The Pettengill House and its new Amesbury Resource Center

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Deborah Smith (Executive Director) and Detective Robert Wile (Board member and Amesbury Police Department Detective) at the Pettengill House's new Amesbury Resource Center.

The Amesbury Resource Center is located at 21 Water Street, in the Lower Millyard area.

I went there just to get a tour and to hear a little about what the Resource Center and what it had to offer Amesbury residents. What I learned about was just how much Pettengill House is doing for our community.

The mission of the Pettengill House, based in Salisbury, is to "support and empower children and families by providing education, comprehensive case management and basic needs; and by coordinating community supports that contribute to individual and family stabilization, personal growth and development."

Known for its annual winter coat and student backpack campaigns, the Pettengill House provides a variety of services for parents and their children. Working in Amesbury, Byfield, Groveland, Merrimac, Newbury, Newburyport, Rowley, Salisbury, and West Newbury, Pettengill served over 3,000 children and adults in FY14. Amesbury is only 2nd to Salisbury in the number of persons served. In FY14, the House served 700 adults and 503 children in Amesbury (out of a population of about 16,500).

Ms. Smith and Det. Wile focused on the close collaboration in place among Pettengill House, the Amesbury Police Department, and the Amesbury Public Schools, in the 'Amesbury School Link' program. Like all of Pettengill House's services, the School Link program is not income-based but rather is a matter of referral from either the schools or the Amesbury P.D. of a family in need of support. Pettengill House works with families and children at all income levels.

Part of what the School Link collaboration does with the Amesbury Schools is work with homeless families. This means working with the homeless families to retain connections to their community of origin, help them integrate with the Amesbury schools, and connect them with services. In FY14, Amesbury had 55 homeless students, out of a total of 336 children supported by the School Link program. The School Link program conducts intakes, home visits, conducts needs assessments, and works on family stabilization and crisis intervention.

The School Link program expresses the organization's belief that "Education is key to ending poverty and improving the quality of life for children and families," as the a program brief that Deb provided me put it. As it turns out, this program is pretty exemplary in Massachusetts, helping set the standard for collaboration among local service providers, public schools, and public safety departments.

Both Ms. Smith and Det. Wile noted that they have presented to their peers around the Commonwealth regarding this collaboration, which represents something of an alternative to more normal lack of connection among homeless and family service providers, public schools, and local police departments. As someone whose day job centers on homelessness issues, I can attest to that.

For more information about the Pettengill House's services and about the Amesbury Resource Center, call their main number at: 978-463-8801. Or visit their website at: www.pettengillhouse.org.

Organizations like the Pettengill House often work behind the scenes in a community like Amesbury but really represent what is best about our town. My meeting gave me confidence that Amesbury is doing well by its residents and that they are well served by collaborations such as the School Link program.

Lower Millyard Task Force Site Visit 11/6/14

Economic and Community Development Director Bill Scott led our monthly meeting of the Lower Millyard Task Force on a site tour of Heritage Park in the Lower Millyard.

Though the site is very much still 'under construction' and the EPA is still doing site work along the bank of the Back River, you can really get a sense of how the park will look. It is still hard to really see it from Water Street but we were able to walk the site and view it, along with a site plan document.

Once the construction is complete (this fall) and the vegetation grows in (next year), it will look good and has more space to it than I'd been picturing in my own mind.

I also stopped by the Town Park and took a couple of pictures of the construction of the new splash pad water feature that is being installed, courtesy of the Commonwealth.

CLICK HERE 

TO VIEW A SLIDE SHOW 

OF OUR SITE VISIT.

Proposed Tax Incremental Financing for New Hotel Site +

Last week, the City Council received a request to hold special City Council and Finance Committee meetings on Wednesday, November 5, 2014. ('Special' because the Council would normally meet on 11/18/14 this month and the Finance Committee, later in the month.) The meetings are scheduled for 7:00 p.m. (City Council) and 7:30 p.m. (Finance Committee) at City Hall.

The special meeting was called so that the Council and Finance Committee would be able to hold readings of several important measures before the regular 11/18/14 meeting and then hold final votes on them on 11/18/14, for quick turnaround. The driver of this accelerated schedule is a proposed Tax Incremental Financing package for a hotel developer, to develop the site at 284 Elm Street for a 92-room, 54,000 square feet hotel. Any Tax Incremental Financing package must also be reviewed and approved by the Commonwealth and the committee that reviews these proposals only meets quarterly; this schedule is designed to get this to the committee before the end of 2014.

284 Elm Street Property

What is Tax Incremental Financing (TIF)? It is an economic development tool made available through the Commonwealth through which a locality such as Amesbury provides an economic incentive for a developer in the form of waived property taxes at a negotiated level for a negotiated period of time. Amesbury approved guidelines for using TIF as a development tool earlier this year.

The way it works is that the City can elect to waive property taxes collected on future increases in property value based on the desired development. For example, if a property generates $10,000 in property taxes in its current state but would generate $20,000 a year in taxes in its developed state, the City can waive some or all of that new $10,000/year in anticipated taxes, for a set period of time.

In this case, the Mayor is requesting that the City waive:

• 75% of the new (incremental) tax revenue for the first 5 years 
• 35% of the new tax revenue for the next 5 years

 

 In this particular case, the value of this TIF incentive (that is, the waived property taxes) is $802,500.

The rationale for offering the incentive in the first place (under the guidelines that we approved earlier this year) is that the proposed site itself offers constraints that add cost to any developer and make the project prohibitively expensive without the TIF incentive. The developer is required to use the tax savings essentially as self-financing for part of the project (proposed at around $10 million total). Here are the numbers (as legibly as I could cut/paste them from the proposal):

You can read the entire TIF package HERE. This is Amesbury's first TIF and likely out only 'bite' at creating an incentive for this property, so it is important for us to get it right. The City is 'investing' over $800K in waived taxes but some short-term and a good bit of long-term gain in new tax revenue from the property.

The OTHER significant item in front of the City Council at this special meeting on 11/5/14 is the authorization for the City of Amesbury to purchase 116 Whitehall Road for $400,000. View the property HERE.  This is land currently zoned for 61a agricultural use and as such, the City has the 'right of first refusal' when the property is up for sale. This request from Mayor Gray is to exercise that right and purchase the land, presumably as open space. As one can see from a map view of the property, this open space links the north side of Woodsom Farm over the ridge down to Whitehall Road, offering the potential to expand the size of and access to the Woodsom Farm property.

You can read this request HERE.

I encourage anyone interested in either of these items to attend tomorrow's 11/5/14 City Council and Finance Committee meetings.