HomeMy WebLinkAbout2018-10-26-REPSC-min Residential Exemption Policy Study Committee(Ad Hoc)
Friday, October 26, 2018
Hudson Room, Cary Memorial Building
Meeting Minutes
Attendance:
Mark Andersen, Chair;Vicki Blier; Howard Cloth;Thomas Whelan;John Zhao and Board of Selectman
Liaison Joe Pato. Guest Keith F Whitman. Absent: Sara Bothwell Allen; Katie Cutler.
Mr.Andersen called the meeting to order at 8:05am.
Mr.Zhao volunteered to record the meeting minutes.
Public Comments:There were no public comments.
Approval of Minutes: The committee reviewed and approved the minutes of the 10/5 meeting, and
reviewed and approved the 10/12 minutes with a minor correction.
Senior means-tested exemption working group
Ms. Blier reached out to Alicia Scahill, who is chief counsel for the Massachusetts Joint Committee on
Revenue, which Jay Kaufman chaired. Ms. Scahill indicated that Home Rule Petitions are typically a
quick process, and DOR often does not object, however it needs the vote of TM. Ms. Scahill herself does
the due diligence which would consist of such things as confirming with the Assessor regarding burdens
on his department. Ms. Blier stated that in the absence of H4001, we can draft MT base on
Sudbury/Concord laws which modify the Circuit Breaker limits.The other current laws use the same
qualifications as the Circuit Breaker (CB). The main issue with CB for Lexington is the house value limit.
Mr.Whelan asked whether we can adjust the house value in the law. Ms. Blier indicated that the failed
H4001 uses town's average plus 10%. Mr. Cloth commented that it is better have the dollar value
specified. Mr. Andersen mentioned that Concord Assessor agreed to talk to the committee, and
suggested the working group might want to look into specificities with some data analysis. Mr.
Anderson also expressed his concern about the length of residency as Mr. Peter Enrich stated there are
constitutional limits of residency requirement. Mr. Whelan also commented the need of projecting
benefit amount. Ms. Blier and Mr. Cloth brought up the assistance need on data analysis, Mr. Zhao said
he could generate charts if there are specifically requirements. For the December public hearing, Ms.
Blier said we might want to have comparison of the benefit amounts to residents between RE and MT.
Mr.Andersen recommended that next committee meeting to discuss MT materials for the hearing, i.e.
max income, age limit, project cost.
Status update on resident survey
The committee discussed and decided to close the resident survey on 11/9/2018. Mr. Andersen passed
the handout of"Issues Pertaining to the Lexington Services and Housing Survey"; and called out the
proper handling of open feedback comments. Mr. Andersen said since open response answers may
contain personally identifying information,the survey editors would remove personal information
during the analysts, and the raw comments should not be shared with full committee and with the
members of public. Mr. Cloth asked who the survey editors are, Mr. Andersen replied the persons use
the raw data. Mr. Pato shared that town 20/20 survey also had open ended comments, a professional
statistician provided the aggregated topics for town officials to review. Mr. Cloth said he had difficult to
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understand impact for the committee to review the comments. Mr. Whitman, meeting observer, said
that key insights should be integrated into the survey results. Mr. Andersen indicated that we said in the
survey the analysis will not identify individual responses, and the answers would be used in aggregate.
If the comments were send to the full committee,they would effectively be public. Mr. Andersen said
the survey working group, Ms. Bothwell Allen; and himself had direct access to the raw data, and plus
one additional person, Mr.Zhao. Mr. Zhao commented that it would be good that we could provide
the same topic summary as 20/20 committee did.
Mr.Andersen handed out the initial survey analysis results to the committee, and went over the findings
with analysis charts.
Public Hearing Meeting
Mr.Andersen stated that the committee will plan to have public hearing on 12/4,the concern was to
get prep work done before the hearing. Mr. Zhao said 12/11 would be better. Mr. Andersen agreed and
recommended to move the public hearing to 12/11. Mr.Andersen also suggested to have additional
meetings in Nov on 11/9, 11/16 and 11/30. (It was past 9:30am at that point.)
Final Report
Ms. Blier distributed the revised Table of Content for the final report. The committee had brief
discussion about the TOC. Ms. Blier shared that the 3 d section is to highlight the need of the study
committee and its final report. Mr. Andersen commented that the structure was good and the TOC
should be shared in public hearing. Mr. Cloth also stated that that feedbacks in Section 6 should be
reflected in final report.
Mr.Andersen adjourned the meeting at 9:44am.
Respectfully submitted by John Zhao, acting secretary.
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