 want to strike down? I think you could strike it. Or you could say there, there is another option. Well, I think actually you could strike it because we're talking about the regional agreement. I think, you know, that was in reference to the building committee. You know, on the second page, whenever you're talking about the enterprise funds, you say expended revenues and then gain. I wish I take out gain and put in projected surplus, just, you know, so because that's what it is. It's a projected surplus. So whenever you whenever you have the, there's two of them that I see. Okay, are there any other corrections? Okay. Oh, do I have a motion on the minutes? Second? Second. Okay, any further discussion or corrections? All those in favor of accepting the minutes is corrected. Please say aye. Aye. Closed. Okay, gone. Okay. Okay, before we get started, the governor presented his budgets today. And so it came out pretty good for cities and towns. And I think it came out very good for Arlington. So on the spreadsheets the manager had, he had an increase of 321,000 for local aid. And how much does that have? 768. So like it's two and a half times. So three 768, so call it 450,000 or something like that difference. And, you know, while it's not a massive amount, you know, if that becomes the base going forward, you're talking 450 this year, next year, the year. So you're talking 1,088 over four years. And we're trying to get that deficit down. Actually, say 2,001 over five years, we're trying to get that deficit down in five years. That's a good chunk right there. So now the question is, is it going to get by the House and the Senate? So I would recommend, first of all, you can go online and see what it see the governor's recommendation. If you want, if you go online to cherry sheets and divisional local services, and it goes to cherry sheets, fiscal 16, and it has last years, and then it has the governor's and then the house is going to come and the Senate and the final, obviously, those three are blank. But get ahold of that, take a look at it. There really there's only two that matter is the general government assistance and the chapter 70. And both of those are higher than I think we have projected. So if you have me have the opportunity of seeing any of our state reps or senators or their assistance, I think, you know, supporting that and hope the House and then later the Senate supports the governor's recommendations. Unless they want to put more rent, but I doubt that's going to happen. So it's going to be interesting to to see how this all plays out. Hey, Gloria, do we have our people here from? Want to come up here? How many do we have three or four? Now the purpose here is just to get a preview on the master plan, not the whole master plan, but sort of focusing on the finances and things like that. And for the finance committee, obviously our interest and your best questions or feedback or whatever you want. Short summary that has gone out to town meeting members. I'm also handing out the implementation table from the master plan. The details that follow to actually get the master plan accomplished. So I won't have to have those in hand as we get started. I'm Carol Kowalski, I'm director of planning and community development. Charlie Kowalski is co chair of the master plan advisory committee. Carol Swenson co chair of the committee. It's okay. Okay, do you want to give any overview or general thoughts? If we could take maybe 10 minutes, 15 minutes to sort of an overview. And I know many of you probably were either contacted to the master planning process or attended some of the meetings. So I really thank you for your input. It's really valuable. Carol, we'll be talking a little bit about the process in more detail. But I thought I'd start by just saying that this really a master plan is really a document, a living document, if you will, that really is a statement of town's future physical development. And that has fiscal implications. I think that's why we're here tonight to talk about how physical development can have a positive impact on town finances. The process began several years ago, World Cafe. And we've gone through quite a bit of analysis of the town's existing condition, both physically and physically during the process. And what we want to say is that this is beginning of a process that we're going to have to go to in terms of implementation, we'll be touching on that a little bit later. But we thought we'd spend a little bit of time talking about what is in the master plan document. Our consultant, RKG associates had some independent observations about the town, independent observations were the town is very well managed. Very impressed with the fact that we had a five year plan for our town finances. And that there's a lot of opportunity in town for future economic development that can help the town in terms of its future budgeting. We'll be talking about that in a little in a little while. The town has changed significantly since I moved to Arlington in 1976. There's been quite a change in terms of development, there's been changes in terms of demographics. Arlington is a very desirable place to live today. Housing prices are going up faster than the region is whole. Our schools are excellent. Have a excellent reputation. We have great recreation facilities, cultural resources. And we think we're poised for a change in terms of how the town may see development of her. And we want to talk a little bit about how that may happen. Just take a minute if you can turn to the third page vision statement for the town. This is really important because this is what guided us through the process. The theme here is the civic connections throughout town that encourage social interaction. Social interaction is really what brings us together as a town. The fact that we've remained a town and not turned into a different form of government and things admirable. We want to continue that. I think a lot of that has to do with the connections that we all have to one another and throughout town. But the vision statement talks about that we want to contribute to preservation of open spaces and corridors that link neighborhoods. We want to promote thriving business districts, the three major business districts that we have now, being around Capital Square in East Arlington, in Arlington Center and in the Heights. Providing living and working opportunities for all. We know that parts of Arlington are becoming unapportable for some. It's an issue that has to be addressed. And more local employment. We believe that local employment, especially after this winter last month or so, I think people would rather have local employment than the commutes they're putting up with these days. We believe that we have an obligation as stewards of our historic heritage and we want to also promote that. There may be some economic benefits from promoting tourism along the battle road that march out from from Charles Sound to Lexington Concord to get all the publicity they had to go through monotony on their way there. cultural and recreational resources. Those provide shared experiences I mentioned before in the connections. And then our natural systems by pond, the topography, the views you get from the hills of Arlington, all those need to be preserved. Walkability is key. You'll read throughout that becoming more of a walking community. And then the last is, and most important to this committee is the shared interest in community wide fiscal health. So with that, just want to have you turn to the economic development section. Master plan, some page for correct. As I said before, Arlington is primarily a bedroom community, people commute to the employment centers in Boston, Cambridge, or commute to 128. And our tax base has been decreasing over time because of jobs or Avalon 128 as I said, or in the urban core area. What we need in town or more businesses to remain locally and promote that. But we have very little vacant land left to develop. So some of the recommendations that we're making there are a series of six here, they're more in the in the full document. But making some changes to the zoning bylaw that would allow some flexibility in in in business districts. And that would help promote more economic development. Current market trends are showing that there's more shared space for employment. We'll talk about that a little bit later in terms of innovative companies. So the industrial district zoning may need to be amended. Um, new office buildings enter an innovation park. I think the truth is that Arlington is not going to be a magnet for 100 200,000 square foot office building, those are happening in Burlington, or as I said before, Cambridge, Boston, and we don't have the land for for large buildings like that. We're going to be smaller office buildings, probably more geared towards medical or professional services. Collaborative workspaces, we have a lot of entrepreneurs in Arlington, many people have their own companies, maybe startups or in in what we call the knowledge industry, trying to capture the talent and have that stay in Arlington. And maybe they are smaller business begin with but they grow over time. And then supporting our magnet businesses, we did a study, the town did a study not too long ago about the importance of theaters and entertainment restaurants and building that is one of the methods not the only one for town for the town. And then last is implementing a lot of the recommendations of a commercial center report that was done back in 2009. So those are summary of the recommendations and Carol and Ted will go into more detail about those a little bit later. Carol, what do you want to talk about the process? Yes, I would like to talk about the process. And one of the things that came out of the two year process were the vision statements. And one thing I must say is the goal I believe of the town and the master planning committee was to try to get as most public input as we can from Arlington. We really wanted to know what everyone thought what would make us a better town. And we did this in a lot of ways. In October, let's see two years ago 2012, we had a World Cafe that just said, What do you see? What do you want Arlington to be? We had good attendance for that. And from there, the town had decided on a master plan, advisory committee, which we have now 11, 11 members, some of those are town meeting members. Most of those people have experience in either transportation or economic development. So it was a wide crowd. And from that, we had about 75 meetings, public workshops, presentations, interviews, surveys went out to get the public input, people I feel had as many chances as they could to input and tell us what they wanted. And from there, we started writing the master plan. By in January, let me not skip ahead so much. We started writing it, we wrote the different sections that you see, you know, briefly in your handout, because by law, we need to have those sections. But they also do cover and overlap a lot of what we feel are good recommendations for the town and we feel this from the public input. So once we had all that together, and we wrote a draft in January, we went to the redevelopment board to have a and they had a hearing formally considering adoption of the master plan. By state law, the ARB has the authority to hold this hearing and adopt the plan for the town. On February 4, that plan was now from there, we've taken comments that have come from them and have done a little more like this pamphlet with the master plan, because we'd like to bring it to town meeting. We have a warrant article on the meeting agenda. We want their endorsement. They're the ones that approve zoning changes. They're the ones that talk about whatever changes that would be to the town. So we want them to help have it implemented. So on town meeting day in we will be presenting that with the hope that they will consider to accept to receive or resolve to endorse the master plan. That was a quick overview. I can begin to talk about that a little bit about in the master plan. You'll see you'll see what I'm about to tell you after the recession of the 1990s. Arlington's commercial property values dropped significantly. And then just for inflation have not yet fully recovered. If we wanted to achieve even like an 8% share right now, we're about 6% of our tax basis commercial industrial wanted to achieve an 8% it would require almost twice the amount of commercial floor space that exists today. That would be like adding the equivalent of another story of space to each commercial structure in town. So that's not likely to happen. At least it's not likely to happen overnight. But we do have a lot of underutilized sites in Arlington. Any development, almost any development you're going to see in the near term is going to be redevelopment of underutilized sites. And we do have areas of town I think everyone can pick one or two that you think about it. You realize that there's there's a potential for redevelopment. We do need to adjust our zoning the consultant opines that we have capacity even in our existing zoning to increase density along Mass Ave. Based on a visual preference survey that we did with the public to we gathered some conclusions that we could go taller in some locations in our commercial areas. There are a lot of single story commercial buildings, early 20th century commercial buildings that really could stand to have a little more heft. In fact, we were interested to see there was an article in the advocate from a long time ago. I wish I had my hand on it tonight for you. But it was an editorial criticizing these one story buildings that were being built in the early 1900s, because they weren't grand. They weren't of any kind of a stature. They weren't made of grand materials or grand scale. So it's kind of ironic that there was a time when suburbs like Arlington their trajectory was they wanted to grow and be significant. But then there was a trend where upper floors were taxed at a higher rate. And there was a trend where the upper floors were removed from buildings in Arlington and some of the other suburbs. So these things ebb and flow. But we did this visual preference survey showing some of you might have attended it. It was last summer, late summer and presenting slides of examples of buildings in Arlington and some that were not in Arlington. And we were kind of pleasantly surprised to see that there was more of it much more of a tolerance for increasing density than we thought. When we say increasing density, we're not talking about 12 story or 20 story skyscrapers, but even four or five story buildings, adding a couple stories over existing stories or redeveloping on on existing blocks. So I'm not going to tell you that we're going to put forth this idea that increasing commercial development is going to solve all of our fiscal problems. But we do have the capacity to increase that over time a little bit. And potentially increasing the demand because if we increase the demand for commercial properties and industrial properties and office space here, that's what will increase the valuation of that whole class of buildings. It's also just very good for Arlington's quality of life. You don't want a monoculture of uses or buildings or building types. So we have a variety of the implementation schedule that we distributed tonight is still in draft form. The final with the revisions, we're expecting to try to post next week. You'll see that it also includes, as Charlie said, recommendation to allow and encourage office space, or an innovation center. We aren't going to have one the size what something would have or walk in, but we can scale this to Arlington. So that's, I'd be happy to take some questions on growth of the tax base. But we also want to talk a little bit about the economic development themes. And Ted's going to talk a little bit about mixed use and why the plan promotes mixed use. Thank you, Carol. As my part of this plan that has been about really puts forth the concept of mixed use development, encouraging mixed use development along Massachusetts Avenue and Broadway, especially where the town to business districts are concentrated as a means of not only boosting the utility and value of our existing commercial properties that want to protect and enhance and increase the value of it to the future to provide more fiscal benefits to the town, but also to provide more utility to residents. Throughout this process, we talked to residents about what they want to see in the future. And without fail, a lot of them have told us continually, they want to see more shops, more different types of shops, more different types of businesses in town. They like patronizing local businesses, local service providers, and voting zoning changes that will allow existing properties to be flexibly reused and redeveloped to provide better services to future residents is key to enhancing their value and making them work for the town in a better way in the future. And we see mixed use development, which is very similar to what we see in the capital square block where the capital theater is. It's not just a theater. It shares that whole building with ground floors and shops and restaurants. And then above, the upper stories are apartments, the three different types of uses that are providing a lot of useful qualities to town. And in a visual preference survey, residents pointed to that capital theater block as the most popular type of building and development they want to see in the future. That is kind of the model for what residents want to see along Massachusetts Avenue and Broadway in the future. That type of mixed use, three, maybe four stories, but you know, with very visible storefronts, and, you know, less intrusive residences above, but that type of use, it's not anything new. It's not anything wild. It's really returning to our roots and promoting that along in our business districts and along our business corridors. I'm going to interject if I may. Right now, mixed use is allowed in Arlington's Zoning By-law. And in one of the district description that's even encouraged, but if you are a developer or a property owner and you sit down, look at our by-law to figure out how you're going to develop or design a mixed use building on your property, very quickly realize you can't do it. Because our by-law tells you that you have to provide all of the requirements for commercial use plus all of the onsite requirements for the residential use. So if you need to provide X number of parking spaces for your residential uses, you also have to provide the same the amount of parking spaces you need for the square footage of retail you're proposing. So on Arlington sites, is that going to happen? No, that's not going to happen. We have buses. We have we have pretty good bus service. And most of our most prized commercial buildings don't have any onsite parking. So there's a kind of a paradox in our Zoning By-law, which we know we would have to address to really make mixed use happen. So don't let anyone tell you it's not allowed by our current by-law or encouraged by our current by-law. But when the rubber hits the road, we've got to amend the by-law to really make true mixed use allowed and encourage it. So I wanted to add that. So clarify that. But we not only think that this mixed use concept can really help preserve our commercial properties and enhance our commercial tax base. But another theme that we stress in the plan is to generate and promote thriving business districts and mixed use development in our business districts by providing a residential base of people who are coming and going to live in these business districts can really promote a better streetscape on their better street life on their people coming and going at different hours, making them active vibrant places that can really help in doing that. And that type of activity will make our business districts more attractive to outsiders to come and visit our cultural attractions that are historical properties, which is another part of our plan. We want to bring visitors into town to patronize our our attractive our attractions and having vibrant business districts helps to do that. So mixed use development has a lot of added benefits beyond just enhancing the value of our commercial properties. Ted's worked a lot over the last couple of years, trying to introduce to Arlington landlords and property owners the idea of shared workspaces, which have caught on very well in Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, but landlords and the outer suburbs, it's kind of new to them. It's a little risky. They don't it's unfamiliar to them. So Ted's pulled together a couple forums, bringing together venture capital people, entrepreneurs, landlords and real estate agents to hear panelists who've done this elsewhere, who can tell Arlington landlords how to do this. We do see the innovation economy and startups as a viable niche, industrial niche for Arlington in the future because our labor force, our residents are working in tech. They are very, very highly trained and highly skilled. So this would be a way of trying to better match the population to the office space and types of workspaces available. I want to get back to mixed use just for one more moment. When you're thinking about when we think about mixed use, we're really trying to harness this really hot real estate market in order to get more business use. Pure business use would be terrific. That would be the best net return to the town and cost police and services. So but at the same time, we have demographic changes where our older adults, that's that demographic is increasing and projected to go up. And young adults, both of those need smaller units. Nesters kind of want to downsize. And young adults, they just want to get a foothold. They want to get that first home or even a apartment or condo. But the market's not making those. So the idea with these mixed use units is that's what we could get smaller units potentially out of the mixed use scenario. And try to leverage that hot real estate market by saying you can get that you'll get permission to build that. But only if you also put in that business use. Or you know, the typical one is stores on the first floor and apartments above. But I don't think we want to be a slave to that format necessarily. The uses are going to come to us. And nowadays, you don't have a lot of noisy, smelly industrial uses. They're quieter. There's no odor. So I wouldn't even say that we want to necessarily segregate light industry from residential, depending on how it's designed. But I really break in an example of that around artists lofts where you have work space and gallery space. So you have kind of a retail component, an industrial component, a residential component, all combined in one space. So that would be the type of thing we want to encourage in our zone is going forward, especially if we want to try to develop our creative economy based around the arts and performance arts and visual arts that are very strong here in Ireland. And our existing commercial spaces are great venues for developing those and showcasing those types of activities. So we have to give property owners an incentive to re-develop their properties to accommodate those types of activities. And mixed use is a way of allowing them to tap into the residential markets while maintaining 21st century commercial spaces. So just to try to wrap up and then we'll take questions of the final version of the master plan is expected to be on the website next week. The article 46 will ask town meeting to endorse the master plan. The master plan is already adopted, but there's so much work that would have to go back to town meeting. We want to really become partners with town meeting and ask town meeting members to embrace the plan and look forward to a future process to bring some of this to fruition. So if you have any questions on the resolution draft language or on anything you've heard tonight or the summary, we'd be happy to try to address your question. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you for your presentation. Very great. I also want to thank you for the hard work that the committee has put into creating the master plan. It's really great. And I also want to say that I'm personally very, very excited about because of the mixed use because focusing because that's one of the only ways that we are going to get any increased commercial space. And I want to say that I'm personally very, very excited about because of the mixed use because focusing because we can really get any increased commercial revenue to the town and try to alleviate the burden on the residential taxpayer a little bit as the town moves forward. Maybe I don't know if we're going to completely address our structural deficit, but it might help. But I just have one question that's in search of, you know, I've been in town meetings since 1976. And I've seen the immense pain that developers have to go through to do almost anything currently. Are you doing anything that is going to somehow change the ground rules so that how does somebody come in and do one of these projects if they have to go through 97 hoops in two years and, you know, bankruptcy or whatever else is in the process to get something done? I can try to address that a little bit. I appreciate that question because it's kind of close to my heart. In the review section, you'll see kind of critique. We asked the consultant to critique our zoning. And one of the observations is that too many uses in Arlington go through special permit. Special permit process, I think the boards that administer it in Arlington work closely with one of them. I think they're fair. They do a good job. Yet, despite that, it costs a developer time and uncertainty. And I think it has a kind of chilling effect on expansion. It might have a chilling effect on new businesses coming here. We're not the only community that has special permit or site plan review, but I do think that there is this sense that you don't want to go to Arlington because you might have to go to a special permit. You might have to go through environmental design review. Even if you want to expand, there's always going to be someone who thinks, why didn't that business go through environmental design review? There's some people who think everything should, but our consultant, and I agree that we have to make something allowed, more things allowed in the fire department. And one of the ways we can do that is by a design guidelines, I believe. We are undertaking an effort right away to see if we can come up with design guidelines with community input that will be incorporated into sound changes so that the public will have some idea in advance before we even change the zoning of what things might look like. I'm not talking about paint color, but the massing, where it might go on the street, how it might take advantage of the site. If these design guidelines are adopted and there's a good, robust public process, I think it would help the public reduce their anxiety about new development coming in and thereby encourage them to say, well, if we know already what it's going to look like, it doesn't have to go through a special permit. Then I think there'll be more the way it will be paved to adjust the zoning, to amend the zoning so that we don't have so many special permit uses. Does that help a little bit? There are some it's also a recommendation to recodify the zoning and to overhaul our zoning wholesale. Our zoning was adopted in 1974 and it followed a good planning process in its day, but think of how much has changed since 1974. In the world, in our population in Arlington and on the ground our zoning bylaw is supposed to reflect what is going on in the town. It's not supposed to be something that's locked in like the Ten Commandments and you don't need to change it. It's time for us to update our zoning to 2014 not 1974. We seem to be changing and finishing this next year. I chose a bad example, didn't I? One of the things that the committee also discusses the role of technology. Technology is changing so rapidly. We think today you may have to wait for the MBTA bus, the 77 bus on Mass Ave. In a few years it may be some sort of Uber, Lyft, or some other service that's getting people around. The power of mobile communications is just extraordinary. And that has to be taken into consideration as well in terms of looking in the future, looking down the road. So we touch on that a little bit in the manager plan, but who knows what's coming down the road. We have to be adaptable and flexible. Okay, Ken? Carol, you might have an insight in this. Bea is out in at least what happened here. The population growth has been all types of people. Blue collar workers, white collar workers, low, high, and so forth. All kinds of people. There's been a great mixture of these people throughout the town. In the last year or two, we see the sales of real estate and many dollars is like nothing now. And we see Oscar prices that are 50, 75, lately 150,000 over the Oscar price for homes. Now these are limited people who could come into this town. You're not going to get the average blue collar worker paying that much money for a house, so they're going to be a major or becoming a town only for the rich. It's almost too late. I'm overstating it, but Arlington has gotten wealth here. If you look at the comparative wealth tables, the upper and the highest and the second highest are much larger cohorts now than they were ten years ago. Every time a property changes hands and value is put into that property, it's now priced where only the people who sold it wouldn't be able to afford it. So over time, and you've seen this trend happening for, I've been here since 86. So there was the recession and then the boom in the 90s and it continued into the 2000s and the housing market has recovered a lot since the recession. It's just been this trajectory that hasn't gone down. Our values stayed stable during the downturn and a lot of properties were getting above the asking price even during their session. I would tell Sims developers, prospective Sims developers at that time when we were still trying to get Sims developed, they didn't believe it because they were from out of town, out of the region, but we saw it, you knew what was happening. So, you phrased it, Kenny, like, are we in danger? It's a pattern that the local government can't really affect. It's a pattern that I don't know if individual property owners want to affect. You can understand an individual property owner wants to realize that value when the time is right for them. But it does cause us a little concern when we think about will our own kids be able to afford to move in or to stay here. Will our older adults be able to stay here? If they're trying to downsize, where can they go? We don't have smaller, moderately priced condo necessarily for everyone who's going to want one. So, it is a concern. The housing element tries to address this by talk of the master plan. Tries to address this by discussing ways we can try to create either through subsidized affordable units that are smaller but also through market rate units that could be available for 55 and older active adults. That's a need in Arlington. I'm always surprised to hear how many people tell me where can I find a condo if I'm downsizing in Arlington? And most of what's been built, well, Sims and Brigham that's at the luxury price range. So, that's great but it doesn't meet everyone's needs. So, we will they're not condos. They're all apartments. That's true. There are only very few condos up at Sims. The townhouses. If you're trying to sell your house and you want to make sure that you don't get a huge capital gains you've got to roll it into another building and there's no condos for sale. They're all apartments that are going up. That's frustrating. It is. What do I think? That sort of begs the question. What do you attribute the big attraction is to people wanting to move to Arlington? If you're willing to pay 50, 100,000 over and ask the price to go home in Arlington what is the main attraction to these people? Well, there are many. One of them is you don't have to drive as far. If you're working in Boston or Cambridge you don't have to drive as far. You don't have to go all the way out to 128. You've got access to Ailway. You've got access to the Miniman bike path which is the most popular rail trail in the country. You have good schools. You've got real asset because you can walk anywhere. You can go a lot of people in Arlington, not everyone but a lot of people can walk a short distance from their home. They can do a lot of errands. They can get to the library. They can get to the dry cleaner. They can get to the coffee shop. They can get their hair done. And that excuse the phrase walkability kind of planner slang but I think you all know what I mean. That's become so popular urban designers who are working in areas that aren't yet developed are building and they want Arlington's fabric. They want our density. They want our proximity to services and amenities. It's I don't know who to credit but it's we are just very popular. Our model this type of urban design is very much in demand now. And Carol, I think we're also strategically placed in a very hot regional housing market in a very strong regional market, especially in the higher technology areas of pharmaceuticals biotechnology, healthcare military defense spending and computer technology research and development and we have highway access under two as you said camera line access. We are ideally located where somebody wants to work in Cambridge or who has to have an office in Cambridge with all things 128 to companies out there. Because we're so strategically located people want to live here and a lot of well paid people want to live here and they have a price for property. We're also close to an international airport. In fact we're one of the drivers of the Boston economy in general. Many of you probably get on planes by overseas and really there's hubs around the world and Boston is becoming one of those international hubs very attractive so I don't know how long it is maybe a half hour cab ride to Logan. Okay Tom Being a developer in Arlington years ago I developed 27 condos it was an old textile gas station Developers today don't want to come in town I don't want to come in town it's hard it takes a long long time a lot of money to get through the process it's not easy you need to educate the people not so much the people giving up the permits it's the people that are coming in town they don't want it we can sit there and we can do this and this is great and I agree with everything you do we need to do this the people coming in town do not want this this is really common you have somebody that wants to put a pimple on their house that's not by right it's a nine month process and they're only going to get a third of what they want it's the education of the butters I'm talking about anything in this town it is very very difficult because of the people coming in town they're not looking for that I don't know how you're going to educate or convince them but they seem to be satisfied paying the taxes you're paying and not having it increase developers do, they talk about it I haven't developed anything in Arlington in ten years and I won't because I know what's going to happen I know the cost if you didn't have a special permit process if it were by right do you think that would be a big difference absolutely I think you have to have something in place I don't think you just play cowboy but I think what you're going through now is incredible really incredible it's scary so it's people just back away from it but I think you need to educate the people I think the people should follow it's interesting how so many people will move to a desirable community and then they don't want it to change they're a newcomer but they don't want anything to change nobody likes I have a question you might have projected like 20 years from now what is the population is going to be increased from now on right and based on that projections have you projected how many new housing units do we need I don't have the chapter in verse but in the master plan we do have a demographic section at the front and we have a housing section that does project our housing needs and talks about how many what percentage of our population is housing burden that means they have to spend more than 30% of their income on rent so there's a lot of good information in the housing section and yes we do have projections I can answer some of these questions the state projects will grow our population by about 9% by 2030 and so we're at about 42,000 right now so that'll boost us up by another 4,000 people by 2030 so that's kind of a baseline okay why not so a finance question so I see on the implementation plan consultant for a lot of items I don't see any money in the budget for a consultant so what's your plan for that everything that's in the implementation if it entails any spending would have to go through the budgetary process that everything else has to go through and that's one reason why we want to bring this resolution to tell meetings so tell meeting what is this implementation table and frankly I think there's too much in there that has consultant listed in that column I think there's a lot of that that staff should be able to do or without handing over a huge contract but you're not planning on a consultant in 2016 we will probably need a consultant to overhaul our zoning but you haven't requested funds we have some funds already set aside and we'll probably also ask for some additional community development block grant funds you just touched on my question which is a better sense of the implementation time frame when you say near term mid term long term summary what are you talking about there we wanted more of a schedule for implementation and we were advised against doing that because for a variety of reasons we settled with the near term the first thing we're doing is the design guidelines we will be forming an implementation committee probably right after town meeting to sort through that implementation table and to decide what are the in each element we want to give a little equal time to each element of the master plan what are we going to put into play first we are also one of the very next steps is to try to get an update to our housing plan going we do have a housing plan but it was done I believe I'm going to say 10 years ago so it's really time for us to update that housing plan and we have a draft grant application in right now to get that done so the implementation committee will do a lot of work to try to prioritize that implementation table and when are you targeting to get the housing plan completed we would like to have it completed within a year because we want to take advantage of you are familiar with the community preservation act I'm sure and there will be an opportunity or obligation to create a community preservation plan in the first year of the CPA and so we want to have that housing plan ready for trying to get the funding through the CPA if possible to fund some of what we some of the recommendations in the housing plan I think it's a very exciting plan it's a great vision it certainly convinced me to spend the next 50, 60 years of my life here great and it's interesting to hear why do people love the town so much and want to move here and stay here and totally point out how difficult it is to change things I'm not sure those are unrelated might not have exactly the right balance but as you said I think we've preserved a lot of the qualities that other towns are trying to get back to in terms of livability but back to the financials I'm wondering about the impact on the tax base of mixed use and you may not be able to answer this it may be a question for the assessors but just for example if the Brigham's property if there was a way to develop that as a mixed use property say a restaurant, an ice cream shop on the first floor and a couple floors of professional offices and then residential above that how would that have impacted same square footage would that be a higher or lower tax base than it is now can mixed use allow the same square footage to be assessed that's an excellent question and I don't know the answer I met with the assessor this week I myself want to learn more about assessing different classes in Arlington in particular but the way they look at it is if you get a large commercial destination you're bringing in outside dollars and that really rocks your tax base mixed use isn't really a destination use unless it's on a scale of is it assembly square that's a lot of new retail it's much more retail than it is residential maybe their next phase will be more residential but I don't think the Brigham's property could have handled that much retail I would only be speculating my opinion is that having more shops there or offices a more variety of uses would bring more people to that location and I think that kind of activity would increase the value of the property at resale and would therefore increase the value but that's something that we need to look into more into implementation phase looking at fairly recent mixed use developments and looking at their assessment and trying to understand that trying to provide an answer for ourselves we know that pure commercial and pure business brings a better return but mixed use seems to be what we're going to be able to see sooner here so that's what we're going to look for Alan I've looked at a number of studies many from the west coast and some from the east coast and the mixed use properties on a fiscal basis provide a better return than this pure residential mainly because you're substituting some of the residential space for commercial space that as Carol alluded to they have lower costs to the town and they bring in similar taxes so on just that research basis they're seeing better returns from mixed use buildings than from just purely residential but that was the details it really depends on the mix of the space and stuff I'm still going to go back to addressing increasing the assessed values to really financial burdens this was the finance committee I have one, okay Peter concerning near term, midterm and long term what do you think the plan is good for 20 years or 50 years? I think parts of it have a 20 year horizon I think other parts of it have a 50 year horizon it depends on what task and what element we when we're talking about new schools I hope that's going to be more than a 20 year horizon so long term is perhaps 20 years I think the average should be 20 years but some of the recommendations in here would be take us out to 50 years but that's mostly for I think large public facilities you want to touch upon the revisiting the plan oh thank you it's common practice for a master plan to be updated every 5 years I think we're going to have our hands full for the first few years so don't hold me to 5 years but it is expected that you look at a master plan regular intervals to update it it's not something that's etched in stone you never deviate from it it's not how the world works and it's not how master plans are expected to be I have one concern here I think a lot of the stuff you've done is great and moving in the right direction the mixed use I mean Ken you're saying we had a house on working class Blue Collard teal street in East Arlington 2 blocks away from Somerville that went for over a million dollars to everybody's shock so I think the 1 bedroom maybe 2 bedroom apartments on top of commercial areas is going to be able to provide some of the more affordable housing but you've already explained to me why they can't do that because of the parking so there's an issue you know about like now I went back into the warrants and oh where's the warrant article that corrects that there's no warrant articles in here and I'm afraid that with the consultants and looking over the zoning it's going to be 7 years before we see the changes to the zoning that will allow for regular mixed use on Mass Ave and probably Broadway and maybe a few other streets so what are we going to see that fix to it next year's housing which you already know about next year one of the things we heard in the input that struck me was such contradictory public comment on parking and that is one of the obstacles to mixed use some people think we don't need parking requirements people use the bus particularly if it's a small unit people use the bus parking requirements up so that for whatever reason you can fill in the blank there was a developer in Austin you might know about this Tommy a developer in Austin who looked at his neighborhood and his potential clients and said we're not going to need parking for this building none of my tenants none of my owners are going to want a car and the butters said we have all kinds of cars in the street so it is an issue but that's one of the recommendations they can't have cars on the street now and after this winter that issue should probably never come up again so you have a reason why mixed use can't happen why can't we see that put it before town meeting potentially go to town meeting very soon there are different approaches but sometimes the consultants will recommend first recodify and clean up the internal contradictions I think that's great I don't feel like we have the time to do that I feel we've gone through this master plan process which was worthwhile planning is always supposed to precede zoning Massachusetts is one of the only states where it's not compulsory to plan first before you do your zoning so we finally have a comprehensive master plan and we really need to just really get going on the zoning change time's wasting you know I've been anxious I'll say so but I just urge you to move ahead with the things you know about as quickly as possible thank you for the encouragement that would be a two thirds vote though that's right so my only two cents having listened to this and it's sort of more of what Tom Charlie is saying is um I would suggest that you're next up but really to dig in on the real estate owners or developers side and understand what they actually want and are willing to do because while I hear you talk passionately and with energy about mixed use I don't really see it as something that's viable and here's why let me give you I wrote down three quick examples so let's see if we can clean up the zoning violence vacant land or vacant spots along Mass Ave and take where the CVS is for example right so you have a vacant land it's a pad site CVS comes in they've got their 20 or so prototypes they pick the one that they can fit in there they go before the redevelopment board vote they're done right they don't want to be second floor third floor and landlords things like that so that's a challenge um now take the majority of Mass Ave which are already existing structures so I think about where I live off um Mass Ave in Park where I see I know this building get photo here some of the two three floors in the whole section it's one floor right so you have a you have a property owner they own the building they're collecting rent they have as long as I've lived there they've had full occupancy so they're collecting their rent each month now I don't know if that building could support a second or third floor they can't you're never going to use them to forgo rent for two years to knock it down and go through a whole development effort just because we want to do it right there has to be incentive for them to redevelop the property or um or if it could bear the load that they'd have to do the capital investment to then have a return right so I would sort of my own feedback is you know there's that that's the next big gap is we can sort of convince ourselves as a governmental entity that this is a good thing to do um but to convince the people that have to have a capital that it's a good thing to do even if we change the zoning it might not be the easiest task that's quite possible I do have a couple property owners who have been knocking on my door over the past couple years saying when am I going to be able to add couple condos above my restaurant and I'm glad to hear that because there are some I'm glad to have a few property owners who are interested in trying to do that whether they would get financing for it, whether they could find a developer who would be equally comfortable doing the fit out for the business use as they would for the residential they're not typical they're not as abundant as a developer who strictly does residential or who only does office or who only does retail but they are out there and if we have one building one mixed use building go up other property owners take notice and it starts to happen I can't tell you which lenders are going to be more amenable to taking on that risk but some new mixed use infill buildings in village centers in metro Boston have been built in the last seven years it can't happen, it has been happening your point is very well taken there are lots of players it's the property owner it's the developer you have to get a tenant for the retail space and the lending has to be in place I'm not saying it can't happen I'm sure we all have our private lives that don't involve a ton of our lives in our governmental entity I always sometimes chuckle when I volunteer for the finance committee and when I go back to my private sector life the commercial view of the government does not equate to the government's view of itself they are wildly different and they are not very positive on the private sector at times for a lot of the reasons Tom brings up and I feel like that's the gap right there people want to build the development make their money keep going that makes sense other questions or comments I'd like to thank you all for coming we really appreciate it what I'd like to do is get through as much as we can today now the first thing is let's do the water bodies I handed that to you proposed re-draft in hope that meets people's concerns re-draft now what I basically added under the vote the town manager shall report to the next annual town meeting on the status of the various water bodies of the town including Hans and Brooks so I just wanted to broach her an issue and the short and long-term policies and programs so we should have some policies as well as specific programs that we've been issuing that will be needed to maintain their quality and then I added a comment under finance committee believes the long-term plan is needed to guide these efforts to maintain our river streams and ponds so that's my shot it's sort of trying to put together what people were concerned about last time Paul I would suggest adding one word to that last sentence okay under the vote no of the comment the last sentence of the comment and it's a plan is needed to guide these efforts to maintain all our river streams and ponds just to emphasize the point okay I'll take that as a friendly administrative change I mean you know the two ones Alweif and the Mystic rivers and lakes are primarily I think it's DCR conservation recreation but we still want to know about them and what's happening what do you think Christine I have a problem in the comment with the the current need is for treatment to reduce growth I have some disagreement with saying that the current need is for treatment to reduce growth of invasive weeds because although that's what the money is being used for we really don't know what the most current need is because we haven't studied it I would be more comfortable we phrase it the money is currently being used for those for those reasons okay what line are you sort of looking at the third sentence that starts the current need is for treatment in a comment comment I would suggest the current use of the funds is for treatment because as I said we don't know what our needs are because we haven't studied that and I do have a question about we could say the current use right will the town manager have money to do this type of analysis well I originally was going to put in more than 40,000 but unfortunately despite all the advice I give people they put the dollar amount in the warrant article and I've always taken and most of the moderators have taken a position that once you set the dollar amount in the warrant article that sets the high point I think if the manager, I haven't run this by the manager yet if the manager comes back to us and say September or something I'm really hopefully come back sooner than that I'm going to need some more money to help with this you know we could transfer it out of the reserve fund I think that's it also you know we've got a lot of manpower showed up here there and I think you could probably put some and we've got a lot of expertise in the town so we could probably utilize some of that too but I think if they need more money then here my thought would be up to the committee of course you could use the reserve fund for transfers and then of course you've got a very large public works budget that they could always probably find a few bucks so I guess those are the two sources I'd see if they need more money and we're not saying it has to be a at least I don't think we're saying this has to be a 100 page report I think you know going through each of the things and what are some of the problems and some of the things that need to be done I think it requires correct me if you think I'm wrong I think it requires simply more thought and pulling expertise from various people than it does to hire a consultant to do it I would think it requires some expertise and it may require some money in fact I think I heard the chair of the conservation commission mentioned and perhaps the need to spend money to do some analysis my feeling is that if that costs money it should come out of the water bodies fund but well it is all the water bodies funds are being are under the jurisdiction of the town manager so I would think it would be upon the town manager to examine the resources that are available to him both in this fund public works and any other source he can get his hands on if he can then he comes back to the town to the finance committee and says I'll need an extra 5, 10, 20,000 to finish this up but if we're asking them to do a long term plan we've got to be prepared that that could be a request go ahead well they increase the amount of in their plan for water quality testing, vanity and survey from 5000 and I thought they had talked about that money going towards a survey of the water bodies I think there's money in their plan we're just making sure they spend that money and deliver a report right I moved the article 34 the way you wrote on the sheet with two applications that were recommended changing the word need to use and inserting all between maintained and our river I'll second that okay is there any other discussion all those in favor we say aye opposed okay okay Gloria we've got those changes for their report okay let's budgets Carolyn okay let's start with housing I'm sorry Wood I'm sorry human resources one of those H words I didn't have enough supper tonight maybe it's 35 and actually really starts on 37 so usually I start with salaries which is on 38 people's salaries are getting close to the top if not just a little bit above the top and a lot of that has to do with longevity there is one position where you'll notice that her salary is actually above the base and that's because the number of years ago when there was a study done that particular job was decreased but when that happens we don't actually decrease a person's salary we simply change the base as a marker so when that person leaves the job the newer men and max will be put into effect and that's true for a couple of other departments there's one in legal and there's one someplace else where that has occurred so and the water and sewer offsets have to do with the work that human resources does that's related to water and sewer if you come back to the other page the 37 you'll notice there's an increase in the training is still very high compared to 2014 but it's flat and that originally we had talked last year that that was going to be for staff who wanted and needed increased training in particularly IT skills for if they were an administrator in the end what happened was we thought that a number of people were going to move from sergeant to lieutenant and there's an assessment and some training that goes with that and less people move made that shift and so that the funds were not used for that we also thought we might use lose a chief so we thought we would need funds for that shift what they are doing is they're developing and we'll talk about this with IT as well they're developing IT liaisons within every department and that will require some training and some of that will come here and the purpose of the IT liaison in each department is so that IT is not sought after for much very low level questions and allows them to do more higher level activities in developing that they decided they wanted to develop a comprehensive training program so that program will start next year in 2016 not this year so there are some of those funds are still around 15,000 of that was used for anti-harassment and anti-discrimination training for all custodians in schools and towns and I think some of the DPW staff and the other 220,000 were the two programs I just described so this year that won't probably fully used but there is an anticipation it will be fully used next year any other questions it's going to be used for the IT liaison program about 20k will be used for that questions okay I assume you're recommending the 300855 yes I'm recommending it as is which is 30855 okay there are are there any questions okay you mentioned one thing on page 38 which is that one of the positions was being how should I say downgraded? it had been a number of years ago okay so as soon as that person this person here leaves that will be shifting back well no so if you look the min is 54 the max is 69 and her base is there oh you're right so yes that will be shifting down okay okay and you mentioned the training one part was like ethics, discrimination yes so it's um sexual harassment anti-arrestment anti-discrimination training for all custodians in buildings in FY16 that was no that was done this past year so that was 15,000 that was spent out of this 50,000 okay questions okay do we have a motion so moved second okay motions for 30,855 is there any further discussion on human resources 300,300 300,000 300,855 all those in favor can we say aye moved favorable action okay unanimous 34 now let's jump to reclassification because it's in the same sort of area so you need to jump to the back which is 235 and then I'm handing out I only have about 10 of these so not everyone should take one but this is the the code to explain oh let me have one okay thanks so to explain how this works so 235 is actually the budget so does everybody have one or can look at one no we don't have it down here okay and last week we got an updated reclassification it looks like this but these ones have some codes next to them and then in the very back of your booklet is the whole reclassification and job classification system okay so why don't you go through it you know first section so section one by reclassifying the following position so let me just talk a little bit about what reclassification is most reclassifications occur because a job or position requires the employee to have a greater independence in their thinking, problem solving or planning to have less direct supervision in a day-to-day basis on responsibilities and to have more technical skill it doesn't have to be all three but it often is the other thing to note is that a lot of these reclassifications the person has actually been doing all of those things for at least a year what happens is the person or their manager they have a conversation if they agree that the job might need to be reclassified then they go to human resources and human resources director makes a final decision and then presents it to us so that's how reclassifications work so how many people have paused oh I didn't get that number sometimes people want to know how how nice how nice she was this year how many applied how many were passed how many were turned down how many appealed that I'm not sure of but if you look here under reclassification 1A the master mechanic that reclassification happens by adding 2A the master mechanic public health public safety radio coordinator and by eliminating 3A which is just master mechanic community safety and that again has to do with an increase in responsibility the others the registrar 1B 1C 1D and 1F are simply a grade change 4A 5 to ATP and ATP is a more technical lever as opposed to just an administrator in some cases there's just a shift of ATP level if we go back to the office manager at 1E we are adding 1B and we're removing 3C for that person so the office manager is actually becoming a project manager and the project manager is a title that more reflects what she currently does in her day to day work and she's jumping up to an ATP 7 because of that ok so that's E and if you look at G this is someone in the library and we've changed that title from clerk to office manager and again it's reflecting the increase in her responsibilities her or his responsibilities now if we come down to the adding we've already talked about the master mechanic we talked about the project manager the head of technology this title used to be 3B which is technology librarian and that implies one thing the head of technology is actually a more accurate description of her job her level is not changing it's simply the title that is changing the public safety dispatcher is we're removing 3D the technology communications dispatcher it's simply again a change in title there's no change in the job description the level now the one that's interesting is the MEO3 the two MEO3s these two people have last year we reclassified them because they needed to obtain a license for their specific piece of equipment that they're using the catch basin and the crane that may be wrong it might have been everyone in that group needed to have some licensing but these particular gentlemen they needed additional training in order to operate these pieces of machinery and no one other than them can operate that machinery and therefore she felt that they should be able to although they're staying MEO3s they're jumping from MC6's 5's to MC6's so there's no they're not that job didn't exist before so we're not deleting a job we're not really adding a job we're just acknowledging the fact that they have this particular skill and so therefore they should have a little higher grade for it and the records attendant to H that's actually a downgrade because the person used to have exposure to prisoners and doesn't anymore but on the other side we've talked about everyone so these positions are all being deleted and it's either because of an addition or a reclassification or in some cases both okay Ken just out of curiosity on the first paragraph H the regional energy manager he goes from ATP 5 to ATP 7 yet there's no money involved how was that I'm not sure that means there's no money involved this was something that was added last year and I think she also said I'm not sure of the reason for that just see what right right well maybe the salary was already negotiated and the reality is that it's at that level oh here wait let's see I know I had this page somewhere this person was shared by Bedford the increased hours and responsibility in Arlington clearly the person is doing this level of work so there was no negotiation of salary change their hours were clearly increased so that they're being paid more by the town of Arlington but the salary itself hasn't changed okay thank you yeah okay any other questions and when this comes up if there's any questions I can give you my piece of paper with all my little notes now I'm going to start spreading this stuff around even though they're probably want to hear from Karen Peter yeah is that the only one that's already in the budget all the others are we didn't we had our interviews we didn't know about the other is that right that's a good question they're in the reclassification article right right so the money they shouldn't show up until next year the monies are here yeah we actually we'll have to have Gloria actual language in here take a look at last last year looks like you've already sent this to Gloria yes okay so Gloria take a look at last year we're actually at further war X dollars is appropriated to be expended under something like that so it comes out of the reclass warrant it doesn't because this is a warrant article right right so you'll see sometimes you're comparing you know last year's to this year's and all of a sudden there's a big jump where it shouldn't have been because you know there's no pay there's no coal was there and that's because of that so it's just something you always have to keep in mind when you're looking at your budgets and I did catch if you notice in some of your salaries that their salary is higher than the min and the max we had a number of reclassifications last year I think it was at least eight I have it in here somewhere and two of the ones I was responsible for the min and the max in the salary page hadn't been changed had not been upgraded so if you see that the person is significantly higher than what the range looks like it may be because they were reclassified and those two numbers weren't changed or it could be the two people the other two people one in legal and one excuse me wasn't it that some of these positions some of the individuals were reclassified into a lower position but the town is not reducing their salaries in other words they're staying with the same salary right there's four people like that in town but also the reclassifications at least that I was responsible for last year those numbers weren't changed on their salary page so if you see it in your confused just ask me and I do have more detailed notes they weren't included in the salary page in the budget so what you'll see is you'll see their new increased salary and you're like wait that new salary is much higher than the max base so the salary has been appropriated correctly but that budget book didn't have the min and max correct you addressed part of my question but maybe there's a longstanding finance committee management issue when we talk to the department heads we don't know about these things and let's say happened to tell us we can't ask so we're completely dependent on you your critique of the changing classification and if you have questions I do have notes on almost every single one as to what the rationale was well this year it should pop out because there's no coal is involved so the salary should be flat and all of a sudden if it pops up you can look at last year's think comp report you mean in F1 out of 16 no these don't, that's my point these don't show in the intelligent no that's correct last year but if you see it this year jump up you'd have to check last year's finance committee report under this article to see if that's the reason for it that does bring up the point when you talk about the salary page with your department heads one of the questions you may want to ask is are there any reclassifications that I don't see here I guess that's the answer are there any other questions from the committee? okay I I'm still a little confused on the regional energy manager you mentioned that they actually increased his pay because of hours well they didn't increase his he's making more money from the town because he's working more hours but they didn't increase his pay so there should be a dollar figure in here then that's over between 80 to 5 and 87 they just check the range where they but it's over oh so that's okay he was already he was at the high end of ATP 5 which is in the lower lower end of ATP 7 oh ATP 7 but I did just check and the salary is going out but he's moving departments so maybe that's why they didn't put it in the reclassification okay it should be in public work right? right she is a she and she's moved into a different division within public work? within public works and she has been given an extra day she's working an extra day an additional day here but her pay is being that difference is being made up with an offset okay which is why we're not seeing it in the reclass maybe are there any other questions? um okay do we have a motion? so moved okay moved and seconded for basically this vote as presented with the additional language we will submit that actually says the language about the appropriation of the total any further discussion? all those in favor please say aye aye closed favorable action unanimous okay next is okay uh before we go up to add it up figure out what it is next one is information technology which is page 41 did you hand out another page? yes there was a new there was a new version of that page that you received last week and so it doesn't have oh it does have the number on it your news your new salary page is very difficult to read but you can look at the old one because there's no changes as a matter of fact there's no change to the bottom line on any of these because this is one of the examples where we had two people reclassified and I simply had him change the min and the max under the base but the salary didn't change at all okay so the only change is that min and max yeah the only change is the min and max on two of the positions one of them is that it's 54 3 for two people now you don't have that as two people on your original and the other one I think it's in the 60's I'm not sure if it's mixes or Karowski I think it's Karowski that was from last year so is that the only change in the substitute page yes those are the only two changes in the substitute page many of the staff are at or near max it's either because of the length of time they've worked here two people have worked here for 25 one person for 25 years and one for 30 years the other thing is in the last four years I think it is we've hired some people with advanced degrees and a lot of experience and so that's why they are near the max and so hopefully we'll be able to retain them because they're liked in the department and by the people they serve Charles Norton manages and maintains the ICS system which is used for collections by the treasurer he'll be key to the conversion from ICS to Munis that'll take place in 2016 and 2017 Sue Dissler manages the larger systems and offers deaf support she and others may get some relief with the IT liaison program that's being developed so those are the big things on salaries unless you have questions and then on the other page the water and sewer offsets are primarily similar to a charge back for services including development of a quarterly billing and automatic media reads for the water and sewer department which we all are benefitting from nowadays I think computer maintenance 15,000 of that was spent on some of the network equipment was upgraded this year and is back under warranty oh that's why that number went down $10,000 it will most likely increase again next year as some other things come off of warranty it remains twice as high as it was in 2014 because he's now using some operating dollars to pay for strategic plan projects and he's using contractor consultants for repairs and for the GIS mapping maintenance one of the things I don't know if any of you noticed yet there's a new line item that's $23,000 just above that and that is to help pay for the strategic plan that he implementing the strategic plan because up until now there hasn't been line items for the strategic plan and I have a detailed grid of the strategic plan for IT the IT strategic plan so you have a description of that I have a very lengthy one hold on so for those of you who can see it this is what it looks like and if you notice it's fairly heavy in through here and this will be next year and if you also notice there's some light colors that means those projects which in theory will be done in four months some of them clearly won't be so at the moment there are projects in the works and their completion is 5% a couple 75 to 100 most of them around 50 to 0% complete for this year can you give just a brief description of some of the things they're doing for 2015 or for 2016 2016 IT department they're going to integrate the help desk and use a ticketing tool for all departments they're improving they're looking for replacing of ICS payroll the employee self-service system health and human services explore WIMWAM software for food inspections infote technology they're looking at plane metrics from mass ortho imagery GIS the police department they're looking at software currently under consideration is data viz for smart 911 DPW they're looking at payroll system improvements human resources improving integration of benefit tracker and GIC billing DPW remote access to documents such as scan plans MS office documents as well as work order management tools library payroll recreation and town manager planning they're developing an implement room reservation tool and it goes on is this money for materials overtime software implement so for the most part I think it has I think materials are coming out of are they coming out of capital plan some cases there are licenses some cases there are licenses some cases if it's materials it's coming out of the other line items and in some cases it may be coming out of capital plan I think it's more consulting than it is in that sense good chance could I just get a copy of this that's fine thank you so that's that line item any other questions I have more information you mentioned Charles Norton will be implementing the change from the tax collection system from ICS to the US we did a reserve fund transfer for $20,000 to the treasure I thought it was to investigate for new RFPs so they haven't chosen what they're going to do yet or how they're going to do that process but that process is in the budget in IT and we're assuming in treasurer as well we haven't met with the treasurer department yet for 2016 and for 2017 so they're doing the RFPs now it's 2015 that may or may not start before the year is out that's only four more months 2016 and be finished by the end of 2017 it sounds like newness isn't certain it's just a placeholder for a new system it sounded like the decision had already been made sorry, sorry, no it hasn't just something new, sorry and part of this remember I'm not an IT person so I pick up about 75% of what he says Charles? I just want to mention that there's largely the coordinate whenever this new system comes in they're going to have to run in parallel for five months so it's whatever the system is not necessarily sorry okay are there any other questions for on IT okay what are your recommendations my recommendation is the budget as is as it stands 695137 do I have a motion so moved okay is there any further discussion okay all those in favor please say aye opposed unanimous 3-4 okay next one is retirement budget sorry the next one is comptroller it's the next page on the salary page again they're close to the max because most of the staff has been there a long time oh but you may notice one interesting item which is a new one for bono is that how you say it? it's a mail pickup stipend so we had an ongoing issue where the mail needed to get from town hall to the comptroller's office and so the solution was to pay her $2 a day because it's on her way to work to pick up the mail it went through the union and all is okay and the town manager approved it she dropped off her retirement board so that's the only thing that looks unusual there back on the comptroller page everything else is the same for the most part it's the same and why the telephone almost doubled between 2014 and 2015 is that the maintenance the maintenance of the old system the actual spend probably won't will be closer to the 52 than the 92 however there's an RFP for a new phone system they are currently getting a count on all phones which appear to be around 1100 and 500k has been set aside in the capital plan for this project part of the 92k in 2016 will pay for a project manager during the transition from the old to the new system and the other part will continue to pay for the maintenance on the current system so when do they anticipate getting a new system what did I just say in 2016 thank you and they'll also be transitioning the water sewer bills to whatever the new system is replacing ICS eventually we're still saying with one and a half telephone operators after the new system any other questions okay questions for the controller's budget okay you recommend me as printed yes which is 422.261 do I have a motion okay any further discussion all those in favor please say aye aye next retirement pension now we jump to the other side and that is 161 there is no salary line item here because the salaries come out of the pension reserves themselves the pension fund itself the town does pay the savings of the salary and expenses and then the pension fund is charged the exact amount of these expenses and it's considered transfer of funds so that's why there's no record of it here any questions okay so non-contrib is dropped $123 interesting how they so we did have a death there are four people left in the non-contrib they're all in their 90s we almost had someone make it to 100 and we will continue to fund that at whatever the cost is which will be around the 87 for the next 5 or 6 years I would say any questions on retirement okay you recommend me as printed recommending as printed which is 9140 241 okay and the retirement cost brought up there 5.51% which I think is the agreement yeah so originally it had been set at 6% but the retirement board and a number of us met and the town manager met in late fall early winter and requested that it be dropped from 6% to 5.5% because we would still reach fully funded within the allotted amount of time but it allowed us to avoid the deficit or decrease the amount of deficit and the retirement board agreed to that Dean what is our full funding gain our full funding we have to be fully funded by 2040 it had been 2032 it's now 2034 and one of the 2034 because we kicked out down to 5.5% what we did agree in what the wording states is if the market should drop again and it doesn't look like we'll be fully funded by 2037 we have the option to revisit that number that discount rate and potentially increase it again and we all felt that we really should try to be fully funded by 2037 so we don't get stuck right at the end and so that's the current plan now the other thing that this affects which we're going to talk about next is the OPEB other post employment benefits because the plan is once this is fully funded we will start actually funding that with more than just a drop in the bucket and so we're pushing out when we start funding that so that just keep that in mind that's another factor finish one start with the other this fund is 49% funded it had been 55% funded prior to 2008 I think if you went back to 2000 it was probably up to 75% or something hasn't been a good decade for us okay there are any other questions on retirement okay your recommendation is 9 million 140 241 so moved okay moved and seconded any further discussion all those in favor we say aye opposed unanimous 3-4 now for OPEB which oh shoot I changed the page that's the warrant article so it's going to be further back that's really a warrant article so I don't have my old one but if you look back in the warrant articles you should find it okay thank you so the OPEB fund is 3.66% funded so basically not very funded there's no state mandate to fund it yet my understanding is it helps our bond rating that we're doing something consistently if we were to fully funded over the course of 24 years we need to be putting in 6.4 million this year 16.4 million this year so if we were to fully funded over 24 years like we're fully funding we would need to be putting in 16.4 million this year now there's questions about whether we should be fully funding it because we don't know what's happening primarily with health care over the long term but fully funded and 3.6% funded is very different there was an agreement that was reached that each year there's a formula for how much that the retirement board requests for this fund it starts at 500,000 and then there's a certain percentage that's added from the retiree HMO contribution it's a share of their contribution this year that formula sets the share at 155 however we minus the 87k that we pay in the non-contrib out of this fund so the minimum requirement would be 568 now the town manager over the course of the last couple of years has thrown in some extra money this year he's thrown in 92,000 92 something and what he's done and that number may change a bit the budget was supposed to be you could increase it by 3.25% at the moment it's sitting around 2.95 and this 92,000 is that difference and I asked him if he preferred that stay there using that money for this and he said yes and I understand that there's some other thoughts about what we should do with that money now the open is on really on article 38 in the warrant and like Carolyn said I'm just going last year there was an A, a B and a C A is the difference between the base of 500,000 and the current appropriation for non-contrib that Carolyn just reviewed so that would be 413,000 the second part is the HMO reduction and that's 155,000 and the third part is a transfer from the health benefit trust fund remember when we went into GIC we were paying premiums we no longer had to have the health insurance trust fund rather than I think it was like 3 million dollars Charlie so last year we transferred 300,000 so rather than because if GIC sort of fell apart and we decided to go back and pay as you go we need that health insurance trust fund so we didn't want to just take the 3 million and throw it over so his recommendation was to do 300,000 a year to give us some flexibility so that would be 300,000 so those would be the 3 elements that we're looking at for article 38 the 413 the 155 and the 300 now the issue is what do we do with the 92,800 right and the 300 does not actually show up here in the budget because it's coming from some place else it's not coming from the town manager's budget it's a transfer so although it shows up in the actual that's because of a 300,000 transfer for 2014 if you look at 2014 it's 847 you're like why is it that much that's that transfer so I think now we can deal with article 38 I don't think the the 413 the 500 minus the not contributed the 155 or the 300 all along so that would equal 868,000 the question is what do we want to do with the 92,800 I think the manager made the recommendation because in his five year plan instead of going 7% increases in health insurance because of the GIC that's come back down again now we might have to revisit that because GIC is coming out with their premiums very soon or and therefore the recommendation for that the other option is to throw the money into ice and snow because we're chronically having deficits in that do you know what we're up to spending now? 1.7 1.7 is the last number I heard so even with the 771 500 plus will we give a reserve fund I mean we're underfunding snow and ice so I guess that's the issue to be thrown before the finance committee you want to put the 92,800 and OPEP which is a long term liability or you want to put it into snow and ice which I guess is a short term liability so Charlie? Could you just review for the committee what happens at the end of the year if we have snow and ice deficit? There's 3 ways to deal with it one of them obviously is the budget we've been increasing the budget for the last 10 years often with bits and pieces you know so that's 771 then the second thing that we've been doing right along is the manager in his 5 year plan I think it's other throws in a half a million dollars for snow and ice deficit so that's built into the whole plan so there's leeway for 500,000 and the third option is the reserve fund so those would be the 3 ways that we do it I think last year we used the budget we used the 500 basically throws it on the recap for the next year and then I think we took like 250,000 out of the reserve fund so those would be the 3 options to do it if I could just recap so if we don't spend the money we don't make appropriate money this year it goes through the year as a shortfall it gets added to the tax rate the next year does it get added and reduce the non-exempt budget or does it add it on top of the 2.5% no it's not exempt from prop 2.5 so it reduces our available prop 2.5 budget in the following fiscal year it's really got to be planned for so let's say for example he set aside 500,000 and the budget is tight and we appropriate everything and all of a sudden instead of 500,000 it's 800,000 well you could usually jiggle the local receipts to cover that but it's got to be accounted for within the limits proposition to it that's correct so by say in another month hopefully or say in early April we sit down with the manager and decide well how much is left in the reserve fund how much the budget is gone you've got the 500 can we cover the rest with the reserve fund or do we need to increase that deficit amount and decrease the amount we put in the long term stabilization fund that's how we balance everything at the end of this is what goes into the long term stabilization fund now we can do that in the good years when we're putting money into it on the other hand when we get to the bad years and we're starting to take money out of it then we're going to take more money out of it so somehow it's going to be paid for and of course nobody can predict what we're going to have so the the unfunded health insurance liability actually several different ways if we were fully funding this so the GASB appropriated rate which would be about 10 million dollars we'd be putting in 10 million dollars a year the total actuarial liability is 124 million dollars the unfunded liability would be right now about 117 million dollars because we're not funding it at the the appropriate GASB rate they calculate the liability using essentially what they figure is the town's cost of money I don't know how to get there but in any event it's about 4.4 percent so the unfunded liability at that rate is somewhere around let's see it's a 185 million dollars so that means over the put it in different terms it means over the expected life of the people in the retirement plan employees in the retirement plan right now the town is going to the town owes that plan 185 million dollars now the 92,000 dollars isn't a lot of money but if the town manages willing to put it into that account personally I would recommend that we put the 92,000 dollars or whatever it was into the OPEP and we put it into the bar pay the snow and ice deficit have a near-term operating cost otherwise the other side I'll put forth is that we've got in fiscal 2020 you know a 9 or 10 million dollar deficit 100,000 dollars that basically takes into account an expense over 5 years is 4 or 500,000 dollars that's sort of less to worry about that time override that type of thing ok can I make it can I finish so we've got a short term being in 5 year liability somehow and the OPEP is another liability storm term Mr. Chairman if I take your viewpoint we should take the 413,000 dollars from the other fund that we're putting in and the other 35,000 dollars does not pay anything into the OPEP at all it's a matter of how much you want to how much you want to do on the other hand we can start cutting the budgets putting it all in OPEP so this is not a what's the committee think I'll put it out to that Peter how about kicking it down the road until we come to the end of the budget process there will be a lot of money left in the reserve fund well it really is it's not a short term what's the money at the end of the line we could have more of a look away which will help there on the other hand we're going to get the GIC figures and those are probably worse off than we think it's an issue it's before us it's a policy issue which policy do you want to do you know you always revote anything we've done but it's before us now you've heard the which way you want to go this is for the snow budget for FY16 it would be rolled into the base snow budget going forward so it does have impacts in later years we're basically readjusting the base of the snow budget up by 90,000 for next year and going forward we would keep it there and continue to increase it depending on what things look like so you either you know and we're not going to increase the snow budget today we're going to do you know Christina will get her marching orders depending upon how you vote today so we either vote to put it in the OPEP or when the DPW budget comes up we'll put it in the snow but we did have we did have a conversation with the town manager last year he had agreed to take a look at the trends over 10 years I thought and I don't know whether he still feels that 771 is really sufficient or not I mean obviously this year it's not even close last year it wasn't even close so the recent history is clearly even adding the half a million in both years we were way over way over that in both years so it would be interesting to hear from him whether he thinks 771 is a good number for the snow budget or if he's just keeping it there because he can't find any more money in which case then your proposal makes a lot of sense Alan for what it's worth when we transferred $300,000 last year from the leftover trust fund we sort of used a rationalization it's healthcare money going to healthcare costs again not not a real solid reason at least there's some rationalization that's it was tagged as healthcare it was appropriated as healthcare money it should stay in healthcare costs if we transferred a 92K this year we're going to have to find 92K next year because that 92K is simply because this would be next year's money right I'm sorry the year after that for 2017 we're going to have to find 92K for 2017 because the reason there is 92K is he's looking at he thought the budget would come out the year over year increase would be 3.25 he's managed to get it to 2.95 he may or may not be able to do that next year and he may just put that difference someplace else I think the math actually works the other way if we put that money into OPEV this year then next year there's going to be another 93,000 that will have to go into OPEV again presumably it would go into OPEV again and on and on because it's built into the base it's part of the base of this year's budget the 93 no so the base is the 568 and then anything else not that line the overall town manager's budget I don't know what the total sum is I don't have it up until the end but it includes that 93,000 okay somewhere within the budget within his budget he's putting it in a warrant article which is a little bit confusing okay anybody else Tom? it seems like it's increasing every year it's become a real number now it seems to keep going up and up and I don't mind spending money but I think we need to get a grip on what are we doing how are we doing it and are we doing it right for the value that we're getting that's no saying to anybody everybody's doing it right I just don't think we're looking into that like we look at other departments I mean we are spending more and more money I think we just come in and manage the assets for five or seven or whatever we say go the plan is not there the plan hasn't been there all the time came in front of us and Dean asked what the plan was the plan still really isn't there and once again I think they're doing the best they can I don't know if we can do it the way we think we can do it I just don't want to do any money until we figure out what are we doing Dean the 92,000 is coming from where it's just general money in other words the manager got 3.25% increase that's what he was allowed under the plan he only increased his budgets 2.95% and recommended that that balance of 0.3% which was 92,800 going to the LCAP on the logic that a lot of this is because we brought down health insurance costs so one to the other my my frustration with that logic I guess goes back to my time when I first joined the finance committee for like the first five years I was on it 1,000 every year for snow and ice didn't matter if we increased 2 or 3% for some reason we didn't need to include a snow and ice number and one of the things I was told was that it wasn't really a 400,000 line of money but a 900,000 line of money because we kind of budgeted some money in next year's budget to cover it and I think we all knew for a long time that it didn't make any sense at that number right and Paul Wilson used to sit and he used to say that every year trying to sit next to me and he joined the finance committee and he said it every year right and I think one of the things we all concluded as a committee is within the parameters of the town manager's budget it is his responsibility to fund the snow and ice not to sort of you know not funded in state 400,000 for a decade and then hope that anything that kind of goes over the we rate the reserve fund or we you know throw it up against next year's number and you know sort of it just sort of goes to what Tom said which is you got to have a plan it's not just something that you know I feel like some of the way we deal with snow and ice for a long time here is we just sort of said it's not really we kind of say it's not really a town manager responsibility because like he said if it gets the budget gets out of control or whatever we don't care we just sort of let it go and I think we got to get I think we've come a long way getting past that by putting additional money and building it up I did take a quick peek and the proposed number for next year would be 846,000 so it's getting there right but I don't think it's actually where it needs to be it could be close to take the 846 plus the 500,000 for the following year what we're getting there 1.346 right so then that leads to sort of the decision of this or open I guess my real question is when you're at we're now at 1.34 million is that the right number that's effectively when we offer a snow and ice budget it's a long way from 900,000 combined and closer I mean do we want to push it up to 145 blended or do we want to keep it at 1346 and that's sort of where I it's the thought process of the accountability but then it's like at what point do we hit the number I know 1.7 is excessive I don't think we'll get to 1.7 again but if you think normal is a if you think normally you're really about a million then you know Charlie's got a valid point if not funding it into the snow and ice budget if you think normal is 1.5 million then it should go to the snow and ice I guess the question is at this point moved in the right direction what is normal I have some numbers for normal for our 10 year using 1.7 is this year's number the 10 year average for our snow and ice expenditure is 1.2 million I'm sure 1.2 so the 846 that's budgeted for this coming year is about 70% 70% of the average number right with the 500 though as the reserve for next year there's a consequence for over budget there is and that's yeah there's a consequence for over budgeting though which is what we always want to come in under well you always want to appropriate it at least we've appropriated the prior year if you don't do that you can't overspend your budget so we've been covering it with the 500,000 it's basically a deficit spending from one year into the next and we've been we've been trying to get away from that by having a realistic budget but we don't want that number to go above well if you appropriate 860,000 that becomes the base you don't want to appropriate under that if we appropriate 860,000 and we spend 700 and then it's 146 it'll drop to the free cash in the way but that's 146 and we could have spent somewhere else under the long range plan in the last 10 years we've only under spent if we use that 846 number we would only have under spent three times in the last 10 years three times but it wasn't 846 so we would go with respect to most yeah absolutely because one of the things we're trying to get at here we're in a unique position actually when we actually raised it as you pointed out we have three times right so I never thought we'd be able to do this but if we do get on let's say mild winter next year we should be able to and we go under budget we should be able to then roll the 500,000 over to the snow and ice budget and get it up to actually move it ourselves up to three the following year and then we'd actually have it all in one year well it's under the managers budget so whatever we do within that budget would have to stay within next year would be a 3% cap no what I'm saying is we have 846 in now and then we also have fiscal 16 we have 846 and it's also going to have 500,000 for fiscal 17 so if fiscal 16 actually came in at let's say 140 you could actually budget fiscal 17 at 1346 and you've now pulled the number to where you want the number of paying it all in one year so I think we're actually at that striking point for the snow and ice budget where it where it needs to be you keep moving it up for inflation 2-3% every year I don't think it's all that far off at this point okay is there anybody else Allen going back to the 92,000 so it's not coming from the trust fund from the health insurance trust fund we'll be doing all three things the exact same way that we did it last year the 413 from the non-contrib, the 155 from the dropping the health insurance for retirees from our contributed from 90% to 85 and the 300,000 from the health insurance trust fund that would all stay the same so we are going 300,000 from the health insurance trust fund this year the question is do you want to put the 92,800 into the OPEB fund or do you want to put it into the snow and ice the short term liability that's the only question and then we'll vote the whole OPEB fund and that will be done so any further discussion? yeah I actually have a separate question so the governor has a proposal an early retirement incentive so I know on the pension side we have these occasional issues where a person might have worked for the town of Arlington for a certain amount of time and they go on their work for another new town let's say the state in this example there's a shared billing at the end so I'll forget I mean I kind of move faster pension marks I assume we're going to get regardless we'll just get stuck with that our portion on the health insurance I'll bring it up while we're going over this for the population of employees that retire before age 65 that have this cross thing going on are we going to get hit with those? if this goes through? I'll have to ask Rich but I bet we may are you talking to the OPEB retirement? yeah because that's just for state workers I understand I haven't seen the actual language but I think it's just for state workers you spent your first 10 years with the town of Arlington and your last 20 with the state are you eligible? and if you are are we going to get a chunk of that? good question because I don't know if they know either because I know who's now working for the state okay so we've got the issue let's do the 928 whatever you do there we'll vote the rest of the OPEB fund and that'll be it so do I have a motion? so move what's your motion? what's your motion? which way? OPEB or snow? OPEB or snow? OPEB okay so the 92 is for moved and seconded for OPEB any further discussion? okay all those in favor of utilizing the 92,800 for OPEB please raise your hand okay and how many for snow and ice? okay one, two okay now article 38 will include $413,000 for part A $155,000 for part B $300,000 for part C and $92,800 for a new part D do I have a motion on that? so moved second everybody understand what we're doing for article 38? yep okay all those in favor please say aye opposed? I'll have to abstain again okay 17,0 and 1 okay article 38 and Gloria on article 38 just add a D and say and further appropriates into this fund to be raised by General Tax $92,800 just start a copy okay on Monday heroin do you have additional articles? no I do okay Christine you'll have DPW okay other budgets from Monday? we'll have inspections you'll have that one okay additional let's see what do we got left how about health insurance? okay okay what I'm going to do is then okay is there a fund? I'm just looking for other so we can make it full night okay then what I'm going to do is I'm going to run the warrant feed in as many of the articles there as we can Grant could you get the amounts for the water and sewer articles? okay just get those dollar amounts and whether they're from borrowing or grants or whatever on that and we've done that okay on Monday we'll run with those and see where we are at that point and then run the warrant any other business? okay