage for one of them, but it could be written in many different ways to put us to set a floor for, say, the housing trust with then the rest between the housing trust and the other twos by bylaw type thing to, you know, there's there's just a lot of ways to write that. I don't know whether we can get as general as no no numbers or no percentages, but but we can we can look more closely at all the other ones to see if there are any that do no percentages or numbers at all if they're splitting it up. Thank you. Kathy recognizing that this is going to come to the finance committee where your vice chair, you want to raise your questions now? Yeah, this is a simple one just on the wording. It says capital stabilization fund. I don't think we actually have something right now called that. So so we have something called the stabili