Town Council - Regular Meeting

There's nobody else here. I'll just keep an eye on that. Okay. So, the three of us are here. Do I need to formally call us out by name? Hannah Belcher, Scott Mahoney-Wright, Cassie Woodhouse. No other members are present. I'll put us on camera if somebody else joins the room, but I'm just not going to do that because at least we have an audio record and that's fine. Okay, so we cannot vote on the minutes. Vote to the next meeting. Okay. So this Thursday at, well, starting at 630, but starting at six, we will have our presentation. So we have, I have confirmation from both of the other speakers because I forgot I'm the third speaker.

I was like, I was out counting the other day. I was like, She's not counting herself. And it, like, occurred to me at a weird time, and then I just never told you that. That's right.

Yeah. But I have the presentation, and I will review it on Wednesday night after the SRA meeting that I have.

Can I take anything off of your plate? No. Okay.

You can't go to the City of Salem's regional committee.

I mean, I could, but you don't want that.

um so no it'll be fine um but yeah i just have a little bit of stuff going on but it it's this this presentation is stuff i have deep knowledge on so it's okay um just to realize how many things i had going on this week um i have a collection of magnets for the farmers market that people have on our resource table. I need to, I'm going to forward you the list of links that I got from Webster Bank. I think it would be ideal if they could be QR codes for each of those links on a sheet and then just like labeled each of the different things that they are. That's the most ideal. If you have Canva and can do the QR code thing.

Yeah, I have like a QR code thing. Great. Okay. I'm actually in the office tomorrow, so I can do those and also laminate. I also have a laminator app called.

Oh, yes. Of course I do. So if you don't get to the laminator part, I can make that happen.

I made such a push for the department to buy a laminator, and I'm pretty sure I'm the only person to use it. And I've used it more for town and homeowner business than other business, but that's okay. They might lay me off, at least I've had my elimination.

Yeah. But I haven't heard from anyone else on their resources. So if you reach out to one of the mortgage companies and that insurance provider that you know.

And they have not gotten back to me, but... I did reach out to Tina.

Okay.

Tell me. Yeah. And I said, what kind of resources might we be able to get?

Yeah.

You know, so I'm going to swing by the bank tomorrow. Okay, great. Like, space tomorrow, I'm going to go by the bank and see what resources. They might have packets. Yeah.

They just have little trifolds or whatever. You know, I just want to make sure that we, if we've tried to reach out to every bank and we've tried to reach out to every mortgage lender. We've gone multiple times.

And if people don't have, like, actual materials, if they want to send us a website, we can put that on a QR code. Like, you know what I mean? If it's... They don't have physical things. I'm also remote on Thursday, so if there are last-minute things to pick up around town, I think it's up to you. Okay.

A lot of older people are going to be more apt to want something tangible on their hands.

Yes. I'll print a couple copies of everything we have a QR code for, just, like, because I don't think more than two people would ever want it. But since I will be in the office, and Robert might leave me off, so try it with us.

Just be there. Clean them dry. Yeah, we confirmed stuff with Mike. WCAP confirmed. We've been told we just don't touch any of the settings and then it will be good for what.

That was my big note, like touch nothing. Yeah. Yeah. So, okay.

It's so that we don't need any extra audio and they can record right from the room. We don't need to have anything additional there.

Hopefully folks will get back to me and I can have it all on a thumb drive. The other thing that I can do is... google drive it to the town hall website through the link and then just open it like that yeah i would almost do both like oh yeah yeah yeah i always do both and then i'll have my computer too just in case yeah and that's true we also have that half an hour at the beginning yeah like if we need to tweak yeah so that should hopefully what i'm

Are you planning on being there on...

I won't be able to be there before 6.

Unfortunately.

But I think the resource table and then Hannah's going to bring the treats and seltzers, so she has most of the materials for setup. So if you bring the tablecloths...

I'm going to be there relatively early to do whatever, because they have to put chairs out.

What time? Just so I can have Matt make sure it's open.

I can be there by, like, no later than 5.30.

Okay.

I think he said he had planned for 5.30, so if you're there at 5.30, the door should be unlocked at 5.30. Yeah, that'll be fine. I have, in that bag right over there, I have the paper plates napkins i also have the fitted tablecloth that we used for the hispanic heritage month event is in there and i have some tabletop decorations okay okay cool um awesome so we'll just test tech as soon as i get there at six

I was informed that it is after one of the World Cup games.

Was it Stephen that informed you of that? Because if it was, erase it from your brain.

No, no, no. Just making sure. It was one of our speakers. She said, I'll be there. I said, great.

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, and I don't have stuff, but I am planning to talk to the folks that will be there giving the other presentation on resiliency after the presentation about some of the resources that they can give to the website regarding comparative affordability. But you had mentioned someone, an organization in town that collects data on... Department of Public Health.

Okay.

I don't know what... is privileged or what, you know what I mean? And I, if you give me a list of like things you want, I can talk to Meredith and cause I, I work with her for a COD thing.

So I mean the basics that we work with, um, that are really relevant to like establishing area median income, which I will talk about a little bit in the presentation on Thursday are, um, household size, gross income for the household, so all adults that are contributing to the household. And that's all that goes into AMI. And then you also want to, if they did collect data on cost of housing, Because between those two, you can establish what percentage of households are housing burdened. What's considered burdened? Like more than 30? Paying more than 30% of your total income for housing. It's a lot of, I mean, the data that's available out there from HUD is that a large portion of the households in our community, and they're not just renters.

Yeah, no, I think that, yeah. Especially with, what does an aging population do to that? So like as income becomes fixed, essentially.

So as income becomes fixed and housing costs don't tend to, right? So there's two things that happen, right? You expect that some of these households pay off their mortgage. Okay. And so that reduces their costs. But a lot of these folks have not accounted for people with a 2.5% fixed income. They haven't accounted for how much taxes are going to increase over time. Most people are not like me where they go, oh, cost of living adjustment, boop, boop, boop, and have the year-over-year spreadsheet for household costs.

Yeah, that's probably not typical.

But we should. Right. And then also thinking about the way that different organizations play for and look at these things over time. I know that the cost of insurance has been going up like 10 to 11% annually, right? When in the best projections, people have said, oh, maybe it goes up 5%. So there's that level of it too. Yeah. What people... put into the projections when they're underwriting the project for us is two and a half, three and a half. So you say that the income will increase two and a half percent and the cost will increase between three and three and a half percent. So, you know, a conservative budget would mean that you give yourself more of a cushion. You say costs are going to go up more than you realistically expect them to. And then you're giving yourself a cushion nesting kind of a thing, but that's not what most people.

Interesting. Cause I was just like, cause my step-mom retired last year. So like our housing costs has remained. I mean, it's increased at the rate it increases, but like technically her income, there's a large portion of that that is a fixed cost because it's mortgage, right?

Most mortgages are not on most mortgages. Yeah.

So it's,

the part of the reason that the housing prices was so bad in 2007 is that the interest rates were ballooning. So they said, Hey, we have this great idea. We can give you a lower interest rate, but in five or seven years, it's going to adjust and it's going to adjust to whatever that market rate is at that point in time. So when those five and seven year terms came up around 2007, Everyone's interest rates went. And you had some folks going from $1,000 a month mortgage payment to three, four times that. And instantly you've got an issue, right? Because as soon as that happens, people are going to start defaulting really quickly. Yeah.

And on top of that, they were giving loans out essentially to people who could not.

A hundred percent. So they were already having a hard time with that thousand dollar payment. Right. So the minute you hit that five year threshold, it was. I hate it. When people like people under, right. So that's why there are movies about this, because the folks that looked at this financial thing from the perspective of someone who's trying to be conservative and prevent risk went. oh, no, this is bad. But by the time they did that, these mortgages were already being packaged into securitized things that people were buying and trading and making money on. Somebody's going to end up holding that back.

Okay.

Yikes.

Uh-huh.

Wow. Yeah, so it's much better for people to have a 30-year fixed thing, even if that upfront rate is not your ideal rate.

You can buy it now, but that's about it. You can always refi, right?

After six months of being in a home, you can refi.

You just raised a really good point, too, about mortgages. And a lot of first-time buyers don't realize that their mortgage, probably within a month to two after buying, getting the mortgage, is going to be sold. My mortgage company, my mortgage was sold three times in the first year. So every time I turned around, I was different. Somebody else had bought my mortgage. And it was people who don't understand that. They're like, why does this bank have my mortgage now? And they get freaked out. That's a weird thing about debt. And it's how they make money.

Yeah. I mean, all of this stuff is opposite. Yeah. I have to remember what the movie was, but Meryl Streep is fantastic in it. She plays like 17 different characters. Devil Wears Prada. No. But she, it's about this sort of trading of unreal things, right? There's an insurance policy that's, packaged into these things and it's traded to someone and there's actually no policy.

It's all funny.

Yeah. It's just like, it's somebody's life and somebody dies and they try to go collect the life insurance policy after this horrible accident. And then they're told, Oh no, there wasn't actually a life insurance policy behind that thing you were paying for.

Yeah. Our debt is somebody else's asset. Like that's like the, the grossest. Yeah. Anyways. Yeah. Anywho. That soapbox I can climb on. The other thing you had asked about was, like, who comes here to work?

Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. Yes, thank you. People employed in Winthrop... Because that's the thing about, like, local preference. It's not employed by Winthrop. It's employed in Winthrop.

And that's how you avoid issues of saying, like, because, like, how is it not discriminatory to say we're only giving housing to the people that work for the town of Winthrop because they work in? Yes.

Yes. And so you can get anyone. And it could be a town employee. But it also could be anyone who... is working here. It could be a coffee shop employee. It could be whatever, as long as they're employed in the town of Winthrop, or if their kids are going to school in the town of Winthrop. And then the other one that typically, and we don't have a policy about local preference, In the schools? No, it's in this community. There's no designated local preference as far as I know. So that would need to be something that we ensure we understand if we ever have the opportunity to do something that is an affordable housing thing. Because that's we can set those parameters and so it could be people who have been displaced from the community of Winthrop within the past two years due to say a fire or another emergency, people who lost their housing here, right? And so if you can show that you had a residency history, that's another way that people can set that as a designated group.

I think from the Veterans Rock Fire, there were maybe four people who were able to stay in Winthrop and find something they could afford. Everybody else had to leave. There wasn't anyone who was able to find it. I mean, I was really helping people trying to find rentals. And there wasn't anything in their budget. I knew somebody who was renting a two-bedroom at Veterans Road before the fire for $1,800 a month for a two-bedroom. And what the developer, I mean, they've done a nice job on it. But all of those are going to be market rate or slightly higher. And you look on the website what they're renting for, and, you know, that's a big chunk of somebody's income.

Yeah. So I will point out that something interesting that came up as a – And it's not an old, it's old business, but it's not an update. So can I?

Yeah, I mean, this isn't technically a meeting. Oh, right, because we don't have court. Yeah, this is just a discussion.

Okay. Well, I guess that's favorable.

And also, like, if you want to shut off the Zoom, you can't. Like, we can't leave it off. Right, you can't do anything. It's not the meeting. Okay.

Well, there's not even anyone here. So they've had enough time. Yeah, I think. Okay. Bye.