[Roberta Cameron]: I want to call to order the meeting of Medford's Community Preservation Committee on Tuesday, May 14th, 2024, 6.30 p.m. We are meeting hybrid, both in room 201 at Medford City Hall and via Zoom. So the meeting being held in hybrid to view and participate in the meeting, you can be in either location. or call in by phone, all of the information is provided in our agenda and we'll post the meeting as soon as possible, a recording of the meeting on the city's website afterward. So first on the agenda is to review the minutes from March 12th and April 9th.
[Theresa Dupont]: And those were in the meeting packets that was submitted last week. Do you want me to pull it up on screen or? Sure.
[Roberta Cameron]: We have Kayleen. Thanks for joining us, Kayleen. Probably can't hear me quite yet.
[MCM00001830_SPEAKER_05]: Sorry, I couldn't get the link to work. I had to manually put it in.
[Theresa Dupont]: No worries. Glad you're here. I need to bring a mouse with me next time. Trackpad is not working. Okay. I'm going to go ahead and share my screen. Zoom needs to stop changing things up on me. So here we have, and you guys in the room are not seeing it because I need to drag it over. Is everybody still seeing meeting minutes? Yes. Very good. This is for the March 12th.
[Joan Cyr]: Now I'm seeing a stained glass window. I was seeing the meeting minutes.
[Roberta Cameron]: That's okay, you can leave.
[Theresa Dupont]: Let's see. There you go. Thank you. So this had a correction. I accidentally kept Joan in attendance. Joan is not there. So that has been corrected here.
[Joan Cyr]: So this is just to accept the meeting minutes that we accepted them, not that we approved them, just that we received them, right? Correct. So I see both of the 312 and 49 meeting minutes in the drop box. So motion to accept the meeting minutes from 312 and 49. Second.
[Roberta Cameron]: All right. So I will call the roll. Doug?
[Doug Carr]: Yes.
[Roberta Cameron]: Kaylene? Yes. Joan? Yes. And Ari? Yes. And myself, yes. Meeting minutes are accepted. So next on the agenda is small grant application from Trees Medford. So I would like to, if you could bring the application up on the screen, and I would invite Amanda and Sarah to tell us about your application.
[Amanda Bowen]: Can you hear me? Yes. Great, thank you. We got a big grant from DCR. As you know, you guys already helped us with funding and inventory of the cemetery trees, and that was a few years ago. We got a grant from DCR and a private grant put together to fund an inventory of all the city trees, and we got an estimate from Davie Tree, which turned out to be a bit low, so they got going on the inventory this summer. this winter, spring, and found that they used up the money before they finished. So we decided to do two things. One is to separate out the parks and do the parks separately. And the other is to go back to DCR for additional funds to finish. Basically, West Medford is the part of the inventory that has not been completed. And because you all because of the open space part of the CPC. mandate and we thought this was a good use it really will be great to to keep track of all those trees and we we anticipate we're already as we get these inventories making sure that they're loaded into the City GIS system, we have an agreement that we've put in place with the DPW to commit to over the next year or so to establishing a means for using this data, maintaining this data, and updating this data so that it doesn't become obsolete that we've put good money toward it. So that's the basic idea.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you. Anything to add? Questions from the committee?
[Joan Cyr]: I was going to say it's at the end of the tree inventory. This is not the end.
[Amanda Bowen]: Um, well, we, we still have to go back to DCR for the West Medford segment, but everything else in the city is done.
[Doug Carr]: So, what is the. total project cost, including DCR, because the request is for $5,000. Right. We're estimating that the park trees are 1,000 trees, and this is how much 1,000 trees would cost.
[Amanda Bowen]: And so we are going to contribute the $500 to get us up to the right amount. The total cost, we spent $25,000 on the city street tree inventory. Most recently, we did another project where we did just South Medford a few years ago, and that, if I remember right, was $5,000. I think that's right.
[Doug Carr]: Yeah, it's just that you're actually asking for a much lower percentage of the actual total cost of all trees. It's more like you're asking like 15% non.
[Amanda Bowen]: Oh yeah, no, we can redo the budget if that makes more sense, but we just broke it out as a separate project kind of.
[Doug Carr]: Yeah, no, I just wanted to know the context, thank you.
[Roberta Cameron]: Okay, this is very helpful. Other questions from committee members?
[Joan Cyr]: Not a question, but will the results of this study inform the Medford Square master plan?
[Sarah Gerould]: It will go into the vulnerability analysis that is currently underway and that will inform the other plan.
[Amanda Bowen]: The consultants who are working on the vulnerability assessment are definitely excited about this data to be used for the larger, assuming the city gets the grant, for the larger urban forestry master plan. This will inform that heavily.
[Roberta Cameron]: I have a question that is maybe not related because So just out of curiosity, I wonder if you know anything about the trees in the McDonald Park, and is that included in this study? Because that's a DCR park.
[Amanda Bowen]: That's what I thought, yeah. Yeah, and we know they need to do lots of work because Sarah and I went over a year ago and observed all the dead ashes in McDonald Park, and it was really sad. So there's work to be done over there.
[Sarah Gerould]: Yeah, we we asked Davey tree why the initial estimates were so far off. And they said and they say, well, I said, well, you've done this for other communities. How come Medford's were so far off? And they said, well, the other communities already had inventories and Medford doesn't.
[Amanda Bowen]: Or not so much that they already had inventories, but they had a pretty good ballpark idea of how many trees they had. And in our case, we were a little bit flying blind.
[Roberta Cameron]: Yeah.
[Sarah Gerould]: Not surprising. So this is really a first, a first tranche of data for the city for this information. And it's really important that that the city be able to manage its forest resources, which are very valuable appropriately.
[Roberta Cameron]: And who will be maintaining this inventory after it's completed?
[Amanda Bowen]: We've worked a little bit with, I can do it. With Tim. Well, we've talked to Tim and Tim has signed the agreement about management of data, but we have worked a little bit with. He has loaded the data we've generated so far into the inventory, and he's also been working with Aggie to create lists of new trees that have been planted that he's mapping and stuff like that. But he's pretty heavily committed, so they're going to have to figure out a way to get a little more GIS savvy. into City Hall somehow. And that's what we're looking forward to hearing how they're going to do it.
[Sarah Gerould]: And one of the stipulations before we sent them a bunch of money from various grants was that this be maintained, that they maintain the data. And we have an MOU to that effect.
[Theresa Dupont]: I wonder if there's some opportunity for partnership with the planning department. We tend to get several interns that last throughout. They'll commit to a whole year and they all have GIS experience. I think in the past they've helped before.
[Amanda Bowen]: They have. There was one guy in particular who worked very closely with Aggie and did some wonderful mapping. of new trees plantings over a number over 10 year period. And those files, I think it was you who figured out that those files still exist on a computer somewhere. So we look forward to, yeah. And an intern can totally do what needs doing. It's just that their workflow needs to be set up. Right. Okay.
[Roberta Cameron]: That could be a solution. Any further discussion? Would anyone like to make a motion to recommend the funding of $5,000 for the Park Street? I'm sorry. I'm going to back up. I had talked about this with Teresa earlier today, and now a suggestion that I wanted to put on the table for the committee's consideration. is whether a tree inventory for the parks is more appropriate to fund out of our project budget, or if this is something that we should consider funding out of our administrative budget, because the administrative budget is intended to help provide the committee with information that we need to be able to administer this grant program. The information in this case being the condition of the trees in our parks, which will help to establish whether, you know, what the priorities are for tree planting in the city. So I think it could fit either way in our programmatic budget or in our administrative budget, and I wanted to see what your thoughts are, Joan.
[Joan Cyr]: My first thought is how is this different from every other study that we have funded through the regular funding?
[Roberta Cameron]: Design for any kind of improvement is really part of the process of making that improvement. And we did previously fund the Oak Grove Cemetery tree inventory out of our programmatic budget. And I don't think we really considered the question about whether that could be an administrative project rather than a programmatic project at the time. But comparable, we have talked about studying, for example, just doing an inventory of accessibility needs across playgrounds, which is comparable to an inventory, to a tree inventory across the parks. And so that might have been done as an administrative project rather than a programmatic project.
[Ari Fishman]: What have we been spending our administrative budget on for, say, the last 2 years? Because I feel like I understand what we spend our program budget on. Um, is the answer Teresa?
[Theresa Dupont]: Teresa and our various subscriptions and dues that we pay for, but does this effectively stretch our budget?
[Doug Carr]: Like, more we have more funds fund if we're using a little admin in the middle of grants.
[Roberta Cameron]: It's going to shake out probably the same either way because any administrative funds that are not spent in that fiscal year roll over into our program funds for the future. So either way, this will come out of our program budget. Yeah, so I don't think it really impacts our budget. It's really more about setting a precedent for the kinds of projects that we will consider for programs versus administrative.
[Joan Cyr]: So I always thought that the administrative budget was really for the administration of the CPA, you know, law and the ordinance and the administrative support of the process of, you know, CPA versus administration related to any particular one grant or one, you know, submission.
[Roberta Cameron]: An example that was given to us back in the beginning was that it could also be used for due diligence in case of projects where more information is needed before we were ready to. That's true. Doug, what do you think?
[Doug Carr]: It sounds like it's, it's something we haven't done just because we haven't really thought of it. And obviously I don't think we're stretching the boundaries here too much of the guardrails for either. So I'm okay with doing it. It's also not a lot of money in that two points or almost $3 million. It seems like we have to play with here. So I don't think we'll be doing this for a million dollars, you know, hundreds of thousand dollar grants, most likely smaller stuff.
[Roberta Cameron]: Right.
[Doug Carr]: No, because it's, It's just a scale thing.
[Roberta Cameron]: One thing to consider is, so one significant difference is that if we fund it out of the administrative budget, it does not go through city council. If we fund it out of... Wow, that's... I want to see the reactions.
[Doug Carr]: Like, oh my God.
[Roberta Cameron]: It's at our discretion how we spend the administrative budget, but the programmatic budget goes through City Council.
[Joan Cyr]: I get the due diligence piece. I just wonder if, and I'm trying to think back to when we met with the CP coalition, If that due diligence was really geared toward an application that we had already decided should be funded, but more information was needed. So it was an add-on that we would do the due diligence for versus this is straight up the application. You know what I mean? I don't really feel comfortable, given what you just said, also reminding me that spending out of the administrative budget doesn't go through the city council. This really should.
[Doug Carr]: Okay. Because it's a tangible part of spending, yeah. I see that point.
[Roberta Cameron]: Yeah, I appreciate that input.
[Doug Carr]: Transparency. Yeah. Right. Got it.
[Roberta Cameron]: Well, thank you. That's helpful that we can tease it out. So with that, I would ask if there is a motion to recommend the funding from our, I don't know if we have to specify. Did you have a question, Sarah?
[Sarah Gerould]: If you can continue, I have a question for after you've done that.
[Roberta Cameron]: So do we have the funds in the general fund budget or is it in an open space reserve right now?
[Theresa Dupont]: And do we need to specify? We have enough to cover this. Do we need to specify? Yes, when it comes time for the mayor's recommendation. But at this point, we don't have to specify.
[Roberta Cameron]: So looking for a motion for a recommendation to fund $5,000 for the parks tree inventory.
[Joan Cyr]: I'll make that motion.
[Roberta Cameron]: I'll second. All right. Then I will call the roll. Joan? Yes. Ari? Yes. Doug?
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[Roberta Cameron]: Kaylene? Yes. Reg?
[Reggie Graham]: Yes.
[Roberta Cameron]: And myself, yes. Excellent. Regulation passes. We make the recommendation And Sarah, did you have a question?
[Sarah Gerould]: Yes, I just wondered if you had any update about the status of the plan for funding the cemetery plan?
[Theresa Dupont]: Yes, that one, I plan to resurrect. I appreciate your patience with that one. Just this spring has kind of hit me hard. My intention is to get another meeting going on that one in early June. But yes, that's still in the works.
[Sarah Gerould]: And were you able to get approval for the entire cemetery, or is it still limited to the historic section?
[Theresa Dupont]: Oh, so in terms of the legal opinion on if trees in the new section, if they would be as considered for passive recreation, we did get a legal opinion on that, and they did deem that it would be eligible. have to go before City Council, but congratulations, and like I said, we'll be in touch.
[Doug Carr]: I would like to make sure we add a note to that, not for the motion, but just to put the context of the other funds that are, have been brought back to us. We've got some notes that are $30,000 elsewhere that others have spent. And this is a, this is like 17 or 18% of the actual total global. Sure. Holistically. I think so. I think it'll just help them understand that it's not just us. These guys have done a great job finding money from many other sources, which most of our grants don't. Right. They definitely hit the pavement. They did.
[Theresa Dupont]: Yeah.
[Doug Carr]: They should be awarded or at least acknowledged for it.
[Theresa Dupont]: I will.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you.
[Unidentified]: OK.
[Theresa Dupont]: All right. If it gets a little loud, please let us know. There's a city council transition right now, and there's a lot of noise coming from the hallway. So if it gets, if it picks up on the microphones, please let us know.
[Roberta Cameron]: But otherwise, next on the agenda is the annual plan update. So, we're going to begin we have a few steps of what we need to go over tonight, but we'll begin with just an overview of the whole plan update. So, it's been how long since we had a plan update 2021. Yeah, so it's been a couple of years. And we are. It looks good. I am going to share. So while you do that, the goal is for us to have this plan completed at the same time that we send to city council the motion for the small grant application and for our annual budget. So this evening, we can talk about the whole thing. Hopefully everyone has a chance to read it. If you have any further comments, send them to Teresa this week so that we can wrap up the plan all together.
[Theresa Dupont]: Yes. I'm not sure if folks had the opportunity to skim it. I mean, it is many pages. So I understand if you weren't able to fully digest it. largely what the plan, it just evaluates what we intend to do as a CPC, as a committee, by also taking in consideration feedback from the community. So that's ultimately, in very, very layman's terms, the purpose of this annual plan is to inform the public on what we're seeing, what we're doing, and the reasoning behind it all. So especially for the new folks, as a new folk, I found it very, helpful to be writing this and it helps you digest exactly what it is that we do here. So I highly recommend for everybody to really read through it, but definitely the new folks. So I don't want to go page by page, but to highlight some of the achievements, the crowding things we want to talk about. This graph has been shared around In a couple of different color iterations, but, you know, same pricing, same figures that are represented here. So this has been super powerful. What I've been interacting with people is just putting it into these numbers here. But, you know, we just break it down. This is the total funds that we committed last year, how many applications we reviewed. So just to kind of give folks an idea of, you know, in summary of our actions of last year.
[Roberta Cameron]: So all the various factors. I tried really hard to make those shades of blue the same, and I don't know why it wouldn't make them the same. I'm usually the word whisperer and can make you do anything I want, but not that.
[Doug Carr]: Wasn't that Excel? Or was that Word?
[Theresa Dupont]: It's Word. It's Word. I never really like to play along together. So did a recap of our total revenue that CPA as a program has generated over the years. So the blue here represent the state match. So for the folks, I think there's a couple of us who weren't involved in last year's budgeting process. We'll talk about that later. Overall, our budget comes largely from CPA, what we call surcharge, or just local revenue, tax revenue that's collected is represented here in this orange. The blue is what we get from the state match money. And most of what makes up the pot for that is they skim a little bit off the top of real estate transactions that happen at the registry of deeds. So you're going to see, even if you look here from fiscal 23 to fiscal 24, the state match dropped down because people stopped buying houses. And actually, we got an email today with guidance from the coalition about what we should be anticipating for the state match percentage. In some years, we've experienced a very nice healthy 30%, I think, 40% was the max since we've been in it. Yeah. So they're anticipating this year that we should budget for 14.5%. Oh, which stings. Yeah. So just something that, again, we'll be talking about our budget. That's an agenda item we're going to plan our next year's budget today. But I just wanted to kind of break down how the state match was broken out. Joe, do you have a question? I saw you unmuted yourself.
[Joan Cyr]: Oh, I'm just typing in comments in the chat. You can go look at them later.
[Theresa Dupont]: Yeah, thank you. So, yes. So again, local surcharge and then the state match money. The reasoning why, again, they're trending down is less folks are buying property plus the, they actually spelled it out really well. And forgive me, it's like a three hour old email. But it's just because nobody's buying homes anymore. And as well as there not being any budget surplus money that has also been diverted to the state match fund in years past. Any questions on that? Anybody?
[Doug Carr]: So it sounds like about $300,000 less this year compared to last fall.
[Theresa Dupont]: We'll look at it. I kind of have it. It's a healthy reduction. Yeah. It is a healthy reduction, which I hate saying that because it stinks. Again, these are just kind of nice recaps. I encourage everybody to kind of go through, and if you want to be familiar with our financials, like over the years. Here's a very large picture. I should probably scale it down. a Google map actually got it linked in, linking out, but it interacted Google map of all of our projects in Medford here. Um, I think we should be really celebrating the fact that we were as a, as a committee highlighted in a Boston Globe article about the good work that we're doing towards funding housing. Um, if folks haven't read this article, highly recommend it. I think it came out like the day after Christmas. So it was a nice little, holiday present. But yes. What else do we kind of want to do? So this, do we want to go ahead and look at budget yet? We'll hold the budget and come back to it. So this part, portion of the plan really dives into the feedback that we're getting from the community. What do they want to be seeing CPA invested in? So we kind of break down like what exactly open space and recreation is in Medford and how we prioritize it. So just some kind of bullet points there. This was actually really interesting. Roberta asked me to kind of dive into how many park projects have we done since the last time that this plan was updated and how much of that was CPA funded. So it's really cool to kind of talk about. Since 2020, the city has completed about 40 projects. I think we're at like 39. So that's why I said nearly 40 projects. And we actually have 27 in progress right now. Whether or not it's shovels in the ground or RFPs getting pushed out the door, we currently have 27 active projects going.
[Roberta Cameron]: For a city that's short on resources, that's astounding.
[Theresa Dupont]: I really wish, I don't know if it's public facing, but there's this great spreadsheet that I can circulate internally here, where it breaks down all the completed projects since 2020, all the active projects. And in the middle, it says the funding source. And only two or three of them have anything related to just operating budget. Everything else is ARPA, CDBG, grants, land and water grants that are out there. So it's kind of great to see how much we're hustling not our standard pot of money to make these projects happen.
[Roberta Cameron]: But I also want to, among us, to learn because I don't think the city was doing anything close to that before CPA came on board. So we primed the pump, got the water flowing, and then all of a sudden CDBG money was getting poured into parks projects that hadn't been before. So we got them to be doing this work on a scale that they had not previously been doing.
[Theresa Dupont]: That is a good thing, too. Yeah. Yeah. I kind of broke it down on a table here just so you can see the numbers of how much CPA is investing in these projects. So as we look at it, it's 40 completed projects since 2020. 35% of those had CPA funding associated with them. Not that 35% of the total project cost worth was from CPA funding. It's just a third of each project CPA was involved in, which I think is pretty astounding. One for every three, and we're there. As you look at active projects, that creates a little bit higher, almost we're almost at 50 active projects right now, which I think is pretty great. Again, we kind of broke down the survey results at our last meeting, which I know was, again, the number of survey responses was a little disappointing, but the content that we really got back was really substantive. So I did break it down in here a little bit. The biggest things that really came out of those surveys and our conversations and tabling, it's such a stark shift from the last time this plan was updated in 2021. Because at that point, COVID was still new and we kind of, nobody had to pay rent. It was just like there was a moratorium on rentals and mortgage payments. So housing in the freshness of 2021 wasn't as stark a need as it is today. So as we're engaging with everybody, Housing was the number one thing folks wanted to talk about, which I thought was interesting. Not having been here three years ago, it seemed like that did shift more from open space park projects a few years ago to now being, well, what are we going to do about housing? So, you know, we obviously, we did, I'm actually going to skip kind of over this here.
[Doug Carr]: work. So I think I want to finish my thought on me. Just one comment on the parks. First of all, that data is really important. I think people need to understand that because one of the fears that I think some of us had in year one, year two, was that this was just going to be a line item in the city budget, like just the CPA. And if it is spurring on a substantial amount, that's the intent. And that's happening. And I think that's an important thing too. I remember the very first grant we gave was like the city like $200,000. It kind of set a weird precedent. And I feel like in the context of what we've done since then, it's just spurring more. They're not relying on a crutch. They're doing more. And this is a supplement, which is always the intent. And that's something we need to communicate to people who, you know, everyone has different priorities. And just to know that it's not the city is actually doing following through on the intent of the program, not relying on it as the only source. That's really important.
[Theresa Dupont]: I will say that I do deflect a lot of conversations where CPA has been asked to be the only source for other projects.
[Doug Carr]: Well, that's good. You're there. It's the first line of defense.
[Theresa Dupont]: We're being recorded, but there are some things where I'm like, where did that even come from? So yes, thank you. That's good feedback. We'll keep that good behavior going. Actually, I am going to touch on a little bit here as we look at historic preservation. In some of my conversations, obviously, I'm engaging with residents and more of the taxpayer stakeholders. But as I've been talking with our colleagues here in City Hall about what kind of projects are you starting to see come up, I will say that the Historical Commission has been incredibly tenacious with their seeking and receiving of grants to fund all kinds of various historical studies around the city. So that's an interesting thing. They're probably going to have You're on the historical commission, that's right. Yeah, I think Ryan said he's got another one locked and loaded, waited for September. I forgot which neighborhood it was, but... There aren't many left. Okay.
[Doug Carr]: You know, we've worked our way across the city in the last 10 years. Very good. Thankful nights are there right now.
[Theresa Dupont]: Yes, yeah.
[Doug Carr]: Yeah, Ryan's always the next one queued up.
[Theresa Dupont]: Yeah, which I love.
[Roberta Cameron]: Keeps us busy. Just a comment there on the photo. I love the current work in progress photo on the previous page. So we should not have to grow photos in the report.
[Theresa Dupont]: We've got lots more to show off. Yeah. I was trying, it was really hard for me to not update this necessarily with like very fresh 2024 things. I love fresh 2024 things. I was trying to get like fresh 2023 things in there, but okay. Thank you. Oh, I see.
[Roberta Cameron]: Yeah. I guess I'll put it in next year. Actually, that was a point that I didn't make on the very first page, the cover page. So a point of confusion, and I don't know if we always want to keep, like we can change precedent. So the first year when we updated it, we thought of the plan as looking backwards and called it the 2023. Like this would have been the 2023 report talking about what we did last year. I think that's confusing. And so I think I actually already changed the cover to 2024 plan. So I think it makes sense to talk about this is our snapshot of who we are today and not who we were last year.
[Theresa Dupont]: All right, thank you. Can you get a new picture? I tried. I pulled over on the side of Fellsway to try to get a good picture. Everybody should drive by Fellsway West. Check it out. I think they're almost ready for signing. So we definitely wanted to include as we're talking about affordable housing here that the creation and generation of the affordable housing trust, as well as some of the recent. Comments that have been directed at CPA. As most of you know, and if not, I'll just refresh everybody's memory. There have been some talks about potentially implementing some fees, real estate transfer fees.
[Roberta Cameron]: So there's been talk about potentially asking the state for to give the city the option to talk about fees. We're not anywhere close to implementing fees. We're just talking about asking the state for the permission to talk about it. A response to that has been to say, well, why don't we just get more CPA funds and use more of our CPA funds for affordable housing? which sounds like a very generous and progressive idea, but all of our entire CPA budget is hardly a drop in the bucket for the cost of affordable housing and all of those fantastic parks projects that we're contributing to that people all across the city benefit from all of our historic preservation projects. we wouldn't be able to do those things if we committed all of our money to affordable housing. So two things I think that I tried to articulate in a plan and I welcome everyone's feedback about whether it's been articulated well is that we wanna continue to maintain a balance between the three program areas that we would consider being a contributor to the Affordable Housing Trust, but that they need to look for additional sources of funding, and that we want to consider supporting a request, like a ballot initiative, to increase us to the 3% level of property tax surcharge rather than the 1.5% where we are right now. So the housing section of the plan tries to capture those ideas.
[Theresa Dupont]: Yes. So we wanted just to capture that conversations are happening right now, whether that becomes a ballot initiative. You just scrolled off, and it looks like Jonah's trying to read it. Sorry, Joe. Here we go. Good. All right.
[Joan Cyr]: Stop. I was reading the one that's in Dropbox, but I noticed it's different. So I just shut it, and now I'm reading this one.
[Theresa Dupont]: Yeah, I went through and I made some formatting edits. OK.
[Unidentified]: OK.
[Doug Carr]: I agree that the balance, that diagram with the three almost equal pieces of the pie tells the whole story. And I agree that's really important.
[Roberta Cameron]: Yeah, and I think, so part of what we've tried to do in the three program area sections is to talk about also, in addition to what public input have we heard, what planning has gone on in the city in the last few years related to each of the three program areas, which also gathered public input and articulates goals for the city, so we can all be on the same page about what our goals are. also trying to highlight the impact of CPA spending up till now in these three program areas. So all of that is meant to especially have an answer to these conversations that are going on about the CPA program and provide some documentation about why we take the position that we take Why do we want to balance the funding between the three program areas? Because the things that we're doing in the other two program areas are also really important. I want to be able to tell that story.
[Joan Cyr]: So who would drive this initiative? We drove it as a ballot initiative when, you know, We started this, but would the city be driving this initiative or would it be a combination of us and interested people plus the city? I feel like the story has to be told. It's almost like campaigning all over again for it. What else could we do if we were to increase our portion? Again, what gets affected with regards to the exemptions and stuff? Do the exemptions change based on the percentage that we opt for? I just don't remember.
[Roberta Cameron]: That's a really good question. I mean, with respect to the exemptions, the same exemptions would apply. What would change is that we would be in a pool of communities that receives a larger state match. So right now we're getting the 14.5%. They would give us some amount above 14.5%. if we were in the 3% pool. But to answer your other question, who would drive it? I, we've started Teresa and I have started just like whispering to people to find out, you know, like take their temperature. How would you feel about this? So, um, ideally it would come through the elected officials rather than having to be a signature campaign. I think that right now our elected officials probably would support it. So, um, we, but, they would support it if we work with them to strategically choose a time to do it and a way to put it on the table. So Teresa and I are going to talk with Stuart Savignore to get his take on what needs to happen. And then we're going to quietly talk to the city councilors and the mayor about whether they would support it and when and kind of how they would like to go about it. I don't know if they want to do it right away if it competes with an override campaign, for example, or maybe it would strategically help an override campaign. I don't know. I want to give them the chance to have that discussion about that before we try to go around them. So that's what I'm thinking, but I just tried to plant the seed in here because I think people will bring it up as an excuse to not do something else. And I want to make sure that we have the reasons on the table that we're doing what we're doing.
[MCM00001830_SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I was just gonna say, I think this does a really good job, like educating people about the really small amount of CPA money. Like you said, it's a drop in the bucket. And then I even think that language of like, you know, we could do a surcharge of 3%. You know, the people that are really against the transfer tax, like they're gonna see that and they're gonna be like, well, I don't want that either, you know? So it's sort of like a education piece here of like, you can't use this as an excuse, you know? But like, if you do, then this is what's gonna happen kind of thing. I think you did a really good job with it. And I think this is where the conversation really has to lie with just educating everybody to be like, you can't use the term CPA and CPC and not understand. It's really not that much money. So I think you did a great job. Thank you. I agree.
[Roberta Cameron]: Ironically, one of the people who was the most staunch opponents to CPA when we passed it was Bob Penta. And I saw him at a city council meeting recently stand up and say, we should be using CPA to support affordable housing, and we should be increasing the CPA surcharge so that we can put all that additional money into affordable housing. I'm going to take him for his word. I am going to quote him on that and say Bob Penta said so.
[Joan Cyr]: He gets the first lawn sign. How about that?
[Roberta Cameron]: And that's the other half of this point that he was trying to vanquish.
[Joan Cyr]: Well, I think what it says is, you know, the thing that people are anxious about the unknown. And when we were first, you know, putting this forth, they didn't really know how this was gonna affect their day-to-day lives, both from the additional property tax that they may pay and the benefits that the city would see. But now we have five years under the belt of what this would do. And so I honestly think it might actually be an easier task to increase it than was to get it passed in the first place.
[Roberta Cameron]: Absolutely. It's proven now.
[Theresa Dupont]: I think a compelling number as I'm interacting with folks, and obviously I've had conversations with people who are not supporters of CPA for whatever reason. Whenever I bring it back down to the average single family homeowner in fiscal year 24 will pay $86. in tax for CPA, that tends to bring it back down there. To your point, Joan, folks don't know the unknown. But whenever you can put a number on it, then most people are like, oh, I pay less than $100 a year? OK, that's great. OK.
[Roberta Cameron]: So I don't think there's anything else. We already talked about the public engagement. Oh, maybe is there a our own goals after? So this page that's on the screen right now is essentially a summary of what we developed our very first plan, and we've never changed these goals and priorities. We put them up every now and then for discussion, but I don't think our minds have changed about what those goals and priorities are. So we can skip past that. It does fit on one page if we use. Yeah, we format it just right. But the procedures, that's just as much as the public needs to know about our procedures. So this is the 2021 timeline. Yeah. And anything else that we have in the plan? Do we have a goals for ourselves? I think so. Oh, yeah. Okay. That concludes our overview of the plan. Are there any other comments? Again, if you want to go back and read it and send Teresa comments this week, that would be great.
[Doug Carr]: End of the week or just let's put a date on it?
[Theresa Dupont]: End of day Friday. I can tinker with it over the weekend.
[Joan Cyr]: Can you put the most up-to-date version in the Dropbox? I will. Thank you.
[Theresa Dupont]: I apologize. I had meant to get it in there before the meeting started, but I had a painter show up at my house at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. Oh, yay. I think so. So sorry if everybody's like getting their eyeballs or estimated availability. Okay.
[Roberta Cameron]: So, we. We need to adopt our annual budget that we're going to appropriate for each of the program areas. In most years, we have used the minimum annual like disbursement or allocation schedule that the state gives us, which is a minimum of 10% in each of the three program areas. a maximum of 5% in the administrative budget, and the general reserve is what's left over. That's the flexible funding that we could spend on any program area. So we have, in some years, given an extra amount to affordable housing, anticipating that affordable housing projects are less frequent and a larger ask each year. So we wanted to bank extra funds toward affordable housing. So I think there was one or two years when we put 20% in the affordable housing category and 10% in each of the other two categories. So this is an Some communities do things differently. Some communities put a larger amount of their funding into the program area reserves and much less is the general reserve. So I wanted to open this for discussion among our committee, what we would like to, where we'd like to allocate our funds this year.
[Theresa Dupont]: And I would like just to jump in just really quick. These numbers that are over here, that's what I'm estimating based off of the state match. So the budget number here is pretty, pretty solid. I think it's like 1.986. I have it on another spreadsheet. And that's based off of surcharge revenue that's collected, as well as, again, the state match of 14.5%. Kind of bummer news, but all right.
[Ari Fishman]: I like generally the idea of maximum flexibility. The only caveat there is as we see the affordable housing trust come into being, I don't know if this is going. This may not make sense this year, but I couldn't see for future years if we commit, say, 15% of our affordable housing directly to them that that should be in this annual disbursement. But since we don't have that agreement at this point, it may not. It probably is not appropriate for this year, but just thinking out loud.
[Theresa Dupont]: Are you suggesting 15% just to the affordable housing trust and no other allocation? I just want to clarify.
[Ari Fishman]: Uh, that was not a specific number intentionally, but we have discussed in the past as that 1 of the things we are considering as a way of supporting them is to allocate part of our. Agreement and we decided we are not doing that for now that we are kind of still going project by project. Um, it was a, if we get to a point where even going project by project, perhaps we say this is something that we're prioritizing. This could make sense, but we're not there. Which is to say, I like the flexibility. I think this is good. Also, I just saw Joan's shirt and it's incredible.
[Joan Cyr]: Do you like that? Amazing. It's really old. I got it in Davis Square. It says, Somerville, the gateway to Midford.
[Doug Carr]: That's a collector's item.
[Joan Cyr]: It is a collector's item.
[Roberta Cameron]: I'm sorry, go ahead.
[Reggie Graham]: I was just wondering, have we gotten many applications in yet?
[Theresa Dupont]: We haven't opened the annual funding round for this year yet. That will open up later this summer. We just have these small little off-cycle or small grant applications come through.
[Reggie Graham]: So, I mean, the distribution of the budget would probably be more reliant on how many applications we got in each category, wouldn't it?
[Roberta Cameron]: If we maximize flexibility, yes. So the state requires us to put a minimum of 10% toward each category. And if we leave 65% in the general reserve, as is shown on this table right now, then we can put that toward any funding category, whatever applications we receive.
[Reggie Graham]: So traditionally, we would Traditionally, we've used it a little bit more for open space. Then I think that the pie chart showed that historic preservation was second and then affordable housing was third. I can't flip it up and down, but if that trend continues, I mean, I know there's an awful lot of scuttlebutt about affordable housing, but Considering the amount of money that we actually have to offer out, I don't see why we would increase any one of the budgets as far as our estimates are concerned. I would think that we'd leave them right where they are and then figure out what we're going to get in as far as applications are concerned.
[Roberta Cameron]: So I think I'm hearing from a couple of you that we lean toward maximizing our flexibility. And in past years, we felt that it would be important to at least start affordable housing off with a handicap because often we don't get applications in affordable housing and we want to make sure that we set aside enough money so that an application next year will have enough money to give it because it comes less frequently in bigger amounts. So, you know, I don't want to lean too hard seeing how important the work has been that we've done in the other program areas. And we may have an affordable housing trust that will apply for funding this year. It's to be determined. It hasn't been appointed yet. So I don't think that there are any affordable housing projects in the pipeline that I'm aware of that are going to apply for funds this year. No, not that I'm aware of.
[Reggie Graham]: Yeah, I'm not sure.
[MCM00001830_SPEAKER_05]: I'm not sure what the is planning on this year. I mean, I was just thinking, just because of the climate in the city, you know, just all the conversation and talking points are pushing affordable housing. That, you know, if we did increase that percentage, it sort of shows that, like, we're listening, you know, we're, we're doing what, you know. people are asking for, you know, even if it was just 15% or just a small increment. I mean, I personally agree with Reg, you know, the pot of money is small, like, you know, 10% seems fair, and then the general reserve is there for anything else. I'm just wondering if like, you know, just for appearances, you know, if we, if it was increased, you know, that that would bode well with the public.
[Roberta Cameron]: I tend to agree with that position too.
[Doug Carr]: But this is non-binding essentially, I mean, can we get applications, can we not change our minds about, so we're locked in here?
[Unidentified]: When we put it into the bucket, we're locked, that money's locked into that channel, so.
[Ari Fishman]: In that case, I think I'm going to change my vote slightly too. I do like the idea of increasing affordable housing a little bit. I mean, at these numbers, it is symbolic, but that is the current discussion, but moving it to 15% instead of 10, we are locked in. It's not that much money. I've been convinced in that direction.
[Roberta Cameron]: So the suggestion is that it should be 10% open space, 15% affordable housing, 10% historic preservation, and 60% general reserve.
[Doug Carr]: Agreed. Seems a good consensus.
[Unidentified]: That looks right. I see what you're saying.
[Roberta Cameron]: have to do that later.
[Unidentified]: I will.
[Roberta Cameron]: Yeah, I promise that I'll be right, folks. I'll go right now. Well, you're going to use the actual budget and not the rounded budget anyway. Correct. So okay, so based on the annual displacement percentage that we see on the screen rather than the actual dollar numbers, is there a motion to approve this budget for the CBC for FY25?
[MCM00001830_SPEAKER_05]: I'll make the motion.
[Roberta Cameron]: I couldn't see who that was.
[MCM00001830_SPEAKER_05]: It's Kayleen.
[Roberta Cameron]: Kaylene, thank you. And... I'll second that. Oh, go ahead. I heard Doug first. Here we go. And I will call the roll. Joan? Yes. Ari? Yes. Doug? Yes. Kaylene? Yes. Reg?
[Reggie Graham]: No.
[Roberta Cameron]: And myself, yes. So the motion passes, but I just want to come back and read this, Reg, your reasoning for voting no.
[Reggie Graham]: I don't believe that we needed to address the discrepancy. If we've been given equal parts to each one of the categories, open space, affordable housing, and historic preservation, I just don't feel the need to increase the budget for affordable housing until we find out what we get as far. Well, I know that we can't do it afterwards now, but I just don't feel there's a need for that. But that's just my opinion. That's all.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you. I just wanted to have your position in the open. So thank you. I would suggest crown down when there are numbers, when there are cents. I got in trouble once for rounding up. That's a very bad thing. All right. The only other thing that we have regarding the annual plan review is application materials. Do you want to do quickly take us through the application materials? So I don't know if I don't think any of the many members currently have experience using our application in the current format. So we'll walk through what it looks like and try to... So everybody should be seeing CPA application.
[Theresa Dupont]: This is a Smartsheet form, it's done online. We do accept paid for applications, although we really, really don't want to. But so we always direct folks to here. Start with just the basics. I'll just skim through it really quickly. I don't wanna bore us here, but applicant information. So the, actually, I think I might still have one.
[Roberta Cameron]: What we want to think about is from our perspective, We want to make sure that we're getting the information that we need to help us make a decision, answer our own questions about the projects.
[Theresa Dupont]: So project narrative, this is where folks can write an essay basically on what it is that they're trying to accomplish here rather than it being bullet points and just budget sheets. This is actually the story of what they're doing and why they're doing it. I'm going too fast or too slow. So again, in this project section, we're really trying to get into the nuts and bolts of exactly what it is and how it aligns with the CPA goals.
[Roberta Cameron]: Let me take a quick look at that CPA budget summary for me. Yeah, I hate this one. I want to change it. Yeah, we should probably change it. Oh, something went wrong. Okay, well, we're going to change it anyway because we need to come up with a better budget.
[Theresa Dupont]: We've actually, we saw an example of it tonight while we were looking at the Trees Medford application, which I think this is the decision I had mocked up. Dropbox, it's not the Dropbox. Sorry folks. Too many tabs open. It's a very basic spreadsheet that asks folks to identify all of their various funding sources. and line item budget for their project. I think it's a little clunky right now in that it's not very intuitive. Folks just will usually put, oh, my project budget is $150,000 rather than, you know, this aspect is 50, I have this much of contingency and what have you. So I think there's some room for improving that.
[Roberta Cameron]: Yeah, so let's take a look at that.
[Doug Carr]: Have you gotten feedback in the past about how easy it is or saving the middle?
[Theresa Dupont]: Yes, that's pretty much the number one. complaints about our application process is that you cannot save it as you're going. I do have a little disclaimer here about what I have since doing this last year's application cycle. I've created a template for folks to use that as they're writing their grant and then they can copy paste. It's still a little clunky, but it's at least the same exact questions in an editable form. My, my thought we were talking about this earlier is instead of just putting a nice little disclaimer here actually linking to that template that folks can access right then and there.
[Unidentified]: That's a good idea.
[Doug Carr]: Yeah, that actually that solves the problem. Yeah. I don't have an example of the packet from the trees thing. So we can't see what the result is in a condensed form. Right.
[Theresa Dupont]: I can pull up that application if it's helpful to close it out.
[Doug Carr]: Are you seeing the need to change anything else?
[Roberta Cameron]: This was updated last year. So I'm more comfortable with this now than what we had in the past. myself, but it's always worth taking a look at it.
[Theresa Dupont]: I think that this is, for me, this section here, why is project needed? Like, I think we have too many questions kind of stacked up in there, so it doesn't really pass my eyeball test. Maybe if we broke it out in a little bit, like, why is this project needed? And then maybe bullet point, like, think about how the project serves the public, what populations it will serve.
[Doug Carr]: Can you send a link to what you think are successful grant applications that would be good templates.
[Theresa Dupont]: I can do that.
[Doug Carr]: I mean, that would be what I would be looking for is something when I'm competing against and what you're looking for, you know, for maybe a couple, you know, one in open space, one in. Yeah, that's a good idea. Just that's always easier to say, here's a good one.
[Theresa Dupont]: And honestly, I'm doing that right now with some people as they're getting prepared for either next year's funding cycle or if they're doing off-cycle, I'm like, here's a good one, copy that one.
[Roberta Cameron]: So we want to make sure that we have this ready to go with a month before the first due date is. So that's the limit on how much time we can spend tinkering.
[Theresa Dupont]: I think overall, the feedback as I'm talking with applicants, nobody said like, oh my gosh, your questions are so wordy or it's too long. really was just kind of, it's inconvenient for me to walk away and come back to it half an hour later. Nobody really seemed to have issues with the substance of our questions. And honestly, we've all, it's more or less written grants at some point. This isn't that bad as far as some grant applications go.
[Roberta Cameron]: The reason why there are so many questions stacked in front of one box is so that they don't feel like they have to answer each of those questions individually. And so it's trying to reduce the amount of writing they have to do. But it might be possible to simplify it. Yeah.
[MCM00001830_SPEAKER_05]: I mean, this is pretty standard. I mean, I, you know, I looked at it and I compared it to Lexington's, which I've had to do like myself many times. I don't think it's any more onerous than theirs. So there's even online. So I think this is I think this is fine. I don't think it's worthy. Okay.
[Theresa Dupont]: Thanks, Kelly. Okay, then. So why don't I tinker with you know, updating it for 2024 dates, putting in that template, embedding it in here. I might just kind of tinker with some of the formatting of the questions, but keep it there. But otherwise, it doesn't really sound like we need to overhaul this.
[Unidentified]: Okay. No, I don't think so. Okay.
[Theresa Dupont]: I'll go ahead and stop sharing. Again, there was a link to the application materials in the Dropbox if folks wanted to look directly at it themselves as well. Awesome. Thank you, everybody. Appreciate the feedback on that.
[Roberta Cameron]: So that concludes our update of the annual plan and our budget and everything. That's all our business for this month. So is there anything else that we wanted to, anyone wanted to bring up for the group? Bye-bye.
[Joan Cyr]: Membership. So I know we have a couple of vacancies. What's the update on the search?
[Theresa Dupont]: We interviewed one candidate. I've been trying to nail down. Thank you, Ari, for nudging me about Ada. I've been trying to get in touch with Ada. I'll reach back out again. I don't have incorrect contact information, so I'm not.
[Roberta Cameron]: Yeah, and we did take a very long time to respond because we have been trying to get more applicants in. So that's really been the hang up is having only one person at a time who we're in conversation with. We really wanted to have the opportunity to open up the membership to a wider more diverse group of folks.
[Theresa Dupont]: Yeah, it's unfortunate that we need folks at the same time that the CD board I think needs a person as well as they're obviously staffing the affordable housing trust. So there were a couple of really great candidates that I thought could have brought their expertise over but they're kind of being earmarked.
[Roberta Cameron]: I didn't think to follow up with you about the mayor's suggestion when I ran into her last week.
[Theresa Dupont]: I reached out to a couple of folks that were on a list. There was another list that the mayor pointed us towards and one person declined and the other person I haven't heard back from yet, but I did reach out to them last week. So things that we've got pokers in the fire, so hopefully we'll be able to appoint a couple of folks here soon. Thank you for bringing that up, Joan.
[MCM00001830_SPEAKER_05]: How many vacancies are there?
[Theresa Dupont]: Two. Two. And they're both the at-large There's technically four at-large appointments. These are two of those.
[Ari Fishman]: Teresa, do you need Ada's email to double-check you have the right one or anything?
[Theresa Dupont]: Yeah. If you can send that to me, that would be great. We were very eager to connect and it just hasn't happened, so I appreciate that. Anything else?
[Roberta Cameron]: I think that is everything that we needed to cover today.
[Theresa Dupont]: I'll tease this out. Just maybe next month, we should probably start thinking about when our social outing is. So if you all just wanted to start thinking about some ideas so we can all hang out outside of Zoom and Room 201. So maybe come up with some ideas next month. That'd be great. Otherwise, I don't think I had anything else.
[Joan Cyr]: I have a question that's somewhat related to that. Do we know what's going into the vault space?
[Theresa Dupont]: We don't. I know it's another restaurant, but we're unaware. My boss, Alicia Hunt, she's been having conversations, but we don't know who the actual restaurant that is going in. We just know that it will remain a restaurant.
[Joan Cyr]: And do we know when the Irish pub is supposed to open two doors down from the Cuba?
[Theresa Dupont]: Oh, I know that that... You see my theme here, Doug.
[Joan Cyr]: You see my theme.
[Doug Carr]: It sounds like it's a pub crawl.
[Theresa Dupont]: Yeah. Yeah. I will find out about the Irish pub. I know that they're... the owner has been working out. So it's in the middle of its build out, but I'm not sure exactly where in the progress. But yes, it's coming.
[Joan Cyr]: Yeah. And how about the Great American Beer Hall? Let's just take it all the way back to that.
[Theresa Dupont]: I do have knowledge about where that stands. Yes. Yes, I do.
[Joan Cyr]: That's good to know. Second question, will it be open this fall?
[Theresa Dupont]: We are all very hopeful that it will be open in the fall, yes. That's all I have to say about that. Yeah, you can text me, Joan.
[Joan Cyr]: That's all right. And did you share the good news with Roberta about the presumed? Why don't you do it, Joan? I got the Preserve Medford site back up.
[Theresa Dupont]: Apparently, there was a version history that they were able to restore.
[Joan Cyr]: We keep backups. I talked to Hadley and I was like, thoughts, ideas? She said, talk to your host and see if they have a backup they can load. Basically, wipe the whole site out and restore backup. We restored the backup from January 8th. which was far back enough to bring it back online, so.
[Theresa Dupont]: Yeah. Oh, good, good. Yeah, I forgot that was, was that Friday? I think so, I don't know. We still have it available.
[Joan Cyr]: Yes, so I know that there was some discussion about moving most of the information onto the city's website, but having the ability to post our own information if we wanted to in a more timely manner, so. Right.
[Theresa Dupont]: Yeah, right. Oh, I don't know if everybody saw. I shared from preserve Medford's Facebook page. The updates of what's the restoration at World War One Memorial. Oh yeah, I shared it into the Facebook group and it was so nice seeing such positive comments come back. Everybody is super supportive of the program, so if anybody does want to go check it out, the statue itself is is complete. Now they're working on the Plaza, which is much more work to do. But if you want to go check it out, it looks brand new. I don't know how the heck they did it, the edges of the limestone look sharper and everything just looks super crisp. So I recommend it.
[Joan Cyr]: Remember that guy that showed up with his sandblaster and he was ready to go in to clean that thing up?
[Doug Carr]: Yeah, I was a little worried, Joan, about that one.
[Joan Cyr]: I know, I was like... Anytime's instruction.
[Unidentified]: Anytime. Sure. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.
[Roberta Cameron]: I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.
[Joan Cyr]: I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.
[Roberta Cameron]: I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.
[Joan Cyr]: I don't know.
[Roberta Cameron]: I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.
[Unidentified]: I don't know.
[Roberta Cameron]: I don't know.
[Unidentified]: I don't know.
[Roberta Cameron]: I don't know
[Doug Carr]: All right, I'll see you in a month.
[Unidentified]: Good night, everybody. Thanks, everybody. Bye. Bye, everyone.