 Oh, it's action already? Where's the 10-minute singing open? The Board of Selectments meeting for Monday, March 11th. I'd like to start with Adam Chapter Lane was trapped in Atlanta today and was delayed in flight. He hopes to make it here. But we tingle with excitement because we have with us tonight the deputy town manager. Would y'all please welcome Mr. Andrew Flanagan. Andrew, very nice to see you again. Andrew, we got a memo from your boss that was missing the second page. Could you explain why that wasn't included in our packet? There seemed to be some kind of collation issue in one of our boxes. I'm not sure if it's a full memo when it's on your desk. Thank you. Thank you very much. OK, for approval, a consent agenda, which are the minutes of the meeting, February 25th, March 1st. Is there a motion? I move approval. Is there a second? Second. Discussion? All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed. Item number two, licenses and permits. Can I start? Yeah, a request for a wine and malt license and common victuallers license for fantastic Thai ink and doing business as Thai moon. I hope Phantika. Sir, learned counsel. Yes, please come forward, sir. I'm attorney Ed Fitzgerald. Aye, Ed. And I'm here with Ms. Amy Cusano and Ms. Pimumas Kamlu. Well done. And so this is the application of fantastic Thai to take over the Thai moon restaurant. These individuals have been working at this for some time. They don't plan to make any significant changes to the restaurant if you know the restaurant. Each of them has had some experience in the food industry as well as serving alcohol. Both of them expect to go through the Titch program in the coming weeks, and all of their employees will be required to do that process. So if you have any questions? Did they bring samples of the food or the alcohol? Maybe take in orders. Good answer. Welcome to, is it Phantika? Phantika, Tammy. Good luck on the venture. I just had a question in your application. You list your hours of operation, and I'm just curious what the hours are. You list eight hours, eight and a half, nine hours. I'm just wondering what your opening and closing times are. So basically, right now the hours we close on Monday and then on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, basically start from 11.30 until 2.30 and close after lunch and open again after 5 o'clock until sometime 9 o'clock and sometime 9.30, yes. It depends on, during the weekend we open longer. Now Friday you have eight and a half hours. Do you open half hour early or half hour later? Half hour later. Later, and then on Saturday and Sunday you have nine hours. Do you close? On Sunday we close sooner. So we open, it's sooner as well. And Saturday you close later? Later, yes. What's your latest, what's your closing time on Saturday? 9.30. That's perfect. Thank you. I just, look at those things, sorry. Anybody else, you have Mr. Dunn? So I regularly give this speech when people come for the alcohol license and so, I know we've got other licenses on the agenda so hopefully they're listening so I don't have to, so I won't give it again. But we take the legal drinking age very seriously and the last time we did a test there were four restaurants in Arlington that failed. I think Time Moon was one of them but it could be, all right, regardless. Regardless of whether, I apologize, but regardless. It's often a new employee who isn't trained and who makes a mistake and it's really important that you don't fall into that mistake and so there's all sorts of recommendations on our board is the pass out and the pass including things like having a checklist that for opening and making sure that all your new employees are trained before they serve their first drink and things like that because I wish you the best of luck and I really enjoy your food but I also don't wanna see you here again to talk about alcohol licenses because we're talking about alcohol licenses, it's rarely a good thing. Thank you. Thank you. Except when we're granting them, then it's a good thing. I said rarely. Can I just add to that and also to the other applicants, just historically the four that failed, in each case scenario a manager wasn't there, it was a new employee and they didn't have established employee training protocols so that not only when an employee came on there never was a monthly meeting to say okay, you're a brand new. So not that that necessarily dictates you're gonna serve but it was curious to me as a court reporter, I always look as an attorney what are the similar things that those conditions existed for those four brand new employees to serve? Thank you Mr. Dunn for remembering that. Could I have a motion please? Yeah, I move approval, subject to all conditions are set forth. Second. Further discussion? All those in favor please signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed. Thank you for choosing Arlington, best of luck. Thank you. Thank you, good job attorney. Item number three, it's a request for a wine and malt license and common victory license. Nicholas Portillo, I hope. That is correct. Now the learning council. Yes. Welcome. Thank you very much, members of the board. My name is Jared Chrislip from the Pico Law Office downtown and I'm here joined by, I believe by Nicholas Portillo, you said it correctly. Is this there? I don't recognize you. Maria. Excuse me. Maria is the proposed manager of record for this transfer, a corporation corporation transfer for ABCC purposes and LLC to LLC transfer actually, given the two entities on the deal. It's very similar to the presentation that was just made in that it's a new business entity taking over an existing operating licensed restaurant to speak to some of your points and concerns that I can vouch for the clients that they were listening very carefully. One item that might be of interest is simply that Jose Landeverde, the third member of the LLC is currently operating. He's working at the restaurant over there on Broadway right now. He's a current employee and a longtime employee. So that helps to address some of the concerns about new ownership or new management. There'll be some consistency in that regard. Also Nicholas has extensive business ownership and operation experience running a successful business in East Boston. I'm not sure if there's any particular items that you'd be interested in hearing us discuss in addition to that, but rather is that straightforward. We have an assignment of lease set ready to go contingent simply on the ABCC approval after presuming an approval here. On the board, questions, comments, Mr. Kirow? I move approval, subject to all conditions as set for. Second. Yep, Mr. Landeverde. Just one question and some of this is the application doesn't lend itself to give all the information. And I raise this because it was a neighborhood issue when it first was addressed and I appreciate that. You all have been down there and are familiar with. I see that you have checked off outside Beside and Sign Plan. I don't know if that encompasses the outside seating agreement that we came to. I just wanna bring it to your attention and if you've been working there, then you're already aware of it that when the board approves in certain locations, not just this, but some others throughout the town, but especially on this one where it's kind of in a family neighborhood and houses across the street and a couple of houses down, if you all are going to commit to the same agreement, are you gonna do outside seating? Right, during the correct seasonal part of the time. I think it's warm weather and then maybe town council or the acting town manager can look at our application and see if we can expand that a little bit better because that's the only place as referenced and I don't know if that necessarily speaks to the point. I just wanted to bring to your attention but if you've worked there, you're aware of it, this board worked out because neighbors were very concerned, it was a little bumpy, I'm sorry, I'm waiting for my daughter and a lot of you for her. This neighborhood really wasn't for it and they came up with a plan that everybody agreed with and it was especially around disability access as well as the serving of alcohol. I think originally they said they wouldn't serve it outside so if you could just review that and I'll make sure the board touches base with you all but it's my understanding that you plan to do what you have been doing before. That's the simplest and most accurate way to state it, I do believe. Then I'm cool. Right, thank you. For the discussion, so Mr. Kerr made the motion, was there a second? Yes. Second, okay, so approval subject to all conditions as set forth that are in the works and have already been done. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed. Thank you, thanks for choosing Arlington, good luck. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, item number four, request for transfer of issuance of stock and new stock holder and change of manager, Mary Parent doing business as a monotony beer and wine learned counsel Joseph Fahey. Good evening. I represent Mary Parent and she's here just to simply ask the town for the privilege to become the manager of monotony beer and wine as well as the co-owner. Mary's been basically employed there full time since the door's opened. I cannot think of a more seamless transition that could take place than for her to basically become an owner. It is proud to represent the establishment has an unblemished record of service in the town. I think we can count on that to continue. And I think it'll be a great thing for the town as well as for the business for her to become the manager as well as a co-owner. Move approval. So second? Second. Questions? This end of course. Yeah. Congratulations, Mary. I've been in the establishment a few times and I do want to say that I'd really like to highlight the community investment that you all, the Duggins and Bergstroms and yourself have done. Not just your monthly newsletters. They offer for local artist only. I was really impressed with this. Can display their artwork and sell it and you don't take a commission or anything, which I think is amazing. And I think your book. You'll take anybody's artwork? Show me what you got. I'll be right back. You'll be the beer cooler, Mr. Creeley. I'm changing my mind on the way there. For him. No, no, that's OK. And I know I was speaking with Neil a couple of weeks ago and I think you booked up until May or June. Yeah, I'm usually booked three to four months ahead. And it's so many people in the art community was talking to Karen Dillon, who's a high school alumnae. Let's get the word out there even more. I passed it on to ACA and everybody. And I think the only requirement is that you're an Allington resident or Allington affiliation. Local, yeah, local, local, or a good customer. You know, in fact, we are coming up on third person. That's a double, it's going to be a double artist on the wall. So Mr. Cureau, he's on the Tourism and Economic Development Committee. I'll shoot you his email. You might want to send him sort of the info and he can get it out to different people. And the chair is right here, Ms. Olszewski is right here. OK, well then she's hearing. I'll read our weekly newsletters. I'll make sure you all connect and hook up because I think it's a fantastic, besides 10 other things you do and other businesses to do also. I'm not, but thank you. Thank you. Yes, Mr. Cureau. I think Ms. Mohan stated it well. I just wanted to add on. I know that you also support a lot of the schools in town with some of the programs, some revenue share and the community card as well. So we appreciate that and certainly I've gotten to know you from visiting the store too and appreciate the customer service and the great face and responsible way you run the business. And Mr. Dunn? So I just want to specifically say that of the three original alcohol licenses that were issued by the town, I think that your establishment really represents what the voters were looking for. And I think that you guys have done a fantastic job of that. And so I wanted to, I'm fully support. I'm delighted that you're changing roles. And I think that I'm very excited about the business. Thanks. David? No, I'll set it. OK. Ms. Mohan made the motion. Was there a second? Second. Second. I kid, because my artwork would look like I'd spent a few hours in the shop first. But my wife is an artist. Actually, she has a display right now. So I certainly will make sure. She does have some talent at that, choosing husbands. But Mary. Gordon will not be addressing us. Mary, thank you for your judgment, Attorney Fahey. Thank you very much. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed? Thank you. Congratulations. Thank you very much. Thank you, Attorney Fahey. And item number five, request for a change of manager, wine and malt. License, Jaquitte Davenuat. Good evening, members of the Board of Selection. I'm Attorney Jonathan White. I'm here on behalf of the company. I serve a second role. I'm also the current manager of the establishment. We are simply looking to remove myself as a director of the corporation and as a manager. And in my place, the current president of the corporation step into my shoes. My client recently became American citizen in July of 2012. That was one of the main reasons why we couldn't set up the establishment with him holding a license initially. He has done an excellent job with his business in the three years he's been in the town. He also has two other establishments, both one in Medford that currently has a beer and wine license and one in Newton that he's fortunate enough to be in the process of selling. He has never had any problems in his establishment during the times that I'm there serving my role when I'm not there and it's under his supervision. He understands all of the duties that are required of him and trains his staff accordingly. Board members, questions? Yes, Mr. Dunn. Did you hear my speech? Did you hear his speech over to the first person that was talking? Yes, yes. Good. We're three for three on restaurants and liquor stores that I go through today. So I enjoy your, the curry dumplings. I'm going to be on my stop all the time as a chick. I'm going to do four and stay with them, beer and wine. Thank you. Thank you. I'd like to second it and also like to congratulate you on getting your US citizenship. My daughter-in-law is from Nepal and I know what a costly and long experience that is as well as I don't know as people born in America would pass the test as soon as you all have to do because I've become aware of the questions through my daughter-in-law. So I congratulate you on doing that. That shows a lot of perseverance and intelligence and God bless you on that and good luck in this business. Thank you so much. Thank you. Okay, so further comments, discussion on the motion by Mr. Dunn and seconded by Mrs. Mohan. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed. Thank you very much for your business here in Arlington and good luck to you. And again, congratulations on your US citizenship. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Enjoy the rest of your time. Thank you. Okay, traffic rules and order and other business obviously. Item six, an update by the Arlington Recycling Committee, Julie, I believe. Good evening. I'm Julie Brazil. I'm one of the two co-chairs with Gordon Jameson, the Arlington Recycling Committee. We're here with several members. This is Ellen Callaway and some very special volunteers from the Brackett Elementary School who are gonna come up later. We just wanna share a few things about recycling in Arlington. I'm gonna stick to my written comments and notes pretty carefully and not ad-lib and get off track because I have quite a few facts and figures. The first, the bar chart shows there's been a dramatic drop in the amount of trash that we sent to the incinerator. The green or the blue speckled line towards the end is our projection of the results for the end of the first year of the trash contract, so ending in July. And it's a very nice decrease from the previous year. I'm not gonna get too hung up on charts and graphs, but I can report that recycling is up and yard waste is up, so that's good. And so that means we're saving money by not burning things that shouldn't be in our trash and are easily picked up curbside every week. The next chart shows the major components of municipal waste. Oh, yeah. I'm colorblind, but you reference green. Oh, the green, I was wrong. It was just the blue speckled chart is their estimated end of the year results. And then what's 50% diversion? I'm gonna get to that. I'm sorry. Good timing on your question. Show me the chart. That's all right. Forgive me. The next chart shows the major components of municipal waste. The big red area is the trash that we burn and we pay by the ton to burn it. Recycling and yard waste are in blue and green and we have a tiny sliver for white goods or appliances. These amounts are tracked by weight and not by volume so it's not the number of barrels of recycling or the bins out on the curb. Our goal as a community right now is to get the red section, the trash we burn, down to 50% and that's just showing what it would look like there if we got to that 50% estimated. The statistic for this is often referred to as diversion and that's the idea that we want to share this evening. Anything we keep out of trash barrels, anything we divert away from the incinerator saves the town money. So if you're looking at the bar graph from when we started thinking about recycling in this way as a town, we have reduced our trash by 38% and if you add up all of the savings over that number of years, it's about $2 million. Getting to this goal of 50% will mean a lot of people thinking about how they can contribute and we'll try some new things. Right now people are composting kitchen waste, dropping off household items like toasters and lamps at DPW during office hours or at our Big Saturday collections twice a year. Clothes and books can go in bins around town and packing peanuts can go to stores that accept them for reuse. The committee is always exploring ideas and one of the ones we're gonna be looking at next is if it's possible to organize a collection for large items like mattresses and sofas. The logistics are complicated but we're looking at it. We know that elementary schools are working on lunchroom recycling and I asked the volunteers from Bracket to come. They have an amazing group who are composting lunch waste and separating recyclable items out of their lunchroom trash. They have set up a system that diverts 75 pounds of waste away from the dumpster every day and by weight that means they are diverting about 85% of their lunchroom waste. So we're really excited by their hard work. The pilot program is obviously successful and other schools are exploring ideas and talking to them and recycling in school lunchrooms across town is getting a boost. And then we have a new idea that we want to try. The town's recycling coordinator found a company that can recycle some kinds of styrofoam. We get a lot of questions about why the town's list of recyclable items doesn't include styrofoam when so many pieces of styrofoam that you see are marked with the number six symbol. The shorter answer is that our hauler develops the list of recyclable items based on the markets and some products are hard to collect or hard to process or separate and it's not cost effective. But new markets are created over time and so we have found a styrofoam collection company. So we're going to try collecting styrofoam in May at our community collection day. The list of items they can take is very specific. So we want everyone to check the website. That information should be posted soon on the town website under recycling because if you bring the wrong items it contaminates the process too much. But we wanted to let everyone know that they can start collecting recyclable styrofoam and just set aside a corner of your basement or front porch and we'll see if we can't fill up a dumpster on May 11th. Finally, we have the town EcoFest coming up in just a couple of weeks, March 23rd in town hall. There's lots of information on the website but it is a great time to learn more about composting which we fully support. The town is working to preserve and showcase our open spaces and there'll be information about that concept of keeping your eco footprint small so it should be a fun event. And of course everyone interested in recycling issues is welcome to poke around on the town's website. There's a lot of information and we add to it from time to time, people have questions. So I just wanna say thanks to everyone in Arlington for all of your enthusiasm for recycling. Thank you. Yeah. So the, I don't know, 15, 20, Dunkin' Donuts styrofoam cups, they use a week. Does that count? I have to check the information. I think they are but some companies are and some companies aren't. It depends, yes, that'll be there and I'll be sure to send a follow-up email and clarify that since you'll be an excellent source of styrofoam, Kevin. And then when I don't show up on Saturday she'll be yelling at me but hey, Ms. Mahan? Maybe Ms. Mahan will help. I will, I've been down there for stinky sneakers. Yes, that's right, you're a big part of it. Are there three people here from Brackett? Yes, stand up. God bless you. Who sneezed, I mean, God bless you too. But first I wanna commend you on stepping to the forefront and initiating the program up at Brackett. Two of my three kids went there and I have a little affinity to it. I was PTO president for five years but in that vein I would like to say to my colleagues at Brackett, if you could possibly explore, I also have an affiliation with the lab collaborative program and Lexington lab, their older kids, their 16 to 22 kids, they had contacted me about they really wanted to get recycling places that recycle toners and the like. For them to get it and recycle it. It's like part of their job, they learn how to package it and send it and so I hooked them, I connected them with the town manager in town hall but I'm thinking the schools, elementary, middle and high school, perhaps if you could contact whoever runs the lab program. It used to be John Pike, I don't think that's the person anymore. There's a new special ed director I think they're interviewing for. So maybe if my colleagues from Brackett could sort of explore that and then the contact person up at lab is Tom Riley and they're right out of Lexington high school and he'll connect you with the person that runs that program for those kids because it really helps them train for that kind of vocation. I'm familiar with the program. Yeah, it's a great program. Yeah, and it may already be happening but I don't see it has in the past. I haven't been in the building but yeah. I haven't seen it at the high school or middle schools but maybe, you know, I don't know if there's still townwide PTO if you still do that, maybe that could be. So thank you. Move receipt. Move receipt. I'll second that. I have a couple of comments. Sure. Thanks. Thank you Julie for the great presentation and also Kim and the rest of the Brackett folks for what you're doing. I know my wife volunteers up at Stratton in the cafeteria a couple of times a week and I know that they've looked at the Brackett example and have been starting to do this too and she said that the impact is just extraordinary, the amount of stuff that the kids are recycling. The kids are getting it, they get it. I want to give you an opportunity to give an extra pitch though. You mentioned the Echo Fest. I know that my older daughter has been hard at work on her trash formations sculpture. If you wanted to give a pitch on that. I'm not very familiar with the details. I think it's a very fun idea. The contestants are all submitting various forms of art and DPW staff will be judging and sending out awards. And so it's art made out of recyclable items is the rule and I think it's a lot of fun. I don't understand I can make art out of trash and maybe get it hung at the monotony liquor store. I hesitate to agree with you having not seen your work, Mr. Greeley, but you should hesitate. If you want to, sorry, Joe. That's fine. The art has to work. Oh, wait a minute though. Yeah, that's right. It's something else too. I know I ran into, Julie, I ran into you over the week and I briefly mentioned this. I think you may know that we've been getting a lot of questions lately about litter. As a matter of fact, one of the issues that was brought to us, we actually referred over to the recycling committee to take a look at. There was a question was raised with us about the feasibility of having covered recycling bins because when the wind comes through, unfortunately, we lose a lot of that recycling and gets turned into litter, which is not what we want. It's the wrong direction. But there was one other thing. We had a woman who I think was also a bracket parent. Ms. Ginz, Maya, yeah. She came in a few weeks ago and talked to us about litter and we were brainstorming a little bit here. I know that the recycling committee does community collection days twice a year. So you said May is the next one. May and November, yeah. And I was thinking and maybe the board can mull this over as well, that there may be an opportunity there for us to potentially partner and to encourage some of the community groups to run their cleanup days on that same day. So it's a community collection and cleanup day. There's an actual opportunity for folks who are doing the cleanups to bring things down to the DPW yard. I don't know if we could maybe talk about that more going forward, but I don't know if you have any thoughts about... No, that's an interesting idea. Recycling at the parks, it's difficult, the logistics. DPW doesn't have the staff to collect and sort. And if you put two bins next to each other, you risk both of them being equally contaminated with trash and recycling. So we have, I know that DPW, the recycling coordinator has a pilot program at one park now to try some things. And the results of that will certainly inform any work that we do. The recycling committee certainly follows if there's a way to get recycling in parks, which is part of the whole care and maintenance and would address hopefully some of the litter, at least in the parks and public spaces. So we continue to work on it and we'll... Yeah, we've got a little bit of time, I guess before the community collection day, and maybe we could brainstorm a bit about whether or not there's a way to encourage some broader involvement. Thank you. Great. My wife, the artist I was talking about earlier, she's a teacher's aide up at Brackett in the kindergarten group. And she's talked about this program. So she's reminded me about how I should be better at my recycling as well. We encourage you, Mr. Greenwood, yes. I'm trying, I'm trying. Well, you know, people who go through my trash can remind me of what I have or what I haven't. You should get the kids to come sort it for you. They're very good now. Yes. So on the motion for receipt and strong endorsement by Mrs. Mohan and seconded by Mr. Kuro, I'm always amazed what you've been able to demonstrate recycling saves us. A lot of people didn't like that. We do force recycling now. But the results of which are the $2 million savings that you talked about and really a trash contract that really for 10 years at other communities end being. Yes. Absolutely. Thank you for all your excellent efforts. All those in favor of receipt, please see the five by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed. Thank you very much for being here. Thank you. And look who's here. We weren't gonna let you slip in, Adam. We're having too much fun with Andrew. So Andrew, before you go, I'm sorry that we did talk about the manager's evaluation before he was able to get here. What were those points you were making about? It kind of goes away with this guy. Good answer. Good answer. I foiled the coup. Adam, welcome back. Thank you. Have you been home or did you literally travel? Oh, I sleep in it. Like this, going out of a wrinkle. We're at item seven on the agenda of the Arlington Committee on Tourism and Economic Development. I see Angela is with us, Mr. Curell. Yes, thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Yes, I'd like to introduce Angela Olszewski, the chair. It's incorrectly noted on our thing Angela mentioned. She said it would be lovely if she had a second person to help her with this, but she actually really does a yeoman's job, carrying a lot. I think I mentioned when we were interviewing with some of the latest vacancies that we seem to have more projects than people at times on ATED, and it seemed an opportune moment for an update from the chair on what the Tourism and Economic Development Committee has been doing. There are a lot of activities that are coming up in the next couple of months, and there are a few areas where I think we would like to ask for the board's support as well. So I'd like to turn it over to Angela, and then maybe I'll be happy to fill in if need be. Thank you. So as Joe mentioned, we have a lot going on right now, and we do have a couple of warrant articles. We have one in the special town meeting and one in the annual. The one in the annual is for the manufacture and installation of the directional signage that was approved last year. The design was approved last year at town meeting, and the procurement process took a little longer than we expected, but we are gonna be working now with the designer to get those all set, and then we're asking for the money this year so that when we're ready, we can manufacture those. The article in the special town meeting is for a visitor information booth, and if you remember, I came before you and asked for permission to put up our tent for a couple of weekends in the fall, and we did that, and we thought that was a really good experiment, and we liked being out there and talking to people and giving them information about town, so we decided that one of our projects this year would be to try to put a semi-permanent visitor information booth near the Uncle Sam statue. So we've asked for funds for that. We also have coming up this summer, July 13th, we are having an Arlington, Arlington Alive Arts Festival we're calling it, and the town's been involved in that. We have a whole bunch of groups working on that. We received a grant from the Cultural Council, and we're working with the Center for the Arts and all of that, so that's in the process right now. That's gonna be a street fair kind of thing. Also, big coming up right now, and we're gonna ask you to do a proclamation, is Patriots Day weekend, and we wanna celebrate monotony. So I just wanna give you a few highlights of things that are going on in the weekend. We're trying to be the coordinating force for all of this. It's kind of the parade committee does the parade, and the Historical Society has things at the Jason Russell House, but we're trying to pull everything together so that it's a cohesive weekend, and everybody knows that there's things going on. We're hopeful that there's gonna be bunting on some of the businesses on Mass Ave. Bob Bose has been working on that, and he definitely has interest. So we're looking at that probably for the beginning of that week. Something else that's going on right now, just kicking this off, is something called Mention Monotomy, where we're inviting the business community to participate also, and offer some kinds of discounts or deals that weekend to customers who come in and mention monotomy. And we also are talking about all of the events and leading up to the Lancer's ride and everything on our Twitter feed, which is, if you can follow us on Twitter, it's at greet riders, monotomy's waiting. And we do have a website finally too, so we're starting to post events up there. That's arlingtonma.org. So you know on Saturday of that weekend, the Jason Russell House will be open from one to four, and there's gonna be weather permitting, children's activities on the lawn and refreshments. There'll be tours, and the monotomy minimum will be there. We were also happy to find out at the Historical Society, we had the house dated, and we found out that, while the main part of the house was built as expected, the rafters, many of the rafters in the inside frame, actually we believe came from grandpa Jason Russell's house, and they date back to about 1640, so we're celebrating with a housewarming. On Sunday we have the parade, that starts at two, and the Jason Russell House will be open for tours from noon to four, and then Monday morning, the Minutemen will be doing their traditional flag raising and burying ground ceremonies. So it starts at 7.15, Lexington is not the only town that gets up early in the morning on Patriots Day, so come down and join them, it's nice, I did it last year, and they march back over from the Jason Russell House to the old burying ground playing music, and everybody who doesn't know about it pulls over in their cars and watches, but it's a nice way to honor those who lost their lives that day here, it's very important, and then we'll be doing our event again, which is, we call it the Monotomy Welcoming Committee, and that's where we greet Paul Revere and William Daz, and that was really successful, I know Kevin, you were there last year, I forget who else came, but we had, we think, at least 100 people down there, and we hit crafts for the kids, Diane Taraz is gonna be performing again, and we're gonna be sponsored by Bo's Real Estate again, too, so. And I'm gonna do that thing where they, we're able to watch where Paul Revere was, like on a map or something on the, Yes, that's what we do on the Twitter feed that day. We actually have people tweeting along the way, so for example, we knew when Paul Revere was in Medford, so we had an idea of when he was coming, and we're getting more followers, so hopefully we will have even better intelligence along the route. We had people over in Somerville or something who were seeing William Daz, but they thought it was Paul Revere, you know, that kind of thing. Well, and I'm not sure whether it'll be William Daz or Paul Revere this year, do we know which it will be? We get both of them. I think William Daz is a scheduled stop, but Paul Revere always stops, too, so as far as I know, we'll get both of them. And actually, you're gonna be reading, right? We have you reading this year. Yes, that's in my children, and you shall hear. Yes. You poor souls, me reading a poem. But Daz did this great poem out in front of Town Hall last year. Yeah, yeah, I think we, yeah. Maybe you can, if you can read that one too, and we were even saying too, because maybe we can get the kids to sort of chant the refrain, which I think is something like, and his name is, my name is Daz, and his is Revere or something. Yeah. Yeah, that'd be great. It's your whereas thing that you like. Yeah. But it was, you know, my 24 years, that by far was the most lively, welcoming Paul Revere that I've ever attended. It was pretty cool. Thank you. Thoughts, comments, Joe? Something else? Well, I think we all had in the- Do you have emotions or? Well, we all had, yeah. I would like at least one or one or two. I think we all had in our packets a copy of the proclamation, which was requested by ATED. We have a proclamation. Should we read it or should we? Go ahead, Ryan. Okay. It's fairly short. Whereas in 1775, Arlington was known as Monotomy, and whereas on the eve of the American Revolution, Paul Revere and William Daz rode through Monotomy, warning the residents that the British regulars were out, and whereas Minutemen and militia from Monotomy and surrounding communities gathered in our town and prepared to meet the regulars in battle on their retreat to Boston, and whereas on April 19th, 1775, the fiercest fighting of the day occurred on the plains of Monotomy, and 12 patriots, including residents, Jason Russell, Jason Winship, and Jebez Wyman lost their lives, and whereas each year on Patriots Day weekend, Arlington celebrates its history with numerous community events, highlighted a parade, which is one of the largest of its kind in the nation, and whereas the people of Arlington have shown a commitment to spreading the word regarding our historic heritage and assuming our rightful place alongside our neighboring communities and the hearts and minds of American patriots, now therefore be it resolved that we, the members of the Board of Selectment, do hereby proudly proclaim that Arlington shall once again be known as Monotomy from April 13th through April 15th, 2013, in honor of the important role that our residents played on the first day of the American Revolution, and that we urge the residents of our town to celebrate and pay fitting observance of the solemn occasion, and I would move, I would move adoption of the proclamation. I'll look, Ms. Mahon. If I could, and I'm sure Mr. Carol Jones, Ms. Elzewski, Angela are working on this, but whatever, nope, sorry, whatever the town can do in terms of, I know Mr. Greeley cited there was a great attendance last year, I started posting it on five lists, which, you know, are very well versed, including a parents list, and it is on the town website, but I don't know, it might be too late, but if there's any way, we can either a couple days before the parade and or during have somewhere in an appropriate fashion, if it's available, the LED announcement board that kind of lists our events and activities, because a lot of people don't know that, you know, at 12 o'clock this happens, and or I don't know if we can get, I know out front is advertising event, I think March 23rd and 24th, maybe we can get something that again lists the Sunday and Monday activities, because so many people say, and the town website, congrats to Joan Roman, is very well used, but I know that, you know, there's a lot of people who are not reaching that when they hear about it afterwards, they say, oh, and the best thing is last year, word of mouth, you know those 100 people, probably told at least two or three people. So, and it may be too late for this year to get something out on the sandwich boards, maybe next year, but I'm gonna leave it to Mr. Carol, Ms. Azulski and the town manager to see if there's any other way we can get sort of a listing of the events for people who aren't on the town website all the time and don't get bothered by emails from me. Thank you. May I ask another question? There was like a poster contest for the kids last year, right? For them to make posters, to hold up when Power Deer and William Dawes came along. Am I right? They made posters, we didn't have a contest, but they did make posters. Yes. And they could bring the posters. Yeah, we're gonna do that again. That's a good idea though, we could have a contest actually, I hadn't thought of that. Again, can adults submit posters? But maybe we'll read this proclamation that day too, so remember we did want to stratton to get the kids involved with doing the warehouses, they really, they get into it, but anything else? If we could vote it, then I have one other thing, I just wanted to ask you. If we could vote it. Yeah. Okay, so Kevin, do your job. All those, that was on a motion by Mr. Carol, seconded by? Mr. Dunn. Mr. Dunn, all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed. We shall be monotony from April 13th through the 15th. Thank you. Thank you. The other thing that I think Ms. Olszewski mentioned, there are two warrant articles that were submitted by the ATED, one specifically pertaining to historic signs, it's 44, and then one pertaining to the visitor center, which is three on the special. These are actually FINCOM articles. FINCOM has heard them and they're considering them for the appropriation amount. I didn't know if there was precedent for the board to endorse articles in concept though, especially on the visitor center, that involves land that is under our control, so we will have to actually pass off on the project ultimately, regardless. I don't know if that needs to be posted as an actual warrant article hearing for the board to endorse when we're not the reporting. Learning council, did you hear the question? I prefer it. Yeah, if it's not on the agenda. I prefer it. I prefer it. And could I post it if the board was going to take a position? Okay, that makes sense. Because I have no trouble taking a position on it, but I agree with Mr. Dunn. If you're going to ask me to support spending money, I need backup. You got it. All right. To that point, could we post our hearing and endorsement of it after FINCOM has voted on it, as we can hear that? That's what I would like. Just like we're doing that with the retirement compensation. Okay. Anything else? Come back around to that. Okay. Anything else, Mr. Currow? Nope, that's it. I'll say that. And I only say that because the main motion is FINCOM, and I don't want them taking any sort of unfounded intention that we're voting on something that it's their baby. And, you know, so that's why. It makes perfect sense. Okay. Thank you, Angela. Thank you. Thank you. So next is correspondence received. And I just want to bring up one thing on the agenda. Marie, I think this is my fault. But correspondence should go back to the end of the agenda. It was that night there was someone here on one of the, that I wished I'd taken it out of order. But I didn't mean to entertain you that, sorry. So thank you for being responsive to me. But I think that correspondence normally should, but if someone's here for it, I'm more than glad to take it out of order so they don't have to stay through the rest of the night. So that said, on correspondence received, Mr. Dunn. Mr. Chairman, I have already informed the town manager and the board administrator that I need to recuse myself from any discussion of the water on Alpine Street because those are my immediate neighbors. So I'm taking this opportunity to inform my colleagues that I will not participate in any discussion or votes or anything related to that particular issue. Okay. Do you want to make a motion to move receipt on the Bob Valeri, Seven Wheaton Road and Christopher Amalajidjan correspondence? And then we'll both, I'll second that. And if I just, sorry, could briefly say, could we refer the request for speed bump on North Union Street to TAC to get in the queue? And also on the Master Road Scholar for Daniel Warn. I want to commend him on that. We have some correspondence in here that indicates he's a Master Road Scholar. He attended a minimum of 22 training sessions, which included snow and ice operation and it lists other things. And I do want to say, as a result of this very active winter we've had, quite a few people have emailed me. Some people say we're not doing it so well, but quite a few, at least 20, 30 emailed me and people have stopped me in the street and said, boy, what a difference from seven to nine years ago when Mr. Hurd was the chair of the committee, Snow and Ice, and I sat down as vice chair and we really tried to tackle, and I'll bring it up under new, well, I'll say now, when appropriate, when Mr. Rademacher, Mr. Chapter Lane, and Mr. Warren think appropriate that the season's wrapped up, we just have that one Snow and Ice committee, because that really got us into, nothing's perfect, and it was a blizzard, but quite a few people said, boy, what a difference from seven or eight years ago. And congratulations to Mr. Warren on completing that. Mr. Cura. To that end, I'd just note that in our packets, I think about a month ago, there was a very nice article about Mr. Warren completing that in the mass interchange newsletter, which is from Bay State Roads, and I know that that's posted up on their website. It gives a little bit more information and we're all very proud. Am I right? Do we have a policy on speed bumps on public roadways? I don't believe there's any standing policy. I don't believe there's any standing policy. I mean, it has just been requested before and whoever the fire chief was at the time, I'm sorry, I don't remember. That was an issue in terms of speed bumps on public ways, but anyhow, I agree with referring it to TAC and let's see what they come back with. I just wasn't sure if there was some policy. Okay, so on those two, motion to receive and refer all those, and congratulate Mr. Warren. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. All those opposed. To move receipt of the Alpine Street correspondence. Second. And Adam, did you wish to comment on that Alpine Street from the water issue? Well, only that in the board's informational packet, there was a letter in response to the letter received from the residents on Alpine Street that I copied the board on for further explanation. And I think basically where this is a private way and it's a condition by a homeowner of the town, we can't really get involved. We have no power. Absolutely correct. Very legitimate issue raised by the residents on Alpine Street, but because it is a private way, there's very limited if anything the town can do to involve themselves in the issue. Thank you. Okay. So this is just a move receipt, please. Yep, for Ms. Mahon. Second. Second. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed. Any baby yet, Mrs. Mahon? Not yet, no. Is everybody sending funny comments about this meeting? About what a fine job you're doing. Yeah, I got the answer. And a request for artwork, but that's all. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not gonna read the artwork. All right, warrant article hearings. I don't know why we decided Mr. Dunn is to move off of Alpine Street. I think that's... Yeah. Okay, this is article nine, grant of easements Thompson School seat the town will vote to grant permanent easements or other interests in certain land surrounding the Thompson School for the purpose of placing utility polls or take any action related there to Mr. Chapter Lane. So this request was started or was initiated by Verizon and they need to locate utility polls for getting power to the Thompson School. I'll let Town Council elaborate. It was unclear to us through the Research Town Council has performed why, why an easement was necessary, but Verizon is requesting it for the legal placing of the polls to be able to supply power. So we advanced the warrant article and I don't know if you wanna... I'll let Town Council answer anything further. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I apologize for paying attention to my phone. We're trying to handle the ARB meeting at the same time. But I think Mr. Chapter Lane has explained my understanding is that there were three utility polls that existed on or budding the sidewalk and with the new redesign of the Thompson School with head in parking, they've been moved back to the non-sidewalk portion of the Town Land. I don't know if the Verizon representative is here. I guess she is to explain the basis for the request. Mr. Chairman and members of the board, my name is Elizabeth Kelly. I'm at Precision Valley Communications and the authorized agent for Verizon. And yes, we have requested an easement, permanent easement to be signed for location of the polls. And I'm in receipt of a letter of consent from the Arlington Public Schools that they are aware and approve of our submission to the article for the easement to be brought to the annual Town meeting. Mr. Dunn. So Town Council passed out a memo for us in our packet and she said that I gathered from the memo that ordinarily this would be done through something called the grant of location as opposed to an easement. Can you explain to me why this one it would be an easement as opposed to? No, grant of location is something that is done when we are asking for our facilities to be placed within a public way. Thompson School is owned by the town and we consider that a private property owned by the town or owned by a town board. So therefore it wouldn't fall under the jurisdiction of Mass General Law 166, Chapter 22 which covers the grant of location which technically is utilities have the right to be in the public way and the town boards are basically acting as agents or representatives of the state just so that we can work with the town on the locations. But the actual grant of location is a license and it's not permanent and the placement of our facilities we look for the most permanent right we can get. So any time we run a private property parcel we request an easement and that would be both companies both in Star and Verizon. And in this case it's a jointly owned polls and a joint easement in the names of both companies. May I have Ms. Rice? Yeah. Are you, are your questions that you posed in the memo satisfied or? I really still don't see the need for permanent easement because the grant of location is a word for giving permission and the board gives permission for placement of utilities on its property frequently. Do you think we should say yes or no? If I get the question as to why it's required by town meeting I'm still not gonna be able to answer the question. So I mean the board can certainly do what it chooses. If the board were to recommend this and town meeting were to authorize it were to come back to the board to grant the easement. It's certainly within the board's power to do that but as Ms. Kelly points out it's a permanent easement that will outlast the Thompson School. And I get asked a lot of times about undoing easements that have been granted in the past and they're difficult to undo. They have to go back to town meeting. Mr. We, but we happen to have a moderator, Mr. Leone. Yeah. Are you talking about this? No, no, do you have a feeling on this? Do you understand what we're discussing now, John? I, I, um, sorry. I was just, it's pretty easy with this permit. We never give it up. It's up to Verizon to give it up. Okay. I don't understand the, uh... So yeah, but us going back to town meeting if we have to take it back. Yep, thank you, John. I didn't mean to put you on the spot. I just, Mr. Curell. Yes, it sounds like, um, you know, the issue isn't just the permanence. It's also the expeditiousness. We could much more expeditiously issue a grant of locations. Is that not true? That's correct. And my understanding is that's already... We won't accept a grant of location because that's not our procedures over many, many years. And neither company will set the polls on private property without a permanent right. I'm just... So it will delay the project. And, and I just want to add that. And it's certainly the purview of the board to make a recommendation. But in, um, I'm currently, um, going for a, you know, applying for a license to another town, the town of Lincoln, for a project of an expansion of a town building. Very same situation. We had to relocate. And the problem is that, see, our facilities, as regulated companies, our facilities are, we would have to pass on costs to relocate if we don't have the most permanent rights. When we have permanent rights, in the future, we are taking action to be responsible about protecting our assets that we don't have to come back and then turn around and charge ratepayers for a change of use of a property. So once we're there, then the secondary thing is certainly the use of the property can change. But when that owner comes, the secondary owner, next owner, comes and wants something moved, we don't have to go out and, and automatically relocate at somebody's discretion and turn those costs over to ratepayers. So other polls in Arlington, those are all permanent easements? If they're on private property, they should be. I can't say that they are exactly good. I've always said temporary easement and we have other problems. I wonder whether our town councils should speak with their council on this further or, I mean, I understand what you're saying, but they won't do it. And I don't wanna delay the project by any stretch. So where are we here? I mean, I'm very confused as to why this is considered private property. I mean, it's public property, correct? It's school property, it's public property. The deed is not in the, in the name of the town. It's in the name of the school board, the school committee. Which is public, which is a public board. No, it's, yeah, why don't we investigate? I'm a former school committee member, ma'am. It's a public board, it's a public board. Well, I understand it's a public board, but it's not considered public property. It's not for the use of everybody. All right, well, why don't we, Like the street is. Thank you. This is the first I'm hearing of this. Normally, and we have one that was voted at the last meeting and tonight, it's a temporary easement. So why don't we do as the chairman suggested, have Ms. Rice contact. I'm blanking on your name and or council to see if we can do what we've done in the past with municipal property, school, town, public. And if the temporary easement allows you to continue on. And then you can rectify that within the next two weeks. Is that's not appropriate, Ms. Rice? That's fine, I'm happy to do that. It is my understanding that the polls have been placed pursuant to a grant of location. They already have been placed. My understanding is they were placed last week. That's not a grant of location in the way we look at it. It's a license, but a grant of location is a special, the grant of locations is a license that is granted just for use on public way. Okay, so we'll investigate it. No, I don't private property. They're already there. It's the permanence of it for us. You can understand when we're building that school, at some point in the future, they're probably gonna have to do that again. And who knows, you know, there was talk about repositioning it completely on the field this year. So I feel better if we ask town council to come back to us. I'm not opposed to it, I just, but I hear that you need it. So, and we have time before town meeting to be able to discuss this and take a vote before town meeting. So move to table to March 18th. Second. March 18th, is that all right with you? Sure. It should be just a quick thing. That's the only reason. We have a full agenda on the 18th. Maybe you don't even have to be here for that. If it's been answered to your satisfaction with our town council, Ms. Gallup, okay? That's fine, thank you. Okay, thank you. Should I be asking you to table this without prejudice or anything like that? Yeah, we're not prejudiced. Yeah. So yes, it is, yeah, I mean, we wanna do it for you. We just wanna, we wanna do it to protect the town as you understand it. Could I also note something? I realize you came in on this warrant article. You might wanna stay for a couple minutes because there is one, we are hearing another warrant article regarding utility polls and you may be helpful to the conversation. Okay. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Okay, so on the motion to table by Ms. Mahan, seconded by Mr. Byrne. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Next hearing is on article 12, I believe. Bylaw or amendment, town meeting, electronic voting to see if the town will vote to amend the town bylaws to amend the method of voting at town meeting to allow electronic voting or take any action related there to his gentleman. Good evening. Eric Helmuth, chair of the town meeting, electronic voting study committee and John Leone, moderate or a member of the committee. Thank you very much. The committee at the direction of town meeting has spent the last several months studying this issue intensely. I wanna thank the committee for working very hard for several months. We have about half the committee who are town meeting members and half the committee are community members who are technology professionals that has led to a very rich and thorough investigation. Electronic voting systems improve the accountability of municipal legislative bodies simply by making it easy to quickly and accurately record individual votes and make those votes very easily available to the public. And in recent years, systems like this have become affordable to even modest size communities in towns which have town meetings. And in fact, in Massachusetts, they are already being used. Currently, the towns of Brookline, Framingham, Bill Ricka, Chelmsford and Weyland are operating electronic voting systems for their representative town meetings. Weyland's doing it with open town meeting. And currently, other towns besides Arlington that are seriously studying and considering this are Lexington, Belmont and Amherst that we know of. The technology is familiar to a lot of people who are in school settings, university settings or even business seminars, audience response, clickers or things like that sometimes call the host or the teacher asks for your vote, you hold them up, you see the results on the screen. And a couple of innovative companies have taken that technology and added layers of security and databases to allow secure, reliable voting by municipal bodies. So there's a handheld device, looks like a TV remote, you click that, it goes to a radio receiver that's attached to a computer that's running a special software on top of PowerPoint. The computer display shows the votes that are currently up for voting on the screen and then can show the results of the tally or if desired, the actual individual votes of each member in a rotating grid up on the screen. The systems that we have started to look at are very flexible and they allow a number of configuration options to suit the specific needs and desires of how the town meeting wants to operate the system. The benefits of the system as we see it are really an improvement. Nothing is broken in town meeting. The way we're voting has been working well for a number for a long time, decades and longer, but it's an opportunity to improve, specifically to improve accountability because what these systems do is make it really easy for us as representative town meeting members, as representative legislators at the most local level to communicate to our constituents what positions we take on their behalf. The systems like this and procedures like this have the ability and the potential to further elevate town meeting as a real legislative body that's representing the interests of their constituents. The system may save a little bit of time, especially as we would get used to it. Not enough to shave a night off of town meeting and that's not really the main driver of this and the committee feels very strongly that there are some incidental benefits like that and ease and flow that could become apparent, but we're really interested in this for the accountability. We have, as I mentioned, been aware of other communities. We've paid visits to Brookline and Framingham and watched many hours of community access video of other towns that are using these systems and we've talked with them. We've talked with their moderators, with their technology staff, with town meeting members and have found across the board a wide level of acceptance, of ease of use, of reliability, of confidence by the town meeting members. We went to Brookline the first night they used the system and it went off without a hitch. People were prepared and well trained. I talked to some town meeting members in Framingham who really represent a cross section of the town. Not one of them had anything bad to say about the system. They said it's been really well received. The community has been very glad to get this extra information on the website of the town after each meeting and how their representatives voted and it's gone very well and in the study of our committee, thus far we have reached similar conclusions about the potential. And your packets is an example of our study as a request for information, an RFI that we issued to a couple of leading vendors. If you're interested in the responses I'd be happy to make those available. But we were satisfied and more important the technology professionals on our committee were satisfied that the systems as described and marketed currently are reliable, secure, do what we need them to do. Also regarding the financing of a system there's another motion in your packet from the finance committee, a vote that they took. And we appeared before them a couple of weeks ago and they agreed to appropriate, don't pending approval of this by town meeting both by by law, which is why we're here tonight and by overall enthusiasm, a sum of $10,000 that would fund the rental of a system for as many sessions as it would go in the year 2014. And the reason for that had to do with capital expenditure planning and other considerations but that's where we're at with that. And I think finally it's important to note that we have carefully consulted with key stakeholders in the town. We've spoken at length with the town clerk and her staff, the town manager, the town IT director. I've had a lot of conversations with the moderator. And so far even when we've talked to has been supportive in principle feeling that this is a practical system that the town could support and operate. I will turn this over to Mr. Leone to specifically discuss the vote that our committee took last week and the bylaw warrant article that's before you. And happy to entertain any questions now or after he's done. Thank you very much. I'm going to expand a little bit on what Eric said. Basically every town meeting member upon entering the hall after they check in with the clerk at the front desk would be issued their own clicker. And I say clicker because they look like a TV clicker. We would all have our own designated number. If the thing stopped functioning we'd be able to hot swap it out give them a new one right then and there they would just have to get the attention of the moderator give them a new clicker where it's good to go. The devices have besides all the normal numeric keypad they have a one, two and three button or yes, no and abstain button. The way we would work it is instead of calling for all everybody in favor say yes. Everybody in favor press one. Everybody opposed press two and then they have the option to abstain. We wouldn't count the abstentions just as we don't count them now. And the bylaw as we're envisioning it right now I would between Wes Beale who's here Adam Oster and myself we've got a subcommittee rewriting some possible bylaws. The one that we're leaning towards would take their existing bylaw and just add in in the first instance the vote would be by voice or if available electronic tally device which is seems to be what they call the clicker. I guess clickers wouldn't look too good in our bylaw. And that would give us the option if they're broken the system's down we can still move forward and go ahead and vote. On all the housekeeping articles further in the warrant where we just go through knock out 10 of them, 15 of them the night before our ending they're all unanimous votes just keep doing those by voice because it's too quick, it's unanimous boom, boom, boom. In the second instance right now if five people arise after voice vote we do the standing vote. The clicker if we used it in the initial vote would eliminate the need for standing vote altogether because we have a couple different options on how to display our information. The behind us on the big screen we can either list the tally, 118 yeses, 38 noes or we can put up their Mr. Chapter Lane who's not a town meeting member but we'll use him voted yes. That would be if we went with that it would make every voted a facto roll call. I'm personally kind of against that for one it'll take too much time. The committee has come up with in the third instance we'll also use if 35 members should arise we'll do a roll call or an electronic tabulation. In that case we have two options. Right now we do a second vote. Everybody stands up, you voted once yes or no. We could either so to speak pull the screen back and show everybody voted the first time around and just display how we all voted or we can have a second vote. We were gonna present those two options to town meeting. Eliminating the second vote in our opinion would be a not a radical change but it would change our tradition of having the second option. So we were bantering that one back and forth so we came up with is that we will go to first three paragraph two paragraphs of the bylaw we'll just add in the tally and then one of them would say if 35 people arise we'll reveal the vote. If 35 people arise we'll do another vote. It'll only take 10 to 20 seconds whatever we decide is the right amount of time. Brookline uses 20 seconds. I think framing here might be 40. But it's always done in 20 seconds? Yeah extremely quick. So we were gonna present that two options A and B to town meeting. The other part that we were thinking of adding into the bylaw is if we don't display all of the numeric tally how everybody individually voted we want it to be on the website the next day so that my constituents come back and how did John vote on that leaf blower article? How did he vote on that? He would say that. That doggie one. Well that's the only one. Only one we've had a roll call in 19 years. So it's not gonna really save us time in the roll calls because we don't really have that many. It's gonna be that ability for the citizens to see how we voted and to see how did they vote. And actually it's also gonna be an attendance keeper. Let's not fool ourselves. At the beginning of the meeting we're gonna have to say everyone test your clicker. We're gonna know if everybody's there. The end of the night maybe we can do motion to adjourn with the clicker. We're gonna find out who left. So. Are you saying town meeting members leave before the meeting's over? No. Never. I think to the point of will this create, we hope that it does create more discussions with town meeting members about votes. And the dog votes and leaf blower votes can be stimulating discussions. But what it also does is if it's used for all the important votes is it creates a whole body of votes that we as town meeting members can be, we can be judged by the entirety of our work. All our votes in our service and not just those hot button votes which is what we have now if there's a one off roll call on a really controversial vote. This gives me as a town meeting member the opportunity to have many of my votes on record. And I can say look at everything else I do. You know, I'm not just about this one vote. Yes, sir. I'm really interested in this and I thank you for your excellent work, Eric and John and Wes and the rest of the committee for all that you've done. So, sometimes a town meeting after the break. There seems to be less people in the hall than were there before the break. I'm not saying I have ever left after or before the break. What is to prevent me from handing Steve and my clicker? Well, hopefully for me and make it look like I'm there. Well, yeah, besides the town meeting it's a moral aptitude of not wanting to be a cheater. The guy sitting next to you saying, hey, Mr. Moderator, Mr. Kruppelka has three clickers. That's all she has? Yeah, that's all she has. You would hope that the other town meeting members would turn them in because it does really, to do that, defeats the whole purpose of a representative. I agree, I'm just asking. It would just be the moderator and the other town meeting members severely shunning that person. If we have the votes displayed on the screen as well, someone can say, well, Mr. Greeley voted, is Mr. Greeley in the room? Right, yeah. And other towns have dealt with this very proxy voting because of the term and they've dealt with this. And I think the short answer is all these deterrents that are possible, if we really needed to we could have tight control over the administration and turning in of the votes. But it's also worth noting that that is a new potential instance of fraud that this system could introduce. It also knocks out a couple of existing potential we have now where people can be in the enclosure and either intentionally inadvertently participate in a voice or a standing vote, which this system almost 100% precludes. So there are trade-offs. So you've been saying, for example, like up on the screen, I should miss the chapter and voted yes. So I assume that each town meeting member would need to be assigned a particular numbered clicker, tally. Correct. So I'm number 252 throughout the next town meeting season. So here's my real question to that, which is it always irks me, I don't know who's on the speaker's list. This is not a criticism, we've done it for years. But for example, the vote comes up to stop debate, whatever word I'm looking for. Terminate. And oftentimes we say to John, John, how many names are on the list, right? And so often he and Stephanie are just there and that's all they have to do on some of these issues because there's so many hands going up. If we have a number assigned, is a technology such, could we also then on an article put a speaker's list up so someone clicks and says, I wanna speak on this and the name appears, did they do that in Brookline or Framingham? No town has taken that option and actually one of the vendors, how did they put it? We asked about the capability and they said it is possible but not recommended. And if this moves forward we would have a conversation with them to see what they meant. Yeah, I think one of the problems with that is that you're gonna have the jeopardy. Who's gonna press the button first? Right now, we see the hands. Well what, the hands don't go up within the first second you say, you know. Yeah, by the time I look up, you see all the hands and you start writing them down. But that should see an electronic system. The first click is the first name that goes up and the number's already assigned to people. But then it's a matter of, I don't know how the... Anyhow. We didn't explore the software capabilities of that, just roll in front of me would roll. I know a couple of months, but if you don't mind, let me just finish my questions and I'll turn it over to one of my colleagues. But it just seems to me if a number is assigned to a name, I mean obviously now I chose not to run for town meeting because there's enough in my precinct. And so since there's a selectment I get a chance to speak but it erked the heck out of me last year, I didn't get to vote. But now I absolutely have to become a town meeting member if we're gonna use this tally to be counted. You're talking the next day in the paper, how do you really vote? Yeah, to vote, yeah, sure. He didn't vote. So anyhow, how close are we to being able to vote in a local election at home with this kind of technology? Mr. Dunn shaking his head. I was gonna say, it's far down the road. Oh wait. I'm just curious, I mean just the way technology is. It's a very different technology proposition. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh that was my first thought, can I vote by my phone? Right on that. But I would appreciate if we could look into that technology because I really do think, honestly if I see Eric's gonna, Eric is on the list to speak, I won't go on the list, he'll do a better job than I will, I'll shut up. But if I don't know who's on the list or how many are on the list or we're asked to suspend debate, just seeing that list to me I think makes all, it also shows us the whole town meeting, how big an issue is this, how interesting is this to people. And since we have to assign a number, it seems to me, they can't be that large a step in the technology to just John Carlson who'd like to speak, click, click, click, and all of a sudden 251 names go up in the list, Mr. Byrne. I'll get someone to move the question. That was the death. No, I agree, I really like this idea and I like Kevin's or Mr. Chairman's idea of making a list when people raise their hands. I'm sure. No question I had with the $10,000 potential to rent the clickers. Yeah. Is there, have you looked in the further down the road potentially, you know, buying it? Yeah, well, they, we went for the finance committee and we've got in the RFP a, we asked for how much will it cost to rent these things on the daily basis? What are the costs going forward for rental? How much to purchase it? To purchase it would be a capital item. So we're looking at a two year timeframe. If town meeting votes to go with it this year, that wouldn't put the devices in their hands till 2015. This way, if we rent it, we can have them in our hands next year. See if we like them. We might decide these are great, we gotta buy them. If we don't like them, we haven't bought them. So it's sort of a test run, as you say, Ms. Ha-Ha. But that would be the quickest way to get them into our hands. And the, when you talk about in the paperwork that we have here, to permits but does not require the use of electricity? Well, yeah, you don't want to require because if the computer crashes, we want to be able to continue. Just go back to the, go back to what we've been doing for 200 years. The expectation based on the experience of the communities is that once they've invested the money, in fact, I saw this on framing in this video, one of their sessions is once you've purchased or laid out an online to get a system, there is appropriate pressure to use it. So we're not too worried about people not being willing to use it as long as they trust it. But I think it is wise to not require it so that you can allow the glitches. I mean, even I'm gonna not trust a thing for three or four votes. Make sure when I press one, it shows up green next to my name. I'm gonna want to turn around and look. But after we've all gained trust in the system, that this thing actually when I press one and it says you voted yes, that it's really yes up there. To get that level of trust among the members, we'll probably use it on almost all the votes. I mean, why not? It's quick, it would eliminate any standing votes because we'd have a tally on every vote instead of me just saying, oh, the yes is one. And you can program it to the third majority threshold right into the software. So it's instant, you know, no calculator fingers. So the names are already up there and it just like in the state house, it's just the name is up. Well, no, it's a PowerPoint presentation. So with us, you could put up, whether it's four precincts at once or whatever is legible from the back of the hall. It's about 16 names per screen and then it rotates through. And it would just say Kevin Grayley, yes, no. But they can be sorted by precinct and alphabetical. We've seen them in the halls, it's pretty legible if you decide to show the names. Yeah, it just takes a few minutes to run through each of those screens, which is why you don't wanna do a roll call on every vote. Right, right. But I think that, you know, leaving the flexibility, not encoding, our recommendation is not to encode too many of those procedures in the bylaw so that there is time to grow with the system, learn with it, see what the moderator prefers, what time meeting members prefer, about questions like that. Thank you, Noah. It's very clear of the work, how much work he has put in this, so thank you. Mr. Mahun. I just have five points and maybe leave it with you all in the town manager. I'd like to see the RFIs that we received and it's too voluminous, just the summary at the beginning. I'd rather three, four pages. I'd just like to see it. That was my first thing. My second thing is I'm gonna wait until the committee in concert with the town manager. I envision the custodian of this as determined by the moderator and whoever else. Possibly will be IT, Dave Good. Dave's come to some of our meetings. Okay, but I'll leave that to you all but I'd like to know when that's decided, who is the person who oversees this in terms of physically. I looked through what you sent out for the RFI. It may be in there and I didn't see it but I was just curious when I get a copy of when the entire board gets a copy of the RFIs. I'm just curious if what happens in my house that clicker gets dropped three, four, five times a day. If there's one vendor or vendors that also, I didn't see that in the questions in here. I saw about battery and handheld. So if I could leave that with you. About durability? Durability, like they're gonna get dropped. So can we get the Duracell or the Dewan? The problem with the dropping when they pick it up, they're gonna get a wicked bad electric shock. So hoping after the second drop, they'll never drop it again. Then the last three things I have is again, I'll leave with the committee. You may already be doing this in concert with the town manager. If we could just maybe either inform or have we checked already and I didn't see that in here in terms of our requirements under the Disability Act, we need to have at least one for visually impaired or whatever. So if we could just investigate that and I know the Commission on Disabilities has said, we're here, we're here as a resource. I don't know if that's, or at the very least, if you could report. Yeah, if you could send them a report or whatever. Just because they sometimes feel like we're leaving them out of the loop. We don't intentionally do that, but so we're trying to get them in. And then the last two points when you were talking about, this is an enhancement, I agree. Talking about possibly, again, town meetings gonna have the ultimate say on this. Possibly eliminating the second vote. I like what Mr. Berger said, I think that was you, Eric, that we just want to hand. Helmet. Oh, Mr. Helmet. I have Beale, Berger, Helmet, sorry. I'd like to not eliminate anything. I'd like to enhance it, as you said. And then last, I would just be curious after looking at the RFIs, it may be in there and you're establishing who the custodian of it is. If there's any inherent program in the system that we ultimately purchased that sort of does what they do in labs and radiology labs, sort of a spot check program that just runs it on its own and checks it and says, I don't know if that exists in this technology. I know they do. Like internal test data? Yes. Yeah, I'm sure. But we don't necessarily have to do that because you're saying it's gonna go on the website the next day and the best person to look at that are the people who voted and they can say, hey, I know I voted that way. But I'm just curious, sometimes they add a feature like that. One of the devices that we're looking at, the leading vendor in Massachusetts, offers a device that gives a confirmation on it, it has a little screen and it confirms that you voted yes, no, or abstain and that's positive feedback from the receiver computing unit itself. So you know right away. So you know right away if you've done that. Which is the one where we're kind of. Oh no, no, it's a very good question and it's very, I think confidence in a vote is very important for this kind of change in this kind of system absolutely needs to be trusted. I'm all for it though, thank you Mr. Chairman. Okay, Mr. Kira. Thank you. Thank you for your work on this. I'm very excited, interested and appreciative of what you've done. I think you pointed to one potential issue that I think we all know will be there is that technology, even fairly simple technology can be fairly intimidating for some folks. It's gonna be very important if we go down this road to have a lot of training for folks annually because we know that we have turnover and I think that goes without saying, I'm sure. In my little head, I'm thinking, can this be where we run this? Not that else, it's technologically. Right, but you do need folks who have had a broad range of experiences and exposure to different technologies. Every one of our members use this, can they all, and because it's like a TV clicker and I think everyone has a TV, we all know how to press the button, but your point on training is well taken and the other towns have developed. A video. They have a video right on their website which we can do the same thing as well as the first date. Everybody test your device. Plus, we don't wanna see that it works. So we'll run a mock vote. Yeah, very good. Yeah, no, excellent point. Very good. I just had one question about what you've seen. I mean, you mentioned what happens if the system goes down, I get that. My bigger worry is if somebody, an individual either forgets their clicker or it suddenly malfunctions during a vote and doesn't record and making sure that there's some kind of a fail safe and some kind of a way that they can be accommodated. The no town allows the members to bring the device home. Chelmsford, I think they're a little extreme. You give them your driver's license. You get your clicker. At the end of the night, you give the clicker back and you get your driver's license back. I'm not for voter ID, so that's it. I don't think we want to go that route. The devices, we saw a failure of a handheld in either Framingham or Brookline and the devices are secure but they're hot swappable so the ID is transferred immediately in the database and so you buy, I think Lexington is buying 10% extra handhelds just to have a reserve so they're ready to go and be pressed into service if there is any kind of battery or... I don't worry about the scenario where you have a very close vote and one or two people, their clicker's failed and the vote is closed. What they provide us for is if my device isn't functioning you get to moderate his attention, he holds the timing on the vote. He or she will hold the vote timing until Mr. Coral gets a new clicker, he tested it right, Mr. Coral gets the vote, then we finish voting. And we can reveal... I'd expect a bunch of those at the beginning. Yeah, right. And he can reveal the votes on the screen. It's another reason we may choose to do that. Just so you know that your vote has been recorded right there in that moment. And a lot of the towns are doing that. Thank you. So do I understand then from your proposal that standing votes will essentially become obsolete? If we're using it as a telly, yes. We would have no reason to do it because if we're using the clicker and it says 118 to 12 there's no reason to have a standing vote. If it's less precise. Sure. I just wanna make sure I understood what you're saying. So... Leave the option in the bylaw. I understand, yeah. I am always fascinated with how technology changes the way people behave. And like the way, and it isn't just like, I mean they're pressing a button raising their hands. One of the things that I've always felt about town meeting is you get social signals by the other people who are standing up. So votes are swayed by exactly, by you see who's standing up and who isn't and you stand up and you don't at the same time. Did you guys talk about that? Because it feels like that in some ways is going away with this. Yeah, we discussed that how in standing votes, someone might vote one way and the second time on the standing vote they're gonna look around and say, ooh, oh my buddy's a stand up. Yeah. They conform to social pressure. Sure. If they sit in that section they're not gonna, okay they're gonna. That drives me nuts. This is to the broke line and Framingham have purchased, allows for the option of actually showing the votes coming in real time. So there is some of that feeling that if we would choose to do that, that you could wait until you see how your neighbor votes up on the screen, other towns have decided to not show that until the votes are in. And I think that really does speak to the issue of culture. And I was pleased that that particular system is flexible enough to account for that cultural preference. I guess I will say that I like the visual signals and I agree that there's definitely some times where it's like my buddies are doing this and so therefore I'm gonna do it the same thing. But there are other times where I know that there's a member of town meeting who has spent a lot more time on a particular issue than I have or has a lot more knowledge about a particular issue than I do and I would defer to their judgment or at least their judgment would impact me. So I would hope that we would go in the direction of permitting that to continue. Regardless, I'm supportive of the plan. I think you guys are doing great stuff but I think I just want to talk about that. I just do do one more question which is, so when will we actually see the proposed vote, like the actual vote of the change of bylaws? And just so you know my motive is so that we can have it in so that we can approve it, so that we can have it in our report and we can have that report in everyone's mailbox. Well those are two things I wanted to bring up. We have to finish debating how we're going to finish it. Present the two different options, the reveal and not reveal. Then I'm going to obviously work with Juliana on the final wording of it. I haven't given her anything yet, I'm holding it back. Then I've got to bring it to the town meeting procedure committee. Obviously they, it's their baby as well. They have come to one of our meetings. We've shared with them everything we've done so far. And at that point when, I guess the three parties, Juliana asked them, procedure committee, we could resubmit to you guys. What our couple different options are, have you vote on it? And we were going to ask if our report and our proposed votes could actually go into your packet. Are you going to be able to get it done? Oh yeah. Okay. Well that's right. Marie, when would he need to do all of this in order for it to be printed in the selection? He had asked to vote. I would say that it will go around the middle of April. Gene, 12 and 12 by the 12th. Oh we'd like it but you know. Okay. 12. When's our last, tell me 12th, I'm better off. Marie, when's the last time you guys can. When's our last meeting before that though? Eight or six? Eight, eight, eight. Six, eight, eight, eight, eight. Eight, eight, eight, eight, eight, eight, eight, eight. That's the real deadline. Yes, we could bring something on the eight. Okay. We could get the eight and then we could have to then bring it forward. Okay. Move approval. Yeah. Okay, move favorable action. Second. Second. And continue to a degree in terms of what finally comes out but we're clearly all excited about this and thank you for the kind of work you put into it. Just a point I wanted to make to Dan's point. This will be a different kind of visual signal as in, although I'm color blind, so I won't say if it's green or red or whatever the dot colors come up when it's a vote. I don't want to be under yes or no. Yeah, you'll go back to that. Pre-sync your name and the yeses column and no column. The colors are supplemental. We'll have to be a little thumbs up with a like on it. No, we have to talk about it. Okay. We are talking signals we can use. I'm just curious though, how large were the Brookline and Framingham town meetings? Because I'm wondering about 252 people checking in and out. A Brookline is 240 somethings or they're just a little bit under us? Okay, Framingham was well. Yeah, Framingham was well. But Whalen uses it and they're open town meeting and they get like 800. Wow, wow. But they don't have assigned clickers. Yeah, because it's an open town meeting. Right, that's right. It's anonymous. I think that we've seen, the two towns we visited had some volunteers that were assisting in multiple stations and the town clerk check-in was different and you did that and then you got your assigned clicker. Yeah, that would have to be worked out and would require some dedicated support. Great. The visual signals, but there'll be lots of speeches before we actually ever get to touch that clicker. So we'll certainly have an idea of our friends and colleagues or those we admire or don't and those speeches that they've given one way or another. So move favorable action by Mrs. Mahan and seconded by, was that you, Stephen? I think Joe got it. Joe raised it. Joe Kuro, all those in favor, please stand by by saying aye. Aye, all those opposed. unanimous, thank you very much. Thank you again. Thank you. Okay, the next is article 13, which is a bylaw amendment regarding animal control regulations. But before we do that, Jessica, I don't know whether you will be able to or not, but recently in the selectman's office, if Kevin doesn't laugh this over, Jessica, tell me if you can get that or not. We, Mary Bartholomew, who actually now lives in California, but recently was cleaning out the attic of her grandfather in Medford and came across this calling all dogs from 1939 here in Arlington, and it was for an anti-Rabic vaccine, which was free of charge by the Board of Health here in Arlington. And I just thought it was so cool. I don't know how well you can see it, but we'd love to know if we could ever identify the young woman, it's a young girl who is dwarfed by a rather large dog standing there beside her. But it's just a cool piece of history, and I wanna really thank Mary Bartholomew and ask, I think we should send her a letter from the Board of Selectmen telling her how much. We really appreciate it. And Marie, thank you for bringing it to my attention. By the way, calling all dogs for an anti-Rabic vaccine was free of charge in 1939, so I don't know if there is an anti-Rabic vaccine anymore. Oh, there still is. I know what it's called. There still is, but the dogs must have to get it, I would imagine, but it would require licensing or whatever at the time. So anyhow, this is a bylaw amendment. See if the town will vote to amend the town bylaws to comport with recent changes in state law, adopted through Chapter 193 of the Acts of 2012, and act furthering regulating animal control, including but not limited to changes concerning dog licensing, kennel licensing, operation, animal vaccination, dangerous and nuisance dogs, and animal control, restraint, and treatment, or take any action related there to Madam Council. Thank you, Mr. Chair. As the board will recall, I was asked and granted time on a meeting agenda, I believe, in November to explain and overview the board of changes in state law that went into effect at the end of October. They're fairly wide-ranging, and there were a number of discrete areas that have an impact on the town bylaws as they exist in new areas. Essentially, the areas of dangerous and nuisance dogs, which this board is familiar with, addressing those complaints. Dog licensing, there are some changes, many of which this town already does, for instance, requiring different fees for dogs that are spayed or neutered, and dogs that are not. Kennel licensing, which is a brand new area. There are five different kinds of kennels under the law addressing types of businesses that we do have in Arlington, and tethering dogs outside, which is a fairly detailed part of the law. There are other parts of the law that I did not propose putting in bylaws, because they really are more backend in terms of funding for training for the animal control officer. This board's appointment of the animal control officer will do that separately, but it's not something that would ordinarily be in bylaws, because it doesn't pertain to conduct of residents and how they handle their dogs. I want to point out at the outset that what's being proposed, there are no changes in off-leash dog parks or off-leash hours or anything like that. Nothing in the state law that makes any change in that. In the red line version of the bylaw, and it's very long and I apologize and took me a long time, but there are two minor changes in section two of the existing bylaw dealing with the leashing of dogs, and those are just that the time period that the animal control officer may hold a dog that is found to be at large, is changed in the state law from 10 days to seven, and also the daily fee for the animal control officer holding the dog for that period of time is raised in the state law from $2 per day to 40. But other than that, there are no changes in the leashing. As I've stated, the changes deal in the areas that I've talked about, I did want to address one point that Mrs. Mahan made, which was an excellent point in light of if this board is considering a complaint about a dangerous or nuisance dog, which the board currently does through delegation of that hearing process to the police department, nothing would need change. That could continue to happen, but there are much more specific definitions of what's a dangerous dog, what's a nuisance dog, and what remedies the board can order for either. The biggest change is that the board, no, town, the board will no longer be able to order banishment of a dog to another town, and this board was not really in the habit of doing that anyway, understanding that that really did, in most cases, amount to a death sentence for the dog. It will create, hopefully it won't, but it could create the situation where this board would have to make more difficult decisions that rather than shuffling a dog off to another town, the board would need to order that dog to be euthanized. But there are other remedies, interim remedies that the board can consider, which this board already had done in terms of requiring muzzling, requiring restraint of the dog, requiring increased training of the dog, and things like that, and the board does have the authority to do that. I did want to, to Mrs. Mahan's point, following the multiple attacks in, I believe it was Marshfield, but it could have been Mansfield, over the past couple of weeks by one dog that had been ordered by the board of selectmen in a split vote to be euthanized, but had been returned to the owner in the appeal period, and in that 10 day appeal period, that dog did in fact then attack again another child, in that case the child of the dog's owner. So the suggestion from Mrs. Mahan, which was a good one, was that could we have an automatic impoundment after the board orders the dog to be euthanized. Unfortunately, under the current state law that was changed in October, we have to make an affirmative motion for that. If an appeal is filed, we have to go to court and seek that order of impoundment pending appeal. There actually, I did notice in the Boston Globe last week there was an editorial calling for a change in that law following the, the events that took place in Mansfield, but currently we have to take the affirmative step of asking the district court, which is the reviewing court for an order of impoundment, which I could certainly do if an appeal was filed. So there's a lot here. I did this sort of earlier rather than later because most of these changes are technical. I wanted to give the board time to think about it. The board does not need to vote on this proposed vote tonight if it doesn't want to, but because there's so much, I wanted to put it in front of you, but largely these changes are really to implement the new state law. The one kind of policy decision, I guess I took the liberty of making and the board could disagree with me if it wishes, is that under the existing bylaw, we do not allow kennels and kennel was defined as ownership of more than three dogs. We have two businesses in Arlington that would fall under the definition of kennel in the new state law that is imported into bylaws because I assumed that the board would not want to recommend bylaw changes that would result in the closure of existing businesses in town. What I did was I proposed deleting the section of the existing bylaw stating that kennels are not allowed in town and instead replace that with the definitions of the five different types of kennels from personal kennels which is if you own four dogs or more all the way up to breeding kennels or veterinary kennels that are all defined in the new bylaw that to allow people who have those businesses to apply for these licenses from the town clerk. That does not mean that every type of kennel that's set forth in the state law and thereby the new bylaw would be allowed under zoning, but for instance a kennel that had overnight boarding may not be allowed under zoning. Those determinations would need to be made if the application was made for that type of use but under the existing businesses obviously are allowed under zoning because they were permitted to open. So that's really the only kind of policy decision I made. And again, there's a lot there so certainly if the board wants to consider it and take a vote at a later date that would be fine, but that's what I put before you. Except to you guys, I don't wanna move favorable action. If I mean, had this, I would like to move favorable action and also if it's all right, my colleagues ask Town Council to explore the question that I posed to her about during an appeals process if we could have a remedy of requiring impoundment or something like that. I understand that's not in here right now but that's something you would explore outside of this. Yeah, given that the state law is very precise on that remedy, I can't recommend having a bylaw that's opposed to that. But what we certainly can do is petition for such an order in the event. Yeah, I don't wanna hold this up. So I'd like to move favorable action on that and let this rise further to find that and do it next year. Which is okay with him, but do we even have the capability to impound dogs? Is there a limit to the number we could? We do. Currently we have a small type of kennel that's under the control of the Animal Control Officer although one of the police captains along with the Animal Control Officer have explored actually entering into a contract with a vendor that the city of Cambridge uses and they've asked me to look at the contract with that vendor and it looks fine to me. So I think that's something that they're exploring. So you're recommending favorable action but you'd like clarification on that. Right, so that's not include, I don't wanna hold that up. It might have been my very first or second meeting as a select man 24 years ago and we had a dog hearing. I was stunned to know we could order that it be euthanized. I was stunned to hear we could order it out of the confines of the town, right? Bob Walsh is a member at the time and it got pretty heated with the owner of the dog. Bob Walsh finally says, I wish we could order the owner out of the confines of the town. Not yet, nor euthanized. I didn't know where to look. I didn't know what to say. And immediately, Mr. Greeley, I was like, yes, whatever I was voting on. Okay, so move favorable, is there more discussion? I'm ready to vote it, okay. All those in favor please signify by saying aye, aye, all those opposed. So the next article is on self-serve gasoline to see if town meeting will vote to amend the town bylaws to repeal title five, article five, concerning self-serve gas dispensing or take any action related there too. Is the sponsor here, Mr. Wagner? Yes, sir. Hi, I'm Carl Wagner and I'm representing this for post change of the bylaws. Yes, sir. If you'd like me to speak about them. What are your proposals? I just think it's interesting to note as we look at regulating things like not selling water bottles and stuff like that, you take a favorable look at the fact that I'm trying to get rid of something that I think is unnecessary rules and legislation. I grew up in this town, I've lived here a long time. I found out last year when I was having a car repaired and a rather tricky repair and came back and the car wasn't quite done. And the guy was running around being the mechanic and also selling gas to people that he said your town requires me to pump gas for folks. And I said, oh, I didn't know that and never really thought about it. A lot of people have never really thought about it. There's a thing called the Arlington email list, some of you have read, I'm sure. I don't usually read it because there's so much of it. And I was surprised to see that self-serve gas has been popular in the last couple of days as a discussion topic. So people do think about it and do care about it a lot. But I am simply asking that the town do what most other towns in Massachusetts do and most other states, except for two in the United States do, which is not keep an old rule that probably is based on old technology and the lack of people to be able to safely pump gas. I'm asking for that rule to be removed. So I should be the last one and I keep speaking first. Excuse me, who'd like to speak on this? Mr. Curell. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Wagner, for bringing this forward. I actually, I enthusiastically support this for precisely the reason that Mr. Wagner recommended. We do seem to be in a position in a cycle here where we're constantly being asked to ban and restrict activities. I do feel that this is outdated. I actually grew up in one of the other towns in the Commonwealth, a few towns left that has a ban on self-service gasoline. And I would go to surrounding towns and use the self-serve. I think it's noteworthy that a lot of the concern when the bans originally came in centered around public safety issues. We did put this out for comment from the departments and the chief and deputy chief replied back to us that they had no concerns given that state codes do adequately cover this right now. A few folks that I've talked to when their knee-jerk impulse has been to say, well, I don't like it because I wanna be served at the pump. But I think it's important to recognize that what Mr. Wagner is bringing forth is not something saying that we ban full-service gasoline. We're just opening up an option. Some people like to be able to go in, get out, pump it and go on their way and not wait for the attendant to attend the other two or three cars at the island. And I think it is, there's a lot to be said for providing that choice to folks. I think it makes us competitive, vis-a-vis our surrounding communities as well. I think it's also important and I know you've done more research than I have to note that any, even if there is a service station which is providing self-serve only, somebody who is disabled and requires assistance, I believe the Americans with Disabilities Act requires that the station assist them if they call for assistance. And we've all seen the stickers on the pumps. So for myself, I'm actually very supportive of this and I would support a motion for favorable action. I'd like to hear from the rest of my colleagues. Okay, Ms. Wagner. I'm sorry, Ms. Wagner, Mr. Wagner. I'm just going by town meeting member hat right now. I've heard from numerous neighbors and two businesses, gasoline businesses in my precinct that they don't want to, they fear that this, well, I know you're saying it will give the option, but I've even heard from the business owners, but I didn't ask permission to quote them that. I'm going to be forced because everybody's going to do it, offer it a little bit cheaper because you can because there's less people being employed. And I've heard from so many people, the list seems to be running, I can't really tell the way it's running because it started getting into a semantic and kind of having fun with it, but I haven't heard from one person in my precinct, business owner or resident who's in favor of this and I've been amazed by how many people have contacted me, including just walking down the street and doing some other neighbor things. So I respect that you want to move favorable action. I just want to explain why I'll be voting no. Could I add a few comments to help people who are watching on TV and perhaps your opinions of what's gone before on this? This was brought up, I think, in the 70s as a band and then in the 80s, people who are still in town were names that I saw on the record and discussing a possible repeal of the ban in the 80s. Everyone I contacted who was attached to that in the 80s now unenthusiastically said they would not be against keeping the ban, would not be for keeping the ban. So I thought that was interesting. I also contacted most of the gas stations. There may be a couple I couldn't get, but I did make three attempts to contact most of the owners of the gas stations. Curiously, the gas station where my car was not quite ready and where the guy was telling me it was a pain to have to fill the gas. The other owner of that station told me they do not support it. So that was a little weird because the one I talked to clearly did. But so the gas station owners, in fact, one of them told me that he did not think there'd even be much of an employment impact at all. One owner told me just today, he said, my guys were being insulted and harassed by customers who were insisting on pumping their own gas or that didn't want to touch the hands of the employees or that were basically being bad customers. So several people I talked to, and I have no connection monetary or otherwise to these gas stations except the place I took my car the one time. But these guys were telling me that they thought it would be a good thing. And then so the people I talked to, Charlie Lyons, Stephen Gilligan, some other people, Howard Winkler, they basically said they're not against it anymore. And the gas stations that I talked to mostly were not against it. And I think it would be a change for Arlingtonians. But I mean, even looking across the state, Arlingtonians who travel across the state, they can pump their own gas. I would support that the zoning laws that govern gasoline stations should probably be looked at because there's lots of new changes in gasoline stations anyway, including full-serve stations. I would say in the next review, they could change the actual gas station zoning by-laws so that any look and feel or the way that Arlington works is preserved in that way, but that it doesn't belong in the general by-laws of Arlington to do something that really nobody else is prohibiting anymore. Thank you. I was just explaining why I won't be supporting that. And you know what? Ultimately, town meeting will decide, so I'm not. No, I agree with Mr. Kira. And I do support this. As long as we can stay on top of those ADA requirements because you do run into some gas stations where someone is not really easily accessible to help out. And so if there is, and I think that our business owners will do a good job of keeping up with that. So I do support this. And I think it's keeping up with the times to a certain extent. You see it happening everywhere else. And I think it's about time to make that jump. So thank you. I'm going to support the motion that Mr. Kira is about to make. I move favorable action on the... He had already, but... Oh, did you actually... Well, I didn't actually place the motion, so I move favorable action on that. You're saying I'm wrong? What's that? You're saying I'm wrong, but you didn't. No, I'm not. I actually was also here with Mr. Lyons, Mr. Gilligan, and others. There were two differences between what, well, two things. One was that in the... Must have been 89, because that's the first year I was on the board. Well, although it's a town minimum before that, but it was allowing for self-serve, but they also must keep a full-serve island. So if I'm understanding you, this would allow a completely self-serve gas station. Am I correct, Mr. Wagner? My intent is to remove the prohibition. However, the town of Menden, it seems to me, to be a good example of what we might want to follow. Menden, this last year, June, I think, removed their prohibition that was in their general bylaws, and they asked their zoning bylaws team with the Planning Department, et cetera, to come up with logical zoning bylaws that covered things such as they mandated full-serve gas, they mandated a maximum size, and I was talking with someone today who told me that there's all sorts of TVs and stereo systems coming into full-serve and self-serve gas stations. I would think we would want to probably prohibit those too in our gas zoning bylaws. So actually, so you're saying we can still do both? I would think that, yeah, I would hope that my action does not make any negative change in the feel of how the gas stations fit into the community, and I would think that the zoning bylaws should do that work instead of the general bylaws. Because I'm with you, I favor it 100%. My mother was 92, not driving anymore, but in her 80s, she used to yell at my brothers and myself that we weren't pumping our own gas, and she did, she had a teach me. But I absolutely favor self-serve. I mean, I was in the line yesterday at a convenience store, and a younger person in front of me bought a pack of gum and used the debit card. And you know, I just, it's like, why wouldn't you just take out a dollar? But that's just so, I mean, so it's time, and I agree with you 100%. The other issue though that came up, and I remember clearly Mr. Schlichtman came up in front of town meeting and he said he sent his students to Cambridge, to Belmont, to other places, and in all cases, the self-serve gas was more expensive than the Arlington No Self-Serve Gas, which stunned me, because you would think if it's full-served, obviously that would have an extra expense to it that the self-serve doesn't. But anyhow, I support you 100%, and thanks for bringing it forward. So, on the, it's a hearing, is there anybody else? All right, on the motion by Mr., oh yeah, Mr. Radosa. He had been silent far too long, let's face it, so. Robert. Bob Radosa precinct 11. Basically, I'm okay with this, but the thing is, I've been pumping gas for 53 years, no longer, whatever it is, no more. Yeah, anyhow. So you don't shop in Arlington, Mr. Radosa, is that what you're hearing? No, the point I want to make is really, you know, it's kind of silly, but I still think, I'd like to do it in Arlington, because somebody's being paid to pump the gas. It's a job, okay. Now that's the part, and I make an effort to do it whenever I can. Now if I'm going to go buy our self-service, I'll go to Wolbin where I can buy it for a nickel less. So that's my take on it. And the other thing is, if you turn it off, so I can say something, but my wife has no idea where the gas tank is. She wouldn't know the first thing about doing it, so I worry about how that's gonna work out. No, Mr. Radosa, please call to select my self-service. No, that's simply my take on it. But like I don't have a problem pumping it, I think it's great, but on the other hand, I hate to see somebody lose a job because of it. Okay, thanks. Thanks. And I think the station would be wise to do both, but we'll see the way the bylaws come out. But the first thing we would have to do is remove this so they're allowed, period. So who's seconded? Sorry. Second. Second. All those in favor, please see in the bylaws. So I say aye. Council is in time. Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, yes. I'm not gonna stop you, just point of clarification when I go to write the board's vote. I think what's been proposed under this article is the just straight repeal of the existing prohibition. And I can write it that way, but a couple board members have mentioned, wanting to keep full serve. If we don't write it into the proposed vote, it's gonna be gone. I mean, Mr. Wagner makes the point about zoning bylaw changes. Those could happen, but they wouldn't happen until next year at the soonest. I did actually, upon reviewing his materials that he submitted, I did check the Menden's zoning bylaws and there's actually not, there are certainly restrictions on size and things like that. There's actually not a restriction requiring the retention of full serve gas stations. And if a zoning bylaw were changed next year, it wouldn't necessarily apply retroactively. Although Menden does do its gas station permitting the same way that we do, which is by special permit through our redevelopment board. So my question is, do you want me in writing this proposed vote to rather than a straight repeal, amend it to repeal the prohibition, but also require that a full serve option be retained. I'm not sure in the board's position on that. My intention with my motion, Mr. Chair, was just strictly to do the repeal. And my reasoning for that is that I don't feel comfortable putting that additional restriction on because we do have stations of different sizes and some of them are only one island stations. But that was my intention, I don't know about the rest of the board. So if I'm following in what you just said, Juliana. I know it's hard. So we just repeal it. Let me just pretend for a minute, we only repeal it. Right. And we wait till next year to do any zoning bylaw changes. But what you're saying is if a station has gone completely self-serve before then, they cannot then be mandated to have to put in a full service island as well. Correct. Or a full service side to one island. Correct. I'm still no, like the- Yeah, well, you've been no all along, right, so. No, no, I just, I saw faces, that's all I just know. Does the board have any thoughts on this? I mean, I really would, I wanna be sure we can maintain full service, right? We're not, this doesn't eliminate full service. But we're also not mandating that they have to do full service. Is that what you're telling me? Mr. Curell's proposed vote would not mandate that. All right. I'm still supporting his motion. Again, you're going against me. I don't know, you haven't said anything yet. And you too, you're going against me. Okay, well. The first rule you learn here is you count to three. All those in favor of the motion by Mr. Curell. So that's all we're doing if I'm correct, is you're feeling that self-service now allowed, okay? All those in favor, please signify by saying, aye, all those opposed. Nay, I haven't learned the count to three yet. One to one vote. Okay, article 15, regulation of utility polls to see if the town will vote to amend the town bylaws, give the selectmen authority to regulate within the allowable parameters established by state and federal regulations and the national electric code. Use of telephone, electric utility or street lighting polls located on rights of way in the town to ensure that such polls and their uses satisfy the needs of public safety. To ensure a prompt replacement of deficient polls and to ensure the aesthetic and environmental impact of such polls and their uses on the neighborhoods are considered to license and make changes as appropriate to defray the expense of the upkeep of public ways if attachments, including telecommunication devices are attached there on or take any action related there to. We did form a subcommittee on this. Who'd like to speak? Sure. You're senior. Sorry, so. You're senior. You take it. All right. On your desk, you've got today just a very brief paragraph which is the minutes of the meeting that we held last week. And Mr. You can see it was well attended. We had several of the proponents and Mr. Kira and I sat down and talked. And we decided Mr. Kira recommended and I supported him proposing a policy where we're talking about formalized leverage where we create a utility poll commission, the committee that goes out there and it works on an inventory of our polls in particular the status of polls that we're not happy about. Then works with us to the, we said periodic review at least annual. And so I think the vision that we had was it starts with 90 days and then it goes on especially while we're working through the backlog. Mr. Leonard provided us with dozens of pictures of polls that are in unsafe and either combination they range from unsafe to really ugly but there's definitely a lot of work there that needs to happen. And then the teeth of the formalized leverage would be that we would then when a utility wants to speak to the board about placing polls or other things that we would talk to them about the list and say, we're not gonna put you on the agenda until you also agree to review this inventory with us. And I'll say, and the two of them it was Mr. Kira's proposal and I supported him. I'll say that my thought on this was this is something that you only get through constant persistence. Like you have to be persistent with the utilities and you have to be persistent and you have to be very firm and you have to be, you know, you have to maintain it. And I think that probably the board could have been perhaps more aggressive in following up on it in past years and we didn't. And so that is, you know, like you don't prune all the time and then it begins to slip a little bit. And so by creating this policy and creating this committee we hope to make it such that it's easier for us to maintain vigilance on the issue. So we don't need to say favorable action, right? We're just saying we're gonna take care of this as a board is likely to understand. Yep, correct. It's no action on the article. Sorry, I should have said that. Second, Mr. Dunn. Yeah. Thank the representative of Verizon for sticking around to hear about this. And I was very, and I guess, and I know I'm curious if she has anything to suggest that would help us about that. So here's the thing. We've got pictures in poll numbers with dozens of polls that are either double polls or severed or like this thing's coming off them or they have wires that are sticking up out of the ground without any casing on them. They've got wires dangling down off them and things like that. What do you think is the best way for us to get those into your system so that they can be, you know, remedied? Do you have any, or do you have any other thoughts about this policy that we're proposing? We have, let me first ask you, did you have any representatives from the utility companies that you're... Oh, that meeting? Nope, we haven't yet. So I'm not, all I'm saying, like I've got a list. Yeah, that would be the first step. All right, here we are. I've got a list of polls. What do I do with them? We have a public relations public affairs bureau. Yep. And there's a gentleman who handles certain areas. I believe Arlington would be under his jurisdiction and I can get in touch with him tomorrow. Okay. And ask him to contact, would it be the town manager or one of you directly? I was actually gonna ask. And they can set up a meeting and possibly then contact the both Insta and Verizon. Verizon is the maintenance setting company for Arlington, although the polls are jointly owned by both Insta and Verizon, in most cases. I was gonna ask the exact same question. Adam, do you think is this, what do you think is the best way for us to handle, hearing the proposal, hearing about this committee, which I think you heard about before. What are your thoughts? I think this proposal is, I would say, as good as any to begin a formalized process for trying to get the utilities in the room and use any leverage we have to get them to listen and begin to address the problem. Okay. So with this list, so I've got 20 polls now that are on my hit list. Should we, and we wanna give them to Verizon, the public relations. Is that something that you think should work through the Slackman's office or through one of your offices? What do you recommend? Fred, I could discuss that with the office and figure out what the best way is. Punt. Thank you for staying. Thank you. Sure, it's a long night. I'd like to say I wholeheartedly endorse this. I've spoken with Verizon and NSTAR union workers about this very issue, and they've said that it's really low priority. We have three workers from Verizon that were told to lay a service, and according to the Verizon rules in their book, they said the service was precarious. They called in the foreman and the foreman said, well, it was right at the entrance to either Waldo or Parallel down Henderson, and the three workers were told, and I can get the names, just laid against the house, wait 10, 15 minutes and see if it works. And they said, this is an entrance tour of Hock. It's going, it might not fall, but the first, you know, five, 10 mile an hour. And so they protested and wouldn't do it. And they got fired on a Thursday and I made some phone calls and the president rehired them on a Monday and said they did do the right thing. And what they've said to be over and over again, because I know a lot of them is, towns like Arlington need to, they're gonna tell you there's a rep, you report that. We've gotten the list of polls, some are four, five, six, seven years old that they've been out there. And you're saying 90 days to me, that's a dream. I think this is the way to go. And I support it wholeheartedly, as well as working with the representatives from Verizon, but I've heard from the workers, we need to make it a priority to management for them to make it to the guys and gals in the street. If I could just put just the topping on this. We're really thinking of a formalized process. So I think that we actually have three actions to take tonight. The first would be to recommend no action on the warrant article itself. I think we were convinced from town council's recommendations that we really don't have a lot of leverage through state law on this. I think the second would be to appoint a utility poll. I think it's really a working group because they have a very specific function. This isn't make up your own agenda. Your very specific function is at least once a year, compile an inventory and bring it to the board of selectmen. So I think that the second action we have is to authorize the creation of utility poll working group. I'd recommend five citizens at large and that we advertise for that. And then the third is to ask town council for assistance in drafting an actual policy. And as Dan stated, the idea that we had is that on an annual basis, representative from the utility, so it would probably be one representative from each of the utilities, the sharing jurisdiction would come before us and actually respond point by point on each of the lists. And if they say, oh, we haven't gotten to this one, we haven't gotten to this one, we haven't got, well, a picture stats emerge. They say, yes, we've addressed this one, we've addressed this. This is the reason why there's an issue. Picture also stats to emerge there. And that we adopt as a policy that we do not place anything on our agenda unless there's a vote of the board for a matter of specific public urgency. And I think we had a good example of that tonight. The Thompson School, obviously, moving the project like that along is a matter of public urgency. So I think those are the three actions that we have tonight. So who's got the list of 20 and where does it go? So the actual, I thought about this. So it's currently on the back of the pictures. John Leonard gave us a stack of pictures. I handed it to Marianne. So I know Marianne has it. We should go through and flip through them and he wrote down the locations and the poll numbers in the back of each one. Do you think we could type that list, generate a list from those pictures? And then let's use that list and let's take it up with the representative jointly with the town manager. And that will be the start of, we don't have to wait for the first inventory. We can start with that list. So could I move first, that we recommend no action on the warrant article before us. All those in favor, please send them five by saying aye. Aye. Second? I move that we create a utility poll working group which is charged with creating an inventory at least once a year and presenting it to the Board of Selectment of utility polls and wires, which are deficient either in their maintenance or safety, consisting of five residents at large and that we advertise up with for those positions. Second? Okay, discussion? Shouldn't there be a select one on that committee of five? I don't think we can legally do that. Yeah, I think we're right. Because ultimately we get the information present. Thank you, Jesus. Okay, yeah, yeah. I can't imagine, but I think it's very good that we have, five citizens could break up the town into sections and do a walk through once a year or something. We had three interested citizens on 8 a.m. on Wednesday morning. Mr. Lennick, look at what he did already. And we can always put it on the website, report if you have a double poll. So, all those in favor, please send it. Was it seconded? Seconded. Yeah, I thought, okay, I'm sorry. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed? And your third one? My third motion, I move that we request the Town Council assist us in the drafting of a policy whereby we at least annually receive the inventory to be prepared by the utility poll working group and that we not place on our agenda any requests from the end star or Verizon each year until we have heard a response to that inventory publicly at a meeting, unless otherwise overridden by a vote of the board. Second. Well, there's too many problems with what you just said for me to put that personally at this point, but I love the concept of it. So what I'd rather do is if we're asking her to put together the policy, let's wait until we have her put together the policy and then vote on it. I will draw my motion and just, No, just make it to instruct and then to bring it back to us. Because I think it's a very, and I'd love to use these first 20 as a test. Okay. So what, how we doing it? But, but it's quite a step to say that can't come before us and we won't prove anything unless those polls, they've appeared public. You know what I mean? There's a lot of stuff in there. We got to, I agree. Will the Town Council word it that we have the option to? I would draw my motion say I move to request the Town Council assist in the drafting of a policy that reflects the discussion that has taken place here this evening. I need to get caution on that move, basically because again, earlier I mentioned that it's kind of like a state right for the utilities to be in the public way. And when, and the other reason we're coming in the public way usually is because somebody has asked for service. Right, a resident. We're required to provide service. We're providers of last resort. And then one of your constituents is going to be delayed in either their home or their business. Yeah. And then how do you choose which person you're going to penalize in their project or their home in order to correct an issue saying another precinct of town? Right. Okay, thank you. So I guess I've generalized the motion. Right, right. We're not against it. We just want to do it in such a way that we have the authority to do it. But I love this, you know, let's do a tally of it, you know, once a year and, right? Is that what was? And we understand that Mr. Heard had actually started a process like this. It's just with time, I think it needs to be reviewed. He was like a dog on a sock in double poles for a while there, I'll tell you, so. All right, so moved and seconded for the discussion. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed. And could you have that done by five o'clock tomorrow, please? No problem. No problem. Aye, aye, aye, aye. Probably even after a town meeting this year, but the 20 we should get where it started on, I would think. I think so. I think it would be good if we could report progress by town meeting. That would be a big deal. Okay, article 20. No action. Only if the, it says the proponents are recommending a vote of no action. On article 20, transfer to conservation committee, town owned parcels, borderings by pond, and the sponsor has asked us to vote on favorable action as Mrs. Mahan has moved. Any discussion? Second. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed. Item number nine, final votes and comments. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Kelly. Final votes and comments. Is there a motion? Mr. Chair? Yeah. Excuse me, I'm sorry to interrupt. If I could just clarify a couple of things on this. First of all, I apologize. Apparently I had a coalition error as well. What's in your books for article 41, cuts off in the middle, but you've been provided with a full set on your desks? Yes. Yes. A full set on your desk that's highlighted and item number nine. So this has actually everything. So you might consider this rather than what's in your books. Okay. But then on article 21, if I could be heard on that for just one moment. Sure. Thank you. The board's vote, I think it was last week when I heard this article was to support the request, but only for the life of the existing list. And Mr. Dunn brought that up to me again. And I just wanted to make sure the board was comfortable with the language that's in this proposal. Or if you don't think it's clear enough, I can make it more clear. But the home rule legislation that I've drafted to provide it to the board states that the candidate can be considered for appointment to the position of police officer when his name appears on the existing certification list. And he did represent to this board that he'd already taken the exam. I verified that, that he has already taken the exam. So the only thing this legislation would allow him to do is to appear on the list that's currently in place. My understanding is that that list was issued in 2011 and expires at the end of this year. And I thought he understood that when we brought that up. He appeared to, yes. I just wanted to make sure that the board was comfortable with that drafting. A motion? I move approval. And I will say that I was the one who was concerned about whether or not the language is clear enough. Now that's been explained to me, I'm totally satisfied. Second. I have a question. Julian, with, by the time if this list ends this year, and by the time the legislation is actually passed, would, could the legislation be too late for him to actually appear on? These are usually passed in the summer. The list is in place until December 31st. Okay, so. What I've been told. So if there are appointments off that list would be, you would be eligible for any, the way it's written is that the legislation would take effect immediately on its passage. Not the usual 90 day waiting period. I'm sure you know better than I do. So that when it went into effect, the proponent could be considered. If the board wanted to lengthen that, it could or you know, if he were not appointed and wanted to come back for an additional consideration, he could move for that again. But I think it's been standard practice over the last few years to allow one consideration. Okay. No, I'm comfortable. I just wanted to make sure that by the time, if there was a chance that he might not, not even be able to make the list and I knew I'd do this for nothing, but now I'm comfortable with that. And your motion, Mr. Dunn was on both 21 and 41. That was my intent. Is that appropriate? Yes, sir. Sure. Who seconded? Seconded. Further discussion? I'm sorry if I can be a bother. Okay. I just wanted to point out that a highlighted note to the board on 41, which is the table that's being provided is very preliminary table of easements. That is going to change before 10 meetings. I just wanted to make clear that the board knew that. Thank you. And just so we often vote final votes and comments all summed together. So, because we've already had the hearings and certainly it's been explained. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed. Okay. So now item 10, discussion, town manager evaluation. Adam said if he had a walk from Atlanta today, he would have just to be here for this discussion this evening. Late fall, even really it was late summer, early fall. Adam, if I'm remembering the dates right, but he asked us to hold a couple of offsite meetings at which we discussed goal setting with him. Both we had our input and he also provided a lot of input on that. And part of what came out of that meeting is that we were to develop an evaluation system for Adam. He'd like to establish a formal evaluation for his direct reports, but felt that what he'd like to do is see kind of the board's approach to how we would evaluate him and then from here he'll develop his own. So Adam helped us. So did Karen Malloy, our director of human resources. And they gathered examples for us, which they gave to us. And then we together kind of came up with our recommendations and developed a document which was handed out, I believe, two weeks ago. And that document was a combination of quantitative responsive and qualitative responses. So quantitative responses were from one to five. And qualitative, anybody could make any comments that they wanted. This board directed me and our director of human resources to get together after the five of us had all filled out that document. We took the five and we did the statistics. I used to teach statistics at Emerson. And I'm pretty sure these are all accurate. And then we also summarized the overall qualitative comments. So this board was directed to develop a summary document of which you have that in front of you now. So from here, first step is we need to make sure that each of you are satisfied with those summary comments. And is there anything you would like to edit on those comments? We don't necessarily have to do that tonight. But once you have approved the qualitative comments, the math is the math, right? But once you've approved the qualitative comments, then this summary evaluation would be made available. Both copies, if anybody would like it, in the select man's office and also in the human resources office. So there were nine categories that we rated overall. And this is now just a math score, because this wouldn't change based on anybody's input, because we've already done math. So on personal characteristics, most of these had three, four, five, or six sub points to it. We rated all of them one to five. One being, never does anything, doesn't at all meet expectations. And five being consistently exceeds expectations. That wasn't the exact wording, but it was right. Consistently exceeds, I think, was number five. So on personal characteristics, as average was 4.48. Professionalism, 4.35. Again, this can be made available if people want to see it. Public relations, communications, 4.5. Board support and relations, 4.56. Community leadership, 4.55. Organizational leadership, personnel management, 4.44. Financial management, 4.23. Planning and organization, 4.27. Overall evaluation, 4.6. So really, A is across the board, in my opinion, but that's taking together everybody's votes. In some cases, if someone put not applicable or they didn't rate it, we would only divide by four, obviously, so. So comments, or I don't know if you've all had enough time to read this and can approve it tonight, or would rather wait until next week, if any of you would like to speak to me, or Karen about any changes you'd like to make in any of the wording. Because that's qualitative, so that's not, you know, we tried to, as best we could, summarize each of the comments on there. Now, also, all five evaluations are public records, so if anybody really would like to see each individual's evaluation and comments, that also would be made available. But our responsibility was to come up with the summary evaluation. Did I go off track anywhere, Adam, and you're, anybody, and you put Mr. Dunn. I'm comfortable with the compendium that you put together. I think it, as far as I feel like my views are very well represented by this document. And I echo that sentiment, and. Sounds good to me. Okay, so then how about a motion to approve and we'll have, we'll direct Karen to just finalize and make copies available. And so this now, after this approval, is officially presented to you, Adam, as well. Okay, can I make a general comment? Yeah. So it's a kind of, I was a little bit amused when I read this report, because when I looked at the numbers, I could do the math and I could say, this means that I was perhaps one of the harsher critics numerically of the town manager. And I wanted to, I guess I wanted to give a verbal color commentary, which is that I'm very happy with the job that Adam is doing. And I really think that the town has done well to hire him. And I really, despite evidently being one of his harshest critics, I'm delighted that he's here. Well, thank you. I mean, the, but it all depends on how you look at a one through five scale, you know, three meets expectations. You know, the lowest rating he got on anything was a three. So there were no below expectations, no never meets them or anything. I mean, I would be proud to get this kind of an evaluation from a group of five individuals with five pretty strong personalities who have strong opinions. But so anyhow, you know, it's, you know, I think it's a testament to Adam, but it, I'll tell you, it took me a lot longer to do it than I thought it would. You know, I must say that it was at four. How many pages? Four pages, five pages? Yes. But we approved it before we used it, so. Move approval. Move approval. Second, I do have a comment too though. Mr. Curell. I just wanted to, you know, I echo Dan's sentiments. I'm very happy. And I think it's important to note to, even knowing that this is, you know, I dread my own performance reviews when I have to meet with my boss. But it's always, it's in a private office. It's between the two of us. And even knowing that this was very public, Adam was actually the biggest proponent to make sure that this got done and that we did this. And we do owe it to you. I think we owe it to any employee. But even knowing that, it shows self-confidence and a comfort with receiving, you know, the honest feedback from this board. And I think you've gotten it. I think you should be proud. And I think for one, I look forward to working with it many more years. And suggestions were made too. It's not like it was, you know, everything's perfect. One of the points one of you made was that, you know, when we look at Adam, we have to look at what he does day to day. But in truth, it's here from today, we'll know how really effective he's been in terms of the work that he has done for the time. I thank you all. I think you took it very seriously. I think you certainly spent a good deal of time on it. And Karen and I, I'll tell you, it was a couple of meetings. I actually liked doing the math part of it, but trying to, you know, get that right touch in the comments to make sure that we were fair to everybody. So on the motion by Mrs. Mahon to improve and present it officially to the town manager, although seconded by Mr. Kuro, all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed. No, no, no, no, you cannot speak. I want to change that. I have no suggestions for improvement in your process. I want to thank the board for taking the time to go through the process. I think it's valuable for me. I think it's valuable for the board. I think it's valuable for the public to see the transparent process and know that together, you know, we're working on making sure checkpoints are met and that, you know, there is a dialogue about how things are getting done and when they're getting done. So thank you for taking the time. I know it was, like you said, Mr. Chair, a longer document than maybe some expected when they first picked it up, but I really do appreciate all of the feedback. So thank you. And you know, this was once a year and we'll redo this, I assume, under next year's chair. And maybe we'll re, I don't know if we need to redo the document or whatever, but all of us basically are dealing with Adam almost daily and if there's something we want done, he knows about it. If there's something that, you know, so we're doing our evaluation all the way along anyhow, but we're very lucky to have you and I believe you're doing an excellent job and I believe this backs that up and, you know, don't get stuck in Atlanta again. That has to be category 10. All right, let us all be there with you. Okay. Do we need an executive session tonight? Madam Council, new business. Mrs. Krupp-Pelka. Well, I like you talk about the select homes. Okay. Is that right? All righty. I thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. I have no new things. Thank you. Mrs. Mohanen. I have a few of the really brief. I'm going to work with the Selectman's Office of my colleague's approval at the March 18th meeting to have a proclamation for autism month in April. We've done this every year, as well as highlight that the police and fire guns and hoses benefit Friday night, the 15th at seven o'clock down at the Ed Burns Arena, the proceeds go to autism research and support. So, and they've done that for several years now. So I'll compile that and get it and it should be a quick item. And then throughout the month of April or maybe at the beginning, I'll highlight two or three things, going blue again and stuff like that, the credentials and everything goes on. I do want to say thank you to the deputy town manager, acting town manager for getting us the memo from the Allington Catholic practice field. It answered all my questions, but one, and if I could just ask the town manager too. I mean, I know Dan Shine, but I've stopped from bringing this up because when we're at sporting events, I think it's unfair. The resident that abuts the practice field now, originally there were a lot of trees there that sort of buffered him from the old practice field in Summer Street, Bob Baterio, he had asked if we could ask them, we know we can't require them if they could somehow plant some vegetation knowing that it will take years down the road. Because the housing authority owns the house there now. No, no, he lives on the corner of Russell and I've been in his backyard and you literally can yell over to Summer Street. I don't know if you've ever been in Bob's backyard, but it definitely has changed. And I know we can't require them, but could we ask him maybe to plant three or four, whatever. So when I met with the principal of the Catholic, he said there is still some landscaping to be done in terms of planting and vegetation, but he also told me that the neighbors were all very happy with the project. It didn't appear as though there was... He's the only one. I'll get you his number, yeah. Definitely, definitely, because I was over at his house a couple of times. I mean, he definitely was saying, can you get me some relief? I spoke about at the appropriate time having the snow and ice meeting and I'll leave that there. I do wanna say that to people out there who forward emails or remarks or correspondence, not just bad, but also good. I got quite a number of emails praising DPW of several storms. I also pass on why couldn't you do this better. Dan Warren and Jimmy Dodger informed me that they do print them all out and at an appropriate time, they pass them out and pin them on the board and the employees down at DPW really do appreciate that. And they said it really gives them a boost. They wanna hear when they can do things better, but they do appreciate that. I would just ask the town manager when he thinks it's appropriate and that falls into my second thing. Allington High School will be hosting the league competition in the fall for cheerleading. I've had some conversations with Rob D. Loretto in terms of purchases we'll have to make, but I've been in three leagues now, Greater Boston, Dual County and Middlesex and I've yet to find a high school that I can say, oh, Allingtons can beat that in terms of aesthetics. So I don't know, I know Permanent Town building is discussing five, 10 years down the road, but if there's something, especially where we're hosting, at least that I'm sure there's gonna be some other sports because eight has come up. Woobam was the last one, that would be appreciated. And like I said, I'm also speaking to Rob D. Loretto who's doing a fabulous job. And then the last thing would be, and if you get us a report when it's appropriate from Permanent Town building, sort of when they plan on discussing Allington High School and Mr. Carroll may be able to help that too, in terms of when they expect it to go into the capital plan. And then the last thing is, and the manager can correct me if I'm wrong, I was speaking to Linda Hansen on Sunday and she brought up about the comparative pay evaluation. That's what I'm calling it, I'm sure it's not. And I think what she indicated to me was that it went out to bid only one group supplied an RFP. So she was told that we need at least three. And I think it went out to bid a second time. But I think the rule is if you go out a second time and you still don't get three, you get to move forward. And I believe she told me that she had a conversation with you or was gonna have continuing conversations with you in the unions about reporting something to town meeting this year. Is that right or? So, I... And if I misspoke, that's my not remembering correctly. What I'll say is I owe the board an update on the salary study working groups. There has been a consultant hire. Oh, he has been hired, okay. He's not collecting the data. I guess I was never familiar with it being a report to town meeting, but rather a report to the board and finance committee and the information to be public. Whatever. But that information over the next couple of months will start to be gathered. That salary study group will be brought back together and meet with the consultant and then the information will be gathered and shared. That should come together in the next two months. That's fine. Because I was told we started this process possibly a year ago and I'd like to. But that's all my new business. Thank you and I apologize. Mr. Burns. No, no business. Mr. Currow. Yes, just a few things. First of all, I just wanted to congratulate the Friends of the Robbins Library and the Arlington Garden Club on their Books and Bloom event, which they held the other night. You know, a lot of us, we go into the library and we're going in to do our business and we don't get a chance to really stop and enjoy the building and take it in. And this was such a great opportunity to do that. There must have been about 15 local authors who were there also who were set up and the opportunities to speak with them as well as some great floral arrangements from the Garden Club members and local businesses as well. It was really well done and supported our libraries. And while I'm on that, I should note we'd hope to have an update. I'd been speaking to Mr. Levergut and he had talked about coming in to update us on the library card challenge. As most people probably know, we unfortunately at the 11th hour were edged out by Belmont and Somerville. However, I believe our registrations for last month were twice as much as what they were last year. 135%. Really extraordinary effort. I know I made a promise and I always keep a promise. We have some logistical difficulties because I don't fit into the Clifford suit. At least I don't right now. So just when you least expect it. I wanted to note that the... Patriots Day Parade. What's that? Nice day. Whoa. Now he's your friend, Mr. Carroll. No, I was upset with him for putting me in this corner. You're on my list too. I want to note also the Arlington Education Foundation on March 24th, has their annual trivia be it's there when they're major fundraisers and they did put out a call for teams. We have a joint selectman and town manager team. So Mr. Byrne, myself and Mr. Chapter Lane will be competing there under the team name of Boys II Menotomy. And... But I'm bummed. Oy, oy, oy. They knew the music. I didn't. So that's... We'll have to do that in a minute. So wish us well. There are a lot of good folks who are there. Last week, Secretary Davy from the Mass Department of Transportation was in Arlington for a legislative briefing down at District 4. Mr. Chapter Lane, myself, our entire legislative delegation were there. It was nice timing because I think we each had a chance to kind of directly reinforce the message that was sent to Mass DOT after the public meeting we had on the Mass Avcarta project. We got to hear about the governor's proposals around revitalizing transportation. Unfortunately, as we all know the very next day, the speaker came out saying he's not gonna isn't looking to play along quite the way the governor had hoped. So we should all be paying attention to that. There's a lot of Chapter 90 funding that's at stake as well as other projects. And lastly, I just note, I think Ms. Sullivan had forwarded to the board an email I received regarding the Silver Maple Forest asking for this board to write a letter to the Belmont Conservation Commission, thanking them for their continued vigilance around the project and trying to protect not only Belmont but also the abutting areas of Arlington from the potential flooding of impacts and such. I don't know if that's something that the board is interested in taking up at this point. And I'm willing to put a motion. Well, we haven't used past, when Claire said I may, I'm sorry, we have submitted a letter in support the combined board of selectmen on that. If you want, I can archive what I have saved in Ms. Rowe and get that to the select committee. I don't know if perhaps we could just bring that back. Just so we have it on the agenda. And then everybody can look at it and decide if that's it. Oh. I did follow Corey Beckwith today, after I got Jareena. Yeah. She'll call me tomorrow because I think Diane, I think the rest of my descent from last year is Jareena. And I did find a letter from him I think it was May 2012 that was regarded as flooding. Right. Yeah, from Kevin Sands. Mm-hmm. So I'll get back to you tomorrow, Jareena. We have a letter from Chris and we can talk about it together. Have the whole board signed. Yeah, if there's some general consensus, maybe we should bring forward something the next. We've always endorsed their Silver Maple Forest and the Belmont Board of Selectmen have done our MuGar stance. So it's sort of been a collegial thing. Yeah, so maybe I can work on this with Maria and bring something forward to the board next time. Okay, which is a week from tonight, yeah. Yeah. Thank you. I'll set you up. Yeah, Mr. Denner. Two items tonight. Start with the bad news, then go with the good news. In our packet, we have a letter from the federal government that says what we expected was going to happen, which is the sequester of the funds being done at the federal level directly impacts our CDBG grant and our community development block grant has been reduced by 5% for this year. So I can't say that we're surprised by this, but it's a problem and we're gonna have to manage that through the CDBG fund. I will also say that so the CDBG subcommittee had its first meeting two, three weeks ago or something like that and we sat there and we went through the list of programs and we each kind of took a shot at defining the one that we think should be reduced and then was argued out of it by everybody else at the board because it's one of those things where it isn't even just a matter you're deciding like who doesn't get increased? I mean, there need to be cuts and we've chosen all these programs because we think they're all worthy programs. And so one of the things that I'm really intent on is as the federal government's funding for this is reduced, one of the things that's kind of natural is that the town starts taking that on, but that doesn't really scale either because for the town to do it we have to increase, for us to provide more services, we need to increase our taxes more. And so one of the things that I'm really trying to figure out is identifying specific programs on that list and finding the private solution that we can get in order to donate to some of these. And so at the meeting both Adam and Steve and I took on specific groups that we are connected with or have knowledge of that we think we could persuade perhaps to take a program off the book of the CDBG and hand it off to the private foundation. So I guess I would encourage the board to think about, A, when we're gonna take a vote on the CDBG funds at a future date, it's gonna be unpleasant and it's going to be very difficult. And insofar as that we can identify private funds to hand some of these programs off, so we can sit there and say, look, this program is still gonna continue, it's just happening on, it's essentially we're doing a handoff from a federal government to private. I think we should all think about that pretty aggressively. All right, that was my bad news. My good news is that today I had a fascinating meeting. Annie La Courte can put together Involution Studios, which is directly across the street and seeing the truth, graphic insights into Arlington budget for everyday citizens. They're interested in helping create a interactive online representation of the budget that you can kind of drill into and you can see where the budget money goes and where the money comes from and stuff like that. Alan Jones from the Finance Committee, Kersi Alson-Ampie from the School Committee, myself and Andrew Flanagan were there, plus three people from Involution. And it was by far my most fascinating meeting today. And our goal... I have so many things, I could say. You're bosses in this one. Other than this one, Mr. Greeley. It was my most interesting meeting before 11 o'clock today. I'm still not gonna say anything. Fingers crossed, we might have like a first draft of something available for town meetings when we come around to budget time. And it may not be that we can do this year's budget, but we may be like retroactively looking at last year's budget. But it's one of those things that it has potential to be really exciting. And it's being, you know, it's a gift from the company across the street, so I'm very excited about it. Wow. Well, they bring it here to show us, or will we... We would definitely, I think, we'll see, let's see how it goes. Like, I mean, I'm doing something a little dangerous and I'm talking about it before we even really started working on it. We just had a kickoff meeting. And so who knows in eight weeks, I'll be like, what? I don't remember anything about that. But hopefully, we'll be able to publicize a before town meeting and see where, yeah. Good, great. I shouldn't say before town meeting, excuse me, before we get to the budget section of town meeting. Like, I think town meeting will have started. It's just that the budgets are generally later on. That's it. Two quick ones. One is this Saturday, I got an invitation for an open house at the old Schwann Mill. Oh yeah, yeah. But I can't make it. So I didn't know whether or not the rest of my, but we did talk one night here about maybe us as a board going there for a tour. But I don't know whether the rest of you will be able to go on Saturday or not anyhow. But that is something I would like to explore at another point. But part of the reason I can't be there on Saturday is because the select tones had a gig at one o'clock at the senior center for the senior association. But I also have a couple of other meetings after that. So that's why I think the Schwann Mill is like one to five or something on Saturday after noon. Yeah, something to four. For me, traditionally Saturday events, just because of my family circumstances, I can't make the select tones. I mean, I used to be able to make the select tones for St. Patrick's Day on Saturday, so I apologize. But I'd love to do a group tour if we can do a different day, or if we just go individually. But I unfortunately can't do Saturday. They're actually offering for kids. They're offering, actually kids and adults, a mapping workshop in the morning that day that I'm doing with my kids. So I'll be there right before. I will make the select tones though. My kids don't know they're singing yet. But Joe, maybe talk to them about the board would like, you know, maybe if we just did it before a meeting one night if we agreed to meet there at 5.30 or 6.00. It would be easier. Just did that and then come on here to the meeting. You know, we at one point held meetings around town. So we held one at the public works. We held one at community safety. We held one at the central fire station. We moved the meetings around town at one point. Cable wasn't thrilled with it. I was gonna say, yeah, okay. So anything else? Move to adjourn. Motion to adjourn. Second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed. Good night.