 We're going to call the meeting to order. Good evening. Welcome to our third special town meeting done virtually. We picked up much better last time. Everyone's getting the hang of it. We're doing much better with the tech support side of it. They have less and less to do each night, and we've refined a few things as we went, as Adam was saying. One of the issues we found out was when I would announce voting, everybody would pop over to the voting portal and hit refresh page at the same time. And that just sort of overloaded the system. So we're going to take a little slower approach at jumping from Zoom to the voting portal. If everyone can just take a cue from me when to jump over. And then that should keep everybody on. We're also looking for a back side technical fix on that. We're going to see if that works this time around or next time we have a meeting. Our voting, all of our verbal voting is going to be done off screen because a few folks thought that that might be influencing people's votes, that they heard how someone else was voting. So we're handling that on the back end. We won't be announcing those votes live anymore, but they will be showing up in the voting records. And it was one other thing I was supposed to mention, but I forgot what it was. And I left my notes at the office. That's part of the problem. Doing this from home. All right, I'm assuming there are no more town meeting members that have to be sworn in. If any of them are, please give us a quick raise hand into Zoom. If you could turn that off for one second, Julie, let's see if anyone raises their hand. They're not sworn in. But everybody really should be at this point. Oh, we have one. Mr. Ruderman. Mr. Ruderman, have you not been sworn in? I was not aware of that. Raise your hand. I have. Yeah, I'll put it down for you and we'll pretend you didn't do it. There you go. Alrighty, sorry, but it's raise your hand. So I recognize the chair of the Board of Selectment, John B. Hurd, the select board, Mr. Hurd. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. John Hurd, select board chair. It is moved that if all the business of the meeting has set forth in the warrant for the special time meeting is not disposed of at this session when the meeting adjourns, it adjourns to Monday, November 30th, 2020 at 8 p.m. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Thank you, Mr. Hurd. Mr. Foskitt, would you like to second? Second. Second, okay, I'm going to. So we're going to take Wednesday off because it's a day before Thanksgiving, everyone. We're going to come back next Monday if we don't finish up tonight. So I'm going to direct the clerk to enter one vote in favor of that motion. And I will now call if there are any announcements or resolutions. Anyone has an announcement or resolution? I guess the raise hand feature is still open. Now it is. Now it is, okay. Raise your hand if you have an announcement or resolution. It's to the Corsi. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Steve DeCorsi, precinct two and a member of the select board. This past Saturday, the Somerville homeless coalition organized a cleanup of the homeless encampment in the Muar Woods. There are 25 volunteers who participated in the cleanup which resulted in the removal of two dumpsters full of trash. I want to acknowledge Mike Libby, Hannah O'Halloran and other members of the homeless coalition for organizing the cleanup. Chief Flaherty, Captain Flynn and Officer Kniff of the Allington Police Department for their participation. And to Officer Kniff in particular for his ongoing work at the site as part of the multi-disciplinary homeless outreach team. I also want to thank numerous residents for their volunteerism and a special thank you to Congressman Joe Kennedy for his help and support. Through the cleanup, a significant step was taken to make the area safer for the homeless population and those members of the homeless outreach team who provide services on site. The cleanup also helped to provide insight as to how the town and the homeless coalition can continue to provide critical services with the goal of securing permanent housing for homeless individuals while also balancing neighborhood concerns. Finally, it demonstrated the clear need to seek the property owner's participation in future cleanup efforts. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Thank you, Mr. Corsi. If we were in town hall, everybody would clap for you right now. That's not going to happen here. Anyone else have an announcement or resolution? Okay, seeing none. I'm going to recall for any reports of committees. Does anyone have a report of a committee or board that we haven't received already? Again, if they do, please use the raise hand feature. Ms. Bloom has put a point of order up, Ms. Bloom. Let's ask Nancy what's her point of order. It's a little unusual this early in the meeting, but Ms. Bloom, what's your point of order? Nancy Bloom, precinct 18. I was just wondering, someone mentioned a couple of meetings back that perhaps we should start half an hour earlier. Yeah, that can't happen, I'll tell you why, Nancy. The team logs on at seven o'clock and we start checking in everybody else by 7.15, 7.30 and takes us till eight o'clock almost. So to get it to start earlier, we'd push all of our dinners right off the page. We entertain that out, but we'd have to actually reschedule everything on our side of the screen here. Thank you, Mr. Moderate. Thank you, Ms. Bloom. Okay, seeing no resolutions or announcements or any reports of committees, we haven't taken one article one off the table, so we don't have to, Mr. Foskey, can you take article four off the table, please? Mr. Moderate, I move that the recommended votes contained in the respective reports of the finance committee select board, redevelopment board and other committees be before the meeting without further motion. Thank you, sir. I move that article four of the bylaw amendment, like bikeway hours be taken off the table. Okay. I need a second. Ms. Brazile can second that for us. Sorry, Julie Brazile, precinct 12, second. Okay, thank you. Oh, we have 229 members logged in already. Very good. All right, so we have article four is off the table. We have received, I have one question of Mr. Heard, Mr. Heard. Did the select board discuss article four in their meeting this evening and did they have a change of their vote? We did have a meeting this evening, Mr. Moderate. Did you discuss this article for at all? We did not. Okay, very good. Thank you very much. And I call up Patricia Muldoon. Patty was there, thank you, went away. There she's back. Oh, okay. All right. Ms. Muldoon. You can hear me now. All right. Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Moderator, Patricia Muldoon precinct 20. I have submitted a substitute motion that in the legalese language basically would eliminate restrictions on the Minuteman bikeway hours. And the reason I am proposing that, I will say that I have ridden the bike path after night has fallen, late into the night with my helmet light on. And I had no idea I was breaking the law. Who knew? It really should be changed to allow all of us to be able to use the bike path in, it is a transportation quarter corridor. So it's something that we should all be able to use as needed. As I understand it, it is rarely if ever enforced, it's certainly unevenly enforced by the police. And they have other tools in their toolkit if there are any problems that arise. This one keeps us out of step as it is currently written, keeps us out of step with our Minuteman neighbors who do not have any curfew or limit on their bike hours. So it is a source of transportation. It should be open just as roads are open. It would help a little bit in meeting our sustainability goals because we want to encourage people to walk and bike rather than using fossil fuel cars. And it would improve, I think the fairness and justice efforts that we are all undertaking, that it's not be something that is only very occasionally enforced with some people and the rest of us don't even know that it is a law. So I think for fairness and to make us more compatible with our neighbors and hopefully more sustainable, I propose that we align with our neighbors and eliminate any curfew hours for the bike path. And I will mention that I have spoken with a couple of members of the Bicycle Advisory Committee and they tell me they've wanted to accomplish this for years. So I think it is about time that we change our largely unknown law and make us compatible with our neighbors. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Thank you, Ms. Muldoon. Mr. Foskik, can we second Ms. Muldoon? Okay, I second, yes. Okay, seconded, thank you very much. All right, as you may have noticed, we fixed the issue with the clock. We had a glitch when Adam would flick away from the waiting to speak screen and go to the screen showing us the warrant article and the proposed votes, et cetera. The clock would glitch. It's been fixed. So now it actually shows the time that it's supposed to show. I think Ms. Bloom's point of order is done. So the next person would be Adam McNeil. Hello, Adam McNeil, presenting for. I'm Mr. McNeil. So, yes, great, good. I know you said not to ask if you could hear me, but I didn't know what to do. All right. So, I am the citizen sponsor of this article, the original warrant article, which did not have either the select port specific language or obviously Ms. Muldoon specific language, although it was written as a generic article on purpose for those purposes. So, I can give a little bit of brief history about this, the article and then also my personal opinions on Ms. Muldoon's substitute motion, although I can't speak for the committee on the substitute motion because we have not taken a vote on that, although obviously we took a vote of support of the generous sized warrant article language. So, the Minuteman Bikeway is obviously a pretty heavily used thoroughfare, both for obviously for cycling, but also for walking, running. I think one of the most frequent accidental violations of the curfew is people walking their dogs. That was especially true in 2019. I'm not sure if 2020's general change and everyone's behavior has massively affected that, but that's neither here or there, I guess, supposed for going forward. Ideally, we'd be back to good conditions, but it's definitely very heavily used and it's very heavily used outside of the curfew hours, as are currently stated, especially in the summer, but even in the winter. And a lot of people are accidentally violating the law. So, the original goal of this warrant article was to do two things. One was to align the law with the actual usage so that people were not accidentally violating the law. And the other was to kind of just clean up some areas of possible inconsistency. I'll say the police were quite willing to talk to me about this. We came to a pretty good hammering out of their opinions on what they use the current curfew for. And I was very pleased to get their support on the warrant article and the genericized language there. Yeah, so that's that I, Ms. Maboum went into pretty great listing of a lot of the reasons why this makes a lot of sense even outside of the fact that the law is relatively inconsistently enforced and a stretch really of resources. But, oh shoot, or was I going with that? My apologies, I just kind of lost my train of thought. Oh, yes. So as I was talking about Ms. Maboum's motion as opposed to the select board's motion, I think it makes a lot of sense actually. I did not talk to Ms. Maboum prior to her filing this motion and I was actually rather surprised by it. But honestly, I believe alignment with our neighboring communities. So we don't have, you know, you trigger when you cross the border, which now isn't super clearly defined on the bikeway, is ultimately the goal anyway, to make things consistent, to make things clear, understandable and to align with uses that's really for the most part not really causing any issues, such like noise violations, if there's any serious issues on the bikeway are already covered under their respective laws. The bikeway hours don't really make sense as a park. It's not used really as a park, except for that possible exception of dog walking that I mentioned earlier. It's a commuting path. It's safer for bikers and walkers to be on the bikeway than it is to be on the road for the most part, especially the section by AOLife that's heavily lit and heavily used. So on a personal note, I support Ms. Maboum's substitute motion, but I hope that either way, whether the substitute motion passes or not, we can work towards extending it with the original if it doesn't. So that's my preference order, Ms. Muldoon's motion and then a passing as the compromise of the select boards. Archer, thank you. Thank you, Mr. McNeil. Ms. Brazil, as a town meeting member. Yes. Julie Brazil, precinct 12. I'm not comfortable with the amendment. I'm very open to the idea of reducing the restrictions on the bike path and aligning ourselves with the surrounding communities. That makes sense to me, but I am concerned that we aren't following a good process here. The abutters had no notice that this was being discussed. There hasn't been a conversation if people have concerns that we, 250 people haven't thought of. I just am concerned that it's not what we said when we wailed the warrant to people and put it up online. And just sort of, secondarily, I feel like we haven't quite learned the lesson from article three. Amendments from the floor with that sort of substantively change things, I think can be dangerous and we have to come back in a year and fix them. And so I won't be supporting the amendment, but I'm very happy to support article four and then encourage citizens or the relevant committees to propose a more complete solution for April. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Brazil. And I do personally find that the amendment is within the scope of the warrant article, which was to extend the operating hours. Okay, thank you very much, Ms. Brazil. Phil Goff. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Phil Goff, precinct seven. I had originally supported article four as I thought giving the town manager flexibility to add some additional hours onto the bikeway made a lot of sense, but I was enthused and actually I rise in support of the substitute motion as well. As I think that as Ms. Maldoon mentioned and Adam spoke to as well, I think it just makes sense as a transportation facility that it be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I think in 1992, when the Miniman was developed, my sense is it was probably thought more as a recreational facility as a lot of rail trails and the Charles River Basin trail system was really thought of more for recreation. But I think that's really, that's changed. That's evolved in the 28 years that the Miniman bikeway has been open in Arlington. Certainly the demand created by Ale Life Station is a big part of that. We know that a huge number of the people who are actually using the bikeway are in fact commuters as the town and the regional planning agency has in East Arlington, Liberal Streets has done counts over the years on the Miniman. The biggest bikes are definitely, obviously in East Arlington as well are in the morning and PM. So people are using it for commuting in both morning and the evening. And I think having the Miniman open for people who are coming home later at night from work or maybe they're out is not only fair for people who are traveling on foot or by bike or scooter maybe as those are becoming more popular. But I also think it's very consistent with the master plans, goals of promoting sustainable transportation as well. So I think just imagine if it was decided that Gray Street at 9 p.m. would be closed through traffic and everyone had to use MassApp instead when they're coming home late or vice versa, MassApp closed at 9 p.m. Wouldn't really make any sense. I think the bikeway should really be treated the same way as a really critical transportation corridor for the town of Arlington. I like the fact that it also would allow us to be consistent and have similar policies to Lexington and Bedford. So someone who is taking perhaps a longer trip at night doesn't have to think about or worry about which town they're in and whether it's legal or illegal for them to be in that particular place at that particular time. So I do encourage all town meeting members to support the substitute motion. And hopefully the Miniman path one day will be available for anyone to use 24 hours a day for transportation or recreation. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Thank you, Mr. Goff. Mr. John Warden. You can speak, Mr. Warden. Am I on muted? Yes, you are. Thank you. Mr. Moderator, fellow town meeting members. With the legislature- Name and precinct. John Warden, precinct eight. When the legislature authorized representative town meetings back in the 20s, we were in very early towns to do it. They specifically provided that any registered voter had a right to address the meeting. All he had to do, he or she had to do was be introduced by town meeting member or town official. Is that within the scope of the article, Mr. Warden? Well, if you let me give my remarks, it will be. Okay. I received today a message from a long-time friend, former member of the school committee and a former town meeting member. And I would like to read his letter to the meeting. Go ahead. The substitute motion for article, it's article four, isn't he? He got the wrong number here. The special town meeting submitted by Patricia Muldoon leaves residents and businesses along the bikeway in a, I'm sorry, this is in the lights table. That is victims of neighborhood of night gatherings. I'm going to ask Mrs. Warden to read this. Oh yeah, you want to sit down. Can you also tell us whose letter this is? Oh yes, it's George Buckley who lives in Renfrew street. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Patricia Warden, appreciate it. The substitute motion for article eight of the special town meeting submitted by Patricia Muldoon leaves residents and businesses about the Minuteman bikeway as victims of late night gatherings, ruckus and shenanigans. The police department needs to be able to order non-commuting people to leave the bikeway in the late evening hours. It should therefore have hours of use set by the town manager in concert with the select board. The bikeway west of Arlington for the most part about much less dense development than in Arlington. Please oppose and vote no action on Ms. Muldoon's substitute motion and any similar proposals that leave the area without regulation. Sincerely, George Buckley of Renfrew street. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Thank you, Mrs. Warden. Thank you, Mr. Warden. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Roderick Holland? Roderick Holland. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Roderick Holland, precinct seven. I originally supported the Adam McNeill select board article four. Really on the grounds that it was a step in the direction of the situation proposed by the substitute motion. On reflection, I think that the substitute motion is a very, very good idea and I rise to support it. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Holland. Elizabeth Dre. Good evening, Mr. Moderator. Elizabeth Dre, precinct eight. I'd like to offer to my fellow town meeting members this thought that a bylaw that is not consistently enforced is open to be selectively enforced and may lead to the risk of inequitable enforcement. If we are not currently consistently enforcing this bylaw, then we do not need it. And I would ask you to vote in favor of the amendment and remove the hours. Thank you very much, Mr. Moderator. Thank you, Mr. Dre. Gregory Cristiana to speak to you. Mr. Cristiana, can you name a precinct, please? Yes, Greg Cristiana, precinct 15. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Mr. Moderator, is it possible for police chief Flaherty or someone from the police department to speak to any concerns that they have with this substitute motion as far as like security, safety issues along the bike path? Is that in the form of a question you have for chief Flaherty that you'd like to find out her opinions of those issues? That's correct, Mr. Moderator. Yes, chief Flaherty, can you tell us what your opinions are? Good evening, Mr. Moderator. Good evening, Flaherty. So historically, the police department hasn't enforced these hours. We would typically advise people when we come across them about the restrictions, specifically if we receive calls regarding some type of suspicious condition or suspicious behavior or some type of illegal activity. And we've always kind of approached it not necessarily with the enforcement mindset but as a community safety, crime reduction and public order matter. Said I took a look back to 2017 at the calls that we've received after 9 p.m. on the bike path from the Cambridge line to the Lexington line. And we've had very few calls for our noise complaints in youths gathering years back. It was an issue that we would have people gathering along the bike path but we don't really seem to have those issues and the police department has no issue with the article of 52 motion. Okay, thank you, police chief, Flaherty. So I have the same procedural concerns that Ms. Brazil voiced earlier. But I think what overrides that for me is that empirically speaking, like it sounds like based on what the police chief is saying, reporting, this has not been an issue lately. And as Ms. Dre said, if it's not being enforced there's also the concern that it may not be enforced equally for all residents or passers-through which could be a vector for introducing bias, for instance. And so for all those reasons I'd say I stand in favor of the substitute motion. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Cristiana. Gregor, excuse me, Robert Marlin. Michelle DeRosha has a point of order. Ms. DeRosha, what's your point of order? Thank you, Mr. Moderator. My question is one of reconciling the substitute motion with the language of the original article. Would the elimination of bikeway hours be within scope for the language of the original article if the town manager decided that that was the move he wanted to make? Well, the language, I find the language is within the scope of the warrant article. It's not the recommended vote of the Board of Selection that determines scope, it's the warrant article itself which basically boiled down to extend the operating hours of the Minutmian bikeway. So I guess by, under my view of it, by eliminating the hours, we are just extending them to 24-7 as opposed to some more finite set of hours. So I did find it within scope of the original warrant article. Okay, thank you. Thank you, ma'am. Okay, we'll go back to Mr. Robert Marlin. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Rob Marlin, precinct three. I move to end debate on the substitute motion and the article. Okay, Mr. Marlin has made a motion to terminate debate on the article and all other matters before which would include the substitute motion. Second. Mr. Foskett has seconded that. So first we're gonna take a motion, a vote to terminate debate. Now don't just jump right over to the voting screen yet. Let's let Adam work through. And once we see the vote screen, the voting page now, if everybody could mosey over there, not all at once. So maybe precincts one, two, seven, and a couple of seconds later, eight through 14, five, six seconds after that, the rest of the town meeting members, seven, two, 21, jump over. So that should eliminate all of our problems with people getting bopped off the system. If you can just please open the Zoom hands, the Zoom if someone's, excuse me, the raised hand feature on Zoom if someone's having a voting issue, please use the raised hand. Otherwise, please use one for yes or two for no and then cast your vote. This is on the motion to terminate debate on the article and all matters before it. We have 199 members have voted. We have 43 not those 43 could jump on over to the voting portal and please vote one for yes, two for no, and then click cast your vote. Mr. Moderator Adele Krause has her hand raised. Okay. So Ms. Krause, let's see what you have to say, but don't announce your vote over the air. Tell us what the issue is, Ms. Krause. Okay, Ms. Krause, we've got your vote and we have recorded it. Thank you. Okay, for the last 10 folks, we're gonna give you about 15 seconds. Mike Grutemann, Beth Maloff-Czech, Joanne Preston, Ian Thomas, Elizabeth Exton, Timor Yontar, Sherry Barron, Larry Slutnick, and then Mary Deist. Gonna give you another five seconds then we're gonna terminate voting. Okay, let's terminate voting, Mr. Korolski. Okay, motion to terminate debate carries by 92%. We have about 217 in the affirmative, 19 in the negative. It's a vote, I so declare it to debate is terminated. As soon as we've run through the screens, we're going to take a vote first on Ms. Muldoon's substitute motion. So Ms. Muldoon has submitted the substitute motion which was circulated to everybody early this morning. And basically Ms. Muldoon wants to eliminate the bikeway hours in their entirety. So it looks like we have one more screen to go. Now we're gonna have to invent one, Adam. So what Mr. Korolski is doing is getting us an agenda item for the system. You can see the back end work. Ms. Muldoon has a point of order, Ms. Weyman. She will bring her up. Let's find out what her point of order while Adam does his thing. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. I just wanted to, oh, sorry, Patricia Muldoon, precinct 20. I just wanted to clarify, I didn't want to eliminate the hours. I want to eliminate the restriction on hours, which I'm sure everybody got, but... Oh, okay. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So we just heard what Ms. Muldoon's substitute would do. So we're gonna submit that and enable voting. Okay, now we can see the vote screen so everybody can stagger your way over to the voting portal. Look, he has a database issue. So precincts one through seven, a couple of seconds later, eight to 14, a little bit after that, 14 through 21. We have the resilience feature up. If you have an issue of voting, please choose one. If you want Ms. Muldoon substitute, choose two if you do not want it and then hit cast your vote. Let's go ahead and get voting. We've got 177 have already voted, down to 65. So here's Ms. Muldoon's substitute motion in front of you. Okay, we've got 10 folks left who have not voted. If you'll please go ahead and vote now. Beth Ann Friedman, Susan Stamps, Lither Beth Eksten, Adam Patcher, Mary Deist, Brian Rehrig, Pam Hallett. We're voting on Ms. Muldoon's substitute motion. So we're gonna keep that open for about five more seconds. Three people, Elizabeth Eksten and Pam Hallett. We're voting if we want to use Ms. Muldoon's substitute. Okay, let's close voting. Mr. Moderator, we're just waiting on entry of one verbal vote. Okay. Okay, oh, I see. Okay, Ms. Muldoon's substitute motion passes 88%. We have 211 in the positive, 29 in the negative. And it's a vote, and I sort of clear it. And with that is how our main motion. So as we run through the screens, we'll take that final vote. Ms. Serena, oh, she took it down. Ms. Serena Memmon has a point of order. Ms. Wayman, Ms. Memmon. Ms. Serena Memmon, precinct 21. Mr. Moderator, I just wanna make sure, from what I read in the substitute motion, even though it's passed, that there was no $20 fine or no fine listed, correct? Correct. Okay, so as soon as we're done clearing that out, I think Ms. Muldoon has made hers. We're going to take a vote on the main motion as substituted by Ms. Muldoon's substitute motion. So he has substituted, now we have to vote and make it the main motion. So we're voting to make Ms. Muldoon's the bylaw. Okay, so please tell me the numbers, please go back to the portal page. In the same groupings, one through seven, wait a little bit, seven, eight, 14, wait a little bit, and then 15 to 21, then please choose one for yes and two for no, and then click cast your vote. If you have a voting issue, please let us know by using the raise hand feature or calling Ms. Brazil. I should have given you her phone number earlier. If you have a voting issue and want to report a vote, call 781-316-3071. So Ms. Stamps has a point of order. Thank you, Mr. Moderator, Susan Stamps, precinct three. I don't know exactly what we're voting on now on article four, because that's all about setting hours. And I think we just voted to eliminate hours. So I'm not, I don't- That's right. So first we had to vote on whether or not we wanted to substitute Ms. Maldun's substitute motion for the recommended vote of the board of select board. We voted yes. And now we have to take a vote on this select board's recommended vote as substituted. Oh, okay. I see. Thank you, sir. Thank you. So if everybody could go ahead and vote one for yes. Two for no, and then click cast your vote. And there are about 10 folks who have not voted yet. Down to seven, Larry Slotnick, Karen Kelleher, Leah Broder, Lisa Blankesbore, Diane Mahan. Lisa and Diane have not voted. We're going to give them another 30, 20 seconds. Okay, everybody has now voted. So let's close voting. The motion carries by 94%. We have 228 in the affirmative, 14 in the negative. It's a vote, and I so declare it. And that ends article four. The next that will bring us to article nine as soon as we get through the screens. Is Ms. Stamps left over from the last time? What did she raise her hand again? Ms. Stamps, you have another point of order? Oh, no, you're wrong. No, sir, I did not. I haven't been elevated that high yet, Susan. I forgot. Sorry. Thank you very much. We have the recommended vote of the Election Modernization Committee. Does anyone on that committee wish to speak to it? So it's article nine. Okay, Mr. Levy. Hi, David. David Levy, precinct 18. Motion to move the question and terminate debate. Okay. Second. We have motion to terminate debate on article nine and it's been seconded. So we have motion to terminate debate on article nine, vote to the Election Modernization Committee. So basically extend the life of the committee and make everyone voting members. So we're going to take a vote to terminate debate on that. Thomas Michael Mann has a point of order. So go ahead, crowd meeting members, navigate over to the voting portal and go ahead and cast your vote on the motion to terminate debate, one for yes to terminate to, to no, and then hit cast your vote. Mr. Michael Mann. Oh, I was just curious since we had no debate, we can terminate debate. Because Mr. Levy decided to ask for it. And now we're going to see if we want to it or we're going to continue to have debate. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Ms. Barron. Ms. Barron. Yes, Sherry Barron, precinct seven. Can you hear me? Yes, I can, ma'am. Sorry. I'm sorry. Don't worry. I had the, Sherry Barron, precinct seven. I had the same question. I don't ever recall that we terminated debate when there was no debate. So I'm just thinking that might be an unnecessary step. I think so. That's all. Thank you. Okay, thank you. We have 39 people haven't voted yet. Please go ahead and try and do so now. And Mr. O'Connor has a point of order. Mr. O'Connor. I am here. James O'Connor, chair of the election modernization committee. I just wish to clarify that the vote was to change our name from study committee to the election modernization committee to increase the size to 15, to, as you mentioned, to extend the voting status and the life to 2022 was all four parts. Okay, thank you. But technically not a point of order, but I'm gonna thank you. You're welcome, Mr. Minor. Okay, the last few people who have not voted yet, please go ahead and do so right now. Let's let to terminate debate on article eight, nine. Adam Pressure, Adam McNeil, Samantha Dutra, Elizabeth Exton, Len Carden. You got five people gonna give you 15 seconds. Go ahead and vote on terminating debate. The debate is, voting is terminated. Please close voting, Mr. Korolski. The debate is terminated, it's 83% in the affirmative, 195 in the affirmative and 39 in the negative. That will bring us to the vote itself. So what we'll be voting for is Mr. O'Connor so kindly told us in his, that we're doing a number of different things here, extending the life of the committee, changing its name, changing its membership role a little bit and going forward in that manner. So we're gonna now take a vote on nine, which had originally been on our consent agenda, but we took it off. So there's our voting screen. So please navigate over to the portal. Take your moment to get there and when you are there, please choose one for yes and two for no. If you want to do the things listed in the discussion in front of you and go ahead and update the election modernization committee as please vote one for yes. If you don't want to vote two for no and then hit cast your vote. Okay, we're down to about eight people who haven't voted yet. Susan Weber, Dave Good, Carol Bain, Al Tosti, Beth Benedict and Len Cardin. So seven, six people down. You can do it. I'm gonna give you 15 seconds to vote. Adam McNeil and Len, you've got 10, five seconds. Three, two, one. All righty, closing voting. Let's close voting, Mr. Karolski. It is 234 in the affirmative, five in the negative. It's a vote by 98% to update the committee. Thank you very much. The vote and I so declare it. Again, that had been on our consent agenda, but no longer. Okay, that'll close Article 9, bring us the Article 10. Acceptance of legislation, Gold Star Families. Ms. Magliazo, what's your point of order? Hi, Mr. Moderator. I was curious as to whether there was a recommended vote on this and where because I was not able to find it. Okay, if there was, it was in the Board of Select, the Select Boards Report under Article 10. And... I see it. Yeah, it's to accept legislation. I don't know if Mr. Chaplain or Mr. Hurd wish to speak to this, Mr. Hurd. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. John Hurd, Select Board Chair. This is an article inserted by the Select Board at the request of the town manager to provide a full tax exemption to parents or guardians of persons who have died in active service in the United States Armed Services. The Select Board strongly recommends positive action on this article to recognize the extraordinary sacrifice that our soldiers and their families make on behalf of our nation. The Select Board voted in favor of positive action, five to zero. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Thank you, Mr. Hurd. Mr. Peter Howard, Mr. Howard. Mr. Moderator, I've brought Jane. I've enabled Jane speaking. I don't see Mr. Howard in the list. Okay. Oh, well, Pete raised his hand. So let's unmute Jane. Jane, is Peter there? Yes, he is. Oh, okay. This is he. Mr. Moderator, Peter Howard, Cree-Sink 10. How much is this gonna cost the town? I, from my understanding, it's only one family that currently qualifies. Mr. Chaplain, do you have a dollar figure for that? Madam Chaplain, town manager, I don't have that one family's tax bill. However, I can assure Mr. Howard in the town meeting that the granting of this exemption would be taking out, taken out of the current abatement overlay or the current overlay that we set aside. So we don't anticipate any new expenditure on behalf of the town to be able to grant this exemption. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Thank you, Mr. Howard. Leah Hyam, Leba. Leba Hyam, precinct 11. I moved the question and all matters before it. Thank you, Ms. Hyam. We have a motion to terminate debate. Second. I spent seconded, so we're gonna have a vote on the termination of the debate. Okay, so town meeting members, please navigate over. Pre-sync says I called out before. When you get there, please vote one for yes to grant an exemption to the Gold Star Families. Two, if you don't want to have that exemption and then please hit cast your vote. If you're having an issue voting, either call Ms. Brazil, 7813163071 or use the raise hand feature on Zoom. Okay, if 19 members have not voted yet on the termination of the debate. Excuse me, Mr. Moderator. Sophie Nicolazzo has her hand raised. Okay. Yes, Mr. Moderator, I just see that there are four points of order, at least on my screen that you're not addressing. Sure. I was looking at the voting screen. Yes, I see that. Thank you. We'll have a, well, since you're here, Sophie, well, she's gone. So Mr. Quinn, Michael Quinn. Mr. Moderator, when you called the vote for this, I believe you misspoke and you asked what you stated was that we would be voting on the article itself rather than the motion to terminate debate. To be clear, are we voting on the motion to terminate debate? Yes, we are, sir. Thank you. Yes. So we're voting on the motion to terminate debate. If I misspoke, I do apologize. Ms. Broder, Leah Broder. Leah Broder, precinct one. I also heard when you called for the vote that you were calling for us to vote on the actual article. So I feel that in order to be fair, we would need to give people a chance to change their vote in case they thought they would. We haven't terminated voting yet. So anyone who we're voting on the article 10 to terminate the debate, if you voted in a manner that you didn't want to, please go ahead and change your vote. At this point, you still have that option. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. So voting to terminate debate. Thank you, Ms. Broder. And Ms. Migliazzo. Yes, Mr. Moderator. Just to clarify, I also, when you spoke, you mentioned that in the misspeaking, you mentioned that we were voting on granting an exemption to Gold Star families, parents specifically. And I just, that's slightly misspeaking because they do already have an exemption on record and without debate, we can't discuss that. My understanding is we do not have such an exemption on record. Mr. Puller told me we did. I should clarify, we don't have a 100% exemption. They do receive a tax. So I'll get that clarified. Mr. Herd, do you know what we have any exemptions of that nature? Mr. Moderator, John Herd, suckboard chair. I do not know. I'd refer to tell manager for that. Okay. Sir, I would. Mr. Chapter Lane. Adam Chapter Lane, town manager. Mr. Puller is actually here. He could probably speak to what information he provided to Ms. Miliano. All right. While we get an answer for Ms. Migliauza, we're gonna close voting because everybody has voted. So, Mr. Puller. Sir, I would say that closing voting though, this demonstrates why we should continue debate. So, Ms. Migliauza, you asked a question. I'm getting any answer. It's a point of order and it's really not a point of order but I'm getting an answer anyway. So please, Mr. Puller, do we have any such exemptions? Mr. Moderator. Yes, sir. Mr. Puller, deputy town manager. Currently on the books, there is an exemption. It is worth about $500. I don't remember the exact figure but it's a partial exemption. It's not the full exemption from property tax payments that is included in the motion before town meeting now. So it is a different exemption. Thank you very much, Mr. Puller. Okay. That answer your question, Ms. Migliauza. Yes, thank you. Thank you. All right, now we're gonna vote on the motion itself. The Warren article 10 to accept the legislation Gold Star Family Tax Exemption once we get through the screen. So the motion to terminate the big carries by 86%, 270 affirmative, 33 in the negative. Is that a new point of order for Mr. Quinn? Mr. Quinn, do you do have a new? I'm Michael Quinn, precinct 10. I just want to be clear on what we're voting on. Currently, Arlington has a 100% potential tax relief for surviving spouse of a veteran whose death occurred as a result of service. Mr. Quinn, is that what we're voting on or is this- We are voting on the recommended vote in the board of select board of order to accept mass general law 59C522H to provide a local property tax exemption to the surviving parents regarding of members of the United States Armed Service who died in active duty in service in their country. That is what we're voting on. So this is the parents. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Quinn. Yes. So it's article 10. We're now taking a vote to accept that legislation. If you want to accept that legislation. Okay, now Ms. Crowder has a point of order and then Mr. Jamison. So we're gonna start our voting. If you wish to vote for this, please navigate over. And then I'm gonna have, please press one for yes to accept the legislation two for no. Mr. Jamison, what's your point? Oh, Ms. Crowder, what's your point of order? I just withdrew it. Thank you very much. Mr. Jamison, did you have a point of order? Yes, Mr. Moderator Gordon Jamison. I wanted a definition of local property tax. Okay. So I'm gonna refer everybody back to the sheets I sent out last week saying what a point of order is. And I think Mr. Quinn's original point of order was the only one that really was a point of order. We all know what local property taxes are Gordon. It's when the town sends us a bill and says you gotta pay $10,000 to mail the money. Would it include commercial? This includes if the, you should... I'm sorry, Mr. Moderator. And I'll, Mr. Poehler, let's humor Gordon. Does this include commercial property? Well, I don't believe it does because what it's applying to is homeowners. You have to be a homeowner, so that's an individual. Thank you very much, Mr. Poehler. Anything else, Mr. Jamison? No, thank you, Mr. Moderator. Sorry to be out of order. Yes, let's keep our points of order to actual points of order, folks. Thank you. And Sophie has another point of order. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. I'm going to try my best to appraise this, to stay within the rules of points of orders. And as was mentioned earlier, since there is already a partial benefit, we're not modifying that. So... I'm saying you're continuing to debate, ma'am. No, I'm just... Sophie, you're continuing debate. But I'm just saying we're not deleting a section, we're simply... I said we are accepting legislation. If we read the vote in the select board's report, now that you are continuing debate, thank you. Mr. Quinn, he's taken his point of order down. We have 36 folks left who have not voted yet. If you can please do so now. Mr. Moderator, Janice Weaver has her hand raised. Okay. I got kicked out of the portal. Okay, can you hit refresh anywhere, or can you refresh your screen by using the half circle up in the upper left-hand corner of your browser window? That should bring you right back in, Janice. Yeah, I noticed that. Janice, you seem to be in Zoom twice. You have two Zoom windows open, and that's gonna be impacting you somehow. Can IT call you, Janice? Do we have her phone number? Andrew? All right, Janice, you're gonna get a phone call. Okay, let's, we have seven people have not voted yet. Janice is one of them. Maybe we can get a verbal vote from Janice. Give that a minute. Elaine Crowder, Catherine Radville, Lynette Culverhouse, Michael Stern. If not voted yet, if you please will do so now. Okay, let's just give it a half a second, see if we can get a vote from Janice. Our way to get that, Emily. We received her vote. Okay, very good, thank you. All right, everybody's voted, so let's close voting. Motion passes by 97%. We have 229 in the affirmative. Six in the negative. It's a vote and I so declare it in that closest article 10. As soon as we get through the screens, we'll start article 10. Article 11, I'm sorry. Homeworld legislation, Justin Brown. Okay, anyone wish to speak to this article or who Bronson presented? I will, Ms. Moderator. John Harris, psych board chair. This is an article inserted by the psych board that requested Mr. Justin Brown and 10 registered voters to allow Mr. Brown to sit for the firefighter civil service exam. Even though he's over the age of 31, Mr. Brown is currently 39 years old. Select board voted in favor of positive action, five to zero. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Thank you, sir. Mr. Joseph Tully. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. I know you've asked us not to ask if you can hear us, but can you hear me? Yes, I can, sir. Thank you, I apologize. I wasn't certain if the unmute was working. Just name it, name and precinct, please, Joe. Tully, precinct 14. I anticipated some opposition to this, having been through a few town meetings and perhaps my concern was mistaken, but I suspect there will be some of my colleagues speaking in opposition to this and I wanted to get my two cents in. So first I'd like to say, I don't know Mr. Brown. I don't know his story. I will defer to the select people that they have a reason for their five-nothing vote and I would respect that, but I've always found these rules to be a little bit arcane. Not everybody knows what they wanna do with their life when they're in their 20s and some of us come to our vocation a little bit later in life and I've never understood why we would wanna prevent somebody from pursuing his or her dream the way the rest of us are entitled to with whatever our chosen field is. And I think some of my colleagues will undoubtedly make the argument that this is not a personal issue. It's simply the fiscally prudent thing to do and they will tell you why that is and so I'm not gonna make their argument for you but suffice to say I disagree with it and I'll tell you why I think that misses the mark. First, as I understand the rules, there's no guarantee that Mr. Brown will be hired. A favorable vote on this article simply affords him the opportunity to be placed in the pool of applicants. If he's never hired, then this entire vote is a moot point and it really makes no difference whatsoever. Alternatively, should he be hired, one imagines that he is at least according to whatever metrics are involved a better candidate than the person that would have been hired in his absence. And so I view that as a public safety issue as I prefer to have the best candidate serving our departments. Secondly, I will tell you, this is my 27th year in town meeting and I can say with virtual certainty that these articles are exceedingly rare. I'm going purely on my recollection but I think there've been about maybe three or four in all of my time here. So the notion that approving this article is going to send us over some sort of fiscal cliff I think simply doesn't have any basis in fact nor does the notion that if we approve this article we'll face an onslaught of individuals looking to change their careers in their mid 30s. I think to suggest that as pure speculation and there's simply no evidence to that effect. And finally, I would simply say let's not lose sight of what this job is all about. It's a dangerous job. And people like Mr. Brown deserve our thanks. They don't deserve to have artificial roadblocks thrown up in their faces. There's no magical reason behind the 32 year age limit. I suppose the legislature and its wisdom could have just as easily made it 36 or 29 or anything else they wanted to. So there's no inherent reason why Mr. Brown can't be an asset to the Arlington fire department. The only thing standing in this way is essentially an arbitrary rule. So I would ask my fellow members to join me in voting favorably on this warrant article. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Telly. Michelle DeRosha. Michelle DeRosha, precinct 19. Looking at the language in the select board report it makes reference to the civil service law as applied in Arlington. And I have a question about what it would take to change that civil service law. And is there something related to how it is applied in Arlington that is on the books such that we could have an impact and change that? Mr. Heim. Thank you, Mr. Moderator, Dugheim Town Council. Yes, there is. The civil service law essentially offers a variety of options to communities. There are some communities that have no age limit. There are other communities that have an age limit to basically oriented towards when you take the exam versus when you be in service. We could put a warrant article on for the next town meeting if town meeting was inclined to revisit the rules for Arlington and eliminate or revise our operating age limit for taking the exam. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Mr. Rosha. Yes, thank you, Mr. Heim. I would suggest then that we do so that we revisit this as a law, as it applies in Arlington and not as it applies to Mr. Justin Brown. Like Mr. Tully, I do not know Mr. Brown and I have nothing against Mr. Brown. However, I find it to be a capricious means of making exceptions for individuals who have either the knowledge that they can request an exemption to this law and it goes against our attempts to be an inclusive community. It looks like a special favor rather than having laws on the books that we want to enforce and not make exceptions if people ask. Now the select board report talked about how historically these have been supported. So all the more reason to change the law for Arlington if indeed this law no longer is serving the needs and the will of the leadership. So that's all. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Thank you, Mr. Rosha. Serena Mehman. Yes, Mr. Moderator, Serena Mehman, precinct 21. I wanted to know why was a law like this put in? Does anybody know of the civil service law? I know Doug Heim, our attorney for the town, had mentioned some things about knowing age limit in some towns and then some have limits and so forth. And we can revisit this law and so forth. But I just was wondering, does anybody know why it was put in first? Mr. Heim, this predates your time, but would you have any estimate of why this is? Doug Heim, town council. I'm happy to answer this to the best of my ability. The fire chief and the town manager may have additional comments. At the time that the civil service law was enacted, there may have been, according to my recollection of the select board hearing, there may have been more acute concerns about the age of police officers and firefighters the beginning of the term of their service. Frankly speaking, people are healthier longer and we have a better ability to gauge somebody's physical fitness for becoming a firefighter than we may have had, back when this provision of the civil service law was enacted. I think the individual communities were afforded some discretion to decide how much control they wanted to exercise for folks over a certain age so that they could have some determination, chief by chief, for example, of whether or not they really had concerns from a, from any number of perspectives about the ability of somebody over the age of 32 to sit for the exam and potentially become a firefighter. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Hahn. Thank you. And likewise, is there a limit on how long a firefighter can be employed? I mean, is there a age limit on the other end of retirement when they should be retiring? Is there a restriction on that? Attorney Hahn, do you know if there's an upper age limit at which a firefighter must retire? Sir, moderator, Dugheim Town Council, I apologize, I don't know that off the top of my head. The manager or the deputy town manager may know, I can try to find that out. Okay. Mr. Chaplain, do you know that answer? Adam Chaplain, town manager, I don't mean to continue to pass around. I know Chief Kelly is here. I'm not familiar with the mandatory retirement age, but Chief Kelly can definitely clarify that one way or the other. Hmm, that's here from Chief Kelly. It's first time in front of town meeting. Good evening, Mr. Moderator, this is Kevin Kelly, the fire chief. Yes, the mandatory retirement age is 65. 65? Yes, sir. Thank you, Chief Kelly. All right, I just have a couple of quick other points. And one was this article will be expiring if Justin Brown gets this authority to take this test on June 1st, 2023. Is that correct? Is that what I'm reading? Yes. Okay. And so I do feel that this would be fine. We could pass this. I think that's fine, but I do agree with the previous speakers that we need to revisit this law. It's our carry with the current tools of firefighting as well as with the knowledge of health. And I think they should probably, I don't know if there's a sex limit, not gender limit on firefighters. I don't believe there's any women firefighters in Arlington are there. Chief Kelly, do you have any females on your force? Also, could we see if there's any diversity? This is Adam Chaplain, town manager. I can confirm there is one female firefighter currently. And anything on diversity too, please? I don't have, sorry, Adam Chaplain, town manager. I don't have any diversity statistics regarding the staffing of the fire department in front of me right now. Okay, we're getting a little bit of outside of the scope of the actual article, Ms. Menden. So, yes. Sorry about that. So I'm in agreement with this article 11, and I do think that we do need to revise this of the upper limit of the exam because, and I'd like to learn more about the noise limit, which sounds how that, if we can find that out in the future. Thank you. Mr. Moderator, this is Chief Kelly. Can you hear me? Yes, sir. I will answer that question. We currently have one female and we have two Hispanic firefighters. Okay, thank you very much, Chief. Okay, so the next on the list, let's hear Dan Dunn. Mr. Moderator, I spoke. Could you hear me? Yes, I can hear you now, Mr. Dunn. You know, Mr. Moderator, it doesn't make much sense for me to talk. If you can't hear me, that's why we keep asking you whether or not you can hear you. Dan Dunn, Pre-621, I move the question. Dan Dunn, you said way too many words, but I think it's okay because you're asking if you ask if we could hear you. Seconded. Seconded. We have a motion to terminate debate and it's been seconded. So Mr. Koroski is going to bring up the terminate debate. Okay, once we see the voting screens, racing's one, two, seven will go over now for three or four seconds, nine, eight through 14 and then a few seconds later, 15 through 21 go on over to the Zoom portal. No, excuse me, to the voting portal from Zoom, to the voting portal. If you have a voting issue, please use the raise hand feature on Zoom or if you wish to terminate debate and can't get through, call Ms. Brazil, 781-316-3071. Press one to terminate debate or two to continue the debate and then hit cast your vote. 198 if you have already successfully voted. Mr. Moderator. Yes. Doug Heim has his hand raised. Okay. Mr. Heim. Mr. Moderator, I don't want to speak out of order. I had an answer to Ms. Memnon's question and one, I guess it is a point of order that I'm not a town member so I can't make one. Well, we'll hear what you have to say. So first to answer Ms. Memnon's question, there are quite a few communities with no upper age limit, ranging from Brookline, Cambridge, Chelsea and Everett to Melrose, Newbury, Port, Peabody, North Reading, Needham, many, many communities have no upper age limit. Secondly, normally, well, I'd ask the moderator if he recalls, I think normally we would invite Mr. Brown to speak on make his own case to town meeting. Obviously can't do that in this circumstance because he's not a town meeting member. So I just note that ordinarily we might have an opportunity to hear something a little bit more organically from Mr. Brown. Thank you. Yes, thank you. Okay, it looks like Brian Reary and Scott Lieber have not voted yet, a few guys will vote and Sophie Magliazo has not voted yet. So a few three folks will vote, giving about 10 seconds, 15 seconds and we're going to close voting on the motion to terminate debate. That's it, time's up. Let's close the voting. It's 92% in favor of terminating debate, 221 in the affirmative and 20 in the negative. Okay, we're going to take the final vote then we're going to take our five, six minute break after we take the vote on the article. Okay, so that's it. Let's take our vote on the article and then we're going to take a break. Okay, so precincts one through seven, navigate over to the voting portal. Precincts eight through 14, go ahead and navigate over and then 15 to 21, go ahead. When you get there, please vote one for yes, two for no and then cast your vote. If you're having an issue, either call is Brazil 781-316-3071 or use the raised hand feature on Zoom so we know you're having an issue voting. Now we're voting to allow Mr. Justin Brown to take the firefighter exam, civil service exam. If you want Mr. Brown to take it, vote one for yes, if you think he should not be allowed to vote two for no and then cast your vote. Amy Miller, Richard Gallagher, Mike Ruderman, Sophie Magliazo have not voted yet. A few people would please vote. We're going to give those three people down to three, 15 seconds to vote on this article. Michael, Richard and Sophie and that's time. So let's close voting. Passes by 90% margin, it's 214 in the affirmative, 24 in the negative and it passes by 90% and it's a vote and I so declare it. All right, we're going to go through the screens but a few town meeting members want to take a five to 10, five, six, seven minute break and then we'll be back. Okay, so town meeting members were back and that closed article 11, that brings us to article 12, home rule legislation consolidation of town meeting member elections. Mr. Dickens has a point of order. Thank you, Mr. moderator. Actually, this is more a question of privilege and it's true. And it involves my concern about town meeting and the reputation of town meeting respect to article 25 because I understand the desire not to have plenty of debate and to stick to the tradition of handling resolutions by just having four minutes of each side. But it was the desire of the select board to really get the will of town meeting members. So given the nature of this question that can be reduced in ways that can misconstru the will of the voter, I was wondering if it might be possible for town meeting members to submit statements that can get entered into the record to go along with their vote? That actually has, that's a request. I'll entertain that request and get back to you on that. Okay, that's fine. But you know, my feeling on this way outside the scope of article 12, but my feeling on this resolution is frankly, this is a board of select, this is the select board issue and you guys punted by putting it in my lap with town meetings lap. If you guys, we have nothing to do with town hall and what's hung on town hall and what the board, the select board wishes to do with town hall has nothing to do with town meeting. We have very limited powers. They pass bylaws, pass zoning bylaws and spend money. That's all town meeting can do. If the select board wished to have hearings on this, they could have had all the open hearings they wanted. They put it on us and tried to shift the form from themselves to the town meeting where it doesn't belong in my opinion. And this is why I've never really liked resolutions that have nothing to do with town meetings prerogatives. I'll entertain the request that you've made to me and I'll get back to the meeting on that next Monday. I appreciate it. But frankly, I wasn't pleased when the select board shifted this to us because it was not a town meeting issue in the slightest. I appreciate that, Mr. Roderick. Thank you Mr. Diggs. And I appreciate it. And I'm asking this now because I don't want to wait until the end of the night. I understand. Yeah, and we don't want to wait till the 20, until we get there. And here's my second question of privilege question that is, I understand that we were allowing the four minutes for yes and no and I also understand allowing seven minutes because the proponents had a seven minute video already prepared. So I'd love them to, I was gonna let everybody go to seven minutes to accommodate their video. Great, thanks. Thanks, I appreciate that. Thank you. And so normally the abstains don't matter to me but I think in this case, an abstain means sends a different message than a yes or no. And so I'm wondering if it might be possible to allow those who want to propose abstaining to also have seven minutes. No. Okay. Thank you for initiating that suggestion. Take care. Thank you. Okay. Okay, let's try and keep things on the scope of the article. Thank you, Mr. Diggs. This is Jim O'Connor. Article 12, Home Rule Legislation Consolidation of Town Meeting Member Election. Mr. O'Connor is on the committee who introduced the article. Good evening, members of Town Meeting. The Election Modernization Committee conducted a collaborative survey with Envision Arlington and surveyed opinions of things that we should investigate and study. And so I'd like to turn over this article to Jennifer Seuss who has a presentation on how we explored the voting for Town Meeting members in the future. Okay, thank you. Hi, Jennifer Seuss, precinct three, also a member of the Election Modernization Committee on whose behalf I'm presenting this article. Article 12, The Consolidation of Town Meeting Member Elections is a Home Rule petition. It was reported out favorably by the select board. So under our current situation, when there's a midterm vacancy, so someone can't fulfill the entire three years, that vacancy is put onto next year's ballot. So next year, there would be the usual four slots for a three-year term and then an additional slot for a one- or two-year term. That can be fairly confusing to new potential candidates. It also introduces opportunities for gamesmanship. Under current practice, you can lose a contest for a three-year term with more votes than someone who wins for a one- or two-year term or vice versa, which is undemocratic and doesn't reflect the will of the voters. So let's look at an example. Under this example, there are five people running for a three-year term, Raj, Kim, Keisha, Bob, and Curtis, and one person running for a three-year term, Tracy. And here's the vote count and here's how it comes out. Raj, Kim, Keisha, and Bob, who are the highest vote-getters for the three-year contest, get onto town meeting. And Tracy, who's uncontested, gets on for the one-year slot, even though she has 30 fewer votes than Curtis. Maybe she's especially controversial or maybe there's some other reason. So under this proposal, all open seats are elected to a single contest. So there'd be five slots and the top four vote-getters are elected to a three-year term, next and available to your terms and so forth. So let's go back to our example. Here's the final vote tally and here's the result. So Raj, Kim, Keisha, and Bob, who are the top four vote-getters, get a three-year term and Curtis, who is the fifth highest vote-getter, gets a one-year term and Tracy does not get onto town meeting. So just some additional thoughts. We already do this process when we redistrict, if we redraw the district lines every 10 years, everyone runs for town meeting again and the top four vote-getters get off the three-year terms, the next four for the two-year terms and so forth. Also that this is not an unusual way to do things, there are other town meeting member elections that work this way, including our neighboring Lexington. We think it's more democratic, it better reflects the will of the voters, it's less confusing and it reduces opportunities for games and chip. So that is it, thank you. Thank you. Anything else, Mr. O'Connor? No, I wanted to defer the remainder of my time to Jennifer to wrap it up. Okay, I can call on Ms. Seuss. Jennifer Seuss, precinct three. We gave the positive reasons, I just wanted to bring up some potential objections and respond to them. The major objection I've heard, which is an objection, is that it can sometimes be easier to get a new town meeting member to run for a one- or two-year term. The second objection is that they're, somebody might run and not know how many years they'll be serving because they might only want to run for one year but get the high vote. And I just wanted to say that I think that these are legitimate objections, but I just think they're outweighed by the fact that we're decreasing games and chip, where it's more democratic, it's less confusing and so forth. And I think that once you get into a system where you have say five or six votes on a ballot, it's going to be less difficult to drop out mid-year if it turns out that you can't serve the entire term. It just won't feel as significant that someone has to be recruited for that special slot. So that's it, I hope you vote favorably on this action. Thank you, Ms. Seuss. Thank you, Mr. O'Connor. Diane Mahon. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. I'd like to move to terminate debate on this matter and any items related there too. Okay, Ms. Mahon's motion to terminate debate has been seconded by Mr. Foskett. Okay, once we see the voting screen, so precincts one through seven, go ahead over to the voting portal, to terminate debate on article 12, press one for yes, two for no, precincts seven through 14, go ahead on over now, and then a minute, 15 through 21, head over to the voting portal. Then please choose one for yes, to terminate debate, two for no to continue debating the issue, and then hit cast your vote. If you're having an issue, please use the raised hand feature on Zoom. And if you can't get a vote in at all, please contact Ms. Brazil, 781-316-3071. And Ms. Broder has a point of order. Leah Broder. Precinct one. Is there a way when there's a motion to terminate debate that you could tell us how many people are in the queue waiting to speak? I get the sense that my screen is not showing. Whatever the screen that's on the Zoom screen is showing all the people who are on the queue to speak. So everybody who's there is on that queue in alphabetical order by first name. So you see the speaking list, that's everyone who's there. And then as soon as the move to terminate debate comes up, we lose that. Yes, because we've opened a voting screen. I don't know what would happen if the terminating debate lost, if it would come back to the same speaker list or not. We haven't encountered that eventuality yet. If it does, we'll find out. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Okay, thank you, Ms. Broder. Okay, I'm now voting on termination debate of Article 12. 228 members have cast a vote. 16 are outstanding. Okay, nine are outstanding. Jane Morgan, Mark McCabe, Sue Stamps, James O'Connor, and Peter Thompson. I'll have to vote on the termination of the debate. I'm gonna give you guys 15 seconds and times up. Let's close voting. Debate is terminated, 81%, 192 in the affirmative, 45 in the negative, debate is terminated. Okay, as soon as we go through the screens, okay. So let's take a vote on the main motion of Article 12. It's printed in the select board's report to rearrange voting in the manner explained to us by Ms. Seuss in her video. So we're gonna enable voting. When we see the voting grids, please one, two, seven, go on over to the voting portal. Refresh if you have to, eight to 15, go ahead on over. And then 16 through 21, click one for yes. If you want to rearrange the voting patterns, two, no, if you wanna keep things the way they are, and then click cast your vote. If you're having an issue of voting, please use the raise hand feature or call Ms. Brazil. And to answer the former speaker's question on her point of order, the voting list would have come back in the same order that it was prior to the motion to terminate. So it would have come right back the way it was. So go ahead and cast your vote at this point on the article itself. If you want to do it, please vote one for yes. If you don't, two for no, and then cast your vote. I have six people haven't voted. Okay, Janice Morgan and John Gersh, your outstanding votes. They're just taking one second to manually enter in two votes that were phoned in. And as soon as they're ready, we'll close voting. Okay, it looks like we're all set. That's close voting. The article passes by 88%. We have 213 in the affirmative, 29 in the negative. It's a vote, and I so declare that we'll close article 12 and bring us to article 13. As soon as we go through the screens, we'll go to article 13. The article 13, Home Rule Legislation, Ranked Choice Voting. Mr. Herd, when you're ready. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. John Herd, Select Board Chair. Article 13 is in regards to Ranked Choice Voting, just a point of clarification. The Select Board originally voted for positive action by a vote of five to zero on this at the request of the Election Modernization Committee. The Select Board revisited this article last Monday and entered a vote of no action, five to zero on this article. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Thank you very much. Mr. O'Connor, James O'Connor. James O'Connor, Chair of the Election Modernization Committee from precinct 19. Our committee revisited this article and voted shortly before town meeting to withdraw the article from consideration and made the same request to the Select Board. We feel that there needs to be more time to educate the community, study the issue, refine our actual language of the Home Rule Petition. And so therefore we ask for a vote of no action. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. O'Connor. To let the town meeting members know, I've personally spoken with Mr. Paul Schlickman and Mr. Adam Foster, both of which had pending motions to amend. They have both withdrawn those amendments as a result of the Select Board and the Election Modernization Committee. Second. Thank you, Mr. Foskett. Now, Mr. Timor Yontar has a point of order. Mr. Yontar. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Timor Kanya Yontar, precinct seven. I'm also looking at the members email list page on the town website and neither the revised report of the Election Modernization Committee nor a revised vote from the Select Board was posted to members. I believe this is poor procedure. Well, we're just kidding. I was informed of this the other day. They didn't give us a written, neither committee or the Select Board submitted a written modification, but because they were just doing it, changing their votes to no action, perhaps they felt it was not necessary. And I think it was as a result of the great choice voting losing at the state level. I will take up your point of order with them, but at this point in time, we have nothing before us because everything has been changed to no action. So there's really frankly nothing to discuss under this article. Do you have anything further, Mr. Yontar? Just to say that because both the committee and the Select Board did not post their notifications to town meeting, I don't think we should be voting on this tonight. I think that we should table it and bring it up on a subsequent night when we can have a report in front of us that says no action and then we can let it go by. I'm being pedantic. I understand that. Oh, okay. I thought you were making a motion to table. I was worried because we have a no action votes in front of us. All I'm saying is follow the rules. Yes, sir. I'll bring that up with the Chairman of the Select Board and with the Lecture Modernization Committee. I'll bring your point to them. Thank you. Anything else? We actually have two votes of no action. So there's really nothing to discuss here. And unless you're confused on voting of no action, I'm not sure what Mr. O'Connor or Ms. Pararon have to bring a point of order on. So we'll have Ms. Pararon first. I know I'm not saying that right. Penarion. Am I unmuted? Yeah, it's Kristen Penaron. I'm sorry, Kristen Penaron from Precinct 20. I am new to town meetings. So my point of order is indeed a question about process, specifically the way that the online warrant is functioning in regard to the Select Board's changed recommendation. When I click on the online warrant now, I still see five zero vote by the Select Board. I don't see any reference to the changed recommendation to vote no action. Is that to be expected or is that just a online process? From my experience when the Select Board meets after their report is issued, they do not always issue a new report if they have changed their vote to no action. They just announced it at town meeting. Okay, that does make sense to me again. I am new to town meeting and I appreciate the clarification. I find the electronic materials extremely useful. And whenever they are updated, I always do this. So thank you very much. Thank you. Okay. So Mr. O'Connor, do you really have a good point of order or is your name just left over there? I do have a point of order, Mr. Moderator. And that is on November 12th, the election modernization committee met. There's an agenda that was posted several days prior as per the open meeting law. And it did state that we were going to revisit our vote on article 13, because we haven't met since that meeting, we haven't been able to post minutes of that meeting. And we intended to bring this matter before town meeting when it came up on the agenda because of the limited number of days in between. Thank you very good. Thank you, sir. Okay, we have no motions or motions before us, so we actually have nothing to speak. So we're just gonna go right to a vote. So it's a vote of no action. Okay, so town meeting members, please navigate over to the voting portal, stagger yourselves getting over there. And then it's a vote of no action. So if you wanna take no action on article 13, please press one for yes. If you do not wanna take no action, press two for no. And then click cast your vote. If you're having an issue voting, please use the raised in feature or call Miss Brazil 781-316-3071. So one for yes, no action, two for no, and cast your vote. We have 22 members who have not voted yet. So if you'll please go ahead and vote. Mr. Moderator. Yes. Ms. Weber is raising her hand. Okay, let's get Janice up. Ms. Weber, hi Janice, you can speak. Second, it doesn't say no action on the screen. So it looks like you're voting for the article. Well, no, we're voting on no action because all the, I know that Janice, we can't go back and change everything on the fly, but I've announced it's a no action vote. Okay, I just wanted to make sure my screen wasn't messed up. Yeah, it's not, yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, so eight members who have not voted yet, please vote one for yes for no action, two for, I guess you don't wanna not take no action. And then hit cast your vote. Curtis Connor, Dean Carman, Samantha Dutra, Lisa Blankin, Spore, Michael Brown, Peter Thompson, Nada El Nua, we have not voted. Okay, we're just finishing off doing a couple of the manual votes. As soon as I get the all clear, we're gonna close voting. Mr. Moderator, Timor has his hand raised. Okay, actually Stephen Liggett has a point of order. That's what I was calling about. Okay, Mr. Liggett. Thank you, Mr. Moderator, Steve Liggett, precinct nine. I'm puzzled. I don't recall ever voting for no action before. We always vote no action. And we don't actually cast a vote though. We do it at town meeting. We usually do it verbally because no actually have, we have to vote and clear every single warrant article, even no action votes. So at town hall, we just have a verbal vote for no action because there's nothing else to do. So we're gonna, that's why it may seem like we never did it, but here we gotta go through the motions. Okay, thank you for clarifying. Thank you, Mr. Liggett. All right, let's close voting. And it's a no action vote by 98%, 222 in the affirmative, 14 in the negative. And that closes article 13 and brings us to article 14. Home rule legislation, senior water discount. We have the recommended vote of the water select board in their report that they want to have home rule legislation providing senior water discounts. Soon as we're done with the screens, Mr. Koroski will move us over. Then we're gonna take Nancy Bloom's point of order while we wait. What's your point of order, Ms. Bloom? Nancy Bloom, precinct 18, Mr. Moderator, I believe you said the numbers wrong in the previous counting. It was, I believe 14 were abstentions and five were no's. I think you said- Oh, I did, I got it. I'm sorry, Ms. Bloom, you're correct. Five no's, 14 abstentions, five no's. Thank you for correcting me. Thank you, 222, yes, five no's on number 13. And Alan Jones at a point of order. Go ahead, Adam. Mr. Jones. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Alan Jones, precinct 14. Is this an opportunity for you to remind town meeting members, I was speaking in article 14, to remind town meeting members of the by-law that says a town meeting member who speaks upon any matter in which the speaker or their immediate family has a direct financial interest shall first disclose such interest to the meeting. I think there are a few of us are over 65. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Very good point, Mr. Jones. Thank you very much. Okay, we're on article 14. Mr. Herd, you speak to this? Thank you, Mr. Moderator. This is an article inserted by the Select Board to file a rule legislation to extend the availability of water discounts to a broader set of island seniors. The Select Board voted in favor of positive action, five to zero. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Thank you very much. Mr. Deist, John, you can unmute yourself. I am an elderly person and... But we don't know who you are. One Deist precinct 13. Thank you. And as everyone well knows, I am an elderly person. And it seems to me that it's inappropriate to make me a special person as opposed to those who really need relief financially. So I'd like to modify this article and take out the part about the elderly person. Elderly, elderly. Thank you very much. Okay, I guess you're making a motion. Oh, okay. Ms. Mahod, Diane Mahod. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. I'd like to move to terminate debate on this matter and any items related to it too. Okay, we have a motion to terminate debate. Mr. Moderator, Point of Order. Yes, sir. I'm unclear as to whether I was supposed to second what Mr. Deist said or not. Not sure. My understanding is that you have to submit an amendment in advance. Yeah, you do 48 hours. And I wasn't even sure what he was asking if to make a valid motion or not. So I don't think there was anything to... The second. Second. Okay. I second Ms. Mohan's... Termination. Yes. Okay. So the motion to terminate debate has been seconded. And we're going to go ahead and take a vote on that. I think we already heard Ms. Bloom, right? On her Point of Order. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. I'm all set. Okay. Thank you very much. If you guys are all set, you can use the lower hand feature and then that clears the decks for us. So we're going to enable voting on the motion to terminate debate on Article 14. If you wish to terminate debate, once we get the voting grids in front of us, go ahead, one through seven to pop over to the voting portal, eight through 15. Go ahead, pop over there. And 16 through 21. Refresh if you have to. You should get your voting screen. If you have an issue, please call Ms. Brazil, 7813163071 or use the raise hand feature in Zoom. One, yes to terminate debate. Two, no to continue debating the issue. And click cast your vote. 199 voting, 45 have not voted yet. 34, down to 17 voting. Too many to read. We'll give everybody another second then see how they're doing on the termination of debate. One for yes, two for no, cast your vote. Okay. Courtney Ulrich, Marion King, Samantha Dutra, PM Hallett, Lauren Boyle, Dave White, Danuta Forbes, PM Hallett, Lauren Boyle, Stacy Smith, and Laura Tracy have not voted. If you guys go ahead and vote, we're gonna give you 15 seconds. Five seconds left to vote if you haven't voted yet. And, okay, time's up. So that's close voting. It says 73%, 165 be affirmative, 61 in the negative. If it's a two-thirds vote and I sort of clear it, debate is terminated on article 14. That will bring us back to the recommended vote as soon as we get to the screens. Now we're gonna take a vote on the main article as printed in the select board support to authorize senior water discounts. And go ahead and one, two, seven, over to the voting portal, eight to 14, and 15 to 21. Go on over, quote, one, he has to authorize senior water discounts. Two, if you do not want to authorize those discounts. And then click cast your vote. If you have a voting issue, please use the raise hand feature and or call Ms. Brazil. 781-316-3071. I have to refresh my page, see how we're doing. Okay, 19 people have not voted yet on this article. If you could please do so now, verbal votes have been manually entered. If you have not voted yet, Amy Lim Miller, Dave White, Sue Stamps, Elaine Crowder, Lauren Boyle, Courtney Urik, Lynette Kalverhaus, PM Hallett, Samantha Dutra, John Ellis, Stacy Smith, Laura Tracy, Michael Brown. Please go ahead and vote. I'm gonna give you 15 seconds and let's close voting. The article carries by 96%. We have 217 in the affirmative, nine in the negative. It's a vote and I so declare it, that closes article 14, brings us to article 15. Go through the screens, article 15, is home rule legislation, retired police officer details. So as we finish with the screens, we'll bring Mr. Herd up so that Adam brings up the proper warrant article. Okay, Mr. Herd, who wishes to speak to the article? Yes, thank you, Ms. Moderator John Herd, select board chair. This is an article that's served by the select board to file a home rule legislation to allow the town manager to hire retired police officers in good standing to be special police officers for the purpose of performing details in any police duties associated with said detail work. The select board voted in favor of positive action, 5-0. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Thank you very much. Ms. Dre, Elizabeth Dre. Good evening, Mr. Moderator and fellow town meeting members, Elizabeth Dre, precinct eight. I'm speaking for encouraging a no vote on this article. Last March at the select board's initial hearing of this article, I spoke and asked the select board to add language to prevent an officer with a disciplinary record from benefiting from this bylaw. At that moment, they declined. This fall, I reached out again and working with town council attorney Heim and selection bureau and other community members that language was successfully added. And I sincerely appreciate the select board's willingness to revisit that, revisit the issue because residents are safer and the article is better as a result of that work. However, after continued discussion with an input from marginalized community members in Arlington and after more in-depth research, I decided that I could not ultimately vote to support this article tonight. And there's two reasons. The first is that there is no set or spelled out requirement that retired officers continue professional training on any subject, including de-escalation, anti-bias, mental health or trauma informed care or even weapons training. According to an email from chief Flaherty, these officers will not be subject to mass general law part one title, seven chapter 41 section 96B, which says, quote, every police officer on a full-time basis in any such municipal police department shall be assigned to and shall attend a prescribed course of study approved by the municipal police training committee for in-service officers training at such intervals and for such periods as said department may determine, which basically just means continuing education, continued professional training. And furthermore, filling this work need with retired police is a step in the wrong direction. If we pass this article, this article will increase the size of the police department at a time when the black community, both locally and nationwide is advocating for less policing, not more. So I would like to ultimately see the town explore shifting the responsibility of detailed work from the police department to civilian traffic flaggers as permitted by state law and as successfully accomplished in at least 27 other Massachusetts communities. If town meeting passes this bylaw tonight, it will put a huge obstacle in the path towards hiring civilian flaggers in the future. Future contract negotiations with the police unions will need to then remove this very lucrative job from retired officers. And that will add a substantial hurdle to moving this responsibility from the police department and into the hands of civilians where it belongs. In light of that, I respectfully ask my fellow town meeting members to vote no on this article tonight. Thank you for your consideration. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Thank you, Mr. Ray. Timor Yontar. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Timor Kayo Yontar, Precinct Seven. This article is a request made to town meeting. Although the town has reached a collective bargaining agreement with the superior officer's police union about using retired police for details and must bring this to town meeting for consideration, we are not bound by that. We are free to vote this up or down. Now, I realize that the question is about retired police being used for details, not about non-police flag men. But this article is proposed because there is a need for additional personnel for details beyond active police officers, which means that if the article is not approved, the town will need to find additional personnel elsewhere. So through the moderator, I have a few questions that perhaps town staff could answer. Very good. Is it legal to employ non-police flag men for traffic and construction details in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts? Turni, hi. Turni, here you go. Doug Heim, town council. Yes, it is legal to employ civilians for a similar role. I'd leave it to the manager or the deputy town manager, the police chief to go into further depth on that if you need to, but it is legal, yes. Thank you. A second. Does the town of Arlington employ non-police flag men for traffic and construction details? Chief Flaherty. Mr. Moderator, I'm sorry. I think that's a better question for the town manager. Oh, okay. Go ahead from chief, the town manager. Thank you, Mr. Heim. Adam Chaplain, town manager. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. No, currently the town does not employ civilian fliers for traffic construction details. Okay, thank you. Number three, please. If you can tell me how much does the town spend annually on traffic and construction details and what part of the budget does that fall under? Chaplain. There is no, excuse me, Adam Chaplain, town manager. There is no operating budget expenditure related to the work on construction or traffic details. Most of this work is paid for by private parties, the utilities or real estate developers who may need a detail to keep the site safe. When the town is doing road work that requires a construction detail, it is paid for out of that capital budget. It's always budgeted as part of the project and is paid for out of that capital budget. When the town bills an outside entity, again, such as the utility, we charge a 10% overhead rate for the administrative oversight or overhead that goes in to managing the detail system. Okay, thanks. Just a couple more questions here. Is there a difference in the hourly rate between employing non-police flag men and police details? Mr. Chaplain. Adam Chaplain, town manager. So under, I believe it was in 2008, there was reforms made at the state level to further allow civilian flaggers. And under that reform, civilian flaggers were required to be paid prevailing wage. Currently, I believe prevailing wage for civilian flagger in Massachusetts is $46.88 per hour. Currently in Arlington, an officer working a traffic detail is paid $51.58 per hour. Okay, so that's about a 10% difference. Thank you. Again, through the moderator, but probably for the town manager, why does the town not employ non-police flag men? Mr. Chaplain. Adam Chaplain, town manager. I'll answer to some degree, but I would also ask if Chief Flaherty could further speak to this particular question. I would say first and foremost, it's long been the position of both Chief Ryan and I know Chief Flaherty that having officers in the field working traffic details can serve as a force multiplier and enhance the ability of the department to be responsive to crisis or calls. I can't cite the exact examples, but I know the Chief likely can where officers working traffic details have been the first on-site to apprehend felons or save people from life-threatening situations. Arlington is comparably lower staffed in terms of its police department on a per capita basis than most of our comparable communities. So having this force multiplier in the field has always been deemed helpful. Additionally, and this gets into a longer conversation, it's been longstanding practice in Arlington and really across the entirety of the Commonwealth to have police officers work traffic and construction details. That work that they perform in doing those details in some cases makes up close to 30% of an officer's take-home compensation on a year-over-year basis. Eliminating that and thereby reducing officers' pay by that much would obviously have to be part of a very serious collective bargaining negotiation and would likely require significant concessions on the part of the town in terms of their base compensation. So it becomes a very complicated matter to try to address to move to civilian flaggers. I'd like to ask Chief Flaherty to speak to this with more clarity than I can, but I also know that the civilian flaggers are not allowed on all jobs. I might have this backwards, I believe they're allowed on state road jobs, but not other private details. But I think the Chief could speak with more specificity on that point. Well, I'm gonna see if Mr. T. Moore, Yontar needs additional, because he's budding up against the time, so thank you. And yeah, I just wanna mention that it's a means for police to supplement their salaries. If the town were to save money on details blazing flagmen, they could use the savings to increase salaries. So thank you for the answers. I would like to conclude by saying I don't see the need for this article. And I am not a supporter of defunding the police, but I would say also that if there's a need for additional personnel, there are other available means and they're cheaper, I will be voting no. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Thank you. Christian Klein. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Christian Klein, precinct 10. I would ask if you could ask to have some clarification to sections two and the last line of section five. These are either acceptances or direct exemptions from specific Massachusetts laws. And I think clarification in those regards would be helpful. Thank you. Mr. Heim, can you clarify section two and section five for Mr. Klein? Thank you, Mr. Moderator, Doug Heim, town council. So section two references a whole slew of laws that are primarily oriented around around not affording any special officers the same rights that full-time officers have. So for example, chapter 31 is basically the civil service law. These retired officers wouldn't be entitled to protections under the civil service law that full-time officers would. Sections 85H and 85H and a half of chapter 32 are basically references to disability retirement for police and fire, which again, these are already retired officers. Section 99A, 100 and 111F, all those things are references to indemnification for officers, what we call line of duty leave without a leave with pay for, it's basically a version of workers comp for police officers. And then chapter 150E is basically the labor provisions that provide for collective bargain. So most of these things are references to, in section two, a references to things that full-time officers, both in Arlington and other municipalities have available to them. But because these would be retired police officers, they wouldn't be available to these officers, especially since they serve at the pleasure of the manager and the police chief can be terminated or not renewed with or without cause. Section five speaks a little bit to what I believe Ms. Dre was talking about before. That's section 96B of chapter 41 of the general laws. These are basically training requirements. And I believe these were referenced in the materials provided by FINCOM. It doesn't apply to police officers, to detail officers, because they're not considered reserve officers or full-time officers under the statute. That means that they're not required to have all the same training as a full-time officer for good or for ill. And I hope that answers Mr. Klein's questions to your satisfaction. Mr. Klein. It does. Thank you very much, Mr. Heim. This is very interesting kind of information. This is the kind of information that comes out when we're able to ask questions to the articles. There has been a spate of articles this evening where debate has been closed on either the first or second speaker. This is not something I recall happening when we were meeting in person. And I would strongly encourage that although we are in a rush to get this done and we do want to see an end to town meeting, that the posing of questions and the open discussion of articles is a key aspect of town meeting in the town of Arlington and that we not take that for granted and we not prematurely end discussion on articles before us. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Thank you, Mr. Klein. Sanjay Newton. Good evening, Mr. Moderator. Sanjay Newton, precinct 10. First, I wanted to just really support what Mr. Klein previously just mentioned about not terminating debate too early. I think it's really important to have these discussions. This evening, I rise metaphorically, I suppose, to urge a no vote on article 15. Ms. Dre has made excellent points about continued training and the size of police force. And I support those rationals, especially as Mr. Chapter Lane refers to detail officers as a force multiplier. But I wish to speak this evening about a different part of this. As Mr. Chapter Lane also pointed out, these details are not paid for largely by taxpayers, but we should keep in mind that many details are for utility work, which we do pay for as utility customers. Other states and even some other Massachusetts communities manage to do very well with non-police flaggers. And I would much rather see Arlington moving in that direction. Again, I urge a no vote and hope we bring none police flaggers to Arlington. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Mr. Newton. Bob Jefferson, Robert Jefferson. Bob Jefferson, precinct 12. Yes, Mr. Jefferson. Again, I'm in support of this article. A lot of what the manager said in regards to public safety, I think are valid points. We currently quite often unfilled details because the process now is that if they can't get an Arlington police officer, they need to get officers from other communities. As a lifelong resident of the town, I would much rather see police officers out on the street, more public safety out there in the event that there is a situation from someone who worked with those officers and worked on the street for 37 years. Quite often those police officers can help out on situations. And again, I think the police chief could answer it much better than I, but I know of situations where detailed officers were instrumental in assisting other officers or assisting in medical issues. And right now, if they wanna talk about changing something, that's not what this article is. And when the initial speaker, Mr. A, spoke about marginalized communities and reducing the size of police forces, that's not what this article is. That's a debate for another day, which I completely disagree with. So I would ask that you support this article. That's all. Thank you, Mr. Jefferson. Gordon Jamison. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Gordon Jamison, precinct 12. I have several questions on this article. Could we have a better idea of what the need is and the number of hours that our officers are doing additional service beyond their 40 hours a week or 37 and a half per officer? Chief Flaherty, can you answer that? Please. Louder, please, Ms. Flaherty. Chief Flaherty. I can't hear you, Ms. Flaherty. Yeah, we can't hear you, chief. She has a poor connection. Maybe Mr. Pooler can help us. Mr. Moderator, this is Adam Chaplin. I can take a shot at this, if that's okay with you. Okay, let's... Yeah. If we can get the chief back, he can certainly cite hours, on average hours worked. I do think a valuable data point that will partially answer your question though, Mr. Jamison, is that the details regularly go unfilled in town right now, and we often rely on police officers from other jurisdictions to have to come to town. Thank you. Okay. We're burning my time here while we're... Sorry, Mr. Chaplin. It's okay. Thank you. Is this part of the collecting bargaining agreement? Does it have to be passed or not? Yes or no? Adam Chaplin, town manager, our commitment was to bring it forward to town meeting. Okay, thank you. So I still have more questions, so I'm gonna keep going. So I hope the police chief will take this and get the intent that it's meant. So when I go by the details in town, my recollection is they're spending more time looking at the work being done and looking at their cell phones than they are at the traffic. Granted, traffic is not always busy in some of the places where they're deployed, but I would be happier if whoever is paying for this, if they were actually paying attention to traffic. I pass through Lexington regularly. They do use traffic flaggers. They have special uniforms with traffic on them. They tend to be older men and women who do that and they do a wonderful job and they're very attentive. That's the end of that part of my thought. I'm looking at the details here. No one after the age of 65 can do this. I do have a question about the second paragraph in section one. Am I correct that someone could terminate from Arlington Police Department employee, go work for another department and then come back and do this in town? I would not be in favor of that. Is that a correct interpretation of that paragraph? Second paragraph, section one, perhaps. Mr. Heim? Yes. I'm trying to make sure I understand that Doug Heim's town council. I'm trying to make sure I understand the second sentence Mr. Heim of the second paragraph in section one. So what that Doug Heim's town council, that sentence has two clauses. They have to have been a regular police officer in the town of Arlington, voluntarily retired under the provisions. So they have to serve as an Arlington police officer and they have to retire. Whether or not their retirement would allow them to go work in another jurisdiction, that would be hard for me to answer on the fly. Probably there are probably some circumstances where that could be theoretically possible, probably fairly unlikely. Okay, thank you, Mr. Heim. Moving on to the next page. I'm a previous speaker spoke to the lack of training. If we perhaps the town manager, if we don't have the chief handy could talk to the training required for these versus regular officers. Cause it looks like there is a lot of training and stuff required, maybe done as much as the previous speaker might like, but there is some training. Can we speak to that? Section five, maybe Mr. Chapter Lane since we don't have the chief. Well, the chief is chief Larrity got her microphone working yet. Mr. Moderator, can you hear me now? Yes, ma'am. Much better chief, thank you very much. Thank you very much. I can start from the beginning to answer some of the questions that went unanswered if that's okay. Quickly chief Larrity, my time is burning. Okay, so I'll start with the questions that you just asked. We would require special police officers to attend training, they are first responders so they would be required to attend first responder training annually at their own expense as well as CPR annually at their own expense and firearms training. As I responded to Ms. Gray earlier in an email today we would require them to attend any trainings that we deem necessary as part of their duties as a special police officer and they'd be subject to the same rules, regulations, policies and procedures of that of an active member. Whether they're not subject to attend an annual in-service training they would still be required to attend trainings that I or the town manager mandated. Thank you, thank you chief. Did you have an average hours per officer for active employees? So that varies per officer per week but I would say right now we're averaging about 20 details being called in a day and we're probably filling 75% of them. Okay, does this count towards their retirement? As far as hours? Yes, does this enhance their retirement or is this separate from retirement wages? It's completely separate from retirement wages. Okay, I'm still learning more on this article thank you very much, Mr. Moderator. Thank you, Mr. Jamison. Mustafa Gveriglou. This Mustafa Gveriglou precinct 10. And I think one of the things I heard, I think twice now is that we have unfilled details. And I'd like to ask why we're not using civilians to fill those details at this time. Chief Flaherty or Adam Chaplain, one or the other? Chief. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Julie Flaherty, Chief of Police. The code of Massachusetts regulations provides that civilian flaggers can only work on public state and municipal jobs. So there's no provision for private work at this time with civilian flaggers. They're not used usually because there's not that much of a cost savings. And as Mr. Chaplain had stated, Massachusetts is a prevailing wage state and in most cases, flaggers are being paid close to what police officers are making. I think it was $46 an hour versus approximately $51 an hour. And additionally, their ability to mitigate traffic is limited as compared to a police officer. Well, I guess I would take the 10% savings for anything that is coming out of our pocket directly or indirectly in the form of higher utility costs or other costs. So I do think that 10% will add up over time. And as someone that's lived in the other parts of the US and has traveled around quite a bit, bluntly I've seen a better and more attentive job with civilian flaggers than unfortunately I have with, and I won't say particularly Arlington or anywhere else, but in Massachusetts, it was kind of a shock to see the level of attention at traffic details compared to other places. And I would rather we save our 10% or save our money. And if we have to give police officers a raise to make up costs or make a more competitive wage package, that's fine, but rather spend the money for the purpose that we want to spend it for and not indirectly sort of spread these costs out in a more opaque way. And then my experience has been that we can certainly get good quality traffic control with civilian flaggers whose one purpose is to control traffic. And I would vote, I guess against this article. Thank you. It's 11 o'clock, Mr. Thayer, oh, he went away. I was gonna ask Mr. Thayer. Move to adjourn the meeting. No, okay, here we go. We have a motion to adjourn the meeting till the 30th. Mr. Brazil, do you want to second that? Julie Brazil, precinct 12 second. Okay, so I have motion to terminate, the motion to adjourn until Monday the 30th. It's been seconded. Do we have any notices for reconsideration? The speakers list will be preserved until next week and it'll come back up in the same order that it is. So it's gonna be preserved. So Ms. Barron has a point of order and if anyone else has a motion for reconsideration on any of the articles for tonight, please raise a point of order now. Ms. Barron, Ms. Barron, did you have a point of order? There we go. Sherry Barron, precinct seven, I was just gonna move to adjourn. Very good. Already done. Yep, so you can use your lower hand feature. I don't have one. Oh, it is, it's there. I know it is. Okay, so hearing no points of motions for reconsider, notice of reconsideration, we're gonna close down the meeting for tonight. Everyone have a good Thanksgiving. We will see you a week from tonight. We did pretty good tonight. We got to a bunch of articles, but we're still got about 10 articles to go. So we probably have two more nights at this rate. So thank you all very much and we'll see you next Monday. Thank you.