Affordable Housing Trust - Regular Meeting

i will call the july 9th meeting of the graphical affordable housing trust to order at 7 34 p.m uh we will start with roll call dan here megan here uh brian here uh nicole here all right uh the first time we tried that you guys couldn't hear us which kind of demonstrates why we have to do that when we have people on zoom uh so uh Next, we have public comment. There are no members of the public here, so we'll move right along. Mr.

Chair, go ahead. By way of public comment, I guess I'd just like to let the board know the ZBA had a meeting at 5 o'clock this evening to close the public hearing for the snow road development. and the board voted in favor of granting the comprehensive permit for that development. So super high level. I can give anybody more color if they like, but that development ended up being for a total of 200 units, 50 of which will be affordable. And so if all goes well, we should get credit for the full 200 on our SHI. and we should have you know we should be adding uh 50 actual units of of affordable housing to our inventories um when development's done cool thanks for the update uh all right so next we have reorganizing uh the affordable housing trust uh

Is anybody interested in being chair? I'd be more than happy to hand that off. It's also kind of hard when we have four of our, well, I think four of six members currently, but anybody interested? No.

No.

I'd be interested in renominating Dan. However, I would also entertain, I don't think we're necessarily required to reorganize in our first meeting. If we wanted to try to at least get more than bare quorum together to decide, I'd be open to tabling this as well.

That's a good point. Pick it up at our next meeting. All right. Then I guess that means I'm still stuck with it for one more month at least. All right. So any other discussion or thoughts on that? Are we good with that idea?

Yes.

All right. Next, we have an update on High Point Drive. And we have Emma here. Do you want to kick it off?

Yeah, great. Nice to see you all again. So we are now looking at draft number five of this RFP. This includes some reactions, adjustments to comments from Christian and Brian. If anyone else had looked it over and had comments that they would like to share, you can either do so now to me via email, So I guess super high level is I would like to, probably best if I share my screen and we just look through some of the comments that are outstanding. There were a few questions I had for you all, a few comments I just had some clarifying, just would like some clarification on. And then from my perspective, we're pretty close to being at the end and ready to release this. RFP. I know there was some shifting in your legal department, so I'm not sure how up to speed the new person is on this. So their review might take a little longer, but I think the next step would be for them to review this. And then we have a memo that MHP has put together that we share with communities that just has some best practices on releasing the RFP, reviewing responses, scoring, and then awarding. And so I can share that down the road too, but just our assistance doesn't end. Once the RFP is out, we can kind of be in touch as the process goes along. So that's kind of a high level view of the things I was looking to discuss. I don't know if anyone had questions up front, otherwise I can jump into sharing my screen. Great. Share. Okay. Are you all seeing this? Are you all seeing this?

Yep. Yes.

Okay. This is tricky. I want to see the words but also the comments. I think this will work. So the version we're looking at is also a little reformatted. I noticed that there was some weird section breaks. This might look a little different than the version you have. So I guess my first question was just confirming the submission format. We usually recommend that there's one paper copy per person of whomever we'll be reviewing. And then some communities don't use flash drives. So I don't know if you would like one on a flash drive, if that is not helpful. It was helpful last time. Perfect. Okay, I'll keep that in. So any reactions to the highlighted two and three here? Any changes you'd like to see for submission with more than seven? proposals be good to have?

That matches what we had for 25 Worcester Street, and that worked out fine.

Okay. Yeah.

Okay, perfect.

Was the three-ring binder copy used for anything special?

It was just how the seven copies were presented to us, so they were all in one place. Okay. I will...

um and then amber and dan are you still good to be the these are easy changes if you anything changes with whose chair but are these good for now amber and yeah yep okay um Okay. So Brian had raised the aggressiveness of 60 days for executing the P&S's purchase and sale. So I don't know if you would like to remove that language altogether, propose a different number of days. Anything you'd like to see?

Just to give some context, I think some of this might come down to what we consider work beginning. In my first read, I took that to mean construction related activities or site work in some respect. And I thought that could be a little aggressive given the need to go through a permitting process. you know at least you know building permits potentially something in front of the zba um and so that was my concern but if if we consider begin work um as starting those permitting processes or something like that then i think you know 60 days or something along those lines could be you know a reasonable expectation um that was kind of my thought process

Should it maybe just be changed then to begin permitting process instead of work?

Yeah, we could specify something more specific.

Just because I agree with Brian that beginning work that that whatever that is, could be it's not specific, so could be confusing, but I think from my perspective, Brian's point is that they want a good faith, some sort of good faith effort showing that they're moving the project forward pretty soon after the P and S starts. So the permitting process to me would make sense.

Okay. All right. I'll leave that. Um, So there was a comment anyway to make clear that the resubmission should stand alone and not be a partial resubmission. Is there a suggested language that would help make this more clear? I wasn't quite sure what. This comment was too.

I can't remember if that was one of mine or Christian's. I think if it was mine, maybe if amended a complete resubmission could put a bow on it.

If amended a complete resubmission?

Sure. Yep. Maybe throw an A in front of a complete.

So I left this section highlighted because we had been discussing fair market value and I think this is something if I'm remembering correctly that your legal department was going to weigh in on and maybe some more internal So I can leave this highlighted for now and can discuss later unless there was any further updates or if I'm misremembering.

I remember this discussion from last time. I don't remember where it landed exactly, but I think from my perspective, One, and maybe you can just clarify, and I'm sure you already described this multiple times, but as part of the forgivable loan, this is where that would be repaid. Is that correct? So there's some portion that would go back to MHP from the sale, or am I wrong about that?

So this is in reference to the price for which Grafton is selling these purses because the developer had already given a chunk of money to the trust. and you all were trying to make this as feasible as possible given that these are now three single family homes that this was going to be the price could be less than the fair market value which is separate from the forgivable loan portion there is a section in here that references that the developer is responsible for reimbursing mhp but that's separate than this if that makes sense okay so it's basically two separate payments there's a purchase and then there's a reimbursement is that right Yeah, the purchase is just what they're going to put in their pro forma for what they would pay for the land. And then reimbursing us comes farther down the road, I think, at closing on construction. OK. Am I not making sense?

No, that does.

The payment is OK. Does that actually?

Because I, for example, if there was a $1 payment for the sale of the property, I'm not saying that's what it is, then it wouldn't affect, that would mean there potentially would not be enough money to pay back MHP, but that's not how it works.

These are two separate, these would be two separate, yeah, two separate line items.

Yes.

Okay. And then there was just a comment about what the involvement would be from your council on some of the attachments. And this is actually a good reminder for me that I should put together. I have all the attachments ready, but when it's time for your legal to review, I will put all the attachments together in a separate PDF so that they can look over those as well. So there was a question just about whether they will review the whole RFP and yes, please help them do so. Okay, so this I think I leave up to you all on how you would like to handle this. I think we've all kind of been on the back end of trying to figure out what the latest version of these documents are. So I'm happy to clarify these and maybe put just the most recent one. Um, if that's helpful and open to your thoughts.

Yeah, I think for the, the trust benefit, um, my thought here was, so we list a 2006 regulatory agreement and a 2016 regulatory agreement. They're both actually the same agreement. It was just amended several times with the most recent, I believe being in, um, in October, 2016. Um, so I thought it would. you know, we might be kind of a catch-all if we just listed, you know, 2006 regulatory agreement as amended to kind of cover all amendments through present. If we wanted to be more specific, you know, we could maybe throw a parenthetical that, you know, most recently amended October, 2016 or something along those lines. But that was my thought.

Okay, I can fix that. I think that would help. For whoever the next person is looking through these to keep everything straight. Um, So I think that was the bulk of my questions for you all in terms of putting together a draft that feels ready for your legal team's review. I don't know if there was anything else that anyone had questions about. While I still have this up on my screen.

Mr. Chair, I just had one point if I don't want to hog the floor. Go ahead. The only other thought I had was if you could scroll up to section four. The development objectives.

Bless you.

Yep. So let's see. Right before. So towards the end of the first paragraph, we talk about the potential for 95 high point drive. If it's developed, it could potentially be developed at market rate. I didn't know if we wanted to include any language or Emma to you if you thought it might be appropriate or not. Obviously, we ended up in this situation because the developer for the 40B got ahead of themselves building more market rates than affordables. And they got to the end of the project and said, well, well, it really wasn't economically feasible for them to build or it wasn't economically advantageous for them to build two more affordable and only one more market rate on the three lots that were left. I didn't know if it made sense to include any wording to specify that if one of these three lots is going to be developed at market, it needs to be the last one developed. So in other words, if, you know, we need you to build the two affordables before you can reap the benefit of building and selling a market rate unit. PB, Jorge Boone & And I guess if we if we agreed in concept, but we weren't sure how to word it, we could you know throw the concept out there and you know our Council could take a stab at some language, but that was kind of my thought and if the if the trust was on the same page or not.

PB, Lupita D Montoya, So you're seeing this as a safeguard to make sure that the same situation doesn't happen again where the.

kind of, yeah, theoretically, if somebody takes over all three sites and assuming 95 is developable, other than just the fact that they wouldn't be in compliant in totality, I wouldn't want the potential for them to maybe prioritize developing the market rate unit and then either walking away or dragging their feet on on finishing the affordables.

Yeah, I like the idea around that, but maybe there's some legalese that they can write in so that it puts some consequences to them walking away. Because what if the developer has to sell the market rate to continue to develop I mean, I don't know. I'm not a developer, but that could be a problem for a developer, I think. So is there some other legalese that can be put in there that there would be consequences equaling them not going forward with the entire deal or something like that?

The situation where, I mean, this whole 40 B situation has been, it doesn't usually happen. Um, so I think there's some language that we could put in there, possibly put in there about that, but I would be very surprised if this were to happen again. Um, But I will make a note and I'll talk with Carson too and see what she thinks about that. And if in the meantime, your legal counsel is looking this over and wants to propose something, I mean, this has to go by them ultimately. So I'll leave a note here. Christian?

I'm just wondering, maybe to fix that, it could say in the second to last sentence, proposals can include a mix of affordable and market rate homes, but at a minimum must have two affordable homes constructed at 5 and 16 High Point Drive instead of should.

I will change that as well, yes. That's a good idea.

So it's my understanding that with the way that 40Bs typically work is they, the building inspector will approve them in, you know, keeping in mind which affordable units have been approved and not leaving them to the end and like ensuring that they get built along the way, not left until the end, like what happened this time. I kind of see Brian's point in that this is already an odd situation, and this is kind of an odd conclusion to the 40B. So I kind of, I think it would be good to have something in there. But yeah, we can run that by our counsel.

get some some wording from them yeah that's a really good point actually because as long as yeah this continues to be under the original 40b it was um it was outlined as a condition of that 40b that the developer kind of not get ahead of themselves um and it was it was a mistake on the town's part to um to kind of issue those building permits um and i guess in the order or um in the, you know, as they were. So you're right. I think to the extent that this falls under the original 40B, the belts and suspenders I was looking for might actually already be there. And it's just a matter of making sure that building permits get pulled accordingly. Because, yeah, to the extent that we're already essentially at least one unit behind, theoretically, at least the first unit built would have to be an affordable unit. And then I would defer to either building or the lawyers to decide whether the second could be depending on how things rounded out. could be a market rate or affordable. But yeah, I assume at least the first would need to be an affordable unit since we're at least one unit behind for the overall development.

Okay, well, I will leave this comment in here and I defer to you all on how you would like to to word any language that you would like to put in about the order. But I'll leave this here just for future reference. I think, That was everything I had at this point for your feedback. So unless there's any other questions, I will share. Let me think. I'll share this as a Word doc and then a PDF of the attachments. And your legal counsel can look it over and Give comments that way.

Cool.

Great. Let me just double check my notes and make sure that we... Yes. Okay. Great. Thank you all. Thanks. Thank you.

Thanks, Emma. Really appreciate it.

All right. Take care. I'll be in touch next week.

All right. And before we move on, before I forget again, the traditional welcoming of the new member. We have Megan here. Welcome to the Affordable Housing Trust. All right. So next we have an update on 25 Worcester Street. So I think it's... a brief update here right on that uh they yeah it's just the announcement that they submitted their project eligibility application which is brief but exciting yeah any uh any questions i guess from uh anybody on that

um mr chair i guess i'd ask um you or the trust as a whole if if you guys are comfortable with me reaching out to andy um i did looking through the the package i thought it was fantastic but um i honed in on one piece in particular it was the the draft of um potential waivers that that he's um he's anticipating uh requesting as part of the the 40b process Several of those are things that the ZBA has not typically granted. And the biggest one that stuck out was the waiver of various fees from application fees to connection fees and things like that. And so, you know, this is obviously a different project. You know, typically we're dealing with for-profit developers and I certainly understand the hesitancy on the board's part to not entertain waiving fees unless there's a compelling case for it. I just don't know. This could be a reason why we may want to have or see if the ZBA would entertain kind of a, an informal roundtable to discuss the potential project and see what they might theoretically entertain for this type of nonprofit development compared to what's typically agreed to for your average 40B. Because if something like that was a hard no among members of the board, you know given the town's financial situation and things like that um that could severely impact andy's financing and the need to find either find additional resources or potentially you know the trust kicking in um some additional funds or waiving the 100 grand that he's supposed to be paying us for the site or something along those lines. It might require us to get a little creative. And then the only other one that kind of stood out to me, but I think I could wrap my head around why it might make sense, is he's seeking a waiver on not doing a traffic study. which given that this is senior housing and only 48 units and I wouldn't expect it to generate a whole lot of traffic. I could see a compelling case that, you know, Andy might be able to make to, to explain why we don't think it's, it's necessary. Um, but it might be another one where, um, it could be good to try to take the, the ZBA's temperature. Um, because if, if not, then that's, that's an additional cost that, that they would need to incur. And then, you know, obviously we would have to, um, the town would engage a peer review or to, to look at anything they pull together. Um, So I think both of those really come down to dollars and cents.

Do you know how much fees are for something like that?

No, I know they're looking for a waiver of a few things. One, there's a generic application fee for multifamily developments. that typically goes into town's coffers and that's what pays our 40 B attorney. Um, so we take their fees kind of out of that pool. Um, but it's really, you know, that's kind of how we typically run the mechanics of it, but, um, it's really town money. Um, cause if we don't end up using all of it to pay, you know, our attorney, um, that just kind of refers back to the town. Um, um, So short answer, no, I don't really have a number to throw out. But the two other ones that can be big, I think sewer connection fees are typically, I believe, $5,000 a unit. So if that's accurate, it'd be 5,000 times the 48 units. I'm not sure what water connection fees look like. And even though the water district is technically a separate municipality, technically, the ZBA... could have the authority to grant a waiver of those fees. I just don't know. Obviously, the Water District is going through building new treatment plants, and I don't think the ZBA would necessarily act in a vacuum if the Water District says, no, we really can't afford for you to waive these fees. because of the projects they have going on or whatever, um, you know, that could impact the board's willingness to, to waive them, um, even though they could. So, um, So really, my intention would be to connect with Andy to try to see how big an issue these things might be or just kind of give him a context of waivers that in my brief time on the board, I've seen the board be willing to entertain and ones that we haven't typically and kind of see what his experience has been in other communities. with similar proposals if he's typically able to make a case and listen, this isn't your average 40B, this isn't a for-profit development where 100% of these units are going to be affordable at very low levels of AMI and make his case.

Are you just anticipating they'll want those fees? waived or or you know for a fact that most of these like non-profit developers look look for stuff like that they're listed in um see if i can find what page it's on um it could be page 50 of the pedia of the of the um

Josh Triplett- yeah christian's right starting on page 50 of the packet is there anticipated waiver table it's only two pages. Josh Triplett- But a couple of the items on the first page pertain to to various fees. Josh Triplett- That they'd be looking for waivers essentially to. Josh Triplett- To not have to pay those fees hmm.

I also find it interesting the number of handicap spaces proposed in this and only three for the 68 spaces proposed as a senior living facility that seems incredibly low to me.

But yeah. I know there are guidelines that tend to define minimums. Yeah, there's a floor.

There's not a ceiling.

But yeah, so we could. Yeah, I think it would certainly make sense to not necessarily be at the floor. Yeah, that's a good point. And I guess what my thought process was, right now, the ZBA doesn't actually have anything on its plate. At the end of this afternoon's meeting, we just talked about scheduling something just to approve minutes from a handful of recent meetings. But if the trust was amenable, I would be open to reaching out to Andy, one, to get some color on what he thinks he'd be seeking, and then also kind of take his temperature on, whether or not he'd see value in this sort of kind of preliminary meeting with the ZBA. And then I could do the same with the chair of the ZBA. This isn't something that we've typically done in the past. The planning board occasionally will have these sort of kind of pre-development meetings before an application is filed. But as far as I'm aware, there's nothing precluding us from being able to do it. And so just kind of start some of those conversations.

Yeah, I think it would definitely help to emphasize that this is not the typical thing that the ZBA sees presented to them, that it's, like you said, it's 100% affordable, it's 30% and 6% AMI units, not even a single unit that is available to somebody over 6% AMI. This is These are units that are going to be affordable to people who are really struggling. And yeah, it's a public good for the town.

Has the trust approached the ZBA in the past about something like this? Or would this be a new ask?

We've never done something like this, so no.

That's good. Because if you do it often, it loses its impact. Right.

I wonder if there's any even like state level organizations that would help with paying the fees or something like that. Maybe not all of them would have to be waived. I don't know.

Yeah. And I don't have a good appreciation of, you know, of the fees that we charge, how many of them, and maybe the answer is all of them. I don't know. But how many of them really have A direct cost associated with them that you know the town's really just kind of acting as a pass through. Because yeah if the town is incurring the cost I wouldn't want that to burden the taxpayer right, I think that's reasonable that it should somehow come out of either the trust or as a sponsor of the project or or the or the developer. But if there's any fees that essentially turn into a profit or a windfall for the town where the fee might exceed the costs to the department that's charging it or whatnot, those are the ones where I'd hope to make some progress in trying to get some relief. But I don't have an appreciation of whether that might apply to any of these fees we're talking about.

Yeah, it makes sense to me to see if there's interest in, in having that kind of a preliminary chat.

Okay. All right. So I'll, um, I'll reach out to things that I'll start with Andy. I might, I might even reach out to, um, to Evan for some background color on some of the fees that he specifically calls out in the waiver table to see whether those tend to be kind of cost reimbursements or more kind of profit generating, if you will. And then connect with ZBA admin and the chair of the ZBA to take his temperature on kind of a informal preliminary meeting about the project. And Dan, I'd probably plan on keeping you copied. And then we can kind of update the rest of the board in our meetings so that we're not running afoul of any open meeting law issues.

Sounds good. Cool. Anything else on 25 Worcester Street? Nope. All right. Update on 17 and 27 Upton Street.

So I received an email from Brendan that was in the packet. Just a brief update of where they're at. He plans to join us at the August meeting. And that should also give us a chance to schedule the ribbon cutting.

Yes. Colin will be so excited.

Yep. We wanted to wait until the site was a little bit more cleaned up. So we can speak with him about that. And then he also mentioned that he would have some invoices for us to review.

Christian, go ahead.

I was just going to mention separately, he didn't mention in the email I'm looking at, but they, the developer with their monitoring agent, MCO Housing, they're working on submitting the project eligibility packet their local action unit um eligibility so it's close to being completed they just let me know recently that they'll need a a local preference um justification letter that i'm working on um so that's the last thing typically that would go to this well it will need to go to the select board to be reviewed and signed before it's submitted to the state that would be the only formal review um i think they're wanting to get that ready to go by the next select board meeting which would be before the next trust meeting um i just wanted to throw that out there unless in case there's any comments from the trust uh i'm good yeah there will be two select board meetings before the next trust meeting so hopefully they can get that

taken care of cool i like that we're we're getting updates nice thank you amber for opinion everybody yeah sure all right uh next we had uh have discussion of future outreach. So Sarah has been kind of putting some thoughts together and sent a little update that's included in the packet. I'm not sure if everybody had a chance to take a look at that, but Any thoughts?

Yeah, she had some ideas for information that would be helpful to put together, which I'm happy to fill all this in. I just wanted to get your thoughts on it.

Yeah, it makes sense to me. I feel like it's a good collection of kind of the basic questions that that people would ask or should ask if they knew to ask them.

She did mention Grafton Day in August, which I didn't think we were moving forward with after the last discussion, but maybe I'm remembering that wrong.

That was my impression, was that we did not have enough time to get something of substance together in the meetings between June and Grafton Day in August.

What I'm seeing in her email is general info about the Affordable Housing Trust to have ready to go for opportunities like Grafton Day.

Okay, that makes sense. She also mentioned when we are doing outreach to neighbors for 25 Worcester Street, getting a list and determining the cost for postage. I stopped by the Board of Assessors and they were super helpful. I mean, they create a butters list all the time, but they are actually able to, like if I tell them I just want a list of like the hundred closest people, they can produce that for me. So they gave me, just as a sample, they gave me 102 abutters and that was a 755 foot radius, but we can adjust that however we want. So if we're, if we want to reach out to the 500 closest or the thousand close, you guys can adjust that however you would like, whatever, um, whatever you want to, I mean, I guess you would, um, consider what you want to spend on postage, but you know, decide what, what makes sense for, um, for what we're sending.

are they able to do it by like mailing address as opposed to by person? Because you could have five people living in a house. We don't need five letters.

Yeah. Yeah. So it's by, um, so it's by the property owner. Okay. So, um, so, uh, people who rent wouldn't be included in this, but we can go through and try to account for that. Awesome. But, you know, it seemed like a good start.

Absolutely.

Lots of times they can do current resident, you know, property owner's name or current resident. So it still goes to the house, even if it's a renter.

Brian, go ahead.

Um, Amber, did the assessor give you a sense? Um, I should probably know this answer, um, off the top of my head, but what, when applicants need to send out a butters notices for either a planning board application or a ZVA application, um, did the assessor say kind of what that circumference was?

Yeah. So, uh, 300 feet is the standard for, um, for like

zba public hearings okay because yeah i would want that to be our minimum um i wouldn't want to necessarily have somebody get a 40b notice about this project that we didn't happen to invite to to our information session um or whatever we end up holding or whatever information we end up trying to send out to people um But yeah, it sounds like your current population is already bigger than what that might be.

So that's 300, and you said the 100-something is like 700?

Yes, we captured 100 different locations in a 755-foot. Okay. And I mean...

So it's probably going to be like not more than like a couple bucks or something, right? To like mail stuff like per, yeah. Seems like a very, that seems like a very reasonable threshold there.

Sorry, there was something floating.

Do we have a sense of timeline for this? Did we decide on when we want to do any kind of outreach about this?

The last one we did was the first week of November. So if we want to make this kind of an annual thing, we can shoot for then again. Okay. But we can adjust whatever... whatever makes sense, whatever, you know, Andy's availability is if we are trying to focus on 25 Worcester Street. And we also had mentioned that we wanted to make sure we're going to have enough information to answer questions and, you know, be far enough along in the process. Not wait until we're too far along in the process and people are surprised, but, you know, kind of find a happy medium.

Yeah. All right. Uh, so yeah, so I guess my, my point was, uh, then in that case, you don't really need to decide tonight, but I don't know. Anybody have any, any thoughts on what a good sort of a budget would be for that? I don't know. It feels like it's small enough. It doesn't really, it's not a big deal.

Yeah, I mean, I think if we're largely talking about upwards of 100 or so stamps and envelopes and sheets of paper, yeah, I think that's a reasonable spend. And I think not to volunteer somebody that's not in the meeting, but I know Colleen has experience pulling together pamphlets for CPC in the past, kind of informational, here's what we do, here's some of the things we've done. I think maybe if Amber's willing to pull together some preliminary answers to some of the things that Sarah was asking about. sarah and or um colleen might it might be great for them to to get together and maybe pull together either a pamphlet that might be specific to 25 worcester that we could use for for some of that direct outreach um but then a more general pamphlet that you know to her point you know we'd have ready and ready to go uh for a grafting day or for our um our public forums or or those types of events

Yeah, it makes sense. Cool. Any other thoughts on outreach? All right. Well, thank you to Sarah for putting all those questions together. and treasurer's report.

Yeah, so another simple one, just a couple of payroll entries and investment income for the month. Year to date, investment income's up over $80,000, so they continue to turn along. Information all the way through June 30th wasn't quite available yet. I'd expect next month's update, we'll be able to cover the full fiscal year and I'll have drafted our reporting to CPC like I had drafted for the first six months. I'll draft an updated version that covers the full fiscal year and have that ready for our next meeting. that's about it cool yeah overall i mean it's been a pretty quiet year i think we had some minor expenses related to the forum um you know admin related expenses obviously and then i believe we only had one gsx payment during the year um so there's not going to be a whole lot to report to cpc

All right. Any questions on the treasurer's report?

No.

All right. And next we have some bills to pay. Are there any questions or concerns about the three invoices we have here?

Dan, has Harrington Heat been keeping you in the loop on some of their direct communications with? It looks like mostly they were engaged on 25 Worcester Street. Or are they just connecting directly as needed?

Seems mostly connecting directly. They've been giving some updates, but... Yeah. Yeah. Seems to be helping to move things along. Yeah.

It may be helpful just from a transparency and billing perspective to have our chair CC'd, volunteering you for your inbox for this, I suppose, just so we can cross-reference when these communications are happening with someone on the board who has access to that communication.

That's a good point. I'll reach out.

Not that I don't trust that they're doing their job ethically at all, but...

Mr. Chair, I'll make a motion to approve the payment of the invoices included in the bill schedule attached to our meeting packet.

Second.

All right. We have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Hearing none, vote by roll call. Dan, aye.

Megan, aye.

Brian. Brian, aye. And Nicole. Aye. All right. The bills are approved. And minutes. Any corrections or thoughts or anything on the minutes in the packet?

Amber, you do a fantastic job with minutes.

Thanks.

Mr. Chair, I'll make a motion to approve the minutes drafted for our meetings on April 1st, April 9th and April 22nd, 2026 as presented.

I don't know that I can vote on these. I was not here for these meetings.

So the what I've heard is that when you're voting on minutes, you're you're voting on whether you are confident that it is a, uh, accurate reflection of what occurred.

Okay. I'm not opposed to voting on them, but like, you don't have to know. Well, no, if I don't vote on them, you can't approve them.

Uh, yeah, we can. Yeah. A majority of the quorum is what's.

Okay. Okay. Though I wouldn't need, uh, we don't follow Robert's rules. So it's all kind of a vibes thing. I think. Yeah.

It's Robert's Rules-ish.

Ish. Perfect.

All right. So we have a motion and need a second. I guess maybe I don't really need a second, but we have one. All right. Any further discussion on the minutes? Hearing none, vote by roll call. Dan, aye.

Megan, aye. I trust Amber.

Brian? Brian, aye. And Nicole? Aye.

Nicole, aye.

All right. The minutes are approved. And that leaves us with one last agenda item. I'll entertain a motion to adjourn.

So moved.

Second.

All right. Vote by roll call. Dan, aye.

Megan, aye.

Brian. Brian, aye. And Nicole.

Nicole, aye.

We are adjourned.