yeah here you're all set can you see who is I to uh you can ask on the microphone to identify themselves and I can unmute them okay so I would go ahead and um okay
open up the meeting and then we'll we'll see if the person at iPad 2 will identify themselves okay all right recognizing Quorum the chair opens the March 10th 2025 meeting of the community housing committee this meeting is being held in
a hybrid model both in person in the hearing room of Yarmouth toown Hall 1146 Route 28 and remotely via the virtual computer platform Zoom commun committee members May participate in person person or through remote participation pursuant
to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021 and act an act relative to extending certain covid-19 measures adopted during uh the state of emergency signed into law on June 16 2021 and extended through March
31 2025 the information to access this meeting via Zoom was published on the agenda with the Town Clerk and on the town's website site with a minimum 48h hour notice to the public the public is welcome to attend in person or remotely
this meeting is being recorded do you want to ask who if the person that's iPad 2 will identify themselves Gabriel maybe you can allow them to talk who is iPad 2 out there shering sh M hello hi no no I'm a from
Muk oh it's Sharon wymer okay great all right well you know how to raise your hand if you want to speak okay correct yeah I I'm gonna listen because you guys always are so smart my name again you would be great
thank you all right good so I'll update you about the guest speaker um you know I have a lot of affordable housing Lotter do um open the meeting a roll call vote um
Greg here Dre irra here leee here Josh here John here so we um I've been speaking to a lot of different agencies locally because we have these affordable housing applications available right um and so I
talked to this nice gentleman who works for the Mass Department of Developmental services and they actually work with residents and match them to Affordable units and they have money to make those units
accessible so I figured uh he asked what do we do for um accessibility at affordable housing and I said well we're very interested in what you do why don't you come and talk to us so they're looking for a speaker for um either um April or
May to come and talk to us about their program and how we could maybe partner with them we do have funds to make improvements uh to housing in Yarmouth as long as it is Affordable to the tenant and it the tenant is low mod
income so it's something that we could think about if partner with them if they have something that they can't they don't have a budget for maybe we could help them maybe they could find us the um tenants but but one by one would be
improving the accessibility of the affordable units in ten and that was that very good okay um item number under uh committee business minutes we have minutes from the the January
21st um meeting I just uh have a um scrier eror on page one um just uh on a motion by Joan Crowley should be joean but okay thank you and I have one
typo on page um for um the Mary way WG where the program can be sued to unlock I think you mean used to
unlock that's the only thing I saw thank you okay can we approve the minutes as amended I move we approve these minutes as amended by I second
second um roll call Greg I drew hi hi John yes yes Le yes hi okay mck housing update so staff met with Barrett planon
last week and went over all the comments from mwan how every what how everybody spoke about prioritizing their ideas in Muk 2 and so Barrett
planning uh waited those responses so you know how they kind of said well what's your first second and third choice so if you said if you said veterans housing was your first choice that got three points right uh rental housing was your next one that got two
points a habitat development third that got one point so they did this and um they're they're trying to wait out weigh out the top three um knowing that they didn't quite give you that scale ahead
of time they did kind of listen to how passionate people were and how engaged the community was on something so for example Forest Road right so they picked up that that was
something that's been spoken about for a while um in town so what I think you're going to see is is um something that is their their main idea they're going to bring you I think is going to be something that has mixed
uses leaving what those other uses are up to other groups right whether it's going to be purely commercial or municipal or a mix of that they um they're still kind of you know
thinking about it but they think that the big thing that should come out of this group is that it's housing right and that housing they heard housing diversity an awful lot they used senior friendly we use those words senior
friendly an awful lot um don't be afraid of having home ownership and Rental together and they um in lie of saying like veteran housing they might use the term Supportive Housing yes that's good for for you know a community partner
that does things like helps veterans or disabled or or elderly you know what I mean so um I think that's where we're going to we're going to go is that they're definitely going to say something like yes they're G to ask you you definitely want housing here you
guys are going to have to say yes and then kind of talk about uh this kind of your vision for it so if my um suggestion was join housing with
habitat and affordable and mixed housing mixed rental housing neither that didn't go as number three I I think I think that's what's they're G to talk about at the next meeting okay and knowing them you're G to get like a big chart with
everything in there okay so when you say staff who is the staff besides the oh that's me Karen green who's the director of Community Development um Karen uh Kathy Williams who's the town
planner myself we um we always invite Robert rittenau as our Town Administrator and Bill Scott who's the assistant Town Administrator but um I call him the Muckman so he's you know he's he's done
so much work on this we've been inviting him okay just to kind of help the the consultant kind of U if they have any questions need need to interpret something you know um needs a little bit
more feedback about um what staff sees as policy of the Town um he seems to have a lot of insight into a lot of different things too I think it's good that he's SM landmines out there give them a heads up so but you know we have
that meeting is on uh March 17th at two two 2 o'clock it's an hour before our normal time and you know if you still need more time that's we' got plenty of time we're ahead of the game I think earlier is better on St Patrick's Day
yeah I think so too so so two questions have they finalized the report on the conditions of the building Excuse me yes and and John I have not read it I think John asked for a copy I don't know
if you I haven't I haven't read it yet um I've been doing some other we all get a copy of that yes okay and I have a I have one printed out on my desly if you want to come okay I think that
um converting the classrooms and that was P Pal's not here but um that was Pal's idea now pal missed a couple of meetings right so I don't think she caught that that explanation how expensive that is right right but that's
what they showing is in this report is that the condition of the classrooms that portions of the of the building would just it would just be very expensive to remodel as individual units because they're just not the material
that used is not conducive to running ities into individual units making individual pling in classrooms either yeah and for those of us who have been around at the meetings we were aware of so I don't think anybody
recommended converting in this committee right see that was my original idea I was like oh just just no we were Weare um yeah so that's probably going to go away but I have to say but it's I would have to say about 50% of the people who
are talking about the gym in the auditorium are passionately for keeping it yeah that's that's very clear from all the do we have any feedback from um any of the other um groups that are looking at this like
Recreation um I think the library committee was looking at it as well or something like that right in the park and wreck and um Finance I I can see what's available I don't know Sharon if you're you're willing to help me out with that question I had a second
question but I don't remember what it was but I can I can people people aren't as far along as you are see that's right we're we're like one step ahead of most of the other um I mean we dep we can say this is our recommendation but we want
to see what other people are saying we can we can say that um but within some of what we talked about other than going off to other areas which I think that's in the re reign of other uh groups um I
think we had some creative ideas but that's we're about housing um I think we had some good ideas like I think written now is that his name Bob written now Bob was concerned about the solar panels on the ground how much room they take so
there was discussion of those can go on the roofs of some of the buildings or it can be raised up so there's parking underneath and I've asked the question who benefits from those the solar panels and I never got an answer to that I think the town would would be selling the energy I think Lee means who's
benefiting from it now right oh the school is it the school yeah yeah it was the school I would assume it's the school y it's the school okay so it's nobody now the elementary school there no they're still getting that the elementary school right I forgot about that they're still getting that payment
that was land under their control okay um and I believe that contract is up um 27 yeah 20 27 sounds good so um that's one thing I'll give them that feedback you'd like to know a little bit about
what's going on with the other I think one thing that was mentioned at the last meeting and I I don't remember if they said it was the finance committee but to me it should have gone under pack and wreck was creating a sports center you remember that oh that is that
is a um here's the mckm right now that is a huge idea to make it a a commercial Venture with professional or semi-professional competitions and who did they come from what group did the group they come from that's always been
kind of from the chamber that that hasn't been uh hi Bill you can come in if you want anything from mck do you or yeah we were just talking about mck and we're wondering um a lot of compliments things oh yeah tons of compliments so um so Bill Scott is our
assistant Town Administrator so he's coming in to to sit down very opportune time and join us so we had two questions about the larger m Muk program right one um kind of like what are all the other
silos tending towards and two where does this idea of having a large competitive Sports Arena where is that coming from and is that going to be really feasible uh a little bit from the I may uh I think a little bit from the
chamber and I've seen some of it from Recreation so as far as your muck around or brainstorming tables or responses we're putting those in the tables and we're going to post them all online so everybody all the Committees can see
each other's work and I I don't think that the uh the sports facility is as big as I mean it doesn't have to be you know uh it's what you can fit on the site so uh the idea behind each different topical area providing
guidance is as we know we have a lot of uh water supply protection land and then we have uh 28 and the commercial constraints that happened there so what we want to do is can this site support
affordable housing and then so as each group comes together then we start saying how do we make fit these pieces of this puzzle so Recreation might come in and say we need fields and then other business people might say well we need
maybe some sort of sports complex those aren't mutually exclusive they can sort of coexist together so you know it's about how much we can fit on it what we didn't want to do is basically pick an idea and then run with it and then have everybody
else say what about us so by frontloading the with this public input process through the Committees you're more knowledgeable about housing than a lot of other people uh chamber and CDC is more knowledgeable about Economic Development Recreation Commission you
know Recreation needs so you're each coming together and saying here's what we want to do here then the last part of it is you provide an idea that is either elevated or moderate so you may come in and say Here's how many units at the
elevated here's how units at the moderate and then we start mixing and matching the land uses so okay so it's not just one grand idea it's like one idea with with everything we want like the the highest level and then kind of
like the reduced level well it could be and then so if you provide two and it's decided that across the board everybody's going to the moderate because we want to entertain all of those or could be that you know we see you know elevated in one area and
moderate and another but and then the school Department's approach to this is they won't be doing their feasibility study for some time December actually they started so we have to deliver three proposals to the Board of Selectmen three Alternatives one of those will
carve out a section of the site of 8 Acres 8 to 10 acres for a school and then we're just going to leave it at that and then try to plan around that but you know the fact is is this both collaboration and competition so that 8
to 10 acres may or may not wind up being used for a school eventually we'll have three proposals and it may be well this one's more toward housing this one's more toward uh the commercial side this one has a school in it and then by
virtue of that then the community puts it together and says okay we like the combination of these two this one you know things like that and you know typically you would hire a consultant give it to committee and then the
committee would run off and say this is what we think we want to put together and then you go through a whole bunch of host of meetings that you know the public is engaged we still are at that point where we're going to do that but starting with you
starting with CDC starting with the chamber starting with all these groups means that you're going to be educating the mut group to say okay here's all the I mean think of the potential we're getting lists where people are coming
around with 15 brainstorming ideas that get down to three that get down to one and two levels so they ostensibly have got six committees out there you know with you know 12 ideas total you know so it's a
great way to start because except for Barrett uh we're not putting a lot of money into just talking amongst ourselves I mean I'm sorry good now go ahead question um so when will the information from the other groups be
available online actually I'm just getting some of them back so I'll probably have that up by Wednesday okay and then uh the Muk uh website is going to have a new section called you the meeting results or something like that didn't trying
get you if you Google you know Yarmouth M Keys utilization maybe I looked at that project and I can send you the link but it it it comes up and it it has you'll see all the stuff
you've been presented at these meetings like the remember the base map the context map and the teams memo and all that yeah I have one other question if I may sorry sure um um the elementary school correct a
acus is going to be reserved for the elementary school my understanding is that if they stay on that site and don't move to the other school and there are issues with them moving to the other other location um then they would have to stay in that school into a new school
is built correct because they be school they can't be building lless that does put a uh sort of in the sequence right right so that if you were to build if I were to say that we would get a grant for sewer housing is usually the leader
for Grants I mean it's difficult to look at a sports complex and say give me a grant for sewer that's a little bit more competitive housing there's a direct link between let's say 40 R and mass Works grants okay so uh it is usually
the driver to get you the off-site improvements so that probably you're right I mean they would stay in that school build another one and then tear that school down and possibly make room for something else whatever it might be the so proposal could say to build on
the site where the school is now once it's torn down but that could be a couple of years yeah I mean so uh that's the whole sort of cost benefit analysis we need to look at which is uh and not only that they even if they were to move
somewhere else they're still going to stay there until they somewhere else is built I stand there yeah so so one of the options that may come out of this is not having the school there at all well I think that's going to be up to the public and the elected officials but yeah I mean there's three options and
one of them is going to contain a school and but if you look at it actually to Lee's point in terms of that sequence is it more effective to you know basically understand that they're going to be moving somewhere else you know and by
virtue of that they can stay there but it means you can build yeah Shadow you can pH in something for that land use later on yeah the difficulty uh if they stay there that they have the School site occupied plus the the parcel that
you would designate for them because you want to build on that parcel before you move the kids out of the other one right if they go somewhere else you don't have that parcel that they're going to build to which means that you can develop that right right so the that's really the the
issue and and once you get all these ideas together you start seeing oh wait a minute The Dominoes aren't going to fall very well if this is one of them so how do we approach that because from a project management perspective you want the offsite money in as quickly as
possible right up front and it's usually housing that does that you can get money for an economic development proposal but the housing there's direct Target grants for that there's a housing Mass works now so I I've done some housing stuff
and we always got grants for intersection work or sewers or whatever so they did as all these things Collide you're right you're asking these questions about okay if the school stays there where do we build our housing so
you're going to come up with a proposal and that proposal is going to say we want this type of development now we got to figure out how is it going to fit in with the other ones and it's better that we sort of frontload and have these dial that eventually what we might be doing is
eliminating the RFP process and and creating more of a you came in with your proposals and the narrative now let's get the different committees to talk to each other and say what were you thinking and then have that done in front of Muk and then move on because
the RFP it seems like it's uh too definitive on more of a conceptual level approach so we have after your single idea with the two levels is we had an RFP process where you'd answer more
questions I I think it's best we have that in a dialogue where some of these issues of if you don't me move how do we build our housing and so we can get some of those answers if we put maybe three people from this committee three from another
and all in a room with the muck people and then Hammer those issues out and in front of the public so one of the things that our consultant is looking at is maybe a shet and sort of focus groups that open it up to the public shet being the just do a quick design
exercise we did have some uh attenders at our last smuck meeting cuz some of their feedback is in our minutes yeah we had maybe four or five people I think that was good to take their comments too in person said didn't want housing
so I love that idea of having a shet because now I'm starting to be like oh because remember we were talking about a development with the plaza was it you John that was talking to me or was it you about a development always should
have like a plaza or went to school for landscape architecture a from from Venezuela uh and she we were designing a condo complex as one of our exercises and all she talked about was where are
they going to gather you know typical you know in the US designed for condos here's a parking lot here's a trail there's a condos she said well we can shape the buildings to formulate a plaza and people can gather which in Venezuela
and South America is more common and so it was a great idea but that's the point is you this group talked about the sort of open space merging with the housing right and that happens with sort of a a plaza you you go from the private space
to the semi-private space the plaza to then the public space which is the rest of the site and so those are the design elements we would think about as you're moving forward so you give us the concept and then our consult are supposed to turn that into a reality and
figure out how to put it on the site what we didn't want to do is as I said hire the consultant have the mck team go through you know iterations of plans then just spend the next few years people coming up to the podium and say I think you should do this I think you
should do that but not that but then this so by you giving us the ideas means that upfront we have some direction I think this short would be great idea yeah and and so through a lot of issues
in a short period of time with it right and not only that if you give us your singular idea on two levels what we're doing is as Lee pointed out is actually we're finding conflicts you know so we're you're finding what conflicts you know between
the school project being there and moving forward or the school project not being there or whatever and the sports facility and and things like that so I think that you know um again you know
housing is a very difficult thing to locate in town because if you look at all our water supply protection and other land protected lands and developed lands there's not a lot left you know so
I'm concerned with the the push so the to move the Forest Road development to this property because they've got property there even though I know this conflict I was at meeting where right all the abuts got up and spoke at Great length but to take
this land and bring the Housing Authority development over there it loses the opportunity to have both exactly yeah and and I think that what you need there is some more definitive sort of do we want to entertain this because it'd be
unfortunate for you to Bally to you're on that group The hous yeah and to basically sort of move ahead with that and not have this sort of meeting in the minds with the board of selectman and the housing authority and whether what we should consider it because sometimes
you get ahead of yourself and saying we should consider this and all of a sudden each party outside your group is reiling it in saying we never talked about that so we really need to what you're proposing as groups outside the Housing Authority is completely valid for your
entity what you proposing from the Housing Authority perspective really needs to be vetted at the sort of the political levels right so we don't a raise people's expectations you know when they can't be done because there's a whole state agreements you have and
other things that need to be vetted before you can really make too much of a commitment because you know in planning one of the things that happens is somebody Whispers an idea and then suddenly the backhoe is idling outside the site everybody thinks thinks it's
happening MH so we got to be careful about if we move forward we do it methodically but not only that do it with enough Clarity that said yes we've talked to this entity and they're willing to consider it you know so but I think that the great thing is is you've
all been involved in housing now you're getting a chance to sort of practice that on the ground the politics yeah yeah beyond the HPP and all the planning documents and all the policy you're setting you're actually getting to say
let's do this and that's and CDC chamber you know Recreation are all sort of just as excited it's like oh we get to play with this site you know but uh it's more than that and and I think what's happening is once you see the other
ideas up there you'll start seeing Synergy across you know a lot of groups and eventually that's what happens that's how you arrive at the plan when you see commonality between your ideas so it's lucky I I kept my cameras
and microphone off of my off office watching no I'm kidding yeah so I'm very eager to see not only what recreation in the chamber wants but the wetlands and habitat advocates in town I think they they can they can increase their buffers in some
places so that's exciting yeah we're always seeing that the wells typically by law Zone one is 400t radius where going to use a th000 ft U and it doesn't go into the site there's only two areas in the top of the site where it goes into but there seven
Wells are on there so we anticipate a recommendation is anything that you do that has you know a lot of participants or occupants it's going to need a sewer line so we're going to demand that keep them interrup interrupting you I'm sorry
that's all right um the school rooms the the school part of their Construction I we're all in agreement that that really can't be converted into housing is that the M school or the the other yeah yeah so we do have a
consultant looking at the cost if it was residential uh and I have another consultant looking at the demo cost right uh but as I said I think I said at one of the meetings residential is the hardest Redevelopment cost
because of all the individual runs of utilities to each unit and separating that so it's the most costly and if if you were had this at With an Ocean View and a great location I'd say maybe you could float
some really high-end condos in there but the startup cost to get the unit up to a place where it could be cost effective might be difficult because the tunnels underneath are all concrete the floors are concrete the ceilings are concrete
there's materials in there you have to remove ahead of time and do you see that being demolished then or well I'm not you know I'm not going to open the envelope before the award ceremony but uh but I think that
uh it might be cheaper to do that and build new than it would be new being that if you were to put something there of a commercial or a housing nature that it's probably going to be cheaper to build it than it is to retrofit that if
you to tell me town hall was going to move there and a few other office likee entities then then maybe it would be worth it you know but uh what that does is it puts us in a position where we have to care for a building that big one
of our goals in the background and not to sort of put a you know uh sort of uh limit on people's ideas is the cost effectiveness of how much Town money is going to go into this and limiting that
to the greatest extent possible because I mean with the sewer line with you know pasas with uh the library you know and all the other demands the town has we need to figure out how to get on the positive side of The leder Ledger sheet
with this thing and that means somebody else's money and things like that so as we plan if we say you know if we only did it this way we could get that grant money that's what we're going to do so your idea gets turned into a financing plan
along with that and we might come back to you and say you know if you went with this program or that program there's more Revenue involved so we'll go back and forth with the different groups to be able to do that thank you
welcome that was great thank you for wanding by for stopping by I heard heard mck no stairs in your sleep yes yes but thank you and thank you everybody for you know your guidance
in terms of the ideas you have and as I said by Wednesday I'm hoping to have everybody else's stuff up the municipal facilities one we haven't started yet that's pretty much department heads and we wanted to wait for everybody to speak just in case people had ideas about that
that we would then include in that group so uh but we're probably just going to go to brainstorming with that because if we go any further then it's making assumptions that only the board of Selectmen have the right to do you know what do you do with a Minal facility so
we're going to list all the sort of potentials so if one group comes up with something and says wouldn't it be nice that the library could provide this service maybe that you know then we'll have a if the library is there or something else but it's not an indic
ation that's what we're going to do it's an indication that there could be a mix and match with some of those uses so all right thank you thanks very much you can you remind me of the different
groups six there's um is the municipal Group which she just spoke about right this housing Economic Development Recreation um water and natural like like Wetlands
natural resource okay and I'm did our video get uh interrupted uh it's still recording but the the broadcaster there's some technical difficulties I'm trying to get to the bottom of two okay
thank you so Man kees U I'm speaking of Zoom um Mary is this our last Zoom meeting I don't know I have to ask mon the law the law expires at the end of the month but yeah I don't think that means we cannot have further
Zoom meetings we're just not required to right well since we have some committe so we can you you as as committee members can participate remotely okay what what part of that law said was that
you don't have to have a fiscal Quorum so you you could before covid you could always participate remotely as long as you had a quum physically at the meeting spot so that's what's going to be for me the big change is need four of
you here in the room so that the meeting can be opened and then people can can still zoom in yeah I have a feeling that people like it so I think we're always going to have that component and our av crew knows how to
do it so um plus we have um some people who have a distance what I like is when one of you goes oh I have a cold um zooming in I'm like thank you okay which is what I did
right so Municipal Services housing Economic Development Recreation open space and water just because you said the seven Wells right so that was very specific that was that was going to be the environmental component
conservation and then the sixth one is education which is the school and remember that we're getting more information from the police department too they're where they're putting their training facility and their trailer and
all of that that's kind of impacting where the madaky school buildings are and it's also where when you look at the map that natural heritage the um the habitat is kind of Dipping down and
could come further you know what I mean you might see those classrooms being demolished and that habitat being restored um because the training the police training center they don't want people kind of on recreational Fields
really close by I've been in there yeah you it's not a thing you want kids to see probably or yeah they do a lot of property they're not they're behind the police station now right yeah so it's they can they can they can have
activities and trainings on weekends at night sometimes they have to do things at night they were like you don't want to put your housing really close to that because people will be disturbed it's not so much that they're unsafe they'll it'll be disturbing so um we have to see
um just like not safe it's very very quiet so whatever they do every everybody's going to hear you know what I mean it's just it's super quiet down here I don't know it might have been but
I think that's good so right so one idea at at at elevated and a medium level and then I kind of like that idea of a shet rather than them issuing an RFP and US responding to it formally with our idea is kind of getting everybody together
and kind of trying to negotiate something that fits really well on the site um new business there's none yay uh reports and action chair's report I don't have
anything uh home Consortium uh home Consortium uh our last meeting Mary um was there um it was a long presentation by the Barrett folks about the end of the um the pilot
program I think Mary's at the end of June that it's all over yeah and they were hoping that all the towns would have their recommendations by the end of last month as far as how they wanted to move forward that they had three we've discussed this in the past three
different categories of depending on how many towns decided to go participate what the cost level would be um I'm guessing we'll find out more about that in next week's meeting or this week's meting meeting I think um I think it's Thursday morning um if I'm not mistaken
or maybe it's next Thursday um there six there's at least six maybe six and a half six and a half pounds yeah that's like right almost right down the middle right so mashby has to convene the affordable housing trust and that that
they don't they don't meet like we do with it's their Board of Selectmen so when the board of Selectmen have time to fit in a trust meeting they will so they mashby I think is on board but they're going to have to schedule a meeting to allocate the funds I kind of had a
feeling would be in towards the middle of the pack you know there's 15 towns right so six and a half is pretty close to half and we'll continue to use it because of mes so it's it's worth it to us because we already have a we already have a
planning um project for us to use all our hours what happens is sometimes you subscribe to something like this and you don't end up using all the hours so it's like uh but we'll you definitely use all the hours and and Alexis knows her stuff which you know you deal with her a lot
more than I do um she's she's pretty sharp um one other thing I wanted to mention that that that morning um there was a survey on I think it was a Cap Cod Times or cap cod.com that the Cape Cod
Commission put out asking the community what they thought was needed on the cape as far as housing goes so in the previous meeting they did not mention that that survey would go out um so I took the survey uh so um um
it only took a few minutes I love surveys anyway so um um and it was pretty interesting um um so we'll see what how that shakes out too so could you remind me of what the home K home Consortium got some federal
money Cor so I'm still trying to kind of figure it out myself I remember when I signed up The Woman Upstairs goes goes what is this I said I don't know I'm G to find out apparently so I think it's it's it's the Cape Cod Commission it it lets
everybody from each town have a representative it's it's it's it's it's mostly kind of a Roundtable discussion yeah normally it's an entitlement program from us HUD yeah so normally I don't know we get like 300 to $500,000 a
year for affordable housing developments on the C and typically they limit that award and you correct me Josh if I'm wrong to about $150,000 per development so when you're talking about developments that are you know $12
million you know the $150,000 doesn't sound like a lot but the the developers go for it because it's cash in hand you know they don't have to pay that back that's that's a grant so um so there's an annual
entitlement in the home Consortium they're the they're the body that votes to award the funds I know that history okay but didn't they get some additional funding that they were trying to coordinate I think they Regal plan arpa
funding they get money but I'm not it came up might be on hold because of the uh buy build America by American yes that yes so that was like three or four meetings back they have don't hold me to this I think
$600,000 but they can't really do anything with it until they got the buy back buy American buy back I think Baba build America buy americ they they have to kind of figure out all how all those mechanisms are going to work before they can actually start spending money
because they need they need to buy American Products in order to I think the developers are also having a tough time uh you trying to find can I get plywood here or I can't get it from Canada or Mexico or
China kind of it's the money's a little bit tied up right now um but I'm glad you brought mention actually made me think that survey actually was so the commission would have public feedback on how the home Consortium should spend the money when once they can um but the Cap
Cod Commission used to run the home Consortium now came now it's under the department the B County Department of Human Services they gave it up and that's been around since that history um
and um the Cape Cod Commission didn't have a housing author housing per specialist person on staff for a very long time I believe they do actually do they do now but long so don't hold me to this the last time I check I checked
their website uh maybe three months months ago and the position was not listed I checked it again a couple weeks ago I think it was listed again so I don't know if they lost that person it was very interesting because because because
you let us know that people have been asking them questions um and they they came and did a presentation to us and I used to work with the commit I used to work with them regularly and in fact I got a grant from Duffy that they oversaw to do a study of homeless individuals to do a cost
benefit analysis and Paul vinus was the head of the housing specialist there and I think when Paul left I don't think they ever really replaced him and that's been quite a while according to this the survey uh what what it said was the
survey was put together by the Cape Cod Commission and and it was it was how they were going to decide how the home Consortium would spend money once they could do it depending on what the public thought was a priority well I'm confused yeah I too
even more confused now because they they let go of the control of that um but I don't know but I I thought the home Consortium got this big pocket of federal money and their job was to try to coordinate Regional planning I'm not
sure I'm not sure the commission giv too much authority over too many things yeah Patty Dy has been assigned it's my understanding it's Patty Dy because we asked who do we have who at the commission do we talk to if we have a
question about affordable housing they said Patty Dy that survey is from the home Consortium itself yeah because they're doing been brought up in any previous meetings and I'd been to all of the meetings I was kind of surprised um when I saw that and
I know a whole bunch of arpa bipartisan infrastructure law and Baba funding is on hold right now because of various executive orders um while they're being reviewed so that stuff might be on hold for the moment interesting to see what happens
with all the renewals in the the HUD continu of care application they just were renewed for two years last year but you know that would be a whole lot of people out in the street Yarmouth Housing
Authority uh it meets tomorrow afternoon and uh we're going to vote on the final light the completely uh corrected and finalized RFP that we're going to see if anyone responds to any developers who
might want to develop the uh that property on Forest Road and uh that's the story I looked at that that RFP that looks like something that PO would would hold oh yeah that's right up there Aly
po affable preservation of affordable housing yeah uh they're a nationwide company but they have a big presence here on Cape um Founders Court Cromwell Court um yeah they're like 12 different properties on way which I believe is
like 99% I'm ready to go and born yeah yep they were lowincome housing tax credit affordable housing developer right I see they they build them so they'll probably review it we're looking
for yeah hopefully Dakota Partners they got three or four places on the cape already right and Dakota you said 12 O they've got more than three or four they they've got on the cape though right I mean they have like 12 on on the cape okay yeah yeah that's I thought you said
they've got four in hyanis alone okay so yeah so so and and you know yarm withth Commons was done by Dakota Partners uh gouth Gardens Commonwealth Community developers um so so they you know it all
goes on the combi it all goes on the state's bid bidding system so they'll all see it probably goes into the central register too yeah goes on the so they all get subscriptions to that that
not public notification well that will be on this assuming everything goes as planned that will soon be on the central register what will be the deadline for applications that's you're determining that yeah that's on the I didn't write it down that's on the final RFP we're
voting on within the next the whole thing is in April and May you know good yeah because it's such a so valuable that land is so valuable it'll it people will have plenty of time I'm sure it's
like six weeks to respond six weeks yeah yeah five maybe five yeah thank you to yeah portable Housing Trust um so our next meeting is February 18th you'll meet
with them on the 17th at two o'clock oh sorry March March 17th yeah you'll meet with them with the mukre then their next meeting the trust next meeting is March 18th um we did uh we are my office is
working with somebody who wants to buy land on Route 28 and convert it uh to um housing I I said how about mixed juice so it's going to be the 18 is going to be a really interesting U meeting
because the trust has an RFP out for $500,000 to acquire property for the development of affordable housing um so it's kind of like um you know is is this group far enough along
to go forward with that or should they use some of that Grayfield money to design it first so we'll see so the the project you just spoke about that would be some blighted property Grayfield
property yeah so GE up you can't tell us I'd rather not okay don't press me all right don't press me I want to get the conceptual plans done so everybody's wowed by them first W so they're meeting
is the 18th and the Muk meeting is the 17th day before yeah so we'll all be together on the 17th um yep that's it for the affordable housing trust yep planning board planning board do you want to come up
and say hi and use the mic I don't really he's gonna come out yeah come up and just just you know introduce your introduce yourself a little bit fashion we can Grill you for a while to say we'll
just um I've just joined the planning board and I'm just not officially joined you yet uh but basically the the most recent meeting most of the discussion was about the comprehensive plan that
everybody's working very hard to get together and about the um State changes to the Adu rules after the planning board had just spent a lot of time on
putting the town together the town's rules together so those were the main topics of discussion that I remember and I'm I did not prepare I did not review any notes before I came here so uh I don't know if you know you're gonna be
held accountable for this de Gin Gin Gin de gin so she's gonna the the process that the planning board reorganizes and then they send their chart of who's going to represent uh the planning board on different committees and then the I
think the select board then you know blesses that with a vote of appointment um right so that's where we are and so right I got it downum head after 20 years so that was discussed at the meeting and decided that with the
exception of me replacing Joanne on this committee uh everybody's staying put until September which is the time typically redo the assignments it's pretty SM so I hope you join us on March 17th I'm planning to come on March 17
and I think you should just grab a seat at the table okay with whether Joanne is here or not well Joan also serves in the community preservation committee right right an awful lot that is a lot that's a lot and that was she had been doing
double duty because they they didn't have a seventh member so by my joining them that relieved her of one of two and that's the decision that was made yeah remind me do you have a background in planning I have a master's in urban
planning yeah but most of my life I've spent uh processing statistical data I became an expert on census data and other Federal datab bases and so I've I've actually had you know 50 or 60
books published of uh huge Sy uh compilations of County and town and City buau reports I used to read those yeah I know me and I are like yes but what I do is what I had did because I did stop
doing this I finally retired about a year ago uh was pulled together anything that's available for all cities and counties in the US and i' put together these huge books because the Census Bureau really and all the agencies
stopped publishing uh in recent years as most data became available online the printed reports from the government agencies dwindled down to nothing really so that when I started producing these books for
a publisher about 30 years ago I thought oh well I won't they won't need me much longer because the agencies will take care of all this it doesn't need to be put together by a private sector publisher but in fact the agency stopped
publishing and our books became more in demand but not so much I mean nowadays people don't buy big huge books of Statistics well I used to hunt those out in the library for right that's the the kind of wacko person I was and I loved them they had all kind of valuable
information oh I love them too that's why I spent four years strangers when you talk about taking surveys you love surveys I was trained in survey research uhuh and statistics which I haven't done for ages but I'm very critical of when I
look at other surveys yes I get really ticked off when you get a survey that's not really a survey because they just looking for a donation I really get ticked off I'm the same way because it's not really a survey we definitely look forward to
having you join us well I'm really looking forward to you learning all this stuff that you are working on it's a lot that's great so thank Youk you DK thank you community preservation I don't have any report at this time we're we're
going to be meeting at some point to prepare our we decided instead of doing one person doing all the presentations for the different articles we're going to do them how we did them in the past like I'll present the two on housing and so forth um so uh
usually uh Dar Marie prepares an outline of exactly what we need to say so that's our plan for the town meeting which is in April something or other I don't know exactly what the date is but that's Community Development okay so
um You probably receive that by email uh our cdbg program is has a survey issued on Survey Monkey but if you could uh take some time and look at that um I
do have paper copies in case anybody doesn't want to take it online with mon survey um and then the next thing is the shortterm rental study um the affordable housing trust has hired UMass Amhurst
Donahue Center uh to look at our local short-term rental market maybe even expand it into our seasonal uh housing could you tell me like the is there like a really specific definition that I don't know like what short-term rental
is it's like Airbnb right that are there likeo Airbnb right so it's something that you know Realtors us to that's what it is but is there like real limits on time limits and stuff like that some
some communities are doing that yeah yeah like they're saying oh you can't you you you can't rent out by the the E like the night you have to you know have at least three nights stay or something like that and they're taxes so
the I mean the market has radically changed right it used to be Realtors or friends of Word of Mouth you would rent a cottage by the week now Airbnb is a platform where you can rent you know the units for x amount of days it's like you're booking it out
almost like a motel room you know what I mean so we have this study to look at what are the what are the costs of that is it hurting the motel industry right is it is it taking away units that used to be rented year round is year round
rentals right and what are the benefits right like can helps pay some of our Wastewater Bill and UMass Amherst is going to help us figure out what are the costs what are the benefits and how to you know mitigate
the costs and amplify the benefits and so you do that with regulations zoning um we might this might be a great place to kick off some type of incentive program to take existing housing and
have it be used affordably or at least year round how much does that cost right because we we talked to U McKenzie Perry from the town of provid provinc town right so that's a that was a big fee to
get those units that are being used only seasonally into being used year round as year round rentals it was it was expensive $20,000 per unit something like that something like that and it was temporary too right it was only one year but they found placemate finds that if
there's a good tenant in there the owner just kind of leaves everything the way it is um but there was also a 25% admin fee like on top of the fee that's being um paid to the property owner to start
renting you round there's 25% admin fee to get the program admin it's huge it's huge money are they continuing that program yep the house next to me um was sold a year ago and they turned it into an Airbnb
and they they lease it like per month or it and the people that they've rented it to have been great but the house sits empty six months yeah so they're making enough money to to to cover everything for the year but it's a shame that you
have this house sitting empty um that there's been a couple of studies that shown that about three and a half months of Airbnb will pay about the same amount as a 12 month year round rental I think it was thing too said that there are some
towns putting in restrictions like you can only rent out Airbnb if it is your full-time resident so you have to live there you know at least half of the year um and you can rent it out for those other six months them all throughout the country
uh so there's there's lots of different ways towns are tackling this issue um it is something we're going to have to look at at some point very interesting didn't didn't hack have a program at one time where they were offering an incent an incentive for people to go it was
similar to what uh provinc toown is doing uh not to the dollar extent right um but there are definitely programs out there that are trying to push to get people uh renting year round instead of seasonally it's just a shame six months the house sits empty absolutely even for
visiting nurses and doctors and things like that the hospital there there there's got to be some use that could you know yeah I'm sure if you if someone contacted the hospital not sure we have nurses coming in and doctors or whatever um um I just don't know they could they
would pay the same amount that someone would for an Airbnb or well I know when I did the last um um community housing um needs assessment for Community Action um on the islands they were competing
for rentals the hospitals were competing for rentals with somebody was working with a client who thought they had housing for them and then the the hospital would grab it up because they needed the housing for their sta um so it was such a terrible tight Market on
the islands I can't remember if that was inet or mat ven but they were both pretty bad well we used to do that at Boston Universal we kept furnished departments aside for for situations like this you got a new hire someone coming in you you know you can stay here for three months
you know what I mean but then you have to move along uh um and of course people move in for that three months they don't want to move along so uh well you know I I've I've talked to you about that I bought a house through the affordable housing destricted program with hack in
the town of yoth and I get these meals lately these hard copy meals so I want to rent my house out and I want to send it back to the woman said yeah it would be illegal if I did that so leave me alone just stop doing this and I I'm getting one like every two weeks from
this group so you so UMass Amhurst wants to conduct interviews so I'm so glad you all have opinions because that was part of my job today was to gaug if you would like to be interviewed I got an opinion because
I'm a homeowner so um put it on your calendar to attend the trust meeting on the 18th at 3 o'clock um so the trust is pay is what's paying for this uh they're paying for it I'm hoping to put it on the agenda from
March 18th 3 o'clock um to have a group interview what what meeting is this the affordable housing trust yeah so the trust definitely I know the trust definitely wants to be interviewed um and if some of you could come all of
you you know what I mean and be part of that um that is it a group interview or it would be a group it would be a it'd be a focus group focus group yeah a survey that's fun okay be a focused
group um but I think I I I think that this is I didn't know if you would be like yeah I don't care about that but it's very engaged care about it good all right that that made it worth coming into work today thank
you wonderful I do um I I I like why I'm saying I put together surveys and focus groups I just find them fascinating uh people's opinions and how you can twist the question to kind of lead someone where
you want them to go unfortunately to do that no you're not but they do it but they do do it it is done sading all the time when I was did my uh Master's thesis on homeless families I went to my chair and I had my survey designed and
all that and I said tell me what you hate about living here he said you can't ask that you can't ask that LE think about it you ha and the thing is that I just said tell me about it's like living here and some of the places were so so bad and uh a couple of people said it
got really ticked off of me for asking that what do you think and a couple of really young women say it's the best place I ever lived because they came from such terrible environments so if you have a biased question like that you're not going to leave yourself open for those kinds of
answers um so it was a lesson learned so I I have a little mini assignment for my my Sociology class in the chapter on research methods they have to design this little mini research project and
one person took it off the internet that's another story um but um they were asking these leading questions and the question they asked three questions in one and they said you can't do that you have to S leave yourself open to what the answer might be so sh you know you
want you want an honest truthful answer but when you work for someone else and they tell you no we want you to lead the people here well then you're not really doing no you're not but it's like I said I didn't like every now and then I might I didn't like that survey but uh um just
to see how they do it and they say this this was good this was terrible and and just because I'm I'm trained in that and so anyway that's my story I went to a conference a couple years ago where uh
the person who is apparently very well respected in the community um almost gave a trick question to the people it was a housing meeting and uh the way it was the question was structured it was like what is the most important thing
for you open space preservation water quality or housing okay like either or yeah and um then you know it says oh the results are in and you know 90% of the people are would rather have housing than clean
water you know I was like that's why I don't do surveys I don't refuse to do them okay we have upcoming meetings we have the mck meeting number three next um uh week from today at two yep and
then our committee meeting on April 14th right and then we got to add March 18th right and what time is it at 3 pm and I'll I'll try to get I'll try to get the hearing room this I'll try yeah normally we have
like room A or B but we'll try to get the hearing room so any other business nope all right can I get a motion to meeting second I move weour the meeting and Greg seconds
okay roll call vote Greg I drew I my I John I Lee I Josh I were we entertaining it this is IES I just I just hate shaving to the Committees to look at I don't
have daughter and yeah friend of mine at first said Gee we really