[Roberta Cameron]: This public hearing of the Medford Community Preservation Committee on Tuesday, April 11, 2023, 630 p.m., is being conducted via remote means. No in-person attendance of members of the public is permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can access the proceedings as provided for in Chapter two of the acts of 2023. A reminder that anyone who would like to listen or view this meeting while in progress may do so by accessing the link on the city's calendar. And on the meeting agenda posted on the city of Medford website, if despite our efforts, we're not able to provide real time access, we will post a recording of the meeting on the city's website as soon as possible. So, this is our annual public hearing, and the purpose of this public hearing is to gather input from community members on to help us to kind of review how our program works and review what our goals and priorities are and are kind of set a plan for the next year. So with that, I'm going to begin with a presentation describing the Community Preservation Act program, and then we'll stop a few points. We have a few different areas of input that we'd like to gather from all of you. So I'm going to share my screen if I could figure out how.
[Unidentified]: I'm not familiar with this computer. share screen. Okay. Hi, this is Christy. I'm back. I disconnected. Thank you. Sorry, I have to do something funny to allow this. Are you able to run the presentation, one of you, Danielle, or?
[Roberta Cameron]: Yep, I can get it pulled up, hold on.
[Unidentified]: Thank you. It's not allowing me to access the screen that the presentation's on.
[Roberta Cameron]: Well, in the meantime, while we're waiting for the presentation, we should actually start with a round of introductions. So you all know I'm Roberta Cameron. I chair the Community Preservation Committee, and I will actually begin. We have a few new people with us today. I'm going to start with our brand new Community Preservation Act manager, Teresa DuPont. Danielle is handing off as of this week to Teresa. So welcome, Teresa. And maybe you want to give a little introduction, say something about yourself.
[Theresa Dupont]: Yeah, hi, everybody. Again, Teresa here. I'm really looking forward to supporting you and the good work that we're doing here in the city. My background, I won't go too deep into it. But my background is pretty strong in both project management, as well as financial management. So really looking forward to bringing my skills to the role and supporting you guys. Thank you.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you. And Danielle, you can introduce yourself as well, since you've been with us all of this time.
[Danielle Evans]: Hi, Danielle Evans. I'm the outgoing community preservation manager, and I am still in the city. I'm the senior planner.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you. And I will introduce our for our new CPC member first, Reg, you want to introduce yourself and say something about yourself?
[Reggie Graham]: Yeah, my name is Reg Graham. I'm going to be the Park Commission representative for CPC, replacing Danielle DeRusso. I've been on the Park Commission for 14 years. So I have a little bit of experience about what you do. I've talked with Mike Cuno and he says great things about the committee. So I'm anxious to get started and give some input.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you. And now I'll go through the screen. Doug Carr. And I'll just read all of your names. We all, we all know you so unless you'd like to say something.
[Doug Carr]: I don't have much to say. I've obviously served on the CPC since the beginning as a representative from the Historical Commission. It's been really a lot of fun. This is a great committee. I also serve on the M-Belt board as well, and a member of the NAACP and Mystic Valley branch as well. I've got a lot of different hats at Medford, but this is one of the fun ones because there's nothing better than giving away millions of dollars every year to city projects. It's the greatest job ever.
[Joan Cyr]: Joan. Hi, I'm Joan Cyr, one of the ad hoc members. Roberta and I started this so long ago, trying to get the CPC or the CPA on the ballot. So I've been working with this group for a long time. And I know that Danielle is looking forward to doing one job. Not to. You're not a moment too soon, Teresa, welcome and Reg, good to have you with us. Matt.
[Matt Leming]: Hello, I'm Matt Leming. I am At this point, the second newest member of the CBC, I do a lot of affordable housing work around Medford, and that's how I got to know Roberta first place. I'm. I'm proud of the work that that this board does, I think it's a very necessary means of putting funds back into the city and just keeping this place very nice. So it's very nice to sit on here and kind of see a lot of the back end of how different walls, sidewalks, churches are repaired and how just the different things you see around the city are built. So it's been really cool to learn about that.
[Unidentified]: Thanks.
[Losa Julie Genevieve]: Hi, I'm Lawson. I, I serve on the Medford housing board. I'm currently the chair. I've been on the committee and I, it's been a pleasure to be here. And again, I piggyback to what committee members said before. This is a great privilege to sit on this board to see all the great things that's being done here around Medford and to be part of it. It's been great. Thank you. That's all.
[Heidi Davis]: Thank you. Heidi. Thanks, Roberta. And I apologize for my camera not working today. It's been plaguing me all day. I am the Conservation Commission's representative to the CPC and have been so since the start of the committee, which Roberta reminded me it's a long time. I just repeat everything everybody else has said. It's been absolutely a privilege to serve on this board and it's taught me a lot more about and got me out of my world of the Conservation Commission and with the wetlands. Protection Act, et cetera, and conservation issues. So it's been an absolute pleasure to work on these issues with this board. So thanks for coming along, Reg, and congratulations to both Danielle and Teresa.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you. And last but not least, Christy, I understand that we'll be losing you.
[Jenny Graham]: Yeah. Yeah. Hi, everyone. Sorry you can't see me on video. I'm actually leaving post office square because in my career, I work in real estate development and project management and I end up getting stuck at the office very late. So, but yes, I am the representative for community development board. I've been on this committee for about three years and it's definitely important work in my professional career. I'm usually the one that's telling people how not to spend money. So it's a nice, a committee to be on where we are trying to send all the money and beautify our city. So I will be terming off at the end of this month, and I'm not really sure who's going to replace the representative for Community Development Board yet.
[Roberta Cameron]: All right. Thank you, everyone, for the introductions. And now, do we have a presentation ready to share?
[Unidentified]: I wasn't able to test it while we were doing introductions, but getting it going now. Apologies.
[Joan Cyr]: While you're doing that, Doug, I think we need to reconstitute the the annual celebratory committee. It's that time of year. All right.
[Doug Carr]: I believe it is. It's getting. Yeah.
[Joan Cyr]: Yeah. So now that we know that Christie's rolling off, we want to make sure that she gets to partake in our annual celebration of a year's worth of excellent work. Yeah. So we'd like to pick a Medford restaurant and meet there. And so we should probably, we should probably start looking at that guy.
[Doug Carr]: My first thought is the Mifflin Brewing Company at Harvard.
[Joan Cyr]: Yeah, except they don't have food, man.
[Doug Carr]: You got to go to Steffi Patti's Delivers. You either come over, or they sometimes bring it over if they have stuff.
[Heidi Davis]: But they also don't have anything gluten-free for drinking. Oh, yeah.
[Unidentified]: But maybe they'll have cider by then. That would be good. I know. All right. I'll work on it. Are you also having trouble?
[Roberta Cameron]: I wonder, you know what, if I move this over to this screen, maybe I can do it from here.
[Unidentified]: Where is this presentation?
[Theresa Dupont]: It's on one drive. We have it on a cloud, one drive. It's not on a cloud? Well, it's a Zoom setting. Roberta, I have to restart Zoom for me to be able to share.
[Roberta Cameron]: Oh, OK. Let me see if I can make it work. It won't allow me to share screens.
[Joan Cyr]: Oh, wait. Here it comes. Yay. You can see? I see Teresa's screen, it looks like. At least I thought it was. It's a little small.
[Roberta Cameron]: It's Teresa's screen, it says. OK.
[Joan Cyr]: OK, wait a minute. I need to get my glasses on now. It's really small.
[Roberta Cameron]: Well, it's PowerPoint, so you should be able to run it in the slideshow. Yeah.
[Joan Cyr]: So it's a little on the lower left. icon that looks like a square with a line on it.
[Roberta Cameron]: Well, this is right now looking, reading it from, is it in PowerPoint? It says PowerPoint, it looks like you're reading it from email.
[Joan Cyr]: Oh, download it and then open it up on your computer.
[Roberta Cameron]: This would have been so easy. There wasn't some setting that prevented me from sharing it over here. Oh, and I didn't introduce Amanda earlier.
[Unidentified]: That's right.
[Amanda Centrella]: Oh, hello. Hi, I'll just a very brief thing. I am a planner in the Office of Planning, Development and Sustainability. And sometimes I help out over here too. And I'll be taking some notes and minutes for the night. Feel free to to tap me in as needed. I do some some parks related work with the city. Happy to speak to that too. Excited to meet, well, I know Teresa and I actually also know Reggie, Reg, but great to see you guys on here.
[Unidentified]: Amanda has been one of the important cogs that keeps this wheel rolling. That's right. That's all I want to say.
[Roberta Cameron]: As has Teresa in the back.
[Matt Leming]: There's always like a few people who just do like 80% of the work in the background.
[Roberta Cameron]: That's all of us, actually. Teresa has started.
[Theresa Dupont]: There we go. Okay.
[Roberta Cameron]: Sorry about that, everybody. That's all right. We are ready to go. Okay, so presentation. The moment we've all been waiting for. Let us learn about Community Preservation Act program in Medford. Oh, I'm trying to advance the screen. So we already have the agenda. Then next screen. And we've already made introductions. Oh wait, oh that's funny that we didn't look at the list of people on the CPC on that previous screen it was a little bit out of date. So what is the Community Preservation Act? The Community Preservation Act began as a state program that was enacted in 2000, which enables communities to raise money for local projects, capital projects relating to open space, outdoor recreation, historic preservation, and affordable housing. It has to be adopted by individual communities in order to use the program. So Medford voted to adopt the program in 2015. And that enabled us to begin collecting a surcharge on local property taxes, which we began in 2017. And that surcharge generates right now, we'll see in a later slide, approximately $2 million a year, which is partially matched with state funding. And the. So, after we adopted the Community Preservation Act we collect the surcharge we also established an ordinance which appointed this committee created this committee, which is has the responsibility of deciding how are we going to use that $2 million a year. And so the committee established an application process. And this is also a little bit out of date. It's actually now approximately 80 projects funded in the first five years, totaling about $10 million worth of investment that we've made in the city of Medford. Really want to celebrate that.
[Unidentified]: Next slide, please.
[Roberta Cameron]: So the next couple of slides, if you watched this, sat through our public hearing last year, you might have seen some of the same pictures. We've changed up some of the pictures, thanks to Teresa. But these are just a few examples of sites where we've funded projects. In the last five years, just a handful. One of our goals, we're going to talk about administrative goals later in our meeting, is going to be to go out and get more pictures so that we can better brag about the work that we've been doing. All right, next slide. back right there. So this slide shows the revenue that we've raised over the history of the program. The first year we had about, the first couple of years, about $1.5 million of revenue with the, and this slide, the blue represents our local surcharge and the green represents the state matching funds that we've received every year. So the pool has been growing a little every year since the beginning.
[Unidentified]: Next slide.
[Roberta Cameron]: So just based on what we had on the revenue that we received this year, we estimate next year, our total revenue will be somewhere in the area of $2.1 million. And the state enabling legislation requires that we spend a minimum of 10% in each of three program areas every year. So that 10% comes out to a minimum of $218,000 that we're going to reserve For open space and recreation affordable housing and historic preservation and a maximum of 5% can go to administration that pays for formerly Danielle and now Teresa salary. as well as some other administrative costs that we have on our administrative budget every year. And then the remaining 65% are general reserves that can be used for any of the program area purposes. So we have discretion about how to divide between open space recreation, affordable housing, and historic preservation. And just so that you know, those of you who have not been through a whole year with the CPC before, next month, we're going to be creating a budget that we're going to send to city council to approve that will look like this. It's going to set aside that minimum 10%. We can, if we want, reserve more than 10% in any of these program areas. And so that we can ensure that we have, that we're spending according to our priorities. I think last year, we put a little bit more than 10% reserve toward affordable housing, for example. Just, I didn't mention before that, for those of you who haven't been a part of CPA in the past, the Community Preservation Committee has the responsibility to study the community needs and priorities So that we can determine how to allocate the funds what projects to spend our CPA money on. We make a recommendation for which projects to fund, and then that recommendation has to be approved by city council. So every dollar of CPA funds has to be first recommended by the CPC and then approved by City Council in that order. So when we make a budget, we make the budget and then we'll send it to City Council for their approval. Next slide, please. So just a little bit more about what CPA funds can be used for and who can use CPA funds. So this chart represents what kinds of projects are eligible for CPA funding. And there's a more detailed chart that we pull out all the time to look at for individual projects to see whether these individual projects meet the eligibility criteria. But this chart is just a simplified version of that. So we can, it shows all of the program areas, open space recreation, historic preservation and affordable housing. And the activities that we can do are to acquire, create, preserve, support and rehabilitate or restore. So the more detailed chart actually has definitions of each of those terms. who can apply for CPA funds can be the city of Medford, other government entities, nonprofit organizations, and individuals in the community for projects that provide public benefit. In the first couple of years, we haven't seen this recently, but in the first couple of years, we actually had private individuals who applied for CPA funds for projects on city-owned property. So when that happens, the city will, the individual can be the advocate to fill out the application, but the city will actually manage the project that they apply for work in partnership. So next slide, please. So what have we done with CPA funding over the past five years? This pie chart represents the funding that we've spent. And the map is a year out of date, it doesn't have the projects that we just funded. but the map shows where the projects have been located. So we've spent about, we don't have the percentages on here, but it looks like about a quarter of the funding has gone toward affordable housing and maybe a third has gone to historic preservation and the balance has gone to open space and recreation. And I would say so, These CPA results, this is data that I would love to pull together when next month we're going to put together a report that will talk about all of these things in a little bit more detail, and one of the things that I really want to to our horn for is the funding that has been leveraged with CPA. So oftentimes CPA is not the only money that goes into a project, but for each dollar of CPA funds that we've spent, it has enabled the city to make larger investments in these projects. So the funds have been matched with state money or money from other private donors and so forth. So it's had an impact that goes beyond the $10 million that we've actually spent. Next slide. So this is just the projects that we funded in the past year. I didn't even count how many projects are on this list. We've done quite a lot of work over this past year to fund projects throughout the city. Shiloh Baptist Church, Isaac Hall, the Cemetery Caretaker Quarters Study, Brooks Estate, Thomas Brooks Park, the And then in the parks, the McGlynn School implementing and doing construction on a plan that we previously funded with CPA. Duggar Park adding to the facilities at Duggar Park. Hickey Park softball dugouts, the COVID Memorial Grove design, Gillis Park, fitness and picnic area, which is also implementing a project that we designed in previous funding rounds. Car park, likewise. Brook School playground replacement. We had a couple of small projects for replacing equipment in the school playgrounds. And then Housing Families, Inc., we're continuing a housing assistance program that we funded for the last couple of years, and finally, our largest project to date, which is contributing to the redevelopment of Walkling Court to expand the senior housing available there.
[Unidentified]: Next slide.
[Roberta Cameron]: So with that, I think we're ready to talk about what are the community needs and priorities for the coming year. And I wanted to ask Danielle, if you could step in and talk about what are some initiatives that the Office of Planning and Sustainability has been working on over the past year that provide some context to our work?
[Danielle Evans]: Well, and Amanda can probably speak to this as well, but the bulk of some of the work has been implementing the CPA grants for some of the parks projects where we've leveraged, Amanda would have the exact number, but in the millions for Carr and Gillis combined to completely rehabilitate those two parks. which were conceived with a study that the CPC funded. So these complete redesigns are just born out of studies that the CPC was able to fund. Probably never would have happened without that initial seed money. I know that the Cape and Park splash pad will be getting underway this summer. We're looking at other projects in the pipeline that we haven't been able to take on. We'll be looking at the open space and recreation plan to see what the next priority should be. In addition, the Affordable Housing Trust will be getting up and running hopefully soon once we hire a full-time housing planner. And we envision that CPA funds will be a large percentage of the funds to capitalize the trust, at least initially. So we're excited about getting that underway and getting a board of trustees established and setting up processes for that. I think what else? Amanda, do you have any other things to add? I don't know if she's still here.
[Amanda Centrella]: Yeah. I think you nailed the key points as far as parks related work, managing some very large projects, particularly Carr and Gillis that were really informed by design funds provided by CPC. So, you know, we'll get to see that work in breaking ground this summer, which is very exciting. And I think with CAR in particular, we've been able to, you know, secure some additional funding for later phase work and are very confident about some other new funding. And so we foresee uh, design, um, needing to, um, go back to community and, and engage community on design for things like the playground and splash pad area, um, for that project in particular. So some exciting kind of community conversations up and coming, um, uh, as, as far as parks are going. And I guess it feels important to add that the comprehensive plan has been formally adopted by the city. And so I think what. At least our office, and I'm sure others are sort of trying to get. familiar with the plan and thinking about and being strategic about how to begin implementation. And I am sure that that will tie into the work that this committee is up to and the projects that this committee will see.
[Roberta Cameron]: Is there an executive summary for the master plan?
[Amanda Centrella]: The comprehensive plan. There's let me see, actually have. The plan up, um, I don't know that. Yeah, I wouldn't say like a, like a formal executive summary. But the plan is available for use and for review. It's on Medford comp plan.org. And there's I think maybe I guess it's less of an executive summary, but there is a a table and implementation table at the end of the plan, which really outlines what all of the. Goals, objectives and even more detailed actions are and then identify stewards for those actions.
[Roberta Cameron]: OK, it seems as though it will be really an important task for. us to somehow distill if not all I mean it would ideally we could all familiarize ourselves with the comprehensive plan. But given that our planning process is over the next month, and this is really our chance tonight to talk about the goals and priorities. it's not possible for us to, I think, reflect the comprehensive plan in our current annual review. But it would be ideal for us to find a way to digest it and distill it to be able to inform the work that this committee is doing.
[Danielle Evans]: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense to use some of these plans that had very, very robust public input processes to inform the CPC and some priorities.
[Unidentified]: Exactly. All right, anything else to add? Next slide.
[Roberta Cameron]: So we've been doing some community outreach over the past year, and I hope that we've even included all of them. I can't recall the I know that we did some library tabling last spring, and I don't remember if that was before the last report or since the last report. So we have Remember, I'm just noticing I'm not sure whether those upcoming are still upcoming events, or those are left over from our previous version of this presentation, but over the circle the square.
[Theresa Dupont]: Sorry, sorry. Yeah, I was just gonna say circle the square is definitely happening. I thought that there was a West Medford Community Center event in May, but I apologize if I was wrong here.
[Roberta Cameron]: I'm not sure, maybe that's something to keep an eye on. Maybe there is and I haven't been, I haven't noticed that it's coming up yet. But there have been events throughout the summer and fall season that we had tabling events at. This is from the one that's shown on the screen, it's from the Harvest Year Energy Festival. I have actually never had so many people stop and interact with a tabling event as we had at this one on the Harvest Your Energy Festival. Some of you were also, I must thank you for putting in time at the library tabling event last year and the Tufts Community Day table that we shared with Somerville's Community Preservation Committee. It was freezing that day. um and but you brave souls went out there and talked with the people who came by and it was really kind of fascinating comparing the input that we got for Somerville versus Medford and um the the introducing committee members from the two cities to each other so that we could learn a little bit about um who we are and what the issues are I thought that was a lot of fun. Thank you to Danielle and Amanda for providing more information from the comprehensive plan. And so this input that we're gathering kind of helps us to figure out like what are the most important things that we can be spending CPA funds on to meet community needs. And so in our plan, our annual plan update next month, we'll have some of this data distilled for us. Next slide, please. So we also, over the last year, we didn't do a survey this year, although we have done surveys most years, but just looking back at what we heard in the survey that we conducted last year, there's the strongest level of support for, I'm sorry, I'm trying to read the colors on the slide, creating new affordable units. followed by converting existing units to affordable housing. I may have this backwards. Converting existing units to affordable housing. And so, I mean, these are just some of the options, some of the ways that we can be using CPA money. Of course, we respond to the applications that we receive every year. So part of the reason for doing this community outreach is to try to let people know about the availability of funds and use it as a tool. The outreach process is a two-way tool to try to recruit people to think about applying for CPA funds and bring organizations to the city who can apply for funds to carry out some of these affordable housing objectives. Um, we heard comments, um, people would really like to see more tree plantings, um, see improvements and some of the specific, um, parks and playgrounds around the city. Improvements, you know, there haven't been very many comments on historic preservation, but we, what we heard was, um, people would like to see improvements at the Brooks Estate, Chevalier Theater, the World War, they're highly supportive of in the restoration of the World War I Memorial at Oak Grove Cemetery. And some people would rather we didn't spend as much on historical preservation. So we take all the comments. Next slide, please. So now just any discussion among those of us here, I don't see members of the public. So those of us here in this meeting, Do we have any thoughts or suggestions about needs that we want to reflect or goals and priorities that we want to reflect or change in the community preservation plan update this year?
[Joan Cyr]: I feel like we have to really go through this comprehensive plan because we can pull nuggets out of it to inform the preservation plan, the CPA plan. Yeah.
[Roberta Cameron]: OK.
[Joan Cyr]: I also think that we've always we always started with the idea that you know until we got our. hands around what we were doing. We were trying to equally distribute the funds. But I think we've got enough years under the belt now to say, OK, there has been this big spend on the open space and recreation. And it was because those were the projects that were being presented to us. We weren't getting the affordable housing projects. But I think that those, that tide is starting to turn, you know, with the waffling court, and they already talked about the next one that's coming down the pike so I'm very excited that the housing trust is out there because we really need, you know, the help of those experts to kind of, you know, effectively spend that affordable housing money.
[Matt Leming]: I totally agree that I, with what Joan said and since I'm just, I'm really happy that affordable housing projects are coming through. I know that this can be like maybe an unrealistic goal or like outside the scope of the CPC, but potentially finding a way to make it easier for money to go from the CPC to affordable housing projects, just considering that they're a lot bigger than most other projects that come through. I mean, maybe even working with some like state representatives to find out if there's anything that can be done about that on the state level could be a longer term goal, but I've, I mean, my thinking is just that a lot of the, like just a lot of the stuff that was being seen with Walklingport and kind of getting the money to there was like very rocky and potentially that process could be improved in the future. I don't think it's anybody's fault. I just think it's the way the law is written.
[Roberta Cameron]: That's one of the reasons for having the affordable housing trust. So hopefully that will make it easier to use money and have the expertise that we need to have the oversight that we need.
[Matt Leming]: So, sorry just to. I don't want to get didn't believe but would that potentially mean that in the future affordable housing projects wouldn't necessarily come directly to the CPC we would just like shove money into it.
[Roberta Cameron]: That's actually a great question and it's something that we might really want to think about what we want to do this year. Is that so the affordable housing trust has the council voted to establish an affordable housing trust. But as Danielle mentioned, we need to hire a staff person who's going to manage that. And we need to appoint a board. So that work hasn't begun yet when we established the Community Preservation Committee, it was about 18 months between when we voted on it. And when the committee sat down and had their first meeting. That's because we were pushing it to the kids to really push that well part of that 18 months was the time that it took for the ordinance. So we've gotten over the hump of drafting an ordinance it took us five years. To do that for the affordable housing trust but we got over that hump. But now we need to appoint a board and hire a staff person. And so let's, you know, maybe say it'll be a year before that board is ready to. I mean definitely a year before they're ready to spend money because they probably also need to go through their own planning process to strategize. How, what is their business plan for using of the housing trust funds. So, back to like what are we going to do we're going to consider. giving Community Preservation Act housing funds to the trust. The way that the City of Somerville does it, because I work for the City of Somerville's Community Preservation Committee, they allocate their funds to the trust every year, and then the trust has its own application process. So if you will have a housing project, you apply to the housing trust, and their budget includes CPA funds, linkage funds, inclusionary, fractional payments, and funds from some other sources that are put into their trust funds. So as Danielle had mentioned, we begin in the first place, it was mostly capitalized with CPA funds, but as time goes on, CPA is a smaller proportion of trust funding and they've been able to expand the amount of funds that are coming from other sources. So that may happen here as well. So some communities will only give the trust money when the trust is ready to spend it. Some communities just automatically give the trust money up front and then the trust can spend it as they like. So we might as a committee over the next year need to think about what kind of a relationship do we want to have with the Affordable Housing Trust. Somerville's Affordable Housing Trust predated its community preservation act program by 10 years so they were already well established and knew what they were doing and had a track record whereas ours we are the ones who have a track record and we want to make sure that our funds are being used responsibly so we might want to keep the training wheels on for a while before we just hand it over so this is something that we'll want to um we'll have to discern over the next year. So back to what decision we have to make. In the past, we've just reserved the minimum 10% share for affordable housing, knowing that if affordable housing applications came to us, we could give any proportion of our budget to affordable housing. But if we're going to be putting it into the trust, we might need to follow Somerville's example and decide ahead of time what proportion of funds are going to go to affordable housing and then put that in up front and back out everything else can go to the other two program areas. Somerville gives half of their funds to affordable housing right off the bat. Cambridge gives 80%.
[Reggie Graham]: Can I ask this? Yeah. If we decided that we wanted to give it to our entity, or however they want to name it or call it or what have you, wouldn't we kind of lose control of what we're trying to do, what we're trying to accomplish? Because if we give them the money, then they're the ones that actually make the decision as to where it's spent.
[Roberta Cameron]: That is absolutely correct.
[Joan Cyr]: So the question you're asking is why would we do that? Yeah.
[Matt Leming]: Yeah. I think the reason that we would do that is because it's very usually affordable housing projects or multimillion dollar projects. And we can only and they only come along once every couple of years. And the advantage of putting it into a trust and money is that it can accumulate over time so that when a credible project does come along, they could potentially put more money towards it. I think with Walkland Court, The issue was that we were, one of the issues was that they needed money over a three-year period, which we couldn't necessarily promise them. I don't think that we should be getting possessive of the funds that we do have. Affordable housing really needs to happen in the city.
[Roberta Cameron]: Yeah, from the perspective of achieving of achieving affordable housing goals, having the affordable housing trust is a real advantage because it helps us to aggregate funds from different sources and to be more like they when they. When we give funds we make a recommendation that has to go through city council, when they give funds, they already have the funds they don't have to go through city council they don't have that step. So they can be more nimble in the market as well. So they have advantages that we don't have that help. affordable housing, but you're right, Reg, we lose some control when we give them the money up front first. So that's a trade off. We want to I wouldn't want to give up that control unless I know that they're going to use it well. And like I said, Somerville, they had a track record. We like they were a trusted entity and the committee like felt like they were putting it in good hands. We don't have that confidence yet. So that's something that we want to think about. We don't have to make that decision tonight, but I want to flag that this is something that we have to, this is a decision that's going to be coming to us in the next one to two years. Losa.
[Losa Julie Genevieve]: Thank you. Does that mean that from what I, when we started talking about the affordable housing, what is that? The committee, what's that going to be? Affordable housing trust. Yeah, thank you. And if I remember correctly, before we were saying that it was like, like entities could still come to the CPC and request money if they still go to the affordable housing trust. So is that not going to be the case? So therefore, is that whatever money, we're not gonna have any money kept for affordable housing. Everything will be shifted directly to the trust. Is that correct? Am I correct on that?
[Roberta Cameron]: That's a choice that we can make. that that that's one way that we can work with the trust, but we don't have to. So we need to wait for the trust to exist first. And then they're going to think about how they want to operate. And then we'll probably have meetings together with them. in the future to talk about how do we structure our relationship with them.
[Danielle Evans]: One thing to note is that someone from the CPC could also sit on the trust. The ordinance was written to allow for that because the CPA dollars that go to the trust still have to comply with the Community Preservation Act rules. So we still have to follow the money, track the money. Hopefully we'll come with other funding sources at some point. I would be worried about, you know, just drips and drabs and say we split it up evenly that You know, half, half of housing funds was retained by the CPC and the other half went to the trust. I'd worry it would just be not enough to be meaningful to do anything. As we know, it's very expensive to do affordable housing projects. So I wouldn't want to have it not be a very meaningful amount that would go there or for us to retain an amount that's not meaningful. So that's just one thing to keep in mind.
[Roberta Cameron]: And when we have to make this decision in the future, it's very likely that the trust will be working with a consultant who will also help to facilitate this conversation.
[Unidentified]: Right.
[Roberta Cameron]: One thing that I wanted to like a goal that I have with respect to historic preservation opportunities is that I would really like to see us be able to a couple of things that I think have been really exciting in the past year and it's an area that I want to lean into in the future. is the grants that were made to the Shiloh Baptist Church and the Islamic Cultural Center are historic buildings that create an opportunity for public spaces, and Chevalier Theater as well. These are public spaces where we can have cultural events, where we can have community services, And I really am excited by the opportunity to maybe define a mission for what kind of projects, like what kind of outcome we can create with historic preservation projects.
[Unidentified]: So... Don't forget the state, that's another one, right?
[Roberta Cameron]: The what? And the Brooks Estate, absolutely. You know, like the whole, you know, the aim of the Brooks Estate is to create new public spaces that the community benefits from. So being able to articulate the story, the importance of these community spaces, I think a lot of times people are less supportive of historic preservation projects because They think that it's just a vanity project, and they don't see how the community is really materially benefiting from preserving these buildings that service as public spaces.
[Matt Leming]: Yep. Well, I, I think with that, I have been thinking about something Joan said a couple of weeks ago, which is about how the Brooks estate, particularly needed will could be a space for like wedding venues and things like that, which I think is a very would be a very important display of the use of historic preservation, the fact that that's actively bringing revenue into the city. But I also, but like I brought that up with somebody else and they all said, oh, people have been talking about getting that for like getting, you know, revenues out of the Brooks Estate for years. And so I think that what could be just this is just kind of an idea but sort of like setting a goal for for those for those kinds of projects like when will after how many cycles of this when will the Brooks estate.
[Joan Cyr]: That's a good question.
[Doug Carr]: Oh, I, I got plenty of I got nothing but answers for you.
[Joan Cyr]: He's gonna say, I need a road. I need a road.
[Doug Carr]: Well, you help fund the roads that's actually going to help this year. But you're I think the logic point that Roberta is making is an excellent one because I think people don't connect, and this probably is true for a lot of CPC product they don't the public benefit of all these. is critical to every one of the votes we make. We always factor that in. We don't fund things if they don't have a public benefit generally, which is, I don't think everyone knows that, but I think, you know, we need to sell that better, I think, as a committee and maybe even with our communications, far beyond the books of state. I agree that the churches and the other public buildings and Chevalier, you know, people who are have their tax funds, fund these projects, see a benefit. They can directly benefit from these projects. And I think we need to sell that better. I concur with that completely. As for the horizon of the Brooks Estate, I used to joke, because I used to have a I had a, we had a budget in the master plan which is the master plan is now 10 years old for what it's worth. You know, we could have actually completed the project five years ago if we, if it had been funded properly but that did not happen obviously but I used to joke that every single week. The project cost goes up $1,000, just with inflation. So if you fund it at 50 or $100,000 a year, which this committee has done every single year sometimes even more than that, you actually can never get there because you're just, you're playing catch up ball you've never actually, it's like paying the principle and not the interest. You don't actually make the loan smaller. And until we actually get the road built and the carriage house restored, a million dollars for the road and $2 million for the carriage house, plus or minus, that's going to always be down the road. There is no end in sight until that level of funding is somehow secured, not through the CPC, because that would be literally the entire budget for more than one year, for obvious reasons. That's not going to happen, and should not happen.
[Joan Cyr]: I think we need the William and Charlotte Bloomberg carriage outset.
[Roberta Cameron]: Well, I was just going to say, the library is a great inspiration for future CPA projects that I'd like to, in our communication with the public as well as with our applicants, encourage that model of community fundraising. So like I'm working with Shiloh Church to try to get off the ground a community fundraiser so they can match the CPA grant and be able to expand what they can do with this project. And the McGlynn Playground was talking about also potentially trying to raise more money from the community like the library did. So looking for ways that we can encourage applicants to raise leverage the CPA funds to raise more money if not from the state federal government and foundations then creatively looking to the community to help close the gap.
[Doug Carr]: Yeah, but let's, let's be realistic here the bloopers gave $3 million out of a $34 million library right they didn't fund. 90% of it, you know, and the city's responsibility as the owner of this for 80 years is ultimately in their hands. And Bill, when we put together a bond proposal to the City Council, 10 years ago, we put up a quarter million dollars of privately raised funds, and we got shot down six to one. The city at that time was not interested. Things have changed a little bit, but there's still a long way to go.
[Roberta Cameron]: Yeah. Well, the fact that you raised funds privately is really helpful, but that was 10 years ago. Maybe there's an opportunity to sell bricks and leaves and signs and all of those other things to give everybody a little piece of ownership of that. I find another inspiring example in Somerville is a Somerville museum that needed $2 million worth of investment to be able to continue operating as a museum, $3 million actually. And they raised half of that through private fundraising, through the community and the city, the CPA in Somerville funded the other half over five years. So I think we could step up. And I'm not just talking about the Brooks Estate specifically, I think a lot of our projects could do more with more. And we should think about whether it's city owned or privately owned, going out and asking for more community support.
[Doug Carr]: I agree, Roberta, actually, you know, the one thing that the board, the InBelt board has given me as feedback for this process, and they've been incredibly grateful because we've never had as much funds from the city of Medford since, in the last, you know, InBelt's been around this year for 30 years. In the last five years, we've had more money available from the city than probably the 20 beforehand. You know, but the fact is that most of our grant applications do not come with a whole lot of funding. And that's not really a factor in our decision making either. We don't typically factor that into what we try to fund everything. And it helps if they bring money, but very few actually do.
[Roberta Cameron]: That's true. I don't want to punish. applicants who don't have the ability to bring more money to the table. But I would love to encourage applicants to think outside of the box and try things that they haven't tried before. And one other thing that I wanted to throw out, I mean, a personal goal that I have, which I would love to see being able to advance with CPA and tell me if this is inspiring to other committee members is to be able to leverage CPA funds to tell more and better stories, more complete stories about Medford, about the history of Medford and about who we are as a community today. To, you know, for example, in our last grant for the. For the additional the addition to the tennis court project at Duggar Park, we added a couple thousand dollars for a sign commemorating Clarence Roan. And so I'd love to find more opportunities to be able to use the CPA program to to bring out stories, to share stories about Medford history in a way that's more inclusive and complete.
[Joan Cyr]: So I know they had that pilot program for the wayfinding signs in Medford, kind of a recreational thing. I don't know what the outcome of that pilot program was, and is the city looking to apply to the CPA for more permanent signs, wayfinding signs?
[Amanda Centrella]: I can actually speak a little bit to that. If you'll, if you'll have me. Go ahead. So, yeah, so the, as you were, you were right, it's a pilot program. I think in the coming, now that the weather is warmer, and the signs that were out, the majority of them with a couple of Exceptions for like, anchoring orient, orienting signs were intended to be where are temporary. We did put out a survey. And I think it's worth trying for the city of trying to recirculate it. It hasn't gotten a ton of bites, but. The idea being that we'd love to hear from folks about their experience with you know placement and could they see signage going in other squares and maybe each you know what happens if we expand this out to all the different squares in Medford and could they have. could aspects of the signs reflect kind of different, you know, act as placemaking tools and reflect like different, a united front, but maybe different aspects of the community. Every square has its own, you know, flavor, if you will. So I don't have a lot of details on where it's going next, but I think the intent is to do some outreach work to understand how community feels about it and and where it would make sense to continue to invest.
[Unidentified]: Thanks.
[Roberta Cameron]: Any other comments on goals and priorities that we want to raise?
[Unidentified]: Maybe you can go to the next slide, Teresa.
[Roberta Cameron]: So the next topic that we need to talk about is our timeline. We had, at our last meeting, talked about the fact that we need to, because of the fact that this past grant round, the requests for funding exceeded the available funds by a substantial amount. And one compromise, this is especially for Reg who wasn't here with us when we had this, worked out this strategy. But one of the compromises that we made in order to arrive at the funding recommendations that we made this past funding round was that the McGlynn School Playground had originally requested $900,000 And we correct me if I have the numbers wrong. We recommended $500,000 immediately out of this past funding round and told them that as soon as the fiscal year turns, we would be able to. take another vote on the remaining $400,000 that they requested to fulfill the $900,000 of CPA funds that they were seeking. So we're anticipating in July that we are going to promise that first $400,000 for the McGlynn School. out of the, remember 2.1 million, which is really 2 million because of the 0.1 is going toward our administrative costs. So out of 2,400,000 going to the McGlynn School in July, if we vote to recommend it. And then we are also anticipating an additional 800,000 for the Walkland Court construction. We could bond the Walkland Court construction so that it comes, we make payments toward that over the next, you know, however many years of a bond we issue, or we could pay the entire $800,000. dollars up front. But that would represent and that they would be seeking that by the fall. So we could also make that offer in July when the fiscal year turns over or wait another month and do it as long as I think that they needed to have that commitment by October if we're going to vote to recommend those funds. So that would be 1.2. That would leave $800,000 that are left. And then there were a couple of projects that we would have been amenable to recommending funds for this year, but we ran out of funding. So I don't remember offhand what the numbers were. That was for the Brooks Estate. Maybe you can remember, Doug, how much the Brooks Estate was asking for. And that was also for the cemetery, the burial ground in Medford Square for the brick wall, to restore the brick wall around the burial ground. And I don't remember how much that was for either.
[Doug Carr]: I think there was about $130,000. I think the Brooks Estate was slightly less, I think. I'd have to double check.
[Roberta Cameron]: So let's say that's about... About a quarter million for both, I think. Yeah. So we're only talking about... Hold on, let me quickly do the math. We're talking about about $550,000 that has not been requested already. of the next funding round. Granted, we're not obligated to fund any of the projects that I've just mentioned, but we certainly would have been amenable to funding them this year had it not been our shortage of funds. What about the car park? Car park? We funded car park. That's right, sorry. So we had talked about, so if we could actually now, Teresa, you've got the presentation open. And oh, but you have it in, could you actually go out of the slideshow mode and put it in an editing mode? And then we could work on that slide together. So at our previous meeting, we talked about maybe for this year, at least changing up how our funding round works. But maybe when we look at the numbers and look at the dates, we can decide whether we want to just have an early funding round and let last year's projects pass in, the summer or early fall and then have a second funding round that we open up to anyone else, or we could open up the funding round to anyone else earlier. So in July, can you put in McGlynn School?
[Joan Cyr]: Because I think we said that the eligibility determination forms are not really necessary anymore since everybody always comes to speak to Danielle. Right. Doing it. So I think we said we were going to eliminate that. Right.
[Roberta Cameron]: So. But we don't so we we probably would not be able to make the applications available again any sooner than June at the earliest. So how much time do they really need to be able to fill applications if we're going to open up the funding round to anyone? And we would need to make a decision, I'd say in July or September, assuming that August we want to have a one month hiatus and just have our social meeting in August. So in. July or September would have to be the Walkland Court. Maybe we could just actually put Walkland Court, I'm sorry, Teresa, but Walkland Court in July, since like, we've sort of promised it to them. But we don't we could have it both Walkland Court and McGlynn School in July.
[Unidentified]: And it's actually the other way around McGlynn school 400 walking 800. Then, September.
[Roberta Cameron]: The question mark is whether we want to. Or I don't know if in September. So if the full applications are due in September, we could have. Yeah, I don't know, I want to throw it out there to the committee members, maybe I've sufficiently explained already what the decision is, whether we want to have the. only consider the applications that were already submitted this year in the fall, or whether we want to open it up to anybody to submit applications in the fall. Can we do that? We can. Our first year, we had two funding rounds. Some communities just have rolling applications always, but I don't think that works for us because... We don't have enough funds. Yeah.
[Doug Carr]: Roberta, I would. I would try to keep it as simple as possible. I don't think we should have a separate funding round for the products we didn't fund last time, including the Brooks Estate. I think we should just have one round and don't require them to resubmit because you've already basically approved everything. So there should be almost no paperwork involved for all three of those projects, but just put them in the mix because I think they need to be evaluated within the larger context of how many dollars and how many products are looking for money. I don't think that should be guaranteed.
[Unidentified]: Okay. So, did you have want to offer something rich.
[Reggie Graham]: No, I just said that was interesting.
[Roberta Cameron]: Okay.
[Reggie Graham]: We're saying you know I'm new to this so I'm just learning, and Just taking it all in.
[Roberta Cameron]: Okay. So perhaps we could continue to have the full applications and the full applications could be due in August. So that we could make the application period shorter. And begin our deliberations earlier.
[Roberta Cameron]: So we would want to maybe have the applicant where you just wrote begin deliberations, Teresa. The applicant presentations could be in. September or October. In the past, we've had a meeting where we looked at the applications before the presentations. I don't know how important that is to us.
[Joan Cyr]: Well, I always find it helpful because it helps, you know, answer questions that I'm having initial questions. Yeah.
[Roberta Cameron]: No, I think, Theresa, what we want to maybe right here. I'm sorry that I'm not doing this myself because it must be frustrating to get like constant changing.
[Theresa Dupont]: All good. All good. I'm just scared that I'm going to make a horrific typo like live.
[Roberta Cameron]: I'd say the applicant presentations in October, September, we can say initial review.
[Unidentified]: instead of begin deliberations? Yeah.
[Roberta Cameron]: And then, and that gives us November to begin deliberation. Yeah. And then maybe we actually have a chance of finishing our deliberation in December. And then, Everything else continues, but it's a more realistic schedule because the last couple of years, we have to keep stretching the deliberations into the new year.
[Doug Carr]: This is just like an August 1st application date. So you have the committee has a month to get everything assembled and distributed. And then after Labor Day, we're reviewing them. And then I think it's early in the months for each of these milestones. It feels right to me.
[Roberta Cameron]: I think Danielle would concur.
[Unidentified]: Yeah, I would feel better having more time spreading things out like this.
[Roberta Cameron]: All right, so I think this is settled unless anybody else wants to offer comments. That's good. And so the other thing that we've just decided I want to make sure that we record in the minutes is that the app, the returning applicants for the projects that they've already applied for. They can just, you know, maybe submit A memorandum or a one line email saying yes, please, or they might want to submit a memorandum that states whether the budget has changed. but otherwise they don't need to re-up their application. Because as Doug pointed out, for every week that you don't fund it, it increases the cost by $1,000. That's a multimillion project.
[Doug Carr]: But I think there is inflation for everyone. I agree with that. A good 5% or 10% budget is something they could resubmit.
[Roberta Cameron]: Yes, so we'd like them. So maybe by the August 1st deadline, the returning applicants should just submit a confirmation that they'd like their application to be reconsidered. And by the presentations, they should have an updated budget cost estimate.
[Unidentified]: and otherwise their old applications are still good. All right. I'm ready to go to the next. So- I think Rich had a question.
[Roberta Cameron]: Oh, go ahead.
[Reggie Graham]: I was just going to say, what if they ask for more money? So if walking court in McGlynn school asked for more money that would reduce our pool a little bit.
[Roberta Cameron]: Yeah, if they, they, if they want to ask for more money than what they've already told us that they wanted to ask for this year. they'll need to submit a new application. And in fact, I think that they should submit a memorandum before for us to review in July, because I feel as though we ought to have some paper in hand for every application that we receive explaining what it is that they're asking for. So even though they've already asked for the funding, this funding round, and we told them that to come back in July, they should submit a memorandum in July saying we're back. We still would like to request that money if you're willing to recommend it. But if they want to expand the budget, like you're saying, Reg, to increase the budget because of a cost overrun, then they would need to submit documentation of the change in budget, and if it's for a new scope, I think that's a new application. All right, so administrative goals. Now that we have a brand new CPA manager, And for the first time, we have a full-time CPA manager. Danielle was always giving us half of her time or as her responsibilities for the department increased, less than half of her time was available. Teresa does also wear several hats for the department, which she is trying to let down as the city hires more staff. But ultimately, she's working for the CPC full time. So what are some things that we would like to accomplish that we haven't been able to with without having as much administrative staff time as we needed. So we have some catching up to do with respect to finances and record keeping and project oversight. Danielle's been doing the best that she can, but the city has also been down several other staff people in other departments that have impacted our ability to keep track of CPA. So It's, I think that that we've crested the hill we're coming back, but we need to do some work to get back on top of this, this end of what we do. So also picking up and improving the communications with applicants and grantees. We just haven't had anyone who's had enough time to do all of the handholding that needs to be done with all of our 80 projects. Coordinating with city staff, mayor, city council, this is all just, you know, basic part of the work that we need to do generally that we'll have more time to focus on. And I also put these, I put on the list, improving CPA awareness, you know, I think that the tabling that we did this past year has been great for CPA awareness, but we'll have more staff support to be able to make sure that we get involved in all of the tabling events that are coming up and maybe finding more ways to get our increased awareness of what we're doing.
[Joan Cyr]: So we probably should take a look at the website for a refresh. Yes. On the content perspective. You know, and I know we've got stickers somewhere. Danielle, do you have those? Stickers are fun at the tabling events.
[Danielle Evans]: Regarding the website, I was trying to figure out if there's a way to get Therese to log in and password. And I don't have the permissions to do that. So I don't know if you could help facilitate getting her. Yep.
[Roberta Cameron]: given her some login privileges so that she can take that. And she may be able to take over the map as well.
[Theresa Dupont]: Yeah, Joan, I'm a I'm a big nerd. How are you? Yeah, excellent. Yeah.
[Joan Cyr]: All right. We should we should probably set up a meeting. That works for me. Some credentials for sure.
[Roberta Cameron]: I'm I'm kind of anxious about the fact that our website doesn't have the back end support that we used to have. Yeah.
[Joan Cyr]: Well, did you say that the city was trying to take it over, Danielle, at some point?
[Danielle Evans]: We're supposed well, we did get the new website was launched. It still seems that the individual departments are not going to have the autonomy to manage our own pages, which. It's too tedious to get updates, so having the external page still might be a good idea for now. I'm wondering like, so we have our go green website as well. So I'm wondering if there's some way to consolidate things.
[Theresa Dupont]: We can, Danielle, Alicia and I were kind of discussing what that could look like. At least we can bring it onto our platform at the very least. And I'm pretty comfortable with making website updates. So my vision was in time once I get my feet wet, to really dive into my great area to really dive into that and get that more robust updates going.
[Joan Cyr]: What, what application do you use for the go green website to make updates? Is it a WordPress site?
[Theresa Dupont]: It is a WordPress site. Yeah.
[Joan Cyr]: Yep.
[Theresa Dupont]: We try to keep it simple.
[Joan Cyr]: Oh, yeah.
[Danielle Evans]: Okay. So one thing that I started to do was, um, I started When we, because I was worried about broken links and. Because I was linking things to my one drive and not wanting to upload things to our website was I was linking to the city's website for agenda. So that every. So I feel like we could just continue to do that, like from the new site. or if we use another site or somehow just link. I felt like there was a lot of redundancy because I would, every time I post an agenda or post minutes that I would have to do for our website, then I have to send it to, you know, the comm staff. So it's like doing everything twice to keep our website going and having content there. I'm just wondering how much of that is really necessary since It's on the city site.
[Joan Cyr]: You don't have to put documents on the preserve Medford website. All you have to do is have a link to a page where they live on the city website.
[Danielle Evans]: Yeah, so I started doing that of things originally they weren't linked to the city site. Right.
[Joan Cyr]: So maybe you need to have a separate, you know, administrative website meeting. Teresa. Yeah.
[Danielle Evans]: Yeah, I just don't think that we need to have two different pages linking to minutes. We could just be like, this is where the minutes are. So you don't have to have a separate link for every single, you just, it was just, it's everything was in two places and it started to feel kind of like busy work updating that.
[Theresa Dupont]: Right. Yeah. We'll, we'll come up with some sort of best practices, but I definitely want to, I feel like the onus has been a bit on you, Joan. Um, so I'll take it away from you.
[Joan Cyr]: Careful what you wish for.
[Roberta Cameron]: And really excitingly, I want to celebrate our fifth year of funding projects this year. So I'd like to think about something big that we can do. I don't know whether this is the time to talk about it, or if we want to wait until next month or June to come up with a venue and a plan for celebrating.
[Joan Cyr]: So tell me what you mean about this. You mean like an in-person celebration or sort of like a celebratory, I don't want to say TikTok video, but you know, something that would just showcase, you know, what has happened over the last five years kind of thing.
[Roberta Cameron]: But you're talking about- I think all of the above, like we should just like put out like, what could we do to let people know what we've accomplished?
[Joan Cyr]: and to thank all of our- There's gonna be a student at Tufts that can help us out with this. What's that? There's gonna be a student at Tufts that can help out with this.
[Roberta Cameron]: And what can we do to thank all of our grantees, our applicants for the work that they've done with our money as well? So, well, I mean, this is, This is something that Teresa can work on, but if you all had some ideas about what you'd like to see us do, I'd love to put that on her list to think about.
[Matt Leming]: I think an in-person get together, at the very least, would be great.
[Unidentified]: I missed the last one, so I still haven't met most of the people here in person. Yeah.
[Roberta Cameron]: Well, we'll do something just for the committee that usually every year in August, we've had some kind of a social gathering just for the committee in lieu of a committee meeting. Then I'd also like to do something in person for all of our grantees and for the city to celebrate. And I think that covers everything that we wanted to cover in our annual public hearing.
[Joan Cyr]: Do we need a motion to close the public hearing?
[Roberta Cameron]: Yes, I think we do.
[Joan Cyr]: I just made a motion.
[Roberta Cameron]: Okay. I didn't hear who seconded it.
[Joan Cyr]: Sorry, Mosa. I think Losa did, but she has already gone on mute.
[Roberta Cameron]: Oh, OK. All right, so I'll call the roll. Doug?
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[Roberta Cameron]: Joan? Yes. Matt?
[Unidentified]: Yep.
[Roberta Cameron]: Reg?
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[Roberta Cameron]: Losa? Yes. Heidi? Yes. Christy? Yes. All right, motion passed. The annual public hearing is closed. Thank you all. Great discussion. We just have a little bit more business to cover. First, we need to approve the minutes from the last meeting.
[Joan Cyr]: Motion to approve the March 14 minutes 2020 says 2022 but I'm sure it's 2023. I second that.
[Roberta Cameron]: HAB-Charlotte Pitts, Moderator, she-her-hers, she-her-hers, she-her-hers, she-her-hers, she-her-hers, she-her-hers, she-her-hers, she-her-hers, she-her-hers, she-her-hers, she-her-hers, she-her-hers, she-her-hers, she-her-hers, she-her-hers, she-her-hers, she-her-hers, she-her-hers, she-her-hers, she-her-hers, she-her-hers, she-her-hers, she-her-hers, she-her-hers, she-her-hers, she-her-hers, she-her-hers, she-her-hers, she-her-hers, she-her-hers, she- All right, motion passes. So the last thing is other business. The one other business that I wanted to acknowledge is this past week, the mayor put out a notice saying that there are committee openings for many committees, including, quote, several on the Community Preservation Committee. I looked, I dug into that because I wasn't aware of vacancies on the committee right now. But digging into it, I learned that, as we mentioned earlier, Christy will be leaving us. And also digging into it, I learned that, well, first of all, I had understood that Danielle DeRusso was having difficulty being able to make our meeting schedule anymore because of her work obligations, but Reg has finally stepped in to take her place for the parks board so that that potential vacancy is filled, but I also understand that Heidi has been waiting for her turn to pass the baton to someone else on the Conservation Commission. So the Conservation Commission and the Community Development Board both have vacancies. And if you know of anyone who would like to serve on the Community Preservation Committee, encourage them to join those boards so that we can get more people who are enthusiastic about serving on this committee and spending millions of dollars every year. Is there any other business, any other announcements that anybody wanted to pass on?
[Theresa Dupont]: Teresa. Just one other quick thing. I'll send an email out to everybody here just so that we're email connected. If you ever have any ideas, want to do any one-on-one, I'll send out like a. Yeah.
[Roberta Cameron]: Teresa. I would recommend. Hold on one second, Teresa. I would also recommend that you request people's phone numbers because it can be very helpful to know how to get in touch with people. With your committee members.
[Theresa Dupont]: Yeah. If you're willing to share that, I'll share mine. Those two ways.
[Reggie Graham]: I don't think my information's anywhere. Okay, good for you. This was forwarded to me, so you might not be able to find me.
[Theresa Dupont]: All right. Awesome.
[Unidentified]: It's a protection program, right? All right. Thank you to all of you.
[Roberta Cameron]: I think that covers all of our business this evening.
[Joan Cyr]: Oh, should I close the meeting?
[Matt Leming]: Second.
[Roberta Cameron]: All right. And I will call the roll. Doug.
[Doug Carr]: Yes, thank you, Danielle. Thank you, Christy.
[Roberta Cameron]: Joan.
[Joan Cyr]: Yes. And Heidi, too. Whenever you find a replacement, you're coming to the party. It doesn't matter.
[Roberta Cameron]: Heidi hopes that she won't be going through this again next year. Matt?
[Matt Leming]: Yes, and thank you, Reg, for agreeing to step in. My pleasure.
[Roberta Cameron]: Reg, again, this is on a motion to close the meeting.
[Reggie Graham]: Yes.
[Roberta Cameron]: Losa? Yes. Heidi? Yes. And and Christie.
[Jenny Graham]: Yes.
[Roberta Cameron]: And yes, I don't think I voted on any of the previous motions. You weren't close. All right. Thank you all. Thank you. Have a good night. Good night.
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