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HomeMy WebLinkAbout1995-02-14 ad Hoc Haven Street Task Force MinutesCOMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS TOWN OF READING 5 6 7 S 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 13 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 HAVEN STREET SALE TASK FORCE MINUTES OF DISCUSSION Tuesday, February 14, 1995 Reading Town Hall Reading, Massachusetts Commence: 7:07 p.m. Pages: 1 to 20 Reporter: Tracy D. Helms DORIS M. JONES & ASSOCIATES, INC. Professional Shorthand Reporters 59 Temple Place Boston, Massachusetts 02111 (617) 542-0039 DORIS M. JONES & ASSOCIATES, INC. 2 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 APPEARANCES: NAME Philip Pacino, as Chairman William C. Brown Willard Burditt James Blomley Leonard Rucker Ted Cohen Peter Hechenbleikner AFFILIATION Reading Municipal Light Department Citizen at Large Selectman RMLD, Assistant to General Manager RMLD, General Manager Town Counsel Town Manager, Town of Reading DORIS M. JONES & ASSOCIATES, INC. 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 P R O C E E D I N G S MR. PACING: You want to start and give us an outline. MR. RUCKER: I'll ask you guys to make sure T_ say everything accurate. The short version was the task force at the last meeting asked a variety of hypothetical questions, most of them went away in terms of answers. When in the conversation with Ted as town counsel and Ken Barna as our general counsel, Peter, myself and Jim Blomley participated it was discussed that the town is obligated to use the Uniform Procurement Act.- So that immediately eliminated a whole series of things right off the bat. The other key question that was asked is could the process involve the process of an agent of some sort as a marketing process. The answer is yes, it can. One of the other questions that was asked is it required that the property be sold at appraised value. The answer is no. You have to follow the professional appraiser's process which is the same sort of process. And if you sell for less DORIS M. JONES & ASSOCIATES, INC. 4 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 than the appraised value, you need to notify the Secretary of State, is it, you have to MR. COHEN: Filed in the Central Register. MR. RUCKER: You have to document your reasoning. And so, therefore, the most restrictive thing going on at the moment is town meeting vote. That's setting it at appraised value seems simple. I think it covers a waterfront of all the various questions asked. Did I say anything incorrect there? MR. HECHENBLEIKNER: No. MR. COHEN: No. MR. HECHENBLEIKNER: The idea of an appraised value would be two things, one, town meeting still has control of an amount below which the property would not be sold and, secondly, you've gotten in two rounds of bids. You've gotten something above 80 percent of the appraised value. Now the last time around it wasn't a qualified bid and so forth, but presumably somebody is willing to pay about that amount. MR. PACINO: Bill. MR. BURDITT: The one other concern DORIS M. JONES & ASSOCIATES, INC. 5 1 1 1 1 l 1. 1 1 21 2 2; 2: 2= 1 we had was we did ask the highest bidder to come in 2 prior to the second rounds of bids to talk to him 3 about what he might do and to look for other things 1 that may be better for the town over and above the 5 sale price; and this doesn't do anything for that. j MR. HECHENBLEIKNER: Right. 7 MR. BURDITT: This doesn't say we can 3 talk to any of the bidders that were not successful 3 bidders. Is there any way we can get something in a that says that we can have a discussion? You know, L we invited the guy there. He showed up and then 2 _everybody ran scared andsaid we can't talk to him 3 because we're going out to bid again. I MR. COHEN: There is nothing that i prevents you from talking to them or to anyone else, 3 and that was part part of the discussion we had 7 about if you were to use a broker to identify people 3 in the area and the state and the country who might be interested in this. The bottom line is that the before you award a contract there would have L to be a bidding process under the Uniform > Procurement Act. But that doesn't preclude you from 3 identifying possible bidders and discussing with them what they might do for the town. DORIS M. JONES & ASSOCIATES, INC. 6 1 Further, you could also structure RFP that 2 goes out for bid as, you know, one of the elements. 3 We're requiring certain things for the town. 4 MR. HECHENBLEIKNER> Just as an 5 example, bidding on both Bear Hill and Pearl Street 6 School use Pearl as an example, it's a simpler 7 one. We had bid it twice, got no qualified bids and 8 the building was sitting there. We had somebody 9 come to the town with the proposal, it happened to 10 be Longwood with a broker. We said we're not paying 11 the broker. If you want to, pay the broker, if 12 that's-the deal you want to strike, that's fine; and 13 they made a presentation -as to what they wanted to 14 doe We talked with the board about it. The board, 15 said fine. We went out to formal bid. They were 16 one of two bidders. They happened to be the only 17 qualified bidder. They wound up with the deal. 18 MR. BURDITT: What I'm coming from 19 is I think what I'm coming from I think our hands 20 are still tied at the 80 percent limit. Say 21 somebody came in say they wanted to make us an 22 offer, and they would take the building down and 23 they would give us something that would be five 24 times whatever we thought we were getting in taxable DORIS M. JONES & ASSOCIATES, INC. 7 1. 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1.3 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 revenue; but if they haven't offered 80 percent of the MR. HECHENBLEIKNER: Appraised value. MR. BURDITT: appraised value, we can't even I wouldn't feel there is nothing we could do about it. We couldn't sell to them, and it could be a wonderful, tremendous thing for the town; and we can't talk to them if it's not 80 percent of the appraised value. MR. HECHENBLEIKNER: Or you could run out and call a special town meeting to make a presentation. MR. BURDITT: You could, but I think what we had hoped to do was to get some language so that we could avoid that. We had hoped we could get something in here that said we're not going to give the building away. We would like the opportunity. I think -the 80 percent still limits us as the 100 percent limited us. Is there a possibility to get something 80 percent or whatever would bring the town a building that would give us excess of what the tax revenue would be at 80 percent, you know, something like that that allows us to talk to see what else we might get? DORIS M. JONES & ASSOCIATES, INC. 8 1 2, 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 MR. RUCKER: Can I ask a question? MR. PACINO: Go ahead. MR. RUCKER: I guess it's to Ted and I was just trying to see if in here and I'm not suggesting this, I'm just asking a question. If it's possible if you remove the bold stroke capitalized words in the draft. Wait just a second for Ted to get to the page. Which says for an amount not less than 80 percent and the and the subsequent word and then it would be upon such terms and conditions. MR. COHEN: The language about the minimum amount MR. BURDITT: Mm-hmm. MR. COHEN: is not strictly necessary. As I was explaining there are a couple of statutes. The statute we're relating to is sale of property that was acquired by taking. It requires that you specify a minimum amount. This property which was acquired by purchase does not, strictly speaking, require that. However, it has been a policy in the town for probably at least the last 15 or more years to specify a minimum amount in every authorization for sale. DORIS M. JONES & ASSOCIATES, INC. 9 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 1.2 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 So what Len is suggesting is indeed possible. I mean, that's a political thing. If you all want to stand up before town meeting and explain to them why you're taking it out and get town meeting to agree to it, legally you can do it. In our discussion the other day I think I was the one who suggested the 80 percent because that was pretty much the figure that your bids have come in at. As a means of leaving something in so that town meeting doesn't feel that you're giving things away and that things are totally open ended. I mean, you know what town _ meeting is like nowadays You know, maybe they would say fine,_ You know, we trust the --light -board and the Board of Selectmen to agree to an appropriate amount. MR. BURDITT: I don't mind the 80 percent being in there. But what I would like is still the ability to MR. HECHENBLEIKNER: Do a qualitative evaluation instead of quantitative. MR. BURDITT: to get more in tax revenues or something that wouldn't give us the 80 percent of the sale value. MR. COHEN: I mean, perhaps you could DORIS M. JONES & ASSOCIATES, INC. 10 1 do something for an amount in money or other goods 2 or services. 3 MR. BURDITT: Or future tax revenue 4 or something like that. 5 MR. HECHENBLEIKNER: Your feeling was 6 somebody might buy the building now and might pay 7 $10,000 here in property taxes and pay, you know, 8 375,000 or somebody might buy the property, demolish 9 the building, put something up that would pay 10 $50,000 a year in property tax and you would like to 11 be able to evaluate something against the other; and 12 the long-term example is for us the problem the 1.3 light board is going to have with that. They don't- 14 get_ the taxes.- They get the =cash. So .hat's part 15 of what they would have to evaluate> 16 MR. BURDITT: I know. 17 MR. HECHENBLEIKNER: It's a joint 18 decision. So the light board would have the input 19 into that. 20 MR. BURDITT: Part of what Mollie 21 wanted last week was to have two numbers in here; 22 one is with the building demolished and the other 23 was with the building up, two sale prices. 24 MR. RUCKER: The only potential DORIS M. JONES & ASSOCIATES, INC. 11 1 problem with that is somebody has got to pay to 2 demolish the building. 3 MR. BURDITT: I understand. Somebody 4 says I'll give you $50,000 and I'll tear the 5 building down. If the land value is 50,000, it 6 should be sold at 50,000. Again, this is better 7 than that. 8 MR. RUCKER: The reason I was asking 9 the question to Ted is my observation would be if 10 that was removed, assuming that the political 11 decision was to do that, and town meeting went along 12 with it, then it leaves the control in that both the 13 Board of Sele-c_tmen have o_ne, set of objectives and 14 the Municipal Light Board which have a different set 15 of objectives after both agree. So it was a check 16 and balance that occurs right in there. 17 MR. FACINO< And the problem you run 18 into is the same problem you ran into before. The 19 appraised value was put in by the finance 20 committee. The finance committee came forward and 21 was very concerned about property going for less 22 than value. And it's a concern that is out there in 23 town meeting. I mean, that's the problem with 24 removing some sort of controls in the town meeting DORIS M. JONES & ASSOCIATES, INC. f 1 1 1 1 1 1+ 1! 2! 2: 2: 2; 24 12 1 that they feel they can at least try to guide the 2 process, so both. 3 MR. RUCKER: It's a devil's advocate 4 argument. This is an interesting problem with the 5 general m anager. T he devil's advocate argument 5 would be that twice it's been tried and it didn't 7 work, but more impo rtantly the ratepayers' point of 3 view. In fact, the carrying cost of this is being born 100 percent by the ratepayers. And it's an increase in cost. 1 MR. BROWN: And loss of tax revenue to the town. MR. HECHENBLEIKNER: By not selling i MR. BROWN: By not selling it. i MR. RUCKER: I was looking at it from the light department. 3 MR. HECHENBLEIKNER: It's not good for town. MR. RUCKER: 65,000 a year. MR. PACINO: Is there a way to ! convert the bold letters to some sort of guideline, the suggested guideline? MR. HECHENBLEIKNER: One of the DORIS M. JONES & ASSOCIATES, INC. 13 1 things that you could do I think, Ted, is if you did 2 what Len said and take the phrase out, then it gives 3 you more latitude in terms of the motion so that the 4 motion could come back and say 80 percent or 70 5 percent or 40 percent. I mean as long as it's 6 MR. RUCKER: Or the board and 7 commission could meet separately to establish the 8 criteria. 9 MR. HECHENBLEIKNER: You would have 10 between now and April 10 to decide exactly what the 11 motion should say,. 12 MR. PACINO: Interesting point maybe 13 in. terms of havi_i-ig the motion strike that and then J 14 have the commission and the board meet and et--__a 15 guideline and say this is what the guideline is,, 16 MR. RUCKER: I think you have to 17 reach an accommodation because ultimately it takes 18 both your votes if you don't find an accommodation. 19 MR. HECHENBLEIKNER: I suggest you 20 take FinCom into that meeting also. 21 MR. PACINO: Obviously. 22 MR. RUCKER: To me what it does is it 23 leaves you a clean slate to then see what's 24 MR. COHEN: Right now it says not DORIS M. JONES & ASSOCIATES, INC. 1 2 3 4 J 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 - 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 14 less than appraised value. What you're taking it down to is zero. What you're basically doing is taking it down to zero, and I think we could amend it. MR. HECHENBLEIKNER: Where could you make the motion to? MR. COHEN: I think we could. MR. RUCKER: I don't think it really comes down to I understand the zero. Politically with the selectmen and commission you are going to have two different objectives; and ultimately, I think the political process itself between the two boards will come to some reasonable MR. PACING: What I would see is the time that this article is presented to own meeting as presented as part of it a separate package showing these are the guidelines the two boards have agreed on, boom. MR. information on the building, what the MR. MR. MR. HECHENBLEIKNER: As well as history of what happened with the bids were. PACING: Yes. BURDITT: Yes. HECHENBLEIKNER: So town meeting DORIS M. JONES & ASSOCIATES, INC. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 15 has background. I think when this was passed MR. RUCKER: That's exactly right. When this was initially approved, why would you not have asked for the appraised value. Now you bid it twice and have some experience you can go back to town meeting and say, well, look, we have a white elephant here that won't go for the appraised value. MR. BURDITT: Right. MR. HECHENBLEIKNER: I think it does go to the concerns Bill has. Part of that package can be some qualitative elements to it also in terms of whether it's job creation, tax benefit and so forth, MR. BROWN: Iagree. MR. HECHENBLEIKNER: That would be part of the mix. MR. COHEN: Actually, we would need to change something else I think because we've got here using a written appraisal prepared by a qualified commercial property appraisal firm to determine the minimum amount to be paid for such conveyance. MR. BURDITT: I think we can still use that. DORIS M. JONES & ASSOCIATES, INC. 16 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 II 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 MR. PACINO: I think that can stay. MR. COHEN: We can still use the term minimum amount. MR. BURDITT: I don't know about using minimum amount, maybe take that out; but I think we can use the appraised value. MR. COHEN: You have to under the Uniform Procurement Act you have to have an appraisal done. MR. BURDITT: And we've done that. I'm saying leave that out. I don't know about the m_izzimum MR..PACINO: I would leave that in. MR. HECHENBLEIKNER: Say fair market value as opposed to the minimum amount because you're already you're below that, you're saying taking out -the minimum amount. MR. RUCKER: Remove minimum, put fair market. MR. PACINO: Put fair remove minimum. Put fair. MR. COHEN: Take out minimum to determine the amount to be paid for such conveyance. MR. PACING: Okay. DORIS M. JONES & ASSOCIATES, INC. 17 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12_ 1.3 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 MR. BURDITT: Yes. Yes. MR. COHEN: Upon such terms and conditions. MR. RUCKER: Those deletions I think just give the selectmen and the light board maximum flexibility. 4 MR. PACING: Mm-hmm. MR. HECHENBLEIKNER: Then when you draft the motion MR. BURDITT: What we need to do is be within the bounds I think is the word. Is that right, Ted, for what we do tonight? MR COHEN:- Righte MR. HECHENBLEIKN'ER: But between now - and town meeting light board, FinCom and the Board of Selectmen meet and determine what the motion will say, and it may say 80 percent or it may not say 80 percent; but credit will be given for taxable value or I mean, you know MR. BURDITT: Yeah. MR. RUCKER: I think as long as it says Board of Selectmen and Municipal Light Board you've got your check and balances. MR. PACINO: Right. DORIS M. JONES & ASSOCIATES, INC. 1 I I 1 I 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2, DORIS M. JONES & ASSOCIATES, INC. 19 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 I think, yeah. MR. COHEN: I was just going to say by deleting the word minimum and by deleting the phrase for an amount not less than the appraised value and you so it would then read so and so and so forth and using a written appraisal prepared by a qualified commercial property appraisal firm to determine the amount to be paid for such conveyance; and to authorize the Board of Selectmen and Municipal Light Board to convey all or any part of such property upon such terms and conditions as the Board of Selectmen and the Mu-nic-ipal- Light Board shall consider proper:a MR PACINO: Okay. MR. RUCKER: And you can go to the political process before the meeting. MR. PACINO: Right. MR. RUCKER: Which incidently I won't be here for town meeting. (Discussion off record) MR. PACINO: At this point, I mean, from the last meeting we can't formally take a vote because we're not an official quorum. I think in the last meeting, the last meeting kind of DORIS M. JONES & ASSOCIATES, INC. DORIS M. JONES & ASSOCIATES, INC.