Okay we're recording Andy. Okay well thank you. I want to welcome everybody to the finance committee meeting of August 22nd 2023 and calling this to order. This is a meeting that's being held by zoom. This is permitted by the open meeting law. Members of the public have access to the meeting by zoom and telephone and of course can view it on Amherst media which I believe is also connected to this meeting. So with that I'm going to start as expected both the usual procedure when we have remote meetings of making sure that everybody who is a member of the committee can hear and be heard and but before I do that I just want to remind everybody that this meeting is being recorded and so you should be aware that recording is in process. So with that said let's just check in with everybody. Anna. Hi everybody. Present. Lynn. Present. Bob. Here. Matt. Present. Bert. Bernie. Yep I'm here. Kathy. I'm here. Okay and I'm assuming that I'm here so the only one we're still waiting for is Alicia and we'll confirm her ability to connect when if we see her in the room. Now I want to thank all of the staff who are also present but I'm not going to go through the same process with them. So with that said first order of business on the agenda is public comment and I want to let everybody who is an attendee know that we are doing public comment. The rules for public comment to join you're aware that you needed to go through the link and say would be here. If you're on the telephone call I don't think we have any on the telephone call. There's a procedure of star nine during the public comment period. I will recognize members of the public to address any questions that are relevant to the finance committee been called on please identify yourself by stating your full name preferred pronouns and your district or address and so that is anyone interested in public comment. I see that we have Pam Rooney. Hello Pam Rooney 42 Cottage Street. I'm speaking as sort of a member I guess of as a member of a community resources committee who spent some time thinking about this opportunity to restructure rental registration bylaws and and our fee structure and I just wanted to say that we I'm happy to answer questions later on as you get into the gist of this. If I were to express my goals for the conversation I would. Andy can you hear Pam any longer? Can we lose you Pam? Pam we can't hear you. We stopped at your goals. Peter Lynn do you know what occurred? Yes I'm muted. Sounds like something got unplugged or? I don't know what happened. Okay we'll check back with you Pam in a few minutes to see if you've heard I don't. Maybe after you take the next public comment we can try again. Okay why don't we bring in Renata Shepard then Renata welcome. Hi thank you for taking my comment. I sent a movement in this effort from anyone just just driving Amherst and I sent a letter to the finance committee which I would like to read so so that you know goes on record for public comment. Dear finance committee because of many of the rental housing complaints arise from student housing in single-family neighborhoods UMass mainly and Amherst College must be involved in funding the rental bylaw. For example I have a condo rented out which it has its own condo rules and regulations to the same wonderful tenants for over 10 years. My rent is well below market and my unit is in great condition. Why should I pay the same fees for my permit and inspection as a dilapidated subdivided house full of rowdy people? Yes you can evict tenants from misconduct but that must be done via lawyers to be effective. It is expensive and can take several months. Tenants renting for like 10 to 12 months may be unconcerned and could even cause property damage before the eviction happens. Fines for parking on the lawn removing smoke detector parties etc. A resident issue not a landlord issue and the resident should bear their responsibility. The landlord must have the opportunity not to renew at least due to these behaviors but also not lose their livelihood over it by losing their permit or paying high fees. Usually landlords only find out about nuisance problems if someone lets them know. If that complaint goes first to the town instead of the landlord the consequences are dire to a landlord who was not given the chance to act first. That option must be in the bylaw. Meanwhile look at the case in North Amherst where the apparently absentee landlords wants to build a second duplex in the same parcel as they already poorly managed one. Would they be allowed to do it? Would they pay the same fees as me? If those issues are not addressed Amherst will not resolve its housing problems and affordable housing will be even less attainable since small landlords like myself will be tired of this Amherst way of governing. A $75 permit fee per parcel plus additional fees for additional units on each parcel would be reasonable and fair especially if you mass an Amherst college pitch in. An hourly inspection fee of $50 to $75 per unit would also be reasonable every five years for good properties. I would still earn less than other rental properties like duplex as apartment complexes, single-family homes, et cetera, but it would not break me and would not deter me from offering an affordable quality rental unit. Thank you for your consideration on this matter. And thank you for writing your comments. So I think that there's nobody else for the... Pam, let me just mention Pam Rooney did her computer blanked out. She's trying to reconnect. She'll come back through the audience. Okay. And I just want to let everybody know that I know that I see the Hilda's hand is up. She'll bring her in in just a moment. But since we've mentioned Pam, if Mandy comes to the meeting, I haven't seen her yet, but I will bring her into the discussion along with Anna, who are the co-sponsors of the Street Light Policy. And as far as members of CRC are concerned, when we get to the bylaw and rental registration, I think I have to make a judgment called based upon whether there's a quorum of that committee that is in the audience. If there's not a quorum, I may do the same thing. And with that said, please bring Hilda in and let's see if we complete public comment. Hilda, hi. You want me a panelist? No. Well, we now need you in the room so that you can offer public comment since you had raised your hand. So I'll just state your name and district that you live in, and then please offer the comment that you wanted to bring to the finance committee and you're muted. All right, now I've got it. Hilda Greenbaum, 298 Montague Road. I really believe that the problem the rent registration is trying to address affects very few people in the town, and the people who are most bothered by it seem to be home owners. So any benefits would be more to homeowners than the people who can least afford to pay for the the increased fees. I really believe that this whole inspection system, if it's going to really is something that should come off the tax base, but that's La La Land. That's not going to happen. And so if it can't happen, I think you need to make it really fair. And, you know, our 200 square foot studio or efficiency apartment shouldn't have the same fees for inspections or for registration as a four bedroom house with four undergraduates in it. That, you know, takes much takes much longer time to inspect everything in a four bedroom house than it does in the 200 square foot apartment. Most of the square foot, you know, these people who want to live in small units tend to want to be quiet and they don't want to bother anybody. So that they haven't done any complaints for many, many years. And I just hope that when you look at the fee schedule, you will remember that the town is more than half probably close to 60% or more renters to homeowners. And they are the people who can least afford to have the rent increased and be fair when you start setting the fees. If in fact, we do really believe this program has to happen. I think that the problems can be handled the way they've been in the past. And we don't need the program, but please be honest and fair and setting the fees and think about the most of the people who are tenants in this time can't afford to pay more than they're paying now. Thank you. Thank you, Hilda. I appreciate your comment. You know, on behalf of the committee, we appreciate hearing from you today. So that I think they were completed the public comment portion of the agenda because there's nobody else who's requesting to be heard. So I want to spend a limited amount of time at the beginning, but it is important that we have the discussion just to see if there's any comments about the budget process that we engaged in during the months of May and June and whether what people, if there's anybody wants to say what they particularly like, that's always good to hear suggestions about what you would like to see done differently and also what kinds of staff support you think was helpful and because we are going to have to make sure that as we transition in leadership in the finance department that the committee gets the kind of staff support that it needs. So, Matt. Thanks, Andy. I thought all the department heads did a great job of getting their budget books obviously together and the information, the responses to our questions. I personally would have preferred to go back to previous process of having actual presentations from department heads at the outset of their sections. I thought it is efficient to give them the questions in advance to respond to, but I thought it took out some of the authenticity of the discussion to not have, you know, a presentation from each department head when they spoke to their piece. So, I realize that's a slightly larger burden on folks, but especially without Sean next time around. I think we, I personally at least would need sort of that more broad overview in the process. Andy, can I just follow up on that specific comment? I think so that's a good comment certainly could happen. I think the committee is going to have to consider how much, how many meetings it has and how long those meetings are. I think the trouble when we were trying to fit them all in is we've increased the number of departments that we have. And every year, you know, there's more and more information. So, I think certainly can have the presentations. Again, it just gets going to add more time to the process.  So, I am feeling, I felt this by last year too, I'm really challenged by the way the budget process functions within the council because it feels like we go through a lot of time spent and a lot of staff time spent learning about a budget that's already been crafted and created. And I'd really like us to think about how we might get those presentations and get those meet under that understanding of needs and get all of that when we're crafting the budget guidelines, not once we've gotten the budget from Paul, because ultimately the place where we have responsibility or where we have not responsibility but where we have agency is in creating the town manager goals and the budget guide. So, once that budget comes to us, I question why we are having so many town staff come in and spend their really valuable time explaining something that unless we're shooting it down, we can't change. So, I think for me, because of the way that this timing, the timing of a new council works, the timing of committee placements works, I'd rather us really look at the process and look at where our points of impact are, our potential impact are and bring staff in around that. And I could be completely off base, but for a couple of years now, I'm like, why is this happening when it's something that is really well thought out coming to us already, which I think is great because Paul brings us a balanced budget, he makes that job easy, but that's my controversial thought of the day, I think, for folks. Paul? Yes, I think it's really important to understand that it's built that way as a functionally because there's a separation between the legislative and the executive. The executive forms the government, you're saying that you want to set the budget and that's not what the council's role is. It sounds like you want to hear from the department heads and then you'll say what you want. That's not what the council's role is. The council is to set the overall guideline and then the town manager uses the executive authority to develop what the town manager thinks the town needs to operate within the guidelines that the council sets and then the council comes back and looks at it and says, did you do that or not? Do we agree with that or not? I think that's how I read it at least. And I would go one step further and just say, and the goals come into that as well. So the two, it's the budget guidelines coupled with the goals that you set that really dictate the budget that Paul brings forward. Can I clarify what I meant? Because I don't mean that we should be building the budget. I don't want anything to do with that. That's very clearly in your arena. I think what I mean or what I know I mean is that when we're thinking about the goal, those bigger picture goals, that's when it is really helpful to hear from staff. And so not necessarily hearing from staff on nitty gritty budget items, but as we think about those needs, right? And when we think about the goal, when we think about the guidance we give through the goals and through the budget guidelines, they are a bigger picture. We're not saying specific dollar amounts to things and nor should we. But for me, that's when the input is most helpful because I think again with what can we do at that point without breaking the law. So I'd like to shift where we get that feedback. Yeah, but to clarify, the staff reports to the manager, not to the council. Oh, absolutely. And so it's the manager's budget that comes to the council. So you talking directly to staff to say, how do we want to do it would take the manager out of the budget making process, which is not the intent of the charter. So then how is that different, Paul, than how the staff, I'm talking about the same type of presentations where they talk about the past year and what they're doing in the year ahead. It's not a change in information. How is that any different than what they're doing now? Because I've already decided what should be in the budget. And you're saying, I want to do it before the manager's decided what should be in the budget. Then why do we do it? That's up to you. We don't have to do it. You can do however you want it. I mean, we do it to explain the town manager's budget, right? So when staff come and give a presentation, they're presenting what the budget is. They're not presenting a list of needs. I mean, they do talk about objectives and things coming up, but they're talking about what's in the budget. I worry a little bit about the, if it's beforehand and it was directly to the council, it would be almost like whoever makes the best case, they're going to get something recommended by the council. And it comes down to who presents their case best, not necessarily where the greatest need is. I think that's where, again, the town manager is critical in it, understanding the whole process, meets the department heads all the time. That's what I would worry about if there was ever a system like that beforehand, where it would come down to just who's the best sort of presenter. I think that's a fair worry. And I'll stop after this because I know I've taken more than my time. I think my concern with how it exists now is that it's who shouts the loudest and who we hear from. I think that there's already bias inherent in the process. All right. I've used it more than enough for my time. Sorry. Thank you. Bernadette? Yeah, I thank you, Andy. I think the budget process is always a bit of a trial, whether you're writing it, reviewing it, or finally voting on it. It's a struggle. And it's always a balancing act. There's always more demand that there is funds. What I think would be helpful is rather than try to move in a number of the department heads, it would be helpful if the finance committee had a discussion in advance of which department heads they would like to hear from, where they see sources of questions or possible controversy in the decisions that were made by the manager and his team in crafting the budget and in sort of shape that discussion. Because there are some parts of the budget that we could probably just sleep through. There are other parts of the budget that we're going to want to pay close attention to because they have a programmatic impact. So how we schedule our time, that's a fairly large committee as well. We've got a number of people we have to get in the same place at the same time and doing things digitally certainly helps. So I think if we could carve out some time, even while Paul was writing the budget to say, these are areas where we've had concerns about in the past. These are areas where we'd like to see more detail and give him that feedback. So we're not inviting every department head in. We're inviting in the ones that we really need to hear from where there's some critical importance to the town and move forward with that. I appreciate all the efforts. I've done more budgets than I care to say. From two finance committees and three other towns, four other towns. So it's a trial and I do appreciate the way this committee has managed things in the last year because it's been, I think, some fruitful discussion. I think there's a level of questioning and civility that this committee has shown that could be emulated elsewhere. So that's my two cents on it. And thank you. I appreciate that. I guess my one thought is that having been on both finance committees and Amherst is what message would it send to department heads that you don't like to come in and allow time for the committee, the old committee, the current committee. And that's the one thing that has kept me from going in that direction that you've just described. Alicia, hi, welcome. Just can you confirm that you're hearing and hearing me and that we can hear you? Yes. Thank you, Andy. Thank you. What we're doing now is that part of the agenda where we're just going in. So if you have any comments about what you particularly liked or disliked about the budget process that we went through in May and June or recommendations that you would make for next year's process, that's what we're trying to draw on now while Sean is still with us. We wanted to do that a little bit earlier than usual so that we could take advantage of his presence. Kathy? I'm going to try to build on the discussion threads that Anna started. I think and I'm not sure how to handle the Bernie suggestion, but I do agree with it. I think it's different hearing from a very large, complicated department with lots of people where we're spending huge amounts of money and hearing from, we have some one-person departments and they're always interesting. And so, Andy, I do understand that it's also the day we get to see that person. So maybe there are ways the council we talked about during the course of the year hearing from the recreation director about the programs, just a larger, what is the town doing? So we could figure out some way of not having people feel we don't value their service. But I'm wondering, Paul in particular, in the fall when we're about to set the budget guidelines, one of my concerns has been that we're giving you goals that are often competing goals that are asking for more in each of a variety of areas. And we've got a budget that we have to deal with. If there was a way of you flagging, if you're going to have to make some tough decisions, you can do one more of something somewhere. And if we had to choose and you came in and I know the past history has always been we do an equal percentage for a library, for school, for town, but there might be some reasons we don't want to do that in a particular year. And that the guideline is when we should be having that discussion. We need to, I'm not going to even throw out a particular idea, but because of where we are, we need to put some additional money in here. And this is the way I might do it. So we build it into the guideline. And we have some of what Anna wants is to feel like at the beginning we're understanding decisions, including where we've put you on a donkey, kind of. We want six more of some things and you can do maybe one of them and make us be part of that priority. So I just, you know, it's a way of thinking of me be having a longer meeting than just repeating, this is the way we always do the guidelines, because the nice thing we get is those financial projections on how much money we're going to have and what our trends have been. And then you present it, assuming everybody gets the same percent, but we could have that discussion then a bit about where the tensions are in that. So that's just a thought and I don't even know how to set that up, because it would have to come from you to keep it manageable. So I will stop there, but it's a thought of an October discussion before you go out, because everyone is living with this is how much money we have to spend, how to spend it the best way. So I'll stop. Lynn? Yeah. First of all, I just want to recognize the enormous amount of time, both on the council and the staff that goes into the budget process. And the budget book that we now get is a model. It's phenomenal. It gives you can basically read our budget book and understand more about the town than just about any other document. So that's hats off to Paul, Sean, and the rest of the staff. The other Paul, did you want to say something? Okay. I think of this in a slightly different way. Okay. I feel that in November, as we're doing the town manager's evaluation and we're doing the budget guidelines, we're bringing to the table everything we've been hearing from the public and our own digestion of that. And as we set guidelines and do the evaluation, we reflect that as us bringing this consolidated message to the town manager and saying, okay, Paul, figure out how to deliver on that message. And the thing that gets me so concerned is that we hold one public budget forum and people think that is the only thing we're listening to and it's not. We're listening to people sending emails to us and talking to us for the 12 months or even longer going up to that. So it's not a matter of who said what on the day of the budget forum. It's a matter of how have we as counselors been listening all year long and now say to the town manager, these are the guidelines that we want you to address as you put together the budget. There is one other critical element that's been missing and those of us that were on the first council had the benefit of a serious orientation for every department. We took an enormous amount of time in our first couple months of doing that. And I'm more than willing to explore with the town manager how we might do some of that periodically throughout the year so that we understand a little bit more about the town's programs. But that allowed us when we got the first budget, which like every new council, the previous council has set the guidelines. The previous council has evaluated the town manager. It allowed us to have a context of the total program of many if not all of our departments. So we're kind of missing that piece especially for new counselors coming in. But I personally believe we should look for every way possible to encourage the public to weigh in all the time and to weigh in specifically around the budget process when we start it. But remember, it's not just who shows up that one night, it's all the other options that we hear. Thank you. Paul. Yeah. So I think I'm hearing from Anna is we hear from the public, but I want to hear from staff before I set goals, before I set the goals in some ways. And is there a way to facilitate that before we start setting financial guidelines and goals? And because I value the staff. And I think that that's something we can think about how to incorporate there's pluses and minuses to that force. And I hear from like Bernie and others is like how do we manage our time when we receive the budget more efficiently so that we're not giving sort of everybody gets 15 minutes, bigger departments get 30 minutes. And it might be that the finance committee says, here are the town manager, here are the five things we really want to dig into this year and sort of say we want to spend a larger amount of time on specific specific blocks of things that we want to spend more time on. That's another way and then sort of like give less. So I just think there's different ways to approach it depending on what exactly the goals are that you want. And the third thing is on every one of these items I'm going to I've been doing this with Sean is like, Sean, you can say whatever you want. So whatever you think, tell us what you think. I think it's okay if I respond to that. Yeah. I wouldn't change a lot for next year. I think these are good things to know. I think it will likely be a tough year to make dramatic changes. I mean, if it's if it's council changes, that might be okay. You know, Paul and Len will have to work on that, meaning if it's presentations from departments to the council, if it's changes in the process that we go through in the finance office, I would say this would not be the great year to do those. I think, you know, Holly's going to be doing her best to kind of do two jobs along with Jen LaFountaine. And so I think this would be year to kind of keep the the financial process status quo in terms of the development of the budget. But if there's other meetings that need to be scheduled to provide input to like the budget guidelines or the goals, I leave that to Paul and Len. Let's get Bob's comments since you and are you on file and then we should probably move along the agenda. Okay. Yeah, I wanted to just mention that I think the process we have used where individual members of the finance committee focus in on a portion of the budget is very good. I think it's very helpful to have, you know, the time to go to think about what's going on on a specific in a specific department rather than having to master the entire budget all at once. It's a, you know, having sat on this committee for four years now, it's a challenge to understand the budget. That being said, I do agree that if there's any way we can refocus or streamline the process that we use to evaluate the town manager's budget, I think we would would be beneficial to do that. I mean, it's a it's a long slog in May to get through the budget. And I don't think I think if we thought about it at a time, we might be able to to focus a little bit more in our meetings than we then we have. So just a just a thought there. I do think what we're doing is is working. It's just that it takes a lot of time. And maybe we could use that time a little more wisely. Can I respond to that quickly, Andy? Yeah. You know, one thing the town could do over this next year is look at what other cities do. A lot of our processes are still kind of built off of what we did as a town when we had town meeting. And it may be worth looking at how cities do it. It always feels like Northampton's process goes much faster than our process. I don't know if it actually does, but it always feels like from the time the budget's proposed, the time it's approved is maybe half as long as hours. And I don't know how they do it. But we could look at other cities and their review process to see what other differences there are. Maybe it's maybe they're good or maybe they're bad, but at least we would we could see what alternatives there are. Good suggestion. Come back to the second, Hannah. Yeah. And I think that we all learned a whole lot from how Boston has been doing theirs in the past year in their way, which to be clear is not what I'm proposing. I'm not proposing a big change where we suddenly get our hands in the budget. I think where the root of my concern lies is Lynn, to your point, yeah, of course, we're absolutely listening throughout the year and putting those to paper as we write goals and budget guidelines. But I don't know that our constituents always know that that's where those are going. And so I think that it's important for me, I guess what I'm trying to say is I want us to be talking about the budget process much more holistically than we have been. We talk about it as if it's a point to point, right, when really it's the full year, it's the budget guidelines, it's the goals, and then it's the budget. And I think that when we are thinking about listening sessions, and I don't think what I'm proposing is necessarily a change to health finance, like the department does it and we don't need to do this right away. But I hope that folks will consider what it would look like to have instead of just a budget forum when the budget's been published, what if we had a listening session before we dove into the town manager goals or before we dove into the budget guidelines? I think that that's where we are listening to our constituents always. And if we also are explaining to people that this is a flow, it's not a point to point. And I think that's really important in terms of bringing a lot more transparency to a really convoluted process, not convoluted, confusing, sorry, it's confusing. And I think that that's, I want to bring that a little bit more delight that this is a cycle. And then I also, I wanted to echo what Bob said really quickly. I also thought the, and highlighted specifically sending the questions ahead of time and getting those answers often in writing was incredibly helpful, especially for those of us who sometimes have to take notes furiously. Having some of them in writing was really helpful as well. So I appreciated that. And I know Sean, that was not a light lift on your part. So thank you. Bernie? Yeah, I'd just like to note that Sean is, after all, doing short time here. So his critique is pretty gentle for someone who's moving on. I do appreciate the work that Sean's done and everybody on this, on this, this task. And I'm, I think the suggestion to look at what other cities do is great as long as the cities we look at are Cambridge. Agreed. And I was just saying that I think that careful selection and consultation with some other cities would be helpful. We don't know who the council is exactly going to be or what, you know, their desires and process will be. So we have to be thinking in terms of what we're passing on to others, as well as what we're learning for ourselves. I think that our process, my observation is the process worked particularly well this year. I think it worked well because we've sort of got a flow going and Sean really helped us in a tremendous way. And so I don't know if Polly is going to be the one who's going to have the role of supporting the committee or who's all deciding to that role yet. They're asking for a reply on that. But, you know, we need to start developing that relationship and understanding early so that the process flows from Sean to whoever is designated to have that role to make sure that we get the support to get through the process. I think we've sort of fumbled through is new city and done pretty well. And I say that reflecting a little bit on the last MMA meeting where Lynn and I met somebody who had been on the council and finance committee in Watertown. And that was a we asked because they have a man they're one of the other cities in Massachusetts that has a manager council form of government. We said, how do you make it work? And they said, we give a lot of thought to our guidelines at the beginning and give guidelines from the council to the manager that come back to us in a proposed budget. And I said, gee, good to have your experience. We fumbled on that ourselves. And it's been working well for us. So anyway, I think, is there anything else that people are burning to say now? We can have further comments on it in subsequent meetings, of course. But right now we have our last time with Sean. So that's why we wanted to do this today. Sean, do you have any final observations to offer? No, I think what you said is, unless the process has changed, I think the guidelines and the goals are again, really the critical things that we look at. And then we also again, we try to in the budget show how the budget reflects what we're hearing. And I think the challenge for you all is sometimes they're not consistent. And I get why they're not consistent. You need to set overarching goals. And then budget guidelines sometimes are a little bit more short term. I think that's where the challenge comes in like this past year where really great goals, but then the budget guidelines are sort of like, hold back a little bit for good reason because we've started a lot of projects. So thinking about how those two line up, which I think is what Lynn said, and how there's maybe one message that comes out of the combination of those two to Paul would be helpful. Okay, well, thank you. So while we have your attention, go go to the next agenda item. And the next agenda item was that you're going to provide us with an update on the FY 24 budget with the state budget is adopted. Sure. So I put, it was kind of late, but I put a document. And like, can you do you have can you pull that up the state aid update in the packet? Sorry, I'm in the wrong packet. I have it, Lynn, if you want me to pull it up. Can you all see that on the screen? Yes. All right. So quick state aid update, the left hand side are the different categories of state aid that we have. The top block is money coming in. And then below that are assessments, money going out. The FY 24 budget is what you all saw when you voted on the budget. The update is what the governor just signed in terms of actual aid. However, a number of the categories are still projections. They're based on activity that will happen this year. So there's a few it's not set in stone. There will still be some changes to the final numbers. And then the change between the two. So just quickly, Chapter 70, the state budget came in about $30,000 better because they doubled the per pupil aid from 30 to 60. So that doubled what we were projecting for an increase. Charter tuition reimbursement is projected to go down by 100,000. I just want to highlight again, this is a projection. It's based on how many kids actually enroll in charter schools. So this number will definitely change between now and the end of the year. But it's projected to go down. The good news is when it's projected to go down, that usually means tuition might go down as well. So just keep that in mind. Unrestricted general government aid is UGA. So that was the biggest area that increased instead of a 2% increase. And the governor's proposal, it was a 3.2% increase that was ultimately approved. The next several categories stayed about the same until we get to school choice tuition, which again, this is a projection of the number of kids that will choice into our schools from other school districts. They're projecting that they go up, that will be adjusted and based on actuals. And that money doesn't come to the town. It goes directly to the schools. They have a revolving fund. So that's not a new revenue to the town. It would be a new source for the schools, but typically they budget a certain amount. And then if it comes in better, they can use that the following year. So on the aid side in total came in about $90,000 better. And then our assessments are going down slightly related to our charter tuition assessment. So we have a tuition assessment and we have a school choice tuition when kids go out of the district. And those numbers fluctuated a little bit from the governor's proposal until the final. But again, all in relatively minor changes in the overall state aid picture. And we won't have finals. We won't have a real good idea of the final until October when we see what charter and choice looks like. Any questions on state aid? I think the one thing that I might add to what you just said and you should follow up to is the one thing that's not on the cherry sheets that's very important to us is chapter 90, which is for roads. And chapter 90 is never shown on the cherry sheet. And there will be, it's been pretty flat over the last years, which is unfortunate with the construction costs for roads going up. And this is from my work on the fiscal policy committee of the MMA. There is an additional piece of money this year in a supplemental budget that is then dividing the funds by a different formula than the formula that has been traditionally used because it's disadvantaged Western Massachusetts communities and rural communities in particular. So the road miles is a much larger portion of that, and that's an unknown figure as to how that's going to work out. And so when we were at the last fiscal policy committee meeting, I asked the question of when we're going to know that answer. And turns out that I got a response that they included in the budget that the Department of Transportation has until I believe it was March to provide those numbers. So that's an unknown. Yeah, Guilford can weigh in if you've seen any estimates. Our projection of chapter 90 in the capital plan was sort of based on level funding. So any additional money we get above and beyond that will just be more that we can put towards roads and other improve sidewalks and improve not sidewalks but road improvements this year. So otherwise, are you seeing any changes that we should know about? There weren't. Again, what I showed there's not any huge changes. I looked at the I always check out the regional schools cherry sheet because mostly because I'm interested in what's going on at the regional schools. And you know, one doesn't affect the town directly, but it's good overall for our system is regional transportation aid came in really good. That was one of the big areas of investment. So it looked like that came in maybe $200,000 plus more than what they were expecting when they did the budget. So if that funding stays, it'll help their budget going forward. There are a couple other little categories that shifted for the region, but the biggest one was regional transportation aid. And some of it's because they're still reimbursing for the regular transportation, but they never used to reimburse very much for vocational transportation. It was always so small amount. It was sort of like, why do it at all? But they increased it significantly how much they're putting towards transportation, which will help the regional schools because they have significant costs for that. Yeah, again, back to the fiscal policy committee experience. And this is a discussion that we've been pressing in that committee because rural communities have a greater burden because they're sending through greater distance and frequently as we do to more than one vocational school, I think we're sending to two vocational schools. So that's a new issue. And there was rural school aid included in the budget. The region's been getting that for a few years now. It's interesting, Amherst doesn't get it. And I remember Pelham didn't get it. But for some reason, when you bring the four towns together, they meet all the criteria and to get the rural school aid. So the region gets it, but at least Pelham and Amherst individually didn't qualify for it. It's based on, I think, population density and mileage or size of the community. So that's another item that will help the region. Lynn, you have questions before we move on? Yes. So Sean, as you look at this budget and where the increases were, even though they're not final, some specifically go to the schools directly and do not come through the town and some come directly to the town. So if you looked at this, what percentage increase are the schools getting from state aid? And what percentage increases the town getting for state aid? And this came up last night in the council meeting. And that's why I'm asking.  So again, we won't know the two sources or three sources that changed the most that come to the town or chapter 70, which went up 30,000 unrestricted general government aid, which went up 120,000. And then the charter tuition reimbursement, which went down 100,000. So again, they net out to a 40 or $50,000 increase, which is a fraction of a percentage point. It's not anywhere close to a full percentage point. I did quickly look up, just might as well answer it, otherwise it will go unanswered. Anna, I think you had asked last night if we were to pull from somewhere and increase all of the budgets the same, all the four operating budgets the same, and do it in a way that we gave that same percentage increase to all of the budgets. And so it was about a $33,000 increase the town would need in order to cover half a year of the stipends. The total increase would be $85,000. So if we were going to, because it would that $33,000 increase would equate to a 3.12% increase for the town instead of a 3% increase to the town. So then if we did that for the other three operating budgets, the total would be $85,000. I think it was an idea, but I'll pass that on. Thank you. I just want to speak to that quickly because I didn't last night, I think that was one person saying that, but I don't think we have to do that. So that is just, it's a piece of it. As far as I'm concerned, it's a piece of information. That's all I wanted for you. But thank you. I was doing some quick math last night as well. So I did have one other, it's not related to what you just presented, but when do we get the fourth quarter FY23? So is it in September? Yeah, there's a few small moving pieces right now, but September, yeah, I think anytime in September, we could schedule that. Holly, let's put maybe October, I would say we will have the information in September, but there's a lot of end of year accounting work that goes on in the months of August and September to get ready for auditors and to close out the year. So I think Holly will let us know when that report is ready. The data will be available. It's just kind of put it into the report format and distribute it to the committee. So September, October at the latest, I would say. Because in my mind, I look at the two together. We've got our budget we think we're living with for FY24. And when we find out what we actually did in FY23, it's helpful to look at those side by side. Thank you. Yeah, real quick. Distributing the Department of Revenue's end of the year letter would be interesting because it leads you to understand why August and September are not calm vacation months for the financial staff in the town. Okay, so if there's something else, thank you, Sean, for that presentation. And when Sean and I talked earlier, you were thinking that it would be better to start with discussion of the streetlight policy instead of fixed time for it. Yeah, I think we wanted to start with streetlights, but make sure we left ample time for the rental registration discussion because I think that's going to be a lengthier discussion that we wanted to get through at least some baseline amount of information today. So I think we can turn it over to the streetlight conversation, but maybe set a limit of 20 minutes and that vicinity and then schedule the rest to come back at the next meeting. Yeah, neither of these next two items was the intention that we were going to reach a conclusion today. Our goal is to get a better understanding of both of the proposals, financial consequences of both of the proposals and the fees issues that we need to tackle for the rental registration and at least start both conversations because they're really important. And so, Guilford, are you here? Yep, we're here. All right, well, thank you. We have Guilford Donna, who is one of the co-sponsors as well as member of the committee. I didn't invite Mandy, who's the other co-sponsor of the policy and use it as a policy that is proposed, but she's not here. So I think what we want to really start with is questions that people have about to try and understand the proposed policy and the financial consequences of the proposed policy. And I'm going to offer first opportunity if she wants to use it. Kathy, it's your choice, but Kathy had prepared questions in advance and sent them to Sean and to me and to Guilford. And so I know that you've been doing a lot of thinking. So if you'd like to start, then I give it to you. Thanks, Andy. I think I copied you, Guilford, on my questions too.  So I'd like some basic information as we're looking at what's being proposed. So starting with, and I'll just read them off and I'm happy to send them to the whole committee, Andy, if you want to, just to make them part of the public record. But I started with how many lights do we have now that don't comply with what is being proposed? And that's the total number. And I broke it down that how many are not shielded? So it's shielding downward. How many have a light bulb that doesn't match whatever intensity we've specified? And then, as I understand, we're only changing lights when the light goes out. This isn't a go and change them all. But do we have any projected cost of as each light goes off or as each fixture needs to be addressed? And I'm not going to use all the technical wording that's in the thing. The light bulb we're going to have to purchase or the lighting we have to purchase versus the one we now use, the cost of adding a shield. And if the entire fixture in some way needs to change, like it's an upward-facing fixture downward, some estimate of the cost of implementing this. And I guess, in my mind, the simplest way of thinking about this, if we had to do them all tomorrow, what would be the cost? And I understand we're not talking about doing that. We're just talking about your street light goes out down here. Then my third area was, does the type of light bulb fixture being proposed use more, use less, use about the same in utility costs? I don't know whether the current bulbs are very low draw on electricity or not. And as I understand it, number four is dimming is very expensive. And I looked at Northampton, and Northampton didn't go near dimming because their lights aren't set up in a way that you could do dimming. And is it even feasible to think about us doing that in any time soon? And my final category was staff time. Does this in any way increase staff time in doing it? Or is it already, you do these kinds of things? Because I, so I'm, those were my five categories. So how many don't comply in one way or the other, the projected costs of full compliance, any implications for electrical costs, dimming, is it feasible at all, and staff time? So thank you, Kathy. I will ask or just have the questions. I see if you have any wording changes, but get them through Athena to the committee and into the packet. I suppose not to do it in advance because it's open meeting law concerns. But it would be certainly helpful to get them now to the committee since they've been stated in the public meeting.  So just from reading this and talking to the vendor we have who provides our street lights. We have roughly 1200 lights in town, street lights, and we have roughly 1200 that don't meet the requirements of this proposal. With that shielded, we probably have 20 lights that have some type of shielding on them. Downward facing lights or it's kind of a, to have a truly shielded light as downward facing, we don't have any. We have downward facing lights, but they do have some leak by. So that's a question that's kind of open. Our light bulb, it's actually not a light bulb. The intensity of our lighting is higher than what you have in the proposal. And our supplier doesn't actually recommend the lighting intensity you have, but he's happy to sell us lights at that intensity because he'll sell us more, he says. Because you'll need more lights to light what you want to light, except in the downtown you might be able to stay the same intensity you have now and still cover things. Projected costs, we haven't made it we come up with a projected cost. Our supplier has been looking at different things and there's really until we decide what we want to do, do we want to go now or in the future? Do we want to have smart lights? Or there's another word for adaptive lighting that changes with the time of day and changes with the conditions during the day. They turn the intensity up, they turn the intensity down, they shut them off at certain times. If we want to go that route, we can start purchasing lights that have the ability to work with those systems now and then install the system later. It's in the lights, there's a number of pens in the lights. I'll just, this is not right, but lights we have are like six pen, the light you need for adaptive lighting is like 12 pen. So if you can start buying the lights that have the ability to connect the system, but we don't really have any right now. So we need to know that to come up with a price. Adding the ability to connect to adaptive lighting makes the lights more expensive than not. Electrical costs, all the lights as they come out, each newer lights are actually less expensive to operate, which is kind of neat. The technology is such that they're more efficient and they actually last longer. So as you move forward, the lights you're getting are actually better quality lights. The dimming or adaptive lighting is relatively expensive. There are many other things that the adaptive lighting can do that they can support, which is other things that the community might use. We could actually have water meters read through the same system that controls adaptive lighting. You can have other things work through the adaptive lighting systems as well. So that's something that's a positive in the future, possibly. Staff time is going to go up because there are a lot of undefined variables in here. Glare to me is different than glare to a younger person. So how do you determine that? How do you actually figure it out? The new policy wants us to measure looms basically at each light by placing a photometer at each light on the ground to measure it. That's going to require time to do that. So if someone complains about a light or about light trespass, that's going to be time someone has to go out there and do it. I really think if you're going to go this route that we're going to have to hire a consultant to come in, a consultant that's acceptable to both parties, to do an inventory of the lights and come up with a baseline for us to start the inventory with, that is actually making the inventory is actually going to probably be the biggest part of staff time in this whole project. Andy, can I just follow up with a couple clarifying as he went through? Thank you, Gilford, because you actually. Yeah, go ahead, Kathy, and then I'm going to call on Anna in her role as co-sponsor to see if she has anything. Okay, you know, as I think the co-sponsors know, I was more than a little bit amazed by the level of technicality of the technical appendix. It reads more like a procedural manual than a policy statement, but with what you just said about the lights, Gilford, you said the supplier said if we were buying lights at the intensity that these specs have, the intensity would be too low and we'd need more lights. Was he basically telling you we wouldn't get enough light out of them, so we'd need two lights where one is? Is that what that comment was in that supplier's opinion? So it's just a question, so I understand what that statement meant. The answer is you just need, so if you're covering 50 feet with one light now, you may have to have two lights to cover a 50 foot section of ground. Okay, so it's how much the light goes out where part of this was to just not have the light go out, but thank you, that's useful. Are there technical things, for example, that you easily have? I think the planning board sometimes has to show us that. It goes out 50 feet, it only goes out 20 feet. Is that an easy thing for us to find? I don't want to ask a lot of staff work on this sort of question. When we do a lighting plan, for North Common, you get that information and looms in that lighting plan, and yes, that's easy to get. For the ones we haven't done any work on in a long time or have never really had any work on like an individual light, we would have to come out and we could do an easy illumination plan, but we would have an issue with bug ratings and so forth. That would be something you have to do in person on site with the loom. If you're going to do the looms the way you haven't laid out, there'll be some illumination asked to be done on site as well. Okay, and so if I was to repeat what you've said, there were a couple areas where this specific specification is an increase in cost. It's a measuring of looms. It's a where you'd have to have some new device added, not necessarily the bulb itself, but a measurement. Is that correct? So dimming is one of them. The adaptive lights are more expensive and then measuring the light shed requires some kind of measuring device that we don't currently have. The device isn't that much. It's just time to do the measurements. Thank you. Kathy, I'd love to get a copy of your questions if that's possible. I was jotting down notes. And then Andy, just so you know, I think the invitation to finance maybe got lost in translation. Mandy didn't know it was today and that both items were on the agenda. So that's the only reason she's not here or she found out I think yesterday. So a couple things. The one thing in terms of cost, there's a small section of our streetlight bylaw that talks about the inventory. And I think that I don't want to underestimate the importance of knowing what we have out there. I mean, we heard it today, we know we have 1200 streetlights, but we think 20 of them have the full shields. We don't have that inventory right now. And so while it is an upfront cost, ideally maintaining it is going to be lower once we have it. And it makes it easier for us to actually to really stay on top of lighting in a way that's effective and up to date, right? Really, one of the purposes to this was to bring our policy up to date. It hadn't been updated in a long time. In terms of the, I wanted to just note one thing, Northampton did put in the pins required to do dimming in the future. That is something that while they're not dimming currently, they did do kind of half that upgrade because the DPU incentives weren't there to kind of convince them to want to go through with the full dimming, but it is very clear that that is the direction they plan to go. And it is the direction that many cities do plan to go. I just wanted to note that it's not that they're not doing it at all. They just didn't install the specific, the second part, right? If it's the structure and the bull. And then I guess, Gilbert, I'm a little confused and I have a question about your comments on about the longevity and I'd love to see numbers on that. I think Kathy, you were kind of maybe getting at this too, unless I'm misunderstanding. I don't understand why changing the temperature of the bulb or would change the disc, the coverage of it. And then in terms, I understand how changing the shielding might, but the idea with the shielding is to only light what we intend to light. So wouldn't we just shield then to light the area we wanted to light? I'm confused about that. And I'd love if the vendor can give us numbers. And then also I'm sure our vendor is great. Are we locked into that vendor? I guess I'm, I don't want our vendor to dictate how up to date our policy is. I think that, and obviously that's not our decision, but it also feels worth exploring that as well. So is it, yeah, go ahead, Gilbert. So we use Halifane as our vendor. And Halifane is one of the top performing light companies out there and top performing fixtures. That's how we chose them. There are other fixtures, towns have used, we've installed a lot of fixtures from under other vendors. Our preference on maintenance and operability on the lights is actually we do like Halifane. It's just something that's an easy light to work on. It's also has lower maintenance and lower issues we find. So that's, if we want to change, we can change. The temperature is kind of like a 30 watt bulb versus a 60 watt bulb versus a 120 watt bulb. So if we have 120s now, and we're going down to 30s, the light is not there as far as you want to go sometimes. And you have to put another light bulb in. So that's something he, our vendor pointed out is when we have to take into account when we then site the lights, and we may have to have more lights because of that. But then again, it's a matter, it's an issue of what you're lighting. If you're staying in the downtown and you want higher lighting downtown, like UMass has higher lighting downtown, you may not have an issue. If you're going to light North Pleasant Street from the college UMass all the way to North Amherst, you might have an issue you need more lights than you would if you use another color. Using a dimmable light, which has a brighter intensity or a higher color spectrum when you want more. And then it dims down at night when it gets darker and not so many people are out and about. That's doable, but then that's using the smart light system. So there's lots of things. And yes, most of the light companies are going to the pen setup that actually allows you to do that. But there are lights in our system that don't have those. And if we replace them one for one, they don't come with the pens. It's the cost of installing the pins require just new parts or do you have to do more wiring than that? It's just a different fixture. And some of our fixtures don't come with some of the fixtures we have to change. The outside look would be different. Bernie. Yeah, when I first looked at the policy, I didn't pay as much attention as I should have to the performance standards. The policy itself is fine. It gives you some clear notions about where you're going to eliminate, what you're going to eliminate for, and how you can get a light.  I would think that we would be better off with some goals for street lighting performance rather than a detailed list of specs. So that we as we replace these and move through this and as technologies change, we could, you know, Wilford and his successor are not going to want to spend more money or buy something that's going to require more maintenance. You know, so if we set some goals for where we want to see the lighting system evolve and then let that be driven by the market and by maintenance needs, I think we'd be better off than, you know, having a policy that has a definition of aluminum. It's overly complicated at that point. You know, I appreciate the effort that went into this. It's not, again, it's not an easy task. You know, having done this with a smaller community, I can appreciate the scale of it. The one thing I would add is I think it would be important that we had an inventory of all of our street lights. And along with that inventory and assessment as to where it is and what it's illuminating because my guess is we could probably knock out a number of lights. We could just simply get rid of them because they don't conform to the location of the policy. And you're also going to want to take into account that is his Guilford mention, you're going to want different levels of illumination depending on where what the environment is. You're probably going to want brighter lights downtown, you're probably going to want brighter lights in the parking lots. For lights on a curve that has chevrons, you really just need to only illuminate the chevrons. You don't have to light the whole thing up. So those are going to be some decisions that are made that you could, it could be driven by a goal to reduce the cost and the impact, the environmental impact it's a lighting system. Thank you. Yeah, I approaching the 20 minutes that we saw and spend our time on. And I talking about this without a sense of cost is very difficult. And I want to just say there are at least two, if not three other big DPW projects that are out there right now. And this is where we're going to need to make some tough choices. Do we put our money into street lights? Do we put our money into trash and refuse collection? Do we put our money into roads, sidewalks and bike paths? And without, we don't have a limited set of money. And so when we return to this conversation, we need a much greater sense of the cost. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Lynn, I just want to end on that note because I want everyone to understand my questions were only to get at the cost. I totally agree with what Bernie just said. But because there was a very technical appendix, Bernie, it was directing us to buy a particular kind of light with a bug rating with a lumen with a Kelvin scale with a kind of a shield and everything was a measurable. So that was where I tried to just tease out to the extent I could. And Guilford gave partial answers in terms of these are answerable, but there is clearly a cost impact. So that's why I focused it the way I did. So thank you for raising that. It's also very directive rather than goal oriented. It gets specific quickly. So thank you. And Guilford, just thank you because even getting those counts was useful for me to understand this is not outside my house. There's one light that needs to attention. It's a lot of them. So thank you very much. The questions that Kathy referred to were posted in the packet now. Okay. Thank you. Everybody heard what Ben just said. I'm going to conclude with just one additional piece and that is that I also was looking at the policy and trying to figure out what the burden is on the department if we connect this policy. And I noted in the third paragraph there was a sentence that says in order to minimize artificial lighting that protects safety wherever possible in the Department of Public Works should protect and enhance visibility through passive means such as reflectorized drugway markers, lines, warning or informational signs, inflectorized markers on guardrails or other fixtures to indicate hazards, curves or road edges and or other hand activated crosswalk flashing beacons. Well, those would advance the goals of the policy and I think actually address some of the tax concerns about safety for pedestrians and bicyclists. They also have it would seem to me have costs and so when we look at the cost for the department, if we actually go through with it as this policy is proposed and recommended that it's adopted, that's a piece too that I just noted to note. So do you have any final comments, Guilford or Sean or Paul and if not we're going to move on? Just quickly, I do think it's a good thing to make these choices that we want to try to move some certain way but we do need to start gathering information and that would be a cost. So you know to hire somebody I do not know I would estimate it probably in the $50 to $75,000 range to bring a consultant in to do the inventory or even to start helping us start where we want to start collecting data and that might be a valid thing to do so that we can work this out and get a little better understanding of everything we kind of need or want. Thank you, Sean or Paul, is there anything if not? Then I want to thank everybody for a very helpful first discussion and I'm going to try and work with staff and with our sponsor member of the committee and anyone else who would like to try and determine what our next step should be in our analysis. We knew that today was a start and I think it was a very helpful start and I appreciate all of the comments, questions and information that you've provided, Gilford, that have enabled us to start that but I do want to move on to run to registration. I'd like to bring Jennifer Taub into the meeting at this point so whoever can do that please do and Jennifer is a member of CRC and who is involved in with this process all along so she may have some of the same contribution that Anna was able to make to the discussion of the previous item. But with that what I wanted to propose was that we try and divide the time that we have remaining in the meeting into sort of three categories and limit the amount of time from the first one that start there and the first one is to allow some time for just questions about the bylaw that go beyond the questions of the fee structure and then the second section would be to start getting some questions out about the fee structure that was proposed and presented and then the third is to take advantage of Sean's final meeting because Sean told me that he and Rob have prepared a draft using the analysis tool that was created in the CRC process and to use that they used that and developed several additional models and Sean did I summarize that correctly? Yeah for the most part I'll say that the last section we just have one model and it's not it's just an Excel spreadsheet that sort of takes the fee structure and pops in some different amounts so the committee can kind of see what values would generate how much money and then have a conversation about how you know is that the right place, does it need to do certain areas go up, go down, other changes so it's really just meant to be to to help start the conversation around actual fee levels because we thought that would be probably the most difficult, where do we start with that? Okay I appreciate it and I see the Lynn and Jennifer their hands up I'd like to keep it limited so I can get some questions out from the committee what I was going to do at the end of the discussion is to make sure that we recognize that this is a limited period of time and that there may be more questions that people have or that have been generated and that we get those in writing so that they're out there for us to work with for the second meeting for discussion because scheduling the next meeting is probably going to be the next most important thing we have to do after this. Lynn? Yeah Andy Pam Rooney is in the room is in the audience and can be broken but I think it would be important to have Athena be very clear of what it means when we bring in people and now have a quorum of the council and the role that Pam and Jennifer can or cannot play. Okay thank you. Okay because I was thinking about the question of the quorum of CRC but if we are getting to a quorum of the council on to Athena is there anything that you want to um if Jennifer and Pam are here to give a report on CRC then I think that would be Pam I'm not sure what what Jennifer and Pam had intended to attend for Jennifer. Hi no I was actually you know in the audience just to listen to the discussion but um and Pam Rooney you know we can certainly answer any questions you may have but I was really just here because I know it was on the agenda and I was interested. Okay Andy if you'd like to bring Pam in she couldn't complete her public comment earlier if you want to wrap that up now and then and if you'd like to um get feedback or get a report from CRC because she wrote that the report I can bring her in for that part how's that sound? Okay and then you're going to uh I'll move Jennifer. Yeah the council you can move Jennifer back okay let's go ahead and do that thank you thank you Jennifer. Thank you. Hi can you hear me? Yes good something happened my computer absolutely crashed earlier um I actually as as a cosponsor Jennifer and I are both cosponsors as is um Michelle Miller and um Mandy Johanke and I think I just wanted to give a very brief overview of the intent and since the since the inception of our rental registration over 10 years ago um we've actually seen the number of of parcels getting permits dropping so the the initial round was a higher number of participate uh participation than than currently and what we wanted as cosponsors was an enforceable reliable process uh with really consistent results because we were hearing from too many people hey the the property next to us doesn't seem to be obeying and there is seems to be no enforcement happening uh why not so um we have obviously put a lot of time and energy as many efforts uh have been lately into developing something that we hope works um I think in terms of the finance committee's conversation um there are two elements it's important that the fees collected in this effort in this process and with this registration um actually go to administer this program rather than just into the general fund because if we do not have an enforceable program it becomes absolutely impossible to maintain the control that we need over the rental industry which is probably second to education the biggest industry in Amherst um we also are anticipating and hope that fees are reasonable not onerous and can be borne by um you know the smallest to largest entity in town um we feel strongly that the there should be a preference for owner occupancy and for the small volume owners you know those who own up to three units um but that's very important for maintaining control over behavior and activity and that there is um some recognition in the um in the registration permit process that there is something essentially for everybody it is by the parcel but with some recognition that some parcels have 300 units some parcels have three units so um that's just a preference to your conversation I too am just happy to be here to answer questions thank you okay so thank you very much Pam um and we're glad that you're here to do that and that if I see uh Jennifer's hand go up and I need to swap you guys in order to avoid the quorum at least know that but I think we are working on limited time so we probably won't be doing that I I sent in um about eight questions in advance of today's meeting which is um uh Kathy had done and I don't I don't think we're gonna I don't want to go through them all because to do that would rob the rest of you of time to to pose questions but I think that the uh I'm going to start with a couple of them that are just off the top and um um this is really for Rob and I think in in the you forwarded them to Rob right so Rob has seen them the we're going to be the challenges to um hiring the staff to implement this bylaw and how is the timing coincide with the implementation date are we going to have to get people hired before the date in which we write in that if we enact a bylaw that it becomes effective um so I was wondering about those at least initial questions Rob yes um you know one of our biggest challenges that we're going to run into now is finding qualified and interested applicants and in this position I think it's you know very competitive out there there's certainly we're seeing a shortage of uh people going into the inspection field generally in each of the disciplines uh so that's that's going to be difficult um along with the the funding question that you're all talking about now there is a there is a significant amount of time to implement this program that that'll be needed uh I'm suggesting six months is the minimum that'll be necessary to really build the program train uh and put together you know the system that we need to to launch it uh as you know the the renewal of the permit based on the current bylaw is July 1st uh so you know if if this was a a bylaw being considered by the end of the year I would I would be suggesting that we would be um you know working really aggressively for in July 1st implementation uh at a minimum and and staff would have to be brought on early on maybe in phases you know depending on the number of uh new staff that are coming on but certainly right from the beginning of its adoption to start to prepare so um question one of the questions is we establish a fee structure then would become you know the fees are broken into two parts one is for the registration just general fees and the other is registered fees that are involved with inspections the larger portion really being in inspections but we would need to be hiring inspectors before we have the first inspections taking place is the way I understand what you have to say so I'm going to actually ask a third question which may go to Paul or to Sean rather than D Rob because we would have to be thinking as a um committee um what we're recommending and what is available funds and uh the there's some money that's available I assume from fees that are already being collected for the program the biggest question is about the hundred thousand dollars that was included in the University of Massachusetts strategic partnership agreement for safe and healthy housing have you thought as a manager and finance director about whether that hundred full hundred thousand dollars or any portion of it might be available for this program or whether you had other visions for the use of those funds do you want me to start Paul um so to your you know to the where you're headed Andy it sounds like a supplemental appropriation would be needed in order to fund um fund these positions before the revenue starts coming in or before the budget is generated that incorporates that revenue um and whether or not instead of a supplemental appropriation that could come from the UMass funds you know I think those funds were just you know we just signed an agreement would we want to commit all those funds to this program I think there would have to be a lot of discussion to decide whether that's the best use of those funds um or if a new program should be self-sustaining um on its own based on the fees it generates so could they help maybe for as like a stopgap measure potentially again we would have to see what the cost would be for half a year and like Rob said if it was phases maybe it's not you know three staff for six months maybe it's uh you know some variation of that that um is less but but it maybe could use as a stopgap but I think we'd be hesitant to commit all of it to the program at this point you know as we just signed the agreement um and it and it was not specific for this um in the agreement Paul is there anything you want to add or is that okay um so I'm gonna not ask any more of my additional questions because I think you know you've gathered where those three are going they want to give other opportunities to committee members um Lynn I think you were the first raise your hand um yes thank you uh first of all I really want to thank the counselors and the staff uh that have really worked so hard on this and while it seems like a sea change in some ways to me it's a way in which we protect all of our residents whether they own homes or whether they rent homes or they rent property but the moment I'm hearing somebody say hire train and implement I'm talking about a new department and a new initiative and while I would like to see us do this I would like to see it be self-supporting whether we have to see it to start or not and I would like to see it separated off in a fund like we do sewer water and other things like that so that we can keep track of what it looks like to be self-supporting um and so as we go on with the model which I'd love to see today because I know Sean and and I'm hearing that Sean and Rob have worked on that model um I I want to keep in mind that um this is a program to help protect the safety of all of our residents and at the same time we need to take into account where we have good landlords who are extremely responsible and where we have landlords that regularly violate safety codes and health codes and we need to figure out how to do a fee structure that doesn't penalize penalize good landlords but makes sure we go after the ones that we need to go after thank you whoops yeah that okay just no yeah thanks Andy and I do have a lot of those similar programmatic questions I just wanted this is a clarifying thing for Rob so in terms of and Sean's note about phasing in the hundred thousand or you know whatever funds um going to staffing or most of the funds um so you know having a lead code enforcement officer that's going to be you know that's the first question right we faces a town in about a week and a half um so you know I just just if you could just talk a little bit about the way that that unit would shape up right where that lead code enforcement officer is your that's your primary credential person and then your code enforcement officers work under that under that person um you talk a little bit about I mean would would we be posting and seeking to hire out this whole team as a single deal or are you looking to phase that in so we are looking to replace uh infill john's position now so that's not something we want to hold back on we want to continue the level of service that we've been offering by you know responding to complaints just as john has done for the last 10 plus years so it's really important that we move ahead and fill that position and and and continue that uh that program that exists now and then you know upon adoption of of any new regulation that would require additional staff then we would probably look to draft a job description for a entry-level code enforcement officer and it and it'd be you know two of the same positions most likely uh but you know we we can decide on whether or not you know their their background is focused more on health laws or experience building or zoning uh as this this work touches on all of those one of the you know really great uh you know things we benefited from by having john for all these years is he was certified in each of those categories and that's really hard to find uh it's really difficult to even find just building inspectors now that are uh that are going through the testing and certification process and continuing education requirements so we might have to break that up a little bit and and have staff that are you know focused on certain backgrounds and and pieces of the code enforcement to build the team thank you Kathy um I have a long list of questions so I'm not going to even attempt to do them right now but I just want to build on this a little bit Rob um because I'm reading through I know you've already provided an amazing amount of information and the CRC group you've really been working through some things so we recently increased the permit fee um and I was doing some back at the envelope I think it was a substantial a fairly substantial increase in revenues and if I'm right it will cover the cost that was in the estimates of the cost of the rental permitting side of of this so if if we're not now doing inspections and we haven't done the intensity yet is there a surplus my first question is there kind of a surplus that we've have money coming in and it's being airmarked for rentals but we're not using all of it so would any of that potentially be seed money then my second I'll just do three and then have you respond to three um so one of the costs on the inspection side is the amount of time we do inspections in terms of how often including for the big buildings we're trying to the 100 unit the 50 unit we're trying to hit all of them in a five-year period if we did a random sample and we said on the large buildings they get inspected once for the big systems um could we cut down on the number of inspections and it looks like the um problem areas are more likely to be the non-owner occupied smaller units that have no in-house manager so that's a second you know could we cut down on the number of inspections but really focus them and then the third is what Lynn started out with that we we would like to keep everyone safe we want to have um uh safe at least marginally meeting code housing do we have any estimate of the hunt 1200 1300 rental properties is it our 10 a problem or 20 a problem do you have any way of knowing on the code side or um on the once you get inside them you can extrapolate and is that linked to anything is it linked to certain management companies certain types of owners so just so i'm looking for is there a way we could target better than saying everybody's on the every five years everyone wants an every unit so we could we limit it and focus on the inspection side so it's the three are related starting with do we have a surplus do we have money some seed money for this in the recent increase in the permit fees Rob do you want me to take that first one um so so we brought about 280 thousand dollars I think this past year it's not going to Rob's numbers may vary because he's looking at the year that they're effective and by numbers the year we actually collected the money um and for FY 24 we budgeted about 190,000 to support the budget knowing that the increase was not meant to just support the the current program so there's a little bit of difference in terms of the revenue that's coming in under the latest fee increase and how much has been budgeted for to actually support the budget um what I would say the one question the committee will need to discuss but I wouldn't suggest doing it today is I think Lynn's comment about how is this where is this program going to be funded is it going to be funded in the operating the town's operating budget where if you're going to do that it's going to mean you know what what we've talked about where there would be a you know a single one-time increase to the town budget to fund this program that would be greater than the other departments or do we consider you know if an enterprise fund or something like that is um an option where instead of putting it into the operating budget we'd actually be pulling things out of the operating budget to kind of manage as its own little system um so I think that needs to be discussed probably after the fees and and that component you know once that's decided is how you want this program to be funded or where um but that so like for example the surplus question if it was an enterprise fund and you had a surplus it stays within the enterprise fund if it's a general fund and you have a surplus it goes to free cash and it's available to the whole town so how you decide to do it will dictate if you can do anything with that surplus enterprise funds um are to be self-supporting and uh so we don't put any tax money or other money into enterprise funds um so we do have grants come in yeah so the so the fee schedule we'll look at in a little bit you know one of the goals of the fee schedule is how would we fund the full program um Rob's estimate of the program includes benefits and retirement costs and things like that um so Rob did a good job of sort of costing out the full program and that's what we have given you a concept for for fees um but you're right if it's going to go into enterprise fund it has to be self-sustaining we'd have to you know we have to do some legal work to look at how that would be set up because there's I can't imagine there's many rental registration enterprise funds but um but it may be an option I guess is what I'm saying that we would look into further if the committee thinks it's a good idea yeah and I and just for to remind the committee that uh we try and include in enterprise funds um an amount that is actually paid back to the town to cover the administrative costs of overseeing the fund particularly from the finance department and from the central administration Paul's office we don't always if there's a particularly difficult period for an enterprise fund we can choose to waive that part but we try not to so I just want to just remind people that that's how we've been operating enterprise funds is there anything else on that topic because uh if not I certainly want to encourage the additional questions be submitted to me uh and um I think they might as well just go to me Rob and uh Shawn if this week and after this week uh Paul's going to have to decide who's going to be checking Shawn's email yep and I was just wondering do we have an estimate of problem properties you know out of the 1200 or or not that was my just threw it out it may be buried in one of these memos that we've got out of our 1300 it you know in terms I'm just thinking can we target the inspections a bit better than what's being proposed it's a it's a question and if we don't know the answer then we don't know the answer yeah yeah right no we don't know that we don't know the answer and we think that this effort will get us to understand that so much better you know we respond to about 300 complaints on average per year certainly there's those repeat uh properties that we visit but again you know it's only in response to a complaint throughout the course of the year we have too many times come across situations that are concerning that we didn't know about properties that we had never been to over the years could be a zoning matter uh misclassification of a building a unit that was never formally created or health and safety uh concerns and you know this is this is our way of suggesting that's this is how we will be able to say we've been through all the properties and we're starting off with safe units at least at the beginning of the program uh certainly I would expect that round two more so in round three that's when you start to to move people off the list of inspection requirements that would make sense to me once we've been through maybe even the second time we go through and see that there's uh no changes from from the the improved conditions that would be these would be good reasons to create those incentives to to reduce inspections and quickly on one of your other questions Kathy I just wanted to address the current draft bylaw uh requires an inspection every five years for properties that have up to 25 units and then some percentage of the larger complexes so the the the code official will make that determination for my estimates that you'll see in a few minutes uh that Sean put together uh is is really only considering about 10 percent of the total units in those larger complexes being inspected each year in that five-year cycle and that's because we have some some number of units that are inspected by uh other inspectors through section eight program we have prod properties that are very heavily managed by onsite supervision that would hopefully allow us to not need to look further than the the sampling of the units and we intentionally left that open and flexible so that we could adjust up or down but just so you when you see these numbers we're not we're not attempting to inspect every single unit in town we're you know especially in those larger project uh properties but it's just to understand that over a five-year period you try to get to all the ones in a big unit or would you just still use sampling I don't think we're going to I think you know as an example colonial village has 200 units we might try to see 20 of those units in year one in each subsequent year but if there isn't any reason to you know if we're if we're not getting you know concerns about the conditions and we are um you know establishing this communication with management and understanding their protocols and how they're responding and what systems they have in place we may be comfortable enough to stop there and not have to see the the remaining units uh or decide that it goes into round two in the the five to ten year inspection cycle and mix you know mix in the remaining units if that is necessary but I would expect that um you know many of those larger properties are are well managed we know that uh we know that there's a lot of good systems in place and we know that many of the units uh have the benefit of it of the annual inspection from some other agency and I think we'll be able to rely on that in some cases okay well thank you um so we need to move on to the next section but I want to give Pam a chance to respond and just remind everybody if you have additional questions that you have now or think of that you want to pose about the bylaw in general uh to get them by email to my address uh Rob's address and Sean's address and so I'll uh figure out what's going to happen to him after his last day so that uh they get to whoever and the finance staff is the appropriate person that will let us know otherwise. Pam do you want to uh do you have anything now and then we can move on to just talking about the fee structure part and uh scheduling a next meeting I think those are the last things I want to make sure we cover Pam. Yes can you hear me? Yes. Oh okay I didn't see anything to unmute um I was going to say in consideration of building a program that I would I would like to see at least recognition of what it costs us today to be running the program so what the staffing is today versus what we might build to so it's not all new thank you. So Andy for this next piece maybe it would be helpful if I just bring up the the spreadsheet um and walk people through it and then people can ask initial questions and I think that will generate thought between now and the next meeting um because it sort of looks at both the structure and certain fee levels again this is not something we are saying this is the the optimal um concept it's just we think this will get get the conversation started so is okay if I just share my screen Andy? Yes. So credit to Rob for a lot of this I just put it into a spreadsheet um and played around with the numbers a little bit so if you don't like the numbers it's my fault if you do like the numbers Rob gets that credit so um let's see all right uh is this large enough or too small? Okay for me other people should speak up if it's not so just I'll start going through it let me know if it's too small um proposed program cost so total program with benefits with health insurance this is for a lead code enforcement officer uh to inspectors um and then min assistant correct Rob um and correct anything if I'm wrong and then supplies and legal costs for you know this brand new program uh would be about $475,000 this number is coming from what you'll see below and so just shows if we're funded or not which this model is basically funded so this first uh block here is the permit fees this would be the annual fee that a parcel would pay regardless of whether there was an inspection that year and so based on the fee structure that's been discussed there would be a differentiation between owner occupied and non-owner occupied um so this first section here owner occupied um this has one unit but it's really a Rob it's less than a certain number of units right um would fall into this bracket so there's 140 of these um and for these 140 they would get a little bit of a break for being owner occupied and so the fee would be $150 uh this would generate $21,000 in total and the annual cost per unit from the permit fee component would be $150 and again any of these numbers can be adjusted as we go forward uh this next section is all about non-owner occupied and then the number of units in those parcels uh so there's 737 one unit 182 unit and so on uh the thought here is that the annual fee would increase based on how many units there are um but it wouldn't increase at such a rate that the annual per unit cost would be the same so it's actually giving a little bit of a lower per unit cost to the greater uh the larger um uh the larger developments and that's to reflect that you know talking with Rob there's not this this fee and sort of the management of the program it doesn't necessarily manage how matter how many units you have the part that really dictates the work would be the inspections themselves which is down below um this is more about sort of just the overall administration of a program and so we're acknowledging that a little bit of a higher fee for larger um more unit parcels but not a dramatic increase as you go up so again over here you can see the annual per unit cost so the total of the revenue that would be generated from the annual permit fees would be 355,000 um the group has talked about different types of discounts that could be put in uh to help achieve certain goals uh so one such discount was a local owner discount so if if the owner of of the unit resided in the town of Amherst um they would get a a certain reduction and here we're proposing a $50 reduction uh so there's 416 of those units we think are parcels um with a $50 break so it would reduce the revenue brought in by that much so the total revenue from the permit fees themselves would be 335,000 the next component is inspection fees um so I think Rob you'd estimated about 600 per year um you know given what we just talked about where you want to necessarily go into every single unit uh so if we did a $200 per unit inspection fee uh it would generate $120,000 a year um and again since this is every five years you know if a unit doesn't have follow-up inspections and they do well um the average cost over five years would be $40 per unit and again that would bring in about 120,000 again we could put discounts in here Rob and Dave and I were talking about maybe there's um possible discounts that could be considered for um uh parcels that have affordable units or certain percentages of affordable units as a way to incentivize creation of those in the future so there's there's different options that can be considered as you get into the weeds on this and then the last section is other fees so if there's an additional inspection if the inspectors have to come back after they find something uh there would be a charge for that possible fines related to violations there would be um fees for that these are estimates that will get much better data on a year after the program is in place but all in all with this concept it would roughly generate the revenue needed to support the program so the one question that I have for um is whether uh a complaint from a is that not considered a um under this being under this program but for another purpose is there a fee charge for that inspection that follows the complaint Rob if there was an if there was a complaint under this new model and would you require would you schedule an inspection and would the owner have to pay for that inspection if for example you found the complaint wasn't warranted yeah um so currently we do not charge in that situation and you know it is an item on the proposed fee schedule that the CRC put together and you know whether it's through the rules and regulations or on the fee schedule itself for clarification I would want that particular fee to be only charged if a full housing inspection is needed and done and violations found uh you know otherwise I think that's part of why we're here to respond to questions either from tenants or neighbors but uh and then of course some of the the responses do not require a full inspection and wouldn't justify charging that fee so that would be an additional revenue piece that could be added so we're going to try and get a general discussion about fee structure and and look at the and we're combining that with looking at the draft Kathy one very quick question Sean is this as I'm searching through the multiple documents that we had in yeah this is not there I worked on the this is afternoon we we lost power this morning but you put it in because I can't get an exact I can't get a match I get a match pretty close to the totals but not necessarily to the fees I'm seeing so just be useful for me to have that yeah and this is I don't know what was in the packet this would not match up with anything in the packet because he's were adjusted this afternoon um okay so so one of the things I saw in the packet was um ability to work with what's the permit fee versus what's the inspection fee and and be varying that and so my my question and this is both of rob rob you know in terms of conceptually if we if we have a property let me start with a property that's inspected you permit it and you say this is a great property could the permit be a five-year permit could do we have any way to put some incentives in you know um so that we're we're not going to your your otherwise considered as long as your same owner particularly owner occupied um and and what I liked about the information we got in the packet is like what's the cost of running the permit system and what's the cost of running the inspection system so trying to think about the fees were somewhat linked to the implementation and that was also my um this is assuming 600 annual inspections we have 1200 ish properties and I know the annual inspections is if I have a duplex that's two units in one property so it's I had the same kind of if we by around two or around three or we're looking at the beginning of all of this maybe but over time can we operate it more efficiently where I meet efficiently for effectiveness that you don't go as often to places that aren't a problem if they're a big place and you just sample you're mainly checking to make sure the boiler system and other things are working you're not necessarily going into the 200 foot efficiency so it's just trying to think of where this is a work is this a worst case scenario could we be more targeted and I'll just end there because I don't want you to do I I realize you can do endless permutations of this but I'm I'm looking for ways um that in my other life when I was working in healthcare a few states decided with their nursing homes they would target the ones they knew were a problem and they would treat them differently than the ones they knew they weren't a problem and that was a shift from trying to go everywhere everyone wants and bob you may have this in other building things so I'm just thinking a way of you could evolve it to feel really fair because if it was well maintained not complain these fees so it's looking for could the permit be for a longer period of time so you knew you got in and you were clean property and or less frequent inspections and I was showing one every five years I would say could you do one over 10 so do we have any flexibility in thinking and is that a bad idea so I'm putting those out there as hypotheticals and I'll stop I don't actually need answers because I can work with a spreadsheet if you put it in I can play with and see what happens to the numbers yeah so I'll leave it to Rob's discussion then as to whether he has anything to say otherwise so call him Bob Hagner I'll just say at this point that I think you know those are all great great suggestions or questions and what maybe in part the CRC kind of worked through to to settle out of five year inspection uh and I think all of us hope that all the things that you're suggesting could happen will happen you know it's just when and and I'll just go back and and maybe repeating a little bit is that we just don't know what we have out there you know we just don't know what a unit looks like and the condition of it and how many bedrooms are in it and this at least one full round gets us that information gets us consistent with assessing records that we don't have today and that's why we felt it was so important and hopefully as time goes on there'd be a whole lot fewer inspections needed and you know there there could be a shift from inspection to proactive kind of enforcement of things like trash and parking and signage and you know areas that could use attention throughout the course of the year in a different way so we hope that would that would occur naturally with a program once we have it established. Ruth, Bob? Yeah I I had the same reaction Kathy had to this spreadsheet in that it seemed like this was like a startup phase and not a phase you know five years down the line when we've learned more about things and I understand we don't know and we we have to be flexible but the one thing I do want to make sure we don't do is we don't place an inordinate burden on those properties that have small numbers of units because if you exclude the larger properties from you know additional inspections etc etc because they have systems in place you're going to wind up pushing more and more of the cost on the smaller units so we just want to make sure we don't do that somehow we have to figure out how we don't do that I don't know what the answer is but I would just suggest we put that as a basic fundamental you know idea or principle that we try to stick to. I don't see any other hands up now so I think that you know I guess that the other thing is we'll get back to the general bylaw question after we've finished all of the discussion about the funding structure and how it would work out I think we probably do need to go then back and look at the general bylaw and see if there are any changes we would need to recommend to make it all work together but that's not something that we need to think about now. Kathy? I just I have a question to build on Bob's and Rob's in round one this is what we need to spend you don't want to staff up when you think two three and four leave fewer people you know it's it's like get so can we think of I don't have any idea of how to do this but we have one I mean Guilford was earlier saying we do an inventory of our lights and then we know what we've got but so do you don't want to hire a whole bunch of staff have that to be carrying that cost and say by year three or year four we know how to focus and we can make longer time periods and now you've got a unit of three or four and as Bob said you're then trying to balance the books on a few groups so just try to think of is there any way that startup you need one thing and steady state we need something else and I have no idea how to do a best guess of this you know I know sometimes universities hire people on one-year contracts or two-year country you know it's like we got to get this in place and there's a beginning or UMass helps us out by because they just think this is such a good idea they give us a startup money and then we can go to steady states so it's it's hearing this I worry about staffing up and then needing fewer once we know what we've got so just think of how we might how we might think out of the box several years down the road on this good question has follow-up implications which we'll discuss later anything else for today is this as intended as a first discussion to get us all started and do you feel like you've got your kind of initial base out of the way of understanding what this is about and what we need to do to recommend the fee structure put it all together in the end so seeing no hands going up on that I think that we are at a point where we're not going to be able to certainly I haven't done anything on them it didn't have a chance to do anything on the minutes and so I think I'm going to forego the minutes anyway for the meeting and going back and looking to see scheduling the next meeting is then the last there's no items not anticipated 48 hours I would like to schedule a follow-up meeting fairly promptly within the next couple of weeks and if possible and it strikes me that the best thing to do if everybody's willing to go in that direction is to see if we can work with Athena or somebody or otherwise to a zoom poll of ours as a doodle poll of some sort that would give us a chance to figure out when it would be available for the largest number of people for a next meeting so does that if everybody's willing to go that route then I think that's what would be my recommendation Lynn you don't want to just try out a couple dates like September 6th we can that I was looking at my own schedule to kind of figure that out and I think we're going to have a bunch of people who are going to have problems in various points I was sort of hating to get into this for example you mentioned November 5th I couldn't do an afternoon on November 5th November 6th would be possible actually the rest of the week would be possible Andy are you interested in polling for a regular meeting schedule a day in time for a regular meeting schedule or just for the next meeting I think we probably need to do both Bob yeah I just want to let everybody know I'll be out of the out of the country from the 5th until the 20th so I might be able to call in or get on get out get online for a meeting but depending on the time I'm going to be in France so depending on the the time difference I may or may not be able to manage in terms of regular meetings I'm pretty wide open but I just have a vacation vacation plan did I think that there's at least one other member of the committee who said the same thing to me about a plan commitment that they've made for travel purposes which is I think the reason that it's hard to do this is a group discussion and easier to do it as a poll yeah I was just going to say as much as I know Sean wants to stay late at his final finance committee meeting it would be I'd love if we could do this via doodle poll instead of trying to adjudicate it in the meeting okay so I don't I Athena can I work with you on doing that and you talk even tomorrow or whenever you're available sounds good okay so with that said I don't think that we have any other business unless anybody else has something that they want to raise I do want to conclude the meeting even though we just did it the other day at yesterday at the council meeting I'm not going to go around the room again but it is a slightly different group because we have our resident members of the committee here and the relationship between Sean you and this committee has been really important and you have kept us going and sort of been the piece of the the person who has kept this committee as successful as it has been we will miss you greatly we wish you well thank you but I'm not going to put you through the torture of last night for everybody went around the room thank you and I just I'll quickly say I told council how much I enjoyed work with all of you resident members of this committee I think you guys bring a ton of knowledge and experience and really good insights to everything we've worked on and you've been a pretty stable group since since I've been certainly is on the finance committee so I want to thank you all again for going to work with you all and being such a good support to the committee and to me always good questions not always good support thank you so okay so we're adjourned but thank you everybody thank you Sean yeah