AI-generated transcript of City Council Committee of the Whole 04-07-26

[Justin Tseng]: hide my dad or something like that, you know, him just being a goofball. And he told me, um, that's so funny. Apparently his uncle used to live in that house, he was saying.

[Andrew Castagnetti]: Andrew! Hi, Andy.

[Rich Eliseo]: Yeah, we, you know, I've, uh, reached out to Rich again.

[Zac Bears]: You got confirmation that they were opened? Yeah, he said that they had scheduled it. He opened them now.

[Unidentified]: Test 1, 2. Test. Test 1, 2.

[Zac Bears]: Medford City Council Committee of the Whole. April 7th, 2026 is called to order. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

[Rich Eliseo]: Councilor Callahan. Present. Councilor Leming. Present. Councilor Malauulu. Present. Councilor Scalpelli. Present. Councilor Tseng. Present. Vice President Lazzaro. Vice President Lazzaro is absent. President Pierce.

[Zac Bears]: Present, six present, one absent. The meeting is called to order. Vice President Lazzaro has informed me that she's not feeling well tonight and won't be able to attend. Action and discussion items 26-066 offered by President Bears and Councilor Callahan. Be it resolved by the Benford City Council that we invite City Assessor Jared Gajdian to discuss implementation of a residential property tax exemption in preparation for a City Council vote in December, 2026. So we do have here, Our City Assessor has joined us. I'm going to briefly speak. I'll turn it over to Councilor Callahan, then we can hear from the Assessor. But tonight we're talking about... So that's a tax on... All of the properties residential commercial properties that are taxable here in the city of Medford. That's the main source of revenue for our community for our schools public safety city hall and everything else that we do here in Medford. Right now, like many other cities and towns, we have what's called a flat rate. So it's the same tax rate, you know, for residential properties for no matter what kind of property you have, you pay the same rate. It just, the bill depends on what the valuation, assessed valuation of your property is. There are some communities that have what's something called a residential exemption, and this exempts certain eligible owner-occupied properties a certain amount of their property taxes. That amount is a fixed amount, it's set every year. If you're eligible and you file your application, you get that exemption. And what it does is it basically turns a flat rate into a progressive rate for eligible properties. So if you're owner-occupied and you're eligible and you file your application and you get your exemption, make, if your house is valued at less than a certain amount, then your taxes would go down, but if your house is valued at more than a certain amount, your taxes would go up. So it changes it from a flat rate for everyone to a progressive rate based on the wealth or value, assessed value of your property. And then all of the other properties that are not both eligible and have a application that has been accepted, they would pay a higher flat rate that's non-eligible residential properties as well as the commercial industrial personal properties. There's communities in the area that do it, some that do not. And there's, I think, a number of policy reasons for us to consider this option. Personally, I think it is an option that we should be considering relative to some of the major things that we need to do as a community, especially the upcoming Medford High School to make sure that while imperfect, if you are in a smaller, older, lower value home, some of the impact of the cost of a new high school would be mitigated by something like this. It's not a perfect tool. It doesn't mean that everyone who is low income would get a benefit because it doesn't actually, it's not based on people's income, it's based on the value of their property. And you know, again, it is a benefit to people who own and occupy their homes, so people who have the means to have purchased and maintained ownership of a home. So there's benefits and costs, but I think there are some really strong arguments in favor doing something like this at a time when we're facing the biggest investment that the communities had to make in our capital infrastructure, a new high school in 50 plus years. So that's my short summary and I'm going to turn it over to Councilor Callahan and then to the assessor. Councilor Callahan.

[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. I just want to note it does say that 066 was by Councilor Leming. Is that accurate or inaccurate? I am happy to speak on this topic.

[Zac Bears]: Oh, that's just an error in the committee report. It says you on here.

[Anna Callahan]: Great. Awesome. So, you know, I think. There are definitely, as you said, there are arguments in favor and against. I think for people, for homeowners who reside in, in their houses here in Medford, most of those people would see a reduction. It would be landlords who live in other cities, primarily that see their taxes increase. And, of course, we want to think about how that's going to affect renters. There are many different ways of viewing that as well, and it's hard to predict whether that would, in fact, increase rents. I think that there are a lot of, like I happen to be a person who believes that this would have a lot of beneficial impacts and very few detrimental impacts for the city of Medford, for the people who live in the city of Medford, right? Which is who I represent. I don't represent out of town landlords. I represent the residents who either own their homes or rent here in Medford. And that's who I, you know, it's important to me that I, vote for policies that favor those folks. I think that this would be beneficial, but primarily this meeting is really about making sure that we could even take that vote. So to me, what's important in addition to this policy is also our ability as a legislative body to be able to take this vote, which we have for two years been told we are not allowed to take the vote. That's a little bit complex, but basically has to do with the fact that without spending resources six months in advance of the vote, the city cannot appropriately plan for us to vote in favor of a residential tax exemption. And thus we cannot vote yes. So I think it's really important that we be able to take this seriously. And that's why we're having this meeting in particular. So I want us to be able to make that vote. I will be one of the people arguing in favor of that vote. Of course, I will also come with a bunch of research. But tonight, this is really about getting the information that we need and making the city prepared for the city council to be able to vote on this issue.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Callahan. Councilor Scarpelli.

[George Scarpelli]: Thank you, Mr. President. I appreciate my colleagues' words, and I just think that I'm glad Jared's here because my biggest fear is that it's not going to help the majority of the community that are homeowners who live in their homes. From what I heard for years, is that not only is the funding mechanism, that's been the biggest hurdle to move forward to see how we can make that happen, if it's even possible. But I think it would be interesting, again, just because I think you've said it a few times, the former said it when I was here, that it just doesn't equate that people that live in their homes who think they'd get a tax break, they really, in essence, will then pay more. So it would be interesting to see what that ratio is, to see if it's truly beneficial. Now, for someone that, if it is, if it's something where it's 70-30, we'd have to think about it. If it's 50-50 and we're going to see half of our homeowners Taxes increase on top of what is already an increase and what we look like in the future. I think it's going to be interesting. So I appreciate that. I just want to, that's how I'm interpreting today's meeting, I hope. So again, but I concur with my fellow colleagues. If this is an avenue to help our homeowners stay in their homes, We should do everything possible to move this forward and try to find the funding for that process. So, thank you.

[Zac Bears]: Hey, Councilor Scarpelli, I will turn it over to the assessor unless there's any other councilor who'd like to speak at this time. Seeing none, Mr. Assessor.

[Jared Yagjian]: Okay. So, just to kind of get, I'll run through some slides that I made and just do a quick overview and then we can discuss those points. But just to your both points, what I tried to do with the data was, give us a timeline of when it would make the most sense compared to the other cities and towns that do already have it. And why does it make sense there and why would it not, or make less sense now here? And then if we can get to that projection, then we can budget for it appropriately because you're right, it's next to impossible to get it done in six months when, or even when we're having these discussions in November, or at the tax rate hearing, so. We'll go through the slides and then at the end, you know, feel free to, we can roll back and, we can roll back and talk about any of the topics here. So this is just a copy of the Master General Law, Chapter 59, Section 5C, which outlines what the exemption is. which basically is a summary here. We can go up to 35% of the average assessed value of all Class 1 residential parcels. That is the assessed value. It has nothing to do with the tax bill. It's always about value. So the residential exemption is a dollar amount in the value that is exempted. It only applies to principal residents of the taxpayer and eligible properties and do include the multifamily residents as well as the apartment buildings. They're all in the class one residential class. The shift occurs, it reallocates the tax burden only within community residential class. It does not increase or decrease the total tax revenue. So, again, repeating here, it decreases the assessed value of the qualifying properties. And the exemption, it's really a misnomer in the sense that it's more of a tax shift. It's a residential tax shift among the residential properties. You know, the upper portion paying the tax base with the higher tax bill and the lower portion of the tax base will have a lower tax bill. The levy never moves. It remains the same. The intent of the residential exemption, when it began, was to promote owner occupancy. My understanding, what I've been told, is it really started down in the Cape with the vacation communities to promote or help the year-round occupants. the addition to any other exemption the taxpayer has, it cannot go lower than 10% of the fair cash value of the property. So in other words, if a property was assessed at, I'll try to make easy math here, 500,000 and the exemption amount was gonna be 400,000 and their tax bill was gonna be less than 10% of what it otherwise would have been, they'd be capped at that 10%. You can't go negative, you can't have a negative tax bill. And then qualifications to qualify property must be on January 1st, owned and occupied by the taxpayer for income tax purposes. Properties held in a trust typically don't qualify. There was a case back in 1966. It was actually Medford versus Kirby that was ruled on. And there's other documents, more recent ones, the Finance Opinion in 2022 and the IGR of 91 as very clear guidance on exemption eligibility of properties held in trust. Also applies for personal exemptions as well. Again, the exemption is for property owners only. Renters would not be eligible. They would not see any type of relief from this policy at all. So now this goes into Medford level data, which is one of the key components. This is what percentage of your city is owner occupied. So what my office did, what I had asked them to do was we took the mailing addresses of all our properties and all the different classes and use that as the metric. It's possible to go around and figure out exactly who was owner occupied. So this is the best, best metric to use. And what we're seeing here is the single families, which we figured right around 95% is owner-occupied. The twos and three families is about 68% owner-occupied. Condos, 83. And then when you get into the apartment buildings, it's essentially 100 you might have. The 111, 112 class, the four families are in there, so there may be someone who occupies one unit and rents three, but the majority of that class would not qualify because it wouldn't be owner-occupied. And the miscellaneous class, it's a small class. They label it that way, DLS, and it's broken out that way. But it's like a 109, for instance, where it's a single family with another building behind it. that essentially, that's 50-50 based on, but it's a small amount of parcels. So I would really be focusing on the single family, the twos, threes, condos, and apartments from this slide. And this is the census data, which also helps. So as you can see, Cambridge, Somerville, Malden, and Everett are all sub-50% for owner occupancy. All four of those cities do have it. Winchester, which is a neighbor of ours, is 80%. They do not have it. Medford, we're 54.1%. So that also kind of corroborates the data that we had on this previous slide here. Yep. This one here? The census? So. And then what we have here, this is from DLS. It just breaks out from our early four that we use every year for the classification hearing. We then applied the classification number of apartment buildings, which are your 111s and 112s, to the surrounding communities. And we have 118 apartments here. And then Everett, going left to right, 334 apartments. Somerville, 661. Malden, 304. Cambridge, 827. And then Winchester, essentially none. It's less than 1%. So this slide, again, was added where it shows that as the apartment buildings rise or the percentage of the apartment buildings in the city rises helps with this exemption because they do bear the burden of this. And the more they have, the more it's dispersed amongst them and it doesn't just really impact very few large scale apartment buildings as it would currently here in Medford. This slide here stacks our 111 and 112 class, which are those nine to 350 unit apartment buildings throughout the city against the other three cities that neighbor us that have it. And as you can see, we're significantly lower on a value base. So the next slide here talks about the break even point. Well, let me go back to this for a second here. Malden, for instance, they have roughly twice the value of us with the apartment buildings. That's relevant where it comes here. Let me see if I can show the notes on this. I don't know if I can do it. OK, so above the break-even, we calculated the break-even to be about $1,150,000. So for our single families, there's $720,000 above. Condos, $56,000, which that's usually all the condos who would benefit the most. It's typically the lowest value class. in most cities. Twos and threes families, we have 912 above. And then the apartment class, 127. So for comparison, it's not on the slide. I didn't have time to put it. I talked to the Malden assessor. He shared with me what they're breaking. breakeven is for over. They have eight single families over the breakeven, zero condos, and 32 twos and three families, 16 two families, 16 three families. And that is a direct result of them having greater apartment buildings. It basically gives almost the entire class, the single families, condos, and two and three families to be all below the breakeven and all get the benefit. Councilor Callahan.

[Anna Callahan]: It's OK to ask questions in the middle. So if I'm understanding this correctly over 90 percent of single family homeowners taxes would go down over 98 percent of the condo owners would go down. Is that accurate?

[Jared Yagjian]: Not down. This is just simply who's above and over. We haven't talked about eligibility. This is just simply based on the assessed value. So we'll get into some other slides, but if they don't, if it's in a trust and they're under the break-even point, they wouldn't qualify. If they were over the break-even point and they were in a trust, they wouldn't qualify. So this just simply shows the break-evens.

[Zac Bears]: But a maximum of 91% would be under if in the single family. You know, it's lower because maybe they're not all owner-occupied and then maybe they're not all eligible ownership structures. But if every single family was owner-occupied and every single family was eligible, 91% would be less than the break-even, 9% would be above. That's correct. Okay. And then.

[Anna Callahan]: Right. Taxes would go down for 90, over 90%. Right.

[Zac Bears]: If.

[Anna Callahan]: Well, yes. If they were all eligible.

[Zac Bears]: So the Councilor Scott probably brought up a ratio, right? 70-30. It's a starting point, and maybe it comes down somewhat, but 90-10 on the single families, 98-2 on the condos, 80-20 on the twos and threes.

[Jared Yagjian]: Assuming everyone gets it, yes. And you have to remember, too, the very important point is it's a sliding scale. So when we do those numbers, it's just we're using this. So someone who's at $1.1 million, they're going to save maybe $15, $20. Of course.

[SPEAKER_02]: But it's still below.

[Jared Yagjian]: And you have to call the break-even point somewhere. And who's above, who's below. So that's where it is.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I apologize. Did we get a copy of this?

[Jared Yagjian]: Oh, right now, I can give you a copy of it. Thank you. Yep. The rental impact. So we touched on this again. It's 111 and 112 class. They bear the burden of this. Roughly 1,500 multifamilies would see an increase due to eligibility being either above the break-even or not being owner-occupied. The apartment class, this kind of shows what I was saying before. We don't have enough of apartments to have it evenly dispersed, so our largest apartment building would see an approximate half a million dollar tax increase. That's significant because it does trickle down to the renters. Their margins don't typically get squeezed if they pass them along. And I'm not just saying that. There's a tax classification report from the Department of Revenue. And I can share this too where they state any tax increase on rental properties undoubtedly passed along to renters in the form of higher rents. And there is also a study, more recent study from 2025 from the Federal Reserve in Philadelphia where they said roughly 50 cents to 89 cents of every dollar in tax increase to a building is passed along to the renters. It's significant, and it's something that does happen, so I just want people to be aware of that, that the renters certainly don't get helped in any way. And we have 3,662 of them in this class. I'm sorry, in which class?

[Anna Callahan]: In the 111s and 112s. Which is?

[Jared Yagjian]: The number of units that we have, rental units. The class, the 104, 105s, the 111, 112s, there's 3,662 rental units.

[Zac Bears]: So that's basically between two units and 350 units?

[Jared Yagjian]: Yes.

[Zac Bears]: Okay. So that's a rental unit. There's 3,600 rental units and two families, three families and apartments, small, mid, large apartments.

[Jared Yagjian]: I believe so, correct. Okay. Yep. This is the number we had in the classification hearing and it was pulled from, I believe, all the apartment buildings including the 104s and 105s. Got it.

[Zac Bears]: Councilor Callahan.

[Anna Callahan]: This is more general. I can save it to the end.

[Jared Yagjian]: So the rest of this just says that, you know, again, there's a strong assumption that the increased tax burden would be pushed to the renters, you know, leaving, you know, more than half of the renters vulnerable to a potential increase. And then the communities where the exemption is in place typically have a larger number of apartments proportionate to the rest of their residential class. That, again, helps with the dispersion of the tax shift in the residential class. This is just a picture's worth a thousand words, I believe, shows what will happen. So yes, to your point, we will have more people that benefit versus don't, but the benefit compared to the hurt is significant. You're going to save maybe $2,500 at most in your lowest priced properties. You're going to go up a half a million. on the renters and they'll be passed through to those buildings.

[Zac Bears]: So. Could we see any chance you have a version of this chart that just kind of shows, is there a chance you have a version of this chart that kind of shows this weighted against the number of properties that fall within each range? Or is that something you could make? Because I think that's helpful too to understand. Yeah, absolutely. There's probably a few, two or three properties on the right end of this chart and 15,000 on the left side of the chart.

[Jared Yagjian]: Oh, absolutely, yep.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah.

[Jared Yagjian]: And that's where, yep, we can definitely do that. There's value buckets and the number of properties in each value bucket.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah, and maybe as well, it might be useful to kind of see the amount of value that would be shifted, right? So like, based on all the assumptions, you know, first we have, the break even then the eligibility but you know if you're under the break even the total amount that people under the break even would be spending less versus like the total amount over you know and how just kind of understanding how would value be distributed could be helpful you know is this. and maybe even across the specific brackets of value. I know that's kind of a complicated, maybe I'm verbalizing it more complicated than it would seem visually. But, you know.

[Jared Yagjian]: It is. You could just cross-reference it with this. You could say the number of parcels in each one of these brackets.

[Zac Bears]: Right.

[Jared Yagjian]: Yeah. And that's easy data. I have it. I just don't have it in a graph.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah. And I'm even thinking like. in the $500,000 to $600,000 range, there are 2,000 parcels. And in total, they would have their tax, an exemption would reduce the taxes there by, I don't know, $5 million in the aggregate or something like that. Yep. We can get that. Thanks, Jared.

[Jared Yagjian]: And then the seniors, this goes to, well, first we'll just go through it. So what we did is we pulled the registrar voters. We have 7,049 seniors in the city. Of that, the seniors that would be eligible, meaning that they're not in a trust and they do live in Medford with their Medford zip code, that's 3,021. So the difference with that would mean that they are in a trust or they who don't live in Medford and they own the home. Of the 3,021 that would be eligible, 677 are over the break even, 2344 are under. So in total in the aggregate of that 7,049, 67% would be adversely impacted by this policy, 33% would benefit.

[Zac Bears]: So I just have a question on this one. So we're basically saying there's 4,700 seniors registered to vote, people over 60 registered to vote, who don't own a property. And there's 3,000 or so who do.

[Jared Yagjian]: Say that one more time.

[Zac Bears]: So the seniors that do not benefit from residential exemption, that's 4,700 people. They just don't own property.

[Jared Yagjian]: No, no, we're saying that they don't benefit from residential exemption because they either have their property in a trust or they don't live in it. They might rent it or something. Yeah, it's like the last four rows. The assistant helped me with this, so we could have added rows. The numbers, what you want is, yeah. There you go, thank you. Sorry.

[Zac Bears]: All right. Or or their renters or or they. But there's no way that all 7000 people on homes.

[Liz Mullane]: So no I'm just saying that's what the breakdown that's what he's saying.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah. Councilor Callahan.

[Anna Callahan]: Sorry. I'm very curious who those 4,700, like what that breaks down, how many of those is because they have a trust, how many of those is because they're renters, and what are the other categories? What else could it be?

[Zac Bears]: Well, I think a big one is, and I think this is an important thing, seniors living in tax-exempt property. So seniors in Medford Housing Authority property, seniors in nursing facilities that are non-profit, right? That would be, not only would they, they would neither benefit nor be hurt because the places where they live aren't even paying taxes at all. So I think that's an important kind of thing to factor in here. Maybe they don't, I think it's fair to say they don't benefit, but they also probably don't pay a cost per se. Councilor Tseng.

[Justin Tseng]: I think another factor, I'm not sure if this is in the 4700 number, but seniors who live with relatives who own their own property, so who would be eligible for the residential exemption under that? I mean, whether it's above, below, or even I think that's another question, but I'd be curious as to that 4700 number, how many of those people live with someone who is a primary homeowner?

[Jared Yagjian]: We can try. So I had to delegate some of this because there's other things going on in the office. I had the assistant work on this and he said that he paired it against our data that, my understanding of how we did this chart is he paired it against the data we had in our owner records. And then those 7,000 would be paired against, they would be owned against, they would be paired against the owner records and he pulled out everything that was in a trust. Does that make sense? I don't know how else we'd get more granular on that. All we had was the birthdate to go on and then the mailing address.

[Justin Tseng]: I only bring it up as, you know, I think that might play with the numbers a little bit. If, let's say, like, it's a grandma, she's living with her daughter, and the daughter's the listed owner of the property, and the daughter lives at the property as well, right? And maybe, let's say the property's under break-even, they might be benefiting from the residential exemption, even though the grandma isn't, you know, is encountered in that bracket right now.

[Jared Yagjian]: Possible.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah, I mean, how I'm reading this is there's 7,000 seniors, 2,300 of them live, own a home, match with the owner records, 2,300 own a home that's not in a trust that's under the break even, 677 live in a home that's not in a trust that's over the break even, and about 4,000 don't live in a home that they're the listed owner of. I think the numbers add up, doing my mental math there.

[Jared Yagjian]: They do. It's the last four, yeah. You could have added another line to make the numbers add up.

[Zac Bears]: I think the 677 is counted in the 4705. I think that's the double count. It's not really a double count, because we're not saying this should be an addition problem. But I think that 677 is included in that 4705. So I think the question that I have, and it sounds like others have, You know, we know there's 677 people who would be over the break even, who are over 60. That's for sure. And there's 2,300 people who are under the break even, over 60. And there's about 4,000 people who are seniors where it's like, do we know what their status is? Are they living in a taxable, rentable property where they may be impacted if their rent were to go up? Are they living with family who would otherwise receive the benefit? Are they living in a non-taxable property, senior housing that doesn't get taxed? Or maybe a senior living facility of some kind. We have a couple of those. I think that would help to understand. that 4,700 number, or at least the other 4,000 of it. Sure.

[Jared Yagjian]: I can ask the assistant to get some clarity on that number, see if he can dig in a little more.

[Zac Bears]: And even if we can't get the actual breakdown of it, I think just to explain it as 677 are eligible, but over the break even. X amount are in trust, and that's where their issue would be. And then some other amount. we could probably get from the housing authority at least, maybe the senior living facilities, an understanding of kind of their populations. And then probably the remainder of all of that would be people who may either would be living in a rental property that could be impacted or living with family. And that one's a little less easy to figure out, I think.

[Jared Yagjian]: Yeah. I'll ask him to dig into that because I can't speak to the chart behind these numbers. Yeah. All right.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you.

[Jared Yagjian]: And then staffing logistics. So this just runs down in basically crayons how we get to the number here. So if you have any questions on it, I can answer. But we figure roughly 13,000 applications. We spend 15 minutes per application, 35 hour a week, four applications per hour, seven hour workday. That gives you 28 applications per day, 140 applications per week. It would need roughly 93, it would be 93 weeks of work at 15 minutes per application.

[Zac Bears]: I just have a question on this one, Jared. Is this kind of the first year and then in other communities because they have the preexisting and established, you know, it becomes somewhat easier in the second and following years?

[Jared Yagjian]: Based on what I've been told, the first year, that would be the scenario. Likely the second year as well. It may be scaled down slightly. And then there is always the follow-up. So you're supposed to check every single one every year. Do other cities and towns do that? I don't know. But it's a massive undertaking.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah. And I guess just to, so six employees, certainly early on, at least, and some of them part-time maybe, and then maybe some of them full-time because there's this follow-up question. I guess wondering how you're thinking of that breakdown.

[Jared Yagjian]: Yeah, so my concern is, one, we need to get the staffing in place, get computers set up. We need to get them trained. It's not very, you know, a skill set out there is like how to retrust. who qualifies, who doesn't, and set a process in place. So it's, my thought would be, you need like a first year to get them trained, to get a process set in place before you have these flood of applications come in the door. And there's no process set in place yet. In office space, where do we put them?

[Zac Bears]: Yeah, do you know of any communities that have done this recently? Is there kind of? people who would be willing to assist on a part-time basis in addition to their work in other communities who have expertise, you know, kind of a network of assessor's offices.

[Jared Yagjian]: I don't know of a community that's done it recently. I mean, I could always ask the people that I do know and other communities do have it if, you know, we could, if they know of anybody or if we could borrow people, you know, for the first year or two. But yeah, I couldn't give you a definite answer on that.

[Zac Bears]: Sure, of course. I'm kind of thinking of this like my initial creative thinking, and I'm reluctant to go off the top of my head, so I apologize in advance, but would be maybe to have some element of this be permanent folks who are doing follow-up processing year round. Maybe that's one or two people. And then if it would be possible to, have some sort of system where you're reaching out to offices that have experience with this and maybe there's someone who wants to do a day a week for the July to October period. Maybe there's some grouping of people who have some pre-existing training who might be willing to. come in for a day or maybe they've recently retired, you know. It's just off the top of my head kind of like a permanent full-time group that we would probably need permanently, right, to address the follow-up piece outside of this 14-week window. But that, you know, maybe some sort of workforce and team could be brought together to do the application process. And especially, you know, if that's, how this is going if the first couple of years are really kind of a ramp up. That could be a way to kind of structure a program. We're a long way from that, but just a thought initially on how we might be able to get to this point. I think six full-time employees obviously would be incredibly burdensome and very difficult to do, but I don't know if we need that necessarily. Obviously, you're the expert.

[Jared Yagjian]: Well, a lot of this is assumptions. The assumption is how many people are eligible. Best guess, we went through it. So that's probably a pretty accurate number. And how do you process 13,000 applications in a 15-week window? Because the problem, and this is the last slide, the problem with not getting enough in before we set the tax rate is people can apply through April 1. If we really miscalculate and the tax rate is set too low, the rest of all those applications come out of the overlay. And so it's a wild guess and it can really mess up the city's finances if the overlay isn't funded properly. And it's a guess. I couldn't sit here and say how much we need in it. It would be an educated guess.

[Zac Bears]: I think to that question, you know, How do other communities handle that? And is it possible to have a longer window? Let's say we wanted to do this in the following tax year, but could you start taking applications, you know, in July for the following tax year, starting January 2028? Like, is that a possibility?

[Jared Yagjian]: I don't believe so. I could ask the LSU, ask the attorney. They have those time windows where you can call in and ask the attorney. Based on how I read it, the window that opens for that relevant fiscal year is July 1. And then you'd have to be the owner as of January 1. But it's a good point. So I will ask that. I will reach out to the attorney and see if something like that could be implemented for the first year.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah, and I wonder if we could even do a like a pre-application type process where maybe it's they would have to officially come back on July 1st of that year, but maybe in the intervening time period, you could do a pre-application where they provide some information, you get a general understanding, maybe a significant amount of the information that they would then need to provide again. Maybe even there could be pre-review, could shorten the amount of work you'd need on every application in that. July to October window because I hear you on the overlay. And I think it also for me it might be helpful to understand certainly what I said before you know are there other communities that have done this more recently and how did they ramp up. But in general what are other communities processes around this and how are they how are they handling the burden. I'm sure in Somerville you know that's a big number over there and And, you know, I don't know if you've had any conversations with kind of the other assessing departments about what their staffing levels look like and.

[Jared Yagjian]: Yeah, their first year, I don't know. I mean, they've been in place longer than I was around, but.

[Zac Bears]: Sure, of course.

[Jared Yagjian]: Yeah, what I do know is just now, currently, they have, I believe, more staff than Medford does.

[Zac Bears]: Oh, I'm sure they do.

[Jared Yagjian]: I think that's true of every department. So. Yeah, so in closing, and we can talk, but I'll stop sharing here. Based on the data that I saw, and while I do this, let me just stop here for a minute. I'll get you the number, because you wanted to know the number in those value brackets. I think it's relevant, so let me just get that information. Okay, so going back to that slide where we were talking about the disparity, the high, and then the low, and you were saying there's more in those buckets. So the break-even bucket, the 1.1 to 1.2 million, there is 1,076 parcels. Now, this is just the total parcels, not just single families. It's all the parcels, the ones to everyone in the class one. It's all class one. The one just below that, the million to the 1.1 is $1,718, did save $333 a year. Yeah. OK. Just below that, the $900 to a million, $2,441, did save $648 a year. Just below that, the 800 to 900, 2,540 did save $900 a year. And then just below that, 7 to 8, 2,408 did save $1,278 a year. And then it trails off and gets lower. The last bucket in the thousands is the 500 to $600,000 bucket, which is 1,700 parcels, did save $1,900 a year. And then it kind of gets to the 300s and 400s and they may not even, you get down to the point where the 10% might kick in.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah. So, but you're, again this is, and we probably should look at it in a different format, but it sounded to me from those numbers that we're talking about like 8 to 10,000 parcels saving between 300 and $2,000 a year. at the maximum, obviously, that maybe they're not eligible.

[Jared Yagjian]: Yeah, 12,799 parcels. Saving an average of $1,100 a year. Yeah. That's the largest amount of parcels. Now, what I think is relevant there is for all the work, going to take, and I'm not trying to minimize saving 300 or 600, every dollar counts in this economy, is it worth it to have such a disparity at the high end for the renters in the 111s and 112s if we wait and let department buildings get built out that are in the pipeline and that are coming online and become more like an Everett or a Somerville? The impact, those numbers, will be much more significant, and then the top won't get hurt as much. There'll be more to disperse, because right now, that top one, we have one parcel that's going to take that $500,000 hit. Yeah.

[Zac Bears]: I have to go to Councilor Skripal and Councilor Callahan, and I'm monopolizing a little bit. I have one more question. Yep. Say we were to implement in January, and then new buildings were built, more stuff in the 111, 112 apartment class. would that in subsequent years change the break-even and the benefit? Like, does it matter when we start this? You know, does the impact, is the help more if we start it later than if we start it now? Or once those get built, the help comes anyway?

[Jared Yagjian]: It does, in my opinion, for what it's going to take to do this, my opinion would be to wait until we get more of those apartment buildings in to disperse it on the higher end. It would also give it a greater impact to the people below the break-even, push the break-even up, actually.

[Zac Bears]: Right. I guess I'm saying, will it do that whether we implement it now or implement it? Is the amount the same?

[Jared Yagjian]: The amount, no, because the average assessed, the average of a class one will go up. Those apartment buildings are worth, you know, some are worth hundreds of millions.

[Zac Bears]: Right.

[Jared Yagjian]: So is that what?

[Zac Bears]: No, I guess more what I'm saying is let's, those things are going to be built, that average is going up anyway. If we, if that happens with a residential exemption active or without it active and we wait to make it active, does that change the amount of the, Like if we waited two years to do this, again, I'm having a hard time verbalizing my point.

[Jared Yagjian]: I think yes. I think I know what you're saying. Yes is my answer. I think the longer we wait, the more benefit, the more people will be under the break even.

[Zac Bears]: The benefit will be higher. I guess I'm saying like whether or not we have an active residential exemption, does that change the amount of benefit? Does that make sense?

[Jared Yagjian]: It changes the amount of benefit to the number of people. You'll have more of your single families, more of your twos and threes below.

[Zac Bears]: But they would come below anyway over time. People who are above it right now might come below once those apartments became active.

[Jared Yagjian]: in a future year.

[Zac Bears]: Like they might be above it this year, but then in 2029 when the apartments were built, they'd be below it at that point.

[Jared Yagjian]: Yep. And that's also assuming that the apartment buildings continue to be drawn towards Medford because it's a good city to build in right now. If you disincentivize them and say, you know, say this is what you're going to, they have to pay taxes on their way up. They don't, my, again, this is my opinion, let them get fully leased out, stabilized, making their money, and then we implement this. would be my thought. If you get a tax move for the people that aren't eligible for this, plus what's going on with the debt exclusion that's upcoming, we're talking, again, this is rough numbers, but you could see a $6 move in the residential rate between the debt exclusion that's coming on and this. It's my opinion that waiting longer would give you more benefit, and it would also help stabilize finances rather than have two things being implemented at once.

[Zac Bears]: Okay. I'm going to go to Councilor Scarpelli, then Councilor Callahan, then Councilor Millan, then Councilor Tseng.

[George Scarpelli]: Thank you, Mr. President. I think that some clarity here, the good news is that the people that, you know, the people that I've been fighting for most vulnerable are homeowners that are in a high tax bracket because they purchased their homes so long ago and now live in certain, you know, live with a certain financial negative impact and as taxes increase where they live on a fixed income. I think that that's my biggest fear is making sure that we keep people that built this community still find a way to stay in their homes. So I think that's my biggest fear. But again, this shift right now, as of today, if this happened today, from what I'm gathering, is that the biggest pain is going to be felt on the renters, because those apartment buildings that are owned by these bigger companies are going to turn those taxes right back to their renters and increase in rent. So I also understand what you're saying, what Councilor Bealz was trying to say is looking at the process and would it be more beneficial. And if you see the communities that it's working, Everett, Malden, Somerville, from the numbers that you've shown, is because, correct me if I'm wrong, because they have more of a wider base in the apartments and so that it spreads that pain out with a larger sum. So from what I'm gathering, from what I'm hearing, correct me if I'm wrong, because this is new to all of us, that if we looked as a council to try to focus on really getting the numbers down, because I'm hearing Councilor Baer's as well. Right now, that one year, six people, that's daunting. We know that's not going to happen. We know this administration will never do that. We're lucky we have two people in the Parks Department today, let alone six people in the Assessors to add. Maybe it might be something that if we can look at, looking at different, being creative and look at a consultant that will work with us as we start a process. We look to start this process where they can come in and solely put us into place for two years. And moving forward, maybe there's, you know, looking at grants where we can hire people to do that as we get stable. Once we get stable, then you look at maybe the increases, three and a half people instead of six. But getting the process started, I think, is why we're here. So looking at that, I think this is a great first step, at least in my eyes. We've always, we've been spinning wheels. We've been coming to meetings, and we're setting the tax levy, then we'd say what? Homeowner exemptions, if we can't do that, it's too late. So starting this conversation now and looking down the road, I think we're at least entertaining the possibility that we can help our owner-occupied homeowners look to some relief in taxes, but at the same time move, shift that burden to a greater instead of, a smaller sum as I've seen today, as you explained today. So I just wanted to regurgitate that so I, you know, that I'm making sure that I'm seeing the right numbers and I'm asking the right questions when we move forward. I know this is just the beginning, but there's going to be a lot of questions and a lot of planning. But I think that, you know, if we look at, when you say look at what we're doing now, if you look at, Fells Way, we look at the redeveloping of Method Square, we're looking at Mystic Ave, we're looking at other parcels. They're not too far away, right? Within three years, you could see a major shift that would help this process. I would love to see us move to a homeowner exemption when it's helping so many people for the next tax season. But looking at the realistic piece and looking at a longer range plan, I think it's something that this council would like to start the process at least now moving forward and looking at that process and where we can see the truer numbers where it's not guesses.

[Jared Yagjian]: Agreed. That's why this was helpful for us to dive in and see where the apartment buildings were being built and compare it to Malden and have a conversation with Malden. So yeah, when we do all those buildings that are being constructed and the ones that are already in the pipeline that will be constructed, we will become more like Malden and most of our single family class will most likely be like Malden. the break even. And then it starts to make more and more sense to go through the implementation process and spend that money.

[George Scarpelli]: But yeah, I think you summed it up great. I also think this is a starting point where if we look at, you know, will we get the same support from this administration? We don't know. But maybe as we bring this type of scenario in front of that, our voters and our taxpayers, maybe this will help people move forward when it's time to elect their new leadership and saying, hey, will you support this to support our tax base? And this is the reason why. So I hate to say it, but politically, this might be something that might move the needle that would really educate people to see where do people stand not just running in mud, but looking two years, three years, four years down the line that we've made a difference here. So thank you.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Scarpelli. Councilor Callahan.

[Anna Callahan]: Thank you. Just hoping to get like an estimate if you can let us know. I would love to see the presentation with the extra information about seniors broken out if that's possible. And then if we could get the sort of spreadsheets behind the charts that you showed so that we can actually dig into like the the numbers and be able to make our own charts that cover not only those percentages, but like related to how those percentages fit into the other percentages. That would be amazing. Is that something you could do for us?

[Jared Yagjian]: I can ask. Like I said, I have other things that I need to get done. So I have the assistant work on a lot of this. So I don't know if he has everything you've asked, but I can ask for you.

[Anna Callahan]: Sure. I think what I'm asking for is more not just if they exist already and just, but like, can we get, ask the assessor's office to provide the presentation?

[Jared Yagjian]: The presentation's easy. I can give you that.

[Anna Callahan]: Spreadsheet of numbers that go behind the presentation, like if we can get some of that data, that'd be great. And a little bit more information about seniors. that bucket of seniors that was, you know, categorized as not benefiting. That'd be great. And what kind of timeline, just asking, you know, what timeline is reasonable for that, a month, two months, like, just would love to get some.

[Jared Yagjian]: I'll have to talk with the assistant assessor. He put that together and I can get back to you on what timeline he needs to get the data for you. Thank you.

[Zac Bears]: Right yeah I also don't know if anyone else but had a similar mind I was thinking of the charts that could explain this complicated thing a little bit more easily as well so access to some of the data would be would be helpful for that in a spreadsheet form so. I heard that and I know we still have two more people who want to speak, but I heard that as a motion to keep the paper in committee and request that the assessor's office share a copy of the presentation and any of the spreadsheets that were used to create the charts in the presentation with the council. That's what I heard. Is there a second on that motion? Second by Councilor Scarpelli. And we'll go to Councilor Malauulu and then Councilor Tseng.

[Liz Mullane]: Thank you again for putting this together. It was really helpful. I know when you were talking about looking at it more in the long term, these other apartment buildings and coming into play. But that will then move the break-even point, correct, once we start bringing that up. So we'll have to kind of take a longer viewpoint of when those buildings do come up, how that will actually then impact who does fall above and below the break-even point, right?

[Jared Yagjian]: That's correct. Yeah. We'll be basically using Malden as a model. Okay. All right. So four to five years, we'd have most of it in the pipeline stabilized at least. We would look more from a class perspective like Malden, and the numbers should be more reflective of what Malden's seeing with their break-evens and their single-family condos, twos and threes that are below it.

[Liz Mullane]: Okay. And then you mentioned again about the percent of the apartments in comparison to the rest of the other types of family, the unit types. What was that kind of, what is that range that you're looking for when you say that that's what you kind of need in order for this to be most beneficial?

[Jared Yagjian]: I don't know if there's a most, but the more apartment buildings that you have, it spreads it, just you don't, so there's not that much of a hit to the renters. What gets lost sometimes, it says it's one parcel that's going to get, but it's really 350 units in that parcel with maybe 800 renters in that building. So it's 800 people that are impacted, not one parcel, and that gets lost in the data.

[Liz Mullane]: And then with that 4700 number, you'll be able to tell us who actually has the trust. You'll be able to break that down a little bit more of what that is exactly?

[Jared Yagjian]: I can't speak on that. I didn't do that. Okay, fair enough. I can't do everything, so I had to delegate that. I will ask him to get that information. Great. Thank you.

[Zac Bears]: I think that's a really good answer.

[Justin Tseng]: Thanks, Jared, for your presentation and for your memo. I think it's helpful for us when considering such a big policy issue to get as much information as possible. So this is really helpful. I'm sure the follow-up will be really helpful. I was curious because the memo in the presentation, I think, suggests that higher taxes on rental housing, like apartments, would translate into higher rents, and I think You know, I think the, I understand the economics behind that, that I think has logic behind it. The memo says about 100, like the example was $116 per month, but I think a lot of economics research also finds that property tax increases are only partially passed. through to rents, especially in the short run, because rents are constrained by what tenants can afford and by existing leases. I think the literature also finds that some of the burden is absorbed through lower property values, through capitalization, and not just higher rents. So I was curious. when we're doing kind of the analysis about impacts to renters, what level of pass-through we're assuming in our analysis. Are we assuming something like full pass-through? Have we modeled more moderate scenarios? Are we accounting for the possibility that some of the burden shows up through capitalization, so in lower property values, rather than being borne entirely by renters? And have we kind of considered, I think, we've considered, I think, the supply side of things. Have we considered demand constraints as well?

[Jared Yagjian]: So there's a lot to unpack there. I'm not an economist. I look to the Federal Reserve for what they say about that. They do say it's $0.50 to $0.89 of every dollar is passed through the renters when there's a dramatic tax impact to a larger building. The smaller twos and threes families, you might have a son living down there, really cheap, and then the mom has to raise the rent on the son. What have you, if they're over the break even. So that's a little different. But the larger apartment buildings, it's a good question. It's the best guess based on the literature that I've read is 50 cents to 89 cents per dollar.

[Justin Tseng]: I mean, I think the literature is difficult. I've been kind of having it rack. in my head for a long time, ever since this first came up when I was on here, because it's just so complex. I've seen the 50-something cents piece article as well. I think it makes a lot of sense. But the Fed also has an article out from 2024 about how lower property taxes actually doesn't lead to lower rents and lower housing affordability as well, but that it's really context dependent. and relies on a lot of these different factors in particular, the capitalization effect. And so I think it's just really difficult. I just wanted to make sure that we're thinking about this as well. I think the, oh, sorry.

[Jared Yagjian]: No, it is. It's difficult. I didn't mean to cut you off.

[Justin Tseng]: Oh, no, no, no. I mean, I think in the same vein, I don't want to make, I don't want to, you know, have our city disincentivize good developments that are coming in as well. I think that's another thing that you had raised. And, you know, I think some of the literature also shows that when taxes increase, developers often start, adjust by paying less for land because of that profit gap. So that part of the burden falls on the people selling the properties rather than stopping projects altogether. So I'm curious if we've accounted for that adjustment in that analysis. Do we have evidence that property tax differences of this magnitude would materially change whether projects get built in markets like this in greater Boston, as opposed to just affecting land values or returns? And is, I guess, is that point kind of drawing from empirical evidence from neighboring cities or? Is that more like just the theory, drawn from the theory behind it?

[Jared Yagjian]: It's the theory behind it. I mean, so what we do is market-based, right? So we just have to wait, and would the cap rates move up? Maybe. But you do run that risk of disincentivizing developers to come to Medford and build. Their margins would be compressed. It's just an extra expense to them. It's not a tax to them. It goes in their expense line. So we have a lot of new growth coming. The city's growing. It's just something to be aware of. And that's why in my view we have this good trajectory now we're getting a lot in development. is to not put a wrench in that. And again, I want to make clear that I'm not saying six or nine or $1,200 is not significant to someone in this economy. But if we just delayed it and let that new growth happen and then did a study when we're more like Malden and went through all that time and effort, I think it would make more sense when we have them built than to do it now and try to do some projection economist style study. I certainly don't know that. I would have to outsource it.

[Justin Tseng]: I appreciate your answers. I have some tough questions, so I appreciate it.

[Zac Bears]: I think we're talking about margins, right? Like what's the marginal impact of a rate increase like this on the 30-year financing of a project? And the capitalization element's really important to consider too, right? Like Lumiere was built, it sold for double its value. How does the financialization and commodification of housing impact things, especially on the high end of these larger buildings? And how much of... I mean, I think your point is well taken and also taken in the counterfactual, right? $1,000 or $1,500 a year might be a lot more meaningful to someone on the small end than $500,000 might be to someone who owns a $30 or $50 million property in terms of how they can. how they're setting up their business plans and stuff like that. So it's worth considering both positions, and I appreciate the analysis. I just had one last question kind of on the overall scope of this. You know, one of the things that we're talking about, and I think this is a place where that, you know, $300 to $2,000 for the vast majority of the residential properties piece comes in, owner-occupied residential properties, you know, it may, be a relatively, you know, different, you know, it may offset a large amount of the cost of a high school debt exclusion for someone. And I think that's a piece of this that, you know, you mentioned, well, do we want to make two major changes to the tax rate at the same time? And you kind of raised some of the concerns that that would raise maybe around the overlay or around the impact to a non-eligible property or to commercial industrial. The flip side of that being, you know, it could mitigate significant impact on kind of the bulk of that middle residential value owner occupied properties. So I'm just wondering if you have like thoughts on that kind of side of things where it might be helpful in mitigating the impact of a cost increase that we're likely to see and just kind of wondering your thoughts on that.

[Jared Yagjian]: So my thoughts on that is, again, to why I think delaying is the best move here. Right now, in our residential class, we have the maximum amount shifted away from it to the CIP. So we do the max shift. So we're paying the class one is paying the least amount, the minimum residential factor that they can by law. And it's flat across class one. It's just you buy a home at $500,000, you pay a rate. You buy a home at $1.5, you pay a rate. Or if you're in a home for 30 years and you bought it at five and it went to 1.5, you pay the same rate versus someone who just bought a condo. My concern is with this is it's not income based. It doesn't take into account people's financials. It just simply says your house is this. So you could have a doctor making $2 million a year living in a $700,000 condo. He gets a tax break. And a senior who's living in a $1.6 million home that's been there for 30 years and she's paying more on a fixed income. So and then you have these debt exclusions coming. everyone is going to see an increase from that. Will it mitigate it? Yeah, to some degree it will, but it will also double hurt the people on the back end of it. So there's winners and losers with this exemption. By delaying it, my hope would be that there'd be more winners than losers than there are currently right now.

[Zac Bears]: Even more winners.

[Jared Yagjian]: Yes. That's what I meant. More winners and less losers than there are currently right now. Thank you.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah, because I think the numbers off the top are You know, it seems like there'd be significant benefit, certainly on the number of property owners. That's probably different than the number of residents.

[Jared Yagjian]: That's what it, yeah, and that's. The number of property owners, right? That's an important. But how many of those property owners have thousands of renters underneath that one roof?

[Zac Bears]: Right, and that's certainly an important factor. I mean, I think I agree with you in general that the tools that we have are imperfect. And, you know, the property tax is a wealth tax, right, at the end of the day. And it's a wealth tax on the, main form of wealth that most people have, certainly in the bottom 80 to 90% of the income stream. But the people who own these big buildings, they got a lot of wealth. And that's, I think, an important thing to factor in here, too. We're taxing someone who owns a billion dollars worth of residential properties the same rate that we're taxing someone who owns a $500,000 condo. And that doesn't mean it's a perfect, perfect distribution, right? Like there's that counterfactual point of there could be someone who makes a lot of income who owns a $700,000 condo and someone who makes not a lot of income who owns a $1.5 million home, right? But I think it's kind of undebatable that there's no regular person in this city owns five $200 million apartment buildings, right? Or even one $200 million apartment building. And I think that's where the... That's another piece of the fairness element to this. How that person then, through the system of economic organization we have, passes those costs on to the people who he's renting to, that's another question. On the face of it, we have a flat rate wealth tax that is treating multi-hundred millionaires the same as it's treating someone who inherited their family home for the last two generations. And I think that's a piece of this conversation. It's a little less practical, but I think is an important. of value space thing to think about as well. It's still imperfect, right? You're not going to, we can't just target. I wish that they had, that we had a better policy. And I think another piece that might be worth us coming back and talking about is how would this interrelate and how could more resources in your department help. people access the other exemptions that exist, senior exemptions, veterans exemptions. Maybe they don't know about them right now. Maybe that's another way to try to get a little bit more targeted, make sure that if you're applying for residential, you're also getting access to the other exemptions they may be entitled to. And then I think there's an entire other conversation around impact on renters and ownership of, you know, big apartment buildings and what that looks like. This has felt like way more progress than we've made on this in a while. I think it's a really, really helpful conversation and, you know, we have some real good data to get into the nitty gritty on when's the best way to implement. And I hear you on the timeline, you know, even if we're talking about the debt exclusion as if it's going to happen tomorrow, but when that actually comes on the rolls is still also a couple of years away at the earliest as well as my understanding. Something else we have to talk about. So maybe there's an alignment in the timelines on both of these things in some way too.

[Jared Yagjian]: Yeah, let's see, you know, so what are we, fiscal 27, so yeah, for purposes of discussion right now is to get fiscal four years 31, 32. It may look dramatically different than what we just looked at right now.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah. Yeah, and I think we might have a good shot at understanding kind of the implementation timeline as well and building something that allows your team to do this in an effective way. I think it's been hard for us, certainly me, for the last seven years for it to be, well, we can't do it, it would take all this work and we're having that conversation at the tax classification hearing and I think, you know, we're moving beyond that and it may not happen tomorrow and we may still well be in November saying we can't do this this year. But I think we'll be on our way to figuring out a way that we could do it at some point.

[Jared Yagjian]: Agreed. I think this was helpful for myself as well as data I learned about it as well. So I'm happy we had this discussion. Great.

[Zac Bears]: All right I'm just going to reiterate the motion and then go to public participation on this item but we have a motion from Councilor Callahan to keep the paper in committee and request the presentation and some additional spreadsheets and information from the assessor's office seconded by Councilor Scarpelli. With that we'll hear from members of the public who may want to talk about the. Resolution to review the implementation of a residential exemption for municipal property taxes. And then we'll move to our regular meeting which I think the rest of you are here for. Anyone who wants to speak on the residential property tax exemption? I'm seeing one in the chamber. And if you're on Zoom, please raise your hand on Zoom. Andy, feel free to come to the podium. If you could give us your name and address for the record and you'll have three minutes.

[Andrew Castagnetti]: Thank you, Councilor Bears, Andrew Castagnetti, Cushing Street, East Medford, Massachusetts. Thank you for your presence and thank you for the opportunity to speak about this matter for probably my 23rd year in a row, according to Councilor Marks. Um, first of all, I must, I must thank Council President yourself and City Councilor Callahan for putting this on the agenda now in the spring, as you had promised before the vote that comes this November. Bless you and other City Councilors, I hope, for honoring your word. Please, maybe I'll need five to 10 minutes maximum because this has been my 23rd year and when I came at six o'clock, the front doors were locked. I was getting a panic attack. So I snuck in a different way. Could I have another five, five is 10 minutes max? Okay. It sounds complicated to some people, but it really should not be that complicated. Thank you. It's like deja vu all over again. I'm here to adopt Mass General Law, Chapter 59, Section 5C, the owner-occupied real estate tax exemption at the full 35% shift allowed by our Commonwealth of Massachusetts law. I'm sorry, this is right. This is my 22nd year in person trying to help our owner-occupied homeowners get a tax break on our real estate tax bills. After all, we carry the load financially for over 100 years. These cities are doing this for many years. They are still helping their owner-occupied taxpayers In Boston, Somerville, Cambridge, Chelsea, Everett, Malden, and others. But still not here in Medford. Why not? For God's sakes, even Senator Kerry gets it at 28 Lewisburg Square in on Beacon Hill. If that's his real address, according to the IRS. Yes, I am totally baffled why I am the only one out of 60,000 Medford residents who comes here to fight and fight, and cares for 22 years to give thousands of unoccupied taxpayers real tax relief. By the way, Dr. Stirella said to me, but Andrew, if we get it, then how is the city going to pay their bills? My reply was, and still is, The money we would save would be shifted to the absentee owners who are business investors. It is simply shifted, added to their bills. Finally, I do believe your city councilors and many others now realize that most of our homes are being snatched up by national and international investors, which hurts our affordability big time. So let's have the absentee business new owners, and some are slumlords, have them pick up the tab and give us, the owner-occupied homeowners, some real, real real estate tax relief, period, and more period. But I can only, it only can be done if we adopt Mass General Law, Chapter 59, Section 5C, in my opinion. Do you have a better solution? What would you say? And I found the math error in the last presentation, that was last November, so I won't regress. I say in closing, but first I want to say, this business of if it's in a trust, you're not applicable to get the owner-occupied exemption, that is false. Unless you have it in an LLC, then you got a problem. Because I know in Somerville, I talked to the big shot, and he said, as long as it's not in an LLC, whatever that is. So I said, what about a revocable and irrevocable trust? He goes, it doesn't matter. You still can get it, as long as you keep your original name of the owner on the document and as beneficiary. You can trust but verify with the State House.

[Zac Bears]: Thanks, Andy, you almost.

[Andrew Castagnetti]: I only got one page left. And in sum of all, the break even is $2,269,117. Of course, ours would be more like in the million dollar range, probably higher. And I'm probably close to that, but that's neither here nor there. I'm trying to do the right thing for the, people who carry the load for a lot of years in this city. And some of the real estate tax value that they went down is $416,000 discount from their $1.3 million average. And the real estate tax savings is actually $4,578 per occupied unit. So, thank you for listening and the extra time, sir. In closing, we thank you all for listening. I'm hoping you city councilors, at least the majority, that's all we need, and the mayor will finally adopt us, because if you do, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts will immediately give us the owner-occupied real estate tax exemption. If you live in the house, according to the IRS, period, as they do in Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, Malden, Everett, and more, this will help us to afford to age and die in place. And don't forget, we carried the real estate tax load for many decades. P.S. my home valuation is very close to the break even. Very close. Meaning I may save $100, or maybe I'll have to pay $100 extra. But it's still better than me paying the $400 increase every year, not including the two tax overrides that were done for the first time in the city. Both of them, one and two. Also, I estimate that 9 out of 10 occupied owners will benefit, meaning 90 percent will save if they live in the house. Please adopt Chapter 59, Section 5C at the full 35 percent exclusion. Andrew said that. Period.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Andy. who wants to speak on this item. On the motion by Councilor Callahan, seconded by Councilor Scarpelli to keep the paper in committee and request additional information from the assessor. All those in favor? Opposed? Motion passes. Oh, we got one more. No? Okay. On the motion to adjourn the Committee of the Whole by Councilor Tseng, seconded by Councilor Leming. All those in favor? Opposed? The motion passes. We'll reconvene for the regular meeting in a few minutes. Thank you.