get this is where we got our summary right of the over thirty days so the over thirty would be the folks who who didn't pay their october bell and then over sixty and ninety would be who didn't pay their july bill and then over one hundred  have to discuss tonight and to barden idea that you missed during our meeting that i've spoken with individually with folks but i think we need to get some oh yeah so to be clear our current policy says if you don't pay me proceed to shut off well our current art that is not actually accurate our current policy says if you don't pay you're given an opportunity to either pay or and then you can enter into an agreement at a set time if you don't follow if you don't either enter that agreement or be follow through that agreement and then you'll be given a shot off right i was jumping through the clinical pathway all the rights of the end people who got into a hole in the home looks like it's getting bigger and for their group of people it seems like the only possible outcome at some point in time is to proceed to a shop and so  the question was rather than for those people who just literally are never going to be idiots should we proceed to shut up or should mediate some government sometimes doesn't for their areas put a lien on the we if if we don't allow it to to get to the hundreds potentially even thousands of dollars per connection then it would seem like good be a manageable thing well we'd hope it would be more manageable for people to meet the the payment terms if it's just one quarter over and you have six months to pay it off or as long as you can stick current with your current bill which that they may may or may not and if they may not then that's a bigger issue you know then and then there's bigger issues than that but but it that this instant centrally would be a line in the sand and we'd say are it on this day this is are we're going to potentially do whatever  through this election procedure over the past year those accounts were really the ones that we're talking about that had large balances prior to the change of july one right if we're talking about people that skip unfortunately it's that that's part of the of the process and and also probably partially due to the economy but we have to have a way to keep the rest of the use of the system protected when that happens but we did know that we've been continually changing the system and introducing a lot of uncertainty which i think has made it difficult for those people to know what to way in the plan but on the other hand i do feel like we have a responsibility to the people who kind of got caught up in the situation room and if it's if it's a half dozen do you do that but we really have that history of not following through there looking at it yet what are they going to do so i get a sense of the folks that they're served keep with the shut off policy i think we need so now this is what happens when we kick the can down the road is if it ends up being a lot harder for everybody instead of just following the policies that are that are in place to begin with saving we're dealing with a lot of the kicking the processing the things from the just hearing you know what i'm concerned about is everything everything else aside if we really start shutting people off that will be the business of this commission really design that we're talking about tonight and implement this once you've got that so this you know what we can be clear with people and say this is what's going to happen in the future because right now we can't do that we have a lot of big things to deal with but i also don't want i don't want our in our work ahead of us to keep other folks from doing what they need to do to protect the system as a whole and to send a message that  this is you cowboys in town like we're we're we're doing things differently because we have to protect the entire system so can we you know i don't want to put this into motion b individual on this commission has taken to to meet with me separate from our regular sessions so that we can all kind of have an understanding of potential of a potential new direction to go so as we've heard from the public they don't like what we've done and they want to do something different so we're looking at doing something different and that would be potentially change well i guess we have three options that we could consider we consider doing what we're doing now it doesn't seem to be very popular but it's an option the second option would be to go to a unit i think what we're calling a u s based float charge and what that would be would it be it would go to classes and number of units per connection so basically it's this we're solving the problem of a duplex being point five your you is a duplex would now be two units because if there's two living space it's basically every unit is counted equal to them to each other so all residential units are equal and then of course they pay for water on top of it it's not based on how much water you use it's based on the fact that you're of residential  mix so just to give you guys an understanding of what the categories are right eventually the meter that goes into the building is strictly residential there's no commercial space there's no rental space urban no  yeah no commercial space there a commercial connection into the building would be strictly commercial no residential and then the next would be next mix residential and commercial and then there'd be school government as well and then each category each residential commercial next government school would have would have a base charge would have its own base charge so for example residential would be less than commercial potentially likely and then there would be a fixed flow charge potentially one for each class so that's the road that we're going down to actually where we're looking at the numbers refining it and then a third option would be going to say nuclear option but it would be it would be probably one of the least desirable ones for myriad reasons but it would be a straight up flow of perth aus and gallon design which i know some people and some people from the community have said why just go to the per thousand gallons so to be fair we looked at those numbers too and kind of to see what it would do overall and individually and that's where we are so you know i think i think meeting from meeting with everybody individually they like we all like the unit based approach there's still some work to do number one it still has bass and gallants just the calculation is trying to different it's a matter of stable but one of the that is i think one of the least from my perspective a benefit in terms of equity inconsistency that if we do it based for residential we base that on the number of separate wellin units which is a countable figure in the building it's not by the meter you might have separate meters for two apartments or you might have one meter for two apartments and from my perspective the base charts for both of those buildings should be the same that's what we're after so that continuity or consistency seems easier and as i understand  because that could result in you know some connections having four offices are they down to four separate rentable spaces and four units per capita lation communities this apartments or put them to bed one or time yeah so if we think there is there is business there is mixed use there is government schools i throw in something called fire protection as a category  different from government schools we could rope it into government we could work it into the fire department we could look at a lot of ways i think i've discussed this with a couple of folks here one on one but it boils down to this if we go back to the day that the fire sale edge and the town combine the village was paying for one hundred percent of the fire water the village continues to pay for one hundred percent of the fire water tank the system that delivers the water to a fire department that puts out fires it's probably not want to send people in this room if there's been two fires in the last six months both of which have used a substantial amount of water from a system that is current and supported only by the people paying and where those fires were those people contribute nothing to the construction maintenance or production ponce associated with water today i think there is a value and budget where are we with the revenue generation where we have a sceptic right now we need to have an understanding of how we're going to divvy up and yeah firewater definitely needs to be part of the equation schools also have to be yet there so i think so  that commercial unmixed is is right now the way that i've proposed it and chris has come up with with numbers and as we've all discussed is commercial has their own category mix has their other category and the way that both chris and i have proposed this mix well actually pay slightly less per unit than the commercial and the justification for that is that the mix has some residential and some commercial and and in there either we separate them out and each mix connection we count the number of residential  commercial and charge them appropriately or we just say we're giving we're giving you the benefit of the doubt you have at least one or two residential which would bring your overall cost down if we count them separately but for accounting purposes let's just call you max need to step back just a little bit put these these different options in context and first of all i think what we're talking about with what we're calling to is going back to an approach that was that is more similar to what we used to have the redesign we had a system where there were units assigned in a fairly consistent but not always consistent manner two to the different users and those did not change with the amount of water that was use system and the and the welcome notes and stuff talk to much about what happened in the past what we're talking about now that was is is looking at the system as a whole and actually setting that that low versus fixed rate slightly separately for at least three or four classes the customer yes why would we do that for me the reason for going that direction is that we got very different guidance from residential and commercial customers so in the residential side we had a situation where we'd been with a rate redesign we had the rates going up for people who are very small users and going up for people who are very large users more or less to the benefit of everybody in between it wasn't that you know because this is all for me at the zero sum system and and what we wanted to do was to have a system that was using very little water but also provide some coverage to the to the relatively good pop twenty percent of the residential users who are really getting stuck in both cases these are customers who experience sometimes one hundred percent increase in their bills relative to what was happening on the commercial side it was a similar effect that kind of in a different way what happens the low and users of the commercial site saw their n that we can explain and folks are going to understand and i think in cancun in concept we understand that the capacity for a commercial establishment is the same just like the capacity for a resident is the same as a residential connection is the same and so counting them as one each each individual unit kind of is one kind of saying all right everybody is on the same playing field you're all commercial it's almost the same concept of commercial space goes for x dollars per square foot  and what we would consider equitable or scalable and while there are some reluctance to move towards categories within a category like small business large business i think we could do it in a way that's really managed well we're not but i so want to come back to like part i understand you're saying that how how are you going to make the distinction between the office with two people and and sonoma station or the big or the bakery  just think we need to treat them like we look at them individually so that so then another question would be is if a mixed connection has residential and a do you want to count that residential as strictly residential or do you want to include that in the overall calculation with commercial well it's kind of it really because it depends which way we go because if we if we say that on each mixed connection well you can't residential then that means where immediately parsing out the commercial and then if a connection happens residential and commercial what are we considering the so we're comfortable counting one residential unit as one we haven't necessarily fleshed out whether we're going to count every commercial unit as one because there is another way of doing it and that was what amy was saying is we do not have volumetric bas buildings downtown time could be twelve you know if there are individual office spaces that are foreign and it may be an office that's the size of this table but has had to ask and it is somebody is getting rent for that small space that would be one same with the restaurant and the bottom would be one so we need to be clear on what worth what we're considering as if we're going to count we're going to start counting units rentable individual parsed out a couple units in a facility that has a significant impact is there so just to be clear so there could be here for a number of residential units or could be a meter or number of residential units and a business or two yes right and i think that makes a what has been discussed individually would would be to have so they were all comfortable with the pace and the flow scenario of the situation that we have right now you have to pay a base rate you pay a flat rate the base rate covers whatever percentage of our own and right now flow there may be there may be multiple flow categories depending on volume and depending on type so we could decide to go increasing i guess i don't like decreasing because most of the country is moving away from more and but then the residential be counted one two three residential units off of one meter or in the connection sure yeah that the expense would be on their side and they could purchase the meter correct just like duplex as you are right now d every unit as a unit and not going in and doing it based on volume or based on potential capacity is is is applying the theory consistently in the saying i know you're a small office but you have the capacity to be whatever the schools which are sizeable and fire which is sort of the wild card yeah do we want to work can we have principles for those there well let's remember we have sent a letter to the schools already saying we're going to increase their bill by argument so to some extent we've taken steps in that direction and we're bound by that but but given given where we are and the proximity of discussion because what we're talking about it's we're talking about the f one fifteen budget which starts on july first and so in theory we still work to do i don't have confidence that it would be ready for the next billing cycle b but i think the goal to have the annual meeting the annual water users meeting in mid to late april which is when we would approve this so that folks would know that on july first this is what they knew this is what the new world is going to look like i think i think a two month timeframe to get this finalized is it is it's still aggressive i was going to call it seems in my head that there are things we could do sooner and other things we might do with this tiered approach and the reason i say that maybe because i live on the street filled with users is i get a much stronger sense of demand from the users for leave sooner rather than later a year from now nine months from because we may lose out on revenue that then we can make up i would like to be thoughtful and deliberate and transparent with what we're with what we're doing instead of rushing to make changes to make changes because then they may change again and and it may not be to everybody's liking so i'd rather we we keep it and this is this i know what you're going to say this kind of brings up the point of like what if we have additional separate revenue what do we do with that and i think that that needs to be part of this discussion i'm going to say what many people have said to me for the non users on the commission it looks much more feasible to put this off into the future but the users some of whom are not in the room say there should be done something for relief next july but last so we're i'm just going to there are things that we could do that dozen multi unit connections that would see significant increases that wouldn't necessarily balance decreases for everybody else in two months but don't really understand what you just meant to say but what i did wonder skirt from people who have one meter for one small user and somebody else who is getting the spider apartments with separate meters is charged more than this five apartments  one here based on the same floor what i've heard from users is fix that immediately don't wait six nine twelve months we're not waiting six nine or twelve months don't wait which is why i fix it before the next bill i just  saying sorry this is just an internal try payment transfer evidently the water and sewer resources department hasn't been paying the general fund for payroll for some time to the to know half a million dollars that was a very it's a you know it's accounts payable there was no internal transfer of money between the water and sewer fund and so this is just to prove those transfers for things that happened you know  the server running a little bit late tonight welcome to the february third two thousand and fourteen richard slick board meeting will start out with public comments ye six hundred twenty five and we're asking that that you continue to defer payments on that loan and the deuce the interest rate which is now two point five percent to zero percent so that we don't continue  reason being that the project is not financially strong and i provided you with some financial information the on the added financial statements we the project just does not have room to make those kinds of net income of ten thousand one hundred forty eight we actually it's essentially a zero budget we budget two hundred twenty seven dollars of income annually on the project this year in fact we have a loss of eleven thousand six hundred fifteen dollars you can see that as it's operating now there isn't really room for making additional payments one of the issues we've had at this property is that we have had historically low or high vacancy in turnover and that due when it was built our only option for heat was lp which is very expensive so people were able to move in and afford the rent but then they weren't able to afford the heat so recently within the last couple of years natural gas vermont gas came through w were able to switch out those units to natural gas which is more affordable and we're hoping to see that that's going to change our vacancy rate we haven't seen a lot of change in that yet but that's certainly hope is that it as those units become more affordable because you can afford heat that people stay for longer and we will have the turnover that we've had this past year one of the reasons we experienced that loss is that we did have a very expensive the election of someone who had been paying rent and then we also had the legal expenses of evicting that person we also are we have experienced also be increased water rates so that the water costs here were about thirty two hundred more than we had budgeted for originally we also are replacing reserves that we you know k to make sure we can maintain the property are fairly low and partly they are low because we've been maintaining the property other fifteen year old buildings and they needed paid so we've begun a process of painting the buildings we sort of exhausted that so  in fact we're looking at this property to to find ways to strengthen it financially and we certainly don't have the ability to make those additional  financing apparatus that we use for affordable housing throughout the country really is low income housing tax credits and if money comes into a project as a loan you were able to to capture that in the basis for the property and were able to get a tax credit that we then sell to a partner you know a limited partner who puts equity into the project so by making it a loan into the project it actually increases the other soft sources that come into the project it's kind of convoluted it's not the most streamlined way to the funding but that's the program that we've got so that's the reason that we didn't say the town can you just you got this grant from the federal government through the state can you just granted into the project that would have housing purposes not this is this is not money that that would have been used for anything else and and we're not talking about any costs to two people in town really by anything that we may decide here o my concern though is that it doesn't it doesn't sound these are going back to the basic question of is is this project on track to to create long term affordable housing for or term rental housing so are always saying that it hasn't really worked out that well it hasn't i mean we certainly have some tenants who've been there longer term but again because people would move in and say ok this rick this is a rent i can afford but then the winter and you've got those he payments to make they would say i can't stand can't afford it so they would move so our hope is that because we've changed it to a much more affordable natural gas that that will help with that they can see issue and the turnover issue because every turnover is an expense so in fact you'll see that we have a sort of a range of grants here as well for the two bedroom units and they're mostly two bedroom units the rents range from seven seventy five to nine hundred and some of that is because on some  targeted to a lower income and some is because if they have a tenant who's been there longer or less likely to increase their rents as quickly as another incentive to stay because it's much more costly if they move out and we have the expense of the turnover accounting thing it's just because the hassle it's another fifteen rate i think i think one of the reasons to continue making it alone is that so in fifteen years say the organisation running it is actually not providing their criteria for for renting their homes are not what we consider to be appropriate for providing affordable housing in town then we call them and kick them out or raise rents or with ever whatever we do so provides a little bit over say control for the town and providing continuing on and it creates this conversation every once in a while that certainly is acceptable to us and yes that's really what we're requesting is just to you know change the interest rate zero percent so we don't keep accruing interest which i think is helpful for both the town and us in terms of accounting but we're not accounting for accrued as interest and then we can do a fifteen year term or a twenty year term whatever term feels comfortable to you but i think that's reasonable to have a check and i agree i'm fine with the fifteen year term contrary to the further along and i'd be willing to go to zero percent because it's really from the way i look at it i just wanted yeah but i mean you have to just need to check in with them every year you know at the time that we do our budget cycle fifteen years sounds like a good it sounds like i don't i don't  statements to the town and would that be enough of a review so that it but i would actually be concerned about is if we literally have to have if we have to be classed in another five years another  coming and that because i think it's that important to keep it off then also our community based organizations and we have actually representatives from town government on our board so if we do provide you with annual financial statements and you saw an chance for a little back and forth but the thing that i want to make sure is that is that the the project is is on track to fulfilling the original objective to the extent that has already i'm not  not being achieved i think it's important for us to know about that too and there's possibility that we can that we can do something to help about and i'm not saying that this is the form of cash or anything like that but we've been talking about you know pace is a mechanism for upgrading the energy efficiency of buildings and a lot of people have benefited from switching to natural gas recently but one thing we know about natural gas prices is they're volatile and the only way to get stability and ener to think you're making a case that there is certainly no room to raise rents here to make a payment to the town but you know these are well below the rents that that sort of the four that hasn't programs allow in fact it's barely enough to keep is the first in a number of hurdles that need to be crossed but it is the first yeah and i think the question is is yet in working to the planning commission that it could either go through  what those mixes are and that came up a lot in the discussion in the public meeting that was held was you know what what are different types of compatible uses and how does that get written into think that one of the concerns of we have is that these different paths entailed different amounts of time and i don't have i mean i'm a little bit nervous about the idea of everything coming before the slug board but on the other hand maybe that's the right way to do it but more if it's something and if that if that route labels developers to start working now as opposed to something that's nine months from now i think it's worth doing i think i would like to have and maybe use road to allow you to interpret on proposals and gives you a tremendous amount of flexibility you know all doesn't necessarily have to fall on your shoulders either you guys could very good point i think if we didn't have the r e d c as capable and as energized as it is i'd have much greater misgivings about going the interim zoning but knowing that the words you all that have done this great we have a fully engaged state rep on this we have a lot of people working really hard on it and help the select board and screen projects before they come in and really make it so that we don't become the bottom which is what we don't want to be max to get some type of i thinking i'm speaking out of turn when they're boxing expires but there's the the auction expiring is one thing but also that bell believes certain funds to help mitigate brownfields that there are available to the nonprofit vs the private developer to make that more attractive to development makes that this you know anything we can do to move the process along in that regard is is is extremely helpful we have right now it's not just big piece of the puzzle that the nonprofit trying to get the funds for a clean up action plan and to do that plan  senior center or worse the richmond economic development committee for example or some other nonprofit can have access to certain fund the regular federal or state funding to help mitigate the brownfields that isn't available for an adjustment to zoning weatherby interludes an excuse is that for the senior center or any nonprofit to get access to the of those funds they have to have a development plan in hand so you need a developer to come in and say this is what we're proposing to have happened and have to be changed for them to apply for the grant does that have to be a viable plan because they have to be something that can be built if it was clean up or can they just say this is what we do with the town change the zoning and it was cleaned up later i think that the reality is that today we got nothing ok we have a lot of people talking to a lot of people but we got nothing the terms of an actual project proposal and we're not going to get that until we fix this so that's why the zoning hasn't experience i was going to commit funds to create a project without the knowledge that they're going to be able to have at least a shot of getting done what they're proposing they're not going to spend the time and money and effort to put together a development plan for  do something in the spring by the spring but you can get just as assured time a developer partnership in place contingent upon obtaining the brownfield lines so you could this all together yeah does it mean september seems like a thousand years from now but it's not not in government time i think speaking for somebody who is fully immersed in government it's not a lot of came out but this issue has been on the slick ords agenda for i don't know how many meetings i mean we have applied through the planning commission to in the interim status you you it sounds like you all are doing exactly the right thing there's nothing that we could do in addition to what you're already doing i mean this is indeed just want to talk to us they know we don't have any power they wouldn't talk to you and they are talking to you which is what you want so is there an ask that you have  i mean it's a sin you're saying that you want to be gauged and involved i see as being gauged involved but you need to do it if there's something that we can do that you want us to do bring it to us one proposal and they're not going to combine them into one proposal but they agreed they would schedule one hearing here in richmond on all three towers so that we could sort of get word needed an idea of what their plans were one thing we did requests that the states not going to grant is that all the towers be considered as one so that there was a chance of if some of them were redundant than they would have to be approved towers within the same timeframe and the public service war zone going to take one at a time and again going back to eighteen t i think it would be useful to have the joint hearings and we can understand what people's concerns are and get eighteen hundred to address them before they submit an application if the concerns are not addressed in the application then we can file a complaint that far but there's really nothing for you to do at this point because you can't preemptively file a complaint until they actually apply  yes the law has a provision for existing agreements at the time the laws change that allows them to continue for the duration of the agreement this agreement happens to be forty years and it was put into the state allows you to remain to last as long as it was originally intended in the agreement allows us to approve an assignment to a new owner which in this case would do when the partnership so legally you're able to do people take thirty percent of their income in the federal government pays the difference existing agreement between the town of richmond and ritchie richmond housing in the richmond housing limited partnership whereas nine hundred eighty five richmond housing in the town and village of richmond entered into a tax stabilization agreement to pursuant to thirty two b s a thirty three forty three and whereas the agreement establish a stabilized tax rate for the property it was used for affordable long profit assisted living housing or as the agreement as a term of forty years expiring on june thirtieth two thousand and twenty six and whereas rich in village housing incorporated in cathedral square wish to renovate the paramus is unique and investment partner and where is easily utilizing section eleven in agreement whereas thirty two b s a fifty four zero four a allows the current agreement to continue under its current terms and whereas the virgin's what were is an agreement that the tax stabilization agreement should required to effect this decision kate next step is high when structures grant applications every year this provides valuable grant money to talent for road improvements which is the highway bridge and bridge in culver improvements which is structure paving jericho road from the jericho town line south to the interstate bridge and the structure it was culvert hauling forest curve and we did not get those grants so this year resubmitt tell meeting update i just want to remind the public again that the monday night before town meeting we're going to have the public information session for the australian ballot items and there are three of them two of them are fire truck the second one is borrowing up to one point five million for a water storage tank and the third item is whether we should move from the elected lister's to a  and also as last year the meat town the town reports will not be mailed you'll get a postcard and if you would like to come pick up a big report where you would like for them to mail it to you could contact come and we are moving forward to organize a drill to set up an emergency operation center in march so some people in this room or outside of this room who want to participate you may have already been drafted  to help out in the case of timeline emergency and you'll hear more you'll see some literature coming soon and then last we've talked about emergency notification systems and how we can communicate with residents federal civil rights case there have been filed against us in the siddur matter that was we want on summary judgment there are still three weeks left for the plaintiffs to appeal that i have no indication one way or the other whether or not that will happen but so far so good and v y c c has requested that the town return certain taxes paid between their june two thousand and twelve appeal when there are two over two thousand and thirteen successful motion on summary judgment in their favor and we are going to that we have done a recruitment for the town planner position we've interviewed five candidates we may bring in one or two others but we did have a very strong  all right and i have one other report of the town center by there is a purchase order on later but the pipes been installed they switched the heat over today they still have a little bit of pipe insulation w of seventeen thousand and sixty dollars and i'm thinking i'm going to cancel those bids and rebuild it you know we are low low bid was five thousand dollars the next point was nine thousand dollars we got a letter that said the low was going to pull they just they claimed it was a confined space and they were unaware of it at the time they did so they said their new price was twice as much as the last price and i don't think it's fair of anybody to try to enter executive session and address the view i c c first then the hazard mitigation buyout and invite mr mourning him and jeff for banneker to the first discussion