 I am James Milan, welcome to Town Meeting Matters, this brief series that we are doing in helping to prepare town meeting members for their highly unusual gathering to take place on June 15th and get a lot of business done in a single session. We are talking right now with our town moderator John Leone, who is going to be, as he always is, the master of ceremonies. In this case, that's going to be even more challenging than usual. John, thanks for joining us. You're welcome. Thank you for having me. We want to be able to give our town meeting members old and new, since this is going to be new for everybody, a sense of what that night is going to be like, how best they can prepare for that for the evening, and just kind of cover some of the basics of how things will operate on that evening. Let me ask you, first of all, John, why this as the solution? In other words, you're going to physically gather everybody on Pierce Field. A lot of town businesses had to be conducted, virtually all of town business, has had to be conducted via Zoom over these recent months. Did you look at Zoom as an option and reject it for some reason? How is it that you decided this was the best approach? Well, up until last week, the legislature had not authorized virtual town meetings. So if we had gone with the virtual town meeting route, we may have had to either have a real town meeting in person if they did not authorize it, or we would have had to ask for home rule legislation to retroactively authorize town meeting to be held. A couple of our surrounding city towns have done virtual town meetings. However, they're being held in a number of different ways. Say, Brookline, for instance, is doing a town meeting, but every single vote is going to be a roll call vote. So they're going to read off every member's name on every single vote and take a roll call vote. My problem with that is I do not know all 250 people's voice by ear. It's hard enough to know their face. So I don't really know who's actually voting in a representative town meeting. That makes a difference. The town of Lexington has gone full bore, and I'm going to give credit to one of their selectmen who wrote a whole application to have a virtual town meeting. We don't have the capacity to replicate that because we don't have an MIT computer whiz on our select board who was willing to devote, it must have been 50, 60 hours of time to do it. So our only option really was wait for the coronavirus state of emergency to end and go with 112th budgeting, which is 112th of last year's budget for a month, but that wouldn't have worked. And time manager chapter lane didn't want to do that because it would have made a real hard effort to budget and to pay for such things as bonding issues that aren't covered and rolled into that. So we went with the old-fashioned town meeting and why outside? It's safer. Of course. Public health says it's much safer to be outside than in a closed space, and frankly we don't have a closed space big enough in Arlington where we can all socially distance six feet apart. So I hit upon the high school and said that's the only option that I really see that we can do. We have done a lot of planning to make it as safe as we can. Actually I've had a couple Zoom meetings ironically with the town staff in order to get the physical layout of the field, get the physical layout of the entrances, and how we're going to file in and file out and run the meeting. Those will be finalized probably today, and we'll be able to release some maps and diagrams of what it's going to look like. Hopefully, probably tomorrow because I've sent those maps off to the planning department who's going to take my hand-drawn maps and make them nice and presentable to the public. Great. Now it's really like basically you kind of got back into having to do it this way because the legislature just the mass legislature just had not been able to you know. Well I'm not going to really hold them at fault either because you know let's face it eight weeks ago who knew. Ten weeks ago who knew we couldn't just hold town meeting on the 27th of April like we'll usually do. And the legislature had a lot of other things on their mind and their plate before they got to this. And now we're here. I'm not interested. We're not interested in assessing blame there either. Just understanding why it was and it makes a lot of sense as you've explained it. But of course that does bring complications. Complications of various sorts. First of all, how do you maintain safety in the way that you are already talking about the social distancing? I'm sure everybody is going to be very highly encouraged to wear masks and hopefully they will be. But it begs a few questions. One is people who are familiar with Pierce Field know that parking is limited around the high school there. Well it's actually with that. It's not really. As part of the whole construction of the high school process they've haven't been down myself and I'm told by Jim Feeney the head of department of facilities that they've as faulted just last week two new big parking fields back there because of the loss of other parking around the school. So between the existing parking lot there are two new fields where the basketball courts used to be as faulted over and striped. And there's also the parking lot up by the Mill Street office building. So I think we'll have more parking availability down by the school in the back than we have for town meeting if we held it in town hall. That's a good point. Not like there's a plethora of parking possibilities around town hall either. Yeah very limited. How about folks who have you know well two things. One is those who feel too vulnerable in terms of leaving their homes and meeting members because obviously there's a decent number of town meeting members who are above the age that you know health authorities are recommending that they generally stay home if possible. Well number one number two those with you know just if not disabilities just for whom it is difficult to be moving around or staying on their feet for instance. Well we'll have designated handicap parking spots for people who have mobility problems. The entire field is ADA accessible and there will be limited very limited bathroom facilities. So I'm going to encourage everyone to use the facilities at home and plan accordingly. Also bring your own water. We do not have water available so I want everyone to bring water. But the way it's going to look is as I'm envisioning it right now as you come off the parking fields we'll have three lines or three lanes. One for precincts one through ten precincts eleven through twenty one and then another lane for non-town meeting members the press of people who may be presenting. You'll follow your lane as you do when you go to the supermarket you have to stay in your lane six feet apart. Town meeting members will get to a check-in table and then they'll be directed to the seating area. We're going to have volunteers set at various spots along the route to direct people. I asked that everyone follow the directions of those volunteers to the designated seating area. The town meeting members will be directed onto the field. The chairs will be preset six feet apart with six foot aisles between rows of two chairs. You're not going to be able to sit where you usually like to sit with your pals and friends as we do in town hall you're going to just have to fill in the rows from the front to the back as directed by the volunteers. Otherwise we'll have you know people will not be social distancing properly. We're going to ask everyone and highly encourage them to wear their mask at all times from the minute they get out of the car till they get back in their car and if they decide not to wear the mask I've designated this separate area in the seating for them to sit and frankly they're going to be in the back left they're going to be as far away from the stage as they can and away from everybody else. So we'll have masks available if they decide they don't want to and then see where they're sitting they can get a mask we'll give them a mask we'll have hand sanitizer but I frankly I don't really in my opinion and I'm not a health expert see it any more dangerous than going to the supermarket. We've all done that we know how to stay six feet apart from each other we know what not to do after 10 weeks of coronavirus social distancing just maintain your social distancing wear your mask and be the smart adults we are. Yeah there there obviously the one difference between going to the supermarket is that everybody's going to be in this one space at the same time for a while. Right and so therefore again as you've mentioned all of the normal procedures that people would follow to keep themselves safe especially the six feet of distance this is going to be particularly important sounds like in that situation. Yes and frankly my encouragement all of the Selectman bylaws articles are being dropped as no action articles all of the zoning articles are being including all the citizen articles regarding zoning bylaw amendments are being referred to a committee which allows them all to come back next year without any any any legislation problems certain rules that say you can't do this or that but we've avoided that so they ought everything to come back next year so we're only going to be dealing with financial articles so we'll have two consent agendas that will dispose of all of the bylaws oh darn it my phone i gotta turn that off all of the bylaw article all the zoning bylaw articles will be disposed of with one vote it's going to have about gee whiz i can't even count maybe 50 articles on it there'll be another consent agenda article that will dispose of about 12 articles and those are going to be all the smaller things that we budget every year parades committees revolving funds all of those things the only things we're going to have actual debate and but on and vote as normal will be the actual budgets the capital plan will be its own separate vote the can the cpa the community preservation act articles and one or two other similar types of article and minuteman it'll also have its own article yep we we understand that that those that that's going to be the content that again as you said maybe debated to some degree and voted on in the in the traditional way the assumption of my assumption of course in the court i'm sure it's true is that town meeting members around the articles that are consolidated in the consent agendas town meeting members will have an opportunity to look at what all those are before they get there they're already understand what they've already been posted on the town meeting website right the consent agendas are instructions are and all the relevant reports that we've received so far have been put up for everyone to analyze and study beforehand and we're also this year despite my personal drive to modernize town meeting and bring it into the digital age we've not are we are not going to have any internet out there this year because we just don't have the capacity there's no bandwidth out there so we are mailing everyone all the reports and all the materials they will need so everyone's going to get a paper packet like the old days also like the old days no electronic voting yes voting we're very we're very curious about how things are going to work how how are things going to be debated how are things going to be voted on how will i assume that you're not going to have a projector working there so people are not going to be able to see the same document everybody at one at once without having their own materials they're referring to right walk us through that all right so we'll the consent agendas i'll do as i did in the past i'll actually read through every article if someone wants to remove that article they can yell yell out hold i'll remove that article but unless there's a substitute motion there's no reason to remove because we're not going to debate it i've requested that any substitute motions be presented need to be presented to me by i believe thursday afternoon because the the reports have been up since last friday and any questions how meeting has such whoops you you muted john what for a second how did that happen i don't know but you were saying any questions town meeting has any questions town meeting members have such we have one town meeting member who asks every single year how many tons of salt do we use we're going to get that question by friday afternoon i'm going to get a response from the appropriate department head and i'm going to publish those over the weekend or friday through monday so we'll won't have all of those kind of questions but just as we do a town hall an article will be introduced people are going to be able to raise their hand myself and our new clerk will recognize them and they'll have their opportunity to get up and ask the questions they always did in that regard the town meeting will look the same will just be outside all right so you'll just have a mic set up for them to access and they'll come up to the microphone and and and stay there right we're going to have the aisles that go front to back they'll be able to walk up and use one of the two podiums we're going to ask that they not touch the microphones we're going to use fixed mics um one of the coronavirus vectors is apparently people touching microphones and also microphones with windsocks so we're not going to have windsocks we're going to have fixed mics so we're going to ask no one to touch them and they'll be wipes there if they want to wipe everything down beforehand they can and when it's time to vote we're going to vote as pre as we did pre um clickers pre-electronic voting i will which wasn't really that long ago right uh those six years ago was the last time we did it right we've had we've had clickers for five years now right um so i'll just call the vote all in favor yes all opposed no and i i'll call the vote if they don't believe me uh five people can arise and then we'll do a standing vote with tellers just again like the old days we're going old school here no presentations no we've tested the field out the um projectors just i'm not strong enough um to defeat the sunlight so it's right and you'll be starting the meeting in the sunlight um and most likely ending it if it goes like most town meetings do right especially with this much business to conduct uh after dark so um can i assume that just the lights will come on and that's well that's how everything will have yeah the football field lights will come on they're extremely strong and powerful um frankly uh we're gonna ask people to start arriving at six o'clock to give everyone time to socially distance check in and sit down i'm gonna start rolling at 6 30 sharp as soon as i get a quorum 6 30 we're gonna start we're not gonna have presentations by every committee in every board we're not gonna have a state of the town i'm gonna welcome them we're gonna say a pledge of allegiance i can arrange for a a clergyman of some sort to come in and say some words i'm going to i still have to work that out this week and then we're gonna start in right with the articles but it's the way i've looked at it i've reduced the actual articles where we're going to have votes down to about six because of consolidation of all the things so you know so maybe we're gonna have the fastest town meeting ever is that what you're saying i'm i'm thinking you know if if everyone gets their questions in beforehand and everyone um without presentations all those we may we might have to have the lights on for a half hour but you know i'm thinking we're all home by nine o'clock well you're about somebody's ears let's hope right yeah so what kind of questions have you already been getting from town meeting members um well just look at the only one i've received so far is how many tons of salt have we used and have the water bodies committee um determined if the salinity salinity levels of water bodies have increased over the last several years i'm going to send those questions out to the appropriate people and see if i get responses i know mike rottamaker will be able to tell me about the salt but i'm not sure who's tested salinity for water bodies right right i'll ask i'll ask good thing you've got a good a good few days to to deal with that yes um so you were saying that um let's just let's just go over to be for in the interest of making things very hundred percent clear um you're you want everybody who's going to be participating in the town meeting to keep up with the questions coming in and the responses being published where where are those going to be they'll be posted to the well we'll push them out to everybody by the town meeting member uh listserv okay anybody can sign up they go to the um email subscription page on the town meeting excuse me on the town website we currently have about 800 people subscribed to that list so obviously they're not all town meeting members there are excuse me there are a lot of town folks who are also subscribed to that but i'm asking all the town meeting members to please subscribe because that will at least give them email updates that things are being um posted and everything is going to be posted to the town meeting web page under the um novus agenda if you're familiar with the way the selectman's agenda works um we have a similar um capacity and we have used that the last couple years for town meeting so we'll have all everything will be linked you click article 51 and we'll bring you to the budget and everything is posted under the budget that was a digitization portion which is working but right right but it has been stalled for the for the moment we're killing a lot of trees at the moment yeah um it does sound uh you know i think people uh who are tuning in will should perhaps be heartened to hear that you know clearly you and and the other organizers have thought through an awful lot of the um you know of what can unfold and how to deal with that well i'm going to give some credit to the um mass moderator association we have a an association to listserv and a lot of the all the moderators are exchanging ideas hey do this is i found this to work i've found this to work and we're just kind of feeding off each other and getting good ideas to things you i may not think about it someone else's thought about so we've i've used a lot of those suggestions any um are there any issues that come up in those conversations or as you think about them that you anticipate hmm i think i know how we'll deal with that but uh you know we'll have to see you know anything that that you're you know you're not 100 clear how things will go um not really um the the general um feedback so far is that the several towns that have done um stadium town meetings or parking lot town meetings they've gone well um one moderator even reported that they had theirs uh two or three weeks ago and thankfully they didn't show any spikes of um infection rates following the meeting that they were at all so there were no um determinable spikes as a result of the meeting which is a was was heartening to hear so people if they follow their um social distancing protocols we should be good to go yeah and you know something that you mentioned just kind of implicitly as you were describing how everything is going to be set up um again i just want to confirm 400 certainty um there everybody will have a chair it's oh yeah yeah seating is going to be available through you know obviously actually or worked out those plans um this morning kind of shared them with um jim fiendy the facilities director the way i'm seeing it there will be um 14 rows of chairs separated two two rows of chairs a six foot aisle two rows of chairs so it'll be 14 rows of chairs this way and 14 14 chairs deep or 20 chairs deep so we'll have 252 chairs set up um but i'm frankly anticipating they'll probably get between around 150 town meeting members i did have a survey conducted of just town meeting members prior to the election last weekend and 80 of those responded said that they would attend which was about 110 town meeting members so i'm expecting about an 80 percent rate um which would give us about 150 160 you anticipated my last question and yeah anything like that um it gives you the quorum that you need i need 62 as a quorum but for bonding issues we need 85 that was one of the reasons for this the um as i call it that if we build it will you come polls i wanted to see if we would get quorums because they don't want to go through this whole exercise and be sitting there with not enough people so what i fully anticipate will get more than enough yeah sounds like you've got you know the best best estimates based on what you've already heard sounds like right probably within those margins very um we will have seating for town folk because we can't tell them to not come but i'm going to encourage them not to come um for obvious reasons and acmi will be live video casting everything so everyone can see it at home they're comfortable and safety of their house but if they feel they want to come down and see this once in a lifetime town meeting yes i will have we will have designated seating for them right concession and uh you know a raffle all kinds of things going on none of that no no kids selling treats this year um the last thing i want to mention is um for the town meeting members once the meeting does end and dissolve remain seated the same for the folks in the stands we're going to have our volunteers dismiss the people by row so we don't have a mad rush for the entrances so your your role will get dismissed off they go the next row get dismissed off they go so it's a orderly um vacating the field process so just bear with us until everybody can be um dismissed in an orderly fashion so we kind of thought this whole thing through clearly so uh last question about you know to find out whether you thought absolutely every last detail through and that is how about breaks are you planning to take any or it sounded from what you said earlier that you're just expecting things just to chug right along and be able to to end early you know earlier than i'm if i have my way we'll be out of here before we need a break um i was not planning on taking a break if we're not if we're not out of there say if we start it's well people start arriving at six um we start at six thirty if we're not done by nine um would i entertain a break depends where we are in the warrant how many i don't know but i mean the answer you know for for for the purposes of town meeting members to know the answer is no there are no yeah break scheduled at at this time and you feel like that's reasonable because you can you you really have thought this through and right business and frankly um what's the purpose of a break get a bottle of water you're bringing water use the bathroom extremely limited bathroom facilities um that are outside in the back of the um the the um whatever they call that the bounds building and again research has shown that a vector for the coronavirus are public bathrooms and we are not going to be able to have the custodians go in and fully sanitize the bathroom after everybody uses it um that would add that would add an hour two hours to the meeting i'd rather not do that right so everybody you know you've been alerted and yeah and hopefully you can make accommodations for yourself uh don't drink a lot of water and stuff before you what about people who despite their best efforts or whatever arrives later than 6 30 after things have begun will they will uh will there still be volunteers directing them to the availability etc they'll still be the um the volunteers um or they'll just follow the signage um directing them to get into lane one two or three depending upon which precinct or if they're a town meeting member or not and that'll bring them to the clerk's table which will still be staffed and they'll just be directed to a seat all right yeah and last maybe maybe the very last thing yeah it sounds like you've got um you know mics set up i'm sure for yourself for all who want to you know come up and engage in debate etc um any accommodation i don't even know what happens at town hall for those who are hard of hearing is that is that going to be is this going to be more of a challenge than um if we're in town hall or we frankly we do have we do have in town hall assisted hearing um devices and my 10 years as moderator um well no wait 12 years as moderator no one's ever used them um i'll have to speak with um the av guy to see if i'm glad you mentioned that i'll speak with the av guy to see if he can um hook into that system and we will provide that but that's a good point yeah i'm glad you mentioned that if in your entire tenure they've never been used one hopes that this is not to not be here yeah all right well it seems to us like we have covered um all the bases and and maybe run around them a couple of times here um so we'll let you go you're a busy man um under normal circumstances even right now um appreciate you're taking the time clearly uh also want to express our appreciation on behalf of the community for the time you have taken obviously over these last weeks to put all this together um it's fallen on relatively few shoulders i would imagine in town right this important civic business taken care of so well done thank you thank you appreciate that good luck um on uh monday the 15th and um i'm sure that things will go smoothly and everybody will be home in bed maybe even by nine o'clock that's what maybe any problem thank you and just um encourage everyone to visit the town meeting website on the town the town web page to keep fully appraised of everything over the next few days all right that way we'll be very efficient here's to efficiency all right town moderator on leoni as i said at the outset master of ceremonies for uh town meeting single session this year monday june 15 starting at arrive at six he'll be starting sharply at six very john thanks for joining us thank you audience for joining us i'm james melanne this is town meeting matters and we'll see you next time