call to order myself Al Hoy Dean harach John Kane pres suore is absent public comment there I don't see any a motion made was made to approve the June 24th meeting by Mr razik and second by Mr Kane we at the meeting minutes okay um first on the agenda agenda is the public comment if none moving on okay we're good we're good y we have an appointment with Greg daily it to well which we'll bring at the end uh next on the agenda is to review the minutes of June morning 4th and I make a motion to approve I make a motion to approve the June minutes second motion to approve the Jun minutes old business Mr fos filio will speak at with the board at the August meeting the appell at tax board meeting is postponed until September 18th or the 25th is there is there a better date for the board I'm good with either one I guess uh I don't I don't see a problem okay I don't have a confidence either for new business can I get a motion to approve the June motor vehicle abatement I make a motion I make a motion to approve the June motor vehicle abatements I second the motion to approve the June motor vehicle ABS can I get a motion to approve the WB Mason bill for 16477 I ranic make a motion to approve the WB Mason Bill joh F second the motion to approve the WB Mason bill for $164 77 can I get a motion to approve the motor vehicle commitment number four ID heric make a motion to approve the number four motor motor vehicle commitment sorry John Kan second that motion I get a motion to to approve the request to the select board to hire an assistant assessor for Sue guard iic make a motion to uh bring to the board uh the assistant position to Su gor's on the assessor's office second John K second you'll bring that right over yep is there anything the board wishes to discuss I would like to make a motion to adjourn if nothing go to adjournment pause no what we're going to bring uh what we were going to originally do in the first part uh which is we're going to have a discussion with Greg is it D DIY and Je Jean qby yes of the economic development okay I'll good thank you introduce what we're doing with economic development right now it's it's not done a lot in in the past but now with a new master plan published we have a lot of tasks forment so last year it was expanded to nine members um and we take on a lot of projects one project for example is we built a business directory for any of the businesses in town that wanted to be in it for free and it's online if you haven't been there you got to go there it's just remember shops in town when you go to that site up Pops all the categories let's say you're looking for a restaurant you tap on restaurants how many restaurants you think there are in town 30 there's 30 that's there's 30 you tap on it and all 30 in alphabetical orders show up scroll through let's say you want to well southw again how L are they open tap on that it gives you the hours the description of what they serve their phone number their address website you can tap on the phone number to call tap on the website to go to the website instantly all of this in like 20 seconds and not just all the restaurants but 157 businesses now in town so that's one of the things our goal is to make this a great place for small businesses especially great place to do business and one of our projects is to help evaluate potential new businesses coming in uh just to be honest I got involved in town government because of carvana and it was an example of a business that I did a lot of study of and determined that it was just a horrible business for South a poor fit with our infrastructure it would have caused horrible traffic there would have been a big long articulated call car holder hauler every five minutes going in out caring 10 cars each uh and nobody really did an evaluation of what the upside would be what what would the I heard some tax revenue numbers thrown out but I don't think there's any good research so my goal our assumption going in is is growth is good but not all growth there's good growth and there's growth that can have more negatives than positives it could potentially cause more infrastructure cost cost to the town and services and Roads and whatever else then it contributed um and so we wanted to come up with a way to evaluate all the pluses and minuses and one of the pluses would be an evaluation of the property tax revenue and we know from looking at I've studied the the online databases with the state and other sources I could find and I see that right now the the share of property tax from business is 6 and a half% of the total plus there's personal property tax that's about 5% but I I can't find what percentage of that is actually due to business because I know that some is business and some is uh you might be a second home or other property that's subject to tax uh and so it's not a big part and I also evaluated over the course of six years and the share of business has actually been declining not because business has necessarily been going down but because residential construction has gone up so residential is even a higher percentage of the total of of the income for the town which isn't necessarily A Bad Thing it it has to do with with an evaluation of what is a better thing for the town um and one of the metrics I'd like to develop is the property tax revenue per acre because land is the the resource for the town that's most clearly limited there's only so much land it's what they say in real estate they're not making any more of it um so we want to bring in businesses that make the most efficient contribution for the the land that they take up and it it's surprising sometimes the really big businesses or big box stores actually contribute less per acre than some of the more densely concentrated small businesses plus they're less flexible they can come in and fail and move out and then you got a big vacant property that that is the worst liability because it's does it depend on their lease well there's all kinds of complications you know the lease you know how much construction they do whether that that site now is inflexible you know fortunately a lot of the things that have come and gone can be reused you know we have two Bank branches that turned into a orthodontic or or S Oral Surgery Center in a you know dog grooming place so things can be flexible uh we've got a you know the Family Dollar that is you know probably small enough to be flexible but notoriously some of the bigger properties that you know can see in out in other places where malls go bad and then you've got acres and Acres of asphalt and big structures the Eastfield Mall they just had tear down um you know we don't want huge things that aren't can't be readapted so my questions that's just in general our our approach to it my questions are about additional sources of data that I can get that will help me evaluate potential tax revenue I know that in in one sense business properties are valuated much the same way as Residential Properties look at the the market value and I I've studied our online guest mapping system you can look at them one at a time and see the pattern uh but I know that there's other elements is there any database I know the total amount of personal property tax but I don't know how it's split between you know business and non-b business is there any source of data that I know the individual returns are confidential the form twos the form of list but is there any database that would have an aggregation by type of any or any additional detail of personal property tax um I could look into that because I do personal property for there but we do it specifically just for businesses new and existing is there is there a total of what the business portion of that is we know that it's a million something in total do we know the total for business versus other kinds of personal property oh that's a good question I would have to look into that yeah that would be a a person thing of Interest aside from it being you know data or whatever I don't think that's a good way to get tax money through the personal property for businesses just my my two cents well Al tell you when I get a when I get a it looks like a horrible I don't I don't I totally agree with you that I look at that form of bliss and say I would hate to fild this out I think it's that's that's yeah you start nicking and it's a way for it's to start having issues between you know assessors and businesses and things like that you didn't go after his lawn mower behind his shop but you went after my weed you know that kind of stuff and it gets oh I think if I I think it's horrible I'm not looking for whether I agree with it I'm looking for how to estimate it and I know that if you're in a corporate form you're exempt from a lot of it because you're being taxed corporately by the state and so if you nowl see your different form of government then that's where you get hit although there is a$ 10,000 minimum on they won't assess anything if if the property is less than 10,000 so I know there's all kinds of qualification but it still adds up to a million whatever and the the application I would like to use it for is you know we had the Dollar General Pros to come in and if we had this prepared I would have done an quick evaluation of that and you know I was actually glad to see that they they turn it away for now I know that there can be an appeal but that's an example I imagine that they're corporately organized so you're not going to have any much of any pro I know there's certain kinds of things that are still taxable but for the most part you won't have very much personal property from their their inventory you know that would be their biggest value but if it's corporately formed we're not taxing inventory right so that's something I think people Overlook they think oh well look at this big business all the but they don't give us anything but they don't give us and plus even their property tax right I don't know if it was a leasing situation whatever but right um do the dollar store is a lease yeah so I that would be another thing that I want to understand but I our goal is not necessarily just give you give our opinion we're looking for objective measurements factual things we don't have uh direct power as an as a um Commission in the town but we have advisory position which has persuasive power If We Gather really solid clear data and evidence we can present it to the select board to the planning board to the people that will make the actual decisions right in this case the planning board and I don't think there's any other Commission in town with with kind of the mission of of looking at the big picture at range picture and I'd like to be able to look five and 10 and 20 years down the line because there are some some businesses that give you a one-time bump but then cost money after that that's true even certain types of development at residential and we want to be able to evaluate that uh and you want to look at their stability they'll be around there in the long run you know all of those considerations um and you know especially if there's some negotiation about tax abatement which makes me very nervous to you know I think we would if there's any discussion of tax vement we would really want to dig in and do the analysis because you know if you're going to give them a break first of all I think that's somewhat unfair to other businesses it is you give some people breaks and other people breaks and people that have been paying into this town for many years right and I worry about a Dollar General do we really that's not a need in the town so what it would happen is it would pull away from all the other convenience stores mom and pop and you know whole variety of other uh retail businesses because we're got all the things they offer are already pretty all available so it's that type of thing is the objective things we would list to help advise the planning board in particular but also select board and in terms of other sources of data I know that accessories use a the cama C it's a computer assisted modeling processors yes are there is any of that data potentially exportable or is there any analysis tools available on that system well we do have reports that we can generate and we have to tell it what criteria you want for that report I would have to I'm not exactly Savvy with that it's usually Sue our director that does all that so I could look into it for you yeah the one one report in particular that I'd be interested in is to just spit out I don't care about even necessarily the names of the businesses or the residents but the type where we could analyze here's the property size the acreage which would be in the database and here's the assessment and here's the type of you know the the category whatever you call of the business or residential or what type of Business Industrial versus whatever if if we had just those few elements I could do an analysis that would show what are the most profitable businesses for the town in terms of Revenue per acre see but from a from a town like ours a farming town where acreage is important if we're going to try to push the tax burden onto higher acreage par no I'm not talking about pushing it on Ely that's to that but why would you want the information I mean that's what we're trying to do you want to increase per acre got understand is the goal is to use our acreage more efficiently not to to charge it higher in other words if and I'll just make up a case say Dollar General wanted to come in in and have a 3 Acre parcel and pay it over and whatever I want to know is that an efficient use of those three acres I would argue that it isn't I mean it's going to it's going to militate against mostly the big sprawling bu it'll be against big sprawling businesses because it's a poor use we're not going to try to push anybody out it's about evaluating businesses that might come in and be disruptive in in other ways like this Dollar General was a big issue for the abuts and you know one negative is it could have pulled down residential property assessments that would offset the the higher assessment of the Dollar General and there are all kinds of secondary impacts and those are the kind of things we want to be aware of and just again we're just informing people and saying and and the model that I'm thinking of primarily is that carvana you know taken huge amount of prime land and agricultural land I've heard that Prime land a lot of times but it's been sitting there for a long time with nothing on it you know so that's that has been doesn't essentially a tax zero tax for the past what however many years and it's industrial land but it's was converted to to lower the tax no and and the right you use of that you know it has to be evaluated and again it's not just the total amount and and in terms of of tax again if you took all of our businesses put together they're only six and a half% of the total property tax so you know adding another you know little bit is not going to offset anybody's residential tax rate because the the leverage point is is so um and it's also an valuation if you were to go to a two-tier tax system that has come up it would just hurt the small businesses the most Crush CR double tax right so that's I I have spoken before the select board against any kind of of higher rate for business because it's not appropriate for account no we've we've we've spoken well we want to keep it the same rate as for businesses as residential I totally agree with that so just so you know where we're coming from we I think we are biased towards small businesses we love small business we love the businesses that are owned by our residents our friends our neighbors they circulate money in the town rather than a big corporation that takes it out and well I think of the 157 businesses not a lot of those are brick and mortar right I think a lot of we're counting people that have a home business bu yes and count as a business although very I don't have a whole lot of home businesses in that you know say there's 30 restaurants there's hey it how you doing late no worries told you're caught on the beautiful Mass PL I'll let you introduce yourself uh Mark fulgo 14 Ranch Club Road and member of the economic part of our sub committee this is our chairman Al ho that's danan herek our vice chairman and that's our clerk John Kane and I was just had gone through the you know our project of trying to better evaluate new businesses and and telling them that our bias is toward um smaller businesses you know a lot of what we're talking about for tools are things that we would use to raise red flags for large outside businesses that people might think oh yeah it'd be great to have a huge used car processing thing that paved over 100 acres or whatever it was well let's do the numbers we're not necessarily here to just give a personal reaction we're here to run the numbers and say well look at all the costs look at all the negatives look at you know the impact on the bigger picture uh the fact that businesses as a whole are only 6 and a half% maybe we'd be yeah you say it's empty maybe we'd be better off if there were homes there maybe it should be rezoned and we can make those um recommendations you know it's important to get a balance of open land too but uh CPC funds sometimes yeah right FS but our goal is to persuade with information so what what kind of businesses are you got ideally if you could go find your next business to come to town what would it be like what what kind not not a brand or store particular or any type of name but like what what are we trying to seek out right now I'm just curious first of all I want something that's has jobs that are better than just minimum w Ag and struggling to fill those anyway and you know sure it's it's nice to have a fancy bagel store we employ high schoolers that's that's great I like those too but you if you have a my understanding is some of the these businesses with lowend wages are just struggling to to sta them um so I would I would I would love to have businesses with you know whether they're higher Tech I if you have some yeah you know I don't know enough to answer that question yet and that's one of the reasons why we're here um we're trying to understand you know the impact of businesses on the town you know one of the things we have as our driving objective is to help improve the town economically right when that means you know um good ta good tax revenue and what does good mean well something that fits in with our master plan something that fits in with zoning something that fits in with the you know sort of the spirit and essence of our of our town um personally you know I see some vacancies uh particularly on on College Highway um you know we had the restaurant that closed um Romas uh and I understand there's some potential plans for that but I see the Family Dollar closing and I I look at those as as opportunities okay we have some properties that that are prominent they're right on you know main drag they're they're I think they're great properties um and bringing in some you know TR helping to attract you know some good business I see our role is really being the filter so to speak or or the conduit I shouldn't say filter because we don't filter we're the conduit um where businesses that are interested in Southwick have a place to go we're trying to streamline sort of One-Stop shop uh you know helping to to be of assistance to those businesses and also to be of assistance to existing businesses who want to grow and develop um in town um from my past experience um I was on economic development in in Rocky Hill Connecticut um kind of a a different town but had a history of farming kind of transitioned a little bit uh a lot of mixture of residential some Light Industry you know they attracted a television station for example that was in an industry uh Industrial Park very clean industry right very clean business brought a lot of um people into town and that drove a lot of um uh sponsorship of the restaurants and things like that so that was a good business for Rocky Hill we were there that was a cou to attract a TV station from the city um into into our town and perfect fit in the industrial park so you know looking at I mean we're very sensitive to the right fit right type of business but we want to start with an objective evaluation we started asking just amongst ourselves how did decisions get made made um how does the select board um make decisions what happened in the case of carvana how was that evaluated and assess because there's obviously an opportunity for tax revenue again I use the term good businesses good fit there got to be good Revenue because we could have some that brings all kinds of Revenue to town but it changes the complexion of town um but our job I think the first job is is for us to you know sort of understand how we could objectively evaluate businesses and and one of those is is what impact they have on tax revenue and that's the area you are all some of that now and we've talked about Cindy is g to look at the C system and fact I'll just give you my card here see have my contact and I can follow up with you specifically on on what kind of thing because I don't think you need to fear us John expressing a little concern about about what kind of approach and our approach is to preserve the character to be entirely consistent with the master plan that was was agreed to and they're right now in the process of building the implementation team they're looking for three residents to be on it recruiting that because they have one person from select one from planning and then three residents to to implement it and we've got a long list in EDC of of goals we have within it you know for example one thing we're going to do in in the next year is create a Rec Recreation destination map for Southwick that'll be sponsored by the businesses they'll pay it for it won't cost the town anything but it'll promote the right kind of visitors not the North Pond crowd right kind of visitors to come into town and spend money and and the businesses what kind of business to get people to come in and spend money in town that's that's the thing I don't see draw is we're drawing people in to use our resources but not to replenish them you know like this isn't for the EDC or whatever but I'm just you know just with that North P that you brought up oh we don't want that that's why if we like I was asking what kind of business is what kind of business you I do heavy construction okay repair are you in our directory no I'm I'm in agam oh you're in agam okay all right so you're not I can't find property sou okay so yeah we and we want to bring bring in people that will spend money in our can as matter fact one of the things I did today I did my homework I've got a list of all the vacant that assignment on Wednesday and but I'll you know so if you did want to come to town you know I see one of our eventually one of our roles is how you know how can we help you can we help you you know um find you know vacant we're starting to profile what are the vacant properties in town both raw land as well as buildings and you know try to find a fit because let's say you weren't familiar you are familiar with town but if you weren't familiar with town and you just wanted to know hey I'd like to put um you know whatever clean business in town and and um you know so our our point would be how can we help you how can we help you I agree with the the data you guys want to collect that you can give to businesses to say hey this is what we're offering and this is what you know we can work with yeah and then also to give the town right the selectman say the select board and planning board we want them to make informed decisions they're so busy sometimes they don't have time to do we have and we have now with the means to compile it and analyze it right so here's a question that I raised at our meeting about businesses coming into town and and the work of some of the other um boards and commissions and even the select board um I'm not passing judgment on this I'm stay away from that but um we have potentially and likely two marijana dispensaries that are going to come into town so I asked the question okay zoning is taken care of it's seems like um a good job was done in uh restricting where so that we don't run into problems with schools and other things and but the question I asked was well um has anybody evaluated the two proposal or the all the proposals including the two that are up for decision I guess U maybe tonight is there well something happening tonight on that I I don't know but that's a special case because there's a special extra tax for marijuana performance of the business yeah the point being there should be and I don't know if there was there should be a financial evaluation of those businesses um or any business coming into town but let's take those as a as a case tax revenue so our standard tax revenue that we would get from any business in town if they own those bills Holdings what does that generate um in that particular use how are they tax you know understanding that and then what equipment do they have because some of these places have from what I understand fairly sophisticated equipment uh to um help in the production process or whatever we discuss the property tax piece of it which is kind of harder to get I guess and then on top of that there would be you know whatever the state I I know the state has you know their extra tax on these businesses and the question I had was does any of that come back to town I think that should all be part of an objective evaluation oh yeah we we should and pursue that it may not be this board that that we right do that piece with but but even with the selection of which business should be given I'd like to see an objective evaluation of those businesses including what's in our domain and that is the economic impact working with you all like what's the tax impact but then what's the cost impact depending on what they're going to do how they're going to be structured you know what impact is that going to have on you know other City Public Works and other boards to try to evaluate the cost side this is about getting an objective snapshot right so so let me just summarize so we don't get off too far off track but what we're we're going to do is start start by I think Cindy it sounds like you're the one that has access to this database yes the most you're going to look into that and see if if we can pull out ideally what I'd like to do is is get the giz information off the geographic in information M the challenge with that is I can only look up one property at time right so it take me forever to yes compile it if if that's in a database format and I can work with any database format right spreadsheet you know database you know whatever I have to see what it see what there or or an exported even better an exported um chunk of that right kind of met metadata of of it um and you want to categorize like industrial small businesss category yeah the the total assessment and the land area those are acreage the acreage those are the initially the three key metrics um and I know that that the kind of structures and everything is important part of the evaluation but again our limited most limited resources like right so if they're more efficient that's better and then I I'm wondering on business assessments let's say it's a well let me read something from from agam and I want want you to explain what this means says valuation techniques for commercial industrial properties include analysis from an investment point of view since the purchase price the buyer is willing to pay depends in part on the return he expects to receive projected rents and expenses are analyzed and then capitalized driiv an estimated market value through income income approach value I I can see how that would certainly apply to an apartment right complex would it also apply to other kinds of of businesses like a mini mall or something like that a mini mall or even a Le a gas station a gas station location is and and the you know the setup and the location you might if looked at the land well the land is only worth um you know 500,000 or something but maybe the last purchase of the gas station was a million and a half yes because because of the economic the the value of the business is higher than the value of the land so aam sends out a a sheet and it says you know write square footage dollar per square foot you know anything that if you're renting out your building to anybody whether it's back to your own business but separate you know yeah if it's renting multiple storefronts what's your opinion to that um as a business owner I think it's it's tough because you're asking these people to maybe even limit their income to try to skate the taxes you know what I mean to yeah it's a perverse incentive for and and really I mean do you want to go after businesses for more tax just because making more money you know I think when it comes down to like property tax and things like you got to go buy the property right you know I don't think we can start taxing I was just curious that they do that because you know as a Revenue Services here right when I when I start my business right I was start as basically by myself and then as I'm trying to just make money right if you were to evalue my business over 10 years based on that if I were renting at fair market back to myself my tax would be a right well I mean another way to think of it is if I'm running a if I'm a graphic artist and I run my business out of my home the value is has nothing to do with the property it's about my skill as a graphic artist but if I'm a gas station owner the value has to do a lot with the property the location of it and the permanent structures that are part of the property so they're different things yeah I I agree they're they're different and and so what you're trying to do in in property taxes to relate it to the market value you know how much could you sell it for is is the business that's tied to the permanent structures you know has the business potential of that raise the value I know I look at at some of and I just selectively looked at some businesses and I see that they're assessed I'm just going to make up num assessed at 500,000 but the last time the changed hands it was million dollars or million is that part of the valuation or is it it's it could be anything that would make a change that's the thing how how often are are the well it it's supposed to be like every five years but um it it changes every year really depending on a sales of so sometimes it can change yes it's based on because you have to report all all the sales gets reported to the to the do yeah okay I mean all of those are complications and I don't want to get into the process of it I just understanding what things affect it because I'm I'm mostly wanting to take our approach through just a data averaging type of thing said well this kind of business so if we saw a Dollar General and I don't know if this data would be available from other places is Dollar General agam you know what is the tax on that is that available through this Tam system or you limit no we only do yeah it's just this town and I I know there's online data that it usually doesn't come down to a property well it's not precise look ours is precise I up the G for that property agam so for comparison we could do that selectively too so the business is obviously taxed on the real estate whoever owns that real estate is taxed what what else in a in a business like the Dollar General it's not inventory or anything but if they had equipment would that fall into um the the the property tax it's personal property but if it's leased they don't get taxed but if they own their registers and let's say they were own in the case of a marijuana dispensary they were doing processing and they owned their equipment that they were using for that that would be a taxable correct element okay you know a couple qualifications said there was 10,000 they don't tax any below the total is is has to be greater than 10,000 and secondly if it's a corporate business structure most of it is exempt from tax because they pay corporate tax to the state right so if it's an LLC or something else they're going to be you know if Dollar General is probably corporate but if they were Private Business their all their inventory might be taxed and do Farms get exempt like farm equipment um I believe farm equipment is personal property tax exempt yes is it okay one of the properties I looked at today interestingly enough s 74 College Highway 10.8 acres and in the listing it says previously approved for marijuana cultivation so if they were cultivating and they had equipment again the question and it's got me thinking about Farms because we have a lot of farms we consider ourselves a farming community and that's why I asked the question about Farm I don't know TR I don't know if they consider marijuana cultivation farming fing I don't think little bit curious that's I want to get into it because it's very complicated certain hand tools are not personal property other things are animals can be personal property that attacks I mean it's gets really crazy so that's where where I I disagree with the personal property I mean sometimes you're G to get a business that you know say a large business but if you're if you're going to be actually impacting the personal property tax you're going to have a business log enough that you figured out how to not pay it yeah and I told John I totally agree with him we're trying to we're not trying to decide policy that's been decided by the state we're just trying to understand understand yeah so that we can look at a new business and quickly say well probably the the property tax is going to be this there's not going to be any personal property tax on it and it calculates to this per acre and we might say you be better off developing it into homes you know it's not going to produce very much as a business unless it's a desirable business that really adds to the town and an example I would give I think Tractor Supply really adds to the town it's just very popular and it's needed it's forms good Services we didn't need another dollar store so that's I maybe that's somewhat of a matter of opinion but those are objective measures those well I like the idea an objective you know absolutely blueprint to say hey this is fill this out and we're going to look at it and say if you check these boxes yes if you check these ones no right we want gotta we've got to do something that we can doesn't take months or even weeks we want to do something where we can come back with a quick response so we're we're trying stuff for businesses to come to to get all the information they need and also the town can collect all the information that we need sure yeah I think there's a great opportunity for collaboration because we you know with a lot of the boards and commissions in town we with the data that is through all these boards and that we can figure out ways to access it and share data and get good data you know that really tells us something right and that's that's our goal I think we can be the the group that helps coordinate between multiple sources and then we can kind of process that data and project It Forward into the future so okay well we appreciate your time just a couple other really quick questions and I may have missed this but um if a um if a business um is concerned about their assessment they would follow the same process that um you know a homeowner would in terms of coming to you for an like an appeal and then with a periodic reassessment that occurs same thing they would follow that same okay yep yeah because it's not it's not necessarily the the business it's the the property itself right right right would the property which could be could be private yeah yep okay well great this has been helpful really appreciate your your time and and I'll follow up with you sendy sure abely time I'm by myself yeah keep your company you got got my card call I just retired the last year so congrat fible got really busy but I'm flexible I don't tied up at certain hours so give me a call if you start to get something question can I get a motion to adjourn I make a motion to adjourn the meeting John can second motion to adjourn time 623