 Good evening. Calling to order the meeting for the Arlington Select Board for Monday, March 29th, 2021. 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. Diane Mahan. Yes, thank you. Steve Fikorsi. Yes. Len Diggins. Yes. And Dan Dunn. Yes. And staff, when I call your name, please respond in the affirmative. Adam Chapdoline. Yes. Doug Hyme. Yes. And Board Administrator Ashley Maher is participating remotely. Good evening. This 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, given 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 requirements 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 the 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 comment. Even if members of the public do not provide comments, 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 by 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 our participants to see your full first and last name when calling upon you rather than nickname. All the materials for this meeting accept any executive session materials are available on the Novus Agenda Dashboard and we recommend that the members and the public follow the agenda as posted on Novus unless the chair notes otherwise. We're 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, questions or motions. Please hold until your name is called. Further, please remember to mute your phone or computer when you are not speaking. Please remember to speak clearly in a way that helps generate accurate minutes. For any response, wait till the chair yields the floor to you and state your name before speaking. If any members wish to engage in colloquy with other members, please do so through the chair and taking care to identify yourself. This meeting will feature opportunities for public comment on certain agenda items. After members have spoken, I as chair will afford public comment opportunities as follows. I will first ask members of the public who wish to speak to identify their names and addresses only. Once the chair has a list of all public commentators, I will call on each by name and afford 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 in this meeting will be conducted by roll call vote. If I can say that next week without reading it. All right, that takes us to our consent agenda. Item number two, minutes of meetings, February 22nd, 2021. March 1st, 2021. March 8th, 2021. March 15th, 2021. March 22nd, 2021. Request for contractor drain layer license. Markey Paving, Inc. David Markey, 110 Middlesex Street, Chelmsford, Mass 01 863 and for approval, LGBTQIA plus rainbow commission banners. Lisa Krinsky, co-chair of the rainbow commission. So first of all, Mr. Dunn, remind me, any of these meeting minutes were you not a part of? So the first one is actually where I was appointed. And so I was out of the meeting for a few minutes but I still feel equipped to vote on it. Okay, thank you. All right. And do we have a motion to approve? Move approval. And I don't know if anyone, including someone from the LGBTQIA plus rainbow commission is here, but we have approval. Move approval in the second. Second, and it does look like Lisa Krinsky is here. And Ms. Chaplin, is Ms. Krinsky with us? Yep, she should be coming on to the screen shortly. Hi, thank you. Hi, you can just identify yourself and tell us a little bit about the banner requests. Sure, I'm Lisa Krinsky, I'm the co-chair of the Arlington Rainbow Coalition and we are requested that in the month of June, that we are able to put up our pride banners in the center of town. We have had 10 of them last year and we'll have an additional six for a total of 16 this year. Thank you. And I'll turn to the board for any comments, Mr. Dunn. No comment, happy to support. Thank you. And Mrs. Mahan. Same as Mr. Dunn and happy to support. Thank you. And Mr. Diggins. I am thrilled to support it and the new banners are a great beat. And if you could say a little bit about the new design and who designed it, because I wanna give them credit. Oh, okay. We had one of our community members who took the logo and the design that we had from last year which has sharpened it up a little bit and made it more visibly appealing and are able to use that new design on the new banners that we're creating this year. Yeah, well, thanks Adam for putting it up, Ian. And I have to say, I mean... Thanks. Yeah, and each of the little beams, me has a special meaning, Ian. And I don't know if that's going to be on the Rainbow Commissions site. I can't remember from the meeting whether we decided that was gonna be the case, but they're not just random, I mean, there's some meaning behind them. That's the... Each of the rays represents a different part of the LGBTQIA plus community. And I think that on our website, we'll have some more detail about each of those individual flags, but wanted to include that in the overall. Yes, great. And they were so impressive last year. They really make a statement when you walk down S.A.V. towards the center for me to direction, they really are impressive. So I'm really happy to support it. And I also want to say that I really enjoyed being the liaison to the commission. The meetings are always fun and enlightening. So thank you. Yeah, no, they are. They are. We're happy to have you with us. Yeah, thank you. So yes, that's it. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Corsi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. No questions and I'm happy to support as well. Thank you, Ian. Always happy to support the banners really gives a lot of color and it's really great to see them up and down massive. So all right. So we have a motion to approve the consent agenda that's been seconded and attorney Hyme. Mrs. Mahon. Yes, thank you. Mr. Corsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Dunn. Yes. Mr. Heard. Yes. Mr. DeCorsi. Thank you, Mr. Corsi. Thank you very much. Happy Pride. Almost. All right. And that takes us to traffic rules and order in other business. Item number five, select board and handbook. Mrs. Mahon. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. After our esteemed colleague, Mr. Grilly, worked diligently on the select person handbook. I had initially embarked on civil public discourse and introducing that to our meetings and then a then colleague, Mr. Curell, asked to sort of champion that and he did. And with his exodus, I have picked that back up again. So when I'd like to, and I'm not sure if we should take a vote on this type, I'd like to if we could. But if you don't, that's OK. Excuse me. What I did was I attended a Zoom meeting with the MMSA, Mass Municipal Association of Select Board, course on public civil discourse, sort of carrying on that discussion. And from that, I think there were like 59 or 60 different cities or towns that participated with it. They were select boards or city councils. And quite a few points came up that I think we should consider and or vote on or discuss and vote on in a future meeting. After the meeting, I did. I'd like to prime myself on my memory. And I had a brain block I called our town manager to say the important thing that I did at this meeting. And I said, I don't know if you know anyone over at MMAs that can help me get some of the follow up information through Isabel Nichols that was spoken to and cited about. And he reminded me he is the MMA president coming to the information within the hour. So what I'd like to do with the Select Board handbook is one of the points that really was salient to me that was raised at that meeting of all the different city councils and town select boards. And some are still forward to the selection is that there are at least a half a dozen communities that. And I think this is a good idea that when people take out papers to be on the Select Board or the city council, along with everything else they get, they get the, in our case, select person handbook, as well as a signature page that says, I have received and reviewed the Select Board handbook. And then some cities or towns don't have that signature page for the whole handbook, but they definitely do for the code of conduct. And the discussion that came out of that was having a civil public discourse, but you need to start in your own house first. You need to have code of conduct amongst your board of council that you ascribe to. So I think that's a good idea. I think it's also a good tool for any chairperson, Allenton Select Board, to be able to say that any current or new member of the Select Board, this is something you reviewed and you signed that you have reviewed that. You could still ignore that and not decide to align yourself. Mrs. Mohan, I think the box that you've got is tapping the microphone. My boxes? Yeah. Like when you're moved. Yeah, sorry. Yeah. It's covering the microphone. So what I'd like to put forth tonight is that I think it's a good idea to not currently, because we already have candidates for Select Board. And I don't want anyone to think anything untoward that I'm saying any candidate for election or re-election does anything untoward towards them. But that what I'd like to do is hear from my colleagues if emotion will be appropriate to adopt that following April 10th, any member of the Select Board who will receive or has received a copy of the Select Board Handbook, which includes a code of conduct, signs that they have reviewed that. And then going forward, when you take out papers, at least for Select Board, it was also suggested that this should perhaps go to other boards, commissions, committees in the town who have the same parameters also do the same. So I'd like to hear from my colleagues. And I don't know that I'll make a motion right now, because maybe it needs to be a future Select Board agenda. But I think we should take a motion now or some other night that as of April 10th, any member of the Select Board or any current member signs that they have received and reviewed the Select Board Handbook, which includes a code of conduct, and then moving forward through the following year, any person who takes out papers for a Select Board, that's not up for re-election, which means they've already signed it. When they take out their papers, they get a copy of that. And it's sort of equates to you're applying for a job. You'd like to know what the job description is. The Select Board Handbook is a lot of what the job description is. So I'd like to hear from my colleagues if anyone's in agreement either tonight or future night to take a vote that on April 10th, any member of the board, all members of the board within the next meeting, signs that they've reviewed and received and reviewed the Select Board Handbook, and then going forward, any person running for election, not re-election, because you've already seen it and signed it, any person running for election receives a copy of that and signs that they have received it and they sort of understand a tacit job agreement to that. So that would be, I'd like to make that motion, but I want to hear if my colleagues say they need more time and they'd like to have the vote at another meeting or if everyone's comfortable tonight, if we can take it tonight. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Corsi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I second Mrs. Mahan's motion and I'm fine with that. I did the only thing I would suggest is maybe working with Attorney Heim if we can just come back with language as to where this is in our chapter four of our Select Board Code of Conduct for a final vote. But I think that the concept makes good sense and I certainly could support that. Thank you, Mr. Diggins. Yes, I'm fine with it too. And as long as there's a rule that the guys have to be as dapper as the current chair or Mr. Corsi, I'll be able to adhere to it. Mr. Dunn. Definitely, I certainly have no problem with signing it. I think it's a fine document and it's something that I think that we, you know, certainly in the past we worked a lot on and I feel like that that process of working on the document is more important than the signature, but I don't see the signature as a problem or a distraction. Yep. Yeah, and I'm happy to also support that. I think it's certainly reasonable to provide the handbook to people right when they express interest in being on the board to see what, because it's certainly some useful information over there that's been compiled over time. So, so Mrs. Mohan, was that a motion just to clarify? Yes, it was. It was to... By Mr. Corsi. What you have stated and then moving forward, if anyone takes out papers for select board who's not up for reelection, because you've already signed it, just because you signed that you've received and reviewed it doesn't necessarily agree that you're in agreement with the Code of Conduct. It's just saying that you've reviewed it. It's hopefully a tool for any future chairperson to kind of remind someone of the job description, but also giving them their right to conduct themselves as a select person as they see fit. Sure. Attorney Hymes, do you have any questions on the motion or do you have what? No, I think I understand the... I think I understand what Mrs. Mohan is asking. I think I understand the input from the board in terms of what I would be expected to do to help. So... Okay, with that, we have a motion to approve. Seconded by Mr. Corsi. Mrs. Mohan. Yes, thank you. Mr. Corsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Dunn. Yes. Mr. Hurd. Yes. Janis Vo. Thank you. So that will take us to warrant article hearings, articles for review, we have article 21, article seven, article 16, article 23 and article 81. We are taking article 21 first at the request of the proponent. So if we have Mr. Sanbon, Sanbon Matu and Ms. Kiesel with us. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Thanks, so this is article 21 and I actually have a clip that I wanted to play. First, I wanna just talk for really quick, but is it okay to share my screen after I just give a quick gist of the article? Yep, and if you could just say your name for the record then we'll have... Yeah, it's Laura Kiesel. I live at 260 Mass Avenue. So this is article 21 and this warrant would endeavor to earmark the majority of the funds for the affordable housing trust fund to go to households making out or under 60% area median income. So just really quickly, I think it's great that last fall during town meeting, an affordable housing trust fund bill was passed or warrant was passed, but I know that there was an amendment to align the language of defining affordable housing with community housing under the CPA, but my concern, and I know others share this concern, is the language of the CPA that defines community housing allows households making up to 100% area median income to qualify, to put that into plain language, 100% area median income, I believe is about $83,000 for a single family, $95,000 for two family, and $107,000 for a three family household. So if I could share my screen, I thought I'd place some clips from the town's own housing panels. Okay. I'm not seeing screen share, do I? Ms. Chaplain, should be able to share. Let me try a different way. It says photos, but I don't see anything that says screen share. Okay, let me try one other thing here. Okay. Does that show it? Let me see if it'll let me, let me just try. Can you see my screen? No, we just lost your video. Okay, yeah, so I'm not seeing screen share. I'm seeing a website URL box, Google drive drop box, but it's nothing that says share your screen under share content. And you're looking at the zoom window, Laura? Yeah, I thought you'd just hit share content, right? And hit screen share. Because I've- Laura, is there a way you could send me the link because I seem to have screen share privileges? Oh, you do? Hmm. Apparently, apparently. I feel like it might take up a lot of time to get my other computer up to send it. So I can try if, but then I guess I'll just talk for a couple of minutes while I'm trying to send that because it's gonna take a minute or two. So as I said, 100% area median income, that is $83,000 for a single family, $95,000 for a two family, and then $107,000 for a three family. And my concerns with that is that if you look at the area median income by race in the Boston Metro area, the area median income for white households is actually quite close to the 100% AMI. It's $85,000 for a single family, $94,000 for a two family, and so on. But if you look, if you desegregated it by race, black and African-American households here in the Boston Metro make $47,000 AMI and Hispanic households make $42,000 AMI. So if we don't more intentionally have a mechanism in the Affordable Housing Trust Fund to compensate for these disparities, my concern is that this is going to work against trying to make Arlington a more diverse town and it's going to be by proxy exclusionary to many black and brown people. Likewise, that very high AMI is also very exclusionary to people who are in section eight vouchers and section eight vouchers are also disproportionately comprised of people who either are people with disabilities or black and brown people. So that's why we were hoping to actually get a mechanism implemented into the Affordable Housing Trust Fund that would make sure to earmark a majority of that to lower income households. And I know that some of the concern was about having some, I just sent it to you, John, did you get it? Yeah, thank you. But I needed, it says I need access. Permission, it says you need permission. I just, yes, I just sent that request. Okay. So let me just send it to you. So I just shared it, do you have it now? Yes, okay. When you're done, I'll try to share my screen here with the community. So I know that some of the concern was we needed to have some flexibility for higher income households, I think maybe for purchasing options for homeowners. So that's why I feel like this might be a compromise to earmark the majority. I know we suggested a range of 75 to 85%. So it's not completely excluding some higher income households, but that's the gist. So I don't know if you wanna play it now, John. Yeah, I'll give it a try. Okay. All right, everybody, here we go. Can you see my screen? Yes. Okay. And when, you know, one of the questions were, when we're talking about defining affordable housing, Arlington has battled for a long time about misunderstandings around what affordable housing is and what that term means, especially as it meets, what it means in terms of compliance with 40B in Arlington, what that means about building up or building out. And so if one of you all can sort of answer, answer some of those concerns, we're getting a lot of questions about that. I would speak, that's a larger challenge for a number of cities and towns. And I think as cities that are committed to centering racial equity as part of the frame, I think the question of understanding what affordability is does require you to use a lens that maybe redefines affordability. You know, and it's a one example, for instance, with one city, as many know that affordability is usually based upon the AMI, the area of median income. And so in one city, the area, and I appreciate the data that was shared earlier by Manisha, the area of median income in this city was very similar, it was over 100,000 median income. And then when they started to disaggregate it by race, which is so important if you're centering racial equity, they started to realize, well, when you look at the median income for whites, it was about 80,000. For blacks, it was, for Hispanics, it was 55,000 and for blacks, it was 35,000. And so when they looked at their policy in this city, they realized that affordability was defined at 80% of AMI. Well, if you look at 80% of AMI, 80% of 100,000 is 80,000. You're about seven and a half minutes about policy. Give us the extra time to figure out the difficulty. How long is the video that you're trying to share? And so in this case, the video is almost, the video is less than four minutes, Mr. Heard. Okay. Is that, is that all right? Yep, maybe we can finish this video and then we'll go with one. Thank you very much. Thank you. The, that the city, by using a racial equity lens, create a policy that then set policy where they needed to be X percentage of affordable housing for people that were in the 30 to 60% of AMI, 60 to 80% of AMI, as well as under 30% of AMI. So acknowledging there was more intentionality about the policy, so you're not reinforcing the inequities. And so that's just a great example for me of why data matters, getting that data and what it means to be targeted. And I mentioned earlier that targeted universalism. Are you targeted in your process as you have universal goals of making it more affordable for everyone? Just what we are considering to be affordable. I know in Boston that most affordable housing is at 70% of the area of median income. And for one person, that's about $68,000. That is not affordable for a good chunk of Boston. So if we're calling that affordable, then it's really gonna leave out a large number of folks. And we know that that means black and brown folks. It's one of the things that people are very afraid of 40Bs. And yet 40Bs, 25% of the units would have to be affordable. And if the town wanted to, they could really insist that the affordability be at 60% instead of 80% or 100% of median income or even lower. That's something that the town could actually take on. Okay, thank you very much for letting us play that. Yep, so I'll turn to the board now for any questions, comments, or motions. Mr. Diggins. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I guess the AMI, it's questionable as to even whether that's a good metric itself, right, Ms. Kisselt? Yeah, it is questionable. I mean, there's pushing to not look at AMI, but right now that's what is used. So there's a push to try to have a concerted effort to go to lower AMI to actually compensate, again, for racial disparities and to also make it eligible for people who are voucher holders. But the perhaps the concern is that the AMI is still underestimating the costs, right? Yeah. Okay, so I'll tell you where I am on this. I have a lot of confidence in Ms. Kellerher, Karen Kellerher, she works in this area a lot, I mean, and I've worked with her. I mean, I've learned a lot about housing from her and the groups in town that work with her. And I also understand what happened, because I was there, what happened in town meeting last, in the special town meeting. And I have a lot of confidence to me that the trust, the board of the trust fund is going to do all it can to make sure that as much housing as possible is affordable without me perhaps reducing the amount of housing that is created. Now, admittedly, I, unlike transportation, I have a very good grip on it. I am still navigating the waters of housing in and of my inclination now is to support what Ms. Kellerher has presented in and see what comes out of the board of the affordable housing trust fund. I would not like to tie their hands at this point in time, because as I said, I feel confident that they are going to do all that they can to increase the amount of housing, which may very well do what you want to do, maybe even go further. So I'm going to hold off and make an emotion now because I really want to see what my colleagues have to say. I don't want to force anyone's hand at this point, but I think you see the direction in which I'm headed. So if you want to make a comment based on what I said, I'm happy to listen. Sure, thanks. So I hope, I hope I do have confidence that everyone has good intentions, but I know, I mean, I used that last clip from Pan Hallett, who's my landlord, I live in affordable housing and I've almost been priced out of Arlington despite living in affordable housing because the AMI is so high here, but I know she was talking about 40 Bs and I think it's peripheral to the issue, but I know that there was some idea of using the affordable housing trust fund to fund the affordable housing and 40 Bs. And those are often 80%, 100%. I think some of the newer ones that are being proposed are about 80% AMI and that's also exclusionary to black and brown people. If you look at the AMI, that's still like $67,000, I think for a single family household, that's still something that I could never access as a voucher holder or any of my neighbors. So I still, that's why I put that last clip in because even if we're going to use it to 40 B, I think that we as a town need to say, well, can you make those 40 B affordable housing units actually at a level that those people on vouchers and those people most in need can access it? Because I don't want, you know, the same way single family housing has become a proxy for exclusion, the high AMI becomes a proxy for exclusion. So like Leon Andrews said, from who I believe is the National League of Cities who was consulting with the town is, you have to be very intentional that program he talked about and actually say we're going to earmark X% for the lower income people if we wanna look at this through a racial equity lens. So I actually took inspiration through that. And I add to that, Laura. I mean, one thing that we haven't emphasized that we really should is class diversity which is lacking in this town. Many people I think were listening into this Zoom broadcast will remember that Arlington was a working class town a long time and it was possible for working people to own their own homes here very proudly and then give them to their children. That is those days you're gone. White poor and working class white people also don't can't afford housing. It's a class issue as well as a racial issue and it's a justice issue. I personally would qualify barely but I would qualify for affordable housing under this 100% AMI. And I'm a tenured professor at a private university who can barely, I'm barely clinging to my apartment here in Arlington because it's my rents doubled in the last 10 years but I should be last in line, not first for affordable housing. It's people who are struggling, people who are on the verge of homelessness, people who are holding down possibly two jobs who can't afford medical care. We have a national crisis, a global crisis. People are being shoved onto the streets. This community needs to respond to that urgent need and that means to make housing affordable for people who are in that income bracket where they're struggling. That's different. Of course, I would like to see all housing in Arlington affordable for everybody, including people like me. But there's a very specific reason we're asking to lower the recommended AMI and that's why, for justice and diversity. Well, thank you very much. I am resisting being asking a bunch more questions about what fundamentally is the issue with affordability, but perhaps sometime we can have a conversation because I really would like to discuss that with both of you and other people who are concerned. I was including myself mean about poverty, really was what comes down to me and the distribution of wealth. So thank you very much. Tony Himes, do you have something to add? Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to highlight one thing because I think that this is not the focus of the proponents article per se, nor is it the focus of the select board's discussion, but I know that 40B is a tremendously important town. I just want folks to understand that the ability to negotiate the affordability of a 40B is not something that we can regulate in a bylaw. It's something that happens in the 40B process. So the whole point of 40B is to circumvent local zoning and town bylaws on most things. You can seek waivers and the Housing Appeals Committee basically assesses things. It'd be very hard to assess a specific bylaw with respect to the percentage of affordable units, but it is something that a zoning board has authority to negotiate if they want to negotiate as a order of conditions similar to or analogous to orders of conditions in other zoning matters. So I just want to let folks know that the zoning board currently has the authority to negotiate affordability rates for units as part of that order of conditions. Thanks. Thank you. Mr. Ducorsi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you for the presentation. I just wanted to clarify one point. When I first saw the Warren article, I thought that you had intended to include any appropriations or any grants from CDBG or CPA, but when I heard your comments, Ms. Kiesel at the beginning of the presentation tonight, it seems to be just geared to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. Am I right on that? Yeah, I mean, that's the focus of our emphasis. I think technically right now the language is broad and it says the majority of affordable housing funds, but that's what we're emphasizing is the trust fund. Okay. Okay, thank you. I am with Mr. Diggins on this. And I do want to say for at least with respect to CDBG and CPA funding, at least during my tenure on the board, all of the grants have been to properties where that that would be considered low, below 60% AMI. And then that would include this year with the grants worth of the housing corporation and clear a lot more to be done. So to the extent that you were addressing CDBG or CPA, I just wanted to make that point. But one thing Ms. Kelleher said at the town meeting is distinguishing between having priorities in the short term through a trust action plan and having language in a bylaw. And so what she said that I found compelling was that in the short term, when we get an action plan from the trust, I think it certainly should be a priority. To address below 60% or below, but because it's so difficult to amend a bylaw in terms of timing, in terms of what opportunities come up, her recommendation and town meeting agreed is bylaw should be as flexible as possible. And I do note that the trust fund bylaw was just approved recently by the attorney general's office. I think the trustee's will populate or will be selected sometime in May. And I think it's really incumbent as part of that process when they come back with a declaration of trust to see what their recommendations are in the short term and to see how that fits. So for the need to be flexible on a bylaw, I think at this point I'd be inclined to not support a change to any bylaw, but I certainly respect where you're coming from here. And I think it is something that we should be focusing on without that specific language amending a bylaw. Thank you, Mrs. Mahan. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would sort of piggyback on Mr. DeCorsi's comments that he just made. I know town meeting debated this vigorously and Ms. Callagher did speak to the trust, the Community Preservation Act and anything else that lies before that. I think this is a good discussion that we're having, but there's a lot of questions that I have from the proponents that aren't really answered and maybe we can talk about it in the future regarding time frame of spending the funds and where that goes. But I think town meeting had a very vigorous debate with Ms. Callagher regarding the affordable housing trust fund. I know that Aaron Zirco and Jenny Rae presented to the finance committee as well as we have the board of trustees action plan. We have a lot of things in place and we can discuss modifying those in the future, but this sort of seems to me to kind of be rudderless in terms of what it is we're being asked to do but besides sort of muddling the waters of something that we voted at town meeting. And one of the first tasks for the board of trustees that Ms. Callagher presented to us was identifying affordable housing priorities in the town alongside an establishing rules and regulation of the trust under a trust action plan. So I'd like to instead slowing that down or stopping that move forward on that. So I would recommend no action and encourage future discussion on this but I would recommend no action. Mr. Dunn. Thank you. I have several points. I'm really glad that Laura and John you brought this forward. I agree that affordable housing in Arlington is a huge issue. If you remember 10 years ago when I first ran for select when I said the most important thing in front of the town at the time was health insurance and we made a huge because of the cost was growing like 11 and 15% a year and we made huge improvements on that. And then five years ago I said the most important thing was the budget and getting through the override because we wouldn't be able to get, you know to have our teachers or our services or anything like that without the override. And then about three years ago I started saying that the biggest problem in front of the town was the cost of housing. I said that the changes in the town and the price of it. And so I don't, I want to be upfront that I agree with you that it is a huge problem and it's something that we need to continue to work on in a bunch of different ways. So that was my first point. My second point was to talk about the trust fund and how it's envisioned to actually work. The trust fund is it's currently envisioned isn't going to be a vehicle for collecting a lot of money by itself. It will collect some money, but it's not going to have a bunch. What it is, it's going to be leveraging a lot of other sources of money, including the CDBG and the CPA. And with, I mean community development block grants and the community preservation act money. And those, those monies come with strings attached already. If we attach our own strings to them we lose a lot of access to that money. And so, and I, to me, I would say I don't want to cripple our access to that money unnecessarily with a restriction that's written into the bylaw as opposed to an intent. My third point is about we just don't have the trust fund commissioners yet and we don't know what they want to recommend. Actually, we know a lot about what they want to recommend but I think we should let them do their work. That's what town meeting said to do in November. And I think that like I don't, given that the town meeting set that course just back in November, I don't see a reason to change course without new information. We just don't have a sufficient new information. And I actually was struck by one of the things that came up in the video you played. The gentleman from the League of Cities, Leon, he made it a really strong point about making a targeted, thoughtful choice about what affordable is. And I think that that is exactly the right advice. That really brings true to me. And I want to do that in this trust fund commission with these commissioners. I don't want to try to do it on the floor of town meeting. And my last point was just in regards to the 60% versus 80%. One of the things that I would keep and I know you weren't proposing to strike 80% entirely, but just for the, I just don't want to be clear that one of the reasons I support some funds be going out at 80% is workforce housing. Because I look at teachers or DPW workers or public safety workers, and I want to make sure that they're not priced out of town. And I think that we should be supporting a mix of housing at a variety of levels. And so I'm certainly still listening and still talking, but I'm definitely inclined to, I'm not inclined to make a change in the town meeting and excuse me in the trust fund at this point. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. And I want to thank you both for bringing this forward. I certainly is the right sentiment. And I think the hope with this vehicle once it's created is that it will operate within the parameters that you're proposing and try to help people that are in the 60% AMI range. But like my colleagues, I think at this point, we need to implement the vehicle, do what we can to try to fund the vehicle and then see what good we could do and allow the trustees some discretion to make sure that they can do the most that they can with the new trust that's created. Like Mr. Dunn said, I think Mr. Andrews from the National League of Cities advocated to first create the vehicle and then study the data before mandating how the funds can and cannot be used in order to maximize the amount of benefit they can create from the trust. So I think like my colleagues, I agree with the sentiment and I think this is where we hope that the trust fund will direct the majority of the funds but at this point I don't wanna tie the hands of the trustees. All right, and with that, this is a public hearing. So if any members of the public would like to speak, please use the raise hand function on your Zoom application. So the first person that we have here is Rebecca Gruber. Ms. Gruber, if you can just say your name for the record and you have three minutes. Yes, Rebecca Gruber Pleasant Street. I'm speaking tonight on behalf of the Michigan Arlington Diversity Task Group as its co-chair to voice DTG's support for this warn article. You're marking the majority of municipal funds for affordable housing, including those in the affordable housing trust fund to households making at or under 60% area medium income. On March 8th, the DTG voted unanimously to endorse this warrant and we urged the select board to do the same. Housing affordability is an emergency and Arlington needs to be doing more. As a matter of social justice and equity, DTG believes it is paramount that affordable housing funds go to those households most in need. Currently households making up to 100% AMI can qualify for the funding. However, that 100% AMI is approximately double the AMI of Black and Latinx households and this warrant article would address that disparity. By setting such a high AMI for affordable housing, Arlington is setting an exclusionary bar for many people of color, people with disabilities and other marginalized populations who qualify for affordable housing. A high AMI is potentially a form of redlining and a historical policy that resulted into facto housing segregation. The diversity task group supports Arlington's pledge to work on rooting out systemic racism in all areas, including housing. To achieve our goal to make Arlington a place for people of all backgrounds and abilities, we need to support this article to make housing more affordable for those who are most in need of it and who have historically been most deprived of it. Thank you for your attention. This is on behalf of the Envision Arlington Diversity Task Group. Thank you. Thank you. Eric Poll. Hello, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Can you just say your name for the record? You have three minutes. Eric Poll, I live at 285 Mass Ave. Thanks everyone for your time. First, Mr. Dunn. I don't know many of Ms. Kiesel's neighbors but the ones I do know are their painters, their nurses, they live in affordable housing and their workforce. I ask you to please correct your statement because workforce housing implies, at market rate implies that affordable housing isn't workforce housing. And I think you claim that market rate housing was workplace housing. Just now it's recorded. So I do know that folks that live in affordable housing are the workforce or they're disabled or elderly and they don't have means or access to join the workforce in the way that I do. And they require special help or to save them from homelessness. Now, democracy has been said to be two wolves and a sheep fighting over woods for lunch. And I know that you're asking that the trustees do the right thing keeping housing under affordable housing under 60% AMI. That's a lot of trust for the sheep given the amount of affordable housing that's actually been created over the last decade. So I also ask that you try to meet your constituents in person, the folks that actually live in affordable housing, find out what they do, find out their circumstances and how much trust they should have given the amount of affordable housing that's actually been generated over the past decade. Thank you. Mr. Chair. Yep, you can respond. Yeah, I just want to briefly say, I'm sorry, Mr. Pull, but I think you must have misheard me. I was saying exactly I think what you were, which is that affordable housing efforts are necessary in order to have workplace housing. And I want to enable the affordable housing trust to do that work. That's exactly what I want them to do. Thank you. We have, he's Judith Garber. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Can you say your record? My name is Judith Garber. I live at Massachusetts Avenue. So a lot of different things to think about with this. I appreciate you all considering this. First, so what it seems like is a, I've heard a lot about in housing that this seeming trade-off between building more and building affordable. If we wanted to feel affordable housing, we're sacrificing building more is what it seems like. And I understand that trade-off when it comes to, I understand how the trade-off works with the way that building works and development works, but this is our affordable housing trust fund. It seems very strange to me to put it, the AMI as high as 100%. This has to be really, that we have to really make a concerted effort to make this actually affordable. And even 60%, I was just looking at this resource from the Arlington's 2018 Housing Forum. And it said on the waitlist, out of the 700 people on the AHA waitlist, the vast majority make $40,000 or less. And 55% make $20,000 or less. So, there's a lot of people that are waiting for housing and need housing. And by, I know we wanna be flexible and all that, but I think we really have to set some kind of limit. And I also don't think this is super radical since there was an amendment exact, there was this exact amendment also proposed at town meeting. So I know there are a lot of people town meeting members that were for it. And I think it deserves additional discussion. So thank you. Thank you. Anna Hinkin. Anna Hinkin, Marion Road. I also wanted to speak in support of this. There's not just the ability to afford housing, I think that needs to be considered. There's also the amount of rent burden that a lot of people end up with when they try to rent somewhere that's really, really expensive. And that rent burden prevents them from spending their income on local shops, buying groceries locally, being able to support the economy of the town, pay local wages. And when you are not prioritizing those people who end up with the highest rent burden, the highest percentage of their income devoted to rent rather than their necessities like food and medications, you really prevent people from being able to support the town. And without being able to have a economically diverse set of people supporting the town's economy, it kind of starts to collapse. It actually happened in my hometown, prices inflated. They didn't prevent the inflation and people couldn't move in. People who retired couldn't retire there. Shops shut down because no one was living there anymore and no one could afford to shop. And the town kind of died. And a lot of studies show that these kinds of economically diverse communities are much more healthy economically. And also the children in those economically diverse communities tend to have higher academic scores, more positive academic outcomes. It's really important that we prioritize helping people not just afford to live but participate in Arlington. And I think this would help do that. So thank you for your time. Thank you. Mr. Heaton. Mr. Heaton, can you hear us? Mr. Heaton. Mr. Chaplain, we'll go to Mr. Kamitsky and we'll check back with Mr. Heaton at the end. Hi, I didn't know I was muted. Sorry, I can hear you now. Yeah, hi. Can you say your name for the record? Kevin Heaton, I'm at 252 Massachusetts Ave. I'm also in affordable housing. I wanted to support the housing warrants just to bring in more affordable housing. It's also been endorsed by all of the disability groups around here, like Boston Center for Independent Living, Disability Policy Consortium, MassAdapt. And also by also been endorsed by City Life Vita and Vana. That's like the biggest our renters advocacy group in Boston and the Mystic Valley and WACP, Boston Tenants Coalition. And like I said, all the major disability groups in the area. So, and I think it would really help bring more diversity and more affordable housing to the town. And we're lagging behind in the other towns around here. All right, thank you. And we'll go to Mr. Kaminsky. Can you hear me? So you can, if you say your name for the record. Yep, my name is Jonathan Kaminsky. I live on Randolph Street in East Arlington. In the history of affordable housing campaigns in Massachusetts, and I've lived in various places all over the States, one of the constants that I've seen time and again is that whatever well-intentioned laws are passed, actual implementation tends to fall to stall tactics. That small government committees, not unlike this one, find ways to stop the well-intentioned laws from actually being put into practice in a way that improves the equitable intention or in the way that actually makes good on the promise that the law tries to make. What you've been asked to consider is not itself binding. It's to bring this before town meeting. The actual decision would be made by town meeting by a representative body elected by the people of Arlington rather than by a small commission that controls the affordable housing trust. And putting this decision, putting this decision cut off, I respect the need for more data. I'm a scientist, I always respect the need for more data. But putting this decision entirely in the hands of a small unelected commission instead of putting it before the town meeting just strikes me as another way of avoiding making it actually happen. And so I would encourage you to approve this, whether or not you think it will actually survive town meeting because I think that this is not a decision that should be made behind closed doors. This is about the fabric of the town. This is about who can afford to live here. And this is something that I've seen time and again that this will get referred, installed, installed again, installed yet a third time. And 10 years later, we'll look back and say, whatever happened to that affordable housing thing and why is it all going to people who don't actually need it? So let's take the opportunity now to take some initiative, put this before the town where the decision can actually be made. And if we need to change it later, we have a process for doing that. And it's no harder than the process you're looking at right now. Thank you. Mr. Chair, just two points regarding, before a small group of unelected officials, we are all elected by the entirety of the town. Ms. Mohan, I was, I did not include the slide. I'm sorry, I'm not asking for, I'm not asking for a back and forth with you. Honestly, and that just threw me off on the second point regarding town meeting. So unfortunately, the previous speaker interrupted me and I lost my train of thought. But there, oh, my second point is this being discussed behind closed doors or that's not the case. If it was, you and other speakers would not be aware of it and we would not be having this discussion. So I take an issue with this being voted on by a small group of unelected officials, which we are elected by the town and this being discussed behind closed doors. I think we need to stop some of that rhetoric that seems to be permeating this and other discussions. And thank you, Mr. Chair, for allowing me to do that. All right, let's continue with public comment. Mr. Hamlin. Hello, can everyone hear me? Awesome. So my name is Guillermo Hamlin. I'm of Massachusetts Avenue as well. And I'm here speaking in support of this. I want to thank the select board for considering this measure. I understand that it's very weighted on many different sides. And I believe that it seems to be leaning no action in regards of its recommendation to the town meeting. I'd like to echo the previous point, not all of it, but enough of the point where I believe that a lot of your insight will be recorded. I believe the affordable housing trust fund and their trustees and the managing trustee have a lot of work to do. And I agree that we don't want to limit them in their ability to be able to make sure that we have permanent affordable housing. That being said, I believe it's very helpful as a, you know, to predetermine and make it very clear what the cost of admission is for developers here. So I'm asking that we support this measure, support the AMI to make sure that there's permanent affordable homes and offers and solutions for those below the 60% AMI. I understand that you can proceed with no action and town meeting continue to do their thing. I think it would be nice to have the select board support behind us. I understand that there's a lot more to be understood. There's a lot more to be discerned. I believe that by town meeting, we can have more information. But if possible, I ask that you vote in the affirmative to proceed to recommend it. And then we can, you know, knives out at town meeting. Thank you. All right. And our last speaker, Ms. Dre. Hi, good evening, Elizabeth Dre, Jason Street. Thank you for the opportunity to speak in support of this morning article. I'm struck by the language of hoping and believing. When you're in an emergency, when you're in a fight, a battle, you don't use hope and belief. You bring tools, you bring actual concrete solutions to the table. And I'm always heartened when I hear people talk about how much they support affordable housing and building affordable housing. And it's the crisis, as Mr. Dunn said, that the biggest crisis that we have. Yeah. When people bring forward these small pieces of solution, whether at the ARB or at the select board, the warrant articles, they're just pushed aside because none of them are big enough to be the solution. But if we really, if it is really the crisis that I believe it is and Mr. Dunn believes it is and many people in the community believe it is, then we need a battle plan. We don't need hope and we don't need belief. We need a plan. We need to cobble together small pieces from lots of different areas to get it done. We need concrete steps. And I also want to say that I believe Mr. Kaminsky was probably talking about the trust fund committee as being an unelected group and not referring to the select board, I may be wrong, but that was what I inferred from his comments. And I would also like to dispel the notion that this trust fund was debated vigorously at the last town meeting because it was not. It was actually stunning how little conversation there was about the trust fund and these amendments. And when it passed, I think a lot of us were just left in shock that we had passed such an important thing, an important bylaw without a robust discussion. So I really think that if we're serious about it, then we need to do something. And I think why the heck not start with this proposal. Thank you. So that closes our public comment portion of this hearing. So I will go back to the board for any questions, comments, motions. Mr. Daines. Well, we do have a motion on the table for no action. As far as I know, there isn't a second, right? Not yet. Not yet. So I will second it because I do have confidence to me in the folks in town that are working on this issue and that care about this issue and that will help to choose the members that will be a part of the board. So anything else that I would say at this point would just be repeating on what I've said. I've heard from my colleagues and I've gotten insights from what they've said. I've heard from the people attended hearings and once again going second in the motion for no action. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have no further comments. Mrs. Mon. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to say to not to my colleagues because you all know this at Infanitum, but to everyone who's attended our meeting here tonight, I grew up in what you would consider an Allenton affordable housing. I grew up in monotony manner. My family were low income. I lived that journey. And in terms of the speakers, I'm not saying that one or two of you haven't but I don't think you even came close to the experience that I lived in in terms of going to all into public schools, living down a monotony manner, receiving the block of cheese that wasn't cut. So it kind of reminded you how poor you were as well as other things. So I really take issue with a minority of the comments in terms of you haven't lived the experience that I did as well as maybe unfairly that I am offended by some of the excursions, a cast to myself personally because I've lived this road and I've walked this road and I've done everything that's been a driving force of me getting into public service. So I didn't live on Jason Street. I didn't live on an apartment on Mass Ave. To me that's, you know, elegant living. I just wanted to point that out because I wanted to let people who are speaking to this let you know where I come from because that's where I came from. I came from, we didn't have all into needs back then but there was sort of a composite that came to that. I've walked this road, I've lived this road. I could not afford to or my family could not afford to live on Mass Ave in an apartment on Mass Ave. I definitely understand the issues before us and how we need to reach that constituency. And I understand that other people may live in, you know, million dollar neighborhoods and I'm not saying your experiences which can't equate to where I come from but I'm really, I've been offended by some of the comments that were directed tonight. So thank you. Is it done? I guess just a couple of technical comments. I just want to, a couple of those, one of the speakers definitely said it already but I wanted to reinforce it. So what were the vote that we take tonight isn't about whether or not it goes to town meeting. It goes to town meeting no matter what when it's on the warrant, it goes to town meeting. What we're talking about is what the recommendation before town meeting is. And that's a significantly different thing. It isn't that we're, it isn't whether or not you block it or not. It's about what the attached recommendation is. And the second thing I just wanted to say is that I've, a repeated theme that I've got heard is that like, is fear that the trust fund is, trust fund, excuse me, it's going to be creating housing that's added to the town meeting. It's going to be creating housing that's added to the town meeting. It's going to be creating housing that's at a hundred percent AMI or near a hundred percent AMI. And if I thought that the trust fund was going to be doing that on a regular basis or even at all, I would be, I would be much more worried and looking to make a change. But because, but as I said in the beginning, the trust fund is going to be in particular leveraging money from the town. And the trust fund is going to be doing that on a regular basis. And that money doesn't move at a hundred percent. It moves at mostly an 80% and actually, sorry, mostly 60% and sometimes 80%. And so I just, I don't feel that I don't, that's, I just wanted to clarify that's why. If you think that we should be doing this because you're worried about. Fund housing being created at a hundred percent AMI. I'd say the good news is you don't have to worry about it. It's not going to be happening with this trust fund. It's not going to be happening with this trust fund. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. And I just add that again, I think with. The comments that the boards made is that not that we don't think that this is a good article and a good policy. It's just, we don't want to get ahead of the actual trust. We want to look at the data. And this could be something that next year. We come back with the year after to create a policy as to how the trust fund funds are allocated. And then we come up with a mandate on how they can spend the funds. So with that, we have a motion for a new action, which has been seconded. Attorney. This is long. Yes, thank you. Mr. Corsi. Yes. Mr. Dan's. Yes. Mr. Don. Yes. Mr. Hurd. Yes. Just back into order here. So you have article for review. Article seven. Bylaw amendment rock removal requirements. Mr. Chair, if I may. Yes. So this article comes before the board. With a consultation of this department. Inspectional services. The health department. The town manager's office. As well as the fire department. The. One of the most persistent complaints that we've had. Over the last. Several years has been. Use of rock chipping as a means of. Excavating. Lots. Usually of a significant amount. At least. To the extent that we're talking about ones with complaints. And the town hasn't really had a lot of great tools. To address this sort of public health. And nuisance concern in the sense that obviously it's very disruptive to people living nearby. And what inspectional services reports is that. Builders are oftentimes reticent. To. Assess whether blasting. Might be a much faster. And less disruptive option. Because. They have to get a survey done. By a certified geologist. Which costs. Cost money. And. At least an inspectional services point of view. They oftentimes underwrite. The amount of time and shipping it's going to take to excavate. A lot. So we've had a lot of these situations where. Neighbors have complained about the noise. The health department goes out. But. They can only. Under our current bylaws really monitor. The noise level. They can't address all of the other concerns. This bylaw. Is a moderate. Incremental step. I want to be very frank with the board. There is some legal risk involved. It would essentially require. Folks who want to excavate excavate more than 50 cubic yards of. Basically bedrock is what we're really trying to get at. It would require them to do a black. A blast survey. And essentially. Evaluate whether or not blasting is feasible. It would not require them to necessarily engage in blasting. There are lots of reasons why that is a more legally tenuous position. It may, in fact, be possible, but I think it's not. It's a very specific reason why. We're allowed to engage in a bylaw like this. Which I've highlighted in my memo. Which is that there's a general law that authorizes us. To regulate. Earth removal. More so. It may, in fact, be possible, but I think this, this bylaw proposal in itself is kind of pushing the envelope. A little bit far. And this is something that's very important for me to note for the public. I think the board understands this. There's a very specific reason why. I think it's important for us to be able to regulate. Earth removal. More so than. Other subjects of, of, of, of bylaws. So that you could. Really. Have more of the building process. Contingent upon this. And we have another article. That's sort of talking about the building process later. So I just want to make that clear for the public that. There's a specific statute that authorizes us. So. If you have questions about how it would work, I'm happy to. Answer them, but conceptually, again, it's trying to address a problem that's been a long standing. I'm sort of nuisance that's somewhat created. By a real estate market that makes it feasible. More, more financially feasible to excavate some of these locks that I know that all the board members have heard about. Thank you. We'll get that done. Thank you. I'm really happy to see the board bring questions, comments, emotions. Mr. Dunn. I think that this is a. I'm really glad to see the collaboration. And I'm really glad to see the approach to something that has been frustrating people. I'm happy to move approval. And Mrs. Mahan. I know people have questioned my head nodding, but I will second that. By nodding my head. Mr. Just a quick question, Mr. So blasting is a lot now though, right? I mean, they just have to do the survey and themselves have to pay for it. So I want to, yeah, thank you, Mr. Degansson. A very good question. You can blast now. And there actually have been several projects that instructional services highlighted for me where the blasting regulations were followed and what resulted was a much faster and much less disruptive excavation process. There are really extensive blasting regulations and the fire department actually oversees blasting to make sure it's done safely and attached to the select boards, to my memory to the select board, there's just a pamphlet that highlights some of the things that have to be done. There are gonna be circumstances where blasting is not feasible because of basically the findings of that pre-blast survey or where it would pose too much of a risk to butters. But in most cases, the blasting has gotten to be so precise, the technology behind it and so has such precision that those things aren't issues. But other things that folks just to know for general knowledge, if somebody does blasting, they have to be bonded to make sure that they can compensate for any damage done to anybody's neighboring foundation or anything like that. For the most part though, the fire department reports that those are not issues, that the blast that were done in Arlington had been done very successfully. Thank you. So I'm just trying to get a handle on some of the complaints that we've heard about in the blasting that has occurred. Do we have any kind of record of how much, how many complaints there have been made? What kind of damage may have been done? Me, what kind of compensation may have been given? Are you asking me Mr. Diggins about blasting complaints or rock chipping? Blasting complaints, blasting. I could definitely follow up with the fire department on that. I'm not aware after having spoken to the Chief Kelly of any complaints about blasting or folks who were detrimentally affected by blasting. And again, this bylaw would not require somebody to do blasting, you can already blast right now. It would require somebody who wants to excavate more than 50 cubic yards to consider blasting by doing a pre-blast survey instead of just assuming that the more economic and better way to do it is rock chipping. Yeah. No, just I got some feedback being about people who did experience me. Oh, okay. Yeah, so that's why. Yeah, so it's not purely theoretical, although I do tend to ask those purely theoretical questions. But so that's where I was coming from with that. All right, thank you. Sorry, so I can certainly find that, I can get that information. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Corsi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I support this as well. Thank you, Attorney Heim, for the detailed memo and in the candor in terms of the extent of the statute and what's going on here. And I had some questions for you earlier that you had answered and I appreciate the consultation with the other departments in time. And yeah, I think this is pretty straightforward. This is public hearing. If anybody wishes to speak on this article, please use the raise hand function on your Zoom application now. And so we can promote Ms. Tuko Fijiwara. Hi, if you can say your name for the record. This is Ms. Tuko Fijiwara. I live in Stony Brook Road. And I don't know if you read the public comments on this topic, but I live near 25 Brunswick Road where blasting has been going on for about four months in my neighborhood. And it doesn't mean that I'm for or against this amendment per se, but there has been a lot of negative consequences of blasting and there's been issues with blasting that are not addressed by the Massachusetts regulation. And I would like to know if these issues can be addressed by the town through bylaws or other means if you're going to encourage blasting. And the other question I have is if the town thinks that there will be more or less extensive excavation in the residential area if this amendment is passed. And the town's reasoning on why there will be more or less because that affects the people living nearby blasting. Thank you. Attorney Hyme, do you have an answer to those two questions? Sure. So with respect to, first of all, I appreciate the comments that have been submitted that not everybody's, well, let me put it this way. The, for example, I know that one comment was concerned about the pre-blast inspections that are done to abutting houses and what the purpose of that is. So the purpose of that is to be able to assess whether or not there's any damages. This bylaw is not necessarily proposing to change what is proposing to change anything about the state's blasting regulations, which again are pretty extensive and are supposed to require that anybody engaging in blasting is bonded so that they can financially compensate anybody who has a claim through their insurance company or anyone else or directly if their homes are damaged. So this isn't proposing to change anything in that regard. I don't think that we could change the state laws blasting requirements without a lot of thought about what would have to be done to keep that from preempting the state law. That would be tricky if the board wouldn't do it. I know that there are towns that have gone in the converse direction more historically than recently and have prohibited blasting entirely. So it is something that the board could consider under another warrant article. I don't think the scope of this is big enough to change the way or locally regulate the way blasting is conducted. The only sort of thing that this bylaw does is say you have to do a free blast inspection consistent with the requirements of the law before you engage in excavation. It doesn't tell you that you have to do blasting. And it may be that folks who are butters urge folks under this under our good neighbor agreement not to do blasting and they would prefer rock chipping but at least it would be a more informed process rather than assuming that the shipping is an improvement. It is a better way to go. Mr. Chaplin. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And just to, excuse me, Ms. Fujiwara's question about more or less development based on the potential adoption of this bylaw or bylaw amendment, I really see it as neutral and town council can tell me if he disagrees but I see this as developers are already have already and will continue to identify parcels that are legally developable and what this would allow or what this would mandate is a more thorough investigation of the means by which the property could be excavated. I don't believe that adoption of this bylaw would make it any more easy or less easy to actually excavate and develop. It would just further sort of further and intensify the investigations that need to be done before chipping or blasting decisions are made. And we have one additional public commentator, Ms. Dre. Hi, thank you, Elizabeth. Can you hand me again for the record? Elizabeth Dre Jason Street. And I'm here as a town meeting member for precinct eight where some of this blasting is currently happening on Brunswick Avenue or Brunswick Road which for different butters, submitted letters sort of of concern. I don't know what's, you know, what the way to go is I just want to really elevate these concerns to you that I'm hearing from people in the precinct. Part of the concern is that there seems to be like a 30 day time that you have to report damages to your foundation within and that might doesn't seem to be enough time for long-term sort of damage to settle in. Also, people have reported that their basements are now flooding because the blasting changes the water and where the, how the water goes through the rocks. And so their basements are flooding but they might not know within that 30 day period until there's a big rain. So I want to put that out there like is there a way to protect the butters and people in the neighborhood who may not, the damage may not show itself until much later. Also about the notice. So what kind of notice are the, is the contractor have to give the neighbors before they blast, right? I read, I've spoke to a neighbor who says that they don't hear the alarms and suddenly, you know, their dog hears it but they don't. So I'm just wondering, are there things that can be put into this to sort of be more protective and more favorable for the butters who don't have a choice to have to live through it but can protect them. Thank you. Yep. Triniheim, are you able to answer those questions? I can answer some of them. So I think that that's correct that you have generally under blast blasting regulations there's a 30 day period to do an inspection and determine whether or not there's been any damage so that you can basically file a claim. That's correct. There are regulations with respect to the both the warning sound that has to be emitted when folks are ready to blast. There are limits on the vibration and noise that can result from a blast and there's a couple of different steps set forth all again in state law for a regulatory review by the fire department. And if there's damage that occurs, I think that I'm glad to hear all of these issues. I think it's important to have them be raised overall in terms of this specific site and whether or not these things are sort of more representative of blasting. I don't know off the top of my head whether or not there's more discretion for us to do something about it in the immediate term. If folks are concerned about, yeah, I'm not sure that I know what exactly can be done in the immediate term. Again, there's such extensive regulations that they have to look at some of these issues a little bit more specifically with respect to notice. I mean, a lot of these things are gonna be subject to the good neighbor agreement generally, but depending on the site and germane to the water issues, we've just discussed the stormwater management by law reform, which I can speak to the town engineer and the environmental planner about a little bit more in advance of town meeting, folks would like or in advance of your final vote and comment to get a little bit more information about how did they assess stormwater within the context specifically of blasting because we spent a little bit of time a few weeks or last week talking about for permitting and some of the other things that have to be done and the way in which they're trying to address stormwater issues that come out of project site development or site redevelopment. So I can look into those issues more, but I don't think I have a satisfactory answer right now about the water infiltration issue. And I do think that I can certainly look at what local blasting regulations we could impose on top of the existing state law scheme, but some of the issues that it sounds like are being raised here are pretty specific maybe to this project. If there's supposed to be a warning horn and it's not loud enough, it's not necessarily that the regulation isn't there, it's that they're not, I mean, it sounds like they're not following that regulation and there may need to be a follow-up on that score. All right, thank you. All right, thank you, Ms. Dreck. So that will close our public portion of this meeting, of this, yeah, this meeting of this hearing. All right, and I'll go for the board any final comments? Mr. Dunn. No, thank you. Ms. Mohan, this is Mohan. No, thank you. Mr. Diggins. Well said, thank you. Mr. Diggorsi. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chairman, just briefly. And this, maybe when we come back for final votes on this, that Ms. Dre brought up the point of a 30-day notice period, maybe we can just verify that there's not a discovery rule in that that would allow people additional time and then you don't wanna conduct a ton of research on it, but maybe we can report back on that when we come back on final votes, that's all. Attorney Hamm, we have a motion to approve that's been seconded. Thank you, Mr. Diggorsi. That's a good point about latent conditions. On the motion, Ms. Mohan. Yes, thank you. Mr. Diggorsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Dunn. Yes, Mr. Hurd. Yes, thank you. All right, and that brings us to article 16, Bylaw Amendment Preconstruction Rodent Survey and Pest Management. You have Ms. Crowder with us. Yes, we do. Hi, if you can just say your name for the record and tell us about the article. My name's Elaine Crowder and precinct 19, townmate committee member. And I'm bringing article 16 before the board today about Preconstruction Rodent Survey and Pest Management. And basically the issue that I'm trying to address is the situation when construction is happening in town, making starts and rats are disturbed and spread to neighbors. This is usually a very distressing situation. It's something that where neighbors then feel the need to do some kind of remediation, which might involve poison. And there are of course ramifications from that of increased poison in neighborhoods can then affect other things like pre-animals and food chain. So my first goal with this in proposing this is to promote sustainable development which would maintain the health and wellbeing of neighborhoods that are hosting construction projects. And in some ways, sort of a focus on this idea the neighborhoods actually are hosting the construction project. And so there is an aspect of the good neighbor agreement in this. The second goal I have is to promote as much as possible, integrated pest management solutions in town as a way of approaching this particular issue. The central tenet of integrated pest management is to choose the least toxic product that will be effective on a targeted pest. So the proposed, my proposed strategy is actually to seize the opportunity that we have during construction often many of the construction projects are at a place at a point where they're no longer inhabited on a continuous basis. And at that point that it's sort of a perfect opportunity to apply solutions to boroughs on the property. I've had the experience living in a condominium of dealing with a very, very large rodent population that have about 2016 or so around a dumpster and had the opportunity because there was a window of in which pest companies were using dry ice to treat boroughs to realize that treating boroughs with dry ice is something that is extremely effective. Much more so than baiting in terms of the numbers of rats that can be eliminated at one time. And eliminated to the extent that you don't really get repeat populations in and around that area. So it just seems like a perfect opportunity to promote in town more use of these kinds of integrated pest management solutions before construction happens. So the proposal itself is basically a survey proposing that survey the property be surveyed before construction that the intervention happened before construction and that there be a report that says that there is no more rodent activity on the property. And this is all achievable because when you use something like dry ice in boroughs, the typical way that pest management companies test for rodent populations in that situation is they'll cover up the borough entrance and if they don't reopen then there is no more activity. If they do reopen, they retreat for a period of three days or so typically and then the population has been abated. So one of the interests for the town, I mean for neighbors for the butters I think is that they are aware that this kind of thing is going to be happening on construction that they are abutting on property that is going to have excavation. So I'm proposing that there be an additional element of alerting the abutters through the existing communication channels for the good neighbor agreement that this abatement has occurred and sort of the results of the reports that have been provided to the construction company via the pest management company that they hired. All right, thank you. We'll turn to the board for any questions, comments or motions. Mr. Degans. Thank you, Mr. Dunn. I mean, I'm sorry, Mr. Heard, Mr. Chair. So it's a pleasure seeing you, Mr. Crowder. Crowder, yeah. And I'm sorry to see you if you're at the last sustainable Arlington meeting because it's been enjoyable having you there getting your input there. So what I see here is it, right? So there's no more detailed motion, right? So Mr. Hein or through you, Mr. Chairman Hein. Turn your hand. Well, I think Ms. Crowder provided her motion in her reference materials. Mr. Degans, that's what you mean, the proposed amendment. Oh, okay, I'm sorry. Yeah, all right, fine, you know, I did see that. And sorry, I missed it. I was just looking at your comments now. So I do want to dwell on the comments, I mean, that is, so it seems like we already do it, I mean, so what's your response to that, Ms. Crowder? That we already, what did you say? That we already do the special services already does the survey? That particular survey is only a portion of what this proposal is. The Board of Health has an item in their demolition checklist that is requesting a rodent survey and treatment, but that only covers complete teardown situation, I mean, demolition. It's only for the demolition. Mr. Chair, may I, you know, Jocelyn? So Ms. Crowder's proposal to my reading does a few things. One, right now the Board of Health's sort of requirement only applies to demolitions. It does not apply to open foundation excavations or large additions. Secondly, it basically requires the results of that process to be transmitted as part of that sort of good neighbor process. And then third, it adds something that currently isn't required, which is that I don't believe survey reports, treatment plans, post-treatment reports are generally disseminated or required to be disseminated. It also suggests, but does not require, for the reasons I think I outlined in my memo, it suggests integrated pest management be encouraged to the maximum extent possible, but for the reasons I highlighted, it can't require that integrated pest management be used. I hope by some or is that correctly, Ms. Crowder? Yes, thank you. And I've actually spoken with the Board of Health, Natasha Wadden, and with Jim Feeney, who previously worked in that role about their particular question, which focuses on remediation of bait boxes only. And there's interest in upgrading or updating to a more integrated pest management type of language in that particular report as well. So the current system is sort of focused on somewhat outdated pest management solutions and could be broadened along with this. Okay, thank you. And I guess that leads to the second part and maybe this will go to Attorney Hyman as well. So my understanding from your comments, Mr. Hyman, is that there is a limit to what the town can ask to be done with respect to pest management. We can't mandate that they do a certain type of pest management, the attorney. That's right, Mr. Diggins. Mr. Chair, if I may. The Attorney General's office has already ruled that local municipalities can't pass ordinances or towns can't pass ordinances that regulate what pesticides, rodenticides, fungicides are used. That is regulated by state law, which is tied into federal law. So we're not allowed to pass a local regulation that says you have to use ex-pesticide or rodenticide or something, and you cannot use why. And it's important for folks to, I guess, bear with me for a second. The reason, because Ms. Crowder asked me a very good question about this in the lead up to tonight's hearing, the Board of Health is pushing the envelope. So they're requiring stuff that they're not necessarily, they're pushing the envelope. And the difference between a Board of Health rule on a demolition permit and what we do in town bylaws is town bylaws get sent to the Attorney General's office for review and they will decide whether or not that's consistent with state law or not. So I know that the select board knows this, but I just wanted to highlight that for the public that the difference is that our local bylaws all get sent to the municipal law unit and they will almost certainly reject any portion of a bylaw that says you have to use this approach to Pestment. Niggans? I'm sorry, I wasn't listening to Ms. Crowder, sorry. And then I was just going to add, and in contrast, the Board of Health is more policy rather than a bylaw. So it's sort of a more town internal checklist kind of setting. I mean, given the limitations on what can be done, my inclination is to go with no action because it just doesn't seem that town meeting will be able to make any effective change to what's going on. I guess it's just a matter of whether we could do something with respect to the survey that would be more satisfying or better made. So I need to think about that some more. I mean, so I'm not going to make a recommendation now, I'm going to listen. So that's it, Mr. Hurd, thank you. Thank you. Mr. Darn? Ms. Crowder, can you tell me what brought this up? So sitting on the Board of Selecting for 10 years, you get a lot of people who call you up for a lot of things. No one's ever called me about rats. What made you say this is the problem I want to solve? We've had problems with rats. I'm on the Board of my condominium and there tended not to be rats. I moved to Arlington in 2005. I never saw a rat and it wasn't until about 2016, 2017. Approximately when things were happening and digging up streets in North Cambridge, that I started seeing rats in town and then we got a tremendous population that was cavorting around in the daytime, which means they're a large population around our dumpster. And we happened to hit a window of opportunity when dry ice was being administered by certain pest companies to burrows. And I realized how effective this was. Sorry, but I'm sorry. So what I shouldn't say, I do know that, for instance, we did have a rat problem where we had to fence in underneath the welcome house and the center and stuff. Let me phrase it in a different way. My first reaction is that we're asking people to incur a cost. We're asking people to slow to both a literal cost of actually doing the inspection in additional locations. And it's also the cost of slowing down their construction process, which inherently costs them more money. And I haven't heard anything that says this is worth the cost. I haven't heard about the problem that we're actually trying to solve. And was there like a construction event that you're aware of that triggered this in town? That you said, if we had this, then we wouldn't have had that particular outbreak or infestation, or is this a general, like I know rats happen sometimes around construction and this is a time to tackle it. The construction events that happened in our end of town, which is along summer street, where the overlook in summer street projects in the streets, that's a little trickier in terms of the ability to use a focused, perhaps not as toxic product. So I wanted to- But again, Ms. Craitor, I'm not talking about the product, I'm talking about the actual problem we're trying to solve. I said, yeah, there have been construction projects in our end of town that caused increases in the rat population where a lot more people were finding rats on their property. You saw a lot more use of rat bait boxes on properties. And it was associated with excavation. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Ms. Craitor. There it is. Mrs. Mohan? Thank you, Mr. Chair. The way that I read this warrant article regarding the road and survey and pest management is, basically, I don't know if I'm going to be able to read this, basically, it revolves around issuance of permit, demolition permit, et cetera, sort of withholding that. And from what I've gotten from the information that we've received is that we really can't withhold that kind of a permit. We could impose some fines, which is what not what you're suggesting. And then the second point, as Attorney Heim has spoken about that the attorney general under state law would reject this in its current form. We, the town can require some sort of pest management requirements, but we cannot under what we, our town bylaws, as well as the attorney general, reject a billing permit, which is sort of the throx of your warrant article. So I don't want to get into a convoluted discussion around that, but I don't want to put a warrant article through that doesn't meet the tests of the attorney general, which we already know how the outcome of that would be. So I'm totally, I spoke to Kristinezard down on Dudley Street about compost and rat infestation down there, which is a very serious issue, but I would move no action on this warrant article. Mr. Ducorsi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you, Ms. Crater, for bringing the article. I know there is concerns all over town with rat issues, but I do have some concerns about what's already being done administratively versus adding a bylaw. And I realize that what your proposal would do is maybe increase the number of instances where the survey would have to be done beyond just the issuance of a demolition permit. But it really, to me, it is really withholding the permit itself or the building permit that's going to spur action here. And we're the second half of what you're proposing we can't do because it's preempted by state law. I think I'm inclined to support that the no action at this time, although I would like to follow up with Attorney High maybe at some point to see if there are additional situations where there can be further requirements for surveys beyond just the demolition situation that doesn't require us to change the bylaw. Thank you, Mr. Ducorsi. Yeah, I mean, I know my neighborhood in, I've heard in other neighborhoods that there's certainly our issues with rodents. So the issue is there, whether or not this is the best way to fight that, I don't know at this time, but I am inclined to support the motion as well. This is a public hearing. If any members of the public would like to speak use the raise hand function on your Zoom application now. We have Ms. Henkin. And I Henkin, Marion Road again. Even if the board can't see this article as written, I really would like to support you working with Elaine Crowder to approach this problem more. I personally have seen many, many rats on Mass Ave over the evenings. They often run across the street here, especially near construction projects. And it really would be good for the town to address large rat populations. Not only are they kind of a health and safety hazard and spread disease and are kind of dangerous for pets, but they also cause a lot of just structural damage to buildings and can even damage a lot of electrical, causing electrical fires. And that's just a major town problem. And definitely we should be encouraging the use of things like dry ice. I've personally used it in oncology research when sacrificing animals. And it's very safe and very easy to use. And it's way, way better than poison for dealing with burrows. And it doesn't impact the environment as much as using poison does, because that can harm wild animals, that can harm children, that can harm pets. And even if this as written, isn't the right way to do this, I really, really encourage you guys to work with Ms. Crowder on this, because this is a problem that we should definitely address. And it's not super hard to address. It's a good idea. Thank you. Thank you. And I will go back to the board. Is all the public comments that we have. Mr. Dickensay, any additional comments? Well, I do support the idea of trying to do better pest management. So I'm gonna encourage you to continue coming to sustainable Arlington meetings. I think that'll be a good way to work with the town. I mean, we care about these kinds of things. And I think part of it will come down to how do we encourage people who are doing pest management to do it in a better way. Attachment that you gave from the CDC was very good. And so we can try to encourage people to do that here locally. And I think the other thing is to try to work this on the state level. And get the attorney general to get folks to do pest management in a better way. So yes, let's do continue working on this. But I haven't got to support the no action if for another reason then, because even if we increase the kind of survey, we'll still get to a point where we can't make them do the right thing. And so we shouldn't lead town meeting to think differently. Thank you. Is it on? No comment. Mrs. Mohan? No further comment. Thank you. Mr. Corsi? No further comments. All right, Attorney Hyman, we have a motion for no action that's been seconded. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And Mr. Corsi, I'd be happy to talk to Ms. Crowder further and Ms. Whedon and Mr. Feeney about what our internal options are in the meantime for better regulation as you suggested. On the motion, Mrs. Mohan? Yes, thank you. Mr. Corsi? Yes. Mr. Diggins? Yes. Mr. Dunn? Yes. Mr. Hurd? Yes. To you, Attorney Ms. Corsi. Thank you, Ms. Crowder. Bringing us to article 23, Vote Affordable Hop, Affordable Overlay Study. Do you have Mr. Hamlin? Hello, can everyone hear me? Yes, we can. All right, let me catch my breath, sorry. Oh, okay. So I'd like to ask you to allow for the vote for an affordable overlay study. I'd like to thank Doug Heim for, sorry, I'm just trying to catch my breath. Oof, sorry about that. Let me come back in a few seconds, hold up. Sorry about that. I just lost my breath for a second. All right, so thank you, select board. I'm asking for the opportunity to present a town meeting and affirmative action on the vote for an affordable housing overlay study. My understanding is that when it comes to a chapter, I think it's like 40R or something, in the state it allows for smart growth overlay districts. The city of Somerville and Cambridge just recently passed their affordable overlay. And I think that'd be in the best interest to study whether or not their supposed claims of increased affordability, prices, and to see whether or not the claims that they make can best serve the town of Arlington. Hold up, sorry about that, I just need to get some water. So my understanding and with the help of Doug Hyne was that the town of Nadek themselves recently had an overlay district that was called Hoop. And I provided that in the reference sheet and the reason why I think it'd be interesting is if the town of Arlington were able to figure out that there is a benefit to creating a whole swat of parcels as an overlay district, for the sake of home affordability and smart growth, it may be beneficial. Now, the reason why I chose to study is that I didn't want to rush or be divisive in forming an immediate means of how to create affordable overlay districts because I didn't want to choose a precinct. I didn't feel equipped to do so, nor did I know where this would, essentially I didn't know which jurisdiction to point this to. Tonight I seek your advisement to proceed with this vote and to offer guidance on how to make this appropriate for town meeting, for the pursuit of its adoption and expansion, but primarily to discover its scope and where to stay, where we can be presidential and productive, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Dekorsi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Mr. Hamlin. Hamlin, just the town manager and perhaps attorney Heim, I know there's a reference here to the housing production plan and my understanding is that the current plan, housing plan expires in October of this year which will require a new plan to be undertaken. And I'm just wondering if they, one, if either could confirm that and two, if there are plans to later in the calendar year to start with a new plan. Chairman? Thank you, Mr. Heard. Yes, Mr. Dekorsi, I can confirm both of those items that yes, the current housing production plan does expire later this calendar year, but also that the planning and community development staff are just now starting the process of doing an update on the housing production plan. So that work will get underway very shortly. Okay, thank you. So it seems to me that that would be the appropriate place to study overlay districts on affordability and to undertake that study as part of something that is required to be done with the state we had our first one go. And you mentioned that you don't want to rush this. So this is something that would take place later this year, but with perhaps a comment from us that this is something that certainly is worth studying. I'd be inclined to, well, actually I will move no action on this with what that provides though that we expect that this may be studied as part of the next plan. Thank you, Mr. Dunn. No additional comment. Actually, so my comment is that I agree with Steve. I think he's saying the right thing. I think it definitely makes sense to look into it further. And I think that the town's housing plan, like that process and looking at it as a part of that is a really good way to do it. Thank you, Mrs. Bond. My first question would be, did Mr. Dunn second that? If not, I will. I meant to, thank you. So that was the second versus just another one. I second and I apologize for not being clear. Okay, and I'm not trying to be picky and I just don't want to jump the boat or anything like that. And I agree with my colleagues previous remarks that planning and community development as part of the next step will sort of take what this warrant article is sort of driving at what it wants to do. But if I could third, Mr. DeCourcy, Mr. Dunn's recommendation of no action, I would, but it's been a vote of no action seconded. So thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Niggins. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you, Mr. Hamlin. I really appreciate the links that you provided too. It was interesting and your objectivity in what you provided, because the one from Cambridge that then indicated that they wouldn't be getting a lot of units necessarily at the beginning was interesting, and it's interesting to see what Cambridge is doing and some other places, what they're doing. And Mr. Courcy suggested exactly what I was gonna suggest, I mean, about the next iteration of the housing production plan. They could investigate this, but on top of that, there are some other groups in town that are really thinking and discussing housing issues. And I will encourage you to engage with them because I think this would be an interesting thing to discuss. Also, there are some members on the ARB who I think would be interested in talking with you about this. And I would be interested in talking with you and them about this in order to get a better handle on things. So you're not gonna get in touch with me. Get in touch with me and we'll work on this in parallel to what's going on with the next iteration of the housing production plan. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Thank you. And I'll fifth the motion. But just saying, thank you for bringing forward because bringing the article forward, make sure that we specifically incorporate this into the housing production plan as it moves forward. So I do appreciate the thoughtfulness and bringing the issue front and center. This is a public hearing. We have one hand raised, Judith Garber. Ms. Garber, can you hear us? Yes, hi, Judith Garber, Mass Ave. Thanks for the board for hearing this article and thanks to Guillermo for bringing this forward. I'm speaking in support of the article but I also understand what the select board is saying and the proper path to go through maybe the housing production plan. I'm curious if the board has any suggestions. I appreciate the board recommending that the housing, the people putting together the housing production plan will look at this specifically and I'm wondering in terms of avenues for public participation on that, what would be the best avenues for that? I'd much appreciate your advice. Thanks. And do you want to take that on Ms. Figgins? Yes, I just want to say that those meetings are open to the public. They are generally the first Thursdays of the month. And so the typical way meetings work is they discuss things amongst themselves. Meaning then after that, they take comments and questions from the public. And I'm the liaison to that committee. So if you find it difficult to interact at any time, feel free to reach out to me and I'll convey your questions and concerns. Thank you. Thanks very much. Thank you. And Laura Kiesel. Hi, Laura Kiesel, Precinct Six Mass Avenue. I also wanted to speak in support of this. I wanted to offer that Arlington, I actually held a panel on affordable housing last month and I had many speakers, including the Advocacy Director of the National Low-Income Housing Coalition who, and they're also having their conference this week, which I am attending. And when I was doing my research for my own article, I wanted to, I was really surprised because Arlington is behind almost all of our municipal neighbors in affordable housing, with the exception of Winchester. And in many cases, very far behind. And in just the past 20 years, we have only increased our affordable housing stock by 0.1%, that's 0.1%. And so I really think Arlington needs to be more aggressive. I've heard on this call both with my warrant and now with Guillermo's warrant, a lot of talk affirming the need for affordable housing, but there's a lot of action not being taken and to just have discussions. Before COVID hit, homelessness had increased in the Metro West by over 45%. Meanwhile, over 82% of the housing stock we're creating is market rate in the area, in the Boston Metro area, and that has exacerbated the issue. So unless we're going to actually start taking tangible actions during a pandemic where the homelessness has increased even from what it was and was already at historically high levels, a lot of people are going to die. And there are results to us not taking more assertive action. So that's all I want to say, thank you. Thank you, and that closes the public comment. Mr. Hamlin, did you want to wrap up? Yes, thank you to the chair for acknowledging my ability just to close up remarks and to think slide board. I'd like to thank you guys for letting me hyperventilate my speech earlier. I was doing some chores and I ran over here when I heard the subject, so I greatly appreciate. I would like to thank each and every one of you. Despite voting no action, your comments were clarifying. And I look forward to this being in addition to the, I believe it's the October, addition to, as you've advised, and I look forward to working with you select board member Diggins on moving forward, as well as each and every one of you. I am looking to make this as comprehensive as possible and primarily effectual. So feel free to reach out to me. I look forward to talking to each and every one of you to make this something that could be adopted. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Hamlin, we have a motion for no action that has been seconded. Mrs. Mohan. Yes, thank you. Mr. DeCorsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Dunn. Yes. Mr. Hurd. Yes. It's a five-zero vote. All right. And that brings us to Rackle 81 Resolution Broadway Corridor Design Competition. Is Ms. Thornton with us? Yep, no problem. If you could just start with your name for the record. Barbara Thornton and I'm at Park Avenue in Arlington, precinct 16. All right. Do you want to tell us a little bit about the article? Yes. I have this feeling of deja vu. And the last one always. Yes, this article has been presented to you before. And I am here tonight because as I found out on Friday, it was not voted, it was tabled. And so I'm here to encourage you to take it off the table and move it forward. And the story, I'm not going to repeat because you've heard of the great study done. Move the town forward. Town has huge opportunities for doing zoning in another year. They've started the housing production plan process. But there needs to be some community action that will give people a vision of what should happen. And I'm hoping that you will agree with me that a good vision would be to do something like a design competition. And I got to say, I'm feeling a little bit like, I don't know if you've seen the movie Chevy Chase in the European vacation where he goes around and around and around that rotary. And I feel like I'm going around and around and around that rotary here. And I'm looking for a path tonight with you to get off the rotary and go down a road that we can get to a vision for the town of Arlington to see alternatives of what housing could look like without doing it town-wide. Just get some plans, get some pictures, get some architects involved, get some planners involved and do a competition. Throw out a little money here and there, $100 for first prize, $50 for second prize, get some students involved, get some Britishers involved and get some stuff that we can do a little like September festival at town day maybe and show the results. So people can see what more density looks like, what more climate responsive housing looks like, what more green space looks like, how it might combine to make everybody happy or not. And then move into the housing production plan and the April voting at town meeting the following year on all these zoning articles. Thank you Ms. Martin. Is that enough? Yep. And my recollection is that we tabled this, Ms. Chaplain to see if the planning department could do this internally. Do we have any movement on that? She wrote a response by the way that night. I got back to her and I said, did anybody reach out to you? She said, I wrote, I said, so that I can read it to you. I have it on my screen, you probably do too. Yeah, Ms. Chaplain. So I did talk to Ms. Ray about this today and I think she's very supportive of the concept, but similar to the last warrant article, felt like it should, could or should either be part of the housing production plan process or potentially be an outcome of the housing plan production process. I don't think that actually puts it off much further than it maybe would take to get it up and running anyway, so I don't know what the board ultimately would want to do with this article. I think we have a willing and interested town and town department of planning and community development, just figuring out how doing something like this fits into the housing plan, housing production plan process, I think would be the work to do. All right, Mr. Dumb. Sorry. I'll pass, I wanna listen more, thank you. Can I? Pardon, yep. Can I make a point to that? I looked in after our last meeting, I had initiated a process to have the federal home loan bank board kind of host this and I realized that working with universities and organizations like that, they have six months time tables. You either make it on that six month time table or you're out for six months. It's that's not like a few weeks, that's a long time. So that's why I'm urging that we sort of, even though the housing production plan process is just getting started. And this is where I'm looking at you all for this road off this circle because I think that one of the things you should consider is instead of me coming before or me and people like me coming before you every time for an issue that we want to join action for, can there be an intermediate process? So maybe you each have a portfolio that you're particularly like around town affairs. So I could go to the housing portfolio person and say, here's my idea. How do you suggest I proceed rather than coming to you at 9.30 at night on Monday nights or later? Yeah, okay. Mr. Gorsi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's interesting, Mr. Thornton. I was thinking of one of Chevy Chase's colleagues on Saturday Night Live. It feels like groundhog data maybe because we've had this had a few times that we did have the benefit of the minutes from our February 22nd meeting actually a post of this evening I'm looking at them now and there was indeed a motion to table to allow you to have conversations with Ms. Ray and Mr. Chapter Lane. Where I am now, I didn't know when this was coming back. I was hoping you were coming back to tell us that you had conversations and that the study's gonna take place and it's not gonna require a vote. And I'm not gonna make a motion at this point but I almost feel like one of us and I'd be willing to do it. Maybe you should have a conversation with Mr. Chapter Lane and Ms. Ray and with you and come back next week in terms of what was happening here because to be honest with you I wasn't expecting to be asked to vote on this tonight because I thought it was gonna be worked out. Yeah, I didn't know I was supposed to because I did talk to Jenny back and forth over the last few weeks about this including I got an email back from her on Monday but I didn't know I was supposed to talk to Mr. Chapter Lane as well. Sorry. Yeah, and you may not had to I mean, I think it was one or the other but I just think from where we're sitting you're coming back here and I will say it's certainly better at 9.38 than at 12.15 in the morning I think which was the last time but I just feel like it's not much before us you've had some conversations but I think we might need to get a little bit more information but again, I'm not gonna make the motion I'd like to hear what my colleagues have to say on this. Ms. Niggans. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So, well, look, your idea, Ms. Dorton, about having a contact on the select board or someone so that you can bring up these ideas and not have to make resolutions or other articles, it's a good one. And maybe we do need to try to formalize that process or make it somehow more public because I think a lot of the articles that we saw in this year's warrant were cries. Let me rephrase that. I just, I want to neutralize it. They were seeking attention, you know, for important issues and a lot of times we were saying, well, this isn't the right way to go about it. And I think we need to let people know what is the right way to go about it or at least what is a better way to go about it. Well, I see where you're coming from with the competition. But I keep thinking that there's got to be maybe a simpler, more direct way to do this. I mean, and especially since we're talking small sums of money, then it's not going to be the money that's attracting people to do this. It's going to be the desire to engage in this kind of a process. And since we're talking so little money, I would say, let's try to do that because once we put money into it, then it becomes like a barrier. I mean, then we have to go through a process because now the time is going to spend money to do it and we can't just spend money, you know, without clearing it somehow. So I would say, let's think about how we can get this going. As you said, you need to do it sooner rather than later. If you feel it, in order to reach out to universities, it needs to imprimatur the town in order to do that. I can see that, but at the same time, Ms. Dorton, I think you have all the imprimatur that's needed to move anyone because you do, yes you do, yes you do. We need to move anyone, you know, that you want to move. I see you do it, I saw you do it with Mr. Chair, can you stop the back and forth, please? So I see you do it with the business school and that series that you did. So we can move forward with this, but at the same time, yeah, I guess we're having, I kind of have a sense of what's going on with the town in terms of the house production plan. And I know the focus is shifting to that. And so I guess I'm a little concerned that if we put it on the town, it's just not going to move fast because of bandwidth issues. And so I really want to keep that, keep it on you. And it seems like I'm getting more involved with housing and somehow we're going to tie transportation into this because you can't, what's good as a house, we can't get there. So we're going to tie those all together and we'll work together on this. So I think it's going to be better that we do a no action on this for respect to town meeting, but that you and I and whoever else, me who wants to act on it will act on it and it has something to tell the housing production, the housing plan implementation committee, when they start taking up the housing production plan. And if nothing else, we can give an example of what a contest can do. So I'm offering to work with you on it. Thank you. Mahan? Thank you. Okay, Yikes, holy guacamole. I was going, my motion would be to, it's a resolution that I would move favorable action on the resolution regarding Ms. Thornton's resolution for the Broadway Carter design competition in light of, unless Mr. Chapter Lane can correct me if I misheard what he said, that the planning and community development department indicated that this resolution, it's not a warrant article, could be incorporated into, I guess what I would ask the town manager is, did I hear you correctly? And if I did not please tell me that this resolution could be incorporated through the Department of Planning and Community Development under their housing production plan process. So I, I think what I, I'll try to say again is planning and community development is supportive of Ms. Thornton's plan here or what she wants to accomplish. It's not entirely clear to me whether we should do it sort of parallel to the update to the housing production plan or as an outcome of the housing production plan. I mean, I think either independently a positive vote of this board endorsing the idea or forwarding the resolution to town meeting in support of the idea is, is okay. I mean, I think as you heard from Mr. Diggins comments and what I'm hearing from board members tonight, I think one way or the other, we want to work with Ms. Thornton to get this done. We just, I think we just wanna make sure it's done. It was sort of best and most efficiently utilizing town resources to do it. Okay, so, so my motion would be with apologies to Mr. Diggins to vote in support of this resolution. It's not a bylaw amendment or anything like that. I'd like to move, um, favorable action, um, to support the resolution regarding the Broadway court of design competition, um, under the auspices of our planning and community development department vis-a-vis the housing production plan process. Thank you. And I actually was gonna have comments very similar to Ms. Nohan that I think it's a good idea. Everyone said it's a good idea. Planning says it's a good idea and it's a resolution. And it looks like the housing production plan is where it will be implemented anyways. So I, you know, I think we can support a motion to approve this, that can be ratified by town meeting and then it can be implemented, implemented through planning going forward. So I will look for a second. This is done. Second. And in additional comments, Mr. DeCorsi. And no further comments. And Mr. Diggins, I'm not sure if you actually did move no action, but if you did, did you want to draw that? I think that's, I think that's why Ms. Nohan was apologizing and no apology necessary to the extent I did. I was drawn happily, you know, but I will say to Ms. Thornton, we're still gonna have work on this sooner rather than later, just so you know, you know. I see. All right, this is a public hearing. If any members of the public would like to speak on this article, please use the raise hand function on your Zoom application. Seeing none, Attorney Hime, we have a motion to approve that's been seconded. Mrs. Nohan. Sorry, I couldn't get my mute off. Yes, and to Ms. Thornton, please keep bringing and bringing your ideas to us whether I'm on the board or not. I really appreciate the time and energy and expertise you put into this. So thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you, Attorney Hime. Yes. Mr. D'Corsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Not only were all in better moods before 10 o'clock, yes. You're done. Yes. Mr. Hurd. Yes. Five-zero vote. Ms. Thornton. All right. Wow. Thank you very much. Mr. Chaplain, if you don't mind, I'm gonna just give you a call at some point. Maybe we can chat this week or whenever it's convenient for you about how cheap it could be. And Lynn, I will be talking to you too. Thank you. Any conversation about how cheap something can be that town manager's interested in. So we'll take it. Well, it's something, but it's still cheap. And I appreciate very much Len Diggins' feeling that I can achieve this kind of stuff on my own. It's not possible without you. It really isn't. So I thank you so much. And I think an award from Arlington to an architect for their design would be a wonderful tribute on their desk. An award from Barbara Thornton for their design wouldn't be. All right. Thank you. Thank you. A lot of love in the air tonight. All right, final votes and comments, articles for review. We have article six, bylaw amendment, CPAC member term limits. Article 11 bylaw amendment, stormwater management, article 14 bylaw amendment, gutters and historic districts. Article 15 bylaw amendment, domestic partnerships, article 19 vote establishment of town committee on auto and property insurance claims and losses. Article 20 vote public remote participation. Article 24, home rule legislation, rank choice voting. Article 26, endorsement of CDBG application. You have the final votes before us. I will run through the articles again. Speak up if you have any revisions, objections to any of the articles that we will vote on together. Article six, article 11. Article 14, article 15, article 19, article 20. I had previous conversations with Doug. Let me listen to him. All right, turn him. So I first of all wanted to say that thank you to a few board members who sent some both administrative comments and substantive comments and question. I also received a series of questions and comments from the article of proponent or I think expressed some frustration that I hadn't reached out. So I apologize for that. It's been a little bit of a crunch time and I try to do that better. I'll try to do that better in the future when it comes to articles proposed by a member of the public that I felt like the directive was fairly clear here. I did wanna just forward some questions that I think I understand the answer to the board on this but my understanding is that the board's motion is to have it report to spring 22 town meeting but if they can report things before then, great. They can report things before spring 22 annual town meeting. My understanding is further that you're looking for recommendations including recommendations that would go on the 2022 town meeting warrant but that doesn't necessarily limit the scope of recommendations to only warrant articles. Obviously the board understands the warrant article process very well and I think there was some questions from the proponent about whether or not the IT department or finance committee should be on the committee and further whether or not there should be other members appointed who don't have experience having their meetings video recorded. So in the spirit of that sort of collaborative approach that the board has taken on this article I just wanted to raise those concerns and answer some of those questions as best as I understand the board's motion. But again, the two questions seem to be about whether or not the IT department or finance committee should be on this represented and the other question was about whether or not other types of boards and bodies that don't have experience of being video recorded should be represented. My understanding from you, Mr. Dunn was that you anticipated that this body would take some survey of other public bodies and not just focus on the bodies that are represented but I just wanted to try to make sure that I clearly understood these issues and were representing both the board and the sort of spirit of what was going on fairly. Mr. Dunn. Thank you. So yes, so I, so it's this group that we're creating the study or not we're creating that we're asking town meeting to create should come to a conclusion for all the committees which means that they should be talking to at least I'm not sure you have to talk to all of them but you should certainly should be representative of them and so I certainly and so I think it would be appropriate to adjust the charge maybe to make it clear that they're supposed to be doing like part of what they're supposed to be doing is to be investigating or what other committees need and want and do but obviously we can't get representatives of all of them on the committee so we shouldn't even try we should just make sure that that group does it. On the second question about whether or not someone from the IT should be on there I actually had in my head I was figuring that I had never actually asked Adam this but I was guessing that Adam was gonna point his the IT director to be the his nominate person on this committee and so I envisioned it being handled that way and whether it should be someone from the finance committee should be on there gently I didn't think it was they didn't I didn't think that they no that wasn't on my list of people who should be there Thank you, Steph. All right, and so do we need just to make sure that I'm understanding where we are do you want to table this one for a final vote to the next meeting or are we okay to vote on it as is? I don't feel like the changes we're making right here are substantive so it's really about whatever you and whether the board and Doug are comfortable with. Mr. Dickens, any comments on article 20? No, no, no questions. I mean, I'm fine with the current vote standing. Yep. Mrs. Mohan? I'm thank you, Mr. Chair. If you are Mr. Don and Mr. Chaplin could remind me where is the select board representation or no on this? We're on article. There should be, right? Yes, there is one member of the select board or it's designated. Okay, I'm just a little confused following Mr. Don's remarks just because it seems like there's some more issues to be delineated out as well as the original proponent of this warrant article. I think we tried to get it back on track but really kind of went astray on that. So I don't know, Mr. Don, if you could kind of allay some of my concerns. Sure. So if we could table this or if you want to go for this tonight. How about let's do both. Let's table it and let me speak to it if that's okay. Thank you, please. All right, so in the draft of article 20, one A is one member of the select board, one member of the, sorry, blackboard or designee, school committee or designee, ARB or designee, town manager or designee, member of disability commission or designee, four members of town meeting appointed by the moderator. So those are the nine. The draft has a 10th, but that's a mistake. So what we're striking that those are the nine. And so the question of finance committee, I'm saying no, and I'm question of IT, I'm saying the town manager can handle that with his nominee. So I'm saying no change to the, to the draft. And then I'm rereading the charge and the charge is pretty good. It says the committee's charge with comprehensively examining options, requirements for market participation and public meetings in order of candidates that will acquire in-person tenants shall include, the study shall include benefits and challenges examining what portions of meetings can be and should. So I think maybe we can add an item to the charge Doug it's something like considering evaluating like committee size and prominence, some committees operate live on ACMI on a weekly basis and some of them don't. And so, and I think that that would cover what we, that point that we were talking about. And then Mr. Chair, I move that we table this till next week for further consideration. All right. No, I would second that. All right. Any comments from Mr. Corsi? No comments. All right. And then any comments or questions on article 24? I have a comment, Mr. Chairman. Okay. Yeah, I spoke with attorney Heim and this doesn't affect the vote but they were, it asked to just insert language that the board is unanimous on ranked choice voting as the single seat elections. The difference that I had was with the multi-seed and just wanted to make that clear in the comment. All right. Thank you. And article 26, all right. And so do we have- Can I just ask, I'm sorry, Mr. Chair, on article 26, if I could ask Mr. Chapellein, I don't expect him to know the answer tonight. If he does, God bless you. If not, regarding the CDBG CARES Act Recovery Act, the last CDBG subcommittee meeting, we were told we may meet, that we will meet again in July for a subsequent federal funding that we'll need to talk about and delineate those funds. If you could investigate that and or if you already know the answer to that or if you're going to get back to me on that. So I can say tonight, I've not heard any news of new CDBG funds from either the CARES Act or the Rescue Act. I think that still remains an open possibility but I don't have any new information tonight. Okay. Thank you. I apologize, Mr. Chair. I kind of piggybacked on that, but I appreciate it. Thank you. Ms. Nen. Sorry, I apologize. Back on 24, the ranked choice voting, I also talked with Doug over the weekend about changing one of the paragraphs in the comment. Did that draft make it or should we table that for the people to look at next week? Attorney Hyde? It did make it. So the draft you have on Novus is the draft with the revised paragraph. Okay. So depending upon... Mr. Dummy, I explain the error. So clarification. Yeah, the draft comment that I initially transmitted basically talked about single seat races in terms of getting above 50% threshold. But the revised motion to reflect the majoritarian approach doesn't actually use that term. What essentially happens, gosh, I hope we're gonna get this right, is that the lowest vote burning folks get eliminated off the bottom and this revised paragraph more accurately reflects the way in which the single seat vote occurs. So I hope that that's a... Yeah. How about this? I move the wee table because I want another crack just to make sure I read it. I apologize, Doug. I didn't look at the revised... No, it's my fault. It's my fault. Thank you. So you want to amend your motion to table article 20 in 24. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yep. All right. So then with that, I'll look for a motion to approve article 6, 11, 14, 15, 19, and 26. So moved. With a second, bye. Second. Good to begin. All right, so attorney Heim, on the motion to approve. Mrs. Mohan. Yes, thank you. Mr. DeCorsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Dunn. Yes. Mr. Heard. Yes. And on the motion to table. Mrs. Mohan. Yes, thank you. Mr. DeCorsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Dunn. Yes. Mr. Heard. Yes. All right. Thank you. Take this to corresponds to receive concerns regarding dangerous crosswalk on Summer Street. Chris Shores, Alley to Residents. Move receipt. Ms. Chaplin. If you could also refer that to Dan Amstead, Senior Transportation Planner. He's done some work in terms of analyzing an intersection and responded to residents in the past. And also just what happens, I think, to live near that intersection. So he has some firsthand experience as well. So if you would refer that to him, he'd be able to, I think, more than adequately respond to the residents' concerns. Sure. Thank you. All right. Move receipt and refer to the town manager, to Mr. Amschutz. Thank you. With a second. Second. All right. Mr. Heard. Mrs. Mohan. Yes, thank you. Mr. DeCorsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Dunn. Yes. Mr. Heard. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Business. Turn it on. Quickly, I just want to say that I know we have a few last sort of matters to have for a warranted hearing. I will do my best to draft what I think are potential comments in advance so that the board can basically have a warranted hearing and comments. I'll also plan to bring back a full draft select board report for the board's review and approval. That'll give you another opportunity to make sure that the report looks basically the way you want and reflects accurately everybody's votes on all these matters. And I also just want to say that I know that the last couple final votes and comments are resolutions that a few article components, Ms. Saundra, Ms. Malapche, a few others have been patiently waiting on the top of my list this week. Thank you. Mr. Chaplin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Simply a restatement from prior new business that the town is expecting to be the recipient of a significant sum of money from the American Rescue Act. However, we are still awaiting further detailed regulations from the federal government about the exact manner in which we'll be able to expend or utilize those funds. And as soon as we receive that information, of course, we'll let the board know as well as the general public. That's all I have. Thank you. Thank you. Mrs. Mohan. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Sort of piggybacking on the town manager's comments. Echo, what he has said, Mr. DeCorsi is the chairperson of the Long Range Planning Committee, where we've had many, well, maybe not many, well, one or two discussions regarding the American Rescue Act, as well as other people with conversations. I would say that as it stands right now, our next meeting would be on April 12th. If I'm remembering that correctly, or maybe I'm remembering it incorrectly. Do you have a cyclone meeting? We have one next month. No long range planning. Our next long range planning is going to be April 12th. And one of the sort of titular meeting points before the 12th will be the finance committee meeting on, I believe, March 31st with the school committee, which I know my colleagues know how ardent I've been in holding everyone's feet to the same fire. But I won't go into too much detail on that. But I've been somewhat frustrated along with my colleagues in the school committee in terms of dealing with COVID, dealing with kids who are attending school hybrid remote and what those numbers mean back to Allington, as well as I know on the Long Range Planning Committee, we've had talk about an override in the few coming years, which the American Rescue Act may push it out one more year before that. But I think through the Long Range Planning Committee, which Mr. Dacorsi chairs this year, hopefully in the next year or years to come, we really need to have a Baptist member come to Jesus talk about getting our hands around those numbers. And then the second issue I would raise is it seems as though April 5th, it's sort of a date that cities and towns and perhaps including Allington is sort of a quasi reopening or reinstituting people being able to come to town building. So what I'd like to do, if I could, through the chair, is ask Mr. Chapter Lane, are there on April 5th any town either buildings or programs, whether it's vaccines or likewise, that will either be reopening or having a soft opening? Mr. Chapter Lane? So there are no plans tied to April 5th for town buildings other than school buildings, primarily because the majority of the populations working in those town buildings are not yet vaccinated. However, we're looking at sort of planning towards end of June, early July date for what would look like a town hall and town office reopening to the public in some form as that aligns with when we think the majority of the population will be vaccinated. But we expect to be bringing staff back to offices. Basically, those already there increasing over the course of the next month or so working towards when we reach herd immunity 70% to 80% vaccination when we start welcoming, probably still in a controlled fashion, but welcoming residents back into town office buildings. Not so much residents. I know that the select board, treasurers, and town clerks office have had staff in for a couple months now. Are you saying that the town manager's office, the planning department, the library, and other town offices are not going to open the staff? What we do in the select board's office, town clerk's office and treasurer's office is we've been there for two to three months, and you need to call or email to make an appointment. And then we have safe procedures in order for you to effectuate your business with that. Are you saying that your office and the planning department and the credit union and payroll and all the other offices are not going to open until July? No, that's not going to open. In a similar model as the select board's office is doing, to me, not to be disrespectful, but I don't understand why the select board's office, I'm just going to pick that as one, has been open for the past two months, but you all can wait till July. I'm sorry if I wasn't clear, Ms. Mahler. That is not what I said. I was speaking in regards to when the public would be welcome back into the buildings in the July time frame. We will be ramping up office staffing over the course of the next several months as more and more people are eligible or become vaccinated. So all of the offices you listed have had staff in them over the course of the past several months and will be increasing that staffing capacity against this happening now and continuing over the next few months. So you're still saying July because this is the end of March. So the next few months is July. What I'm saying is why can't we get the rest of the town offices operating as the select board, town clerk, and treasurers? So I'm saying that that is exactly what we are working to do now. And it's not waiting until July. The July time frame only has to do with reopening offices for access to the public. The next several months will be spent incrementally bringing people back into the offices as people become vaccinated. OK, I guess I'm confused why the three offices I cited have not been vaccinated, but they're in there working. I just want to know when Town Hall will operate as three departments of the Town Hall have been operating for two months and why it's going to take another two months for them to come back into the office. I'm not saying let the public in, but come back into the office. What I can do and provide to you, Ms. Mahanan, and the entire board is draft a plan for what our plan is for Town Hall offices and other town administrative offices in the coming weeks and months. That'd be great. And I'd prefer it in the coming weeks. I understand everybody working at home. And I'll leave it at that. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Susan Corsi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yeah, I just wanted to update the board and in the community. We had last Monday, the chairman, Mr. Chapter Lane, Attorney Heim, Ms. Rait, and then Senator Friedman had a call with Mass Housing in response to the letter that we had authorized where we were seeking Mass Housing to make a determination that the changes to the MuGar site were substantial and that they were so substantial that it required the restoration of the townhouses back to the original design or even a revocation of the eligibility letter. We had a spirited conversation for over an hour with Mass Housing. I want to thank everybody for attending. I really want to thank Senator Friedman for her advocacy for the community as well. Unfortunately, what came out of that meeting was that Mass Housing issued a letter the next day that we received on Wednesday morning indicating that in their view, the changes were not substantial and that the concerns should be addressed at the local level before the ZBA. So it's back at the ZBA. We took it as far as we could. I don't agree with the determination but you accept it and you move on. And I just want to point out that tomorrow night, the ZBA will be continuing their public hearing on the MuGar site. It's at 6.30 and earlier start and right now it's the last scheduled date although they haven't told April 9th to continue their hearing. So I want to thank the members of the board for all of the additional work that has been done on the MuGar site. I want to thank the chairman for scheduling meetings and for attending meetings and for leading us over these last few weeks on this issue. Thank you. Ms. Nagan? Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I just want to note the passing of Elaine Shea today. She had pancreatic cancer and everyone's loss is important and this one is no more important except that I am so grateful to Ms. Shea. I recently met her and she just welcomed me. She was just so welcoming and so helpful and in her family too. And she reminded me of a lot of the people who helped my mom when I was growing up and it was through that help that I was able to get a good education and become a better person. And so that's it. She was really a wonderful person and I just wanted to note that. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Ngan. That is very sad news indeed, Lynn. I hadn't heard that. She and her husband were real assets to the town. That's very sad to hear that. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. Yeah, Ms. Shea was definitely a matriarch of the town. She promoted everyone being upstanders as I think everyone that met her recently. She got a nice purple bracelet so we had those in commemoration of her work. I did want to just follow up on what Mr. DeCorsi said. He was very diplomatic in the way he described the conversation but there was a lot, I want to thank Mr. Corsi and Senator Freeman for the advocacy on the call. I think both I and particularly Mr. DeCorsi and Senator Freeman all were very active in trying to convince mass housing about our position but we weren't successful in the end but we did, it wasn't without a fight and I certainly never want to find myself on the opposite end of a conversation with Senator Freeman because she knows how to argue. And then I also just following up on that I had spoken with the town manager today. We did have a resident meeting in the past few days and one of the issues separate from the project was just on the accumulation of trash. We've asked the Mughars to participate at this point. We're still in process of trying to reach out to the Mughars but not hopeful that they're gonna step up to the plate. So next week we'll have an agenda item on this just to discuss what the plan is to clean up the area and Tommy is just already working on that. And one last thing as we move to April 5th a date that many of us school parents have been looking forward to for a long, long time. I do want to thank our colleagues on the school committee and everyone in the school department for all the work that they've done this year to continue to provide really top notch education for Arlington students in this crazy system that we've had to operate under. And my boys are both in hybrid programs and it hasn't been easy. I know for parents it hasn't been easy for teachers and administrators but everyone's doing the best they can and it was really the best result of a bad situation. So I do want to thank them as we transition back into full-time, hopefully full-time for an extended period of time. So with that, I will take a motion to adjourn. Was it adjourned? Second. All right, turn your hand. Mrs. Mohan. Yes, thank you. Mr. DeCorsi. Yes, Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Dunn. Yes. Mr. Hurd. Yes. See you on my spoke. Good night, folks. Thanks. Good night. Good meeting. Bye.