00:01:16,970	Good evening, everybody, and welcome to the July 20th meeting of the Hamilton Select Board. I’m Rosie Kennedy in stead for our chair. Um, Bill Olson. And, um, we do we have anybody on the zoom? Uh, just one member of the public. Okay. So, um, we’ll open the meeting with a roll call, vote. Lee McCoy here.

00:01:45,770	Ben Kaluza here. And Rosie Kennedy here. So the first thing we’ll do is board in committee openings. The Affordable Trust, the affordable housing Trust has one opening. Conservation Commission has two openings. The Council on Aging has one opening the Community preservation committee.

00:02:11,430	Do we need the, um the CPC has two openings, one opening for a member of the historic district commission and one opening for an at large member, the Hamilton Environmental Impact Committee has one opening. Historic District Commission has two openings for three year terms, two openings for two year terms.

00:02:32,170	One must be a resident of the historic district and one must be a resident realtor, and the Human Rights Commission has one large opening, one at large opening. Public comment will be taken for a maximum of 30 minutes, and no speaker will be allowed to speak for more than three minutes.

00:02:56,730	Is there anybody in the public who would like to speak? Good evening, Bill bowler. Uh, as I think most of you know, Leon, Puritan, who’s been a long time resident of Hamilton, turns 100 and we’re having a birthday party for him. So I want to formally invite members of the Select Board and the public to come. Uh, it’s on August 6th from 2 to 5 p.m.

00:03:25,230	at the Wynn Senior Center. So thank you. Uh, that’s a change. The original date was. The original date was August 9th Sunday. So it’s August 6th. Um. Leon is not the oldest person in town. Although Karina’s gonna look and see if he might be the oldest man. Older than him.

00:03:52,270	Okay, well, we were thinking of it. We were thinking of bringing back, uh, the bus and post cane, but somebody else can do that. But just briefly about Leon. Um, he, uh, he’s a remarkable man. Uh, he was a three time Board of Selectmen member.

00:04:21,700	He’s still on the housing authority, the Hamilton Housing Authority. Um, until a year or two ago, he drove to work in New Hampshire, a machine shop. Oh, my God. Every day. I mean, this guy has stamina. Um, when the Rotary Club for a number of years did, uh, uh, it’s most you probably know we did a calendar as a fundraiser.

00:04:52,770	Um, we usually got about 750 calendars printed, and Leon sold half of them. No way. I mean, he just. And he’s not a hard sell. It’s just that everybody he met, he’d sell them a calendar. So, anyway, uh, I just want to invite you and hope, uh, some of you can come.

00:05:15,630	There will be presentations of various sorts, and, uh, that’s it. That’s wonderful. Bill, thank you so much for an exciting milestone. Yeah, sure is. Hope I get there. Wow. Is there anybody else who would like to speak? Hey, Rosie. Um, is that a packet? Are those the. Are those all yours or those? That’s for Rosie. That’s just for Rosie. Okay. Thank you. All right.

00:05:46,000	Yeah. Everything is in your packet, though. Sometimes, huh? Usually the chair gets a special printed one. Okay. Like other instructions and stuff. Yeah, I saw that when I came in. I said, oh, dear. Um, so now, um, so now it’s time for the Select Board Committee liaison reports lead.

00:06:05,870	You have anything to add today? I don’t it’s been pretty slow, actually. Not a lot of meetings happening right now. Um, I did miss the HTC one. Unfortunately. I went one week and it was not that week, and then I missed it the next week. That can happen. Um, so I don’t have anything to report there. Um, no. Okay.

00:06:26,070	Yeah. Um, one update from fin com. They asked to be informed. Uh, once we start to formalize our goal setting, if anything that came out of that could potentially turn into a warrant article, they want to be able to assign a member of their committee to start collecting data so they can, um, get

00:06:48,500	prepared and make recommendations or advertisements, etc.. Um, and then otherwise they’re continuing to help support, um, the concept of uh, also looking into our capital, uh, committee policy.

00:07:12,870	Um, so they, um, Scott Mattern, new member, Pinkham has sent a couple of notes about ideas, but that was one of the things I spoke to Joe about in terms of process, was that we would lead the drafting and authorship of it as the select board, collecting input from, um, the capital committee.

00:07:33,100	And then once we have a draft, sharing that with fin com for their, um, for their input and comments, um, just like one other thing too, but I think the other stuff’s mostly in works, I guess with Pinkham, they’re also going to be looking to formalize roles in terms of chair and vice chair and getting kind of continuing to organize as a new board since they had two new appointments, uh, about a month or so ago. Okay.

00:07:49,370	Yeah, that was all the major stuff. But they’re also kind of unpacking water. And I know that’s kind of on on people’s minds. As we heard from John during the goal setting and what that basically means is just, I think just figuring out what our options are.

00:08:08,100	And then probably, um, what that means short, medium, long term. So they’re still getting their ducks in a row there, but not much to report on it in detail. Okay. Well, it sounds like a lot of good things are in process. Yeah. So they’re starting. It’s nice. They’ve got a full board for a change.

00:08:23,830	It’s been they’ve been at three people I think for the past couple of years. So. Yeah. Well that’s good. Thank you Ben. Um, so I have just a couple of quick updates. First of all, the CBA did not have anything new on their agenda, so they deferred their, um, July meeting until August. And then the CoA has, um, there’s one opening on the CoA.

00:08:48,100	Went to their meeting um, last week and they have one opening, which I believe is going to be filled pretty quickly. Um, I continued, and one thing that I thought was really exciting are very young, energetic assistant director Hannah applied at the CoA.

00:09:12,700	She applied for a a grant for improvements, internal improvements in the CoA, and she was awarded a grant for $24,000. And with that, they’re going to redo the floor at the CoA. So there’s a lot of really good, good stuff happening over there. So congratulations, Hannah, on your good work. And, um, I think that’s all that I have. So let’s see. Next item. Is.

00:09:39,870	Approve the minutes of the July 6th Select Board meeting. Can I have a motion to approve those? A motion to approve the meeting of the minutes of the July 6th Selectboard meeting. Second. Okay. All those in favor? Aye. Okay, great. So that’s all set.

00:10:03,900	And now we are on to our agenda and we have a department head report with town Clerk Karen Kale. Good evening everyone. Thank you. Good to be here. Um, so routine visit at this time of the year. I’m here for three reasons. To obtain the Select Board approval of the list of poll workers for the period September 1st, 2026 through August 31st, 2027 to present.

00:10:25,470	The state primary ballot. The state primary warrant for Select Board signature and to provide general information about the key dates related to the upcoming September 1st state primary poll worker list. You had it in your packet.

00:10:45,970	Mass general law requires that this be done on an annual basis, and part of the process requires me. The clerks, to contact the chairs of the Republican and Democratic town committees to ask if they, for any names of any of their members that might be interested in serving as poll workers. So I did that in compliance with the law, and I did not get any responses from either of the committees.

00:11:05,830	So what I’m presenting to you is a list of 47 names. Thrilled that there are that many. Uh, these are all poll workers who have already worked with us or who have reached out to help. And I got to say, it’s wonderful.

00:11:20,770	People will come in and like, drop off a dog license or census form or something and ask what they can do. So that’s always great to see. So yes, we’ve got a good list of people, um, questions are often asked and the state law does require us to look at the distribution of the party enrollment of the workers as it compares to the town

00:11:41,030	registration. Um, and I also like to look at it as the as it compares the state registration. And it’s really quite remarkable. This year, our percentage of poll workers enrolled in a party or on enrolled um, mirrors the state numbers almost exactly.

00:11:59,370	It’s really it’s really kind of ironic. So we’ve got like 63.8% of our poll workers are enrolled. The state figure is 64.7. So off by very little in Hamilton. We’ve got a little bit more on enrolled 68.7. And then the for the registered Democrats 27.6% of the poll workers are registered Democrats. Um statewide 25.

00:12:24,300	8% are and locally 19.5% are. So we have a little higher percentage of, um, those enrolled in the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, 8.5% of our poll workers are registered Republicans. Um, statewide, that number is 8.4. I and I gone out many more decimal.

00:12:43,500	Uh, it might have been identical, I don’t know. And in Hamilton, we’re at 11% registered Republican. So I’m very happy with that outcome. Um, it’s not necessarily intentional, but it landed very, very nicely. We should feel good about that. All of the poll workers will be trained on August 18th. So that’s all. All in the process.

00:13:01,700	So this week after this, this official appointment, I will be sending out an email to each of them soliciting their, um, availability for the various events surrounding the upcoming election.

00:13:19,500	And, uh, it may sound like an easy step, but it’s like selecting a sports team because then you have to get the right skills and the for the right position at the right time of the day, because you have those who say, you know, there’s no way they’re going to show up at 645 in the morning.

00:13:32,930	Um, so you got to make sure you, you know, slate them, you know, schedule them into the date, the time of the day that they’re most alive. So, but that that, um, always seems to work out. So I’m looking forward to getting that done. So again, um, followed complying with all the laws.

00:13:50,400	And it does require a vote of the Select board to approve the list of poll workers that I presented in the packet. So I think one of you has to make a motion, please. Okay. Yep. So I need a motion to approve to approve the Hamilton election workers from September 1st, 2026 through August 31st, 2027. The list as presented by our Town Clerk, Karen Kale. So moved. Second.

00:14:16,930	All those in favor? Aye, aye. Terrific. Thank you very much. Next topic. Um, the state primary warrant. That, again, is something required by law. Uh, um, template comes to us from the state.

00:14:35,130	We then have to work through it and figure out what positions are going to be on the ballot locally. So that’s what you see in front of you. And um, it’s nothing to vote on. It’s just something that you do have to sign. So Wendy has, um, uh, printed it on bond paper. So we’ll get signatures on that.

00:14:56,470	And then by law, the constable does have to post it in at least four locations across town. So we do post it in five. I think that posting process and requirement kind of goes back to the days before we had newspapers and telephones and certainly any kind of electronic devices.

00:15:14,130	You know, it was the way to make sure people knew that there was an election coming up, just like we post the warrant for town meeting and town election. We do the same for the state elections, too. So thank you on that. And, uh, next is just general information about, excuse me, the upcoming primary. So, um, it all started really in April. We began receiving the nomination papers for district and statewide offices.

00:15:38,670	And then the initiative petitions that will result in the ballot questions submitted for signature verification. So, um, I’m proud to say I didn’t do any of that. I delegated it all successfully to an my assistant who certified over 2500 signatures across all those pieces of paper. You kind of go cross-eyed after a while.

00:16:00,370	So yeah, there were about a thousand signatures on nomination papers, and then 1584 across the 19 different questions that were submitted for signature verification. So we’re done with that. I shouldn’t say we’re done with that. In fact, we had someone come in today.

00:16:19,600	If someone is running for statewide office and they’re not going through the primary process because they’re other than the Democratic and Republican Party, they still have time to submit nomination papers that would then get them directly on the November ballot. So those papers are still coming in.

00:16:40,570	So today was a libertarian, gentlemen or gentleman, registered as a libertarian who was submitting his papers to run for state auditor. So, um, still going on in that front. So the primary, um, September 1st, the last day to register. I’ll just read all these dates out loud. It’s already on my web page. Um, and will be posted, um, with flyers of the Council on Aging and a couple other places around town.

00:17:00,370	Last day to register a Saturday, August 22nd, which is ten days before the election. And that coincides with the kickoff of in-person early voting. So, as a reminder, when it comes to a state election, there are three ways. Three primary ways for voters to vote. I should do a quiz.

00:17:18,070	Lee went to a training I did once. Um, voters can vote by mail. Um, there is one week of in-person early voting for the primary, the general election. There’s two weeks, but there’s one week of in-person early voting that will take place in the clerk’s office from August 22nd through August 28th.

00:17:37,300	And then, of course, Election day is is still an option to come and vote in person at the rec Center gym right behind us here. The vote by mail postcard. If you didn’t get yours, I got mine today. Uh, were mailed by the state to anyone who had not yet applied for vote by mail.

00:17:54,230	So everybody across the state is getting this, um, this if not last week, this week. So I’m just reminding folks that if that is the option they want to pursue, they must get it back to us. They must sign it. And they and any other enrolled voters must indicate which ballot they want, Democratic or Republican.

00:18:14,070	Um, we run very high percentage of applications that come in either incorrect or incomplete. And it’s a bit of work to track people down. By law, we are not required to track them down.

00:18:31,730	You can just kind of say, well, oops, you’re not going to get a mailed ballot. Figure it out as the days go on. But most clerks don’t feel pretty good about that. So we do our best to contact people and, um, the experience I’ve had is quite telling. You know, you call an enrolled voter and say you didn’t request a ballot.

00:18:47,070	And they’re like, well, I can’t, I’m not enrolled. And you have to explain to them then Massachusetts, yes, you can. And they argue with you. They really can’t. So we have a lot of very interesting, fun conversations with voter education on the phone, to the best of our ability to reach out and contact them.

00:19:05,030	But needless to say, as the day gets closer to the election, we don’t have any time to call people. So please, if anybody’s listening or watching, make sure that they do complete it and sign it. And any mail ballot must be received by close of the polls at 8 p.m. on Election Day.

00:19:23,900	So folks, get those back to us as soon as possible. And then another date that I tend to hold on to, um, is the last date to complete a recount. We’ve we’ve had a few recounts in my short six years at this job. So by Friday, September 11th, if there’s a recount will be done with that.

00:19:40,200	So then we just move on to the general election. So again, that’s the headlines. It’s on the website. Um, and um, any questions. Sometimes you get so deep into this you forget the obvious. Any questions. Um for the mail in ballot, people can also hand delivered. Does it have to be postmarked.

00:20:01,430	Oh great question. Nope. Has to. We have to postmarked. Going out. But coming back in. No, actually we prefer that it be dropped off either in the dropbox or on our counter. Um, I you know, I hate to say it, but, um, post office is not reliable.

00:20:17,670	I mean, even after our local election, quite some time after the local election, we got ballots still returned to us by mail. Even though the postmark on it was before election day.

00:20:35,730	Um, so I had to escalate that all the way up the, um, poll to the state elections division, who dealt directly with the post office, and they just, you know, they had a reason and an excuse, but it’s really, really not reliable. So, yeah, I’m glad you asked that, Rosie, if people can drop it off, all the better. And even if it’s it has to be received by the close of the polls. Correct. The first for the 8.

00:20:56,970	P.m. for the primary. Correct. Okay. I don’t want to say what other rules are for other elections, because then it gets confusing for this election. It has to be by 8 p.m. and the sooner the better. It’s it’s needless to say, chaotic.

00:21:11,670	At the very end of the day at an election. So the sooner we get them back, the better. Thank you. Any other. Questions? Nope. Very good. Thank you. Thank you Karen. Let’s see. Where are we here now? Let’s see.

00:21:36,500	And now we’re going to review the Harbor Light Homes resident lottery process with Director of Planning and Land use Mark Conners and Harbor Light Homes senior operations manager and a sidekick. Thank you. So the lottery process for the Asbury Common development is now open. And that’s exciting for the town because it does include a local preference.

00:22:08,800	So residents of Hamilton or people that work in Hamilton, or people that have kids in the Hamilton School District, there are a certain number of units that are set aside for folks that are residents or, somehow affiliated with Hamilton. Um, Harbor Light cannot really include that in their marketing materials.

00:22:28,800	And that flyer, you see that there’s not much in there about the, um, the local preference, but there’s nothing to stop the town from sort of getting the word out. And I’m glad to see the Hamilton Run news is here to help us hopefully get the word out. But we do hear a lot about the need for affordable housing.

00:22:43,200	And, um, this is an exciting opportunity because there’s often when you have these lotteries and I can tell you more, I’m sure, but you get a very large number of people apply for those units for these are 45 units that have like 1000 people apply. So your chances of being selected are relatively small.

00:22:58,330	Um, but my understanding from talking to Anna is that often the local preference units, they can’t fill all those units, they don’t get enough interest from the community. So those units go into the general lottery.

00:23:14,100	So, um, I’m going to turn over to Anna to sort of get into the weeds of, of the income qualifications a little bit more about the development. But I think from the town’s perspective, sort of this local preference is very interesting and something we’ll want to promote through the lottery process. Thanks, Mark. Thanks, Mark. Uh, thanks, everybody for having me. It’s nice to be here, sort of on my official day job business.

00:23:31,270	So, um, I did prepare some slides. I wonder if you want to go back a little. I’ll kind of go through them quickly. Uh, skipping over the parts that are more obvious. But I will say part of the goal of this is to share information with the public. It’s also very much to equip the select board.

00:23:46,730	And Mister Connors and current anyone in the town. If people come to you with questions, I want you to feel like you know how to answer them. Also, you can obviously refer people back to my office, but it’s important that you feel like you understand this process as well.

00:24:00,270	Hamilton has not had a formal lottery like this, and and it’s certainly not my time at Harbor Light, but I’m not sure. Even in the recent past, if there’s been a big affordable lottery in Hamilton, we did do one in Wenham a few years ago for Maplewood, so Wenham is somewhat familiar with this, but not here in

00:24:15,300	Hamilton. So that’s the goal of tonight’s process to explain exactly what’s going to happen and how we look at everything. Um, so thanks for having me. So this is the rendering of the building. There is, from the outside, architect’s rendering. If you’ve actually driven up Asbury Street, you know, it doesn’t quite look like that.

00:24:32,170	And if you go back one step for a second, but if you have driven up Asbury Street, you can see what you know. It almost looks like we’re building a football field up there.

00:24:43,330	So there’s a lot of dirt and there’s a lot of diggers and a lot of things moving around, but this is a rendering of what we expect final product to be. Yes, sir. This is the view from Asbury. This would be the view from the middle of the parking lot. So later in the presentation you’ll have an overview to kind of see where it will look from Asbury.

00:24:55,130	That’s that’s on purpose. So, um, this is one of many things that Harbor Light Homes does. Wendy, next slide. Um, so for those who don’t know, we are a non-profit community development corporation. We build and manage affordable housing for seniors, family, disabled and homeless populations in Essex County.

00:25:15,330	We do so because we advocate for just and equitable communities, because everyone deserves a home. So these are some examples of some smaller projects we’ve done over the years. Next slide. Um, so we currently have properties in 11 communities across the North Shore. Um, we do have a property here in Hamilton. We own the building that of course food pantry works out of.

00:25:31,170	There are four units above a core food pantry, and we are very proud to be the landlord for accord. So best tenants ever. Uh, but we have senior housing, senior supportive housing, family and individual housing, housing.

00:25:46,330	And we also help manage some first time homebuyer properties out in Gloucester. We have a lot of things in the pipeline. So the first one which we’re talking about tonight is here in Hamilton, 45 homes at Asbury Common. We have a fully permitted project. We’re waiting on funding for up at Depot Lane in Ipswich.

00:26:00,930	We have a permitted project in Salem in partnership with Life Bridge Shelter. We have a permitted project in Main Street in Gloucester for 29 senior homes. We have a permitted project in Lynn at Schoolhouse Square. Uh, another site in Washington Street that is not fully permitted. And then we have another street under construction.

00:26:18,530	That lottery opens actually October 8th up in Raleigh. If you’ve been to Market Basket and you’ve seen construction across from Market Basket, that’s going to be Windward Crossing, which is another Harbor Light property. So we actually have a lot of things going on. This is one of many. Next slide Wendy.

00:26:33,530	Um, so this is sort of a snapshot of that. What that impact looks like. Um, we currently have over 760 homes and 11 communities. Um, you kind of see a map there. One statistic here, I want to pull it out because this is a question I know comes up in town is about property taxes.

00:26:48,530	So if you see the number in the middle there, it says $6 million plus of property taxes paid. Um, Wendy probably knows this. We do pay our property taxes on the property at a court and all of our other sites. So even though Harbor Light is a nonprofit developer, we voluntarily make those property tax payments pay into the communities.

00:27:05,000	And in many cases, it’s actually the building itself is not owned by Harbor Lights. So in the case of Asbury Common, Asbury Common LLC, which is not a non-profit, um, entity because there are federal tax credits involved.

00:27:20,870	So you can’t have a tax free property if you get federal tax credits. Those things don’t go together. So I just want to point that out for people who might be watching. Or if you get that question, will this building generate tax impact? And the answer is yes. Asbury common will pay taxes to the town of Hamilton. So that’s an important thing to call out there.

00:27:34,170	Because it’s not I’m sorry to interrupt because it’s not owned by Harvard. Well, there’s. Two reasons. One of them is that Harbor Light voluntarily would. But the legal entity that is developing that building is called Asbury Common, LLC and Asbury Common LLC received federal and state tax credits.

00:27:53,170	So there’s an underlying equity lender, I forget which bank it is in this case, but there’s equity that comes in the form of tax credits to that for profit bank. Whether it’s Rockland Trust institution for savings, I forget who it is for Asbury.

00:28:08,430	So in order for them to be awarded tax credits, it has to be a taxable entity to offset.. And will they pay fair market value? They’ll pay whatever the assessor assesses it. So so Wendy, I think it’s to decide really. No, no. Yeah.

00:28:29,270	But that process, that process runs through a typical taxation process with the assessors of whatever property the development is in. So that’s deep in the weeds of how finance finances work. But it’s a really good question. So okay okay. Next slide. All right. This is what you’ve come here for. Introducing Asbury Coleman. So um we’ve this is still not the view from Asbury Street.

00:28:47,330	But we’re getting closer to sort of an angular side rendering. Asbury Coleman will be for 61 Asbury Street. There will be 45 units. Those are both one, two and three bedroom units. There will be some units that have full Ada accessibility. So roll in showers and lower countertops. Um, anything that would help support someone who has mobility impairment in that way.

00:29:07,730	There’s also a unit to support someone who has hearing impairment. Um, because of those unit sizes, we will accommodate up to 1 to 6% households. There are two income limits. We’ll go deep into this later at the 30% and 60% army level. We will happily accept any housing vouchers that someone might have.

00:29:25,800	So if someone has a current mobile voucher through section eight MVP, Vash, which is veterans voucher, um, anyone who holds a current voucher is happy to use it at Asbury Common, there is a local preference for applicants who currently live or work in the town of Hamilton, so you don’t have to work for the

00:29:41,730	town, you just have to work in the town. Or if you have children who attend the regional school district. So, um, the reason I draw that distinction has to be public school in the town of Hamilton. So if someone has their kids who go to Pingree or another private school in Hamilton, that wouldn’t count.

00:29:57,730	It has to be the public school system in the town that’s providing the funding. That’s for up to 31 units, which works out to be 68% of the total. That is the absolute maximum allowed by the state.

00:30:11,130	If we’ve gone up to 32, it would have been over 70%, and the state would have not allowed that. So we are at the absolute maximum allowed by the state. There will be five units that are reserved for families who have homeless preference under the federal definition of homelessness, which includes four subcategories.

00:30:28,200	And there are two units that are going to be fulfilled through mass ability under the community based housing 3% priority program. So those are referred through through mass ability. And those are preference. A is for someone who is currently exiting institution, and preference B is for someone who is at high risk of institutionalization. So we’re getting certifications from the State Department. Those are marketed separately.

00:30:49,130	There are two units like that at the property. Those are requirements given to us by the state under that 3% priority program, which came about a few years ago. The rent itself is pretty generous. It includes free on site parking and also all of your basic utilities.

00:31:06,230	So heat, air conditioning, electricity, hot water, it does not include cable. It does not include Wi-Fi. It does not include streaming services or anything else. But your basic needs. Uh, trash service obviously included in that as well. Um, I can’t wait to see the size of our recycling barrel. I just can’t wait for that. So that was a joke.

00:31:23,730	Um, but all of that is included in the rent, so it ends up being a pretty good deal for the folks who are there. Next slide. Wendy. Um, okay. We this is the shot you were thinking of.

00:31:38,270	So, um, this is a rendering sort of looking at the side and the trees on the right are the mature trees that are currently still there on Asbury Street. Those are will remain. Those are still there. Those will be there. The driveway will come in through that side of the building.

00:31:56,270	So this is the view looking south on Asbury is if you were standing in the compost pile, does that make sense? Okay. So the building itself has some pretty good amenities. There will be laundry on every floor, not laundry in every unit, but laundry on every floor, which is fairly typical for a unit. A building of the size, uh, heat and individual AC or individually controlled.

00:32:11,900	I don’t know anything I hate more than going to a hotel. And you know, they’ve got it cranked to 80 and you can’t change it. So every unit can control its own temperature. There’ll be a playground, half basketball court, walking paths, community gardens. Some units have private patios and entrances.

00:32:27,830	There’ll be a fully furnished exterior terrace, um, at our anchor point, one and two properties. And also at Maplewood down in Wenham, there’s a terrace space that’s furnished with the building, and residents gather for meetings or potlucks or barbecues or all kinds of things out there.

00:32:46,470	Uh, some of the units have great views, um, especially on the upper floors. There will be community rooms that are rentable for birthday parties or small gatherings. So if somebody wants to have a party and have their friends over, they can do that. There’ll be a play, an activity room, um, you might call it a rumpus room.

00:33:01,000	I think we’re calling it casually, but sort of a creative, flexible space for kids to play. We will have an on resident services coordinator and an onsite property manager. Those are staffed by Harbor Light people whose offices are there, that residents can come to to help with leasing questions or if they need support services, filling out an application for benefits or arranging

00:33:18,530	transportation or arranging for tutoring or whatever the residents might need. Um, we have staff, people who help provide that sort of, um, wraparound services for people who are there. We have on site maintenance staff, again, staffed by Harbor Light employees. It’s not contracted out.

00:33:36,330	And we have a 24 over seven on call after servers hours, which is still staffed by Harbor Light people. So if something happens in the middle of the night, the on call maintenance guy gets a call. We’re out there right away. The units themselves will have tile, bathrooms, big windows would look plank, plank floors, everything. Brand new. Um, be very beautiful.

00:33:55,330	And obviously, for those who don’t know, it is close to downtown Hamilton. The our MBTA stop and all the routes one, one, 97 and 128. So all right, next slide. Um, this slide I know is really important to this board, but also really important to the community.

00:34:15,130	There’s been a lot of effort in Hamilton in recent years to talk about climate resiliency, to talk about our carbon footprint, to talk about waste reduction. So with that in mind, when this was permitted at the CBA, there were a lot of climate resilient design features. Um, so I’ll kind of buzz through these quickly. The first is that there are native and drought drought tolerant plants.

00:34:31,700	The existing mature trees were maintained. That was hugely important, I know, to the town, but also to the neighbors in the neighborhood. Um, those line of trees down Asbury Street are beautiful and didn’t grow overnight. So those are two remain. There’s a minimization of the turf and lawn area.

00:34:48,830	Um, there is some grass here and there, but it’s pretty minimal compared to what you might see. The fire lane is partially constructed from grass pavers, so there’s less pavement underneath this. You could see that it maple woods.

00:35:04,530	If you were to drive around the fire department requires you to have 360 access of the building, but they’re under the grass and under the pavers, so it can bear the weight of the ladder truck. But you wouldn’t necessarily have to have it on asphalt, which is helpful for drainage. All the exterior fixtures are Leed and dark Sky compliant. I know that’s been really important.

00:35:19,970	Talking about lighting, especially in that part of town which is away from downtown. There’s not a lot of a lot of other big lighting out there, all heating and cooling is provided by a heat pump, uh, with variable refrigerant flow. And that will allow for the right size of equipment, both for the buildings within the units.

00:35:33,830	Um, it’s pretty high tech, to be honest. I don’t understand all the details of how the heat pumps are working within the units, but that’s part of what we’ve contracted out with our climate coordinator. Water sense, Plumbing fixtures, Energy Star appliances. So again, the features and fixtures are incredibly efficient.

00:35:50,700	The ventilation chambers are provided by a central recovery unit within an LP wheel, which I will confess, I had to look up what that meant. That’s a desiccant wheel.

00:36:04,600	So the humidity is controlled in addition to the temperature that allows for a more energy efficient return in terms of the heating and cooling systems, it will be our first passive house design, which is very cool. It will be so sealed. It would be so airtight, um, with low insulated triple glazed windows. So when it gets cold, it will be cold. When it gets warm, it will stay warm. That’s sort of the idea there.

00:36:19,670	That’s more energy efficient. There’ll be roof mounted solar and there will be two EV car charging stations and 14 more that are EV ready. Before I go on to the nuts and bolts of the lottery, does anybody have any questions about the building, the siting? I I’m sorry, does anybody else have.

00:36:38,700	Questions? Okay, I have a couple questions. Um, how many parking slots tickets. 68 parking spots. 68. I’d have to look up the exact number. I think that’s what. That’s the number that reminds me. Okay.

00:37:00,170	And then, um, just I just want to understand so that if people ask me, um, this development, it will be managed by Harbor Light Homes, but owned by a different entity. Is that correct? Um, yes and no. So the the entity, Asbury Common LLC has two components. There’s the primary equity equity member, the people that loan the money so the banks and the state and so on and so forth. That is the 99.99% member.

00:37:17,770	Then there’s what’s known as a managing member. Harbor light is the managing member. So we don’t we we did not put up all the money to build it. But we have control, if that makes sense. They have the financial responsibility. We have the management responsibility.

00:37:31,730	So we’re the managing member of Asbury Common LLC. And then we are the hired property manager for okay. And so and so point 1%. Is. It’s 0.01% of the managing member. Okay, okay. Thank you. That’s it for me. The um, sorry, on the solar system. Is that, um, financed through. There? Are I, I want to pull this up.

00:37:59,870	I think that there are solar tax credits, um, that were put in place to it. Yeah. So the project received federal solar tax credits. Um, and then the rest of it is sort of financed through, I think Harbor Light owns the panels, but I think the federal tax credits help provide the financing for that.

00:38:15,930	So that’s built into it. So the property will have solar tax credits. That was $111,000 plus or minus put into the project. Oops. Did Vicki Mazon help with that or. I don’t think she did. Actually not for this one. But I. She’s usually a wizard at finding, um, grants for those type of things.

00:38:34,230	So yeah. Yeah, the solar tax credits came through. This was all permitted and funded. Um, when federal policy was more generous on that front. So. I do have one more question. I have a question.

00:38:48,400	Um, how much of the energy use do you expect to offset with the solar? That’s a good question. I don’t know the answer to it. I don’t I’d have to look for the final specs on sort of the HVAC system coming in through and out. I don’t think it’s a 100%.

00:39:02,500	I don’t think it’s a fully sustainable, um, building, but I think the percentage is decent in terms of its overall return. But that’s something I can get from our real estate team. You know, what coverage, like what percentage of the roof is covered? Um, I don’t know what percentage, but I can look that up to. How these techies. I was. Just asking these. Questions. Is it and is it three stories? Um, I believe it is. Two stories.

00:39:20,730	Two. Okay. And I believe that was part of the permitting process. There was concerns about height up, you know, in terms of fitting in with the community. So what is. The height going to be? Do you. Remember. Um, the total overall height? I’d have to look up, but it’s two storeys.

00:39:35,670	Plus I think there’s some basement areas for mechanical and whatnot. But above ground I think it’s two storeys. Okay. Thank you. That might be in the CBA files. The overall comprehensive permit. I bet Mark or Wendy probably. Has. The rear. Will be three storeys, but as you see it from three stories.

00:39:50,370	Yeah, there’s like a garden level, like a terrace kind of level between. Yeah, I think it’s three levels of windows on the back. Oh, there you go. No, I can see this. Yeah, it slopes down a little bit. Okay. Okay. Mm. Any other questions here about this part of it.

00:40:07,430	Um, just one comment would be to be it looks like that roof up top is flat. Uh, that. Yeah. I’m not sure what the date of all the renderings are. That maybe an older bird’s eye view. I can check in on that part of it as well. Full confession.

00:40:26,130	I don’t do the, um, construction design permitting part of it. I’m all about post design operations for housing and lottery work. So those questions I’ll have to get more information from some of that stuff.

00:40:43,730	Know that the development next door has had challenges with seagulls, and so if you’re if you have flat ish roofs and solar, um, you’ll need some kind of a seagull mitigation something or other. Okay. I will pass that on. Yeah. For the maintenance folks. Um, and I just have one question. How far from Asbury Street will the actual entrance to the building be? I would have to look up the final setback. I’m not sure.

00:41:05,670	Do you know what the final setback. Is? Uh, I don’t know the exact what number, but, um, the the foundation is m, so. It’s starting to go vertical. You can start. It’s it’s not right up against the road. It is. It is set back a ways. But I don’t know exactly what the number is.

00:41:25,370	Yeah. And it does slope down a bit. So you won’t really, um, see the whole thing I think as you drive down Asbury Street, you may see the top of it. Yeah. The building hides the slope, I guess, in some ways, like the slope is tucked on the back side.

00:41:44,070	Are there any, um, street improvements around sidewalks to connect down? I know that we have a section. That we’re. Yeah. I’d have to look. Back at the permit again. That’s not my expertise. I’m not sure if you know. The town decides to do the sidewalk there. Regardless, with a certain amount of money.

00:42:01,000	I forget the exact amount, but a fairly substantial amount of money towards that sidewalk. Okay, I thought it was. Yeah, the price, at least when I heard maybe a year or so ago, maybe about $1 million for the for the sidewalk. Does that sound. What the cost to connect? I can look it up. It’s. Not that much, but it was. It was in the hundreds of thousands. Okay.

00:42:21,970	Well, that’s. Been the whole price tag to get all the way to Asbury. Yeah. Well, I think that’s the goal, though. Isn’t it? I’d have to look at the permit. I wasn’t part of the permitting process, so I don’t I don’t want to I don’t want to say one way or the other.

00:42:34,800	I know the answer exists, and I’m sure it’s on a computer in this room, but I don’t I don’t have it. We’re asking you questions. Sorry, that. No, no, that’s okay. That’s it’s it’s tough. It’s different departments. So I don’t do the permitting design part.

00:42:50,800	I know just enough to be dangerous to tell you what a you know, what the, the lighting system will be. But I don’t have all the spec specs in front of me. Um, we will be having a public information session on Tuesday this coming week. And we do have a member of our real estate development team who will be present for that session.

00:43:04,200	So I can definitely get you more information. I mean, the answers exist. We just don’t have them. Do you know when occupancy is planned? I do know the answer to that question because it’s germane to the lottery. So if the schedule holds, we’re hoping for like an April 2027 certificate.

00:43:19,830	It, um, it’s under construction. We have the winter. Things happen. Um, this development is also subject to to the Baba provisions, which, um, have created some delay here and there because you have to go through a process under those federal regulations to show that you can source something domestically or not source something domestically.

00:43:35,900	And then you have to get a waiver, and the waiver has to get approved. So it’s great, but it also adds costs and it also adds some time. So there are a few items that we’re working through Baba waivers on.

00:43:48,630	Um, this is one of the first developments in the state that’s actually had that provision be in effect. So I know that’s created some delay, but we’ve got a lot of time. Like Mark said, we just finished foundation. You can start to see framing going up. You can see the elevator shaft. So there’s a lot of ways to lose time still.

00:44:01,600	There’s also a lot of ways to gain time to come back. But if everything holds, we’d be looking at April 2027. Okay. Thank you. We’re approximately as the as the property line on this image. Do you. Know. Um, between the site and Cantor Brook or the site and the road and the what? And behind the building, like.

00:44:20,630	I think it’s where that stand of trees. Is that back stand of trees? So I’m the side then. Oh, that goes into brick hands. It’s a four acre parcel that’s sort of nestled in the rest of brick.

00:44:37,630	And so beyond that, you’re into the Brick Ends property, which goes on for I don’t even know how many acres, um, the there was a very helpful pile of dirt that was moved not long ago. Um, so if you look at the site, you can see construction fencing kind of around it. That’s somewhat close to the edge of the parcel. Um, to the northern side. That fence line was there.

00:44:58,070	And I know this because I had to look it up to say, who owns that huge pile of dirt? It looks so attractive to kids on bicycles. And the answer was brick and owns the pile of dirt, which made us very happy.

00:45:10,200	So there was a large pile of dirt that was moved there, but there is a fence in between that. So that’s sort of the northern line. And then coming to the east, um, that’s still part of the parcel, but I know that part of it is going to remain as designated forest land. There was a process we went through with the town.

00:45:24,100	There is an existing forestry restriction that will remain in place that we just re-upped. Um, it’s been in place for decades and we’re not going to change that. So and then obviously the mature trees on the Asbury side, that’s sort of the property line.

00:45:43,270	And then the mature trees and the back side opposite, uh, Cantor Brook is the other line, more or less roughly. And to your knowledge, um, Brick Gardens is going to continue their agricultural pursuits. Definitely not. Definitely not my expertise, but to my knowledge, I believe so. It looks like. it’s pretty. Pretty close to the property line. I think.

00:46:11,600	So just because they did have that large dirt pile there for quite some time, it’s right right next to it. So it’s it’s intended to be, you know, in, in the middle of their fields and their operation. So. So you might get some, some kids who want to learn farming, which would be. That would be great. Yeah. You never know for sure. Yeah. Okay.

00:46:29,170	All right. Are we ready to go on to the very exciting part that I know the most about? Okay, ready? I think we’re ready. Oh, I forgot about this part. Yes, we do have this. Part two. These are just for plans to show sample spaces and square footage. Again, these are architect’s renderings.

00:46:42,530	That’s actually a rendering of the common area. Uh, sort of the lobby area. This would be an example of what the one bedroom floor plan would be, approximately 100, 720ft. You got it. One day next to be the two bedroom.

00:46:58,900	Um, so you sort of have two bedrooms, living and dining kitchen, so on and so forth, and then three bedrooms. Um, so that’s totally up for the three bedrooms, two baths, living, dining. And that’s an artist’s rendering of the inside of what a three bedroom unit might sort of look like looking around.

00:47:12,730	So again, just all renderings, but you get a sense of what it might sort of look like and what the layouts would be, along with the square footage. So, okay, this is the part people pay big money is when we start talking about unit mix and income limits and eyes glaze over. So, um, this is reflected on the fire you have here.

00:47:27,970	But these are the income limits for each level of Ami. So again, there’s 30% army and 60% army. Um, so there are. Am I. Area median income. Yep. Area. Median area median income is a metric that HUD uses to determine affordable, um, both rents and also income limits. Geographically throughout the country. So we are a part of the. Geography.

00:47:51,870	We do. So we’re part of the Boston, Cambridge, Quincy metropolitan service area. Okay. The town of Hamilton is, um, across the state there are different areas. So, you know, Western mass has different limits. Um, South Shore has different limits.

00:48:09,070	Unfortunately for us, we’re grouped in with Boston and Cambridge, which is unfortunate because, you know, rents and incomes in Greater Boston are higher than they might be here on the North Shore. So the numbers you see are actually quite high.

00:48:27,800	Um, the 30% Ami limits for, you know, two people is 41,150 for four people is 51 for you kind of see how the math works for six people it’s almost $60,000. So those are the 30% Ami limits. If someone is in a 30% Ami unit, their rent will be subsidized by either a section eight or an MRP, which stands for Massachusetts Rental Voucher Program Subsidy.

00:48:46,530	Um, I’ll get into this a little later, but it means that effectively they’ll pay 30% of their income toward the rent, and then the voucher will pay the rest. So there are 16 units that are like that at the building. The remainder of them are at 60%. Ami um, those do not have a subsidy. They are straight tax credit units.

00:49:03,600	They’re still subject to the income limits, but they don’t have a subsidy. So that’s where you see a rental range and you see an income range. They also have minimum and maximum incomes for that. I’ll go over where the minimum comes from in a minute. But that’s where the ranges are, the number of units.

00:49:19,000	So there’ll be ten three bedrooms sorry ten one bedroom units, 252 bedroom units and ten three bedroom units. And that’s what we call a unit mix in the building. Any questions here? Yeah. Can we hang out on this for just a second? Yep. So this is the total I’m looking at the total number of units on for the whole site. Here is 45. Yeah.

00:49:50,970	I have some FAQs that talk a little bit more about income and assets. Maybe we’ll keep going. We could come back to come back. To this. Are they all then? I guess what I’m trying to understand is they’re they they all have some sort of an allowable income range.

00:50:05,030	Yes. They are one. The entire building is affordable. 100% of the units are affordable. There are no market rate units. Okay. Thank you. At this development. And that’s typical of what Harbor Light does. We typically do 30% and 60%. We are not a market rate developer. We’re not even typically doing 80% Ami 80%.

00:50:24,070	Ami is practically market rate. If you look at where the numbers are, it’s it’s very, very close. So we typically do this developmental mix where we have 30% units with a subsidy and then 60% units that do not have a subsidy but have much higher limits.

00:50:39,730	So again, if you look at, um, you know, the four person maximum income is 102,840, which is a decently high number in terms of overall income and still qualify for a unit here. So., so, you know, um, can you just tell me, do you know what the current Ami is for this? The, the the HUD limits for Boston.

00:51:00,900	So those are the what you see there. The 30 and 60 are represented by those numbers. So. Right. What’s the what’s the total though. What’s the. Oh like the four person Max I think it’s like 120,000 or something like that. Okay. Yeah 130.

00:51:18,470	I’d have to look up I don’t know, I’m not sure off the top of my head with the 100% number is. But and. And then I just had, uh, one question. Maybe you will get to this, but, um, so is there a maximum number? Well, it says okay, maximum number of people.

00:51:41,530	Um, but the one bedrooms, can there be kids in the one bedroom units? Not really. I don’t think so. I think it’d be unlikely. I do get into that a little, but I’ll. I’ll cut ahead a little bit. Oh, okay. But we’ll come back to that. Yeah. Because there there’s, there are two FAQs that talk about over occupancy and under occupancy. So yeah.

00:51:58,130	So it says like on the one bedrooms and the table anyway. But that’s two people right. But but that’s not necessarily kids. There’s a yeah. So so I’ll go ahead and answer. So the short answer is typically in a one bedroom unit. You have a single person.

00:52:11,930	You have a couple. Um, the most awkward part of my job is when someone has a couple. There’s actually a state requirement that says married couples or those in a similar relationship are required to share a bedroom unless there’s a medical reason for them not to.

00:52:26,430	So the reason we say that is that sometimes you’ll see a couple apply and they say, well, we want a two bedroom. And what they really want is a sewing room or a home office or a workout room or something else. So the state is all about heads on pillows. They want to have just the right number of bedrooms to correspond to heads on pillows.

00:52:40,730	So in a one bedroom environment, you could theoretically have a single parent and a child, but there’s only one bedroom, so they’d have to either share the bedroom or somebody could be sleeping in the living room. In theory, you could legally have that, because the square footage of the unit would allow for it.

00:52:58,930	But as a practical matter, very few people actually want to do that. You know, if I was a single parent and I had my 17 year old son with me, I don’t know that I would want to share a one bedroom apartment, but technically you could, but I think it would be unlikely.

00:53:13,300	And in my experience, I don’t recall that we’ve ever actually gotten an application like that. That would most likely be only for the 60% units. If it’s a subsidized unit and there’s a minor involved, then the state subsidy or federal subsidy rules get into effect. And typically those prohibit parents and children from sharing a bedroom.

00:53:32,000	They also have prohibitions about, um, sex assigned at birth, like boys and girls sharing a bedroom or if it’s the same age. So the sharing of bedroom is something that’s determined by the subsidizing agent. We harbor light, don’t tell people where they can sleep.

00:53:45,800	Like if you want to have a one bedroom and you want to share it with your kid, you could do that, but you could never have more than two people. And that’s because the state sanitary code requires you have at least 50ft per person per bedroom. And if you go back, you don’t have to go back.

00:54:02,470	But if you do, go back and refer to the bedroom sizes, um, the the bedroom sizes are less than 150ft, so you would never have more than two people per bedroom, which is where you get to six people would be the max for three bedroom. Four people is the max for a two bedroom.

00:54:17,530	So it’s a combination of the sanitary code governing and saying you cannot have, you know, five people in a two bedroom, you can’t have eight people in a three bedroom. But then the state also says, well, you can’t have extra bedrooms.

00:54:32,270	We’re not going to we’re not going to provide tax credits and all these grants and affordable housing, trust money and historic trust. You’re not going to get federal funding so that people can have an exercise room or sober room. That’s just it’s about heads on pillows. So where are the 60% ones on this table? Sorry. They’re the second line of each group. So the seven one bedrooms at. Yeah.

00:54:51,530	So the higher income is the 60% Ami line item for each group. Thanks. Good. I told you you liked this part. It’s very exciting. Our eyes did not glaze over. We really switched on for this part. It’s it’s interesting. It’s a lot. I mean, this takes a long time to digest it.

00:55:11,600	And, um, one of the things that I bear the designation for is I am our certified lottery agent, which involved passing a series of tests and requirements to actually have that designation. So we don’t expect certainly don’t expect, applicants to understand all the rules. I don’t expect all of you to understand the rules. Um, if you would like to understand them, you’re welcome to apply to be a compliance officer.

00:55:28,530	But there’s a lot there’s a lot of qualifications that go into it. So, um, all right, let’s talk about the process itself, because this is where I think people in the community probably have a lot of excitement. So as Mark said, there are two pools.

00:55:42,100	There is a local pool, and there is an open pool. So, um, right now what we’re doing is, is receiving applications. We are assigning a unique lottery number to every application. So, Rosie, if you apply, then apply. We apply. I know who all of you are. Let’s say your number is one, two and three.

00:55:57,200	When we do the actual lottery, we would not take out a ticket and say Rosemary Kennedy. Ben glues it. We would say a number. You know your number, I know your number. But I’m not the person who draws the tickets. And that’s done for privacy and also for sort of, um. Subjective objectivity.

00:56:14,300	Right. So I, I’m one of the few people that will have the decoder. So I’m not the person who draws the tickets. And also everyone has their number. So the lottery itself is actually a very stressful and exciting night because everyone in the room knows who they are, but nobody else.

00:56:27,670	So sometimes when people’s number gets called out, they they cheer, they celebrate, or they cry, or sometimes they swear. It’s just, you know, it just depends on what happens. So everyone gets a unique number. Um, and we’ll, we’ll assign those prior to the date of the draw.

00:56:41,970	The first thing that will happen is we draw everyone who’s in the local pool. So again, that local pool will consist of applicants who live or work in the town of Hamilton, or who have children who attend public school. In our public school system, they get one set of numbers, um, and that will be the local pool.

00:56:57,530	Then there’s an open pool that will include all of those same people as well as everybody else. We actually draw the entire stack twice. So local applicants almost have two chances, if that makes sense.

00:57:13,800	So let’s say I was in the local pool and I was drawn dead last in the local preference pool, and you think to yourself, oh gosh, I’m never going to get anything. But then you have the open pool. And let’s say that exact same person was drawn number one in the open pool. You’re number one for the non local preference units.

00:57:28,100	So the thing I would like to impart here locally is this is the best chance for folks who have that local preference to Hamilton is at the lottery. Local preference is only available at the lottery. Once the lottery comes and goes. It goes away. The state does not allow you to have permanent local preference, so this is the moment that people would want to apply.

00:57:46,070	If they want to get that local preference. That’s a really important small detail. So we draw the local, we draw the open pool. Then we have this whole range of numbers. The water is just sort of putting everyone in order. After that we have to assign the preference units first.

00:58:03,400	So we award the Ada the hearing impairment and the CBH and homeless units first, so that the people who need those units and have that document in preference get those units, they’ll come off first. Then after that, we would award the local preference units.

00:58:19,270	So again we’d look at the list of people who are the top, you know, 31 people drawn from the local pool. They would have first opportunity to get the 31 units that correspond to that. Those would get filled, and then the remaining open units would be filled with whatever sort of left over. So anyone who has, um, who is lower down in the preference units, a local person, that’s sort of this remainder at the end.

00:58:35,800	And those are the open pool units. That’s the order of allocation. When we go through it. Then the long term wait list. Um, once the building is fully filled the first time, all 45 units are fully occupied, that’s when the local preference goes away. And then the ongoing waitlist. Let’s say somebody applies the day after the lottery closes.

00:58:54,470	That’s great. They can be on the waitlist, but the waitlist will be from an open pool perspective. There’s no longer the local preference in effect. So the people that were on the list are automatically on the waitlist. Right.

00:59:11,100	So the reason yeah, the reason the state makes you do a lottery, at least up, is that is how a waitlist is created. There’s really no other fair way to make a waitlist. You have to do it by lottery. So we do this huge lottery. We get hundreds of people applying.

00:59:26,970	We award all the units, and then the remainder of that lottery becomes the first part of the waitlist. And then as more and more people apply, they get added to the waitlist. But behind the people who are in the lottery. But in the case of open versus local, when they revert to the waitlist, it will be their open pool number that governs their position.

00:59:43,070	So the lottery, the lottery and local is is really where it’s at in terms of having that local preference take effect. I have a question about finances. Um, okay. Um, the, the rents.

01:00:08,170	So if somebody were to enter this apartment using, say, the 60% and then they work really hard and got a job where they were above the income limits, what happens in that case? That’s a really good question. So there’s something um, and so there’s two parts of the two parts to my answer to the question.

01:00:23,070	If it was a building that had any market rate units, which this one does not, but if there was a market rate unit and if someone were to exceed 140% of the Army, it’s called the 140% rule under tax credit, which is the IRS 42 code. You can go up to 140% of the current annual Army and still be eligible for that tax credit unit.

01:00:42,000	If someone were to go over 140%, then they would be considered a market rate renter and you could charge the market rate for that. If the building had a market unit to sort of convert it to, so that you would say, okay, this person who is in unit 101, was it 60%. Now they are a market rate person. So now unit 101 will become market.

01:00:57,400	The next available unit that would come online. Let’s say it had been market would have to be rented as a tax credit unit. So within the building you can you can never change the mix but you can change. You don’t want a one was this way. Unit 102 is that way okay.

01:01:09,000	Now you in 103 is this way. Unit one and one is that way. You can move it, but you can never fundamentally change the mix. And someone could stay, but you could charge the market rent in our case, because we don’t have any market apartments available.

01:01:26,070	Someone could stay and their rent would be commiserate with that tax credit rent. They don’t get evicted, they don’t lose their unit, but it means that they can stay on. And then as soon as you rent that unit, they would still the next the next resident would have to meet the same rules so they don’t get evicted.

01:01:42,100	We’re not allowed to evict someone when they go over income because of the way the tax credit rules. Work, and. They would still just pay whatever. This they would pay, they would pay the tax credit, maximum rent and the maximum rents are also set by HUD. That number, you see, is a and this is the FAQ.

01:01:58,300	So the maximum allowable rents are set by HUD. And the maximum income rents are set by HUD every year. They renew on April 1st every year. So somebody could ostensibly do do really well, get lots of promotions at their job, and then just indefinitely be able to stay there. They could and put in practice again.

01:02:18,030	Um, that doesn’t tend to happen in theory it could, but they would be paying the 60% tax credit max at that point, which is still, you know, rent like it’s still there’d be no subsidy. They’d pay the rent. Um, we just wouldn’t be able to charge them anything more than that.

01:02:32,230	But you said the 60% is. Don’t get that. There are no subsidy. There’s no subsidy. Correct. Yeah. Okay. That’s a good question. If you’re looking it up online, it’s the combination of the next available unit rule and the 140% rule. If you’re looking at tax code things, that’s how those two things kind of go together.

01:02:51,470	So okay next slide Wendy. Um these are the key dates and deadlines. So on Wednesday morning over at the actually in this very room except I’ll be over there. We will do a version of this as well. The public is welcome to come. It will be recorded on zoom and in person.

01:03:09,170	The exact same movie will play again on August 4th at 6:00. So we’ve got two public information sessions coming up. Um, those will be recorded and the slides and links will be available on our website. All caps bold red I wish I can make it flash September 1st, 2026. That is the application deadline.

01:03:26,200	If I receive an application on September 2nd with the most heartbreaking story you’ve ever heard, that will be a waitlist application. We cannot enter people into the lottery if you miss that deadline. The lottery has been open since June 1st. We actually keep it open longer than is required by the state just to give people more time.

01:03:42,200	So generous on our part. But September 1st is a hard deadline. People can submit applications online. They can mail them, they can fax them. They could drop them off. I don’t really care how it comes to us, but we have to have a completed application with all the necessary documentation by September 1st.

01:03:59,800	Then on October 6th, once again in my favorite room here at the house, someone in public library will have the actual lottery drawing itself. And it is a lottery. We have a glass bucket, we have numbered tickets. We pull them out and read them very carefully.

01:04:14,730	Again, that’s all prescribed by state policy and state regulation. How you do it? Um, and then, Rosie, getting to your question, then there will be a process starting sort of in November to March with the idea that we would have like August 1st move ins. It’s called the Lisa period. And the reason we have those deadlines, I also put those there.

01:04:29,530	So there’s a concept within all of this. The documents will stale after a certain point. So let’s say someone’s enter the lottery, their income qualified for the lottery. That’s great. They’re in the lottery. If it’s a non subsidized unit, the next round of paperwork will go stale. After 120 days.

01:04:45,670	So let’s say someone’s looking at an April 1st move in and the last set of bank statements we have was from, say, August. Well, those documents are too old to be used. They’ve stapled. So we can’t really start the process too far in advance because we have to have all documents must be dated within 120 days.

01:05:00,330	If it’s a 60% unit, if it’s a subsidized unit, it’s only 60 days. So if someone’s going into a subsidized unit with an April 1st move in, we’re not able to really use their documents until after February 1st at the very earliest. So there is a little bit of a delay.

01:05:18,030	Um, that’s just sort of how the process works. It takes a long time to get through the paperwork and qualify for folks. Sometimes people apply and then they drop out, sometimes they’ve moved, sometimes they’ve changed their mind. Um, a lot of reasons that people do that.

01:05:31,670	So there’s a little bit of turnover in that process. Um, but that’s where the deadlines are coming from. And then again, if everything goes well, we hope April next year we’ll have our first new residents. So how. Would if the lease up period, if the application is stale, what. what would happen? We we just request a new we say well we need updated pay stubs.

01:05:53,570	We need updated. Yeah. We just okay. So financials or. We. just you. Sort of have to be forever current right. You have to within that period of time. So we would just request new documents. So nobody knew could apply to somebody who was in the in in the process.

01:06:08,500	In the process or in the lottery. And then if you get to a point where someone was awarded a unit in the lottery and you’ve asked them for documents 2 or 3 times and, oh, yeah, I’ll get it for you, there is a point where we will move on.

01:06:22,430	If someone is non-responsive, that’s sometimes happens to, you know, we’ll put out requests for information and the tax credit paperwork, especially the first year files, is as cumbersome as you would imagine. IRS tax credit files to be. Um, and they are, um, inflexible in the way that the IRS is.

01:06:41,230	So it’s not a question of why I just couldn’t get it to you. Is it? Okay? Can you take my word for it? Can my mom write a note? It’s not how it works. Everything is third party verified, independently verified. Triplicate tracked, and so on and so forth. So it’s.

01:06:58,070	How long does it typically take someone to put together their application? It depends on how organized they are and how complicated their family structure is. Just about as complex. Then, just to give me a sense as like a mortgage application or something. I don’t think it’s quite that bad, but it depends on how many sources of income they have.

01:07:13,130	Um, how many members of the household, if there are other, you know, public, like if they have public benefits of some other kind or someone has to get like a Social Security statement, right? They need a current Social Security statement. Some people are more adept at doing that than others.

01:07:28,770	Um, some of the preference documentation going into the lottery, you know, homeless preference is a great example. Like there is a federal process that is substantiated to document homeless preference. I can’t just have Corinne say I sometimes sleep on her couch. Could she please get homeless? Preference? That’s not how it works.

01:07:42,600	It has to be an independent letter signed by a social service agency, a doctor, a social worker clinician, someone like that to say this person is experiencing chronic homelessness. So everything that goes into the file is driven by state or federal statute. Everything has a process and a reason we have to document it.

01:07:59,330	So how long does it take to process someone’s application to determine whether it’s complete? Um. I would say like on average, probably. So if we have everything completed in the file, I would say probably within a day or two. And then everything we do, we run through a third party compliance agency.

01:08:21,330	We have a third party source that checks it to make sure the file is compliant. So the turnaround that can be a few days as well. So usually we have part of the benefit of the lottery too is you get a snapshot of someone of where they’re going to be.

01:08:36,070	So unless something radically changes between the lottery to the lease up, you kind of know where they’re going to land and what they’re going to be, and you’re sort of redoing something you’ve already done before. If someone’s application is submitted, like the day before the deadline, you know, on the 31st of August, but then it’s found to be an incomplete application.

01:08:52,900	So we we do our best. There’s a disclaimer on the front of the application itself. Actually, if you have any. Thanks. You’ve been spelunking my folder. There is. So there’s this big warning sign. I guess people at home can’t see this. The red flashing caution signs.

01:09:12,330	I’ve tried to make it as obvious as possible reads as follows. Important. This application is not complete if not filled out, completely signed and submitted with one copy. Each of the applicable documents as described below. Applicants must verify all income assets as part of the lottery application process. Per LLC regulations. Additional documents may be required depending on the applicant’s circumstances.

01:09:30,330	Failure to provide a complete application with supporting documents can delay the approval process and your ability to participate in the lottery. This is the answer to your question. Please be advised that lottery applications submitted within one week of the lottery deadline cannot be guaranteed for processing and review.

01:09:44,830	We encourage you to submit your application early to ensure acceptance, completion and eligibility status. So that sounds about right. Then on the can you can you do me a favor? Can you go down to Anna’s last slide? Oh yeah. There’s more. These are yeah. We can we can come back to these.

01:10:01,870	These are some of those FAQs about income and assets that people want to know about. Like just that one. Yeah. So that way on the record it and this is all being recorded. So people can of course write it down while we ask our questions. Um, but it sounds like get in a week early.

01:10:16,870	Um, so that way they have time to kind of check and follow up, if not maybe even more. I would say apply as soon as possible. Um, we offer this disclaimer. Um, so a lot of other lottery agents, if it comes in and it’s incomplete, it goes right out the door, it is declined and complete. They don’t even bother to follow up.

01:10:32,970	One of the things that Harbor Light does that I’m proud of, but is hugely labor intensive, is we do follow up with people. So if you submit something and I can see on your bank statement that you have some sort of income source, but you haven’t given me the original document for it, we’ll send you

01:10:45,570	a letter, we’ll call you and say, hey, Ben, we got this. It looks like you’re receiving, you know, SSI for this, that or the other. Could you please send us your statement? We ask for whatever we’re missing. That is very unusual within the industry. Most of the time, if it’s not right, it’s not complete. It’s. It’s rejected.

01:11:02,370	Same thing with local preference. Homeless preference, CBH, Ada preference. If someone indicates that they have it. But we don’t have the documentation that supports it, we would reach out to them and say, you know, local preference is a great example.

01:11:19,430	If I see that somebody has a Hamilton address, but they didn’t provide the local preference documentation, which again, is very specific lease agreement or rent. Mercedes current utility bill, voter registration, employment records or local school registration. Um, I’ll follow up with them and say, look, you have a Hamilton address, but you haven’t indicated or proven to us where that’s coming from.

01:11:35,430	Could you give us a copy of the list? We’ll ask people so we can document that. Um, again, the idea being we don’t want to give that local preference to someone who doesn’t really deserve it. Right. Like that’s important. So that’s true of all the different preferences.

01:11:48,800	Um, so we want to give people time to do that. But if someone comes in hot 5 p.m. the day of the deadline and it’s not ready, despite all best efforts of myself and my team, we may not be able to get back to you to say hey. And again, you know, the application itself.

01:12:04,830	It has a document checklist. It has it explains everything that you should provide. So. Yeah. If they reached out to you early enough, do you have members of the team who would be able to help? Absolutely. People with that. Yes we do.

01:12:23,630	We can’t fill it out for them, but we can point out what’s missing. And that’s as part of our process to the state. We have letters that indicate exactly what we’re missing. And and that’s part of what my team is doing all the time right now.

01:12:41,770	Because I would think that some people in the, um, high risk categories or high needs categories might be the people who would need that the most. 100% would tend to give up pretty easily, and maybe not understand the letter. But absolutely. Okay, so you are available okay. Absolutely. Yeah, we do that. Um, if we want to go back, I’ll buzz through them real quick. I know we’ve been talking for a while now.

01:12:56,730	Um, but these are some questions that come up and I’m glad these are going to be linked. So, um, the first question kind of gets to those income deadlines. Why are there multiple rents listed for the same unit type? Um, the short answer is that goes back to that 30%. 60% Ami.

01:13:12,900	So the example I’ve given here is if you’re a household whose income is $21,000 a year and you’re applying for a project based voucher subsidized apartment whose rent is 30% of the gross income, you would pay approximately $7,000 a year towards your rent. For the units that are subsidized by vouchers, rents are variable based on income.

01:13:30,370	Someone making 21,000 a year would not pay the same as someone making ten, but they would pay the same percentage. They’re always going to pay roughly 30% of their income, regardless of what that is. Um, this gets to the question of rents.

01:13:46,230	If your income places you above the 30% limit and the 60% Ami rent will be fixed in a range between the contract rent and the maximum allowable rent. This is again a difference between Harbor Light and a lot of other developers. Most developers will just charge the maximum allowable because it’s allowed. They want to make as much money as they can.

01:14:02,300	We set our contract rent to be 85% of the maximum allowable, and that’s what gives us that range that you see on the flyer. So we’re willing to give sort of a discount from what we could theoretically charge, because if we didn’t, that distance between the 30% group and the 60% group is just too big.

01:14:16,370	We don’t have enough people who would fit into it. And there’s sometimes a reason to give that discount. So our contract rent is 85% of the max. And then that maximum allowable number is set by HUD every year. Okay. Next question. Um, why is there a minimum income. This is one that comes up a lot.

01:14:35,670	So we set the minimum income so that people don’t pay more than 40% of their monthly income toward rent. Um, I think most people in this room know that if you pay more than 40% of your income in rent, uh, it’s sort of considered cost burden. I think legally it’s actually 30%.

01:14:50,370	But we found in present economy that that number itself is also too narrow. So in a lot of cases in the market right now, people are paying 50, 60, 70% of their income towards rent. So for us we say, okay, we’ll let you pay 40% of your income towards rent. That’s what the minimum income number comes from.

01:15:06,230	So that way we don’t want to create a situation where families are cost burdened because they’re spending so much of their income on rent. So that’s what that minimum number comes from. Um, there’s no age restriction that’s really important. Um, a lot of especially one bedroom units have an age restriction. Um, all across the state, across the country.

01:15:23,430	So these are non age restricted one bedroom units. That’s really huge for young people in town or people who maybe are not age 62. They’re not eligible for senior housing. You’re 58.5. There is no age restriction, which is really exciting. Um, this is a question about minor children have to share a bedroom.

01:15:42,100	And the answer is individual occupancy requirements are not determined by Harbor Light. And generally speaking, you can choose to share or not share bedrooms, but the subsidized units may have restrictions from the subsidy program rules. And that that comes to us again from the state and federal government. It’s not our business.

01:15:58,130	If all your kids want to share, that’s that’s up to them. Next slide. Uh, what if someone has no income? This one comes up from time to time. And not always. Even someone who has DTA or Social Security, most people have some kind of income.

01:16:17,900	But if someone has absolutely no income, they can submit a notarized statement of zero income to attest to that. This is an important one has to do with assets. So this changed, uh, there was a piece of legislation that was filed under the Obama administration called the Hama, which stands for the Housing Opportunity Through Modernization Act.

01:16:36,070	Um, there’s lots of industry jokes about hot air and how much we love it. Um, but prior to that, there was no asset limit for subsidized units at the federal level. And the federal government recognized that was somewhat problematic because you had people who had these huge bank accounts, savings accounts in subsidized units.

01:16:54,900	So hot air established federal asset limits for those subsidized units. The current limit for section eight units is 105,574. It’s much lower for the Massachusetts voucher units. It’s only 25,000. So within that number, retirement accounts are exempt. This is really important for seniors. So if you have a retirement account and it has more than $105,000, that’s fine. It’s almost expected that you might have some retirement.

01:17:19,300	Retirement accounts are exempt. Similarly, 529 plans educational plans are also exempt. Um, but if you, for example, used to own a house and you sold it for $2 million and now you’re sitting on an investment account or layered CDs or a savings account from the proceeds of that house, you would not be eligible for a

01:17:38,730	subsidized unit. You could be eligible for a 60% unit. And that’s fine. We see that we have residents at Maplewood that are in that situation, but if you have sold the house and you’re sitting on a huge pile of cash, be advised you will not be eligible for subsidized unit, but there’s no asset

01:17:54,430	limit for the tax credit units. Um, and again, this is just sort of a market reflection. There are people who used to own houses. They’ve sold them. They have assets like that’s fine. There’s something to be an opportunity there. But there are some limitations.

01:18:09,570	And then there’s a very complicated way that we sort of look at how assets enter into income. So if it’s an account that has, um, determinable assets, right, an interest rate, you can see it like your amount of income every year comes from this interest rate or, um, let’s say it’s an RMD, right. Like, you know that every year you’re taking out a fixed amount.

01:18:26,700	We’re going to count that as income. Um, for things that don’t have determinable income, the one that people always use I find fascinating is like a baseball card collection, which most people don’t have those anymore.

01:18:42,030	But if it’s an undetermined amount, we use something called the federal passbook rate. So we take 0.4%, which is the 2026 passport rate against the value of the asset whose income cannot be determined. And then we’ll add that imputed income to their assets, but only if the total is more than 53,674. They adjust that number every year.

01:19:00,930	So it’s just a lot of math. Um, that we have to look at for people. Are their retirement accounts, uh, for one or other retirement accounts? Because I know that there’s IRAs. Or any kind of, any kind of bona fide retirement account is exempt from the asset limit.

01:19:18,830	So it could be an IRA, it could be a 401 K for 403 B, any flavor of designated retirement account could be a Roth. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, people have to live on this money for their entire lives. Absolutely. So I, I think something like that is a pretty fair assessment to have that in my opinion. What do I know.

01:19:35,570	But no, no, but your opinion is I mean that that’s why the their every so often federal policy gets it right. Right. And this is a good example. They recognize like especially seniors have assets. Right. Exactly. Yeah okay. So uh next slide I think we’re almost done.

01:19:52,770	Uh this is one of my favorites. I like to go away for the winter. Can I lease out my apartment or rent it to somebody else? The answer is no. You may not sublease your apartment or operate it as an Airbnb. We’ve actually had people try to do this. Uh, the affordable unit must be your principal full time residence.

01:20:07,430	You can take occasional trips or vacations, but the duration has to conform to your lease. This is pretty basic. If you have the means to go to Florida for the winter and you have a second house in Florida, you really should not be receiving subsidized housing or even low

01:20:20,900	income tax credit like this needs to be your one and only can take trips, can go away, but you can’t have a second house. Um. Camper. I was gonna ask him about a. Camper. Uh, no. There will be no camper parking on premises. Your second is in the camper. I mean.

01:20:38,870	Uh, well, I suppose you could go to the camper, but I’m not sure where you’d park it in the camper. You consider it an asset, so again, it hasn’t that hasn’t come up. Our pets allowed. The answer is no. Pets are not allowed. But service and emotional support animals are always allowed.

01:20:55,370	That’s state and federal law there with medical documentation. Um, can I host overnight guests for short term visitors? Yes, you can have guests. You can have some come visit you for a short period of time, but they can’t live with you. So we typically set that to be about two weeks for the year.

01:21:11,500	You can have some come visit you, especially from out of state. But if we find that they’ve been there for months and you’ve asked for a second key for them, that’s going to create a problem for us because you have an unoccupied resident on the lease.

01:21:24,500	So, um, but you can have someone come stay with you for a short period of time. And now I think I might finally be. Oh, no, there’s two more. Um, okay, what if my household size is larger than the state? Um, rate the range slated for the unit. This gets back to that state sanitary code.

01:21:43,130	So maximum number of people will be six people in a three bedroom, four people and a two two people in a one. It has to do with the square footage of the bedroom. It is inflexible. That is what it is. So you can never have families being under housed, which is too few bedrooms.

01:21:57,900	And then similarly, if your household size is smaller, can I have an extra bedroom, an office or a playroom? The answer is also no. The state wants heads on pillows. The point of affordable housing, particularly a property that has a homeless preference, and all these things.

01:22:11,600	We want people’s heads on pillows that are currently not in a place that’s habitable for them to live, or affordable for them to live, so you cannot have an extra bedroom. You can’t use it as an office. There’s a minimum requirement of one person per bedroom at the state level. And are there apartment complexes that would be able to accommodate people who have a larger number of.

01:22:31,530	Um, not in the Harbor Light portfolio? We have one unit in Beverly that’s a four bedroom, but that’s you don’t see that very often in the open market.

01:22:44,600	You might like you might have a rental house or, you know, a four bedroom apartment is pretty rare, but a four bedroom house might be out there, but it’s usually not affordable. So they might be. But I just think about blended families or something where they’re sort of kids from both families. But okay. Yeah, it’s. Yeah. We we have exactly one unit in Beverly. It’s a four bedroom unit, but that’s the only one we have in our portfolio.

01:23:03,600	So if a couple’s living in a one bedroom apartment, have a kid. Well, they. If it’s a three person household, they’d have to go into a two bedroom. But is there a process for them to is there any preference for them? He means if like they start as. A, they start a couple.

01:23:21,200	And then they have a child. Oh yeah. That happens all the time actually. Um, so what we would do is if at the next vacancy, we would move them into a two bedroom or try to transfer them. There’s a, there’s a preference for someone who’s an internal transfer. So that happens.

01:23:35,100	People have kids. Kids move away. People have spouses or parents who live with them. Those people pass away. So, you know, household size changes over time. And kind of like Rosie’s question about, you know, income going up to a point.

01:23:52,700	There’s a certain point where you have to have human flexibility, where families change people’s circumstances change, and you can’t just throw somebody out and be like, well, sorry, you have too many people, you know, you have two. That’s not how housing works. That’s how Harbor Light works.

01:24:07,170	So what we would do is put them on a priority list for an internal transfer to a unit that matches their household size. Um, that usually gets resolved relatively quickly across the portfolio. I mean, it works out, you know, there’s no it just depends. But that happens sometimes people end up taking in like a foster kid or like a cousin or a niece. You know, it just like like families happen, right? So. Right.

01:24:25,430	So and if maybe there wasn’t going to be an apartment available in Asbury Commons, maybe. Are you saying that maybe they would go, they could go to live somewhere else that had.

01:24:42,370	The potential potentially at a different, a different building or within the same building? You know, something opened up or, you know, we would try to work with them to try to find something, but we wouldn’t we wouldn’t just turn somebody out and say, oh, sorry. You know, you can’t. Okay. What if you get selected and you meet the income limits and you get like a big raise at work, so you’re living in unit and then.

01:24:55,670	So then you would be subject to that 140% rule. Um, so again you’d requalify, we would raise your rent to the maximum allowable to us, but you wouldn’t be forced out. But again, in our experience, if someone is doing that well, they typically end up moving of their own accord.

01:25:13,970	Um, but it sometimes happens. There is a, a resident anchor point to that that happened to who came in at 60% and ended up getting some huge new job and bought a house, you know, so it’s. And the thing. Is. We want to keep affordable housing, really for people who who really need affordable housing.

01:25:32,500	We all need affordable housing. But the reality of life right now is such that it’s not readily available. So I was just wondering the same thing. Yeah. So so.

01:25:48,170	Legally, like I said, we wouldn’t force them out, but it tends to be the people in that situation as I end up moving on their own. Um, again, if it was a property developer and had a market unit, they would shift them to market and then they would charge them whatever they wanted to charge at that point. But we don’t have that restriction.

01:26:02,570	So but to my knowledge, that’s only we’ve only had one resident who’s exceeded that, and they ended up moving and buying a house. And to some degree, that’s the point of the tax credit program when it was first created, was to encourage people to have some upward mobility.

01:26:18,070	That’s why the limit is 140% of the Ami, because you want to encourage people to take on that extra shift to get the better job. If if you were going to risk your housing every moment you had a better job, then that would desensitize people.

01:26:33,400	So again, the tax credit program was written with good policy behind it, with the idea that you can go up to 140% and it won’t affect the rent that you’re paying, because in the same turn, you know, you could have a good month or good season and then something else could happen. You know, that’s going to be a fluctuation. So it does swing both ways. It’s been extremely educational.

01:26:46,300	It’s a lot you know, it’s like I didn’t need all to ask all those questions. But we had your. well so. Yeah. So hopefully the FAQs and the presentation is helpful. It is a lot I will not I will not deny it’s very convoluted. Um, there some of the questions that came up.

01:27:02,830	I looked into uh, so it’s like a U-shaped building. So the two wings, that closest park to Asbury, about 150. Okay. 200ft for the main part of the building. And then they’re required to pay if the town decides to fill the sidewalks are required to pay. It’s $172,000, a change.

01:27:23,830	And that’s a fair share of contribution to the town has to commit to building sidewalks and budget for that’s optimal. Doesn’t have to do that. But if you do, they have to pay that. We don’t want to do that. Okay. Boy, I. was somebody misrepresented that cost to me. Somebody said it was going to cost $1 million to build.

01:27:40,430	A. Well there platinum sidewalk. So, you know, there platinum sidewalks. There are. What’s the limitation on that in terms of like, timing? You know, you know what? I’m sorry. Could you go up to the microphone. Sure. Sorry. Mark. So for fair share. Contribution typically six years. So it. Has to be.

01:28:02,600	Built within six years. Um, if we budget for it, I think it’ll be part of the budget discussions at the end of the year. So if we budget for it, we’ll collect that money from Harbor Light. If we don’t ultimately build it, we have to return the money to properly.

01:28:15,930	And that’s stipulated to go towards that section of sidewalk between the new development and the connection at Asbury, like by the gas station there. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thanks. Yep. Yeah. I have one other thing to say. Today I was talking to Rich, the building inspector.

01:28:34,770	He was saying that you guys had a top quality builder, that he was really happy to work with and felt like he was doing a really good job out there. So that’s good to know. Yeah. The building, the GC is Windover, if anyone wants to know. So Wendover is the overall GC at.

01:28:50,770	The site down in the area? Yeah Wendover spin around. There’s a lot of local connections too. And their their finished product is really nice. So that’s good. It’s quite a project and I thank you. So much. It’s a lot. So yeah thanks for the invitation. Everything to us. It’s very helpful. Um, so please refer back to the slides.

01:29:08,500	Reach out with questions. Um, it is incredibly technical. And even though I don’t know all the building specs, the income, asset qualification, that is what the lottery agent does. That’s what my primary role is. So if anyone has questions about that process, come to the info session, reach out to our office. Please spread the word that applications are open.

01:29:27,030	Um, as of this morning, we had received 130 applications, which frankly was lower than I expected. And we’ve received very few from the town of Hamilton. So I’m not sure what’s holding people back, but perhaps they should know that, you know, for all the times we’ve heard comments about we need affordable housing, why can’t we build affordable

01:29:45,630	housing for people in Hamilton? This is your chance. This is literally right here. And, um, you know, I was the one who wrote the local preference justification and submitted to the state, and the state approved it at the highest possible level. So, um, the opportunity is right here looking for people. So hopefully people apply.

01:30:04,800	And will that be pure local preference or does that need to take into consideration? Um, different demographics. So it depends on what the final composition of the local pool is. There’s a stipulation. So if the state awards you local preference, they look at the composition of that local pool.

01:30:25,100	If the local pool does not meet the same minority population as the overall metropolitan service area, there’s a requirement of the called minority balancing. So every year with the Centennial census. So we’re working off the 2020 census, the magic number that the local pool would have to be is 33.4%. Self-identified minorities.

01:30:44,800	It’s probably unlikely that that will be true in Hamilton, but one never knows. Um, so if you look at that local pool, let’s say the day before the lottery, and I have for argument’s sake, I have 100 people in that local preference pool, but only ten of them are self-identified minorities.

01:30:59,700	Then we would add people from the open pool who are self-identified minorities to the local pool. Until you get to 33.4% of the pool, that process is called minority balancing. And that’s sort of the caveat that comes with local preference. The state wants you to do that essentially to avoid second generation redlining.

01:31:18,330	So in a community that’s 95% white, and you say we’re only taking people who are already here. Well, that pool of people is already 95% white. You’re never going to change that. So if your local pool does not naturally hit 33.4%, you supplement it with minority balancing from the open pool until you hit that process.

01:31:37,700	Um, we have had to do that in Rockport. We had to do that in Wenham. Um, so there are there are other communities that I would anticipate and I would anticipate Hamilton will be the same. But until we actually get the real number, I won’t know how many people we have to balance to. And that’s all.

01:31:52,070	Categories of minority, right? It’s yeah. So there’s a form cheat sheet here. Of course the clerk is prepared. I do have a pile of them over there. So there’s a page at the application that conforms to um, I think it’s the HUD 559 form. I forget what the HUD form is. Uh. It’s optional.

01:32:09,600	No one’s required to do it, but there is a page of the application that allows for people to indicate household, minority and ethnic status. So just these are all federal categories. So the ethnic categories are Hispanic, Latino, not Hispanic or Latino.

01:32:26,830	And then American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Black or African American, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, white and then other and other is actually considered minority other not white. Um, so those are the categories and it would apply to the households if any one member of the household has one of the self-identified minority qualifications, then they would be considered a minority for purposes of the lottery. Okay.

01:32:45,470	That’s part of the application against voluntary. So like that. In is it a lottery to balance it as well? It is. It’s the pre lottery minority balancing lottery. Yeah. It’s just it’s just good to to to understand that okay. Yeah. So and again that comes from the state regulation.

01:33:03,700	So I can send Mark the link. You can send it around the current. Um or anyone can Google it if you just Google LLC and then affirmative. Fair housing marketing plan AF amp. It will come up with a document.

01:33:20,170	It was last updated in 2013 which feels really old to me, but that is the current version that we are required to follow. So the description there of what how local preference works and also about minority balancing is all specified by the state. Well, again, you’ve certainly given us lots of really helpful information with which to educate the general public and your, um, dissertation has. Really, really.

01:33:43,300	Been well, it’s only because I know that I’ve asked a whole lot of questions so that I can understand it. I wish. It was a dissertation, but. No, it’s it’s. It’s it’s a compliment because you’re very thorough. Thank you. So much. This is what I actually do during the day.

01:33:57,630	So this is it’s really nice to be here and two more chances. And again um, if anyone asks questions, just reach out. Yeah. Really. Thank you. All right. Thanks. Um. Wendy, I’m wondering if we can put those events on our town. Are we allowed to run? Not allowed to put those events on our town calendar. But.

01:34:16,870	That’s good. Um. Those are private events. Yeah. All right. But we can suck it up. And I think that’s important. I mean. I can think of some seniors. There’s no reason why senior couldn’t apply to get a snazzy new apartment. Yeah. Why not? Right. Yeah. Of course. All right. So anybody have anything else? We should.

01:34:44,570	Move on then? Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you again. And thank you, Mark, for coming. Yeah. In the town. Could. H.w news. Pretty excited. Everybody in town gets her. Great. Okay. Wendy. You’re on. Um, do I need to read the next. Where are we? Here. Um, review town funds with assistant town manager. Finance director Wendy Markowitz. Okay.

01:35:25,130	So. Uh, we discussed a little bit during the budget process about funds and the amount of money sitting in specific funds. I mean, we we’ve discussed stabilization, but, um, maybe it wasn’t brought to everybody’s attention.

01:35:56,170	The amount of, uh, funds in different specific buckets, particularly there are three, uh, there’s a balance sheet that we have to report to the department of, um, the revenue, the Massachusetts Department of Revenue every year in the in that balance sheet, there are three specific buckets. So you have your general fund.

01:36:11,670	And then outside of the general fund, which is the regular operating budget, you have your special revenue funds, you have trust funds. And then you have your capital project funds. So I will tell you that the capital project funds are they come from bonds or from state aid, like chapter 90 and then trust funds is money given to the town. And it is specific to what the the funds are.

01:36:37,170	Um, to be used for. And then special project funds are earmarked again for special projects. But they can be grants, they can be gifts. Um, all kinds of stuff like that. So we’ll just go through that.

01:37:02,370	So there are some just so, you know, end of year wasn’t a lot of time to do some research on trust funds in particular. So we do have to go back and research. Uh, a lot of these trust funds are very old, and we may even have to go to legal to find out, um, what they were given to the town for.

01:37:23,870	From my understanding, it is not easy to undo what’s been done. You have to actually go in front of a judge. So whatever’s been given to the town for a particular purpose has to be has to stay with that purpose. Unless you literally go and get it done through a court system, right? It can’t.

01:37:43,900	From what I understand, it cannot take place at a town special town meeting or a town meeting in particular. But we will find out for sure. The ones that have someone’s name on it are. Trust us. Is that. Yeah. Okay. So we’ll start with the trust fund.

01:38:01,130	So those are so the cemetery perpetual care fund, um, that’s driven by the law and that is, um, that money is for to take care of the cemetery in particular, so that you can’t spend it. You can only spend it the you can only spend the money to take care of the cemetery.

01:38:21,930	And, um, there’s more to it than that, but that’s literally what you can spend it on. But but it has to be. You have to specify the amount of money you want to transfer from that to the general fund to spend on maintenance. And we do that every year.

01:38:41,300	And there’s another fund as well, um, which is in the, I want to say, special revenue funds. It’s also called the where am I looking? We’ll get to it. Forgive me. We’ll get to it.

01:39:00,370	So then the other funds that are right below that, the 8030 all the way down to the, uh, 8250, those are the specific trust funds that, uh, my team and I have not had a chance to research. There are some paper files that I can go through at some point. Uh, hope to find something. Otherwise, I’ll have to reach out to legal and see what we can find. So. So those usually have. We’re gifted as with a specific. piece of mind. Okay.

01:39:20,100	Yes. And just real quick question about the cemetery perpetual fund. Where did that money come from? I honestly don’t know. I have to research that. Okay. Sorry. Just curious. Yep.

01:39:36,670	So then the Clark fund, you can see, um, so 1982, Clark family donated Bridge Street property to the town of Hamilton. But then in 1990, they repurchased it from the town of Hamilton. And the income was to be used for the conservation purposes and for the protection of open space. So that is specific to what the Clark family wanted to be, it to be used for.

01:39:57,430	So it cannot it cannot be used unless it is specifically used for that purpose. So it’s really for land. So the Conservation Commission and um, the every time there’s a turnover and conservation, we revisit this subject. We, we, we go back and then I have to educate and it’s fine.

01:40:18,270	So then everybody gets re-educated on the conservation and the Clark Fund. And it’s great because we just keep bringing it up. So then there’s this conversation there. So the same thing with the Conservation Commission Fund, it’s for conservation purposes.

01:40:36,370	Um, and it’s very specific because because there are two different but one is specific for land and open space and one is for conservation purposes, like to save, you know, to, to like procure conservation. And if you understand what I mean, um, and then the stabilization fund, that’s the general stabilization fund. And currently it does meet the policy, the minimum balance of 5%.

01:40:55,200	But it’s pretty much right there at the guideline. There is not much wiggle room, um, on that. Just want to make sure that I know John McGrath on. I want to make sure he’s not asking any questions. Uh, the OPB trust fund, $1.8 million. So currently, um, the town of Hamilton needs $4.

01:41:15,830	4 million to be fully funded. Uh, the moving. It’s a moving target, as you may realize. It’s, uh, projected to be fully funded 20 at 20, 47. And, of course, that’s a that’s a projection. Every two years, there’s an actuarial study done.

01:41:38,830	Um, and every year, the town of Hamilton, um, puts $125,000 into this trust, uh, along with the pay as you go, um, benefits for the open sea, um, health insurance benefits for other post employment benefits for um employees that have retired. And then you have your affordable housing trust. That’s the 851,000. So again, earmarked for that. And then recreation field stabilization.

01:42:06,630	So this has been a hot topic, $708,000 that started with, I believe 600,000. Now it’s gained quite a bit in interest. That is one stabilization and topic that Joe has mentioned that we could discuss in the next budget process and potentially bring to annual town meeting and maybe ask the

01:42:28,100	residents to consider re voting, how to use that. Those funds. And it would take two thirds vote to. What are they currently used for? Well, it’s according to what I understand, Hamilton cannot use those funds unless Wenham agrees. Also to use the funds. Right. It has to be right.

01:42:52,500	Right? It has to be. Is that John talking? Yes, yes, John. Right. Correct. Yeah. That’s correct. And it was originally, uh, $500,000 when. When the the Peyton Ridge property was, uh, sold. So it’s, it’s the treasurer’s done a nice job keeping it, uh, invested and that’s grown.

01:43:26,730	I’d like to see the, uh, the funds used, potentially to pay down some of the cost of the fields project, which we’re currently paying for. But again, it’s we’ll we’ll discuss it and see if there’s a path forward here, but. Right, right. We have just we have talked about. All right.

01:43:47,500	But that’s exactly what we can’t do unless Wenham agrees to contribute their commensurate amount. Right. Well, that’s why Joe is talking about potentially going back to town meeting and saying, can we change the language of how we can use these. Funds. Right, to because we don’t have a need for it anymore? And I mean, not in that form, right? Because. Well. Well, we can’t use it.

01:44:13,670	It appears that it appears that we will not be able to use it in the way it’s been voted. Exactly. So it seems like that’s a lot of money that could do a lot of good for. Right. Um, capital expenses for the town. So that’s an interesting question. Yeah.

01:44:29,670	Because otherwise we have to use it only on recreation fields that are controlled already. There. Hamilton. But we’d also need William’s vote. We would be simultaneously. We have to vote. Are there any that says recreation fields? Are there any recreation fields that are solely controlled by Hamilton, or are they all part of. Well.

01:44:55,270	I think that the way I understand that that money was dedicated to, um, turf fields. correct. Turf field development. And so, um, that would have to be changed as well. But then we have the, then we have the, um, recreation department, right.

01:45:23,100	That has that contributes money toward Patent Park and the Little League that contributes money. So just thinking about another, um, beneficial use for, for this money. So that’s why we wanted to revisit the language and see what our legal options are. Okay. Yeah. It needs it needs a legal review. And then, uh, sort of a financial review as well. Rosie.

01:45:42,300	So I think Rosie put a finger right on it. It’s like it’s a lot of money. Let’s go back to the original source. Let’s satisfy everyone’s questions. Both, you know, business wise and legal wise, and then come back to the board and see if it’s worthy to get in front of the town meeting.

01:45:59,870	So yeah, I think and then with, with each one of these, it’s sort of understanding, you know, what what their uses are, what the allowed uses are for each one of these items. Right.

01:46:20,830	Um, and then you know what the if there are deferred maintenance, if there’s like deferred maintenance or things like that example like for the Rec or around patent um park if there’s recreation fields there that have not that need an upgrade. Right.

01:46:41,330	I think that understanding the, you know, what’s our return on this fund, uh, versus what’s I don’t know what our coupon rate is on the, on the field, uh, the stuff that we have with the school district, presumably, but. So maybe 4%. But I’m not sure right now. Yeah. Okay.

01:47:08,970	So capital stabilization fund, uh, Hamilton had taken money out to pay for the new fire track and still continuing, we have after the three years of returning money paid back the amount of money, which I believe was $650,000. But because it’s a moving target of trying to meet the depreciation, depreciation continues. The value of depreciation continues to increase every year. So still not at the depreciation rate. So um FY 25 the depreciation rate was almost 2 million. So we’re still behind and meeting the policy of the Capital Stabilization Fund.

01:47:33,330	Is that a 5% also. No it’s the depreciation rate at the end of the, uh fiscal year. So the FY 25 was 1.979 million. Okay. So that’s what that is okay. So then you can see these other two trusts. Do they have it in the name park and Playground flag fund. So that kind of speaks to what.

01:47:56,300	But you still have to I still have to look to the language to make sure we understand, you know, what specifically we can use them for in the park and playground area. So we’ll be doing some research on those. Now, the other funds.

01:48:12,530	So special revenue funds, we have a much better handle on. So Hamilton Foundation, um, they they take care of their own funds and donations. Uh reserve bond premium. So that’s those are that’s money used to apply to future bond costs. So that’s continuous anytime. Um Hamilton bonds, water management grant.

01:48:34,230	So that’s money that came in FY 25 that Tim has plans to use in design improvements. So that’s an ongoing uh, project design Green Communities grant. So you can see that it’s a -$300,000. So that is for the solar and geothermal projects at Town Hall.

01:49:00,970	The tax exempt lease, um, program that we have, we signed an agreement. So we’ve already started making payments and it’s in the negative. So we’re working with CLA, our auditors. But the tax side of them to get federal tax credits. And we were waiting for the solar and geothermal to be placed in service. It’s a very much a timing issue.

01:49:22,370	So we may not meet the timing. We may have to get revenue anticipation notes. We’re working on. That. That sounds okay. Arpa. Um, those funds have to be exhausted by the end of 26. We’re working on that. Uh, basically, the remaining funds are being used for the patent park. Um, um, the master plan.

01:49:46,400	Thank you. So that we’re well into, uh, the the plan. So it should be it should all work out. Public health excellence. That’s the regional public health program. Uh, we’ve needed to give money back, and then we get money in based on the budget. So that’s it’s an ongoing budget.

01:50:07,670	Give back, take in firefighter safety grant. So when you see these negative these grants. So we ask the state for reimbursement. Then they reimburse and then we spend. And so it’s it’s a reimbursable grant. So that’s why you see the negatives here. Uh the local cultural council. They run their own program.

01:50:27,900	And they, they give grants to locals and then they get money from the state CoA revolving fund. That’s $20,000 limit. And it’s programs for seniors. They have they use funds for different programs. The Elder affairs grants similar.

01:50:51,870	But we use that those funds for the CoA director or assistant director to supplement the payroll to offset the operating budget, which is been very helpful. The bulletproof vest, which is a federal grant also from the police department, those funds will come in and offset that negative insurance reimbursement when there’s any kind of claims, those funds come in and they go out, similar to grants, but it’s an insurance town owned land.

01:51:13,830	That’s the sale of the cell tower that just went through from blue Sky. So there are stipulations on how we can use those funds. So that had to go into a special revenue fund that we just we just created police and fire accidentals.

01:51:31,430	So that’s workers comp funds for the police and fire set aside in case there was any kind of incapacitated injuries while on duty. That’s, um, driven by Massachusetts state law. Uh, transportation infrastructure. So we get these these very small dollar amounts here and there, and it’s amounted so far to a $6,300, and it has to be used for State Street projects.

01:51:52,230	But as you can see, there’s not enough money to do anything with just yet. Fire safety grants similar for fire safety program and education. Some transportation, senior money, their transportation for seniors, which I know the co director is working to decide how to use that. Those funds, the medication project drug take back program basically for opioids. Um community Preservation act.

01:52:15,770	So we have $1 million there. But pretty much at this point, they’ve exhausted their opportunities to, um, give any money because it’s pretty much all spoken for. Um, and then I know that I know that they’ll be doing a presentation for the select board soon. So they’ll be talking.

01:52:35,170	About how is that one done and gone, or is it being replenished? No, it’s no, that’s so this is this is the amount of money that comes out of the, um, your real estate taxes. Okay. So this. Yes. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Um, pedestrian safety grant. That’s the federal funds, um, from the police mass VIP. So that’s Vicki Maloney. That’s $5,000 grant.

01:52:59,000	I’m not specifically sure on what that’s being used for. So I would have to ask Vicki about that one, but I’m sure she has something in the pipeline. So the Edson clinic’s revolving fund, that’s a $200,000 limit that’s gone up since, uh, when Covid took took place. That’s for emergency dispensing.

01:53:17,800	Um, and vaccination clinics. And they are using it as we speak because they just made some purchases and got some vaccinations. Police revolving fund. That’s for police details. Fire revolving. That’s for fire details. That’s ongoing. Money comes in. Money goes out. And then you have your recreation and parks.

01:53:41,170	So that’s the whole rec program that Sean, um, runs the $825,000 limit. And, um, that since my time here has gone up, I think about $300,000 in three years. So he’s been he’s done a tremendous job with that program. Um, wetland protection grant. So that’s for that’s a revolving fund And that’s specific for wetland protection. Election reimbursements.

01:54:08,670	I’ve talked to Karen, and that’s specifically for election equipment. Um, so that’s kind of finicky. It it is specific, uh, for particular elections, in particular equipment, police gift fund, similar to the fire gift. It is used mostly for, um, items that you would not use your operating fund for.

01:54:32,130	So, like, you know, Officer Luca making, like, you know, like, almost like baseball cards, for example, for the kids and and stuff like that. So, um, you know, promoting, promoting stuff for the public safety for the residents, septic loan program. Uh, we know about that. That’s helping some of the some people who are having difficulties there. Elder gift account and consulting fees. So those are ongoing. Yes.

01:54:56,000	I’m sorry. On the septic loan program. Like, typically each year, how many loans do we give out? It’s a it’s a brand new program. I want to say we have one off top of my head. I believe we have one. Yeah. Okay. Right. Yes. Um, the consulting fees, those are ongoing planning consulting projects. So anytime, anytime.

01:55:17,370	There’s a planning project. Um, the consultants give Hamilton money. We use it and withdraw against it. And so then it just it’s sort of revolving, if you will, facilities, grounds, grants and water state grants. Again replenish able recycling dividends. Mass DEP grant used for compost and trash barrel purchasing solid waste.

01:55:42,370	Cell phone grant for seniors. Um hmm. That’s another one that Melinda is aware of. She’s working on it. The opioid settlement that continues to increase is grant money for the health department to use opioid related programs and needs.

01:56:09,070	Then we just received recently in FY 26, two settlement checks for PFAS settlement proceeds for the water, public safety systems pursuant to the three M and Dew Point legal settlements to be used for PFAS treatment. So this can only be used for, um, treatment of any PFAS contaminated water. So it’s still to be seen how it’s going to be used. There, there could be more money coming. So I don’t think we’ll be using it anytime soon.

01:56:32,000	Could could our could that be used for our pretreatment? Uh. As long as it’s contaminated water? Yes. Okay. Yeah, I think it does come in as contaminated water, because I know there are always maintenance costs on our in our pretreatment plant. That’s interesting. And then the pavilion gift fund.

01:56:53,370	So that goes with the, um, I believe with the patent Homestead Pavilion project that’s going on over there. Yeah. Oh, so the here’s the other fund, the sale of lots and graves. That’s the one I was talking about.

01:57:08,370	So this is the money that comes in from selling the lots and graves, and then it’s used by the interest from it is used for the cemetery. Perpetual maintenance and then the patent homestead as it’s very quickly. Um, diminishing to $17,000 as we continue to maintain the building. 8000. So this, um, lots and graves. Yeah.

01:57:38,830	So we’ve got 267,000 rounding up on that sale of lots and graves for cemetery perpetual maintenance. Yes. And then. But you can only use the interest for that. You dump it into the perpetual maintenance fund. The interest from it or or you used just use it straight out of it because. You have to transfer. That’s right.

01:57:54,270	Right. No, it says like there’s this other one at the top. Are they related or do they do you dump one into the other or. The the trust fund? No, this this is the one that you can use for the maintenance, the trust fund I have to do more research on.

01:58:07,930	I’m sorry. Okay. Okay. We don’t know what that one. I’m not. It was. I remember that. Well, we can brainstorm once we find out what we’re allowed to use it for. I guess. I do have to do. Stuff around memorials, and especially for veterans of, uh, wars and things and getting those updated.

01:58:24,900	Remember, about a year or so ago, someone made a request, so. Um, and so as you can see, yes, we have $3 million in special revenue funds, but they’re earmarked for very specific, um, categories, grants, you know, projects. So. And do those have pretty good like tracking of of what is happening with those as far as. Oh yes. Okay.

01:58:53,470	Yeah. Yes. Yes. It looks. Like right down to. that $0.04. Yeah, absolutely. Well, especially the grants because you have to prove to the state the amount what you’ve spent in order to get reimbursed for them. Okay. Mhm.

01:59:10,100	Well I mean I guess partially just to understand if there was money going out on some of those things, it might help. Yes. So what those funds were shown to be useful or are used for in the past. So yes. The um so the Capital Stabilization fund was a little is a little low because and because, because sorry. Can you say. It.. Because three years ago. Yeah.

01:59:31,930	Hamilton decided to take money to buy a new fire truck. Okay. So there wasn’t enough money. Box, sort. Of 650. I want to say. Wow. I mean, I can call it up right now if. You want. That shouldn’t be that much. Just a surprising. Yeah. So I. Set out a. Fire. Truck for.

01:59:51,130	Yes, there was a need for a fire truck. And the. Yes. Right here, I’m going to show you. And then the idea was to replenish the amount taken in the next three years. So this past ATM, we did that we, we, um, put the money back. So which 1 a.m. I on? Yes.

02:00:20,000	645 right here. So FY 24, fire truck 645,000. And we have since replenished. So 235235 and then this last ATM, 200,000. So the depreciation you see it’s a moving target. So 1.61.71.9. So and it’ll go up again for FY 26 because you know as we increase our assets and infrastructure the depreciation increases as well.

02:00:54,100	Oh yes. Oh yes. So it’s all based on the depreciation the asset level and the depreciation level. And so you’re you’re projecting how much is the fire truck going to cost me in the future when this one needs to be replaced essentially. And so.

02:01:10,200	No that was the amount of money that they needed to buy the fire truck. But the policy states that the Capital Stabilization Fund will strive to meet that. See here it says the target for the town wide capital stabilization should minimally equate to the total annual asset depreciation. That’s 1.979. Yeah, we’ve got. 1.550. And we’re replenishing it with these 200,000.

02:01:37,870	Exactly. So it’ll go up a little bit because I haven’t made the transfer yet because we just jumped over the year. I just gave you June 30th numbers. So it’ll go up again 200,000. So essentially let’s look at that. So it will be oh I just was up there. Hold on. So it’ll. More.

02:01:56,000	Yeah it’ll be like 1.7. It’ll be it’ll be 1,000,750. okay okay. Yeah. Because I gave you June 30th numbers and we just did atm. So that’ll be FY 27 numbers. So another 200,000 still a moving target. It’s still going to be a series. Yeah we’re getting there. Yeah but we are getting there.

02:02:17,970	All right. Yeah. And then the other capital project funds are um those are bonds or like I said, chapter 90. So you can see chapter 90 again, money given by the state for roads, sidewalks, repairs and reimbursable.

02:02:42,130	So like today I literally got four emails from Tim saying these, these are the ones that we need to send to the state because it’s year end and you have a certain amount of time to send them to the state for reimbursement. So that deficit will turn into a positive. Okay. And then those other five are bonds. So that’s the bond money.

02:03:01,370	Those are the remaining balances of the money that we received in the bonds. So it’s a continuous um it’s a continuous drawdown on the bond funds. Yeah. I think this is great. As long as we can kind of keep unpacking. Like what all the uses are for these and get this list.

02:03:18,830	I mean, we’re going to do the best we can and try to research what we have on hand. Some of those, like I said, a lot of them old. Is they’re like an equivalent of like kind of like a title and deed search, you know, for this. Yeah, I don’t know. I’m gonna I’m gonna find out. Oh yeah, I’m gonna find out how we can find out. All right. Yeah.

02:03:33,200	Yeah. It’s, um. There’s some. Serious money there, too. Yeah. Um. Well, I would say as far as, um, funds that we are not certain about, it’s approximately 50,044. And. Yeah. 44 and another 30. So maybe 70, 70,000. Yeah. But it would be really. Good to be able to, um, decide what we can do with that.

02:04:05,300	Um, athletic fields. Right. Money. That’s a lot of money. Just sitting there that could help the town. So we’ll see what what happens with that. But Joe did mention putting that on the forefront this budget season. Yeah. To to. Figure out what we can do. So that’s very interesting.

02:04:26,630	And anything else with that Wendy, does anybody else have any questions about that. No. I hope you feel better knowing that there are specific, you know, goals for each fund like it’s earmarked. It’s not just sitting. Right, right. But if the if the goal is no longer there, then it’d behooves us to do something.

02:04:47,400	Of really constructive to be able to to redirect it into something very different or. Well, I think that being aware of the purpose and what’s available also gives us an opportunity when opportunities arise. Yes. Yeah. Because someone might be small and specific and if it’s like, well, this is for park benches or who knows, right. We’ll find out exactly.

02:05:08,270	Oh, there was one that was for park benches I came across. Well there was well. Somebody had an idea about that. Just a. Few meetings ago. Like around movement table. Yeah. Your neighbor. Yeah. Both your neighbors. Yeah. They were small town. So. Okay.

02:05:31,230	So then, um, so the next item is to review the select board policy updates with select board member Kennedy. So I did send out, um, policy update for oh my God, I my brain is not working anymore. The cemetery uh, cemetery plots right. Yeah. And I’m, I’m it’s pretty straightforward.

02:06:03,430	We had talked about this before that sometimes when somebody comes in and is sort of pulling at the heartstrings to, to want a plot for their family. And then just recently we, um, we enabled a whole family who were out of town to use either 4 or 6 plots.

02:06:33,170	And we keep we kept talking about under what circumstances would we, um, sell a plot to somebody who is not in, who was not living in Hamilton? And so one of the things that I thought was important is that certainly, um, current residents can buy a plot for current or future use.

02:06:57,870	But then what do you do with people who have since moved out of town? And I thought as a draft to to think about, there should be some sort of a finite timeline. I mean, if somebody lived in town and then came back 20 years later, which has happened, um, wanting a plot, I mean, how fair is that to residents? Because I’m meant to research exactly how much land we have available.

02:07:22,970	How many, um, burial plots are there and how much can we expand? And I know that, um, I maybe it was ten years ago. Maybe it was 15 years ago. It’s all a blur.

02:07:45,270	But we did expand this cemetery with to some land behind it, but I’m not aware that we have, um, a significant amount of expansion ability. And so it’s important that it’s a small cemetery. Um, that the goal and in fact, if if one looks at the cemetery documents, the cemetery department and specifically states for Hamilton residents only, so so I thought maybe making some sort of a reasonable compromise that if somebody moves out of town, well, certainly if

02:08:17,230	somebody goes into assisted living or a nursing home and, um, their, um, legal address changes when the time comes, you know, it’s probably not something they thought about when they when they would enter the nursing home or their assisted living, then they would certainly, my opinion, be eligible. And then there was can. I just.

02:08:39,130	Thank you so much. And then the second. Right. If a resident moves in with an out of out of town or out of state relative because they weren’t able to care for themselves, they my feeling is they would they should remain indefinitely eligible to purpose to purchase a single cemetery plot, either

02:08:59,000	directly or via legal representative. I mean, because maybe they moved out and didn’t think about those things. And then this is the tricky one.

02:09:19,370	If a resident voluntarily moves out of town not more than five years prior, and that person had a substantial tie to the town, they are eligible to purchase a single cemetery plot. If a husband and wife both had substantial ties to the town, together, they may purchase two cemetery plots and then substantial ties may include attending the Hamilton Williams School system for the majority of K-12 education, or residing in town for ten or more years.

02:09:44,300	So and then always leaving the exceptions, um, due to extenuating circumstances, and that all exceptions must be approved by the Select board. So I thought that was a compromise that you can’t come back 20 years later, but maybe five years or whatever. I just that seemed like a reasonable number to me. And, um, whatever the board thinks. So this was just a first pass.

02:10:13,630	I think it’s, you know, I try to think of all the contingencies and what what would be important. So I don’t know what people think about that. Yeah. I thought it was great. Um, reading through it, um, I think it’s a good idea to have a policy in place for deciding decisions. Right. Um. Go ahead.

02:10:35,100	Yeah. I’m sorry. I was just going to say. I mean, I’d like to spend a little bit more time with it and think about some of the extra contingencies, but I it didn’t seem seemed good.

02:10:52,200	The, um, only exception I can think of and usually, like sometimes, like families will buy, buy in advance, like, kind of like for their family or for their children or for situations like that. Um, I’m trying to picture like, what happens if, um, you know, if they already if, if their loved ones are already, uh, buried there in that cemetery. But normally it’s kind of a family plot. I imagine.

02:11:11,800	Yeah, I think there are for there single plots. Then there are family plots of four. Yeah. So I’m picturing though, it’s like if they run out of space in the family plot. Um, but then they’ve moved away. But they didn’t do that planning while they were a resident.

02:11:30,570	But in the back of their mind, they’re thinking, well, of course that’s where I’m going to be read. You know, ten years later, they come back and, um, discover, oh, shoot. Like, you know, I haven’t been back in town. Um, but if they if they’re living here, then I guess that. Then you can buy it. Sort of.

02:11:47,530	Proactively. Right, right. And because I think we can’t just continue to change forever, you can’t say ten years or 20 years later, you can just come back because how many people come and go to Hamilton and how big of a town are we? So we have to set some parameters somewhere, I think, because every time an

02:12:10,070	out of town person comes with their prior ties to Hamilton, well, how long ago was that? Right? You have to sort of. And it seems it seems. Geez.

02:12:34,570	You know, can’t we just give plots to people who lived here 30 years ago? Well, you know, being a nurse, you know, the nurses are the queens of compassion. You just you just can’t do that because we have residents who probably current residents who should be able to buy the cemetery plots for us. And I understand that.

02:12:58,730	And you run into those issues that, you know, a family may have a, um, a family plot at Cemetery Acts and there isn’t any room. So you have to start another family plot at a different cemetery. I think we’ve all heard of that. Like on Memorial Day. You know, your families will tell you, we go to this cemetery to see this person and that cemetery to visit this. So that’s just the reality, I think. But yeah. Um.

02:13:20,470	So I think it’s a good start. I think, uh, to your point as well, about seeing what our remaining capacity like, and then also sort of like based on our current, you know, allotment or designations, if that trend continued, like, when would we run out of space as well? What kind of is it

02:13:41,900	getting? A little bit of a time scale on this of. Yeah. Also, is there any other future planning that needs to be done in terms of expansions? Or if there were, there was a need to have an additional cemetery in town or something like that in

02:13:54,770	a piece of land comes up for sale. It’s like being able to to plan and and think ahead a little bit. I think that would be probably useful to go with this.

02:14:11,400	So we know if this is a 5 or 10 year problem or if it’s a 20 or 30 year problem, or like I have no concept of how full a cemetery is. I haven’t gone to the. Back.. Right. I understand that, um, and for the time being, we need to set some parameters. Right now. I think this is sort of a right now policy.

02:14:30,030	Right? All our policies are sort of for the time being, we can’t project what would be the case in ten years or 20 years. I mean, I don’t know what land would be available. I know that, like I said, I know that they did expand the land, um, acreage of the cemetery.

02:14:49,170	I just don’t know how much of that has been has been utilized. But a policy is meant for sort of current decision making, right? And sort of in the foreseeable future. Because because you can’t always amend a policy. Right. So I don’t see a major issues with this one. I’m just kind of I was. Like. Yeah, I know.

02:15:09,770	It’s good. I can always count on you for good questions. And I appreciate that. So, so and so if I finish with that one, the the other policy that you and I had had talked about, um, was the what was the other policy. Signed. Policy. The same policy. Yeah.

02:15:36,630	So that one that I’ve lots of questions about that. I mean, that one is. It’s doozy. I think the thing that came up at the goal setting meeting maybe or maybe it was the meeting before that, like so it could have been 3 or 4 ago.

02:15:54,170	But Bill also asked, he was asking for kind of like an overlay to of like, well, where is there? Um, right of ways, you know, that are in I don’t know what to call it, but like that are basically owned by the public or owned by a town.

02:16:09,770	Like, are there right of ways owned by a town where people have historically put up signs that there are some locations that have come into dispute, right where the gas station says, sure, go ahead and put a sign up. Right. It’s like it’s not their land or their it’s not in their right to allow those people to put those signs up. And usually they come right down. Um, you know, it’s kind of. Okay.

02:16:23,600	But you can also say that about any house in Hamilton because there’s a right of way to every single residence. So that’s one of the questions that I had. How can we police every single ten foot, uh, right of way. Right.

02:16:49,230	Um, and that’s that’s the sticky thing, right? Um, in town owned land. Well, when we talk about the, um, the, um, gas stations, those are privately owned pieces of property with a town right of way. Right. So, so it becomes very complicated. And so I, I, I’m sort of stuck on that.

02:17:13,300	And then what kind of signs do we allow? And I was looking at the, um, ngl sort of designations of what we. You could control what becomes government speech. It just is mind boggling. Yeah. So we’ve opened up quite a can of worms, but by looking at this so the other, the other I think the banner policy was the closest thing that we had.

02:17:38,930	And that was it didn’t it. It didn’t particularly stipulate what kind of signs could be there and what kind of signs could not be there, and how do you enforce it? Because since we’ve been working on this, I’ve looked around town, driving around, and there is signs that pop up for for different

02:17:58,630	things. And I’m thinking it shouldn’t be there, but who’s going to police it, right. Who’s going to I mean, I know the DPW has in the past, but if it becomes a government speech, thing, is it an arbitrary government speech that we allow some and not others? And those are sticky questions. Yeah.

02:18:24,270	So so I don’t I don’t have an answer. And this one needs so it needs more discussion. I think. We could do I think what we talked about in terms of process as well, is to have uh, because this one was like a little bit of both. Like it wasn’t.

02:18:44,700	So I think what we would get from council, it sounds like, and the typical process has been okay, like, you give us the one that you think is like very conservative without any exposure, but that the we could draft something that we think is maybe better fitting with some of the requests that we get in town.

02:19:01,170	And to see, is that something that we want to potentially absorb, right. As far as allowing some locations and some places for either, um, for public speech or government speech or some of these things, because the easy thing to do is just say no signs anywhere unless it’s for a commercial business. Right? You know.

02:19:22,570	But no, see, but that’s viewpoint discrimination when you’re saying that will allow commercial, why would we allow commercial signs and no other signs. So so I think. Um.

02:19:40,270	That would be the one I’m what I’m suggesting is that’s the one that we get from council that may say, well, we think that this is the most conservative approach. And is, you know, generally, you know, maybe the, the norm, let’s say, like that. And then that’s like something that maybe we want to draft that says, well, this is what we think is right, that we might be comfortable with.

02:19:54,130	Yeah. And then have the but then once we do that we put both policies out to then open up the debate for the rest of the. Yeah. So it’s it’s sort of arbitrary. And you need to have a reason for saying only commercial.

02:20:09,970	You can’t just you can’t just make it an arbitrary decision. So, so the other part of that. Are you talking about commercial like advertisement signs? Are you talking about commercial like business. Sign a business. Sign a business sign? Yeah, I mean. Not I wasn’t picturing advertisements. Yeah, I’m picturing more like Cumberland Farms or, you know.

02:20:29,130	Oh, those are those are the permanent signs. Yeah. Yeah. Those are about, like, the signs people put up for, like. Right. Yeah. Good signs or banners. It’s actually. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it just becomes very sticky.

02:20:50,770	And there are ways that the town can, um, limit signs without being, without discriminating as to what it is. You can say, not in an intersection because of safety factors. Okay. You need to have a line of sight. But then again, you know, a two foot, um, yard sign, right? I don’t know, they’re just and I don’t I don’t have an answer. I just have a lot of questions.

02:21:13,770	I guess. And and personally, when it’s for a particular purpose, like, you know, I know this came up last year when we were talking about, um, um, signs for political signs for, for, for running for office.

02:21:38,100	I personally, this is just my opinion and I’ve had the opinion then and I still have it now that I don’t see a problem with that. I think it’s you’re you’re not denigrating somebody else. When you put up a sign, you’re saying, I support this. And I think that’s I think that’s okay because it’s for a very short period of time.

02:21:58,200	Usually it’s local elections, right? It’s for a short period of time. But I it’s just it’s just up for it’s up for discussion. And I, I don’t want to limit people’s ability to put up signs. Yeah I put some language in this initial draft around like time like some time bounding stuff. Right.

02:22:22,630	So but not content. Right. I think that’s sort of where it gets where it does get sticky is if you’re trying to. Well, right. When you try to control content. Right. So so and, and some signs are taken down right away and then some signs are left up. Well, wait a minute.

02:22:39,870	You know, signs that I’ve seen an intersection intersections are ostensibly violative, but those signs are left up. And then some other sign for like car washing or window washing is ripped out of the ground in five minutes.

02:23:04,830	Back to the point about understanding exactly where the right of way is, so that the enforcement can be fair and across the board, because it probably is that that it’s just different people enforcing whatever rules they think. Right. Probably the rules. And it’d be better to be clear about, like, where are you allowed to put those things where. You’re not write those. Things right.

02:23:26,730	And, and I just think we can’t become very pedantic about, uh, about it sometimes. And I, I, I because I’m an old school Hamilton person, I just, I, you know, I think we get where I think we potentially for the temporary signs get are sort of a little bit overzealous about it.

02:23:56,030	So for instance, I think I said this at our last meeting, but the baseball team slapped their names on all the, um, telephone poles or light poles heading, uh, it was all along Peyton Park, and I saw that, and I thought it was great. Why not? Right. Um, I think it was adorable. It was supporting our kids, blah, blah, blah.

02:24:15,970	But then the other part of it is Joe said, you know, they probably, you know, it was probably not the best idea. I don’t have a problem with it. The problem I have is when they become messy and nobody takes them down, right. Who’s going to be responsible for taking them down? Who put them up, and who’s going to take them down? Yeah, well.

02:24:36,600	It’s certainly a fun one, I think. Let’s get, um. There’s some others that are probably a little less fun that, that, that will continue to, to work. This is, this is a this is an interesting one. So I think we’re probably at a place where we could get council to do their draft update.

02:24:56,530	Then we could keep working on this one, make any changes to it, and then put them both to the select board. Yeah. Kind of. I think a while back with uh. I think we mentioned it, but I don’t know that we said. No, we’re. Just going to work on them. Yeah, yeah. So we could. So we can.

02:25:14,700	Work on them on the. Yeah. But we can work on a few others for, for so we give them. Oh you won’t do it all in. Well maybe not everything but but a few more okay. Okay. And and there are certainly a couple of others. Um. I have a list, but I’ve lost it.

02:25:30,670	Yeah, I my list is at home on a post-it note. Yeah. So. So I do have it, but there are some others, so if that’s okay with everybody, we can just continue the conversation. Yeah. The only other one, um, if it’s all right with you, I might work with, uh, Tom on it. Is the capital Committee.

02:25:53,470	Oh, yeah. Um, capital planning. like planning policy one perfect for the overlap of the school district and trying to get them to match what we’re envisioning for. Kind of like five year plans. Yeah, I think that’s great to be. Yeah. So that sounds like a great plan. Okay.

02:26:14,370	So other than that, we’ll just keep working on them. Um. What’s the update from policies. Right. Yeah. Well, you know, you don’t realize how convoluted they can be until you start to work on them.

02:26:38,430	And and for instance, when I was working on looking at this one with the temporary signs, Holy mackerel, I you know, I found myself in Mel, whatever the, whatever the, uh, you know, restrictions are on signs and what the government can say and what they can say. I mean, I wanted to be very careful about that. So that’s why I came back with all the all the questions. From a procedure standpoint.

02:27:01,000	Wendy, if you could check with Joe to maybe and Rosemary, you might know this, but, um, since the cemetery draft policy was issued to a select board and we’ve discussed it here with a quorum, I don’t know if I’ll have to go in with a packet if it needs to go in with next week’s packet, or when if there’s time limitations on when we have to make that

02:27:22,570	document available. Everything from a procedure standpoint. Well, it should because we this this was our first draft. Yeah. And and we could um we would bring it back to, to the next meeting and it would be in our pockets and everybody would have a chance to look at it.

02:27:43,630	And the public as well. So we would not act on it until we’ve had an opportunity for the, for, um, for it to be posted. Okay. All right. Okay. Anything else? Other business. Pardon me. Can I ask a couple things? Sorry. I because I missed the last meeting, I was going to ask about goals. Uh.

02:28:05,400	And did you all circle back on goals yet. No. Okay. Cool. We’re still working on that. And then, um. I think we’re the first meeting in August is Winterfest to tackle that again. And I think that I was going to send that okay. Because I had. Where we are.

02:28:21,930	Yeah, there was one from last year. Uh, I think it was actually it was it wasn’t on our goals from last year, but we started talking about it and I can’t remember the acronym now, but it was a different format of potential insurance. Um, for. For employees. For employees, for municipal workers.

02:28:45,000	And it was a government run program. Um. Yeah, I. , I thought. Gee, I. See gee, I. See yeah. Do do that. Get it. No no. No. It’s a very lengthy process. Yeah. So he, he did a notification to the unions and started that process.

02:28:59,600	But I just thought it should go on our goals tracker. Um, to see kind of just to keep tabs on it. Okay. Um, and then another any other business or new business thing, um, was there was a little bit of outreach around, um, trash and recycling pickup for the commercial businesses downtown.

02:29:27,670	I did speak to Tim Olson and recommended that he request to be on our next agenda. Um, to develop options and bring some options to us. I think he was at our last meeting and did did talk about that. He talked about. It about well, he talked about trash in general. The whole trash program. Casella was here as well. Yeah. Okay. Um.

02:29:48,400	Well, within like, I don’t remember what week it is or where I am now, but I think it was on Thursday afternoon. There were some individuals last week who were still having challenges with their pickup with Casella in the business district downtown and needing additional guidance and support, as well as an understanding of this is what

02:30:10,600	we used to do. You know, the people who came by said, we’re not doing it that way anymore. All you get kind of like the one bin, right? They do generate a tremendous amount of recycling. And so down there yeah. Yeah.

02:30:24,170	So then there’s a question of okay, so I was just kind of brainstorming. Tim’s brainstorming. He’s got a few ideas. He’s kind of bouncing them off of me. And I said, this sounds like a good thing to bring for the whole select board, but also with some options and then some like a plan of like, well, how do you how are you going to get these

02:30:37,070	options out to the the business owners so that, you know, we don’t have downtown just looking like the back of a, you. Know. The back of a department store with cardboard everywhere. Right. So it’s. He had talked about, um, a second, a second barrel will be available for purchase. Yeah.

02:30:57,870	But this is, I think beyond that, you know, for the commercial, like, because if they get a big delivery and they break down all their stuff, it’s like. They’ll it would pile up. Right? Exactly. Yeah.

02:31:13,970	I agree to have unlimited recycling and all of a sudden to cut you off at the knees and say, this is all you got. And that’s a, that’s a change. You know, I think the business owner I spoke to is very, uh, collaborative and interested in trying to find a solution that works.

02:31:29,870	The town works for all the businesses, you know, and making sure that it’s like it’s a, you know, they want our town to look nice, too. They were very accommodating, but I think it was also around trying to understand, you know, what are their options, you know, from the town. What are the costs like and sort of some of that stuff.

02:31:45,830	Um, so good news is everyone has kind of like that like kind of convenience miscellaneous like been for the most part. But now there’s this question of what do they do with their actual commercial volume? You know, that’s going to go beyond. like a typical household. Well, I, I brought that up.

02:32:04,030	I mean, um, at our last meeting, the issue was people reached out to me who had have horse farms in, in the area. Sure. And there’s lots of recycling. And if you don’t make provisions for that, like, what do they do? Right. So it’s same. It’s the same issue. Yeah. So I think Tim is definitely aware there are there are issues. And good that you brought. A few ideas to. And I thought he should come.

02:32:26,930	Yeah. Get some guy. I made a note to. Talk to him. Um. So anyway I said we wouldn’t we couldn’t get it on the. I knew we wouldn’t be able to get on this agenda because it was already like Thursday night. And I think Joe was. Out the door. Yeah. He was it was already posted.

02:32:42,070	It was already posted. It was like, all right, next. Next meeting. You know, in a couple of weeks. Yeah. So since, since this change in the, uh, trash pickup, this will be Tim’s. And when did it start? July 1st. This will be Tim’s third. Third, third visit with us. Well, I missed. Him at the last minute.

02:32:59,630	To be. He needs to be, because I think these issues are very, very important. Right. And we do need to find a solution for our commercial entities in town. Yeah. Okay. That was my oh my goodness. Well I’ll entertain a entertain a motion. You okay. Sorry. Entertain the motion. Are you entertained? I’m just. Saying I’m done.

02:33:25,270	No, no. Um. So. Okay, let’s. I’ll entertain a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. All in favor? Aye.