I just started recording. Okay, so I would. Now that we're recording, I would like to call. The finance committee meeting. For the town finance committee. September 8, 2023 to order at one. Three minutes after one. It was posted as a one o'clock meeting. And. So I want to note that this meeting is being held. As permitted by. The open meeting law. Notifications. As an electronic meeting. But I want to also remind anyone who is participating in the meeting. This is being recorded. And this being recorded both for audio and visual. For audio purposes. So just please be aware of that. Let's go through the. List of committee members and make sure that everybody can hear and. He heard. And. So Anna. Lynn. Present. Please note that Bob Hegner had notified me in advance that he's available for this meeting. Bob. Matt. See. You're here and Bernie. I'm here. Kathy. Here. And we will note that. Alicia is not present for the moment. And if she comes. We will. We will note that for the minutes. When she, when she arrives. We'll keep an eye in the attendee list also. Make sure that she doesn't come into the attendee list gets brought into the room. So with that said. I think that. Ready to proceed with the agenda. And I'm going to proceed in the order that the agenda. Was published. So. The first matter is to. We have public comment. And. Like to find anybody who's in the audience. Andy Lynn has her hand up also. Did you have something. Alicia has confirmed that she'll be joining us soon. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. So. Back to public comment. Anybody who's interested in public comment, please raise your hand. I have one person who has, and that's for not a shepherd. So we should bring her in and. We always welcome. Public comment on matters that are relevant to finance committee. And. We're not a welcome and. Please. Identify yourself and. It's a strict you live in and then. I'll be a comment to the committee. Hi. I'm. I'm not a staff member. I've been following the strength of registration process. From your pages and would actually, hopefully you were finally made fair. Well, you're not. I was shocked by the numbers provided. He was really expecting the hundred and fifty dollar fee with your review. To reflect more fairness in this kind of registration process. You know, the not. This is all for being vocal. After add inspection, please. Not to mention that wasn't quoted in the bullet saying a higher fee. My father and the other. Really. Let me stop you for just a moment. Do you know why there's such an echo Athena, because. It sounds like there's some background noise. And. Coming from Renata's microphone. Yes, we can hear you. There's just some background noise coming through your microphone. I'm in. I'm not at home. I'm sorry. So were you able to hear me so far? I'm. Here you better now. Should I start over? Yeah, go ahead. Start over. So I said, I've been following this rental registration process from the early stages and was actually hopeful. That you were going to finally make it fair. And well, I was shocked by the numbers provided. I was seriously expecting the hundred and fifty dollar fee with your review. To reflect more fairness in the process. I'm not. A fifty dollar discount. For the local there's nothing after add inspection fees. Not to mention, I was misquoted in the bulletin saying the higher fees will not bother me and no one's expressed that it really bothered me. And my profit margin is not justified. Besides. That. Some sections are different in condo, which have common areas governed by association rules and small units rather than large homes with several bedrooms and other. Different. This is something to reduce the cost and have it share more fairly. Colleges could also provide assistance. Most complaints come from. Parts. And I. Do not pay for. The. Finally. Captain large of large properties. More burden on small landlords and you'll drive them out of business. Not only that. But the state of Massachusetts is very effective of tenant. There's a new law that requires landlords to provide information sheets dependent on how to find resource, including access to board of health. Pre-inspection. If they complain that their landlord's not addressing. Issue for the problem. And the key word is free. By all taxpayers. Anyone creating or changing rental rules must have. Must be very well versed. In state. Rental loss for creating more hurdle. Maybe trying to rewrite state law. In lane and turn. To be helpful so everyone can understand them. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. We are not. Likely to be making a. Final decision today on a recommendation of the council is possible. But I'm not anticipating it. And so if you. I would encourage you. If you have your comments in writing. I would encourage you to. To also consider sending them. To me and I. Is it. My, my address. Which is Steinberg. A. And I will make sure that they then a conveyed on. Through the entire committee, including our resident members. So thank you very much. And I appreciate your comments. Thank you. Thank you. Alicia has joined us. Alicia, can you hear us? Need to confirm your. Yes, thank you, Andy. Okay. So. And I'm just noting it's one 12. Thanks. In the minutes will know. Your. That you joined us. So thank you. We just started with public comment as the first item. And it's been a little bit of time now on. Counselor compensation discussion. As of. First, and of course. As a reminder to what. The sequence of events were as that. Committee had recommended. An increase to 7,500. But the council. Adopted. An amount of 10,000. And it's been a significant adjustment to the president's. Additional increment as and. The matter that's been referred back to us is. About. Funding the increase and. There was a memorandum. That's been referred to. As part of what was referred on to the committee. And. The other thing that. Two other things that I will notice is that. Amount. Then the discussion of the council. Let me start there. In the discussion of the council. There was a question of a third option. Because. The memo I'm referring to, which is in the packet for this meeting. Refers to two options. What is. A transfer from. Free cash when free cash transfers are made available. That would fund the. First. Part of the year and then until the budget. Takes over for the second half of the year. And the second option was to delay. The implementation of the increase until. July 1st. During the council discussion. There was a third question. Third option that was discussed. And that was to. Fund the amount out of the. Budget so that. The entire. Compensation for the year. Would be paid at the new amount, but that the additional. Amount above the current. Council compensation would not take effect until. Would not be available until July 1st. So that. In essence. The entire additional amount would be. Conveyed during the second half of the year. So those were the three options. The other thing that I wanted to note is. There was an email that I sent to the committee, which I. Assume will be made a part of the packet for this meeting. It may be shown on the screen at some point by me or somebody else. But I raised certain questions. With Sean. About the first option. Which has to do with the. Free cash. Transfer. Anticipation and. So those that might. Questions to him and his answers to me. I shared with the entire committee. So with that, I want to open it up to the committee to see if the committee has any questions. About where we are with this process. Lynn. Thank you, Andy. Maybe I'm not. Hearing things correctly, but there, I thought there was also. Another option that we discussed. And that was. That. In FY. 24. We. Would. So with that, I want to open it up to the committee to see if the committee has any. Questions about where we are with this process. Lynn. We would. Only we would receive. Pro-rated the same amount. Counselors would receive pro rated. The same amount as they presently receive. That would take us up to the beginning of July one. And then on July one. We would. Not go for the full compensation. But do some additional pro rating for FY. 25. By remembering that correctly. So we don't have Sean present. My understanding is that the. In essence, there were three options. In FY. 25 didn't matter because that would come out of the FY. 25 budget when. There is such a. Such a budget. But the question is. What is the. The. Calendar year since the. Thought of the council was is that the. When they, when they first passed the motion, the. Increases would be effective on January 1st. And so the. The questions were what to include in the. What to recommend to be included in the FY. 24. Budget. I think that's. I'm getting them here. So I know. It would be the FY 25 budget, but there were two versions of it. One was to put. Did not have the increase take effect until. That budget goes in effect, which would be July 1st. And that was, I think, what was an option. In the memo that was from Sean and Paul. In the second, which was discussed at the meeting, but was not an option in that memo. Was to. Have the entire amount. The calendar year. Included in the budget. But to be. But then it couldn't be paid. The increase couldn't be paid until July 1st. So. So. So. I was going to try to paraphrase what Lynn said, but I'm not sure it makes sense. It's, you know, if. Let me just, so let me just say something a little bit different. The, if the full amount doesn't. Start till. July. When it's been budgeted for. In the calendar year. That's what I was looking for. I was looking for. That we're looking at people would get 7,500. As I roughly compute it, the first part of the year would be at the lower level and the second part of the year would be at the higher level. And I may not be quite right in the terms of months, but if they're exactly six months, that would be. Right. So. It's, it's. It's a delay to go up to the full 10. So I just wanted to say it a little bit differently on the one that. Doesn't do. The increase until we put money in the budget. So it would, for the calendar year of 2024. People would be getting 7,500. And then for the calendar year of 2025, which is out in our future zone. They would get it beginning the full 10. Because we would have built it into the budgets. Is the option of the delay. So I just want to phrase it a little bit differently because it's not that there's no increase in calendar year 2024, but it's the proposal is not to go all the way up. So then I think that was where we're, you know, the pro rating is, you know, it kind of happens in a mush, but it's not that we've said we've pro rated starting in July. It's just if you think of what you're going to see in your bank that's the way the flow of funds will look at. And if you have to file income taxes on it, that's what you're going to be filing income taxes on. So I'll just, that was just me trying to rethink what. Not doing it till July is. Thanks, Kathy. That's exactly capturing what I meant. Man. Thanks, Andy. Yeah. And maybe. I can help us with this. I, or, or somebody on the council, on the committee. So I was just confused by Sean and Paul's memo. They talk about a 64,500. I'm out. Right. That's, and then, and then I'm looking at option two, which is like, seems to be clearly their, their preference. And, you know, I certainly understand that. And they talked about delay submitting an appropriation request for this added cost. And so my question kind of piggybacks on Kathy's, are we talking about a prorated added cost. To up the compensation starting in July one, or are we talking about prorating the full amount. That the council is authorizing. By its recommendation. So in other words, is it the 25 or is it the five that I don't, I think that's ambiguous in this, in this memo. Well, if my explanation was clear, Matt, I think that's what their option of the delay is. That that, you know, we would, this fall, put it in the budget. And so there would be no doubt about that on July. 2024, you're getting $10,000 stipend a year, divided by the number of months, you know, and that for the first six months, you would be continuing to get what we now get. We get paid bi-weekly. I think that's what they meant by it. So it's not trying to take on any of the added expense in the fiscal year we're living in right now, because we would have to figure out where that money comes from. There isn't, there isn't an existing pot called discretionary money for increases in stipends. Right. And if I can just respond, because I know that's definitely the intent is to not take any of the burden on this fiscal year. And I think it's not clear to me whether the intent is to push, you know, if the council takes this action of increasing this type of now, does that then create the obligation, you know, next year and pushing the obligation? I think you understand what I'm asking. Bernie. Yeah, Andy. I'm looking, looking at the memo. It just seems to me that option two is the, it's the cleanest and most straightforward way to do this. You know, you build it into the FY 25 budget. The budget passes July one, the new increased compensation goes into effect. There's no fiddling. If you will with this year's budget, there's no taking money out of free cash. I'm sure we'll have free cash and a free cash to do that. But using money out of free cash for anything, vaguely resembling an operating expense usually causes some, some tumult. And it just seems to me that the easiest way to do this is more straightforward way to do this is build the increase in the FY 25 budget and go forward with that. Thanks. Yeah, I think that what we're dealing with is sort of a problem that I don't think that the charter commission may have thought it through in exactly the way that we're dealing with this because the, since the requirement is sort of built around creating compensation decisions for the next council term during the first 18 months of the prior council term, council terms begin on January one, but the appropriation is done on a state fiscal year. So I think that we're trying to deal with that reality now. And that's what I don't think that it was really anticipated because I didn't think through the mechanics of it. The way that we're forced to think through it from the budget perspective. The other option that was discussed in the memo was the option of looking at the possibility of transferring a half a year's worth of 32,500 at the time that free cash transfers are met. And that was the subject of my email to Sean and during his last week and his responses. It looks like there's going to be sufficient funds and just everybody remembers that transfers occur either because there was additional revenue or there was money that was appropriated or not spent. And as the year progresses and Holly can talk about this too. She will event she will come to a conclusion of the as to what that amount is as the budget for the prior fiscal year gets closed out the one that is not that ended on June 30. Once free cash is certified by the department of revenue. Then there's the opportunity for the council to take actions with it and the normal actions that we take are to transfer to make sure that free cash remains at the amount that policy is approved. And the recommendations 5% that the general stabilization fund be funded at 10% and the other money that the rest be allocated as determined by the council. But normally it's to try and get it into other stabilization funds. And to do as much as we can for the capital stabilization fund knowing that that's what we can do for road repairs and sidewalks which is the hole that never gets filled in multiple ways. So in but to take to make it make a termination at that point to the portion be transferred to some fund to be used for the purpose of compensation. So I think those were the points that Sean was essentially making in that in his response to me. Ali, do you have anything else to add on that or I mean, yes and no, I mean just to sort of reiterate it there's you really have the two options of number one and number two and number three. And number one is not necessarily appropriating it from free cash or waiting until next budget cycle FY 25. And I think that Kathy explained it well. The first six months would be at the lower rate. The second six months would be at the higher rate. It's not necessarily being prorated, but it would just, you know, as the calendar year versus fiscal year worked out. That's how it would work out. The first year would be the 7500. You know, the only other option, which is, is really sort of not an option is to take it from your existing budget, but then you would have no money to spend on things like training and conferences and, you know, anything else from office supplies, et cetera. So right now you're, you're really looking at just either making that decision to delay it till FY 25. Or I do think that free cash. You know, again, it's, it's too early to say, but I think it will more than, than be sufficient to keep our stabilization funds at the general stabilization fund that where we want and then put the additional money into the capital stabilization. Kathy. Yeah, I just want to speak to option. That Bernie just said it was his preferred option. This, the, the two half years, because I think, I think it's a unfortunate term, this notion of free cash, which makes you think like we have no good use for it. It's like discretionary spending on some way. But I think we have such a high need for delayed road, sidewalk and other repairs. And last time those of us who were on finance, I think all of us in this group, the, the extra, we put in a million dollars for roads. We, we pledged up to a million for the athletic field and that's sitting out there. If they never do the field, we should take it back. This one thing I would like to do shouldn't just be sitting out there. And then we set up the capital stabilization fund. And we, we have an obligation and we were talking about this a lot with the school to taxpayers to as much as possible lower future costs of the delayed infrastructure that we've got and be able to find a way in our budget. And I think that's what we've been budgeting for to build this up. So I just want to speak strongly for the, the option that keeps it until we put it in a budget. And I also want to just say that we, we've been very tight on the budgets. And I was uncomfortable with, as people know, going all the way up to 10, but we're getting there here. And it's, you could think of it as a slight phase and it's, it's pretty impressive if we're going to be able to build up the stabilization fund to be able to go. But for those of you who didn't take a tour, a recent tour of DPW where it's raining in on their heads. And, and it's literally raining in on their heads. And so we saw that when we went earlier and Lynn, I know you went more recently, but we've been sent pictures of, we've got a building that's in a state of collapse rather than just need some prettying up. So I think we've got a real need that serves the entire town. So that's why I want to speak to this, this second way of, of funding the increase in a stipend for those of us in the legislature. So I guess at this point we could either delay it for one more meeting or if somebody makes a motion, then the motion is on the floor. But. If you certainly think that. We can entertain motion Matt. Well, I just want to come back around and, and make sure my question was understood because I feel like it, we kind of. Maybe didn't quite get addressed. You know, I do think that if the council took a vote to increase compensation up to 10,000. That that can be done without leaning on this current fiscal year's budget. But instead by, and it's not a monthly, I mean, I understand that it gets paid out monthly or biweekly or whatever, but that's not, that's not actually what the council set wasn't a monthly rate. It was an annual rate. And so I just want to make sure that folks understand it. My question was, you know, could the. 64 five. Be pushed into the FY 25 budget. And then that monthly or biweekly rate be proportionately compensated to hit that 10 K next year and to kind of recognize that the council has made the decision to not turn to the council on or the council motion that happened or the motion. So I, cause I feel like we didn't quite address that. And I'm not actually advocating for that or against it. I just, I don't hear that actual idea of being discussed. When you say that, do you mean. In next year, the next fiscal year. Or the next calendar year. Count. Implementation would start July one. council set compensation for? Can I attempt to say what I think you're trying to say, Matt, in dollar terms, if the cost for a year is an additional $64,000, I think you're suggesting we budget not just $64,000 in the next year, but $64,000 plus $32,000 just for this one-time catch-up. And then in the following fiscal year, the cost would be $64,000. Is that what you're suggesting so that you get a weird way of getting paid, but you get a big increase? And then everyone would experience that as a decrease in January 2025. I guess, yeah, we're right. I mean, that's what you were trying to say, right? As another way of keeping the expense up in the $96,000 range rather than the $64,000. That's what I thought I heard. Yeah. Okay, so that, which is just more artfully stated, but what I was trying to say is the third option that I thought came out of the council discussion. Alicia, you're here. Yes, thank you, Andy. I was also going to just try to clarify what I thought Matt was saying, but the same thing in that we would then overall still have the $10,000 for the year. It would just be sort of rationed differently so that it can align with the budget when we are allocating the new budget, which I don't think is a terrible idea, but I'm still advocating and hoping that we can start the increase starting on January 1st, because while I do agree that we didn't talk about specifically monthly installments and what that number is, but essentially that is the number that families are going to need to be taking into consideration when they're making plans for childcare, for food, for all of the things that we said the increase would be four. And so like, again, if I needed to have childcare for the two meetings upfront, because we do have the reimbursement, but we don't have upfront costs for those things, or if I needed to make sure my family had food for those two meetings, essentially we would have the same amount of money that we had now that we already said was not enough on a monthly basis. And so I think that starting that monthly increase in January is extremely important for incoming counselors who will be counting and assuming that that will be the case, especially for families or non-traditional families who may need the extra support in order to effectively serve on the council. So I would still be advocating and hoping that there would be a way that we could have the increase effective as of January 1st or whenever the new council is inaugurated. But I do see in terms of trying to balance budget demands, the value in what Matt is saying in terms of considering that as opposed to just dropping it down to 75 and having a slow increase, because one that is not what the council decided, and there are very specific reasons why we determined that we think 10k while it still wouldn't be enough would be a more significant increase. So I would be hoping that we would consider still trying to find a way to increase for January 1st, but I do think what Matt was saying would be a better idea than having it only be the 75k for the first year and increasing to 10k for the second year. And of course, thank you. And then we have to get into the question of we're going to do that, how we get that additional money made available for the second half of the current fiscal year. Bernie? I don't think that the Department of Revenue would appreciate the town appropriating funds in FY25 to compensate for labor in FY24. If you want to be paid in January when the new council is seated, then you need to appropriate the money now. That means taking it out of free cash, rearranging budgets, maybe holding off on the payment until near the end of the fiscal year when we can move some money around. We've got some spare change here and there, but it is not a smooth move. Let me put it that way. To try to pay FY24 labor costs in your FY25 budget, I wouldn't want to do that. I think I put her hand up and I'd like her to go ahead. I was just going to ask Holly if she can check on that. Our charter doesn't it doesn't call the councilor compensation pay for work done. We could pay councilors in a lump sum at the beginning of the year. I'm wondering, Holly, if we can check to see if that's accurate, if the DOR would have a problem with paying councilors the way that Bernie suggested. Again, it becomes an old bill. Yeah, I understand what you're saying and that is typically the issue with paying people from the last fiscal year, but I'm not sure if that same thing applies because... You know, the fact of the matter is that the councilors get a 1099. They're employed. They're considered employees. People have to jump through hoops with teachers contracts to make sure the teachers can get their quote summer money in quote. There's no such contractual obligation here with the councilors. At any point it's unfortunate that we have councilors seated on an annual basis while we run a fiscal year that's basically six months out of sync. So let's be simple about this and let's be straightforward. If folks want to be compensated starting in January at the new rates then appropriate the money. Take it from free cash and put the money in the budget. If you want to be more conservative about it and what I think is a little bit more straightforward, I understand the free cash and I understand the whole thing. So I've been through this stuff. If you want to give the appearance of being a little more straightforward, a little more fiscally conservative, then put in the new rates in the FY25 budget, appropriate the money there and go forward. So you got one of two choices. You want to spend that? We'll have enough free cash to cover this. We're very good. If you look at the record, we're very good at predicting how much free cash we have because we're pretty tight. We're pretty conservative. We form our budgets. We've lucked out in terms of some expenses. So there will be money. It's up to the council. If you want to pay in January, appropriate the extra money now. If you want to wait and make it look a little different, then put it in the FY25 budget. Thank you, Andy. I personally support the idea that we keep the present budget the same, that in FY25 we budget so that councillors during that fiscal year would receive 10,000. Therefore, in the first year of a new council's term, they would only receive 7,500. I understand the cash flow issue with childcare. I have gone through the issue of childcare myself back in the earlier days. But we also did put in this budget, the FY24 budget, if you will, a pilot of childcare and family care funds of another 5,000, thank you. I knew it wasn't that high. The other reason is there are so many demands on free cash. Everybody's lining up and they think of it as free cash and it's not. All it is is what's left over from last year's budget and we have guidelines on how we have to spend that. In addition to that, I think us rushing to give this to ourselves, to give to future councillors, to give to the next council, leaves a political taste in our community that I personally do not like. I'm hearing about other compensation issues about teachers and others where people are not happy about it. And I'd like to see us as a finance committee say here's what is a sound decision going forward for finance and do it as we've talked about and not try to rush in and take some of the precious leftover FY23 budget money. Thank you. Well, I will say that at our last meeting I supported those points and I did feel like 7500 was an appropriate point to get to. But then the Mctown council took its action. And my understanding is we are trying to figure out how to do what the council said. So I mean, I think if we were going back to that debate, I would be in the same boat. But I think right now our task is a slightly different one. So I just want to make that point. I'm prepared to make a motion if we think that we're ready to take a vote, Andy. My motion would be to have the finance committee recommend option two and that we write a report that captures what Lynn just talked about and talked about limiting earmarking the use of free cash on a huge queue of needs and that we will be then building it into this coming budget and future budget. So we're honoring what we voted on. So I'm prepared to make a motion that we recommend option two. I don't want to have to read the whole option out unless you don't want to move forward with the motion at this point. I think we've all spoken, actually. Yeah. Are you making that motion? Yeah, I'm willing to make the motion. I make a motion that the finance committee recommend option two to the council, which is to fund the full amount for the next fiscal year. But I just want to say option two that and then have the memo accompany it because I don't want to have to read the long explanation of what option two is. I got it. Thank you, Kathy. And of course, that would mean that in effect, counselors would be receiving $7500 for the next calendar year. Correct. And that it would be moving to, in essence, in two steps to get to the full amount, the full amount. Can we have the second calendar year? Can we hear if there's a second before we start debate? Second. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So there's been an emotion that's made in seconded Luna's seconder and mover was happy. So that's the discussion is now on the motion. Alicia. Thank you, Andy. So I respectfully disagree with a few things that have been mentioned, one specifically in terms of the child care compensation. I mean reimbursement just because again, it's reimbursement, not compensation. And so in order to be able to access those funds, you need to have the money upfront at first anyhow to be able to pay for those child care services. And then you would get the money back and it would turn into a cycle where people who need to access these funds are then not being compensated for any work. And I know that like Athena said, this is not pay, but essentially it just puts people with children or families or other things like that on a different plane. And usually those people may need the funds more than people who do not have to be in that situation. So I don't think that that's fair. And going off of the council vote itself, we voted to increase it to 10 starting next year, not in the following year, which would be the last year of that council. And so again, I don't think that aligns with the vote that was made by the council. I don't think that's fair. I don't think that's following what we said we were going to be doing. I do hear and understand that we have a lot of needs in line for the free cash. And this is just another one. And I do understand the need to prioritize and understand those things. But in terms of compensation issues for like other teachers and stuff, while I am fully aware of the egregious pay that teachers in Paris receive and that that's something that should be addressed, that's not necessarily in our purview. And we don't necessarily have the ability to do that. And so I think we should be focusing on the task at hand right now, which is thinking of how we can meet the vote that the council took, which was making sure that the counselors who are inaugurated in January can access the 10 K that we voted that they have. And we'll look to see if there's any other hands for discussion on the motion that's on the floor. Because if that then I think we should proceed to a vote and be asking, as always, whether there's support for the motion from the resident members, but we're still in discussion. And I see Matt has his hand up. I apologize, Andy. I just I want to just so somebody mentioned writing a thoughtful memo that kind of lays out some of the discussion, particularly this prorated issue there. That's not really what it is, but call it a prorated issue, if you will. And then, but when when Kathy made the motion, you sort of made a comment about how that prorated issue was not part of the moat. So I would I mean, I think that I would probably support option two as a motion, but I would I would like for town staff to have that full deliberation. And I wouldn't if we're assuming that it's 7500 for the year. And that's what option two means. So I just I mean, I want to tease that out just a little bit further. I apologize, but just just to be clear. You know, Matt, I when I mentioned that it's, Andy has to write a report to the council. So I wanted him to make that clear in the report. So it's cleaner. I think just to say we're voting on option two. And then in the report captured the discussion and what the implications are. The other thing I would add in the report is that we are we do have a charter commit charter review that we're setting up. We could fix we could add a word or two in the charter on this discontinuation. So you future future efforts to do this wouldn't hit it. We could just make it clear that when it would start, but that I didn't want to muddy this motion, which is just a vote on this motion, but I wanted the report to capture what what it means rather than trying to write it into the motion. But could Athena read the motion. Kathy's motion was to recommend the council proceed with option two. So I just motion on the floor and I'm I'm troubled by it because I have been hearing what Alicia has said in what the and I don't know how many counselors this is going to make a major factor, but I know that there are some. There will be some. So we don't know who the voters are going to choose as the next council. But I think that the one thing that I'm very uncomfortable with is trying to rearrange expenditures out of the current year budget so that we increase counselor compensation or the current fiscal year out of that budget because if we're going to use the council portion of the budget, then it has to come out of essentially training conferences. And I think that Paul has previously stated his concern about that. And I agree with his whole heartedly that there'll be new counselors and the counselors who continue. And I think that there's been known, you know, the benefit of of going to the MMA meeting and being involved with and doing other training and being involved with other councils around the state and learning from other councils and other communities is is valuable. And I think the pre-cash discussion has already been covered. Athena. Just wanted to make a quick note that also included in the council's budget, that's where we pay for newspaper advertisements for bylaw changes, zoning bylaw changes and so on, as well as extra help for minute takers for council committees and the town council. So motion has been on the floor. There's been substantial discussion and seeing no further hands going up. And as I say this, if anybody has anything else to say, they can still raise their hand. But if not, I'm going to proceed alphabetically through the list and by last name and proceed to a vote. And there are no further hands that have gone up. So we are on to the vote, which then is Devlin Gouth here. No. What was that? No. That's a no. Reesmer? Aye. Yes. Egnir is absent. Matt, this is on a support or do you support the motion or do you recommend not support? I don't support. Bernie, who be I? You're muted, Bernie. I'm sorry, I got to learn to push the little button. I support the motion. Shane? Yes. Okay, I'm going to support and Walker? No. Okay, so the motion is, if I get this correct now, 3S, 2No, and the resident members, one in support and one not in support. You know what you have to believe that. So I think that we have a motion that has been passed. I will write this up and as best I have time to do it and I will send a draft to all of you before sending it on because I like to run drafts of difficult discussions by the committee before sending it to the council so that there would be a draft that goes forward. With that said, can we bring Mandy Jo Hanneke into the meeting now? She is chair of CRC and we had indicated that one member of CRC would be invited to be present. We can't have more than one member of CRC because of the open meeting law problem that would then ensue. So as soon as Mandy gets brought in, just check to make sure she can hear us. Hi Mandy, can you hear? Yes, I can. Thank you. Okay, so with that said, we are now going to switch to the next agenda item which is continued discussion of rental registration by-law and fee structure that goes with that is the next step and of course we did hear public comment. One public comment that was offered was on the subject also. And with that, I'm going to actually start by asking Kathy who said that when I spoke with her as vice chair yesterday that she was going to give some plot to a series of additional questions and I have not had a chance to go through the draft that you sent to me earlier today. I have to admit that I've been sort of flat out all day. But would you, are you in a position to share that with the committee so with the questions that you identified? And then Rob Moore, are you here? Okay, Rob might be very important part of answering the questions as well as me, Andy. So, when is it? I'd be happy to Andy and if I held off having Athena send it out or post it because I'm supposed to speak to it first. And there you don't have to apologize for not having read it. I think I sent it to 45 minutes before the meeting which and it's five pages long so you wouldn't have it. But what I'll try to do is just focus on the overall concepts that I was wrestling with as I'm reading the document that clearly a lot of work and a lot of thought went into. And I want to preface it with are there ways that we can think of designing both the permit structure, the frequency you pay a premium, a permit fee, and the inspection on how often we do them and if it's in a 50 unit apartment building, 20 apartment building, do we really need to do all of them even if we're only doing a share of them each five years? Can't we just do one sample and then do it? Because if we can devise a more targeted approach, once we get our baseline, we should hopefully know what we have is I'll use the word problem properties so I don't know what better word to use for them. And so I went through a series of what if we did the following. For example, properties that are owner occupied or local, where we've already set up a pre-schredule that they get a lower fee, could they get a multi-year permit? So they could get a permit that was good for three years or good for five years. If they had code violations, they were bound to be fine when we first inspected them. And they get a clean bill of health on the other things that the permit law is looking at, you know, complaints, nuisances. So could we do a longer period for the permit? And on the inspections, could we instead of inspecting all the units within a multi-unit over a five-year period, either while at once or staggered, could we say we're just going to take one random sample and we're going to be focusing in the 50 unit, 100 unit buildings on the systems or the elevators working? Is the plumbing working? Is the electrical? Since it's doing all, rather than we've got some apartment buildings with tiny efficiencies in them. And the idea that our inspectors are going to go into every one of those over a five-year period doesn't make any sense to me. It feels like overkill. So can we do more targeted once we start? I don't know what the right threshold is. So all of my questions were trying to use the estimates we already got on how much money we raise from this permit structure, from this inspection structure, if we're billing them. But trying to bring down the cost to the well-managed code compliant substantially by reducing the frequency. So I tried to start making a table, Mandy. You at CRC gave us these nice tables. So I started to say, okay, if I'm an owner occupied on option one permit fee, I would pay 50 bucks for the payment permit. Then I would pay 150 for the inspection base. And if I had three of them, 75. So that's where it starts to add up if every single one of them. If that's an entry threshold. And then in the future, if I don't get seen again until five years from now, and I would even on some of them go out 10 years. So I'm looking at a way, can we focus on where the problem is, rather than set up a huge bureaucracy. And then on the flip side, I think we have a vacancy in our inspector, our very skilled inspector who retired. I'm not sure we can hire a lot of skilled inspectors. So I also was wondering, Bernie, you and I both started thinking about this last time, that the first year or the first 12 months or 18 months is the biggie because we're trying to get a baseline. Can we contract for services during that year, so that we get a better sense of what steady state is. So maybe we only need one and a half inspectors over time once we know what we're looking at, rather than staff up permanent jobs. So that's, you know, looking for a way of being smart on on the transition to steady state where we don't know what we're going to find on the first round. So it goes on for five pages because I tried to think through some different variations on this and then interact it with the list of what are we talking about the and I thank you for the tables because we've got a huge proportion of our units, not the dwellings in the really big buildings. If you do 20 or more or 50 or more, you're getting most of the rental units. But I think our problems are in what used to be single family homes or duplexes that have absentee landlords and aren't always well managed. So they're old homes that are that are dilapidated. Many of us can point them out. So I was trying to think of both how the inspections get focused rather than send our inspectors into the beacon up here and or the big ones downtown or name the others that are been built recently in every unit. Then a tiny piece is I noticed that we didn't exempt the federally inspected subsidized units. We give the inspector the option to exempt them and I would just exempt them. I see no reason of sending our inspectors into places that are being inspected. So I move it up. This is in the bylaw. It's as a here's the list of exemptions and down below it has a possible exemption that Rob could exempt them if he felt like it. But I want to limit the number of exemptions and make the permit term potentially be longer. And that's where I'll stop because I'm really worried that we create a top heavy. We create a bureaucracy and make it really difficult for good property managers with long term tenants operating in the town of Amherst. And that's not what we're trying to do. We're trying to work on health and safety issues that we know are out there in dilapidated buildings. So all of my five pages that I will share with everybody have to do with better targeting. And I think a lot of this is in the regulations rather than in the bylaw. But some of it might be the wording of the bylaw because the regs talk about frequency and who gets a pass. There's one final one that I don't quite understand what it is. But if there's a complaint, you get a complaint inspection where if it's a landlord tenant dispute and you get a complaint, you're paying 300 bucks for that inspection. And what if it is literally you're at loggerheads about something, but it's not a code violation? And what if we get a lot of those? So I'm worried that we've set ourselves up for a lot of appeals and court actions against us on some on some of these pieces. So that's why I wanted to be more focused. And I will stop there. And if you think I've summarized the five pages well enough, I'm happy to send them to everyone and then have and I didn't expect Rob you to have answers to my how we might focus it better. But these are the concepts and I suggest some ways to do it. So I had to read through a lot of these documents and cross looked before I could figure out what it was that was bothering me because I certainly think we we should be going after the properties that are dangerous. And I agree with that basic concept. Thank you. I don't think I pardon Athena. Kathy, if you Kathy, if you'd please send that to me, I can post it in the packet so it's available for the committee members and members of the public. Okay, I think I sent it to you when I sent it to Andy, but I'll resend it. Yeah, I don't think so. Okay. Yeah, I didn't know if Rob or Mandy have any initial comments that you want to make your responses and then Rob, since your hands up. Yeah, thank you. Just a couple. I just wanted to mention so everybody knows that in the larger apartment buildings we do actually inspect the common areas major systems already that's a program that's been in existence required by the building code for as long as I've been doing this type of work and we do that every other year currently and that's car called our COI certificate of inspection program. What this is this by law is doing is moving that to looking inside the dwelling unit itself. So just that's a big difference in the type of inspection. Obviously, there'd be overlap and they would be done at the same times depending on the cycle. But that part of the inspection already occurs. The question about why staff up why not contract out I think the CRCA and you know I've certainly participated in this conversation a couple of times and we thought about that it isn't you know it's it may be difficult to find a firm that would be able to offer inspections of health fire building compliance inspections as well as zoning which is a really important part for us to deal with. And it and it isn't you know most of the work is really what happens after the inspection. So we spend the hour you know collecting the information and hopefully a small percentage of those units have issues that we're dealing with only a small portion of those have issues. But that's that's what takes the time. It's the several follow-up the email that the citation of the the proper code or regulation and that can only be done by you know a certified inspector that's appointed by the community so we can't have an outside service be you know the building inspector and cite the building code so we have to do that and same thing for zoning. So after you know we talked that through we felt it made sense really the only way to truly do this and understand the condition of the properties and what is out there for you know unit count better account compliance with zoning is to do the inspections ourselves because we know all of our rules and regulations that we deal with and absolutely you know the future hopefully the program downsizes and there's fewer inspections needed and and the targeting occurs but I would suggest that targeting occurs the second round and not during the first five years when we get to see all the properties. I have mentioned a couple of times in these meetings that I was expecting only to really look at a percentage of the properties in the larger apartment complexes. I realized the draft regulations don't say that it's it's offered as a possibility in the bylaw but the regulations that are currently written do say that the intent is to have every unit inspected over that five-year period. I think we need to look at that you know after thinking that through and you'll see in my draft fee schedule that I worked on with Sean a few weeks ago it only accounts for that it's not accounting for the full 20% of the residential units so the idea I think most recently is that our bylaw or regulations could you know make that possible that we're not looking at every unit I don't think we'll need to in every case. The the last piece I just wanted to mention about the the the subset I was housing units there's about 220 units or so in town we know the intent there is probably not to inspect those but I will say it and the reason why we left that open is that we have had issues we've had disagreements with the the Section 8 housing inspectors through the housing authorities and their outside services it doesn't address zoning it doesn't address some of the you know unique situations that our health inspector here can deal with necessarily so there are cases and there's small number that we are involved in that are units that are inspected by those agencies and although we'd expect to exempt almost all of them every year if we needed to for some reason require an inspection we wanted to have that opportunity to do that and this is you know those are cases where it is entirely for the benefit of the occupant of the unit and nothing else thank you. I just want to ask a question on definition when you said inspection for zoning is that since the building is okay is it that is that the number of occupants is that what you're looking for in the you know zoning violation is what you said what is that? Yeah it could be you know about half of our our complaint response matters are zoning related and half are related to code some type of code and you know a lot of those complaint response matters are around parking occupancy so unregistered or trash of some sort abandoned vehicles that that's kind of the day-to-day zoning piece but what we throughout the year when we're entering these properties for the first time I think I've mentioned that we too often find more dwelling more bedrooms more units even in the building than we have our record of and our assessor's records might call for say that there's five bedrooms in the building and then we find out there's actually eight and then there might be a basement that got converted into a dwelling unit or an attic converted into a dwelling unit over time and these are things we never knew about had no record of and this is really the time this is the way we're going to get a good handle on that and understand what's there what's permitted according to their either CBA permit or maybe it's pre-existing condition and what needs to be permitted by the Board of Appeals or maybe just not allowed at all and and the unit removed so though that's the kind of the harder zoning piece that we run into as we enter these properties for the first time thank you yeah um thank you Rob for going over a number of the things that CRC's heard and discussed all the time with that I wanted to say two things the the Excel spreadsheet that was included in that in case there is confusion the has has multiple tabs and the tab on rate permit application fees was a tab that includes dollars and and costs that CRC said they think is logical but finance should really be the one looking at it the tab that talks about inspection fees is completely not a proposal that CRC is sending to finance to review and all it is just something that is there as an example of other than the different inspections and the numbers in it are just a here's some options on how you might get to the final dollar amount that we might be aiming for CRC made no recommendation as to that is a good proposal or not and I just want to make sure that the finance members know that those numbers do not come with any particular the numbers do not come with any particular recommendation as it relates to the inspection fees um and I think I was I tried to be clear on that in the supplemental memo that CRC sent to the council um and the other thing I would say is I think what would be most helpful to the council and CRC for finances discussion is a couple of things the first is to determine the dollar amount that this town is seeking to receive in revenue directly from the program versus to to use from operating budget pilot amounts other fees in other words if Rob has estimated that the program will take $500,000 do the revenues from inspections and permit fees need to equal $500,000 or is there another number finance would recommend the revenues equal from the permit and inspection fees that would be a very helpful discussion for the council overall to have because that was one thing that CRC struggled with and why we thought finance should be involved in that and the other thing I would say is um if finance believes the program itself is too expensive I would urge finance to not necessarily come in with specific well reduce it to you know increase something to three years or increase something to 10 years or something like that just tell us it's expensive and how much you're aiming for and maybe some suggestions but CRC has a background of knowledge after 15 months of discussions that finance will never be able to match in three months in terms of all of the nuances of the tradeoffs between increasing the inspection the application and permits from one year to two years to three years or not for which ones to do that and and same with the frequency of inspection so I would just encourage you if you do believe that the program as proposed is too expensive to indicate broad areas where but you know this is me as chair leave the nitty gritty of how to reduce it specifically to CRC where all that background and conversation already exists and can probably be done more efficiency efficiently than in a committee that hasn't been discussing it for 15 years and and we will take all of the recommendations seriously but I that's just my thoughts from as a chair of CRC in terms of efficiency purposes thank you okay thank you I'm going to say one thing in response to what you just said for the benefit of the committee I think that I had offered to give the excel spreadsheet version of what was also presented as a PDF and to anybody who requested it but I'm going to add it to the packet for this meeting so that it's available for everybody to look at and then you can be able to look at the tabs that Mandy was referring to because I think that they were not available looking at the version that was in the PDF document that you did receive it will make it however Mandy a public document at that point when it goes into the packet just here is an obvious point because we can't do it any other way I put my hand in line because I have the questions but I'm hoping I'm going in order that hands went up so Bernie thank you Andy let me just start by saying I have a great deal of sympathy for Rob and the the work that he's asked to do it's it's not it's not easy let me get my screen back here so I can see myself there you go that said I think we need to and without being terribly prescriptive I think we need to take a cue from our up Massachusetts resident former resident Henry David Thoreau and simplify simplify I think the program is it's as it's outlined is is is comprehensive but maybe too so for given the situation that we find ourselves in both fiscally and in terms of the field I don't know if life has changed I haven't looked at it the situation and in about a year and a half but people who are skilled inspectors especially people who could do the building building stuff combined with the zoning enforcement piece are few and far between they're hard to recruit and to try and recruit somebody in on a temporary basis could be more trouble trouble than it's worth so the other thing that I would say the other thing that I would look at is the program should cover its costs it deals with an externality it deals with people making money off property rentals and some of those people are bad actors some of those tenants are not the best tenants and they generate a cost for the community that the community should not bear it's the property owner should cover it so if you scale back the program and make it more specific maybe make it more complaint driven you can lean more heavily on the people who are not interested in providing quality housing and you know those those would be general guidelines the other thing I'd like to know is has the town attorney told us that it's okay to give a discount to people who have rental properties who live in town as opposed to people or corporations who don't live here aren't aren't headquartered here it seems to me on the face of it that that's asking for a lawsuit and I will be the first to say we should never not do something because we might get sued but I would be help it would be more helpful if we heard from town attorney that that's that's okay so there's that there's my scaled back version that didn't get down into the weeds and tell you to do things in three days instead of five or five months instead of 27 which by the way I think would be fair discussion for this committee if the people want to want to engage in it but I do understand that you you acquire a certain amount of of insight and expertise when you spend a lot of time studying it which I dear see none of us have so that's that's my two cents yeah a mandate let me follow up on that with one question then get to Alicia uh the point that Bernie was making about whether there's a litigation risk and the prior discussion had been as I recall as I thought I understood it that it was owner occupancy that was the trigger and not a an owner who lives in town we've got they have both in their pre-schedule so I can say KP law has reviewed the regulations in the bylaw it has not reviewed the draft schedule or and the schedule the draft schedule that includes those those delineations and the current draft schedule does include three different categories for application fees one for owner occupied dwellings one for dwellings who have an owner living in town for parcels that are rented that have an owner that lives in town who is seeking permits for three or fewer I think it's rental units so that could be three parcels with one rental unit on it each or one parcel with three rental units on it each but live in town and then the third delineation is everyone else it has not been KP law has not seen the draft schedule that has those delineations in it okay thank you uh Alicia um thank you Andy I had some very similar concerns to Bernie so I won't repeat those but I just have a question for Manny Jo I'm hoping you can remind me um what like issue or challenge or series of issues and challenges you are looking to address with the spy law and then also when you were in the planning stage was there ever any intention of this being revenue generating if I may Andy yes please so so the main item that CRC was tasked with and and its main goal in this revision although there are some secondary goals the very biggest goal is to have town inspectors have the ability to inspect our rental properties in town um not on just a complaint basis right now the inspect the permit program is a self-inspection by the a self-certification by the property owner that the property complies with all building code and zoning and health regulations and if you Rob can address this I know John Thompson has we've actually heard from in our surveys actual tenants that those self-certifications come in on July 1 with everything matches and everything complies and parents will move their students in on July 15 or August 1 and call the town and the town will go out and we'll find many numbers of violations that are clear that they have existed for more than 30 days but unless the town receives a complaint they cannot go into any property um and so the inspection services department through Rob has been um vocal at CRC that they would like the ability to inspect our rental units for health and safety matters to to get them up to code not on just a complaint basis and so that was the biggest sort of impetus for this change and why you see the inspection portion of this for the application um in the revenue generation when we started this process from council referral a year and a half ago uh CRC was it was implied to CRC that the program should be revenue neutral so not necessarily revenue generating meaning the program should cover through its fees its own costs um what CRC began struggling with when it started looking at how to do that based on the program it was drafting and talking about was is that still logical we know there's some pilot money that was just agreed to that is meant for health and safety of students in and student of of properties in town i i don't know how it's worded um but a yearly part of the pilot is is um indicated for not necessarily this program but other things and we also heard from a number of residents including tenants and including property owners that this program will benefit not just the people living in the properties that it's a benefit to all taxpayers in town and therefore some costs of the program should be borne by all taxpayers and so when we started hearing those comments CRC did not believe it was um it was its place as a committee uh to discuss those specific issues and then should it be revenue neutral or revenue loss because some costs will be covered by all operating budgets that are not part of these fees or not and that's where we started thinking finance was the better place for those discussions and i think that it's important to note that state uh department of revenue regulations and state law specify that fees should only cover the costs that are being absorbed by the payment of the fee and that it's not permitted to use fees as a revenue generation for other purposes um my question the reason i have my hand up rob is that when i talked to john thompson a few times over the years about this he indicated that the time of those conversations that a significant portion of his time but he never said what significant was was just trying to make sure that all rental property is actually going through the rental registration process and that when he was alerted to a rental that was not in the inspection program um that it took some time um depending upon the circumstances to find the owner of the property and to actually enforce the rental registration and require rental registration um is that still a significant portion of time that um employees of your department have can you give us an idea of the amount and you know i think then we get into the question of whether where those expenses should come in uh yeah so there's there's two different kind of situations that we deal with the ones where you know a complaint may be generated from an abutting property uh brings an inspector to the property or the neighborhood and finds that there's a property that's not registered and i think that's probably what john has was talking about that type of situation and uh it's that's absolutely correct that it takes a lot of time to to sort through that and get a response once we find who the owner is often properties are you know held in LLCs or whatever the case may be it's not always straightforward to get in touch with somebody from out of town um you know one of the successes of this program that we have now is that it it established who for the record who owns the property and the way to get in touch with them for the properties that are actually following the rules so that you know that has been great um so the other piece of that is uh and this is something that we haven't been able to keep up on year to year but we did put a major effort into it last year is to really search town records look at assessing records uh ownership records and try to identify those properties that look like they may need to be in the program but aren't and you know we did that it takes several months of a couple of staff really staying on that making phone call sending notices that that effort last year I think if I'm right it's somewhere around 120 to 150 property you know new permits that were put into the program as a result of that effort so that's something like I said John you know couldn't possibly have done year to year on his own he you know uh but uh with a couple other uh staff uh assigned to help with that effort uh we were able to get that done over a three to four month period and that was that was generated out of some of the discussion with the CRC developing this this draft by-law and some of the questions that they had um you know really kind of sparked our interest in doing that and being able to report on that and uh our sense is that year to year that's probably something that's going to have to be done to make sure that properties stay in the program and you know it's really difficult without the a fuller staff to be able to do that in addition to the day to day things and be consistent with it which is really the harder part of it and now would be an ideal time for us you know we just came through a renewal uh now we're looking at the properties that uh didn't renew for that were in the program last year that's those the easiest ones to identify and then we you know would go from there thank you um we will need to come back to that question that I raised as a second point and that is whether uh inspection and registration fees of compliant properties should be paying that expense or word that um otherwise how that is being funded but Lynn your hand is up thanks Andy um and Mandy Joe I want to thank you for although it's in your memos and so forth for clarifying what you seek from finance versus what we should go back and say to CRC okay and the fact that you've spent 15 months and you're right I'm not an expert on rental registration just trying to look at how the town can ensure better rentals in our community that are safe for all residents whether they're students or not students okay I strongly believe that this cannot be totally supported by town budget that somehow or another the use of fees for the purpose that the fees were collected going back to Andy's point need to go into a fund that is used for that purpose okay whether that's an enterprise fund or what it is it needs to go into it I also really want the town to move from complaint basis to actual more of the kind of inspection we're talking about but I got a little concerned Rob when you talked about the first five years versus after that because it almost sounds like we're going to spend the first five years taking inventory of the stock and that's a big that's a big job okay and and how are we going to fund that job if because I I'm also hearing and I am hearing from residents who are actually fine landlords they manage excellent properties they might have four or five around town and they're looking at this and saying I'm not the problem so I I want to try to make sure we're not quote suggesting all owners of properties are slum lords they're not we have some outstandingly good owners of properties in town so this is a big puzzle and it's a puzzle of how do we want to do this so that it's legal that the fees are legal so that we protect the safety of our residents and at the same time respect responsible landlords and and how are we going to do this when we can't even hire somebody to replace our existing building inspector because we aren't paying at the level other places for so I do want to suggest that instead of thinking is there a company are there individuals who we can contract with for 30 or 40 percent of their time because they actually would like to do some extra work and but they have benefits coming in from elsewhere and I know managing a part-time workforce is difficult but sometimes in this work environment we just have to look at it creative um and then my final question questions are really around when a property owner sells and a new property owner comes in will the inspection records of the property be made available prior to the sale of the property because in many cases you know you go to buy a home and we all bring we bring in an inspector or at least we should we bring in an inspector who inspects the home for us and says you know this is fine but I got to tell you the boiler is 25 years old so you buy that property with your eyes open the town is going to now have significant data about a property that if I were buying a rental property I'm not thank you very much and they're done that don't want to do it again if I were buying a rental property I would want to have access to those records as part of my purchase and sale and so it's a matter of what is public and what isn't public so that's a lot all at once I really want to hope that we can find a solution to this that works for the town and works for our property owners and helps clean up the properties that need to get cleaned up that's my bottom line thanks uh rod um yeah a couple things um I just wanted to mention that uh we do have some part time employees that work for the town conducting inspections I found that's even harder to find people interested in doing that kind of work and um you know as far as being competitive with pay the part-time scale is probably even more discouraging than our full-time scale so I've been I have been through that for years and we often struggle with that as well and talked about that at length uh also um so I just I just want to uh to to mention that so be aware of that thanks okay thank you Matt thanks thanks Andy and thank you Mandy Jo and Rob and and all have been working on this I so I guess I have a couple of questions and a couple comments um I I agree with the running um concern around staffing you know Rob you and I spoke a little bit about about this a while ago and it's it's I guess I live in a world where you know we oftentimes conceive of the perfect position and then the perfect scheme of staff to to do things that we want to do and really it just so much of this does become personnel dependent in terms of how it really runs so I think that I I think that I agree with the idea of contracting or consulting in especially for some of the ramp-up costs you know in those first couple years as as Kathy said you know figuring out what our baseline looks like and identifying housing stock all those things I think are really well put you know and and I think it's just the reality that if all this past the council you know implementation would still be delayed until we you know fill key some key spots so I um you know I empathize I support you in that and I think um it is it's kind of hard to even conceptualize a full scheme without you know that that chief inspector um in place uh Rob I really appreciated your comment about subsidized housing and the inspections there um you know and doing entirely for the benefit of the occupant I think that's that's well put I've I've definitely been hearing a lot of folks who are talking about you know low quality apartments that you know I mean college students was the example I was getting but I think that that crosses across all different spectra you know um so I I really appreciate and I and that that ethos I think is something that um should be communicated really clearly to the community because um sometimes this it does feel like there's a there's a animosity between renters and owners in town and I think you know that that that service that spirit of kind of serving the renter I think is something that gets lost on folks and I think that you know it's a it's a conceptual thing and I realize this isn't a financial point manager but I just want to address some of my thoughts here um and and so you know I appreciate that and then at the same time and I've spoken to me and Joe and others about this you know I am concerned that you know anytime we increase the cost on landlords there is that is in don't take it the wrong way that's an excuse right I mean that that pass through to raise the rent it you know is an excuse and and I'm not saying that our landlords are are out there doing that willy-nilly but I think that is a that's a real a reality right that that you know whatever cost we apply to landlords will get passed along to the to the renter and and so um okay actually I will take your your advice to many Joe and I'll say I'll pass that back to CRC and say you know um solutions on that particular issue I think are probably the most pressing for me in terms of what you know what impact this bylaw might have um I hear the I hear the thought that you know we don't want to be complaint driven all the time and reactive but Rob I was under the impression that um at least talking to John that that you know your inspectors could essentially make their own complaint if they had just reason to you know if they wanted to see a property because they had you know probable quote unquote probable cause to go do an inspect they could they could make their own complaint I realize that's a customer service issue and you really want to avoid you know the the appearance of impropriety or not impropriety but the appearance of bias but but I was under the impression that your folks could make could make their own complaints and investigate according to that um and I probably had a few more thoughts but that's a lot so I'm just going to pass thanks so Rob yeah so on that last point there about our own complaints um the bylaw the current bylaw does allow us to do that certainly um it's it it happens uh from time to time when uh and it's you know when John's was responding to something and maybe came across something close by that was in very clear view and visible and he would you know make contact to the to the property owner of that particular rental and and deal with it I think what we've asked for as part of kind of the overall you know enhancement of this program is to have be able to dedicate time to some proactive enforcement whether that's between inspections or you know when we get into this maybe it's not until after that five-year cycle that we actually have time to do that but there is there is no proactive enforcement so the program now is really complaint response on those few occasions where an inspector on their way to work sees something really offensive they'll deal with it they won't ignore it so but that's that's pretty limited in the number of responses or the volume of work that John had done over the years while I'm talking I just want to go back quickly to one of Lynn's comments that I that I intended to answer was about the public display of this information we use a program called open gov for our permitting now we are slowly transitioning all of our our our licenses and permits into it it's been fabulous right now you can see the permit displayed on a property that's publicly available to view and that's where the inspection report would live so that would be available in the system we have already established that will continue to enhance over time and for anyone that's interested Burlington Vermont uses the same program and uses those functions so if you were to go there and be able to find a rental property and they have a map that you can hover over and find all the rental properties select one you could see an example of a type of inspection report that they use and just as an idea that that's how you know they're not the same documents obviously but you know that's how it could work and probably even better over time as we build out that system thank you India trying to you come back to you and Rob as we respond to yeah no thank you and sorry I had to step away for a little bit um so I missed a lot of Lynn's specific comments but got the general gist of them but for Matt um when you talk about the solutions to how to pass the the issue of if we do this program and the costs go up and it will get passed on and and we already have high tenant costs we heard a lot about that it's one of the reasons I think CRC struggled with how to set the fees and why we recommended you guys talk about it because you know you said well it's not really a finance issue but it kind of is right does this program do the fees cover 100 percent of the program or should the fees cover only 50 percent of the program with general revenues from property taxes in general covering the rest and I just throughout the 50 percent just but that in some sense that's the struggle of the question CRC in the end said that's not our decision to make or make a recommendation on because that's more within the purview of finance and financial and all of that um but it was one of our top struggles in terms of how to minimize the costs recognizing that even though the bylaw itself prohibits the complaint inspection fees from being passed on to tenants um that's if if there's an actual complaint that says there's a violation a landlord would not be able to pass that on to tenants it it does not and main it may not be appropriate to I don't know pat prohibit the passing on of the application fee or the required inspection fee just to get the permit and so CRC basically assumed a lot of that would be folded into annual rents which might increase annual rents it who knows by how much and that was a big concern and a lot of discussion and that's why we passed it on to you guys yeah and Andy if I may I just that wasn't the part that I was I said that the personnel issue was not a finance issue I fully agree the fee structure is a finance issue definitely um let me try to organize my thoughts because Bernie was a lot more eloquent than I was where I jumped into the weeds right away but the notion of simplifying was where I was starting from and I will Mandy I know you all spent 15 months but I'm perfectly willing to jump into um examples so if Burlington has an example of a place that is permitting and inspecting I'm looking for places that do it in a focused targeted efficient way and what I'm reading in the text in the regulations is I don't see it um and so my questions were less on let's do this or let's do that and more how are these ways we could pare it down to make it less onerous on places that we think are not a problem at all um and if we don't know they're not a problem on day one if we know it two months from now we give them a longer free pass before we come back to them um and and we have enough this is an industry in town you know a big one um in terms of people making extra money off of it that aren't that are our residents not just out of town and we know uh you use the term bad apple Bernie and we know they're dilapidated properties we know from the look at the outside of them we're wondering what's inside them um and until you get inside them you won't know so I don't disagree with the thrust of this but I think um the trying to make the fees match the expected costs yes that's what was thrown to us but the costs reflect how often we're doing each thing I mean Rob gave us an example where he said the reg version says go to every apartment within a big building at least once in the five years but as I heard you say Rob you'd be okay with a sample rather than trying to hit every single one of them because just as you can you know a lot when you get inside some of these buildings so you don't have to hit all 50 efficiencies whether it's the first year so that's an example of the number of many fewer inspections because we have a huge I mean the the table you gave we have a lot of rental units in these big buildings it's a huge share of the total and if we don't have to go to every single one of them it saves money on inspection time then the other thought I had Rob was less on a going to an outside company or even just a part-time staff but what I've seen and who knows whether this exists in the inspector word if you're setting up a project that we want someone who's interested in coming and working with us for two years with this many hours you could pull a retiree in who might want to do it they're not looking for a long-term part-time job but it's a focus so you see it on faculty I'm willing to come teach one course for one semester or two semesters so trying to think of how do you do that transition piece to get out and get inside the doors of buildings and so that was where I was thinking of what do you do in the year one ish on whether you think because this is tied you don't get a permit unless you have an inspection and you have this contingent permits permitting I'm doing but I'm thinking we really don't want to delay giving a permit to people that have 15-year tenants in their property and we don't think there's a problem with them we want to get in and out really fast and say good place thank you very much so there's a concern that they wouldn't even ever you know so that speed of doing it so I don't have a solution for but I'm just trying to say if we can't hire a full-time person easily we found in part-time or they're if I know it's it's a two-year gig with a limited number of hours and it plays to my skill set or there's some people sitting out there that would come out of retirement you find this with nurses all the time really good ones that just didn't want to be committing for long term so those are ideas and I did not go through there's a lot of pages to read here when Bernie said simplify I didn't go through the pages of the bylaw and the pages of the reg to say where could I see literally simplify and I because I was trying to focus just on the things that I thought cost money you know number of times I touch a property person goes out more times cost money complicated application processes are costing staff money and costing landlord money so the what information an applicant has to give and I'll look at our permitting now are we asking for things that are really easy to fill out and is year two a nothing's changed you know kind of a list you know I'm still the same person I was or the same property and if it's nothing changed the ownership didn't change could we make the permit a five-year permit or three-year permit those are questions I'm raising rather than let's do it but every time you make people reupload information or staff recheck it it's it's somebody's labor time so I'm looking for ways to lower the labor costs on the two sides of the equation the receiving end and the town end to make implementation a success rather than have everyone screaming at us that you know they're they're in my house and I'm a renter and I have a great house and I don't want them to be here right now you know on uh you know I have children you know so just trying to think through the mechanics of it so um and then my last is Linus said more than once because you said it last time Lynn on do we need to set up a protected fund as far as I can see the fees we're getting right now for permits when we went up are probably generating more revenue than the costs of running the program based on and so I'm assuming that just at the end of the year you didn't spend everything you took in and the excess fees are going over to support the general budget and we want we certainly want to avoid doing that over time you know it might be a startup but we didn't fine tune it enough and Lynn you were suggesting a way to keep the fees internal and if we're running surpluses you lower the fees then you know they're they've not been set correctly um but I don't know Lynn on whether there's any way to do that other than an enterprise fund so that's just a question on is there a way of of sequestering these funds are for this purpose and um they go to partially fund the following year if we didn't use them all um so that is a question I didn't have in my long document so I I think you work work long and hard on it but it it reads like a very intense very labor intensive process to try to find the problem houses and so I'm looking at problem properties so I'm looking for a way of simplifying it and targeting and I will look at a couple places that I think face our concerns like Burlington and I'm perfectly willing to do that on my own time you may already have looked at all of them but I just want to look at do we have any examples of people doing it really efficiently where the landlords don't care the rent don't mind they think it's a fair process that's it um uh Andy I have a text from Alicia at 251 that said she had lost her connection and it had failed for some reason and she needed to leave by three so we need to note on the record at 251 she left the meeting and she did have some comments and she will send them um to Mandy Joe okay thank you that's all I have to say yeah I would ask that she send them to the committee too uh and I can uh text her later and acknowledge what happened take care of that request um please don't ask her to send comments to the whole committee Andy please don't ask her to send comments to the whole thing um I didn't hear you exactly please don't ask Alicia to send her comments to the whole committee what what Athena is saying please don't ask Alicia to send her comments to the whole committee for open meeting law purposes Alicia I mean Athena where do you want some scent I I think the point is if I get this correctly is that um we offer Alicia the opportunity if she wishes to share the comments she intended to make before she lost her connection but that if she does so they have to go to the entire committee and become a part of the record no she should not share her comments with the entire committee outside of meeting she should not so she should hold on next meeting yes please thank you okay we'll do um our review is going to come back to the next meeting actually to try and draw this to a conclusion because uh I had one other member who indicated uh the he had a time limit and Matt just raised his hand to acknowledge it was him it was uh so um and I think on it too we we recognized that we had two meetings scheduled one for the uh for September and they were just Friday and next Friday um the reasons that we were getting into not doing the following Fridays was other things going on such as the um Gables and uh the new housing on uh to the unmain street and the open house at that location and I think that there was a conflict with the next Friday too if I recall so um but we do want to get back to this next week my I was trying to keep track of questions that we need to investigate one is to see if we can find out um whether KPU law has any advice on the issue that I believe it was Bernie who first raised regarding whether we can charge whether there's any legal concerns about charging fees that are differential solely on the basis of residents of the owner of the property and if we're going to go the next step to do that I also had some questions of Holly and uh that uh for the next meeting about the some of the accounting questions of how the um money uh how we keep track of inspection fees and other fees and make sure that the fees are used for the purposes that are intended what is the basis for doing that and um also um how the um program is currently being supported um whether it is from fees or partially from the budget so we know as we go forward whether a portion of the budget is supporting the um rental registration program um in its current format and that gets back into the question that I had raised earlier uh the John responded uh are the Bob responded to so um early about um how we make sure the properties that are rental properties are actually doing the registration and complying with the program um so I wanted to make sure that we get a response to those at a later time Lynn you had something else um Andy this is something that Athene and I agreed uh we're going to be communicating to all chairs and that is um by the middle of by the beginning to the middle of November all chairs need to be decided and what they are going to finish up in this term and what they're not and so we need to start looking strategically at that Athena may want to add to that uh Andy if it's okay yeah go ahead um so I spoke with Dave who's here in the audience yesterday about the surplus real property disposition policy that the committee had begun looking at earlier this year and uh Dave is working on we're hoping to have a draft for the committee to look at at the next meeting um I'm sorry the meeting the second meeting in October but then looking ahead if the committee is planning two meetings per month until the end of the year then we just have seven meetings left and so um like Lynn said we're going to start to look at scheduling out things and making sure that the committee has enough time on each of its agendas to get the things done that it would like to get done before the end of the year and begin work on those carryover memos for the next council's term so you and I can can meet and talk about that but I wanted to say it during the committee meeting so that everyone kind of has a sense of how much time there is left um before the end of the year thank you thank you and I have been very clear with uh the committee that we have three major referrals that we're working on right now the two we discussed today and the third being streetlight policy and that there were dates that were incorporated in the council referral motions that I have continued to put forward to the committee in the order in which they came up so that um the third one is the streetlight policy um in Mandy's presence so she has anything to add to this but I did attend TSO uh town um the uh not TSI meeting the TAC meeting transportation advisory committee yesterday and they had a discussion about the streetlight policy and reported that they were working with Mandy as one of the sponsors of that particular policy possible modifications and then it would go back to TSO so I had not put it on the agenda for this meeting largely because I thought we were going to be filled up with these two items um but we did uh can't neglect the streetlight policy but it seemed to make sense uh from what I was understanding and confirmed yesterday at TAC to at least see what's happening Mandy do you have anything to add to that um in talking with Anika yesterday the current plan which may change is to have TSO review um new revisions to the lighting policy proposal on September 28th and October 12th if that helps finance schedule stuff that may change but that's the current plan okay thank you um so I just wanted to make um by this committee aware that um this is not one that's being neglected but if there were changes in the policy that we should that it was a reason to focus on the two that I put on the agenda today I hope that uh that was an agreeable with the rest of the committee uh Athena did you have something to add um yep quickly we will have some financial order sorry Holly I'm talking for you um we'll have some financial orders uh coming late October early November certification of free free cash and transfers of free cash into uh various funds and maybe an additional financial order just to um add that to the list of things in front of fine finance committee that are coming up before the end of the day um Lou please note that Anna had to leave the meeting uh and also that um we also have the other really big job which is guidelines and so let me just mention in terms of council meetings uh the compensation stuff will now go on the agenda for September 18th and we uh at this meeting um on Monday we'll discuss uh the town manager um evaluation and it'll be a quick referral to GOL and hopefully back from GOL uh and then because we need to get going on it and also um on the 18th at this point we're scheduled to begin to get some of the thoughts about financial guidelines from the counselors okay so I have those on my list to finish up also do we have dates for October November and December no we don't and um I think probably the best thing to do is for um me to work with uh Athena and get a um propose some dates that work and then I get a doodle poll so that we can get input from the committee that way as to who's available as far as scheduling is concerned I think the one thing that I'm always very conscious of is has a date been set for the meeting in which the town manager and finance directors are going to make the presentation about trends and the financial projections for the next year financial indicators is set for October I mean I'm sorry November 13th 13th and uh the that is also probably the meeting at which we will start dealing with things like and I hate the word free cash uh and other financial orders uh that we often have to do to kind of mop things up from the previous year um and any other financial stuff will probably be on that date as we all know we're trying to squeeze in things around um the additional work we're doing to try to help the school committee become a quorum again thank you yeah I uh point that out I was asking about the uh indicators meeting because we usually use that as the trigger point for the discussion of the um guidelines for the next year because uh what we propose and guidelines is dependent upon the projections of the money that's available right um let me while we're on it so the 13th of November we will discuss that is when we will do the financial indicators it is when we will invite the school committee and the um library uh trustees etc and have a quote committee of the whole not committee of the whole um BCG meeting uh there may be a BCG meeting earlier than that if we can figure out how to schedule it and um then on the 20th of November is when we will have the public forum required for next year's budget okay okay so um I think we've covered I have um as far as on the anticipated business uh really don't have any that are business because the everything else has been covered pretty much as announcements so we know the next meeting date as far as approval of minutes is concerned I don't know how many people have had that opportunity to look at the four sets of minutes I tried to do that this morning but this morning has uh not been my uh morning where I had as much time as I had hoped and the only minutes that I came completed on were the first ones listed as March 28th and I found no problems with them I don't know if anybody else has had a chance to look at March 28th and uh other um I'd like to move that we approve the minutes for March 28th okay and I'll second that so we can just move forward with it and since we have to take a roll call vote on it um I noticed the I will note that Anna's absent Lynn I um Abhagner's absent Matt he's left he's left so uh it's absent uh Bernie I concur okay uh Kathy yes and I'm yes and uh Belisha is also absent so um as far as the next set of minutes which is I got substantially through them but not entirely there were minor corrections that I'm gonna have to offer um but they're not major um points and uh I will get them to you and continue to march along as best we can to continue to get minutes done um and uh the thing is uh gonna add four per meeting to try and get us on on track to get this done so that uh that's why they were four this time but that's the goal is to add four to the the list so that we can and try and get them done anything else that somebody has to offer if not I'm going to declare the meeting adjourned thank you thank you this was a good meeting


The Center now goes way beyond any expectations that we had about what the impact on the people who provided service would be. Civic engagement in public service is really at the heart of what we are meant to do as a public institution. Working with people in the public service center have opened my eyes to things that are happening around here that I didn't even know about and that's inspired me to get involved. What I learned at UC Berkeley and the engagement with the community was just a major defining moment. The Magnolia Project was about a two week trip to Louisiana where we worked with different organizations on the ground who were working to help rebuild Louisiana post hurricane Katrina. I think one of the things that really made it transformational for me was to work with organizations that in some way reflected sort of the upbringing that I had as a kid. My brothers had never finished high school, my parents don't have college degrees so it was pretty radical I would say to think that education would serve you. One organization was doing community work around gardening and then another organization was more political and so I was able to explore these different aspects of my own identity. My time at Cal has inspired me to give back primarily because of the people that I've encountered, that I've worked with, seeing other people leading that charge in a selfless way inspired me to put my energy into service. Too many people say I can't make a difference and it's not true. People really can make a difference. It's about justice and it's about making sure everyone has a chance to live the American dream. Change happens and so we just have to fight and that's what inspires me. Whenever I hear that Berkeley students are somewhere making trouble for the good of the human race I will say go Bears.