 Good evening. We're calling to meet to order the Arlington Select Board meeting for July 29th, 2020 or June 29th rather than ahead of myself. As a preliminary matter, this is John Hurd, Select Board Chair, permit me to confirm that all members and persons anticipated on the agenda are present and can hear me. Members, when I call your name, please respond in the affirmative. Joe Curle? Yes. Steve DeCorsi? Yes. Diane Mahan? Yes. Len Deggins? Yes. Staff, when I call your name, please respond in the affirmative. Adam Chapter Lane? Yes. Douglas Hyme? Yes. Any Board Administrator Ashley Barra is participating remotely. Good evening. This open meeting of the Arlington Select Board is being conducted remotely consistent with Governor Baker's executive order of March 12th, 2020, due to the current state of emergency in the Commonwealth, giving the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. In order to mitigate the transmission of the virus and reduce risk of COVID-19 illness, we have been advised and directed by the Commonwealth to suspend public gatherings and, as such, the Governor's order suspends the requirement of the open meeting law to have all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location. Further, all members of public bodies are allowed and encouraged to participate remotely. The order, which you can find posted with agenda materials for this meeting, allows public bodies to meet entirely remotely so long as reasonable public access is afforded so that the public can follow along with the deliberations of the meeting. Ensuring public access does not ensure public participation unless such participation is required by law. This meeting will feature public comments. Even if members of the public do not provide comment, participants are advised that people may be listening who do not provide comment and those persons are not required to identify themselves. For this meeting, the Select Board is convening via Zoom as posted on the town's website, identifying how the public may join. Please note that this meeting is being recorded and that some attendees are participating by video conference. Accordingly, please be aware that other folks may be able to see you and take care not to screen share your computer. Anything that you broadcast may be captured by the recording. Please also take care to adjust your screen or device name if you would like to speak in order for us to recognize speakers appropriately and develop accurate minutes. It is helpful for participants to see your full first and last name when calling upon you rather than a nickname. All meeting, all the materials for this meeting, except any executive session materials are available on the Novus Agenda dashboard. And we recommend the members of the public follow the agenda as posted on Novus unless the chair notes otherwise. We are now turning to the first item on the agenda. Before we do so, permit me to cover some ground rules for effective and clear conduct of our business and to ensure accurate meeting minutes. I will introduce each speaker on the agenda. After they conclude their remarks, the chair will go down the line of members, inviting each by name to provide any comment, question, or motion. Please hold off until your name is called further. Please remember to mute your phone or computer when you are not speaking. Please remember to speak clearly and in a way that helps generate accurate minutes. For any reason, for any response, please wait until the chair yields the floor to you and state your name before speaking. If members wish to engage in colloquially with other members, please do so through the chair taking care to identify yourself. This meeting will feature opportunities for the public on certain agenda items. For comments on items after members have spoke, I as chair will afford public comment. Opportunities as follows, I will first ask any members who wish to speak to identify their names and addresses only. Once the chair has a list of all the public commentators, I will call on each by name in a four, three minutes for any comments. Please keep in mind that all participants and members of the public must be recognized by the chair before speaking. Finally, each vote taken tonight will be conducted by roll call votes. All right, lost agenda. All right, so the second item on the agenda is meeting of minutes June 1st, 2020, June 8th, 2020, June 15th, 2020. I'll first call to see if there is a motion. I guess I would so move the consent agenda, but are you just going to do the minutes separately? Oh, sorry, skipped over. All right, so the next item on agenda is the consent agenda, which includes the meeting of minutes. The meeting of minutes June 1st, 2020, June 8th, 2020, June 15th, 2020. Then we have reappointments commissioned on disabilities, Liza Molina, Community Preservation Act Committee, Eric Helmuth, Clarissa Rowe, Conservation Commission, Susan Chatnick, Katherine Garnett, Pamela Haydell, Human Resources Board, Cynthia Gallagher, Julie McKenzie, Library Board of Trustees, Katherine Finley, Redevelopment Board, Rachel Zembry. Then we have reappointments and water registrars, William Logan and John L. Warden III. Then we have a request for a contract or drain layer license, New England Style, Inc., 244 Howard Street, North Barrow, Massachusetts. With that, I'll take a motion on the consent agenda. Mr. Chairman, if I could move approval on the consent agenda. All right, so we have a motion by Ms. Bihang. Second. With a second by Mr. Curl. Mr. Ducou, I see any comments on the consent agenda. No comment. Mr. Diggins, any comments on the consent agenda? No comments, thank you. All right, so on a motion by Ms. Bihang, seconded by Mr. Curl. I'll turn to the Town Council for roll call vote. Thank you, Chairman Hurd. Sorry, Ms. Mahan. Yes. Mr. Curl. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Bihorsi. Yes. Mr. Hurd. Yes. All right, and that closes the consent agenda. So we now have a public hearing. This is for two thirds, a minimum of two thirds of the members of Edmund Road for a request for a private road repair. And it looks like we have Christine Aquilino. Mr. Town Manager, Ms. Aquilino present. Yep, I just promoted her to panelist. All right, there she is. Hi, Ms. Aquilino, can you hear us? I think you need to unmute yourself on your end, if you can. You know what, she had two identities in the attendees, so I'm promoting both. Maybe it made them unmute. Here we go. Yep, we can hear you now. Good. Hi, so if you want to just identify yourself and tell us a little bit about why you came forward today. So for almost 20 years, I've been trying to get the road repaired. And this was the first time I got everyone to agree. So, and now we learn actually that there might be some repairing of the gas lines, but nobody wants to postpone it because there's deep holes in the street, there's a lot of foot traffic. I have fallen, my husband's fallen, kids use the road for going down towards school, towards the junior high and towards the park, which is the rec center, I'm just up the street from the rec center and from Great Expectations, is that what's called? Yeah, Great Expectations Preschool. So anyway, we really need this road repaired. So everyone's agreed, there's no conflict. I got all nine people to agree. Okay. All right, thank you. I will now turn to the board for any questions or comments. I'll start with Ms. Mahan. No comments and after you do a poll by the board, since it is public hearing, I don't know if there's any other members of the public to speak. We'll do, yep. Mr. DeCorsi. We've got a letter. Everyone knows about this meeting tonight. Sure, yep. Mr. DeCorsi, any comments or questions? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Now I support the Betterment Order. Actually, I'll move approval of the Betterment Order as contained in our agenda. The only comment I have is that we have in the order an interest rate not to exceed 5%. And I know right now the prevailing rate is well less than that. So I'm hoping maybe we can work, I don't know if it's something that's done through the manager's office or through DPW in terms of determining what that rate is on the assessment. But to the extent we can make it as reasonable as possible, I think it would be great. Thank you. Tom Andrew, do you have an answer to that or town council? Town council can correct me, but I think it's statutory, but we could verify that. Okay. Thank you. All right, Mr. Carl, any comments or questions? No, I know it's difficult to organize these. So thank you for bringing your forward and congratulations, assuming the vote goes through. I'll second the motion though, unless it's been seconded already. Thank you. And Mr. Diggins, do you have any comments or questions? No comments, questions, I'm fine with it. Thank you. And I also will support this. So on a motion by Mr. DeCorsi, seconded by Mr. Curl. Sorry, this is a public hearing. So at this time, we'll invite anybody from the public to use the raise hands function on your Zoom application. And if any hands are raised, then the town manager will let us know. Do we have any raised hands? Right now, there's no raised hands. So we'll give it a few more seconds. So with that, on a motion to approve by Mr. DeCorsi, seconded by Mr. Curl, turn to the council for roll call vote. Ms. Mahan? Yes. Mr. DeCorsi? Yes. Mr. Diggins? Yes. Mr. Piero? Yes. Mr. Hurd? Yes. It's unanimous vote. Thank you. Yay. Thank you, Ms. Aquilino. Thank you. Okay. All right. And that brings us to number seven on our agenda under appointments. So this is an appointment to the grants committee of the Arlington Commission for Arts and Culture, formerly known as the Arlington Cultural Council, for Nicholas Castellana, term to expire June 30th, 2023. Is Mr. Castellana with us? Hello. Hi, how are you, Mr. Castellana? Good, how are you? So if you can just tell us a little bit about yourself and why you decided to join the grants committee for the Arlington Commission for Arts and Culture. Yeah, my name is Nicholas Castellano, originally from Los Angeles, moved here with my girlfriend who's going to school. Been a classical musician for most of my life, kind of transitioning into arts administration and management and very interested in the process of giving back to the community through grants and thought this would be a great opportunity to get involved in the community. Great. Well, we appreciate your willingness to serve. That sounds good. Have a lot on your plate, but we're glad you stepped up. So I will turn to the board for any questions or comments. Mr. Diggins. Happy to have you. Thanks. Yeah. Mr. Carl? Yeah, your resume is very impressive. Thank you for contributing your talents to the town. I mean, as you no doubt know, the grants committee has a small amount of state funding to dole out, but they really effectively use it to support a lot of great projects and people are going to really be thirsting for that once things start opening up again. So thank you. Yep. And Mr. Diggins. Yeah, I just want to echo Mr. Caro's comments. Thank you for stepping up, Mr. Castellano. And you do indeed have an impressive resume. And we all really appreciate you agreeing to do this. Thank you. Ms. Mahan. You're really thrilled that we actually have another untapped talent that we've thankfully found in Arlington. I'm not sure if anyone's made a motion to approve. Not yet. I definitely would like to make a motion to approve Mr. Castellano's appointment and express my gratitude with my colleagues for you stepping up to the plate. Thank you. An enthusiastic second for me. I heard two. I'll give that to Len. Give it to Len. Oh, sorry about that, Joe. Thanks. All right. I was enthusiastic at least. All right. So an emotion by Ms. Mahan, seconded by Mr. Diggins to approve with Nicholas Castellano's appointment to the Grants Committee for the Islanding Commission of Arts and Culture. I'll turn to the town council. Ms. Mahan. Yes. Of course. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Curilow. Yes. Mr. Hurray. Yes. All right. And that's a unanimous vote. Thank you, Mr. Castellano. Thank you. All right. So number eight on our appointments is an appointment to the Minuteman's School Committee representative for Arlington. And we have a Michael Ruderman term to expire June 30th, 2023. Is Mike with us? All right. Mr. Ruderman, how are you? Good evening, Mr. Chairman, and members of the board. It's a pleasure to appear before you tonight. And a well thought out background. Thank you. I thought it was appropriate. Yeah. So we all know you, of course. But if you could just tell us a little bit about yourself and why you decided to step up for this appointment. I'm applying for the position of school committee member to the Minuteman Regional Tech High School Committee from Arlington. I'm passionate about Minuteman's mission. I've really seen how successful their approach to education can be. Not just with my own daughter, who's a class of 2016 graduate, but the kids of many families. The way Minuteman delivers high school education experientially, putting into practice, things learned immediately. This is the approach. For some kids, it just turns on the lights and makes everything possible. And I've seen some great successes that way. And because I believe in the mission so much, I'd like to do what I can to continue to be a Minuteman spokesman. And I help with the administration to do what I can to promote its future and its success. Great. Thank you for stepping up to serve. I will turn to the board. So Ms. Mahan, for any questions or comments? First, I'd like to make a motion to approve Mr. Ruderman as our representative to the Minuteman School Committee. I agree with Mr. Ruderman with Michael that Minuteman certainly has had many chapters, but this is a real exciting one. Its best positive is probably a negative in that we lost a few communities, but the communities we do have, there is a wait list. And the school was built to a certain capacity, and we won't get into past history in terms of why there was perhaps a larger capacity. We have what we have. So I'm thrilled that one of the concerns that a lot of people had was that seats would be empty and perhaps the school was overbuilt. It wasn't. Our success is also something I'm a little contrived about that we do have a waiting list. But I know with Superintendent Booplin and hopefully if this is successful with Mr. Ruderman that we'll find a way to foray into that and solve that also. So thank you. I'd like to move approval. Thank you, Ms. Mahan. Mr. Crowell. Yeah, I'd like to second the motion and say thank you very much, Mr. Ruderman, for stepping up. I mean, as the chair said, we all know you. I think we've often we've worked together on some things and we've worked opposite sides of other things. The one thing I do know is every time I've been out at Minutemen for a milestone event, whether it's the ground break or the beam raising or the ribbon cutting on the new facility, you've always been out there to support the students. And I haven't gotten to know or what I know as a town meeting member for a time here who was a graduate of Minutemen. It's very impressive, young woman. I'm just so happy that you're willing to keep with the commitment to Minutemen to represent us. Having served four years on the school committee, I know that there are a lot of challenges in Minutemen as a special beast. So I think we're fortunate to have someone who understands the district and some of the different challenges that it does face and the role value that Minutemen education brings. So thank you very much. I was very happy to see your resume come through. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Degans. So at the top of your resume, you got a really great letter of recommendation from Mr. Carmen. So he had a lot of good things to say about you and I support vocational tech also. And one of the sad things about not having town meeting as usual is that the Minutemen guys, students weren't there to provide food, especially that chocolate cake. So welcome. Well, thank you. And so thank you. Thanks. The kids in the culinary shop get a real opportunity to shine when they bring a selection of their daily fare for us to purchase and feast on a town meeting. Yes, I like buying five of those cakes. They're really good. They're really good. All right, Mr. Degorsi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you, Mr. Ruderman, for putting your application in and want to acknowledge Sue Scheffler, who is your immediate predecessor, who served the school committee so well and Laura Maher set before her. And I want to thank you. It's great when you have someone who has a connection to the school. That wasn't always the case with some of our representatives over the years. And I think it really gives you an advantage because you know the school, your daughter's been through the school and you've been on the advisory board there and so involved. So looking forward to working with you as you go forward in this. Thanks, I appreciate that. The Minuteman folks have been very kind to keep on inviting me back to each of the milestones that Mr. Currow mentioned. And they want to keep me involved and I'd like to stay involved. All right. And thank you, Mr. Ruderman. I think you're the perfect candidate for this position. So we have a motion to approve by Ms. Mahan, seconded by Mr. Currow. You know, we'll turn to the town council. Ms. Mahan? Yes. Mr. DeCrusty? Yes. Mr. Diggins? Yes. Mr. Currow? Yes. Mr. Hurd? Yes. So you have a vote. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Ruderman. Thank you. All right. Now have agenda number, item number nine and our licenses and permits for approval are a sidewalk cafe license for the Monotomy Grill at 25 Massachusetts Avenue by William Lyons. Do we have Mr. Lyons here? I see somebody by the name of Bill Willie, who I'm going to guess. It's probably him. It's him, so I'm going to, taking the chance, but I'm going to promote him. All right. He should be with us if he wants to unmute himself. Will he be there? Yeah, we can hear you now. Okay. Sorry about that. Yeah, no, no problem. All right. So Billy, if you can just quickly talk a little bit about your application. Yeah, it was just to put the five cocktail tables in front of the restaurant. Billy, if you don't mind just, we all know you, of course, but if you could just state your name in your affiliation with the business. Sorry. Billy Lyons, I'm the managing partner of Monotomy Grill in Tavern. And we had applied for the five cocktail tables out front on Mass Ave. We filled out the application. I spoke to someone from the ADA last week asking me the measurements of the table. And that's where we're at, where they've worked out very well. I hope that I can get approval. All right, thank you. So with that, I'll turn to the board. Mr. DeCorsi for any comments or questions? Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm going to move approval and I just want to make a comment that Mr. Lyons, I'm happy to see that you're back open again. And I know you've been creative with your patio and on the side with the tables and hopefully this helps things out and gives you a little additional capacity. I hope so, but thank you very much. We have a long road to go. So all I can do is encourage everybody to check us out. All right, thank you. And Mr. Dickens. Happy to see the addition of some more capacity outdoors. Thanks. Ms. Mahan. I'll second Mr. DeCorsi's motion. I certainly encourage everyone who can visit all of our local businesses, but definitely Menotomy Grill where memories are made and continue to be made. And I know how difficult these times are right now for our local businesses just to barely break even. So I'm thankful that Mr. Lyons and Menotomy Grill is coming before us on this, but I also want to thank through Mr. Heard who was our liaison to the, I think it's the Economic Recovery Task Force. And if I said that wrong, I apologize. I know there's been some talk on one of the Allington, the original Allington list about what is the town and town manager and select board doing to help these businesses. And what we're doing is we have this economic recovery task force, Mr. Heard is our representative liaison to that and we're doing everything we can to really shave off a lot of time in terms of a permit process. Normally this could take anywhere from four to eight weeks and businesses that can get their plan together and get before us. We try to take them the very next week meeting and we will continue to do that. So I want to thank Mr. Heard as our representative on this task force that's really expediting these requests to hopefully have businesses, like I say, at least survive and thank you to Billy Lyons, I mean, with all sincerity. You've been a host to so many Allington related events, whether it's school reunions, whether it's small gatherings and hopefully this is one small part to keep you afloat and keep you going because you're a very valuable asset to the town. Thank you, Mr. Heard. Appreciate it. Thank you. All right, and Mr. Curl. Thank you. Thank you, Billy. I'm really happy to see you, Mr. Chair. I'm really happy that you're able to open up and expand the capacity as well. And I guess I understood that you had a discussion with the ADA folks, you've worked it all out. Addressing the comments that were in her memo. And I think Mr. Curl's asking you spoke with somebody from the ADA. Yes. And then we submitted the second questionnaire to Ashley Maher. I signed it up on last Friday. So I believe you've done everything we're supposed to do. Okay, great. Thank you. Look forward to seeing it. Thank you. See you up at operation. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Curl. And I too, I'm looking forward to seeing some more capacity there. I mean, my family spent a lot of time in anatomy. So we did get to go on the outside patio, but you do need a little more space there. So happy to support this. All right. So we have the motion by Mr. D'Corsi, seconded by Ms. Mahan. It's the town council. Ms. Mahan. Yes. Mr. D'Corsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Curl. Yes. Mr. Herrick. Yes. Mr. D'Corsi. Thank you. Okay. Thanks everybody. Thank you. Look forward to seeing it. Thank you. All right. So that now takes us to citizens open forum, except in unusual circumstances, any matter presented for consideration of the board shall neither be acted upon nor a decision made the night of the presentation in accordance with the policy under which the open forum was established. It should be noted that there's a three minute time limit to present a concern or request. So we will now open up to citizens to use the raise hand function to be listed in the open forum list. And we'll give you a few seconds to do so. Would you like me to read you the whole current list to Mr. Chair or? Yes. So we have in the order that they were raised, Carol Kowalski, Lynette Culverhouse, Don Seltzer, Jordan Weinstein, Elizabeth Dre, Laura Kiesel, and Aram Hallman, and also now Ben Ruddock. As you call on them, I'll bring them over to a panelist and go one by one. Sorry, can you give me the name of the gentleman after Laura Kiesel? Yeah, Aram, A-R-A-M, Yep. Hallman, H-O-L-L-M-A-N. And since I said Ben, Pam Hallett has also raised her hand. All right, so that is the extensive list of Citizens for Citizens Open Forum. So please be respectful of your other speakers and the remaining agenda items and keep to the three minutes as allowed. And we will start with Carol Kowalski. Okay, all right, she should be joining us. Hey, Carol, can you hear us? Hi, I'm Carol Kowalski, 182-Situate Street. I'm a 30-plus year resident and the former director of planning and community development for the town. I was very excited to learn of the presentation. The board will hear this evening for 1165-R Mass Ave. and I urge the board to support this proposal. I guided our community to complete its current master plan that town staff and town officials have been working hard to implement since 2015. It's very exciting to see that the vision that residents and board members have had going back over a decade for this segment of the Mill Brook could actually happen, including preserving the historic mill buildings, daylighting more of the Mill Brook, creating a type of housing that's hard to find in our town, including new apartments and subsidized affordable housing, all with a link to the bikeway. This is a very good project for Arlington and it's proposed by an owner who has longstanding commitments to Arlington as a volunteer and as the owner of a successful business that expanded here in Arlington this year. We're unlikely to see a proposal with this many benefits again in a very long time, given the few redevelopment opportunities left here in town. It's a great opportunity for us and I hope you will give it your support. Thank you. Thank you very much, Carl. All right. So next on Citizens of Open Forum, we have Lynette Culverhouse. Hi, Ms. Culverhouse, can you hear us? Can you just give us your name and address for the record? I think you're still on mute. Hi, Lynette Culverhouse, 24, Draper Av, lived in Arlington since 1984, newly elected town meaning member for Precinct 11. I just would like to say a few things about housing development in Arlington. It is clear that this is a hot ticket topic for many residents. We are a town that wants to encourage diversity, equity and inclusion, but our housing costs are narrowing down residency options for many people. Including those essential low income workers, people of color and people with disabilities. Until now, the way it seems to work in town is a developer proposes a plan, town leadership supports it or tweaks it and then a process to get residents to buy into the plan is launched. I think we need to do this in reverse and have a lot more conversation about how to move forward before any further development proposals are made. I would like to see residents have input on the type of housing we would like to develop in town before any future projects are proposed. This would be a much more democratic approach. As a new town meaning member, I plan to meet with residents in my Precinct to learn where they stand on housing issues and what really matters to them. I propose that town meaning members do that in each Precinct, collect all the information and then we tell the developers what we want rather than the other way around. So if people want 50% of units in any new development to be affordable, then that's what must happen. If people want those affordable units to be for people making less than 50% of average median and income, then that is what must happen. If people want only sustainable materials used in new construction, then the developer must comply. The people of Arlington should be deciding not the developers. Some people might say this is not the way things are done but I think that this pandemic is inviting us to a new normal. I guess I am suggesting we find a more democratic and inclusive way to invite residents into the process and therefore have more collaboration, harmony and buy-in for any future developments. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Kovos. All right, and now we have Don Seltzer. All right, Mr. Seltzer, if you could identify your name and address for the record. I think you're still on mute as well. There we go. Yep. Don Seltzer, Irving Street. About a month ago, I sent the board a letter regarding the long delayed sale of 1207 Massachusetts Avenue. Apparently it fell through the cracks of all that was going on that week with transitions, town meetings, et cetera. I understand it has now been distributed to the board and I hope that you will find time to review it. I'd like to emphasize one key point in my letter. The last time that the select board considered the sale was more than three years ago before the majority of the sport were elected. The last action that the previous board took on the sale was to authorize the town manager to negotiate a deal and to return to the board for approval. That never happened. This board has never reviewed nor approved the sales contract. No one was authorized to sign a contract. And during this time, the prospective buyer has dragged his heels, failing to provide the redevelopment board with some of the basic information required for this review. Fortunately, the terms of the contract offer the board a second chance. As of last week, the town is free to withdraw from the sale and reconsider. A lot has changed in Arlington since 2015 when town meeting voted to sell the DAV building to pay for the strat and school renovation. A fresh look at our priorities is warranted at this time. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Seltzer. All right. And next on our list, we have Elizabeth Dre. It was actually Jordan was next. Oh, sorry about that. And so we have Jordan Weinstein. My apologies, Mr. Weinstein. If you can say your name and address for the record. It's Jordan Weinstein, 23 Linden Road. I'm a town meeting member in Precinct 21. My issue or question to you tonight is to get some clarity on whether or not there actually will be a town meeting, a special town meeting held in the fall. There's an assumption by many in town meeting that we by virtue of the way it's been discussed so far that we actually are going to be having a town meeting, but I couldn't help but notice that the town moderator at the last, our past town meeting was somewhat ambivalent in his use of language and in rereading the introduction that the select board put into its report to town meeting. It also basically says that the next scheduled special or annual town meeting is gonna happen when town meeting members may more safely engage in the thorough discourse to which we're accustomed. And given the current pandemic and its acceleration, I'm concerned that we may not actually have an in-person town meeting at town hall, which my understanding is the only way that the town moderator is going to agree to hold it. So what I would like to propose is that like Lexington and like many other towns that the select board move to allocate some funds and some resources to allow us to actually meet virtually. Lexington did it over a four day period. I know that they had some customized software to do it, but inside town hall and also because of the weather and other considerations we can't meet outdoors that town meeting is gonna be not held at all. So I'd like to suggest that the select board and the town moderator and other leadership members in within the town consider seriously doing what has to be done to allow us to meet virtually in the fall. Thank you. All right, thank you, Mr. Weinstein. All right. So we now come to Elizabeth Dre. All right, Ms. Dre, if you can state your name and address for the record. Okay, how about this? Elizabeth, okay, great. Sorry about that. Elizabeth Dre on Jason Street. I'm here as the co-chair of Arlington Fights Racism as well as super excited to be a new town meeting member for precinct eight. I'm here to share Arlington Fights Racism's disappointment that the town manager did not keep his word that Arlington Fights Racism would be involved in the organizing and scheduling of the community meetings that are being held on race, equity, inclusion and specifically and most importantly, the meeting between the community and Lieutenant Rick Padrini that we have been calling for as individuals and as an organization for over a year. On February 10th of this year before COVID, before the world closed down, we were promised in a meeting with myself, Lynette Martin and Chief Flaherty and the town manager that where the town manager committed to working with us with Arlington Fights Racism to set the format and the agendas of the community conversations specifically around Lieutenant Padrini. So, but honestly, we were shocked and disappointed when the meetings were scheduled when we had like a, we saw, we saw Diane Mohan post it on Arlington list and they went out our consultation without our inclusion in the process. It's another example of the town's actions damaging the trust that we have been trying to build with them since last year by having these small meetings with Adam and Chief Flaherty. In addition to breaking his promise to work with Arlington Fights Racism, I've been told by other community groups who work on these specific issues that they also were not invited to participate in the planning. The Human Rights Commission only voted to cosponsor the events the night before they started. It's another example of this town pushing ahead in an insular way, hearing only their own voices in their own echo chamber and pushing aside the very residents and community groups who are raising and addressing these issues and town groups whose mission it is to work on issues of diversity, inclusion, and equity in Arlington. Let's be clear. I mean, these events are important to have. These are important discussions, but let's be honest. This was not a community conversation. A conversation is an interactive exchange of information where people get to ask each other questions, where follow-up was allowed. A conversation does not ask participants to submit their questions ahead of time and then allow the speakers to choose the ones they want to answer and then write a script that they literally read from. A community conversation does not hide the community from each other. It does not. Let's put it up on your document. If you just wrap up your point, do you have that? Okay. On a personal note, I'm very concerned about the August meeting with Lieutenant Padrini. I've emailed twice to learn more and have not. If I am not able to see other people, if I'm not able to talk to him directly to see him, to let him see me and hear me, to hurt the pain and the anger, I personally will not be healed and this will not be over for me. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you. All right. And we are moving on. We now have Laura Kiesel. Hi. So my name is Laura Kiesel. I live at 260 Mass Ave, which is Capitol Square Apartments. It's affordable housing through HCA. I'm actually here today to just offer some input or concerns. I know the new development project that someone else spoke about, the first speaker on the public citizen forum that is being proposed for the old mirip development, 135 units, I believe it is, with 25% earmarked as affordable housing, which is 35 units, but my concern, and I don't think people always pay attention to the numbers, is I know that the affordable housing is for 80% area median income or AMI. For a single person, that's $60,000, that's $7,000 a year. For a family of two, that's $77,000 a year. And I think for a family of three, it's $86,000 a year. And I don't have it off hand, but I think some of these apartments, even the single one bedroom units would be close to $2,000. And so for me, that sounds like a lot. And I think a lot of people don't realize that these affordable housing units at that price actually exceed a lot of what the existing buildings in the area are priced at that are not affordable. I mean, that are supposedly not affordable and on the private market. And I have concerns about the pressures from those abutting properties, what they will face when landlords start raising those rent. And if the net effect is we're losing other renters who already exist here, who are lower income, people of color, immigrants, people who are disabled, for much higher income people qualifying for these affordable housing units, we are not going to reach more genuine equity in this town. I appreciate that it's a quarter the earmark, which is higher than the 15% earmark, but I actually would like to push for a more meaningful earmark, maybe half. I don't know how doable that is. And I would like at least some of those affordable units to be for more genuinely lower income folks, like maybe 50% AMI. To put this in perspective, I was on the call five or six weeks ago that the select board had over the CARES funding for COVID, the rental assistance. And I remember the original proposal by the planning department was for 2,500 or something like that, and I know a lot of the select board members was like, that's way very high. Like those people don't sound like low income. I think the final cap agreed on was 2,000. But if our affordable units are in that realm, that is going to create a lot of development pressures here and it's going to displace people. So those are my concerns and I just wanted to air them. And I would like to ask the select board if they have any or like influence to compel these developers to consider that, that I would ask them to do that if they are concerned about both allowing people to stay here in Arlington and drawing people here who are actually going to make Arlington more diverse. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Aaron Holman. We do have one additional hand raised, Mary Ann Dunovan. Is Mr. Holman with us? He should be coming through. Let's see in there. Mr. Holman, if you can state your name and address for the record. Hello, apologize for the technical difficulties. No problem. My name is Aaron Holman, 12 Whittemore Street, Precinct 6. I'm speaking only for myself. My personal top priorities for Arlington, both of which are reflected in the master plan are preservation of our existing business tax base, the creation of affordable housing. I'm concerned with the way we are converting our extremely limited business tax base to residential and that residential housing that we are creating is not just unaffordable, but will drive up the average price of housing even further. And furthermore, there is not enough of it to get us out from under Chapter 43. I want to elaborate on each one of these. I'm aware of my time limit. I moved to Arlington over 20 years ago. At that time, the ratio of residential tax base to business tax base was 95% to 5%. Today, it is closer to 96% and 4%. We are moving in the wrong direction. We're not creating enough affordable housing. Yes, it's an improvement going from the lexate with zero residential units to now requiring 15%. That's not enough. We need more. The current standard for what is affordable is insufficient. Not only that, the prices that will result due to Arlington's high medium income will make it unaffordable for people who are here already. Those who are displaced by construction, by, excuse me, those who are displaced by the construction of supposedly affordable housing will not be able to afford the increased rents and will be permanently displaced. That's not in master plan. I'm concerned that a new development in our zoning code is furthering both of those trends. I refer now to the mixed use business provision. I'm concerned and I'm seeing evidence that it is simply a loophole to allow wholesale conversion of business property to residential. It is being abused in a manner not intended by the master plan to convert almost all space in buildings to residential, leaving only a token quantity of business. This is evident in the block of business that includes Teriah restaurant and ACMI TV. Where owner Frank Pesciuto wants to replace four shops with 21 apartment units and one small token, 750 square foot office. I don't think that's what was meant by mixed business residential. That's wholesale conversion. This is also equally evident at 400 to 402 Mass Ave, where again- Is the home here at three minutes? So if you can just wrap up whatever point you're on right here. I will finish up. I will finish up. Where owner Frank Pesciuto again wants to convert all but one of five units to office. I am asking for a moratorium on such conversions. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Holman. And next up, we have Ben Rudick. Ben, if you could just say your name and address for the record. You're still on mute, Ben. Hey, this is Ben Rudick. I'm at 40 Web Calot Road. I will do my best not to wake up the infant sleeping on my chest. So you don't have to hear her screaming. I am speaking as myself and also for Arlington Neighbors for More Neighbors, which advocates for abundant secure housing for all across Arlington and Greater Boston. I am speaking in support of the proposed housing development. I think it's an awesome step forward. And I just make a few quick points. I'm sure all of us can come up with some reason to oppose this development on the grounds of trees or housing or schools or traffic or whatever you will. But I think that those objections should be kept in context with the fact that we as Arlington and all of Greater Boston has more or less stopped building new housing in the 80s at a time when since then there's been absolutely phenomenal growth of the Greater Boston economy. And the result is that you've got tons and tons and tons and tons of high paying jobs coming into this region and almost new housing being built for a variety of reasons and that's just causing widespread and massive unaffordability. So will this 130 units solve that problem? Absolutely not. It's a drop in the bucket, but it is a great step in the right direction and I hope to see many, many more large housing projects come up. Other point I would make is that we are dealing here with a for-profit developer. If we want to raise Arlington tax money and buy land and build the things ourselves, I mean, heck, we could build free housing. But if we're dealing with a for-profit developer, then they need to make some amount of money to move forward. Could they be slightly more generous with their affordability allocations and the average meeting income restrictions? I hope so. But at the end of the day, if we make those restrictions too severe, we will get nothing. So as one of the previous callers spoke about raising the affordable percentage of 50%, my understanding is that you need between two and four market rate units to pay back the loss of each affordable unit. So a 50% affordable development will make no money and no private developer will ever build it. So if we want 50% of nothing, then we can have 50% of nothing. But I would like 25% of something. I think that's better. Also to note is that with the 25% affordable requirements, they are falling under 40 Bs. So they are not invoking that at this time. This is a friendly discussion. But if they want, I think they have the ability to more or less bypass our zoning discussions and do what they will under state mandate 40 B. So we should be realistic about the power that we have as citizens because they can largely move ahead one way or the other. And I am thrilled that they are speaking to us. Final point I would make is regard to the community listening discussions that happened a couple of weeks ago. I was absolutely thrilled to hear housing come up as a source of structural racism in Arlington. We have had very restrictive housing and zoning policy for the last 100 years. In the early days that was intentionally racist. Now it is just an artifact of that. And something we need to grapple with is that while our attitudes may be more progressive now, we are living in a built environment that was created in part with the intention to keep out black people and poor people and other undesirable groups. And it's gonna be a really tough road to figure out how to address that. But I think it's the conversation we need to have. So thank you for listening. All right. And next on our list is Pam Hallett. Joan, while we're waiting for Pam, Mark Kapline and Steve Revolac have since signed up. Can you hear me? So we are gonna add those names and then we'll close the list at this point since technically people should raise their hands at the beginning. Can you hear me at all? Yep. Absolutely. I'm Pam Hallett. I live at One Gilboa Road. I'm a town meeting member. I'm also executive director of the Housing Corporation of Arlington. Just want to come on. I took the concept of this other private development coming into town to my board last Thursday night. And we are all thrilled and support it wholeheartedly. We think it's a very exciting 140 unit. We're actually a little jealous, to be perfectly honest. We are thrilled that they are going to do the 25% going through 40B. We would like to make recommendations that they seriously consider having some of the affordable units at different levels of area median income. So they had structured it all for 80% if they could do some at 60% of median income as well as a few at 30%. I think they would overcome a lot of the animosity that they may be facing as it comes up in front of the board. But I just want to go on record saying that we thoroughly support it. And we do believe that this is a good way to start to address the racist policies that have been in place in Orlington as well as most of the rest of the country since at least last 60 years. And if you have not read Color of Law or watched their 17 minute video, I strongly suggest you all do it, just as a learning process. But thank you. Thank you, Pam. All right. Next on the list, we have Marianne Donovan. Marianne, if you can just state your name and address for the record. Hi, Marianne Donovan, 37 Drake Road. And I'll be very quick. I'm not part of any group in Orlington. So I want to just say that I loved the presentation on racism the other day. I got a lot out of it. I got a lot out of all of it. I especially learned a lot from Chief Flaherty and everything that she explained. And I want to also echo complete agreement with what Pam Hallett just said. So anyway, thanks very much for your service, everybody. Thank you, appreciate it. All right. We have Mark Kapelein. All right, Mr. Kapelein, if you can state your name and address for the record. Hi, Mark Kapelein, Palmer Street, Arlington. Can you hear me? Yep. Okay, great. So I have some concerns about the proposed project by the Merrick family. First is a recent letter that the select board wrote and it stated that you're opposed to high density projects like the one at Thorndike. And this one is as dense or if not denser. And second, you assert that you still meet the 40B safe harbor threshold. So that might also put this project at risk. Another concern is the loss of artists' workspaces and rehearsal spaces. There's not much industrial space for small craftsmen to work in Arlington and this is one of the few places left. Another concern is it's a big hill to climb up from that property to the bus stops on Mass Ave. So it poorly suits disabled people and that would mean they would need automobiles and more parking. You know, one unit, one spot per unit is rather short considering the price range of the units which are gonna have wealthier people who can afford cars or else a roommate situation where all the people have cars. And those are my concerns and I hope you consider the proposal thoroughly. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Kevlin. All right, and lost on Citizens Open Forum is Steve Revillek. Hello, Mr. Heard. Thank you for having me. So I just want to provide a brief point of information regarding the area median. Sorry, before you start, if you can just say your name and address so we have a further record. My bad, my apologies. Steve Revillek, 111 Sunnyside Avenue speaking on behalf of himself. So just a quick little bit of background on area median incomes that HUD uses for determining eligibility for affordable housing. So Arlington is part of something that's called the Boston Cambridge, Quincy, Massachusetts, New Hampshire Fair Market Rent Area. The long name, it covers over 100 communities in six counties in Eastern Massachusetts and Southern New Hampshire. It is a big area. And our family of four AMI as of this year is $119,000. Now, as I know the board has talked with the Redevelopment Board in the past, this is basically the result of, we have a good economy, we've been adding jobs and we have not been adding housing. So we have just basically set ourselves up in a situation where the price has been getting bid up successively over the last 20 years. This project will be a drop in the bucket compared to the region as a whole, but I think it is a meaningful step forward. When you're building anything, the big costs are land materials and labor and in Arlington, it's land. To the extent that it's impossible to build something that someone on the lower end of the income spectrum can afford, this is where we need subsidies. The Housing Corporation of Arlington has done very good job work in this regard. Our Public Housing Authority has not built anything that I'm aware of in the last since the mid-70s and maybe it's worth a conversation about why. But beyond that, I think one of the options, what we may want to consider at some point is through the establishment of an affordable housing trust fund, perhaps even doing development, having the town itself become a developer. And yes, it could be residents paying the costs of doing these projects, but perhaps that's worth it and I think it's a conversation we should consider having. Thank you. John, you're on mute. Sorry about that. With that, that closes Citizens Open Forum. So we now go to traffic rules in order and other business. Agenda item number 10, we have an update on the Sustainable Transportation Plan by our Director of Planning and Community Development, Jenny Rae, and our Senior Transportation Planner, Daniel Amstis. Jenny? Good evening, everybody. I'm Jenny Rae, I'm the Director of Planning and Community Development. Thanks for having us here tonight. I know that we have a few agenda items to get through. The first one is gonna be an update for you about the Sustainable Transportation Plan, which is something that we've been working on since, in earnest, since last year and have been held up a bit by the pandemic, of course, but have been doing a lot of work, wanted to share with you sort of what we've done so far, what's to come and set some expectations for engagement through the end of the year. Dan Amstitz, who is the Senior Transportation Planner, has really been ushering this entire project forward and working with our excellent advisory committee, which includes Len Diggins, who is now, of course, a select board member. And we're really just pleased with the leadership from that committee and the support of the town in allowing us to do this transportation plan, which really builds off of what we started to talk about with the master plan, but will put into greater focus what the town needs to do to prepare for the future along the lines of transportation planning. So with that, I'm actually going to turn it over to Dan, who's going to make a PowerPoint presentation to the board. Then I'll rejoin to answer questions. There's Dan. Hi, thank you, Jenny. Okay. Do you have my presentation to bring up? I don't, do you have a Dan or can I pull it off with Venda or? Oh, yeah, I can share it from mine. I wasn't sure if you had it ready. Okay, that's fine. Here we go. Okay. All right, can everyone see that? Okay, great. Thank you very much. And yep, my name is Daniel Amstutz. I'm a senior transportation planner for the town of Arlington at the Department of Planning and Community Development. Our sustainable transportation plan has a name. It is called Connect Arlington. And this is some of the graphics that have been produced for it. I'll just give a brief, a few minutes update on where we are with the plan as Jenny mentioned. So in starting up the project, it really started up a fall of last year. As you may recall, this project is funded partly by town meeting by a town meeting appropriation and by the community development block grant. So about 60,000 from town meeting and 20,000 from CDBG for $80,000. We convened the Sustainable Transportation Plan Advisory Committee in late September after forming it over the summer. And we did a request for proposals in October with responses due in early November and we received four proposals for that. So myself and Jenny and two members of the committee scored the proposals. We interviewed all four proposers, consultants, and we selected Nelson Nygaard as he told them to help us develop this plan. And this is the picture from the proposal that they sent to us, which was very good. And so we began the plan development with the kickoff with Nelson Nygaard in early January and we met with the committee and they gave a presentation about their proposal and their approach and so on. And the first main tasks or collecting existing conditions data for development of this transportation fact book, which is very similar to what they did for a transportation plan they did for Newton. And so they collect a lot of data on existing transportation conditions and demographic data that you can sort of look at with transportation data at the same time and they compile it into this book that has tables and charts and graphs and maps. And I'll show a few slides of what they've produced so far in just a moment. And then they also developed an engagement strategy for us going forward. The original, I'll talk about this in a moment, but an original engagement strategy for a survey, some mobile workshops, lots of in-person engagements is what we were originally looking at. And we started in the spring, the public outreach efforts. We did three focus groups about biking and walking, transportation for all ages and environmental sustainability. And we also were working on a transportation survey that opened in May. The engagement has had to be revised and kind of shook up a little bit by COVID-19, unfortunately. So the in-person engagement events that we were hoping to have had to be moved to virtual and the focus groups, we had focus groups virtually in April that were meant to happen in March, but we had to cancel them basically right at the last minute. But we had some very good participation with those. We've started the, as I mentioned, open to this transportation survey. We had an interactive map that went along with it where people could actually drop points on a map and point out places where they were concerned about issues. And we've continued to hold committee meetings. We've had about two or three committee meetings online along with about three that we had in person before we had to move online. And so as we revised it, we've had to again sort of figure out how to continue doing some of the virtual engagements. We'll do additional focus groups. We had planned to do up to eight focus groups. And so we want to do three more in the next couple of weeks. We're planning to do a virtual forum later in July or in early August. We've been coordinating with the Council on Aging and Social Service Agencies to distribute information as well to people that don't have as good access to online sources or to smartphones and that kind of thing. And then we've kind of pushed the mobile workshops to be in the fall. Again, if feasible, we may need to again revise this a bit if the COVID-19 and the pandemic is still a major concern over the next few months. This is some of the interesting information that we'll get from the Factbook. This is a map of all of the traffic collisions in Arlington from 2016 to a write-up to 2020, which you can find on MassDOT has a new website where they have this information available. And some of the interesting points that were made by our consultant was that it's not uncommon to find a lot of the crashes on the main corridors, Mass Ave and Mystic and Pleasant and Broadway and so on, but they were surprised to see the number of collisions that you find in the neighborhoods. And we'd have to dig in a little bit to see what that's all about, but that's kind of unusual to find that many collisions outside of your main corridors because those smaller streets should have lower traffic, lower speeds and so on. So that's, again, an interesting finding that we get through this planning process. Another interesting finding is, again, where they've been looking at census data about things like mode share, about how people get, in this case, I believe, commute to work. So what was interesting is how sort of well we compare to some of our other peer communities in the region. Even, for example, even though we don't have any T stations directly in town, we actually have a higher public transportation share than the city of Newton. And you can see how we sort of stack up. We actually stack up very well against a number of our peer communities in terms of having a very diverse modal split that's not just driving, but also public transportation, walking, biking and working from home and so on. Oops, excuse me. And then this is very interesting. Again, this is the kind of thing that I wouldn't necessarily have thought of doing, but this is looking at the transit walkshed. So looking at how easy for people to get to transit stops. And you can see sort of there's a quarter mile and half mile, a quarter mile from bus stop and half mile from a rail stop, like ALY for like the West Medford Commuter Rail. But this is overlaid with the, they took topographical data and looked at the steepness of the different streets around Arlington and you can see just how pronounced they are in Arlington Heights. And that affects people's ability to actually be able to get from, to walk or to bike from someplace in the Heights, just even down to Mass Ave can be very difficult because those slopes are just so steep. So that's really interesting and how that, we think about how that kind of affects what kinds of choices people make about what mode they're going to use. If they're going to have to walk back up in order to get to their house, they might not want to take that trip as a walk and they might decide to drive, even if it's not very far. And so that's just an interesting point to take into account when we're looking at how to encourage people to use other modes. The next steps on this is that we hope to have the Transposition Factbook released in late July. We've already provided comments to Nelson Nygaard on their first cut, their first draft of it. And as part of their plan progress, they're developing the vision and principles, action strategies and tracking progress so that once we finish the plan, we can really set benchmarks for ourselves for tracking progress for actionable steps. We don't want this to be something that sits on a shelf somewhere. And the draft plan itself with the Factbook and this information would be released in late summer and early fall and then have it finalized by the end of the year. So we're still on track, even though COVID-19 has set us back a little bit, we're really still on track to finish this by the end of the year, which is within our schedule. And with that, I'm gonna take any questions. So I will go to the board. Ms. Mahan, any questions or comments? I think I'm unmuted now, right? I'm sorry. Sorry. I just want to thank Ms. Wright and Mr. Amstutz for not only all the work that's gone into this in light of the COVID-19 world, but also the different eight to 10 questions and survey that they did in conducting this. I do want to, I think what we need right here is a move approval for the sustainable transportation plan. I know there's gonna be more steps that will be involved in the future. And hopefully as we see what we can do going forward in terms of getting input and some feedback, but I'm certainly appreciative of all the work that I know is three times harder than it would have been in the regular normal work we had before we entered into the pandemic. So thank you very much to both of you, as well as everyone else in the planning department. We appreciate that. Thank you, Diane. Thank you. Mr. Currow. Thank you. Thank you for the work. I was fascinated by that walkshins diagram. So I live at the top of one of the longest dark lines on that thing. And it's something that we all know up here that it's something you think about if you're gonna go down to the bus stop as walking that hill, pushing it in the night like tonight. Seen it graphically, that's fascinating to me and I think that should, maybe that'll help us inform some decisions as we go forward. I took the survey, but I took it quite a while ago and I cannot remember, did you have a way in there to capture, for example, people who are relying on the Council on Aging Transportation Service, the BAN and such? Was that part of the scope of what you were looking at? That is definitely part of the scope. Thank you for that question. I don't believe we had a question specifically about that. Certainly somebody could add in commentary or something else within the framework of the survey, they could add in information about that. We did one focus group about transportation for all ages that ranged from sort of the more elderly groups as well as the younger children, parents with children and that kind of thing. We have heard some concerns that it isn't focused enough on some of the people that may be disabled or have mobility impairments and so we're planning to have an additional focus group focused specifically on that. But we tried to cram a lot into the survey as best we could. So there may be some things that aren't directly asked as part of it. Yeah, thank you. I think it is important to focus in on it because especially as part of our age-friendly Arlington initiative and part of one of the key components of being able to age in places is having mobility options available. So if we can capture that, I think it is important. We're all community, but I love the work you've shown us so far. So thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks, Joe. I'll just add that we did actually, as part of the age-friendly Arlington survey that they put out, there's actually some data in there that relates directly to transportation options, future transportation, mobility. And so we do have some of that information as well. But as Dan said, we are planning to do an additional focus group to make sure that we've covered as much as possible as well as the, they're calling it a door hanger outreach process, which will be happening, I think over the course of the next week or two. And that outreach is intended to engage more people who are seniors and other populations as well. Great, thank you very much. Thank you. Hey, Mr. DeCorsi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all, so I wanna thank Mr. Amstutz for the work that was done and on the walk shed, it brought back memories. I grew up on the top of Wallstown Ave and it was a dark line every time I walked up that hill because it was quite steep. So brought back some memories there. But just a question on the peer comparison. I imagine that was done a while ago and I noticed that I think it was 7% of people working at home and there was a percentage of commuters. And I don't know to the extent that you're incorporating these statistics into any action plan if you're thinking about maybe taking another look at that because I imagine we're gonna see fewer, maybe users of public transit in the short term and working at home. And so if you could just maybe help out on the timing on that when that was looked at. So it might be difficult to see on this slide but consultants took this from US Census Bureau data from American Community Survey estimates from 2018 which is I think the most recent data that we have. I'm certainly aware or I've heard of this obviously with the COVID-19 pandemic, the phenomenon of more people working from home is a real thing. There is actually a really interesting presentation that the Massachusetts Transportation Secretary Pollock gave a little while ago about how when it comes to dealing with congestion a year or two ago, the idea of people working from home was not really considered as a feasible strategy to reduce congestion. We only had maybe four or 5% of people in the region that were actually working from home which we didn't compare very well with other regions similarly but now of course so many people are that can and I think they are seeing this that at least the statewide they're sort of seeing this as a way of potentially one way of reducing congestion is actually because now so many people are used to it and so many people have had to sort of pivot to this but I have not seen any numbers. I'm not sure we can, I don't know if we can produce numbers that quickly about how many people are working from home or how many people would be working from home in the near to long-term future but I have asked our consultants to really look at the COVID-19 and how that may be affecting things like public transportation. If there's somebody that we can incorporate that into the plan knowing that this might, we don't know if it's short-term or whether it's going to be a long-term impact on whether people will use public transportation or not or just other ways that mobility is suddenly changing because of this crisis. Thank you. Thank you. All right, Mr. Diggins. Well, I feel as if I shouldn't say much because I'm on the committee and so I'm feeling that I should really listen to what folks have to say more and incorporate that into how as part of the advisory committee, we interact with the staff and the consultants but I will say I was very impressed with the way the nimbleness of the staff and the consultants when we did have to make transition to virtual meetings after the pandemic had. So the fact that we are on schedule is really pretty amazing. If we just slip by a month or two, I think that would have been impressive but we really are on schedule and then the consultants are doing a really good job. But if I may, Mr. Chair, through you ask Mr. Kuro a couple of questions. Sure. Okay, so Mr. Kuro, I mean, I'm curious as to how you negotiate that hill in the wintertime mean and especially when there's still a nice on the ground and what might you do in order to make it a little more pedestrian friendly? I'm just curious, you know, man. That's a thing. We have a great TPW that plows wonderfully so it's not usually a problem. So yeah, just very, very carefully. I negotiate it. But yeah, it's just something that you think about. I will also note that this board actually a number of years ago took action specifically to restore the bus stop on the Turkey Hill line up at the top at Arlington 360 which had been there during the time of the hospital specifically to address this issue for the residents within that area in the surrounding neighborhood. Thank you. Thank you. And is it all your comments, Mr. Viggins? Yeah, yeah, I'm really inclined to listen. And I mean, if I say a lot of positive things it's like I'm selling my book. So I'm here to listen and accept criticism or whatever. But thank you. No problem. And I just echo the comments of the other board members. Thank Jenny, Dan and the entire playing department for everyone, all the work that you've done on this process. And the presentation definitely shows us some interesting information to use as we make decisions going forward. And I too live at the top of one of the hills that's easy to get down and hard to get up. So we'll see how we can incorporate that to alleviate that problem. All right, so we do have a motion for approval of the transportation plan by Diane. Do we have a second? Second. So on a motion for approval by Mr. Heinz, seconded by Mr. Currow. Mr. Chairman. Point of information, Mr. Chairman. Yep. Yep. I just wanted to say I appreciate the affirmative or positive motion, but I think it would probably be best if it was approval of progress to date or receipt of progress to date as a finalized plan is still being produced. Sure. Just for clarity's sake. Sure. Mr. Heinz. I will say that my motion to approve covers that. So it's moved approval. Mr. Currow. Yep. Great. All right. As amended on a motion by Mr. Heinz, seconded by Mr. Currow. Thank you. Mr. Currow. Council. Yes. Thank you. Mr. DeCourste. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Currow. Yes. Mr. Hurd. Yes. Thank you. And that takes us to agenda item number 11 update, economic recovery, task force, consumer survey results from our director of planning, community development generator. Thank you. Also, I'd like to have Ali Carter join us as a panelist. She is participating. Absolutely. So I'll just say to introduce this, you know, where we're presenting to you the results of the consumer survey and it was shared last week via social media and town notices. So, you know, we wanted to get the word out to people who had the many people who had taken the survey, but also to share with you the results so that it could be a little bit more clear about the kinds of things that we've been exploring with the recovery task force. One of those efforts you're going, we're going to talk about after this agenda item. It's been an incredible experience working with the recovery task force. And with Ali helping to spearhead that. We've learned a lot about what, what the local business community needs and have been trying to be as responsive as possible. And that includes the many different sectors that are operating in town. This consumer survey is really helping us to think about how to be responsive. And including not just restaurants and outdoor dining, but also fitness programs, arts classes, lots of different facets of Arlington's business community. So with that, what I'm going to do is have Ali share her presentation, which is the consumer survey results. And then we'll talk again. Thank you. Thanks, Jenny. Okay, I'll share my screen one moment, please. All right. So thank you, Jenny. And thank you members of the board for your time tonight. So we really look in the task force, the Arlington economic development recovery task force wanted to undertake this survey because we know that a lot of people are making decisions on how they come out, do business, interact, not based on the reopening guidelines from the state and what's allowed, but really that they're making their own choices. And so we wanted to see, take the temperature of folks in town and see. Check their comfort levels in a number of different ways. So I'm really pleased to say that the survey had a excellent response rate. It was open June 4th to 21st. We had over 1400 responses, which is much more than the typical towns survey. And so it was, we feel like this is a really accurate set of results that we have here, pretty representative. So I'll just walk you through a question by question. First question was as the recovery from the COVID-19 crisis proceeds, how long will you wait before dining inside a restaurant? About 9% of people said they will go day one right away. And over 30% said they're going to wait until there's a vaccine or COVID is no longer a threat. So you can see how for our, you know, restaurant owners, this is really helpful information to have and helps them plan, you know, potentially for exploring outdoor dining options in a really serious way. We also wanted to know how long people were going to wait before shopping. So how would they treat shopping for nonessential items, like not going to the grocery store, but just more casual shopping versus eating inside a restaurant. And people have seen over 20% said they would shop as soon as they could. And around 10% said they'd wait until vaccine or COVID was no longer a threat. So not nearly the level of discomfort that comes with dining indoors as was shopping indoors. Probably my guess would be has to do with, you know, you can wear a mask the whole time you're shopping. We asked people if they would like to see curbside options for restaurants continue. Over 30% said yes, permanently really like curbside pickup. Just under 60% said yes, as long as COVID is with us, we want to have these curbside options. So it seems like that is a really, you know, positive thing that we're allowing restaurants to continue that. And also that the restaurants know that this is something they should be planning on doing for the long haul. As the recovery proceeds, how much shopping do you expect to do online? So the majority of respondents said they would do between 25 and 75% of their shopping online. So people are going to be shopping online for the foreseeable future way more than they have been pre COVID. If local merchants offered their products and services through online shopping, how likely would you be to shop through retailers compared to national or global? So over 40% a really strong response that people would prefer to shop online at local businesses. This is an important question for the business owners because they, you know, it's quite an investment to set up an e-commerce page. And so this lets them know that it's a worthwhile undertaking. We tried to get a sense of what people preferred to shop for online versus in person. And so this is a word cloud where the larger words show a higher prevalence of response. People really, the biggest difference was that there wasn't a huge difference except for like three categories. People are comfortable buying children's clothes online, but adult clothes in person. People want to buy their shoes in person and people want to buy their groceries in person. Those were the big things that we saw stand out there. This one is really interesting. So we wanted to get a sense of what was going to make people feel comfortable being in a store beyond what is mandated by what can a business do to make you feel comfortable? So essentially the furthest, the further these blue and green lines go to the right, the higher degree of comfort that intervention brings. So people like demarcations on the ground, touch free payment systems, menus, inventory, any information that you can get online in advance to plan ahead so they can expedite their trip. More outdoor options for dining, that's what the rest of that says, and shopping online and being able to pick up curbside. Those were the things that people felt most made the biggest difference in their comfort level. Business owners in all sectors, we've heard this for months now, they're working twice as hard to get half as much in the first scenario. And so a lot of them have been really struggling. They don't want to raise their prices because they know their customers are having a hard time, but they really feel the need to at a certain point. And so we asked if people as customers would be willing to pay more for goods and services for businesses that implement increased safety precautions and strong 80% said yes, which really helps make that decision easier for our business owners. Now we wanted to get to comfort level with attending large indoor events. And it's pretty strong response that people are very uncomfortable with that while COVID is with us. So that is a really hard thing to swallow for our theaters and some of our arts and culture nonprofits in town. And, you know, something we need to think about pretty hard in the task force. How comfortable would you be attending a large outdoor event? Not quite as uncomfortable, but not most answers rather somewhat uncomfortable or somewhat comfortable. So more ambivalence on that score. And then we wanted to ask about small group cultural activities since the arts and culture sector is so integral to our local economy here. We asked about comfort levels for an indoor tour of museum historic building or gallery. Still pretty uncomfortable there. Indoor class or workshop. Most people pretty uncomfortable. Outdoor class workshop or lecture, a higher degree of comfort for folks. And this is a, we had sort of an open ended question at the end and this word cloud represents what we heard there. A lot of concern about local businesses. People talk about masks a lot. So just to summarize what we learned about what people want from the survey is that people want as many outdoor options as possible. Dining, shopping, across the board, outdoors. People feel safer when others are wearing masks. People will be more inclined to shop and dine at places where proper safety protocols are in place. And people want online curbside low contact options to remain in place until COVID is no longer a threat. We just explained this a little bit. We had focus groups with six different industries in town as part of the task force work. And I wanted to fold some of the information we got from the focus groups into this presentation. I wanted to look at the presentation sort of look at the consumer responses compared with the focus group feedback. And some industries we heard from them were affected immediately. Others are more concerned about long-term ripple effects. Concerns about costs of opening up and the loss of revenue. Business owners are concerned about employee health and safety and their ability to enforce these restrictions and that under-employment is really difficult for the basically some people are making more money on unemployment than they would be at work. And so it's hard for the business owners to get people to come back to work. So I think one of the big things we learned from putting these two bits of information together is that the folks who shoppers, diners, people, consumers are just as concerned with safety as the business owners are and that employees and business owners should feel comfortable enforcing those rules because it really makes the majority of their customers feel more comfortable. And with that, I will be happy to answer questions or hear your comments. Thank you. John, you're on mute. I'll turn to the board for any questions, comments and a motion to receive. Mr. Carl? First, I'll move to receive the report. With the board's thanks. Appreciate all the work that's gone into this. I actually, I was in a discussion group with a number of people I know and the person who organized it happens to be a member of the task force and she actually walked us through this last week and there's a lot of interest. I also attended the mass select board association meeting where this chapter lane was a panelist and gave a trimmed down version of this. I see points of hope and I see points of real challenge and I think that point of hope. I mean, I'm glad to see that so many of the residents who responded said that they are willing to support businesses, whether it's through higher prices or supporting efforts at e-commerce. But I still see a lot of challenges there with the concerns of folks to get out and about. And I think that you're doing this. I just have to imagine that it's incredibly important to the business community in town as they try to make decisions about their futures. I assume you've gotten some feedback already from some of the business owners about this. Were there any big surprises for people who you've been in contact with over the last week? We went over it in detail at the task force and at the recent Arlington Heights business owner meeting. And you know, I don't think many people were surprised. I think a lot of it was reaffirming and reassuring but I do think the one item that was really helpful for folks to know that people aren't going to necessarily run in the other direction if they face their prices. I think that was helpful for them to hear. Great. Thank you very much for the work. This is helpful for us too. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll second Mr. Kuro's motion. And I also want to thank the task force for this for the survey. And I agree you look at this and you say, okay, there's a lot of loyalty from consumers. And I think people understand that businesses are going to have to spend more. And if information is provided to consumers that this is now what it takes to provide services, people will be willing to spend more. The thing that concerns me and we're heading into July, so we still have several warm months ahead of us, but people clearly are reluctant to be indoors and understandably so. So we're going to be talking about outdoor options later later in the meeting, but I think it's really critical as you look at this because that question on question one is just really concerning in terms of, you know, when people will feel more comfortable. And I imagine that question one assumed. Distancing and protocols, just like the later question on large indoor events. Is that, is that right? Um, you know, you may have pointed out that we didn't make it entirely explicit in that question. But, um, yeah, we were trying to sort of given the assumption that all these protocols will be in place. How comfortable do you feel? Okay. All right. And the other thing I would say, and I think we've all seen this and to the extent that, that restaurants in particular can offer those curbside options and this help that can be given to them that, that certainly is something that's going to help business. Um, the last thing I'd say, and it was an interesting piece of feedback, and I've gotten it from a number of people is the, the underemployment is worse than unemployment for most employees. And then that's really, it's, you know, an issue where that the, the, um, unemployment benefits for part-time workers is often greater than what they were receiving. And so it, some people would argue it creates a disincentive, but I mean, it's just, it's, it's one of those things that's real difficult for the, um, for the business owner. And, and, uh, I don't have an answer for it, but did you get any, was there any further discussion on that point in terms of, um, I suppose you want to grow business and be able to give employees more hours. That's the answer there. Yeah. It's in some of the employees even want to go back to work. Um, just because they're bored. Um, but there's, this is also again, there's the risk of getting sick. And so there's, it's like, I can, it, there's just so many disincentives, especially while we're with, you know, the version of unemployment that we have now, um, it's really a difficult decision for some people to return to work. And, um, you know, you know, I think that, um, you know, when you're in the business, you know, you're in the business, you know, you know, right now there's not a lot of. Employers who are operating at full capacity. And so they don't necessarily need all their staff. Um, and once they start up payroll, then they're costful way, way up. Um, but it's another difficult part of the balancing act. Um, that they're in right now. Thank you. Thank you. Miss. Um, I'm on. Okay. I'm just checked with that little mute thing is on and off. Um, first, I want to thank the planning department. I know I keep doing this, but I want to do this because we've spent so many time and hours on this, uh, in terms of really reacting to everything that we're dealing with. Um, having said that, um, and also watched the. MSA MMA, I don't know what the letters were. We all watched. Um, but this was discussed at, I think at the MSA. Without town manager, Mr. Chaplain speaking. And one of the glaring things that came out in the beginning, which is also what you gave to the board is, uh, in terms of recovery from COVID-19 and shopping patterns and things like that. The number one thing. That people spoke about local businesses and going to them was having a vaccine. Um, and then the second thing on after that was, um, even beyond having a vaccine where you felt most comfortable was, um, having curbside. Uh, so I guess I would ask either, um, uh, misrate or miss Carter in terms of, um, um, small businesses we have here in Allington, a lot of them are restaurant oriented. And we all know the statistics with that. And I know that the planning department's been doing what they can to reach out to small businesses. To give them some relief that they can through CDBG cares act. But one of the things that, um, Ali Carter and, and Jenny Raid, and Carter, we've all been going out individually to these businesses is we've encountered business owners that, um, English is not necessarily their first language. It's a second language. They're not familiar with social media. Um, they might not even have a laptop or any computer access. Um, because of financial reasons or tech issues. Um, they might not even have a laptop or any computer access. Um, because of financial reasons or technology reasons. So one of the things I would ask is, um, and I know you've been doing this outreach is in terms of. Working with our small businesses in the survey is, um, what plan or next step do you have to reach out to all the small businesses, whether they be restaurants, whether they be cleaners, whether they be, uh, other types of businesses that, um, really plugged into the town the way a lot of us are with technology and how do we reach them? Well, actually, um, I'm glad that you asked that question. It's something that we've talked about quite a bit. How to reach that part of the community that doesn't pick up on, uh, town notices and all the social media, which is excellent that we do, but doesn't always get to everybody, of course. Um, so actually in distributing information about the community development block grant opportunity, we were able to leverage volunteers from actually amazing, amazing Arlington, which was an excellent, um, push to reach a lot of people who we would not have reached otherwise, just simply by doing, uh, you know, sort of a drop of flyers, um, door to door, literally, um, handing out the information it was in. We had, uh, we do have the information in multiple languages. And so we have that access available in our department and ultimately to have people be in touch with our department if they need access to additional resources. So I think that that will lead us to more connections in the community. And I know that Ali is also working on other ways to reach, um, other portions of the community as well. But I'd say that that was actually an incredible effort and led to, um, many more applications already. So we've already seen some results as, as, you know, that push came out. So I don't know if Ali, you want to add to other efforts. Um, yeah, we've, you know, I, I have my meetings monthly in each business district. Um, and what I really love about doing that, and I've been doing it for years now is that, you know, neighbors, it's like a word of mouth thing. And so if I meet, if neighbors have news, they share it. And just since this crisis has started, my email mailing list for that has grown quite a bit. Um, so. But we, we have done a little more hands-on, like I've dropped things door to door as well. Some of the posters. Um, so. We'll do whatever we need to do to get the information out. Um, and we've worked a lot with the chamber as well, um, leveraging their mailing list. Um, and yes, we're just really trying everything. And the more people we can reach and the more ideas you have, the better. No, and I, I thank you all for that. And, uh, the only other thing that, um, I've kind of put forward for plenty of time. And I don't know how we capitalize on that is, um, uh, I don't know. I don't know. Um, I don't know. Two things I, I'm one of the great things I think you all did was sort of the bingo card. For restaurant and businesses. And maybe how we expand upon that, whether we replicate it or do something else. But, um, If we do do that and replicate it. Um, how we kind of curb it towards curbside. Online ordering. Cause that's what, until a vaccine comes, it's like, you know, It's like, you know, I think that's where we're going to go. Uh, Presentation at our town manager made at the MSA conference. That's where everybody's. Comfortableness kind of relied. Um, so whatever way we can do that to promote that. And one of the things that, um, I was talking with Jenny rate and, uh, Allie and Kelly about was when we were going into these business owners. Sometimes saying, do you have a son or a daughter or a niece or nephew that could call into planning department or that could call into planning department with you? Um, to talk about whether it's the. CDBG cares act. Small business program, whether it's, um, Getting you out on a list for there. It's the bingo program. Um, you know, however, we kind of amplify on that. Um, cause the big thing is we've got, From what I'm hearing from people and I hope it's not the case. We possibly could lose a lot of these small businesses. Um, which is really a tragedy not only for that especially for the business owners but also for the town so whatever we can do to save them so I just want to put it out that you guys certainly have been at the forefront trying to think of new ways and different ways that we need to reach these people and we need to keep doing it so I'm gonna look to you all to tell me how that gets done thank thank you mr. Diggins thanks Holly and Jenny I have a few questions you started off I mean the first sentence was that people are doing their own thing I mean I didn't quite catch that first sentence any presentation sure so I think you know people are making their own personal decisions on how comfortable they are being out in the world based on their contacts who they live with their own personal health situation and risk and not necessarily like that when you know the state says okay now you can go sit inside a restaurant that everyone is necessarily gonna go out and do that so we wanted to sort of see where people's comfort comfort levels were because we can't rely on it being completely aligned with the state reopening guidelines I see and how did you come to that conclusion um I mean partly just through people I know and talk to I think the most fascinating things about all this is that everyone is digesting this information and processing it there there's no there's no survey to get to that conclusion the right so that's just that's just personal no I mean a little bit but I also you know we were part of the National Main Street Network here and and there they put out a really great article about that that people behave different than you know laws and regulations and so it was actually they had a suggestion in a sample survey and I took that to the task force and we built it off of their sample okay all right well that's good enough for me so I'm definitely interested in that you know so so I'll follow up with you on that I was just wondering because that's a pretty bold statement I was just wondering what was what was backing it up you know so because because that's important so thank you so when we're on most of the questions when most of the surveys answered when the most of your answers come in because I was a three-week period for it do you have a sense of when most answers came in most of them right away we got a really strong response really quickly I remember we had like over 300 responses and like the first couple of days so it ended up being over 1400 but it there was a pretty strong immediate response all right because we that's that to me was a kind of a pivotal period at least for me and this of course that's anecdotal but but my feelings about things kind of changed in that time frame me from me thinking there there's a chance you know that he I might get out and do some things you know in the summertime to like I don't think so he just like right off the summer and just be prepared to hunker down me for only the rest of the year if not until you like like the early part next year I don't know how many other people felt that way but but I think there might have been some change in thoughts about things we didn't so so I I know probably sample sizes isn't it and isn't high enough to see how the responses might have changed from the start to the end and I'm not suggesting you do that but it's just something I throw out there so so do you have a sense of how much more people are making you know through unemployment than they are employed generally I don't know specifically in a difference you know a lot of different information but I've heard it from several business owners that it's it's really difficult to entice people to come back right again because the version of unemployment that we have for right now through the month of July is it's not the usual unemployment scenario that extra $600 a week right right and one of the things you have a sense of whether people that they employ or are in residence or or from out of town we asked that in a different survey so I'd have to refer back to different survey data just to verify that it's not top of mind at the moment but we do have that information okay just curious I'll follow up we saw that and and and finally we this is more of a comment in but maybe there's some way to tease it out for me there's certain kinds of indoor activity that I won't do and it isn't so much because the risk as much as it is the enjoyment of it and I'm inclined to do restaurant takeout because I want to support the restaurants I'm not inclined to dine indoors to be in a restaurant because it's just an inferior experience for me now it's so much that I'm concerned about the getting COVID as much as it is well a having a mask on it it's just it's just so I don't want to say unromantic because I'm not really a romantic person but but it's just not the kind of thing that I associate with being in a restaurant whereas there might be some other indoor things that I might do another example is that I mean I'm not really inclined to go to the gym it even I'm not particularly concerned about COVID it's just such an inferior experience compared to beforehand so I'm just kind of wondering if maybe there might be indoor activities a difference in the kind of indoor activities people are willing to do before there's a vaccine but let's just more of a comment so thanks Sam and great work appreciate it all right I just want to thank Jenny in particular alley for all the work as setting on a bunch of these meetings and also thank all of the local business owners that have taken a lot of time out of their day while they're trying to adapt the new norm here to participate in the meeting they had a lot of big hand in the questions that went out in the survey and they eagerly awaited the survey results in particular some of the local restaurants that you know I think from what I heard it was it wasn't great news but it was anticipated news and it was something they're ready to adapt to and just shows that with our next agenda item and going forward we as a town need to be very leading help support these businesses and you know create spaces where they can serve their customers in a way that will be comfortable for our residents so thank you all right so we have a motion by Mr. Curran seconded by Mr. Dacorsi look to town council for roll call this mom yes mr. Dacorsi yes mr. Dickens yes mr. Curell yes mr. Hurd yes thank you and so we are moving on to agenda item number 12 discussion and potential approval modifications to Midford Street and Broadway Plaza to expand outdoor dining options with marathon session with our director of planning and community development Jenny Ray and our senior transportation planner Daniel Ansett's so I'll turn to Jenny excellent thank you and I'll just add basically as part of the last discussion one of the things we are pivoting towards we're in phase two but we are looking ahead to phase three and that means building off of that consumer survey probably conducting additional survey work as we begin to roll things out take the temperature of how things are working if they're not working making modifications so it's you know it's really this isn't a bit of an iterative process and so when you're looking at what we're proposing tonight which is basically some preferred scenarios and other options that we've been exploring it's in the spirit of we're being responsive but we may we will do more and also we may need to change things a little bit and make those modifications we're pretty sensitive to the fact that this might be the first time you're looking at this information we did actually have a lot of outreach through alley to members of the business community who are butters directly to these scenarios that we're talking about tonight and so at the end of dance presentation alley can give a brief update about that as well what we're going to do here is just to share these options it will identify the things that we would need you to do in order to support them to become a reality we'll talk about how they interface interface with the sidewalk project that will be happening for weeks over the course of the summer and into the early fall and then we'll also talk about some opportunities that we're planning to pursue not just for this for Erlington Center but for other opportunities in town to increase space for social distancing as well as outdoor dining options so with that I'm going to turn it over to Dan who's going to make a brief presentation about these scenarios and the options I've outlined thank you Jenny thank you chair and members of the board so I'm going to I'm going to go through this whole presentation I'll try to move quickly about and and I'll have lots of labels I have lots of maps and visuals with labels and so I'll point these out and hopefully you'll be able to understand what's going on but certainly if you have any questions please let me know I'll start moving so as Jenny mentioned we've been looking at different opportunities to do some additional outdoor seating and dining in some places that it might be a little bit difficult to do anything on the sidewalk and so here is Medford Street at Mass Ave you can see that there's it's a very wide street about 36 feet you've got parking on both sides we have the layover for bus 80 and 95 in front of the region there's a handicap placard space that's there and then you've got the turn in that goes into a Russell common lot on the street called Park Terrace something that in order to sort of make this work especially with the businesses on the opposite side of the street from the layover is I think there's a three three main restaurants that are there we're looking at how we can provide a big zone where these restaurants can all have their outdoor seating and even a little bit more by taking up a little bit of space out of Park Terrace and so as you can see the yellow boxed area is where the seating would go essentially the red lines or the red dashed line are just meant to be the barriers whether they're Jersey barriers or other types of barriers that would separate the people in the street area from the traffic and we would still allow traffic to move through here it is an important link between Mass Ave and Route 60 as well as of course the buses that stop and lay over here at the you know in front of the theater we would you know keep the we're very consider very aware of the hidden cap space that's there and we don't want to have to move that if we are you know temporarily if we don't have to so we want to keep that in place and you're moving over into Park Terrace it does provide an entrance to a into the lot it is technically one way from Medford to the parking lot and so one of the things that we need to change would be to allow some degree of two-way movement here because there are some private parking lots behind you know the Mass Ave businesses as well as Arlington Catholic that do need to get in there and so that's something that we would look in in order to make this kind of thing work so I'm going to go into a little detailed view of what this would really look like and you can see that we would have about 14 feet available out of the 36 feet 14 feet wide for having the seating I don't recall what the length of this is but it again it goes from here to Park Terrace it would still leave plenty of space for the buses to lay over as well as through traffic and for people to park on the opposite side of the street so we'd retain you know these features and just really take this space from the street and from these specific parking spaces just for this purpose and allow the businesses to have these this outdoor dining space which I've made another diagram sort of showing how it might be split up by these different zones so that it fits within our temporary dining license application so that it would be clear sort of who has ownership or oversight over certain areas and who would provide different pieces to them so you have three different zones here each one is approximately 500 square feet based on being 14 feet wide and approximately 35 feet long to fit within this space which is about 115 feet or so long and then there would be the zone on Park Terrace which could be for you know any number of different restaurants there and I calculated based on the diagram that we have and the social distancing requirements for seating that you could get between about nine to twelve thirty inch tables out here that would depending on sort of how you move things around this is all kind of can be movable the zones can extend out a little bit or be changed a little bit to make it work but I'd say that you get almost a dozen tables out in this type of situation and so basically the breakdown is that we would repurpose five of these parking spaces to be for outdoor dining there would be in a small encouragement into the traveling itself about six feet from the parking stalls end and then again allow two-way traffic from Park Terrace to the common lot or from the common lot and also converting that small section of Park Terrace between Medford Street and the private parking about 60 feet or so this would create approximately 2000 almost 2000 square feet of outdoor seating area in this situation for the Broadway at Broadway Plaza another place that we've looked at where again we've gotten some requests and there's been some conversation about how we could incorporate outdoor dining not just as in the Broadway Plaza area itself but sort of outside of the Plaza the existing conditions here you can see Broadway and Alton Street there's one of my traffic on from Alton to Broadway there's that area where you see the blue in the very middle is unfortunately it's the dated image from Google Maps and so that's actually are the parking and loading area that we have in the center the handicap placard space is actually in the space that I've indicated there and then there's another handicap placard space at the very end of the the parking line that you see on the north side of Broadway and then there is the stop for the route 87 as you may recall we move the layover away from there to the corner of Broadway and Franklin so in what we're looking at is again to take some parking spaces to create this outdoor dining space as part of the Arlington Center sidewalk project the handicap placard space that is on the end of that block of parking is actually moving to the middle of the block having it at the end of the block has been just not a very good location especially when buses do come along and other that gets blocked by traffic quite a bit and so as part of the project is moving to the center and then it's getting a curb ramp so that you can get up onto the sidewalk and so this would be the location of the temporary seating again really retaining as much of the existing pieces here with the bus stop with the loading zone the existing handicap placard space that's on Broadway at Alton and as we go in just a little bit to show what this would look like again basically we'd have to kind of split it in half to retain that handicap placard space where the temporary seating on either side of it we basically take up the the the length of the parking space which is approximately 18 feet and then would leave you know the whole driving aisle for people to be able to park on the opposite side of the street and for the buses of course to be able to get through and again the red dashed lines or the barriers just as a just showing where they would be approximately and then again splitting this into zones of you know for different businesses to be able to use this is a little bit more difficult because these two parking areas that we're talking about carving out are not the same size and so one one of these the space on the right I think would would just generally be larger than the rest of them you can see is approximately 576 square feet would be created in the first two zones the third zone a little over 800 square feet again this would be the handicapped space would continue to stay in the middle and this would create space for probably around seven tables I'd say again we're using a 30 inch size either square or round table with the seating around it and the social just again that so this would look about a larger impact in terms of parking there would be about a dozen parking spaces that would be repurposed for this we would keep again the handicap placard space in its new location I'll get into that in a moment as to where sort of where the the center side of a project fits into this and it again creates almost 2000 square feet of space for outdoor seating for businesses within Broadway the Broadway Plaza area I did want to mention that there are a couple of concepts that we have also considered we talked about but these are not being proposed at this time which would be including you could create you know fairly large space on Alton Street it would require again changing traffic flow and direction on Alton Street to make it work the parking parking loading area would be displaced or repurposed for this as well you could again you could create a very large amount of space but we we thought that this was you know this is something we might move to if there is a demand for a greater amount of outdoor space for something like this and then additionally near the fire station on the lower side of the of the image there you can see another area for you know whether it's dining or generally seating for people to be able to be outside and have somewhere to sit down those there's about six parking spaces there it might be pre-purposed again that might conversation we need to have with some more butters and so on but that is something else that we have looked at but it's something we'd still be considering at this point and then another piece of this that the other piece of this is just something we thought about again is the old mystic sort of walkway area between Mass Ave and the Brussels Common lot just something that we've been thinking about is how this could work but again not being rose quite at this moment so just moving over to the several project and how it fits into this I think the current work area is around American alarm on Alton Street Broadway and Franklin Street is where they're going to start our plan is to have the contractor prioritize the sections near Broadway Plaza and on Medford Street to have those completed and over the next few weeks say three to four weeks to sort of work through getting these if approved that we would get these seating areas in place getting the materials getting the applications and the permits and so on in order to make it happen but that's the idea is instead of putting something in and then having to take it out when the contractors come in and do their work it's that we would actually we have them do their work now so that we can put it in and then have it stay in for as long as is necessary the last thing or one of the last things I'll mention is the mass dot the Massachusetts Department of Transportation as a shared streets and spaces grant program that just started accepting applications last week it's sort of a rolling application it's got a broad eligibility include things like outdoor seating or shared slow streets program which you heard about a few weeks ago we are getting working with some consultants who are providing some free technical assistance to us on completing the applications we are planning to submit an application possibly rated related to this or also to our shared streets program which I can you know we're still working through some of the details of that so what we're looking for really is this is this is sort of the detail is possible approval of repurposing the five parking spaces on the west side of Medford Street and then six feet into the driving lane to converting that into a seating area the allowing this two-way traffic with with access from the common Russell common lot to the private parking areas behind no Mass Haven Medford Street converting Park Terrace between Medford Street and the private parking which is approximately 62 feet to a pedestrian only space or seating and again the 12 parking spaces on the north side of Broadway at Broadway Plaza converting that into the seating area so that is my presentation so I'm ready to discuss any questions that any of the members have oh and I think Ali might speak to some comments that we received from some of the business owners as well you want to address those first before I go to the board I'm sure I'll just say briefly that you know we were hearing from business owners on Medford Street before face who even started that social distancing on that street was difficult because there are two very busy takeout restaurants that were generating large long queues I personally witnessed it myself too on Broadway Plaza over on the Broadway side not on the Plaza just east of it so we've been hearing this for a while a need for it particularly on Medford Street and even though this was a very quick turnaround this proposal as you know we've got several expressions of support immediately some even during this meeting from business owners and property owners in this in this area all right thank you with that I'll turn to the board for a motion questions or comments mr. Diggins um thank you um so who's gonna use these spaces like be given the location of the spaces they are they're supposed to be used by restaurants or just yes they that's the idea is that these could be available the sidewalks on Medford essentially to have seating on your sidewalk without having to create a parklet you need 10 foot sidewalks and they don't have that on Medford Street they're very narrow and so there are there are four busy places on that side of the street and a fifth across the street as well as two larger restaurants around the corner on Mass Ave that are looking for more outdoor dining options and having difficulty making them work on Mass Ave so the idea behind this would be that restaurants would primarily use these and similarly on Broadway Plaza that side there's been interest as well yeah I was just me because I know the area that I was just trying to like think of which restaurants are gonna use which spaces and I get the impression that some restaurants might have to might be a little separated from from the tables no maybe but even right there on that immediate block there's four like right directly adjacent to that right right in the plaza area you know oh yeah and there's there's three in the plaza area that don't already have licenses for existing that could take advantage of this opportunity in the zone one two and three those correspond to what or four we were just trying to give a general sense of like that area could be licensed to three different businesses we don't want to create at this point like an open seating area because we want a licensee to be responsible for cleaning maintenance maintenance and social distancing protocols and stuff like that right I got you so it's just it's just it's just a division not not a ranking or or or actually never mind it's just temporary confusion of my part sorry about that I get it so there was a question for getting it so you know I mean I I'm glad to see thinking along these lines you know and and I know I said earlier that I'm not concerned being about COVID getting it and I didn't really meet in the context that he I don't see this is a big deal it's something that's not worthy of concern I should have said I'm not more concerned you know but I'm still very concerned and and I guess maybe this is so much a matter of what we're proposing to do as much as it is as I look at what's going on in the rest of the country a that I'm just really concerned about about things to be so I'm gonna motion to approve it because I like what we're trying to do but I will say that I think it's good for people to be more cautious about getting out there you know I'm just I'm just yeah just increasingly concerned so so that's it you know I want you to approve it all right thank you all right to the motion approval of the quest by Mr. Diggins I can find Mr. Carroll comments or questions yeah just just few thank you very much I think that we absolutely have to do this my question actually was somewhat along the lines of something's Diggins was getting at is that there's not a perfect one-to-one matchup I think with the zones especially as they align restaurants so what was the thinking on how how the zones get get distributed that they would be on a constant basis one you know first come first serve you if you've applied for zone and you you get in there that that's your zone or maybe a rotation for restaurants on the block I think we were just trying to generally show that it could accommodate three dining areas so we know with these are by no means dedicated to anyone specifically we want people to fill out the temporary outdoor dining license application and apply and we you know I imagine through that process situate people as close as they possibly can be to their the store from if I add to that I I made the zones myself just thinking about about a space about the same length as two parking spaces roughly and it was worked with you know it's a other colleagues to sort of figure out what would be about how many tables that you could actually fit based on the approximate size of again using a 30 inch diameter or 30 by 30 inch square table and then seating like four seats around it and like approximately how much space that would be and then you would need six feet from those chairs to the next chair and and so the zones are really just my creation at Ali asked me to sort of break it up so that we would be able to see that what would actually look like but those are flexible changeable okay I'm just thinking I had above how how licenses are our portion because that you want to imagine situations of conflict between a business as a competitor setting up in front of them with their outside dining and I'm just just trying to imagine a fair way that we can allocate these and also try to avoid some of the conflict and one of one of the other questions that I've had along those lines is with the outdoor dining I guess one of the trade offs we're we're making here is that previously we talked about having spots where people could park very short term for takeout you know picking up takeout orders how do we see that working in with his outdoor dining location in front of a restaurant that might be offered takeout just add to this I think one one thing that we talked about on Medford Street is the possibility of looking at the spaces across from where we're proposing the outdoor seating to be come maybe ten minute parking you know sort of curbside pickup sort of spaces I know that we when the parking meters are on it's naturally a quick turnover situation but the parking meters aren't on right now so that might be a good signal to people that says you need to you know keep moving this is just for curbside pickup only so we might add that and we did hear from one of the businesses that that would be appreciated with regard to people coming and going particularly in the morning and at you know other points during the day where they know that there's a peak demand so I think that that would be something we would also want to incorporate okay great thank you next question the relocated handicapped placard space is that the same size as the original space I'll go back to it just so that we are different dimension I believe it's actually so it's actually I think it may be larger by a bit it's more like two parking spaces because there's the space where the vehicle goes itself and then there's a like a loading area like a hatched out like a van loading area that is required as part of that as well and then the handicapped ramp or curb ramp that leaps up leads up onto the sidewalk so I believe it's larger than the one that's already there and the problem with the one that's already there is that there is no curb ramp nearby that's accessible and so that's partly why we're moving it very good very good and and I assume that this whole plan has been run by the disabilities coordinator and public safety and all of that are will be we have received input from DPW and the including the town engineer who helps us to think about ADA compliance and will continue to do so as we evaluate outdoor dining options as long as we continue to proceed with this we would also be obviously including Jill Harvey who's the ADA coordinator for the town there is additional work for us to do as a follow-up with both DPW and Arlington Police Department to ensure that we're you know compliant and doing everything correctly and we need to coordinate with them obviously for materials purposes. Thank you very much I really appreciate the work. Thank you. Thank you. And Ms. Mohan? Just what I think is a hopefully a quick question the I don't know if this is to our planning director or a town manager the Arlington Center sidewalk project I know that's on MassAb but I'm thinking in terms of message boarding and other vehicles etc that may need to be parked somewhere else has this particular what we're approving tonight which is modifications to Method Street and Broadway Plaza for outdoor dining options has that all been taken into consideration and there won't be any sort of overlap in that or will there be? I can I can take that. Planning has coordinated with DPW and the contractor for the parking project and the contractor will be taking spots actually you can see the first car along Monument Park on MassAb I believe six of those spaces will be dedicated as a lay-down area for equipment for the contractor but so there will be other impacts in the center but there's no overlap between what's being proposed and what the contractor needs. Okay thank you. Of course. Mr. DeCorsi. Thank you Mr. Chairman and thank you Mr. Amstetz in this raid for during have you gotten requests for for other parts of town to create additional seating that in one thing I'm concerned about we don't meet that much all of the summer so I think we're meeting in the middle of July so to the extent that there are other other areas and we need to act quickly. Hopefully we can do that but just to the question is has it been demand elsewhere? Well there has actually been and a lot of that is actually goes to alley directly as part of the outdoor dining review process and it's been spread throughout the business districts and then additionally we're still working on the neighborhood based interventions for the shared streets project and through that we received a lot of feedback and ideas of things to do other you know streets to look at so we actually have a lot potentially happening how much of it will need to come back to the board I'm not certain how much will need to come back to the board but if it does it would be whenever you're meeting in July would be I would say would be the most appropriate time with Adams input in terms of timing. Okay and then on the potential for Alton Street and the Illumistic area is that something that you want to just wait and see if there is demand that that unmet demand before you ask for approval on that? I would actually like to ask for approval of that in you know in spirit tonight with the understanding that we have a lot more work to do to make either of those things happen which we of course will do as we're going to be doing with the other dedicated outdoor dining locations but I would suggest that since we in the spirit of time and in possible demand for those spaces I think it would be wise to dedicate them and also because we're going to be working around the sidewalk project as was raised earlier I think that we need to be a little bit flexible with the space and the opportunities because there could be a situation where the sidewalk reconstruction is interfering with the outdoor dining and it won't be accessible for a few weeks during the time that that section of sidewalk is being replaced so I think having additional options would be very useful and I think they might be capitalized on by you know people after we share with them these opportunities. Okay I think I'd be willing to go along with that so I Mr. Shaw wait to see what others say on that the only thing on Alton Street as I looked at it is if there are butters that would have concerns about having the streets shut down so that would be you my only concern on that but I think we could try to work around that as you said to in spirit to to approve that and if there are issues that come up they can be raised at our next meeting. Thank you. So I have a few questions so I'm wondering about the sidewalk project and this would be to the town manager I believe it was my understanding I saw it in the plan it looked like the plan is to do the sidewalks in front of where fusion taste is there and over on Medford Street I thought that because they're waiting for some utility work that that whole block the sidewalks or sidewalks weren't being done so is that stretches sidewalk walk being replaced in this phase? Yeah so the only thing not being replaced as part of this project is the plaza itself okay but the walks in front of fusion taste I'm dragging my cursor over the screen like you can see it the walks in front of fusion taste as well as Medford Street are part of this project. Okay so when those happen that those spots out in Broadway Plaza will certainly be disrupted. Okay correct so our the latest thinking is to we're starting in front of American alarm doing that and then quickly moving in front of Medford Street and then also then quickly moving in front of fusion taste in Broadway Plaza to get those sidewalks done first so that we can get established with being proposed tonight and not have to worry about sort of like an up and down disruption. Okay and then as far as the Medford Street locations I assume we've looked at the but the swing of the bus coming to the right onto Medford Street and that there's sufficient clearance. Yes Dan's gonna show you. Sorry just getting to that. I think so you're talking about the buses coming on from from Mass Ave and then getting into the layover. Yep right. I don't see that as being it's not specifically something that I've looked at from sort of an engineering view. One of the other options that we looked at was was bringing it down was bringing it was bringing the seating down essentially past the penny cap spot and into almost to crosswalk at the bottom of the screen here. The Public Works director raised that as didn't raise that particular issue but the way that this would function here it would be pretty similar to what you you know how it functions now. We had a different version which had a wider area for seating that was more like 18 feet wide and so the parking plus the travel lane was 18 feet. So essentially kind of a seven feet for parking and 11 feet for a travel lane. 11 feet is usually what the MBTA looks at as the minimum for or having a you know through bus come through. So we actually widened we took less from the street space in order to make sure that the traveling itself was was was wide enough more like you know more like 15 feet or so or 14 feet so that there's enough wiggle room for that for people to get out of parking spaces and also for the buses to come through. So I don't really see that as a as a concern because there's there's still plenty of room for when they actually enter Medford Street to correct and get over to the side to get into the bus stop. But we'll definitely share this with the MBTA along with we've reached out to them about the sidewalk project as well. Right. And then all the businesses on Medford Street here I know Ali had spoken that she had retained common has been any concern from any of the businesses about losing the spaces in front of there. Their business or the restaurants more happy to get their seating then as the consensus has been then rather have the seating in the spaces. The consensus has been a ladder. I did have a conversation with one business owner in this area and she was concerned about the loss of parking and I explained that you know as Jenny did earlier that we have the ability thanks to both you all passed on June 1st to create 15 minute zones so that we could you know the spaces on the other side of the street further down the block could be designated as such and then I mean and then she responded weird way sign up so not to put too fine a point on it but it was commentary was received rather well. All right thank you. Yeah I think this is definitely something we need to do we've talked about this in the last agenda item and we support these businesses and you know this will help get people in their seats so I'm definitely on board with this. Mr. Chairman? Yes. Can I ask a couple of questions please? Yes and we asked some of you first. Sure. If you would just so we can clarify your motion because we have a motion for approval can you either change or clarify the motion includes the request on Alton Street and the additional spaces on Broadway? Sure. I definitely will amend my approval to include what you said about Alton Street and Mystic. Was that clear enough? Yes. Okay great. So I remember my other question it's a little bit contingent on the answer this question so initially the presentation started off with a concern about people doing takeout me queuing for takeout and and the inability to social distance so so how does this help with that issue because I say I'm getting takeout from from one of the shops on on Metford Street and there's the tables across me on in what would be a parking space me how does how does this help with that? Well I guess it's similar to your point from earlier that was like the pre phase 2 version of the need for this I just meant to say that to sort of underscore that this has been something we've been hearing from folks on this area for a long time but essentially you know all these places even the takeout places have like a few seats inside and so they right now they're also small they can't really have any seats or many at all six feet apart that are compliant with the state regulations so this just gives them room and back to the survey you know people aren't really very comfortable dining indoors so we have the opportunity they don't want to but they will probably be more likely to if there is space allocated outside for it so it it doesn't take away from the social distancing it provides an opportunity for seated social distancing outside gotcha and so so then my other question you know perhaps idea of food trucks you know or is there any consideration about getting food trucks in in in town I know for a while ago there was some talk about maybe you know trying to create times for food trucks come to town but you're creating these zones I mean let's say for some reason someone doesn't take one I mean that would be a space that maybe a food truck could occupy on you how do you feel about that it's actually not allowed by our traffic rules and orders it's it's not allowed and I we have gotten requests but that we've worked with in the health department in the last few weeks not but you can't do it in a meter parking space and at this point you know we're trying to help the people who are already here and like not have any more vacant store fronts and it's it's a proposal that's not well received for your pandemic or there are good things about it in certain circumstances but not right now and not in this place could not be a thing well thanks that was that was a very clear answer I appreciate it Ali and Joe I just want to confirm that your second includes the amended motion it absolutely does thank you you're right in dying to respond you any further comments with the discussion the amended motion no thank you okay all right so we have a motion by Mr. Diggins for approval seconded by Mr. Curl on console yes of course yes yes yes mr. Curl yeah mr. Hurd yes yes thank you that takes us to agenda item number 13 we'll bid adieu to miss rate thank you for thank you so much Ali and Dan for all your help this evening all right so this is a request for endorsement national endowment for the arts grant application by and in and in Chris Elinger true story there in town manager do we have mr. Mrs. Elinger yeah Christopher is coming in I don't see a separate name for and okay hi everybody mr. Elinger just identify yourself there will just be me and is on a finishing up a performance that's online in Springfield Massachusetts on mental health issues during COVID and addiction and recovery so yeah and unfortunately it'll just be me but I'm sure I've come to one of your select board meetings and I've just been so impressed by the amount of work that gets done in the town and the thoughtfulness and energy that you all approach it so thank you great and if you can just tell us a little bit about your request yes so I'm requesting and inviting two things one is a letter of support we are applying for a national arts grant which is extremely competitive it's from a program called civic work in a particular community our troop true story theater it's a ensemble of 17 actors has been forming in Arlington for the past 19 years and we have partnered actively with a lot of different civic organizations over that time most recently with the town planning department for the last hour 10 grant we got this is actually the third hour 10 grant we're applying for we've been really amazed that we've succeeded in getting two of them especially being such a small community as Arlington and each of them needs a special focus and a primary partner as well as the sign-off from Adam who thank you Adam for signing off on the last two the one we're looking to submit in the beginning of August would be the primary partner would be with Jillian Harvey as the diversity inclusion and equity officer of the town and with the different groups that Jillian works with but also we have space to work with secondary partners and it's a much stronger application we've been told if we have a number of secondary partners and we already have the Arlington Human Rights Commission has expressed interest in being and re-upping as a secondary partner the police department has expressed interest in being a secondary partner again with this theme about diversity inclusion equity in the town and we wanted to invite both the select board to put in a letter of support so that's one request and then a second request it's more than invitation is to use us potentially for one or two dialogue events if and when we get the grant and when we're clear about what's happening in the community in the world at that point so happily we've discovered we don't have to be super specific about what exactly we're going to do we have to give examples of potentially the kind of things we might do including the groups that we might work with and it helps to have more groups to work with and then closer to the time we'll decide them that the what we will be doing is 24 events over two years that would start to lie first a year from now if we get the grant so there are a lot of provisional things and we're in a world that's spinning right now in all kinds of ways and happily we shift we were able to shift our work very quickly to be online after doing it face to face with people in the community for eight the past previous 18 years and have been really impressed with how responsive people are to doing it online any comments or questions yep so I'll turn to the board for any comments questions in motion we do have a draft of the letter that has been attached to the agenda so I will go first mr. curl thank you very much I'd first I'd like to move that we endorse the our town grant application of two-story theater and and power the chair to sign the letter of support on our behalf and that we become a partner to true story theater or potential future dialogues I know that Christopher and reached out to me on this when they went through the last round I know I think I was chair at that time and doesn't matter of timing I we didn't have the opportunity to actually vote a letter of support at that time I sent an individual letter that says this is an individual person but I did suggest to Christopher man that said it would be that makes sense to come to the board because true story has been such a strong partner the partner in the rust right now on the dialogues that are ongoing the town and if there's you know a public policy issue that requires input whether it's the issues of diversity inclusion or reimagining our libraries or the role of arts in the town or whatnot true story has been there and I really appreciate you as you know long-standing community institution and I personally look forward to further partnership with you thank you thank you and Mr. Han thank you mr. chair I'd like to second mr. caro's motion as well as along with mr. caro on the rest of the board thank him and Chris Allinger for really hanging in there with this and seeing the throw in making sure that we can take advantage of the most advantage of the opportunity that we can and on the second suggestion that Chris had in terms of hopefully getting the endowment and being successful and and broadening out the extent of the services that can be done I certainly second his remarks in terms of working with Joe Harvey our diversity equity and inclusion coordinator as well as I went to Human Rights Commission so I'm sure that's a tacit part of the motion that goes in there but I know that'll be the best way to get it done and I look forward to seeing what Chris and Anne do moving forward with this and thank you so much for doing this thank you this is your question yeah thank you mr. chair I support the motion I just want to thank Mr. here for work that he has done with true story theater happy to support the motion also and I have a quick question for Mr. Allinger if that's okay this year so in what category would you put your on your performances would you call yourselves performance artists yes okay thoughts so thank you and again I'm happy to like my colleagues support this and sign my name says a lot I think it's a great project that you guys are undertaking and we wish you the best of luck so we have on a motion by mr. Carlos seconded by miss mahan miss mahan yes mr. DeCorsi yes mr. Diggins yes secure yes mr. Hurd yes thank you mr. Allinger thank you thank you all right next on our agenda we have item number 14 for approval Arlington preservation fund loan Patrick Guthrie present Arlington preservation fund mr. Chair if I may yes I don't know mr. Guthrie is present but we just had one of these about two meetings ago yeah long and short of it is the Arlington preservation fund is a program that's in part funded by community development block grants it essentially lends money or whatever provides it a very low interest or loan or a grant for specific housing projects improvements to housing that helps to preserve the historical nature and character of homes in order for them to distribute that money they need to essentially a vote of non-objection or alternatively of approval from the select board and to ensure that there's no objection from the town yeah thank you and I think you know last meeting that we had this on our agenda board was comfortable with the town council's explanation so I will turn to the board members mr. DeCorsi yes thank you mr. Chair I move approval of the loan as contained in the in the letter that we received unknown June 22nd thank you mr. Diggins I second it it's all very straightforward to be so I have no additional comment miss behind I'm in favor thank you Mr. Curl no additional comment no do I so on a motion by mr. DeCorsi seconded by mr. Diggins attorney hi miss Mahan yes mr. DeCorsi yes mr. Diggins yes mr. Curl yes mr. Hurd yes all right to item number 15 overview in presentation proposed redevelopment at 1165 our mass intrusive avenue 1165 arm mass mass property LLC the developer by attorney Mary with Stanley O'Connor and do we have this attorney O'Connor with us yes good evening I'd like to thank you mr. Chairman members of the board for this opportunity to present this project to you this evening I represent the developer and the developer is a joint venture between Spalding and Sly Investments and the Myrack family the Robert Myrack side of the family and this evening we are joined with his daughter Julia Myrack who's integrally involved for those of you who've grown up in Arlington like myself or have lived here for a long time you are familiar with the Myrack legacy this is not a developer that's just dropping into Arlington to produce a development in town flipping the project and leaving this is starting with John Myrack someone who came to this town created a business and created a philanthropic legacy as well you're familiar with the fact that the Myrack family and Julia will not tell you this but I will tell you that the Myrack family has been very generous to the town of Arlington including the Jefferson Cutter house including the reading room with the Robbins library and very significant contributions to the Arlington Center for the Arts and the former Sims Hospital we're going to hear about this project from the professionals and you're going to see a presentation it is 130 units of housing 25 percent of which will be affordable the joint venture has recently filed a project eligibility application under the comprehensive permit statute when the project is completed Spalding and Sly will be selling their interest to the Myrack's and the Myrack's will be the sole owners and they will self-manage this project much like they do the legacy as you're all familiar with an Arlington Center which is a comparable size as this now I will tell you I am also a resident of the town as you know and I can say that this project is very different than the project that's proposed on the Miugar property because I will suggest to you that this project was designed in accordance with the recommendations of the 2015 master plan which was adopted by the town of Arlington and the smart growth guidelines adopted by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts which encourages a mixed use development on this site is the work bar that you may be familiar with which is which is the commercial part of the part excuse me the project and then the affordable housing note they're proposing there are a variety of transportation choices here it is project is going to enhance and showcase the town's natural resources with a emphasis on showcasing Milbrook and the Minuteman bike trail and it encourages connect connectivity and embraces the Minuteman bike path there's a project also provides for keeping certain of the historic buildings that can be saved and can be repurposed David Gamble who is going to speak tonight was involved in the master plan and he will review these issues as well the developer will be the joint venture will be hiring a consultant to determine the percentage of the affordable units that should go for a local preference and it's the developers obligation to make that case how many of these units should be for Arlington residents now we did have a neighborhood meeting last week that about 45 neighbors attended by a zoom it was a very good dialogue there were a lot of comments and questions and we have told the neighbors that we will share with them when the traffic study is complete and a comprehensive traffic impact study has been done by niche engineering and Daniel St. Clair from Spalding and Sly will give you information that the amount of traffic entrances and exits from the site is minimal increase it's very minimal there'll be ample opportunity before the zoning Board of Appeals because you know this goes as a comprehensive permit goes to the ZBA for public review and comment this is an exciting project for the MIRAC family and I would suggest to you for the town of Arlington is Carol Kowalski and Pam Hallett both of whom are very very familiar with affordable housing projects indicated and what the joint venture would be looking for from this board is a letter of support to the mass housing so that they can continue with respect to their obtaining a project eligibility approval and if I maybe I'd like to turn this over to Julia MIRAC who wanted to say a few words thank you very much thank you Mary thank you select board for giving us the time this evening as some of you know my grandfather John MIRAC started business almost a century ago with a small auto repair shop in Arlington Center that site is now occupied by the legacy at Arlington Center which is a project we developed and is similar in size to what we are proposing to develop in the Heights after my grandfather began to enjoy some success with his business he made it a priority to give back to the community especially the town of Arlington as an orphan he felt especially grateful to this country for giving him a home and an opportunity to succeed he never forgot his roots and always hoped to provide opportunity for others he purchased the mill complex in the 1970s in order to preserve the beautiful buildings and we have maintained the site ever since in 2015 we began to revitalize it by making a major investment in one of the buildings and transforming it into a co-working site known as work for our Arlington in 2019 we expanded work bar to encompass the entire building I would like to believe that work bar has become a unique and valuable addition to the commercial sector in Arlington by redeveloping the rest of the site and building multifamily housing I feel that we are realizing a dream of my grandfather's to preserve the beauty and integrity of the structures while also enhancing the environment around them and providing much needed affordable housing I know that he'd be very pleased to know that this parcel of land would eventually become a place where Arlington citizens could live work and play in a beautiful setting at this point I'd like to introduce my partner in the project Daniel Sinclair from spotting inside thank you Julia and thank you to the select board for giving us the opportunity to present our project my name is Daniel Sinclair as as introduced I'm a managing director with spotting inside investments spotting inside was founded in the 1960s and has developed many projects and established communities in the Boston area such as Arlington were extremely excited to have the opportunity to partner with Julia my rack and her family as well as to pursue this project in the town of Arlington Julia and I were introduced by David Gamble almost two years ago David as has been stated already has been a significant player in helping produce the master plan for Arlington on this site and other sites like it we've engaged David as part of our team as the lead master planner and Joel Bargman of Bargman Henry our architect to to develop the design based upon the town's thoughtful master plan for the property we're very excited to share that with you today so without further delay let me hand it over to David Gamble and he can also introduce Joel Bargman as he goes through the presentation thank you very much thanks Daniel again David Gamble I'm an architect and urban planner with Gamble Associates we're based in Cambridge and as you all know Arlington is such a desirable town for so many reasons this site in particular harnesses for its access to trails and open space its relationship to public transit corridors it's got historic resources that run right through the center of it and it has natural resources and if you were to go there today and you didn't know better you might just think it's acre acres and acres of impervious surfaces with lots of cars but in fact we feel pretty confident that these assets actually make it very desirable next please and we weren't the only ones if you go back a century ago the famed landscape architect Charles Elliott envisioned a series of public spaces along the Millbrook and thought about that corridor in relationship to Massachusetts Avenue which is always traditionally the primary transportation corridor through the town next please and it seems like periodically every few generations this idea emerges and then it dies away so going back into the late 70s I think it was the Arlington Conservation Commission that imagined an idea about some unique place straddling the Millbrook that had historic resources and buildings that grew in an incremental fashion around that that natural resource just a decade ago another group of dedicated citizens in Arlington thought maybe there's a swath of space between Arlington Heights and Arlington Center that could be redeveloped because much of those uses are privately owned and somewhat inaccessible and that's where you should concentrate redevelopment in in an effort to actually preserve the residential neighborhoods on this periphery next please and so these ideas are actually emerging out of years of conversation and if you want to talk about a democratic process I can't think of much more than a recently minted master plan because five years ago in the evolution of a town is actually fairly recently there were dozens of volunteers and hundreds of of hours dedicated to sort of channeling what people thought and where where the town was growing and where it should go so the public process and maybe some of you are actually in these photographs there's Carol Kalowski before she headed west getting ideas on a walkthrough on a Saturday afternoon so there was so much effort into trying to understand what the community wanted and where it could go and it's a truism that that says that the best plans emerged from previous plans and that's really what's happening here we're actually thinking about leveraging the public engagement through the master planning process towards a site that's poised for transformation and it's also a truism that people get planning fatigue and people come and go in towns and sometimes new people come and they weren't part of that process so even on this select board I know not all of you might have been part of these conversations but they've occurred and it's actually important to recognize that and to harness it next uh so these principles some of which you actually helped cultivate uh were boiled down to where the town sees growth happening preserve the open space think about mixed use stewardship of their historic resources recreational opportunities leveraging your natural systems and really people of all ages want to be in walkable environments close to transit and close to open spaces and I can't think of a site that's better poised for that in Arlington than this one next so if you were again to see it today you might think that it's one big swath of land but it's not it's actually more nuanced than that and the image on the left hand side shows the the way in which the property actually rings the site the bulk of the property is actually what I would call a midblock condition it's not up along massachusetts avenue but it's nested and actually straddles uh uh the the millbrook so it's complex uh and I agree with what Mary said uh it's not just like an opportunistic thing here this is a patient partnership between an experienced developer who's used to addressing sort of complexity and a patient uh civically minded land owner I think that has a long view so it's a unique opportunity we advanced design guidelines uh that was highlighted in the master plan as one of the implementation action items here next along these three corridors and each of those corridors has a really a different relationship next slide y'all so you have massab you have the millbrook you have the bike path and the these principles that we've then established based upon the master planning principles about these systems and the history and trying to make connections and yes density in part because of the degree to which one has to address all of the site's current shortcomings so density is not a four-letter word and we're going to talk about how the site and the building actually knits the landscape together next so you know there's a variety of ways in which master plans tend to sit on a shelf which someone mentioned earlier and they're very thoughtful long-term consensus building endeavors but they tend to falter for one of these reasons that the market changes rapidly and certain assumptions are no longer held true sometimes comprehensive plans are too closely tied to a a political leader or some group that was advancing it and and they fall out of favor and more often than not actually they falter because there's no conduit to a private sector developer who's willing to take on the challenge and work in unison with the town to get a project moving and with that I'm going to turn it to Joel Bargman architect that uh uh leading the design of the buildings and he's going to talk zooming in a little bit more closely how this building straddles these corridors. Thank you David. Joel Bargman from H4C. The slide on the right the hand is circling work bar that as Julia mentioned has been redeveloped it's a separate property but it's really part of the master plan in fact with what's known as building two forms the gateway into the object as you come from Mass Ave. This diagram on the right shows building one which is the existing mill building which was shown in the first couple images you saw engine room is another existing older building that's being restored and then there is a new building behind those is the backdrop building is building four that has the majority of the apartments in it as well as parking on the first two levels of it so the the diagram on the left just shows the combination of the work bar and housing the mixed-use development that is the basis of this project diagram on the left it's really just an idea to show you coming in from Mass Ave we have a connector road that goes by Myrack Hyundai into the site and then the core of the site is an internal courtyard that we'll show you in some photographs and that becomes a Destrian, Sickle, and automobile center court that leads to a one-way exit the Rider Street extension and then back out to Mass Ave and then we'll talk a little bit more about the transportation at the end of this. On the left you have a photograph of the existing addition standing in the middle of Mass Ave looking with Myrack Hyundai on your right and looking in towards this site on building two is this red building that unfortunately is a building that is a heavy timber building that has suffered some beetle infestations of termite the heavy timber has really deteriorated over the years and the structural engineer has recommended that that frame is not is so expensive to restore in addition the ceiling height in the building number two is six foot eight inches which does not comply with current code requirements for habitable space. What we're doing instead is replacing on the existing footprint building two with a new building that along with work bar forms a gateway into the site as you see here coming up closer now past Myrack Hyundai and up to the door of work bar this will be a handicapped accessible new roadway that is widened to 24 feet from its current condition the entry to building two will be at the top of the grade entry to building one and four will be at the bottom of that grade what you see on the left is an important characteristic you see this new loft building the olden loft building they're the same height they're intended to evoke the continuity of the project as a scale and a method of making windows and and facade treatment continuity into the site leading to that front door today an access road is only 15 feet wide doesn't accommodate life safety fire trucks emergency vehicles coming in to the site so we will be removing the bridge creating a clear height open space and a full 24 feet wide road with a five foot sidewalk on the side so you'll get that photograph on the right I mentioned the signature space was the center court that's a combination of vehicles destrians and bikes here you see that here the architecture is an ensemble of buildings it's not iconic architecture it's not intended to dominate it's intended to knit together different buildings so that building the new building the existing buildings share a common core very efficient to renovate and a common entry to to the buildings I mentioned parking what love about this photograph is you so far you have not seen one parked car on the site the cars are either below building two or on the first two levels of this building they're hidden in this wood flat amenity space so you really don't have the sense of the parking garage behind that space the courtyard will be a dynamic space of different textures different materials and for seeding elements for pedestrians and activities the working your way west this is rider street extension rider street extension connects to rider street better street then connects to a Minuteman bike trail so you see folks are coming from the bike storage area which is in this corner of the building out pedestrian and big plaza town rider street the new sidewalk along the new millbrook so what i would say is that this development is really unlike any multifamily housing project we've ever worked on and it's a much about connecting the neighborhoods connecting to the existing fabric and covering some really interesting habitat and natural resources you can see the existing millbrook and the app between building two building one is filled in that old gap is being opened up so you'll see millbrook go through onto the end of our property as i mentioned this path connects to massav and minuteman trail and what this diagram on the left is showing is building four is actually 16 feet below massav we're able to make that transition in the handicap accessible manner what that does is it reduces the scale of that building from massav and i think you saw that or i hope you saw that in the opening slide moving back towards building one and the millbrook which is right here we're putting a new bridge we'll carry fire trucks other vehicles across the millbrook and what's really nice as you see on the left the existing condition ingested development over millbrook and millbrooks opened up and what's really another exciting aspect of the project is you go from this rather large common courtyard along the side of the existing building then you have two rather intimate courtyards that are serving not only the residents of this project it's also accessible to the users of the work bar space who are here and can just walk across millbrook and into this area so it becomes sort of an outdoor environment that is mixed use as well as being open to the neighborhood so the neighborhood connects right down from rider street extension along here and along here we're selling new railing on the millbrook and interpretive signage restored engine house and then there's one last private outdoor space so we've gone from a large outdoor space to some intimate spaces don't want the amenity space to be an issue for the neighbors so it's on the far side of the project this is towards the parking lots and it's completely shielded from the neighborhood by the architecture of the building that knits together building one the parking garage and building four so there's a culmination in the outdoor space and a very private space what you see on the left is the existing condition David mentioned several times the asphalt and that we have 6.4 percent pervious open space so the green space is essentially the pervious space that's being increased from 6.4 22.5 percent in the proposed development so you can see the extraordinary amount of green space and some of the pervious space that is being left is related to the millbrook path private outdoor spaces and the courtyard space so it's not just parking space in fact the only parking space or five spaces in the courtyard three along the side of the building then another five along right of street extension they're really just using existing paving with that i'll turn it over to David Daniel to discuss the transportation level vehicle and automobile thanks Joel so we've prepared and not yet completed but close to completing a very detailed transportation plan with niche engineering and there are a number of key takeaways that you know are that we can share today that i think are both encouraging and exciting for the project you know first of all the the project it when you look at the project as in these images you can see there's a number of ways in and out of the project and as david gamble mentioned where we sit at the center of the block and not right up on on mass av and not on rider street and so there is an existing network of private ways that provides a robust grid of access to the public streets that serve the project and so we have access to mass av along the west driveway we have access along rider street which leads to forest and eventually to to mass av and we also have full access at quen road so we have a very efficient of the vehicular access and circulation routes and and further as we've analyzed the the the traffic that would be related to our project the total trips to and from our site are projected only to increase less than about two percent at the main intersections in the study area and so the traffic analysis indicates that there will be a very minor increase in traffic that can be accommodated at the study intersections without any adverse effect to traffic operations and so diving a little bit more deeply and looking at the vehicle trips that would actually be experienced on the site today under its current use there are 102 vehicle trips per day entering the site and 97 trips exiting the site per day once the project is completed there will be 117 vehicle trips entering per day and 11 exiting 111 exiting that's an increase of 15 vehicle trips entering the site over an entire day and 14 exiting over a day so a very modest increase um and and as noted previously from the architectural design perspective all the parking will be accommodated on site the total amount of parking and related to the new project is about 10 more than what exists today and the vast majority of that will be accommodated in structured parking within and underneath the buildings not on the surface with respect to local bicycle with respect to bicycles there will be local bicycle access to the site provided from shared lanes on Mass Ave and from other public streets via private ways commuter and recreational bicycle access to the Minuteman commuter bikeway is provided via Ryder Street indoor bicycle parking with dedicated bike repair and maintenance areas will be provided for the residents within the parking garage structures and exterior bike parking will be provided in the public areas including parking areas along the Millbrook Walkway pedestrian access is provided via private ways to Mass Ave and Ryder Street there will be a raised sidewalk on the south side of the Ryder Street driveway over the Mill Millbrook Bridge provide and that'll provide separation that from the vehicular traffic needed for improved pedestrian safety in addition the main pedestrian entrance to the building complex will be separated from the main parking garage entrance and exit to reduce potential conflicts the sidewalks on Mass Ave provide local connectivity to nearby retail and service locations and also to the MBTA bus stops for computers public transit is also part of our study and it is provided for residents via the MBTA bus stops at Mass Ave and Appleton Street which serve bus number 77 and bus number 79 connecting to Arlington Heights to Harvard Square and to AOLF stations bus 67 which connects to AOLF station to Turkey Hill runs along Summer Street the AOLF station services the MBTA red line extending from Arlington to Brain Tree and Ashmont and the broader MBTA system in addition that we will be working on a transportation demand management plan that will further support our transportation goals so Joel we can continue so just to recap the project benefits we believe are are are quite meaningful here the public realm a number of spaces with great diversity will be created that highlight the site's history its ecological conditions and that improve the Mill Brook and those will include things like the Mill Brook pathway and the and other exterior spaces so there'll be lots of places for residents in the community to to enjoy in the public realm connectivity between Mass Ave and the Mill Brook and the bikeway link will be tied together with the project we will be leaning heavy into the adaptive reuse and really celebrating the historic buildings on the site that can be reused in the project and from a resiliency and sustainability perspective we will be kind of on the on the leading edge of what can be achieved there from a point of view that the we will be providing an access driveway to the site for enhanced vehicular and pedestrian access all the buildings will be provided with elevator access and we will be actually having to rebuild an entirely new Mill Brook bridge that provides access to the site and gives public safety vehicle access and then obviously there are significant economic development benefits that come along with a project of this size not to mention the fact that we'll be providing a hundred or so new apartments i'm sorry 130 new apartments 25 of which 25 percent of which will be affordable and parking spaces with close to a one-to-one ratio. Is that the end of the presentation? I think Joya was so yes that is the end of our presentation sorry for the long pause there at the end thank you for your time yeah thank you for your time and we're we're thrilled to present this to you and we hope that you know the successive work bar is a little preview of what's come and that this can be a development that the whole town can be proud of so thank you thank you i'm just to confirm Mary did you have any comments to close up you're muted Mary thanks Julia as we promised that the neighbors we will get traffic report available to them they also requested even though we don't think a shadow study is necessary because the way the project is situated we are going to do a shadow study because several of the neighbors asked for that as well so we we are want to work with the community with respect to this project thank you for your time thank you and i will open up to the board for a motion to receive any comments or questions that board members might have um miss mon sorry i'm over see oh i'm sorry that's okay um is that is that the motion you're looking for right now mr chair if it is i'll second mr carol's motion so i think what we'll be looking at at this point based on previous handlings of these projects is we still wait the notice from mass housing and the application but we can go ahead in anticipation of that and move receipt of the presentation and then authorize the town manager to hire a consultant to review the project um and attorney i've been correct me if if i'm wrong on that procedure mr chair that's that's correct so i think the applicants today are coming and giving us an advanced view of what the project entails under the regulations once they submit an application to a subsidizing agency the select board will have 30 days to provide any comment in support of whatever the select board you know ultimately opts to do with respect to the project just so folks sort of in the public understand that the select board's real role is this relatively narrow matter of project eligibility to express uh support concern or whatever about specific aspects of the project set forth in the regulation and want to make sure that there's proper site control they want to identify many things that they think of the subsidizing agency should know about from the community's perspective the board's allowed to solicit comments from other town boards and committees and personnel but ultimately it's a relatively short window in terms of 30 days so it's helpful if the board anticipates wanting to have anybody take a look at the project from a standpoint to do that now because once the project eligibility letter is received by the subsidizing agency you'll only have 30 days to provide your comments including comments of support if that's how the select board opts to go right turn to miss mahan um i guess again i'll second mr carol's motion um i do want to say that um i do appreciate um julia myrack and turning up on san leo kroner and others um their ties to allington that really speak volumes to me in terms of moving forward with this project as well as um meeting with the uh and hearing from the different people that have worked on this project mr bergman mr campbell mr st claire i apologize for missing out on any others and the other thing is um i understand that you're going above the 15 percent affordable requirement to 25 percent um i don't know if this is appropriate for me to ask if it isn't then maybe i didn't ask this question but um i just would like to put uh take advantage of the opportunity in terms of the 25 affordable apartments component of it whatever you can do um whether it's in terms of a lottery that gives allington residents um allington town employees um some sort of uh avenue to um be considered for those perhaps um as a first or second choice i just would like to put that out there for you all i'm not saying that's a requirement it's just sort of a wishlist thing for me because i'm hearing a lot from um current discussions that we're going through right now in terms of uh you know allington residents who can't afford to live here but more importantly allington town employees who can't afford to live here and a lot of it is because of affordability um so that's why i put that forward so that's just just sort of a wishlist thing and i uh happily second mr carol's motion thank you mr mr heart hey mr carol just wanted to confirm if you have any comments or questions in addition to the motion no i mean i appreciate the presentation i know having had a chance to look at it before i mean i what mr gamble was right on point i mean i was actually right off frame of that that black and white picture of the walkabout um it was a very democratic process and there were thousands of people took took took part in the master planning uh process and and this project i think is is probably closest to the heart of many things that were that were um touched on during that process i was the board's liaison to part of it part of that to the the advisory committee and um you know one thing that this board is supported efforts to to build out the to improve rather the millbrook corridor for public access i'm very excited to see that aspect and through to see the adaptive reuse i've visited work bar a couple of times incredible things are done in that in that building i appreciate and what you've put forward the the commitment to some of the sustainable energy practices that i know that you you've followed it at work bar too um so i mean i i am i'm happy to see this go forward and go through its paces i'm glad that you've been meeting with the neighborhood and getting some of their their concerns and that that those will be addressed and i think you've heard some of the other questions that have been raised about unit mix and affordability which which obviously is obviously something that's top of mind for us but uh thank you very much for bringing this forward and we'll look forward to seeing it as it as it moves along thank you mr diggins yes thanks thanks a lot you know so this is this is definitely an interesting project and and uh yeah i appreciate all the work that the consultants have done i mean outreach to the board and and to the community um you know um this is a very active community and uh people really care about it a lot and and i would say you're not going to please everyone you know but but what we can always do mean is listen to people's concerns mean and answer them as as honestly as as we can uh i mean i've heard from from folks mean and so i'm just going to ask a couple a few questions mean and if you can answer them now that'd be great you know so on the the bike storage see how many bikes will be able to store in that area we are still working through the specifics of the storage in in the parking area but we anticipate being able to store store between 50 and 100 bikes just in rooms and that doesn't include bikes that could be stored in other places you know in the parking area and along the site so you know our our goals are aligned with the town and trying to get as robust of a population using bicycles and taking advantage of the Minuteman trail and we think that's going to be a real draw here so you know we don't want to we don't want to miss that as an opportunity to align the amenities that our property offers to complement that and the connection to the bike to bike trail is is along Rider street okay gotcha i saw that again that's what that's what i thought too and and so one of the questions that's been brought to my attention is is the seemingly high ratio of parking spaces to units is that indeed high or in your opinion or or what's the rationale for the number of parking spaces to number units it's a great question mr. Viggins and and i think we heard from someone else earlier that we didn't have enough parking and we would need more so i think this is a matter of perspective and so what we try to do is just empirically understand that by having our consultants study what the neighboring apartment complexes that are of similar size and scale and in the Arlington Heights area what actual parking do they use and how much do they use during the day how much do they use during the evenings and how much do they have on the on the weekends and so we are going to mimic that amount it turns out that it's it works out to be probably just a little bit under one space per unit but we have units that go from studio all the way up to one bedroom two bedroom and three bedroom and and so you know you end up getting different different residents who have different needs for those but you know we're comfortable that that ratio is the right ratio and i'm really happy that you're going beyond the 15 percent of units mean for affordability a i know that some people would prefer more higher i mean at all and and i would say go as high as you can go but as as mr. Rudick said to me me we understand and appreciate that you are a private developer and and you need to make money i mean i get the sense me from from the nature of the the myrax is that the money will go back into into the the um the town uh in one way or another i mean if you can support the good folks me who are trying to do well me and then they can make that money work for for the community or similar communities because um we ultimately i think for us to get what we want is more affordability and more diversity mean everyone's going to have to pitch in more and that's going to be pitched in financially more and so either me those who extract monies from various entities will give back more that money you know to help aid everyone at large or we just extract less in the beginning but that's the only way we're going to really get to where we want to go uh and so um one one yeah and just one more other comment me because i i do share this concern too about the um the loss of zoning me for industry in and a i yes yeah i understand that probably this is the best we can do uh with this piece of property and i certainly appreciate how it fits in a with a master plan and i really like the way it's opening up a mill brook uh to to the public and it may be that you can't kind of open up mill brook to the public and maintain it as industry industry space and so i think it's really incumbent upon the town you know to try to rezone maybe other areas or do something you'll try to get back some space that we can dedicate uh to towards industry but but uh this this this is a beautiful project aid and once again i think you've done a really good job in outreaching and i'm sure you'll continue to do a good job in outreaching so i can i can happily support it thank you great thank you thank you mr the question thank you mr chairman and i want to thank the group for the for the presentation for the outreach and sorry it's so late in the evening can i wait a really full agenda but um i i know there was outreach that took place before our meeting and and with the neighbors and and i think that's very helpful for for all all concerned um just a question on the the project eligibility application when when was that submitted we uh we put our finishing touches on that today and have submitted it electronically okay all right so we will notify and then that will trigger the 30-day period for comments so i mean i think it's important for us as a board and we're making this vote tonight to reach out to the departments and reach out to the public um for comments and and and use that 30-day period wisely but uh it it seems like a little bit of time before before that comes in and and just a comment on the 25 percent and while it's greater than the zoning or the inclusionary zoning bylaw it's 25 percent because that's what's required under a comprehensive permit and and that's that's fine i i just um you know for the public's benefit that 25 figure is is is by statute and um and and that's that that's where it comes from um and just one other comment on again on that the completeness and mr currow mentioned adopting some of the um recommendations in the millbrook carter report which the millbrook carter study group issued in in 2019 i appreciate the opening up of the of the brook there and and trying to work with walkways and and make connections there and i look forward to looking at the application and have an opportunity to comment on it great thank you very much sure thank you mr de Corsi and i like my colleagues i'm happy to start this process i think it's an innovative use of the space i've known the space to be there all my life but a lot of people just drive right by and they don't know what's back there and i think it's a good way to fill a need for the town and i can say that i and personally i know the myrax charity i i grew up playing for the myrax little league team the 1993 town champs so and everyone knows the family everyone knows that the family has always give back to the town has had the town's best interests as hard so i am happy to start the process without any further comments on a motion by mr currow second by mr mahan i'll turn to attorney hind mr mahan yes mr de corsi yes mr diggins yes mr currow yes mr herd yes and thank you all for sticking with us as mr corsi said on a pretty tight uh pretty heavy agenda tonight thank you thank you very much thank you we look forward to working with you thank you i have a given minute to populate out i mean so the last item or item number 16 rather under traffic rules and quarter this is regarding the thorn dyke place comprehensive permit that's set to repeat begin application the review again in july so the did reach out to boards to attorney hind me did you want to comment no i'm sorry just oh sorry so they reached out to boards back in 2016 to to comment in anticipation of the permit application is now back on we have attached a copy of the letter that was sent signed by then chairman chairwoman mahan with the board's comments regarding the project um in urging that the zba not move the project forward we're here with the understanding that the zba is in in a board appointed by the select board but just to open it up to the board now to reiterate any comments to determine whether or not we should just send along a letter of the same form this time around or any additional comments or changes so i'll open up to miss mahan um i think um i'd like to sort of follow the same parallel course in terms of um what our comments should be to the zoning board of appeals as an informatory piece from the select board understanding that the zoning board of appeals is guided by law in terms of what they can addict and not and not have control over but as policy makers of the town i'd like to send something similar but i'd also like to hear from my colleagues on the board if there's anything they'd like to amplify and or modify um that would be a more effective piece of correspondence or if we um basically mirror the previous message and send that out thank you mr thank you and i shouldn't mention that in the request they in the town manager can correct me if i'm wrong but he said that the comments were due by july 7th for the upcoming hearing Doug can i don't have that date in front of that accurate so the um just to be clear uh the uh memo is requesting comments by july 7th a 40b hearing process isn't typically one hearing it's not going to be in this case this is sort of a re-launch of a hearing that was first noticed many years ago it's still technically the same hearing um but there were some intellectual appeal by the town um so this is really the substance of the appeal being heard sort of again with some revised submissions by the applicants particularly with respect to um the floodplain and a couple of other developments so i think what the memo was looking for was whether or not committees or commissions have any revised comments based upon some of the new submissions um but also in your particular case there are new select board members that weren't on at the time the initial letter was submitted and so it could be totally appropriate for the board to essentially echo its previous comments and commitments especially given that you in your letter make reference to the board's very um detailed letter that was submitted with respect to project eligibility to mass housing or you could um develop new and additional comments um on the on the project for this eba's consideration mr carl thank you um i think it's reasonable for this board to to send a letter if it's if it's if the board's so inclined to send a letter the original it's an attachment um just just stating that that we've a significant turnover on the board we wish to reiterate um all of the points that were made by the by the previous board i don't feel comfortable well submitting comments at this time with nothing in front of me about the new submissions i gotta be honest i i i think at the time that we'd sent this we had some some presentation um to base our comments on um others may may feel differently but i'm not sure i'm feeling like i'm in a position to to to address it specifically the new submission i don't know how significantly it's changed yeah mr corcy any comments yeah thank you mr chair um now i i think we should send a it certainly update the letter um and i hear what mr carl's saying there isn't anything specific in front of us so if july set is the date i think i think we maybe need to take action to authorize the the chair to either send a letter to designate um a one of two members to to to um draft a letter before june before july 7th um reiterating our opposition but updating it for things that have taken place since the november 2016 letter because the procedural posture of the of the application was different in that letter okay mr diggins well i agree with scuro you know but also i understand it's time constraints being uh and i certainly have witnessed the amount of thought that went into uh drafting the the the current letter a my only opposition to the project really is on on environmental grounds uh but i will go along um happily so with with some the the current letter if that's really what the with the board wants to do uh and i yeah yeah that's essentially it you know thank you yeah if i may um i'm sorry mr yeah i was gonna turn to you if i may um i want to try to differentiate between things it would be helpful for the board to have a letter um by for the hearing on the 14th however uh if the board needs more time it's not as if comment will be foreclosed at the 14th hearing so it is possible that if the board once more times that's okay um i just think that the you know the the plan director's trying to cultivate things to help move this along with respect to the cba's process um i also want to note that i don't think that their revised submissions dramatically in my professional opinion only they dramatically alter the overall posture of the board had taken in the sense that um you know as i recall and what was expressed in that that letter uh is primarily that the board wanted uh the zba to avail itself of all the resources that it could to develop the best possible record and reaches decisions with one piece of it but the other pieces of it with respect to the overall uh impact to the project the concerns about flooding wetlands those are all things that um frankly the the the revised submissions aren't going to you know essentially a race or dramatically revise concerns about those same issues so again i'll open up to the board but i think the suggestion here could be we're all going to be pretty confident that this isn't going to get wrapped up on in this first meeting would it be preferable to all to put to push to our next meeting to get it addressed to to to gather comments and and update the letter rather than just reiterating the letter that we have or would the general consensus be to just reiterate the letter so we have it to ensure that it's in front of the zba for the july meeting yep it's girl i i'd feel more comfortable if if we designated you and perhaps another member to to work on a draft of a letter that could be presented to us at our next meeting for for approval if it doesn't there's i mean we might send a note to to the zba to let them know that we have additional comments underway but but but we don't have any further meetings until the time yet okay in the worst i mean do you have i'll make i'll make that as a motion sure i move that doesn't need the chair to to coordinate the the drafting of the of a letter with comments to be submitted to the zba and with further requests to chair notified the zba that we will not be in a position to to provide such comments until uh July 20th i believe that's our next meeting right yep July 20th and do the second second and do we have any further comments on this i um mr chair if i may yep um if i could ask the chair or perhaps town council is there anyway um before July 7th July 9th dates are going be on me right now that we can relay a message to the zba that the um while the select board is going to go through this process and i don't know what else we're going to add to the comments but we may that uh the select board is um still a hundred percent uh dedicated or committed to um assisting the board the zoning board of appeals to enforce the rules and regulations of the town to um ensure the uh safety environmental impacts and health of ollington residents it's kind of like one of the main thrusts of of the original letter that we sent previously so that while we're saying something else is going to come but not until beyond the date of your next meeting that core epithet of what we've been saying to the zoning board of appeals still stands i've had to admit my motion in that respect uh if i could ask uh through the chair attorney hain yep attorney hain i think we can do that um thank you mr chair i think we can do that uh miss mahan i'd be happy if you wanted to um charge me with drafting something that reflects that i'd be happy to do it i i i i'm ready to skip ahead to something uh that's not before the board on this specific matter but um as the board may recall uh we do need the the town republican committee is just provided some uh a list of candidates to fill the vacant registrar uh position and um the recount has been set for july 9th so if the board is uh willing and able to meet to appoint a registrar um between now and july 9th i could try to uh draft something for the board for your approval on this score as well um i i would ask my through the chair ask my colleague mr caro um if he's amenable to that i'm absolutely amenable to that i think we have one other piece of business that might might might might warrant that treatment as well so yeah and i would ask the chair if that's um something that he's also amenable to yes absolutely and mr chairman can i say one other thing i'm sorry yes uh one other thing that just for folks to know not just for the select board for the public um the revised submissions are all uploaded um take a look at them uh on the thorn dyke section of the zba's webpage so you can take a look through any of the revised submissions again they're primarily technical documents uh written to the plan as they outline different you know floodplain and delineations and things like that thank you thank you and i apologize if this already happened but do we have a second for mr caro's motion second and do you have any further comments mr korsy i'd know further comments mr diggins nope mr hawn no thank you and mr curl no i don't all right so we have a motion by mr curl second by mr hawn attorney i'm mr hawn yes mr decorsi yes mr diggins yes mr curill yes mr herd yes so uh unanimous vote thank you all right so that takes us to correspondence received we have a request for additional traffic coming from magnolia park entrance on thorn dyke street from bill palm tear 112 thorn dyke street so i want to refer this mr chaplain should we refer this to your office or of course i mean tag has studied this a number of times most recently recommending this area be designated as a speed safety zone but um if you refer it to me we can have uh dan amstutz taken a little look uh and in at the very least provide a response to mr palm tear all right thank you and then we have correspondence from christville already 56 adams street the property 400 to 402 mass ab just briefly since this mentions me um this is where i have my law office there is currently an application i think just went to the zba is going to the redevelopment board so this is i'm just a tenant there i have nothing to do with this application but i'm actually in the process of transitioning out of that location anyway so whatever goes on at this property in the future i will not be a part of so this one i believe would be referred to on to the redevelopment board since i think this is the next stop for this project yes right and so i'll take a motion to receive these two correspondence refer 17 to telemanager for 18 to the redevelopment board so moved second so on a motion by mr curl second by mr decorcy turning on this mohan yes mr decorcy yes mr diggins yes mr curel yeah mr herd yes all right and that brings us to new business so turning on i've no new business other than what we discussed uh mr shaw herrington i believe is forwarding to your office and forwarded to me a slate of folks to replace uh not to replace but to fill a vacancy in the register and the board registrars um so if the board you know has occasion to schedule a meeting before the july 9th recount date um it may be wise to do thank you mr chaplain no new business miss mohan uh no new business mr chair thank you i can't picture the chamber since i haven't been in there yet i'll go across my screen mr decorcy no new business hey mr curl no new business mr diggins 1120 is new air so no new business and i have no new business as well with that i will take a motion to adjourn from so moved miss mohan second by mr curl attorney i'm miss mohan yes mr decorcy yeah yes mr diggins yes mr curel yes mr herd yes good night all night thank you