 are calling to order the meeting of the Eilenton Select Board for August 31st, 2020. As a preliminary matter, this is John Herd, Chair of the Select Board, permit me to confirm that all members and persons anticipated on the agenda are present and can hear me. Members, when I call your name, please respond in the affirmative. Diane Mahan. Here. Joseph Carl. Here. Steven Ducorsi. Here. In Lendingons. Here. Staff, when I call your name, please respond in the affirmative. Adam Chapelling. Here. Doug Hyme. Here. And Board Administrator Ashley Maher is participating remotely. Good evening. This meeting of the Eilenton Select Board is being conducted remotely consistent with Governor Baker's executive order of March 12th, 2020 due to the current state of emergency and the Commonwealth given the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. In order to mitigate the transmission of the virus and reduce risk of COVID-19 illness, we have been advised and directed by the Commonwealth to suspend public gatherings and as such, the governor's order suspends the requirement of the open meeting law to have all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location. Further, all members of public bodies are allowed and encouraged to participate remotely. The order which you can find posted with the agenda materials for this meeting allows public bodies to meet entirely remotely so long as reasonable public access is afforded so that the public can follow along in the deliberations of the meeting. Ensuring public access does not ensure public participation unless such participation is required by law. This meeting will feature public comment even if members of the public do not provide comment. Participants are advised that people may be listening who do not provide comment and those persons are not required to identify themselves. For this meeting, the select board is convening by Zoom as posted on the town's website identifying how the public may join. Please note that this meeting is being recorded and that some attendees are participating by video conference. Accordingly, please be aware that other folks may be able to see you and take care not to screen share your computer. Anything you broadcast may be captured by the recording. Please also take care to adjust your screen or device name if you would like to speak in order for us to recognize speakers appropriately and develop accurate minutes. It is helpful for participants to see your full first and last name when calling upon you rather than a nickname. All of the meeting materials for this meeting except any executive session materials are available on Novus, the Novus agenda dashboard and we recommend the members in the public follow the agenda as posted on Novus unless the chair notes otherwise. We're now turning to the first item on the agenda before we do so permit me to cover some ground rules for effective and clear conduct of our business and to ensure accurate meeting minutes. I'll introduce each speaker on the agenda after they conclude their remarks. The chair will go down the line of members inviting each by name to provide any comment questions or motions. Please hold until your name is called. Further, please remember to mute your phone or computer when you are not speaking. 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 colloquially with other members, please do so through the chair taking care to identify yourself. This meeting will feature opportunities for public comments on certain agenda items. After members have spoken, I as the chair will afford public comment opportunities as follows. I will first ask members of the public who wish to speak to identify their names and addresses only. Once the chair has a list of all public commentators, I will call on each by name in a fourth, three minutes for any comments. Please keep in mind that all participants and members of the public must be recognized by the chair before speaking. Finally, each vote tonight will be taken by a roll call vote. And that takes us to the second item on the agenda. Which is a proclamation for Hunger Action Day, which I have right here. And is Andy Doan on the list of attendees? Yes, would you like me to promote her? Okay. Hi, Andy, how are you? Hi, thanks for having me. Sure, you can just state your name and your position then I'll read the proclamation. Andy Doan, executive director of Arlington Eats. Thank you. All right, so the proclamation sign by the members of the select board. Whereas Feeding America has designated September as Hunger Action Month and September 10th as Hunger Action Day to raise awareness about hunger and inspire neighbors to take action. And whereas in Arlington, an estimated 4,530 people, roughly 10% of the total population are at risk for food insecurity. And whereas the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the issue of food insecurity throughout the region. And whereas before the pandemic, approximately one in 13 residents of Eastern Massachusetts experienced food insecurity. In 2020, one in eight residents of Eastern Massachusetts are projected to experience food insecurity. Child food insecurity is projected to rise at a greater rate with one in six children now at risk to experience hunger. And whereas the town of Arlington recognizes that Arlington Eats, Arlington Council on Aging, FoodLink and Arlington Public Schools have worked in partnership to address food insecurity in this community and acknowledges that they have increased services dramatically since the onset of the pandemic. And whereas the number of neighbors served by Arlington Eats has increased 60%, Eats now distributes approximately 9,000 pounds of food and makes 220 to 250 deliveries per week. And whereas FoodLink has collected 90,000 pounds of food twice the usual amount provided the equivalent of 75,000 meals to those in need in distributive food to 15 new community partners. And whereas Arlington Council on Aging has acted as a communication hub to connect all residents to food resources and has undertaken focused outreach to Arlington seniors. Whereas since April, Arlington Public Schools has been providing weekly deliveries of free breakfast and lunch to children in teens facing food insecurity in Arlington, APS deliveries currently serve approximately 220 children in teens per week. Now therefore be it resolved that the town of Arlington encourages any resident in need of food to call the Arlington Food Hotline at 781316-3400 or visit ArlingtonEats.org and resolve that the town of Arlington encourages residents to support efforts to alleviate food insecurity by volunteering and donating money or food when they are able and resolved that September 10th, 2020 shall be proclaimed as Hunger Action Day in Arlington and that all residents are encouraged to take cognizance of this event and participate fittingly in its observance. Andy, thank you for being on to the meeting and all that you do. Then you wanna address the board, you can do so. Yeah, I just wanna thank the select board in the town of Arlington for recognizing hunger. We've always known it's been an issue in Arlington but of course at the pandemic it's even more so now and we're just grateful that we can all work together as a community to ensure that no child, no family or no senior goes hungry here in Arlington. So thank you for this proclamation and for the community, we can work together to make sure that we can eliminate hunger here in Arlington. Thank you. Yeah, we'll turn to the board for any questions, comments or motions. Mr. Dickens, you are muted. Sorry about that, I was unmuted and then unmuted it. I hear there was a motion by Mr. Kuro, I'm not sure if it's seconded, if not then I'm happy to second it. And so, and also to add that I fully support this, I think it's really good work. As you noted, it was a problem before the pandemic and I'm glad we're doing this but we as a region as a country just gotta do a lot more. And I think living wage would go a long way towards being solving this problem. A host of other problems including housing, healthcare and everything else and the more I'm involved the more I'm really determined to do some work on that because that statistic about the net value of a white household being $250,000 and that of a black household being $8 is a problem. It's not only across just those two races, it's a problem in terms of just poverty in general. And I've done a little bit of math and it seems to me that if you took $15,000 of that net worth and gave it to the minority families in some way or another, you would bring them up to $185,000. That's not a whole lot of money. And I think as a region, we can do that. We just have to have the will to do that. And so, thank you for what you're doing and we'll do more. Yep. Mr. Carl. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Hi, Andy. It's good to see you. Thank you very much for bringing this forward. 4,530 people, the food insecurity in the town is a big number. You know, it's noted further down the resolution that the number of neighbors serve by on can each has increased 60%. Is that since the pandemic began? Yeah. Yeah, that's late April's. We actually hit our peak about 250 families we were serving every week. It dropped down a little bit in May and June and July. And then just this past month, it's gone back up to 250. We think most likely it's because of the reduce, the reduction in. Kind of employment. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And the lingering effects of the pandemic. Thank you for all the work that you do and your partners as well in the town. It's a great partnership. So thank you. Okay, Ms. Mahan. Thank you to Andy and everyone with Allington Eats. I have two questions, which I think I know both the answers to, but my two questions are when people ask about when is the time that we can drop off to Allington Eats food links. I think I know the answer. And then my second question is, how are we getting out that information on where you can donate to Allington Eats, what the current need is, whether it's gluten-free peanut butter or whatever and how that word is getting out. So the blanket thing would be, what's sort of the general time place day to drop things off? And then how do we find out where to drop that what we should drop? Yeah, the great question, Diane. So we accept food donations on Tuesdays from one to 4 p.m. and we're currently located at St. John's Church 74 Pleasant Street. We do, they're on the corner of Pleasant and Lombard Road and so we actually have tables set up on Lombard Road so you can drop off your donation there with contact lists so you don't have to interact with anybody. And in terms of what our needs are, they keep evolving and changing. So for instance, we recognized earlier this summer that we were getting a lot of requests for diapers and adult and cottonic products. So we put out the call for that. So the best way to find out is go to our website, our LinkedIn Eats.org or follow us on Facebook. We post regularly on there what the current needs are and we're just so grateful for the way the community supports us. We get a lot of our food from the Greater Boston Food Bank, incredibly reduced price but there's these interesting things or most recently is now sun butter. We can't get ahold of that anywhere. So that's where we're asking for community or non-edition. So that's an important piece that the community can play in donating food to us. Thank you. And Mr. D'Corsi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Andy, thank you very much for all the work you're doing at our LinkedIn Eats and I'm happy to support this proclamation and we have it in the resolution but I can't emphasize enough that people are in need of food that the food hotline is listed there and the LinkedIn Eats website is listed as well and anything we can do as a town to get that word out for people in need but we should do that but thank you for all your efforts. Thank you. And just to clarify, Mr. Carl, did you make a motion to receive? A motion to adopt the proclamation as written. Yep. And seconded by Mr. Diggins. All right. And thank you, Andy, for coming. I've been involved with Eats for a couple of years. Becca was a food pantry and I'm just amazed at the work that everyone does, especially Andy where she's been with us for a few years and where it is now from where it was when she started is just an amazing transformation and the amount of work that they do is mind boggling. So thank you for all you do. All right. So we have a motion from Mr. Carl, seconded by Mr. Diggins, attorney Heim. Ms. Mohan. Yes. Mr. Dacorsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Curell. Yes. Mr. Hurd. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Thank you and thank you, Andy. All right, so the next item on the agenda is our consent agenda. So we have meeting of minutes, August 17th, 2020. Then we have appointment of new election workers, Lisa Blankspore, 11 Webb Cowet Road, Precinct 9, Chris Brumel, 65 Park Street, unit number one, Precinct 8, Jennifer Goebel, 89 Sunset Road, Precinct 13, Emily Hoffman, 79 Park Street, Precinct 10, Diane Kaplan, 65 Park Street, unit one, Precinct 10, Rebecca Kittridge, 46 Teal Street, unit two, Precinct three, Sherry McNeil, nine Walnut Court, Precinct 12, Vanessa Rinesmith, 60 Brooks Avenue, Precinct four, Karen Roach, 43 Beverly Road, Precinct 11, Elizabeth Sartori, 3309 Sim Circle, Precinct 16, Wendy Seltzer, 176 Pleasant Street, Precinct four. And we'll look to Mr. D'Corsi for a motion. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair. Move approval of both items in the consent agenda. Thank you. And Ms. Mohan. Second that motion by Mr. D'Corsi. Thank you. Any comments, Mr. Diggins? No comments. And Mr. Caro. No comments. All right, Attorney Hyde. Ms. Mohan. Yes. Mr. D'Corsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Curo. Yes. Mr. Hurd. Yes. Janice Vogue. Thank you. And that takes us to appointments. So we have two appointments to the traffic advisory committee. To fill unexpired terms. One is Lewis Jones, term to expire December 31st, 2020. And Shoji Takahashi, term to expire December 31st, 2022. Mr. Chaplin. So I see Shoji, so I'll bring him in. I don't see Ray. Yeah, I think he goes by Ray. Ray. But I'll keep an eye for him if he joins while we're talking with Mr. Takahashi. Hi Mr. Takahashi, how are you? Hi everyone. Just tell us your name and a little bit about why you wanted to join the traffic advisory committee. My name is Shoji Takahashi. I live here on Mountain Avenue, right across the street from Stratton Elementary School. I've been involved in the Safe Roots to School program for a few years here. And I've been a bicycle commuter from Arlington to Cambridge for more than a decade now. So I've had a lot of interactions, both with cyclers and pedestrians. And of course we drive around our kids. And I would love to be involved a little bit more, see the goings on behind the scenes and perhaps learn a little bit how the town operates but also provide some feedback from my experience using all those modalities to hopefully get designs that are designed for all walks of life. Great. Thank you. And thank you for your willingness to serve. Mr. Diggins, any questions, comments, emotions? No, well, I'll motion to approve of Mr. Takahashi. Okay, I don't have your last name here of the candidate for the Transportation Advisory Committee. You'll be seeing more of me because I'm on the committee. I represent ACMI as the member of the Chamber of Commerce made. So I'm looking forward to working with you. Mr. Carl. No, I'll just second the motion and just say, thank you, Dr. Takahashi. Glad to see that the Stratton Safe Routes of School program is still alive and well since the days that my kids are up there. Thank you. And Mrs. Mahan. And thank you, Dr. Takahashi. And I have looked over your resume curriculum vitae, whichever is appropriate. And once again, with a lot of volunteers that we have in Allenton, we're very fortunate that we probably couldn't afford you if we had to pay for you. But since we're getting you on a volunteer basis, it's definitely the right price range. And I do appreciate you and your family's commitment to volunteer in this way, because I know while you're the person up front, it's also your family allowing you to do this. So I'm very appreciative of it. Thank you so much. Yeah, Mr. D'Corsi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I also wanna thank Dr. Takahashi for your willingness to serve the community on the Transportation Advisory Committee. Thank you. And again, thank you for serving this. We put a lot of stress on this committee. A lot of the stuff comes through here and we push it off to you. It has a full plate, so I know you're ready to get after. All right, on a motion to approve by Mr. Diggins, seconded by Mr. Carroll, Attorney Hyme. Ms. Mahon. Yes. Mr. D'Corsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Carroll. Yes. Mr. Hurd. Yes. And Mr. Chaptiline, is Mr. Jones with us? I do not see him. If the chair is so inclined, I can keep an eye out for him over the course of the meeting and let you know if he does join. Sure. We'll turn to Mr. D'Corsi if the board so chooses, if we wanna approve Mr. Jones and then if he's in, we'll invite him back in to introduce himself. Sure. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And we did receive information in the agenda, a package and the recommendation from the Transportation Advisory Committee. So I'll move appointment of Mr. Jones to the tack. All right. And Mr. Mahon. I will second that and I will ask the chair or add them through the chair and see there's a under attendees, there's a phone number that ends at 967. I don't know if that might be Mr. Jones or if that's something else. So I'll leave that to Mr. Chaptiline and the chair to DeCypher. Thank you, Mr. Hart. Sure. I suppose I can say that if that is Mr. Jones, if he could hit star nine, that would raise his hand. Oh, thank you. He can identify himself that way. Okay, please continue through the chair. Thank you, Mr. Hart. And Mr. Diggins, any comments, questions? No comments. There seems to be something in the water in Kendall Square because they're both like at the Whitehead and the Broad Institute. So I'm looking at his CV and that analysis that I mean, he's gonna be, they're both gonna be really great on the committee. Looking forward to it. Great. Thank you. And Mr. Carl. Oh, nothing more other than I was really impressed with the quantitative analysis that the candidate did of the bus rapid transit pilot. Yep. All right. And Mr. Chaptiline, I assume no raised hand functions on that number. Nope, nothing. Thank you. All right. Attorney Heim. So on a motion by Mr. DeCorsi, seconded by Mrs. Mohan. Ms. Mohan. Yes. Mr. DeCorsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Kuro. Yes. Mr. Herd. Yes. Nana spoke. All right. And that will take us to our open forum, except in unusual circumstances any matter presented for consideration of the board shall neither be acted upon nor decision made the night of the presentation in accordance with the policy under which the open forum was established. It should be noted that there's a three minute time limit to present a concern or request. So at this point, if you could use the raise hand function if you'd like to speak at open forum. There are no raised hands, Mr. Chair. All right. Five seconds. All right. Now we'll put a close to our open forum. So that brings us to traffic rules and order. We haven't a few items on here. What I'm going to do at the request of one of our participants is bump up our discussion of the special town meeting, which is number nine. We'll take that out of order and take that first. So that's an update and discussion of special town meeting. Mr. Chaplain. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I'll give a brief update and then I believe Mr. Diggins can also share as he and I have been attending meetings together and I know you've been attending several of these discussions as well, Mr. Herd. So I believe we were able to inform the board at the last meeting of a success. Well, actually, I think at the last meeting we were the day before a meeting we were planning with the Lexington board, the Lexington moderator and other staff from Lexington, the town manager and an analyst to learn about their process. We had that meeting. I think we learned a lot about their process, the level of volunteer work that would be necessary and the level of tech support that would be necessary from both a volunteer and town staff point of view. So we learned how they did it. We then followed up last week with a more detailed conversation with the member of the Lexington Select Board that actually wrote the sort of, I guess you call it the adjunct program to Zoom that helped them manage their virtual town meeting. That was myself, Mr. Diggins and Eric Helmuth who was really instrumental in bringing electronic town meeting voting to town a couple of years ago. And I think that really helped us build out or at least for Len and Eric, I'm less technically savvy than they are, but a better understanding of how the platform could work for us and what would need to happen from today forward to be able to conduct a town meeting later this year. We then got a proposal from Mr. Pato in Lexington not in his role as a select board member but as the individual who wrote that program which seems very reasonable to us. So I think we're in a position where there's a lot of work to do between now and town meeting to do this but we think it's doable and practicable. So I feel good about it. I don't want to speak for him but my sense is that Eric Helmuth agreed. I think the moderator is feeling good about our ability to do it and I'll let Mr. Diggins speak for himself but I think we're in good position to make this happen. The only additional thing I'll share that we, I did learn and I think it's, I only offered this because I think we should, we could all keep this framework in mind that though Lexington did this in the spring, they did not conduct their full town meeting in terms of going through every warrant article and coming to conclusion on it. In fact, what they told us is their virtual town meeting looked much like ours that there was a consent agenda with a lot of yeses and a consent agenda is with a lot of no actions and in a few substantive articles that they worked their way through. So I only offer that in, I think there will be learning here, right? They kicked it off sooner than they did but haven't gone through a full multi debate type town meeting yet I think they're planning to do that this fall. So just before we would be planning to do it so we might still get some further wisdom from them but I think both Lexington is learning we'll be learning in the other communities that are trying to do this we'll be learning as we go. Yeah. And Mr. Diggins? Yeah, I mean, I'm enthusiastic about it. I mean, the hard part is going to be the training part. I mean, I'm a little concerned that the timeline has the training starting a little, I'm a bit later than I wanted it to but that will, it sent us to at least have the trainers in place I mean, who are going to help train the town meeting members because I think it's very important that town meeting members take a lot of the responsibility for training because we're going to need staff to continue doing what it takes to operate this town especially since we're in the middle of a pandemic. And so I don't think we can really place the owners of training on the town staff. So a lot of us town meeting members are going to have to take that on and I am going to be happy to coordinate that. I think that will mess very nicely with the precinct meetings, I mean, and so I love my fellow town meeting members. So I look forward to getting in touch with them and coordinating that training and setting up a buddy system, so that those who need a little extra help will have someone that they can turn to for that help. So that's about it. And my only hesitancy about doing this sooner, early in the agenda was I was a little concerned that the moderator and perhaps maybe Eric might be tuning in late because it was late on the agenda. So if they do turn in late, I'll ask the chair if we could maybe consider being talking to them a little bit more, but that's all I have to say, thank you. Sorry, I didn't even think to see if the moderator was on the panel. Okay, all right. Mr. Carl? No, I'm very happy to hear this and that we can go forward. So can you review what the thinking is around a workable time timeline? Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, Pline? We're still thinking that second week of November for the first session. It's, you know, it's Len and I, Mr. Diggins and I spoke this morning and I think we'll have to talk a few more times about exactly what date it will be, Veteran's Day, I believe is on a, is that a Wednesday in the middle of the week? So there's some complications around whether or not we can be ready for the ninth or we have to push a little bit. So we're in that timeframe thinking we can get it kicked off by then, but that's what we're, that's what we're sharing for. Okay, and then working backwards, obviously. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, great, thank you. And Mr. Ducorsi? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you, Mr. Chapter Lane and Mr. Diggins for the update. I am glad to see that this is moving forward and the discussion with the Lexington select board member has been productive. The only, one procedural issue and maybe a question for Attorney Hyme is just the timeframe, just procedurally, does the moderator have to ask us to run the meeting remotely? And then we go from there or do we issue the warrant first or announce that the warrant is open first? Cause I know there's some different protocols in the special legislation. Attorney Hyme? So the special legislation was relative to annual town meetings. I think that the right process would be to call the special town meeting and then have the moderator make the determination in consultation with public health officials come back to you and say that we think we need to conduct this remotely and make that decision in that order. So I think the first thing would be to sort of set the meeting date. And there's a couple of other things that flow from that. So one of the things, if I may, Mr. Chair. Yep. That we just need to be mindful of is chapter 48, section five, which basically says that the planning board is gonna need to notice each hearing on zoning articles 14 days before that hearing happens. So for everything that they have to do, we also need to know, have a general idea of when the date is with enough time for any zoning articles to be heard. And they don't usually hear them in one night. So they would need to advertise them for two weeks before they could actually have the hearing. So it may be in everybody's interest once we can get the date down to notice the special town meeting as sort of soon as possible and take the steps that you've expressed some concern about, Mr. Corsi, as well as give the planning more plenty of time to figure out how they're gonna manage having zoning article hearings. Thank you. And Mr. Mahan. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Similar to Mr. Corsi or one of my other colleagues sort of keeping November a date in mind and working backwards. Is it the moderator or some other office that also needs to sort of give a heads up to Fincom, ARB or Capital Planning in terms of this is the date we're shooting for. It looks like it's in November. These are the articles we already know that we carried over from the annual town meeting we had at the high school field but also recognizing that once we open the warrant, even if it's a shorter time period and a hundred registered voters, others may need to come in. So I guess my question would be to you, Mr. Chairman and anyone you need to direct it to, maybe I don't know if it's the town manager, how are we sort of giving the heads up to what it's just in the planning process right now but it looks like maybe in November to Fincom, ARB and Capital Planning or any other group that needs to have warrant article hearings for this special town meeting. Chairman Heim or Mr. Chapterling. So that's a very good question. So the ARB through misrates participation in some of these conversations is aware. I've had informal conversations with the leadership of Fincom and Capital Planning. I think they have a loose sense of what we're looking at but as we firm things up, we need to firm things up with them. So yes, you're right on that. As soon as our schedule gets firmed up, I'll be communicating with them to make sure that they can line up their hearings accordingly. Thank you, Mr. Chair and thank you, Mr. Town Manager. Appreciate that. So I'm not going to worry about it. It's on our chairman and our town manager. Thank you so much. And I have had discussions on this with town manager, Stegans the past couple of weeks as they've been in touch with people in Lexington. And I think it's going to be difficult for sure. And there'll be a learning curve and, you know, but it's also something that we can handle. And just for anyone that might think why we can't jump right on this as far as training is that, you know, for those who have kids in school know that a lot of the town's technical staff is going to be committed to trying to get our kids back in school and get set up. So, you know, we're working with both that and to try to develop the framework for the special town meeting. So we will, we'll get through it, but it will take a lot of work. So we'll ask for patience. So it doesn't look like we need to vote to set a date tonight. Would you anticipate by the next meeting that we'd be able to do so? Yes, I think to meet all these timelines we'll have to do so. Yeah, okay. All right, so I don't think we are looking for any motions or votes on this particular article. And we will push on. So the next agenda item that we have here is agenda item number six, discussion approval of blue bike station locations. We have Jenny Ray, Director of Planning and Community Development and Dan Ansets, our senior transportation planner. Is Dan with us? So I think you've just got me tonight for this one. So if you don't mind, I'll bring me, I'll bring a memo that Dan provided to the board up on the screen. Okay. So as the board will recall, it adopted or approved for station locations at its last meeting. And there were two potential sites that Dan described to the board. One at the intersection of Lynnwood Street and the Minuteman Bikeway and one somewhere in proximity to Thorndike Field, Dog Park, A-Wife, Magnolia Field, that general area. So after doing a little more work with both DPW and the folks from Motivate that operates blue bikes, Dan has come back to recommend specific locations in those two areas. The first one you can see on the memo that's up on the screen on Lynnwood. I guess that would be on the Easterly side of the road adjacent to the nearby cul-de-sac. And so I believe that that would be south of the bikeway itself, taking up three parking spaces, good access to the bike path, good access to Spypond Park, with one drawback being that because it's on the roadway, it's likely that we will have to take it up for the winter season. But this is the workable recommendation that Dan has made for this particular location. Would you like me to pause at this and try to answer any questions or go on to the next one and then take it? I'll go on to the next one. I think I can handle the questions that's discussion. So the next one is down sort of between Thorndike Field and Magnolia Field. It's not quite as close to the Dog Park as Mr. Amstutz had originally hoped. Part of the challenge was we would have needed an easement from the MBTA to put it in the location we had originally thought about and we couldn't get a clear timeline on how long getting such an easement or even an allowance or MOA would take. So we located an area that's already on existing town property. So I think you can see on this map. So this is where the bikeway takes that bend there and we've probably all walked on this sort of crisscrossing dirt path depending on where we're going. So this is town property over here. This is the path that wraps around Magnolia Field and you can walk over to Magnolia Park. So we'll be talking about putting our own concrete pad in here. So DPW would do that work and placing the bike station right here on our property. No need to get MBTA approval and we would have site control over it and we wouldn't have to remove it in the winter. And I think that's... Turn to the board for questions or motions, Mr. Carl. Yeah, first, I'll move approval. I just had one quick question on the Thorndike Magnolia one. I'm trying to recall and I can't tell from the picture there is the new station directly adjacent to someone closed utility controllers or transformers. Yeah, you know. Fenced in. I think, can you see my cursor? Yes. I think that's down just off the screen over here. Okay, okay. That's my recollection. I was trying to recall and I wasn't able to go down there and it's not really material anyways. I'm just anticipating that where this is an informal path that is built up that you're probably gonna see, you know, a new little jog around the stations. Just... Yeah, I think you are right about that. Yeah, yeah. So great. I appreciate the creative thinking here though. And I think it's a good location. I think it's great to have it even a little bit closer to Magnolia and Thorndike. Close to the neighborhood too that the access to Barnum is right up over and just outside the top of the screen as well. So yeah, good access. Yeah, that's right. That's right. It's great. Thank you. You're welcome. Mohan? I'm unmuted. Yeah, sorry. I'll second the motion and I just have, I think a couple of comments. Of course, am I correct that the other four Lubeik stations are mostly from the center to East Allenton? Correct. My second question would be through the chair, Mr. Hard would be, if we approve these additional two locations at Linnwood Street at the Minuteman Bikeway and Minuteman Bikeway and Thorndike field, does that preclude if we find a bikeway location in the Heights, whether it's the industrial zone, Myrack, Sims or other, we would not be able to add that is it the way the contract is written out once we've agreed to six locations. If you do find a seventh location in the Heights, which I heard a lot of people, I think Mr. DeCorsi might have mentioned this and others is that sort of shutting the door on that. I guess I wouldn't describe it as shutting the door. The rule that motivate likes to try to adhere to, I believe was having stations be within a third of a mile of the closest station. So the closest station to the Heights right now would be in the center just behind the Uncle Sam Plaza. So we could, I think we can look at from there. I would imagine from there on out, we would probably space things a third of a mile away. Either on Mass Ave or along the bikeway heading west. I mean, I think all along what, to adhere with motivates rules for operating, I think we want to prove success with this system as it's currently laid out. And then if success is there and funding is there, see if we can start to move west. So I don't think it precludes it. I mean, I can't see how it would preclude it would be my answer. Okay. I guess I would leave with the chair and the town manager. We're definitely covered in East Allington in the center. We don't really see it in the Heights. If the chair and the town manager could further investigate, I know our approved contract identified six locations we're now at six, whatever we can do if we find a seventh or eighth in the Heights to make sure that that's something doable we're not locked out of it. So I'll leave that to the chair and the town manager if you both are comfortable with that. Yes. Yeah. And I would definitely like to investigate further locations, I think. And I would love to have it in Heights because that's where I am. But in our discussion at our last meeting one of the main deterrence was that if you have one that's more than a third of a mile from the other locations and if you plopped on in Heights and you rode up to the Heights and then it was full then you'd be riding back to the center and then taking the bus back up to the Heights because that's why they have them so close together. But I think the idea here would be to make a successful program and just start to push them one by one out towards the other parts of Allington. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And so Mr. Diggins. Yes. You're muted, Mr. Oh my God, I'm sorry. I figured it out before he said anything was just having problems hitting the button. Thank you, Doha. So I'll pick up a little bit where my colleague Ms. Mahan left off me. So I'm understanding too what's intriguing at the last meeting was when Mr. Anstab mentioned that I think there was another application for a grant that might come through in 21, 22 that would give us the ability to put more stations out maybe, I think it was made for ADK. So maybe we can even get another six stations. And so that's why I was really interested in having them strung along Mass Ave so that we could reach the Heights following that one-third of mile distance rule. But at the last meeting, why there was a potential location on Broadway Street and the answer was that it was partly an equity issue, which I understood. I'm interested in why now we have these stations on the bike path. And I'll just say a little more because when I think about where these stations go, I think why would anyone get a bike there and leave a bike in or leave a bike there? I kind of get it along Mass Ave. I don't so much get it along the bike path. Now, I'll follow this. I mean, I'm gonna prove it enthusiastically, but I just have to ask this question for my own edification. So if you have some sense of the rationale for the stations on the bike path, I'd appreciate it. Thank you. Absolutely. So when we set up line bike, I received a lot of feedback in this regard and I know when talking about blue bike the same. And I don't even speak for myself as a user of line bike owners here. People don't always commute the same way or in the same manner. I've heard from a number of people who in expressing interest for bike share are the type of people who might jump on the bus to get on the work in the morning, but in the afternoon, we'd love to be able to jump on a bike and don't wanna have to bring that bike on the bus and on the train with them into the city. So I think right out of the gate, I think that's number one, right? You know, you might take the bus in, but then you come home, you get off at Alewife. I don't know if it's Mr. Kiro saying he's one of those people. Yeah. I'd like to speak to it if I could too. So yeah, you know, you might get off the train and say, no, now I'm gonna jump on a bike and take it home. So, you know, maybe you live over near Broadway, maybe you live off Capitol Square, maybe you live in the center, you know, whatever it might be. So you pick up a bike down here and head up to where you go. I also think it's a recreational corridor. We see, I see people with blue bikes coming presumably from Cambridge and Somerville on the bike path quite often. So I think it's a recreational corridor where people coming, you know, any which way might choose to access that bike to get where they're going faster if they know that it's there. Mr. Kiro? Thank you. Yeah, thank you. No, I just wanted to just add a use case because before the pandemic had me working from home every day, I was walking from my home along the bike path to Alewife and back just about every day. But the use case for me along the bike path was if, for example, I'd gotten a late start in the morning, I might've been walking part of the way but I knew I wasn't gonna make my commuter bus. I might, if there was a line bike, in the days of line bikes, I'd grab one and kind of finish out the route that way. And likewise, going the other way, sometimes if I was taking a class at the high school or something was running late, I'd pick it up along the way. So I was actually partly walking and partly taking the bike. I think that these locations that were proven tonight, I think they make a lot of sense though because they're near some of our very active sports fields and recreation areas. So I do see that there'll be a lot of destination traffic as well. Yeah, so I think it's pretty sound. I appreciate the explanation. Then one last question and that is, are we locked down to these locations? Are we able to move them if for whatever reason we decide we want to put them someplace else? You know, I would have to double check that. I would imagine they would want them to be there for some period of time to establish the network connectivity, so to speak. But I would also guess that within reason, we would be able to move them around but I would have to review the contract. I see town council's raising his hand. You might know for sure from his contract review. So there's a process for us to reevaluate the stations and the length of the contract also will provide some natural moment for both blue bikes and the town to assess. I believe if I remember correctly, they had talked about moving the stations the last time they were on or maybe it was the first time they were on, but so it is possible. I just think there'd have to be a joint agreement on where we're moving the stations and why. Thank you. That's it for me. Thank you. Mr. Corsi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I appreciate the memorandum. One thing I like about the discussion here is Mr. Amstutz mentioned both on street and off street locations. And if we are gonna add more locations in the future, to me it's preferable to have the docking stations off streets and not losing parking, you're not affecting traffic. But Linwood Street, for example, that he discussed why it wasn't practical to keep it off street and appreciate that. And I think on the last discussion on whether we move stations, I mean, one thing we're gonna have to look at, we have to hit a certain number of rides in order for the contract to be renewed or a certain level of usage. And I think as we go forward here, we find that there are some locations that aren't used as much, that would be the time to go back to Blue Bikes and seek a waiver of that one third of a mile and see if we can find another location to pick the numbers up. Thank you. Yeah, I agree. I think these are good locations. I would have liked to explore, put in Osprey and Linwood, but I understand that it just, I mean, logistically wouldn't have worked. But I think that's a good location because I do anticipate there'll be a lot of people just from the commuter standpoint that from East Allenton that would wanna a little walk in the morning and get on a bike, get into our wife. And that's a good location for that. So I do agree with these locations. So we have a motion to approve from Mr. Carl, seconded by Ms. Mohan, Attorney Hyde. Mrs. Mohan. Yes, thank you. Mr. DeCorsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Curell. Yes. Mr. Hurd. Yes. Janane Misfoe. Thank you. And that brings us to item number seven. Presentation of Allenton Community Electricity UP, UP campaign. Ken Pruitt, our energy manager. Is Mr. Pruitt with us? Yes, he is. I just promoted Ken, Jill and Patrick Roche, who I believe all three of you are gonna speak. Ken, is that right? That's true, in sequence. Okay, look at that. We'll recognize Mr. Pruitt. Great, thanks so much to Mr. Chair and to the members of the committee it's a pleasure to be here tonight. Again, my name is Ken Pruitt, the energy and project manager for the town of Arlington, working out of the Department of Planning and Community Development. And we're here to talk about really an exciting partnership program between the town of Arlington, between, along with Good Energy, which is our green electricity aggregation broker and the Arlington chapter of Mothers Out Front. To rebrand the Community Choice Electricity Program as well as to create a new, more effective and user-friendly website and other materials. And also to run an opt-up campaign, a multifaceted opt-up campaign that we hope will get many more electricity customers in Arlington to voluntarily add new renewable electricity to their supply, whether that be 50% or 100%. And it is an exciting program and I wanna thank, before going any further, Good Energy for offering to help us conceive of and launch this campaign at no cost to the town. Their work with graphics on the logos, their help with the language around the different product offerings and the website and other materials that will come out over time. They're developing on their own dime and I'm happy to have them do that. In addition to that, the Arlington chapter of Mothers Out Front has offered to do a great deal of work promoting the opt-up campaign to the residents from through their membership. And we appreciate that as well. And so we can, am I in control of this? Or Adam, are you in control of the? Yeah, I can advance them as you tell me to. Great, thank you. Maybe if you could go to the next slide. So I just want to introduce my co-presenters, Patrick Roche, who's the director of innovation at Good Energy and Jill Manca, who I mentioned is a volunteer with Arlington Mothers Out Front and who's been critical in this campaign. But I also finally wanna thank both Adam Chaplain and Joan Roman for all the time they've put into helping to plan this opt-up campaign and rebranding effort. They've spent a lot of time looking at different drafts of campaign materials and the website. And so we think what we have to show you here tonight is pretty exciting. And with that, I'll turn it over to Patrick Roche from Good Energy to cover the next several slides. All right, great. Thank you very much, Ken. Thanks for having me. So I thought we'd start off just by talking about what this program is. So it is called municipal aggregation or sometimes community choice aggregation. And just as a refresher, your electricity bill has two parts. It has a supply portion, which is the sources of electricity, where the electricity comes from. And then it has the distribution, the wires and the poles that get it to you. And so in Arlington, every source will always handle the wires and the poles. But you can choose where your electricity comes from. And Arlington has chosen to do a community choice aggregation program where the town selects a supply source. And every source still bills, everyone you get a single bill and they still can handle the power outages and all that sort of stuff. So this program has been active since August of 2017. And it was launched under the name Arlington Community Choice Aggregation or Arlington CCA. And there were sort of four main goals of the program. So one of the big efforts has been to increase the amount of renewable energy that is used going above and beyond state standards. But at the same time, trying to have competitive prices compared to average source and hopefully some savings. Also price stability. So the program can contract for longer terms than every source can, so they have stable prices. And also choice. So the program has multiple options and those options really differ in the amount of extra renewable energy that they have. So the program has been, was designed to sort of achieve those. And Adam, if you scroll down to the next slide, the program accomplishment slide here. So over the past almost three years at this point as yeah, here we are in August 2020, participation is around 14,000 households and 1,000 businesses. So, and I think in Arlington, there might be around 18,000 households total. So the vast majority of the residents are in the program and that's what it's really designed for. So the program has generated a good deal of savings. So there's been a cumulative $2.6 million saved compared to the ever source rates, the ever source supply rates. And we'll just note the savings can't be guaranteed in the future. We don't know what ever sources rates will be every six months they change. But we've delivered that over the course of the contract and that works out to about $165 per household with the average electricity use in the program. So that's on the savings front. On the renewables front, the program initially started with the standard product, the one that most people are enrolled in. That had 5% additional renewable energy. And after the first two and a half years, that was the first contract, the town started its second contract at the end of 2019 and went up to 11% additional renewable energy. So more than double that. And that all comes from within New England, it's known as Mass Class 1. And while 11% might not sound like a massive number, in context, the state minimum in 2020 is 16%. So you're not quite doubling the state amount, but you're going well above and beyond. And so that's really powerful when we look at every person in the program, more or less, is getting this extra renewable energy. So collectively across the entire town, it adds up to a lot of extra renewable energy purchased. So that's about 12,000 megawatt hours of additional renewable energy above and beyond the state standards. And to put that in perspective, that's enough to power completely around 2,200 Arlington homes with all of clean energy. So that's a lot of extra clean energy being purchased. And Arlington is following a very similar strategy to a number of other neighboring communities. So you're all sort of pursuing this strategy of going above and beyond the state standards and it's helping to support the growth of renewable energy in the region, which is really important. So you can go to the next slide, please. So looking a little bit more into the renewable energy side of things, we have the standard product, which has the 11% extra renewable energy. And then there are also, there's a product with 50% extra renewable energy and then a 100% renewable energy. So those are people who really want to go above and beyond and can usually afford to pay a little bit more per month and get that extra renewable energy. So as of July, we have about 731 households that are in that in one of those two options. And most are in the 100% option. You see about 589 accounts there. And the pie charts, what they show is on the left, you can see that the people who have opted up, as we say, who are in the 50% or the 100%, they're only about 5% of the total accounts. It's a very small little chunk there. But on the right, you can see that when we look at the total purchases of extra renewable energy, they're almost a third across the entire town. So they have a really outsized impact on the renewable energy goals of the program. So that was sort of the genesis for us working with Ken to think, how can we over the next few years really increase the number of people who are in these 50% and 100% products to really help the program achieve its renewable energy goals even more? And to do that, we thought, I think we need to revisit the sort of the messaging and the branding of the program. So if you wanna go to the next slide, the program was called Arlington CCA. And I think what we realized was to the average person that didn't mean all that much. And what we decided to do is went through a process of saying, okay, how can we, what we wanna communicate to people is that this is a town program, very different from, it's not people who knock on your doors or call you on the phone, trying to recruit you into some program. And what people can notice is a town backed program and that it's about electricity. So we came up with the name Arlington Community Electricity, which we think kind of achieves those goals well and happens to have a nice acronym base. And we came up with this logo. So we have the town seal and then we have the program logo here. And before we didn't really have any logo to speak of. So now what we have this that can go on all the materials to have a consistent branding and color scheme. And what we've decided for now is to always have the town seal along with the program seal. So it's again, clearly communicating that it's a town program. So that's, yeah. So rebranding the name and coming up with the logo is a big first step. And then if you go to the next slide, these are also the product names. So there are four choices in the Arlington Community Electricity Program. There's our standard product on the far left and that's called local green. That's what it was called before. And it has that extra 11% renewable energy. And there's the, as you go to the right, there's the 50% product and 100% product. Their names changed. They were just a little wonky. So we have local green and local greener and local greenest. So it's just sort of on a continuum. So the idea is the thing that's changing between the products is the amount of renewable energy. So that's what we're trying to convey. And then it says a reminder, we also have the basic option all the way on the right. That just meets the state's minimum standards for renewable energy. So that's there for people too. So if you go to the next slide, one of the big things we've done once we sort of worked on the messaging and branding was to revamp the website. So what we wanted to do was help the website really support the goal of getting people to opt up to really facilitate that, but also to have a lot more information about the impact the program's having for your renewable energy is coming from. And also just make it more educational in general. So when someone, if someone does see information about the program and to go to the website, it just really breaks it down for them about what this is because electricity is something a lot of us think about and certainly our bill. And so we've got sample bills up there and just a lot of other information. And people can do, take all the actions that they might want in the program on the website between whether it's changing their product choice, whether it's leaving the program or joining the program. So this will be in just a few days, I think what we're gonna be doing is it's a website that good energy builds and maintains. So we work with them to get all the content approved, but we maintain it, but we're going to be linking it to the ArlingtonMA.gov web address so that it will have that .gov ending, which again connects it to municipality. So it will be ACE or ACE.arlingtonMA.gov, which will be really nice for that. And we'll invite you to explore it and probably be up in a few days. So the next slide is what we're really looking forward to doing is kicking off an opt-up campaign as we call it. And what we're really doing with Ken and with Jill is kind of designing a year long outlook of different ways that we can get the program into sort of the mainstream and promote awareness of it and also promoting the ability to opt-up into a local greener or greenist. And we have about 730 participants in those opt-up categories right now and the town set a goal of hitting 1,000 by the end of the year. So we'll see if we can do it and it's really gonna involve a lot of different things. So we're gonna be doing a lot with social media to reach people and promote that and promote awareness. We'll also be doing things like traditional media letters to the editor. We'll be printing a bunch of lawn signs soon, which people can put up and hopefully we'll be seeing around town. Other signage, maybe some banners we'll be looking at and just a lot of different kind of diverse mediums. So there'll be a lot I think coming and we're really excited about the partnership with mothers out front who will be really impactful in helping us achieve those goals. So I think I'll give it back to Ken right now. Thanks, Patrick. And Mr. Chair, with your permission, I think we have one more speaker, Jill Manca from Mothers Out Front. If you are... Absolutely. Great. Jill, are you there? I'm here. Good evening. I'm Jill Manca, Arlington Mothers Out Front Local Campaigns Liaison. And on behalf of Mothers Out Front, I would like to say that the ACE rebranding and website is a huge improvement. It makes the community electricity program easy to understand and answers questions very well. Arlington Mothers Out Front has been working to persuade residents to opt up to 100% renewable electricity through Arlington CCA program since its kickoff in 2017. Having the town initiate and support a new opt up effort will help convince even more residents to opt up through the ACE program. And Mothers Out Front will continue to support this effort. Choosing 100% electricity through ACE while very effective is only the first step in fighting climate change. And tandem with this, with this, we will need to switch the source from fossil fuels to renewables for both heating and transportation. Switching the source is especially important and urgent in light of the new Massachusetts legislation passed by both chambers to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The 2050 roadmap includes measurable steps along the way, a 50% decrease in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and at least a 75% decrease by 2040. Arlington Mothers Out Front is in full support of the ACE program and renewing this opt up effort. We should not underestimate the importance of this work in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and advocating for the transition that we desperately need to reach net zero in order to address climate change. Thank you for listening. Thank you. And Mr. Prude, did you have any other anything to add before I turn to the board for questions or comments? No, that's the end of our collective presentation. Thanks again for making time on your agenda for us tonight. Happy to answer your questions. Thank you. All right, Mrs. Mohan. Thank you, Mr. Chair. First, I'd like to make a motion and then a question. First, I'd like to move a seat of the presentation and approve the proposed Arlington Community electricity opt up campaign. And then my question would be, I don't know if it's to Mr. Prude or anyone else through the chair. I heard in the discussion or presentation that there would be, I'm asking, am I correct that my recollection is that there will be a link from the Arlington Mass Town website to the Arlington electricity opt up program. So and my question is so many people go to the website and you can kind of go look for one answer and find it three different places. So will there be a link when people go into Arlington utilities, it gets them to this electricity opt up campaign? Right. Mr. Prude? Yeah, there will be. And we're still discussing the best, most logical straightforward way to promote that on the website, but the goal as you espouse is our goal as well. We want to make this as easy as possible for people to opt up. And we think that the website that Good Energy has helped us to build is tremendously user friendly. So the last thing we would want is for people to have a hard time getting there. So we're going to do our best to make it as accessible as possible. And Jill Manco from mothers out front has actually been very helpful in sort of bringing together a group of her members to kind of reality check different pieces of this, including the website to make sure they found it intuitive. And we'll do the same thing with the link from ArlingtonMA.gov. Okay. And if I could, Mr. Chair, I do want to thank Ken and others. I do know when people were sending me inquiries, I think within the past month about what are my utilities? What are my choices? And other people directed them to Evasource, which is a great company also. But it was noted that when it went to the, I may say this wrong, what utilities cover Arlington feature on the ArlingtonMA.gov, it didn't get us to the community electricity program. So I'm going to leave it to you and Jill and others to make sure there's also Italian link to that. I did, when I got that inquiry forwarded to Ken, Mr. Pruitt, who answered right away on the Arlington list and others. But I want to make sure that when we have that main ArlingtonMA.gov page and we get to that page and I don't know what the title is that gets us there that says utilities that under Evasource is also the second option. And I don't know how you do that. So I'm going to leave it to you all and thank you for listening to me. Great. We'll absolutely look into that. Thank you. All right, Mr. Diggins. I enthusiastically second this and I just have a few questions and they're kind of light. Well, first, actually first two things or more comments and a little more weighty. First, I want to say that this is going to be an interesting time to launch a campaign for something like this. And so be patient with judging your success because I think a lot of people who are just going to be tapped when it comes to extra funds to spend on things, people are very uncertain, I think. And so there are those of us who would love to do this, but maybe just don't feel that we can spare the box even though we really want to save the planet. We just try to survive. So just give yourself some time on it. The second in terms of outreach, and there is sustainable Arlington which is under the umbrella of Envision Arlington. I know that they would be all over this in terms of helping you to get the word out. So you probably thought of them already. If you didn't, you're going to get them tomorrow. So I just mentioned it now. The third is I'm going to play like I'm a marketer now. And I think the ace idea is a really good one. I understand the green, greener greeners, but you can play around with the ace theme. It's like you have three aces, three of a kind. You can get a pair in there, you get like a full house. Just toss that out there. And who designed the logo? Everything's to the chair. Who designed the logo? Of course. Primarily good energy with some input from Jill who herself is a very skilled graphic artist and Adam and Joan and myself and others. Yeah. Well, I like the plug going through the E. I like that a lot. That's very clever. I will say though, be losing the leg on the A, it just kind of, I mean, it just made up. So I don't know. I was just kind of wondering if there's any discussion about it. It's fine. It's not a deal breaker or anything, but so I just tossed it out there humorously. So great job. Me and I wish you all the success. Thank you. Mr. Dacorsi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you all for the presentation. Just a question on the participation. You mentioned that you have 14,000 households and a thousand businesses. How does that compare to a year ago? I don't know if the level of participation has been growing steadily or if it's been flat. Maybe if we could turn that over to Mr. Chair, if we could turn that over to Patrick Roach. Yeah, sure. The, I said Patrick, yeah, the level of participation has been very steady. So it's been about, you know, total about 15,000, a total sometimes it's been just about 16,000. But generally what happens is as people move out or even move within town, they still have the number of accounts changed, so they'll drop out and we do these periodic sweeps to enroll new people who have moved in or changed account numbers. So the numbers stayed pretty flat right around there. Okay. And I know you have the goal to get up to 1,000 for the greener and the greenest programs. Is there a goal to increase that 14,000 to a higher number or is that a comfortable number just getting people to shift from the lower percentage up higher? You know, I think we certainly want to make people aware that they have this option to join the program and make it very easy for them. And I think the website will do that and the messaging we do will reinforce that. The people who aren't on the program might be with a competitive supplier already. So they might put their own third party supplier or that's most of who those other, say, 3,000 or 4,000 are. So they've made a choice that they want to be in the competitive market kind of on their own. So it's not super likely we'll get a lot of them, but we will make sure it's very easy if they do want to get it. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. My name is Carol. Thank you very much, Chair. Thank you to all the presenters. I'm a huge fan of this program. I'm on the local greenest 100% although in full disclosure, I have rooftop solar. So I use it for my overage, 100%. But I was very enthusiastic about signing up early on. Love the new logo. I love the rebranding. I agree. It'll be a lot easier to communicate to folks. And I love the new names, local green, local green and local greenest. I think it'll be a lot easier to communicate. I have to admit that I get a little hung up though with the on slide seven, with the, well, they're not really pie charts, but the graphs and the captions there because, you know, we say at the bottom it's 11% extra renewable, 50% extra renewable, although if I'm understanding correctly that's not actually extra renewable. It's actually, it's a 50% renewable energy is part of that program. Likewise with 100%, it's 100% extra. So, I mean, as far as the graphics are concerned we're, I think, implying to someone who reads this casually that they only have 11% local renewable and the local green, but they actually have 27%. And likewise with the basic it's 11. So it seems, it feels to me like the way this is being communicated here where kind of comparing apples and oranges a little bit we're on a different, communicating different pieces of information for the different plans. And it feels to me like one of those things that was very possibly a matter for a lot of discussion when it was being designed, but I'm just wondering if there's been any thought to that because I could see that being a little confusing to folks. Is that true? Yeah, that, you know, Mr. Currow, thanks for bringing that point up. That's something that we frankly struggled with a little bit as we were, you know, designing these logos, you know, and so strictly speaking, you know, if you read the language underneath it's correct because it's extra renewable but as your point was a sticking point for us as well. You know, if you're in local green you're actually receiving, you know, not 11% but 27% renewable electricity. Same thing if basic is actually 16%. The local green is actually 116% just to make things even more complex. So it is a complex, it's a little bit of a complex issue. We ultimately decided, I don't know if we can get the, there we go. We ultimately decided to present it the way we're presenting it here, you know, internally with our discussions and the materials thus far. But, you know, we certainly wanna get this right. That's one of the reasons that we asked for a little bit of time to present to this board tonight. And we could certainly revisit the way we portray these. I guess one thing I might do is with your leave, I know that Good Energy has dealt with this same question with the branding campaigns in other communities that also have electricity aggregation. So perhaps Patrick might be able to, you know, give some comments on what other communities have done with that same question, because it's a very good point. Come Mr. Roche. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, so I'm glad to wrap it up and to Ken's point say that 100%, it is, we do take 100% of your usage, your kilowatt hours, and purchase renewable energy credits to match that on top of what is being purchased in the state minimum. So it is 100% extra. What to, I think what, one of the reasons that other communities have taken a similar approach to sort of highlighting extra, partly because their emphasis is on showing the additional impact that they're having above and beyond the state standards. So that is, it is geared to that. But the other, and the other piece is that I'm talking about total renewable energy. What one part is that the percentages go up every year. So that number would kind of, it kind of like, would keep creeping up. And then there are also a bunch of different types of renewable energy or classification. So we could, the mass class one classification, which is sort of new and new, that's 16%. But there's also a class two, there's a waste to energy. So there are a few different things. So I think in recognizing that what you'll see on the site is there's a page where we have more detailed information about all of the rates. And we, after each one, we list the total. So we take whatever the extra is in the base. So there's a total percentage that's listed there. And there's also a PDF that we link to with detail about all those other classifications. So I think that's a big improvement, particularly on the previous site. So I think we should, there'll be a lot more information for the people who want to find out more. I appreciate that explanation. I'm not too proud to say that I think in encountering this confusion that actually uncovered some confusion I had about these two higher tiers as well, as to whether they've been constituted just an absolute 50% and 100% as opposed to an additional on top of the statutory requirement. Thank you. It's helpful. Thank you. Thank you. Yep, and just to reiterate what my colleagues have said, this is such an amazing program. And we talk about this on a daily basis, but it is something that we need to keep talking about and to have this campaign to get it out in front of residents I think will be really effective because this is certainly a location, but residents will be receptive to this. So I'm excited to see the next year results and next year's numbers. So with that, we have a motion to receive from Mrs. Mohan, seconded by Mr. Diggins, Attorney Hyde. This is Mohan. Yes, thank you. Mr. DeCorsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Cureau. Yes. Mr. Herd. Yes. Thank you all for joining us tonight. Thank you. So that takes us to item number eight on the agenda for approval letter of support to mass housing regarding 1165, our Massachusetts Avenue. Do we have Mr. Chaplain, is there anyone from the proponent that's with us? There is. And I also just accidentally demoted Joe to select for a number of Cureau to attend these. Let me, let me fix that. Yeah, there's several members. Would you like me to promote Attorney O'Connor, Julia Myrack and Daniel St. Clair? Yes. Okay. And Joe. And Joe. Sorry about that Mr. Cureau. I can sometimes click on somebody and the names jump around. So that was, it was not intentional I swear. Attorney Hyme, do we have to have the minutes reflect that the town manager just kicked Mr. Cureau out of the meeting briefly? I'm gonna play the fifth one. I'm gonna insist on it. We have a raised hand, Mr. Chair from a phone number attendee. I'm not, I don't know if the project team, maybe that's, could that be Mary? Sure. Does Mary's number end in 967? Does that ring a bell to you, Julia? Adam, I'm on. Okay, here he is. There he is, here, okay. Sound. Okay, great. Okay. All right, we have attached to the meeting here a revised letter based on discussions we've had with both the proponents and, you know with some more information that we've gotten. What I am proposing is we've taken the letter that was presented to us at the last meeting. We have in fact, changed it to a letter of support and changed the language a little bit. So I will go to Mr. Attorney was standing on. Do you, is there anything that you wanna add before I go to the board for? If I could, Mr. Chairman, members of the board, Mr. Towne Manager, I just wanted to say to the board of selectmen that I apologize if you thought my two letters were aggressive. I was just trying to be very direct with the factual information. I guess that's the litigator in me. But we appreciate, you know, it was important to the MyRack family to have a support letter from the board of selectmen because they were really not particularly interested in proceeding with the project if the town was not interested. This has been a couple of year journey and they took very seriously the directive of the town and when they designed this project, they looked at the master plan, they looked at the Milbrook Carter study, they looked at the housing plan, they looked at the smart growth criteria. So they wanted to come to this town with a project that they could be proud of and that you people could be proud of as well. So we wanna thank you for all of your time that you spent on this and effort. And I know you've received comments from a number of other people as well. In Julia or Dan wanna chime in or? I'll just second what Mary said and say that we're very grateful for the time that you guys took to reconsider the letter and to listen to everything that various people had to say and to factor that in. And we're very pleased that we're now offered a letter of support and we hope this is the beginning of a long and friendly adventure together to build something really great for the town. So thank you. Mr. Diggins. I will motion to approve the letter and I just have a couple of questions, maybe just one. So in the letter from the attorney, and by the way, I mean the tone of the letter is fine. You have to defend your ground and I appreciate that. So I wasn't offended in the least. But talking about the numbers made for the rental. I was just trying to do some math. So you say that the artists were being charged like $7 per square foot? Seven to $15. For square foot. Eight, that's per month? Well, it's you take the number of square feet that they occupy, multiply by seven or 15, whatever the number is and divide by 12. That's an annual rate. Okay, right, right. Okay, I thought so. So I just needed to clarify that. So I got you. Okay, fine, fine. So that's it. That's my question. So thank you. And Mr. Curl. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you to the proponents. Yeah, I'm very happy with where we're at here. I feel like what we were, what was before us for consideration before was a supportive letter. I think we've spelled that out in more black and white. I had suggested at the last meeting that we do actually call out the fact that this has been a cooperative process and we do that here. And also note the proponents long history of civic and philanthropic engagement with the town. And that's important to note. We still continue to give, we give voice to some of the comments that we've received from the public. But I think that, you know, the commentary that we had at the time of the initial presentation as well as the bulk of what our initial draft had included was always supportive of this. We've received more public commentary, I think since our meeting two weeks ago, it's been positive, including from neighbors to the project that I've spoken to. So I'm very happy with where we are here moving forward. I recognize that some of our other boards and commissions did submit at the last minute, some commentary as well. Mr. Chair, was it your intention to submit those as attachments to our communication? What was your intention? The comments to the boards? Yeah. So we did note in the final letter that we received additional comments, but I'd be happy to do so if the board is so inclined. So I don't know if Mr. Diggins made a motion. I did, at least I thought I did. Oh, did you? Okay, so I'll second Mr. Diggins' motion, I'm sorry. Okay. And I'm very happy and I look forward to seeing this as it unfolds. And Ms. Simhan. Thank you, Mr. Chair. On most of I, Mr. Diggins and Mr. Kearrow, which I think I just heard, I went through the chair to Tony O'Connor or Julia Mayrak regarding our comprehensive permit regulations regarding designated 25% of the residential apartments to be available for those who make less than 80% of the median income. Is that included in this and in this letter? Is there anyone standing up on it? It's, that's part of the program. So that would be one of the requirements. I just wanted to highlight that. Yeah, no, no, no. Absolutely, that's one of the program requirements. Because we've gotten a lot of, as I know, Attorney O'Connor has also seen a lot of correspondence around affordability and of the residential apartments and the 80% median family household income. And then the other thing that I know myself and my colleagues have gotten questions about which I believe this project satisfies to allow us to send a full letter of support is that this is in fact a true mixed use project. And I was wondering if either Attorney O'Connor or Julie Myrack could answer or speak to the mixed use project vis-a-vis more far or anything else that fulfills that requirement. Let me just say it doesn't have to be a mixed use project but from the Myrack family perspective, it will ultimately be a mixed use project. Though there'll be separate lots, the intention is that the Myrack's will buy out Spalding and Slye when this is all done. And as you know from the other things they own in town, the legacy, they hold things long-term. So the work bar will be there right next door to this 40B project. So I would suggest that it's in the spirit of a mixed use project. I might just add that it actually goes one step further. The parking for work bar is accommodated and built into the garages underneath the residential building. So they are actually tied together and there will be a legal shared parking agreement. So one relies upon the other to be complete. Okay, Anna, if I could just ask one last question, Mr. Chair, on the parking, I think it was Mr. St. Clair that spoke to that. On the parking and underground, where we do about the Millbrook and thinking about one or two other projects with underground parking, in terms of any environmental impact or any environmental accommodations that you've taken into that, or how do you see that offsetting and not affecting the Millbrook in its current configuration? Well, the conservation commission is involved in reviewing all of us. And we're in front of them on September 3rd. So you'll be dealing with all of that. Okay, I don't know if Mr. St. Clair, anything to add, it's okay if you don't. Sure, I mean, the proposed building number two, the building right beside the work bar building, currently has subterranean space, some of which is used for parking, some of which is just occupied, kind of unfinished space. The new building that will go in that place will have a similar basement space that'll be used for parking. It'll actually will be pulled further away from the Millbrook than what exists today. And as Ms. O'Connor shared, we've got to go through all the very tedious and useful steps with conservation commission to work through that. There will not be a negative impact to the Millbrook. And Daniel, you might want to add that the largest parking area is going to be under the newly constructed building at the rear of the site. And it is above, it's on grade parking. It does not go below grade at all. So the first level is on grade, the second level is a level above it, and then the housing is four levels above that. So it does not go below grade at all. Exactly. Okay, I would thank everyone. And I assume this question, and it doesn't need an answer, but I just want to put it out there, this question or this query is probably more appropriate for the conservation commission. With the Millbrook going through part of this project, any remediation or accommodation for a large surge, whether they call it a hundred year storm, and sometimes we get it every 10, 20 years. I'm gonna assume that that's something that you'll be addressing with the conservation commission. And it's not appropriate with us before the select board. But if there's any brief comments you wanna have on that, if not, that's okay. And that's my last query. No, it will be with the conservation commission. All right. All right. All right. And Mr. Dacorsi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I also wanna thank Ms. Mayrak, Attorney O'Connor, Mr. St. Clair for the comments tonight. And I think that the last two weeks were productive two weeks. We had what was a draft letter two weeks ago and we said at the meeting this would be an opportunity to hear from boards, hear from the public, and also hear from the proponents of the project. And I know the town manager and the planning director met with you. There was a lot of questions answered and some good, healthy discussion. And I think what we have here is a letter of support that we can all stand behind. And I think it all helped us as a town to try to address some of the concerns that we heard from the public. And for the artists, for example, the town manager and the planning director has been working with the artist community and we're gonna continue to work with them. And we understand your position as to the future use of your site. And I think as to affordability, it sounds like you made some decent progress as to perhaps looking into within the 25%. Maybe there's an additional source of subsidy that within that 25% down the road that that can be increased. It's, there may be a few units that are 60% or less AMI. It's not something that has to be done for this evening's discussion, but it was a comment that, and then we appreciate you getting back to us on that. I do note that we talked earlier your project's consistent with the housing production plan. It's consistent with the open space plan. It's consistent with the Milbrook Carter report. I think we did receive some comments from the redevelopment board about concern about a decrease in commercial space. And I think their concern really followed from the master plan that we're discussed mixed use projects being predominantly commercial, but the need for affordable housing here is so great. Through the slaughter, we're beyond that, but I hope you understand where that is coming from and where the concern is. Yes. Yeah, and I also want to say one other thing. I do appreciate the time that was put into, and I learned this in the last two weeks, but you really thought out, even on the open space between the engine house and the Brook, you acquired a parcel of land there to provide that open space. So we appreciate that thinking in advance. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I would like to say that we'd like to thank Mr. Town Manager and Jenny Rafe for all the time that they have spent on this as well, as they have put in a significant amount of time over the last couple of years on this project. Agreed, absolutely. Thank you. Yeah, and just to kind of echo my colleagues, I want to thank the proponent, Attorney O'Connor, for being in touch with us in the past couple of weeks and not blowing off our concerns. You took a lot of time to address them and did so in a respectful manner. It's good, you know, we had a lot of community concern and I think you took that concern straight on and did what you could and you were honest with some of the concerns that just weren't feasible. So we do appreciate that. And you know, I think this is, I've said this before, this is a great project. I think this is exactly the type of project that Allington needs and it's the perfect location for it. So I do look forward to working with Attorney O'Connor and the proponent going forward to, to as we move into the next stages of this. So I do appreciate all your work on this. So with that, we have a... And Mr. Chair. Yep. Just one administrative item on the letter. I would just ask that before it's sent out that we make sure that the date reflects the date of the vote that we're about to take. Sure. Yep. And I have a motion to approve by Mr. Diggins, seconded by Mr. Carl. Attorney Han. This is Mohan. Yes, thank you. Mr. DeCorsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Currow. Yes. Mr. Hurd. Yes. It's unanimous vote. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you all for your time. Thank you. Good night. All right. So item number nine we did previously. So item number 10 on the agenda is discussion of future suckboard meetings. I believe we'd put this on with the intention that we might have a date for our special town meeting in November. I think at this point it'd probably be best to just kick that on to the next meeting. Once we can set a date for the November town meeting, then we can set a date for our November and December select board meetings at that time. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Well, actually, I think we should, if we have the time, just think about me how we would schedule things if we were gonna have that meeting, special time, virtual town meeting starting in on November nights, because I think that's really what we're targeting. And I think the most we would slip back and it would be by a week. I mean, so, I mean, if we can, let's just maybe take it through a little bit now instead of waiting for two weeks because I'd hate for us to get to two weeks and then regret that we hadn't really thought it through. Okay, I mean, if you have comments on that, that's fine. I think, you know, as far as the meet, the main date that we're gonna come up is when we have the special town meeting. And then we can pretty easily filter our meetings around that, but it's really open to discussion on. I'm just a little concerned about how we would be, because we're gonna have to have hearings, right, on the articles, right? Yeah, for some of them, yeah. Yeah, so I mean, we don't wanna get squeezed too much, you know. Well, you're the chair, I mean, so I've made my comments. I will abide by whatever you decide. And Chris- Mr. Chair, if I could? Yep. First, I would say that I understand we're looking at, I believe, November 9th, but until we know what actual date we're looking at and we're working backwards, sending any dates might not be as expeditious as possible. Plus, I believe it's my understanding if the chair or attorney Heim or the town manager can correct me if I'm wrong. I believe what we did, what we have said previously is in this special town meeting, any citizen articles that would have appeared at our town meeting on the high school field, if nothing has changed and they feel comfortable going forward, we don't need to have another warrant article hearing. And or if anyone whose warrant article, citizen warrant article got tabled in June, chooses not to go forward in the fall special town meeting, they can go to the spring. So my question is, are those two scenarios that I'm putting forth correct that less circumstances have changed in the regular town meeting citizen articles like our table in June can go to our November meeting. They don't need a warrant article as well as am I correct that any of the regular town meeting citizen articles that did not get taken up in June have been tabled that those, the proponents of those citizen articles, if they choose to not to go into the special in November, they can go into regular next year's town meeting. And then my last point to the chairman would be until we know I'm always, what's the date and work backwards? And we don't know tonight that November 9th is the date. So if the first two scenarios that I posed could be answered and then the chair commenting on whether November 9th is firm or not for the special town meeting. So that's my understanding as to the whether or not we need warrant articles if the ones that were tabled are just being resubmitted then we do not need warrant articles unless we have additional comments but I'll go to attorney harm for that. So I think that your summary, Mrs. Mahan is more or less correct. You're sort of three buckets. Articles that we heard and issued votes upon as long as nothing from the board's perspective changes you could basically recertify that vote in common. Second bucket is if somebody wants to basically resubmit or basically wants to recalibrate something that they tried to submit that would require some kind of new hearing and it would be up to the board to decide how you wanted to manage that. And then third, there were a few articles that I don't think we got to votes and comments on. So we would have to at least come back with a little bit but no, we wouldn't have to hear all of them unless something changed as we said. Yeah. I think the point as to the scheduling meetings is that we should, we'll wait to see when that meeting is to schedule our meeting that coincides with that. And then we'll have to, we can always add additional meetings if needed, if there are a number. We'll have to see what comes in for new articles and what hearings we'll have to have. And then we can add additional articles at that time. Yeah, Mr. Stiggen. Okay, thank you, Mr. Chair. Which my must plea would be or inclination that at our next meeting that we've already scheduled, I think we're gonna know whether November 9th or something else is firm. I don't see how we can set anything tonight because it would be a maybe date. I think we should wait to add our next select board meeting but I'll leave that to you, Mr. Chair. Yeah, Mr. Stiggen. Thank you. So I guess we will be the ones to determine when the warrant gets open, right? And so until we really know what's come in, we won't really have a sense of how many more hearings we need. And so I think we really need to open that warrant sooner rather than later. The only reason I'm gonna press me that we start scheduling is because it's just gonna be a weak difference in terms of when we start VTM. I mean, if we were talking to me in a matter of we are just gonna be like November 9th or January 9th, which is a huge golf thing. Yeah, that would really affect dates but we're just talking a weak difference. And so I generally feel like, unless there's some incumbent reason to put something off, we do it sooner rather than later because you really don't know what the future is gonna hand you in terms of free time and free thought. So we kind of have to band with now. We're not talking much of a difference in time. So I would suggest that even though the moderate is not here and that's the only reason I'm not really pushing really hard to set a date is that we should set the date sooner rather than later so we can open that warrant and find out what's in front of us. So that's it. Thank you. Mr. Corsi, any comments? No comment. And Mr. Carroll? Hold on. Yeah. Oh, okay. I lost my window. Yeah, I don't feel like we can set a date for the special time meeting tonight. I mean, if we wanted to have one or two contingency dates for the board for warrant article hearings, we could. But I mean, I think in the spirit of what we've discussed, I mean, I don't think that we're gonna have that many warrant article hearings. I, unless something has really changed on the ones that are not citizen warrant article articles, I don't think we're gonna need to rehear them. And, you know, likewise to Ms. Mahon's point, if the citizen proponents don't wanna make any change or choose not to resubmit their warrant articles, those won't have to be heard. So it's only gonna be in that handful of cases where people ask us to resubmit on the behalf of the board with some tweaks to the language. So I mean, we could put a contingent date or two on. I don't feel a great need because it may well be the case that we're able to fit it into the schedule we've already laid out. Yeah, so I think we've confirmed earlier that we're gonna set a date and stone on in our next meeting. I think once that's in stone, we can pretty simply come back and schedule the rest of our meetings through the end of the year. So that's what we'll do. All right, that's fine with me. All right. I made my case here, so it's fine. All right, we don't need a motion on that item. So that takes us to new business. Mr. Diggins. Yeah, I just wanted to mention, you know, that the father of a good friend of mine, Edward Braga, passed away on August 17th, I mean, and I didn't know the father very well, but the son, you know, has been a really good friend. He's one of the smartest people I know. I know that people often talk about rocket scientists being the smart people, but he does research to me with police departments on gang research, I mean, and body cameras, and that kind of work is really hard because you can't do the controls, I mean, and people like him have been the kind of people who have always made me feel very welcome in Arlington from the get go. And a good friend of his is Paul. He introduced me to Paul, and I rather recently found out that Paul is the son of Marie Kapalka. And so it all kind of just comes together in a very nice way. And so I don't know, I think about Marie a lot, but when these things happen, you always feel that you want to take every opportunity to have to let people that you care about know that you love them because you don't know when that chance will go away. So to Marie, you keep this town together in one way or another, and I'm thinking about you, hoping that things, you know, that you get better and love you very much. Thank you. This is Mohan. No new business. Thank you. Mr. Carl? No new business. And Mr. Corsi? Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chairman, just very briefly. So tomorrow is the primary election day and I want to recognize all the hard work that was done by the clerk's office and also by other town employees helping out the clerk's office, getting ready for tomorrow. So between early voting, mail-in voting and a full day tomorrow, I want to thank the election workers for their willingness to be there all day tomorrow and hope that tomorrow if you are voting in person, be safe socially distance when you go through and let's hope that the poll workers aren't there too late tomorrow night. All right. And Mr. Chaplin, new business? Very briefly, I'll add that I, the very well-appreciated thanks from Attorney O'Connor for my time in Jenny Ray's time. I know it wasn't intentional, but excluded a thank you to town council, Doug Hyme, who has been great for the past several months, trying to get us through the discussion around 1165 Mass Ave. And I also know, Doug really did a lot of the legwork of putting the bones together for that letter that the board approved tonight. So I wanted to give town council that thanks as well. And I'll also add that we received word, the end of last week that the town has received another green communities grant in the amount of $100,000 for interior LED light upgrades at two of the schools in town. So we'll be putting out a news release on that sometime soon, but I wanted to share that good news with the board as well. Thank you. All right. And Attorney Hyme? No new business. Thank you very much, Mr. Chaplin, I appreciate it. And I apologize, I took new business out of our normal course of order. So I'm no new business for me. So now we'll share move to adjourn. We have a motion to adjourn a second. On a motion to adjourn by Mrs. Mohan, seconded by Mr. Carrol, Attorney Hyme. This is Mohan. Yes, thank you. Mr. DeCorsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Carrol. Yes. Mr. Hurd. Yes. Thank you. Now let's vote. Thank you all. Bye everyone.