 During the meeting of the Arlington Select Board from Monday, March 22nd, 2021, as a preliminary matter, this is John Hurd, the Select Board Chair. Permit me to confirm that all members and persons anticipated on the agenda are present and can hear me. Members, when I call your name, please respond in the affirmative. Diane Mahan. Here, thank you. Steve DeCorsi. Here. Len Diggins. Present. And Dan Dunn. Here. Staff, when I call your name, please respond in the affirmative. Adam Chaptilane. Yes. Doug Hyme. Yes. And Board Administrator Ashley Myers, participating remotely. Good evening. This open meeting of the Arlington Select Board is being conducted remotely, considered consistent with Governor Baker's executive order of March 12th, 2020, due to the current state of emergency in the Commonwealth, giving the outbreak of the novel coronavirus in order to mitigate the transmission of the virus and reduce risk of COVID-19 illness. We have been advised and directed by the Commonwealth to suspend public gatherings. And as such, the governor's order suspends the requirement of the open meeting law to have all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location. Further, all members of public bodies are allowed and encouraged to participate remotely. The order which you can find posted with the agenda materials for this meeting allows public bodies to meet entirely remotely so long as reasonable public access is afforded, so the public can follow along with the deliberations of the meeting. Ensuring public access does not ensure public participation unless such participation is required by law. This meeting will feature public comment, even if members of the public do not provide comment. Participants are advised that people may be listening, but do not provide comment and those persons are not required to identify themselves. This meeting of the Select Board is convening by Zoom as posted in the town's website, identifying how the public may join. Please note that this meeting is being recorded and that some attendees are participating by video conference. Accordingly, please be aware that other folks may be able to see you and take care not to screen share your computer. Anything that you broadcast may be captured by the recording. Please also take care to adjust your screen or device name if you would like to speak. In order for us to recognize speakers appropriately and develop accurate minutes, it is helpful for participants to see your full, first and last name when calling upon you rather than a nickname. All of the materials for this meeting except any executive session materials are available on the Novus Agenda Dashboard. We recommend the members and the public follow the agenda as posted on Novus unless the chair notes otherwise. We now turn to the first item on the agenda before we do so permit me to cover some ground rules for effective and clear conduct of our business and to ensure accurate meeting minutes. I will introduce each speaker on the agenda after they conclude their remarks. The chair will go down the line of members inviting each by name to provide any comments, questions or motions. Please hold until your name is called. Further, please remember to mute your phone or computer when you're not speaking. Please remember to speak clearly in a way that helps generate accurate minutes. For any response, please wait until the chair yields the floor to you and state your name before speaking. If members wish to engage in colloquy with other members, please do so through the chair taking care to identify yourself. This meeting will feature opportunities for public comment on certain items. After members have spoken, I as the chair will afford the public comment opportunities as follows. I will ask the members of the public who wish to speak to identify their names and addresses only. Once the chair has a list of all public commentators, I'll call on each by name and afford three minutes for any comments. Please keep in mind that all participants and members of the public must be recognized by the chair before speaking. Finally, each vote taking in this meeting will be taken by roll call vote. It takes us to item number two, our consent agenda. We have one item for approval, blue jean ball lawn signs through April 10th, 2021. Do we have someone from the ACA that wants to present on this? Yes, I see Tom, there he is. Tom Formico, I'll bring him right up. Tom, can you hear us? Now can you hear me? Yep, we can hear you now. Very good, and let me see if you can see me. There I am. Perfect. Hello, everybody. Do you want me to just launch in and give you a little description about what we're asking? Just tell us about the request. Great, we're doing our blue jean ball fundraiser on April 10th, and we are hoping to put lawn signs, 18 by 24 inches. There's 24 of them in well-trafficked areas of the town to promote awareness of it and the hope that people will go home and buy tickets for it. Sure. Alrighty, I'll turn to the board for any questions, comments, or motions. Mrs. Mahan. Thank you. First, I'd move approval. And it's a very aggressive lawn sign effort, which is good because people are looking for information. These are 24 great spots. And my only question would be, I'm just gonna assume that you have a plan to gather the lawn signs after the event is finished. I promise you will. Yeah. Okay, only because you may need, at least if not the sign, you can use the six again. So thank you very much. Absolutely. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Dunn. This is one of those things where I don't think we actually have the authority for what we're being asked to do, but at the same time, I'm gonna say yes, because I want to support the event and the cleanup is what matters. But the actual jurisdiction of these particular locations is really tricky, but that shouldn't slow us down. So that's all I got. And you have a second on that one as well? Second. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Diggins. That was an interesting comment, Mr. Dunn. So I have no comments other than to say April 10th. It's the election day, Veeze, but thankfully, it's gonna be remote Veeze, so you'll get attendance because if it was gonna be live, we know that everyone would be at home, riveted to ACMI, watching the results. So you'd have to have a monitor up there spinning out the results to me. So good luck, Veeze. I went last year, it was a good time. Veeze, I hope you do well. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Degorsi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yeah, and I support the motion. I really like the sign the way you've incorporated the blue gene into the signage there. So best of luck on April 10th and hopefully next year we can have the ball back at Town Hall. Yep, thank you. And thank you for your presentation. And the blue gene ball is always something that we look forward to every year. And it's one of the premier events that we have at Town Hall. So I'm looking forward to supporting it this year and I'm much more looking forward to attending it next year. Me too. Thank you. All right, so we have a motion for approval. Seconded by Mr. Dunn. Turn your hand. Mrs. Mahon. Yes, thank you. Mr. Degorsi. Yeah. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Dunn. Yes. Mr. Herrick. Yes. Shannon, Ms. Vo. Thank you. Thank you. All right, that takes us to traffic rules and order and other business. One item review and approve outdoor performance regulations. So I think Mr. Chapter Lane is gonna take this one. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman. So the draft policy that has been put before the board tonight when we put it on the agenda last week, we thought we were gonna be prepared to ask for approval, but we're not quite there yet. Still wanted to very briefly talk about it. What you have before you is the product of a lot of work by members of the Economic Development Recovery Task Force, the Erelington Commission on Arts and Culture, the Chamber of Commerce, and town staff, really in recognition of the arts and culture community and sector being one of those most hard hit economically by the impacts of the pandemic and our desire to really, as soon as it is safe and practical, allow for arts and culture to try to get back, get its footing back in the community in a safe manner. So you can see the framework we're thinking about in the draft policy that's before the board tonight. What we need to do before we ask for your approval is just go through a few more paces with the Board of Health and the Parks and Recreation Commission to make sure that we all have a common understanding of things. And I think most importantly, make sure that with what we eventually ask you to approve in this policy is the way that we consistently approach events and programming on public spaces from a public health point of view over the course of the next few months. So we'll iron out those details, hopefully in the next week, maybe two weeks by the time that the Board next meets and hopefully bring it back before you for approval. All right, any questions or comments from the Board, Mr. Dacorsi? Yeah, first of all, I'll move receipt of the draft and I appreciate the additional time. I know we had received some questions through our emails today from Mr. Klein and I know there are some issues as the town manager indicated just need to be worked out for consistency. So I have no questions, I just wanna move receipt. Thank you, Mr. Dunn. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I second the motion. I'm definitely supportive of the intent here and I look forward to getting it done. Yep. Mr. Mahan? Thank you, Mr. Chair, no questions. I support the motion. Yeah, Mr. Diggins? I support the motion too and I certainly appreciate the questions from Mr. Klein, I look forward to seeing how this is all handled and I'm sure it'll be handled well. Thank you. Thank you. Yep, and I definitely support the policy. This is something that the Economic Recovery Task Force has been discussed a number of times and certainly the business owners are looking forward to and I think we can do and we can do well. And I talked to Mr. Chapter Lane a little while ago briefly and just to reassure anyone that's watching that was tuned into the meeting for this particular purpose that we are gonna move on this. We're not gonna drag our fee. We wanna make sure this is in place for the warmer weather that we are now experiencing. So we will work to get this on the next agenda. All right, we have a motion to receive. Turn it on. This is Mohan. Yes, thank you. Mr. D'Corsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Dunn. Yes. Mr. Hurd. Yes. So yeah, let's go. Thank you. All right, that is to warrant article hearings, articles for review. We have article 11, 14, 19, 20, article 24 which was tabled from our last meeting and article 26. First up is article 11, bylaw amendments, storm water management. Ms. Chaplain, do we have someone from DPW speaking on this or? I believe Mr. Town Council was going to address this. Jenny Ham. Thank you, Mr. Hurd. And a quick note before I start on that, I wanna note that I'm sorry, fortunately due to some changing schedules and things that we were trying to get put on the agenda for this meeting, I didn't prepare a memo for you on article 14. I'm very lucky that Steve Macalca from the Historic District Commission prepared such a thorough memo, including a draft motion with respect to the fiberglass gutter issue. So I'm grateful to Steve for excellent work done. I'm sorry that in the shortest shuffle of worn articles that we're putting on, I didn't put that one on. This article, article 11 with respect to storm water management returns to the select board from last year's discussion. You may recall for those who are on the board at that time that you moved positive action on this update to the storm water management bylaw, which really provides five core changes. It looks a little bit more comprehensive in the draft that you've got from Emily Sullivan, the environmental planner who worked in conjunction with the town engineering department to bring this updated bylaw before you. So number one, I think as it puts in my memo, it provides a little bit of a clear goal for storm water management that cites the statutory basis for the authority for us to engage in the type of storm water management that we do. Second, it improves and updates some definitions that are a little bit outdated in the current version. Third, and this is probably what applies to most sort of homeowners who might have some concerns about what this is and isn't, it clarifies the applicability of the bylaw within different types of projects so that if you're repaving sidewalk, a walkway up to your front door from the sidewalk, it makes it a little clearer that most projects like that don't get a storm water management review, but if you're doing some sort of substantial regrading and repaving for the purposes of improving a driveway or adding parking spots and like that, it might be you're probably gonna get some kind of storm water management. Fourth, it allows for a promulgation of more detailed rules and regulations consistent with the bylaw. This is one of those areas somewhat similar to some other things the board's tackled in the last couple of years that it's very hard to detail every single specific element of a functional bylaw within the bylaw itself because sometimes things get updated or they get changed both from the perspective of what the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection would expect with respect to some of the technical aspects of this type of work. So it allows for regulations to be promulgated consistent with the bylaw. And then finally, this is obviously a big deal it ensures compatibility with EPA permitting. The some of the few tweaks between last year's version which you had previously approved and had we not had a truncated town meeting would have gone in front of you. Is it added a little bit of language that made it clear that this was compliant with MS4 permits required by the EPA and made some of the definitions more consistent with the conservation commission's existing regulations. So with that, I think, if there are any questions I'm happy to answer them as best I can. We had tried to schedule this a couple of different times when the environmental planner could be here but realistically speaking I think our warrant article schedule is so busy that it's been hard to do that. So I'm definitely prepared to talk about it and answer some basic questions and talking points. And I hope that I can provide you sufficient information to make a decision on this tonight. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Diggins. Thank you, Mr. Chair. This is, I mean, there's a lot here and it almost seems like it would be the sort of thing that goes to ARB or ZBA but it's definitely in our wheelhouse. And I appreciate the fact that it is something that is crafted in a way that it can handle changes that may arise through other legislation. So I am going to move positive action on this. So and I haven't further, excuse me, I have no further comment. Yeah, this is behind. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will second that. And I have three questions or perhaps one that are three parts. And this is sort of a reach by taking advantage of the opportunity that this talks to some water management on public and private property in accordance with Master EP. So my questions are for the DCR owned land either to Turning Hime or Ms. Sullivan on the DCR property along the al-wife is that covered in this bylaw? Very high. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you, Ms. Simhan for the question. So I think there are slightly different things in the sense that what this bylaw does is it sort of has, if you will, a triggering event. I know what you're referencing. We've been concerned for a long time about discharge into the al-wife rook but this bylaw, updating this bylaw doesn't change the threshold for projects requiring a permit. It's still project driven. So there certainly are circumstances if there's a project over at al-wife where this might be triggered. The testing with respect to stormwater, I think that you're referencing still is ongoing and there are requirements that I know that we're continue to try to sort of tighten but for better or for worse, this update isn't necessarily related to stormwater discharges that aren't essentially being evaluated in the context of a project to revise or construct something new. Thank you, Attorney Hamm. I guess as a follow-up, and I'm reaching here, I totally understand. But in terms of, which is coming up in the next two, three years, the Nifty's variance waiver process in the city of Somerville and Cambridge and the CSO discharges which goes to stormwater. Is this something we should or could apply? I'm hoping the answer is, I know I'm reaching, but my thing is if we're gonna hold the town of Allington to a certain standard, if we can't do DCR right now, if we can do when the Nifty's variance waiver process comes up, hold the cities of Somerville and Cambridge to the same standards that we're holding the town of Allington to. Yeah, so thank you, Ms. Mahan. I think that that's a really important point. I think what Ms. Mahan is referencing just for other members of the Board of Public is that Allington is really a model stormwater management community. And obviously stormwater is not just a entirely local issue. We have water bodies that are fed by our neighbors as well. I think that while this doesn't directly address that, I think the MS4 permit is gonna hold everybody to some higher standards. And that will be a benefit. This is part of our way of keeping up with those higher standards, but hopefully it will also drag other communities that might be seeking waivers from certain types of discharge up as well. I'll have to, I'm sorry, I can't answer totally conclusively as to whether or not there's a way in which this might tie into some other communities or DCR if there's not an active project context. I'm not trying to pun Ms. Mahan. I just don't see it right now, but I don't wanna totally rule out that by improving our own stormwater management that we won't have sort of further leverage points when we're saying, look, we're doing our part with respect to these water bodies. We need these state and other neighboring municipalities to step it up. So I think it is helpful in that regard, but I'm not sure there's something under this schema that would give us some more direct control of that. Okay, and I guess I would ask town council and Ms. Sullivan, maybe not comment tonight, but we're talking about holding Allington to a certain standard that we hold the cities of Somalo in Cambridge with their CSO, which is combined sewer overflows, which means when some water goes real high, they get to dump all their gaga or whatever you wanna call it into our waterways. I know I'm reaching, but if we could just kind of keep that on the radar that we're holding Allington to a high standard, if we could use this bylaw amendment for stormwater management with the cities of Somalo and Cambridge with the remaining three CSO just charges into the L-Wife on the Allington side, especially when the NIPDs permits comes up for review, which is shortly, so thank you. Thank you, Ms. Sullivan. I'll make sure to talk to the environmental planner and the engineering department about it further. Mr. Corsi. No questions. Mr. Dunn. No questions. Thank you. And I will support this again. This is a public hearing. If anyone wishes to speak on article 11, please use the raise hand function and use Zoom application now once, going twice. All right, with that, we have a motion for positive action by Ms. Dakin, seconded by Mrs. Mahan, to turn it on. And if I may, Mr. Chair, the environmental planner put together a terrific memo on this for any members of the public that are interested in learning a little bit more about our LinkedIn's commitment to this, from everything from climate resiliency to more basic stormwater management. So I'll stop talking. Mrs. Mahan. Yes, thank you. Mr. D'Corsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Dunn. Yes. Mr. Hurd. Yes. It's unanimous vote. Mr. Chairman. Yes. Just for consideration, including that memo in an appendix in the Selections Report, if appropriate. Yep, absolutely. That brings us to article 14, bylaw amendment gutters in historic districts. Can I see Mr. McCauke with us? Good evening. Can everyone hear me? Yes, we can. If you could just say your name for the record, just tell us a little about the article. Sure, Steve McCauke, Chair of the Arlington Historic Districts Commission, live on Russell Street in Precinct 9. I thank you for the opportunity to address the Select Board this evening. I apologize ahead of time. If I say Board of Selectmen, I keep falling back into that habit. It's a hard one to break. So I did provide a memo that I think lays out the rationale for why we're asking for this bylaw change. But just to summarize very quickly, if you don't know the historic district commissions have jurisdiction over changes to visible features within the historic districts. One of these features are gutters, obviously important features on houses. We have a preference for retaining historic materials replacing like with like. And in fact, we don't have to do a formal review of like with like. Those kinds of repairs and changes and replacements can be done without a formal notice hearing, formal notice process or a formal hearing. However, any changes that change the visual look, change materials, those types of things, unless there's a specific exemption in the bylaw have to go through the full hearing process. What we found over the past 10 years is the materials available now to replace gutters. When people do replace wood gutters with wood gutters, they fail very quickly. You just don't have the old growth wood that you had available. I still have some wood gutters in my house that were installed in 1872. You're not gonna find anything that's going to last like that anymore. What we found is those gutters were failing very quickly and that compromised the historic structures. It was just an unsustainable situation. We spent a number of years looking for alternatives, other things that would meet the goals of historic accuracy, as well as the goals of preserving the structures. And we kind of lucked out around 2008 with, if you remember the economic crisis there, people stopped building boats. People that were building boats said, hey, what else can I do with this technology? And they actually adapted the boat building process to building fiberglass gutters. They took old wood gutters, created forms, and then created the fiberglass gutter within that form. So it actually has the texture and exact dimensions of historic gutters. And when installed on houses, really are indistinguishable from the wood gutters because of the profiles. And they also have the added advantage of having more capacity. And obviously they have the longevity that you don't get from the wood today. So what we found is, since these materials have become available and there are now multiple manufacturers in the marketplace that make these products is that we've seen a increasing number of applications asking for this on structures in the historic districts. And I think for the past four or five years, we've approved every single application that's become before us. It's almost pro forma at this point. We do ask for some specifics around installation and making sure they're using the right materials and people who know what they're doing. But those are really a few process things. Then we spend literally minutes at hearings on these things. But we still have to, because of the way the bylaws written, go through the formal notice process, make people wait for our next hearing, go through the hearing process. It's just unnecessary for the commission. It's unnecessary for the homeowners. And we like to move these kinds of changes into a category that's exempt under the bylaws so that we can go ahead and issue certificates of what are called non-applicability without formal notice or formal hearing. And we provided the language in exactly how that would work. I'm happy to answer any questions. All right, and thank you for the presentation. Mr. DeCorsi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all, I'll move favorable action. I wanna thank you, Mr. Makaka, for the detailed memo and for the explanation tonight. And just a question, to obtain the certificate of non-applicability, is it not? You just lost just the... I'm sorry, I lost you. Okay, I'm sorry. Is that any better? No. Okay, just a question on the process to obtain a certificate of non-applicability, is it an application that's required or just a letter to obtain that now? It is an application. On our application, there's a box for a certificate of appropriateness or non-applicability. If you check off non-applicability, you just have to provide enough information so that we understand the scope of the project and make sure it meets within the guide or falls within the guidelines or the bylaw change. And then we would issue the certificate. We don't have to do any formal notice or have a hearing. If there's a question, then I will typically follow up with the applicant, clarify the application and issue the certificate. Okay, thank you. Mr. Chairman, I don't know if I broke out before I made the motion for favorable action, but I'll move that. And again, thank you to Mr. Macauker for the detailed memo. Thank you, Mr. Dunn. Second, no questions. Thank you, Mrs. Mohan. Thank you, no questions. Thank you, Mr. Dickens. Thank you. I mean, I'm gonna support it. Just a quick question, and you can give me a very quick answer. Are these letters to me in general environmentally friendly or is a combination of the way that they're produced by and combined with how often or how often they need to be replaced in that positive environmentally? I haven't done a study of that. I can't point to anything specifically, but I do know that these gutters are going to be very long-lived and not require multiple repairs. So I think you're eliminating some sequential pulling things off the house and throwing them into a landfill and replacing with something else. Okay, thank you. Thank you, thank you for the presentation. Very detailed in your memo as well. This is a public hearing. If any members of the public want to speak to this article, please use the raise hand function in your Zoom application. Seeing none, we have a motion for favorable action that has been seconded, Attorney Heim. This is Mohan. Yes, thank you. Mr. Dacourcy. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Dunn. Yes. Mr. Her. Yes. Mr. Yanis. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right, that takes us to Article 19. Vote establishment of town committee on auto and property insurance claims and losses. We have Mr. Fisher with us. Mr. Fisher, can you hear us? Say your name and tell us a little bit about the article. You have to unmute yourself there. Sorry. Thank you. Did I hear correctly that this should be limited to three minutes? Your presentation. We get five to seven minutes. OK, I think I'm below four minutes. Thank you for your time considering this proposal. I asked the board to support Article 19 to see if the town meeting would learn the costs of our auto and home owner insurance premiums and claims into establish a committee charged with admission. Last year, the select board asked me what actions could such a study lead to. I'd like to respond to that question after explaining the reasons behind this proposal. Arlington needs new sources of revenue to prevent overrides, as everyone knows. At the same time, we know a few facts about incidents and causes of our insurance losses. For example, how many houses had termite damage last year? Can we know how many car crashes actually happened associated with texting, DWI? What are their costs? And how many houses had problems caused by solar panels and so on? At the same time, insurance costs appear incredibly high when considered as the cost of the town as a whole or by precinct. Precinct six, for example, has about 1,300 cars whose total premiums amounts to about $1.3 million according to data from the Insurance Information Institute. How can we not be curious about such a large figure? The total cash flow for all of our insurance, homeowner and auto, might be in the range of $60 million. We don't know. I'm not suggesting the study only to lower our premiums. Rather, I think we should find out the answer to this question. If we consolidate our insurance process as much as possible, could the savings be adequate to provide some of the funding for the town prevention services, such as police and fire? I think further savings would accrue because with a unified model of insurance, clear knowledge of claims and their causes would enable targeted prevention programs, such as termites. These are my motivations, a new source of revenue and a more informed community. Here are some possible actions that could follow from this study. We might learn that the current system is extremely economical and claims are in line with the cost of premiums. We probably will have enriched our understanding about local insurance and it might lead to recommendations as to how to improve the existing systems. I doubt it will have been a waste of time. If we find that the cost of claims is small compared to the cost of premiums and if the idea garners broad support, follow-up actions could be that a subcommittee could work up a report on existing self-insured programs, such as the single-payer auto insurance programs of British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. What are the strengths and weaknesses of these systems? That subcommittee could also look at the way the state of Massachusetts self-insures its state-owned fleet. How does this work and what are the problems? We might find specific recurring home insurance claims that ought to be addressed and recommend action. Also, if the data is clear and again, if the idea garners wide support, the committee could ask this Mass Municipal Association to look at this idea. We could also collaborate with other interested committees. I think this project can only increase our knowledge of the town and I ask for your support. Thank you very much. Thank you. I'll turn to the board, Mr. Dunn. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Fisher, for bringing it forward again. So have you, are there any programs out there that you think that the town should be replicating like other towns that have adopted specific programs? Not in Massachusetts for auto or property insurance. The closest that comes to mind is that Arlington itself in most towns and cities do the same dynamic for their workers comp on a frighteningly small scale with no reinsurance. And the dynamics of it based on my interviews with Ed Marlinga and John Mar years ago are the same. And I interviewed employees who were very protective of the town and motivated. You can ask Ed Marlinga about it. It's interesting. It's kind of too good to be true. They said that people get dimes dropped on them if they cheat and add studies, patterns of loss. They implement prevention programs. They had just done such a prevention program for trips and falls. And also, they had just done a prevention program because they had so many costs due to back injuries because that's when the workforce was really aging because this was years ago. But to be clear, that's for the town's insurances, like the town's insurance, not the residents of the town. Correct. Yeah. So I think I'm pretty sure that I recommended a vote of no action last year. And I'm still in the same place. I just don't see a direct enough path forward about what this study committee could come up with and suggest. I think that there are a lot of avenues out there for interested people to pursue understanding more about the insurance industry. And Massachusetts, including the Division of Insurance with Massachusetts and through our state regulation, excuse me, our state representation. And I just don't think that it's a fruitful path for the town to engage in a study without actually, there are other studies that I'm supportive of where I understand what the end goal might or might not be. And this one, I just still can't understand it. So I would like to move that we recommend no action. All right, Mr. Mahan. Did you say me, because I didn't hear the word. Yep. Okay. I will second Mr. Dunn's motion just around the fact that everything that my colleague Mr. Dunn stated as well as I don't really see in this Warren article saying to establish a town committee. And I understand the comments that the opponent received from Mr. Malinger, Mr. Mar, who both retired and have moved on and no longer with us. I don't have any sense of what that committee would be. So I would second Mr. Dunn's motion. Mr. Corsi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yeah, I support Mr. Dunn's motion. Thank you for bringing this forward. Mr. Fisher, we did speak about this last year. And I tend to agree with Mr. Dunn's comments on this as well. Yeah, Mr. Diggins. I'm intrigued. I mean, because I understand where everyone's coming from. But sometimes you just don't know what can come out of something until you take a look at it. And I appreciate Mr. Fisher's being honest about the uncertainty about what could come out of this as opposed to trying to promise us the moon and the stars being as a result of the study. Some questions. So I mean, how would the committee be composed? How would it be composed? I would propose a precinct based committee with any interested precinct. Someone would come forward and be a precinct captain ideally one of the town meeting members. I'd like to say everyone I talked with about this, which in much more detail is actually wildly enthusiastic about the idea, I omitted a sentence which was the eventual outcome would be a statewide network of community based plans with a third party administrator working in partnership with each town. So it would be statewide. And I admit this is far-fetched and incredibly far-reaching but British Columbia is about the same size with 3.7 million cars. And you asked for an example of this kind of program in Massachusetts. If you go on the webpage for insurance corporation of British Columbia, it's incredible. It acts as a community function. They do a lot of funding of local prevention activities. I can't say enough about the many examples that it does. This might take a few years but part of the reason I don't just do it is that if there was an actual sanction approval of town meeting, I could say this has quantifiable interest 120 people or however many people voted in favor in town meeting. And then it's less odd because honestly, it's odd to ask people these kinds of questions. I've been over the years, I've been involved with perhaps 10 insurance claims for homeowners insurance. And you get a good feel for how it works, what's good, what's not. And I see I see termite damage over and over and nothing is done. The reason is it's actually excluded. It's not covered. This is not an insurance system that's invested in the town's welfare. And once you get inside of this, the question of socialism just disappears. That it just like, is the current system for the best? Is it really so efficient or are we just conditioned to accept it? So I don't want to take too much more of your time. Yeah, I just have a couple more questions. So how would you go about getting information that you're trying to get? With a survey, I would ask people, I have done this for about 30 people. I would initially do a lit drop in each interested precinct, takes about three or four hours to do that and invite people to respond by email or by taking a photograph of it and then jump to survey monkey on that basis and gather as much information as possible. So it wouldn't draw on the town's resources in order to go about trying to get this information? No. Okay. So you feel that the imprimatur of town meeting would make people more likely to respond to the survey? Yes, and also Vision 2020 would feel enabled to help. I was a town meeting representative to Vision 2020 from about 1998 to 2015 when Julie Brazil took over. And at one point we asked people to name their insurance companies for us. And we put none of your business. 3,000 responses produced the names of 70, literally 70 insurance companies serving the town. And our main impression was that it's just so fragmented and that's the issue. But my point is that that was felt to be radical. I asked, later I asked Vision 2020 to just empower me to say to my precinct, this is a vision 2020 project. And their response after much debate was it's, they didn't want me to say that. And it's because it just seems so odd and far-fetched. That's the truth. Yeah, I appreciate that. I think we can see how this is gonna go. And so I would say, don't be discouraged. Let's see, let's continue working on it. First off, when you try and do some work on your own and make some headway. And then second, try this again. And one quick side question. You didn't happen to submit a study to the UPWP, other MPO, did you? A study? No, what is that? No, no problem, no problem. If you don't know what it is, you didn't. All right, thank you. Okay. And thank you. I think this is so much of the comments last year is that it's an A for effort. And I think you're trying to, you really are trying to help residents, but I just don't think that the stated goal is succinct enough at this time, as Mr. Dunn said. So with that. Thanks for your time. Yep. You still have some public commentary potentially. All right, with that, this is a public hearing. If anybody wishes to speak on this article, please use the raise hand function in your Zoom application. There is no public commentary. So we have a motion for no action, which has been seconded. Attorney Heim. Sorry. This is Mohan. Yes, thank you. Mr. Corsi. Yes, Mr. Diggins. The curious in me is just too, too curious to say yes, so I have to say no. Mr. Dunn. Yes. Mr. Heard. Yes. It's a 401 vote. Thank you, Mr. Fisher. Thank you. All right, that takes us to article 20 on our agenda. We vote for public remote participation. Do you have Ms. Dre with us? Hi, good evening. Can the slideshow that I submitted is it possible to use that? Yeah, I will give you, do you have it? Or would you like me to bring it on the screen? I'm happy to pull it up if that's easiest. Let me see if I can access, give me one second. I would, yeah. So we can just make the share function, if you have it. Yeah, it's in a different orientation when I open it up. So I can let you share. Perfect, thank you. You should be able to share now. How we doing? All right, we sharing? Yeah, we can see it. Perfect, great, thank you, appreciate it. So Elizabeth Dre, Jason Street, thank you very much. I'm really excited to present this article to you. One silver lining of COVID has been the ability to remotely attend and participate in a wide variety of town meetings. And these lowered barriers have, I've seen increased resident participation and increased equity and increased, increased the diversity of voices that are being seen and heard and listened to in town government. And this incredible response offers Arlington the opportunity to now intentionally choose to maintain expanded access and equitable spaces in ways that maximize equity and diversity. Many barriers to access just disappeared with remote participation. It didn't matter anymore what the weather was, what the bus schedule was. There was too many stairs to climb. I couldn't find a babysitter. I had a long day at work or just wanna sit on the couch or maybe I'm still at work. This hybrid meetings allows us to instantly be there wherever we are at that moment, whoever we are at that moment. And of course my favorite part is the very quick commute home to bed. I wanna frame this article by offering an analogy of absentee and mail-in voting. So those two options don't change the reality and the rules of how we vote in person. What they do is offer additional ways to vote. And that has an increased accessibility and therefore increases the number of people who vote. And so I believe that hybrid meetings and we've seen this this year will do the same. So it doesn't change the rules of when the public participates during the meeting. It just gives them additional ways to participate. And that therefore the public participation will remain accessible as it is now and civic engagement will remain high as it is now. So, oops, I guess I don't really know how to move my... Oh, there you go. Okay, so this is the intention of the article. It's fairly straightforward. And again, it's enhancing the how that people can participate publicly without changing the when of people participating. What this article does is provides the consistent policy within the town that will relate to all public bodies and it lowers the barriers to access, allows more vibrant and diverse input and does this all in a way that is consistent with open meeting law and the town manager act and respective of the legal requirements regarding the business of each public body. What it doesn't do is violate open meeting law regulations. As Mr. Heim has stated in his comments, there are no set forth requirements for public participation. It, there's a lot about the members of the body like you guys, but there's nothing about how the public can participate remotely. So there's nothing that says you have to do or what you can't do, but it does say that you have the option of doing it if you decide to do that. So when I was talking to people, a lot of people wanted to know what did the committees think? What were their feelings? What was their experiences? So I created a very informal and scientific six-question survey asking them these questions. I mailed it out to 47 of the town's committees, asked these questions and as of today, I got my 22nd public response and thank you Chairman Hurd for filling it out for the select board. And what we saw was overwhelmingly positive feedback and 40% of the groups reported increased public participation and they all saw it as positive. And not a single person thought that it should not continue after the pandemic. These are the groups that were, oops, most people thought, and this would be affected and it's no surprise, right? People with young children, I mean, this reflects my experience. When my kids were young, I didn't have the time to, I had a lot of things to say and a lot I wanted to learn but I didn't have four hours to go sit in a meeting and wait for that time for my three minutes to speak. But now people can do that while they're taking care of an elderly parent or they're on their way home from work or they're feeding the kids. It just has opened access. The biggest concern not surprisingly is about technology, how running it smoothly, how to incorporate people. And I think that's a legitimate concern that I'm hoping the town can help with. These are, I got a lot of really positive comments thinking that this was a great idea. And I would like to just sort of close by saying that this middle one is really what we should focus on, right? This would ensure my attendance. I have a physical ability, disability that sometimes makes it very difficult for me to travel distances. And so I present this also to Arlington as a moral decision to make about how do we message who is welcome and whose voices are important? I say we throw the windows wide open, right? Like we throw our arms open and we say to everybody we wanna hear from you. The residents who are maybe now just paying attention and able to attend meetings, those are your future volunteers. Those are your future town meeting members and your chairs and your select board, right? If we don't, we'll never get to looking different at this level, at the high level. If we don't start to lower the barriers and invite more people at the entry level. And that is what this will continue to make possible. These are some groups that endorsed, have endorsed this particular endorsement. I thought I was in Article 21, so apologies for that. And I just wanted to also talk, say that we would not be alone that the city of Boston's looking to do a similar thing. And there's actually an act in front of the state legislation that they're talking about that's been co-sponsored by our own senator and representatives, which I appreciate. So we would not be alone doing this. And I ask for your support. Thank you. Thank you. We'll turn to the board for any questions, comments, or motions. Mr. DeCorsi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And Mr. May for the... So Steve, we are losing you a little bit. Put it into this. Sorry, I didn't mention me. Nope, I can't hear you. All right, Steve, I'm gonna come back to you, okay? We'll go to Mr. Dunn. And then we'll go back to Mr. Dunn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Dredd. I definitely support what the article's after in principle. I absolutely agree in, as you say, opening the doors and the windows and not letting, enabling as many people in as possible. I do have some questions about the practical things about this. So we hit this point in the process and what the select board's gotta do is gotta take a broad warrant article and render it down into a specific motion and say, hey, town meeting, this is the specific motion that you should put forward. And I've got a few things in my head that I consider optional. I consider obstacles, not blockers, but things that need to be figured out. So for instance, the technology question's a real one. You've been in our select board room and you know, like, if you think about somebody who's in it coming in remotely to speak at that, like not only does the members of the select board need to hear and the people at the front table, but all the audience needs to hear. And so getting that level of sound projection that works that doesn't get feedback and people that never could see it is a non-trivial technology solution there. And then I think about there are some committees that meet in our select board school committee, probably more ready for stuff like that. You know, tree committee, finance committee, cemetery trustees, like their meeting locations are not gonna be as conducive for this. And so I guess I'm wondering if you'd had any, did you have specific, so let me wander for just a second more, which is, so one possibility here is to say is to refer this to a committee and say, all right, committee, figure this out, what's the practical way to do this? And you know, there's definitely saying, you know, referring me to the committee is the way to kill it. I'll tell you that isn't my intent right now. My intent is to try to figure out a way to get to yes. And I just don't know how to get to yes in the time between now and town meetings. So if you have thoughts about how to get to yes between now and town meeting, I'm listening. Fantastic. So I did submit my presentation to the finance committee. I'm not sure if you had a chance to see it, but in it, I looked at those, I looked at the cost and I looked at the logistics. And I went back a year and you know, we averaged five meetings a night, maximum seven. So I looked at where are we currently meeting? Where are the highest areas that we're using for meeting space and identified eight of them? So if we took seven of them, right, that's the maximum that we would need on the extreme. And we outfitted seven meeting spaces with the technology needed, then that would be, that would be the how, right? And starting from scratch, you know, because I don't know what the town already has in these different locations, internet, wifi, you know, and I'm not including the select board chambers or the school committee, right? So those are even also perhaps usable. I just don't know what the logistics of who gets to use those. So I didn't want to make assumptions, but it would cost to outfit fully equipped seven meeting rooms with the screen that you're going to need and the microphone and the speakers and everything else, the camera would be $7,490 to fully equip seven meeting spaces. So that's assuming we start from zero. So there are logistics to work out, but I don't, I really don't think that those logistics are a big enough obstacle. I spoke to, when I spoke in front of the finance committee, we left it that they were going to talk to the IT department and Mr. Pooler to see whether or not those costs could be absorbed in the current budget or whether there would need to appropriate some money for it. And they don't have an answer as of this evening. But, you know, when I spoke to people, I spoke to people who did the technology for the schools and how putting them, you know, getting them up and running remotely. And I, people did not think that technology was the real obstacle. They thought logistics were the real obstacle, but I think that we can solve the logistics. It will, it, will it be bumpy initially? Yeah. So I guess, do you have a sense that it's a, like the, and maybe this is. And you just muted yourself. The perils of using the space bar. So the, it says, establish parameters. And so did you have, like, were you looking for the us to put forward a motion that says, committees are required, committees are recommended, make it easier such that if you do it, this is how you do it. What did you have, did you have a direction you wanted us to go in? Yes. So also in the, in that fine, the FinCon presentation, I have eight sort of parameters I've already sort of written out, but it would be to, it would be a requirement of public bodies. And that is why, that is why I'm asking for it to come from above, right? Not make it optional. And, but, but for the town to support it by saying these are, this is the policy and we're going to help you get there. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm still listening. Yep. Mr. Dacorsi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Is that better? Okay, good. All right. Sorry about that earlier. Yeah, I'm still getting a bad message here. So I'll try to continue and then hopefully it gets better. So as I was saying at the beginning, thank you for the presentation. And I do have a question. Maybe we could just talk about for the select board, Mr. A, in terms of what you'd like to see if we go back to the chamber, is it allowing citizens or public forum remotely, public hearings remotely? Or what do you envision as soon we could do it? So this is a very narrowly only applies to public participation. So however it is that the select board meeting would have their public participation, it would offer it that in both in-person and people to zoom in and do their three minutes of open forum or speak in support of a warrant. The rest of that would be if, the rest of whether or not you as a board want people to be in front of you is remains up to you. This is only affects related to how the public participates when they're allowed to participate. Okay. All right. Thank you. And I see Mr. Dunn's concern in terms of how this gets framed in terms of a particular motion, speaking for myself, I mean, at some point we're going to go back into the chamber and if we can do it, I would support having remote participation on citizens open forum or public participation. There may have to be time limits that we implement on that. But I mean, I could see doing that and there may be situations where members are comfortable coming back that the area that I'm concerned about is it seems to me that this is going to be a committee by committee determination because the open meeting law allows the chair of each committee to determine one, whether there is public participation and two, what the extent of it is. So I think administratively from the select board and I'm curious to see what my colleagues think, I could see looking into doing something like that. And I think it's been effective to date. I am a little troubled by how that will work for other committees and what our ability is to tell other committees what they need to do and whether they even have, a lot of committees don't even have a public participation component and the open meeting law actually leaves it to the discretion of the chair of each committee to do that. So there is a concern that way, but at least speaking for what we can control, I certainly would be open and into looking into that and trying to implement that. If I could respond to that, the open meeting law is very specific about that it's at the discretion of the chair when people, right, how the public speaks and when the public speaks, but it doesn't speak to how the public speaks. So the chair would still be in charge. It's still at the discretion. If they don't allow speaking, then speaking is not allowed. If they only allow it this way, that's still the when. This is just the how. This is another how, another way to do it. Thank you. This is Mohamed. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'd like to move no action on this for several reasons. First of all, the article is written that it's going to be remote participation by members of public in meetings of all public bodies. It does not talk specifically about citizen open forum at select board meetings. It talks about our at least 113 committees and subcommittees that we have in town. And as Ms. Stray has pointed out, that's at the purview of the chairperson in terms of how that is conducted. I think once we get back to the point which we're not there yet in terms of we can have meetings where it is open to the public that when it comes to, and it seems to me from Ms. Stray, she's focused around the select board citizen resident open forum. The other concern I have is I don't think this is going to pass the attorney. I guess I would pose this and I'm sorry, Attorney Hine. In terms of the attorney general's office scrutiny oversight that they have on this, I don't see them ruling this as something that we could do. And if attorney Han could speak to that or if he could say, I can't speak to that. Attorney Han. Thank you, Ms. Han. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think it would depend on what the parameters are. So Ms. Stray and I have exchange correspondence about this as she noted, she has I think eight sort of parameters. One, that it applies to all public bodies. Two, that recordings are made and they're made immediately or not immediately, but they're made available without request. Three, that people can see and hear each other both live and remotely. Four, that there's an opportunity to actively participate in public comment opportunities remotely, although there is a note about discretion being afforded to the chairs, then there's a piece about meeting locations and discretion about what sort of business is put on there. So I'm not trying to give a difficult answer, Ms. Han. I think it would just depend a lot on the contents. So I think you could have a town bylaw that says there will be to the extent that you have public comment, you'll provide opportunities for remote participation in that public comment. But I don't know that you could make that mandatory for all public bodies to have that. Although it's not clear to me that Ms. Dre is suggesting that it would be mandatory to have public comment. Does that make sense? No, no. And what I have from you, what Ms. Dre is talking about and what she's proposing, the way I interpreted two different things. She's talking about the select board citizen open forum and then her warrant article talks about remote participation by members of the public, of all public bodies, of all their agenda items here in the town of Wellington. To me, that's two different things. And from what I got that you sent to us was that taking into account the Americans with Disability Act, which is a whole nother issue around this that perhaps would not survive the scrutiny of the Attorney General. So, I'm sorry, Mr. Chairman Mayer. Yep. So you cannot, in my opinion, require board members on bodies to participate remotely or change the parameters of the open meeting law. I believe that would be rejected. Absent special legislation, I think, which I highlighted. So, there are very clear rules with respect to remote participation by members of body. And that's what I'm referring to in the sort of first section of that memo. The second section of that memo, the second section of the menu memo, I think we're mostly on the same page that you can have, the open meeting law doesn't speak about the requirements for public participation. You don't have to have any public participation under the open meeting law, remote or otherwise. So it doesn't speak to that. There are issues with respect to public hearings. And what I mean by public hearings or legal hearings, such as a zoning board of appeals hearing, I'm not sure you could require a body like the zoning board of appeals to have remote testimony offered under 48 and have that count towards a quote unquote hearing. The piece about the ADA is I just wanna make it clear that offering remote participation doesn't necessarily address disability access. For some people, it certainly may, but it doesn't alleviate us from the requirement to comply with the ADA and for example, provide ADA accessible physical hearing rooms. So I'm not trying to be difficult on what I'm saying is that there are some things under what's a pretty broad warrant article that could be done and there are some things that can't be done in my opinion. So I wanna differentiate. You can't make a public body like members of a select board, for example, participate remotely. And if you do participate remotely, everyone has to be able to see and hear the remotely participating member, which may create some of the logistical problems that have been referenced previously. So people in person and online have to see and hear the person who is participating remotely who's a member with respect to members of the public and the public comment period of a resident open forum or some other non-legal hearing type situation I think a board can provide for remote participation and then you could have a bylaw that says, these are the parameters for participation. I think your question and Mr. DeCoursey's question are somewhat about, can you make the, Envision Arlington Reservoir Committee only operate with public comment if they have remote participation or are you divesting the chair of some of that? That's a pretty close question. I don't have a lot of confidence on the answer to that one way or the other if you can sort of totally preempt a chair's decision about how to have public participation. I think that to my understanding, Mistray is proposing that you don't, she would leave it up to the chairs to decide whether they're going to have public participation of any kind, but if they're going to have it, they have to have it remotely. Okay, I guess I would respectfully disagree in the fact that Mistray's warrant article is to establish parameters for remote participation by members of the public in the meetings of all public bodies in the town of Arlington. Doesn't say the select board citizen resident open forum, it's saying our 113 plus committees, boards, commissions, authority to have remote participation. It doesn't say substitute the chair, it says that they have to do it. I don't think this will survive Attorney General scrutiny and I understand what Mistray is saying. She's focusing on select board citizen resident participation and she's shaking her head, no. So I'll disagree with her, no shaking head. That, I think in terms of what we've gone through COVID, free COVID, the select board meetings were available live streamed as well as through ACMI as well as residents were allowed. And I understand we have a Lexington resident that's sent some correspondence on this, but I really weigh on Arlington residents that we had opportunities for that. We get emails, we get phone calls. I certainly think that if this warrant article was written that it somehow took into account allowing those who truly could not make a meeting. I understand what Mistray said about, being a mother and having kids. I was in the same boat in terms of having kids and serving the town as well as having a extreme special needs young child, but I still was able to participate in the town. And that's something that you kind of make a choice about. If you can't make it to a meeting, then you can certainly email or call a member of the select board of the school committee or the housing authority or the toxin rec commission or the conservation commission or the other 112 different committees and commissions. I think this is just from what the proponent has suggested, which is she's sort of targeting the select board citizen resident participation, but it's gonna apply to all 113. Actually, I think it's more than that. Public bodies in the town of Arlington, I would renew my motion for no action. Thank you. Ms. Nagans. Sorry about that. Sometimes I can't see the line on the microphone very well. So as a courtesy, I'm gonna second it. Hey, it's no indication how I'm gonna vote. All I can say, well, what I'll start with saying is I think we know that this is gonna come before town meeting in one form or another. So we as select board, we shouldn't really craft our response to a town meeting that is going to deal with this. And so being asked for me, what I very much want is remote access to everything. And me, whether there's participation or not, it's nice to be able to bounce around meetings, I mean, at will, and so I don't know what's gonna happen with open meeting laws. I mean, I think that's a big thing to factor in. I mean, one thing I was hoping to have done by now is to talk to our state reps and Senator and others about this, I've just been a little busy to get around to doing that, but I think I should really put some effort into doing that sooner rather than later in order to get some understanding as to how things are going and what influence we can have on how things turn out with respect to that legislation. Regardless, I think we can work with town staff to try to provide more access. I mean, as a person who's done TV and these remote, these hybrids, I can tell you, I think the hybrid model is the hardest model. And I think the full on remote model is probably the one that will work best. And as odd as it may seem, it may be better to have people in a room who want to gather in a room with their laptops on Zoom sessions so that everyone's on Zoom. You can be talking with someone next to you, but you're still on Zoom and people are interacting seeing you on Zoom and any of the one who wants to remotely participate will do so on Zoom. If they can't, if they have to come to the place, then there will be a laptop for them there. My point is that I would like to work with town staff to see what we can do. Regardless of what happens to me with this article and I don't really know me to what extent the article can force anyone's hand on this. But like I said, it's going to town meeting and however we decide here, let's make sure that we have a good response or a good statement so that town meeting really has an understanding of where we're coming from and where we would like to see things go. That's it, thank you. And so I'll just say, so I filled up the question on behalf of myself, not the board as a whole, but I think the questions were right on point in that we have enjoyed a better participation and more public input from more diverse commentators as a result of the remote participation. And I definitely think, I'm not the technology guy, but I think that's something that we should continue. And what I envision, which I think is the intent of the article is that if we're in our old chamber and we have our meetings as we normally do and we're talking face-to-face and we have proponents for a common VIX license who come in just like they normally do, we go to Citizens Open Forum just like normal, we open up the list to anybody that's in the chamber. And then once that's done, we have some sort of a Zoom link that's just available when people are sitting in a queue for to speak. They have three minutes just like they do here and we'll we're sitting in our meetings. We do have iPads in front of us. And I'm not, again, I'm not the technology guy, but I assume there's some way to link the two, link the feed from the Zoom to ACMI, which we broadcast in the chamber. You know, I have sat there with my sons while they do their remote learning. So I understand feedback. So that would be something that we'd have to address. But I do feel like it's something that we can definitely achieve. The thing that is a little concerning to me about the requirement for all meetings is that as Mr. Corsi said that most committees just don't have public participation, designated public participation. And where in situations where, you know, I'm on ATED and we just have agenda items when we speak, there's no open forum. And what this requirement would take away is at the end, sometimes back in the day when we used to sit over at the Bulls real estate office, sometimes people would come and same thing happens sometimes with the new Zoom meetings. And we say to them, oh, can you just introduce yourself? Tell us why you're here. Tell us a little bit why you wanted to come see the meeting. So it takes away the option, I guess, for a chair to open up to public participation unexpectedly. I think there's certain, I think if we can hone it in the scope of the article to say, you know, we want to have remote participation and really if we can talk about the different boards that this would apply to, I think it's a lot more effective whereas it's not over encompassing. And again, if we can bring the language of the article in that allows the discretion and certainly I think we'd want to see some discretion that if it became technologically unfeasible that we wouldn't have to move forward. But I mean, I think that's where I am in, I'll just invite the time manager and to see if he has any comments since a lot of this is within his jurisdiction. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think I would offer a few things. One being that I probably speak to my colleagues in other communities more regularly during the pandemic than I would have prior just based on Zoom and the needs to communicate. And I would say it's pretty much 100% across the board that local governments agree that we need to find a way to provide remote access or hybrid remote access in the next normal because of the increased participation that we've seen and because we've seen and heard from new voices and new people and we've widened the table, right? We've had this opportunity to provide more seats at the table. So it's something I've been giving a lot of thought to talking about with staff internally about how we would do it. So I, and I think that seems to line up with the thoughts of both the article proponent and the board tonight that this is a very worthy concept and something we need to work on. I'd offer that the town of Franklin actually has been doing hybrid remote meetings since last August. They have a town council form of government. So it's a town that's actually operates like a city type thing. But they have some counselors in the chamber, some remote, some people who have agenda items come into the chamber and then all public commenters are remote. I talked to the town manager last week, he said it works very well, but they basically had to build a TV studio in their chambers. So it is logistically and technologically quite complex. I'd like to try to find an afternoon to drive down and see it myself and learn a little bit more about how it works. And then I think, and I hope these comments can be helpful. I think what worries me about a mandate before a plan and a mandate before potential state action amending and making the state open meeting law more flexible is that we'd be putting something in place that might need to soon be tweaked. I think perhaps consideration of an endorsement of the development of a hybrid remote access plan for Arlington government meetings would provide both the time and flexibility to put something together that works and then can be endorsed by the select board and other bodies. And I offer that and hoping and trying to help the board and potentially Ms. Dre come to some type of common agreement on how we can achieve something that I think is probably a common goal. That is a public hearing. We'll turn to the public. Can you- Mr. Hearn, I'm sorry. Yes. Can I just interject something? I just have a quick question because I realized that there may be a source of confusion with respect to where different folks are. So if I may just put this question to you from Ms. Dre, there is a recommended vote which is about an appropriation which would not, which isn't something that the article contemplates. Maybe that's what Ms. Mahan is referencing, but then there's a sort of action item list further on the parameters of the warrant article. And I'll confess I'm a little confused as to which is the proposal, the recommended vote is an appropriation for a sum of money, but the action items that sort of one through eight, it is more consistent with sort of trying to establish a town by-law. And maybe that's some of the source of confusion on my part with respect to what's sort of in-plane, what's not. I don't want to interrupt public comment, I'm sorry. May I respond? Yes. Thank you. Thank you, attorney Heim. Yes, that was a part of my not knowing what I was doing, but also thinking that I had to ask the FinCom for money when I went in front of them. So I would ask you to refer back to the initial general public remote participation warrant that was submitted with the general language and not that one about appropriating money. If I may. And I would also like to mention that I've spoken to the attorney general's office about whether or not this would violate open meeting law. And they were not sure, right? So to be honest, because this was new, they said that when something comes in front of them, they look to see, does it violate the state law? So there's nothing, the attorney couldn't say yay or nay, but that she would have to wait to see if it came in front of her and then do that kind of research. So I wanted to put that out there. And I also wanted to say that I'm not against an idea of studying this to get it done, right? And giving and making that time to figure out how to do it correctly. I'm hesitant to give a lot of time because we have opened the door. We have made our, we've made ourselves, we've made town government accessible and you have brought people to the table that you will then be sort of shutting out and messaging to them to wait a little longer that they're not that important yet. And that's uncomfortable to me. And I would like to say that the only reason, I'm really pleased that Ms. Mahan was able to come to meetings when she had young children. And I think that's really commendable, but that isn't everybody's experience. And that I was simply referring to the select board open form because that's what Mr. DeCorsi asked me about as to how it would work in the select board. But this is in general to make all of the meetings accessible to people. Thank you. All right, Attorney Hime, does that answer the question? I think it answers my question in the sense that I think we're talking about the board is looking at how we should examine the issue. And I think that what's being proposed is the town bylaw of some kind that sort of fits in those premises. Thank you, Mr. Redd, I appreciate your indulging. All right. And Mr. Chair, if I could, before you go to public comments, just two comments. We really need a figure, which was not provided to FinCom for us about how this would impact 113 plus town public agencies, committees, commissions, authorities and what that cost would be, especially since we're looking at, in 2023, which we may be able to push out to 2024 and $18 million override. So any five or six-figure cost, which I definitely see this in the five-figure, you can't just put proposals before us and say, you know, vote for this and we'll figure out how much it costs. No, you need to put the proposal before us, say how much it costs, how it affects 113 to 130 different town of Wellington public entities and what that cost would be. And I guess in a most less critique way in terms of Ms. Dre, thanking me for being able to attend meetings. I have, you know, in the house that I live, I have three severely handicapped, disabled family members and I still was able to attend meetings. So I certainly understand the limits of that. So I kind of felt like you would give me disingenuous platitudes. So I'm still not in favor of this warrant article because we don't know what it's saying. We don't know how it's gonna be implemented across all the 130 different town city commission agencies. And in light of the fact that this town is going to be facing override, that we will be able to maybe push out one more year in terms of the Recovery Act monies that we received from the federal government through President Biden, but it's gonna be really tight. So I don't think we can take people coming in saying, I think we should do this and let's figure out how much it costs and we'll figure it out that later. No, I think proposal should be, this is my proposal, this is what it affects and this is how much it will cost. And this proposal isn't anywhere near that. And thank you, Mr. Chair. All right, let's go to public comment. So we have a number of hands raised. The first one that I see is Rebecca Gruber. Ms. Gruber, if you just say your name for the record and keep your comments to under three minutes. Yes, Rebecca Gruber Pleasant Street. So I'm speaking to encourage you to support this warrant article. This has been a very difficult year and if there have been any silver linings, one of them has been some of the pivots and adjustments we've made in the way we conduct business. One of these adjustments has been the executive order allowing for remote resident participation in our town meetings. This change has resulted in a significant increase in public participation. As you may have noticed, I've been participating and I had not previously. My perception is this is allowed for significantly more involvement, transparency, knowledge and support by the public and the work that you all are doing in the decision making of our town's governance. Participating remotely has allowed residents who previously would have had great difficulty to attend meetings of boards and committees and commissions. It's removed barriers for seniors, parents with childcare responsibilities, people with disabilities, residents who don't have transportation, caretakers. And it allows these people to be a part of the civic activities of our town. And these are voices Arlington needs to hear from to be the diverse equitable community we're striving to be. As the day approaches, hopefully quickly that we can return to normal, let's commit to a new normal and who has a voice in our town's governance. While many of us will be able to once again attend meetings in person without remote participation, others in our community will be silenced. Let's do everything we can to make it as easy as possible for everyone who wants to be heard to speak and to be engaged in our town. Thank you. You're muted, Mr. Heard. There it is. That's my first of many times that I'll do that. All right, Mr. Helmuth. Hi, thank you very much, Mr. Chair, Eric Helmuth. I'm brand new road. So I'd like to encourage the board to find a way to some kind of positive action on this. And I think that, you know, it's clear from the discussion that the scope of this is up for grabs. It's not clear exactly, you know, how to work technologically or legally in some places. But I really appreciate the intent behind it. And I think everybody here does. And when Mr. Dunn mentioned that, you know, sending things to a committee doesn't always kill that. I can tell you from personal experience when it came to implementing electronic voting in town meeting that sending things to a committee was exactly the right thing to do because we were able to really take the time to get the answers that we needed and come back. And, you know, the delay is the delay, but we were able to do it right. And I'm not suggesting that that's the best course. You know, maybe there is a hybrid way to refer a full rollout of this or a wider rollout to some real study. I think that would be wise. But maybe there's a way to look at, to prioritize, into taking immediate action for the highest priority opportunities to preserve some of this ability for the public to participate remotely sooner than that. And, you know, I'm not unaware of the TV studio implications of this. But what you just to say, you know, I would encourage the board to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. And if there's a way to do some of this and to do more work later to figure out how it can be expanded, I think that there are, it is an opportunity for equity and inclusion in a way that's really positive. I would also offer a practical bit of caution. This comes from my service and experience on the Information Technology Advisory Committee. And I don't speak for them, I speak for myself. But one thing that I learned to do is to look for the hidden costs. And I think that when you're studying this, whether that's for full rollout or for short-term, I would caution you to not just look at buying the technology, but to think about the human resources that are gonna be required to train what your expectations would be for committee staff. Are they bringing their own device? Is the town gonna provide a device? And especially to what extent you require live support during the community operation because, you know, that's a scaling issue. But that comes with so overtime or human resource time, if there needs to be a help desk that's supporting the inevitable problems that come up. Or maybe that can be addressed by policy. If the policy says, you know, if internet goes out, you know, tough luck, we try our best. I don't know, that's for you to worry about. But I think when we think about the costs, I think buying the equipment is just the first and the easiest step. So that's just a bit of how I would approach this in my world of technology management. But again, you know, if there's a way to move this forward in the spirit of inclusion, I would personally urge the board to find a way to take those steps. Thank you. Thank you. Carl Wagner. Hi, can you hear me and see me okay? I'm Carl Wagner, 30 Edge Hill Road. Thank you for having my comments. I am very impressed to see that Mr. A has brought this before you. And I hope that you will act in the, sorry, there's a cab on my side. Hope it doesn't come in the picture. I hope that you will act to work with her, to craft this so that the big picture of what she's proposing is allowed, which is we learned how to do Zoom over this 12 month period. And we cannot lose Zoom when we go back to in-office meetings with the public. I particularly am reminded of two Arlington board type meetings. One is the AHA. At some point, one of the members of the AHA said, where did all these people come from? Because they started having Zoom meetings and the public could finally attend. Well, the answer is those people who attended were the AHA residents and people who care about things there, but they couldn't attend due to various problems or requirements when there were meetings only in person. So the other thing was the ARB had a member on it, which actually said is that people go to these meetings and they stop processes of progress. Well, if that's really true, that book by the way was called Neighborhood Defenders. If it's really true, the way to make things better is to let the public not only go if they're available and they're free to go, but let them chime in via internet. Lastly, when I was a town meeting member who came to you to reduce the time speaking in town meeting, you wisely worked with me to make a compromise that worked for everybody. And I hope therefore you will send Ms. Dre away with a promise to work with her, to come up with something that it sounds like you all broadly agree with. And it might be a substitute motion that Ms. Dre brings back to you, but please do not send it to the waste bin because you don't want to look like you're on the wrong side of history when this is all over. Thank you very much. Yep. Paul Schlickman. Thank you and good evening. I'm intrigued by the idea. I just want to point out that one of the big problems with doing something like this is the school committee room as it now exists will be slated for demolition within the next 12 months. And we're going to be camping in temporary space wherever it is. I mean, I was also intrigued by listening to the town manager talk about what kind of a studio they have in Franklin. So when we build a new school committee room, we can build it so that technologically we'll be able to do this. But I would hope that just speaking as a resident and a town meeting member, not speaking for the school committee, that whatever happens to this article, it happens with the realization that it's going to be very difficult for the school committee over the next couple of years until we are in our new quarters. Mustafa Baroglu. All right, I tried to demote Mr. Schlickman and I demoted Mr. Baroglu unintentionally, excuse me. Ready to go. That's what you get for demoting me. Yeah. We got to come up with some. Here we go. Okay. I should have actually spoken up for Andrew Fisher's article. I grew up in Vancouver. We had BCIT Vancouver's behind me in this picture. So... Say your name for the record. Oh, sorry, Mustafa Baroglu, 26 Shawnee Road for what is where a town meeting member precinct 10. So I'm here to speak in support of Elizabeth Dre's proposed warrant article. I understand that some of the language needs to be resolved or tightened up in terms of making it into, I guess, an article that we can vote on and have an action at the end of. But I think I would echo, don't make perfect enemy of the good. We should get this to go forward. I've certainly been able to listen in and comment on meetings I wouldn't have taken the time to attend for 15 minutes or 30 minutes where it actually mattered out of a three hour block. But when I'm at home, I can do other things. As an example tonight, I'm helping my mom with her taxes online. So I would probably wouldn't have come in for what is it now nine o'clock. I wouldn't have been in here for the last hour and a half to an hour and 45 minutes for those five minutes of speaking opportunity. I think there's a couple of things that I'd say that came up in the discussion. First of all, I think as Mohan mentioned 113 committees, I think Elizabeth mentioned that they tend to happen in seven to eight places. And maybe it's more. I think you can prioritize these rooms. You can start working from the top down. I'm not sure why Ms. Mohan is shaking her head, but just keep going. Okay, so I think if there are 113 meeting rooms, I think that's something that should be streamlined in the town frankly, because I don't wanna find 113 places as a resident to go and visit. I'd like to be able to go to the main places and see people and what they're doing. The other thing is, we have an override coming. That's true. If you wanna build support for an override, having people come and understand what the town does would be really valuable. Giving people a voice in what's gonna be used for their override would be really valuable. Cutting people out of the town after they've been shown what's available, I think is gonna taste really bad at the end of office. And I think that it's, I think say it's a $50,000 buy. It's gonna be at the beginning, most of the equipment, and then it's gonna be some support that will hopefully get better and more efficient. And I think it's probably the best 50,000 you can spend to convince people that this town is gonna give them the services and the things that they want for the money that they're gonna give the town. So I think that in all cases in this situation, more information would be a better thing. I can say that I think I started working in industry in 2000. Every company I have been in has had hybrid meetings. We have had consultants all over the world. We have had consultants all over the country. The technology has improved vastly since 2000. I remember what the guy said in before 2005 for video conferencing, the expectation of sky high and the technology wasn't there. Now we have FaceTime, we have Zoom, we have, I do Google Duo, I mean, we use WhatsApp. We're all fluent with this type of technology. We'll be at three minutes if you can just wrap up yourself. All right, so to make it short and sweet, just put an iPad in every room, connect it to somebody else and broadcast their voices out to everybody else and put a screen up to bring the other ones in. Start there and then make it better from there. Thank you, I do support the article. I think you should go for it. Anna Hanken. Can you hear me? Yes. All right, I'm Anna Hanken, Mary Ann Road. I would also like to speak in support of this article. I have been able to attend these meetings only because they're on Zoom, both because I'm a graduate student and typically at this time I would either still be in the laboratory or commuting home. And because right now I actually have two herniated discs and it's really actually super painful for me to be sitting and talking to you right now. That's why I have a pillow here all the time. I'm usually laying down during most of these meetings. And I have spoken to other people in the disabled community in Arlington who have said that they've had a lot of difficulty getting to meetings. They have difficulty sitting in those meetings and being able to call from home makes it so that they can participate in Arlington governance. Otherwise, it's just not an option. I know that there were difficulties with people in wheelchairs accessing the select board chambers. That's a major issue. You guys need to have the voices of the disabled people of Arlington at meetings. It's important to hear from us. And this does require work and it does require resources, but the people whose voices are being brought in, they matter. They really do. All of us matter. And the work you do is very important. And in terms of getting advice on how to implement this, one of the resources you guys have that I don't think you realize you have is teachers. The public school teachers have been working with hybrid models all year and they actually probably have a lot of really useful recommendations for you guys and how to implement this, what kind of problems you're gonna run into, what is the biggest pain point and how to have people participate without it getting out of hand, especially because they've got to control kids all day. Hopefully the adults of Arlington are a little less rowdy than kids. So I really hope you guys find some way to move forward with this because it is so important for everyone to participate, especially those who would otherwise really struggle to get to these meetings, especially because parking around town hall is really quite difficult. I don't know if I would be able to find a way to get to these meetings, even if I was able to leave work on time. So thank you. Thank you. Mr. Weinstein, is he already with us? Yes, hi. You just muted yourself. Yep, there you go. Still muted. Okay, thank you very much for letting me speak for a moment. First of all, I just want to say how encouraged I am by the support that the select board in large part has given, if not the letter of the article, at least the intent of it, and that there seems to be relatively widespread support for some sort of continuation of what essentially, I think what the article is attempting to do is simply continue what we're doing currently tonight during the select board when the select board begins to meet in person. I know that there have been different interpretations of what the intent was, but I think that that really is the intent is simply to allow when we go back to in-person meeting to maintain some kind of ability for people who currently are able to attend remotely to be able to continue. And I think that Ms. Dre did her due diligence in going to the finance committee and speaking with a whole bunch of other people that the evaluation that there would only have to be around seven meeting rooms that the town set up and equipped for doing this and the cost seems very reasonable. And as Mr. Mustafa had pointed out, why should we have 130 different places for people to have to look in order to attend a meeting in person when they could be done within a handful of meeting rooms? I think the other point I just wanted to make was that I think Mr. Diggins actually stated very clearly how it could be done very easily. And he was, it was very understandable that you could have in your meeting, you could simply bring your laptop or your iPad and continue what you're doing now in a room where people could also attend, granted that there would be some public address and necessitations there. But I just would also like to echo that it would be really a wonderful thing if the select board could come up with some way to incorporate this concept and move forward with it without dismissing it because there are some concerns that it would be too difficult to achieve. And the technology today makes it much more achievable. Thank you very much. Mr. Treer, you're muted, sorry. All right, Darcy. Okay. Ms. Downey, can you hear us? Yeah, there we go. I can't see me, oh, I see. It's one of those, is it? All right, so this has been a very interesting discussion about it and a lot of the things that people have talked about, I already thought about this. Elizabeth came to me a while ago because I'm the chair of the Disability Commission now. And I think if this was a non-binding resolution, you'd all go, yay, and that would be that. I do think that there are some real problems with doing this and some real advantages. The huge advantage, absolutely right, you're getting voices you've never heard before. You're getting a lot better participation. If you look at what happened at virtual town meeting, that is a bona fide case for doing this. They had, I believe, the best attendance they've ever had, in essence, on a regular basis. And that was very important and that's the kind of thing you would hope would happen at most meetings. On the other hand, I've heard a couple of things people say here and I wanna go, no. For example, as someone who's now chairing these meetings, I have been thinking about this, but the idea that I'm gonna be able to, it's hard enough to do a Zoom meeting with the limited number of people I have. It's really hard to do it if it's hybrid. I know there are ways to do it. I think every town in America that can possibly do it will be working on it, but it's not a snap your fingers and it's done. It's not a spend $10,000 and it's done because among other things, you have a bunch of volunteers running it and just like the town meeting members, the level of technological expertise, the level of comfortableness with tech, frankly, the whole digital divide. I mean, some of those voices that you're hearing from, you're hearing because they have the ability, they have a good internet connection. I can't tell you how many times I've had somebody who has a bad one on a Zoom thing. So all of a sudden, they're not getting their voice heard even though if they've been there, they would have been able to get a little closer to the microphone or whatever. So I do think it's a great idea, but I'm really thinking it's much more something where you have to have a study committee who knows how to do this and who looks, frankly, why would we reinvent the wheel? They're gonna be, everybody's gonna be trying to do this to get these hybrid models up and working. Why should it be just us who tries to do it in Arlington by ourselves without looking at what works for other people? And also, I forgot what the other thing was. But basically, I'm very much in favor of it as a, like I said, as a non-binding resolution, everybody would go, yeah, absolutely, be open meeting, get more sunshine in there, get more people talking, but I think you've really got to think about the logistics more than the, and not make assumptions about what kind of tech people can afford, what kind of tech people can use. And I don't know a virtual town meeting. I know that moderator Leon did a survey about this and got some responses, but it changes some things about the way meetings go. We've got three minutes, if you can just wrap up your thought. It's that it does affect how meetings go and who gets to talk. And I'm looking here, was I this number on the list? I don't know. When I'm running a meeting, I don't necessarily see somebody's hand right away. So I don't know that I'm calling on them in the order that they raise their hand. There's like some sort of disenfranchisement that takes place in these sorts of teleconferences as well. And I think we have to be, that has to be part of the solution is you have to figure out a way around that. For all I know, maybe everybody needs a tech person to work with them when they have a committee meeting so that there's a tech person who's getting the people on who can't get on. And all of these meetings are a little rough still at the beginning and we've been doing them for what nine months. So I'd like to say yes, absolutely. And somebody smart needs to figure it out and look at what other people are doing. Thanks. Mr. Seltzer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Don Seltzer, Irving Street. I speak from the perspective of a resident who has frequently attended meetings of various boards and committees both before and during COVID. Unlike the select board, most town committee and board meetings have taken place in small conference rooms with limited seating. Visual materials were often set up on easels that could be seen only by the committee members. Hard copy handouts were distributed only to committee members. If a hearing was of a special interest, it could draw far more residents than the annex conference rooms could hold. Some members of the public would stand outside of the hallway hoping to catch some of the discussions others just gave up and left. Sometimes the chair would anticipate the higher turnout and book the senior center or another large room. While those provided enough seats for everyone, the acoustics were usually terrible. You had to grab a seat in the first or second row to have a chance of hearing what was going on. On a few occasions, I was the lone member of the public attending either because of an inconvenient early morning meeting or because of bad weather. Zoom meetings have changed all of that. I've seen a large rise in public involvement and a better knowledge of the issues facing the town. I think that is a good thing. I understand the legal argument for board and committee members to be physically present and together, but no such restrictions apply to the public. I think that this discussion this evening has been muddled a bit by different understandings of what public participation is. Really being able to attend an open meeting and observing is public participation. I strongly urge this board to support the continuation of this virtual option for the public to attend remotely and to provide the necessary and resources for this to be implemented. Thank you. Ms. Kiesel. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, you can. Hi, my name is Laura Kiesel. I'm at 260 Massachusetts Avenue. I'm calling tonight to pledge my support for this article and I'm gonna offer just some input from a disability perspective. Last year, which was the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, I worked on a piece with the Christian Science Monitor as a journalist and multimedia piece about remote access becoming more the norm and mainstream for disabled people subsequent to the COVID pandemic because even though it qualified as reasonable accommodation under the ADA, the courts were mixed and a lot of workplaces were still denying disabled people. Even though that's specific to the workplace, I still think a lot of the things that were discussed in that piece are relevant now, namely like as a disabled person, I know that I've been asking for remote access even in town participation for a while. When COVID happened, suddenly it made something that a lot of marginalized people have been asking for for years really happened in a matter of days or weeks which showed it wasn't a matter of cost, it was a matter of willpower. And suddenly when the access needs were something that everyone was experiencing, we could get above the hump of cost, we could get above all these concerns about technical glitches and we just made it happen. And I would really not like to see us go back. When I was doing this piece, I spoke to several lawyers and I actually brought up municipal access via remote. I spoke to Matthew Portland, who's a very popular and well-known disability advocate lawyer about participation in town meeting for disabled people. And he thought that this established a precedent under the ADA for reasonable accommodation to have remote options for disabled people upon request. I spoke to the Disability Rights Division of the Attorney General's office and they too thought that this might reasonably establish a precedent for if people needed it. I was talking specific to the AG's office about town meeting if disabled people needed it. And I spoke to another lawyer who also felt like this established a legal precedent specific to disabled people if they needed a reasonable accommodation for town meeting at other town committees or commissions to be able to access it. I agree with Len Diggins that it could be more difficult to do hybrid right now. And so my argument would be, well, then let's keep it all remote until we can more reasonably have a decent hybrid alternative. Otherwise, I think you're gonna start shutting out a lot of marginalized people who have suddenly had access to these meetings who now will not. So that's what I wanted to offer for tonight. Thank you. Thank you, Lynette Martin. Thank you very much. My name is Lynette Martin, used to street. I too find it really great to hear how much support there is for this. I'd like to hear more ways of making it happen as opposed to reasons for not making it happen. We're talking about creating studio rooms, but that could be a goal. We can easily get this done with laptops as someone stated. And as far as Ms. Devaney mentioned, like what about the people that don't have great internet connection? Well, before we did Zoom, what about the people that couldn't even access the room? I mean, this is definitely moving us towards more people being able to be there. It might not be perfect, but like, again, you don't wanna not do anything because you're trying to get it perfect the first time out. And the costs, whatever the costs are, clearly this is a priority and it's going to be prioritized by the community. So I think that we find the money. I mean, I was just sitting on the last select board meeting where there are millions of dollars to like renovate pieces of land and stuff. I mean, we need to prioritize getting disabled people to be able to access these meetings and find the money somewhere. And I would be remiss if I didn't point out, again, how demeaning certain select board members can be to the community. Chairperson Mahon was continually rolling her eyes during testimony on research that Ms. Kiesel did, which I had not heard and found useful and informative, has been shaking her head no the whole time. And I found it really upsetting her comments about, mentioning that she has two disabled children but that she was able to make it happen. And if people wanna access it, they'll make it happen. It's just not, it's so offensive to people who want to make it happen and can't make it happen. There's a lot of privilege in having two disabled children and being able to make it to meetings. Perhaps you have other family members at home. Perhaps you have enough money to pay for a sitter. There are people that are working multiple jobs. As people said, they have to call in from their jobs or from their commute. There are people that can't make it because they can't get up the stairs because they have disabled, disabling injuries. Sitting in the select board meetings in particular for long periods of time can be very difficult even for a person with a back problem. I myself have had to bring in stuff to sit in the select board meetings, special pillows and stuff. So I just think that we need to continue to think about how we are addressing the community and how words matter and be more careful about the statements that we're making when we address these issues of accessibility. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Lynette Culverhouse. Hi, my name is Lynette Culverhouse, Draper Avenue. Thank you for allowing me to comment on this very important article. I wanna offer my support and urge the select board to find a way to work with Ms. Dre to allow this kind of access to continue after we're back to in-person meetings. For me, this is about democracy and civic engagement. This is about allowing participation for a multitude of voices that don't normally get heard. This is about allowing you as our leaders to become better leaders by having access to more opinions and more ideas and more of people's realities. So I am urging you to look at this from the perspective of human beings rather than the complications or the cost. As Mustapha said, there have been numerous businesses that conduct hybrid meetings across the world with in-person participation at the same time as remote participation. And I'm sure that within Arlington we have such people who could help us figure out a way to make this happen. So I urge this board, please make this happen for the sake of our residents and our democracy. Thank you. And Sarah McKinnon, you're on mute. First time for everything. Hi, my name is Sarah McKinnon and I live on Kilseith Road and I wanted to also speak in support of this article. I've been an Arlington resident for six years. I have young children and the remote access this year has completely transformed my ability to participate and to be informed and to meet quite a few people that I wasn't meeting because of their common interests in the things that they chose to speak on. I wanted to also speak up for Laura Kiesel's suggestion that we're all online now. We've been doing this for a year. We're pretty good at it. It's not perfect. I do think that internet access is a good internet access is a key concern. And some people even speak of this as human right. When we think about people who are trying to enroll for vaccinations right now and they don't have internet access, this is something that we in the town can work on to help people gain secure, good quality internet access and may even be less expensive than at outstanding rooms. You have a momentum now. You have people really engaged. And it's hard to do. You're competing with a really busy world. And I would be sad to think that we would lose that momentum at this moment by getting tied up in the details of can we afford it? What's the structure? We're doing it already. And I think we could continue doing this for now, not rush back to in-person at the cost of losing real civic engagement. Thank you very much. Yep. All right. And so that closes the public commentary. So I'll go back to the board. So we do have a motion for no action that's been seconded. I'll also entertain if the board has any competing motions or amendments. I think at this point, if you fuse the comments together, everyone supports where we're going with this, but we also, I think with a mandate like it is, we need to kind of pare it down a little bit. And I would just say, I mean, again, I don't want to keep saying I'm not the technology person like I'm 100 years old, but I anticipate just to say that, if we study this, I don't anticipate that we need a gap because I can look at myself sitting in a suckboard chamber with my laptop and my Bluetooth speaker from my backyard that at least gives that option. If we don't have the technology to wire it in, then at least the board hears the public comment. With that, Mr. Dunn. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would say, first off, I actually don't think it is easy. And with all due respect to some of the previous speakers about, for instance, the concept about an iPad or using laptops, this is actually something that I try to, I run a company meeting every week and I've done it in ranges in size. Like doing a meeting in person or that's a hybrid that's like 10 people or 15 people not that hard with the right things. But when you get to like 50, it's hard because you need all 50 people to hear the speaker. And so I guess there's like, for instance, one suggestion, hold up the iPad and then the iPad can do it. And I can assure you that Ms. Dre was trying to give her presentation from an iPad at the front of the select board chambers. The people in the back of the room would not be pleased with that. But I'm not saying this to say no, I'm saying it just to say it's not easy. But what I would like to us to get to yes and the version of yes that I would like to suggest is that we model the election modernization committee. And what we did is we looked at a set of problems and we said, let's create a short-lived committee that exists for a year or two that's specifically here to address this specific problem. And so I sketched here in my nine people. I said nominee from the select board school committee, ARB, the town manager and the disability commission and four town meeting members appointed by the moderator. And I think we should charge the committee to have an interim report by October 1st. And I choose that date so they can be engaged in any capital purchases. Then that they have a report for spring of 22. I want them to evaluate what meetings are appropriate for this, what portion of the meetings are appropriate for it and what much it costs. And I want them to dissolve in the spring of 23. And the reason I say spring of 23 is because that gives them a year. Frankly, I think the select board should step first. Easy for me to say it because this may or may not be my last meeting, right? But I think we should step first and we should have remote participation when we come back for Citizens Open Forum. And then I think that we should be able to learn from it and that committee should be able to learn from it and see how it extends to other committees. And that's why I give the committee a two-year lifespan is to permit a two-year arc of learning. Thank you, Mr. Chair. All right, and just mark your calendars. I think we do have a meeting on April 5th. So any additional questions to Corsi? Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chairman. And for to improve tonight of poor internet access but I'll second Mr. Dunn's motion and I also appreciate what the town manager said earlier about endorsing a plan. But I think we should step first and we had talked briefly about the possible return to the chamber. And I think as long as we're in the state of emergency it would be in a hybrid type setting but I think there are some logistical issues and because we're in the state of emergency the governor's order expects the open meeting law. So we don't know how that's gonna turn out exactly but I, from my comments earlier I support trying to do that with the select board and seeing if we can expand it further. So I like Mr. Dunn's idea. I also, early I did have some confusion between what may have been presented to finance committee what was presented to us because it sounded like it may have been a couple of different things and if it's an appropriation the finance committee's vote is gonna be what's before town meeting. So this is a separate action by Mr. Dunn and I think it's, people may think it's too long a period but I mean, I think if we made it to trying to make this work at the select board level we're gonna get out ahead of this. Mr. Diggins. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So through you Mr. Chair to Mr. Dunn. So with the committee have the ability to report out sooner rather than- Yeah, the committee can say and do whatever it wants it's just required, it is required to make a report before October 1st. And the reason there is both the intent is both to capture the capital purchase cycle and frankly just to capture some of the urgency of the proponents. Right, so I suppose we can report out sooner. I mean, that's fine because we, yeah, we don't want to miss opportunities to, I'll just stop there. So, okay, I'm fine with that. And just a couple of comments to me thinking I generally will think both sides of an issue and as much as I have enjoyed their vote access and other people have too, I wonder to what extent me more people are participating because there's just nothing else to do. So it's like when we get back to normal meet and you can go out to dinner with friends meet and do other things meet. It'll be interesting to see what participation looks like then. I'm still in favor of this me but I'm just kind of like wondering what's going to happen when people have alternatives to you know and the other thing too that I want to emphasize is that along with the participation what I really like is the fact that these meetings are recorded, you know and I would like to see us also move to a model where those recordings are accessible. I mean, so whatever we study, let's think about how we can give people non real-time access to these meetings because they're enlightening even afterwards. And sometimes you can go through them at 2x and it takes less time and skip through the parts that aren't terribly interesting. Like when select board members in yellow shirts talking. And yeah, so another thing is just to, it'll be a real desire, a real incentive I think for us to work on providing better internet access for folks. I don't know if that's something we can do locally but I think it's something that we can push our legislators out to state delegates to work on because that will benefit us all. I mean, not only for these meetings. So that's it. Thank you. Come on. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm a little confused just because it's me. I think what I'm hearing is in regards to Article 20. Most of my, I'm made by Mr. Diggins of no action is still on the table. But if Mr. Dunn who this is probably his last meeting could explain again what it is he's proposing. Thank you, Mr. Mohd. So I do recognize your motion is on the floor. And so I'm, but I'm safely suggesting an alternate path that I would be inclined to support. I don't think, I don't endorse or I'm not ready to go with the proponents do all committees now effectively in which I may be putting two words but I'm not ready to go that hard that fast but I do like the idea and I do think that we should encourage remote participation. And so what I'm saying is do what we did with the election modernization committee. We created a committee that was effectively a special purpose committee with a very specific timeframe and a very specific set of a problem to look at and give them a time, a membership and a timeline that they're supposed to report back to town meeting. Okay. And what is this committee that you're proposing that is not Mr. Ray's committee which the original article that's before us is no action which I'm hearing that maybe that's what you're supporting no action, but creating an additional committee. Who's on this committee? No, I was actually suggesting of becoming a town meeting committee. I wasn't suggesting no action. I was saying nine members and these are definitely off the cuff. So they could be changed. Select Board School Committee, ARB appointee from each one of those appointee from the ARB is number four because I was picking the big committees so to speak, the ones with the most public involvement town manager representative from the Disability Commission and then four town meeting members appointed by the moderator. So that's nine committee members. Yes. And what is their charge? Because my thing is I understand what Mr. Ray's trying to do, she's saying for all, she's saying for public participation for select board meetings, but she's applying it to the 113 plus town committees that we have. So what is it that this nine member committee would look into? Just to select board. What meetings should enable remote participation? What portions of that meeting? So in my mind, they could say they might, this is again off the top, they may look at the select board meetings and say, citizens open forum is the only appropriate place or they may say everything where you'd invite and like we'd look to them for the recommendations there and how much it costs. Those are the three elements of the charge that I thought of. So what you're saying is that the select board should abdicate their meetings and the control of the meetings to this nine member body to disseminate what they should be doing, which I'm not in agreement with. I would disagree with your characterizations, Mrs. Mohan. I would say that I'm suggesting that we turn the select board meetings into a laboratory for the rest of the town to learn and adopt from. So you think that the select board is not competent enough to be able to designate what should be public meeting, remote meeting, and somebody else needs to guide us on that. I again disagree with your characterization, Mrs. Mohan. Yeah, but you're creating a committee to say that. If you're not, say that's not what you're doing and we won't have to be guided by that. That's not what I'm doing, Mrs. Mohan, but I do look forward to their recommendations and I think that we can learn and I think that the other committees can learn as well. So again, you're saying that you wanna abdicate the select board meetings to this nine member committee. Let's not go back and forth on this. I think we've... No, no, but excuse me, honestly. I know Mr. Dunn, this is his last meeting. He can do a big brouhaha, but I have to live with what he's speaking to, okay? And my thing is, I think the select board should be in charge of and designate what their agenda is. And Mr. Dunn, in my opinion, and I'm asking him to correct me if I'm wrong in saying he wants to create this nine member committee to say what the select board's charge should be. And if that's not the case, say that's not the case, and then I'll vote for his committee, which means that we're really not doing anything. But my understanding is that what Dan is suggesting is a committee to study the feasibility of remote participation, make recommendations as to what meetings and what boards and commissions, it's feasible to use it, the cost. The committee could come back to us and say, this is wildly unfeasible, and just recommend it to tell me that they not do any action regarding remote participation, but as opposed to just voting no action and saying we don't want to continue the remote participation, or as opposed to voting for the article as proposed that says that we all have to, we're gonna have appoint a committee that tells us or tells town meeting where it's feasible to have public participation, to keep it the tenor of the comments that we value the increased participation that remote has offered. And that's not my understanding. Ms. Draes, a original warrant article which I voted no action on, targets the select board, citizen public participation, and Mr. Don has made a motion on how to study that. And I mean, if the rest of my colleagues want to abdicate our select board duties, that's fine, but I'm not in favor of that. So I'm still on my motion of no action. And I'm not trying to be like overly dramatic, but I think people are trying to go along to get along. Ms. Draes presented a warrant article that I think we're not all in favor of, that we're trying to find a way that we can do something that placates our, and if it's no action, it's no action. But if people don't want to stand up for that, that's fine, but we have the select board. And Mr. Don, this is the last meeting, God bless you. Attorney Hyme. So if you can answer the question, what the, I think you can understand the intent of where Mr. Don is going to essentially send amended language to town meeting and not the article as proposed, do we need a vote of no action on the article or can we vote on Mr. Don's amended language? Does that question make sense? It does. So if within the scope of the warrant article, while the moderator is the ultimate authority with respect to the scope, my understanding is that the two competing motions are a motion of no action, which is very straightforward, it's just no action. That's it. And then the other proposal is the select board votes to study this issue and report back on it. So they're different things. I appreciate the discussion on the board, but they're different things. You can do either, but they're not synonymous. Right, but do we need a vote of no action in addition to Mr. Don's amended language? No, your vote is, if the board is inclined to vote as Mr. Don is proposed, then your vote is this is the action we're going to take. We want to study this issue, we want to create a committee, study the issue and report back. And it's no action vote would basically mean there's no discussion before, tell me. Any additional comments? Mr. Diggins. Essentially, I have a question being to Mr. Hyman because I'm just not clear myself. So then if we vote no on no action, then we are voting for Mr. Don's proposal. No, there are two separate motions before the board right now, Mr. Diggins. Okay. You'd have to vote on the motion, presently stand, you have to vote on the no action motion first. Okay. Because that's the primary motion, unless you want to vote to change the motion to Mr. Don's motion. But you have to dispose of the no action one way or the other. I just don't want to, I don't want to make it synonymous for you that if you don't want, if you want to take the no action proposal, you vote yes or no on that. But your other options are to vote to amend that motion, to a motion of create a committee to study the issue. Either way, you're in substance doing the same thing. Gotcha. Gotcha. I was just wondering if it was like two votes or, or I see, I understand now, sorry. Okay. All right. So then, all right. We'll see what happens next. I'm done, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Are you making a motion to amend the vote of no action? As you Mr. Chair, if I can recommend the simplest course of action is to vote down the no action and then take up a second motion. Okay. Attorney Hamm, we have a vote of no action that's been seconded. On a motion by Ms. Mahon and seconded by Mr. Diggins, a vote of no action. Mrs. Mahon. Yes. Mr. DeCorsi. No. Mr. Diggins. No. Mr. Dunn. No. Mr. Hurd. No. Okay. The no action mode is a four to one vote. Mr. Hurd. Mr. Dunn. I moved the creation, the move that we recommend the creation of a remote participation committee as I outlined a couple of minutes ago. We have a second. Second. Any additional comments, Mr. Diggins? Still moving. Just shake your head if the answer is no. Mrs. Mahon. Could Mr. Dunn, once again state the committee, the parameters and the cost, please. Sure. Of the 113 to 20 committees that we have. That we create the committee to study the remote participation. The committee should have nine members, a nominee of the select board, a nominee of the school committee, a nominee of the ARB, a nominee of the town manager, a nominee of the disability commission and four town meeting members to be nominated by the moderator. That the charge of the committee is to respond by at least October 1st with a preliminary report and a report for the spring of 22 and for the spring of 23. That during the course of their activities that they should evaluate what meetings should have remote participation, what portion of those meetings should have remote participation and evaluate the cost thereof. And that includes all town and school, committees, boards and subcommittees. Yes. And so just to be clear, when I say what meetings, I'm not the part of what I'm asking them to evaluate is whether it should apply to all committees or only some of them. Yeah, but my question is, of the 120 to 130 committees, commissions, agencies, recreation departments, et cetera, those all need to be looked at. Yes. So that's the charge for this committee. And you won't be on the board anymore, so that's God bless you. Okay, God bless that committee that you want to create. We have a motion and a second. Attorney Hyne. Mrs. Mohan. Yes. Mr. DeCorsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Dunn. Yes. Mr. Hurd. Yes. unanimous vote. Thank you, Ms. Drake. It's on here. All right, that brings us to article 24, tabled from our last meeting, Homeroom Legislation Rank Choice Voting. Mr. Dennis with us. Mr. Dennis. You just say your name again. Yeah, I'm Greg Dennis. I'm the clerk of the Election Modernization Committee. Thank you for taking this article. Again, I'm looking into it with a lot of consideration as you see in your materials and received by email, the Election Modernization Committee submitted further comment on the Rank Choice Voting article. The committee just wanted to clarify its opinion with respect to the two options. You heard about two weeks ago, we have our original proposal. We're calling the proportional proposal on the modified proposal as put forward by Mr. Oster, which is calling the majoritarian proposal. And they differ in how the multi-seat elections are determined. At the prior hearing, the board heard some objections from Mr. Schleckman and Mr. Oster to our original proposal. And our committee just wanted to make clear that if the board feels those objections carry any weight or gives you pause, we think the right thing to do is to put forward a positive recommendation for the majoritarian option as advocated by Mr. Oster. That option would address the concern and would mean that our proposal would be, the proposal before it would be unlikely to face substantive amendments or substitute motions at town meeting. So if you're looking for a compromise position that's unlikely to face real opposition, that one is available to you. We would strongly prefer one of those two options appear before town meeting over further delay or postponement. All right, thank you. I'll turn to the board for any questions, comments or motions. Mr. Dunn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I really appreciate the work and the extra thought that we got back from the election modernization committee. And I think it was very instructive. I think that the proportional voting that is one of the proposals they put forward, it's got a lot of implications. And I think it's the type of thing that the town meeting and the rest of the town may come around to over time. But I think that making that case takes a longer runway than we've got. And I agree with the election modernization committee, the rank choice voting is better in most respects. And so therefore I've got a very practical view that I think that we should move forward with the majoritarian, because I think that we can get that through town meeting and through a ballot question. So I move that we recommend favorable action on the proposal specifically the majoritarian version. Mr. Corsi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will second Mr. Dunn's motion for discussion. And then I want to thank Mr. Dennis and all the speakers last time. And then again, thank all the work that the election modernization committee has done. I still have an issue between single seat and multi seats. And I understand that the will of the board may be to go forward on a multi seat. I could support rank choosing for a single seat election, see how that works, and then maybe look later on whether it should be expanded to multi seat. But I think the issues that were raised at the last meeting for the research that I have done on it, I'm still concerned about the multi seat election. So depending on how this goes down, I may ask for some comments that while I support a single seat rank choice right now, given where the discussion has gone and some of the challenges, I don't support a multi seat at this time. Mr. Mahan. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Similar to what Mr. D'Corsi said, going into this, I was 100% aboard on rank choice voting, but then one of the statements was that campaigns would not be as competitive. And we'd get out more on even playing field, but if I was in a multi choice election, whereas in the past, I would say, can you give me one of your two votes? And if you were on school committee, you could say, can you give me one of your three votes? I need to change my campaign strategy to say, can you give me your number one vote? And to me, that makes it more adversarial. And that kind of turned me away from choice voting in multi-ranked elections. So, sort of back on the fence, I thought I was 100% on board on this, but then when I saw that the purpose that I was kind of buying into this, that it would turn into, it's going to be a less competitive race. No, it's not. It's going to be, if you're in a two, three person race or more, you're not saying, give me one of your two or three votes. You're saying, give me your number one. And that's sort of not the environment that I want to run in. So thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Diggins. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I like proportional, but I'm going to support the mature Italian because I want to get this in front of Tom eating. Tom eating is going to work his will on it. It's going to be a fascinating discussion. I'm really looking forward to it. I see, I hear Mr. Schlichman's argument me that you've reduced two votes to me or multiple votes down to one. I see it as a voting experience. And I see it as an experience that engages me more with all of the candidates to meet. And so now I feel that I have more impact on all the candidates. And now all of them have an interest in reaching out to me because in the current system, they can just say, you know what, me, I'm not interested in you, you're in a certain camp, me and Ann, and just discard me or not paying attention to me. Now they have an interest in reaching out to me. So I think it engages more. I'm not concerned about the fact that you may get a candidate that differs from the majority and that may threaten grants. Me, first off, I think that's hypothetical. But give it credit, me. I think it then becomes incumbent upon me and the majority to work with that candidate or that person that's won has a seat to convince them that me, their position is correct. You could end up with me some really bad person, but that's the risk, that's the risk of taking democracy in. And so I support this. And I think it's, yeah, I'll just stop there, thank you. Thank you. And I would say, I want, I'll just reiterate again that, you know, I do wish that there was a process where we were able to get more public education on this before the vote gets taken. But, you know, I did talk to attorney Heim about my suggestion and the last one about doing a ballot question prior to the town meeting vote. And it didn't sound like that was really feasible, correct, attorney Heim? So yeah, I think the suggestion is a good one so far that you could gauge the public sort of perspective on it before you submitted special legislation. The board has the ability to submit an unbinding ballot question on anything that it wants. But the way that special legislation is typically structured, you would submit the special legislation and then it would go to the voters for ratification rather than the other way around. Similar to the way that we do everything from, you know, and I don't want to make the comparison, some ways I don't want to make the comparison. A little bit of the way we use package store licenses or alcohol licenses, you get the authority to make the request first and then you submit it to the voters for ratification. The only processes that I could find that are more direct or something that's specifically highlighted in the statute like the conversion of an office or something like that. Yeah, all right. And I certainly understand, we've had great presentations and I've had great conversations with opponents of and people that were not in favor of rank choice voting in the interim since our last meeting. And I definitely think it's something that can be helpful in our current election system, write information on to people. I think I would lean towards just for reading stated by Mr. Don lean towards the majoritarian view over the proportional at this time. But I certainly want to hear what public commentary comes up with as well. So with that, I will turn to the public comments and the first one is from Jennifer Seuss. Sorry for all the delays. Hi, so thank you for considering this proposal and your sort of very thoughtful commentary. I've had some conversations with some people. I want to urge you not to make a choice to propose rank choice voting only for single seat elections. I think that's gets very complicated, especially on for the slack board where there is a year with a single seat election and two years with a multi seat election. Some of the worries that you've heard about the multi seat elections for rank choice voting are specific to the proportional representation. I understand why the committee at this point feels that that might be too complicated to explain, to open to worries. It certainly does potentially change the relationship between the board and the community. I understand why people don't want to but then I would say if you do decide to put forward majoritarian rank choice voting, some of the worries that you've heard so far just really aren't there. I mean, you don't really have any worry about grants. You don't have, the publicist doesn't have to worry about this complex counting process. There's just a lot that goes away. And so to remind you of the good things that rank choice voting. So rank choice voting encourages participation. So more people run without worrying about spoiling another candidate. And so when you talk about whether this will promote a more friendly campaign or a more contentious campaign, the reason it might be more friendly is just for that reason because you aren't worried that by running, that you're there threatening somebody else's possibilities who you might like very much. And so that's why they're sort of this friendly competitive thing. It does increase, because it increases the potential, there'll be more people running for office. There'll be more people interested in the election, interested in what these boards do and the other processes, and more likely to come out and vote. You just get sort of more people involved in the electoral process. So when we were looking for things that we could do in town. So I didn't introduce myself, did I? Jennifer Seuss, Teal Street, I'm also a member of the Millet FD Monetization Committee. When we were looking for things in town, things that we could do to improve the electoral process, getting more people involved, getting more excitement about these elections was a really important part of that. The other thing it will do that's really crucial is it reduces gainsmanship. So right now, as everybody knows, some people know that there's this bullet possibility, some people don't know about the bullet possibility, some people use it, some people don't. In general, there's sort of this gainsmanship that goes on now, that you just don't have to do with range choice voting and that's, I think, a really nice thing. The other thing is that it increases, it sort of better reflects the will of the voters. And I know there's a debate about the two kinds of range choice voting for multi-selections and the committee does strongly feel that proportional better reflects the will of the voters, but I would argue that they both reflect the will of the voters better because people can sort of express their preferences I really like this person and I like this person second and maybe I don't like this person. It's a much better relationship the voter has to the voting process. So I'd encourage you to put this before a town meeting. There's going to be lots and lots of opportunity to explain it to town meeting members, lots of opportunities to explain to the voters before it comes through our vote. This is not the end of the sort of education conversation. It's just really the very beginning. And so I urge you to take that step forward. Thank you. Sean, from ACMI, can you hear me? I'm gonna few texts that the cable is out on the broadcast. No? Okay. All right, we'll move on. All right, Mr. Schlickman. Thank you very much. You know, when we started with the liquor licenses we started with beer and wine only in restaurants and we went from moist until about 10 years later we now have full alcohol services, package stores full expanded our all alcohol licenses. So we took it step by step. If this board votes to advance rank choice voting for only single seat elections I think that's a reasonable starting point to put it before the voters and do it that way and see where we go. Rank choice voting on a multi-seat election does not do what the proponent state based on how it would in theory work for single seat elections. Do you know if anybody in town who said, gee, I would really like to run for office but I don't wanna do it in this way but I will run for office under rank choice voting. I've not met that person. I have not met that person. And as a person who was elected under a three-person race I wanna be very clear. Bill Hainer and I are very good friends. We do not share political constituencies. I tell people all the time please vote for me. I like Bill, give him one of your three votes as well. And he does the same. The current system for multi-seat elections promotes far more cooperation and collaboration than a rank choice scheme where I have to say, Bill's a nice guy but I need your number one vote. Alice Wolf once said, if I get everybody's number two vote in the election I lose because rank choice starts with the number one votes. Gaming the system, rank choice doesn't solve that. It just changes the game on a multi-seat election. And so that you have to adjust your campaign strategy to a new set of rules. And I think the new set of rules for a multi-seat election is less friendly, less cooperative, more adversarial. If there is rank choice voting in the proposal I will go to town meeting with an amendment to remove it for multi-choice and I will work to defeat the article. If we advance a rank choice voting for only single seat races I think that it's reasonable to put it before the voters and see if they like it or not. So the compromise position is not between which kind of multi-seat rank choice you wanna do. The compromise is put forward the most basic rank choice for the single seat elections and see where that goes. And I don't agree with the argument that it's more complicated than having rank choice for everything because the multi-seat rank choice is a very complicated process. To do it for single seat elections when the select board has only one member up it's just one seat on the ballot, rank choice rules apply when there are two seats up rank choice rules don't apply, pretty easy. So I urge you do not go past a single seat rank choice proposal going to town meeting this year because that my friends is the compromise. Thank you. Mr. Oster. Hi, thanks everybody. Adam Oster, I live at 10 Cottage Avenue in East Arlington and really I just wanted to express my great appreciation for the work of this committee. They've been energetic, they've been thoughtful. I haven't agreed with them about everything but it's really been a pleasure to interact with them. I hope the board will do what they think is right and let town meeting sort it out. Those are my comments, thank you. Yep. Now close the public commentary section of this meeting. So we do have a motion to approve that's been seconded. So I will go back to the board for any additional comments or questions for the proponents. Mr. Corsi. I don't have any further questions. All right, Mr. Dunn. I guess one comment is that I don't agree with entirely with Mr. Schlickman's characterization either. I think that one, so for instance, the relationship he said about voting for the person who only gets the second votes can't win that was true under the proportional version but that's not the majoritarian version that I'm putting forward does not have that flaw or at least that character. It just doesn't have that characteristic. And so I understand that Mr. Schlickman thinks that the compromise is to do only single seats but I would say that the compromise to majoritarian. And I understand that Mr. Corsi isn't comfortable with that. And so, and I guess I'm kind of, I looked at the will of my colleagues on which direction to go for majority and I'll be happy to support however that comes out. All right, Mr. Diggins. I'm very much in favor of doing right choice for multi-seat and I'm fine with going with the majoritarian since that seems to be the way that you're, seems to what makes you comfortable, Mr. Dunn. And so because I'd like to see it in the multi-seat I'm gonna support that. Thank you. This is my, I guess I would ask Mr. Dunn and Mr. Corsi, is what I'm hearing from the vote majoritarian or multi-seat? I think if I would, Mr. Corsi, I'll take a stab and you can see if I get it right. So last time we heard about this, we heard about proportional for multi-seat. And tonight we're hearing about it or we heard, we've gotten writing at least the majoritarian for multi-seat and I'm supporting the majoritarian for multi-seat and Mr. Diggins is suggesting don't make a change for multi-seat voting. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair. I mean, look at it in a rank choice type analogy. My first choice is to do it for single seat. My second choice would be to do majoritarian and my third choice would be proportional. And I wanna have a voice. So I wanna tell you what I think about it. I think we should go forward on single seat. I think maybe down the road, maybe it will be appropriate to extend it to multi-seat. I'm not ready to do it now. I think it needs a little bit more outreach and work, but here's your example, there's my three preferences. Okay, thank you for that clarification. And I agree with Mr. Diggins on single seat. So that will be my vote, which I think means I may not be voting for Mr. Dunn's motion. Okay. All right. Mr. Diggins, can you just explain, because I know it has been said in the conversation with Mrs. Diggins and she explained it to me, but sometimes it just doesn't go through my head. So why is it that the proportional that takes away the problem with having two votes in a multi-seat election? Sorry, why is it the majoritarian takes away the problem? Yeah, it's a good question. So in a multi-seat election, in a proportional system, you get one vote. So your vote could count for you sort of spend your vote on a candidate and that candidate needs sort of 80% of your vote to get elected. Then you get 80% of your vote going to that candidate and 20% to the next candidate or so on. In a majoritarian, you get, it retains the reality or feature or bug, however you wanna see it that we have today where you effectively get as many votes as there are seats. So it would not be changing that aspect. The way it's counted is you counted as if it's a single seat election, that person gets the first seat. And then for the next seat, you again counted as if it's a single seat election, only you exclude whoever won the first seat and so on. You just continue the same process, applying the same process used to elect a single seat election repetitively in excluding the prior winners so that because somebody can't win two seats. So that's how it works. And like Mr. Dunn said, the criticism that, Alice Wolfe's complained about this or that or so this or that would not apply to the majoritarian proposal. And I think it really defangs the objections that you've heard to rank choice for multi-seat elections. All right, so I turn it on. We have a motion to approve that has been seconded. Mr. Hurd, I think we're correct me if I'm wrong, but we've got two people who think that we should do rank choice and two people who we think should do single seat. Do you wanna reveal which way you're gonna vote? So the beauty of chair, right? Is, I mean, I think where I am is, you know, I just, I don't, there's gonna be a robust discussion in town meeting and that discussion will, regardless of how we vote is gonna take place on both sides of this issue. So I think at this point, I would be inclined to support your motion and pass it along to town meeting to at least, you know, put non necessitate the need for one of the substitute motions. Thank you for clarifying. Yep. Attorney Hyam? Just so I make sure I understand the motion is for single and multi under the majoritarian form of multi-seat selection. Correct? Okay. On a motion by, I believe Mr. Dunn, seconded by Mr. Diggins, Mrs. Mahan. Yeah. Mr. D'Corsi. No. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Dunn. Yes. Mr. Hurd. Yes. The vote is four to one. The motion carries. Thank you. We'll clear out a few nights of town meeting for this one. All right. That takes us to article 26. Thank you. Corsi from CBG application. Is that Mr. Helmias? Good evening. Thank you for your time tonight. I'm Mallory Sullivan, the community development block grant administrator. And I'm here to present to you tonight the CBG sub committee's recommendation for program year 47. This year we received 23 applications across the five categories of CBG, which are affordable housing, public services, economic development, public facilities and planning and administration. The sub committee members individually reviewed and scored each of the applications based upon an evaluation rubric with seven different criteria. And then the sub committee met over the course of three meetings to convene and review and to make recommendations. The total requested amount across those 23 applications this year totaled $1,253,216. And the sub committee's recommendation for program year 47's budget is $1,200,515. I'd like to thank the members of the select board who are members of the sub committee as well as our resident members. And I would like to make a request that the select board moves this to town meeting for endorsement. Thank you. And thank you for no one bringing up the fact that I confused the CBG committee with the CPAC committee. All right, we'll go to the board. Mr. Dacorsi. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair. And I just, while we start, we're gonna take a vote on the CBG. I would like to vote on the various categories, but I wanna point out on the first category, rehabilitation and housing, I am going to recuse myself and I'm gonna request if we can do separate votes for each of the categories if that's possible. The reason for that is one of the recommended entities is Caritas communities. I have done some legal work for them outside of Arlington, but for that reason, I feel like I need to recuse myself from that vote. All right, and that's no problem. Mrs. Mahan. I would like to make a two pot motion to move approval on all of the CBG recommended votes with taking the affordable housing, capital improvements, Caritas communities as one vote and the remaining as a second vote. And before I get a second from that, if I could ask, first I wanna give a testimonial to Ms. Sullivan, how informative, knowledgeable, and really on top of everything that's come out of CBG, Arlington's lucky to be a CBG community, but under the Federal Cares Act, the Recovery Act, all the different acts that have come out, she and Jenny Rait has certainly been on top of that. One of the questions I'd like to ask through you, Mr. Chair, to Mrs. Sullivan, is with the anticipated approximately 30 plus million of the Recovery Act that the town of Arlington is anticipating and receiving, do you see any need for the CBG subcommittee that there might be another separate sort of Cares Act or something funding that we need to meet in July, or is the approximately 36.7 million something that the CBG subcommittee does not need to have a roll-in? Ms. Sullivan? Yes, thank you. We, so we are awaiting further guidance from HUD and from various organizations that provide legislative insight, so I'll start with that, but we would certainly want the subcommittee's input that's been a very important part of this process, for me personally, but also of course, to make sure that the projects that are receiving funding are those where there's greatest need based upon the subcommittees understanding, as well as based upon our public comment process. Okay, so I would renew my motion that it's a two-pot motion to vote the first for affordable housing, carrot is communication is one motion, the rest is a second and just ask through the town manager regarding the recovery act funds, if the CBG subcommittee led by Ms. Sullivan needs to meet again in whatever month that you all will oversee that and thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Mr. Viggins. Sorry, I liked to second that motion and also express appreciation for everything that the CDBG committee is doing, especially my colleagues on this committee. I know that it's really hard work processing and choosing amongst various grants and also not giving people all that they asked for when their causes are really great causes, so thank you and I look forward to voting for this. Thank you, Mr. Dunn. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm happy to support it, just one clarification. So is this the actual approval of the CDBG and referral to town meeting or is this just the referral to town meeting? Tony Hines. So correct me if I'm wrong. The way I remember working is we like, so the actual people who can authorize the expenditure of the fund are the select board with a sixth vote from the town manager and then, but we're the actual dispersing authorities where the ones who actually appropriate the money. And, but then we send it to town meeting as a gesture of good faith and education saying, please endorse these priorities that we've already approved. And I'm asking for clarification. Are we actually literally doing the vote tonight in which case you also need the town manager to vote in the roll call? Tony Hines. So, I'm sorry, Adam, go ahead. I'm sorry, thank you, Mr. Chair. I think we're doing both in one vote tonight. And my recollection is that's how we've done it in the past that it's both a vote approving the budget itself and a forward to town meeting. Great. Yeah, and I would just add that that's what I've drafted as your, it's a warrant article hearing, but I appreciate the precision with respect to describing what's happening. But yeah, the town manager would vote on this, but the report to town meeting only has your votes because it's the select board's report, not the manager's. Full support, thank you. Thank you. And that will turn to the public. Any members in public would like to speak on this article? Please use the raise hand function and zoom application. Seeing none, we have a motion to approve that's been seconded. Attorney Hine. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I'll be conducting this vote with Mr. Chapter Lane's vote, but just to be clear, it will only be your vote that I report for the purposes of the warrant article. Attorney Hine, sorry. Just a clarification. So we're gonna vote on, we're gonna separate the two votes on this. Got it. We're gonna vote on Mr. Corsi. So the first vote will be just on the allocations for the rehabilitation and housing category of the recommendations. Mr. Corsi. Abstain on that. Yeah, that's right. Thank you. Mrs. Mohan. Yes. Mr. Corsi, sustaining Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Dunn. Yes. Mr. Hurd. Yes. And Mr. Chapter Lane, your vote for the purposes of the actual disbursement. Yes. Thank you. Yeah, and then we will take a separate vote on all additional recommendations. Attorney Hine. Thank you for bifurcating the motion. Mrs. Mohan. Mrs. Mohan. Yes, thank you. Mr. Corsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Dunn. Yes. Mr. Hurd. Mr. Hurd. Yes. And Mr. Chapter Lane. Yes. Thank you. It's unanimous vote. All right. That closes our warrant article hearings. Thank you, Ms. Sullivan. All right. Articles for review. So final votes and comments on article eight, article nine, article 10, article 17, article 18, article 22, article 70 and article 91. Mr. Chair, may I briefly make a statement? Yup. Thank you so much. Members of the board, this is why we do draft final votes and comments. Member of the board contacted me earlier to correct the final vote and comment with respect to the adult, the young adult and youth advisory board. I made that change. I hope that the second iteration of it was transmitted to you, but the short version of it is the one of the two DEI positions was taken out. The second change that was made was to reflect that Mr. Diggins did not vote in the positive or did not vote for no action on article 22, which was the one about email addresses. And I added a line about noting the, some of the board members expressed interest in exploring the issue further, including whether or not alias addresses would be technically feasible. And then finally, the final vote, finally, the town clerk, your very first one, I had sort of mushed together a couple of things that had been talked about, but it's a very simple fix. The date, the controlling date, instead of being January 31st should be January 1st. So I've made that administrative correction to the final votes and comments in front of you. Thank you. And so I'll read these down. We are voting on the final votes and comments as described by attorney Heim. Any comments or revisions to article eight, article nine, article 10, article 17, article 18, article 22, article 70, article 91. Seeing none, I will take a motion from Mr. Viggins. I motion to approve. Mrs. Mohan. Second. Your official comments, Mr. Dunn. No comment, thank you. Yeah, Mr. DeCorsi. No comments. All right, and attorney Heim, we have a motion to approve that has been seconded. Thank you to all those board members for your thoughtful feedback on all these, I appreciate it. Mrs. Mohan. Yes, thank you. Mr. DeCorsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Dunn. Yes. Mr. Heard. Yes. To unanimous vote. All right. Of course, once received, we have traffic concerns regarding the road utility and repair work to new food link building in 108 Summer Street by Eugene Downing, five Montrose Avenue. What's reparking meter enforcement guy Morelle via the request to answer set? Senator DeCorsi. I move receipt. I don't know, I'd ask Mr. Chapter Lane, if I don't think any referrals are required on these, but I wanna check to see if he thinks we should be doing that. Otherwise, I'll just move receipt. I mean, I suppose as a formality, referring them to my office for response, it might be appropriate. Sure. Okay. I'll amend my motion to that. Thank you. Mr. Dunn. Second. No comment. All right. Mr. Diggins, any additional comments? No comment. Thank you. Mr. Mahan. No, no comments. Thank you. All right. And so attorney, I have a motion to refer. Mrs. Mahan. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Mr. DeCorsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Mr. Diggins. Sorry about that. Yes. Mr. Dunn. Yes. Mr. Heard. Yes. Yeah, I misspoke. And we have, I am for discussion, future select board meetings. We wanna make sure that this isn't Mr. Dunn's last meeting. So let's see where we are. So I just can open up to attorney Heim to tell us where we are on warrant articles, what's left to be heard. And then we as a board can talk about options Thank you, Mr. Chair. So we've got about eight articles left. A few of them are on the easier side in the sense that things like revolving funds don't typically have a lot of discussion, but there are a few big ticket ones, including the real estate transfer fee, an article about rock excavation, an article about pest management at sites that sort of builds off the good neighbor agreement and believe an article about restricting affordable, restricting the affordable housing appropriations to folks earning a certain amount of money. So they're not super brief and there are some of them that would be hard for me to draft up a preemptive comment. In other words, as the board may recall, there are some years where I'm able to basically draft a memo, but then contained in that memo is the sort of comment that you might provide or draft both that you might provide. I can't do that for a couple of these. So the question is whether the board wants to schedule another meeting. I will note that to my recollection, it's pretty normal for there to be a vote on the draft select board report after the election of new members following the town election. So basically we have one more round of warrant articles that need to be addressed by the select board. And the question is whether or not we can do that at your next regularly scheduled meeting or not. All right, so we do have one meeting in the interim. So I'll turn to the board for any discussion, comments as to whether or not you think we can cover it in the meetings that we have in the books already or if anything in the interim is necessary. Mr. Deans. Well, I guess if we start at our usual time, I mean, and we want to get through them all and we should be prepared, we need to do a late night. The alternatives to start a little earlier, we just do a longer meeting and hopefully it won't be as late a night. I mean, I think it'd be good if we could get through them all in on the fifth or whenever, meeting and then have our approval, a short approval meeting being on that Wednesday or Thursday, the seventh or the eighth, but I think we're going to need two meetings just as a matter of whether we need three. So let's try to have just two. Thanks. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yeah, I agree we're going to need two and just the question is whether we do something before the fifth. I mean, I could, if the seventh works for people, I could see holding that open if we get the work done on the fifth grade, but I'd be uncomfortable just having one meeting just because something could come up on the fifth. Yeah. Mr. Mahan. Sounds good to me. Thank you. Mr. Dunn. It's, I guess my thought would be due one a week from today and the fifth if we want to rather than a Wednesday, but I can make things work. Yeah, I mean, if the board is inclined, I would prefer to do the fifth and then assuming that if we have to meet on Wednesday, it would be a pretty short meeting. I think that would work out better for me, but I can make whatever the board wants to do work. Mr. Chairman. Yes. Yeah, I thought there may have been a conflict for at least one member on the 29th and that was one of the reasons why we didn't select that date. Yeah, could we, if it's possible, could we put the, I was one with the conflict, but I don't have that anymore. We maybe could put the 29th back on. If that's okay with my colleagues. Yep. I think that works for everyone else. That works for me. Mr. Dunn. It works for me. And I certainly wouldn't have suggested it if I knew there was a conflict, so I'm glad that my ignorance worked in my favor. Yeah, that was the reason I wasn't suggesting it was because I was hoping to wear that conflict. So yeah, 29th, yes, I mean, then the fifth and then if we need the seventh, and hopefully we won't need the seventh. Okay. Is that cool? All right, so we'll plan on the 29th and the fifth for almost two meetings to wrap up our warrant article hearing. Quick question. Yes. Is this the longest streak of Monday meetings that's like where it's had? Cause we've never like got a role. If you ask my wife, then the answer is definitely yes. It's almost like we're the finance committee, except we're not meeting Mondays and Wednesdays. Actually back in the 90s, right before I ran for the board, they were meeting every Monday night for like three full months in a row. That's a whole nother story. But you know, I thank you. I apologize to my colleagues. I originally said no because my husband will be traveling, but I'm able to make that work cause I think he might be home that 29th. So I'm all set with that. And if we have to add another meeting, that's not great, but that's okay too. All right, so I don't think we need to vote on this. So we'll plan on meeting next Monday and the following Monday to wrap up our warrant article hearing. And that takes us to new business. Turning hand. The only thing that I wanna note is that we continue to work diligently with our legislative delegation on the special legislation. We've got most of it ironed out and those things should be submitted from the fall special town. Thank you. Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Two brief pieces of new business. One, the weather's getting nicer. So we are once again working on getting outdoor dining, going with the restaurants, planning and community development are working with the Chamber of Commerce and restaurants to get them up and running. And we should have an announcement or announcements to report soon on when, when we'll start to see those tables outside again. So hopefully the weather holds and people can start getting out of patronizing or only through restaurants. And then second, I wanted to mention the town applied participated with a group of eight other communities, the Cambridge Health Alliance and Tufts University to become a regional vaccination site. As I think the board knows we did our, what would have been our last first dose clinic last week will now roll out the remainder of the second dose clinics. But as an applicant or as part of this regional collaborative we found out last week that that collaboration was approved by the state. So it's been approved as a collaborative but not approved for vaccine yet. But we're hearing that vaccine doses are on the rise coming into the state. So we hope very soon will be part of this regional collaborative that will have doses in Arlington residents will be able to access vaccinations at a site at Tufts University, so much closer than Fenway Park, the Natick Mall or Schillett Stadium. So more to come on that, but I think it is positive news. And I hope it exemplifies our sort of tireless effort to try to get Arlington residents vaccinated as easily as possible. That's all I have. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Corsi? No, no business. You, Mr. Dunn? Yeah, one short one. I really loved the email that we got from Susan Elmore, a resident at North Cross Street and the town manager. She was looking for guidance about clogging which is when you pick up litter while you're jogging and then throw it away and the town manager clarified that it is indeed appropriate to throw it away and park receptacles. And I wanted to thank Ms. Elmore for helping keep Arlington clean. Mr. Diggins? I can't follow that. I have no business. Don? Just two, possibly three things. Spoke about the CDBG funding and the recovery act. I also know that myself and Mr. Corsi is chair of long range planning and Charlie Foskett and the town manager have had conversation amongst others regarding the recovery act monies and issuing a statement about sort of estimate of what those monies are and what they can be applied to. And I know there's been some postings by our colleagues on the school committee regarding those monies. I know there's an upcoming meeting on the 31st with the finance committee as well as I think April 12th with the long range planning committee that Mr. Corsi chairs and we'll be discussing that but it's kind of confusing to some in terms of the town of Arlington receives 30 something million in recovery act reimbursement for one year and the schools are going to receive monies from three different, their separate recovery act, their desi and their infrastructure funding. So I just kind of wanted to put that on the radar that we need to kind of keep that in mind. And then the other thing is something that I had been working on and Mr. Kiro sort of took the reins and I've taken it back. And what I'd like to do is ask the chair if it's appropriate to put on a select board meeting between a very brief agenda item between now and the 10th or we can do it after the 10th but I attended a Zoom meeting regarding civil discourse with the MMA Massachusetts Municipal Association which a lot of the stuff I already kind of knew but there were a couple of suggestions that really made sense to me. And one of them was some cities and towns when women or men take out papers for a city council or select board, they get the code of conduct or select person protocol book that Mr. Greeley and worked on and we now have, they get that when they're running which I think that's a good idea. But I don't think that's something we can do right now because I don't want anyone to say myself or the board sending it out saying that candidates need to be reminded of that. So what I'd like to do is a two pot request after the April 10th election, any new member that's been elected gets the code of conduct as it exists with the current select board. And we also have an agenda item that the select board discusses which I thought was a good idea that came out of the MMA civil discourse discussion is that actually two pot recommendation. Anytime anyone takes out papers for the select board they get the code of conduct or select person protocol book so that they know what it is they're signing up for. And then the other suggestion was which I'd like to be an agenda item along with that is that any other town committees, commissions, authorities, et cetera also either have a similar code of conduct and or have a uniform statement at their meetings as people participate in person or remotely to say that these committee members are conducting themselves in this way and we also expect that from the public. So along the issue of civil discourse making sure everybody's on the same page. So I'll work that with Mr. Heard as the current chairman if we can get that done before April 10th, that's great. If we can't I'll work with the next chairman but I just wanted to put it in you all's bonnet that that's something that I think we need to discuss in terms of before we can say that anyone who comes before us, this is what we expect of you if we make a statement and make it uniform across all of our committees and commissions that this is our statement how we're gonna conduct ourselves and we would appreciate the same from you. So thank you. Thank you. And my only piece of new business I just wanted to give a heartfelt thank you to Chief Larrity, Captain Flynn and Officer Brandon Wentz. Last week was my son's sixth birthday. We had a little outdoor event for some of his friends. I just he likes every day he comes home from school he puts his blue shirt on that he says this is Chief's outfit. And he says he wants to be the chief and he wants me to ask the town manager to make him chief. And I told him he has to wait till he graduates college which he now understands, but a couple of weeks ago I think my wife had seen something on Facebook that Captain Kern was retiring and he saw that as an opportunity to join the force. So he asked me to reach out to the chief and see if he could be hired as a police officer. So I had reached out to Chief Larrity to see if she could just send somebody by just to say hello to Dylan during his birthday and Officer Wentz and Captain Flynn showed up and Captain Flynn read him his oath of office to become an officer gave him a certificate and making him an honorary police officer in the APD. And it was really an amazing, amazing event. And a lot of people they were almost reduced to tears. So I just want to thank those three in the APD for, this is just another example of the community policing model that has been around in the APD for many years. And it was just, it was a really great event. He has now asked me that now that he's a police officer when does he have to go to the police station? I just, I tell them that everyone's working from home during COVID. So, but I do want to thank them for that. With that, I will take a motion to adjourn. Do we have an executive session, Mr. Chair? Regarding Eitron. Yes, we do. All right, we'll take a motion to adjourn to move to executive session. I'd like to make a motion to move to executive session and with attorney Heinz guidance that when we come out of executive session, unless he says differently, it will be for the purposes to adjourn. Thank you very much, Mrs. Mohan. And I just add that we're entering executive session for the purposes of discussing litigation with Eitron Incorporate. All right. And when we come out of executive session it's for the purposes to adjourn or to take a vote? I think what you've made clear is that, yes, to adjourn, that you'll adjourn in executive session. Okay, so that would be my motion that we enter into executive session. And when we finish, we come out by making a motion to adjourn. Thank you, Mr. Hart. All right. Thank you, Ms. Mahan. Mr. Dunn? Yes. All right, we have a motion that has been seconded. Attorney Heinz. Mrs. Mohan. Yes. Mr. Dacorsi. Yes. So as we finish by 11 o'clock, yes. Mr. Dunn. Yes. Mr. Hart. Mr. Hart. Yes. Okay. It's a unanimous vote to go into executive session for the purposes of discussing potential litigation with Eitron and that the board shall adjourn from the executive session and not be convened open session.