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MINUTES January 8, 1998 4 BOARD OF HEALTH they said these betterment's to these little small projects is to have the ability to tell investors that it is a way for communities to secure repayment through the betterment process." "Participating in this revolving loan program does involve betterment's." "This is a sticking point in a lot of communities especially southeastern MA and the Cape." "We have probably 250 communities participating in the program." "We have been spending a fair amount of time down here working with the Health Agents and the County to try and get people over the hump, being reluctant to participate because of the betterment process." "The deal that we offer is initially $200,000.00, $20,000.00 of which can be used by the community to do whatever it wants." "Initially, we were saying if you're going to get the $200,000.00 loan we want communities to go through some type of planning or thought process to figure out where's the best place to put this money." "The Community Development program had more of an income basis to it." "It was targeted more to low and moderate income people." "This money, we're de-emphasizing the income, we're really trying to encourage communities to decide if they want to target some lake, some estuarine area that there are a lot of failing systems or is there an area where there is a public health problem." "It's up to the community to target it." "What we initially sold the $20,000.00 as was money for the towns to figure out where the sensitive areas area." "So, we're saying you can pretty much use the $20,000.00 for whatever you want buying computer equipment, tracking Title V installations, etc.." "We're not going to spend a lot of time looking at what you are using the $20,000.00 for." "That leaves $180,000.00 to go out in the form of loans." "We charge you no interest so the town over a twenty years period really works out to be 18 years of payments." "Over that period you're on the hook for the principal." "You are entitled to loan that money out to the homeowner at either 2.5% or 5% at your discretion." "The benefit is, regardless of which of those two you choose that gives you an income screen that will exceed the requirements needed to repay the loan to the Commonwealth therefore gives you some ongoing amount of money assuming you get your $180,000.00 in loans." "You would have between 2.5% and 5% of that repayment for your own discretionary use." "If you wanted to utilize accounting to perform the same functions that you are using under the D.A.T.E. program and you needed to pay them to do that you could reasonably use the $20,000.00 and/or that margin,that 2.5%to 5%, on the loan repayments to finance that agreement." Mr. Ball questioned, "Who would determine that 2.5% or 5%." W. Gottlieb responded, "You would, the Board of Health." Mr. Doherty commented, `But that could be used to pay the administrative overhead in continuing to administer the program."