Yeah. I mean, she got the same emails everyone else did. Who's the vice chair? Is that right? Sarah's the vice chair. The acting chair. Both. I don't know if an acting vice chair when we had the acting chair. Okay. Should we wait for Sarah or should we start? Okay. Sarah just emailed me. Waiting to join the webinar. I don't know who would run the meeting if we don't have a chair to join the webinar. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what the vice chair. Sarah just emailed me that she's waiting. So let's. Waiting. Yeah. She said, I'm waiting to join the webinar. In process. There's a bunch of people in the waiting room. There is one of them. Can you bring her over that way? Okay. And I don't know. Panelists. No, she's a presenter. I don't know what the problem was. Trying to get in. Am I muted? No. Okay. Hello, Sarah. Hello. And we're also joined by Andrew McDougal. New member just came in. Right. I think we'll have a round of introductions, but I don't, it doesn't look like we have enough people yet. Right. You, you have seven. While we expecting. I know Sarah is not coming. About Diana. Diana here. I'm here. Oh, there you are. Sorry, everybody. We're missing. Miss Obell. Who I did not hear back from when I contacted. So I'm not sure. I'm not sure what her status is. Well, all right. Then why don't we get going? I'm sorry to be. Pretty much the last one. Don't know what the trouble is. I don't know what the trouble is. So before we tackle the agenda, I guess I should call the meeting to order. The meeting of the community preservation at committee meeting at call, call to order at 6. 05 PM on Thursday, October 22nd, 2020. We are meeting virtually since we are not allowed to meet in person. The meeting is being recorded. Got it. Okay. So before we tackle the agenda, I think I would like everybody to introduce themselves. We have several new people, which is. Wonderful. And because I think we appear in different arrangements on different screens. I will just call on people. By, by whom, the committee that you represent, if you do represent one, I'm Sarah Marshall. I am a member of the LSSE commission. Historic commission. Are you here? Introduce yourself on mute. There we go. There's a mute. Hi, I'm Robin Porter. My commissioner. Amherst historical commission. Thank you. Housing authority. David W. Housing authority. All right. Okay. Conservation commission and new member. Hi, everybody. I'm Anna. I am a commissioner on the conservation commission. Very excited to be here. And how do you pronounce your last name, please? Devlin. And it's like the princess from frozen. Okay. Okay. That I can remember. Planning board. Yeah. Hi, Andrew McDougal. Happy to be here. Representing the planning board.  I think so. That's great. And we have some at large members and we'll, how about we start with the most. Senior by seniority. That is. That's me. I'm Diana Stein. And I'm a member at large and happy to be part of the group. Okay. Next, I think would be Sarah. Ising her. She is not here tonight. So then Sam. Hi, everybody. And new members. I'm Sam McClellan. I'm glad to be here and glad to see that you're here. As well. Okay. And the newest member at large member Katie. So Bell is not here. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe. Maybe she will drop in. We'll hope so. So before we proceed, we do need a minute taper. I think I'd like to pick on a, on a, one of our. Someone who has served on the committee in the past just to not put our new members throw them immediately into the fire. So Robin did the previous set. I think so. Would Sam or Diana be kind enough to volunteer? I'll do it. If I can get a copy of the recording. Is that possible? Because. I don't know. I have a little puppy here and sometimes I'll get up and I might miss something. I will send you a link when it goes live in the next couple of days. Okay. Great. Thank you, Diana. Yes, you can watch the whole meeting again. So good. All right. Then our first item on the agenda is to elect a chair and vice chair. I would suggest we just push that to the end. I agreed to chair this. So let's do that and. Tackle that if necessary at the end of the meeting. In which case, I think I turned the floor over to Sean and son, Sonia, who will tell us, try again to make me understand where our money comes from. Sean, you're muted. Yep. Thank you. I'm Sean. The finance director and I'm lucky to be joined by Sonya Aldrich, the comptroller who has lots of experience with CPA and will correct me if I say anything wrong. So I'm going to do a very brief overview of the CPA, mostly for some of our new members just to hit some of the fine points about the calendar and the process. And then turn it over to Sonia to go through our available funds and we'll be really brief so that we can spend most of the time. So I'm going to share my screen per second. All right. So what, what is the CPA? So it is funded by a 3% surcharge on our property taxes that all the voters and Amherst and one pointer time voted to do it. I think it started out at a lower percentage and ultimately went up to the 3%. And it really could be used for four main purposes. One is historical preservation and open space. And for some of the new members and you may already know this, there's a website www.communitypreservation.org. It's run by the community preservation coalition. There's a lot of really good information on that website for learning about, there's a Q and FAQs and case studies and some good information on that website. This chart is something that I found helpful. And I think one of the things that we're going to do is look at these pictures just if you're wondering, these pictures are projects that have been funded by the CPA. I think our temporary chair is in one of them. Yeah, there we go. Our interim chairs in the background there for the graph park ribbon cutting. And so basically this little chart has the four purposes at the top and then it has some different types of things you can do with projects on the left-hand side, and then you can kind of go across to see if it's something that's eligible. So sort of a matrix you can use to do a quick sort of pass on whether a project is eligible. There's a lot more nuance that goes into some of these things, but this is sort of a quick way to get a sense of whether something's eligible for CPA. Shifting to our timeline. So tonight is the first night of three scheduled presentation meetings. If we need more, we'll add more, but hopefully we can get it into the three that are coming up. And then on the, after the fifth, which is the last night of presentations on the 12th, there will be a public hearing where the public can come and voice their support or give comments on any of the projects that were presented. And then between that meeting and the 19th, the committee will work on developing a recommendation, which is, you know, a challenging process and may need more information from staff or from the presenters to do, to do their work. And then ultimately, if we stick to this calendar, the committee would finalize a report to the council on the third. I'll just note that we move this prod, this process up to the fall and it's a little more condensed than it's been in the past. So we want to stick to the timeline, but we've left room in there where if you need to go later, there's room there to go later. And then some of the key steps in the process. So your committee, the community preservation at committee, you're going to hear presentations, review proposals, ask questions, hold the public forum. You'll do the prioritization of projects and consider funding strategies. And Sonia and myself and Anthony will help with some of those funding strategies to give you different ways you might be able to fit all the projects in or fit some of the projects in, consider borrowing and things like that. And then ultimately develop and vote a recommendation. Once you vote a recommendation, the finance committee will take that up. And this year, again, because we'll move the process to the fall, I think they're still deciding when they're going to take up CPAs, recommendation, but the finance committee will review it and then make their own recommendation to the council. And then eventually the council will take both recommendations and vote to approve or not approve. And sometimes there's some exceptions to this rule, but in general, once the council votes to approve the recommendations, those funds become available to the requesters on July 1st. So again, because this process is a little earlier, but once it's approved, it'll be July 1st of 2021. And I'm going to turn it over now to Sonia, who's going to talk about the available resources for CPA. Okay. For the, for the new members, I'm just going to go through the whole thing again. The top box is the current fiscal year CPA CPA is funded by estimated revenues. So until tax rate is set. We're estimated, it's just like a regular operating budget. We're estimating our local receipts and taxes that will be coming in to set that. So fiscal year, the beginning balance and fiscal year 21 is the only actual number we have right now on here. And that is what we ended our fund balance with 887,389. We're estimating that our surcharge will come in at 950,000 and our state match right now, the state's telling us to use 17.7%. So our state match should come in around 168. It will come in a little more because we're 3%. Town now because of that, we get set round two and round three, how to calculate that. I still haven't figured that one out. So I'm sticking with the 17.7%. The more we get in the end is good. So for 21, we had $2 million available. And we voted 1.256. And projects for fiscal year 21, the current year that we're in now. We also voted $377,000 as a budget reserve. And what that is, is so that if something comes up during this fiscal year, we have a funding source to go to, to fund any projects that come off cycle. We get those from time to time and they spend times that we haven't been able to fund them because we don't have any capital. The only way we could fund them is through borrowing. And it has to be in a project that can be borrowed for. So this 377 is kind of like our free cash, our municipal free cash where we voted in. But at the end of the fiscal year, this goes away. It just drops down to fund balance again, and it becomes part of the pot for the, for the following year. So so far we have no projects. The reserve for historical preservation, that is $50,000 that was voted this year. Another rule of CPA is that you have to, you have to spend at least 10% of new revenue in that fiscal year for each of the three major categories. And that's community housing, community housing, and same place for all of these other categories. That's where we know we're going to do some kind of, open space and. It's the other one. Historical preservation. Thank you. Historical preservation. Oh, recreation is part of. Is part of this counted as part of open space. So that doesn't have it separate 10%. So with historic preservation, last year, we didn't, we didn't meet that 10%. So we put $50,000 into a reserve for. And that, that reserve doesn't go away a year and that stays there until we appropriate it for historic project. And then we have returned appropriations and this is older, older projects that were completed, and the funds weren't fully expended. They get returned back in and that becomes part of the pot for the following year as well and we had returned about $118,000 back. So for the end, we're estimating that at the end of fiscal year 21 will have 440,488. So that gets carried over into 20 so this. Again, these are all estimates. So we're assuming that we're going to take in a million dollars in so charge and we're going back to the 11%, which is what the state started with for fiscal year 21. Mainly because we really don't know where the budget's going with COVID going on and everything so we want to be as conservative as possible. And that will give us 1.55 million to start off with with fiscal year 22. Then we then we have to take care of our debt service from previous debt that was authorized through the committee so we need to pay that so we know that's kind of come off the top. So that's what that is the 388,000. We don't spend that budget reserve up at the top of 377 it will get carried down here and that will get added to the balance. So right now we have 1.16 million. And most likely we will have the budget reserve back in here because I don't know of any projects that are coming off cycle. So the last box is just our debt service and letting you know what year they're doing what year they're coming on. Any questions on the, this piece of it, the financing. My only question is, is it possible for you to send this to us, or is it possible for us to access this. Yeah, we'll mostly. Yeah, we'll send this out and the other thing I want to mention, we have quite a few new members so if anybody wants to do like a zoom meeting with Sonya myself outside of this and get into like the finer details of CPA questions. We're happy to set up a time to do that as well. But we'll send this out to everybody. Thank you. I'll take you up on that Sean and Sonya, I had one question though for the debt service or we are we approving projects in excess of our amount that is then finance that's carried as debt service. I'm just trying to give me a high level overview that super fast. You mean if we have 3 million worth of projects and only $2 million in cash. Yes. Yeah, I mean, like, like that writes, I guess, I guess the, and I appreciate that comment but the, if we have, you know, the 1.5 million available, and we find that we have projects that exceed two or 3 million we could still approve them. And that it would essentially be financed through future appropriations. You have to know you have to have an appropriation so either you have to authorize debt for it or you have to have the cash and hand for it. And I interject, we can recommend to counsel that a specific project be funded through borrowing. And if they go ahead and do that, then, yes, CPA funds pay it back over time. And that's what you see down here on the debt service these are the pay ongoing payments for CPA projects that were, you know, funded that were approved, you know, 10 years ago now just going to pay off the final installment of a rehabilitation project for the housing authority. So, so yeah we can recommend projects in excess of the funds available to us. And we can constrain future, you know, future committees and what they can do because we're, we're taking some of their. That was my exact, that's where I was going thank you thank you all for clarifying that. And we can I add I think we get generally review this every meeting if they're, you know, especially if they're changes. This won't be the only time you say Anthony always has it at the ready and we can go over it again especially as, as some of the estimated numbers get firmed up and you know Sonya can figure out exactly how much money. Right once we get the actual years and stuff like that. Yeah. Right. Just ask a quick question. What are the dates that the estimated funds are expected to be fine off that always confuses me. Basically you're 21 what comes in for so charges and everything it's going to be right up until June 30. So that estimated balance to beginning balance for July one isn't until the previous fiscal year is all said and done. Okay, you probably won't have actuals for your process that ends in December or around December. Yeah, yeah, we never do. I mean, fortunately, at least not in my experience, it's never been the case that oops, there wasn't enough money to do what. Right. Yeah, that's everybody approved. So, I don't know if that is the possibility but that's why we're very conservative in the numbers we use that happens and that's why you have a fun balance sometimes that carries forward because we might get a little more in than what was projected. But it does appear that we have a smaller pot. The estimated pot this year is quite a bit smaller than last year's estimated. Yes. Well remember that, but that budgeted reserve will go back into the pot. So you can, you can decide as a committee that you want to put that back into the pot for next year at some point. So we can, we don't have to wait till the end of. You commit it for next year, then I can't allow it to be spent twice.  Okay. All right, so we could just, we could just take that. We could decide we're just going to take it. All right, but that's not anything more we need to understand or decide tonight, I guess. Right. So maybe although Sonya, maybe you could go back if Anthony could throw that up again and you could point to the number which represents the new revenue, which of the various to the 10% are calculated. That has been confusing in the past. Okay, so each year it's, it's the current year's revenue. So it would be the new tax assessment of a million dollars and whatever we estimate for the state match. So it's 10% of those two numbers. So if you see the minimum over there it's 111, we have to spend at least 111 in each category. And for a lot of these the debt handles that takes care of that right off the bat. 11,000 in each of those. Yes. Yeah. 111. I'm sorry. Yes. Yes, yes. I did 10, 10% of 10%. Yeah. Okay. Right, but we have additional monies that we can spend on top of that. Right, you can spend more than 10%. We're held to actually spending or reserving at least 10% for each category. Okay, thank you. That was, I think that's enough on that. So let's move to approve outstanding minutes. The only minutes we have to review are from the September 10th meeting. Thank you, Robin. I just see first to show up hands. How many met one, two, three, four, five. So we have seven members how many people have reviewed them and Robin presumably. Okay. All right, so that's we can proceed. And I'm told that even if you weren't at the meeting, you can, you can vote to approve or amend minutes as needed. So I would like to do this quickly. I don't, we have a lot to do tonight. So I don't want to spend a lot of time word smithing. Does anybody have a major. Comment. Any inaccuracies. Diana. I'm just like the statement. That I, it doesn't add anything to the minutes. I'll tell you which one it is. And I just like it removed. That's all. Yeah. See here. And, you know, I didn't understand what two other Sonya. Was referred to. I do also think it's easier to follow. If we use last names or the initials to my mind or are not. Convenient. So anyway, the, the line I'd like to lead it. I, it says, I, there was a discussion of item three under the. Proposal evaluation criteria. I know what was going on, but it doesn't add anything to the minutes. And I would like to have it deleted. I'm sorry. I don't know which page or paragraph you're on. It's under the proposal letter. Yes. And it says discussion of item three under proposal evaluation criteria. But it doesn't. Okay. I just. Right. Would take it out. Robin, do you see that? No. It's the second, it's the second line above proposal form. Okay. It's the one. Above. Proposal form. Okay. There's a essay comment and then a DS comment is the second one above the proposal form. That's the line that I don't think adds anything. I don't think it explains anything. I don't think it explains anything. I don't think it explains anything. Isn't the purpose of minutes minutes to track what happens in the meeting. It's not, it's not about what matters most in the meeting. Isn't it to, so that people understand what occurred. Anna, that's exactly my point. I don't think it explains anything. It's not to be a transcript. It's to, it's to describe every vote taken. And who voted how and what the major questions were in the major points. So. My thought would just be if someone was worried, you didn't talk about item three. You know, and now it's not in the minutes that you had talked about it at all. That would be my only concern. Yeah. I don't think that in this. For that particular item that that's a concern. So I don't remember if it's Anthony, who actually is going to be making the changes. I see the line she's talking about. I can. I can really. Okay. So would you also please, I'm sorry, Diana, was there anything else? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I think the other would have been, like I said, I, I think it's easier. Well, the two other Sonya. Aldrich's. And then last, last names are easier than initials. That's all. Yes. Okay. I would like to add something where on the first page after the list of people present. Meeting call to order at six o'clock two PM, I would say on zoom. I would like to add, I would like to add that the meetings. Are allowed. Under review financials. The second. Paragraph, so to speak, his estimate of 1.38 million. For funding. Please add in the fiscal year 22. Round. Okay. Good. The next paragraph. Kind of the end of that paragraph, HB reported. Okay. And then at the end. Okay. Where it says closer to question mark question mark. Just say that the amount returned will increase somewhat. Okay. And then at the end. Very. Almost the end. It says set 24th meeting. Meeting any reason to have this. In the end. No. And I was going, I will decide that. Yep. Okay. Okay. All right. Anything else? I just agree with Diana's comment regarding the names. I'm not sure who would affect it or if we have to confirm it. My preference would be first name. First initial last name, either or works. If we stick with. The initials. My preference would be for the SML to be. Just. Mac. The initials were just a shorthand for taking notes. I apologize. Maybe we can agree on a standard and then whoever takes. Do the replace once they're done. But when I was taking the notes, by the way, it's. In real time. Yeah. And the only other comment is I'd add an aid to my name at the top. It's as McLeod, M-A-C-L-E-O-D. That gets important to us. Here it is between. People come to blows over that. I second that, Sam. Okay. Glad we have that. So. All right. Any further comments? Any other comments? Any other comments? Any other comments? Any other comments as amended? I second. All in favor. We have to, we have to, all right. Marshall. McLeod. Go here. Fordham Stein. Did anyone else? Williams. Approved. All right. I'm an abstain by the way. And thank you. And Google's abstaining, which is fine. I'll do that. I think we have a question. Do we have any members of the public? I think she just turned the camera off. Oh, okay. All right. Anthony, do we have any members of the public? Okay. So anyone who is in attendance. Who is not one of the people presenting. If you would raise your hand. We've got made gauge. I'm going to promote you to a panelist now. Meg gauge. Meg, you're muted. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm on the steering committee of the district one neighborhood association and we've submitted a proposal. We've got some excellent, helpful feedback from the historic commission earlier this week. And realize there's some points that we actually have planned, but in order to make it a six sync proposal, didn't include. The proposal. The proposal. And also. My. Ineptitude. In attaching photos. I can't, I don't know why I couldn't. I tried three different. Photos, but I wanted advice. Maybe. Anthony or somebody could help me attach, help us attach. The photos that give you a good picture of what's involved with the trail. I'm not sure that I can reach out to you tomorrow about that. And you will, and you will have a presentation at a future meeting. We will. Right. I know. So I'm just asking about whether we should submit. I mean, there were things, for example, we want to have QR codes. So people can access the information with their phones and hear the students voices telling the stories of who lived where. And we just didn't include all that detail. Cause my training is keep it tight and short. But I thought it would be, it isn't to change anything, but it's to augment some of the ideas. Maybe you could help me with that too. I don't know if the procedure is. We have to augment the proposal. We have historically allowed people to supplement their proposal. Thank you. Maggie, you just, just send your additional document or uploaded photos or whatever, whatever to Anthony and he'll get them out of the committee. I also want to put in a huge. Votive support from everyone in North Amherst for the North Amherst library. Proposal where we have one of the oldest historic buildings in town. It's a total treasure. Many of our kids learn to read there. And we're so fortunate to have an anonymous donor who's supporting a huge amount of the. Improvements there. We have a lot of people supporting the North Amherst library. Like a restroom, for example, in the community room. We don't have like many parts of town. We don't have a real community space up here. And we're, we're really, I'm just representing a lot of people supporting the north. Guilford's proposal. For the North Amherst library. It's a really big opportunity for CPAC to make a difference. Thank you. I'll be in touch with you, Anthony, tomorrow. Okay. Thank you. And thank you for letting for the public comment. Sure. Thanks for attending. Is there anyone else? Does it appear that there's anyone else? Raise your hand now or forever hold your peace. Well, yeah. I don't see anyone else raising their hands. All right. So we can begin the presentations. All right. Maybe I can just tell the, the new folks on the committee. They're not going to be. These are fairly informal. The presenters get to, you know, summarize their project if they want. And then we have questions and answers or sometimes we just launched directly into questions. So. We'll give the presenters an opportunity to say whatever they would like to. So one quick preface for all of these folks. I sent the, I sent those questions to the presenters. In some cases they would have received them all this afternoon because one. So. And I haven't, I actually never really asked for written. Responses back because I didn't really know what to do with only three sets of questions. So. You may, we, this may now be a good time after they're finished speaking to ask your questions. I'm going to bring in Guilford mooring. For our first presentation. And if Alan snow or anyone else from DPW is in there, some of these, some folks in the attendees list are anonymous. Anyone else from DPW is here. You can raise your hand.  But the floor is yours. So which one is first. I don't really have an agenda. I put the library first. So you've already, you've already heard a little bit about the library. We've been working with Coon Riddle through the generosity of a anonymous donor. We've done a lot of planning for the library and come up with some, some good concepts. There is a, the town manager is going to form some type of committee, building committee for this project that will help see this as it goes forward into construction. So, I think that's a good idea. I think that's a good idea. I think that's a good idea. I think that's a good idea. So the next question. It's just that your process now is starting now. And if we were to wait until we get into the building committee and so forth, we'd be a little out of sync with your process and wouldn't meet the construction schedule we have right now. So that's why you're seeing this now. One of the things we did find very early on in the process is that there was some alterations made to the building. And those alterations are causing this damage to the wall. And so that's why we did that. And so that's why we did that. And so that was the, the beam that was cut. To put the stairway in. The stairway goes from the main vestibule down into the, into the basement now. The original entrance to the basement was actually through the back of the library. There's a large window. If you go to the library, you can see a large window in the back of the building. That was the entrance into the basement and it was the side. That's not acceptable. So they put the stairs in. And so that's why we did that. There's some rearranging in the building, which is not really very good. And this wall has started to roll in. So we wanted to ask for some money to just work on this wall to take down the support system there is, and it's going to probably be some type of form of butchers thing that we use to hold the wall back up. We're taking the stairs out. We're going to put the beam back in the entrance to the building. We're going to put the beam back in the building. And then we're going to put the beam back in the building. And then we're going to be established into the basement from the back of the building, which will actually be the middle of the building when the new additions added on to it. The back of the building will have a stairway, which goes down to the basement and one, which goes upstairs to the first floor. And there'll be a lift, which will take you between the middle floor, which will take you to the second floor. And then we're going to put the beam back in the building. And then we're going to put the beam back in the building. So the estimates we have are from Coon Riddle. There is a contingency in there. It's about 20% right now because we do not know what's behind the foam insulation. We haven't taken that down yet. And we don't know what's behind it. So we gave a pretty hefty 20% contingency to it. I think. That is everything about the proposal. Any other questions? This is Sam Guilford. Thanks for the presentation. Just a quick confirmation to make sure I understood what you said. The existing stairwell is going to be removed in its entirety and not replaced. And there's going to instead be a new entrance with new stairs from the back window area. Is that correct? Yes. The actual entrance will be a little bit to the, a little bit more. I have a question. Thank you. Is this, does this work need to be done before. All the other work that is funded by the private gift. No, we're hoping to actually dovetail this work in with the work that the private donors doing and kind of. Economize on making a bigger project out of it. Yeah.  No, but I meant more. Is it, is it necessary to do the work before the other work can. Be done. I know that. No, it's not. Okay. They can be done together. But it makes sense to do them together. But it's not like the other work couldn't happen. If we.  Isn't compromised by the wall at some point in the future. Anybody else. Just, I'm assuming that the justification under historic preservation is just the historic nature of the building. And the budget that is really a specific historic preservation expense. I'm just thinking of the slate roof projects, which, you know, the slate themselves as. A specialized process that requires specialized trade into people. Where's this. I'm just trying to get a sense of that. Portion of the budget. Okay. There is no special historic preservation skills required for doing this wall now. I don't think so. But it is, it is important to the integrity of the structural integrity of the building. Right, right. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I just. Yeah, no, I got that. I just was wondering. Yeah. I don't think specific as well, but okay. So it is essentially because the building is historic, it is necessary to preserve the integrity of the historic building. Okay. If the stairwell access new one is for the general public. Or for staff. My understanding from last year's presentation, there was some. It was primarily for those who were working there. Do you have any indication regarding that. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if the library will operate is not been fully worked out yet. Sharon Sherry, the head librarian has been discussing how she would operate a library with two floors and the staffing she has at the time right now. So she has not. Come up with an actual plan for that. And that's something that has to be something she still has to work out. Thank you. Thank you. I think we'll need a second exit to be used by the public or as a workspace. Or is this just where the mechanical. Systems are. Again, we don't know how they're going to use the library. This, this basement space for the library. So right now, a lot of the space is going to be for mechanical sections of the building and for just general storage and support of the building. So there's a lot of space. There's a lot of space that does not need to be because of the size of the building. And in the way the basement set up, it's pretty much an open space in the basement. There's not need to be a second exit from that. That space is what we're being told. Hi, Alfred. I have a quick question for you. Oh, sorry, Andrew. No, you're up on a rock, paper, scissors. All right. So are you there? I choose. Anna. So it's okay. Sorry. So I, my question is just, are you reinstallating that wall? And are you putting consideration into sustainability of materials and things along those lines? Or is that further down the road? You're not there yet. So the building has actually been insulated really well so far. So we will have to take some type of additional insulation. We pull out the other stuff. That has been included in this project for that one section. And then the overall project. There's a lot of sustainable practices in the overall project, which will upgrade the existing heating and cooling system as well as lighting and. Lighting heating and cooling. And there was one more system, which just went in electrical. Electrical is pretty much up to. I really can't really get much better with the electrical. Yeah. Great. That sounds great. I was just wondering if you were ripping out insulation and reinstallating if you had. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Hey, girlfriend. Yeah, I was, I was, I guess just curious the, obviously the. It was unanticipated that we're going to have the issue with the wall when the work was originally done. Right. The thought was that, that temporary. Or that fix was actually a permanent fix. Or was it always intended as a temporary one? Yeah. And what we can tell it was only a temporary fix. It was meant that at some point, something had to be done with the wall. As we started looking at what we're doing to the building overall, it was quite evident that. There's a chance that without doing something to this wall, we would lose the front of the building. Specifically, we'd lose the entry way. That might be lost if we start making these changes and not. We're not going to be able to address the wall issue. Okay. I think that, I think that covers me. Thank you. Any more questions. All right. Then Guilford. Thank you very much for. Attending tonight. Guilford also has the mill river pool. Oh, is that follow a meeting? Okay. Then let's move on. To the mill river pool repair. And we did get some late video. And photographs, I think I don't know. Did anyone who, who was able to see who had time to look at those? I saw the photos. All right. I wonder Anthony or somebody could. If you want, I think it would be helpful to see the video. Yeah. At some point, but I'll let Guilford. Maybe narrate what's happening. I think it's working. Yeah, we see. Well, we don't. Yeah. I hope I have a. Yeah. So what you're, what you're seeing in the video is how the paint is. The paint sticks very well to the, the current concrete and the pool. But it pulls when it starts peeling and popping, it actually pulls the. The existing current concrete surface away from the rest of the concrete and that's what we're trying to, with this proposal, we're hoping to. Clean and treat the pool so that we, and we paint it and that the paint doesn't pull out sections of the concrete with it when it comes out. That's really what. That video is showing. And then the cracks or the cracks that we have that have to be in the treatment process. We want to steal those cracks up. We want to fill the pool with water. We want to fill the pool with water. He's not in the deep end, but the deep end is the worst part for cracks and because of the high groundwater, the cracks actually fill the pool over the winter with water in the deep end. But so Sam blasting and sealing those would alleviate that problem. So overall, it's just a general maintenance of the pool. The pool was installed in the seventies and there's not been anything done to the existing concrete structure. We keep, we're at the point now where every year we end up having to scrape and repaint the pool. We keep pulling off a layer of the concrete. So their goal here is to sandblast all the paint off to a professional job of resealing the concrete and repairing the concrete areas and then put a high quality paint on it that will at least last five years before we have to actually start doing touch ups on the paint. And hopefully that will extend the pool for another 40 or 50 years. The pump we got and we put, we put in the new pump that was from money from last year or the year before. And that pump is, you can actually go in the pump room and have a conversation with the pump running. It's such an efficient and much better pump than it was before. So we thank you for that. And then we did some upgrades inside the bathhouse in the bathrooms a few years before. And we're also doing, we actually, we're just kind of working through everything in this park. We have the basketball courts we'll start working on this year and the next year. And we've already done the tennis court. So to keep this as a viable, usable facility, we definitely want to just take the concrete pool, clean the concrete, repair the concrete areas that need to be repaired and then put a high quality of paint on it that will last for a few years before we have to start actually touching it up. And then hopefully you get a five years out of the paint and maybe five years out of touch up before we actually have to do this major, major paint jobs that we do right now on it every year. So that's the project as a whole. The numbers came from a quote from a vendor. We brought a vendor in who examined the pool. He went through some pretty detailed examinations. He actually had a device to actually measure some moisture in the, in the sides of the pool and do some other things with it. So we're pretty confident the estimates good. We're public works. We always have a contingency number in there. So there is a contingency number in there. So I think that answers that tells the project and answers those two questions as well. Is there any other questions? Andrew. Thank you. Andy. All right. Yeah. I was just curious. Yeah. The, the, I think in the, the quote, it was like $12,000 in material and 65. And then the other, you know, 40 or so. So I assume is that all labor or is that also like concrete materials? The $50,000 is, is the labor to do the sandblasting and to make the repairs. And then there's a fifth, 12 to $15,000 number we were given for the actual concrete material they would use. So the $50,000 covers labor mostly of chipping and, and doing all that. And then the final paint is in there too. But the concrete number, they thought was going to be between 12 and 15,000. So that's where the contingency is built in. Okay. And then do you have a sense of what it costs today? Annually all that work you're doing. You know, repairing the concrete painting regularly. Like what's, what's that cost about today? It's probably about $5,000 every season and labor and material. Okay. Great. That's, that was my questions. Thank you. Gilford. Sam. I just have a comment. I was a painting contractor for a number of years. And I also worked with a Sharon Williams company for a number of years. I don't envy the challenge of painting a pool. I get, you know, my opinion as the spectrum is, that's got to be one of the most challenging types of surfaces to deal with. And I'm pleased to see that you are. Including sandblasting in there because trying to adhere to the substrate would likely pull the pain out. So. The expense, I have no idea what the current estimate would be from people who are looking at it, but I do know that pools and this type of work is dramatically more involved. And so I think it's a great job. And I know that the high grade epoxies are also. Not like a tip of can they're very much a premium. So good luck with it. I hope it goes well. It's a challenge. She come out. She come out really well. We think. Great. Thank you. I've got a question. Oh, actually too. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't hear an explicit answer is if after sandblasting, you find more extensive damage. Will you need more funds? I can. I meant this. I hope I kind of, I guess I didn't. The person who did the analysis is pretty sure that the. The high end is $15,000 with the concrete work. He thinks it's more in the $12,000 range. So he's quite a good nurse. He's a really good nurse. He's really a good nurse. He's a good nurse. He's a really good nurse. He's a really good nurse. So I think I'll take off on him and he actually a misguessed. Right. Okay. Thanks. And then that crack that you said is, is taking in water. That means it's a full depth. Crack. Well, the crack you saw was higher up in the pool. The crack. You didn't show. There's two cracks down the. Deep end of the pool. They're the ones that are full depth. And they're the ones that are letting water in. Okay. Is that a challenging repair then? It's a bit of a challenging repair but it's doable in the scope of the work and he's comfortable with the numbers he gave us. Okay, I mean we're in a drought so I guess it'd be easy to do it now but the water table rises again then maybe. You want to live someplace with a high water table you should live around the river pool. It's high all the time. Oh, okay. All right, any further questions. Yeah, I just said one fall I think you know the answer but just since you are. Are there any, are there any safety concerns with the current technique of having to do this work. You know, every season pain flex that might get in the water that you know might be ingested or things like that. Well, we do have every once in a while we have someone who points out there's a lot there might be a pool of pain flight flex somewhere on the bottom of the pool and their kids are playing with it. That's more towards the end of the season with the pool most of the years. We've had had that comment made. There's not been a lot of it going on so it's not that much of a safety issue but it would be nice to kind of stop and make it look a little more like this is the pool for the next 20 30 years. Anyone else. All right, then I think that does it for the pool. Thank you, go for it. Thank you very much. If you have any more questions just let us know. All right, thanks. Bye. All right. Is anyone in the audience from the Goodwin church, Nancy or, or anyone else. There's a couple anonymous people in the attendees list. If anyone there's from Goodwin church, could you raise your hand. I had confirmation from Nancy that they'd be in the, oh, there we are. Okay. Galaxy tab. Is this Nancy. Whoever's using the galaxy tab needs to unmute, at least if it's Nancy. Got it now. Yep. Hey, I'm new to this. Okay. Well, thank you for joining us. Please do introduce yourself since we don't see a name. Sure. My name is Nancy Schroeder. And I'm a member of the Goodwin. Memorial African Methodist Episcopal Zion church in Amherst. And I'm on the board of trustees there. So Nancy, the way this normally goes is. If you want to spend a couple of minutes talking about your project expanding on any of the points you made. I know you got some of the questions a little late. If you were able to address them. And then after that, the committee will. Pepper you with any other questions I have. And if you need me to call up any documents for you. Let me know. Thank you. The church was built in 1910 by. Members of the congregation. And we share as members and friends, we share a strong spiritual fellowship at Goodwin and we have a great gospel choir and we have a beautiful sanctuary. The one thing that we lack is generational wealth. And the reasons for this lack of generational wealth are. Manifold and I guess built into the structure of our nation. And it boils down to the fact that. As a majority African American church. We don't have the quests and we don't get large gifts coming in and we don't have wealthy supporters. So we have members who tie and give more when needed. But we still operate on a shoestring budget and maintenance repairs have been deferred from years. In 2019, the church collaborated with the Amherst. Interfaith opportunity network and had a very successful community fundraiser to raise. To restore Goodwin church. And those funds. So far have been used to replace the furnace and oil tank repair windows, remove trees hanging over the church, remove mold, reply with walls and ceilings. And make other minor repairs. We currently have $22,000 in our restoration fund. We want to reshingle the roof and rebuild the chimney. And install insulation in the attic and the walls. And the estimate to do the work is about $24,000 based on estimates that I got from three contractors. We're asking for this work. We're asking for a grant of $12,000 from the CPA. And the church will match this amount from our restoration fund. But in addition, on the advice we received at the historic commission meeting, we're including a 25% contingency budget line. In case the work is more expensive next year. This amount would be an additional $6,000. So we're asking the CPA to fully fund the contingency line item and increase our original funding requests to 18,000, which you don't have in writing. And any funds that are not spent on these three repairs would be returned to the CPA. So with the CPA's funding, the church's roof will be replaced. The chimney rebuilt and the insulation installed. The church would still then have about $10,000 in its restoration fund to address other maintenance and repair issues in the future. The questions that were sent to me this afternoon was one of them was whether we've applied for other funding. We have not so far. We thought we would stay do this. Local first locally first. So we haven't gone to other funding organizations. And the other was. If there's rot in the sheathing. Would we have the money to replace that and the contractor did go up into the access panel and take a look around and he did not have the money to replace rot in the plywood sheathing. So, but the price would be or the cost would be in terms of what he gave us as an estimate would be. I think it's like $3 and 20 cents a square foot. So that's about $100 for a four by eight piece of plywood. And so that's about all I know. I think that's about it. I think that's about it. That's my presentation beyond what we have written. And I look forward to your other questions. Thank you, Nancy. Any other committee members have. Questions about this proposal. Yeah. Nancy, you referenced $12,000. I think we have a number of 24,000, 240 on something I printed out here that includes the chimney, attic wall and roof repair. Right. And that's 24. And what we're saying is. We will pay. Can we match it? Can you give us $12,000 and we will match. The $12,000. From our funds. And then at the historic commission, they said, well, I don't think we can match it. We probably should add a contingency. And so I'm asking the CPA. To front the contingency. So that would be 18,000. The other question. I did have one, but it's more of an internal matter. It's about whether insulation would qualify. Right. So I. My idea is that, that roof and chimney repairs. I think. I think that's straightforward. No promises. And any contingency associated with. Those two areas of work. Yep. Eligible, but I don't know about the rest. So. I just, I just, I just raised that. I heard that. At the historic commission too. I mean, and then the other good news. It might be good news. I mean, I think the, the, the, the, the center for ecological technology. Might subsidize the insulation. So it, it probably is something we could pick up. And. Yeah, I can just add that. We'll discuss it. We're meeting again, the historic commission again is meeting next week. And Jane Wald is the better expert on what's generally covered in terms of preservation and rehabilitation and what's not. I think that's a definitive idea from her. That's right. And I think she was the one who raised it. Yeah. She knows her stuff. It's certainly a church that is part of Amherst history. As a kid, I had the Woodside Avenue paper route. Looking back in that area. And I found it a really cool spot from my perspective at that time, and I was a little surprised. I was a little surprised when I got on Galeard. Along with other buildings. It's a long time Amherst resident. You know, this is a building that is part of the. History of Amherst for sure. That's right. Any other Diana. I have a question for Anthony. Is it okay to. I don't think there's any issue with changing the request amount in either direction at this stage. Okay. After we, after we recommend it, the town council cannot then increase it. But. I am not aware of any reason they can't make that request at this stage. Okay. And it could actually be that if the center for ecological technology or whatever the CDG stands for, that there'll be some reduction in that in the insulation costs. So. Right. After we recommend it, the town council cannot then increase it, but. I am not aware of any reason they can't make that request at this stage. Okay. And it could actually be that if the center for ecological. Technology or whatever the CDG stands for. So. Right. Well, it sounds like I should. Revise the budget and return it to you.  With the contingency. I just, we just haven't put it in writing. Yeah. Be good for the record. Yes. Good. And. Thanks, Sarah.  I would ask are just. Is the insulation that you're doing, is it spray foam? Is it rolled in like an apologies if I missed it in the proposal, but. Hang on. And the reason why, like, I just, when I saw the number two, I was thinking this is a comment, not a question. But. Yeah. I've had worked under my house and like. Those seem like pretty fair prices. Like I, I would be concerned given the age of the house. Obviously if you've got three quotes, that's great. But. The very good idea. Yeah. No, I just, I got through. I got one quote for each. Each item. I didn't. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. So you love open. Blow would be on the attic and then the walls would be so. You lost dense pack. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Yeah. Once you get into system stuff. Who knows what you're going to find, like pulling walls apart and so forth. So. Anyhow. Thank you for the time and making the presentation. Thank you for listening. Appreciate it. Any remaining questions. All right. Thank you, Nancy. All right. Thank you. Now we're looking at Anthony, you're muted. We're looking for way, Lee. Yes, wayling greeny. We should be coming in. You're muted. Hi, I am going to unmute myself. I think you can. You know how this works. I thank you. Yes, I do know I'm going to. Hi. Hi, everybody. Thank you so much for having me. I see. Cut a few familiar faces here. So it's a pleasure to being here today. And I apologize. I did not have the written response back to you. Since I didn't get the questions into about. So I'm happy to verbally explain to you. And if you'd like me to do the written response, I'm also happy to do it. So how should I do it? I can do the written. I can do the verbal response to your questions. Or I can do my presentation first. Do you have any preference? Presentation. Presentation first. Okay. Thank you. So my name is wayling greeny. And I am the founder and executive director of Amherst community connections. Thank you for having me here tonight to discuss the phase three supportive housing program. Thank you for believing for believing in ACC. When your committee funded first in 2016. The very first and only supportive housing project. For the chronically homeless in the state. Since then you have further provided funding to ACC for the phase two supportive housing program in 2018. So I'm here tonight to present our phase three supportive housing program to you. If you approve of the funding request, we'll start in 2021. So with two successful supportive housing programs behind us. I hope that you will consider our funding request. So I want to summarize for you for the successes and accomplishment we have done in the phase one and phase two. In the short four years that 23 people we have housed. In studio or one bedroom apartments through the funding that you provided to ACC for the housing purpose. And of those 17 have graduated. Or they are completing the program as we speak. And 14 have received permanent housing vouchers. They are currently in the housing that we provide. They are working diligently to achieve housing stability. And financial stability. And to be eligible for the program. They have to be people are disabled. So 100% of the people we admit into the program. They are disabled and combined. And they have to be homeless. So on average, they have been homeless for 10 years or more. And because we have to screen them in for those who are more disabled. We want them. So instead of rejecting them for their past. You know, rental history or substance abuse or criminal background. We want them to be in the program. Because we believe the barriers for their success in achieving housing stability has to do with the fact that they have been rejected. Dismissed by the mainstream housing programs. So about 4550% of them, they suffer. Try morbidity. Meaning that they have co occurring mental. Substance use and chronic medical conditions. And about 45% of them, when they first enter into the program, they have no income whatsoever. And about 50% of them, they have had criminal issues in the back. Larceny assault and battery. Substance use or substance selling. And, you know, that's what got them into the legal realm. And we look at the breakdown about 50% of the people that we housed in the program. So far in the past four years, they are people of color. Minority groups, Asians, some and by and large are African Americans or Hispanics. And about 65% of them, they are males. And the 35% are females.  And they are about 50 to 60, 55 to 60 years old. And it takes us between six to nine months. To get them to graduate. To receive their permanent housing voucher. And be on their own. So imagine that they have been homeless for years, years and decades and decades. And they have been homeless for years. And they have been giving us, giving us the funding to rent apartment for them. And we provide a support service. So your money goes a long way. So for a person, we graduate. It costs $7,000 from you. And we have to raise $5,000. To do the social service support. We have to do the social service. We have to do the social service. We have to do the social service. It's the social service component. So the overall cost between the housing and. The support service. It costs 12,000. And I want to give you a perspective. We have done the research in my two years ago. Application for the similar program phase three. But that was the research done. We found it costs about $35,000. It costs about $35,000. It costs about $35,000. It costs about $35,000. It's the social cost. The time is spent in jail. In detox. In crisis center. In emergency room. All these things. There's a social cost. And has been dissected. Estimated. It costs the society $35,000. So. If we can between your funding, we can pay $15,000. Together. Put $12,000 on the table that we can say the tax payers. Who would normally have to pay $35,000. So the saving is substantial. So. We are very pleased for the success. Of the participants who have been in the program. So you might ask me, so why phase three. Aren't you finished to your work? People who are currently homeless. Are you not done? No. Unfortunately. We still continue to see the presence of the people who experienced chronic homelessness. As you know, the housing in Amherst is so unaffordable. And they are competing with students. With others who have more money than they do. And yet many of them have deep roots in Amherst. I have some participants right now, for example. I'm calling aunt. They retire from our local elementary school. Well respected. Well respected teachers from full river. And yet. This person. Experience chronic homelessness. And I have another participant. Whose uncle is a famous UMass. Faculty member who has deceased in the music department. So they all have roots here in Amherst. So the continue unaffordable housing in Amherst. Has made it difficult. If not impossible for them. To rent a place. And as you might know, the worsening of the economics. Has contributed to some extent to the housing instability. Because a loss of income loss of job means that likely to become. Rent a weird and unable to pay the rent. So the likelihood of becoming homeless is so much greater. So. I want to tell you that the supportive housing program really works. This is a very effective way to address the systematic. Racism in our society. Given over 50% of the participants are people of color that we serve. And also by supporting this phase three. We have a supportive housing. You are helping preventing the spread of COVID-19. As you know, COVID-19.  They are out and about really making it hard for them to shelter in place. And for every chronic person that ACC is able to help. Through your generous support. We are able to support the taxpayers every year. $28,000 per person. So if you multiply that by the number of years, number of people that we are able to pull out of that, we cite this perpetual cycle of in and out of jail or in and out of mental institution. It's in the half a million dollars realm. So with that said, I would go. Finish my presentation. I got to answer the questions that you have. And then I'll be open for questions. Does that sound okay? All right. Good. So I received seven questions. So the first question was. Is this phase three we submitted the same as the last one we submitted two years ago. The answer is yes and no. The concept is the same. get the people who are currently homeless housing first. You provide support service as they are housed. That concept is simple. It's the same. However, what are the differences? Well, the difference is that we now have secured more service providers on site that they can come to see their doctor, Dr. Basi, from the homeless health care for the homeless. And we have a worker from Wayfinders, their own site, to help do the raft, which is housing's financial support, to meet your moving costs last month's security deposit. And we have another person from Bay State Hospital also under the health care for the homeless. She does mass health enrollment. So that's one in-house support service providers we have secured. And the second difference is that now because of COVID-19, we provide tele-support, meaning we don't have to have you on site to do case management with you. We use technology whether it's FaceTime, whether it's Zoom, whether it's just simply a phone conversation. We can do a lot of things that we can do face-to-face. Of course, everybody prefer face-to-face, but during COVID-19, we do not let COVID-19 stop us from providing support service. But we augment the face-to-face, which we still do, with tele-support. So that's the big difference compared to the one that we submitted two years ago. The second question is about the administration fee of $60 that we charge. So here is the explanation. In 2016, when we received funding from CPA, we were provided with $50 at the administrative fee for the housing program. And in 2018, two years later, we received $55 per unit from the CPA. So this program will start in 2021. So we asked to raise that by $5. So that's one answer from the $50 to $60 after five years. And what do we use the money for? Well, as you know, people they come to the program, if they have a little bit of income, they have to contribute 25% of their measly income, whether it's social security with disability income, or emergency income from the state, which is $300 a month compared to the social security disability income, which is $750. So we have to help them by paying for their fees to stay in the program, because if they have income, they need to contribute 25%. So we help them to secure a money order, because many of them are having challenges to do to negotiate with the banking institution or with the postal service. So that's one thing we do have to spend time to coach them every month. And sometimes they don't have the money to pay in the beginning of the month. So we have to give them $10 this time and $20 next week. Just the whole process itself, it's rather time consuming. But by doing this, we are able to get them to pay what they can afford, which is 25% of the income. So that's the money payment for being in the program. And the CP at the time, therefore, will not have to pay as much toward their housing because they are paying part of it. And the other part of it is to help them negotiate between the repairs that they need to do and the issues that they have with their neighbors, that we help manage that with their participation to work with the landlord to talk about the disposal is not working, the showerhead is broken. So all that housing part, they have nothing to do with the casework. So therefore, we do have to spend about an hour of 10 minutes in our 10, 15 minutes to do all these negotiation for them. So therefore, that's how we budgeted the $60 for this coming phase three. And the third question you ask is how much do they pay if they can afford to pay? Well, we do charge them 25% of their income. So for people who receive SSI, the average, they spend about $185 putting it into their housing. And therefore, CPA doesn't have to pay as much. However, I want you to know about 45% of them, when they first enter our program, they do not have any income at all. So the ability to contribute is zero. The fourth question asked was, do we help them with the mass health application? We do. We have a caseworker, as I mentioned, come from healthcare for the homeless in-house. She comes once a week and she helps people apply for mass health. And the fifth question, what is the representative payee that was referred to in the support service to C? And the representative payee is designed for people who are not able to manage their finances, such as pay for utility bills, pay for phone bills, pay for program fees that they have, such as the senior center. We will refer them to senior center to work it out with our probe with a state agency that can provide the representative payee. So that's what the representative payee is for, to help people manage their finances. And the last question is, whether any money from CPA is ever used for support service? And the answer is no. All the programs we provide, such as housing application, such as helping them to build their financial stability to get a job, to apply for security, disability, income, or to help them manage their wellness, do physician referral, do social mental health provider referral. Our last thing is about how to get rid of your credit issues that you are struggling with, get rid of your quarry issues. Those are things that we have to kind of help them manage in order to be attractive when they apply for public housing. So these are legal realms that we do what we can and we do have legal avenues that we can secure for them if the situation is a little bit more complicated. So there's no money ever used for the support service that we provide. So these are the six questions that I received this evening. So that concludes my representation and I'm so grateful for your attentiveness and I'm ready now to receive any questions that you might have for me. Any further questions? Andy, you're muted. Yep. Thanks Sarah. Thanks for the presentation. This is actually, this is wonderful to hear. I have a couple, they're probably short questions but I have a few and also just partially my curiosity too.  Right now we focus on individuals. So most the people who come in the program, they are singles, women, men, and families, we refer them out to other agencies because the state has a right to shelter law and so the state agency, they will take care of homeless families if they are eligible for. But the state of Massachusetts does not have something comparable as called right to shelter for homeless individual men and women. All right. And then another quick one is just do your graduates typically stay in Amherst? Graduate, do they stay in Amherst? Yeah. They have roots in Amherst. So most of the people, they secure housing, they stay in Amherst. But rarely they might end up going to, for example, I have a couple of them, they are over in Springfield because it's easier for them to find housing there compared to in Amherst.  This is their support system. And we provide post housing support so that make it easier for us when we do the post housing support to them as well. But everybody's a phone call away, a Zoom meeting away, a text message away. Good. Thanks. And thanks for all you do. Appreciate the answers to those. Thank you so much, Andrew. Ma'am. Yes. Thanks for the presentation, William. Question for you. I looked at the HUD requirements for definition of chronic homeless. How do you prioritize whom you choose to be chosen for to receive the benefits? And secondly, how do you define Amherst resident? It's a one-year time period to be minimum homeless repeatedly. But do you have a residency issue of six months as an example, or how do you do that to determine their Amherst residency as well? Thank you. Same for the question. To answer your question, there are three criteria they have to meet in order to be considered to be in the supportive housing program. The first one is that they have to be homeless for at least one year or four times in a span of three years that sum up to be one year. So that's homelessness. They have to be at least a whole year add up together.  As you know, people who are homeless, they are very fluid. They go where there is a bed, a shelter. They go with the social service for them. So we rely on the verification of our partner, Craigstores. When they have people stay at the shelter for the duration of the shelter that we oftentimes ask for the verification from them because Craigstores is located in Amherst. So once you stay in Amherst, stay at a shelter, you are considered to be an Amherst person. And the third criteria they have to have is that they have to be demonstrating that their needs are so high that they will benefit from intense case work. So we do have a screening device which is called a three county assessment. And we use that tool to score them on the areas whether it's the substance abuse, whether the mental health, whether they're anti-social behavior, just we add up all the score. The higher you are, the higher we're going to get you in. So in essence, there is a prioritizing depending on the more you need, the more deficient you are, the more likely you will get into the program. So we don't take the easy ones because this is not the purpose of a supportive housing program. So if I heard you correctly regarding the definition of Amherst resident, there's not a time element affiliated with that, but rather it's whether or not they've been determined to be so based on Craig's list if they have stayed there for any particular period of time. Is that correct? They have to, we also, you know, because we are a social service agency working with more than just Craig Store's shelter guests, they see about 160 people a year, unduplicated. And in our caseload, we work with about 700 plus unique individuals. Many of them they don't stay in the shelter, but because we work with them year in and year out. So we know they are a regular presence in the town of Amherst. So if they receive service from us or they go to the survival center, they go to the soup kitchen not really alone, then we know that they are in Amherst. So when you have a couple of individuals with high scores on your screening process, I'm curious it must be a dilemma for you to determine which to choose for a limited number of slots. Does that occur where there are close choices and you have to face that dilemma? I do this all the time and it's heartbreaking for me when I had to choose one over the other. So that's why I'm so glad, Sam, you asked this question. I'm here today to ask you to increase our three vouchers, which is what you have given us for funding for. Let us to do six vouchers instead, because there was one year overlap between the phase one and phase two. We were able to demonstrate to you there were six vouchers then that year 2018 when there's overlap. We were able to manage the six vouchers between those two phase one and phase two and we were able to meet the needs. So today, before you wanting to ask you, please let us have the vouchers that we know that we can definitely use to benefit all things considered besides the usual three vouchers. I'm expecting there will be more needs given the COVID-19 given the bad economy. All these confluences or factors is going to make it even harder. So I hope that you will consider really to provide the six vouchers that we could benefit that we could provide to the folks. So thank you for this question. Thank you for the answer. I just want to play timekeeper a little bit. Yeah, yeah. We've got another one on docket. Yeah. All right. I see no more hands. So we thank you very much, Waylene, for coming tonight telling us so much about this successful program. Thank you so much and wish you all a very good evening and I'm going to go have dinner now. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you everybody. Thank you so much. And bringing in Shannon Sherry. Hi, Shannon. Oh, here she is. Hey guys. Sharon, who else should I bring in? I see Austin raising his hand. Austin and Kent Ferber and Cindy Harvison. Am I good, everybody? Yes. And everybody, thank you so much for having us. Austin Sarant, the president of the Jones Library Trustees, he's going to start us off. Good evening. Thank you all for your consideration of our proposal. We've submitted in addition to the proposal a memo which kind of locates a little bit of the proposal in the context of what we've done in the past. Did you all receive that memo? We received it kind of late afternoon. So I have read it. I'm not sure everyone has read it, but we certainly will have read it. Well, it's a deal since we receive the questions later than you receive the memo. In any case, I won't go down that particular line of lateness. Just let me say that this proposal is in some ways substantially revised from the last one that you've seen and it's some ways similar. It's similar in the sense of it seeks CPA funding to do some work that is necessary to the preservation of special collections at the Jones Library. You know that special collections is a treasure in this town. Indeed, tonight we just had a library chat which we talked about special collections with Cindy Harbison, our special collections librarian, with Michael Kelly from the archives at Amherst College with Jane Wald and Robin was also gracious and Robin Fordham was gracious enough to join us. What came out of that conversation was yet again an affirmation that special collections at the Jones Library plays an indispensable role in the cultural and historical life of the town. What its special collections provides is not duplicated and cannot be really duplicated by anything that is done in the colleges at Amherst or Hampshire or the University of Massachusetts. The other thing I just want to call your attention to is that one of the issues that came up with the last proposal was the absence of a budget carefully laying out the cost of each of the items. We provided you that budget and we will in a minute answer the written questions that you've provided. So what I'd like to do now is to introduce Cindy Harbison who's going to say a little bit about special collections and then Kent Ferber who's the co-chair of the Friends Development Committee is going to answer a few of your questions and I'm going to come back to answer another one of your questions. Cindy. Thank you. So the history of Amherst is rich and it lives within the walls of the Jones Library. It's really the history of Amherst that we're collecting. Residents come here to use maps, account books, diaries, deeds, newspapers, family papers, organizational records and so much more. We're the repository for some of the town's official records. We have the Amherst tax records where you can find out everything from who in Amherst owned enslaved people in the 1700s to when houses were built to how many cows Emily Dickinson's father owned in 1863. He had two. We have the fire department's historical records and they tell you a lot about the oh so many fires that Amherst experienced and things like the diaries, letters and scrapbooks have helped first and second graders begin to understand what farming in Amherst was like 200 years ago. We also have a rich literary heritage in our collections. We're out of space so we can't collect the history of Amherst and into its greatest degree and really the records that reflect the diversity of the town and we also have risks of because of an outdated HVAC system which is the crux of our proposal. The HVAC system has failed multiple times in the last five years causing four leaks. The latest leak occurred this summer and we have 157 books that were water damaged and rare volumes by Noah Webster, Helen Hunt Jackson, Edward Hitchcock and Julius Lester among others as well as very rare imprints from the early 19th century were all damaged. Parts of the manuscript collections were damaged including some of the First National Bank of Amherst records and the Kinsey Garten scrapbooks. The Henry Jackson photograph albums which are one of the library's only collections documenting the black community of Amherst in the 19th century were also affected. The equipment that failed is at the end of its useful life and there is no way to reconfigure it to prevent a similar failure in the future. Moving the collections elsewhere is not a feasible option because there is no other climate controlled secure space in the building and storing the collections off site is far too expensive and makes them difficult to access. Currently the shelves are covered with tarps to prevent further protect them from further leaks. This seriously impedes access to them. They're blue and my favorite color used to be blue until I have these tarps because you have to go under them to get anything and it's like going into a cave it's just terrible.  Thank you. Thank you Cindy. Kent is going to answer I think the first few of your questions and then I'll speak to the to the last one. Kent. You. Okay great you can hear me thank you. I shouldn't clarify that I am both the co-chair of the Friends Development Committee but I also been a member of the Feasibility and Design Committee for this project since we started on it in 2014 and so I've been central to it from the beginning and in fact was closest to the preparation of this proposal as anyone so that's the reason I've been asked to respond to these questions. We can we'll be happy to provide something in writing but just to give you a quick oral answer so the first one was indicate the nor the direction of north and the center of the front door of the library on the plans and if you look at exhibit D and E I guess or C north the entrance of the library is to the left as you look at the the if you take the my little text box identifying the exhibit at the top of the page the entrance to the library is to the left so you come in from the left and the original 1928 building is the L shaped with a one leg of the L parallel to the street you enter into that and then another leg perpendicular to the street going back. The second question is I can't tell whether construction rehabilitation for the exhibit and reading room areas is included in this proposal as opposed to the larger Jones renovation effort. The estimate that you have includes all of the special collections area including the exhibit and reading rooms. It does mean that at least in this version part of the special collections facility is not in the 1928 bill it's a relatively smaller part but if and what the what the consequence of that difference is remains to be seen but part of the expense in the estimate is for the special collections and for the exhibit and reading room areas. The third question was that the budget for items two and three and page six including materials for use in the exhibit and our reading rooms spaces are only for storage and if you go to the very last exhibit which is the separate estimate for what's it called for the cases and movable shelving you'll see it's broken out so some is for the reading room some is for the special collections workroom and some is for storage area. The fourth question is the list of funding sources includes five hundred thousand dollars in CPA funds does this indicate a likely request to us next year likely is the operative work I can't say we are doing two major historic preservation we are reaching two major historic preservation objectives with this larger project one is to secure these special collections the artifacts the the papers the documents etc and the other however is also to restore a good part of that 1928 building that has nothing to do with special collections the exterior windows some there's a great number of rooms inside the historic building that are not available to the public we'd like to make them available to the public so that would be a separate project we probably will apply but that hasn't been determined yet primarily because we don't know exactly what we're going to do in the way of historic preservation of that original building we'd like to do as much as possible it's a major commitment of the trustees but we don't have enough detail yet to describe a proposal for you and so I can't say whether we would come back and then the last question are any of the items in special collections in danger of being transferred to another owner I think that's for me to answer Kent I'll defer to Austin for that so the answer that question is yes and you've already heard why so we're out of space in special collections that means Cindy as the person's responsible for special collections is already in triage mode and if we're not able to create more space in special collections hard choices are going to have to be made about what is taken in what is retained at the library chat today this question was asked would it serve the town of Amherst if its special collections were dispersed housed in the libraries at Amherst UMass or Hampshire or stored elsewhere and the answer that we got from Jane Wald and Mike Kelly was absolutely not the town is well served by a vibrant special collections and an integrated special collections so if we cannot do what we think we need to do with special collections which is to afford more space then yes some very difficult choices will have to be made about what it is that is kept and what it is that is what it is that is not kept I just also want to just remind us that we're talking about five items in this proposal we're talking about the HVA system the fire suppression system compact shelving display cases and the cost of creating space what we've asked for is less than the total of those those those items but those are the things that we are going to be doing if we are funded through a CPA so we're happy to entertain any other questions you have Sharon Cindy Kent on my myself and again thank you for your consideration do any committee members have questions Sam what's the exterior closure on the fantasy consulting services just trying to understand what that is I'm asking because it says exterior yeah Kent I'm on page number six of fantasy in the overall summary item number b 20 I you can always respond at another time but that's a question that I had I'd be happy to clarify that I assume that means that some work needs to be done on the exterior wall of the original building that would make it slightly different than the entrance way now I do not I can't answer that we'll get you the answer Sam okay anyone else Andy yeah I think I probably know the answer this but I'd love to hear just kind of hear you know I guess obviously out of space lots of issues with the space what what is like your realistic plan b if they didn't get this I mean like I know that we're facing obviously tough decisions in terms of what you've taken what you wouldn't take would you just stop taking things in would you actually look to maybe would you realistically have to look to offload some of those assets to other locations or you know so this is a policy this is a policy decision that the library director working with Cindy will have to make so I'm going to defer to Sharon and Cindy if you want to try to give a little more detail to the answer or so my thought process is kind of so it really has to do with so here's the here's this massive expansion or innovation project that we're proposing and if the town turns that piece down then I think what we would end up doing is is we need to go and repair the building so we would be applying for JCPC funds so it would still be the town doing the repair piece and then ultimately you know the amount of space that we have left over that's when Cindy would have to step up to the plate and decide you know take a look at so here's Amherst here's her collection development policy and and what fits and and and go from there Cindy you're up I think we would have to make hard choices about what is I mean we already have to turn down records that I would really like to have and really document the the town and I already don't do any of the outreach that I would love to do to people in organizations that I would love to just spread the word and you know establish those relationships so that we could you know hopefully one day have those records in terms of of the space I can't see the tarps working long terms so we would have to make some decisions about the only solution I've come up with thus far is to turn the exhibit room into the reading room and the reading room into a storage space and that would mean that we would lose a lot of space for you know we couldn't have the class visits that we had and it still wouldn't be a truly climate controlled space so it's there there is no good option B there is Andrew there is no good option B that's part of the problem the library was asked by the town council to do a repair estimate on the building and the estimate was between 14 and 16 million dollars to deal with maintenance of the building if we're going to maintain the building if we're going to make changes then we're going to have to make the building accessible and bring it up to code that's covered in that 14 to 16 million dollar figure that 14 to 16 million dollar figure does not include any money for rearranging of spaces in the in the in the library so if we were forced to sit stick within the existing footprint again we'd have to make hard choices do we take away space from kids or do we take away space from the reading room or do we take away space from the brunette gallery to accommodate special collections and you know again that's a that's a set of contingencies that we have not yet uh gamed out and hope we won't have to thank you that thanks for your presentation thanks for your answer any other questions i have one i really just to make very explicit explicit the hbac system the special hbac system the special fire suppression systems these serve only the special collections facilities is that correct yes thank you oh sam yeah a couple questions on page six of the jones presentation not the fantasy there's a caveat which obviously is necessary this must be emphasized however these are preliminary designs and not construction documents considerable adjustments and refinements may remain however there is no reason to believe the special collections archives facility will be located anywhere else i'm how confident are you that the design destination as indicated and i believe it's exhibit c is in fact that design i recall from the prior presentation there was uncertainty and i asked this because the presentation uh proposal references special collections but it's incorporated in a much larger project uh so that makes one wonder if there's a you know a greater likelihood of it moving or not and i think it's significant even if you don't cannot cannot guarantee so you know how confident or certain are you that that's where it's going to be do you is it minor adjustments at minor core or might you actually say no wait a minute we're going to this other location so i'm about as confident in the location of special collections as i am that joe biden is going to carry massachusetts okay that's pretty confident is there a possibility that joe biden would not carry massachusetts yes but is it a likelihood no we're through the schematic design phase a lot of work is going in to getting us through the schematic design phase so we're pretty sure that the location of the things that we have shown them is what it is going to be now there may be some adjustments as you know better than i as you go from schematic to design development there might be some adjustments here or there but it would really require that we almost go back to ground zero which we are not going back to to take special collections and put it and put it somewhere else so uh i think we're we're we're pretty sure or that this is where it's going to be and as a follow-up given the scope of the overall project particularly what the detail that was provided last spring um if for any reason something were not to a core with the needed funding for the overall project i realize this is a contingency request but would this be rendered null and void or would the library trustees envision using cpac money cpa money to enhance the special collections in the existing basement footprint or is that simply a later issue has that i think again sam i think it's it's a really hard a really good and really hard question and the answer is we are we're nowhere near thinking about what happens um if we don't get this we don't this doesn't work we know what will happen which is the town will face a 14 to 16 million dollar repair a bill but beyond that you know we've been working really hard to get through the schematic design phase on the renovation and expansion which uh i would characterize somewhat differently than the distinguished library director it's a modest expansion it is not a massive expansion of the building but it has taken us a really long time to do all that work so that's a long way of saying i just don't i just don't know we're obviously not going to just sit by whatever happens and watch special collections you know kind of deteriorate and disappear in the jones library but but we don't really have contingency plans beyond what we're asking you to think about with us i have one other um on page three of the cost estimate there's a reference to conditions of construction used for the estimate referencing a start date of march 22 march of 2022 yeah construction period of three months um is that a filler or is that actually a perceived time frame was that just what they used to create their their contribution to the estimate saying okay if we were to do this task in the month of march of 2022 this is what we envision it would take under ideal circumstances or is that it seems like it's hard to plan that far ahead given the scope and dynamics of the decision trees that you have yeah i think it's more the i think it's more of a kind of filler because i think you've just named it i mean we've asked the town council to um a vote to approve the project in april of 21 of course we just asked them to do that we don't know whether and they've got the six months beyond the time that we uh get the mblc grant which should be in july or maybe august of this upcoming summer so i i wouldn't i wouldn't want to put a lot of you know stock in it's going to be in march of 2022 as opposed to may of 2022 or whatever yeah that was my assumption any more questions i see none so i want to thank you all thank you all our visitors on behalf of the jones thank you so much and thank you very much for your proposal and your time tonight thank you okay thank you all right um so old business that could that concludes presentations for tonight uh old business uh just one quick thing one or two very quick things on signage and kind of marketing from sam anthony do you have the capacity to show a couple of images we've been in communication with dave zomac who and prior to that sanya and holly and others from the town and we've been fortunate that they've been able to generate examples of signage from our ongoing discussions that we can consider sarah and marshal and myself have looked at the examples that were generated with our input and by angela mills thank you to david and anti angela uh and we just wanted to show a couple that sarah and i thought were the better ones are more appropriate one of which is we envisioned down the road of the committee having administrative fees so that we can have signage wherever it might be this this project was funded in support of the cpac we need to get the word out and so one of them which has green is for general permanent signage and the other is for plaques that may or may not exist inside of buildings uh there's one typo on it which is the letter f should be smaller case not larger space but this is the summary of the phraseology we agreed with and the general mock-ups that the town staff has come up with that we just wanted to show to you if you're able to if and then you can find them i'm sorry i have your email saying i will have the signs but i don't see an email that actually has well i like this afternoon and i'll read it to you then nonetheless it's not a significant issue given everything that we're talking about but let me open one up on my end so that i can read and we can send this another time there's no urgency here you can share your sam you can share your screen if you want how would i do that let's say bottom middle green button share screen here screen okay what's that eddie arnold song welcome to my world welcome to my world look at my desktop and this is it's all actually buried in another folder this is my workplace but let me scroll to the top if i'm able it's open so here are two signs um these were generated by angela option one this is what we're envisioning something along those lines for project signage uh simple this project was supported by community preservation act funds and if possible if it's not problematic from a production standpoint with all the varying years we put the year in it's got the armors logo you know the colors may change but this is the general concept of what we're considering for signage separate from this is this we envision plaques at some point we've seen metal plaques that exists elsewhere that are smaller just a nice one inside that would be non-intrusive uh we didn't reference metal but angela and dav came up with the idea so this is kind of what we're thinking of something along this lines that would go inside buildings if there were um you know a church a private facility that we wanted to reference that some of our funds had been utilized this would be something that could hang but thought is that uh dav and the town staff would determine all the logistics of how things go from point A to point B and the committee is just coming up with a phraseology and the recognition that it's something we wanted to go forward this is what sarah and i these two came up with after the input from various individuals i just wanted to show it to you so those that's the current status of uh signage i don't know if you have additional comments dav i see that you're here if you do uh or even if you don't feel free to come in i would add that i could imagine having to replace the words this project with something a little more specific like renovations were supported by you know so because if it's in a building what exactly is this project but anyway we're just showing you the the direction which we're moving not asking for any decisions at this point but if you have any comments certainly another point is there may be the thought of having a banner for you know if there were a large project such as the uh north hampton road project or even future developments uh you know such as the work that was on proud park there could be a banner display that's roll up roll out that we can put up that says your funds being utilized your cpa does it work down the road that would be in a determination with the town staff in terms of how it would look but that's where we're uh that's the direction we're headed in and one other uh thought is we did i was able to acquire the prior facebook page and credentials from a former administrator of the committee and uh it is currently listed on the town site let me see if i can find it and what i want to do is invite everyone present to follow the page and like it the motivation is just the more people who look at the websites that we have in the town that reference the cpa committee and the see what the cpa does the more interest there may be in the future for town project submittals and being a community committee in an organization that's within our objective so this is what the page looks like i'll ask sarah marshal probably or someone or anthony to send you the link so you can click on it well we don't we don't know who's on facebook if you're on facebook you're on it just you know look for the link is actually on the cpa page it is exactly and that's where i'm looking to migrate to but i have too many pages yeah it's fine it's it's fine if people are on facebook they'll they'll figure it out and you can find it on the page but you know that's small steps and you know part of the objective of getting the word out regarding some of the great things and great projects that come our way and maybe they'll as we go forward be some other ideas coming from the community as we reach out at various you know covid doesn't help but this is where we're at for now so that's what i have to say so just i guess quick clarification um so this is something you said you're not looking for input or or like i said no we're not looking asking for a decision but if you certainly have comments on what you've seen go ahead i mean i i just first time i'm seeing it so no i just i wasn't it wasn't clear to me whether this is like you're seeking all of our input or this is like this is where we are and you're just providing it's an update we've we've had this issue has come up at several meetings in the past so we just thought we'd take it to a little subcommittee so here's where we're at it's an update all right very good thanks sure okay well if on further reflection you want to send me any comments on that or to sam please do um um topics the chair i don't have any topics i didn't anticipate anthony do we know the lineup for the next meet shawna's waving his hand so i think was a lot to chair on this we're going to do that yeah yeah okay so um yeah we'll be meeting weekly at least for the next few weeks get through these um the rest of the presentations all right so uh yes a lack to chair and vice chair um we could do that now uh but we still don't have every everybody here i don't know if our two new members would feel ready to have an opinion about uh voting on anybody or we can just again kick it kick it to your meeting here i think we need to move forward and i would like if the floor is open for a nomination i would like to nominate you as i would say sarah marshal as a chair of our committee i'll second the nomination okay i do not refuse um all right so let's all in favor of my being the chair i think for this this cycle this season or you know until next fall raise your hand do we need a roll call vote well um sure all right sarah marshal votes i david williams david williams votes david i thank you sorry sam hi andy yeah i guess normally like some discussion i it's it's almost like picking out the hat for me since i just met all of you but um you know you you clearly already seem to be um well in control of this this uh committee so like i've got no good reason to say no but i've been inclined to abstain since i yeah that's fine abstain okay diana i vote i robin i honor i have similar thoughts to andy um but i also don't want to hold the vote up if i if losing my vote would hurt that so i would like well i think we have five votes in favor so right all right i'm gonna yeah i'll abstain as well thank you okay so five in favor two extensions all right diana i would like to nominate sam for vice chair a second what do you say sam uh i accept the nomination all right we'll do that any discussion anybody want to contest it no okay all right we'll do it again sarah marshal's in favor david williams all right oh it's i sam i andy abstain diana i robin i honor abstain thank you five to two okay that's great um then i think we are done unless i have forgotten anything no i believe believe that's all that's before us all right well um to circle back to the to the um the questions that we some of us prepared um it's not too late to submit questions to anthony for the remaining proposals yes so yeah if i i would say if i could get them monday morning so i can give the proposals a little more time to answer them than half a day yeah thank you okay and was i mean is anybody unclear about i mean you've you've seen it's it's what we did tonight but it gives the applicants a chance to put it in writing yeah this a little time maybe so yeah sarah i was just going to say that i think my questions and i'll i'll connect anthony with you offline so if if you're still good with that but yeah i think just the only questions i had coming out of today in the process is just what is flexible right like it sounds like people almost amending their proposals as they were presenting them in some cases uh and if that's within the bounds of this that's totally fine um but the the submission process has been locked is completed right no new applicants so um again if that's precedent or there's no issue with it i don't have an issue with it but um uh yeah i'll just make that as a comment so um so i have taken down the submission form uh that said there is no statute that governs when proposals have to come in and in fact last year we did entertain a proposal that came in in the middle of the year um it would be up to this committee whether to entertain a new proposal if it i i bring that to you and say are you interested in considering this at this time it would depend if we had any money either yes so yeah well otherwise it was very nice to to eat meat all of you all right and i guess we're just going to be doing this for receivable future all right in that case would anyone like to move to adjourn i so move is there a second second and diana moved in sam seconded i think we don't need a roll call just raise your hand if you would like to adjourn now all right that's uh so two seven seven eyes all right that this concludes the meeting then at 815 thank you all thank you nice to meet everyone i thank you bye so sarah you and i can follow up with dave so that uh they can start making plans sure sure okay thanks anthony thank you thank you anthony yeah