Affordable Housing Commission - Regular Meeting

Okay, so with that said, I am going to call this meeting to order. It is 4.04. And I'm gonna make a special request and I'm gonna ask you Ross specifically because you just seem to be on this stuff. Whenever we do anything that requires a motion and a second, would you please write down who made the motion and who made the second? Thank you. I appreciate that. Because I get to clean up the notes and I'm like, I think it was Fred.

Sure. No, no, no.

And the minutes are fine with the transcript that I get. So, yeah. So thank you for doing that. I appreciate it. So with that said, before we go on with our agenda, we are missing two regular members. So I am looking for a motion to seat both George and Kent as regular members for the purpose of this discussion. Motion by Ross. Is there a second?

Thanks, Fred.

Seconded by Fred. Any discussion? All right. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Excellent. George and Kent, welcome. I don't think we have anything to vote on today. You know, just in case. All right. So. To seat George and Kent. Seat George and Kent as regular members.

In the. Here's the notion.

We have Kent, George, and Anthony are alternates. And then the five of us. Okay. All right, with that said, I don't remember if I linked the minutes from last meeting a couple of weeks ago, but they are up on the website. And so, If you didn't get a chance to check them out. We can couldn't. So, do you have a motion to push the approval of the June 3rd meeting minutes to July?

Okay, let's go with it.

I'm I'm yep. Moves to July. Um. So maybe we don't even need a motion for it. Maybe we just do it. Okay. All right. So information, communication, and correspondences. I have since received another email regarding the workshops, and I'm going to forward it to everyone now. I didn't want to get it lost in your email, so I decided to wait. Excuse me. To do so. All right. Okay. Affordable housing. There it is. So the meeting came from Craig Bonatti and they have their next focus group. So as many of you know, the Old Lyme Zoning Commission is currently in phase two of the Town Zoning Regulations Rewrite Project. We are pleased to announce our first focus group meeting, which will be held on June 24th, 2026 from 6.30 to 8.30.

PM.

Yes, and I think that that is the way they're doing it. I think it's the first meeting on the topic. Kent is workshoppy and the second meeting is the focus group that discusses and and that's where we want to make sure that we have representation at each of these.

Yes. Yes.

And each workshop will be followed by a focus group on that same topic.

I would hope so.

I don't know.

The workshop.

Yeah. It would be better for someone like me who couldn't go. Okay.

Yeah. So I will forward Craig's email to you because he also talks about self-housing issues. Where is it here? Focus group topic-based assignments in development. So there's no date for housing issues. In addition to meetings, I think it is, yes. So this is what it is. Focus group topic-based assignments. So he's, the assignments are, I mean, he's looking for representatives from the following committees. And so for us specifically, it's housing issues that he is seeking representation at their next, at the housing issues focus group, which will follow the housing issues workshop. And the focus group will be in August, but it is to be determined. We don't have a date for it yet.

The next workshop.

is not in here but i think he's that is housing yes a housing workshop there will be a focus group on housing yes in august but we don't have a date yet I forwarded the last email to everyone, and so that's probably in your email, but I will look for it and resend it along with this one because both of these communications have all that information. Anything that they've scheduled is in there. Otherwise, it will say to be determined. Okay, so that is next Wednesday is the 24th, right? 630 to 830. That is the environmental focus group.

Okay.

It's not listed here. Um, it says in the focus group topic based assignments in development, it says so for environmental. I mean, again, you can take a look at it. Harbor Management Commission, flood and erosion controls, everything environment-based. So I don't know that 29 is going to be much of the topic of discussion anyway, but I don't know. But 20, 29, 1, 29-1, yeah. So, okay. All right, I'll forward that at the end of the meeting.

Mm-hmm.

My other thing here. I did receive on this same topic. Actually, scratch that. I'm not even going to bring it up yet. I'll bring it up in the next meeting. It's an email I received from someone about something we haven't even discussed as in this group yet. So, okay. Next on the agenda. I'm looking for my agenda. I have so many screens up. So what's next? Thanks. Thank you. Old business project update. Okay. Okay. So since we met last, here's what we know. We know that Mike Carey and Sarah Luffler did connect. We know that Sarah just yesterday or as of yesterday, Habitat's attorney reached out to Sarah. Sarah sent the MOU that we discussed here that was developed back in January of 25, to her attorney and she said that her attorney and Mike Carey were working on that together and talking about or looking to schedule the closing. I don't have a date. I don't know if there's anything else they need from us yet. Fred and I were talking about this and I told him that I will definitely be reaching out periodically. I'm, you know, we're going to stay on. But the closings... It was clear to me in our last meeting that when the closing happens and doesn't happen, it has no bearing on us spending the ARPA funds for the prep work that needs to be done. So the other piece that I can tell you is that Sarah and Habitat are meeting with the architect to begin their first phase of planning the work on the 24th as well, next Wednesday. Okay? So that is the update there.

Here it is, okay.

Yes, although what I would like to do, what I'm proposing is that everything come from Sarah, if that is reasonable to her. Fred and I also had a brief email exchange about this, like streamlining points of contact. So whether it's Sarah or someone, she, I, pull through Habitat. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I don't want everybody. Yeah, no.

Right, right. And. It can be done on the property until Habitat phones it.

That's not what I've been told.

So the architect can be working with that.

I don't want to do anything. It's still our property and we would have to hire anyone who's doing work on the property.

I mean, that's not my, my understanding is that with everything that was put in place, the closing while it needs to happen to actually transfer ownership and the deed, it is not going to hold up whether or not the site work can be started by the people that Habitat chooses. So we didn't have to do a request or anything. Right, which is why the town's not doing any of that.

So stuff can happen on their property.

Everybody seems comfortable with that. I hear you. And that was my hang up for a while. And everybody seems comfortable with that. And so for the purposes of not being the one who makes those decisions and wanting habitat to get going so that we can spend the ARPA money and not leave it sit there. Let him start work. That's my take. But you tell me if. Yeah.

Very dicey. And I think that question, I mean, does anyone, oh, let's do the driveway. So if you have to come and hire someone to build the driveway, probably still own it without doing an RFP. I mean, certainly would be cleaner if you have to take the deed and they can do whatever they want.

Absolutely.

What's the holdup on transferring the future of work?

We can't get an answer on that. That was last week's. That was the purpose of the whole discussion last week was what do we need to do to move this forward to get to the closing and Habitat can take over. Habitat was holding off initially before our last meeting two weeks ago, holding off on confirming with the architect that they were moving forward because Sarah needed to know If it's current what you just said, if it's currently owned by the town, does that job have to go out to bid? And does the town need to take care of that? And Martha said. Sarah wants to hire that architect and Sarah's there's already an agreement in place and we know that's being transferred to them. Then that's fine. We don't need to worry about that.

Yeah.

I can get clarification. And you say you don't know what's holding them.

Closing. Who says it's sold it up? I mean, if the town owns it, can we tell our lawyer and schedule the closing of habitat if it's been agreed?

One would think. I would think that.

But we have not heard. And then two lawyers have to. We have not heard from the lawyers.

Yeah, well, it sounded like he's, well, this has to be in place and this has to be in place. And we confirmed last week that everything was in place. We've since received an email asking about the Mylar. We confirmed that the Mylar was taken care of, that the subdivision has happened. The addresses were sent to Sarah since then. And...

And with those three things, they should be able to, but we have no idea what's happening with those pieces. We don't know.

Mike wasn't sure if who was going to be doing the closing, representing the town in the closing at the time of our meeting two weeks ago. Habitat has a lawyer that, I don't know who they're, Victoria something.

by the town attorney to make sure that the interests of the town are protected. But it has to be, you know, Habitat has to be happy with the two. It has to be drawn and read and reviewed and modified and all that stuff. As far as we know, no one has done it. We don't know.

We just don't. So I explained to Fred before the meeting that I reached out to Sarah I reached out to Sarah separately earlier this week to check in since our meeting to ask if there's any movement. There had been little to nothing on Monday, and then I reached out to Sarah, Martha, and Mike Carey on Tuesday and got the response that she heard from their attorney, Habitat's attorney, on Monday. She sent the memorandum of agreement and that her attorney is working with Mike Carey. That's where that was left yesterday.

That is insane.

Right. So I'm going to give it a couple of days and I'm going to reach out again and I'm going to keep reaching out looking for updates. Like, where are we with this? What is holding it up? I understand that. I understand that. I really do. It's but my my carry is the town's attorney and Martha has to sign off also on any.

I don't even know. Yeah.

he's not the town that's a separate he he works for the town attorney's firm or for the firm that represents the town yeah yes and so my brief understanding is that um we want to be um strategic is not the word that's my word and i don't even know that that's the one i want to use but we want to be purposeful in when we are communicating with him and what we are communicating about because we're going to get charged for everything that's communicated granted we have money to spend but we don't just want to willy-nilly throw it out there so yeah and here's the thing so so moving forward I will continue to loop all three of them into those conversations. I'm not going to communicate with Mike Carey separate of a third party.

I do too. We all do so. Well, we can move through the agenda, so let's just continue going through the agenda here so.

This update.

The properties I was talking about. Okay. Yeah, no, I understand that. Okay, so the steering committee role in process. So, George last time. Yeah, basically, and until we get any further direction. I'm going to ask for one of the three of you to be a point, a person who will receive, I mean, the emails of invoices will go to all of you, but one person forward it to Martha and say, yes, please make sure this is paid out of the ARPA funds. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And Anthony. Awesome. Okay. That's perfect.

Um, so should it be a formalized. Sign up on this, if we all forget it, should I wait until I hear from you guys? Yes, let's do it.

Or I think, or just, I think an email would be good enough and email response. We will get. I think that's God's mind. You remind me that we get one in one semester.

That would be lovely.

Make sure the work was done and it was done satisfactorily.

That's a great question considering we haven't closed yet. I think once it has, once we've closed, it's not our property.

Okay.

Right. So it's another.

But if you get a bill for $100,000, $80,000 from something, there must be some responsibility to figure it out. It's the word done was done satisfactorily. Somebody go check it out. There's someone to check with.

I think it's Habitat's role to do that. So I would imagine that their general contractor, the gentleman that was here with Sarah last night, would be the one to say, yep, it was done to our satisfaction.

Right. Right.

And I can work with her on, please, you know, if there's a concern, please don't send us anything until everything is. Okay.

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

So the chain would be habitat to our steering committee and Kent to Martha and Anita and counts payable to get paid. You can put them on both on the same email. You can just include Martha on it. Okay. And then if you guys want to work out a system where, okay, if I don't hear from anybody and, you know, half a day, I'm going to go ahead and forward it to be paid or however you want to work that out.

Where to put that. She didn't. Well, the are the functions that there's so many accounts, 1000 accounts.

I have to know what it is because there have been payments made under the already. Yeah. To this project.

Okay. Maybe I'll talk to her.

Yes, there have been about 8000 dollars has been spent out of those funds.

You know, what for.

Um, she's going to have to do more digging. Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'll need to sit down. Yep. I'll need to sit down with her. She's hard to, she's very, very, very busy, obviously. But I would need to sit down with her and say, can you show me, like, can I see copies of the invoices that were sent to you that ARPA paid for? Because I don't have access to anything that came in the email I would have that came to the affordable housing email. And then, for instance, I know Martha went ahead and okayed Mike Carey to be paid for the most recent invoice that he sent. And this is a breakdown. I have to look on the email, but I think that that comes from a different line though, because there's also, that's the part that I'm still fuzzy on. I'm not really sure determining. Okay. And she's the one that told me that. So, okay. Yes. Okay.

Yes. Exactly.

Alright, so.

Google.

Perfect yes, thank you very much. Can't take that. Thank you both for taking that on along with Anthony. Alright, so new business. We really pretty much talked about the zoning piece already because that was also the communication that I wanted you to all be aware of. So as I get information into the affordable housing email, I will forward it along to everyone. And that brings us to town-owned properties. So Fred has a list of.

The two most potential are just off the post road behind the firehouse by Rogers Lake. uh and these are them uh we uh actually walked in there now and my recollection of the of the comment after the possibility we didn't see any big problems there uh each of these lots had a house on it Previously. It doesn't say that you could have a house on it now, but at least there is a buildable lot. It's potentially buildable.

I mean, it was at one time.

At one time it was, yes. And one, the Kimmick lot has, you know, a lot of wetlands on it. And the Grandview lot, you know, it is, is bigger, there's an old foundation there. We don't know. Those would be, I think, the next lots to be considered, that they're the most practical on their face. Tell me where they are.

So this is, so 21 is here.

Okay. The firehouse is here.

Oh, yeah, this is the street here. Yeah, this is where he's across the street from the fire.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And that for a while, and so most of the houses that are in there, they've been aggregated a bunch of these little walls. Okay. But yes, let me go find it. Yeah, yeah. There's nothing there.

Well, I am.

That's the road goes up for Steven. It's pretty exciting. You know, just the, I think before we. You know, we get any.

on properties for affordable housing, I think we should have a general discussion on, you know, how we go about it. I mean, this Habitat project was different because we have, you know, $150,000 of artful funds. And so, in this, in the current development, we in the town have been kind of acting as a quasi- developer. We've been doing stuff. We have money. We've been spending money. But I think we've found out now that it's not such a simple project. And the projects are not that economic. In other words, hundreds of thousands of dollars need to be raised in order to make the project doable. And there are various organizations who do this. You know, I think it'd be interesting to at least think about. But we just wrote these properties, put out our P and see if any developer. But we've built something. Maybe there are incentives, you know, sort of. You know, it depends how much. It's time to really want to develop portable housing. I mean this. What I've gathered, We gave a developer a pre-bunk and said, okay, can you rebuild affordable housing? We wouldn't have a lot of acres. I think it's something that bears a little fall. You know, I don't, originally we were thinking, oh, so we have a lot, turn it over to Habitat and have them do it. But I don't know if that's the most efficient way of producing affordable housing.

yeah certainly doesn't appear to be the quickest no goodness no and and the fact that they're i mean they they are a little i mean this would almost have to be an individual develop like someone who's like i'm just going to buy more property i'm going to build a little house on it as opposed to i mean with these singleton lots right because these are not these are all separate lots here is that correct what you've outlined in purple yeah well the town owns them except for the one that's outside of it. Yeah. And then they own this one over here.

Yeah.

So we've talked about these properties in the past, have we not?

Yes.

Okay. So this is, these are known as Grandview and is it Emmick? That's the word.

No, I mean, one, there's a little foundation in there. Hi. There's one.

The agenda was up on is up on the website. Okay, well, the agenda was posted. I know that. No, it's a meeting.

No, it's okay. Okay. All right.

Okay.

Sure. Hey, Martha, real quick. Sorry, you probably didn't want to get dragged in, but I just saw this email, and I'm not even sure. It just came in at 4.30 from Mike Carey regarding Rich handling a closing. Do you know anything about that? No. Yes, right, right. Mike Carey is, it looks like it's just too affordable housing, but it says, Rich, can I tell these people that you will be handling this?

Do you, you don't, okay. Okay. Okay. Okay, all right, thanks.

Okay, thanks, Martha. I think that I should be telling them to put me in when it is.

Sure. Which says to me, Rick is getting it now, so nothing's coming up.

I'll find out. I'll find out. Okay.

So. When you just, when you did this, your search, did you just look at places that are zoned already for all town-owned properties?

A person who is a

senior center director, or was director, said, you know, there's some land around there, for example. But you probably don't, I don't know what happens, though, where you could do a fair amount of housing. It would be probably forested land. It's not, it's not the way.

You know, I got a little town on land, and then, oh, this one is the senior center, so I'm, assuming at this point it's not available for development of a forest house.

I don't even know where would we begin to even look into that. Like if it's not owned by the town.

It is owned by the town.

Okay. But so Martha had like a list of every single town owned property. Right. she went through and got and removed those that are not up for like the town hall property and you know, where there are things. So I would imagine that the senior center was a part of that. I don't know about adjacent property.

Yeah, I know.

Okay.

So I was at the river park looking at you know, all the land of town, all the open space, and they're trying to see, well, are there restrictions on this? You know, could this be used for affordable housing? Because that's part of their plan, but.

Yeah.

Well, the part of, I assume, the tension here is that if you have an opportunity, to put a fair amount of new housing in a place like Cherrystone, which is certainly commercial, or even on Mills Road, or taking up something that is now effectively open space, a center, a senior center, so then there's a tension. I mean, are we going to give them some open space because people would rather have housing out there than in town? Or people would rather have a Cherrystone because that's not Yeah, in town. I mean, there's a trade-off between trying to, that's what the state wants to do, you know, is build up the housing in downtown on commercial purpose, partly for transportation reasons, although it's not clear that we, technically, we have a transportation center here, but, you know, you're not going to, I mean, the car.

My, that's, you know, if the police station is on the, on, We don't own property. I didn't want to see. Well, I felt divided and put some forward. I was just assuming that that was the police station or fire station or something.

Yeah.

At this point, that's complicated enough.

Yeah.

That's a good look at some other time.

So. what is the best bang for our buck, so to speak? I mean, when we, I agree with everything you said up front, like piecemealing it, this property, that property, it just seems futile at best. I mean, it's just not that we shouldn't look into those opportunities. Um, I mean, I know that there are a couple of properties that allegedly the church, one of the churches in town owns, and it came up that, you know, could this be something that affordable housing could utilize since it's no longer being utilized, no longer being utilized the way that they had previously used those homes. And I think their homes on those plots of land. So that was just something that was shared with me in passing. So I don't know.

Yeah, yeah, I mean they're they're they're.

Purple to make it housing for refugees. Right, right, but they would. I my understanding is there's no explains them to sell it OK with that unless it's sold to the Habitat for example. It is interchangeable to have it remain at housing for yeah.

Yeah.

So in a situation like that, they could just decide that they're going to set it, set the costs in a way that makes it fall into affordable housing, right? So that's not something that we would need to exchange into anything with them.

The idea of taking these lots and putting it in an RMP is pretty interesting. There are, you know, there are, you know, people now pushing for prefabricated housing. And the issue, I guess, in some of these towns, don't, you know, doesn't just admit that, is what they're saying. It's not only that it shouldn't be appropriate, but I mean, it would be interesting for a long time to somebody to be willing and certain to make certain exceptions to have prefabricated housing. Then you put it on a ramp piece and see if people would bid to build something would be an expense of refabricated and the town will approve. And that's kind of my pilot project. It would be interesting to think about. I don't know enough to know whether that's something that is remarkable that people can support.

I'm sure it's on the zoning committee agenda to look at.

It was prefab panelized. They brought the panels, they bolted it together, and it was done in a matter of a week. Then you have to fit it out. But the foundation first and then the prefab panelization goes up in a week. And then you have to finish the fish.

So steering committee. Meeting next week, Jim Lampos is going to come. He has a bunch of ideas about. Proactive stuff which I know which may be the steering committee, the one that you are.

You and Jimmy are. OK.

can't come next week, so they may be looking for somebody else. You can even run affordable housing to... Oh, this is Martha's ad hoc, yeah. So, one of the things that he talked to me about, I don't know whether he's worked this out at all, but he said, you know, among the tools that we have, the town has the ability to give certain property tax reductions and incentives. So he said, for example, look at the beach. Some of the beach communities, there are no seasonal housing there that if you offered the kind of incentives that the town could potentially offer, some of those houses, people would turn them into selling or turn them into year-round housing, and you'd be providing, you know, affordable, unfittingly affordable housing for year-round ownership that don't now exist. people want to be willing to sell their economic to a vacation house. I think that makes sense or not. But those are the kinds of things that I think it's worth thinking about. Because then you're taking individual loss and saying, are there the state money for affordable housing and the town would be willing to do and your property tax to make it easy enough to do that.

I'd like to wrap up this town and just say, let's have a document listing everything, you know, 90% are going to say not to be developed. And then like, put that, I think we can put this town on the property thing to bed pretty soon.

What did you mean?

Something that, like anything in addition to this.

You said 90% are probably not elite, maybe more, 95% are not developable. Is that right?

Well, again, if you have a lot that's tentatively developed or not No, no, no. Just I say under current conditions. Right.

Right.

No, no, no.

Right. So to your point, let's have it on. I think you create somebody created a spreadsheet previously, I thought.

Yeah.

So we could just have those. Let's not have whoever comes in after us to have to go back and rehash this, because I think. You know what, where we have interest to George's point from earlier is any of those spaces where several units could be possibly constructed or developed for affordable housing type situation. So just to have a spreadsheet that says these are the town properties. Wouldn't work. Here's why zoning regulation. And these are the ones that are possible. And here's what we might do with them.

If there is, let me figure out what to do with it. But yeah.

Let me see what I have, see what I'm getting at.

I'm not sure I've gone through that process. I mean, I'm not sure.

It might be a lot of work. Can you tell me generally, are we talking about 15 pieces of property or 500?

There's less than 100 properties.

And of those, I think these two, there's a few that are questionable.

I mean, if you have the raw material, I can create the spreadsheet if you have the raw material.

You have the packet of the sheets, right? Let's see what I have here. I think you do that. Yeah. Because you separated them. I'm sorry. Oh, it's the table. You separated them between these are the ones that are possible. These are the ones that aren't. So is there anything else to discuss on town of property? Because we do have the gentleman from Norwalk coming to our next meeting. He is, I think that's who you were, the family you might have been referring to, George, that you ran into earlier. Yes, yes, yes. No, it's not, right. So that is really it on our town on property discussion. Okay. Yep. Thank you. Well, yeah, I mean, it's like, can we get to that? But I guess we'll get to that next month. Okay. Okay. Um, all right. Budget update. Um, I mean, we have, uh, we've really spent very little money this year, um, out of our actual budget. And this is a piece that, that I'm, I'm still not clear on. I'm going to have to sit down with, you know, somebody and Anita, maybe, maybe Kent, since you're doing the ARPA stuff, maybe we can sit down together. Um, to determine where we would spend. Our original budget was $14,500. What we have remaining in there with the fiscal year about to end is $13,843. It's a June 30 fiscal year, yeah. Yeah, right? I mean, advertising, contracted services, printing, miscellaneous, and legal. So for instance, I sent a bill, one bill from Mike Carey, the first one that I received in this role, to Martha and Anita and asked to pay it out of contracted services, but then they let me know, no, that comes out of legal services. So I think that these, I'm guessing that those bills, because it's affordable housing representation, has to be paid out of our budget that the town provided us, whereas, ARPA is all things affordable housing, McCullough, maybe even McCullough related.

No?

Period. So not necessarily McCullough related, but okay.

Yeah. So, yeah.

I mean, we assume we would be paying $122 for ABATAC. We want to, but.

Yeah, and actually, as I'm being reminded from when I looked at this the last time, we received a pretty large invoice from Tom Metcalf once I first started, and it was paid at the ARPA fund. Yeah, so our status is, my understanding is that it's going to be to roll over. I don't know. I mean, some towns put it into that slush fund that ours is already quite large. And I believe that our previous, I think we requested the same amount of funding for this upcoming fiscal year. So I'll have to find out more about that. You know what happens to this 13 843 68 on June on July 1st.

And I'll get an answer to that.

Great question. I mean, I've it's.

OK, and she responds to email very quickly, so I can just send her an email tonight and ask her that question. I will do that. Yeah, yeah, right. And the last thing on the agenda, I don't know why I keep looking down because it's on my laptop, is the website. So has anyone gotten a chance to take a look at the information that's on the website for affordable housing? It is very outdated. It needs an update, and I don't want to keep kicking the can down the road, so... I am happy to work with Katie and people here at Town Hall to get things, to get new information up there, like an update on where we stand with McCullough, the original goals and objectives. objectives of the Affordable Housing Committee are up there. I don't think much of that has changed at this point. I would like us, since this has come up at a few meetings, I would like us to put some type of a glossary in there for people to be able to look at the differences between Section 8 housing, affordable housing, low-income housing. I think, you know, Anthony has brought that up a few times that, you know, there are so many different classifications and oftentimes people just put them all into one lump. And I just think for the purpose of educating the community, having something like that up there.

I think you should have a blurb about the town owned property. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. I would love to be able to give data like out of X number of, this is where I think a spreadsheet, I love spreadsheets would be really helpful because out of X number of town owned properties that are currently, you know, not,

Occupied.

I think we're at like 3% and the idea is to get to 10%. Which I don't know with that steering committee or ad hoc committee. Where that's like, what is your role in that, George, in terms of like. I initially understood it to be understanding 20, like the current legislation. And are we going to do our own plan as a town? Or are we going to jump on River Cog?

Well, I think the problem is, I mean, my view is that it would be a waste of a state not to do our own plan to some extent. And I think that's where this committee wants to say to Marlon, But the River Cog has a lot of resources that we don't have, although they are using the same consultant who also introduced the listening session in the first five minutes. And he's going to do the others, I guess. So that's helpful. And also, River Cog has some clout. I think that's what I hear, because the state's depending on them to do these plans. So the state's going to say, you know, what River Pog says should be our plan, the state's going to be pushing in that direction. So the idea so far, in the two meetings we've had, is to say that we want to do something that's, you know, like a hybrid. We want to try to steer what River Pog gives us. But figure out what it is that Old Line really wants out of this. We don't have the allocation yet, though. What is our number? No, and that's... a big part of the plan. I mean, they're going to give us an allocation, but before we even get to that point, how much can we push to describe what our plan is with a view to maximizing what it is, out the extent to which we can use. When you say they, you mean state?

Yeah, state. What if they come and say we have to build 250 units? once he chooses using city property, he's not going to do it. He'd cherish them on Halls Road. That would be the only way to build that number of housing, in my humble opinion.

Well, also, I mean, I think trying to put on the website the different kinds of housing is really important because it's something people don't understand. I'm not quite sure who would be the right person in the country, and I don't want to rely on Tammy Council to do this,

Yeah, no, I think I can get something from the state.

Yeah.

Yeah. River Cog actually. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

To try to explain that, because I'm assuming I could be wrong, but. I mean, it may be that the state is going to basically do an allocation only, you know, the narrowest legal quote affordable housing, state money and state benefits, blah, blah, blah to do this. but I assume that the housing plan is going to be something a little more diverse. It's not just the lowest cost affordable housing, but how do you increase your housing stock that's more affordable than otherwise?

That's the case. I think the law will be such that you have, the state has a definition of affordable housing, and I think the law says, no, we will be required to have this many units that meet this criteria i don't think there's anything around that how many but it looks like how it is how many there are on each property i don't know but if the town doesn't meet that allocation that means it doesn't get certain benefits and subsidies and money right but it does i mean this state is not going to put us in jail