Bangor committee reviews Waterfront Concerts impact, housing TIF, and chicken rules

[0:11] Joseph Leonard: Good evening everybody, welcome to another regularly scheduled meeting the business economic development committee and the chair of this committee, Counselor Leonard. Committee members are Counselors Fish, Counselor Carson, Counselor Balloon, and Counselor Mallory. We also have around the table Counselors Back, Walker, Dean, and we are also joined by our community economic director and creating. We unfortunately have to reconvene on item number one, the presentation from University of Maine Warner students on their assigned economic development project. So we're going to move right ahead into item two, a presentation of the University Maine researcher Todd Gabe, professor and director of New Maine School of Economics, economic contribution of Waterfront Concert 2026 update, and feel free to come to the table when you're ready. Yeah, like the table? Sure, thanks. All right. [1:11] Todd Gabe: Well, first off, thank you all for inviting me. My name is Todd Gabe. I am a Bangor resident, lived here since 1999. I am the director of the School of Economics and a professor there. My wife is in the audience. She is a lifelong Bangor resident. And I did this project at no cost to Waterfront Concerts, no cost to the City of Bangor, entirely pro bono, part of the University of Maine's public service mission, and also it's a very close fit to the research I do on economic development as we'll see in a moment, and there should be a power point. [1:46] Speaker C (unidentified): Sure, surprise, okay, yes, you're working on the slides, but we also have the slides as well, oh. [1:52] Joseph Leonard: Perfect, yeah, but it should be coming up momentarily, the reason I walked up a minute ago. [1:57] Speaker C (unidentified): Is yeah, up there, all right, well. [2:09] Joseph Leonard: Good, I guess before we get started, I just want to appreciate the work that you did on this, sir. It was a very fun read. But back when I was taking some classes at the University of Maine in the economics department, it was kind of a really nice refresher. [2:25] Todd Gabe: Did you take my class? I did not, unfortunately. Well, [2:31] Joseph Leonard: now it'll be like you did. You know, I'll just treat this as a bonus class they don't get paid for. Okay. [2:39] Todd Gabe: Yeah, so that's pretty much the intro. Just a quick look back. This is not my first rodeo on the topic. I actually did the first project on the economic impact of waterfront concerts. It was a study that went through the 2012 season, so just the first couple of seasons. That report came out in January of 2013. I did an update in 15, And then the most recent, until this update, was a update through the 2016 season. And that report came out in June of 2017. So it's been a while since we've done this update, so I think it's good timing. I've also written some peer-reviewed journal articles. As I mentioned, this is connected to the research I do at the university. We did a project on the effects of popular music concerts on hospitality sales. And that's sort of the foundation of some of the stuff I'm gonna talk about in a few moments. That was published in the review of regional studies. And then I did a travel cost analysis of the concerts, and that was published in applied economics letters. So the type of work I do on this topic, it's gone through peer review at some journals. I promise I will show you the results in a moment. But first I just wanted to talk about sort of how we'll interpret the results. results. First off, the economic contribution I'm going to talk about is just one part of the impact that waterfront concerts have on the community. Some of the other impacts you could quantify, some you couldn't, but a lot of the other impacts are sort of beyond the scope of my research that focuses on economic impact. The second line there is the economic impacts that we're going to talk about a few moments are very much concentrated on concert days. If any of you have attended the concerts, you can appreciate there, it takes a large team of people to work the shows. So of course when we talk about the employment impact, those are many of the people we're talking about. Not all of them, but many of the people we're talking about are the folks that you see that are actually working the shows. And then the final bullet in terms of the economic impact analysis, I use a standard input output model. That's where the multiplier effects come from. I'm actually quite well versed in the input output model we use, implant. I was a student at the university of Minnesota in the mid-1990s. They were actually developing the model at that time. So I took economic impact classes as a master student. We were using very early versions of the implant model, and it had a lot of bugs back then, and now they take care of all the bugs but it was many years ago next slide also I think it's useful to contextualize the results and do you mind if I walk over to the screen I agree I would have brought a laser pointer but Alex would have compensated it little waterfront concert receiver you can't take that yeah but I did bring the bottle with a cap on all right okay so these 15 you see 51 little dots and you see two larger dots these 51 dots are represent the economic impact of live music events in the 50 states plus DC this is from a study that was done in 2025 so pretty similar to the time period that I'm looking at. And this is the natural log of the number of fans. Using the natural log is a common transformation. We are dealing with values that have a very, wide range. This dot right here represents the economic impact of concerts in Alaska. So Alaska had about 84,000, almost 85,000 people attend live music events and the economic impact was 93.1 million the point at the upper right represents California and 24 million fans so a couple of orders of magnitude larger than the number of fans and that makes sense California's the biggest state to have the most live music events and then the economic impact of the live music events in California was 18 billion so again the economic impact ranges from 93 million to 18 billion so that's why we use this type of transformation the two sort of circles here represent the economic impact of the i'm going to share for you in a second related to waterfront concerts this first one right here represents the economic impact over the four-year period of 22 through 25 so there were about 634,000 people that attended the events at Waterford concerts over that four-year period and the economic impact over that four-year period was about 260 million and then this point up here represents the economic impact over all 16 years over the 16 years there were 1.6 million people that attended the shows and the impact over the entire 16 year period is about 601 million the reason I'm showing this to you is the results I'm going to share with you are very much in line with other studies that have looked at the economic impact of live music events. It's kind of interesting if you look at the economic impact over the 16 years of Waterfront Concerts, it sort of is right around a dot that represents a state. If you read the report, you know that state happens to be Iowa. So you can think of the 16 year economic impact of Waterfront Concerts being sort of in line with the economic impact of all the live music events that were held in Iowa. So just to give you some perspective, Iowa had 1.65 million people attend all their live music events and they documented an economic impact of 589 million. So I guess if I wasn't here talking you could literally go to these other studies and say hey which state is most similar to sort of the number of for people that attended the shows at Waterford Concerts. You can plug in the value for Iowa and get a number that's pretty similar to what I had. Guess maybe four, okay. So this chart here might be familiar to some of you. This is tracking hospitality sales. So taxable restaurant lodging sales in the Bangor Economic Summary area. They are adjusted for inflation to January, 2026 dollars. So, as I think most of you know, hospitality sales in the Bangor area is very much cyclical. You have the largest amounts of sales in July and August. It dips down into the winter, I think January, most years would be the lowest amount of sales. I think we still have our New Year's resolutions, we're not going out to eat as much or we're recovering from the holidays. And then the tips that are dark are the amount of hospitality sales that are related to waterfront concerts. So you see a lot of months where there is no tip and that's because there were not no waterfront concerts in those months. I should mention I'm focusing on the live events. I know I know waterfront concerts I think has some events indoor at the cross center but these are purely the outdoor events. So you see in some of the summer months that tip is relatively larger, the four biggest months for like relative percentage of the Bangor area hospitality coming from the concerts. September of 2022 about 12% of the restaurant lodging sales in the Bangor economic summary area associated with the concerts. August of 2023 about 11%, August of 24 about 9%, July of 25 about 9% and August of 25 about 9% as well. And those were the months when they had the largest concerts that attracted the largest numbers of people. Yes, next slide. So here I'm just going to kind of quickly walk through how I sort of the highlights of the economic impact analysis. You see three columns. One is called direct impact. One is the multiplier effects. The final column is total impact. The direct impact would be the economic activity that happens at waterfront concerts. I mentioned that we go to shows, you see people working the shows, those people are counted in that 943 people I mentioned. This in the report I mentioned it earlier and I mentioned again, a lot of these are part-time seasonal jobs. Also some of the direct impact is also spending of concert goers at other businesses in the area. So some concert goers will spend the night in a hotel, some will get will go to a restaurant. Some will do some other spending while they're here. Those numbers are estimated by looking at the taxable retail sales in the Bangor area. I started with data in January of 2000, and I look at data for every month up until the end of 2025. You might say, why did you look at a bunch of data before the concerts even started? That's sort of just to sort of set a baseline for the relationships or like the normal fluctuations that happen in retail sales. As we saw a moment ago, retail sales is tightly cyclical, so in the years before the concerts they follow the same cycles, and then when the concert started you have months with concerts, months without concerts, etc. So that's the direct impact. The multiplier effects are the additional economic activity. For this, I use the Penobscot County input-output or in-plan model. The reason it's a county-level model is that's just the lowest level of geography where those models are reliable. And so the multiplier effects capture the additional economic activity that is supported by the spending of waterfront concerts, the people that work at waterfront concerts and the other businesses that are impacted by water for a concert. So really the multiplier effects, if you think like what types of sectors are impacted, it's just the types of sectors where regular people spend their money. You go to a concert, you see people working, they get a paycheck, they spend that paycheck the same way that we all spend our paychecks, groceries, services, whatever, education, however we're spending our money. And then you see the total economic impact in the far right. We'll go to the next slide. I'll go through these next three pretty quick. This is just looking at that impact over four years, 22, 23, 24, 25. In the upper right there you see that total impact and it's in red and bold. The reason I made it in red and bold is just to remind us that number we saw earlier. When we looked at that scatterplot and I showed you those two big circles in the scatterplot, one of those circles represented that 259 million, which was the impact over the four-year period. Next slide. This is this is the entire impact over the 16 years and again that's 601,000,000. I mentioned earlier. So that is the 601,000,000. That was related to the number here. 1.6 million people who attended the shows over the 16 years. And again, so if you remember one thing, that $601 million, you can remember, it would be similar to the economic impact of concerts in the state of Iowa, very good, yeah, so you can remember that. That's like Iowa, one year of all live music events in Iowa, the number of people that attended those events over that, over one year, very similar to the number of people that attended events over that the whole 16 year run of waterfront concerts next slide just give you an idea of kind of where i'm headed with this work i mentioned in the report i maybe should have mentioned beginning this is like all research it's a work in progress i'm actually taking a pretty deep dive into the effects of concerts on the local lodging sector looking at hotel room rates and availability. In the report, as sort of a teaser, I show some data on hotel room rates the night of the Jelly Roll concert. As it turned out, the Jelly Roll concert was announced sort of like into this year, so I actually had room rates at all the, not all the, I think it's like 16 of the hotels and motels in the bangor area before the announcement was made and then once the jelly roll concert was announced you could see what happened to the room the accommodations both in terms of what they were charging and the availability so as it got closer to the concert a lot of the hotels were sold out right after the announcement you saw that the hotel room rates they actually doubled as a result of that announcement, so I'm sort of taking that concept and I'm blowing it up right now. I have 50,000 daily room rates in the Bangor area. You might think, how could there be 50,000 daily room rates? We don't have that many hotels. There aren't that many days in the year. So a lot of them have repeated observations. And the reason it's important to have repeated observations is hotel room rates and things like availability, it's not static, it's dynamic. If you went and said, hey, what's it going to cost for a hotel room somewhere in Vancouver? If you search right now, you would see what it would cost for a room, say, you wanted a room in September 29th for my birthday, right, if you went to, but then if you went and you looked September 22nd, just a week before my birthday, you might find the price is different you might find that the room is sold out and let's say there's a big event that is announced it's going to happen in Bangor for my birthday right if you look at the room rates today it'll be whatever they're asking maybe if they announce a big birthday party for Todd and I'm not suggesting Bangor needs to have a birthday party for me be nice you don't have to that you can see the room rates would go up so anyway so I'm continuing with that data collection analysis through this year. So again, sort of a kind of a fun deep dive. And that's something I'll definitely be able to publish in an academic journal. I'm not aware that anybody's done that type of research. So the slides you've all been waiting for. Questions, ideas, suggestions are welcome. [19:01] Joseph Leonard: Well, thank you so much, professor. Any questions or comments for Todd? Well, I just wanted to say, oh, please, Councillor Beck. [19:12] Michael Beck: Well, I was just going to ask a question because is there any way to extrapolate from this, hey, because of all of this revenue, you know, for the retiree who lives between 2nd and 3rd Street who emails and says the concerts are allowed, you know, they don't own a restaurant, they don't work for their concerts, how does this translate to whether a lower tax bill for them or the revenue sharing that we get how does it how does it affect their bottom line you know when we celebrate all of the growth because of this how does it affect that the revenue share [19:47] Todd Gabe: Would be a question for somebody else in the room. You would all would know better than I would what you get from the state tax revenue sharing. Certainly there's been a lot of development in the city in and around the concert venue. Whether that would resonate with somebody that lived in that area, I don't know. Could be in, could be an increase in some of the property values around the venue. I haven't studied that explicitly, but that would be something that we could, you could look at the impact of the venue on property values in the area around the venue. Of course that would be sort of difficult maybe to tease out because there's been other development that's happened as well. The YMCA is going in across the street, there's the Bangor Savings, there are a handful of restaurants and hotels. I mean I think they're all sort of connected, but so I get, I guess potentially would say an impact on property values. Yeah, so [20:55] Speaker E (unidentified): I think much like you saw the professor present a direct impact and then a multiplier effect, we could very easily take the data about the waterfront concerts and do we could you know sense out exactly what proportion of our yearly increase in revenue sharing is attributable to the sales tax revenue and other tax revenue that goes into the revenue sharing formula. That would be very easy, the indirect impact, the impact on property values, the impact of people wanting to live in our city because there's a concert venue that they like to attend, you know, those sort of associated impacts. You could accumulate them on a list, but I don't know that we have the expertise internally in the city to actually come up with a number, but undoubtedly contributes also to revenue sharing and other benefits to taxpayers. I made a note of that. I mean that's [21:51] Todd Gabe: something that as I really drove down into the impact on local sales tax, right, or on the taxable sales, I could connect with somebody and yeah, that's right. Did you have a follow-up [22:06] Michael Beck: sure? Well I'd love to see the revenue sharing back because that's something that affects everybody, so I mean great to see, you know, it's a great story to tell. This is what it did for all of [22:16] Joseph Leonard: us. Certainly any other questions, Counselor Walker and Council Carson? Oh I'm sorry [22:23] Carolyn Fish: Counselor Fish, okay, are you ready for me now? Yes, okay, thank you. I just wanted to say this economic impact report is phenomenal, and thank you very much. It's, I wish we had such impactful analytical data for a lot of projects and situations in Bangor, but that was very impressive and very impactful, and thank you very much. I just want to say very impressive, thank you. [22:53] Joseph Leonard: Did either of you have a, are you just notifying? Yeah, so I, the Mike Greg and Nognern and me like has all these questions regarding like different types of impacts for certain artists that come into the venue, like what has grander impact as opposed to like other artists, or whether or not if artists that cancel at the last minute sometimes have an impact on the reputation of the venue as well. I think the, What I really enjoyed about this overall was the confirmation that we are following the same track as all the other venues that seem to be going in this direction anyway, and it shows that this was a very good opportunity that the city decided to take on, and it's paying dividends off of that initial investment. I remember going to one of those first concerts back when it was still a grass field. It was OK Go that was playing there. And it's just amazing what it's turned into recently. And so I just wanted to thank you for just showcasing to us the economic evidence that shows that this is a positive impact for the city overall. And I don't know if you have anything you'd like to say in addition to that. [24:15] Todd Gabe: Getting at your first comment, that would be interesting to sort of look at how the impacts differ for different acts. That was really the crux of what I did in that travel cost analysis of concerts. So this was a published article that looked at like sort of the footprint of the people that come to the shows and how people are willing to travel farther for different types of artists, and the approach I happened to take was just the number of like hit singles that these artists have had. So of course this was only looking at a few years worth of data, so this was looking at like the first three years, so it was a limited number of bands, and there were some bands that would have had a small number of hit singles, there were some bands that would have had a lot of hit singles, just like you know there would be variation in that, and I looked at distances that people would be willing to travel to see different types of acts. And sure enough, there are some acts that, you know, depending on The genre, you're going to draw from a different part of the state, and depending on the genre, you're going to attract some more people from Canada. In terms of the stuff that I'm working on right now, I actually have looked at the impact on both hotel availability and the hotel room rate for all the shows that happened this year. And there is a big difference. I mean, there are some shows that aren't moving the needle on hotels, which makes sense, because there are some shows that there aren't a lot of people that, I mean, they have to have a smaller number of people that go to the shows. Of course, Jelly Roll would be an extreme example that I don't know if it was a sellout, but I mean, it was a very well attended show and there were others. So I think really looking at the effect that the shows have on the hotel room, right? The availability probably lines up very closely with the number of people that attend the shows. And also, I think I am going to also do some analysis around the impact of potentially fewer Canadian people coming into Maine. And then there was one other thing. Oh, the cancellation. That I That, I don't know. I know that there was one no-show this year that ended up coming, and then there was one show that got canceled. In terms of being able to analyze the impacts, when those things happen, it actually helps identify or sort of isolate the effects of the concerts because like if you if you look at I'll use the Little Wayne show as an example so Little Wayne had a scheduled show and you could see the impact that scheduled show had on hotel room rates in the area and then he scheduled another show but that show wasn't scheduled until I think it came on the radar maybe like in early July so that gave you like a lot of contrast so I knew the hotel room rates on the night that Little Wayne ended up coming which I think was July 28th so I saw what that room rate was started in January February March April May June that was pre the announcement of the makeup show and then of course you could see what happened to room rates when that makeup show was announced which I believe [27:59] Joseph Leonard: Was early July, yeah, and thank you for that, and I did have a question for our community economic development director regarding if we're seeing the rate of success with these shows and with the amount of demand that we have for hospitality rooms, hotels, and motels, what does that look like for us as a city in terms of trying to work with some new companies that want to do business in Bangor that see this as an opportunity for them to make a profit off of what is already a profitable entity, yeah. The economic [28:44] Speaker G (unidentified): development team is working looking at the city properties at the cross Center and even downtown to prepare to come to you to possibly prepare a request for proposals for that, because when there's a show you can't get a room in Bangor it's built, which is the good news, so it's a good problem to have, yeah, it's a good problem to have, but we're looking to solve it. [29:10] Daniel Carson: Okay, Councilor Carson, then Councilor Faloon, thank you for all of this work, I would be super interested digging into that hotel data, I know that's whatever, yeah, and interesting, you like one of my takeaways from this is actually the case that this makes for continued economic development, specifically recruiting, you know, certain types of sectors into the city that aren't yet here, but hotels is one area where we struggle, and it's very anecdotal, I mean, we do have some data on that, I can, you know, call over across and they'll say, oh, we had, you know, five conferences last year that we're going to that wanted to come here but they can't, right, and so we don't actually know what the total impact would be, but all of these things together really piece together a compelling narrative, great data to actually be able to make the case for economic [30:00] Todd Gabe: development in some of these spaces, so, and even like, I think I started with when I went through one of my slides, it is a very cyclical hospitality market, as is the entire state, particularly when you get on the coast, like, if you want to see cyclical, like, look at some of the coastal towns, their hospitality sales are around not literally zero, but they're very low. [30:26] Susan Faloon: Thank you, thank you for that presentation. It was fascinating. Do you factor in the costs associated with these concerts, like, I guess security is probably part of the venue, but you know, an increase in crime in the area or emergency services calls and any other, I'm trying to think of what other, like, there are expenses, obviously there's clean up after, you know, the surrounding area because there are lots of people. Are you factoring in any of those added expenses into these numbers? [31:00] Todd Gabe: Well, some of that is what's like generated by the economic impact. When people pay to go to a show, part of that covers, I believe there's an agreement with the city for security and things like that. So that is part of, so some of that is part of the numbers that you saw. In terms of some of the other costs, like some of the other fiscal impacts, it's not captured, but anything that would be paid for out of the revenue generated by the concerts would be included in those numbers. [31:39] Speaker C (unidentified): Any [31:41] Joseph Leonard: other thoughts or questions or comments from council or staff? This was a trip down memory lane for me. I, you are a fantastic professor. Thank you, thank you so much, and we'll be looking forward to any additional data that you might have on this and but definitely let us know if it gets into any publications. [32:07] Todd Gabe: Yeah, like I said, the hotel work will be ongoing through the rest of this calendar year and then I'll be, I'll be, I'll put together some report and come back. [32:17] Joseph Leonard: Oh, great. Thank you so much. Okay. After that exciting presentation, we are going to move on to a land development code discussion, regulations on keeping of chickens in residential zoning districts, and Land Officer Collette has joined us at the table. Would you like to take it away? [32:41] Speaker J (unidentified): So as we were reviewing the land development code, this policy question of how we should address chicken keeping has come up because there is the new state law that basically requires that municipalities can't adopt an ordinance prohibiting the keeping of chickens in residential zones. It does allow us to set guardrails and things like that. our legal staff has interpreted the state law to mean that because we currently in our current ordinance we do prohibit chickens from most residential zones outside of the rural zones we're allowed to keep that but when we change things if we as we are going to change the zoning rules we're going to have to be in compliance with the new state law so we have to address it and so in speaking with our consultants for the land use code you know staff were talking about should we do a minimum lot size for chickens to address some of the nuisance concerns, like rats. Rats is a big concern that have come up, and also odors. The consultants said that, you know, a lot of places now are not doing a minimum lot size. They're really just placing those guard rails around new ascents concerned, putting setbacks in place, addressing rodent control, things like that. And I did include a few places in your memo that talk about what other towns in Maine do. They don't have minimum lot size requirements, but some of them, like Ellsworth, do have some pretty stringent setback requirements. So that's our question to you, is whether you want us to put a minimum lot size into place. If we did do a minimum lot size of one acre, you know, functionally, while there may be a few blocks in the urban area, it would pretty much push them outside of the I-95 corridor. Whether or not we do a minimum lot size, we are recommending do that we have, you know, you know, quite a few guard rails in place, and I've listed those out, what these regulations would look like, and we would address some things in the zoning code as far as, you know, what those setbacks would be and things like that. And then we also propose changes to the animals ordinance to address more of those newest concerns. So the official staff recommendation is to do the middle lot size just to address the concerns with rats, but we want [35:19] Joseph Leonard: to put that question to you. So questions or comments for staff? Well, while we're getting our thoughts underway, I definitely understand where you're coming from with having lot sizes. I'm of the opinion that it's probably at some point in the future in our best interest to not really tie ourselves down to what might eventually be in the future an arbitrary lot size allotment. That said, though, it's a really good starting point at the end of the day. And I did actually very much appreciate you bringing up the three municipality, not variables, examples, yes. And I thought Auburn's was probably most applicable to Bangor overall. If I were just only taking one of those three options, obviously I recommend that we look to something that's more appropriate for us, but I'm just one counselor. I,, oh, Council Carson, did you have a question? [36:34] Daniel Carson: Comment, please, Mr. Chair. I appreciate all of, all of this is really great. My comment would be, I mean, for my fellow counselors would be that I feel that a minimum lot size as large as one acre would nearly defeat the intention of the state law, which is that we are not supposed to be barring people from having chickens in residential zones. So just because of that size, that would be severely limiting, but would agree with what you just said, that what was sort of put there, Auburn's, and maybe reconfigured to be more appropriate for the city of Vancouver, but that sort of layered on lots that are this size, this is how many laying hens there can be and so forth. Thank you for that comment. [37:29] Joseph Leonard: Council Carson, oh, Council Dean, please. Absolutely, perhaps it's not a question, it's more. [37:35] Speaker G (unidentified): Sorry, my concern on a smaller lot would be the size of the actual chicken coop. I have seen some chickens in hoops that they, you know, they should not be in, and if we have a very small area, there's really not going to be enough room for those chickens to roam, and I don't know how we're going to police how these chickens are being treated, right? So we have to be cautious with. [38:01] Speaker C (unidentified): That because we don't want to invite other problems. Oh, please, if you would, we do. [38:09] Speaker J (unidentified): We're recommending a minimum size of the coop. So four square feet per chicken inside the coop, and then 10 square feet outside the coop in a run. And then we're recommending that this use would require a certificate of occupancy that would need inspection by the animal control officer in addition to the code enforcement officer. And it would be complaint driven if there are people, neighbors do see coops they think are too small. It would require a complaint, and then the animal control officer and or code enforcement. [38:37] Speaker C (unidentified): Enforcement officer would inspect, so okay, just one, yes, if you want to follow up, that'd be great. [38:42] Speaker G (unidentified): Do you think we would have adequate time with animal control to handle these complaints if we did allow? I mean, is it something that could get out of hand? I guess what do you mean by time? Yeah, you know, sometimes people have all good things but they go awry, right? They didn't express [39:04] Speaker J (unidentified): concerned. We talked with Trish, the animal control officer who were doing this. She didn't have concerns with her. She's already, I guess she already has to deal with some of the issues [39:12] Speaker C (unidentified): with existing chickens. So yeah, thank you. Did that answer your question? Yes. Sure thing, Councillor [39:19] Susan Faloon: Falloon, and then Councillor Beck. Thank you. I had some of the same questions, so I am concerned about like how do we kind of enforce and monitor that too. So you answered that, but like I live in a pretty small lot in town and my neighbors have chickens and they've definitely, like I can hear them. I mean, it doesn't really bother me. I've kind of gotten used to it, but they've definitely made their way into my yard at times, you know, things like that. I never even gave it a thought about the rat issue and there are already areas of Bangor that have rat problems. So that is definitely a concern for me. And then I guess my other. I had another question, I might have lost it. Do they have to do anything now they have to? Do they currently have to get a certificate of occupancy? Or is that's going to [40:09] Speaker C (unidentified): be new? I don't know what the policy is, if it's another one. Yeah. [40:18] Speaker J (unidentified): And the I mean, technically, they're only allowed right now in the rural residents. It's in a small on the urban area, they're [40:25] Susan Faloon: problem with the book i guess that was where i was going with that like the ones that exist now have they been approved or are they just like showing up and there 's no kind of showing up yeah and so would they have to then get a like if somebody has one that they've had for a while would they have to now once this goes through have to then get a certificate of occupancy yes yeah so okay so then they would get the inspection then so if they're not sort of meeting all of these guidelines then they would have to fix it. Yeah, okay, thank you. Thank you [41:01] Michael Beck: Council Beck, yeah, I'd just be kind of curious how these communities, how they got to their decision, whether they did like public hearings or, you know, who was involved in researching that, just because still off the top of my head and I'm not in this community, but just, you know, with council in general, you know, I'm not the one who has to live with chickens, you know, I don't have my neighbors, I don't think, are playing on getting, but, you know, you know, if I say yes to this, you know, I want to know more about what people who do live with chickens, what they're seeing, things they notice, but also experts who again, you know, have experience in raising chickens and being a good neighbor with those chickens, anything we can gather that really informs them for us what the best number to go with, because, you know, I'm in favor of trying to find a way to, and we have to stay long, we have to find a way to make this work, and just even looking at these three, I don't know what would be a best fit for Bangor at this point, I'm just looking for the best experts that come forward and sell me and say, Banger, do this based [42:06] Speaker C (unidentified): on these factors, we can, we can reach out to those talents and see how they can watch those [42:15] Joseph Leonard: Oh, and Counselor Fish has a question. When you're ready, counselor. Okay, I don't really [42:23] Carolyn Fish: have a question, but we are supposed to be on vacation and my family only gave me till seven o'clock because we have a special event that we have to attend, so I just wanted to let you know I'm going to sign off and not be available for the rest of the meetings, but I wanted to sign in for as long as I could. Thank you. Thank you so much for informing us, Counselor Fish. You [42:43] Joseph Leonard: have a wonderful evening tonight. Okay, thank you. Bye-bye. Okay, and I think that's a, to refer back to what Counselor Beck said earlier, I think that would be a good education on us to see like how other municipalities sort of enforce potential issues that may arise from residents, because to Counselor Falloon's point, I also know some people in the area, I won't help them, that do own chickens in the urban area and they are wonderful citizens and I do see that as a good potential future for having community assisting each other for food sovereignty and food security, and this is the direction that we want to go in and support. At the same time, there is no mechanism to, and they, I am of the opinion they operate their venue fairly well. But that said, though, it would be great to know that there is a guideline and a city recommended pathway for what is appropriate uses of raising chickens and what are not. And if we can make it easier for our code enforcement officers to make it clear that okay, if these chicken coops are feeding X, Y and Z for what we deem as the city to be parameters for the bare minimum in order to raise chickens in the city of bangor i think it would help all of us as a council to go forward with whatever recommendation that we want to move forward with but counselor beck's point we do have to move along with what the state's direction is as well we're kind of tied to that Council Cars does the states [44:32] Daniel Carson: update prevent for any reason building something in here that would in for around rodents is my question I'm living that nightmare right now because the property is beside me and what I am thinking about now is how do we prevent the excuse that it's a civil question between a property owner and a property owner when chickens are responsible for bringing hundreds of rats to neighbors and so maybe is there something that could be built into this regulation that makes people who have chickens on their property wholly responsible when rodents arise because of their failure to you know keep things clean or whatever [45:14] Speaker J (unidentified): that is so we do have in here I believe there is some language about preventing rodents so if you know somebody complains neighbor complains because there are rodent issues code enforcement animal control would inspect and you know if the person can't control the rodent issue then the city would have to take action you know on that chicken coop there is very specific language though that we've proposed to help prevent the rodent issue so hopefully that will help minimize that but there is recourse you know if it does become an issue [45:52] Speaker C (unidentified): yeah okay [45:56] Wayne Mallar: oh there's a question yeah brought something to mind as a general question a rodent issue is that not a health department issue of all the changes I don't I think any time [46:11] Speaker J (unidentified): it's related to animals even if it's a health issue the animal control officers well yeah [46:15] Wayne Mallar: in this case it would be animal control I mean yes I mean forget about chickens but if we had if you have a rodent issue with, like, Councilor Carson's house next door, isn't that a health issue? And isn't that something that the health department should be taking care of anyway? [46:32] Speaker E (unidentified): We do have our director of public health here. [46:37] Joseph Leonard: I think it's off the top of my head. I mean, that to me primarily sounds like it would be a code enforcement issue before it becomes a health issue. But would you want health director? No, that's fine. Fine, I was just okay thinking off the top of my head. Sure, okay. Did you have a follow-up question or anything else for council? First staff of me, did you need a guided recommendation or were you just looking for a follow-up questions? I can't remember the top of [47:09] Speaker J (unidentified): my head. Well, I have been looking for direction on the minimum lot size. It sounds like at least from some of you that we don't want to go in the direction of the minimum lot size potentially, but also maybe look, it sounded like there was preference for what Auburn has, where they limit the number of pins on a certain lot size, and maybe tailor it out to Bangor or something else [47:29] Joseph Leonard: that would be my preferred option. I personally don't like the idea of forcing ourselves into a lot size, but again, I'm just one counselor. If anyone else has a hard stance on we need to have a lot size, I do want to let you vocalize that. But if not, that would be where I think I and at least Counselor Carson said we would not be privy to lot sizes, but I did really enjoy Auburn's, and to be fair, Portland also had a good language in there as well that I did like, but Auburn would probably be getting best emulated for where we want to start off with [48:10] Speaker J (unidentified): Bank or okay, and we'll also reach out to the different municipalities to see where they got their data, and that will help us come up with a better recommendation on how many hens we [48:22] Speaker C (unidentified): might limit the certain long sizes. I'll pick up the direction we should go. Sure, is everyone like [48:28] Speaker G (unidentified): oh please, absolutely. I'm seeing a little problem with some of the wording, especially the Portland one. If you have a multi-unit and one of the residents would like to have chickens, but the other two say it's a three unit, I think there's going to be a discussion there that needs to be had. Single family would be one thing, but I don't think you'd want to allow that on the multi-unit unless the entire unit is in agreement they would like to have chickens on their property. That doesn't seem to be addressed moving towards that more in the city, it might be an issue. I [49:07] Joseph Leonard: think that's a fair point, because if we have multiple residencies living in the same building, they would, I think it would make sense to address that consenting issue there. Did you have a anything you'd like to respond to that or no? That's definitely something to look at [49:23] Daniel Carson: Okay, Counselor Carson, then Counselor. Well, just along with that question, I would be interested if how the state's working that, you know, with the some of the other food sovereignty laws. There's, you know, like you can't prohibit somebody from growing vegetables even if it's a multi-unit thing. And so I just wonder if the spirit behind or any of the language in this matches that, where that would become an issue for us to try to regulate. But I'm interested in that [49:54] Susan Faloon: question as well, Counselor. Thank you. This may or may not be a question that you can answer, but Counselor Dean's question made me think of it. So if you do have renters in a multi-unit, like could the land, I'm assuming the landlord could say no to chickens, like even if, you know, even if they are allowed in the city in general? And I mean, the city wouldn't have any ability to kind of like override that, or I don't know, like if the state could. I like, I don't know, I guess I'm just raising the issue that there may be tenants who want chickens but their landlord doesn't allow it. [50:40] Joseph Leonard: And actually before you answer that actually might be a question that we might need to address with our tenants bill of rights actually because I feel like food sovereignty is going to be if we if we limit food sovereignty to just people who own the land that does put a restriction on people that live on rented land at that point so that actually is i don't know if officer clay if you have a answer to that or thoughts on that but that [51:11] Daniel Carson: that is actually a good question. I would just say, you know, the state really just speaks [51:16] Speaker J (unidentified): to the zoning aspect of it doesn't really speak to the property owner aspect but usually you know in our zoning ordinances we do say you need property owner's permission before you do certain things on the plan you probably won't require that with this too and i don't go against the state law so the state law just says we have to allow it in those initial areas [51:42] Speaker G (unidentified): so right, but that doesn't mean that the property owner has to allow their tenant [51:53] Joseph Leonard: That was an interesting question. I appreciate you asking that, Council Walker. Did you know, you didn't? Okay, any other questions, thoughts, or guidances? Did you have enough for us to go off [52:06] Speaker C (unidentified): with this? Yes, I will be back with revised [52:13] Joseph Leonard: Well, thank you so much for all the work you put into this. It's, it's, I'm trying to think about poor Dad Joe, but Dad Joe King's right over there, not on this committee. Thank you, thank you so much. Okay, so we will be moving on to our last item, which is the continued discussion on Bangor Housing Authority application for a tax increment finance district creation for affordable housing in a credit enhancement agreement. I don't know how you would, you want to tackle this conversation today. I do want to make sure that we leave as educated as possible so that when we go to council next time with this, that most of those questions can be answered. So if you, please take all the time that you need. [53:08] Speaker G (unidentified): Yeah, I place this on the agenda because, you know, there's been a lot of discussion in the public realm about this, and I know counselors, you all have had questions specific about this development, so I wanted to create, you know, at a workshop setting like this, us the ability for you to be able to ask questions directly of Bangor Housing Authority folks who are here this evening. And you know, I gave you all of the information that was part of their application and answering some of the questions that you had in a previous meeting on this. So, really, this is a time for you to ask questions directly of them. [54:00] Joseph Leonard: And if the applicant could just come forward to the table. Thank you so much. And if there are any questions that Council does have that you think of after this meeting,, please do not hesitate to forward those questions to Director Krieg or myself or Bangor Housing Authority. I just want to make sure that all the questions that we have are answered in a due diligent manner so that by the time we get to City Council next meeting, we are able to move forward with an option for staff and not put it off again. Does that make sense? Okay, with that I will open up to questions or, I'm sorry, did you want to start [54:57] Carollynn Lear: off with anything, sir? I just, Council Leonard was just going to offer to say, I know there were at the last city council meeting it seemed like council's had a lot of questions, so I just was going to open it up. Does anyone have any specific questions that they want me to address in my presentation or anything directly they would like to ask, counselor? [55:21] Speaker G (unidentified): Dean, I have a specific question, but it may be more for you, Ann. I'm just wondering how many entities do we have that are taking advantage of the TIFF and the credit enhancement? Is that, is that normal, or is it usually one or the other? You've done one for Pancras over at Milton Place. John comes under the downtown to have some of them, some of your other housing credit enhancement agreements are in the downtown, so they come under the downtown TIP. Just to remind folks, you have to create the TIP district to be able to fund the credit enhancement. So, this isn't part of its own of a district, so the request is to create the district and then do the credit enhancement agreement, but you have done use before. Okay, thank you. [56:15] Joseph Leonard: Did you have anything that you want to regale us with, which is like general thoughts or comments, or was there anything that you thought might help us come to a better position where we might be able to ask you more in-depth [56:34] Carollynn Lear: questions on this? Just listening to the public comment, I felt like there was maybe a lot of not confusion, but just better information that we could provide to as to actually what we actually are doing for the 30 units of supportive housing. Does everybody kind of have a grasp of what Home for Good means really in terms of what we'll be doing there on that site? I just wanted to backtrack. In 2023, the legislature created a law, it's in Maine Revised Statute, Title 22, Subsection 20-A, which is a housing first program, which takes a portion of the existing real estate transfer tax that every transaction in Maine pays, the buyer pays half, the seller pays half. A portion of that has historically gone to Maine Housing for affordable housing development. In 23, they kept that, but they also took a portion of it, put it in the general fund to be administered by DHS to help pay for services related to Home for Good projects. There was some comments from the public about, well, HUD's really eliminating housing first, which is true. The HUD housing first model doesn't have services like Home for Good would, like even the HUD secretary, when he commented about it, he really thought that housing first was more of like a warehouse model. But then he went on to talk about how the Secretary's uncle benefited from affordable housing with wraparound services, which is exactly what we're doing here. And when you talk about the statute, the program is established in the department to facilitate the delivery of support and stabilization services for residents. This is not only providing stability in terms of housing, it's a path forward. It's a path forward to no longer living on the street. It's a path forward to potentially getting away from addiction. It's a, it's a path forward to saying, you know, I used to receive benefits because I'm a veteran. You know, I want to be able to get those again because now I have an address and a roof over my head. I used to talk to my family. I used to take medicine. I used to do all those type of things. Having the roof over your head is the first step in that. We have, as we all walk around the city, I live in Hermann with my family, but we're in Bangor all the time. I've obviously lived and worked in Bangor for the last 15 years. It is everywhere that we go. I mean, there was a huge presence in the library recently. You hear about moms and dads that didn't want to take their kids to the library anymore. What we're hoping to do is take the 30 most hardest to house individuals that may have 150 police interactions a year, that may have treatment for crisis in our emergency rooms at our hospitals including the mental health, they may have jail time, they may be contributing to needles, to trash, to all those things that we all talk about without a solution. What we're saying is this is part of a solution to a very serious problem that we have in Bangor. So how does this work, we take the 30 hardest to house, it's not waiting list based, it's based on coordinated entry. So we will work with our partner Preble Street in the continuum to identify the hardest 30 housing 30 people to house and we're going to move them off the street and into our apartment building, brand new apartment building. And once that happens, is purple street will be there 24 hours a day every day with two to three staff on call all the time that's there to protect people from maybe making decisions that may hurt their housing like wanting to bring their friends in but it also keeps people that shouldn't be there out and away from them so that folks can receive those case management services from purple street and other their partners to get better. Is the solution for every everyone returning to work? Of course not. Different people that have lived with homelessness, almost their entire adult lives, will have different expectations. But it'll be a tremendous amount of dignity for those folks living in our Yellen Pines project. And at the same time, they won't be visible to the public anymore. And one thing that's really, I think, hard for me to quantify is if someone has 100 police interactions a year and they have the ambulance service and they have the ER visits and they have jail time, that has a cost to Bangor and Penobscot County, and that those people with those high level of interactions will no longer have those interactions. Mark Swan runs Purple Street that now runs the Hope House in Portland. He told me a story of a homeless man in Portland with 300 interactions with Portland PD a year. 300 interactions in one year. That's one person. That's a lot of time that they, that police could be doing other things more productive to help other citizens. He was moved into one of the three existing home for good projects that went down to six calls. And six of those were generated from purple street because he wasn't following the rules of the apartment building. Residents will have leases, they will receive a housing choice voucher from the Bangor Housing Authority. Those are existing vouchers that we have, not increasing our federal resources there. And one thing I just want to point out that I think is helpful, we are buying the land, we applied to main housing through a competitive RFP process, we were one of five cities that applicants can say got it. Only this is the only one in Bangor, Auburn got one, Augusta, Portland and Sanford did. And with that competitive process and award, we were able to receive just over $4.2 million in that 0% subsidy from Maine Housing, which comes from that portion of the real estate transfer tax, we're able to borrow a million and a half. The Development Corporation, the Bangor Housing Development Corporation, the housing authorities affiliate, is going to put in 750 of fees that we're able to generate back into the deal, or able to generate 3.4 million dollars through the sale of credits to a private investor, bringing in a three and a half million dollars of private investment. Zero capital dollars are coming from the city of bangor. What we are asking for is for a little bit of return on the property taxes that we will pay that does not go into the project's pocket that is going to allow us to borrow more money to help pay for things that are expensive with this project. Council Leonard, one of the biggest things that I heard from the public comment is this thing shouldn't cost 11 million to build. It does not. That is our total budget. There are a lot of fees and reserves and things that Main Housing puts on us, like debt service reserves and other types of things. It costs a little over $7 million to build this thing. One of the local developers in the room said, well, if I had $7 million, I could build 50 units. Well, if I take that money, if I had $11 million at the per unit cost, I can build 46. So the developer math is very similar in terms of what we're building. But we're building a building that's gonna feel like you can't just walk into Yellen Pines unless you live there. And if you don't live there,, you're going to be asked questions as to why are you there? And who are you here to see? And how long are you going to stay? It will be very controlled, it will have a high level of security for the folks living there. But the credit enhancement allows us to take a portion of that tax revenue that we would be paying to the city, and it gives it back to us to the project to allow us to borrow more money. And I think that 's incredibly important again we haven't asked for capital dollars we're paying for the land I know there were some comments about that was a below market land deal at the same time same time it was part we're very grateful to have that land I think it's a good site for it but it was part of a very large homeless encampment and the soils are contaminated with beef ass we have to do a lot of mitigation to bring a lot that stuff up that's going to cost us a tremendous amount of money ppass is everywhere it's not just that site but it's just how it works so without capital dollars this credit enhancement from the city I think is an important gesture in terms of helping address part of our homeless crisis that we have I am very sympathetic we all are very sympathetic to the tax dollars in our city the property taxes that we pay at our agency have also gone up But that's just the nature of cost and inflation. But I think without having a capital investment, returning a portion of those taxes to us to allow us to borrow more, I think, says a lot about whether Bangor wants to help address the homelessness crisis in our community. I understand that there's an advisory committee, they will make recommendations. That's the long-term solution, but what we're proposing is a short-term solution that helps address things before those longer-term solutions and maybe grants down the road can come to fruition. We will take 30 people that are the hardest to house that live around here because it's not waiting list driven, it's based off coordinated entry. So we're going to address people that we know that have homelessness around here. We're not moving people up from Rhode Island or we're talking about the hope the people that are around here currently that have had assessments, and they have a score from a one to a 16. And that's based on through the continuum. So I think that was a little bit misleading. Folks, I think we all want to be able that we're going to have investment, we want to serve people that are local and around here. Does anyone have any questions on that so far? We do have Ali Lovejoy from Preble Street, I think is on zoom. I don't know if she has the ability to say something or wanted to, but Preble Street who has done this for 25 years in Portland on three different projects you may talk more [1:07:07] Joseph Leonard: to the service component of it. Sure, and before, if anyone does have questions, I just want to, but before I get to that, I think it's important to note that administratively, the past administrations have done, this is just my opinion, worse than nothing in going forward with how to tackle this poverty crisis. The encampment enclosures have only exacerbated the problem more so. And because of the years of putting this off, it has only made the problem larger and more expensive to deal with. Homelessness is a very expensive problem to deal with, and not solving it, as Mr. Maya pointed out, that cost goes on to our local law enforcement, our EMS, our local hospitals that now have to work with preventable issues that create a backlog for people that don't have preventable medical issues from accessing the care that they need in order to have good, sustainable lives for the foreseeable future in Bangor, down the line, down the docket more. So for me personally, like if I'm removing the morality of this, which the morality for me is already more than enough to convince me, but if I'm only looking at this from a conservative fiscal standpoint, not going forward with this project is in the long term going to cost the city more money. I don't see a way how we don't go forward with this program, even if it were, let's say, blow it up to $20 million. This problem, you can't put a price tag on hundreds of 911 calls that go out to the consistent same population over and over and over again, where sometimes a single unhoused individual can rack up a ER bill into the seven figures. That's unsustainable, and that's not fair to our taxpayers that have an obligation to pursuing life for as long as possible with the services that we have right here in the city. So I don't want to go too much longer on this monologue, but it's imperative to me that we actually do what we've been doing, this administration has been doing, which is being productive in solving the problem. Problem and I just want to thank you Mr Maya for a very esoterically going forward for presenting the information that was given to us because I think there has been a lot of misinformation that's been thrown to the council that is really coming from just misinformation in general so I do appreciate you setting the record straight so counselors to have questions we have councillor carson and then councillor falloon and councillor beck. [1:10:29] Daniel Carson: Question and a comment Mr Chair the question would be it would be great for me I appreciate you know the state the money going to these projects I may appreciate this project and I do have a one concern but it's really with the credit enhancement agreement can be solved with very simple language change that would help protect the city in the future. But my question is more about who will build this. So I know that there is a developer but what I what I don't have information on and would love if it was available would be the developers labor practices, I would like to know where the workers come from that are going to build this building. And I would like information on their wages and their benefits. Very often we put, and I'm not saying here at the council, but I've seen this across the state. They get a bucket of money for something, and that money goes out the door for a project, perhaps like this. But along the way, we bring out our state workers, who we pay at a much lower rate than we might pay workers who are working in the state, or perhaps they don't have bargaining agreements answer the ability to do that. And so my personal view is that if we're going to do an affordable housing project, we're going to think about, you know, helping people, which is very important. We do also think about the people who are going to build it, and whether or not they are going to be compensated fairly receive benefits for building on this project. So that would just be the question. [1:12:10] Joseph Leonard: Sure thing. Is that something that you can provide to council either today or by this coming Monday for the workshop at all? [1:12:21] Carollynn Lear: Yeah, so we went through a competitive process to select a construction manager. We hired Lejoy Brothers out of Augusta. They've done work for us. And I think to your point is really just a matter of integrity. I mean, we do really good work and we hire professional construction managers and they hire subcontractors to do that work. We typically I don't know city does this require Davis Bacon or if you could come up [1:12:51] Joseph Leonard: to the table that'd be fantastic thank you that's just what helped me answer the question if you could introduce yourself that'd be fantastic as well I'm Cindy Leas and I'm the [1:13:00] Speaker C (unidentified): director of development for Fanglass does this follow under Davis Bacon it does stay speaking [1:13:07] Speaker G (unidentified): and also section three so for those of you that don't know section three is an opportunity for people in the lower wage rates to be hired and Jill Du Joy has a program that works with our bank or housing programs to find workers on our larger projects [1:13:29] Carollynn Lear: and the Davis Bacon wage rates require that everyone subcontractors and contractors have to provide payroll data and we verify that their hourly wage that they pay their employees is at that standard for the trade carpenters would make x plumbers would make y laborers and would make z so we because Davis Bacon would apply we would be able to I don't think anyone would be able to show you what they have for benefits that's not really anything but we can at least verify that and provide data that through Davis Bank and compliance that sure [1:14:04] Joseph Leonard: did that answer your question counselor Carson okay counselor thank you [1:14:14] Susan Faloon: I appreciate that you talked about like where the funding was coming from and that in that, you know, for the most part, except for the tiff and the credit enhancement agreement, that it's not coming from the city. Some of the pushback that we got was, you know, oh well, they were, you know, if I wish I could get this kind of a deal on the land, or I, you know, I wish I could get, you know, this money to build, you know, my project from some of the developers who were speaking. And so can you just like clarify like the, and you don't have to get into like details, but like I think most general developers are not going to qualify for the funds for this [1:14:55] Carollynn Lear: type of project, is that correct? I don't, I mean, we've been, I've been here at Bangor housing for 15 years and have never ever wanted to do a deal like this because you can't provide housing. We provided housing for a lot of folks who were in former encampments, and the one thing that happens is they are out within three months or six months because they're evicted because they cannot follow the house rules. When the legislation changed and it allowed to provide state money for a group like Preble Street to provide 24 7 services, I said let's talk about it. Then the RFP came out and I said, you know what, it's here, homelessness is in Bangor now. This is when we had the stuff on Valley Street, we had Can't Cope, I mean it was, there was a lot going on, and I said, you know what, this is going to be difficult, there's going to be a lot of scrutiny me on it, but hard things are important, and so we said let's work with Preble Street and take a chance. I don't know that there's many developers that would entertain ever doing a high-risk project like this. What makes me feel better is that this model has worked in Maine for 25 years. There has been, the state has supported this for 25 years to provide services, service dollars to the service provider. Our expenses are going to be paid for by the rents, to the vouchers, the heat, the hot water, the taxes, all that type of stuff. Preble Street will be funded through DHS, through the real estate transfer tax proceeds. So this is something we never wanted to touch because we're not service providers, we're landlords. That's what we do. We're developers and landlords, that's what we know how to do. I do not know how to provide case management work, Neil or Cindy. That's just not what our staff does. But Preble Street is the best at it in all of may, that's why we picked them, and they've been doing this work for 15 years. Did i answer your [1:16:46] Joseph Leonard: question, counselor? Thank you, counselor Beck. Oh, thanks. Well, first i just want to start with [1:16:53] Michael Beck: saying i appreciate hearing that the folks that would be getting taken care of around here, they're already here. They're here, yeah, you know, there are residents that we're taking care of. In looking at the deal, you know, the memo we got talked about, you know, the over a million dollars in reimbursement assistance, they talked about this other 345 thousand dollars for affordable housing. You mentioned that, you know, that helps borrow more money. The money that you're borrowing, is it for doing new projects, or is it still towards this? It's for yelling pies, for this one. So i'm clear, this is what makes it possible to do it. 's helpful to make it possible. We also [1:17:35] Carollynn Lear: need to have conversations with main housing because we need more resources. Sure. And going [1:17:40] Michael Beck: back to your comments, i think one of the things that it illustrated perfectly is how much better as a we can do in the city to story tell to our folks, to say this is what it's about. And i think one of the things that i would like to see to be able to tell that story is, you know, the people who live here, if they're not there, they're going to be going to jail, police interactions, they're going to be doing, you know, first responders are going to have to be helping with them. That is infinitely more expensive, and it would be nice to kind of get the best estimate. It doesn't be perfect, i'm not looking for someone to spend hours researching it, but if there's any way possible for someone's staff to kind of help paint that picture of we do this, we place people in this program, this is what it saves the city, because suddenly that million dollars with this enhancement suddenly looks like a great investment, which i think it is. You know, right there, it pays for itself. So if the morals don't get you The first thing should, and it just seems like such a no-brainer deal, and it's one of the things we hear often about us, you know, look at all the problems we have in our streets. Here's a project that is absolutely doing something about that, and folks are going to get rehabilitated, their skills, they're going to get an opportunity, they're going to reach a place, the hope is at some point they're going to be able to leave this program into something better, something bigger, something they can do. That's, that's, that's the idea here, and re, you know, rehabilitating people that way, and giving them the skills that somebody's person could never do, and I'm not living on the street, yeah, and living on the street is not going to do either, so just be able to tell the story from that point, just the financial side even, I mean, I don't want to get into the morals with people, I mean, at the end of the day, you know, we got to be, you know, careful with our tax dollars, and I can be able to say to people, look. At what this investment gets all of us, so that's the story I want to be able to tell with this, so I appreciate, you know, you coming in and talking to us and answering our questions. [1:19:35] Joseph Leonard: Because that's, it's all part of it, so thank you, and thank you for bringing that up, counselor Becca, to your point, is that something that staff could actually do for us, which is like a very easy, quick way to just make it very clear how this in the aggregate is a money saver for the taxpayer, because we get a lot of comments from people saying just how this is a very large expenditure, but really what this is, it's a reduction of police calls. It's a reduction of services that are unnecessary, that are preventable, but also what it is, and I know director Gunderman would be able to speak to this as well, the amount of people that consistently need services the most are the ones that are unhoused the longest, and really the best way for my understanding of discussing this with caseworkers is it's much easier to house those people that are most recently homeless, as opposed to those that are on the street for five years. It takes a much longer time. This is a statistical power law that was done. There was an article that wrote about this back in like 2006, how the longer someone is homeless, the more resources it takes to actually rehabilitate them back into society. And the thing that I think a lot of people are not really aware of is homelessness is not a monolith. There are multiple different factors, multiple different entities of people that categorize themselves as homeless. There are the working homeless, people who literally work out of a job and sleep in their car. I talked to a woman, actually, who had two children that she slept in her car with her children. She would drive them to school and then she would they would go to the YMCA to shower and then she would go to work as a barista later that day. There's also the couch surfers. There's also the people that are interim intermittently in and out of the streets and going into housing situations. So when we think of, I think as a society, we're very, our minds are very made up on what the stereotype is for those that are unhoused. And I think that's also a big portion of the problem is actually educating people that homelessness is not a monolith. There are multiple different entities of people that exist in this poverty spectrum. So I would appreciate that if there's way to showcase that. I do see that Ms. Lovejoy has her hand up. If you want to raise a comment or educate us, but please feel free. [1:22:42] Speaker M (unidentified): Thanks so much, Counselor. I just wanted to add to the conversation that, so Preble Street opened the first program like this, Logan Place, 20 years ago in 2005, it was 30 units, all folks who had been chronically homeless, and we were able at that time to do a cost study for those individuals to look at the costs of or the number of police contacts two years before housing, a year before housing, and then a year after housing, two years after housing. Same with the people's participation and cost associated with detox programs. Jail time and so I'd be happy to forward that information along to the council with the sort of you know percentages decreased so we saw an 81 decrease in police contacts for those individuals during that time and so if it's help if it would be helpful to the council I'd be happy to forward that data along since it's you know just kind of representative of the folks that we'd be serving through this program and the impacts that having those folks safely in housing has on community resources. [1:23:57] Joseph Leonard: I would very much appreciate that, Miss Lovejoy, if you could please forward that to Miss Krieg or any other staff member or even us counselors. Councilor Meller, you had [1:24:11] Wayne Mallar: your hand up. Yes, I have a couple of questions. The TIF that we're providing to you, how many of the others that are building in the state, the five others or four others, are asking for a shift? [1:24:26] Carollynn Lear: You know, I mean, they're only what you say, five? Yeah, I know all the other four have direct capital I think from each community. Some have a continuum of care funds, CDBG, different allocations. I can [1:24:44] Wayne Mallar: get that detail for you. Okay, it'd be interesting to know. The contractor that's building the projects, is that the same one for all projects? The individual projects picking their own contractors? [1:24:56] Carollynn Lear: Everyone has the ability to pick their own design team and construction, and the people that are building them are going. Yeah, we select, we went through a process and interviewed several and decided on LaJoy Brothers, who's done work, affordable housing work in Maine and has done good work for us as well over the years. So what they would do then from there, sorry, is they're a construction manager, they're paid a fee, and then what they do is they bid out all of the subcontracting. [1:25:30] Wayne Mallar: I'm not concerned by that. I just was concerned that maybe one person had to bid for the state to build all the facilities. [1:25:38] Speaker C (unidentified): These? No. Yeah. [1:25:42] Carollynn Lear: Yeah, I think there were some comments on online that said one person controls both sides and I didn't quite understand what that meant. But for us we have an award for Main Housing, they're our bank essentially, and with them it'll be a very public process of what we build. They have a very rigid set of design standards. Our architect is a group called Gar and Turgeon, Dylan, out of Scarborough. They've done these before, they actually have been contracted by the city of Bangor to do the pre-approved housing plans. That was your architect that the city used, were very well known, reputable, and LeJoy Brothers is the same level of integrity for a general contractor. So Joe Joy will then bid out all the subs, they'll bid out the electrical, they'll bid out the plumbing, obviously contractors that work around here. That's what we just did when we finished Sunridge Senior Housing. We used companies that were local like Hughes Brothers around here, we used ABM Mechanical around here, so that creates a lot Of economic development, on a seven million dollar contract, we would hope that construction could start this year, and that will be heavily regulated and monitored through Main Housing. Now, once you're [1:26:55] Wayne Mallar: up and operational, what's your success rate? What percentage of your people that you take into this system of assistance are able to eventually leave and be successful? A better question for [1:27:12] Carollynn Lear: Ali, I mean, for me, the success rate is certainly getting folks off the street, and I'll let her [1:27:18] Speaker M (unidentified): She has, that's such a great question, and so right. I do think it makes sense to just make sure that everybody's clear that this is permanent housing. It's not transitional. It doesn't have a, you know, like a two-year time limit or something like that. Folks can stay there if they, if they need to and want to, as long as they are, you know, adhering to the, adhering to their lease, because as a reminder, these are all folks that have been homeless for years, sometimes decades, or have been homeless over and over and over again. And so the number one goal and the number one indicator of success is, that person able to maintain their housing and not end up back on the street, back in a shelter. And with what we have seen, we just did a three year look back, and we had 88% of the folks that we had served through the three existing programs in Portland, so there's 85 units between three programs in Portland, 88% of those folks maintained permanent housing. Some folks come and they stay, and it is where they live for the rest of their lives. Some folks come and they gain some skills in being able to set boundaries with guests. For some folks, it's the, you know, the guests that they allowed in is what has put their housing in jeopardy over and over again, and so with support from staff and time, they are able to gain the skills that they need to then move on and live independently, and they move out and live independently. Some people reunite with family and that they've been estranged from and go and live with family after that. Some folks move on to something more like assisted living if physically they need that. I mean, what we are seeing is that chronic homelessness really takes a toll on people's bodies, and so unfortunately we have had a number of people pass away in their housing because by the time they get into the housing they're physical, they're physically, they're in such rough shape not having had medical care for such, you know, not having had preventative or ongoing medical care for a long time. So, yeah, 88% of folks maintain their housing. Some folks move on into independent housing, some folks move with family, some folks pass away while they're in their housing, only about 10 to 12% have returned to homelessness. And again, that's among folks who historically their pattern is to return to homelessness over and over again. Do [1:30:16] Joseph Leonard: you have a follow up question? No, that's fine. Okay. Councillor Carson. [1:30:21] Daniel Carson: And this would be a two part question for maybe you, Alison, or anybody who could answer it. But I guess more specifically for you would be that of the 88% that retain their housing,, how many of them go on at some point or another with the life skills into work? [1:30:45] Speaker M (unidentified): I don't know the exact percentage. I can say that we have, I'm just thinking of one building where we've had four out of the 30 have engaged in either part-time work or full-time work. Again, because, people have been sleeping outside for so long have been not connected to medical care. A lot of the folks that are coming into these programs have pretty significant either physical or mental health disabilities. And so, we're really first and foremost trying to help stabilize folks in terms of their physical and mental health. Some of them do go on to employment and some of them are significantly disabled and that's not, as much a potential for them [1:31:42] Joseph Leonard: Did you have a follow-up question or did that answer both? I had two when I started the thought and then I forgot the second one. I did have a follow-up actually on Councillor Carson's question, Miss Lovejoy. Of those people that are very disabled that are in housing, do they get a pathway to getting to like getting the disability assistance that they might get from the state or the federal government so that they might be able to move out of this housing into a more supportive housing unit that exists outside of this current model? Does that [1:32:22] Speaker M (unidentified): traditionally happened at all. Usually, if we see somebody move into a higher level of support, it's because somebody's medical need has progressed to the point where they would qualify for assisted living. But absolutely, the staff are there to help folks if you don't with whatever trajectory makes sense for them, and is the trajectory that feels right for them. So if somebody is looking for employment, we'll help them with resumes and job search and be their sounding board when they get home from a hard day at work. If they are disabled, then sometimes because they haven't had consistent medical care, there isn't the documentation for the person to be eligible for disability benefits, for example, or veterans benefits. And so the casework staff would be working with that person to get them kinetic connected to the medical providers that can actually document some of the disability that might go on for them to become eligible, or we're just or we're helping people with those applications directly, whatever makes sense for that person situation. So, as Mike mentioned, we have staff there 24 hours a day. So at least two staff at a time on at all times, and the first shift staff are doing a lot of casework. They're doing a lot of connecting people with health care, mental health treatment, substance use treatment when needed, employment or benefits, helping people reconnect with family if that's something that they want. That first shift staff is doing a lot of casework. Second and third shift staff are the ones that are there really to help people build community, build cope with, you know, if somebody has substance use issues, evening can be really challenging for them, and so our staff are there trying to get people to like not isolate their apartment, come out, participate in a community meal, be part of a group, really do that kind of connecting people to help people not get sort of isolated in either mental health or substance use. And same with overnight, if you have somebody who's been sleeping outside, a lot of times folks are struggling with insomnia or awake at really strange hours, and so having somebody there in the middle of the night can really prevent somebody from going from something that could just be, you know, somebody but he just needs a little bit of extra support and to not be alone, preventing that from becoming a crisis situation. So the staff are there 24 hours a day, both to do the sort of connecting work to external resources and opportunities, and to do that work to help people stabilize, prevent neighbor conflicts from escalating, prevent mental health symptoms from becoming crises. Thank you for answering that [1:35:31] Joseph Leonard: question. I appreciate it. Are there any other questions from counselors? Let me just ask [1:35:38] Wayne Mallar: one more question assuming the property is built i mean you get the tiff district is established he received the TIF what other expenses should the city of Bangor expect to [Speaker C (unidentified): incur? Are] you saying you'll be self-sufficient and no support will be required from the city after you, if we give you the TIF and the three quarters of the TIF for your other expenses? Yeah. [1:36:14] Carollynn Lear: I'm asking us from, I mean, I think it was pretty clear to say that the operating expenses, the expenses of the owner are paid for by the rents that we receive, right? I just wanted confirmation. Yeah, I mean, I don't know that any other landlord asked for a bailout on stuff, and I think I was also clear to say that the staff costs related to Preble Street are paid for through the RFP that we've already received through DHS. Okay, did that answer your question, Councilor Meller? I think so. Okay, so no, I guess it's my answer. What's more clear? Thank you for the direct answer. It would be great to have, I mean, I would say it would be great to have a CDBG allocation, it would be great to have a lot of stuff, but I know the city doesn't have a lot of those extra resources. We're trying to do the best we can to, we have a list of all the things that we've carved out of this thing to try to make it feasible and still have the main housing requirements, but we know that CDBG and other things aren't always a viable [1:37:12] Speaker C (unidentified): option for projects. Oh yes, absolutely. So one of the things that we did cut out of this project [1:37:20] Speaker G (unidentified): is all of the things that someone who's homeless needs, dishes, silverware, so we will be as the project comes to fruition, we will be fundraising for that, and any support that the community can [1:37:37] Speaker C (unidentified): give us would be greatly appreciated. We have to buy beds, we have to buy mattresses, people [1:37:42] Joseph Leonard: Come in with backpacks and I'm sure the city will be more than happy to doing whatever we can to help promote those fundraising goals if we're allowed to, which I assume we are. Any other thoughts or questions on this matter? I know it was kind of a long-winded one, but I think it was very much a needed education on like what this project is, what are the resources that were pouring into it, and how this isn't a project that is just dumping a bunch of money into a project that's going to not have any results whatsoever. I think what at least to me with this showcase to the committee is that this is a project that has a proven track record not just in this state but in multiple other states and multiple other countries as well, and it's really the only methodology that I'm aware of in this type of temperate zone environment, that we can sustainably assist those that are chronically homeless while also being able to expertly and intelligently focus our finite resources onto individuals that really require a police call or ones that just need this type of service as is. Because as I stated earlier, there is a statistical power law. The longer someone is homeless, the more resources and time it takes to rehabilitate them back into society. And by giving those individuals the care that they need in order to survive, it makes rehabilitating those that are recently homeless more of a success rate to actually rehabilitate back into society. That's why I really like this program. It's a great way to help people write as they get unhoused indirectly because they have more access to those resources that would otherwise be really held up by the more chronically unhoused individuals. Did anyone else have anything that they want to say before we end this discussion tonight? Okay, so we do need to actually vote on this to forward it back to council. [1:40:22] Speaker G (unidentified): Or could you already? Oh, sorry, you tabled it in your last Council meeting to this coming one. So [1:40:30] Joseph Leonard: Okay, so we don't need action. Okay, thank you for that correction. Okay. So unless there's anything else on this item. We will close this item and Director Creek, do you have anything else that you need to bring up for VED? If there's nothing else, it is currently 8.02pm. This will be the ending of the business economic development committee but stay tuned. We do have the government operations committees.