 Good evening everyone this open meeting of the Arlington Finance Committee is being conducted remotely consistent with Governor Baker's order of March 12 2020 to the outbreak of the virus in order to trans mitigate the transmission of the virus. We've been advised by the Commonwealth to suspend public gatherings and as such the governor's order suspends the requirements of the open meeting law to have all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location. Further all members of the public body of public bodies are allowed encouraged to participate remotely disorder you can find posted with the agenda materials for the meeting on the town website. Ensuring public access does not ensure public participation unless such participation is required by law this meeting will feature public comment only in writing by email to T Bradley at town.arlington.ma.us. This meeting is convening by video conference on the zoom app as posted on the town's website identifying how the public may join in and comment. Please note that the meeting is being recorded and that some attendees are participating by video conference according accordingly please be aware that other folks may be able to see you and take care not to screen share your computer. Anything that you broadcast may be captured by the recording. All supporting materials have been provided members that have been provided members of this body are available to town's website unless otherwise noted. The public's encouraged to follow along using the post that agenda, unless the chair notes otherwise chair will introduce each speaker on the agenda after they conclude their remarks the chair. Invites members to provide any comments questions or motions please hold until you are recognized in your name is called. Please remember to mute your phone or your computer when you're not speaking and please remember to speak clearly in a way that helps generate accurate minutes. For any response please wait until the chair yields the floor to you and state your name before speaking. If members wish to engage in colloquial other members please do so through the chair taking care to identify yourself. Due to the size of my left the top screen, I may not be able to see all the members at once if someone raises raise their hand and I haven't noticed. I hereby request the terror Bradley or any record, please bring this to my attention. So now we'll confirm that all the meters members are. So if you will. Answer in the affirmative when I call your name grant give me in. Well, here. John Ellis. Kyahee Lee. Yes. Brian Beck here. area. Sophie Migliaz or he said he wasn't going to be here Sophie and so did grant. Sophie. Here. Jonathan Wallach. Shailene Crawford. Darrell Harmer here. Here. Alan Jones. Here. George closer. Here. Bill Keller. Here. Altoxie. Here. Juan de Nascimento. Here. Christine Deschler. Here. Dean Korman. You hear you're here right. Yeah, did you not hear me I'm here. Dean Korman it looks like it's trying to speak. David McKenna. Here. Yes. Thank you David and Tara you're here. Okay. So we have a quorum. Let me, I want to make some comments here. This is the time that I should normally ask to pass the salt. Having to eat my words. So last week. The last meeting rather. Al Tosti asked about our future schedule. And I'm not sure if that's the case. I'm not sure if that's the case. I literally responded that we could end by March 30th, but I'm concerned that that's not the case. So Grant. Gibby is not going to be here tonight. And so that means that we have to do the water and sewer on Monday or later. But remember, we have the school budget on Monday night. And tonight we will address article 25. And the insurance budget. And if Brian Beck is here and ready. We'll also do the parking district commission fund. And then we'll do the water and sewer budget. And then we'll do the water and sewer budget. And then we'll do the water and sewer budget. We didn't do when we did the parking budget. Then we also have to do the water. Water bodies, the historic district commission. We've got a response on that. I think we're getting a response on the committee and disability where. Has. Then. Sending a flurry of emails back and forth on this. There are some select board issues that we have to deal with. The town managed. Any issues that wrap up with the town manager. And then in addition, I'd like to see us receive some reports from our special working groups, including out of these operation research, which is. Going to be covering the DPW. Trash trash collection and recycling. Budget. Excuse me or operation. Christine, hopefully has a policy. Her policy group has a. The annual that has been worked on for quite some time. And it's. I mean, I've seen it. It's very impressive. And then an update, perhaps on the IT. Working group. And, and. If it sounds like I have things under control here, that's not really true because. All of this was derived from an excellent summary that. Tara prepared while I was struggling to figure out what was going on this email arrived. So. We also have to do the warrant article on domestic partnerships. The warrant article on rodenticides. And then, as I mentioned earlier, the select boards trying to change the budgeting schedule. And they're not going to be able to come until after March 30th. So. Probably, I think we should be thinking about it using at least. Tara pointed out that. In 2021, we met for 19 regular meetings. Right up through 414. And. This year, if we meet. Even through. A couple of meetings in April. We'll, we'll, we'll still have fewer meetings than last year. I mean, that's just a piece of information for whatever it's worth. So, so in any event, please reserve. We're going to review the budget for April 4th and April 6th. And we will also, as Al pointed out, need to review the budgets after we see the houseways and means committee report. Hopefully on the 14th of April. So. Is that. Anybody have any questions on that. Thoughts. None. Okay. Good. So then I think. I see that we have Julie Brazil and Greg Dennis here. Welcome. Thank you very much for. For coming. So let's address the minutes. Tara, do you have the. You have two sets of minutes. Yes. I am to working off a laptop today unexpectedly. So bear with me. Just a minute here. Okay. Here are the minutes for 314. Whoops, wrong one. Here they are. Okay. Okay. Okay. Thank you. I did not receive comments. From anyone except for you, Charlie, saying that they looked fine. Oh, I don't know if anyone else has had a chance to read these. They've been up on the SharePoint site for a day or two. But I found them. Accurate. So. Are there any questions on the minutes? Motion to accept the minutes is in order. Okay. Okay. So this is what's the, this is the minutes of 314, right? Yes. Okay. So we'll move to a vote. It's not here. Shane. Yes. Does John Ellis here yet? No. Mackayah Healy. Mackayah. Thank you. Brian. Yeah, I'm here. Yep. A reef is not here. Sophie. Yes. Okay. John and walk is not here. Shailene Crawford. Is not here. Darrell Harmer. Yeah. Any record? Yes. Allen Jones. Yes. George Cozer. Yes. So Keller. Yes. Val Tosti. Yes. Wanda Nascimento. Yes. Christine Deschler. Yes. Dean Carmen. Yes. David McKenna. Yes. The minutes. Yes. 314 are approved. Then we have the minutes for 320. Is that right? 316. I'm sorry. 316. Yes. Today's 323. What am I saying? I don't know why they're not resizing. This is. This is a new laptop and a new experience. So. Here we go. We're just taking up half the screen, but this is unfortunately as big as I can get them. Okay. Any comments on the minutes for 316. I reviewed them. I didn't find any. Any difficulties with them. So. Motion is in order. If there are no comments or questions on the minutes of 316. So. So we'll go to a vote. Shane Bundell. Yes. Okay. Okay. We'll just skip. Okay. Let's skip. Yeah. Yes. Okay. We got. Sophie. Yes. Jonathan wall is not here. Traylene. Darrell Harmer. Yes. Annie LaCourt. Yes. Alan Jones. Yes. George Koser. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Carmen. Yes. And David McKenna. I'm counting you, David. Thank you. So those minutes are now behind us. I think the only minutes, the next ones that we'll see will be the minutes from last Monday. So the next item on the agenda is a warrant article. Number 25 early voting. And we have with us tonight, town clerk, Julie Brazil. And the chair of the election moderate, modernization committee. Greg. Dennis. So let me. Somebody have the comment. Okay. So let me turn the floor over to. Who should Greg or who wants to speak? Oh, Julie, is it okay if I just lead? Sure. Okay. Thank you to the chair and to this committee. For providing us this opportunity to present this warrant article to you. Again, this is warrant article number 25. It's a home rule article. That would provide Arlington voters with early voting options for town elections as well. When we first took a look at this. Three years ago. We had seen that some communities had attempted this. But their efforts ultimately failed in the legislature. The legislature wasn't as interested in providing. The state and federal general elections only. Not for town elections. And the election modernization committee has been interested in some time and making available early voting options for town elections as well. When we first took a look at this. Three years ago. We had seen that some communities were not as interested in providing expanded early voting at that time. But things seem to have shifted in the state houses a lot more interest in early voting. There's bills that have passed would afford some communities with the ability to offer early voting. And I think. The whole pandemic era. And the expanded options for more flux, more flexible voting options that were available during this time. And I think it's important that. I think we've appreciated that and want to make some of those kinds of things permanent. So we think the ground is shifted in our favor such that if we were to forward this, we would have. For this to the legislature, we would have a good chance of passage. And even if it does not, it's still a statement that the town believes that. Municipalities ought to have the ability to vote. The. Parameters of the law. And things like that are very similar to what's already in effect for state elections. And the hours. For early voting are largely within the existing hours of the town quarks office. And the volume of early voters isn't going to be tremendously high. So. And Julie can speak to this, but we believe that the court existing quarks staff. We'll largely be able to accommodate the early voting request to have a minimal. Financial impact. And. That about summarizes it. Julie, did you want to add anything? No, I think, I think that's an excellent summary. And yes, I mean, I think we, we haven't seen. Huge numbers in the communities that have done it. A few communities, you know, similar to Arlington did it. During the pandemic. Because their elections were later and that ability was restored. It wasn't really a practical option for Arlington last, last year in 2021. But yeah, turnouts very low. And so my, certainly my plan would be to ease into it gently, make it available as an option to take the pressure off of voters who have tricky schedules. And. And, you know, if it seems to be catching on ramp up very slowly, having election workers come in. In order to, so like a team of two. Just to assist. So if it, if it starts to catch on, we'll see it coming sort of as a team and we can, we can build it into the budgets better. But at this point, I couldn't begin to guess. Because we don't know what the rules. We'll change. And, you know, this is a minimal package. And we don't know. So that's really all we know is, is this minimum seems like a good idea. If we can get it.