 Hello, everyone and welcome. I'm James Milan. I'm here with Adam chapter lane, our town manager for a, an end of the year wrap up a recap of the years we all know, unlike any that we have experienced as a collective body and certainly unlike any that our town and town hall has experienced. So Adam, you know, we're almost done with 2020 and hoping better for 2021 but, you know, as I was thinking about it before, before starting to chat with you I realized there's actually a lot to be said in the area of achievements or accomplishments. This year, despite, and it's a big despite the constraints of the pandemic. I know we at ACMI feel really good about continuing to carry on with our own mission, and I imagine that that's got to be a big hallmark of how you're feeling as you look back on the year as well. Yeah, absolutely. I mean I think there's a lot so many different ways we could talk about 2020. I think a word that comes to mind for me as it's been a real reckoning in many different ways right reckoning around race reckoning around public health reckoning around the economy, and that list could go on and on and those things have been themes globally, nationally and here locally. But as you just suggested, I do think, you know, both town staff as well as volunteers and just town residents have a lot to be proud of, about how much we've accomplished, even in the face of all that and how we've continued to move priorities forward, even under all of these limitations and restrictions that we've rightfully been under for the past 10 months now. Yeah, and obviously there are just a whole bunch of different subject areas that we that we could cover and we will do our best to at least touch on on many of them. I would start in for no particular reason, but start with what you were just saying about reckoning around kind of racial equity and and racial justice. As we as you so correctly put it, that's been a global a national regional and a local issue. And continues to be of course. But for us here in Arlington we came into 2020 with, you know, something that we had been a reckoning that was already underway, but that really accelerated in a lot of ways. Again, pandemic or no pandemic community conversations that needed to happen have, you know, were successfully executed. And those had a lot to do with the wider issues but also local issues around Lieutenant Padrini and and things events that go back two years now. But nonetheless, really we're in a different place it feels to me now than we were in January of 2020 and if you can walk us through that a little bit that would be great. Yeah, absolutely and I, I guess I'd be proud to say that if we go back to January of 2020. It was in January of 2020 that 60 town staff department heads and other supervisory personnel spent the whole day at the sons of Italy, being trained by the National League of Cities on race and equity. January of 2020 was also the month that were actually the second month of work for Jill Harvey, our diversity equity and inclusion coordinator so we started 2020 with a commitment to race and equity, having no idea what the rest of the year would hold at that time. And I think it's that work that set us up to have some of the conversations you referenced over the course of this summer around race and equity. You know, not that we were years deep in that regard, but we weren't starting the conversation after the tragedy of George Floyd, which I think has been a part of our success in having these conversations in the manner in which we've had them in Arlington. Again, both at a staff level and a community level. You went to twine that much broader conversation with the fact that we were dealing with our own very real and concerning issue of Lieutenant Padrini. And I think you know there's, I never I don't think I ever claim there was a solution to concern around Lieutenant Padrini. But I do think working with with the chief, working with outside consultants, race, racial equity consultants. I do think we were able to provide an opportunity for the community to go face to face in this virtual world with Lieutenant Padrini and for him to do the same. And really hear community concerns at a level that I'm not actually even sure he would have been able to hear if we'd been in a room together. I think there's something about the sterility of this virtual environment that I really think makes every person's voice more clear and, you know, easy much easier rise above the din in this virtual world. So, though I'm sure concerns in the community are not gone over Lieutenant Padrini. I'm glad to say that I think we've broadened the conversation in Arlington around issues of race and equity involving policing and beyond policing. I know internally the chief has been a real leader in changing and updating policies that meet this moment. And I know the community is stepping up with town meetings vote to form a study committee to look at a civilian oversight group for policing in Arlington. So, I don't think 2020 ends this year with anything near completion on this work that we need to do around race and equity and its intersection with policing. But I think 2020 saw early on an investment in that work, and it set us up entering 2021 to really start to hopefully make some actual strides in progress on improving issues of equity in Arlington. And as you mentioned, you know, it was perhaps most fine, most the highest volume around this may have attended, you know, Lieutenant Padrini's writings, how those were reacted to and dealt with, etc. But there is so much more to the situation than simply that and also, as you said, to even to the quite the challenges around policing and our and our community, because I remember from the that series of conversations referencing here that we were talking about institutional and systemic racism across a number of institutions, you know, obviously around the country but also here in Arlington from housing to the schools, etc. And my assumption is that you're also feeling that that optimum that note of optimism you were just hitting it felt to me applies to the work that you see going forward in those other areas as well. It does and and I don't mean to suggest that the work is easy, or that solutions will be easily had or found. But I'm optimistic that we're having the conversations that we've got a team of people internally, incredibly invested in this work. We have a core group of people that are representative of multiple departments. We have Jill as our director. We have a lens of Michelle representing her firm powerful pathways. We have our partnership with the National League of Cities race equity and leadership division. And, and I think we're ready and we're poised to really tackle this work. And again, I am not so naive is to think that the changes we will eventually have to try to propose and implement will be easy, because these are hard conversations to have and they'll continue to be hard to have. But I am optimistic that we're having them. And I think, frankly, I know we're far, far ahead of many communities not only in the state, but nationally. And the fact that we're as a community ready to have these conversations I think puts us in a great position to start the year. I know from my own feelings of discomfort, frankly, constructive discomfort that were, you know, that I had as a participant or spectator on those conversations. You know, it was a good illustration of that fact, the fact that we are pushing into necessarily uncomfortable territory and we've got a long way to go. We talked last week about the teachings that are going to be happening in January, February and in March. And certainly that is the next step to hold up as another example of what you're talking about. Moving moving to other to another topic area though. I know that constantly one of the ways in which we live in the more the grimmer parts of our conversations. And I think about these, this last year has been around the progress that we have made as a continued to make as a community as a green community as a community interested in, you know, moving forward into the future in a, in a, an environmentally responsible way for ourselves and with regard to the region. Certainly again, roadblocks could have been thrown up against the against progress in that area and yet it seems like a number of things were pushed forward through the course of 2020. Absolutely. And I think, I think there'll be a theme maybe and what we talk about now for the next few minutes of like everybody in mid March through the end of March and even a little bit into the beginning of April, much was put on pause. And we were all getting our footing and figuring out how to exist in this new world we weren't exactly sure how long, and if it would last. But I think we've been so lucky to have a team in Arlington that quickly adapted and got many efforts back up and running virtually very quickly. And the basics like select board meetings school committee meetings and other board committees and commissions, all the way towards some of our more in depth planning efforts and finding ways to engage not only with the committees that were steering those planning efforts, but engaging with the community about those planning efforts. And I'd be remiss to not mention that a huge part of all those efforts has been ACMI. And so we were doing our technical end of figuring out the laws and statutes and how to get zoom up and running. But if not for ACMI being, I mean, literally a partner from step one to make sure that we were broadcasting live on ACMI streaming on ACMI dot TV, and making sure we're putting it on Facebook live. Really, ACMI has been sort of a quiet, amazing critical indispensable partner in all of this which has been, you know, so gratifying to have a great team ACMI working with us on this. But to your immediate question, one of those efforts. We can handle that form digression. Thank you. No, but before I let you continue, I did want to say that thank you for pointing that out and it is true and hopefully more and more people in the community have come to recognize that with us stuck in our houses in the way that we are. And all the changes that needed to be made to how business is done, so to speak, that a, a, it open, it was an opportunity for a community, you know, community centered service operation like ACMI to step forward and provide what it uniquely can so we're, on our end, we really are proud to have, you know, come through as best we can. But also, you know, we're appreciative of the fact that more and more folks recognize, hey, community television community media has a an invaluable role to play in quality of life around here and, you know, that's the kind of thing that can be taken for granted so absolutely, absolutely. Anyway, now I digressed I know that's a well well deserved praise and digression about ACMI's role. So in regards to being a green community and focusing on some of these more climate focused issues. The start of this year we were planning and working on two really big planning efforts focused around sustainability and issues of energy and climate. The first being the, excuse me the creation of a net zero energy plan. The second being the creation of a sustainable transportation plan separate plans working together to achieve mutually beneficial goals. And both huge undertakings both with big representative committees, staring their work, and certainly the need to engage the community, and both picked right back up in the spring. And now both are pretty close to reporting their final plan to the community, so that we can begin working to make recommendations to town meeting for the implementations of both plans. So I think I think that's a huge credit to the staff in the planning department, who have been working on that under Jenny rates leadership on the clean energy plan can prove it our energy manager has been absolutely phenomenal on the sustainable transportation plan which we're calling connect Arlington, Dan Amstutz the senior transportation planners work has been has been tremendous and I don't mean to leave anybody out there just the key, the key staff working on those two plans. And I think you know what might end up happening is that you know when we start to make some of these proposals to town meeting to adopt various bylaws or changes or to fund certain projects that might be recommended by these plans that I think that probably some folks are going to be I think that we've been able to make so much progress this year on these important issues, but we have. And I think all those involved should be proud that again, even in the face of all these challenges we've been able to accomplish so much, and get these two important plans right on the precipice of completion. How pivot pivoting into yet yet another direction. I'm wondering how you are. And again, sorry out there there's no particular organization to the way that I'm moving through this. Some might find that I should have, you know, we should have addressed this first and foremost because coven 19 has defined so much of our experience for so long now in this year. But I'm wondering, again, what your perspective is as you look back. In terms of just how, how things have gone well but also what lessons were you've learned around dealing specifically with the pandemic in our community. Over these last nine months or so. And, yeah, let's let's talk about how the pandemic itself has played out here in Arlington going back to March and perhaps before. So I think the first thing I would say is, you know, sitting here today, looking back over the past 10 months or nine months. I feel so grateful to be working as part of what is truly a brilliant, passionate and dedicated team of professionals in Arlington, the public health team. I knew they were good, but their level of knowledge and professionalism and literally I mean 24 seven for the past nine months has just been. It's been astounding. They're, they're smart. They're resilient. They care so much about Arlington and the people of Arlington. That has just been an amazing part of this pandemic. The team around them police fire public works planning recreation, the deputy town manager working on finance the HR director working on all the different nuts and bolts that have kept everything together. And beyond that the school superintendent. It's really just been the public information officer I can name every employee. It's really been so gratifying to see such an incredible team, operate day in and day out as as you know we meet every day at noon to check in see where things stand and plan looking forward. So, you know, I, I always enjoyed working with these people, but looking back it's really been an incredibly gratifying experience to work with all of them and see how excellent they've been. I would say that number one and I think Arlington, if you look comparatively, we're very fortunate that we had already invested in public health at a rate probably significantly higher than most communities had. We had with our Health and Human Services Department, Christine Bargeron leading that effort Natasha Wade and as our public health director below that several health health compliance officers working under her direction. We had pretty solid infrastructure in place. I think this pandemic has had has made us add even more to that infrastructure, but I know that many communities. It's one health director. And that's it. The community is not that much smaller than us. So we've been lucky that we started with that infrastructure. I think looking forward we're going to have to consider. If even our already robust infrastructure at the start of this is enough, given the possibility of having to face down issues of issues like this in the future. So I think that's, that's both a reflection on being fortunate to start from a position of strength and then we have to look at going forward. And as a result of lessons learned, you know, I think at this point that I think there's going to be more lessons we learned when we study this, and we plan to study this. One of the co chairs of Envision Arlington had reached out to me to suggest we put together a committee to debrief how the past nine months have gone, and what we should think about going forward and we will be forming such a committee I think it's a really good idea. In the moment, I would say, I think myself and others need to focus on trying to figure out what some of our perhaps known unknowns are. So that would better prepared as a community. I mean, I've obviously I was familiar with the word pandemic and epidemic and, and so on and so forth and I knew what the World Health Organization was but I can't honestly tell you that I, I ever thought as a local government leader that we would be facing and you know I don't, I think part of my job is to not catastrophize and to interremain calm and not over expend resources unnecessarily, but I think as much as public health was ready for this. I'm not sure entirely as an organization we were ready for exactly what we've been facing. I think at some point when we have time someday sitting down and looking at what other potential, you know, maybe worst case scenarios are out there that we need to be better prepared for. I think the other thing I'd add is, if we could go back in time. I think our, our networks in the community of supporting those most vulnerable have performed very well. But I think sort of refreshing and talking more about our resource mapping, so that we know from a town point of view, exactly how well we're doing taking those vulnerable from a food insecurity point of view from health point of view from an isolation mental health point of view. I think making sure those networks are built out in the manner in which they should be built out would be an important lesson learned. And I think, I think we've done a very good job communicating throughout this pandemic, but I've definitely learned, you cannot communicate too much. In general life, I, you know, in my job I find there's times where I feel like I said that already I already told the public about that are we issued a release. Through this pandemic. That's been on on steroids right where you feel like you've communicated, either through interviews with you James or press release or a town notice or an Arlington alert, but you just can't communicate too much there's people are overwhelmed with all the information they're receiving from you know whether it's Twitter or Facebook or TV or, you know, however they get their information that you just yet you have to I think inundate people with information you want them to see to make sure that it gets in front of them. So I would say sitting here today that's another lesson I've learned that you can't over communicate. So what I hear you saying is that, you know, whether it comes to communication to taking care of vulnerable populations to just having the infrastructure in place for a proper public health response to a crisis like this, that you feel like well, and that we were well positioned to begin with, and that we have, you know, that that folks have performed really well. But in all of those areas you also recognize that there's possible to do even better. And that seems like a prudent approach coming out. Well, let's hope we're coming out. Yeah, certainly at least coming out of this year. The topic area I wanted to ask you about, though you may have something else you also would like to mention is the fact that this was a very active, and unusually so, from our ACMI perspective, active year politically here in town so in other words we had elections that contested beyond what is often the case for local offices. There were a lot of them there were a lot of candidates there and all of this happened within the pandemic as well. Then there were town meetings that had to happen in various, you know, unusual ways and accommodations to the circumstances. So much was was done on that level as well. And so I just wanted to touch on that and get your reaction. Yeah, I mean so I definitely have observed the same. I guess what I see is, I've always felt like local government is where you can have the most impact. It's why it's my chosen career path. But I think given all of these global issues that have now come home to roost, whether it's race, whether it's climate, whether it's this pandemic, whether it's income inequality, whatever it might be. They've all sort of started hitting us at the same time, you know, earlier this year late 2019. They're there right I'm not they're not new, but they've the volume has been turned up on all of them. And with you know really the total dysfunction of the federal government. The, I would say the inaccessibility of state government to some degree I don't want to say it's dysfunctional but it's hard to access local government is a place where you can both access it very easily, and you can make very positive in your community feel local government. And I what I hope is that more people have seen that because of the volume being turned up on all these issues and decided that getting involved in local government is a way they can make a positive impact, and potentially make progress on these areas that need to be addressed. So I think I hope that's what it is. And that's definitely my sense of what it is, even if people are running from viewpoints that are different from their opponents or from even even some of our current policy proposals. They're all focused on trying to make the community a better place. And if that's the goal, I'm, you know, I think that the paid staff are happy to work with anybody that's focused on improving. And it was very struck throughout all of what we just alluded to in terms of local governance and again the, the, the elections and the meetings that needed to happen, etc. Very struck by people's patience for parents and just kind of understanding and rolling with the punches as, you know, you, you called town meeting I remember you know, fixing the plane while it's in the air in a sense and that applied to an awful lot of, of how things had to happen over these last number of months and it did feel from my vantage point, like people just had the right attitude about that and understood that things were going to be messy perhaps labor or time intensive in a way that they weren't, you know, it wouldn't be under normal circumstances. And again, they're just seemed like there was an overall can do attitude, which was reassuring as well as refreshing and impressive given again the kind of the inexorability of what we woke up to every day in terms of the constraints. All right, our time is getting short Adam let me ask you just to spend a few minutes looking forward. And also invite you in case we have not hit on anything of, you know, of importance that I invite you to bring that up but also just give us a sense of how you see things, what you're looking forward to. Let's put it that way in 2021. So, in terms of the anything that hasn't been brought up I would say there is a lot of budget work to be done going forward, figuring out what revenues look like in the next fiscal year both from a state level point of view and a local level point of those are going to be some hard discussions that we have to work through over the next six to eight months. And maybe beyond you know I don't know that any of us really know what the new world is going to look like so I think I would, I would only add that as sort of a public service announcement that even as we were hopefully starting to come out of this pandemic as vaccines roll out. There's still revenue issues and then potential service level issues that we have to work through as a community. So what I what I look forward to is hopefully a combination of being able to come out of this of this pandemic world, you know might take another five, six months before enough of us are vaccinated but, but once we get there. I hope that we will all be ready to be hitting our stride on all of this important work that we've talked about over the past half hour. So I have, I have a lot of hope that we've, we've maintained enough resilience and enough progress, such that, you know, we've been able to achieve what we've achieved over the past nine months through these boxes that we're talking through. I'm excited about what we'll be able to achieve and we can all get back into a room together. So, you know, from your lips, let's say, you know, to God's ears, let us hope that that is that that is indeed the case. For your own stewardship, which has not been without, you know, your share of criticism this year, which I think we need to acknowledge as as is the case for leaders were in any situation. For your stewardship, let me just commend you and say this is, you know, we always appreciate the time you take with us, of course, and therefore, or and thereby with the Arlington community. But we know that you are just like the health department and many other and the planning department and many other aspects of our local government you're working. We call 24 seven as well in a lot of ways and it's been a long, long year for all of us. But let's recognize that, you know, you it's the person at the, at the head of the pyramid here. It's been, it's been quite a taxing year we appreciate the fact that you have managed to get to this point. With what we could as far as we can tell a sense of humor intact, certainly a sense of optimism and energy moving forward into 2021, which we all of course, hope is going to be. I mean, the bar is very low. So we can feel quite good that it's going to be better than than this year just passed. And let's hope that when we get to talk 12 months from now that it is an entirely different flavor and tone to the conversation because we will have much to celebrate. I hope I hope you're right and optimistic that you are. That is my hope as well. Alright, I have been speaking with our town manager Adam chapter lane about this year gone by, which none of us will ever forget Adam thanks a lot. We've got another meeting coming up so we'll let you get to it. I'm James Milan this has been talk of the town a recap of the year with our town manager. Thanks for joining us.