 All right. Mike? I am here. Great. Leslie is not here. Jill Barr? Here. Jill? Here. Okay. Natasha? Yes. Marvin is not going to make it. Jim? Here. Yep. Joe Connolly? Yes. And then we have Claire, who I believe is coming a little bit late. Okay. So, we are assembled for the January 23, 2024 meeting of the Artificial Arlington Artificial Tourist Study Committee. We'll just jump into the agenda then. First item is acceptance of meeting minutes. I hope everyone's had a chance to look it over. I'm fine with it, but if you haven't had a chance to look over, take a quick look now. Now, after you do so, I'll entertain a motion. Move to accept. For a second? Second. Okay. Okay. Natasha Caldwell? Yes. All right. So, Mike? Yes. Yes. Leslie is absent. Jill Barr? Abstain because I wasn't present. Okay. Jill? Yes. Natasha? Yes. Marvin? Absent. And Jim? Yes. Great. Okay. Our respondents received. Natasha, do you want to give us a quick summary of what was in the packet? Sure. So, we really just have a couple of emails, too, from Joe Connolly. One is the MIIA Heat Guidance document, and the other is from Joe Connolly, and it was regarding some information we talked about at the last meeting, weather data. Weather data. I'm really from Boston. Weather data as well as, I'm sorry, I'm drawing a blank, but it's... It's some cost analysis. Thank you. I'm sorry. And then the third piece of correspondence was an email from Miss Evans, and that email has been included in it. It talks about the group and sort of taking a little bit of a broader look than just Arlington. So, with that, that's the correspondence that we've received. I'm thinking the chat comments were... I know the chat comments were also included in there, so I guess this would be the opportunity if there's any discussion. I'll just say that, you know, I always appreciate the correspondence we receive and the comments in the chat. I feel like they've generally been helpful and sometimes quite helpful, so thank you for those who submitted. Even if they're people from the committee like Joe, I still find it helpful to share with a larger group, and we appreciate it. So, looking at the agenda, I think we will do working group updates. It is the next item, but my goal is to, and obviously I don't want to rush the working group updates, but I think I really like a good chunk of our meeting today to talk about item five, project timeline, because I do feel like the work is continuing at each of the working groups, but we're kind of at that critical point where we have to determine how we're going to get all the work done in the short time we have, and if that is possible. Spoiler alert, I think it is possible, but I think it's worth the discussion, and Natasha and I worked on a project timeline that would meet our deadlines under the current version of the town meeting, more in an article in the past, and we can talk more about that, but when we get to it, I don't want to move into that item just yet, but I would like that to be sort of a good chunk of our meeting tonight, but as we always do now, I think it'd be good to get, you know, working group updates, so we always have health go first, maybe we'll mix it up one of these days, but does health want to go first? Happy to, Jill put together some sort of talking points, but please feel free to just jump in, so we've been able to meet, Marvin has been able to communicate with us via email and has definitely been participating and giving us some great feedback. We're at a point where we have started to, you know, write up sort of our section draft, if you will, and so I think, you know, we've got sort of the three topics that we were planning to or issues that we were sort of planning to cover, and this is in no particular order, so please, we can talk about that at another time, but just in the order that I have them listed here, mental and physical health benefits, you know, what we're seeing is that research indicates the importance of mental and physical health among children and adults and the importance of accessibility to team sport, so we've seen some research, you know, related to that. The second topic area was heat-related illness. Our research definitely indicates that there are differences in temperatures related to artificial versus natural turf fields, which do seem to have effects on or potential effects on athletes. However, we are seeing that there are some policies and procedures and mitigation pieces that have been helpful in trying to reduce sort of that, such as, you know, maybe if a temperature, you know, the heat is a certain level that there isn't any playing on such activity on such surface or whatnot. And then the third topic area is the chemical and medical exposure, and so our research is pointing that there definitely is, you know, some chemical and metal components and things that are found in the turf fields, but that, you know, the components, the research is really limited to the crumb rubber and that it's really narrow in what is being studied. It's a little bit more focused on, you know, just like single exposure versus, I think Marvin has talked about this a little bit more and more, but essentially, you know, I think we really haven't, we haven't been able to find any additional studies on alternative materials. And the studies that we are looking at are indicating that there are low potential exposures or health effects from the chemical type of situation here. So, we're still doing more research. This is in by no way, shape and form, sort of our final draft. But this is, we wanted to give an idea of where we were looking and what we're heading in. Our next steps, we're starting to look at our research and starting to put our resources, sort of underneath each one of these topic items to make sure that we're matching up what our research is saying and where it's coming from. We have also discussed speakers. So, we've discussed the possibility of bringing in a professional to talk a little bit about risk analysis. We've talked about bringing in an epidemiologist to talk about different aspects. And we got some information today from Marvin. Jill, I'm drawing a blank on that. I've also, go ahead. He said he had a couple people to look at and we talked about could we bring back Rachel who spoke in the form in the spring? Or would we want to bring in a new voice? Yeah. And then just some other folks that sort of, Jill and I had discussed. I have a Board of Health member that works at the U School of Public Health looking to tap into those folks, a couple of other Board of Health members that are medical professionals. I'm looking at the state epidemiologist. I've consulted with some or I've reached out to Mass Association of Health Boards and been in contact with some folks there to see what other communities might be doing or if they are helping in any way, shape, or form or have some people that we can talk with to share their experiences, as well as I have some colleagues in Brookline who just went through a very similar committee process. So, really trying to tap in to see what they found and what their experience has been. And I think I'll leave it at that for now and happy to answer any questions or, Jill, if there's anything that you feel that I've missed or skipped over, please. I think the one thing we talked about this week was, you know, in our draft of our reporting, we really had a discussion of like, is there, we feel like there's three issues that really don't necessarily have significance over each other. And how do you highlight three issues without assuming an order? And as we're going through the different subgroups, I think as we put together those reports, if there is a reason to order things, being clear about that, but if we're not ordering things, how do we be clear about that? So that one person doesn't weigh one issue stronger than another. Sorry, we were trying to go fast because I know we wanted to spend the bulk of it. Yeah, that's still helpful. Well, move on to safety and it's just me and Joe tonight. Leslie's not here, but Joe, I'll say the, I'll give a quick rundown and then you can tell them everything I got wrong, okay. So we met and, you know, we've been tracking down various sources, but Leslie's been sharing some interesting information from some of the nearby communities that have dealt with similar issues quite recently or in the midst of dealing with similar issues. So I think as you referenced, Natasha, you know, we're well aware of Blacksington. I think you brought to like Brookline. We obviously know Boston has encountered these issues, you know, but Leslie brought to our attention Maldon. Also, another densely populated area is going through these same issues with the Roosevelt field in Maldon and they had put out a lot of material on their website of the process, the input they got, the steps they took. What makes Maldon a little more interesting than Lexington was, and we've lamented on some of these past calls that there's not a lot of research on crumb rubber infill alternatives about their use. I mean, we know that there are alternatives. We just don't have a lot of research or data on their use. Maldon is a city that at least going forward with the Roosevelt field project is using crumb rubber infill alternative called Brockville, which you may have seen in the literature. It's, I think, one of the more popular alternative infills, and they specifically did so because it's, they believe it's safer, but they also believe it will keep the temperature down. Now, they cite, they mention that it mentioned data that shows it will keep the temperatures down and closer to those of a turf, of a regular turf field. Unfortunately, they didn't include citations for it. So we believe it may be quite advantageous for us to get more information from Maldon because to our knowledge, a community very close by is trying something that we've been talking about on this committee, but we don't have any experience ourselves. So it might be interesting to hear. I mean, the field hasn't been built yet. It's still in the process, but why they chose it, how they studied it, what they found. I mean, the other interesting thing is as we look at these studies of other communities, and, you know, we're obviously looking at it from a safety perspective, but we're also looking at it with a wider perspective of the committee. I do find it interesting because we're doing our own research, but in many ways, these communities have also done their own research. And I don't think there's anything wrong, we should still do our own research, but I don't think there's anything wrong. If you trust their research and piggybacking on a little bit, and in some cases, you know, they delineate, they've read 100 studies where they hired a consultant that read 100 studies on, you know, issue X related artificial turf. And this is, this was the consensus they reached after reading 100 studies. I mean, I'd love it if we could read 100 studies. We're reading dozens of studies, but I would trust if provided the person is, you know, comes with no conflicts and credibility. You know, I'm perfectly happy to read someone who has read 100 studies on this topic and tells me where they came out on it, at least as another data point for us. So you know, Lexington put out a lot of information there, and it's very interesting, their consultants report on this. Lexington, of course, as you know, is going forward with a artificial turf replace. They have artificial turf in Lincoln Field. They're replacing them. But what made the Maldon, an example more interesting is, I believe that Lexington is sticking with Chrome rubber infill. Maldon is not. So some interesting issues we sort of discussed within the working group after Leslie had found some interesting documents. And we can talk about this more later, but as much as it'd be good to get some expert knowledge, you know, if we can have some guest speakers and there's time allows for it. We think it would also be, as Natasha said, helpful to get some input from from fellow nearby communities that have that are gone through, are going through, or expecting to go through a similar process to us and have made some decisions in that regard in some cases, about, you know, the process and how who they consulted and how they got to when we continue to sort of go through other studies to and talk them through. And we're starting in our group to, and you'll see this is, you know, will be relevant to the time, but starting to sort of talk about, you know, among the three of us, do we have some sort of rough consensus of what we think about where the safety studies are coming out. So we're starting to move from a research perspective to, okay, well, you know, what are we seeing and are you seeing what I'm seeing and are you kind of agreeing that that's the same thing or something different. So in a nutshell, that's where we are. Joe? Yeah, no, absolutely. I think it was great. I think it's great. You know, we are all, I think very much on the same page with far as what we've seen to date. And I think, you know, I do wish we had some more independent study on the Brockville, which is basically just, you know, it's more like a shredded wood, right. And, you know, I did, again, we go to the evil industry, I guess, who will, and they provide abundance of information on their studies. But I know we're trying to, you know, find independent data. But from reading the industry, it is very interesting that Brockville, which is probably why it was developed, does help alleviate a lot of the concerns that Crumb rubber posed with regards to temperature and displacement, but still happen the same cushioning property. So again, very interesting. I'll be really curious to see what other information, as Jim said, that Malden may have come up with. Yeah. And I want to be clear, you know, I mentioned, you know, we're not just looking at the communities that have adopted artificial turf. I'm more than happy and encouraging to have like Boston, someone from Boston come in and tell us why they have a moratorium on artificial turf fields, too. I mean, that's a valuable perspective for us to hear as well, provided we can get somebody from Boston, which I would like, if possible. So I just want to be clear, we're not trying to stack the deck here with communities that have gone the artificial turf route. But I think it's relevant to hear that few point and then hear a few points from other communities that have chosen to go a different path, if time permits, of course. In the absence of time, we looked at the documents they've put online, and you know, these communities to their credit have put a lot of information online for the public. And Jim, just to that point, I think it's, it's a little bit important to also mention that the makeup of the communities and the community size and the dense population, I don't know if, you know, we might have the same makeup as, you know, I can see in the chat someone mentioned Springfield. I don't know what Springfield's makeup is, and if they have more green space or more field usability than maybe we do. And so happy to look at that comparison. But I think that what's really important is that we're looking at as much as we can, you know, our community and similar communities and the makeup and what space we have available. And the climate, you know, I mean the climate between Maldon or Lexington and Arlington, the differences are probably, you know, undetectable. Springfield probably is fairly close to us too, but it is, you know, what, you know, 90 minutes away, but driving, you know, it's going to have a slightly different, you know, I mean, trying to find apples to apples. And this is, you know, in response to the idea that, you know, a lot of studies are about Florida and Texas and California, which, you know, it's helpful to hear what the studies say about the artificial turf there, but not exactly, you know, we don't have anywhere near the number of 90-degree days as those, as those, you know, communities and those states do. We're, you know, Lexington and Maldon probably have just about the same number as us, a growing number, albeit, but, you know. But it is funny too, I think when you do reach out though, just, I know Springfield was mentioned, I mean, having, being a Springfield College alum, I kind of have a lot of familiarity with that city. The city of Springfield has more, I probably, I can name off the top of my head seven, eight, nine, 10 turf fields within the city boundaries. So, and I know they're organic turf, I don't think they have, I could be wrong, but I believe when I did reach out to them, there was only a certain percentage of the fields they were doing with the organic turf treatment. I think it's too when we, if we do reach out to communities, if the town of Arlington had seven turf fields already, right, and then we were talking about putting in an additional field, I think the conversation and whether we should add an eighth turf field or that eighth turf field should be natural grass is a different conversation from us talking about the town of Arlington, town has none right now. The municipal side has zero turf fields. So, again, I think that's something that if we do reach out to other communities, one question we ask, well, how many turf fields is currently already existing in your community? Just to give us a, you know, a more well-rounded picture of exactly where, where things are. So, the nutshell, that's where our group is and environmental, last but certainly not least. Thank you. Yeah, and Joe, you can jump in when I miss something, but a couple of overarching issues. If we're going to have speakers in, we need to decide when those speakers are coming in, because when I reach out to people, they're going to want to know when we want them to show up, how long we want them to talk, how long is set aside for questions and that sort of stuff. So, I think that would be something we need to decide if not tonight, very, very soon. The other issue is, as Natasha was mentioning, starting to write the, or lay out the format of the report from each subgroup. And we talked about this, I think last time that there should be some parallel construction. So, we have the same look to each of the subgroups. If we're going to have a separate section for each subgroup, they all want to have similar titles. And I think we need to decide on that again, really quickly. So, those are the overarching ones. And then the other question that we talked about last time was the issue of finances and costs. And I don't know if we decided who's going to look at that and how that's going to be handled because, as we said, that's probably one of the first questions people are going to ask comparisons. So, those three topics I think need addressing fairly quickly. As far as the environmental group goes, we chatted last week. And I just want to emphasize a couple of things that I think are important. One is that there's so many studies out there, as you said, on crumb rubber, but very few assessing the impact of walnut shells or coconut or sand or any of these other ones that are out there as alternatives to crumb rubber. And I've had no response in talking to a couple of state agencies, trying to talk to a couple of state agencies on this, other than to know that from the perspective of D.P. Wetlands Protection Act that they have draft language, which is going to classify artificial turf as an impervious surface, which may have some impacts on how we do an assessment of natural turf versus artificial turf. So, in terms of those resource areas that are under the Wetlands Protection Act. And the other one was the heat island issue that was mentioned in the sounds resiliency work as well as the hazard mitigation plan. So, there's a bunch of things that we're going to have to take into consideration. One of the things that the environmental groups talked about was there are too many topics to be covered in any depth that we need to, I think just as Natasha was saying about health, that for the environmental group, there are too many topics to go into any depth on any, on all of them. So, we're going to have to try to narrow down, you know, is it chemical pollution, is the stormwater pollution, climate change, resilience, is it, you know, ecological impacts, soil, you know, there's a lot you could look at, but given our timeframe and some what lack of access to the information we need from the agencies, we're going to have to cut that a little short. Hi, Claire. So, I don't know, Claire or Joe, you want to add to any, any of those comments? Excuse me, I think you covered it. It is, it, you know, trying to find sort of the right track for, you know, the, there's a lot of information out there about, you know, a lot of, a lot of different environmental issues. But, you know, it is, it is sort of hard to get, get focused on exactly to, you know, what it is we would like to, you know, bring back to this group as part of study. It's, and they all, they're, you can really go down a rabbit hole really quickly, you know, looking at just sort of the effects of, of crumb rubber and essentially, you know, the runoff. And then it goes into, you know, different issues with materials and things like that. You know, it is, there's quite a bit of information out there. Yeah. Joe Bari, got anything to add? Well, I'll just mention two things. One, I met yesterday with Dan Martin, who works for the recreation, whatever, they have a long name at MIT, their, their athletics and recreation department, who manages all their fields. And so he gave me a pretty good view into how they think about it, which I mean, it's obviously very sort of focused on availability of fields and costs and things like that. And their access to capital may be greater than ours. But, but, you know, it was a helpful conversation in terms of understanding some of the cost factors and also understanding, you know, what they use. They're currently using a product called Liga Turf, which is actually owned by Astro Turf, which I didn't even know, Astro Turf as a company still existed. But it's used as a synthetic infill that, you know, is intended to both be cooler because it's, it's a, it's like a green rather than dark black. I mean, part of it, he said part of it is just the color of the infill affects how much he absorbs. And he's seen that just in terms of how quickly the, the, you know, snow will melt off of a field, like a field with dark infill will, will melt faster than a field with light infill because of the heat retention. So anyway, so he gave some pretty good information and also connected me with one of their, with an architecture firm that they use for their designs, who I'm going to try to track down and chat with to get some thoughts on the sort of more, he didn't really have much to say about these sort of the true environmental impacts, but he thought that this guy would have some more information on that sort of as a, as a designer. And then I'm also, I'm connecting with someone from Mass Municipal Association on Thursday. They were busy because their annual meeting was on Friday and Saturday of last week. So they weren't really in a position to do anything other than get ready for that. But now that they've gotten past that meeting with her, like I said, Thursday afternoon. So, right. And hopefully out of that, we can identify one or two guest speakers that would be good for the community to hear from. Yeah. Sounds promising. Yeah. Well, we're going to give it a try. Thank you, Joe. Other than that, as I said, I've been stonewalled in terms of getting a hold of people either in the city of Boston or other towns around here, as well as DP. It's been hard to actually speak with some of these folks and they would provide some good information. I did want to get hold of Burlington school folks because I know they've been working on these things. So I wish I had more specifics to report, but I do think going back to those first three points I mentioned, it would be really, really helpful for us to identify what dates we want speakers to come in. Is it going to be one speaker per subgroup, or is it going to be more? I think we need to nail that down pretty soon. I have the names of two or three people who I think would provide good information and an overall picture of the environmental effects of different kinds of church. So if we can do that, that'd be great. Yes. And I think we will be able to answer some of your questions in this meeting and some of the next agenda items. I will say, I think at our last meeting I mentioned that I reached out to a division at DPH that put together that really helpful FAQ and they actually did get back to me and we had a nice conversation and they don't traditionally sort of go and speak to groups, but they sounded like they might be willing to and they run it up their chain of command. The interesting thing is at one point, the person who started said, you know, we don't have a position on artificial turf. I said, yeah, that's exactly why I've come to you. That's the whole point. You're sort of a neutral party that is analyzing these issues as a government agency. So you might see it as a bug. We see it as a feature. One thing I might be able to do to offer some help, I have a little bit of a contact. So there's the Office of Local and Regional Public Health and I work with them pretty regularly. I can probably reach out to them and they have some staff that may be able to reach out to these divisions that you're trying to get in touch with and maybe they know someone or can at least put us in a little bit more touch sometimes. If you know someone who knows someone, that kind of gets us somewhere, if you will. So I'd be happy to reach out to local regional health. I also have reached out to MAHB, which is the Mass Association of Health Boards and there's some other colleagues that I can certainly reach out to because it feels like in most of these communities, some way shape or form the health departments and or conservation commissions are involved in these and so there's got to be a way we can get to these people. So if you're looking for someone specifically, Mike, for environmental, if you let me know, you're trying to get a hold of someone in Boston, I mean that's going to be impossible anyway, but I can reach out to local regional health and they might be able to persuade someone to call us back. That's one of the places I've left a couple of messages and I specifically asked them if they were at all involved with Mayor Wu's idea of banning the artificial turf, but I haven't heard back, so I don't know the answer and so that's where we're at. And I wonder if your MMA contact, Joe, would have information about that, like who would be the best person to talk to about that there, but just an avenue that we can reach into and I just want to acknowledge there is one individual that was brought to our attention, I believe in one of the emails Susan Chapnick had sent us, Mike Hugo from MAHB, I did, he is one of the individuals that I think that he's working with Oaks Bluff in the vineyard, so he's someone that I've been put in contact with, but I'm also reaching out to a number of other folks. So I'm hoping that if he's working on some of these policy things, he might at least know the right people to try and get us to be able to talk with or get, you know, go in a direction to get more info. Or he might be able, might be willing and able to provide a talk as well. Yeah, let's see what his, you know, I'm happy to brand all that back. Sure, good. So that's great. Thank you to all the groups. I think I'm going to say that we skip over four. I mean, to some degree, we've already kind of touched on four, but I rarely get to agenda item five, which is project timelines. Because I think that's the most important thing we can discuss this meeting. And Jim, are you okay if I share my screen? Yes, sharing the screen would be good, because I could give you a throw out a bunch of dates, but it just be easier. I think if we're all looking at the same thing at the same time. Can everybody see this okay? So I will preface this, that what you're reading or about to read is a very aggressive timeline. However, it seems to be the only timeline that will work given when you work backwards. So the, the town meeting or an article that passed was very specific that the report from us to the select board and town meeting was due 30 days prior to the start of town meeting. Now town meeting, the date has moved two days, but for all intents and purposes also, you know, we're not going to submit this report on the weekend. So March 20, Friday, March 22nd is basically the date that we would have to submit this by. When you work backwards from there, which is what I did, we can read this going forward, but that's essentially, we came to a lot of these decisions about or suggestions about project timing based on knowing that everything has to be wrapped up by Friday, March 22nd, which is less than two months away. And February is a short month. So, you know, we will continue to have meetings and if you see full meeting most of the time, it's, it's, the date references a traditional Tuesday, five p.m. meeting. You know, we're meeting today, we'll meet again next week. You know, my view is guest speakers at this point will fit them into any meeting. If you have someone who's interested, we can fit them into any meeting going forward. I suggest February 6th and February 13th. I think once upon a time I had a vision of, you know, one week having safety, you know, safety provide speakers or health provide speakers the next week. And I'm just not sure it's going to work out that way. And we're at a point where I'll take, you know, if someone's willing to come and speak to us, we'll accommodate them any, any week that it works for them. And, you know, maybe we have 30 minutes for one person and 30 minutes for a different person from a different group. I don't think we should, I don't think we should get hung up on, you know, if we have someone who's willing to talk to us, we'll fit them in, we'll make it work. I'm more concerned that just with the timing being such that we may not be able to make it work, you know, for as many as we would like, but we should shorten, you know, for those trying to throw out some dates, I would say, I mean, it can be as early as next Tuesday. I didn't put that as a suggestion for guest speakers, but it could be, you know, but certainly February 6th or February 13th would be prime dates for that. And then you'll see, so whenever we have a deadline, I try to put on a Friday just because I don't think necessarily have a deadline on the day of one of our meetings works, but you'll see the first sort of big deadline would be Friday, February 9th, which is about two and a half weeks away for each of the, each of the working groups to put out sort of a bullet point outline or it can just be, just frankly, bullet points, if that's easier, of findings and recommendations. And the recommendations part, I'm looser on that more just sort of like, you know, what are you finding and where is it pointing? I am sensitive to what Mike said that, you know, it'd be nice to have kind of a rough format template for when people do put this into narrative form, which can help, help us also guide us as we do the bullet form. And I'll, I will work within the time, Mike made a very good suggestion. I actually liked, liked it as a, as a starting point or maybe even as a finishing point. So my commitment to you is that by the next meeting, Natasha and I will, we'll put something out to the group that would sort of fit that well suggested template for each group, which would work for either, either or both the bullet point outline or the actual narrative submission. And then going from there, you know, we would have the next meeting guest speakers and or potentially discuss, you know, each group goes around and discusses their bullet points. But at that point, you know, knowing that it's still sort of a little rough, it's still information. We would not meet on the Tuesday of school vacation week, unless there was a demand or unless there was a need, certainly could, but I think that's a tough week for a lot of folks. But the deadline that Friday would be the narrative form of the sections from each of the working groups. So there'd still be work going on that week, but maybe not necessarily meeting. We'd reconvene the following Tuesday where we'd actually discuss the drafts that were circulated the prior Friday. Have another meeting the following Tuesday where we would sort of, at that point, Natasha and I will try to pull the sections together and make them a cohesive whole, fill in the gaps, work on an executive summary, put a draft of an executive summary, a draft of, you know, transition clause, you know, making it so it's a real document, not that it's taped together, you know, in pieces, but then it works as a cohesive whole. We would discuss that at our meeting on the 5th and talk about some potential final recommendations for the group. You know, not just individual recommendations, but what would we want to potentially put out there as a collective, not finding a recommendation. Release a draft of a working draft of, you know, the report at Friday to the public with the idea that the following, and I said Thursday, but it can be flexible, but at some point the following week, we'd have a public hearing on the draft report. We'd meet that following Tuesday to review anything we, you know, final comments from all of us, review what we heard at the public comment, make revisions or changes as necessary, and then take a final vote on, you know, there may still obviously be some, you know, administrative work to do on the report, but essentially take a vote on the final say of the report, what it will say, and what the idea of the report would then be formally submitted that Friday. Jim, I have a question. It's tight. It's tight. The section drafts for the towards the end of February, are those going to be part of the minutes available to the public or not? I think they could be, and then probably should be. It's still not the report. I mean, it's just no, but it's the section drafts. So I think the only way that we would be able to share that would be through the packet with everyone. So I think that's how I would envision it going out that it would go through the packet. Good. So some people would be able to read it and maybe send in some comments as well. Oh yeah. I mean, there's going to be opportunities for comments from the moment, you know, the bullets are submitted. I mean, at that point people are getting a, I mean, you know, I would caution the public, everything's still work in progress and maybe hold your fire until we get to something a little more, that starting to look a little more like a final draft, just knowing that these things will evolve over time and there's work to be done to put it into a cohesive whole report. But, but yeah. I think that's very positive because I know that, you know, there's going to be a lot of people interested in seeing this report as it develops. So I think that's good to hear. I mean, to be frank, I mean, I'm hoping this isn't the case, but we could have a, we could have a working group put forward a series of recommendations that everyone in that working group agreed to or findings and recommendations everyone in that group agreed to. And then, you know, the other members of the committee say, well, that's nice, but I'm not, I appreciate the work you did, but I'm not on board with that. Wow. And, you know, ultimately, we're not submitting a report in pieces, we're submitting a report as a whole. And so we need it to be something we can either all agree on, or if we can't all agree, we cross that bridge and we get to it. But I like my goal is to find consensus here. And I believe we can if we follow this path, I think it will work. I'm open to someone telling me this is ridiculous too, by the way, I don't think it is, but I'm open to someone telling me this is completely unworkable and sounds nice, but will never be realistic. I think as you pointed out, I don't know that we have much choice given the 30 day before the meeting deadline. So I think this is probably as reasonable as we're going to get. I think what it means, I know at least for the environmental group, it means we're going to have multiple meetings between the committee meetings, just to iron out a lot of this information. So it's going to be pretty fine. There's that, and I would expect that our meetings come come into February, early March, our meetings will get much longer too. I mean, I don't think an hour is going to be sufficient. You know, I think, especially if we have some guests, well guest speakers read more earlier or mid February, if all goes well, but you know, by once people start putting ideas on paper, I expect our meetings are going to have some real things to talk about at that point. And, you know, I would be expecting are not looking forward to this, but our meetings would be, you know, potentially two hours long to cover all the issues we need to. So that's something to keep in mind as well. In the interest of full disclosure, Susan Stamps and Gene Benson, who are the authors of the Warren article that created this this committee, have submitted for the current open warrant of the Newtown Springtown meeting, a Warren article that would extend our deadline. I've talked to Susan about it or she reached out to me, we had a good conversation. By no means this is not necessarily, and I don't want to put words in Susan's mouth or Gene's mouth, but this is I mean that they would be quite happy if we wrapped up our work in time. This is more that it's a failsafe that if we can't, you know, if they they sort of had to hedge their bets, they have to submit this now because if they don't, if March 22nd comes and goes and we haven't submitted something on time, then we there's there's nothing to get us out of it. This would get us out of it. I want to be clear, though, that's my goal is still to be true to the Warren article that passed, which is, you know, we wrap it up by March 22nd. But if there is some point at which we realize this is not going to happen, it's unrealistic, we potentially have some breathing room from this Warren article if it passes. But I think you should assume the schedule in front of you is what we're going to try to do and make every possible effort to adhere to. Yeah, because it seems unlikely outcome. It's a lot of work for everyone. Oh, as you say, if it doesn't pass, then we're if it doesn't we don't submit and then the extension doesn't pass when town meeting actually rolls around like I don't know where that leaves the whole process, but it seems like a bad way to. We have this happen in the legislature sometimes that, you know, communities just keep going about their business and then, you know, they blow past a deadline and then like, you know, six months later, the legislature will say, okay, we'll extend your debt, you know, it sort of becomes an ex ex post, you know, we'll, we'll just, I mean, you know, we're not going to jail if we don't, if we don't complete this on time. But I can't imagine the time town meeting wouldn't if we needed an extension wouldn't give it to us now that they have a vehicle for doing so. But I can tell you, I think people would be much happier if we stuck to our deadline, which is tough because we got a late start. I fully admit that it's not anyone here's fault, but we got a late start. And so I think, you know, I was pointing out to Natasha, we got a late start, but in some ways he's done as much work as if we hadn't gotten a late start. I mean, the reality is people who have a year and start meeting from like the start of that year, they don't have weekly meetings, they have monthly meetings when they and they meet less and their work is kind of spread out over a longer period of time. We're compressing our, I feel like we're meeting just as much and doing just as much work as if we had more time, we're just compressing it. Jim, is that the project timeline going to be the minutes or going to send to us or something? I mean, you know, we could take a formal vote on it. I don't think it needs it. But I guess if someone had objections to what I want to know now. I guess, Jim, I had one question and I just want to be clear. I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't do the sort of public meeting. But is that a requirement somewhere in the warrant article or is that just something we want to do because it's the right thing to do? It's a great question, Joe. It's not a requirement. I have suggested it simply because I think we made certain verbal commitments in our early meetings about, you know, streamlining public comment now through just leaving it to the chat with the idea that people would be able to weigh in more at the end of the process. I will note, however, that the warrant article that's been submitted for this warrant upcoming town meeting would actually mandate, I think it would push the deadline to, I'm trying to remember what Susan told me, but I think it would push the deadline to October and require a public hearing in September. So if we blow past their deadline, we're definitely going to have a public hearing. I'd say why not just have a public hearing and try to work it in as, you know, good transparent government. I guess I would just, my suggestion for what was worth is to just stay away from the phrase public hearing and maybe just talk about a public meeting or a public or a discussion because public hearing has this very formal feel of like, you get your three minutes and you get to say your piece and blah, blah, blah. And I don't think, I mean, not that there's, well, there is something wrong with that approach, but leaving that aside, like, I don't think that's actually what we want. I think we want to potentially have a little bit more of a discussion and hear from people and, you know, not just be sort of sitting there listening with no response. So, you know, although we should also think about setting some ground rules for how long people can talk because, you know, based on how much discussion there was about this meeting, this could turn into a very long one. Yeah, no, I mean, none of us wants to be there for five hours and have everyone just, you know, I do think, I do think that, you know, us being able to keep all of these draft submissions, you know, open to the public that that's also going to allow some commentary before we even get to that. So my hope is that even we're going to have this public meeting to discuss and people can comment that a lot of that would have already kind of been being flushed out as we're going along, because we've been very transparent, I think, you know, thus far going forward. And that is our goal. So I would, I would sort of hope that that would help sort of move us along at that point, if that makes sense. I don't know what others think, but. Well, I think it's important to remind people that, like, we're making a report to town meeting. We're not, we have no authority, right? Like, we're just saying, here's what we think based on the research we've done and all the people we talked to, blah, blah, blah. Ultimately, the real forum for like, is this, are these recommendations accepted? And what, what power do they have as really town meeting? So as much as we want to hear from people, we also need to recognize that, you know, ultimately, town meeting is the decision makers on this. Yeah. And I can't say this for certain, but if past is prologue here and past practice would be this fall, then I would assume that we would, once town meeting begins, you know, there's always started every session of town meeting, it's acceptance of reports that we would submit the report. I mean, we would submit it formally on the 22nd, but we would, you know, I guess a secondary submission would happen actually at town meeting. And then the moderator would let, would let us do a, you know, an eight or 10 minute PowerPoint presentation summarizing things for, for people who maybe have just not been engaged, which might be most town meeting members potentially. So, but there wouldn't be a pending vote on anything other than potentially if we blow past the deadline to extend our deadline. But there's no, my understanding is there's no warrant article coming about a moratorium or about a ban on artificial turf or anything like that. Frankly, because I'm hoping they're waiting for waiting for us to do the work they asked us to do and not prejudging it. So, Jim, just a quick thing. I just thought of this. Would it make, maybe have some sense to put our report out to the public and then give like a week to receive written comment on the report that then we as a committee can then go through that feedback. And then whether we feel appropriate or not, make any, any tweaks. I mean, I'm not saying I'm not opposed to having a, you know, you know, a public input session where people can comment, but it might be more fruitful. We might get more out of it where if we let people send in written comments, because then they could say, I disagree in the health section, you know, subsection two with the finding X, Y or Z, it just, we might get more detail out of it. And we might be able to then make some, oh, we didn't think of that. That's a good point. And then we can make some recommendations as compared to if we're having a two and a half hour just input session, you know, we might just be hearing people talk and not be getting a lot of, you know, real detailed information out of it. Just a thought, Joe, I agree. There's a risk that some people just literally pick up where they left off at the last one of these forums. And, you know, it's, it's a resuscitation of ideas already heard, which, you know, is fine. It's just not very productive. I agree that what you're saying would be potentially more productive for us as we actually have a submission and we can read it and sort of compare notes. I'm not sure they're mutually exclusive. You know, we, I don't know, Natasha, in theory we could move on both paths, right? You know, have, you know, maybe have submissions but still allow a, and I do take Joe's point quite seriously. And I agree with it that it probably better to call it a public meeting on the draft report. And then we sort of, rather than just sitting there as passive observers and just, you know, having five hours of people come up and say their piece, hopefully maybe it's a little more interactive. It's our meeting but we're getting input and it's a little more interactive. I think that Joe's point is a good one. And I think following what Natasha was saying, with several opportunities to comment on various sections of the draft, I think we may provide people the input they want to provide without going through a five-hour meeting. I think that the idea of saying here's the draft report to the public, it's going out, you've got one week to make any comments you want and written comments. And I think that would, that would be a really productive, helpful way to go forward to make sure that everybody who wants to comment has the opportunity and they'll have, it looks like, several opportunities to comment on various parts of it. Oh, I mean, I expect we will start getting input from the moment those bullets are put out. I think we've already gotten some inputs. Yeah, yeah. So that's, you know, and that'll be shared in the minutes in the packet. But that's, you know, subject to some changes, alterations, you know, but to answer your question, Mike, about guest speakers, as soon as possible, I'd say, you know, the next three meetings are fair game. Jim, I don't know that we really should vote on this because I think what's going to happen in the next couple of weeks, right? Like, some of these things might end up changing. And if we decide that, you know what, all of a sudden, we're not going to get this project done, we're going to know that a lot sooner than 322 or, you know, possibly the date that we're going to hold a public discussion period. So I don't know that really formalizing this vote, but just that, you know, we acknowledge that this is the timeline that we want to stick by, and where we're going to do our best to do that, I think is sufficient. I don't know what your thoughts are, but. No, that's exactly what I don't think this needs to vote. I think it's just sort of a, for those in the committee who said, where's this all going? What's, when, you know, what are our deadlines? This was Natasha's effort and my effort to. All Jim. Yeah, to try to show just how stark the realities are of our timeline, but doable. I still think this is achievable and doable. All right. Good to know. I think I agree that sounds right. Yes, Jim, one other quick question. In terms of guest speakers, should we consider ourselves like empowered to invite someone to the committee, or do we, do you want us to sort of? I mean, I think if you could just say this one about Natasha and me first, that's a whole committee, but, you know, I mean, I'll take anyone. One question. I should say anyone, but I should say anyone, but I mean, I'll take if someone, if you've identified somebody good and they want to speak to us, I mean, you know, our group has identified one or two people who we've expressed interest to, they've expressed interest back and, you know, for instance, the athletic trainer at the high school, you know, I mean, that's not someone I expect will take up a full hour. You know, that's someone who may be in 15, you know, in 20 minutes can tell us, you know, a lot and doesn't need more than that, you know, springing in someone who's extensively studied artificial turf, you know, the last 20 years of their career, that might be someone we want to hear more from for an hour, you know, it's, it's a sliding scale depending on who you want to bring in. And I also just, in wondering if this is something that folks want to talk about, and I can't help but feel compelled to bring it up, but I don't know, do we want to discourage speakers that may have come from the forum, or do we want to encourage those, or do we want to just try to find new folks? I just, I know that that it was the forum in the spring, some aspects may have been a little bit more contentious, and so I don't know if that's bringing in sort of a preconceived notion, just something I wanted to bring up. I'm not on either side, but something I feel like maybe the group should acknowledge and maybe discuss a little bit. I would stay away from it, personally. I would stay away from it. I would say anyone that, you know, was a quote expert at the forum, we just get a fresh voice. That's just my two cents on either side. My, my understanding is some of the people, I think I might have heard this from you, Joe, or Leslie, some of the people we invited at the forum would have absolutely no interest in coming back. That's very true. If they do have interest in coming back, that scares me even more to be honest with you. All right. So what I'm hearing, Jim, is that you suggest that we run the names by you and Natasha before we see if they're available and interested? Yeah. Yeah. Or even if, I mean, it can be after you've gotten some initial interest and you're like, hey, we're getting, I mean, because, you know, I mean, you're reaching out to lots of people, you know, and maybe only, you know, 10% of the people you reach out to are going to amount to anything in terms of getting. So, I mean, reaching, just reaching out, you don't need, you don't need to run it by Natasha. But shortly, I have to go to another Zoom, but we'll take this up next time. Yeah. You got the heart of this meeting. I think we're through the heart of this meeting at this forum. Thanks, folks. Thanks, Mike. Natasha, maybe if you could, we don't need to share the screen, I don't think anymore. Oh, yeah. So, yeah, I mean, if you start to get to a place where you're actually talking dates with someone, I think it'd be good at that point to just rope us in and say, you know, we're getting close to scheduling so-and-so, do you think this would be good? Or, you know, because we have a sense maybe of who we could pair them up with in terms of a night or, you know, if there's another schedule conflict or something like that. I think we've kind of hit agenda item six already. I mean, the subject matter experts, I think we, by talking about guest speakers, I think we've kind of covered that unless people have more to add. And agenda item four, additional research needs gaps. I don't really have anything. We kind of have this as a standing item for people who, to bring up issues that may not be covered in a working group but might still be relevant for us to be looking at, like some of the issues we discussed last week. I guess one that came up when I was talking with Dan Martin and MIT was, and this may not be our call, so maybe it's not something we want to talk about, but it's sort of the access to fields and playability and sort of how often, you know, I don't know what the right, I'm struggling with the right term, but hopefully, you know, I mean like, you know, the availability of the fields. And is that something we're going to speak to? Or is that more of a Parks and Recreation Commission issue or, you know, or just Joe's issue or whatever it might be. But I just wanted to raise that because I spent a decent amount of time talking with Dan about that. That's one of our, that's our overall health. So we have our three aspects of health, safety, chemical safety and overall health. And our overall health is, our kind of bullet right as of right now is access to fields is important because kids playing is important to their overall health. And if we want to understand as artificial fields, do they actually increase access? So, so certainly the things that you're hearing from MIT would be super useful to us. Yeah, Joe, I think in my, what I sent around, I think if you look in that graph, it, it, to answer your question, it depends if, you know, if everything's apples to apples, so you have a lighted turf field versus a lighted natural grass field, obviously lights are going to extend play and allow you to have more users in the field. So if you looked at everything being even, so it's the exact same thing, can you get more users on an artificial turf 11V11 field than you can at Graska? And the answer is no. So, you know, just by putting down an artificial turf field, all of a sudden you're going to have more people know, but you're going to have more potential playing dates. And that's what I think I put in that spreadsheet where you can certainly start the year earlier, and you won't have as many cancellations due to weather. Again, I'm just trying to keep things out. Could a soccer team potentially add another team if it's a turf field, because they're not going to ruin a potential area that, that's all what a coda should have. You don't really know, it's really tough to measure, but I think if you looked at apples to apples, it's more of usable dates than actual participation. Okay. To that point too, Joe, I think I have had a conversation with, you know, the town manager's office as well, and some of this background information that we're trying to get, I had mentioned the last time sort of talking to them about if there's any staff available in the town that can try and help get some of this information, such as the information that Joe is talking about, but also maybe, you know, how many fields do we have? What do they look like? How are they used? What are the number of hours that those little data things? And what I've basically, what it's basically come down to is there really isn't any additional staff, I think, that the town has available. But I do think that between myself and maybe even Joe Conley, it might be something where we can try and start collecting that information, and at least presenting that out to the group as it comes forward, you know, all the things that we've sort of mentioned. And then we can make that part of the packet so that there is some of that background information that I think that we've been discussing and talking about town members probably are looking for. I've also, I also think that Jim, Jim Feeney has some information about the cost analysis and some additional things that we can, we can go off of in terms of that comparison to the artificial turf and natural turf fields. And Joe, I know Conley, I know you probably have a lot. And actually, Joe Barr, you probably know more, too, on the finance conditions. Yeah. No, I know you, but it sounds like in terms of where this information will live, it will be in the health section, like Joe was talking about, just in terms of the report. Yeah. I think some of that background stuff, though, the accessibility piece, yes, but I think like that background information, like we've got 200 athletes that utilize this field, like that might not be under the health section, but like a background type of. I just thought of this, and I don't know why I would be said accessibility. So accessibility, when Joe, when you're saying it, do you mean from an ADA perspective? Okay. All right. So that's what I thought. But I do think maybe another part of this is an ADA perspective, right? Where it should be mentioned that we had an accessibility audit, the Institute of Human Design did accessibility audit of all town outdoor recreation facilities in 2016. Grass is not an accessible surface. You cannot put a mobility device, a wheelchair, anything like that. Grass is not permissible by code. It's not code compliant. Where turf is a compliant surface for ADA. And that's why when you kept saying accessibility, I was thinking women, they're already, you know, they're already going down that road. So again, that's something maybe just as a point where I'm not sure where it's going to fall, maybe in health or access, where, you know, a note regarding the accessibility for people in mobility devices or wheelchairs and how they are affected between the two different surfaces. Interesting. I'm willing to go to item seven new business and anyone has anything new? I'm also cognizant of the fact we're down to just a bare quorum right now. So I don't want to prolong this meeting too long to the point where we lose our quorum, but well, if there's no new business, we have a lot of work to do in a short time span. I think we can do it. You know, our safety group sort of talked about this a little bit today. And we have a plan. I would say each group should have a working group plan for how with these deadlines in mind, you know, soft deadlines, but still, you know, try to work towards them, you know, what the plan is over the next is including the next two and a half weeks, you know, for the first deliverable. And see if it's, you know, see if you can get there. I think everyone can, but you're going to have a plan. Okay. Well, thank you for my thank you, Jim. Sorry. And Natasha, thank you for the schedule, because that really helps give us, I mean, it's a lot of work, but at least we now have a sort of parameter for what we got to get done. It's terrifying, but in all the right ways. And I'll make sure that gets sent out tonight just to the group and we'll include it in the meeting minutes as well, just so that it's all public. But I just think it's helpful for the group to kind of have that in mind. So that's okay. I'll entertain a motion. Motion to adjourn. Is there a second? Second. Oh, Jill, you do it. Natasha, just call the roll then. All right. So going right down our list here, Mike, he had to leave. Leslie is absent. Jill Barr. Yep. Okay. Jill. Yeah. Natasha. Yes. Jim. Yes. Yes. And Marvin is not here. That's it. So it passed us in. Well, thank you all and let the good work continue. All right. Thanks. We'll meet up next Tuesday again. Thank you. Thanks. Bye.