 Right, I feel like Jim, I'd be happy to go through the roll call. Yeah, I guess we'll just say we're at the January 16th 2024 meeting of the artificial study committee. And first things first to find out who's here so Natasha if you'll call the roll. Yes, Jim. Here. Yeah. Natasha here, Mike. All right. Leslie here. Joe bar, not presently here yet. Marvin. Not here. Jill here. Joe Conley. Here. And clear record here. Great. So just a note before we get to the next item. Marvin is traveling the next few weeks. And he will not be at our next few meetings, which is not to say that he will not be actively participating. He wanted to make that clear, but he through various obligations prior obligations. We'll miss the next two or three of these meetings, but we'll have to make sure that. Make no mistake, Marvin is still very much engaged and very much working, even if it's his travels. So, and we'll be following our minutes closely for when he can't be at the meetings. So I guess that means for the rest of us, Corm's important the next few weeks. So we're good tonight. But obviously, you know, if people have to miss a meeting, please let us know in advance, just so we're sure we have Corm. We're not really taking a lot of votes other than the meeting minutes. So I mean, we can have a meeting even without a quorum as long as we don't take any votes, but it's always better to have a quorum. So. So I guess to the next item acceptance of meeting minutes. As everyone had a chance to look at them. Mike. Yes. First of all, I want to just thank you for the very comprehensive and thorough and complete minutes. It's very helpful to have all that information there. So thank you. And I moved to accept the minutes for the. January. Ninth. Meeting. As presented. Second. Second. Before we take a vote, I just say this is more of a. I think that's it. I'm going to vote for this. You know, administrative change my, I'll work with you Natasha. My name appeared in the three or four different. Spelling. So I'm sorry. Somewhere very creative. So. Just as long as you make them unified. Yeah. Other than that, motion seconded. I guess, call the roll. Yes. Leslie? Yes. Joe Barr, not currently here. Jill? Do I vote if I wasn't at the meeting? Because I wouldn't know if the minutes were not accurate. You can still vote if you want. You can vote or are you going to abstain? I'm going to abstain. OK. Natasha? Yes. And then Marvin is not present. And then we have Jim. Yes. All right. So moving right along, correspondence received. Natasha, can maybe give us a summary of it? I certainly reviewed it. It was very interesting. So we have two emails. The first one is from Susan Chapnick. And it is in regards to the hazard mitigation plan from 2020. So that was included in the packet. And then the second email is from Leslie Muir. And it talks about the, I think it's the MII CPA. No, I'm sorry. This is the CPA funds. I'm sorry. And so with that, I don't know if there's any discussion that folks would like to have. Yeah. I mean, all I'd say is we received this outside correspondence. I'm glad we created a mechanism to receive it, as well as keeping the chat open. But we get more extensive commentary through the correspondence. And I found it very helpful, whether I agree with it or not, or whether it's always helpful and interesting and sends me on some further follow-up research. So to those who submitted it, some of whom I see on this call, thank you. We really appreciate, or at least I'll say I appreciate it very much, and I think I speak for the rest of us. So working group updates, which is now a standard agenda item, I know the working groups, or I hope that they continue to meet. I know mine did, and I suspect the rest of yours did as well. I mean, I think it's good practice. Scheduling won't always make it possible. I think it's good practice to we meet weekly and for the subgroups and working groups to meet weekly as well, or as much or as little as you feel necessary. But I would say more is better in this case, just because that's where a lot of the real work is sort of happening. And you can sort of meet at more flexible times, potentially, just when you're choosing, trying to schedule among three people rather than nine people. But I think it's good for each of the groups to give us maybe a quick rundown of what's happened since last week, of course, knowing that there was a long weekend for many of us mixed in there. And I think it's, well, hopefully I can have your discretion or have your latitude in doing this. Maybe the working groups, if agenda item three could potentially fold in agenda item six, which is subject matter experts, kind of hoping that the groups can tell us maybe what progress they've made and that just in their updates here. So maybe we could kill two birds with one stone, two agenda items, and with one here. So I think we'll just go first with the one that's listed first, which is health. Great. So our group, unfortunately, was unable to meet this past week. We were, I was away on vacation and just had some craziness going on. So we have not been able to connect again. So we don't really, unless Jill, you have anything that you'd like to really talk about, Marvin does have a few ideas for some presenters. And he's reached out to a couple of folks, but we haven't really connected as a group to determine who or what those might be. So more information to come, hopefully, in the next week. We will be communicating with Marvin via email. But Jill and I will plan to meet, hopefully, sometime this week or this weekend to just kind of continue going on with the work. But what I've been working on mostly has been really synthesizing the data that we have had. So we've got a lot of articles that all of us have sort of submitted and looked at. And so now it's really looking at those and trying to figure out what they say, what they mean, and whether or not we feel that this is something that, as a group, I'd like to come back together and our small group and talk about what we think our findings are and how we proceed forward. So Jill, I don't know if you have anything you'd like to add? Mm-mm. OK. Sorry, it's a quick update. No. I mean, I assume to this week we would be quick just based on scheduling. And I know even when groups aren't meeting, emails are being traded and ideas are being shared. So meetings are good. But I know the work continues even outside of meetings. So thanks to the health group. Next is safety. So I don't know, Leslie, Joe, do you want me to kick it off and then jump in if I get anything wrong or if you want a supplement? We met and sort of talked a little bit about potential speakers and also talked about just further research avenues. So one of the things in terms of each of us had sort of had a potential lead or for a speaker, Leslie alerted me when we began this process to a very good. I don't know how many of you have seen it. The Department of Public Health within the Executive Office of Health and Human Services at the state Massachusetts level has a very good FAQ if no one's ever seen it on artificial turf. It was, I don't know how long ago it was created, but it's still up there. I think it seems fairly up to date and fairly current. We can circulate it to the group and correspond with materials for next week's meeting. But it was not just done by the Department of Public Health, but it was done by a particular program within the Department of Public Health, the Environmental Toxicology Program, which is within the Bureau of Climate and Environmental Health at the Department of Public Health. And it covers just a lot of good material, I think, in a very balanced way. I mean, it's not comprehensive like a study, but for a layperson getting into these issues, it does a very nice job of laying out the issues related to artificial turf and frequently asked questions and answers. And so we've referenced it a few times in our safety working group meeting. And at our last meeting, I said, well, wouldn't it be great if we could find out who was behind this? Like who at DPH wrote this? Because obviously they seem very knowledgeable to themselves or they know, they've talked to a lot of people who are knowledgeable. And maybe we could get somebody either who wrote, put this page together or somebody, let that person who put the page together worked with and putting the page together to come and speak to us. And it would cover some of the topics in safety, but I actually think they'd be very helpful to the larger group answering questions about health and environment as well. So I have a call into DPH and I'm hoping that, we can play a little phone tag, but I'm hoping to hear something back this week. And that's a potential, I think, speaker who would, I would argue comes at this from a, hopefully neutral standpoint. I mean, there's someone in state government who put together I think a very content neutral FAQ on this. So that's one avenue we're considering. Joe, do you wanna talk about another potential avenue that I think could be very interesting from a safety perspective? Sure. Yeah, I reached out to the athletic director at the high school and asked him if someone from their athletic training department could potentially talk to us just about what they're actually seeing injury-wise, safety-wise on Arlington Fields. Arlington High School plays on both artificial turf in grass fields and the athletic training department kind of takes care of the athletes and both those surfaces. So I think that would be a good source of local information about what their observations are with regards to what they're seeing. And as we talked to that, I mean, I have no idea at all and I'd be very interested to hear what their opinion would be as far as what they're seeing on a day-to-day basis in Arlington High School athletes. So that is something I reached out and made some preliminary contact and they have expressed a certainly willingness to come talk to us if we so choose. And obviously, we're looking at this from the safety perspective. I mean, this isn't someone who's gonna be able to opine to have an environment or health issues necessarily, but more to, you know, we're kind of, you know, a real downer, I shouldn't say down to earth, but a real local perspective on, you know, someone who can truly speak to what they see in Arlington in terms of sports injuries on turf versus artificial turf. And as Joe said, we have no idea what this person's views are or what they'll say. So it could be quite interesting, you know, we'll get a fresh perspective there potentially if we can line this up, which I think Joe's put it in a position where I think it's likely we will. So those are two possibilities. I mean, we're still looking at other things, but those are two that are precious in our minds right now and maybe are furthest along. Talking to the high school athletics people, I'd like to be able to extend that to not just injuries, but heat related. Yeah, oh yeah. Okay. Yeah, I'm hoping they would be able to address both. You know, Jill wasn't here last meeting when Joe talked about the, and I don't know that the MIA information went out, did it? I think I got it to Natasha a little late, so. Yeah, yeah, so we did, because we did talk about that last week and we're interested in seeing what they have to say about that as well. And I think Susan's hazard mitigation study also had some interesting points too, to make along those lines. And then, you know, we just had sort of a further discussion about some of the things we're seeing in the studies about heat and skin abrasions and sports injuries and the like and talked a lot about heat. So, you know, I think we're trading ideas and trading various, you know, articles. And I think we're starting to sort of get to a point where, you know, talking it through or we're reaching some working conclusions based on some of the things we've seen so far, but it's still work in progress and we're still, you know, trying to survey the literature. So I think in a nutshell, that's where safety is. And let's Joe, Leslie, you have anything else to add? No, that's good. I think I just saw someone post some of the comment about that high school doesn't have athletes paying the summer months. High school football starts in August. So, you know, it's certainly in goes to June. So certainly it's the tail end of the summer months and they run conditioning camps all summer long. So I think there will be some perspective on what happens during the summer season. Yeah, and with the way climate's been recently, sometimes those last few weeks of August are some of the hottest of the year. So I think I think we would get a pretty good perspective from the trainer about that. So environment. Hi, good evening, everyone. And we like, I've heard before is we've seen a lot of research and I'm trying to get more information from some folks. For instance, I was talking to folks at DEP Northeast Region to see if they have any ongoing issues, cases or research regarding artificial turf and they don't. But there is a case or two before them on the superseding order. I believe it's in Dorchester. There's a school that is looking at turf. I'm not sure what the status is because they didn't have the information available to me but there's something going on there. And as you know, well, I'll just say I also reached out to Fish and Game, Fish and Wildlife to see if they have anything ongoing that might pertain to this. And I didn't get a call back from them at all. So it's a little hard. As you know, there are bills at the state house right now regarding artificial turf. The Senate bill sponsored by Senator Pacheco and that bill right now is in ways and means. And I tried to get hold of the staffer who would know what the basis was, why they brought forth this bill so we get a better understanding of what the background of it is. But again, I haven't heard back on that. There is also that there was a story in one of the papers about Mayor Wu's statement or executive order about artificial turf. I believe now that I've looked into it, that may be a year old or at least it's not a brand new statement from her. And I think she's walked it back a little bit from an executive order to a recommendation. So I'm looking for more information there too, like a lot of things. And in terms of specific studies on infill and other components of artificial turf, I was trying to find some research on the non-rubber infill, a coconut or a walnuts or whatever it may be. And again, there's not a lot out there in terms of research on those various issues and what the perhaps environmental or other impacts might be and what the difference is between say cork and sand or something. I mean, there's a whole bunch of combinations that various companies have put out. And so there's just not a lot there. I was also in touch with some of the research areas at EPA, which did in fact, look at artificial turf and infill. And I'm gonna try to provide that some of the links of those studies to the public comments. And so it's still an open story. In terms of speakers, there are several out there that I think would be good. We've got a couple of ecotoxicologists at BU or other places and I'm trying to get some more information there. So the key point in terms of outreach to people we may want as speakers is to nail down some dates. So that we can, if I'm talking to Professor X, I can say we're gonna have about an hour or 45 minutes on February X that would be helpful as I go out and reach out to these people. Other than that, at this point, I don't have much more to say. I don't know if anybody else has questions or anything about the environmental issues. No, I think that was very helpful, Mike. And I can see each of the groups are still chugging along here and making some progress. I mean, this is, I'll say this is that sort of unique period where we established the committee, we kind of have our groups and we have our focus, but it's that challenging point between having kind of the direction but then figuring out how you get from here to the end game, how you have to do all the steps and lay the groundwork to get there. And so it's challenging and we're all kind of, sometimes it's just getting someone to return your phone call at a state office or a local office or a university office and that can be challenging in and of itself, but a comprehensive approach, looking at assisting literature, first person sources, we try everything and we see where we can get with all of it. Yeah, Jim, I would just note also that it's also a challenge to find people who can give us a broad picture. You know, one professor might have studied infill, the other one might have studied the blades of grass, another one might have studied whatever. It's hard to get someone who's got that big picture because we just don't have the time to get into all of nitty gritty tiny details, but I think we need to have some of the salient points brought out. Exactly, that's a great point, Mike. Anything else on working group reports before we move to the next item? Okay. Guidelines for working group reports. So I think at our last meeting, I had said, you know, I think Mike had posed the issue of, well, you know, how do we, you know, when we do start to get to a point and maybe we're not quite there yet, but we're probably not all that far away, either each of the groups to try and to put down, put ideas into paper, you know, starting to formulate, you know, you know, conclusions or recommendations and showing, you know, the research that went into that, you know, how does, how do we want that to look? And I think I'd said that Natasha and I would sit down and think about a possible template we could share with each of the groups. Well, I think the problem is we started to work on that and then realize we weren't exactly sure what kind of template the group was looking for. And this isn't a cop out, but so we don't necessarily have anything to deliver for you because I think as we started to develop one, we weren't exactly sure what people would be looking for. Specifically, were people looking for a template for, for example, you know, each of the working groups could do to write up what they would write up their, you know, recommendations and, you know, explain the research of how they reached those recommendations and we would sort of a template for something that we would literally like drag and drop into a final report under the section safety or under the section environment or under the section health. Or were people looking for a different kind of template that would sort of show our committee where the working group is and where they'd like to go before they get to a point where they can put pen to paper and write something more formal. I hope I'm making myself clear. Yeah, I think what you're talking about is a draft report and a final report is what it sounds like the draft report be internal to the committee, perhaps. Yeah, yeah, or something. I mean, I, we're gonna have a challenge that at some point once we do sort of reach each of the groups reaches an endpoint, we're not going to have much time to write all of this up. And then it'll be on Natasha and me to make sure that what we have, you know, the whole is equal to the sum of its parts that we write a report that doesn't look like it was literally written by a committee. It looks like there was a coherent theme to it, even if, you know, there's different pieces of it. So I'll tell you, I'm inclined to want each group to start drafting something that literally could be dragged and dropped into a final report. It would be a draft, of course, you know, nothing would be final till we all agree on things. But, you know, if, for example, the safety group was ready to make recommendations related to the issues they're looking at with safety. So, you know, heat effects, athlete, you know, injury effects, skin effects, that we would, you know, write those up in however many pages, show the research, show, you know, reach, you know, discuss the pros and cons of turf and artificial turf and relational issues, discuss mitigation and, you know, efforts, if any, that could mitigate those issues and then make a recommendation, at least, you know, or maybe, you know, within those specific issues they're looking at, which would not make a recommendation for the larger issues the committee is looking at, because only the committee can ultimately, you know, do that collectively, looking at all the issues together. But I don't know, Natasha, I'm kind of, I'm not being terribly clear. And if people understand me, great, but I wouldn't blame you if you didn't understand me right now. So I think what we're trying to decipher is, my mind was going in, does each subgroup sort of want a template that's going to talk about, okay, here's the articles that we looked at, here's sort of a summary, here are some of the authors, here's the conclusion that we've come to as a group, and then presenting it to our larger group here. Or is it more in line of what Jim is talking about, that we're almost starting to write this without having sort of an outline as to what we're writing, but similarly, you know, well, actually, I think that's what Mike is saying. I think what Jim was sort of saying was, you know, do we wanna have just an ongoing document that sort of just says, okay, the environmental health group is at this stage and we've looked at X, Y and Z, sort of being able to try and provide some additional information. And so I feel like there might be two things there. One is sort of like this template that each group would have and say, okay, you know, here's the article, here's who the author was, here's the funding source, here's what I think it was saying, you know, come together with your group, come to a consensus, and then that all gets presented and potentially could be used in the final report, but this group would have to obviously, you know, approve that. And once that piece is done, then, you know, the rest of the committee, so let's just say the health group presents three things, you know, heat illness and, I don't know, three things. And then, you know, Mike and Jim have recommendations, hey, the health group didn't look at X, Y and Z, can you go back and look at that piece? And the same would be done for all of the other groups. So I don't know if that's sort of the direction of the template that we were going in or if there's another direction. And so I think that's where Jim and I are a little bit stuck. Can I make a recommendation? I mean, I think there's so much information here, right? And that's what we're all grappling with. There's really so much and it depends on how deep we're gonna go. I mean, we're not writing a scientific report. I mean, right, we're reviewing literature and then kind of summarizing it and then putting, you know, appendices of citation. So what if each working group did a, you know, like their own, you know, here's what we're gonna talk about, you know, his item one, his item two, his item three and just did it in really just, you know, bullet point form as a start that we could circulate and just so we could kind of get an idea of what each of the kind of subcommittees are thinking. So maybe we can catch some of those. Like, well, you didn't look at that, I didn't talk, you know, sooner than later so that they get kind of incorporated in. It just might be, and I'm just trying to think of the easiest way to think about this. And that way we have an idea of kind of how it's gonna lay out at least topically. And, you know, then we could have a discussion about maybe what's missing off of that. I think that's a good idea, Joe. I think to narrow down the funnel, if you will, on what we're gonna look at and put them in bullet points as a starting point, I was thinking of from the end product of what we're gonna hand back to the town, it would be helpful, I think, for each subgroup to have the same format of the report. So it's introduction, it's research reviewed, it's conclusions, it's recommendations or whatever the topics are. If they're all the same, it would be helpful for the reader to know what to look at. With, to start off internally, perhaps what you're saying is great idea so that we know what we're looking at internally. And maybe that's what we should, maybe that's the path we should be on. I mean, I like that idea, which is, you know, the group start to like, it can just be bullet points even, you know, this is, you know, this is what we think about the, you know, this is where we've seen literature that says, you know, artificial turf is good for this or bad for that. And here, you know, we've seen these six studies that you can reference, you know, and then, you know, we buy that or we don't buy that, you know. Just so we have a sense of kind of where each group is going. And I'm not saying that would even be next week or the week after, but, you know, fairly, by the, you know, by early February, I think it would be good to know kind of where each group is leaning on these things as they take the deep time. Because honestly, I won't have time to, I mean, just reading all the safety studies is gonna take up all of my time. So I'm kind of, it's something of a leap of faith. We're putting our faith in each of the subgroups that they have done the work on that area for us. Now, we may get to a point where if you, someone who's not in that group feels like a conclusion or recommendation from the group isn't adding up, they might then say, well, I wanna see that. I'm gonna take a close look at that study myself. And that's their right, they should. But, you know, the initial default should be that you sort of defer to the subgroup to make a recommendation and to show the work and show the sources and explain how, you know, they got from point A to point B. And that can be done, you know, just with, you know, a bullet point, you know, right up in the next few weeks, in the next two or three weeks. And in the meantime, Natasha and I, I think can do it with Mike. So I think what Mike is saying is kind of, I think I get it now, which is, just when we do ultimately put this in the final form that we all kind of have the same format. So it's not like, you know, when you're reading the report, you know, it radically changes kind of how the information is being presented when you go from one subgroup to another subgroup's, you know, submission. Yeah, I think that makes sense from, you know, start with the bullet points. The other thing I think that we had talked about before is, you know, just making sure that, you know, that we show what the studies we looked at are. So, you know, our references should be there. You know, even if it's going to be an appendix to the report, all of our subgroups should show where we're, you know, how we got to the conclusion is based on our looking at X, Y, Z, one, two, three, however many studies we looked at and went through. I think that'll be important. Yeah, I mean, I'll say my, I totally agree with Leslie. I mean, I don't, this is my own preference, so I hope I'm not offending anyone. But like when we write the final report, what I don't want and I don't think is a good use of time or space is, you know, an analysis of, you know, page-long analysis of each study, right? You know, well, this study said this and then we spent a whole page discussing what this study said, and then the next page, and then we read this study and it said this. You know, I'm a big believer in, you say, we read several studies, oh, use safety, for example. We read several studies that said, you know, artificial turf, you know, had extreme heat effects. Footnote, you know, you go to the footnote referencing the studies. We read several other studies that took a different position. But, you know, many references studies. You know, we think that these studies had, you know, were more, you know, the better studies were the peer reviewed ones that said that, you know, I'm all about kind of keeping it an easy reading flow and showing the work is shown in footnotes and appendices. I mean, if there's a really important study that's so critical, yeah, I mean, you can spend a few sentences getting deeper into that, but I don't want us to get bogged down into, we read 12 studies, we're going to have 12 pages explaining each of those studies and then we'll tell you where, you know, we kind of think we go, no one's going to read that report. No one's, no one in town meeting. Well, maybe one or two out of 252, but not many. It's a poor town meeting. Yeah, I mean, it's for town meeting. This is for an audience of government officials, but government officials who have, you know, it's a citizen legislature, you know, they have limited time and, you know, they want to follow this, they want to follow it, but they want to ultimately, you know, come away with, what are we saying? You know, they want to know what we're coming away with. So I think I have a better sense now where through Mike and Joe and Leslie, I think I have a better sense of the path forward here. So I don't want to belabor that point. I do want to get into the next point, which is what we shortchanged in our last meeting. But I don't want to shortchange tonight, which is additional research needs slash gaps. And I'll just sort of say, I received, I think as groups are doing their research, they are coming across issues that are realizing are very important, but don't necessarily fall within their group, but also don't necessarily fall within any other group either. And yet they're, and they don't even necessarily fall nicely into our charge from town meeting either. Yet they are things that may be very important to a town meeting member reading this. And so various folks have sent me, from within the committee, have sent me some of these questions. And I just wanted to kind of read a few of them tonight and talk about, well, A, do people on the larger committee feel like this is important for a final report, even if it doesn't neatly fit within to our charge or to any of the subgroups work? And then B, if it does, if it is important, who should look into this? Because I think the rest of us are kind of maxed out on just the work in front of us. So with limited time and limited resources, how do we get some answers? So let me, I don't know if you'll indulge me for a minute. Let me dig up. I have the questions here. Natasha, you may have two, but let me see here. So one of the questions, I think we touched on a little bit is financial, for lack of a better term, financial questions. Like for example, let me read this here. What's the current cost? So these group of questions would all kind of be sort of costs related questions, financial related questions. What's the current cost to maintain our existing grass fields? What would be the cost of installation, maintenance, annual infill replacement, annual infill replacement or disposal for an artificial turf field? And what would be the effect of putting those funds into an improvement slash additional maintenance of our existing grass fields? So basically a series of questions about what's the cost to maintain our current grass fields? What's the costs of installation, maintenance, upkeep, disposal for an artificial turf field? And then what are we looking at in terms of how funding can be used in either case, a comparison? Now we read studies that reference these things, but the studies aren't about Arlington. I mean, we have some Arlington specific information we can take advantage of and can make this more relevant and salient to our, ultimately the town meeting members we have to submit this report to. So, I mean, I personally think these are very important questions. They're not part of our charge and I don't want them to take us from the important work we're doing with respect to the issues that are within our charge. But I still think town meeting members will want to know that information when we give a final report. And I want to first take the temperature of do others agree? Yes. I feel like we might have brought a little bit of this up last week in just that one of the other points that Health Group was looking at was just sort of the usability. And so looking at the local data in terms of how often is a field closed down because of inclement weather or how many games or what have you can be played on X field versus X field in Arlington. And what does that look like? Is there a rest period? I think being able to have those numbers that are just local to Arlington just to give some context I think is really important in something that town meeting members would probably want to have. So I for one feel like this is an important topic and because it doesn't fit neatly anywhere that begs the question of are there other folks that we can reach out to to get this info? Well, it's also really important because we often hear people say you don't need an artificial turf field if Arlington maintained their current fields better. And that may be true, but you can't know if that's true unless you know what it costs to currently maintain our fields, what it would cost to maintain them to a point of professional grade, never a professional grade. I mean, it's very important I think because if we're gonna put recommendations out there you don't want someone saying, well, yes, but, you wanna be able to get ahead of the but part and say, oh, well we, you know, and here's a cost analysis too by the way. What we're finding in the health group too is that the accessibility numbers are pretty staggering like how much more you can use an artificial field. So if we're making an argument about access and health and access to playing we really need to have a sense that these fields would actually increase accessibility. And, you know, the data out there says that but would it make a difference here? And I assume we don't have unused fields that we could schedule practices on but I think we need to have that data. I'd actually put Jill, I think that's really important and I'd actually put that as a separate category beyond the financial issues of just like field demand and usage, so, which relates to the financial piece but, you know, what's the current assessment of how many hours, so this was a question we got from a committee member, you know, so this doesn't fit neatly into a group but it's a sort of important question, you know, does there any assessment as to how many hours of field time we currently need? Similar to what I think an assessment Lexington did when they analyze these things, you know, you know, are we, you know, issues related to lack of field availability? What are we seeing? What's the percentage of total available field hours would be represented by one artificial turf field? Would it just replace the grass field and there would be incremental or would it be more dramatic? You know, how many kids might this presumed increase in field hours represent relatives of the total number playing on all fields during any given weekend? So, you know, the financial issues are here, like what's the costs of installing a turf field, maintaining a turf field versus the cost of installing a artificial turf field and maintaining an artificial turf field, including disposal costs, of course. And then the separate question of field demand and usage, you know, what's our current situation Arlington in terms of how much these field, the demand on these fields, is it, you know, is all demand being met? Is all demand not being met at this point and why? And I don't want anyone to think these questions are like, you know, coming with an agenda. I think these are legitimate questions, especially on the financial side, like you've got to really know what the costs you're looking at. It doesn't mean that it sends our recommendations in a particular direction, but I think it's awfully hard to make a judgment about these things when you're not considering the costs and the usage implications. And the demographic of the community, I think that that's one of the things that sometimes I get a little bit frustrated with, we're such a densely, you know, we don't have an endless supply of open space relative to the population and the number of users we have. And that's important to understand what our density of use is. You know, how many playing fields we have of a certain size and shape because you can't play soccer on a baseball field. So how many rectangular sports and you know, what's the demographic of who's playing those sports in our community? I think I said it at one of our, you know, we're not looking at professional athletes. We're not looking at college athletes. We're looking at high school and below and recreational uses adults down to the little super soccer stars that are the two and three year olds that are using our fields. And I think it's important to give that picture of our community and put it in the context of who we're trying to support and how best to support them. So is there a consensus that those two research areas are relevant to our work even if they're not specific to our charge? Yes, I would say so. Because I know the first thing or second thing people are gonna ask is what's the difference of cost? Yeah. Of course. There's a lot of natural term. I mean, that's gonna be one of the first questions and you know, they'll wanna know how many playing fields and what kind do we have? And is that enough or do we need more? And how do you know? Right. So if there's a consensus, these are relevant even if they're not part of our charge, they're still relevant and worth pursuing. But there's also a general acknowledgement that they don't fit neatly in any of our subgroups and our subgroups have more than enough to do the next few weeks. You know, Natasha and I hello and I really sort of have discussed for questions like this, you know, are there other avenues for us to get this information that don't tax the time and energy of the members of this committee? And Natasha, you had a few ideas of maybe some follow up. Yeah, I would be happy to have a conversation with the deputy town manager and town manager to just discuss, you know, where we're at with our research and our purview and whether or not, you know, there is some sort of additional help or they may be able to ask certain departments to get some of this data for us so that it's not just all on this committee and this group. So I'd be happy to have a conversation with those folks, you know, this upcoming week and report out on that to see. And it could be, we don't have anyone to do it or, you know, it could be, we can get you this data from this source and that from that, but you're on your own on this and we'll have to come back to the drawing board. But I do think that it might be a good first step and some of these things, you know, between the recreation department and department of public works, we might be able to get some of that information. And then other pieces, it may be other areas of town or departments or maybe they'll point us in the right direction or say, here's where you need to go for that research. So I'm happy to start that conversation. I don't know if others have thoughts or comments. I think the ABSA and the soccer club, I think they had collected some of that information. And so it may not be a huge stretch for them to put it together for us. You just got it. I'm just telling you, so it's going to be, I totally understand what you're saying. I think we can give you the data. Some of it's going to be pretty subjective. You know, I mean, as far as do we need more fields and I'll answer simply, yes, how we can prove it based on how many athletes and is there any type of number, you know, a standard based on you should have this many rectangular fields if you have a population of 44,000 that might be out there. And I think, so we can certainly provide that. The way we maintain our fields is not necessarily the way that, you know, FIFA maintains their fields. So our cost per field is going to be, you know, it's going to be a lot of guesswork. So basically you're going to take our maintenance contract of $120,000 divided up, you know, by acreage and try to come up with like a fertilization cost for a size of a soccer field. You'll get a number, but I can't tell you that it's going to be, you know, a perfect number if that's what I'm trying to say, because you're really trying to, you know, extrapolate, you know, smaller numbers from greater numbers. The industry has all done this and no one wants to hear it, but the industry has all done this and come up with comparative comparable data that is out there. And I know we could get that data just for at least some, I think we, Leslie, we even, and Jim, we saw some of some data and some of the research we did, but I'm sure that came from some type of industry, you know, and when it comes to just field usage, you got to remember that, you know, we're talking about, you know, it's more, so we, Leslie had me reach out to DPW how many times we sent out field cancellation notices last year. Now, field cancellation notices, it's not quite an accurate number because if we say the fields closed on a Wednesday, we might not put another notice, open them up till, you know, Friday. So one field notice might last a couple of days, but if you were to just say, it happened 40 times last year. So, you know, you could probably say, I think fairly so, times up by one and a half and that gives you about the number of times, probably 60 times the fields were closed last year because of inclement weather. Now, that doesn't take consideration when the fields open. High school play starts early, you know, mid-March. We don't open the fields sometimes until April 14th, right, April 10th. So, you know, we don't send out field cancellation notices, you know, March 21st through April 10th, we just say the fields aren't open yet. So that's, you know, 31 more days. I mean, so, you know, I'm just saying there's no perfect science to give you the numbers that you want, you know, but it will give you an idea. So if you think about, you know, it's approximately 75 to 80 days, if you will, that one or multiple fields are closed in Arlington due to inclement weather. There's also times that we open the fields just because we absolutely have to and these groups aren't gonna get their seasons in unless we, you know, say, oh, you can go sneakers only, you can go, but you have to stay off of, you know, the wet area, you can't use the goldmouth because the goldmouth is a puddle. So there's a lot of other those type of situations that aren't really gonna be factored into any type of data. The best thing I can do is just tell people it's a common sense approach to it, where if it rained for 24 hours straight, you could go play on a turf field, right? Stop raining at 7 a.m., you could have a game at 7.02. All right? If it's rained for 24 hours straight and you went out to any grass field and organic doesn't mean it's a magic field, it's a grass field and you all of a sudden played a soccer game after 24 hours of rain, you would destroy that field for the remainder of the season and probably the next and cost you thousands of dollars in field repairs. And it's just, if you break it down into that type of simplicity, we can get you some numbers, but I think people just have to understand that it's that simple, that after a period of rain, you cannot play on a grass field no matter how it's maintained. But quite frankly, how it's built, you just can't do it. You might be able to get on it a little quicker. If it's, you know, you pay a lot of money of under-drainage systems, you build it like Fenway Park, you might be able to get on the field, you know, after six hours or eight hours after the field has some time to drain appropriately. Still gonna damage to the grass. There's no doubt about it. But you go on an artificial turf field, you're playing at within moments or even in the rain, you know, without damaging the field. So I just got to point it out. I mean, we can try to get you as much data as you can, but it is a little bit of a common sense approach where, you know, if you look, you're almost better off saying, how many times did it rain last year? You know, go to a meteorology, you know, weather website, how many days did it rain last year? That's how many days the fields, quite frankly, probably shouldn't have been played on. And then that's probably gives you a little bit more accurate information about when the fields are usable. I think that's very helpful, Joe. My only thought is, who's gonna compile all this information? And it may be too late for us to do it this time around, but I'm thinking some graduates or undergraduates certainly one of the local colleges might have an interest in figuring this out. But I'm just a little concerned, even if there's some of that data available, who's gonna put it together for this committee? Well, I guess maybe see what you can find on a first pass. Like, you know, what is out there and how much can we extrapolate from it, you know, or interpret what we do have? I do think though, on the financial question that it's very, I mean, I'm not, I don't wanna diminish either, you know, the field use question, it's very important. A financial question though, I think is very important. And I suspect it would take some time, but the information is there. I mean, just for example, and maybe this is a bad example. Belmont Hill did offer, you know, had an offer on the table to install an artificial turf field at Poets Corner. I assume they costed it out. Now, you know, obviously it was there costing out, not the town, but the point is they have an idea of what an artificial turf field would cost, I'm sure they shared that data with the town. So I mean, finding out how much installation of our artificial turf field would cost in Arlington, I think we probably have those numbers somewhere from Belmont Hill in the town's possession, I guess. That's a little different just because of the work that was involved in Poets Corner, but I think what I could do, I could go to a landscape architect. I don't think a landscape architect's industry, they literally will design a grass field or they'll design a turf field based on what the client wants. And I could go to a landscape architect. I can go to three, I'll get you three prices from landscape architects to say, can you please price out the cost of a, we'll just say a standardized 11V11 soccer field artificial turf? You know, don't, we don't put in lights, we don't just, just the fee, you know, can you please price out for me what it's gonna cost for an artificial turf field and what it's gonna cost for a high quality, natural grass field. And I'll have them break down those budget numbers. We do enough, you know, business with multiple landscape architects. I'm sure I could get at least three to do that for us just so you could. But would they be able, I mean, that'd be great, but would they be able to address the maintenance and disposal costs to which are important for maintenance is important for both disposable would be important. Well, yeah, well, see what happens with disposal cost is you just roll that into the existing contract. So I think they could price that out based on, you know, installing a turf field, rolling the disposal costs into that original purchase price. So you could do that. Okay. The thing is, remember, you're gonna apples to apples. So it's like, okay, so at the end of the useful life of a grass field, you know, you have to, you know, demo the existing field and, you know, and it removed all those topsoil and dispose of that. So this kind of, you know, you have to do for both just to get a clear picture of what that's looking at that the eight to 12 years. Another question we got, and it's a little, well, I'll put my cards on the table. I'm not sure it's as relevant as the two that we've just discussed, but I do want to share it because it was shared with me. Is a question about, it was specific about Poets Corner, which I guess you could extend it to some of the other fields. So we have fields in our own and that are built on landfill. I believe McClellan was built on a landfill. McLennan, Buzzel. McLennan, Buzzel, Poets. Yeah, McLennan, Buzzel, so, and you know, obviously Poets Corner. One of the questions we received was, you know, what are the current risks from a turf field being built on landfill? I mean, there are potentially health and environmental risks associated with that too. I think that's an interesting question. I don't know if it has readily available answers to us without, you know, someone doing a lot of testing at these sites. It's an interesting question to Poets Corner. If others agree that it's worth pursuing what we can pursue it, but I just wanted to put it out there. See what you all had to say. What I would want to understand is if installing a turf field would have any benefits to capping off the landfill over a natural field. It's the preferred method, you know, my soil and grass certainly you can to cap, but from, again, I'm regurgitating to you people what I hear, I'm not an expert, right? But what I am told it is the preferred capping method. For landfills, for those. Yeah, think about it, you gotta cement base. You don't just have a stone base and a mesh layer. You basically have another, you know, cement layer. The barrier, there's a barrier. I think the first two questions are really important. And Joe and Natasha to the extent you have a pathway to maybe get us some answers on the financial piece and on the field use piece. I think it would be helpful as we go about looking into the health safety and environmental questions, which, you know, is the actual charge before us. But whatever answers we could get on those other questions, I think they are relevant. I don't want them to distract us from the other work, but it should be helpful to have it when we go and write a final recommendation report. From the health and safety perspective, I think knowing the weather of like how many days a field is closed from rain is valuable to our discussion of kids needing that like sports outlet for exercise and mental health. On the other hand, we're closing turf fields for potentially for heat. So how many days, even if we use something like Burlington standards, how many days would fields have been closed on the other end? Like maybe they just balance each other out, but having that data to be able to look at would be important. I think you just hit the nail on the head, Joe. I think that's a really important question, right? Yes, we're, you know, a mitigation strategy for an artificial turf field in summer is, you know, it's closed for a certain number of days when it exceeds acceptable temperature levels. You know, how does that balance out with a turf, a regular turf field, grass turf field that you can't use because when it rains, you know, or when there's 24 hours straight of rain, you know, I think that's actually a perfect way of why it is relevant, I think to this discussion. The only thing, Joe, and again, I feel like I'm playing, you know, whatever, being too negative, but, you know, those heat, you know, if you're looking at play, it's happening between mid-March to June 15th youth play, mid-March to June 15th, and then it's happening between August 15th and November 15th. So, you know, whether it's, although there is camps in stuff that certainly happened in the summertime on the turf, I'm not saying it's not, but as far as, you know, play, like, you know, that's really gonna be impactful. Like if we close a field, you're gonna have a ripple effect on the users. It's really on those outer ends, and that's just not, you know, when you're probably, probably, I'm gonna guess getting the majority of hot 90 plus 90 plus degree days, as compared to, it is the majority of when you're getting, if you're gonna say, you know, our rainy season, if you will, right, is that early spring, is that springtime, and I might leak into later fall or whatnot, but really the springtime is the rainy season, and so it's not gonna quite be apples to apples, where if you're, you know, closing a field down for two weeks in July. So maybe that's what we need is, March 15th to June 15th, and August 15th to November 15th. Right, that will give you a better picture. What were the rainy days? What were the heat days? Because if I'm putting on my town meeting member hat, and I'm looking at whatever we come up with, and, you know, it weighs on the side of rain, then I wanna understand that the side of rain is significantly greater than the side of heat in the time we're using. And I agree with you that in the summer, it's probably fairly easy to take a camp and say, you know, you play on the turf this day, but on Wednesday, you've gotta move to grass because there's just more, there's not a user issue. Correct. Sometimes we know that there's a user issue, and we can look at the weather specific to that season, and I think your expertise is saying, we don't need to worry about July, and, you know, whatever, if we had the information from those dates, or if we could agree to those dates, I think that that is reasonable. Yep. So I know a few of you, or at least one of you, has a hard stop at 6.15. So we should get to the last item. I think this was a great discussion. Won't be the last on this, but I'm glad we had some time to talk it through a little bit. The last item is the meeting schedule. And Natasha, what did the doodle poll say? So the doodle poll about 80% still thought that Tuesdays at this time was the best timeframe. And the second, I don't even have the second one on there, but let me just pull it up. I'm sorry. I thought I had it. Yep. So it looked like 83% said Tuesdays five to 6.30, and then the second was Thursdays, that was about 66, so six PM to 7.30 PM. So we had five people who responded saying that Tuesdays was a good day, and four people Thursdays, six to 7.30. Maybe we keep with our current schedule, but if we ever have to rejigger or do a change because of something, we can shift to a, for instance, we say we want to combine two meetings into one, we meet on a Thursday, which would cover like a two-week span and be a little bit sort of in the middle of that period. It gives us some flexibility if we know that potentially we could meet on Thursday at six. Or if we have to get a speaker in and they can't get one at that time. Exactly. So let's stick with Tuesdays at five, at least for now as we move along. And then I think the last item is new business. I don't know if anyone has any, I think they want to bring up. Okay, well, we'll plan on meeting again next week. You know, I'm happy to take a week off if people feel like, you know, at some point they feel like, you know, they'd rather have more productive, you know, subgroup working group meetings, but I feel like for the moment, I still find these weekly meetings helpful just to, you know, find that we're all, find out where we all are on things. So I don't close out the possibility we would skip a week in the near future, but for now I find we're making good progress. And with that, I'll entertain a motion. Motion to adjourn. Second. Okay. If you'll call the roll, Natasha. All right. So Mike. Yes. Okay, I'm trying to go down my list here. Leslie. Yes. Joe is not present. Jill. Yes. Natasha. Yes. Marvin is absent. Jim. Yes. Great. Thank you all. Thanks to those from the public and the comments in the chat. I always find them interesting and helpful. So have a great week. We'll meet again next week. Thanks. Thanks.