[0:14] we were [Music]

[0:28] oh

[1:11] that will go on okay because this bottom one is on

[1:14] yep okay but that'll go on and then you'll be live

[1:17] so when you want to go live you press that there you go okay so we're live

[1:21] now you're live okay just open up the meeting

[1:25] public meeting to order of march 30th the first meeting of the

[1:28] town franklin cpa committee called meeting to order and we only have

[1:33] one agenda item this evening and it's member training led by stewart

[1:42] you nailed it mr chairman he's the executive director

[1:46] community preservation coalition

[1:52] he's on there he's muted

[1:56] you're muted yes i was i was i was trying to get the uh power

[2:01] there to go here there you go so i'm on here twice it

[2:06] seems like you are stuart just for just so you're

[2:10] aware um you're on once on zoom and then you're

[2:14] being um routed through zoom right on live onto

[2:18] franklin tv i am very impressed

[2:26] so is your committee um in person or are they all remote

[2:32] um it looks like everybody's in person except for

[2:36] uh joe halligan and lisa oxford gotcha okay um

[2:42] so do you want to begin with just a quick introduction i'd like to know

[2:46] particularly what committee different folks represent

[2:51] that would be helpful sure why don't i have each member uh

[2:55] introduce themselves individually and they can reference what committee

[2:58] they're from great you want to start mr chairman sure

[3:03] my name is chris feely and i'm representing the franklin housing

[3:06] authority

[3:10] well i'm dave mcnail vice chair i'm citizen of large

[3:15] phyllis malcolm the historical commission

[3:20] mike giardino at large wayne sumerian recreation advisory board

[3:27] jeff livingstone conservation

[3:31] uh monique doyle a member at large and then to zoom joe joe halligan vice

[3:38] planning board and lisa

[3:44] the oxford member at large hey great so you got all nine

[3:51] i was taking notes quick all right um so we all set to begin i'll share my

[3:58] screen we'll get going all right

[4:06] so let me start the show from beginning all right so how does that look for

[4:15] everybody thank you that's perfect thank you yes all right

[4:21] great so i'll start by saying that um i i normally do this presentation in

[4:26] person and i hope to be um fully vaccinated soon and be back out in

[4:31] person so you may be the last training session we

[4:34] ever do by zoom and i'm sorry about that but um we try

[4:39] to do these interactively and i think it'll still work on

[4:42] zoom so if folks have questions i think it does make sense since there's a lot

[4:46] of material to get through that you ask your

[4:48] questions along the way and i'll stop at certain points certain

[4:52] cadence points when we move from topic to topic just to make sure

[4:56] that everyone's caught up and and has um doesn't have any questions

[4:59] and please feel free to ask questions now because

[5:03] some of the material is complicated and um

[5:07] you know cpa is a wonderful act but there's a lot of moving parts to it so

[5:12] um feel free to to chime in at any time so i'll just quickly tell you about our

[5:17] organization the community preservation coalition we are

[5:20] a non-profit based in boston but we're really just a grouping of all these

[5:24] other non-profits that uh represent the different cpa

[5:28] categories open space housing and historic

[5:31] preservation and so uh someone from each of these organizations sits on our

[5:35] steering committee we also have eight members from cpa

[5:39] communities like yourself someone on a cpc in a local community um

[5:43] we have eight of those on our steering committee we have some

[5:46] at-large members and and uh you know a total of 21 folks sit on our steering

[5:50] committee and and meet a few times a year to kind of set the agenda for cpa

[5:55] and each of these folks really dig in and help us

[5:59] run the coalition and represent us at the state house and at the trade

[6:04] associations and meetings and conferences and that sort of thing we're

[6:08] a pretty lean and mean organization we are the three

[6:12] full-time folks um right now we're two and um going to

[6:16] be adding back in a replacement for our

[6:19] research director who left to start her own business very

[6:23] recently um so we really rely on those 21

[6:26] steering committees to really help us steering committee members really help

[6:29] us run our services and what what sort of

[6:32] things do we do well typical of i guess for lack of a better

[6:36] term a municipal trade association um we do the things

[6:40] that um each of you you know in your capacity at

[6:44] the town probably has a statewide association

[6:47] that represents uh planning boards um uh town managers town councils there's even

[6:54] a mass moderators association representing all moderators and towns

[6:58] uh and we're the we're basically the trade association for cpa committees

[7:03] we do a ton of technical assistance so i'll show you at the end

[7:07] our technical assistance hotline that you can call

[7:10] monday through thursday with any questions you might have on cpa

[7:14] i'm going to introduce you to our website and show you exactly where

[7:17] you would find information that a community preservation committee member

[7:21] might need we'll get you all up on our newsletter list so you can receive

[7:27] information from us we do a newsletter not

[7:30] too often to spam you we probably do it every six to eight weeks or so

[7:34] and if there's a bulletin throughout the year like when the state match is

[7:38] announced and that sort of thing you'll hear from us

[7:41] probably i think our most valuable service honestly

[7:45] to cpa communities is the work we do on beacon hill

[7:48] um you know you're not going to head up to beacon hill on your own

[7:52] um and start advocating for a decade to pass a piece of legislation to improve

[7:57] cpa so we spent a lot of time doing that

[8:01] making changes to the act that communities feel are beneficial

[8:05] and frankly defending cpa from legislation that would be harmful and

[8:09] not in the best interests of cpa communities

[8:13] we also help communities adopt cpa as well and i saw susan spears had

[8:18] had joined us this evening and worked very very hard with some of the local

[8:23] advocates to get cpa passed in franklin and those are the folks who we work with

[8:29] prior to a community passing cpa to really make sure they

[8:32] have all the tools they need to explain it to their voters

[8:36] and then trainings like this conferences i hope we get back to having our

[8:39] in-person conferences again and those sort of things round out what

[8:43] we do um people always ask us how we fund

[8:46] ourselves so i actually inserted that right into the

[8:49] conversation right into the presentation rather

[8:52] we fund ourselves three ways we have the traditional requests we make to

[8:57] foundations like any non-profit or charity would do

[9:00] um our member organizations those six non-profits also help us

[9:04] in kind and with funding as well but by far the largest source of our revenue

[9:10] comes from membership dues that cpa communities pay out of their

[9:14] administrative account you don't even have to worry about that

[9:17] now you are a complimentary member for us we want to get you up and running

[9:21] and make sure your cpa program starts out on good footing

[9:25] at some point next year probably you will have an administrative account and

[9:30] at that point we'll invite you to join and hopefully you will it's very much

[9:35] voluntary but we're really honored that almost every single cpa community in the

[9:39] whole state has seen value in what the coalition does so don't worry about that

[9:45] for now we'll we'll revisit that in the future at the

[9:47] point that you have an administrative budget available

[9:50] to you so this is our website uh hopefully some of you have been there

[9:54] already communitypreservation.org and we spent a

[9:58] ton of time on this website i have to tell you

[10:00] um chase mack our communications director is

[10:04] adding things and changing things and posting things every single day

[10:07] so we really try to keep it fresh and updated with all the news that's

[10:11] happening around the state and what other communities are doing in

[10:15] particular the tab that i want to draw your

[10:18] attention to is the one called technical assistance

[10:21] on the top and when you hover over that tab it opens up this big super menu in

[10:26] green um with literally hundreds of articles

[10:30] and information on every single aspect of

[10:33] of cpa um i you know we've been at this for 20 years now since

[10:38] uh cpa was passed in 2000 i'm not so sure we've ever taken anything off our

[10:43] website there is it looks nice and clean and neat right

[10:46] now but boy when you get in there there is a lot of information very

[10:51] helpful uh information particularly for cpa

[10:54] committee members so i would encourage you to spend a

[10:57] little time as you get up to speed looking through

[11:00] the technical assistance tab on our website

[11:05] so um before we dive into the main meat of the presentation tonight which

[11:10] is what is a community preservation committee and what do you guys do and

[11:13] what are your first tasks that you have to tackle in

[11:15] the coming months i just want to give you a broad

[11:18] perspective of cpa because you are really part of

[11:22] a really terrific program that is in more than half the cities and towns

[11:27] in the state over 50 percent of the communities have cpa

[11:31] but because most of the recent adoptees like franklin have been cities or city

[11:36] form of government we now have 65 percent of the

[11:40] massachusetts residents living in a cpa community so more urbanized

[11:46] communities and the city former governments have really formed um

[11:50] the backbone of communities that have adopted in the past

[11:53] decade in the first decade early on it was more

[11:57] rural towns suburban towns more wealthier towns

[12:02] cape communities but we made some changes

[12:05] with the legislature's help in 2012 to really incentivize

[12:10] more cities to come into the program and make it more flexible and meaningful for

[12:14] them and it's worked terrifically one thing

[12:18] we're really proud to say is no communities have ever revoked cpa

[12:22] once you've had it for five years you can exit the program and no one ever

[12:27] has every community that has adopted it has

[12:29] felt that it was really terrific and um has stayed in the program um

[12:34] it's only even been to the ballot three times to revoke it

[12:38] um in all three communities i believe it was um

[12:42] hingham sturbridge and northampton were the three communities that even went to

[12:46] the ballot with a revocation vote um and it was

[12:50] like 80 20 uh in all three cases to keep cpa

[12:54] so it's really a terrific program i don't think we'll be able to say that

[12:58] forever at some point someone's going to have some other priorities and

[13:02] want um to exit the program um hopefully it won't be franklin

[13:06] um but uh you know at this point we're really pleased that

[13:10] none of the communities that you see on this map um have ever

[13:15] revoked cpa so this is definitely my favorite map of massachusetts the

[13:20] one that shows all the cpa communities the green are the towns

[13:24] and the orange yellow depending upon how it appears on your screen are the

[13:30] city form of governments so a lot of them are town of like you

[13:35] folks are but um but have a city council um or a

[13:38] city manager form of government there were nine new

[13:43] communities that adopted cpa on election day on the

[13:47] presidential ballot so you were one of the

[13:49] the class of 2021 um and um i probably could maybe memorize

[13:56] all of them um maybe not um but uh

[14:00] the other cities i know we can start with um

[14:04] greenfield and framingham were the other cities that adopted cpa

[14:07] on election day you are the first community that

[14:11] are organized with their community preservation committee and are going

[14:14] through the training i have to say um it's really good to

[14:18] have a town manager named jamie helen who has a tremendous background with cpa

[14:22] and who um has worked on it for quite a

[14:25] while because you folks organized faster than any

[14:30] community in the history of cpa i have been doing this for 15 years i've never

[14:34] done a training before the program actually begins in

[14:38] the community so you actually don't start collecting

[14:41] money and officially join the program um with your surcharge until july 1st

[14:47] i've never done a training before july 1st and

[14:51] it's really terrific you'll find out in a minute um the value of having been

[14:55] organized earlier you're going to really have a lot more

[14:58] flexibility next year than other communities sometimes it

[15:02] takes years west newbury holds the record took two

[15:05] and a half years after their election for for west newbury to get organized

[15:09] their terrific cpa community now but that just for some reason was a

[15:14] little slower in getting out of the gate

[15:18] so the last thing i'll tell you statewide

[15:21] is to give you a perspective of the impact of cpa because it really has been

[15:25] a hugely successful program there have been about 13 000 projects

[15:31] these are these statistics are all as of the end of last fiscal year so they're

[15:35] almost a year old at this point and we'll update it

[15:38] this summer after all the communities report what they did

[15:42] during fy21 but this is through the end of fy 20.

[15:47] historic preservation is definitely the most popular category of cpa

[15:51] you can see we've had about 13 000 appropriations and projects and about

[15:55] half of them have been in the historic preservation category it doesn't roll up

[16:00] that way money-wise this is just numbers of projects in this

[16:04] case the money is actually pretty even when you

[16:07] add it up statewide between the different categories

[16:11] but in terms of number of projects historic preservation is definitely

[16:15] more most popular we're closing closing in on 32 000 acres of

[16:20] open space that's been preserved with cpa either through agricultural

[16:24] preservation restrictions conservation restrictions or actual fee

[16:28] ownership by cities and towns outdoor recreation

[16:32] is clearly the most popular category recently in cpa i mentioned

[16:39] that legislation in 2012 that made a bunch of changes

[16:43] to cpa one of them made the recreation category

[16:48] much more flexible than before um originally with cpa you could only

[16:53] develop new recreational facilities or buy land

[16:57] for new recreational facilities but you could not rehabilitate

[17:00] the ones you already owned prior to cpa and um most communities you know have

[17:06] recreational assets but have found it very difficult to

[17:09] inject capital funding and and really bring those up to stan

[17:13] current standards so we worked with the legislature for about five years to make

[17:18] those changes and since then the outdoor recreation

[17:22] category has really exploded which is very rewarding to see

[17:26] communities finally being able to fix up their parks and their

[17:30] playgrounds and their athletic fields and then lastly the affordable housing

[17:34] category we've had over 20 000 units either created

[17:37] or supported in some way with cpa funds so you add it all up um believe it or

[17:43] not there's been over 2.5 billion dollars raised

[17:47] between the local surcharge and the state matching money

[17:52] and that's in less than 20 years so cpa has really

[17:56] um you know been the little engine that could in terms of getting projects done

[18:00] across the state and quietly and very efficiently there's

[18:05] no state agency in charge of cpa the state

[18:08] spends absolutely nothing on administering the program

[18:11] they consider it to be a local program and so all the money goes right into um

[18:18] projects so it's really a terrific funding source and

[18:20] and i think the communities that have it including mine i live up on the north

[18:24] shore uh in boxford i was chair of my cpc for

[18:28] five years and before i joined the coalition and i know my town has had

[18:32] tremendous success with it so i'm pretty confident you guys will as well

[18:38] so before we jump into a community preservation committee and what you do

[18:42] and what your responsibilities are any questions from anyone so far

[18:50] all right so let's yes go ahead i said it appears not sorry okay all

[18:55] right great and uh jamie just so you know

[18:58] um you know i can't uh i can't see too many of you folks i can see a few faces

[19:03] but most of you i cannot see um let's do

[19:06] with uh if there's a question we'll uh we'll

[19:08] flag it for you okay great thank you all right

[19:13] so let's move on um all right so um you folks now that

[19:20] you've uh come together and organized and i

[19:22] think you organized the committee in terms of a

[19:25] chair and vice chair you're ready to sort of dig in and begin

[19:29] your work and the cpa legislation gives you a

[19:33] little road map for your first set of months and maybe

[19:37] even up to a year in terms of um how long and how deep you

[19:41] want to dive on your getting yourself set up um the first

[19:45] thing that it requires us community preservation committee to

[19:49] do is to write a plan um and this doesn't

[19:53] have to be a plan that you create from scratch

[19:55] um you're all volunteers and so far you don't have any administrative help you

[19:59] don't even have an administrative budget to hire any help

[20:02] um so you um you know you really are supposed

[20:06] to take into account all the other planning that

[20:09] that's the city has done um and and let me ask for a second do you

[20:14] um object to being called the city should i

[20:16] call it a town um i i made that mistake once um

[20:21] in braintree they're known as the town of braintree and they want to be known

[20:24] as a town so if you want to balance it out stu you

[20:28] can say the city known as the town of franklin

[20:30] okay i'll well that'll be where you cover all your bases and you might want

[20:33] to turn this into purple on your map so we can

[20:35] stick out

[20:38] we support all colors here jamie all right

[20:42] um so um this cpa plan um you know the first thing you're going

[20:47] to do is grab all the other planning documents the

[20:50] the the town slash city has um and then it requires you to meet with

[20:55] others um meet with the general public in terms of

[20:58] having a public hearing to get some input from

[21:01] citizens at large and non-profit groups in town as to what they want to see

[21:05] out of your cpa program uh meet with all the other boards and committees that

[21:10] might intersect with cpa in town and you know after a period of time you

[21:15] roll that together in a written plan um do not uh be bashful

[21:21] about looking through other plans from other communities there's been about 175

[21:27] other cpa plans we have six or seven of them on our website that we've

[21:32] looked through and vetted and make sure all the information was correct

[21:36] in those plans and accurate um and feel free we put them up there in a word

[21:41] format so that you could use them um you know when you when you read

[21:45] through these plans you'll see tremendous

[21:47] local custom material that folks have really customized to their communities

[21:51] but there's a lot of information about the program and about the history

[21:55] of the program and there's no need for you guys to write

[21:58] that from scratch um if you want to incorporate in your plan and you like it

[22:01] in someone else's plan go grab it it's a public document and we

[22:05] encourage you to do that because like i said you're all

[22:08] volunteers and um only have a limited amount of bandwidth

[22:12] and time um to do this we've had a couple

[22:15] communities that have actually hired outside consultants to do community

[22:19] preservation plans and that's certainly something that you

[22:21] could consider doing um we've had a couple communities who've

[22:25] turned to their regional planning agencies

[22:27] i don't know which one um are you in serpent's

[22:31] territory mapc and they oh you're in mbpc's territory okay great

[22:36] i don't think they have written any cpa plans but they certainly probably could

[22:40] um you know if they get paid anyone will do

[22:43] anything so that's certainly an option but by and large the vast majority of

[22:47] communities do it themselves um with a little help from the folks in

[22:51] in in town hall um and the volunteers of the

[22:55] committee so it's really up to you as to how you

[22:58] want to do this but the key is to really reach out to

[23:02] the community and find out what is important to the

[23:06] people and the organizations in franklin in

[23:09] terms of the four cpa categories

[23:14] so once you get that plan done um you then have some ongoing responsibilities

[23:20] obviously throughout throughout the year you do

[23:24] have to repeat that public hearing every single year

[23:27] and once again solicit the public's input as to what's important to cpa and

[23:32] what the public might want to see coming up that year on your cpa projects

[23:38] and then you use that information uh to do a light refresh

[23:41] on your cpa plan it doesn't have to be rewritten from scratch certainly

[23:45] but you'll want to you know update it to any changes that have happened to the

[23:49] law updated with a list of projects you

[23:51] completed the year before update it with your financials from the year before

[23:56] and those sort of things um in addition a cpc kind of acts as a department head

[24:04] in terms of monitoring your account balances and spending

[24:07] um you know you don't have to do the actual accounting the the town

[24:11] accountant and the finance director and whatever you call your different finance

[24:15] people in town will take care of that for you but they

[24:19] should be providing you with copies of your budgets on the same schedule

[24:23] that they do for all city department heads so if the dpw

[24:28] director gets um you know a monthly report the cpc should

[24:31] as well so they can see where they're at in terms of their

[24:35] spending in their administrative account and also the various projects

[24:39] that have been uh had money appropriated them for cpa

[24:44] and then to the meat of the order the last two things on this list are really

[24:48] your the very essence of why the cpc exists it's to

[24:52] make an annual budget and present that to the city council

[24:56] and then to make recommendations for spending

[25:00] the money and appropriating money for projects

[25:04] as you may know and you'll probably hear me say this about 10 times this evening

[25:08] the cpc can't spend any money itself except your administrative account and

[25:13] even that has to be appropriated first by the city council

[25:17] all the final spending decisions are made by the council

[25:20] but conversely the council can't make any appropriations from

[25:25] the cpa fund unless your committee first recommends

[25:29] that spending to the council so there's kind of a checks and a balance there

[25:33] and it is a very different arrangement than any other border committee in town

[25:37] um you really you'd be hard-pressed to find

[25:40] um you know a budget that um has to be recommended by

[25:44] a committee or else the council absolutely can't spend that money

[25:49] um so it's a very unique arrangement and um

[25:52] you know one that comes with a lot of responsibility

[25:56] for being on a cpc all right so let's talk about the coming

[26:01] year and what you would do um you know obviously the first thing

[26:05] you're going to do as we talked about is to begin working on that plan

[26:09] but here's where you know jamie being johnny on the spot here and getting you

[26:13] guys organized ahead of time is really going to pay off

[26:17] because it's not too late for you folks to

[26:22] recommend and submit a budget to the city council for

[26:25] fy22 most communities are not organized in time to do that

[26:32] so this is terrific for you mainly because

[26:36] it will give you an administrative budget starting july 1st

[26:40] um and we're going to talk about exactly what that budget is going to look like

[26:44] in a minute we're going to step through it and i even have um

[26:47] a format i can send you afterwards of what the actual

[26:50] order would look like that you would present to the council with your budget

[26:54] you'll have to fill in your numbers of course but

[26:56] um we can step you through this this process and

[26:59] like i said it is going to be beneficial because the ability to

[27:03] be organized in time to submit a budget and get it passed by the council before

[27:08] june 30th will give you an administrative fund

[27:11] starting july 1st to be able to hire some help to do the plan if you want to

[27:17] to pay for the ads in the newspaper for the public hearing you're required to

[27:21] advertise it in the newspaper for two weeks prior to the hearing

[27:24] um maybe even to buy uh you know a couple boxes of donuts to have at the

[27:28] hearing you know a lot of cpcs like to um you know attract people

[27:33] through food um it's a great way to get people to come

[27:36] um to meetings and give their opinions you know

[27:39] sometimes a public hearing can be a little sparsely attended unless you

[27:42] generate some excitement about it and really reach out to people and tell them

[27:46] you really want their opinions and and food is a great way to do that and

[27:50] you know that's kind of the kind of thing that the

[27:52] administrative budget is for so you're in great shape uh to be able to

[27:56] have that um for this coming fiscal year

[28:01] so you're going to work on the cpa plan you're going to get that budget together

[28:04] with our help and get it to the council um and then at some point you know

[28:09] probably by about the fall um excuse me that's a that's a typo

[28:13] sorry about that um uh it could be the fall of 20 2022 if you

[28:18] really you know dig into your cpa plan and want to spend an entire year working

[28:22] on them that's fine um you know typically i think it takes

[28:26] probably in the six month range so you may be ready by the

[28:29] fall of 2021 sorry about that typo to um begin

[28:33] accepting applications um or you can you can wait and you really if you would

[28:38] really want to dig into your plan and it takes more time

[28:41] certainly the pandemic is going gonna you know still raging and it's still

[28:44] gonna slow down some things possibly for you

[28:47] um and then typically you would send your projects to the city council

[28:52] in the same budget time frame that the city is doing its regular budget in the

[28:55] spring um so maybe by the spring of 2022

[28:59] um you know a year from now you'd be ready to present your first slate of

[29:03] projects uh to the council um some like i said

[29:06] some communities take longer and really want to dig in on their plan

[29:10] um and and take their time setting up all their materials and their procedures

[29:14] and their application and that sort of thing

[29:16] the timetable is completely up to you the legislation does not specify

[29:21] uh a timetable for all that all it says is you have to do a plan

[29:24] and hold a public hearing so this is just a

[29:28] a suggested timetable and before i send you a copy of this presentation

[29:32] afterwards tonight i will fix these dates in here just to give you

[29:36] guys some ideas so any questions on those beginning steps in the

[29:41] the time frame [Music]

[29:47] all right let's move along all right so the next section is um a

[29:53] little denser we're going to get into the budgeting of cpa

[29:56] and how the money flows and where the money comes from and and what you have

[30:00] to do to spend that money with cpa so

[30:04] as i said you do your responsibility is to prepare

[30:08] an annual budget and present that to the council it does require

[30:12] your recommendation you have to actually formally vote at a meeting

[30:16] you know i move to recommend the following annual cpa budget for fy22 to

[30:20] the city council and you pass that and you send it along

[30:25] normally communities set up their annual cycle

[30:28] so that the cpc does their budget and their project recommendations to the

[30:34] city council at the same time that the city is doing their regular budget in

[30:38] the spring but that's not universal i know rockport for example always does

[30:44] their cpa projects in the fall because spring can be a very busy time

[30:49] it can be a little bit of a crazy time emotions can be running pretty high

[30:54] about this the town's budget or the school budget

[30:57] or override votes or um you know different

[31:03] things that are really controversial so sometimes cpcs want to

[31:07] pull out of that cycle and and do their stuff in the fall it's really up to you

[31:11] as to how you set up um your cycle um but at least for

[31:16] for this year i would definitely suggest that you

[31:19] send them a budget um this spring at the same time they're working on the regular

[31:23] budget now to do a budget you know just like at

[31:28] home when you do a budget um you need to know how much revenue

[31:31] you're going to have that's the very first thing in the budget is how

[31:34] much money are we going to have to spend in the coming year and for right now

[31:38] let's talk about it as if we're doing a budget for fy22

[31:41] for next fiscal year um so your total budget for cpa

[31:46] is only based on two numbers um you have the money you're going to collect

[31:51] locally through that two percent surcharge

[31:54] which i think jamie correct me if i'm wrong is going to be somewhere in the

[31:58] range of 1.2 1.3 million is that what you guys

[32:03] are thinking that's correct stu that was based off

[32:06] um i want to say fy20s numbers um so that probably will be a little

[32:12] higher probably closer to 1.4 million right okay great so that's the first

[32:17] part of your budget um and then you get a distribution from

[32:22] the statewide trust fund every november so that is the second

[32:26] number that you need to be able to do your

[32:29] budget now the fy 22 budget is going to be easier

[32:33] than any budget you're ever going to do because you don't get a trust fund

[32:38] distribution during fy22 you will not get a

[32:42] distribution this coming november the way the trust fund works is you

[32:47] collect your local money for an entire year

[32:50] and then you get your match after the end of that year

[32:54] so you're gonna get your first match in november of 2022

[33:00] and that'll be based on what you collected in fiscal year 2022.

[33:06] so your estimated local revenue for fy 22

[33:10] is just going to be that 1.3 1.4 million so that's the only number you need

[33:17] and um you know your municipal officials probably want to take another look at

[33:20] that based on the current tax data they have and the current tax rates

[33:24] but that's the number you're going to need from your finance department

[33:28] or jamie to be able to start working on your budget

[33:31] what are we expected to collect in our local surcharge for

[33:36] fy22 all right so let's talk about the trust

[33:39] fund a little bit and then we'll get back to the

[33:42] to the budget budget because the trust fund is the best part of cpa

[33:47] um you know you can always raise your taxes by two percent

[33:50] to pay for projects that you want to do in town

[33:54] and you could also always have overrides to pay for projects but

[33:57] none of that would come with a guaranteed annual state match

[34:01] from a cpa trust fund so it is truly the magic of cpa i'm not sure

[34:06] any communities on that on that map would be green or orange or purple

[34:12] if it wasn't for the trust funds frankly it's the magic it's the engine that

[34:16] makes cpa go and it is a true trust fund um it is um

[34:22] a trust fund account that the department of revenue

[34:26] um administers it's the only thing the state does for cpa they track the trust

[34:30] fund money other than that it's completely a local program

[34:34] and um unlike every other piece of state revenue practically

[34:39] the cpa trust fund money does not come from the state budget

[34:46] it comes from a dedicated fee that was created in 2000 when the

[34:52] legislature excuse me first passed cpa and governor

[34:56] celucci signed the legislation it added a

[35:00] surcharge onto all documents filed at the registry

[35:04] of deeds in massachusetts so anywhere in massachusetts when you

[35:08] step up to the window or at a registry and you file

[35:14] a mortgage or a deed on your property or trust fund documents or

[35:21] a mortgage discharge a second mortgage equity line of credit

[35:27] paperwork any piece of paper you're filing at the registry

[35:31] there's a fee you pay to the state most of it goes to the state's general fund

[35:35] but on almost all documents at the registry 50

[35:39] of that fee goes to the cpa trust fund there's one document that's 25 and

[35:45] that's municipal lean certificates but everything else has a surcharge of

[35:49] 50 on it and that money funds the trust fund now the exciting

[35:55] part of this and why your timing on cpa is spectacular in terms of when you're

[36:00] joining the program the exciting part is that that fee up

[36:05] until about one year ago was twenty dollars

[36:09] for most documents and ten dollars for municipal lean

[36:12] certificates and it hadn't changed in 20 years and

[36:16] the the matching money from the state was

[36:19] getting awful thin because we have 186 miles to feed right

[36:23] there's 186 communities and they all share that trust fund and

[36:27] that's why you're kind of all in this together

[36:30] because you're all taking a piece of the pie out of that

[36:34] trust fund all 186 communities so the matching money was down into the

[36:40] single digits and when i say a matching money what i mean is

[36:44] a percentage match against what you raise locally

[36:48] so last year if you had been in the program

[36:52] you would have received 28.6 of what you raised locally or 28.6

[36:59] of 1.4 million dollars that would have been your match

[37:03] last year um before those fees were raised

[37:07] it was getting darn close to single digits

[37:10] below 10 percent the match they um we took i think eight eight years to get

[37:17] the legislature to pass that legislation it is

[37:20] not easy to pass legislation in massachusetts

[37:24] and to pass legislation that generates money

[37:27] is next to impossible especially money that is

[37:31] outside the regular budget process and this trust fund

[37:35] is outside the legislature's control um they cannot grab this money without

[37:42] changing the cpa law the only thing that can be done with this money

[37:46] is to pay it out to a match every november to the 186

[37:50] cpa communities so um you know already last year that match was a lot higher

[37:57] than it was the year before and this coming year i think it'll even

[38:01] be a little bit higher of course you don't get your first match

[38:05] until a year from this november but still we're in a definite upward

[38:10] trend on the trust fund and it's also doesn't

[38:13] hurt that the real estate market is going

[38:16] absolutely bonkers um you know cpa really depends the

[38:21] revenue with the registry of deeds there are lots of different types of documents

[38:24] that are filed with the registry but it really depends upon the real estate

[38:27] market um those are the vast majority of the

[38:30] documents that are filed so between the increase in the fees uh

[38:35] the surcharge fee at the registry and the tremendous um you know

[38:40] real estate market right now the trust fund is really doing well

[38:45] so there's three figures i want to show you on this chart just to give you an

[38:50] idea of how much money is brought in to the trust fund so the last year

[38:56] of the old fee structure when the fees were twenty dollars per document

[39:01] uh the trust fund brought in 23.2 million dollars

[39:07] last year the trust fund brought in 56.9 million dollars

[39:12] and that didn't even have 12 months versus the new fees it only had 10

[39:17] months with the new fee structure and two months at the old fee structure

[39:23] so this match this coming match in 2021 in november of 2021

[39:28] is going to be the first match where we'll have

[39:31] all 12 months at the new higher fees and we're now four months into that

[39:37] trust fund year we've collected november december

[39:40] january and february and the trust fund has already brought

[39:45] in 27.2 million dollars so in four months it brought in more

[39:51] than the entire year back in 2019 um it's up 131.7

[39:59] from last year just in those four months um so it's really a terrific time to be

[40:06] joining cpa um if you're in terms of the the trust

[40:10] fund any questions on this state revenue or

[40:14] the statewide trust fund yes that works yeah uh can you talk

[40:18] about the uh match the base maps uh it's not 100

[40:24] it's just 28.6 correct um cpa in its first six years back from

[40:31] 2001 to 2007 um it did match a hundred percent

[40:38] but it was an accident honestly um the the folks who created cpa never

[40:45] dreamed that it would be a 100 matching fund their goal was to you know

[40:50] be somewhere in the 30 to 50 percent match

[40:53] and that's what most of the state grant programs

[40:55] are you know are not a hundred percent they're they're matching funds

[40:59] um you know sometimes 30 sometimes 50 depending upon the different state

[41:03] programs that are out there and but in the beginning um it was

[41:08] another go-go time at the real estate market um number

[41:13] one it was when interest rates were plummeting so everyone was refinancing

[41:16] sometimes people were refinancing two three times a year back then when the

[41:20] interest rates were just plummeting and each of those refinancings created

[41:24] tremendous money for the trust fund and you heard me say that the initial

[41:28] communities that adopted cpa were very small and very you know for

[41:32] the most part suburban and rural um so there was enough money to pay

[41:37] everyone a hundred percent for for seven years um but it was probably

[41:41] the worst thing honestly that happened to cpa

[41:44] because it became known as the program that was 100 matching program and it was

[41:49] never designed that way so when it finally fell below 100 percent

[41:54] it fell quickly and then there was a lot of gnashing of

[41:57] teeth of the state has reneged on their promise

[42:00] or they're not funding it the way they used to that was not true at all the

[42:04] funding formula has never changed um it's been the same for

[42:07] all one more question 20 years you see that match going up at

[42:12] all with the present interest rates on

[42:15] property and so forth um interest rates on property do you

[42:20] mean um buying houses right now the interest

[42:23] rates really dropped okay so you're talking about mortgage

[42:27] interest rates i mean i'm just saying with people being

[42:32] able to buy homes and so forth i mean do you see this

[42:35] this in this rate going up at all this match or just in general do you see the

[42:39] matching rate percent going up at all um

[42:45] yes i think it's like i said the real estate market is doing terrific and

[42:49] most of the reason is those low interest rates um

[42:52] so i do think this year's match in november is going to be a little bit

[42:56] higher than last year because of that the department of revenue does all the

[43:00] estimates on the trust fund and they do it right about now sometime

[43:04] end of november early april they'll put out their estimate so we'll see what

[43:08] they say in terms of the projections for this

[43:10] coming november the long-term trend i think you know

[43:15] this is not going to be a crazy real estate mark like this forever

[43:18] we're really constrained in inventory in massachusetts you know

[43:23] prices are great but cpa is not a percentage of every sale it's a flat

[43:28] fee on every sale so um you know it's this is only going to take

[43:33] um the hot real estate market is only going to take the trust fund so far

[43:38] and you know new communities might join cpa

[43:41] and every year your local surcharge goes up

[43:44] so your claim on the trust fund goes up a little bit in each of the 186

[43:48] communities so um it's definitely not going to you know

[43:52] go much higher um and it'll even probably you know tick

[43:56] down very very slowly over the coming decade or so and then

[44:00] we'll have to go back to the legislature and get them to raise the fee again

[44:03] or find another funding source thank you all right any other questions on the

[44:09] trust fund

[44:13] all right so let's move along all right so um

[44:16] so back to your annual budget you've now gotten a good

[44:20] estimate on what your local surcharge revenue is going to be

[44:24] and in the future your state revenue as well coming in every november

[44:29] starting in november of 2022 so cpa really doesn't have many

[44:35] requirements about how you have to spend that money matter

[44:38] of fact it really only has one it says in the law

[44:43] that you must spend or reserve for later spending 10 percent a minimum

[44:50] of 10 percent in each of the three cpa categories so

[44:54] in fy 22 you're going to have about 1.4 million dollars

[44:58] in total revenue because you just get your local money in fy 22.

[45:03] so you're going to have to either recommend a project

[45:07] for a hundred let's see 100 uh 10 140 000 um in the housing category

[45:14] or you're going to much more likely because you're not ready to do projects

[45:18] yet you're going to ask the city council to

[45:21] set aside 140 000 in the housing reserve account and 140

[45:28] 000 in the open space and recreation reserve

[45:30] account and a hundred thousand hundred and forty thousand in the

[45:34] historic accounts that's the only requirement that cpa

[45:39] places on you you have to do a little bit in each

[45:42] category you can't ignore completely a category of cpa

[45:47] you either have to do a project worth ten percent of your total budget

[45:52] or you have to reserve it for later spending and once it's reserved into one

[45:55] one of those reserve accounts it has to be spent on that category

[46:00] and this is why most communities don't put more than

[46:03] the minimum in there because it restricts your money it

[46:07] it ties it up you want to keep as much of your money in that big blue category

[46:12] which is your flexible spending you know that money can be spent on anything

[46:16] it could be all spent on a housing project

[46:19] or a series of housing projects all on open space or typically

[46:23] you know some of each the other thing that

[46:26] cpa says is you can take a small part of your annual revenue and use that

[46:32] for administrative funds for the cpa

[46:34] committee we'll talk a little bit more about what those administrative funds

[46:38] are used for in a minute but there is a cap on that it's five

[46:41] percent of your anticipated revenue so you could have an administrative

[46:46] budget of about seventy thousand dollars next year five percent of your 1.4

[46:51] million dollar surcharge when you do the budget for the

[46:55] following year you're gonna have to add in your state

[46:58] match estimated revenue to come up with that top figure and then

[47:02] everything will flow from there does that make sense okay

[47:08] all right so those that's the requirement with the budget

[47:12] so what does an annual budget actually look like so

[47:15] this is um a typical cpa yes

[47:21] so with the administrative piece if we put five percent

[47:26] into that category can we move that to a different category at a later date

[47:32] from the administrative fund yes yes you can but this goes back to what you

[47:39] have control over and what you don't have control over

[47:43] anything that you do has to be recommended to the city council

[47:47] so you can't do that on your own as a cpa committee

[47:50] so if you put five percent into your administrative account

[47:54] and then you later want to grab some of that back for a project

[47:58] you would have to make a recommendation to the city council and they would have

[48:01] to vote that now um i think i hear where you're going

[48:06] with this um the administrative account you don't

[48:09] want to end up with a lot of money just sitting there

[48:12] but you won't because the administrative account

[48:16] is an annual operating account it's the only annual

[48:20] operating account in cpa meaning when you set that 70 000 aside

[48:25] it's only good for fy22 and whatever you don't spend

[48:29] will automatically be put back in your cpa fund

[48:33] for spending on projects um and your municipal officials will do that when

[48:37] they close the books at the end of the year

[48:40] so what's great about it is you know if jamie doesn't spend his entire legal

[48:45] budget in fy 22 you know

[48:48] that closes you know to some general fund account you know he can't carry

[48:54] that forward um it's a use it or lose it with cpa if you

[48:58] don't spend all the administrative money it's not gone to you

[49:01] it goes into your general cpa account and it can be spent on projects the

[49:04] following year

[49:07] um so it's a really um you know you won't end i have never really

[49:11] actually i don't think i've ever seen anyone put money in

[49:14] and then before the end of the year take it out to put it somewhere else in the

[49:18] administrative account because they know it just is going to

[49:20] be put back into the you know general cpa account at the end of the year

[49:27] does that help yes thank you i got a question

[49:30] yeah so how many of the 186 towns and cities have a

[49:35] a um administrative expense do they take advantage of that

[49:39] uh i believe probably every community except

[49:43] for cambridge cambridge actually they have a small

[49:49] administrative expense the only thing they do with their

[49:51] administrative budget is they pay they pay dues to our organization which we're

[49:55] grateful for um but they have made it a policy of

[49:59] theirs that their municipal officials are going to

[50:02] do all the work on cpa as part of their regular job

[50:05] um and they're not going to spend any of the cpa funds on administration

[50:09] that's incredibly rare almost every community

[50:13] spends a little bit i don't there is in terms of

[50:17] another way to ask that question how many communities spend the full five

[50:20] percent that's pretty rare um i think newton

[50:23] probably spends the full five percent because they have a full-time cpa

[50:27] administrator um somerville probably spends the full

[50:31] five percent uh most communities spend only a tiny

[50:34] fraction of the five percent but we do recommend

[50:38] that you put five percent in at the beginning of the year

[50:41] because you don't know what kind of things are going to come up throughout

[50:44] the year you don't know when a piece of land is going to present

[50:48] itself to you um as a possible acquisition when a

[50:52] farmer passes away and you want to protect that land

[50:55] and you need to do an appraisal um and an appraisal costs you know five

[50:59] thousand dollars so you don't you can't anticipate

[51:02] everything you're going to need so we we do recommend that communities when they

[51:06] do their budget that they ask for the full five percent

[51:09] from the city council and there's no danger in doing that

[51:12] because if you don't spend it it's just going to go back into your regular

[51:15] cpa account at the end of the year and the city council will give you a new

[51:19] five percent administrative budget makes sense i have a question yes

[51:25] um in the cpa law is it defined exactly what

[51:28] counts as a mixture of expenses and what the administrative account can be used

[51:32] for it is not um but my next slide i think

[51:36] um talks about that so it's not defined in the law

[51:41] but we have seen through um dor letter rulings over the years um and

[51:46] town council opinions we got a pretty good handle on what it

[51:49] what it can be spent for and what it can't be spent for um so i'm going to

[51:53] talk about that in a second sounds good all right um so

[51:59] let's do let's do a quick annual budget for you um it's going to be really

[52:02] simple this year um you know i'm assuming you're not gonna

[52:06] have any projects in the next you know month or so to recommend to the

[52:10] city council unless something is really hot that i don't know about um

[52:14] but uh probably not in the next month anyways

[52:18] so um your budget will probably consist of

[52:21] um an estimate let's say it's 1.4 million jamie will

[52:24] figure out or the with the municipal officials exactly what that should be

[52:29] um you're going to take 10 of that for argument's sake let's say

[52:33] it's 1.4 million in your revenue and you're going to put 140 000

[52:37] in your housing reserve account 140 000 in your historic reserve account

[52:43] and you're going to ask the city council put 140 000 in your open space and

[52:46] recreation reserve account by the way open space

[52:50] and recreation share a reserve account by open space we

[52:54] mean conservation land you know buying land

[52:58] for conservation purposes and by recreation we need active

[53:02] recreation parks playgrounds athletic fields community

[53:05] gardens trails those sort of things so it's really kind

[53:08] of passive and active recreation two different types of projects but they

[53:12] do share one reserve account all right so i would recommend

[53:19] that you ask for seventy thousand or five percent

[53:22] in administrative funds um you're probably not going to have any new

[53:26] projects this year any projects to recommend so what you're

[53:31] going to do is ask the city council to put the

[53:35] balance in what's called a budgeted reserve

[53:38] account so it's going to be the 1.4 million

[53:42] minus the 140 000 in each of the three reserve

[53:45] accounts minus 70 000. whatever that number is

[53:48] and my math i usually i usually estimate a million dollars so i can do it in my

[53:52] head um but i picked up on your actual of 1.4

[53:55] and i can't do that in my head but whatever that balance is your budget

[54:00] is going to request that the city council put that in a

[54:03] budgeted reserve

[54:06] and the reason you do that is a little piece of complicated municipal

[54:10] accounting but um let's say that amount is

[54:16] um well let's do it real quick right um 1.4 million 140 000 times 3

[54:24] is 420 and then the 70. so it's about half a million dollars between the

[54:29] reserve accounts and the administrative account

[54:31] so you're going to have about 900 000 that you're not putting into the reserve

[54:36] accounts or the administrative account the way municipal accounting works in

[54:41] massachusetts that none 900 000 is considered

[54:45] unbudgeted revenue and once franklin sets its tax rate with

[54:50] the department of revenue anything that is not in a budgeted

[54:54] account you lose access to it until the fiscal

[54:58] year ends so you do tax billing what four times a

[55:02] year in franklin yep yeah so you set your tax rate

[55:06] sometime in late november early december jamie exactly okay so

[55:11] if you don't put that 900 000 in a budgeted reserve account

[55:16] you're going to lose access to it between december 1st

[55:20] if that's the date you set your tax rate and

[55:23] july 30th uh june 30th of 2022. in fact it's going to be a little longer

[55:29] because technically you don't you don't get access

[55:31] again to it until the town has closed the books on fy 22

[55:35] and that can take a couple months actually towns have four months they can

[55:39] go all the way till october 31st to close their books

[55:42] so potentially that money could be gone from you temporarily from december 1st

[55:48] through the following october 31st but if you include it in your budget in

[55:53] other words you take the entire 1.4 million

[55:55] and tuck it into a different account you'll have access to that for the full

[56:00] fiscal year and you're probably going to want to

[56:02] spend that 900 000 next spring you know if you do your first set of

[56:06] project recommendations to the city council

[56:09] you're probably going to want that 900 000 to spend

[56:12] and you wouldn't have it unless you put it in a budgeted reserve

[56:17] so that's a pretty simple budget honestly

[56:20] for fy22 because you don't have any projects and you don't have your state

[56:24] matching revenue in fy22 so it's three reserve accounts of 140

[56:30] 000 if if it's 1.4 million that jamie comes up with

[56:34] 70 000 administrative and the balance in a budgeted reserve

[56:38] and then you'd be all set um for the entire year

[56:42] and you would have an administrative budget starting july 1st

[56:46] if the city council approves this budget before july 1st

[56:52] any questions on that

[56:57] so this is something i'd recommend that you put on the agenda maybe

[57:00] your next meeting um and between now and then you know

[57:04] hopefully the the financial folks can come up with

[57:07] an actual number for you to use um whether it's 1 million 410

[57:12] 566 whatever it is um and then um you know i'll send you a

[57:18] template where you can plug in all the numbers

[57:21] and then at the next meeting um hopefully the chair can call for a vote

[57:24] and recommend that budget to the city council and then they'll

[57:29] have plenty of time between now and july 1st to get that passed

[57:34] sound good yes thank you all right okay um so um actually i think i just

[57:42] i just i i jumped ahead of my slide here this is um

[57:46] talking about what i just what i just mentioned to prepare that budget for

[57:49] fy22 um and uh it all starts with jamie and

[57:53] the financial folks coming up with an estimate all

[57:56] right so let's jump to the administrative account what can you use

[57:59] that for well the first thing i'll say um and

[58:03] this is where you know jamie will throw spit balls at me

[58:07] and the nine cpa people will stand up and applaud

[58:10] this administrative account is an administrative account

[58:14] for the community preservation committee it is not an administrative account for

[58:20] franklin's cpa program so let me say that one more

[58:24] time it's your administrative account for

[58:27] expenses to run your committee it is not an account

[58:31] that the town can turn to to run the cpa program

[58:35] so if the tax collector spends time processing cpa low-income exemption

[58:41] applications um you know people applying for the

[58:44] low-income exemption that you folks adopted

[58:47] that's just part of the tax collector part of their job

[58:51] if the town clerk or city clerk i don't know what you call it probably town

[58:56] clerk you know spends time processing your

[58:59] warrant articles when they're preparing the warrant if they're the ones that do

[59:03] that um that's just part of the town clerk's job

[59:07] um you know if jamie spends some time

[59:10] calculating with the finance folks what your local revenue is going to be next

[59:13] year um just part of his job and you can

[59:18] the other city departments cannot get reimbursed from the cpa

[59:23] fund that's uh against the law and section six it's called the no

[59:27] supplanting phrase of cpa you can never have cpa money

[59:31] end up back in the general fund budget or supplant spending in the budget

[59:35] so it's your expense account to run your committee and that's why you can see

[59:40] you know a lot of committees don't use the full um five percent

[59:44] uh and like i said it just goes back to your

[59:47] and undesignated cpa account at the end of the year

[59:50] so what do you use it for well the first thing that

[59:54] um probably about 60 or 65 percent of the cpa communities do is they hire some

[59:59] administrative help certainly there's probably not too many

[1:00:02] people at town hall who have a ton of extra time to help you out

[1:00:07] and um you know sometimes communities feel that they want to have

[1:00:10] you know a part-time cpa administrator um i don't see two too many communities

[1:00:16] do that right out of the gate um because there's probably not enough

[1:00:20] work you know in that first year let's say

[1:00:23] but maybe there is maybe you do i mean i somerville

[1:00:26] had someone on board right from the beginning the

[1:00:29] the point i see that some communities start to cry uncle

[1:00:33] on the workload and want someone is when they first start doing their first set

[1:00:36] of projects and there's things that have to be

[1:00:40] processed paperwork applications bills you know recommendations

[1:00:45] and that sort of thing it starts to get to be a little bit much for volunteers

[1:00:49] to handle all on their own now some communities don't hire

[1:00:53] administrator and they're someone who's designated as their helper you

[1:00:58] know at town hall we have a lot of communities that uh

[1:01:01] very often in the planning department you know someone's job in the planning

[1:01:04] department will be to spend a couple hours a week assisting the cpc

[1:01:09] um and and that's just part of the planning

[1:01:11] department's budget so it's really up to you folks how you

[1:01:14] want to handle that um for now you're just going to request

[1:01:17] the budget from the city council and then you can discuss this over the

[1:01:21] coming year um as to whether you know you do want to

[1:01:24] hire someone to help be an administrator for the cpc and

[1:01:28] there's a couple ways you can do that you can hire someone as an independent

[1:01:32] contractor who just works from home uses um their own resources and you pay

[1:01:37] them hourly um you can have someone who's a

[1:01:40] part-time employee of the town who actually has a desk within town hall

[1:01:45] um you know or shares a desk within town hall you know

[1:01:48] 10 15 hours a week 20 hours a week or like i said you can have someone

[1:01:54] who's um already on the payroll at the town

[1:01:57] handle that those duties but they can't get

[1:02:00] compensated from the cpa fund if they're already a town employee to do that they

[1:02:03] would just do that as part of their regular job so those are

[1:02:06] kind of the three ways we see administrative assistants being applied

[1:02:11] supplied to the cpc the other thing you can do is you know

[1:02:16] hire consultants and get appraisals on land if you're thinking of buying land

[1:02:20] if you feel there are some studies that you need to be done to give you a handle

[1:02:23] on what the cpa needs are of the community

[1:02:27] um you know basically anything that's due diligence

[1:02:31] on the project applications you get going toward town meeting

[1:02:35] so if you get an application from the cons com to buy a piece of conservation

[1:02:38] land you're going to need an appraisal on

[1:02:40] that and the const com doesn't have the budget for that

[1:02:42] so you're going to use that from the administrative fund if you get a

[1:02:46] historic project and you want someone to review the plans

[1:02:49] it's a complicated one and you want to make sure that

[1:02:51] the project is being done to proper historic standards

[1:02:54] you could hire a historic preservation consultant to review all the historic

[1:02:58] applications which is very popular as well um

[1:03:03] you know small things the newspaper ads for the public hearing

[1:03:07] you know you might want to print a flyer to hand out to people that explains the

[1:03:11] cpa program you might want to print a bill stuffer

[1:03:16] for the first set of tax bills that go out next year

[1:03:21] you know people are going to be seeing this surcharge on their tax bill for the

[1:03:24] first time and cpa by law is separately itemized on

[1:03:28] their tax bill so they're gonna see taxes you know four thousand dollars cpa

[1:03:34] surcharge seventy five dollars whatever it is um

[1:03:37] and a lot of people say hey what's this cpa thing i don't know what

[1:03:41] that's about so the first time you send out tax bills

[1:03:44] um you know it's nice for the cpc to pay for a little flyer that can be inserted

[1:03:48] in there explaining everything about cpa

[1:03:53] so it's really up to you folks how you spend this money but it is all

[1:03:57] about the expenses of running your committee

[1:04:01] and things that you decide on that are important at your committee

[1:04:04] and once the town council gives you a budget

[1:04:08] to go with and appropriates that money then it's just a vote of the majority

[1:04:12] members of the committee you know i move that we spend five thousand dollars to

[1:04:15] get an appraisal on farmer johnson's land because the

[1:04:18] const com thinks they might want to buy it

[1:04:20] and then everyone votes and then you spend the money

[1:04:24] so did that answer whoever asked the question about what you use the

[1:04:28] administrative account for yes thank you that was very informative

[1:04:32] okay any other questions on the admin account

[1:04:37] all right let's move along so one of the neat things about cpa

[1:04:42] is that you can borrow against your future cpa surcharge

[1:04:47] in the same way the town borrows against its regular tax revenue stream

[1:04:52] you know the town probably doesn't have four hundred thousand dollars sitting

[1:04:55] around when a fire truck needs replacing they might bonds that um the town

[1:05:00] doesn't have seven million dollars around to build a

[1:05:02] new police station they're gonna bond that

[1:05:04] against future tax revenues of the town you folks have a two percent revenue

[1:05:10] stream that has been given to you by the taxpayers

[1:05:13] um and that two percent surcharge will continue

[1:05:17] until such time as cpa is revoked or the surcharge is reduced at the ballot

[1:05:22] um which is very rare so um you have a you know

[1:05:27] a revenue stream that's bondable um and that is up to you folks as to whether

[1:05:32] you want to tap that revenue stream if you want to recommend to the city

[1:05:36] council that a project be bonded that is your

[1:05:39] option and it can be very useful because you

[1:05:44] know especially let's say a big land purchase comes up in the next year

[1:05:48] well you know how much money do you have you only have

[1:05:52] 1.4 million dollars in your first year and you really don't have 1.4

[1:05:56] because 140 000 is going to have to be put in the housing reserve

[1:06:00] 140 000 is going to have to be put in the historic reserve and some of it's

[1:06:04] going to be in your administrative reserve so you

[1:06:06] actually have a lot less than 1.4 million

[1:06:09] to spend on a piece of open space to buy it but open space only comes around once

[1:06:13] you know once it's built on it's built on and i know that's you know um

[1:06:18] you know in the past 20 years a lot of franklin has been built up

[1:06:21] and built on um you know as have a lot of communities in that 495 built they've

[1:06:26] been really developed heavily and cpa um can protect what's left and

[1:06:32] if that comes up and you don't have enough money this is a very viable

[1:06:36] um thing to do so if you ever get into the situation where you're considering

[1:06:40] this i have a whole separate presentation

[1:06:42] just on bonding i call bonding 101 and i'll come back to one of your meetings

[1:06:47] that one's only a half hour long i promise it's shorter

[1:06:50] and i'm happy to give you the soup to nuts on what you need to know

[1:06:53] um to bond the only two things i'll tell you now

[1:06:57] is give some thought when you bond because it does ratchet up the vote

[1:07:01] approval that you need at the city council from a majority vote to

[1:07:04] two-thirds so consider that we've seen a lot of

[1:07:06] projects die in that space between majority and

[1:07:10] two-thirds um and the other thing um again

[1:07:14] jamie's gonna be throwing darts at me right now again

[1:07:18] um you can't pay the debt service on bonds that have been issued in the past

[1:07:22] by the by the town even if they've been issued to buy open space or to rehab a

[1:07:27] historic building if it wasn't initially bonded under

[1:07:31] authority of chapter 44b which is cpa then you can't pay the debt

[1:07:36] service on it no i'm not throwing any darts at you on

[1:07:40] that one all right good any questions on bonding

[1:07:46] all right super so let me know if that comes up

[1:07:50] all right so there are two complicated pieces of tonight's presentation your

[1:07:54] through one which is the budget now let's talk about

[1:07:58] um how you determine what you can spend your money on when it comes to projects

[1:08:04] now you'd think it'd be pretty simple right

[1:08:07] everyone knows the four categories of cpa you probably already know those by

[1:08:10] heart open space historic preservation

[1:08:12] recreation and housing but cpa can't pay for everything you

[1:08:17] could possibly think of in the open space category

[1:08:19] it can't pay for every historic project it is a restricted fund

[1:08:24] and it has very definitive rules there had to be four

[1:08:28] walls around it um and cpa is pretty flexible but there had to be four walls

[1:08:33] somewhere or else things would get out of hand a

[1:08:35] little bit so what folks don't realize is

[1:08:39] in addition to the four categories each cpa

[1:08:44] project has to be covered under one of these verbs that you see on the left

[1:08:48] hand side you have to be acquiring something

[1:08:51] creating something preserving something supporting something

[1:08:55] and rehabilitating something or rehabilitating something

[1:08:59] and as you can see not every verb is available in every category

[1:09:04] so this we call this the cpa allowable uses chart

[1:09:09] um and it's a very helpful document as a beginning

[1:09:12] conversation because i guarantee all nine members of you

[1:09:16] as soon as someone finds out you're on the cpc you're gonna be stopped

[1:09:19] you know at market basket or shaw's and uh

[1:09:22] hey mary you're on the cpc i was just thinking i was at the park the other day

[1:09:26] and boy the swing sets there you know are 40

[1:09:29] years old can cpa pay for that i tell folks don't even try to answer

[1:09:35] that unless you have the allowable uses chart in front of you because it really

[1:09:38] does help figure out what you can spend it on um

[1:09:42] the this is a simplified version on it there is on our website in that

[1:09:48] technical assistance section the first thing you'll see is is our

[1:09:52] project allowable there's the full version of this chart

[1:09:55] that has all the definitions of all these words the fill

[1:09:58] the official dor version

[1:10:01] this chart actually has not been around for all of cpa

[1:10:04] dor came out with this around 2005. the section of cpa that tells you what

[1:10:09] you can spend your money on is section 5 b2 and it's this

[1:10:14] gobbledygook long legalese paragraph that says

[1:10:18] you know cpa funds can be spended for the acquisition

[1:10:21] creation preservation of open space and the rehabilitation of open space if

[1:10:26] it was acquired or created with cpa funds

[1:10:29] and the acquisition preservation and rehabilitation of historic resources and

[1:10:34] and and honestly no one knew what they could spend their cpa money on in the

[1:10:39] early years of cpa um and then this chart came out from dor

[1:10:43] it was like bing it just really helped quantify

[1:10:47] things and explain them and for fun go back and read section 5

[1:10:51] b2 and you'll see how this is a much easier

[1:10:54] way to understand what you can use with your cpa funds

[1:10:58] the important thing when you just are looking at a cpa project

[1:11:02] you know the first thing the job of the community is going to be is figuring out

[1:11:05] whether that project is legal is it fundable

[1:11:08] sometimes you might need help with your town council to do that

[1:11:12] sometimes you might need our help to do that probably the number one question we

[1:11:16] get on our technical assistance hotline is is this project okay to fund

[1:11:22] but you know by and large you know you don't want to run up a big bill with

[1:11:25] your town council asking on every project you know you want to

[1:11:28] kind of try to get familiar with what are the

[1:11:31] you know what's the sweet spot of cpa projects what's it really there for

[1:11:35] um and when you accept applications for cpa projects and we'll talk about

[1:11:39] applications in a minute you're going to want to budget with

[1:11:42] those applications to the best of the ability of the

[1:11:46] applicant to give you a budget because you have to go through that

[1:11:50] budget and look at each thing that the money is actually

[1:11:53] going to be spent on and you have to find a box on this chart

[1:11:57] that justifies that expense line item by line item in

[1:12:01] the project budget if you can't find a box or boxes

[1:12:06] to stuff an expense into where it says yes or yes if acquired or created with

[1:12:10] cpa funds if you can't find a box that says yes

[1:12:14] it's not eligible for funding um so it's really good to understand

[1:12:20] what these verbs mean there's definitions of all of them

[1:12:24] and to look at a budget and then see what box

[1:12:27] the project goes into so if the cons com comes to you and says

[1:12:32] we want to buy farmer john's property and protect it as agricultural land

[1:12:37] can we do it let's go to the chart that's an open space project right open

[1:12:42] space is conservation land you heard me talk about that

[1:12:45] what are you doing what is that money being spent on it's being spent on

[1:12:48] acquiring farmer johnson's land you're good to go

[1:12:53] all right someone comes to you and says we

[1:12:56] want to create um those little plaques that you see on historic houses all over

[1:13:02] town you know circa 1776 the colonel johnson house we want to create

[1:13:08] that for all 200 historic houses in town we want to make these new signs and put

[1:13:12] them up on all the houses can we do that all right let's go to the

[1:13:15] chart in making those signs designing them and

[1:13:20] then paying someone to fabricate them are you

[1:13:22] acquiring a historic resource and there's a

[1:13:25] definition of a historic resource it's a building structure vessel

[1:13:33] real property document or artifact

[1:13:37] are you acquiring real property documents

[1:13:41] artifacts boats [Music]

[1:13:45] no you're not are you preserving protecting from injury harm or

[1:13:50] destruction is the definition of preservation

[1:13:52] are you preserving real property documents artifacts

[1:13:56] no um are you rehabilitating them fixing them up

[1:14:00] bringing them back to their original glory nope

[1:14:03] not eligible for funding a matter of fact there actually is a perfect box for

[1:14:08] that to create these new signs it's that create box in the historic

[1:14:12] category and guess what it says you can't create something historic

[1:14:17] and i always laugh at that i think you know the legislature

[1:14:21] sometimes gets things right and sometimes they don't but in this case

[1:14:26] they were dead on you can't create something historic with cpa funds

[1:14:30] believe it or not that was um that's a long story i won't get

[1:14:37] into that there was a change necessary to cpa to

[1:14:40] fix a little boo-boo of the legislature on that but they did

[1:14:45] get that one right you can't create something historic so

[1:14:48] those signs are not eligible to be funded with cpa

[1:14:53] a question that i always get asked the last thing i'll tell you about this

[1:14:56] chart is why is support available only in the

[1:14:59] housing category very popular question and

[1:15:03] and support even has a very broad definition too so it really

[1:15:07] allows you to do a lot of things in the housing category and the reason is

[1:15:11] the legislature knew housing was going to be tough it is going to be your

[1:15:14] hardest category to implement i guarantee it housing

[1:15:17] is expensive it's politically charged it's based on land which is scarce in

[1:15:22] new england um it's an it's a tough nut to crack and

[1:15:26] so they wanted to give towns as many resources available as

[1:15:31] possible to do housing projects so you'll notice

[1:15:34] it has the most verbs available right of any of the categories and so they

[1:15:39] wanted to allow you to do things if it's in support of affordable housing like

[1:15:44] doing a housing production plan or hiring a housing coordinator for the

[1:15:47] town it's eligible for funding on the other

[1:15:50] hand they didn't want you moving the entire parks and recs maintenance

[1:15:54] budget over to cpa so that would have been very dangerous

[1:15:58] to have support in all those categories i think

[1:16:01] um and clearly they're they're not so any other questions on the chart

[1:16:11] we are happy we do this a lot with communities when you get your first

[1:16:16] set of applications the very first time sometimes we set up a zoom call and we

[1:16:21] go through each application and i help the towns figure out where they fall on

[1:16:26] this chart and how to make that analysis and it can be very helpful to to go

[1:16:31] through that thinking of how you make those decisions

[1:16:34] and i'm happy to do that the first time around at some point in the next year or

[1:16:38] two when you get to your projects your first round of projects

[1:16:43] all right it's all downhill from here those are the the

[1:16:46] two most complicated parts of the the presentation

[1:16:50] so i wanna maybe get on my soapbox just a little bit

[1:16:53] and talk about you know what cpa is truly for

[1:16:56] and what it's really not for um and um you know by and large when the

[1:17:02] legislature created cpa um the one thing they had to promise the

[1:17:06] anti-tax advocates in massachusetts the the prop two and a half lobby if you if

[1:17:11] we if you will is that cpa was not going to supplement

[1:17:15] the regular city budget you have a regular city budget you have

[1:17:18] a hundred percent of your tax revenue that comes in

[1:17:21] and it's available for city spending um and cpa is not supposed to replace

[1:17:27] that and it's not supposed to be added to

[1:17:30] that you know the things that are fundable on your city budget

[1:17:34] um are by and large the same every year and cpa was designed to fund new things

[1:17:41] and you know it recognized that the average citizen

[1:17:45] can't have too much impact on a city budget right

[1:17:48] it's the it's the city manager town manager

[1:17:51] the finance committee um the city council

[1:17:55] you know those are the where the real control is on the city budget the

[1:17:58] average person can't really impact the city's budget too much other than

[1:18:03] maybe you know choosing to elect a different city

[1:18:06] councilor if they want to but cpa is designed to be exactly the

[1:18:10] opposite it's a grassroots bottom-up process

[1:18:15] it's a voluntary tax that the town has agreed

[1:18:18] the voters in town agreed to tax themselves for

[1:18:21] and it's a grassroots effort to get it passed

[1:18:25] and the projects should the ideas should come from everyone

[1:18:29] that's why the legislature wants you to really beat the bushes out in the

[1:18:32] community to see what's important to them

[1:18:35] everyone should be able to submit an idea for a monday and

[1:18:38] it goes to the cpc you guys make recommendation

[1:18:42] and then you send that off to the city council in the end both of these budgets

[1:18:46] end up in the same place right the city council makes the final decision

[1:18:49] but the process is really different cpa really should be

[1:18:53] a bottoms up approach where the grassroots

[1:18:57] and the different committees in town and the volunteers and the non-profits

[1:19:01] everyone really gets a say and an access to this funding the communities that get

[1:19:08] this that understand cpa is not just supposed

[1:19:11] to supplement and be co-opted by the by the council

[1:19:15] for regular old things that that they've

[1:19:18] always paid for the folks who get that and really

[1:19:20] truly adhere to the no supplanting phrase in cpa

[1:19:24] they usually have tremendous cpa programs and

[1:19:27] really terrific support the communities where there's always pressure to take

[1:19:31] the money from cpa let's get cpa to pay for that oh can we possibly get cpa

[1:19:36] to pay for that let's see if we can twist that just a little bit

[1:19:39] so we can get cpa to pay for that with that kind of

[1:19:42] approach i see programs where there's constant gnashing of teeth constant

[1:19:48] arguments constant pressure from people to revoke cpa or reduce the

[1:19:53] surcharge because it's not being used the way it was

[1:19:56] intended so it's just something to think about as

[1:19:59] you create your cpa program to know what kind of cpa program you want to have

[1:20:04] and whether you're going to you know really maintain the the essence of what

[1:20:07] cpa was all about in terms of that grassroots approach

[1:20:12] so um how do projects happen you know how do these ideas get you get

[1:20:18] to you from the committee well you know over the next year

[1:20:22] while you're creating your cpa plan you're probably going to want to create

[1:20:26] a cpa application document as well there's no statewide cpa application

[1:20:33] document there's no state reque excuse me requirements

[1:20:37] on what information you ask for as a matter of fact

[1:20:40] the word application does not appear anywhere in the cpa legislation

[1:20:45] the cpa legislation as far as funding goes starts at the process where it says

[1:20:49] the cpc shall make recommendations to the city council for spending

[1:20:53] so anything the entire process of how you collect applications what you

[1:20:59] ask for what forms you use what procedures you use

[1:21:03] what timetable you use how many times a year you're willing to accept

[1:21:07] applications most do only once a year whether you

[1:21:10] make exceptions for late breaking emergency projects like a

[1:21:14] land purchase that just was discovered is important those things are completely

[1:21:19] up to you in the nine members of this committee

[1:21:23] but you're probably going to want to come up with an application every

[1:21:26] community does and we have samples on our website as

[1:21:29] well of sample applications so don't feel again that you have to reinvent the

[1:21:33] wheel take a peek at the variety of different

[1:21:36] applications we have i'd recommend that you really look at

[1:21:39] the two-step application project process which most communities do

[1:21:46] which is step one is very just a very simple form that's

[1:21:49] basically says tell us your idea you know

[1:21:52] and all the cpc does with that is look through it and determines whether it's

[1:21:56] eligible for funding and if it is they let the group know

[1:22:01] and they proceed to a full application step

[1:22:05] the last thing you want to do is have someone spend

[1:22:08] you know untold amount of hours putting together a formal application getting

[1:22:12] estimates getting a budget getting letters of

[1:22:14] testimonial um only for them to approach you and say

[1:22:18] and you have to say we can't fund that it's um you know it's a sign project in

[1:22:23] the historic category we can't fund that um that's when trouble starts you know

[1:22:27] someone calls the city council and complains writes a letter to the

[1:22:31] editor of the paper you know you just don't want to have

[1:22:34] someone really invest that much time and energy into something that's not

[1:22:37] eligible so this two-step process can be really

[1:22:40] helpful and we have an example of a two-step

[1:22:42] application on our website so you set a timetable you have an

[1:22:48] application you have a procedure folks submit applications to you

[1:22:53] you review them you get input from other boards you know if it's historic project

[1:22:58] you're probably going to want your historic rep on the committee to go back

[1:23:00] and talk about it with the rest of the historic commission get some guidance on

[1:23:04] that you want to do a lot of due diligence um

[1:23:08] look through the estimates um you know ask questions of the

[1:23:11] applicant kick it back to them because some things

[1:23:14] are not complete you know you want to leave a

[1:23:16] a nice long period of time you know three four months

[1:23:21] to really do proper due diligence to have these applicants come in and talk

[1:23:25] to you and answer questions and really vet these projects your idea

[1:23:30] cpc does not exist just to determine if a project is legal

[1:23:35] and send it off to the council that's a misconception with cpa

[1:23:38] sometimes if your job was only to determine if

[1:23:42] something was legal the legislature wouldn't have created a

[1:23:45] nine-member diverse cpa committee they would have just created a position

[1:23:49] called cpa lawyer and they'd look at the application and

[1:23:52] determine it was legal and send it to the city council

[1:23:54] you guys really are there to add value you know to really make these projects

[1:23:59] better to vet the projects to make suggestions

[1:24:03] to increase the budget if you think some things are missing to cut the budget if

[1:24:07] you think things are excessive and to really add value and

[1:24:11] really study and do due diligence and then finally you get to the point

[1:24:14] where you take a vote on it at the committee level

[1:24:16] and you send a recommendation to the city council

[1:24:20] and then at the council they use whatever process they want to

[1:24:24] some of them have sub-committees where they assigned it to some don't

[1:24:27] that's up to them and the way they normally approve appropriations

[1:24:32] but in the end unless it's a bond or eminent domain or buying land those

[1:24:39] things usually require two thirds all the other projects would just be a

[1:24:42] majority vote of the council

[1:24:46] any questions on that process i have a question joe halligan vice chair

[1:24:51] planning law so my question is are we allowed to spend

[1:24:56] any money without council approval including appraisals on property

[1:25:00] like we're doing all the behind the scenes work uh to see if a project is

[1:25:04] viable so we need appraisals uh have a lawyer

[1:25:07] look into it make sure it's a clean title property do we need to get

[1:25:12] permission from the council to spend that money

[1:25:15] no that's the only thing you don't need permission from

[1:25:18] but they have to appropriate a pot of money into your administrative account

[1:25:23] at the beginning of the year first so when you do your budget and you ask

[1:25:28] for five percent or seventy thousand or if

[1:25:30] you only want to ask for 50 or 35 whatever you guys decide

[1:25:34] when you ask for that money you're asking the council to appropriate that

[1:25:39] to the cpc and then you can folks can spend it by a majority

[1:25:44] vote at the committee meeting so someone can you could be discussing a

[1:25:48] project and joe could say well you know the cpa legislation says we

[1:25:52] need an appraisal and whenever we're buying land which it does

[1:25:56] um so um you know jamie got an estimate from an appraiser for us and it's

[1:26:00] somewhere around five thousand dollars so

[1:26:02] i move that we appropriate five thousand dollars from the administrative fund

[1:26:07] um for the cons count to be able to do an appraisal

[1:26:10] on the farmer johnson's land all in favor

[1:26:13] and you vote on it um but you first have to get them that's

[1:26:17] that's the key um and why it's so great that you guys are organized

[1:26:21] in time is you're going to be able to get them to

[1:26:25] approve a cpa budget and hopefully they will appropriate money into your

[1:26:29] administrative fund and then you'll be able to spend that at

[1:26:32] the committee level next year okay so i guess i guess my issue is

[1:26:37] we're really behind doing all the legwork behind the scenes

[1:26:40] for the console itself because we really don't have the power to buy

[1:26:46] renovate or anything without council approval now all nine of us

[1:26:50] are all pretty up to date on what's going on in the town and we all

[1:26:54] feel as though there's a project whether it's affordable housing or it's a land

[1:26:58] purchase we put months into the project and it's

[1:27:03] possible it could go to the console and it's basically a five million bullet

[1:27:08] out of nine members five people vote no it doesn't happen am

[1:27:12] i correct absolutely um and that's a choice you

[1:27:15] know franklin made when you switched from a town meeting former government to

[1:27:19] a council you know instead of being you know a

[1:27:21] couple hundred people or 500 people making a decision on a

[1:27:25] project at town meeting you know now you do appropriations by

[1:27:28] the council and that's how it works in in cities so

[1:27:31] yes um i will tell you that it is

[1:27:36] pretty rare for cpa projects to be voted down

[1:27:42] yeah it does happen a little bit more in cities frankly there seems to just

[1:27:46] be you know cities are a little more complicated beasts

[1:27:49] um and you know if you have a mayor form a government and a city or a strong town

[1:27:54] manager former government and a council you know in a big operation you know

[1:27:59] things can get a little more complicated so

[1:28:01] i'd say you know cities have a little less

[1:28:06] a little a little bit more number of cpa projects that don't get approved

[1:28:11] but by and large cities or towns the vast majority of projects get approved

[1:28:16] and that's because um you know you have this cpa committee whose job it is to

[1:28:21] really vet it and you're making a

[1:28:23] recommendation so you know what is it saying if the

[1:28:26] council you know you send them uh 10 projects next year and they reject

[1:28:31] nine i mean why did they appoint you all to

[1:28:34] the committee you know and ask for your recommendation

[1:28:37] um so by and large um not all of you were appointed by the

[1:28:42] council but some of you were um so by and large you know

[1:28:47] we have very few projects that get rejected it helps

[1:28:50] that the money is coming out of a dedicated cpa budget and you don't have

[1:28:54] to raise taxes to do these projects right i mean that really helps if you go

[1:28:58] to the city council and ask them to spend a million dollars

[1:29:00] to buy a farm and protect a piece of farmland

[1:29:04] that's going to be a tougher sell in the absence of cpa it's

[1:29:09] probably going to need an override vote you know or a big chunk of the free cash

[1:29:12] available and it's going to get a lot of scrutiny

[1:29:15] and be very difficult to pass but that's why you have cpa so if you'll

[1:29:20] notice cpa is not the nuts and bolts needs of

[1:29:24] the town it's not the roads it's not the police it's not the fire it's not the

[1:29:28] schools it's quality of life issues and these

[1:29:32] things are very difficult to fund for cities

[1:29:35] and towns there's not a lot of extra money in cities and towns

[1:29:39] so the capital you know budget for the parks is the first thing to be cut

[1:29:43] in tough times you know buying open space

[1:29:47] no community that i know of has a budget every year out of their

[1:29:52] general fund to buy open space it doesn't happen

[1:29:55] it's it's not there very few communities have a budget for affordable housing

[1:30:00] cambridge and boston do they might be the only ones

[1:30:03] um you know these are quality of life issues

[1:30:06] that by and large you know have a tough time finding a home in the regular

[1:30:10] budget and that's what cpa is for and that's

[1:30:13] why you have a tremendous success ratio when

[1:30:16] projects get to the legislative body of being passed just just one last

[1:30:21] overall question in your experience in history

[1:30:25] what seems to be the most favored uh piece that uh everybody is in favor

[1:30:32] would be housing recreation is it historic have you seen them sway

[1:30:37] more to one item more than another um not

[1:30:42] too much i think that um

[1:30:47] you know housing probably brings the most controversy

[1:30:51] um because housing you know is development and there's always going to

[1:30:54] be a butters um and it is you know can be a lightning

[1:30:58] rod housing development um so that probably

[1:31:02] gets a little more static than the others

[1:31:04] um but by and large you know these are all

[1:31:08] quality of life you know really great things you know they

[1:31:11] they're all fun exciting things that really make living in franklin a better

[1:31:16] place and so um you know they they all get a

[1:31:20] lot of love okay thank you um i guess i guess i'd

[1:31:25] say one more thing to answer that question the one thing that i think

[1:31:30] stands out a little bit about cpa is the having a budget to buy open space i mean

[1:31:35] that truly is something that most communities can never do

[1:31:39] you might be able to scrape together some capital money for the parks

[1:31:42] every now and then out of the regular budget um you might be able to apply for

[1:31:47] a bunch of um you know uh you know uh grants

[1:31:51] to get non-profits or housing developers to to build things that you the way you

[1:31:55] want it to be built um but by and large the open space you know

[1:31:59] once it's built on it's gone it's gone forever um so um

[1:32:04] you know that was the very essence of cpa excuse me it was actually based on

[1:32:09] the um nantucket and martha's vineyard land bank

[1:32:12] that's what the essence the genesis of cpa back in the

[1:32:16] 80s um a gentleman named bob duran who was a state representative

[1:32:21] who jamie knows very well um uh you know filed the first cpa legislation

[1:32:26] when he was a state rep and then carried that with him

[1:32:29] to the senate when he became a state senator and then carried it with him to

[1:32:33] uh becoming the secretary of environment where he finally got a passed after a

[1:32:36] decade and a half um like i said it doesn't get it's not

[1:32:40] easy to get the state to pass money items um uh

[1:32:44] but it really started as an open space protection

[1:32:47] um uh uh funding source and then the other things kind of were

[1:32:52] layered in as time went on

[1:32:57] money if someone were to write a grant for example

[1:33:01] for historic preservation can that grant money be incorporated into the cpc funds

[1:33:08] or the cpa funds um so i think i understood your question

[1:33:12] it's if someone comes to you um with a hundred thousand dollar

[1:33:16] historic project and they ask you for 50 000 and then

[1:33:20] they want a little bit of money to hire a grant

[1:33:23] writer to apply for grants to get the other 50 000 is that what

[1:33:26] you're asking uh yeah yes um uh actually that was a

[1:33:32] surprise to us we once asked dor that we didn't think that grant writing

[1:33:36] would be really an eligible cpa expense and to our surprise they said they they

[1:33:40] felt it was um you know because it's it's helping to

[1:33:44] contribute to the success of the project um you know it's always easy to pay for

[1:33:48] something 100 out of cpa and and people will come to you when

[1:33:51] they'll ask for you to pay the full freight but a lot of cpa committees want

[1:33:56] to see some other fundraising from the groups that

[1:33:59] come to cpa um you know they want to see some

[1:34:01] private fundraising or you know some grants from state agencies

[1:34:06] there's a lot of money out there for in particularly in the open space in the

[1:34:11] housing category um recreation and historic don't tend to

[1:34:16] have as many funding sources outside of cpa

[1:34:19] um but yes the short answer to your question

[1:34:22] um you could you could put a small budget in there for

[1:34:26] grant writing to be able to supplement the cpa funds

[1:34:31] so how do the um nonprofits figure into the uh

[1:34:35] funding how do they help great question so um i don't think the legislature

[1:34:43] necessarily anticipated this when they created cpa

[1:34:47] i think in their minds they were thinking cpa

[1:34:50] was only going to fund municipal projects they were only going to fund

[1:34:53] things like rehabilitating province town town hall

[1:34:57] that you see here on this slide and if you've been to

[1:35:00] provincetown you've seen this spectacular town hall

[1:35:04] it's the center of activity in provincetown and it was rehabbed top to

[1:35:08] bottom with with cpa funds i think most legislators when they were voting

[1:35:12] for cpa thought all the money was going to be spent in this way on municipal

[1:35:15] assets it has not turned out that way and in

[1:35:19] fact a huge part of cpa is supporting

[1:35:23] projects from non-municipal entities um

[1:35:29] non-profit or even for-profit housing developers

[1:35:32] um habitat for humanity land trusts who are protecting land um you know

[1:35:39] neighborhood groups who are the backbone of trying to rehabilitate

[1:35:44] a park in their neighborhood

[1:35:48] you know boys and girls clubs who need their historic building

[1:35:54] rehabilitated that's open to the public every day and is one of the most popular

[1:35:58] places to go in town so um providing funding for non-profits

[1:36:03] has become a big part of cpa not in every community there are some

[1:36:07] communities who feel like they want to keep the spending on

[1:36:11] municipal assets or the majority of the spending there's

[1:36:14] one community i know of that spends all their money on um

[1:36:19] non-profit programs that's williamstown they're the only ones in the state who

[1:36:22] do that most have a mix you know of maybe 70 percent municipal

[1:36:28] projects and 30 percent roughly um this is anecdotal

[1:36:33] spent on um nonprofit organizations or private

[1:36:37] there are a whole set of rules about spending public money

[1:36:41] on private property we don't have time to get into that tonight

[1:36:45] but there's an article on our website which is in the technical assistance

[1:36:49] section says it's called can we fund private projects

[1:36:53] and you'll see some of the additional things you have to determine there

[1:36:57] basically you can't spend public money on a private asset

[1:37:02] for private benefit you can spend public money on a private asset

[1:37:07] for public benefit so there has to be a public benefit component

[1:37:12] to the project

[1:37:15] i have a this is jeff livingston from conservation do you have a question

[1:37:18] [Music] it's about rights rights of the asset

[1:37:22] rights of the work that's being done so effectively

[1:37:26] what you're saying i'm very shocked at this actually that you're actually

[1:37:29] able to provide public funds to private projects or private entities for which

[1:37:35] there's a benefit but that doesn't necessarily

[1:37:38] convert to rights that the city or the municipality

[1:37:42] might have for those rights or for that asset is

[1:37:45] that correct absolutely yup that's that's something

[1:37:49] that um you know usually is negotiated

[1:37:53] and outlined in a formal grant agreement a contract that is signed

[1:37:58] um between the city and the private entity and we have

[1:38:02] a whole article on grant agreements on our website and

[1:38:05] samples of different legal contracts that cities and towns use

[1:38:09] before they give money to a private entity there is

[1:38:13] a grant agreement a contract that is signed that details

[1:38:17] you know what are the rights and responsibilities of each party

[1:38:20] because so so often having done a great deal of grant writing in the past at the

[1:38:24] federal and state level are been involved in it you essentially

[1:38:28] give up you know any private rights to those entities in order to get the

[1:38:32] funding that's part of the that's usually part of the agreement and that's

[1:38:36] not something that necessary a municipality would want to do

[1:38:40] or want to agree to if you're if it's using its own set-aside money

[1:38:44] at least in part or uh majority for that particular activity

[1:38:49] can you give me an example of of what you're talking about because i'm not

[1:38:52] sure i understood the well basically if you if you're

[1:38:56] working with non-profit organizations and many many times essentially you know

[1:39:02] you cannot reserve rights for your community only you

[1:39:06] basically have to open it up to essentially pretty much anyone so let's

[1:39:09] say for example i mean let's say that we were doing let's say

[1:39:13] that we basically went out and we got grants for del carte

[1:39:16] for example let's say we let's say for example just

[1:39:19] throwing out numbers so it was two million two and a half million dollar

[1:39:22] project and we basically went out and raised a million dollars of of uh

[1:39:27] non-profit money from the sierra foundation or something just maybe

[1:39:30] throwing things out right you know one of the caveats would be

[1:39:33] that basically we would want to open that up necessary not necessarily if

[1:39:37] we wanted to do that but we were making private

[1:39:40] a private uh park or something for just the residents or the citizens of

[1:39:43] franklin who effectively funded the majority of

[1:39:46] their tax base their taxes we could not necessarily do that through that funding

[1:39:51] vehicle because that that program would demand that we

[1:39:54] open it up to essentially everyone you know we could not that would be that

[1:39:58] we would be restricted and the rights that we would give that

[1:40:01] that entity would have towards outside to its citizenry we could not advocate

[1:40:06] only franklin that's typically how it works for

[1:40:08] non-profits so i could see you're kind of mixing pools of money

[1:40:12] you know municipal money plus non-profit money i think that would run into some

[1:40:16] pretty interesting discussions regarding rights

[1:40:19] of use and rights of propriety going forward that's just my

[1:40:24] my personal opinion yeah i honestly i don't see a lot of um difficulties in

[1:40:30] this regard with cpa but the example you just gave were you

[1:40:35] talking about a project on municipal property or on the private

[1:40:39] property

[1:40:42] yes in this case it's mental property yeah okay all right so

[1:40:45] so that's a completely different animal um um uh

[1:40:49] that's where a private entity is investing in a municipal project

[1:40:54] right um that's not what we're talking about with cpa

[1:40:58] we're talking about the public entity the city

[1:41:01] investing in work at the boys and girls clubs

[1:41:05] historic building so we're talking about the opposite of what you're talking

[1:41:08] about

[1:41:12] uh joe halligan vice chair one question which

[1:41:15] has been a big hot topic in the town of franklin lake that is affordable housing

[1:41:19] have you seen cpa join the private sector

[1:41:23] uh in construction of affordable housing 100 of the time i have other than boston

[1:41:32] and cambridge um municipalities don't usually build affordable housing

[1:41:38] and by the way cpa is for affordable housing only um

[1:41:41] up to a hundred percent of area-wide median income is

[1:41:44] is the people who can live in cpa housing

[1:41:48] but it almost always is a partnership between the town

[1:41:55] and a developer with cpa we've had a lot of partnerships with

[1:42:01] for-profit developers because for-profit developers do build

[1:42:05] affordable housing and we've seen a lot of partnerships

[1:42:08] with community development corporations which are quasi governmental

[1:42:12] organizations and we've seen a lot of partnerships

[1:42:15] with non-profit groups and faith groups and habitat for

[1:42:18] humanity type organizations and you know we've had um a lot of

[1:42:23] communities partner with veterans organizations to build veterans

[1:42:26] affordable housing um so uh yes it's almost always

[1:42:33] a partnership with most of the work being done by the other entity not the

[1:42:38] city or town i'm guessing you don't have a housing

[1:42:40] department in in franklin uh stewart we we actually uh have a

[1:42:46] municipal affordable housing trust okay but um does that have a paid staff

[1:42:51] or well it's generally our planning

[1:42:53] department we're a staff of four there's a community development director brian

[1:42:57] keviner who's on the call tonight we have a town planner a conservation

[1:43:01] agent and we have uh an executive assistant who also has

[1:43:05] been managing our housing portfolio for about 20

[1:43:09] about 25 years maxine okay so you you have dipped your toes into it a

[1:43:14] little bit more than than some other communities

[1:43:16] um um so you know those sort of things um are projects

[1:43:22] that the planning department's going to take the lead on probably

[1:43:26] um and um it will probably be the planning department applying to the

[1:43:32] cpc you know when when other city departments

[1:43:35] want to use cpa funds they put in an application you know if the parks and

[1:43:38] recs department wants to fix up a park they put in an

[1:43:41] application just like anyone else with the cpc if jamie has an

[1:43:45] idea of how he'd like to use some cpa money he

[1:43:47] puts in an application he put a city manager at the top or town manager

[1:43:51] at the top of the application so a lot of those housing projects are

[1:43:55] probably going to be driven by the folks who are already doing that

[1:43:59] sort of work with the housing trust but you may receive an application from

[1:44:03] habitat for humanity to do a project um or um you know very common the local

[1:44:09] community development corporation um the metrowest community development

[1:44:13] corporation which i don't think works down in your area although they did a

[1:44:15] project in medway not too far from you they applied to cpa

[1:44:19] programs all over you know metrowest um for

[1:44:24] funding so it'll be a combination probably of things that come from

[1:44:28] your planning department and then other outside organizations

[1:44:35] joe helen again uh vice chair so my question is being on the plane aboard

[1:44:39] we're always talking to people developers

[1:44:41] and we're trying to get an affordable component in town

[1:44:45] and a lot of developers are complaining about the cost of material

[1:44:48] labor uh the the land value so if someone i'm just gonna throw an

[1:44:53] instance was coming with a 10 unit downtown building could they apply the

[1:44:58] cpa to possibly sponsor two three or four

[1:45:02] affordable units within their project absolutely

[1:45:05] happens all the time and it's a great way um

[1:45:08] you know to get affordable housing built in your community because

[1:45:12] the developer is doing all the work and you're just

[1:45:15] writing a check to you know buy down some of the units to be affordable

[1:45:20] um it's a tremendous way to get affordable housing done

[1:45:23] um uh you know and um bedford has done that a lot where they

[1:45:29] have partnered with developers and then just bought down you

[1:45:33] know from market rate to affordable rate some of the units in that development

[1:45:37] right because we're here we're hearing from developers that

[1:45:40] you know the last 20 of the project is the profit i cannot afford to build that

[1:45:45] but if the cpa stepped in and bought those three or four units

[1:45:48] that now makes it viable for the developer to move forward

[1:45:52] benefits the town benefits affordable housing

[1:45:55] it's a win-win for everybody that's exactly it that's exactly i mean those

[1:45:58] are terrific projects and and very common so let's move on so

[1:46:02] i want to because we're we're at an hour and three

[1:46:05] quarters already and so usually we go about two hours and

[1:46:09] everyone's probably getting into a zoom coma already

[1:46:12] pretty quickly so um let's move on with um

[1:46:16] the next step we talked about how the projects happen that they end up at the

[1:46:20] council and i do want to point out that the

[1:46:22] council's decision making is a little more

[1:46:26] restricted than normal these are the four things that the

[1:46:29] council can do when they're presented with a cpa recommendation they can

[1:46:32] approve it they can reject it they can approve it

[1:46:36] but with a reduced amount or they can reject it but then order the

[1:46:41] money sent to the reserve account and let's

[1:46:44] just kind of rarely use this last one um you know i could see it being used in

[1:46:49] a case of where you apply you put in a recommendation

[1:46:53] for a housing project and that project is a lot of money and that's going to

[1:46:57] represent your 10 spending that year but the city council rejects it

[1:47:02] therefore you would be out of compliance because you wouldn't have spent

[1:47:04] or reserved any money on housing so they could order that money sent to the

[1:47:08] housing reserve instead the council cannot initiate

[1:47:13] any cpa projects on their own without a cpc recommendation

[1:47:17] and they cannot raise the amount of the appropriation

[1:47:21] nor can they make um you know substantial changes to the project you

[1:47:24] know minor legalities and things like that they can

[1:47:27] certainly fix uh in the order but if they change the

[1:47:31] scope of the project it's not your recommendation anymore and

[1:47:34] the cpa legislation says they can't vote on something unless it has your

[1:47:37] recommendation so if you put if you put in an

[1:47:42] application you know um to partner with the habitat

[1:47:46] for humanity you know on two houses on johnson street

[1:47:52] you know they can't change that to four houses on west avenue

[1:47:57] so you know they are much more limited with cpa because of this checks and

[1:48:03] balances between the cpc and the council

[1:48:08] all right so this is sort of um uh my last slide before we

[1:48:13] um have a cadence point here we can check in with everyone and see how they

[1:48:16] feel um so to review some of we call these

[1:48:20] these these five things are really kind of

[1:48:22] some of the basic tenants of cpa and we've touched on some of them but i kind

[1:48:26] of just like to review them at the end for

[1:48:28] folks um cpa is never to be mixed

[1:48:33] with general municipal revenue um and by mix i mean

[1:48:37] cpa money ending up in the general municipal budget

[1:48:41] or replacing things that were already in the general municipal budget

[1:48:44] that's the supplanting issue that we talked about and that's not allowed with

[1:48:47] cpa you can combine general municipal money

[1:48:51] and cpa money to do a project but you can't have cpa money end up

[1:48:56] supplanting regular municipal spending cpa can fund

[1:49:02] capital projects it is not it can never fund operating expenses

[1:49:07] except maybe a little bit in that support category in housing

[1:49:10] um if you had a housing office for example

[1:49:14] and it can never fund maintenance it's a capital program

[1:49:17] for by and large this is a common question we get about recreation in cpa

[1:49:24] recreation is actually the definition of recreation in the cpa

[1:49:29] legislation is actually a subset of the definition of open space

[1:49:33] so that tells us that recreation projects in cpa

[1:49:36] are for outdoor use only you can't invest in any

[1:49:40] buildings or large structures for the recreation category

[1:49:47] one of the things that you'll do a lot with cpa most communities do

[1:49:51] is to acquire open space to protect it or acquire farmland

[1:49:55] or acquire restrictions on on farms or open space when you do that whenever

[1:50:01] you buy something with cpa funds it has to be permanently restricted

[1:50:06] to the purpose for which you acquire it excuse me so

[1:50:10] if the town buys a piece of land with cpa funds for open space

[1:50:15] they can't change the use 10 years later to build a new school on it

[1:50:18] for example because there'll be a permanent restriction on that property

[1:50:22] and then we also talked about kind of one of the basic tenets of cpa is that

[1:50:27] everything that the city council votes on has to come from you folks

[1:50:30] in terms of um cpa so let's take a quick stop here and and

[1:50:37] check in um we can do two things right now

[1:50:41] um we can just take some general questions and

[1:50:44] and call it a night i do have about 10 12 slides of

[1:50:51] examples of great projects from other communities and the different

[1:50:54] categories of what types of things cpa funds

[1:50:58] um i have done these slides in about five minutes in record time if i kind of

[1:51:03] give it the express version if you want to get a peek at what some

[1:51:06] of the other communities are doing with cpa funds and

[1:51:09] the general themes throughout the spending but i want to turn it back to

[1:51:12] you because you know we have been here for quite a

[1:51:15] while and i know folks might be um getting hungry or maybe

[1:51:19] there's a bruins or celtics game on that someone wants to get to

[1:51:21] so let me turn it back to you and find out what you'd like to do for the next

[1:51:25] couple of minutes so i my opinion would be i think we can look

[1:51:30] at the projects when you send us your slides here just open it up to

[1:51:35] questions that people might have

[1:51:40] anything else i just one question so just roaming around a little bit on

[1:51:46] the on the site that you have um you have a

[1:51:48] fantastic database of previous projects by year town etc i was

[1:51:53] just wondering if it's possible to get details of any of these projects

[1:51:56] do we do we write to the cities themselves or do we

[1:52:01] actually go through your organization directly okay so um

[1:52:05] when you were on the project database on our website

[1:52:09] did you click on the name of the project and have about a big

[1:52:13] opening a big window that opened with details on the project

[1:52:17] no i was just looking at the list i was just trying to search for the

[1:52:20] project's own specific area um and we're just about to actually

[1:52:24] um overhaul our databases on our website so

[1:52:28] um one thing that will be more apparent is when you

[1:52:31] search for projects you know four things come up the project name

[1:52:34] the date the town and the appropriation if you click on the project name

[1:52:39] it's it is clickable another window will open with about 50 data points on that

[1:52:44] project other than that that that database is

[1:52:49] actually run by the state unfortunately they

[1:52:53] collect all this data and they don't display it anywhere on the state's

[1:52:56] website so we display it on our website because we

[1:52:59] feel like the public should have access to it

[1:53:02] but we don't collect that data the state does actually every year and you will

[1:53:05] be required at the end of every fiscal year the cpc has to file a form with the

[1:53:10] state called the cp3 it's an electronic form

[1:53:13] to give the details on your projects so they'll be in that database

[1:53:17] um but if if the details are not in that expanded view

[1:53:21] then you would have to contact the community i

[1:53:24] will say that after 15 years of of doing this i

[1:53:27] you know i don't know all 13 000 projects by any stretch of the

[1:53:30] imagination um but i do know about a lot of them so

[1:53:34] you can always check with us too yeah it's a good i mean is a good place

[1:53:38] to start if we're actually looking at something similar

[1:53:40] to use as a reference if someone has done something very similar just to look

[1:53:44] at how it was structured the cost etc so it's really nice to have that as an

[1:53:48] as a tool great um we're about to launch in the

[1:53:52] next couple weeks in addition to this project database we

[1:53:57] have crunched about 25 or 30 different reports that

[1:54:01] you can pull out of the database you know

[1:54:03] show me a list of all the open space projects that have been bonded

[1:54:08] in all the communities um and so there's gonna be a whole new section of our

[1:54:12] website that we're just putting the finishing touches on

[1:54:15] where you'll be able to dig down into you know really mine that data for a lot

[1:54:19] of different um reports we're pretty excited about that

[1:54:22] and um we'll add you to our newsletter list

[1:54:25] and we'll put out a newsletter as soon as that

[1:54:27] section is ready just another question since this is a relatively new um

[1:54:34] program um is there a is there any kind of process whereby

[1:54:38] uh the state goes back and looks at or or makes requests of people that have

[1:54:42] done these kinds of projects through the cva and asked them what work

[1:54:47] what didn't work you know uh you know basically lessons learned is

[1:54:50] there anything like that that's captured for

[1:54:52] people like us that are just starting out to actually review or to access

[1:54:56] um no i there's not um i mean if anyone was going to do that it would be us like

[1:55:01] i said the state has no they don't really consider this their

[1:55:05] program um you know for better or for worse we're

[1:55:08] it and people think we're a state agency all the time because

[1:55:12] you can search for hours on the state's website and the only thing you're going

[1:55:16] to find is one thin little page on dor's uh

[1:55:20] site about the trust fund and that is it um

[1:55:23] it's it's kind of it's kind of surprising actually um

[1:55:27] but um um you know we we're we try to since you guys support us we

[1:55:32] try to run pretty lean and mean um and that is not something that we've

[1:55:36] really you know been able to tackle we do have

[1:55:39] a lot of success stories on our website i think the closest thing we have

[1:55:43] is in each category we probably have 15 or 20 success stories

[1:55:47] where we write a long description of the project

[1:55:51] and what worked and what didn't work and we actually give

[1:55:54] links to if it's a building project to the plans

[1:55:59] you know to photos to documents um so i think that's the closest thing to

[1:56:03] what we have are these success stories and and lessons learned

[1:56:07] um but it it could be you're right it could be a lot more robust if we had a

[1:56:11] bigger staff to be able to do something like that and one last question i'll

[1:56:15] stop asking to stop with the questions um for

[1:56:18] conservation there there is a fantastic organization

[1:56:21] run by the state that actually brings together all the

[1:56:25] conservation groups of the towns together at least twice a year

[1:56:28] the big one is in the is in the fall and um

[1:56:32] again this is pre-coveted of course but that actually turns out to be an

[1:56:35] incredibly excellent venue for networking sharing

[1:56:40] again the whole idea about what work what doesn't stories projects etc etc

[1:56:44] with the different uh conservation groups and different

[1:56:47] towns is there something like that for cpa

[1:56:50] or is there something like that envisioned in the future for cpa

[1:56:53] yes um absolutely we we did we have done conferences

[1:56:56] many conferences in the past um and as soon as we bring on our third staffer

[1:57:01] that is going to be um one of their main jobs is to restart

[1:57:05] those conference against post postcode um so we usually do them

[1:57:09] regionally so we have one in the western part of the

[1:57:12] state and then the next year we'll you know go southeast and then the next

[1:57:15] year we'll go northeast anyone can come from around the state but we try to move

[1:57:19] the location around so it's not always in one part of the state thank you

[1:57:24] no problem i have a question so we have open space housing historic

[1:57:33] are we looking for projects of each one of those every year

[1:57:37] because we want to have a project fitting each one of those

[1:57:41] not necessarily no we have um lots of communities that build up money

[1:57:46] in their reserve accounts um so you are not required

[1:57:50] matter of fact you're not required to approve any projects at all um we've had

[1:57:53] some communities you know take a year off um because they

[1:57:56] had you know so many projects in the pipeline

[1:57:59] you know the municipality was having a tough time administering all of them

[1:58:02] um so they take some time off it is not you are not required to

[1:58:09] to do any projects in any category or do any projects at all

[1:58:13] each year the only thing you are required to do is

[1:58:16] is reserve that money in the three reserve accounts

[1:58:20] um if you don't do a project in that category

[1:58:24] oftentimes um mike is uh something like the housing issue would be a great

[1:58:28] example um you know 140 000 in a year really

[1:58:33] isn't going to buy you a lot of units um so typically a strategy in the cpa

[1:58:38] plan might be to say okay the committee feels comfortable

[1:58:42] with this project or this concept uh maybe we should save up x amount of

[1:58:47] dollars from the ten percent every year plus an additional five percent

[1:58:51] therefore in four years five years you'll have x

[1:58:55] you know million dollars and you can be able to contribute

[1:58:57] towards a project something like that open space is the same way

[1:59:01] recreation is certainly the same way and so that's going to be a deliberative

[1:59:05] uh issue i think once we go through all the presentations over the next several

[1:59:09] months uh on each of the categories the

[1:59:11] committee's gonna have to decide you know

[1:59:13] do you want to spend all the money or do you want to save some of it for larger

[1:59:17] things and make no mistake they'll definitely be

[1:59:20] there's already a ton of projects in town that are

[1:59:23] backlogged that will require multi-million dollar

[1:59:26] investments you will almost always have more

[1:59:29] applications than you have funding um so that is the start

[1:59:36] yep absolutely and um there's there is one downside to being organized so early

[1:59:42] um you know the community like west newbury that took two and a half years

[1:59:46] to organize they had a ton of money to spend coming

[1:59:49] out of the gate because they had the three years that they weren't

[1:59:52] organized to spend and then you can always spend one year in advance

[1:59:56] just like the city does you know spending for the next year

[1:59:59] so they had four years worth of funding coming out of the gate so

[2:00:03] one thing about getting organized so early is you're only going to have

[2:00:06] you know fy 22 money to spend um you know over the next year

[2:00:12] so if there's a negative to being on top of the game that's it but that's

[2:00:16] that's a pretty small negative

[2:00:19] uh joe halligan one last question so i i thought i heard you correct

[2:00:24] uh if the board uh discovered there was a 10-acre parcel

[2:00:29] available for sale we really feel as though that land would

[2:00:33] fit someday into something that we would be

[2:00:35] interested in doing maybe the relocation of a historic

[2:00:39] building a possible park a garden a public garden

[2:00:44] where people can plant their vegetables like i've seen in other towns

[2:00:47] but we don't know the exact use are we limited to buying that because we don't

[2:00:52] know what we're going to do that's one of the great things about cpa

[2:00:57] is that you can buy land for all cpa purposes

[2:01:04] and this is typically done you know not necessarily where you have

[2:01:08] no idea what you're going to do for the land although you certainly could

[2:01:12] um but it's typically done where you have a

[2:01:15] pretty good idea of some things you want on that land but you never have time to

[2:01:20] finalize any of those ideas before you have to go to closing right

[2:01:23] you know usually when land comes on the market it's not going to stay there very

[2:01:27] long and folks don't want to you know when

[2:01:30] they decide to sell they want to sell so you know typically in that situation

[2:01:35] you would ask the city council to um buy the land

[2:01:39] for all cpa purposes and then a committee would be appointed

[2:01:44] by the council to study the land and make recommendations on

[2:01:48] on what to do with that now one thing about cpa is anytime you buy land you

[2:01:53] have to put the proper restrictions on there

[2:01:56] so in this case you would wait to put those restrictions on

[2:01:59] until you determined okay we're going to use these five acres up front for

[2:02:04] affordable housing and then we're going to put soccer

[2:02:06] fields in the back and we put a housing restriction on the five acres and a

[2:02:11] conservation restriction for recreational purposes on the soccer

[2:02:14] fields um you know we've had some communities

[2:02:17] do three um you know my community bought a piece

[2:02:20] of land and there's 50 acres of conservation land in the back

[2:02:23] with hiking trails and there's 20 acres of um

[2:02:27] fields multi-purpose fields and there's a 10 a 12 acre parcel up front that's

[2:02:32] um going to be developed for affordable housing that's the one piece that's

[2:02:36] still not built yet okay i guess my last question would be

[2:02:41] being on the planning board and seeing developers coming forward

[2:02:44] uh is it possible if they were to come forward with a project

[2:02:49] and there is a lot of land left over can they

[2:02:52] donate that land to the cpa

[2:02:56] no they would be you can donate money to the cpa

[2:03:00] account so people can make private donations

[2:03:03] and say they want that money deposited in the cpa account

[2:03:07] land would be donated to the town the cpa

[2:03:10] program doesn't own any land in and of itself when you use cpa money to buy

[2:03:15] land it's town land after that um it has a

[2:03:18] restriction on it um for you know one of the four cpa

[2:03:22] purposes but the land is all owned by the town

[2:03:25] the cpa doesn't is not an entity that owns land

[2:03:29] so they'd be donating the land to the town and they'd probably be

[2:03:33] you know the town every time land is donated to a town the council has to

[2:03:37] vote to accept that donation you know you don't want to

[2:03:39] you know someone can't just waste off their contaminated land on you you have

[2:03:42] to accept that donation usually you accept it um for a specific

[2:03:47] purpose so you know the council would pass an

[2:03:51] order to accept the donation of this land for

[2:03:54] conservation purposes or for recreational purposes

[2:03:59] you know if the person donating it wants it to be used in a particular way

[2:04:03] okay thank you

[2:04:08] opportunity if that opportunity comes up your jamie is your first stop to

[2:04:13] figure out something like that

[2:04:18] thank you anyone else

[2:04:23] great that's awesome is that it mr chairman yes

[2:04:26] thank you stuart i appreciate it i'm going to

[2:04:29] um i'm just going to put my um the last slide here with our

[2:04:33] phone number and um uh encourage you all to

[2:04:38] you know call or um or email my email address is on the

[2:04:41] website um and we're happy to answer questions

[2:04:45] we're happy to help you get up and running um when you have a draft cpa

[2:04:49] plan we'll we'll proof it for you make some

[2:04:51] comments and edits and see if we can um make some suggestions

[2:04:55] for you on the plan we'll review your projects you know the first

[2:04:59] time around um you know we definitely want to see you

[2:05:02] guys get up and running and be very successful we're

[2:05:04] really excited um you know if susan is still there i don't know if she's still

[2:05:08] on the line but you know i i've been around long enough

[2:05:11] to have worked on the first franklin campaign

[2:05:13] and it was very disappointing to to lose and not get cpa for you know over

[2:05:18] another decade so it's really exciting to have you guys in

[2:05:22] the program and we want to we want to help in any way we can

[2:05:26] steward thank you so much for um taking the time so quickly

[2:05:30] and um you know for uh customizing the presentation for franklin

[2:05:34] just for the folks at home that are paying attention

[2:05:38] april 6th which i believe is next week is the next community preservation

[2:05:43] committee meeting we're going to be approving a calendar

[2:05:47] of dates at that meeting but also notably next week we're going

[2:05:52] to give you the committee and the community an

[2:05:55] update on open space efforts and then in the months after that we're

[2:06:00] going to tackle each uh meeting we're going to focus on updates on each

[2:06:04] of the issues before so ryan jetty is going to come in and do a

[2:06:08] presentation on recreation um and then we're going to do one on

[2:06:12] affordable housing as well as historic preservation

[2:06:16] hopefully over the summer i think one of the other ideas christie and were

[2:06:19] talking about was to maybe take the committee out on a

[2:06:21] short tour particularly the historic spots maybe just go to the red brick

[2:06:26] schoolhouse the museum the washington street church and some of

[2:06:30] the other hot spots that um you know maybe for consideration down the line so

[2:06:34] i think uh stewart's slide at the beginning was referencing

[2:06:39] review plans you know some of them are good to do in this room

[2:06:43] i think some of them are probably better to do outside as well um

[2:06:47] and so uh you know we hope to spend the next several months

[2:06:50] uh reviewing kind of the current status of each topic with the committee and the

[2:06:53] community uh just to get everybody started

[2:06:59] and with that i think we'll adjourn mr chairman

[2:07:02] i have one yeah one thing does everyone agree

[2:07:06] that we should just have our first budget be that generic

[2:07:09] oops presentation that they made the 10 10 10 and five

[2:07:13] yes and the rest as a reserve budget sounds good

[2:07:16] perfect so you can take care of that development we will take care of that mr

[2:07:20] chairman and i think just for clarity on the administrative expenses

[2:07:23] i mean that list was perfect that stuart put up i think the most likely expenses

[2:07:28] would be appraisals site costs i think mr halligan pointed that

[2:07:33] out earlier too um and so even if that's not used for

[2:07:37] any potential purpose in the future um having that available i think would

[2:07:41] help the community out a lot and donuts

[2:07:47] i know stu i owe you a box of donuts for saying a couple nice things about me

[2:07:51] but uh johnny on the spot or whatever so i owe you a box of krispy kremes

[2:07:55] no problem and albert i'll return that jamie i'll send you a

[2:07:58] a budget template that you can use to prepare for the committee

[2:08:02] excellent thanks dude thank you great so i'd entertain a motion to adjourn

[2:08:07] second someone's gonna make a motion i make a

[2:08:10] motion to adjourn a second all those people say hi hi

[2:08:15] it's gonna be a roll call one zoom is gonna be a roll call

[2:08:20] why did i knew joe was gonna see i didn't even say anything because i knew

[2:08:22] joe was gonna say it himself thank you joe i forgot that okay so

[2:08:27] there's been a motion made and seconded in the clerical

[2:08:30] call role uh dave mcneil hi joseph halligan

[2:08:36] yes christopher feeley yes phyllis malcolm yes wayne marion

[2:08:43] yes jeff levingston yes tony doyle yes mike uh i don't know how to say your

[2:08:48] last name and lisa oxford yes

[2:08:54] thank you thank you we're adjourned thanks everyone

[2:08:57] thanks everybody have a good night all right

[2:09:01] thank you might be the bottom button

Community Preservation Committee 3/30/21

Transcript