 Okay, it's 802, should any reason we shouldn't get going? Everything is, looks like it's an order. So I call this meeting to order on Wednesday, April 27th, 2022. This is session two of Arlington's 215th annual town meeting. Let's give some time to finish the attendance check and vote, just a reminder, as Ms. Wayman has been saying, that failing to vote in the attendance check-in will not affect a member's ability to vote later in the evening. The attendance vote is effectively a test vote, but it's useful to be able to test that your voting is actually working. So, okay, so we have some members, I see who have been active in the portal tonight, but have not voted yet. So if you can hear me and you're at your computer, please vote within the attendance check-in. Mr. Diggins, Ms. Nathan, Ms. Francis. Okay, let's give it one more minute and then we'll get going at, no, 805. And while we're waiting for that, let's, something we're gonna try tonight because we were seeing some database connection timeout issues last night. And so what we're gonna try tonight, based on the advice of the developer of the virtual time meeting platform that we're using, we're going to vote in waves. You might remember this from, I think last year or the year before we would vote in waves. And what we're gonna try tonight is kind of splitting the even precincts and the odd precincts. So I'll give everyone a cube when we'll start with the odd precincts, give them about 20 seconds to get their votes in. So if you're an odd precinct that you would hold off and with the attendance check-in, it's not so important because it's gonna be pretty staggered over a longer period of time anyway. But when we get to like actual like real votes, I'll remind folks that, you know, we'll start the first 20 seconds with the odd precincts and then we'll flip over and give the even precincts an opportunity to vote. It's on the honor system. You could actually vote at any time, but it'd be helpful if you could follow the instructions of ordering, voting with your even or odd precincts. So, okay, it's 8.05. So let's close voting on the attendance check-in. And again, if you missed the attendance check-in vote that will not affect your voting throughout the evening. And so we have 100% on the test vote. 100% of people voted yes, but okay. So we'll just cycle through the precincts. Okay, great. And so now let's move on to the Star Spangled Banner. And Ms. Tanaka will be performing in a prerecorded video. So just some brief opening remarks I wanna make tonight. So last, on Monday night at the close of the meeting, I wanted to just briefly apologize for not asking whether there were any objections to adjourning at the end of Monday night's meeting. I assure everyone that the meeting did actually adjourn. We're not still in Monday's meeting right now. I just failed to give folks an opportunity to object to the adjournment. So apologies about that. And just a broader note, I will make mistakes. I apologize in advance for that. And I'll apologize after I make mistakes as well. And for every mistake that I make, there are probably 1,000 things that go right. And that's due to the incredible work of the team of volunteers and staff that we have that have put all this together and have gone to pretty heroic lengths in recent weeks to pull this virtual town meeting together. Their professionalism and determination to make this meeting successful is just really exemplary. And I wanna applaud them for that. So thank you. So let's move on to the swearing in for any new town meeting members who are in attendance who have not been sworn in yet. Either you were newly elected or appointed and you missed the beginning maybe or maybe the entirety of Monday's meeting and you still need to be sworn in. Can we enable the raise hand feature in Zoom to see if there's any folks who still need to take the oath of office to be sworn in? Okay, so we have at least a few. I see at least three there. Okay, so we'll now recite the oath. So repeat after me. I, state your name, will participate fully and will fairly evaluate all matters before town meeting and vote in the best interests of the town. I support free speech and will treat others with mutual respect and will conduct myself in a civil manner that is becoming of an elected town meeting member. I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully and impartially perform the duties incumbent upon me as a town meeting member of the town of Arlington in accordance with the bylaws, the town manager act and the general laws of the Commonwealth. So help me God. Thank you, congratulations. I now recognize the chair of the select board, Mr. Diggins. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. It is moved that if all business at the town meeting as set forth in the warrant for the annual town meeting is not disposed of at this session, then when the meeting adjourns, it adjourns to Monday, May 2nd, 2022 at 8 p.m. Do we have a second? Second. Second. Okay. And let's do a raise hand vote in Zoom. Or I should say not vote, let any raise hand and Zoom for any objections. Otherwise we'll assume that it is a unanimous vote. Okay. I believe we have one raised hand. Is that, does anyone, can anyone confirm whether that's a raise hand from earlier or if we do have a legitimate objection through a raised hand, then let's go to a vote. So Ms. Wayman, can you bring up a, let's say, this is a vote on Mr. Diggins motion that if all business is not disposed of at this session that will adjourn to Monday, May 2nd. We actually, can we confirm the objections? That might save us some time if there was an error in that raised hand. Can we bring Ms. Pinaran up? Give her an opportunity to speak. Am I still muted? This is the technical issue. I did not intend to raise my hand. Oh, okay. I'm glad we asked. We can hear you. Yes. I don't know how that happened. Thank you. No, we understand. Okay. So let's try that again. So the raised hands are now cleared. So let's get folks another opportunity to raise a hand if you object to Mr. Diggins motion to adjourn. If we don't finish all the business tonight that will adjourn until Monday, May 2nd at 8 p.m. If you have an objection raise hands, seeing none, the vote is unanimous as I declare. And so now let's introduce the town department heads. Ms. Weimey, can you roll the video? Hi, my name is Dana Mann and I'm the director of assessments. Hi, my name is Patricia Shepard and I have the pleasure of serving as chief information officer for the town of Arlington and head of the information technology department. Hi, my name is Mike Ciampa and I'm the director of inspectional services. Good evening. My name is Dr. Elizabeth Homan for Liz and I am proud to serve as your superintendent of Arlington public schools. My name is Adam Chaplain and I'm honored to serve as your town manager. Hi, I'm Julie Brazil. I'm your town clerk. My name is Michael Mason and I'm the chief financial officer for schools. My name is Douglas Heim. I'm your town council. Hello, my name is Michael Cunningham and I am your deputy town council. Hi, I'm Christine Bondorno and I'm your director of health and human services. Hi, I am Jim Feeney and I am fortunate to serve as your deputy town manager for operations. Hi, my name is Sandy Poodler. I am deputy town manager and director of finance. Hello, my name is Karen Malloy and I serve as the town's director of human resources. Hello, I'm Kevin Kelly and I serve as your fire chief. Hello, my name is Julie Flaherty and I'm the chief of police. Good evening. My name is Michael Rademacher and I am the director of public works. Hi, I'm Jenny Raid. I'm the director of planning and community development. Hi, I'm Eda Cody, the town controller. Hi, I'm Phyllis Marshall, the town treasurer collector. Hi, I'm Andrea Nikolai, your director of libraries. Hi, this is Joe Conley, director of recreation. Great, the video did cut out for like a second. I don't know if that just happened for me or for everyone. In case it was for everyone, the video cut out during introduction of Christine Bondorno, director of health and human services. Apologize for the interrupted video. Okay, so let's now, so I'll call now for announcements and any resolutions that anyone might have, any announcements or resolutions. I don't recall whether we usually do this through the raised hands or I don't think we have like a something in the portal to request that, do we Ms. William? If we do, we just use raised hands. Can we enable raised hands in Zoom to see if anyone wants to offer any announcements or resolutions? I saw a hand but then it disappeared. Just get folks maybe five more seconds. Raise your hand in Zoom if you have an announcement or a resolution. Okay, seeing none, let's move on to reports. So I think Mr. Thielman is maybe looking for reports. So I'll call for reports that are ready to be received. Mr. Thielman. Mr. Moner, I don't have a report. I just have an announcement if I can make one. Oh, sure, sure, go ahead. Sorry about that. Thank you. No worries. Jeff Thielman, precinct 12 and the chair of the high school building committee. The high school building committee is inviting the public to tour the new wings this coming Saturday, April 30th between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Self-guided tours will begin and end at the Mass Ave lobby and we'll only include the new wings. Attendees are advised to park near the Mass Ave entrance since there will be no access through the rear entrance and low-brook drive. Accessible parking is available on shooter court. For more information, please visit the project website at www.ahsbuilding.org. We have about 540 people or so signed up and we hope more can sign up and come see the new building. Thank you. Very thank you, Mr. Thielman. I'm very excited to see myself. It's very exciting. Let's see, there's a couple more hands. Let's take Mr. Dennis next. Greg Dennis, precinct one in chair of the election modernization committee. I move that the report of the election modernization committee be received. Do we have a second? Second. Mr. Moderator, Julie Brazil-Town-Clark, have we picked an article three off the table to receive reports? Actually, we have not. You are correct. So... Okay, this is Charles Foskett, chairman of the finance committee. I move that article three be removed from the table. Second. Second, yep. We have a second and let's enable raise hands in Zoom for any objections to article three being removed from the table. Seeing no objections, article three is removed from the table and article three is now before us. We may now receive reports. Mr. Dennis, do you want to reissue your request? Now that we're receiving reports. Sure. Again, Greg Dennis, precinct one, chair of the election modernization committee. I move that the report of the election modernization committee be received. Do we have a second? Second. Okay. And any objections? Do we have raise hands enabled in Zoom? Seeing no objections, the report of the election modernization committee is received. Do we have any other, Mr. Foskett, you have your hand up? Yes, I have a report. Do we have a second? Second. Second. And do we have any, is this the finance committee report? Mr. Foskett? Yes, it is. Do we have any objections to receiving the finance committee report? We have a hand up in Zoom. Could we bring Mr. Maron just to verify that that's an objection or Mr. Mayor? I apologize if I'm mispronouncing that. Yeah, I don't have an objection. I just, I have a report to give. Oh, I'm sorry. Okay. Yeah, I see the problem with our procedure here. Okay, so seeing that there are no objections. Mr. Moderator. Yes. I'd like to make a few remarks about the report. Yes, please. Thank you. Mr. Moderator, Honorable Sluckboard and school committee members, town and school executives and managers and meeting members, good evening. My name is Charlie Foskett. I'm from Precinct 10 and I'm chair of the finance committee. Before I begin my general remarks, I'd like to request Mr. Moderator that I can make an administrative change to one item in the finance committee report on page 30. The recommended vote on article 72. Due to an oversight before printing, the entirely responsible responsibility of the finance committee chair in article 72 should not read $2,946,000 but rather $3,046,037 or $100,000 more. Reason for this change is that initially the assessors released $750,000 from the overlay surplus which we were planning to use in the annual town meeting and then decided because of an article in the special town meeting that we needed to put $100,000 in the special town meeting. So we reduced article 69 to 650,000. And as a result, we needed to increase the withdrawal from the override stabilization fund but failed to do so in the report that went to print. So this is correcting that item. And we'd like to make that as an administrative change. Okay, I will accept that. And let me, apologies that I didn't do this in advance. Let me take the text which you had sent me earlier this evening and see Ms. Wayman. I just sent you a message with the details of what Mr. Foskett was just describing. Is there a way you could present that in a window quick, like I apologize for not sending that ahead of time. This is from the minutes of our meeting where we changed the amount from 2,946,037 to 3,046,037 increase of $100,000, as I just described. And I guess I'll just ask, do we have any objections to receiving this change? And Mr. Mayor's hand, I will assume it's still about the report that he wants to give. So seeing no objections yet, we'll make this change administratively. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. If I may continue with my remarks. Yes, please, yeah. So thank you, Mr. Moderator. I'd like to note that this is a time of transition. We're welcoming a new school superintendent, Dr. Liz Holman and yourself a new town moderator, Mary Christiana. Congratulations to both of you on your new roles. Most of you know that our long-term town manager, Adam Capilane will be leaving shortly after town meeting and Dr. Ed Boquillian is retiring from Minuteman Tech to begin a new phase of his life. Our former long-term moderator, John Leone, is enthusiastic about his new role in town meeting. And on the finance committee, Peter Howard, Mary Margaret Frankelmont and John Dice all retired this past year, each after decades of intensive work on Fincom. All of these individuals I just mentioned have provided years of dedicated service and leadership to the town or our greater community. And we should be grateful for their immense contributions. Last year, I warned about the upcoming need for a large override if we are to maintain town services. In this year's finance committee report, you will see that the deficit timing has moved out by a full year. I fear I may look like the boy who falsely cried wolf too many times and when the real wolf arrived wasn't believed. So let me summarize why this deficit year moved out and what the implications are. In the revenue section of the long-range plan and appendix D of the Fincom report, there are two $5 million revenue items in fiscal three and fiscal 24, fiscal 23 and 24. And there's also a $1,094,000 revenue item in fiscal 23. The $2,5 million revenue items are amounts that the town can apply from the federal opera funding towards municipal services. And these funds were not known or available for planning last year at town meeting as they only were announced late in 2021 and early 2022. The $1,094,000 revenue entry in fiscal 23 are funds that town meeting put into the Fincom Reserve fund last year as a contingency for school department use in the event of rapid student population growth as we exited the pandemic. Student population did not recover fully from the pandemic drop in the prior year. So these funds were not necessary. At the special town meeting on May 11th, town meeting will be asked to vote to return these funds to the override stabilization fund making this $1 million available as revenue for fiscal 23. The net result of these major changes and some others has been to push the time of the $7 million deficit out by one year. But the crisis is coming. And the cumulative deficit over the fiscal years 25, 26 and 27 is forecast in appendix D at over $50 million. In Arlington to paraphrase the late Senator Everett Dirksen, this is real money. In the closing paragraphs of my remarks in the Finance Committee report, I suggested that the town give serious consideration to an alternative method of planning that might be able to guide us to spending practices that are constrained to be within the normal growth of our revenues. I propose that each year that we bank each year's normal increase in revenues from real estate taxes, local receipts, state aid and other resources for one year. In the next year, we increase spending only by the amount of the prior year's increase, which is already in the bank. If we do this, our town will live within its means and still provide excellent services to our citizens. That's what we do at home. That's what we do in our businesses. And that's what we should be doing in our municipality. Thank you. Great, thank you, Mr. Foske. Let's see, we are still receiving reports. Let's see, we have a hand from Mr. Mayor. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Smarterhead, John Maher, Precinct 14. I'm speaking tonight as a member of the Permanent Town Billing Committee. Also members of the committee or Tominy members are Bill Hainer and Bob Jefferson. Our chairman, Alan Redie, has prepared an exhaustive multi-page report, replete with photographs of the two major projects that are run away under the jurisdiction of the Permanent Billing Committee, being the renovation of the central school and a major renovation in addition to the county art projects. The total amount of money being spent is $55 million. I will not go into any further detail. I'm very much prepared to respond to any questions, either online or offline from members of the town meeting. Having said that, I would respectfully move Mr. Moderator that the report of the Permanent Town Billing Committee be received. Okay, any seconds? Second. Okay. I don't recall if we actually need to take a vote of that, but any objections using the raise hand feature in Zoom? Seeing no objections, it is received. Thank you, Mr. Marr, and apologies for the mispronunciation of your name. I've taken note of that. So I see a hand from Mr. Moore. Do you have a report to offer? I do. Christopher Moore, precinct 14 and vice chair of the Capital Planning Committee. I move that the report of the Capital Planning Committee be received. Any seconds? Second. Okay. And any objections in Zoom with raise hands? Seeing none, it is received. Anything you want to add, Mr. Moore, about the report? No, thank you. Great, thank you. Let's see, are there any more reports to receive? If so, please raise your hand in Zoom. Okay, five seconds. And seeing none. Mr. Moderator? Yes. Charles Musket, precinct 10, chair of the Finance Committee. I move that article three be laid upon the table. Any seconds? And any objections with the raise hand feature in Zoom? Seeing none, article three is now laid upon the table. Which means it's basically a temporary place where we can put it, where we can come back to it at each meeting to receive more reports until we're done. Okay, so article six is now before us. So let's, Ms. Wayman, can you bring up article six, please? And to start, the convention that I'm gonna start here is, so in this particular case, article six was removed from the consent agenda. So what I'll do here is for those articles that were removed, I will give the person who was the first person to request removal of that article from the consent agenda, the opportunity to speak about why they removed it and to speak to the article more generally. And then we'll circle back to any proponents of the article or if there's any, or the board or committee from which the article originated, we'll ask if there's anyone who wants to speak on the article. So can we bring up Mr. Tremblay, who was the first to request that article six be removed from the consent agenda? So we could hear why he wanted to be removed, whether he had any questions or any commentary, and then we'll switch over to Ms. Kearney from the Human Rights Commission. Can we bring up Mr. Tremblay? And Mr. Tremblay, are you there? Yes, I am. Can you hear me? Yes, I can. Go ahead. Name and precinct, please. Ed Tremblay, precinct 19. In reading through this, I had, there were a number of things that struck me as made me scratch my head and say, why are they doing this? I have to say that Ms. Kearney reached out to me today and we had a very good conversation and she answered a great many of my questions and one question I still have though is, why the change from equal to equitable? So if you don't mind me using your speaking time, I'll ask Ms. Kearney if she has an answer to that. Can we bring up Ms. Kearney? Of course, Kearney precinct 15. I'm also the co-chair of the Human Rights Commission. I was not involved in the writing of these amendments, but I believe that equal and equitable are not necessarily the same. People can have equal access, but sometimes equitable is really a much better way of doing things. You can give people, I explained to Mr. Tremblay that if you have three people looking over a fence and they're all different heights, if you give them the same height box, there's still gonna be people who can't see over the fence. So to make it equitable, you make the boxes the same height so that they can reach the fence at the same height. So I hope that that kind of explains things. Mr. Tremblay, does that answer your questions? Well, somewhere I got, you know, I can, I'm more than happy to be corrected if I'm wrong, but somewhere I got the idea that equitable, and maybe I'm mixing it up with has more to do with outcomes and equal has more to do with a level playing field. It's like opportunities versus outcomes. Yeah, so I guess I'm a little concerned about the outcome nature of it because outcomes are really hard. There's so many factors involved in the outcome of any particular thing. How can we base a whole commission on outcomes? And let's see, do you have anything further to add about that or any other questions you want to direct? Well, I was wondering if somebody could either, could speak to my unsureness about the definitions of equal and equitable. Yeah, and do you feel like you've gotten a satisfactory answer on that? Well, I mean, Christine gave a good answer, but it wasn't quite what I was looking for. But don't misunderstand me. I mean, we did have a, she did answer a lot of the questions that I had. Yeah, so let me actually direct to Mr. Diggins, the select board chair. And I apologize, I should have actually given first crack at this to describe the recommended vote to the select board chair in this case, since that's the board that originated this article. So Mr. Diggins, do you want to respond to that? Thank you, Mr. Moderator. No need to apologize. I think me and your sequence was appropriate since this Carney had been mentioned. I'll make an attempt at it. Mr. Trembley, it's not that the outcome will be guaranteed and even that the outcome will result in all parties being equal, but there is a threshold that you tried to reach with equitable. So as Ms. Carney, such as an example, you have three people and they are trying to see over a fence. And if, I mean, one is too short, much shorter than the other, and you give them all the same kind of box to stand on, the one that's too short may still not be able to see over the fence. And so you really want to get the one that can't see over the fence, to see over the fence. The other who can see over the fence may not need a box, may still get a box and can see even higher. I mean, and so you're not trying to guarantee that the outcome is equal for all. You just want to reach a threshold. So that's the convention generally with equitable. Now, it may be that the phrasing is not the best, but we are incrementally trying to improve it, based on the way we are currently using the terms. And everyone may not agree on the specific terms or the way they're used, but I think the spirit of it is such that you agree with where we had it with it. And so I'll stop at this point and hope it's satisfactory, but if not, we can talk about it some more, Mr. Trimley. Right, so let me just interrupt here to say that we do have a couple of points of order and we don't have a timer running. And I apologize. I didn't know at the time when Mr. Trimley started speaking, but let's take Mr. Foskett's point of order. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. I'm confused because there's no button or no indication on the portal where you can ask questions. And I'm wondering whether all these people who have their hands up for second request actually are trying to get questions. Right, so just be my portal, but I keep trying to hit the participate button and mine still says attendance check-in debate is closed. I see, I think we haven't opened the debate yet, right? So can we open that up? Ms. Weiman, apologies for that. And this is on article six. And Ms. Moderator? Yes, Mr. Trimley. I also think that I might be trying to sharpen to find a point on this. And I'm not sure I want to take up any more of the town meetings time on this. I think this is a better thing that I should, would be better for me to have a conversation offline with other people about this. Okay. Do not take any part of the town meetings time. Right, thank you, Mr. Trimley. And Mr. Trimley, it's good to see you back on town meeting, by the way. And I look forward to your questions about the salt usage of the town later on. And okay, so we now have some speakers. So I wanted to give Mr. Diggins, the select board chair an opportunity to speak to this. If you had anything further to say? No, Mr. Moderator, I'm pretty much just out of me. The select board, as we said in our report, we understand where the commission is coming from. We trust their judgment with respect to modifying the language, to update it. And so it was a 5-0 decision to vote favorable action. And that's where we stand. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Thank you. So let's head over to the speaking queue now and we'll take Ms. Mazzina first. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Angel Mazzina, precinct 15. I am in support of this article. If it helps at all to perhaps propose an amendment or some language there that says equal and equitable, if that could address some people's concerns about the difference between the two and still accomplish what is being trying to be accomplished here, then maybe that's a good solution. I'll unmute myself. Okay, thank you, Ms. Mazzina. I'm not inclined to take that amendment at this point. I think the current language, at least in my opinion, is clear enough. So let's take, thank you for the suggestion. Let's take Ms. Hyam next. Ms. Hyam, are you there? I'm muted. There, I hear you. Okay. Leba Hyam, precinct 15. I would like to move the article and any actions before it. Great, thank you, Ms. Hyam. So we have a request to terminate debate and on the article. And there are no other matters before it. So really just the article. And so let's bring up, let's bring up a vote on terminating debate. And okay, so we're now voting on whether to terminate debate on article six. And this is a two thirds vote. We have a point of order from Mr. Harrelson. Can you bring Mr. Harrelson up? Hi, Mr. Moderator. Brooks Harrelson, precinct 16. I did not hear a second on the motion to terminate debate. You are correct. Do we have a second on that? Mr. Moderator? Yes, Mr. Fosker. Yes, there were three seconds that came up on the screen. Oh, okay. There were three seconds. I don't remember the names, but there were three people who seconded it. Okay, so I accept that. So yeah, there was a second on this. So let's get back, thank you, Mr. Fosker, thank you, Mr. Harrelson. So let's get back to voting. Given the confusion, the interruption, but let's go a little bit longer than the timer here. I'll give like another, at least another 30 seconds. So we still have several missing voters who appear to be present in the meeting, but who have not yet voted. Let's see, do we have, so we have a point of order from Ms. Bloom. Let's take that. Nancy Bloom, precinct 18. I was just wondering, do you want us to vote in waves? Oh, absolutely. Thank you for the reminder. I forgot to suggest that. I'll try to remember that going forward. Thank you for the reminder, Ms. Bloom. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Yeah, it's probably too late now on this, on this order, hopefully too many people didn't get blocked out from the time out. Okay, so voting is closed and we have an affirmative vote to, to terminate debate. 206, affirmative, 25 and negative. So debate is terminated. And I will try to remember when we vote next time that we should do it in waves, odds first and then evens by precinct. So let's cycle through the precincts. So let's now go to the main motion, which is article six, the bylaw amendment updating the Human Rights Commission bylaw, so let's bring that up. And we'll enable voting and please vote only if you are in an odd number precinct. If you are in an even number precinct, please hold off on voting for, I'll say 30 seconds. So odd number precincts, please start voting. Okay, and now if you are in an even number precinct, feel free to vote now. Since we're getting some timeouts here, I'll give a little bit more time to make sure the votes are getting in. All right, so I'm seeing a message that, I think it seems to indicate that fewer than a hundred people have voted so far, I don't know if that's accurate. Greg, it looks like we're getting a lot of the server error. People are, you know, they're not refreshing in time or it needs to be very refreshed. So I might want to give just a few more seconds. Yeah, yeah, I'm going to give some more time here until we get these issues ironed out. So where are we at now? Okay, so we have 220 votes cast, 221 now, we're missing 30. So we're getting there, it's just taking some time. We might have to have like smaller waves going forward. Okay, so I'll start calling out some names of folks who have not voted yet or maybe they've tried and I apologize if you've tried. Ms. Preston, Mr. Gersh, Ms. Atlas, Ms. Richter, Mr. Helmuth, Ms. Bloom, Dr. Warden, Ms. Weber. If you haven't voted yet, if you're still having trouble, let us know. I see some of these have actually come in through the chat, okay. Okay, and Mr. or Ms. Howard, do we have votes for them? Apologies for these technical difficulties. Let's just go another 30 seconds and I think that that should be, see if we can get everyone by then. Okay, we have a point of order from Mr. Warden. Let's take Mr. Warden. Can you hear me? No. Yes, I can. Oh, I just want to report that Dr. Warden is unable to get a voting screen, so that's why she hasn't voted. I had great difficulty getting one. I kept pushing it, nothing happened. And she wants to vote yes, by the way. Okay, we'll take none of that. You're all set now. Okay, thank you, Mr. Warden. Thank you, Mr. Mariner. Thank you. So let's go ahead and close voting. And it seems like almost everybody has voted here. And this is the main motion for Article 6 to accept a bylaw amendment, updating the Human Rights Commission bylaw, and it passes with 234 votes in the affirmative, seven, negative, and it is a positive vote. So let's cycle through the precincts. And if you don't notice your precinct in time and you missed it, you could always check to see the votes in the portal by clicking the view votes button and the left side of your portal window. Okay, very good. So that closes Article 6. So let's move on now to Article 7. Article 7 is bylaw amendment for the Youth and Young Adults Advisory Board. So let's bring that up. And Mr. Diggins, as chair of the Select Board, do you have any opening remarks about Article 7? Thank you, Mr. Moderator. And the Select Board is in full support of this, and rather than going on a lot about it, I am going to turn it over to the co-chairs of the study committee. They are Tom Beady member, Alexander Franzosa and Ms. Josephine Allman. And so I think they'll have a presentation. And if there's any time left after the presentation in comments, I may say a few words. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. And Ms. Weiman, do we have a way of showing a timer or like I can keep track of time myself but so that everyone can see, I don't know if that's something we can do if we're not pulling someone from the speaking queue. No, okay, let's just keep track. So we're starting at 8.54. So let's see, do we have Mr. Franzosa and Ms. Allman up? Alexander Franzosa, Precinct 6. Josephine Allman, Precinct 1. Hi everybody, we're presenting tonight to inform you of the results of a study committee formed last year for the creation of what we have decided to call the Young Arlington Collaborative. I hope to make this presentation informative enough for you to make an informed decision and brief enough to keep the show rolling. Next slide, please. So as a reminder for current town meeting members who were town meeting members last year and for new information for those who were not, Article 17 of last year's warrant created our study committee for the creation of a Youth and Young Adult Advisory Board commission or committee with the ability to make recommendations to the select board in reports to town meeting regarding Youth and Young Adult involvement and governance. And what this means is it's an advisory board rather than a decision-making body. Next slide, please. Taking a look at the membership of the study committee, thank you Mr. Deans for introducing myself and Josephine Allman, the other co-chair. You will see that he himself was the select board designee and I'd like to thank him again for his help in getting this thing rolling. And I'd also like to thank all the other members of the group, including some town government veterans as well as high school students currently at Arlington High School. It was a great group to work with. Next slide, please. Our first charge was to look at whether we should create the board. So when we approached this issue, we had discussions and found that yes, in fact, it is important to create this board and we'll go into the naming of the collaborative in a bit. So as youth issues and youth activism have become increasingly prevalent in society and we want to have an avenue for youth in the town to have their voices heard about the decisions that affect them, we see that it's important to have young people speaking in formalized groups such as a committee or a collaborative. We also find that young people have the potential to develop skills in town government that could be useful for the next generation to lead the way. And most importantly, representation in government helps ensure that laws are fair to all. Next slide, please. In order to make sure that our decision was informed, we did some research on other groups and a diverse set of communities across the Commonwealth actually already have something to a similar effect from as far reaches as Salem and as close as Belmont. And looking at some of what these committees did, some were for specific events and others were more general and we wanted to go into a more general lasting committee that would be in Arlington for the purpose for the long run. And having similar committees in these other towns showed that well, if it can be done elsewhere, I'm sure it can be done in Arlington. Next slide, please. So with our decision to create the Young Arlington Collaborative, we're gonna start to take a look at the structure. We were inspired by the Envision Arlington model in which there's a standing committee with task groups under it so that we could have as large a number of people involved as possible. The standing committee will be large and it will be composed of 21 voting members, 21 counting non-voting alternatives as well. So a total of 21 and 21 and a quorum for voting would be 11 members. The task groups will broaden the reach and allow non-members such as high school students who don't happen to be in the collaborative itself to participate and have a voice while the votes will be made by the actual committee itself. Next slide, please. Further into the mechanics of how we will choose members, it will be driven by precinct. That is, each precinct will have two members, one which falls into the youth category, which is from ages 12 to 20 and one in the young adult category, which is 21 to 39. Again, having this broad range and having a diversity of both youth and young adults allows for a broader number of opinions and voices to be heard in the collaborative. These candidate members may apply or may be chosen by town meeting members. So there will be some involvement of town meeting in the original formation of the collaborative. The terms will be for two years and the voting members and non-voting members will alternate each year based on precinct so that there's an even split of youth and young adult members voting each year. There will be a liaison chosen by the select board that will serve as the secretary and this will allow for continuous communication between the collaborative and town government when presentations are not being made. And finally, we thought it was important that subsequent member selections be made by the collaborative's own choosing for a method. That is, we chose this method to get things started. We'll see what the collaborative wants to do for its future meetings. Next slide, please. And finally, a look at our mission statement. Our mission statement is to invite the youth and young adults of Arlington to get involved in their local government. We will provide an inclusive space where we can collaborate with our community, let all voices be heard. And we thought that this will serve as a good poster for students who might be interested in getting involved to get involved. Next slide, please. And I would like to thank the study committee for their help in getting this going. I'd like to thank town meeting for your time and thank you, Mr. Moderator. We're now open to questions. Great, thank you, Mr. Fransosa. Let's see, and there's probably a minute left according to my timer, did Ms. Almond want to speak at all? Yeah, I just wanted to say that I'm another co-chair of the advisory study committee. And I really believe in youth activism. I've been a youth activist for a long time. And I think that there's a particular power and urgency in young people asking for better worlds because we'll live in it the longest and issues with degenerative effects will affect us a lot more than adults. But although youth activism is powerful and becoming a bigger part of our society, it doesn't yet have a large voice in official government positions. So this committee would kind of be Arlington's way to take that step to look at us, the youth and young adults and sort of tell us like we see you, we'll listen to you and we want to help you make a difference and make a difference in things that you're really passionate about. And I really feel that stagnation on pressing issues in the country and in the state and in all governments is usually due to divides and misunderstandings. And this is a collaborative. So it'll bring together all of us. And I think it will bring us that much closer to solutions that work for everyone. So I just wanted to say that just ask you all to please concur with the select board and vote for favorable action on our article to help all the residents of Arlington like me be represented in that government. That was what I wanted to say. Great, thank you so much, Ms. Almond. And thanks for being here. So I'm gonna open it up now to the speaker Q and we're gonna take Mr. Hamlin. Hi, thank you. My apologies for the graphic. Guillermo Hamlin, precinct 14. I'll keep this short. I concur with this select board report. I appreciate the work that went into this, the people that went in to produce this. So I view it favorably and I look forward to seeing what this can do. Thank you. I have nothing further to say. All right, thank you. Just a quick question before we get going to the next speaker, Ms. Wayman, are you seeing a timer? Cause I'm not seeing one on my portal view. Yes, for Mr. Hamlin just now, I'm gonna stop it at 40 seconds. But yep, there is one. Okay, can we display that so everyone can see? Are you not seeing it right here where my cursor is? Oh, I'm not. I'm just seeing the speaker. I'm not sure what other folks are seeing. Hold on, let me make sure that I'm, yeah. It seems like nothing's being presented right now. Here we go. Yep, there we go. I'm sorry about that. Thanks. No worries. Okay, so let's take Mr. Kepline next. Hi, Mark Kepline, precinct nine. We just passed article six against discrimination at yet you've codified age discrimination in this article seven. So I'm wondering if people are older but feel young at heart, would that be equitable and allowable for them to participate and have the opportunity to be on this commission and board? Thank you. Let's pose that, let me give that question to, do we want to give it to one of our speakers to answer? Mr. Moderic, could I take that question please? Who is that speaking? Oh, Mr. Oh, yeah, please go ahead. Yeah. Yeah, hi, Mark. To address your question, part of the charge of the group is that there will be working groups that might not necessarily be members of the committee itself that is people that don't fall within these age ranges. So there would be a place for voices that aren't necessarily in these age ranges in the committee itself, they just wouldn't be voting members. So I hope that this addresses your question and I hope that this doesn't cause any problems in town meeting accepting this because I do think that it's important to create it. So thank you. Can I talk to her as well or? Yeah, please. So in terms of equity, I think that this is actually, this committee would actually really contribute to equity in town meeting because adults and people who are not youth already have their voice in town meetings. So this is not going to take away any adults rights to be on committees or to be in town meeting, this is just a way for youth to also have that chance. So I don't see it as discrimination as much as bringing forth more equality in who gets represented. Okay, thank you. So let's take Ms. Muldoon next. Thank you, Patty Muldoon, precinct 20. I'm very enthusiastic about this and I have a comment and a question. My comment is as a member of the election modernization committee, which has just been laid down, we were unable to move forward with questions about youth votes such as having folks maybe at the age of 16 on up be able to participate in municipal elections. Questions like that were not addressed. So I'm excited that there's going to be a collaborative that can bring things like this forward. And my question is, could you speak a little bit more about how town meeting will be choosing them? Is that going to be the moderator choosing members or how is town meeting going to make those kinds of decisions precinct by precinct? Thank you. Mr. François, do you want to take that or we can? Sure thing, yeah. So Alexander François, precinct six. We wanted to make this as light administratively as possible. So what we're going with here is to have the town meeting members in each precinct make a decision on who to choose. Now this can either be a selection for non-applicants or for applicants to directly reach out to town meeting members. We do have a mechanism in the main motion such that if town meeting members don't make a decision to have and if the other, if the chair or the secretary want to correct me on this, I believe it's the select board is charged with motivating town meeting members to get people involved. So I hope this answers your question. I'm still really confused. Do you want like a precinct meeting to choose the precinct representatives or how does it actually happen? Let's ask the chair of the select board, Mr. Diggins. Do you have any context to add? Yes, thank you, Mr. Lauderdale. Leonard Diggins, select board chair. So the town meeting members have the option of putting forth candidates. I mean, the candidates will actually be, the members will be chosen randomly. So that is the way we are trying to maximize or increase diversity or at least try to minimize preferences. And so the town meeting members can get together on their own and put forth candidates or candidates can come forward to town meeting members on their own or they can come to the select, present their names to the select board office. I mean, the only thing we're going to do is make sure that whoever is saying that they are from a given precinct is actually from that precinct. They go into a hat for lack of a better term and their names are pulled out. And so does that, I hope that answers your question, Ms. Magellan. Thank you, Ms. Lauderdale. Thank you. I think I'm clear that the final responsibility lies with the select board. Thank you. Yes, thank you. Great, thank you. Let's take Ms. Preston next. Naming precinct, please. Can you hear me? Yes, I can. Joanne Preston, precinct five. I'm very much in favor of this amendment. I think it would be very important to get more people involved. My real reason, however, for signing up to speak is that I was prevented from voting on article six and I don't want it to happen again. I couldn't get into chat that was disabled. I got into Q and A five times saying I couldn't vote and each time I heard you say, well, I guess everyone's finished voting now. This didn't happen last year with the program. So I hope there was some way that you can find out that people are being prevented from voting. That's why I got elected to town meeting. All right, so the line of comments, I appreciate the concern. The line of comments is out of scope for article seven that we're discussing now. We can take those concerns offline. There is a, for everyone, they're in the left-hand side of the portal. There is a get help button where you can submit a form. They were busy. They were busy. I couldn't get through. And so you should check the all the various ways to make sure before you close voting, please. Right, I appreciate that. So this is out of scope and we'll do the best we can going forward. Thank you. Let's take Ms. Barron next. Hi, Mr. Moderator. Hi, naming precinct, please. Nope, this is Ashley, one of the Zoomers voice. Ms. Barron is having trouble with her computer connecting. So she's unable to speak. Maybe if we could put her at the end of the list or maybe next, if she comes up, I'll interrupt one more time. Okay, so let's try to get her in after each speaker who is able to speak. Okay, great. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Mr. Fiori. Peter Fiori, precinct two. Can you hear me now? Yes, I can hear you. Go ahead. So my question is this, these young adults, these older young adults that be working with these youths, some of whom are as young as 12, are they gonna be subject to Corry checks? And if so, who's gonna manage that and oversee that? Mr. Diggins, do you have an answer for Mr. Fiori? Yes, Mr. Moderator. Thank you, Mr. Diggins. Fleckport chair. The schools have a way of dealing with this already. So we have standard procedures for me for conducting Corry's and SORI's. And so we'll be relying on current procedures, processes for handling that. But thanks for bringing that up. I mean, our town council has certainly brought that to my attention and assured me that we have ways of handling that consideration. Thank you. Thank you. Great. Let's try Ms. Barron again. Mr. Moderator, she's still having trouble connecting. I still don't see her in the attendees list. Okay, apologies for that. We'll keep circling back. Let's take Mr. Tosti next. Alan Tosti, precinct 17. I move the question on all issues involved in this article. Okay, do we have a second? A second to terminate debate. We have seconds. Okay. So let's take a vote. We'll need a two thirds vote to terminate debate on article seven. And apologies to Ms. Barron. We did not get a chance to speak. We have a point of order from Mr. Wagner. Thank you, Mr. Moderator, Carl Wagner, precinct 15. I'm not saying this has to be done this way, but I'd like to ask you and the body, if a member wanted to speak but was having technical questions or problems, as we've heard with a recent attempt to speak, which trumps the right of a person to speak who's having those problems or the request to end debate? Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate the question. I think for the, it's a hard balance between the rights of the individuals versus the kind of prerogatives of the meeting as a whole and the aggregate. So I'm deciding to move forward and I recognize that might not sit well with some folks and we're just gonna move forward. Thank you, though, for the comment. So let's continue to terminate debate or the vote to terminate debate. And so go over to your voting portal once this comes up and we're gonna, let's try this time. Let's do it by sevens. If you're in precinct one through seven, please vote now. If you're in precincts higher than seven, please don't vote yet. And we'll extend the time. Don't worry about the timer that's ticking down. We're gonna add some time to that. So precincts one through seven. We'll give them maybe 20 seconds or so. And now precincts eight through 14. Please vote now. And if you're in precincts 15 to 21, you can start voting now. Okay, we have lots of votes coming. It seems like it's functioning a bit better this time. So we'll try these waves of like in these three blocks going forward. Okay, let's go for another 30 seconds, just at least. And some names we have here of folks whose votes have not come in yet. Ms. Howard, Mr. Derringer, Mr. Stern, Ms. Radville, Ms. Kepka, Ms. Borja, Mr. Herd, Ms. Kniff, Ms. Ryan Vollmar, and Ms. Barron. So let's just go another five seconds and then let's close voting. And let's close it out now since we have 240 votes cast. Okay, so the motion to terminate debate passes. 217 affirmative, 22 negative. So debate is terminated. So let's cycle through our screens or through the precincts. If you missed your vote showing up there, if you missed your precinct screen, you can always view your votes with the view votes button on the left-hand side of the portal. So that's all the precincts. So let's now vote on the main motion for Article 7. This is a bylaw amendment for the Youth and Young Adult Advisory Board. So let's bring up that, the vote for that main, enable voting for the main article. Let's see, I see a point of order for Mr. Wagner. That was from 9.13. I don't know if that was from earlier or not. Can you bring up Mr. Wagner? Is that a new point of order? Can you hear me? It's Carl Wagner, precinct 15. Yes, I can, go ahead. I'm sorry, that appears to be an error. I actually have been removing that point of order. It seems to stick there, I'm sorry. Oh, okay. Let's see if we can clear that. Ms. Weyman, is there a way to clear it from our end? Okay. Okay, so voting is now open for the main motion on Article 7, the bylaw amendment for the Youth and Young Adult Advisory Board. If you agree with the recommended vote of favorable action on this new board, for the creation of this new board, please vote yes in the portal. If you don't want to establish this new board, please vote no. Oh, I'm sorry, I sort of said we should be voting in waves. If your precincts higher than seven, do not vote yet. Sorry about that. Precincts one through seven should be voting. And let's now let precincts eight through 14 vote. And if you're in precincts 15 and higher, just hold off for a few seconds. Okay, now if you're in precincts 15 or higher, go ahead and vote. Okay, so have votes missing from Dr. Seuss from Mr. Stern, Ms. McKinnon, Ms. Graham, and Mr. Dunn. So let's just wait a little bit longer, maybe 10 seconds to get these last votes in, hopefully. Five seconds and then we'll close voting. Okay, let's close voting on the main motion for Article 7. The motion passes, the main article passes 241 votes in the affirmative, three in the negative. So Article 7 passes. So let's just wait for the all the votes across precincts to appear. And again, if you miss this, if you miss your precinct coming up because it scrolls by pretty quickly, you could always go to the view votes button in the portal to view the votes at any time. Okay, and so that closes out Article 7. It is 922 and Article 8, which is up next, has two amendments associated with it. So I think maybe, I think now would be a good time for us to take a break before we jump into that because I think there's gonna be a lot of discussion, especially figuring out those amendments and kind of talking through that. I don't wanna start that and then go into break. So let's break now for 10 minutes and we'll come back at 933. Okay, Article 8 is bylaw amendment for civilian police advisory commission. And while we're bringing that up, let's give the select board chair a moment to introduce this article. Mr. Diggins, do you have anything to say to this? Sure, thank you, Mr. Moderator, learning to get the select board chair here. And first, the select board would like to express me deep appreciation for how well this study committee function. And it took a potentially, well, potentially hot button issue and treated it with the thoroughness mean and the inclusiveness that it deserved mean. And they created two great reports, an interim report and a final report and the select board is happy to support it unanimously. And I'll just quote from the next to penultimate paragraph which reads, the select board believes that the proposed civilian police advisory commission will provide a resource for the public and for our police department to help reinforce and cultivate confidence, trust and communication such that the excellent work of the police officers is recognized, acknowledged and encouraged and the negative conduct of our police officers is conveyed, heard and addressed. And with that, I turn it over back to you, Mr. Moderator to turn it over to the proponents. All right, so let's say the proponents for the main and we do have two amendments, at least that I'm aware of. Let's say, do we have a proponent who wishes to speak on behalf of this? Mr. Diggins, did you know if there had been someone arranged to speak to Articulate? Well, you know, I may be mistaken in the sequence. I'm sorry, Ms. Moderator, being the fun we just go into the questions from fellow Tom, any members, that's fine. Okay, well, let's introduce the articles. I'm sorry, the amendments to the main motion first. So can we bring up Ms. McKinnon please to introduce the first amendment? And then we'll get to the speaker queue after we introduce the two amendments that we have. Are we able to, yep, I see Ms. McKinnon is permitted to speak? Hello, Mr. Moderator, can you hear me? Yes, name and precinct please. Thank you, my name is Sarah McKinnon and I represent precinct 20 and my pronouns are she, her. Good evening, my fellow town meeting members. I'm speaking this evening to present an amendment to article eight, which proposes to form a civilian police advisory commission. My amendment adds to the language of part C of that proposal and seeks to specifically highlight continuing training for advisory commission members in equity, cultural humility, implicit bias and the significance of language access. The story of this amendment began and is rooted in community conversation. It was conceived in response to discussions at recent diversity task group meetings. The DTG is open to our entire Arlington community and anyone may attend the monthly meetings. Consequently, a broad diversity of voices comes to learn to exchange ideas in points of view and to think deeply together about a wide range of issues related to diversity, equity and inclusion. The DTG's nominee to the study committee, Carlos Morales, has kept the DTG abreast of the work being done by the committee throughout its mandate. DTG participants were deeply impressed with the rigorous extensive research and the outreach and community consultation involved in the committee's work. However, during the course of discussion, it was noted that in part C of the proposal, which states that members must receive initial and continuing training in the following subjects. All of the training currently listed is directed towards commission members' understanding of police policies and procedures and communication practices to the police. There's no question that such competencies are necessary for an advisory commission to the police and that each of these should be approached and understood within an equity framework. Such a framework is perhaps implicitly embedded within the very creation and structure of this civilian led advisory commission. And yet, as diverse community members at the DTG read this proposal from outside of this process, they strongly expressed their beliefs that such implicit assumptions should also be named explicitly, as we collectively try to develop systems that enhance equity for all peoples and groups within Arlington. Thus, this amendment specifically names equity, implicit bias and language access understandings as key trainings all commission members should be regularly engaged in together. These would serve to complement the knowledge and experiences they will bring through their personal and professional backgrounds, qualifications and experiences and foster a common understanding of terms and concepts. Furthermore, a cultural humility approach supports processes that center and foster critical self-inquiry, recognize and help shift power imbalances and will support board members as they strive to collaborate and partner with people in our community, particularly those who are historically marginalized and or currently hesitant or even afraid to rely on the police. Should we decide this evening to pass article eight, we will be setting the future members of this commission a challenging task that town meeting has collectively determined is an essential aspect of our community values. I believe that the members of this proposed commission should be provided with every available and appropriate tool to support the complex mission of healing and bridge building we are asking of them. I therefore urge you to support this amendment and thank you. So we actually, so we need a motion to introduce the amendment. So I will need you to say that you have a motion to amend this article and that you wish to submit it. I have a motion to, I'm sorry, I don't remember everything you said. You have a motion to amend the main article. I have a motion to amend the main article. And you wish to submit that. And I'd like to submit it, thank you. And so do we have a second to accept this amendment? By Ms. McKinnon. Second. Okay. And we also have a, thank you. So this amendment is accepted and we have a second amendment. It's a little out of order, but then we'll circle back to the main motion where we have a proponent who will speak on behalf of the entire, the main motion. So let's take, since we're speaking to amendments, let's take Mr. Backeel next. I believe has an amendment prepared. Mr. Moderator, this is Sanjavikheel precinct 12. I have a motion to amend article eight and I wish to submit it. Do we have a second? Second. Right, it's seconded. Yes. And so, yeah, you can speak to your amendment. So along with Mr. Klein of precinct 10, I'm suggesting a specific amendment to article eight. This change restores the eligibility requirements to match the original recommendation of the civilian police advisory board study committee. Under the study committee's recommendation reached after nearly a year of meetings, quote, current or former law enforcement officers, whether in Arlington or elsewhere, were not eligible for appointment to the commission. This language was changed by the select board at their warrant article meeting to allow for the inclusion of retired police officers who had served in other jurisdictions. We afforded this amendment to allow town meeting the opportunity to vote on the original language as proposed by the civilian police advisory board study committee. Let me further say that I strongly support article eight. Over my 22 years living in Arlington, I've had a small set of interactions with our officers. Each of them has been professional, friendly, and helpful. However, I'm concerned with the recently published survey from Envision Arlington from 2021. In that I learned that only about 65% of respondents are very comfortable reporting hate crime and only 61% are very comfortable reporting a mental health emergency. I want everyone in town to feel as comfortable calling our officers as I am for any reason. To get there, we need to understand why folks aren't comfortable. I believe the original recommendation took this need into account and hence its original language should be restored. Thank you. All right, thank you. And I got word that Ms. Giddelson would like to speak as a proponent of the main motion. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. And you're co-chair of the police civilian advisory board study group? Yes. Okay, so can you tell us about the main motion? Yes. I'm Laura Giddelson, precinct 17, chair of the civilian police advisory board study committee. With me tonight are my colleagues, Susan Ryan-Volmar, who also co-chaired the committee and Sanjay Newton, who was clerk of the committee. I'd like to begin by letting you know that warrant article eight has been endorsed by police chief Julie Flaherty, DEI director, Jill Harvey, the town's human rights commission, the LGBTQIA plus rainbow commission, the council on aging and the diversity task group of Envision Arlington. The study committee met for the first time a little over one year ago on March 18th, 2021. Over the following 12 months, we met 17 times as a group. During our meetings, we heard from guest experts and discussed with each other what we were learning from our research. During a six week period last fall, we held 14 listening sessions to solicit feedback on interactions, both positive and negative as well as neutral that folks have had with the Arlington police. Four of these sessions were open to all residents. One session was held for town employees. The remaining sessions were held for students and parents, residents of public housing and residents who are a member of racial or ethnic minority groups, LGBTQIA plus, living in public housing, living with disabilities, members of faith communities, veterans and or immigrants and refugees. Throughout the month of November, 2021, we collected feedback from residents via an online Google form. Finally, Susan Sanjay and I also met with members of police chief Julie Flaherty's command staff as well as the presidents of both police unions. We drew six key findings from our work which you can read about in our report. I am going to highlight three of our findings for you tonight. The first is that compared with other suburban police departments in Massachusetts, the Arlington police department has a well-deserved reputation for excellence. In 2020, just weeks after the murder of George Floyd by a police officer, the eight can't wait campaign launched. This campaign urged police departments to adopt eight policies that have been shown to reduce use of force during police interactions with civilians. When the campaign launched, the APD had already adopted seven of the eight policies and within days had adopted the eighth, making it the only law enforcement agency in the state to have adopted all eight. In 2018, the Arlington police department was one of just 14 law enforcement agencies nationwide selected by the council of state governments just to center to be a law enforcement mental health learning center. In that capacity, the Arlington police department provides resources, guidance and materials for other law enforcement agencies across the country that are developing crisis intervention co-response teams that pair mental health clinicians with police to more effectively respond to a 911 calls related to mental health emergencies. The second key finding is that even though the APD operates at a high level of excellence, there are residents in town who have experienced deeply negative interactions with Arlington police and they are extremely reluctant to file official complaints about these experiences for fear of retaliation. Without exception, residents who shared these stories with the study committee were people who belong to racial or ethnic minority groups, people who are LGBTQIA plus and or people who are living with a disability. Our third key finding is that the current process for reporting complaints and or compliments about interactions with police does not meet the needs of all residents. Many residents are confused about how to file a complaint, so much so that an ad hoc process has developed over the years by which residents bring their complaints to the Human Rights Commission and or the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. We also heard from residents, we also heard from residents who have had great experiences with police but didn't know that there was an official process through which they could share positive feedback. Based on our findings, we voted to recommend to town meeting that the town create one or more alternative ways for residents to file complaints and or commendations regarding police interactions. We also voted to recommend to town meeting that the best way to improve trust between residents and police and especially for residents who belong to historically marginalized groups is by creating a civilian police advisory commission. The primary purpose of this new commission will be to serve as a qualified advisor to town residents, the Arlington Police Department and other town staff with respect to policing in Arlington from a civilian perspective. What this means in practice is that the commission will broadly educate residents about their options for filing complaints and commendations about police conduct, connect residents who have information to share about the police department with appropriate town officials and committees, support residents through the complaints and commendations process and follow up with residents. The new commission will also work proactively with the Arlington Police Department to find ways to make the department's work more transparent to the public in easily understandable ways. What this means in practice is that the new commission would work with the Arlington Police Department to regularly analyze and publish data that offers insight into the quality and effectiveness of the department. Examples of such data would include complaints including their nature, status and disposition, police use of force incidents including all use of firearms, stops, searches, citations and arrests including demographic data, civil lawsuits and other claims brought against the town or department, database of training and database of awards and commendations. At this point, Susan, Sanjay and I or other town officials as appropriate are happy to answer any questions. Thank you. All right, thank you. So let's turn over to our speaking queue now and so let's take Mr. Tremblay. Name and precinct? Actually, while we're waiting for Mr. Tremblay, hold on, we have a point of order let's just take that first. Ms. Bloom. You see, don't we have to speak to each of the amendments before we speak to the main article and debate each of them in turn? So what I've decided to do is we're gonna have discussion about all three, the main motion and the two amendments and then we'll vote on the amendments in the order that we just heard them, the McKinnon amendment first and then the Klein-Bequiel amendment second and then we'll see how those amend the main motion or not and then we'll vote on the main motion. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. We'll just debate all at once among all three of those elements. Thank you. So let's go back to Mr. Tremblay. I'm muted now. Yes, I can hear your name and precinct. Ed Tremblay, precinct 19. My initial concern about this was that there didn't seem to be anybody with any connection to the police department on this board. Now, perhaps I haven't gotten to read the full body of the second amendment. That may answer my question about that. But it struck me as curious that you would have an advisory board of civilians advising the police department without any police input at all. I was wondering if it would be possible to hear what the chief has to say about this. The amendments. And the amendments you're asking, Mr. Tremblay. Yeah, so can we bring up Chief Flaherty to speak about the police, any police department participation in the drafting of the main motion or the amendments? Good evening, Mr. Moderator, can you hear me? Yes, I can, go ahead. Okay, thank you very much. Julie Flaherty, Chief of Police. Before I respond, I would just like to take a minute to thank the study committee for the work that they've done over the past year. I was extremely grateful to be on the committee and to have the opportunity to be part of the committee. Everyone was dedicated and passionate about improving policing in Arlington and I'm very grateful for that. I also wanted to thank Attorney Heim and Jill Harvey for their participation, their presentations and their very valuable input over the past year. I do support the recommendations of the study committee. I feel that the Arlington Police Department has always been a very progressive and professional police department and having an advisory commission in place will only further our mission in building trust and strengthening the ties with the community. And I do look forward to, and I welcome input and discussion around policing issues. I do, however, feel strongly that it is important to have someone who can offer expertise in policing issues and topics on the commission. I feel that a retired police officer or someone with a law enforcement background can offer valuable insight on such things as how police officers are trained, why certain actions are taken by officers, how policies are developed. How hiring happens and how promotions happen and what role collective bargaining agreements have in discipline. There's some very complicated issues that people outside of policing wouldn't really have the knowledge of. Policing is a very unique profession in which we are required to go to police academies for almost 26 weeks before we sworn police officers and then we train for three more months on duty as sworn police officers in field training. A person with a background in policing would have more knowledge of that and would be able to speak to that. Civilian advisory commissions have become quite common over the past few years and I've done research and found that many commissions welcome input from people with experience in policing or law enforcement and it has been considered best practices. For instance, in my research, I found that the Milton Vermont Advisory Commission has a police chief as a non-voting member. The Benefit Main Advisory Commission has a chief as a liaison. The Fago, North Dakota has a retired police chief that sits, I'm sorry, retired police officer that sits on the commission. The Vermont State Police has a retired police officer on the commission. The Fruta, Colorado has a police chief as a non-voting member and our neighbors in Brookline who I would consider an agency that's just as progressive as Allington has a deputy superintendent on the commission as a non-voting member. So please remember that this is an advisory commission. If this was a police oversight commission, I would understand the call for not having members of law enforcement involved as they would be involved in investigations in disciplining offices. This is a study committee the study committee is recommending an advisory commission not only to improve the officer complaint system and take complaints but also to recognize police officers in Allington for exceptional work to look at our data and analyze it and make it more accessible to the community to review our current policies and make recommendations for future policies and to really educate the community about the police department. So it's really not about just taking complaints. So I think as the chief of police I think my request is very reasonable to have somebody with a law enforcement background sit on the commission and I'm respectfully requesting that town meeting members vote in favor of that. Thank you. Thank you, Chief Flaherty. And apologies that we accidentally reset the timer part where the time should have been attributed to Mr. Tremblay's time. Mr. Tremblay, did you want to redirect that question as Chief Flaherty suggested? I honestly don't know who president would be able to answer that but if you have thoughts, I'm happy to entertain possibilities of other folks fielding your question. Oh, I mean, Chief Flaherty expressed her idea which I think mirrors mine that there really ought to be somebody on the commission that has a police background. I think it's pretty hard to discuss policing if you haven't had any exposure to it. And so that's my comment and I'm willing to support this and as I said, I think I support the second amendment but I'd also like to be able to read it someplace and I haven't figured out how to do that yet. So I will stop now. Thank you. If you're referring to the Klein-Vekeel amendment that should be listed in the annotated warrant online for article eight like both amendments should be listed there. Okay, I don't have that up and I won't take the meeting's time up to figure that out. Thank you, Mr. Tremblay. I did want to make a note that let's see, oh no, we'll just move on. So let's take Mr. Fuller next. I'm sorry, that's the second requests. I'm in the wrong, waiting to speak. We have Mr. Siano is next, apologies for that. Yes, Frank Siano precinct 15, three questions. I'm in favor of this. I support our police department. However, the idea is a good idea. So three questions. The members of this commission, as I understand it, will be unpaid volunteers, am I correct? Let's see, can we have maybe Ms. Giddelson answer that question? Yes, much like many other town commissions and committees, it is unpaid volunteers. Thank you. This commission, as I understand it, does not hold hearings or render decisions, but rather receives information. I think I'm right about that. And then helps to provide the public with procedures on how complaints may be filed. And even a member of the commission can accompany somebody who is unhappy with an action. I guess I understand that to be true. Is that the case? Ms. Giddelson, can you answer that? Yes, that is a substantial part of what the commissioners would do is act as a liaison between members of the public and the Arlington police and should a member of the public wish to file a complaint or a compliment, they could come to the commission and the commission would guide them through that. The commission will not itself have any say in discipline or the investigation. That would remain the same as the status quo and the processes that APD already has. Thank you. And then how will the public become aware of this? Will there be a post office box next to the town clerk's office or how do you propose to do that so that if somebody wanted to reach out, how would they do it? Make a phone call, would it be, I guess it'd be on the town of Arlington website. I guess maybe I answered my question. The last thing I have is these members go through a training process and can or will ride along with an officer. So my next question is, if there's an injury to one of these volunteers, what insurance covers them? Is there a special insurance policy that you'll buy or what? And that's my last question. Ms. Giddelson, do you know the answer to that? I would refer that to town council, Doug Hyme. Mr. Hyme, do you have an answer? And I pray that nobody's injured, but... Hopefully we have a policy that goes beyond prayers. Mr. Hyme? Doug Hyme, town council, thank you, Mr. Moderator. We don't have... The town carries very limited insurance policies for very specific reasons, such as an automobile accident, our fleet is insured, if you will. Otherwise the town is self-insured. The town is self-insured for just about everything. We also are self-insured for workers' compensation and line of duty claims. So if someone's hurt in the discharge of duties associated with the town, the town does take care of them, but it's not pursuant to an insurance policy. Thank you. So now I wonder, these humans on the commission are not employees, they're volunteers. So I would just ask that somebody look into that. So if something happens to somebody, that there's coverage for these humans on the commission. So when I served in... For Massport, we had an insurance policy. And with that, I've concluded my comments. Thank you, I support this. Thank you, Mr. Siam. Next we have on the queue, Mr. Hamlin. Hi, Guillermo Hamlin, precinct 14. Thank you. And I'd like to thank the study committee for doing the work. I've learned a great deal. So we've already made it clear that this is not an investigative model of an advisory commission, but rather it seems as though it's more of a review-focused model. In regards to having former officers, can we specify what that means? Like does this lead to dispatchers to what I imagine would be a retired state trooper who has some time-eating experience? Can we specify what this range is? Because I'd like to support it, but I'm feeling advised to just keep it as it was in the study committee, given how comprehensive it was. So I don't know who to necessarily ask that to, maybe the police chief or the proponents. Let's start with Ms. Giddelson. She seems very knowledgeable on this. Ms. Giddelson, do you have an answer? Thank you. The language in the warrant article in the by-law language was, we consulted a lot with Doug Heim, town council. So I think he's best situated to answer that given the definition of law enforcement officer. Mr. Heim, do you have an answer? Doug Heim, town council. Yes, so there are specific definitions of what constitutes a law enforcement officer. Usually they're defined, it's defined in several different ways in different statutes, essentially as like a peace officer. If someone's essentially, one shortcut way of thinking about it is most of the time if someone's carrying a firearm in the discharge of their duties. That's a good indication, for example, that they're a peace officer. The corrections officer is also a peace officer. There's also the recently passed Justice, Equity, and Accountability and Law Enforcement Act, which also defines what sort of is encompassed and what is not encompassed. So for example, there were some questions at some point in time before the select board about, well, could a district probably be considered a law enforcement officer? Under some federal guidelines, they're considered law enforcement officers in very limited purposes. They wouldn't be considered law enforcement officers for the purposes of state law and what we're considering here. So like a district attorney could serve an active or former district attorney. It's probable that a number of other types of law enforcement adjacent positions. I think the part of what the advisory board, I'm sorry, part of what the committee is recommending though is also to try to avoid some basic conflicts of interests with coworkers. So that would bear some thought. But one other thing that I wanna just take a moment to clarify, if I may, just for a moment, Mr. Moderator, is that at present, what we're debating does not guarantee a seat to a member of a current or former law enforcement personnel. We're only talking about a provision which would exclude those folks from eligibility if the amendment was accepted. So there's not an automatic seat under anybody's version of this reserved for law enforcement current or former personnel. I just wanna make that clear. If I want to say one other thing, just because we don't have an insurance policy doesn't mean folks aren't taken care of. Volunteers are actually municipal employees for the most part, both for conflict of interest purposes as people may be familiar with and if they're acting within the scope of the volunteer position they're occupying such as the hazards of being a moderator. You're acting within the scope of your employment right now, Mr. Christiana. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Hamlin, anything else? Yes, thank you. So I was looking, I'm confused about the term oversight. My reading of this is that although it's not an investigative body, it is still a review one from what I understand. So can we clarify as to what oversight means provided that if we were to vote as a proponents would like that they would provide a yearly report to town meeting covering the findings. Is that not oversight? And I apologize for being so in that figure. Ms. Giddelson, do you have an answer about the oversight? I'm not fully sure that I understand the question. It is part of the bylaw that the commission would annually report to town meeting and it is also true that it is not an investigatory body. So I'm not sure exactly. My apologies. Mr. Hamlin, do you wanna clarify the question? Sure, is this, can we, how would the commission, I'm reading it as it is. And so they would receive complaints, use of force incidents, injuries. Okay, nevermind. My apologies, I retract my second question. I just looked at a different document and it was more outlined according to how it would like. Thank you. Great, thank you, Mr. Hamlin. Let's take Mr. Kerbal next and while we're bringing him up, I did wanna point out that the McKinnon amendment, the first amendment that was presented, there were two versions of it. So if you're looking on the annotated warrant online, you will see that there's a amendment McKinnon revised and amendment McKinnon. McKinnon revised is what is presented tonight. So I just wanna make sure there's no confusion about that and the only difference is that the word or the term racial equity was replaced with equity in the revised version of the amendment that's before us. So Mr. Kerbal, if you're there. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Joe Kerbal, Praising 13. I actually wish to give my time to Barbara Doshi to speak on this. Okay, is Mr. Redosha a resident of Arlington? He is. Then he has the right to speak being introduced by a time meeting member. So can we bring Mr. Redosha up, please? I think I'm up and... Name and address? Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, Bob Redosha, Columbia Road, Arlington was a prior time meeting member and was on the PCA Board Study Commission. And thank you, Mr. Moderator, for the time. I'm gonna speak a little differently about this and I understand that but I still think there's another side to this. One of the charges requested of the study committee was to collect data and information about the experiences of comparable communities. I gathered data on our six adjacent cities and towns and later added five other nearby communities that seem to relate to Arlington in a lot of ways. And I came up with some data that's, I think it's important to understand where we stand among our other 11 peers. Like I said, we're the fifth smallest in area per square mile. We have the fourth highest population. We have the third highest density of people. We have the fourth lowest police employees. We have a number of police employees per 10,000 residents. We're the fourth safest community in the group and ranked 21st in the state of 350 communities in the state of Massachusetts. Police department is in the forefront of mental health and law enforcement as one of 10, 12, 14 nationwide communities that established crisis intervention teams to help other mental issues with other communities. Cambridge is the only community in our study group, my group that I looked at that has a police oversight commission. Summable is looking into it, but we're not Cambridge or Summable. We're a lot different. The other communities in our area resolve police complaints and issues with the normal resources available that represent all segments of the population, including those that fear retaliation if they speak out a file of complaining. For example, our DEI director, Jill Harvey and police chief, Julie Flaherty have been successful in bringing closure to several complaints and other issues. And we have the resources within the town to deal with that. And it's just a question to somebody talking to somebody. And if you're afraid to talk, then at some point you have to say something. Now, the public has participated in various discussion groups and surveys and so forth. And there was no overwhelming consensus as far as I'm concerned, among the 84 statements that I read that called would create support advising a civilian police advisory commission made up of civilians without any law enforcement experience and a token non-resident retired police officer from outside Allenton. I believe this would be demoralizing along with being divisive and more divisive than unifying and would undermine the goal of trust and respect for each other. We recently added several young recruits to the police force who seem to be very enthusiastic and positive about doing their job. If this article should pass, I hope that being under the scrutiny of a civilian oversight commission doesn't put a damper on their enthusiasm. The original warrant requesting the study committee contained a statement while there is no universal agreement on what kind of independent police review if any is appropriate in Allenton and goes on with a lot of other. To close, I just want to say, I believe this is not appropriate and thank you for your time. Great, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Rendocia and Mr. Kerbal, did you have anything else with the remainder of your time? Hearing nothing, let's move on to Inez Zuckerman. From the speaker queue. Name and precinct, please. Inez Montserrat Zuckerman, precinct 19. And I will be very brief. I agree with article eight and in particular with amendment G, Ms. McKinnon's amendment to section C, qualifications for service. And I want to address the portion of the use of language access. I happen to be a professional Spanish interpreter and translator and I use the Allenton webpages very often. And I hadn't even noticed that we don't provide an option for translation of the webpage. And I found that when I was looking to see if we've had translation of the police department webpage or page. And that is something that all our surrounding towns, except for Belmont, I did a little research, all provide. So there's a very, and I'm sure this, we would have to pay for it. There's a Google translate or other translate function that can be applied. Ms. Zuckerman, let me just kind of chime in for a second and start to interrupt. So just to make sure that we're remaining in scope, is this a comment about the police department's website or specifically to the civilian review board? I'm sorry, it's about the significance of language access and how we can miss such things. So it is important that there be continuing training in those subjects. That we're remaining in the scope of this particular article, we're not broadening to police department's website. So if we can just kind of rein it into the scope. Okay. So the scope is the continuing training in the following subjects. And I think continuing training should be, the significance of language access should be part of that. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Great, thank you. Let's take David Pretzer next. Hi, I'm David Pretzer from Precinct 17. I think this is an excellent article. I think Arlington has the opportunity to be a leader here. I'm a bit concerned that without the amendment, there could be an appearance of like a conflict of interest or a risk in making an anonymous report. And I was hoping we could ask Gillian Harvey from the DEI department to give her perspective that slash expertise on if that's something we should be concerned about. Sure, we can bring up Ms. Harvey. And which specific amendment, the McKinnon amendment or the Klein-Vekeel amendment? The Klein-Vekeel. I'm worried that if we don't do that amendment, that the presence of a retired law enforcement article could interfere with the ability of the board to hear anonymous complaints and so on. And I wanted to get Gillian's perspective on it. Okay, can we bring up Gillian Harvey? Do we have an answer to that question? Hi, can you hear me? Yes, go ahead. Great, Gillian Harvey, DEI director. Yeah, I just want to also first say thank you to the study committee and for all of the effort and time and thoroughness of the work that was done over the last year. I said it before, I'll say it again. I'm just really impressed with the way that group came together and what came out of it. But to answer this question, so at this time, I honestly don't believe that former police officers should be on the commission, but I do feel that after the commission is established, possibly in a few years, that membership should be reevaluated. I do think that there is potential benefit to having a former police officer sit on the commission as that individual will hold certain knowledge and experiences that no one else on the commission will have. So down the road, yes, but right now for getting the commission started, I don't see having a former law enforcement officer on the commission as beneficial. I actually see that's potentially hindering the trust building work that needs to happen now amongst residents and law enforcement. I can see that being an issue right now, but again, down the road, I certainly think that it makes sense to have a former law enforcement officer on the commission. And with all of that, I mean, the commission will get started and part of their job is to also really reevaluate themselves and in the future, what we'll need to change. And so it hasn't been set up yet and there will be different processes. Ms. Harvey, I can't talk to your connections cutting out. Oh, yep, it is. I just got the sign here. Internet is unstable. Which part did you not hear? Last 10 seconds. I don't know where I left off. Basically, I'm just saying that I... Like in the future that you could see it being revisited. Oh, yes, that the commission, it hasn't been set up yet. They don't have their processes in place, but all of that will take place if the commission is established and that right now I don't see that it's appropriate to have a former law enforcement officer on the commission, but in the future, it would be beneficial. Is there anything else? Right, any other questions from Ms. Harvey or anyone else? No, I just want to say based on that, I think the appearance of trustworthiness is very important. So I agree with that. I encourage everyone to vote for the main motion and the Klein-Vekele amendment and thank you, Mr. Moderator. Great, thank you. Let's take Ezra Fisher next. Ezra Fisher, precinct four. I just have a short, sort of what I think is a common sense linguistic comment, which is to say this is a civilian police advisory commission and police are not, everyone involved is a civilian. Police are civilians. They're not part of the military. And so I take this to mean civilian police advisory commission. I think that we're using the word civilian to mean non-police. People who are not police officers and we are advising the police. And so I'm in support of both amendments and the main motion and specifically, I think a common sense would tell us that we should be voting yes on the Klein-Vekele amendment to return the original qualifications for serving on the commission. Thanks. Great, thank you. Let's take Lynette Culverhouse next. Damon Precinct. Lynette Culverhouse, precinct 11. I'd like to support both of these amendments. In particular, I think that the amendment to add racial equality, cultural humility, implicit bias and the significance of language access training to the list of qualifications for service on the board is very important. Since the desired outcome of this board is to reach those marginalized communities that traditionally have felt unsafe coming forward with a police complaint, it seems imperative that those who wish to serve in this capacity have the cultural competency to communicate effectively with all people including and especially those who have been cast aside by society to the bottom of the pecking order. I believe that this addition will encourage more people to come forward and will give the board members the communication tools necessary to engage and include all sources of complaints. It also supports Arlington's commitment to inclusivity and equity. I believe that this board offers an opportunity to build trust between residents and police and that the members of the board will work with and consult with the police in the course of their work. I therefore think that the presence of police on the board is unnecessary since that communication will already be there and the relationship building will emerge from it. So I urge members, town meeting members to vote in favor of both of these amendments. Great, thank you. Let's take Mr. Harrelson next. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Brooks Harrelson precinct 16. I rise in support of Ms. McKinnon's amendment and it's always difficult to follow Ms. Culver, how she speaks so well. I think, and I think many of us hope and expect that the formation of a civilian police advisory board will provide a safe channel for members of historically marginalized communities to bring forward issues of community safety where they might otherwise hesitate due to historical wounds, their communities have suffered necessarily in Arlington, but nationally and cultures are protective. In order for those communities to be heard, the listeners need to be trained in elements of bias well outside their own comfort zone. I have been involved in civil rights, diversity, equity and inclusion efforts since 1964. In the last 10 years, I've taken more than 15 trainings in anti-bias and I still have blind spots where I don't comprehend the issue. Recognizing and modifying my bias is very hard to do. I applaud the efforts of former chief Ryan and current chief Flaherty in police training in anti-bias and community policing. Trust is earned and this board will have to earn it by informed listening that can only happen with continuous training at least at the level that the police force undertake currently. I urge you all to vote in favor of this amendment. Thank you, Mr. Maurer. Great, thank you. Let's take Mr. Varaglou next. Hello, am I coming through? Yes, name and precinct please. Mustafa Varaglou, precinct 10. And I'm speaking in support of the McKinnon amendment echoing very briefly some of the other comments in terms of the importance of including the equity, culture, humility, implicit bias and significance of language access training. And I think just very sort of broadly when you look at the list of qualifications that this would be added to the vast majority of those qualifications are police facing or maybe more technical or logistical. And I think adding this would be a way of facing or interfacing better with the public that may be coming to this commission. And so I think it's important to kind of make sure that the commission can both speak to the police which it's set up to do very, very well and speak to the public as well. So I encourage support of this amendment and of the article overall. Thank you. Great, thank you. And let's take Ms. Dre next. Good evening. Elizabeth Dre, precinct 10. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I'd like to thank Mr. Varaglou and Mr. Klein and Ms. McKinnon for bringing their amendments forward to strengthen this incredible article that we have in front of us. I'd like to point out that I believe that a civilian police advisory commission is not a punishment for the police department and that we as a community should be proud that we are able to employ it and commit to the transparency and the system of checks and balances that it brings and it will strengthen the relationship and it will strengthen the police department and it will strengthen our community. And also I would like to say that I believe that the commission should be voted into being and will have the ability to continue the strong partnership that has been established between the study committee and the chief and the police department and we'll be able to call on the police as advisors in their work. I'm curious to know, I know that the study committee did extensive research and I'd be interested about this particular issue about whether or not to include police officers or retired police officers as part of the commission. And I'm curious to know, to hear from them about that particular research and what they learned about this specific issue when they spoke to other communities and what it is that led them to the decision to not allow retired police officers on the commission. Thank you. Great, thank you. Ms. Giddelson, do you wanna take a crack at that? If possible, I'd like to send that, ask the clerk of the commission, Sanjay Newton, to answer that, because he had some of those conversations. Okay, can we permit Mr. Newton to speak? Yeah, Sanjay Newton, precinct 10 and clerk of the civilian police advisory board study commission, a study committee. I think part of what we, the research that we did, right, looked at other boards and other places. We also, you know, part of what we looked at also really, excuse me. Actually, I lost my words. Part of the research that we did really, let me give it to Susan actually. Sorry about that. This is just in the context of the eligibility requirements and the thought that went through that with it, yeah. If you wouldn't mind asking Susan to... Sure, Ms. Ryan Vollmar. Sure, can you hear me? Yes, go ahead. Okay, great. Elizabeth, I really appreciate that question. It's an important issue. This is something that the study committee spent a lot of time on, which is how, you know, if this commission comes to be, who should be on it, what the eligibility requirements would be. And Sanjay and I spoke with outside experts about the composition of commissions like this. And to a person, they were unanimous in saying that under no circumstances would you want to have current serving law enforcement on a commission like this. It's too much of a conflict of interest. It's too much of a power imbalance. And those experts included Brian Core, who's probably one person in the country who knows more about the establishment of these commissions than anyone else. He consults with municipalities across the country who are doing the work like Arlington is doing, which is trying to figure out how to build trust between residents and police. And he was adamant like, no, you don't have current serving officers. We spoke with a former Boston police department, police officer, 30 year veteran who now teaches criminal justice at Emmanuel College. He said the same thing under no circumstances do you want current serving law enforcement on commission like this. And the third person I'm completely blanking on his name, but yet another expert in this area said the same thing. However, the issue of having retired law enforcement, and I wanna clarify, when we say former law enforcement, we're talking about someone who's retired who's been in the force or in the business of law enforcement and has a stellar record. You're not talking about someone who's been booted off the force from this conduct, which is a distinction, a very important distinction to make. In that instance, yes, there can be a place for having retired law enforcement on a commission like this. I think Chief Flaherty made a very good argument for that. However, DEI director Harvey explained why that's not a good idea right now for Arlington. Since 2018, the community has been through a lot, a lot of trust issues, now would not be a good time to put law enforcement on the commission. And I would hope that if this commission is formed that the new commissioners would follow the lead that we took in working very, very closely with Chief Flaherty and DEI director Harvey, both of whom are amazing, talented, and made our work possible. So I hope that answers the question. Mr. Ray, does that answer your question? That does. And I guess I'd ask Ms. Harvey, if she has any other comments that she'd like to make and then I'm done. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Great. Ms. Harvey, did you have any comments? Is that just open-ended? Yes, please. Okay. Ms. Harvey, you have one minute and one second. Oh, I honestly... You don't have to use all that time. I was gonna say. In terms of just the question that was asked, I think I covered it before. I really do feel that there is a place for former law enforcement down the road, but just not in these beginning stages. I really think that our residents need to be able to know that they are gonna have this commission and that trust needs to be built and it's not gonna happen overnight. So I kind of stand by that, that not right now, but in the future. Great. Thank you, Ms. Harvey and thank you, Ms. Ray. Before we get to Mr. McCabe, just got word from... There's a need for an administrative change. Madam Clerk, do you wanna explain that please to the body? Yes, Julie Brazil Town Clerk. When Article 7 that we just voted on passed, it called to create a new Article 15 of Title II of the town bylaw. And so in this case, the vote language for Article 8 calls for the same new addition. So if we could just know that we're voting to create a new Article 16 in Title II of the town bylaw. Right, so I'll accept that change administratively. We don't wanna add to Article 15s to the bylaws. And so with that, let's take Mr. McCabe from the speaker queue. Yes, hello, I'm Mark McCabe, Precent Two and I stand to terminate debate on Article 8 and all matters before. Great, thank you. So we have a request to terminate debate on the main motion and this is subsidiary motions, the amendments before it. And so let's open up a vote to terminate debate on Article 8, which would create a civilian police, I'm sorry, yeah, so this'll stop debate on all three motions. The main motion to amendments. Go ahead, yep, sorry. And so let's go to the board. And before everyone votes, let's try doing in waves again, starting with precincts one through seven. And also I got word from the platform developer for the portal, like for folks to, please not repeatedly hit the refresh button. If it doesn't go through, just let it back. It'll automatically, when you're on the time-out screen, it will refresh on its own. And so if you keep hitting refresh, it's actually gonna magnify the problem with the load on the database. So let's just be patient with that and see how that goes. Okay, so now let's try opening voting or allowing voting for precincts eight through 14. And it seems like votes are coming in pretty well. At a pretty good rate. And so let's let that middle section of precincts vote. And if you have trouble voting, there should be, do we have in the chat about the instructions for folks? Or in the chat of Q and A? Let's bring it up. Yep, there it is. The get help button and the get help button in the portal. And now precincts 15 to 21, feel free to vote. And so yeah, if you have any problems and you need technical support, get help button in the portal. It has help desk phone numbers in there. If you're having trouble voting, you can enter your vote into the Q and A or call the town clerk at 781-316-3071. So we have 232 votes cast and some folks who have not voted yet. Mr. Thielman, Mr. Palmer, Mr. Stern, Michael Brown, Ms. Keppke, Mr. Ruderman, Ms. Rowe. We have a point of order from Mr. Weinstein. Why don't we take that now while we're waiting for the remaining votes to come in? Yes, can you hear me? Yes, go ahead. Jordan Weinstein precinct 21. I know that there was a second on the motion to terminate debate that appeared on the screen, but you once again did not request or ensure that there was a second or announced that it had been seconded. And I just wanna make sure that we don't skip over that procedure, which I think is very important. Great, thank you so much for pointing that out. I'll make sure to announce that in the future. Thank you, thank you. Okay, so voting is closed and the motion to terminate debate passes with more than 86% of the vote. It's a two thirds vote and so debate is terminated. So we'll just cycle through the precincts and then after we're done seeing all the votes from the precinct screens we will open up voting on the McKinnon amendment first and then the Klein-Pakil amendment after that. And then finally the main motion which may or may not be amended. So we've run through. If you missed your precinct screen you could always view votes in the portal. So let's now open up voting on the McKinnon amendment to article eight. And then during voting if we can bring up that, if it's possible to bring up that amendment on screen so folks can see it while they're voting I can speak to it now. Just summarizing, this is the McKinnon amendment, article eight, yeah, enable voting and we'll start with precincts one through seven again. Actually, before we get to that we do have a point of order from Sherry Barron. Can we bring her on please? Hi, Ms. Barron, name and precinct. Ms. Barron, it looks like. Okay, Sherry Barron, precinct seven. Do you hear me? Yes, go ahead, please. Mr. Moderator, could you just review what this amendment is? Yes, so yeah, we'll bring that up on screen during voting period, all right. All right, thank you. Great, so here we have it up on screen. And Ms. Weyman, is voting actually open right now? So it looks like it is, yeah. So the McKinnon amendment it adds one line to the list of qualifications for service on the committee and that line is equity, cultural, humility, implicit bias and the significance of language access. All the other verbiage in here is just kind of rearranging the letter designations on the lines and just making sure that the second to last of the penultimate line has an end on it. And yeah, so it's really just adding that one line to the qualifications for service on the board. So if you are in favor of this amendment to the main motion, then please vote yes in the portal. Let's see. Let's see, precincts one through seven should have already been going. Apologies if I didn't mention that before. Let's let precincts eight through 14 vote now, give them a little bit of time and then finally let's let precincts 15 to 21 vote and while those votes are coming in, we have a point of order from Rebecca Gruber if you take Ms. Gruber, please. Is Ms. Gruber able to speak in Zoom? Clarify your explanation that the addition is to the training for the members of the board. It's not a qualification. It's the training the board members would be receiving. Oh, thank you. Thank you for the clarification. Thank you. Thank you. Right, so this line G that's being added is as Ms. Gruber said. Thank you. And we have another point of order from Mr. Wagner. Let's take that note. And while we're taking that, let's open up voting to all precincts. Thank you, Mr. Moderator, Karl Wagner, precinct 15. Can you hear me okay? Yes, I can go ahead. Thank you. Actually two points of order. The first one that I intended to say was that if possible, could the moderator please put the entire single page amendment if it is a single page amendment into full screen mode so that we can read the entire thing as although I am not specifically well knowledgeable in the McKinnon amendment, I think it also added item H, a minor addition, but something slightly different. So just if it's possible to do like a full screen instead of a partial screen on a single page amendment like this, the public would be able to see the whole thing and judge for themselves. Sure, yeah, I appreciate that. We have a challenge here where like most screen that it's kind of in like a wide screen form like a landscape format, but the documents are in portrait and so it makes the text pretty small, but I take your point, but we'll try to fit that in. Thank you. Just one other minor small point of order perhaps for the programming department. I believe I was point of order one and there was a person point of order two. I cast my vote in the middle of being in the point of order Q and I moved to second instead of first. Not that I mined of course, but just an interesting change if you cast your vote while you're in point of order order with someone else. Thank you. Oh, interesting. We can look into that. Yeah, and so the H here that it's adding is just because there's a G being inserted. And so the the and that's being stricken from F and adding the H is really just in the service of adding a new G that's being inserted. And so let's, let's see. We still have some votes outstanding from Benjamin Rudick, Edward Morocco, Michael Brown, Michael Stern, Clarissa Rowe, Catherine Radville and Peter Thompson. So if those folks, if you're able to vote, please. And if you have trouble voting, you can follow the instructions in the chat to call the town clerk at 7813163071. Or you can enter your vote into the Q and A. So I think we have 240 votes now. It seems like it's stabilized. So let's close voting on the McKinnon amendment. And the amendment passes as it requires a majority to pass. And we have 86% of the vote, 202 in the affirmative 33, the negative. So the main motion is now amended according to the McKinnon amendment. So that item G is now inserted into the qualifications for service. We have a point of order from Ms. Bloom. Why do we, yeah. Nancy Bloom, precinct 18. Yep, go ahead. Just one thing. When you're trying to show so many screens, I was not, we're not able to see who's voted. And I was not able to tell whether I had voted or not because if you look at view votes, doesn't show a vote that's not yet been made. So I couldn't tell. It turns out I did vote and it was recorded, but just so you know. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, so it looks like, have we cycled through all the screens? Okay, great. So the main motion is now amended according to the McKinnon amendment. So let's open voting now for the client-the-keel amendment. And we'll get that up on screen once we open up the voting. So this will now, so we're voting now on whether to amend the main motion, which has already now been amended by the McKinnon amendment. We're now voting on whether to further amend it by the client-the-keel amendment. And the client-the-keel amendment, which we'll pull up in a moment now with voting open. So let's start with precincts one through seven. Please hold off on voting. If you're in precinct eight or higher. And see if we have, so it's gonna be hard to get this all on screen because it's, there's a lot of vertical text here. We also, we have a point of order. Let's take Ms. Mazzina's point of order. Since we're still getting a database connection timeouts, let's still keep it to precincts one through seven just for now while we take Ms. Mazzina's point of order. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. I think as much as they'd like to be known as the McKinnons, I think this is the client-the-keel amendment. Did I say the wrong amendment name? Not a problem. Apologies if I used the wrong name. I think what I meant to say is that the, we're voting on whether to amend the main motion, which has already been amended by the McKinnon, by the McKinnon amendment, we're voting on whether to further amend it with the client-the-keel amendment. And so let's now, like folks in precincts eight to 14 why don't you start voting now? Seems like the database issues are settling down a little bit. And why don't we take Mr. Warden's point of order while precincts eight to 14 are voting? There is, is that, am I unmuted? I, yeah, I can hear you, Mr. Warden. I'm still confused. The main motion excludes retired policemen. The amendment would put them back in as members of the commission, is that correct? The- I can't read the microtype in the text. Right. Do you have a copy of the client-the-keel amendment that you have? I do not. Okay. Just yes or no. Does the amendment put the retired cops back on the commission? The, it disallows, let's say, it makes, so former police officers and law enforcement were not eligible according to the main motion and they would now be eligible with the client-the-keel amendment. Thank you. Can Ms. Giddelson confirm that or remember? Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. The original motion excludes current and former law enforcement officers, sorry, the select board, which is what is the main motion would allow for retired former law enforcement officers from other jurisdictions from Arlington. What the vehicle client amendment does is that it returns the language to the original language proposed by the study committee which would exclude former law enforcement officers from anywhere. Is that clear, Mr. Borden? Yes. So the main motion then includes former police officers from other communities. The main motion would exclude, would not include currently serving police officers, but would, would allow for the possibility of retired law enforcement officers from other communities. Okay. I think, Mr. Moderator, if you could make these points clear when you present amendments, I think it would help because not everybody can read the tiny amount of type that appears on the screen. Great. Thank you for the suggestion, Mr. Borden. So we have a number of points of order. Let's, so folks in precincts, 15 to 21, feel free to vote now. Let's take a point of order from Sherry Barron. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Sherry Barron, Precinct seven, it would be very helpful. I think it would be very helpful. I think it would be very helpful. I think it would be very helpful. Mr. Moderator Sherry Barron, Precinct seven, it would be very helpful. I believe, and it's been done in the past. If you could read the. Substitute motion to us. Because I too have a little trouble seeing it at times. And it's like, for me, I'm more of an auditory learner. So, and, and to be voting before that happens, like I feel like now I'm, you know, I'd rather hear it read first and then open voting. If that's possible, thank you. Sure. Yeah, I appreciate the suggestion. Thank you. So the. The climb the keel amendment. This isn't the rationale at the bottom, which I can read off this change restores the eligibility requirements to match the original recommendation of the, the civilian police advisory board study group. Committee. Let's see. Right. It means subsection B to replace the words actively employed with current or former. And this is under the. The section of persons who are not eligible to serve on the commission. Right. So the folks who are not eligible to serve on the commission is being changed from actively employed with current or former. So it is making former. Officers and law enforcement ineligible. And that's what the client to kill amendment is. It is. Changing. We have a point of order from Mr. Tepline. Okay. Now I can speak. Mark. He's nine. It seems like. The first amendment expands the scope. Of the article by requiring additional training. Then the select man's approved. Article. And I. Maybe the funding somewhere else, but I'm just wanting what all this costs. Thank you. Right. So. Yes. So we're not really open to debate on it at this point, as far as the question of scope, I will briefly answer that that at the end of the warrant article is the, the extra phrase or take any action related there too. And so I would consider this particular amendment in scope under that clause. That doesn't mean anything would be in scope, but I think it's sufficiently in scope. But thank you. So let's. We have a point of order from Mr. Wharton. I don't know if this is, I think this is a new one. Mr. Wharton, do you have a new point of order? I'm trying. Mr. Wharton, I can hear you now. Can you. Yes. No, I, no, I don't have another point of order. Okay. So let's clear that and Mr. Rosenthal has a point of order. So let's. Yes, Mark. That's all precinct 14. I found that every time you or anybody else tried to explain this. My understanding of what this particular amendment would do. Flipped from one, one thing to another. It would be much easier. If you would just answer the question. A yes vote on this amendment means. Either that. Retired police officers are allowed. Or aren't allowed, which is it. So the answer to that question is that. If you vote yes on this amendment. Then actively. Then. Former police officers would be ineligible to serve on the commission. Thank you. I'll try to make those sorts of points more clear in the future. Thank you. So. All precincts, I believe have been voting at this point. If I didn't already call for it or precincts. 15 to 21. Please vote. I see. I'll just call out Jennifer Seuss has not voted. According to my view here. And it looks like she's voted now. Mr. Harrelson has not voted. Michael Brown has not voted. Betty stone has not voted. Mr. Sweeney is not voted. So let's give, uh, we have two and a 35 votes cast at this point. Let's just give another 30 seconds. See, uh, Aham Sadat has not voted. Elizabeth Extern has not voted. Uh, Edward Morocco has not voted. Um, Michael Stern has not voted. Let's close this in 10 seconds. Okay, let's close voting. And this is for the client vehicle amendment to, uh, a new motion that was approved by the public item. That is, uh, a formal. Uh, law enforcement ineligible to serve on commission. Okay. And so the motion passes, uh, 1 56 and the affirmative to 76 in the negative. Um, so we'll go through these. It's now 11 PM. Um, And I am inclined to just finish out the main motion. If folks don't mind, uh, you know, And so now, this means that the main motion has now been amended by both amendments, both the McKinnon amendment and the Klein-Vekele amendment. So next, we're going to vote on the main motion as amended by both amendments. Let's just finish out these precinct screens. And so let's open up voting now on the main motion as amended by the two amendments that just passed. And after that comes up, I see we have a point of order by Mr. McSweeney. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. James McSweeney, precinct 16. So I believe that you just said that the Klein-Vekele amendment would make former law enforcement officers ineligible to serve on the committee. And that is contrary to what my understanding has been based on all of the dialogue thus far. And I'm wondering if someone else could confirm that. I made a vote. Yeah, Ms. Giddelson, can you confirm that the Klein-Vekele amendment makes former police officers and law enforcement ineligible to serve on the commission? Is that correct? The Klein-Vekele amendment makes former police officers former law enforcement officers from jurisdictions not Arlington ineligible to vote, ineligible to be on the commission. The original motion excludes former law enforcement officers from Arlington, but not from other jurisdictions. So a yes vote on the Klein-Vekele amendment returns the language to what our study committee recommended in the first place. And so we have a point of order now from Ian Goodsell. Hi. Sorry, I was trying to withdraw. I didn't get to it in time. Yeah, I'm sorry about that. Name and precinct and your point of order, please. Ian Goodsell, precinct 11. And I was trying to withdraw, so I'm done. I'm sorry to take your time. No worries. And we have a point of order from Mr. Wagner. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Carl Wagner, precinct 15. Can you hear me OK? Yes, I can. I just wanted to briefly state that I think some confusion is being added when people are making statements about the articles and the amendments that is not referring the amendment changes versus the article as it's in front of us. For example, the previous speaker just before Mr. Goodsell said that the amendment would return the article to its original intent. I believe that was a political statement, the intent prior to the select board vote that was in the actual Article 8. And I think that that is adding to confusion. I would please ask that all people who are giving explanations of amendments versus articles would refer only to the article before us, not to something prior to the article before us. Thank you. I think that was within scope. But I think we'll have to agree to disagree on that. Thank you for the comment. OK, so where are we? So voting should be open now on the main motion as amended. And let's now open it up for precincts 8 to 14. Please vote. And apologies that we're running past 11 PM. I just give folks another 15 seconds within that swath of precincts. I mean, voting is not going to close for the middle precincts, but just to prevent the database from getting overloaded again. OK, and now folks in precincts 15 to 21, please feel free to vote. Some folks I'm still waiting on votes from is Sherry Barron, Paul Marshall, Elizabeth Exton, Samantha Dutra, Paul Marshall, Zachary Kronko, Diane Mahon, Michael Brown, Kevin Mills, Betty Stone, Joanne Preston, Ellen and Ahmad, Deanna Graham, Michael Stern. So let's give another, and we have 234 votes cast. So let's just wait another 15 seconds. And then we're going to close this up. And then we'll finish up the evening. OK, let's close it up. Close voting. OK, so this is the main motion as amended by the two amendments. And it passes. 214 votes in the affirmative, 18 votes in the negative. And we'll cycle through the screens here. And while these votes are displaying, while these precincts are displaying, I don't want to allow members to raise hands and zoom. Can we open up the raise hand function and zoom? Are there any notices of reconsideration? If there's anything you voted on, which means that if you voted on the prevailing side of an article tonight and you want to give notice of reconsideration so that we can reconsider that article at a future date with potentially new context, new information, you can give notice of reconsideration now on any of the articles that you voted on the prevailing side of. So you raise your hands and zoom for that. So we have two hands. We'll take Christian Klein first. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Christian Klein, precinct 10. Notice of reconsideration on article eight. OK. Thank you. Great. And Ms. Brazil, can you take note of that? And let's see. And we have a point of order from Ms. Preston. Why don't we take that first before we take the other notices of reconsideration? Can you hear me? Yes, Ms. Preston. Yes, Joanne Preston, precinct five. I didn't get to vote again. I would like to ask the Mr. Moderator if he would consider when you give off the names of people haven't yet voted, like 20 people, then you only give 15 seconds. It's not enough time. For instance, I tried to get Julie and I got her just as you then said, we're closing the vote. We need more time to be able to vote. I was hung up on that it was full and it just never refreshed. And I'm sure there are other people who might have wanted to vote on this. I'm sorry to hear that, Ms. Preston. I mean, you're in the first seven precincts. So there should have been more time for you than for other folks as well. But I do apologize that you weren't able to get in. We'll speak with the developer of the platform to see if there's anything we could do about the contention on the database that's causing timeouts. Well, yes, because last year it gave you timeout, but then it allowed you to vote. But this time it doesn't. But also when you remind people, which I think is a very good thing to do, you should give those people enough time to at least call Julie and get in their vote. 15 seconds is not enough time. Thank you. Great. So I am hearing from someone on the back end of the system that your vote was recorded on this. So it looks like it did get through. Thank you. And so back to notices of reconsideration. Let's say I'll take Ms. Kowalsuk. Let's, can we get Mary Kowalsuk on the, permitted to speak? I'm not sure why that happened, but I did not want me to raise my hand. Oh, okay. Apologies. No worries. So we are done with notices of reconsideration. I would now entertain any motions to adjourn. Is there a moderator? Yes. I move that we adjourn. Do we have any seconds? Just a quick three thing, 10. Do we have a second? We appear to have several seconds in the portal. Let's say, can we, we have some raised hands. Let's say, Janice, can we get Janice Weber up? Or I'm sorry, Janice Weber up. I don't know if this is, she has a raised hand in Zoom. I just wanted to second the motion to adjourn. That's all. Okay. Thank you. Okay. So let's get all hands lowered and are there any objections to adjournment? Which is hard to believe at this point at 11-12, but are there any objections to adjourning? Seeing none, this meeting is adjourned. Thank you. Thanks everyone for sticking around 12 minutes late. Apologize for running long, but at least we don't have to work through that article and kind of refresh our memories when we come back on Monday on May 2nd. So I'll see everyone Monday, May 2nd at 8 p.m. Thanks everyone. Have a good night.