 I mean, everyone, welcome to the Board of Select meeting for Monday, January 27th. It's a bit after 7.15 p.m., so we're ready to get going. First up on the agenda, we have a consent agenda, which is the minutes of the meeting of January 13th. We have a request for a one-day beer and wine license from the Regent Theatre for a performance of Mission of Burma Concert. It is not often that I receive Facebook inquiries about license requests, but I have a number of Mission of Burma fans who wanted to know if I could get them tickets, which I answered no. And we have several reappointments. Board of Youth Services, Mary DeCorsi and Carleen Newell, Commission on Disabilities, Susan James, Conservation Commission, Eileen Coleman, Council on Aging, Sue Culhane, Historical Commission, Diane Schafer, Open Space Committee, Michelle Hasler, Park and Recreation Commission, Shirley Kenneth, Redevelopment Board, Andrew Bonnell, and Michael Kair. Is anyone here who wants to speak on any of those issues or are there any of those nominees or renominees who are here who wish to be recognized? I'm not seeing anyone. Move approval. I have Washington from Mrs. Mahan. Second. Second for Mr. Carroll, Mrs. Mahan. I just want to ask the town manager or Mrs. Cropelka if on the Regent Theatre Burma event, I see that we receive something from the police department that's not on the original application. Did they get a copy? I think it's approved, yes, it's all approved. So that will be incorporated, but we have before us on our desk tonight from Officer Ritchell, we'll be coordinated with 2B, 2B. Any further discussion? All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Aye, 5-0. All right, next up, salary survey. Mr. Towne, Manager. Mr. Chairman, may I humbly ask you consider taking item number three before number two for licenses and permits, just due to the length of number two? I think that makes a lot of sense. Item number three, request for a class two license. John Finichetti doing business with our length of snails. Good evening. Good evening. President Nessey representing John Finichetti. We are here with respect to a use for our license for the real estate of 251 Summer Street in Arlington. John Finichetti has lived in town all of his life. Mr. McDermott show essentially owned the property going back to 1981. And when he did own the property, he went before the ZBA, he got permission to have up to six used cars for sale on the lot. He was, John purchased the property approximately seven years ago. When he bought it, McDermott show remained as a tenant at the property. He's left a couple of months ago. John would now like to sell used cars at the site. His primary purpose at the site, the business objective is selling gasoline, both gasoline and diesel. The property itself contains approximately 18,000 square feet, ample room for the gas station services as well as the used car lot as well. There are two bays on the lot as well. And again, John is not going to be using the property for the sale of more than six cars. His hours of operation would be eight o'clock a.m. to six p.m. He'd be operating six days a week. That's why we're here. Move approval, subject conditions are set for second. Motion and second. Is there any discussion or questions? I just assume the six days are Monday through Saturday. Monday through Saturday, not Sunday. Anything else? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Five, zero. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. You're the town manager. A big thank you for that switch on the agenda. That was a big thank you. Mr. Chairman, I do see that Commissioner Kniff is here with us tonight. Do you think she wanted to give a speech or anything? I don't know. Well, we wanted to thank you for your service though. I enjoyed it very much. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Girly. Adam, you're on. All right. Well, I'm very glad to be able to say tonight we're here to present the final report of the salary or compensation study that we've really been working on for the past several years. This started with a request from the Board of Selectmen some time ago to take a look, coming out of the GIC after the transition to the GIC, let's take a look at the compensation of all town employees and see where we rank against comparable communities. So what we started by doing was bringing together town management, union leadership, school management, school union leadership, and also a representative of the Board of Selectmen, Selectmen Curo, as well as a representative of the school committee, Kirstie Allison Ampe. And we started working on determining who we wanted to compare ourselves to. So as we've discussed at prior meetings, we used a number of criteria to determine who we wanted our comparable communities to be. We looked at population, five-year average municipal growth factor, population per square mile, median income per capita, median income per household, single family median home value, average family tax bill, total tax levy, excess levy as a percentage of maximum levy, and residential valuation as a percentage of total tax levy. And what that resulted in is 12 communities that we would compare ourselves to, which were Belmont, Brookline, Medford, Melrose, Milton, Nadek, Needham, North Andover, Redding, Stotem, Watertown, and Winchester. So again, that was a really collaborative effort between the unions and the town. We all worked together to determine who those communities would be and who we would compare ourselves to, and we reached consensus on using those 12 communities. Moving on from there, with the good work of Karen Malloy, Andrew Flanagan, we solicited the services of a consultant to help us gather all this data from the 12 communities, and that resulted in the hiring of HRS Consulting and Sandy Stepchinsky, who's here tonight, along with her team from HRS Consulting to gather the data. So then after that hiring was made, again, a lot more work by Sandy and her team, by Karen, by Andrew, by the union leadership, members of the union leadership, to gather this data, to analyze the data, and finalize what you have before you tonight. So the last thing I'll say before I ask Sandy to go over the report is we're looking forward to being able to use this data in practical terms. We have contracts that are currently executed with all collective bargaining units on town and school through the close of FY15, which is the upcoming fiscal year. But negotiations for FY16 and beyond will be starting in the next six to eight months during FY15. So very soon, both the town management and union leadership will be able to use this data and have an informed discussion about issues of compensation that we want to address. So with that, Sandy, if you want to start the presentation, I'm gonna shift around so that we can project. Thank you very much for inviting me. It was a pleasure to do this study for the town. It was a mammoth project, and as Adam mentioned, it was a team effort between our company and the town and the union leadership and town officials, town management, town and school. And as a result, we have a very good product that we provided. On the next slide, I just wanna tell you a little bit about our company. We are a consulting firm in Massachusetts. We provide technical assistance to cities and towns in all areas of human resource management. The team consisted of three of us. Unfortunately, the other two couldn't be here this evening, but I wanted to mention them because they were a key part of the team, Carol Grandfield and Tony Turisi, both who have 30 plus years of experience in management as well as financial management and local government. Okay, moving on to the next slide. As I mentioned, the Arlington team consisted of town and school leadership, town and school management, all the union leaders, human resources, town and school, and then our consultant team. I'd like to give a huge thank you to Karen Malloy, who did a tremendous job in coordinating everything on the town side for us without her help. This never would have been the great product that it is today. Next, the general goal of the study was really, we were not hired to come in and update your pay plans or do that or make any specific recommendations, but basically to give you a snapshot of the municipal compensation and benefits data. And as Adam mentioned, there were a number of communities that were selected collectively by town and union, and it was intended to be an independent objective analysis, and we did that independently. We don't know anybody here, really. We don't know the politics, so it was quite objective. Going on to the next. The summary scope was a review of town of Arlington's. We started with the job description review just so we could understand what the jobs were that we were studying, and we looked at all your current compensation and benefits. We collected municipal and school labor market data from other comparable cities, towns and schools, and we did a general information review of what the compensation trends are for compensation and benefits in local government, and we provided the general facts regarding all areas of compensation, and we also provided an enhanced internal capacity to management of providing tools and methodologies that can be used going forward. These were the communities that we used, Belmont, Brookline, Medford, Melrose, Milton, Nadek, Needham, North Andover, Redding, Stonem, Watertown, and Winchester. And we looked at the salary ranges, the salary averages, stipends if applicable, any unique requirements, shift differential uniform pay, so forth for public safety positions, educational incentive pay, any other permanent information that would impact the salary ranges. And we also looked at the benefits, vacation, health insurance, longevity, the GICHRA reimbursement, and it was quite comprehensive, so we looked at all of those pieces. So when we're looking at your total compensation package, there's base pay that we look at for all the general government and the school general positions. We looked at base pay, we looked at the pay ranges, and then there's indirect pay, such as allowances or fees that a position may get, and then there's also other pay, such as benefits, and then there may be performance-type merit pay. So we look at all of those items, and we did collect all the union contracts and all that. Then we studied the averages, the medians, the range of percentiles. We cut and diced the statistics and the data in a number of different ways, looking at it at all different angles and provided that information to the town. So there were three major areas of the analysis. Fire service was a little bit more in-depth. The compensation is a little bit more complex. So we looked at base pay, EMTB stipend, hazardous duty pay, associates degree, night differential, weekend differential, holiday pay, defibrillator pay, longevity, and other pay that is typical for these types of positions. And we studied all of the fire union positions, and we came up with a total compensation cost. I'd like to say that at this point, I'd like to just say that the fire department did an excellent job in also helping us to collect additional information in additional union contracts, and I wanna thank them for that. They did a terrific job. Next, the police service. We looked at maximum base wage, school credits, longevity, night differential, weekend differential, holiday pay, firearms, defibrillator pay, clothing allowance, cleaning allowance, and any other pay that's applicable to similar bargaining unit type positions and police. And we looked at all the union police positions. And then with teachers, specifically the categories of general compensation, it's really categorized by education level for teacher's pay, whether it's a BA or an MA, an MA step six, and then MA maximum 15 plus, and then 30 maximum. This is very typical for teacher's pay, and we did study all of those categories for those positions as well as, and then we also looked at all other school positions as well. The study, I should say, included over 100 positions for town, town and school, and we had two key meetings with the stakeholders which provided the town and schools with options and opportunity for review and input. So we actually met with everybody and gave them a copy of a draft report, and then they were able to follow up and give us additional information and provide some input. So it was really a good give and take kind of a process. We provided a draft report and then a final report. And this was a unique process for the town. There aren't too many communities that have that kind of collaboration between management and union and town officials. So I think this was sort of a unique process for the town of Arlington. It was quite successful to bring everybody together and work together as a team. So we were very pleased with the outcome. So with regard to the whole study, and you have all the data, and I'm sure you're gonna wanna plow through all the information, but in addition to what the data fact finding tells you with regard to the averages, there's also just some general recommendations that we'd like to make, and we hope that the town would continue in the good management that they are continuing now with their compensation policy, but perhaps establish a more focused compensation philosophy going forward and making it a little bit more concrete as to who you wanna be compared to and how you want your administration plan to look with regard to compensation and benefits. And then determine the desired position you wanna be in the market, for example, the 50th percentile. And the pay schedule should be maintained and updated. And of course, for any union positions that would go through the collective bargaining process. And then regular surveys should be conducted and maintained on a regular basis for the town. And every so many years, you do want a benchmark, the market to see, just to see how you fall in comparison. So I'd like to thank you very much for the opportunity to have been of service to the town of Arlington. We really enjoyed very much working with your town manager and your deputy town manager and HR and all the union leaders here as well. And I just thought I would just take any questions that you might have at this time. Thank you very much. I mean, obviously I was part of this so I don't really have any specific questions on the report, cause I was at your presentation, but I did wanna give my colleagues just a little bit of a sense before Sandy came into the process, you should know that there were, what would you say, four or five meetings at least with all of the stakeholders coming together to find that basket of communities which were actually given to HRS to look at. I think we probably started with something like at least 60 communities in the greater Boston area. We looked at probably, I wanna say, something on the order of 20 different data points. We looked at things like density, commercial, tax base, income levels, taxation levels and a whole number of issues and discussed them together and kind of rank ordered them to try to find what we ultimately called the Baker's Dozen, which are 12 communities plus Arlington with also a healthy bit of common sense thrown in as well to find the comparable communities. So Sandy and Karen did an incredible amount of work taking that and pulling together all of these contracts, especially trying to find, I know sometimes it'll be difficult finding like categories. I think one of them was like, for example, firearms pay is called something different in different communities for police and trying to tease that out is difficult, but there was an awful lot of work that was done probably for the six to seven months before that as well with the stakeholders to try to find this basket first before it was handed off to the consultants. I just wanted to make sure that my colleagues understood that context as well. Does it mean it? Yeah, I mean, I was gonna ask, I find it hard to believe we compare to a Belmont half our size and a Medford what two or three times our size. So I'm not quite sure what you just said, Joe, but I'm just wondering how those particular communities were selected. I think you just explained that, but. So can I, may I? Go ahead. So we started with the population range and we decided how far up or down to go. And then we started looking at those other criteria that Joe mentioned. So Belmont, Arlington, Medford are quite similar in terms of how dense they are. There's a little bit of a variation in density. So there's a great degree of comparability about how much new tax revenue those three communities can grow. So that's one of the reasons why they're like us. You know, at Belmont, they started to stretch a little bit away from us in terms of their property valuation higher than us, Medford a little bit lower. But when you start to look at ranges and you start to look at a number of different criteria, it started to go from that, you know, 60 communities to 40 communities to 30 and we sort of continued to narrow and find those communities based on a number of criteria had a lot of similarities to us. Is there an executive summary? I mean, you did a nice job explaining to us what you did. What did you find? I mean, I understand this position like position. But do you have conclusions on salaries in the town of Allenton and benefits? I think overall that the town has done a very good job in keeping up with the market. There were some areas where the town may have fallen behind and those areas are spelled out in the final report. And I think going forward, what the town needs to decide is how you want to use this data and how you're going to make it a useful tool for you and that's where the philosophy comes in and with regard to how competitive you want to be. And I think one of the things, I think you had great comparables because we found a lot of good comparable positions to match them. So I think that your team here that came up with the list, and I've been doing this for 30 years. I've done these types of surveys for hundreds of communities. And so the methodology that they use was correct and it was good and they came up with, because you want to have a mix of communities to make sure that for certain groups of positions that you will also have a good match. So because you're looking at a wide variety, a huge organization on the town side and the school side. So you want to make sure that you have good matches, not only for police and fire, but also for your other departments as well, for your general government as well. Did you by any chance look at the salary of Selectman in other communities? No, I wish I did, but I didn't. I failed you in representing Mr. Kroger. I bet you're all underpaid. Good answer, thanks. Mr. Psynski, I'm going to say that incorrectly, I apologize. First I'll just preface where my remarks are coming from and then I just have a few questions on some of the, I'm not going to go into depth on it because I think anything more in depth, perhaps I should meet with the town manager or Ms. Malloy. Because I don't want to, you know how sometimes I get a little picky on you. Where I'm coming from, and this is great data to have, is that I'm trying to reconcile that when we were talking about entering the GIC and when we were talking about the override and the five year plan, we had, I think these were, if they weren't all, I think there's 12 communities. I think the 10 communities are encapsulated amongst these 12. And all the PowerPoint presentations when we were talking about GIC, when we were talking about the override showed, you know, that we were at the bottom end, second or third to the last. And I don't really see that in here, but again, I'll avail myself of the opportunity for that. The other thing that I'm trying to reconcile is that while there are 12 communities, cities and towns that are cited in here, it's really hard press to find one position that's compared to all 12. I mean, I don't mean to, I'm not picking on any particular department, but like legal of the 12 communities, I think there were only three that we actually compared to. On public works, we had a good foray across the board, but I can't remember if it was for a former supervisor or a highway supervisor, I know electrician and plumber were back down to four to six. I'm just wondering why, I know when we went through the GIC and we said to our employees, if you wanna get raises, you gotta get rail, you gotta take the GIC, we did have that data. I'm wondering why that's not here. Do I? Who I direct that to? I also, in terms of comparable compensation data before the GIC? Well, what I'm saying is, okay, let me pick, I don't wanna pick legal, that's not fair, I keep picking up. Working foreman, 19C on the first page, we have Arlington and we're only compared to Medford. And what I'm saying is when we were having GIC conversation in the override five-year structural plan, we were compared to 10-year families. I'm just wondering why, and I'm just picking that one out, I'm not. It's because Arlington and Medford would have been the only communities who had listed a working form in Mason. Well, how about legal? Legals that would be an example of Arlington is one of, probably on the lower end of communities that have decided to have an in-house town council as opposed to out of house or a contract in town council services. Could I just follow up on that too? The way that our methodology works too, is we do, that's why we start off by reviewing the job descriptions and what the jobs are here and get a good foundation of understanding your organization, and we do wanna compare apples to apples. And so if there is a blank or there's no data from a particular community, a lot of times we go by the 75% rule. If it's not a match, 75% that we might not use it. So we do a lot of digging and research to make sure that we're comparing apples to apples. So sometimes it's better to have a few really good matches than a whole bunch that might not be. And you're never gonna have 12 matches for every single position. I've been doing this for years, I've never seen it. I mean it's just because not every community is gonna have an exact organization as yours. So it's really like a benchmark and a snapshot of the market. And I think, and then the town probably has their own internal, I know they maintain their own classification and internal equity system as well. So going forward, they also have that tool that they use internally and they've been doing that very successfully. Okay, and what I'll do is I'm gonna avail myself of the opportunity to have a further in-depth discussion with the town manager. I just wanna reconcile that when we were going through GIC discussions of entering it, as well as the override, we did have all those salaries and it did show in the lower end. But I don't wanna also jeopardize your bargaining position and I do appreciate the fact that, as was cited before, Ms. Stansky, I'm gonna say it. Ms. S. Just to call me Sandy. Sandy, that we do have a very unique model here where we do have the town manager and the unions. And I do applaud that. It's just, I wanna make sure that this study, where I'm coming from is when we spoke to our town employees and our retired, well, not so much our retirees, but about going into GIC and going for the override, we acknowledged that they were on the lower end pay scale and we needed as a town to look at an override employees GIC. The other question I might have for you, Sandy, or maybe the town manager, just for my edification, and I'm sure my colleague, Mr. Cureau, knows the answer to this, but having not been in on the discussions because he was our liaison and did a great job at that, could you just very briefly explain to me, and I'm just picking out an area, the data points, the data points for, I'm gonna say number four, public works director, we have 10 and 11, so I'm assuming there were 10 data points for the lower end compensation for public works in Arlington, and there were 11 data points for the high end. And I'm just wondering if I go down to 19C, working form in Mason, there's one in one. So I'm just wondering, what are the data points, why sometimes there's 12, 14, sometimes there's one point? That's a very good question. The data points are the number of matches or hits that we get for data. So what it means is when you're looking at the average, that means we had 10, so say for example, for a public works director, for example, we had 10 matches for the minimum range that are built into the average and 11 for the maximum. So obviously the more data points you have, the more valid the validity of the statistic. And what it does is it just counts as to how many pieces of data that we have. So when you're looking at the average and the min-max and the median, you're saying, okay, we know it represents this much. Okay, so I was looking at that. I think what I'm hearing you're saying is, I was looking at it, did we look at 10 and 11 different facets of a particular job for one position and we only looked at one, but what you're saying is that's not necessarily a probing data point, it's a statistical analysis data. It's a statistical analysis, absolutely. So that's just an easy way to go down that column to see of the 12 communities that were cited, how many were actually matched. Right, how many do we match, right? Yeah, and that number should actually match the number of boxes that are filled into the left. If you look at the left under the... No, that definitely, as I'm looking at this, that should match. I just took data point, it can mean so many different things. And then the only thing I'd leave with the chairman is I don't know if at the end of this, if there's any statement by the union or not, everybody wants to wait and take the next step. I was absolutely planning on inviting union conversation and frankly I debated at the beginning of this whether or not I want... No, I didn't say, I was debating with myself whether or not we should do questions and comments and then I invite them and I scanned the audience and I didn't see anyone who was ready and waiting, so I'm gonna keep going and then I'm gonna... But yes, I absolutely was thinking about that. Steve. Thank you. I'd like to call my colleagues in thanking everyone who was involved in this. This is a, you know, I was very impressed by this study. It's been, you know, for three generations now my family's worked for the town and it's very important that our town employees are compensated fairly for their great work. I also like to see the town and school working together on financial issues. I hope that's something that continues and we can delve deeper into moving forward. I do have, one thing that stuck out to me was performance-based awards for town employees. I was wondering if you could speak a little further to that. I know that we saw what the fire department has for, you know, their continued study and their further accreditations as well as the police department, but I was thinking more along the lines of, you know, kind of the general government positions, what those type of awards would look like. I don't know if that's right for Sandy or Adam. So in these existing contracts, for the first time that I'm aware of with SEIU, which are the middle management positions that are in a union, we did negotiate with them a new performance incentive, which is in place now, where they can either delineate a goal with their department head at the beginning of a year and then demonstrate the meeting of that goal at the end of the year and if they do that they earn a financial incentive or pick basically an accreditation or a certification they wanna receive that will help them in the performance of their job and if they achieve that and follow through, earn the same performance incentive and they're eligible for that once a year to go through that process. So we were successful doing that with one group. I'd very much like to spread it to more groups. So as we go into bargaining for the next round, we'll look back and see how successful we've been and how many people have really been taking it up on a regular basis and see whether or not it seems appropriate to try to negotiate that with other bargaining units. Thank you, I like the idea of it as well and I guess this is appropriate for Adam too. Do you see this study having any impact on staffing levels in town? You know, in the review I've done so far it has not struck me as such that and I would guess you're saying, you know, are we so out of whack somewhere that we need to fix compensation and thereby reduce staffing levels and nothing I've seen would speak to me in that regard or I would at least say it wouldn't be my intention to approach any negotiations from that point of view. Okay, thank you. Do we have someone from the union leadership who wants to weigh in? Yes? You're absolutely welcome to, I would be. Thank you. Okay. First, I'm Bob Lodgins and most of you people know me. Mr. Don, I don't think you know me. I don't think so, I'm sorry. Precinct seven. Good to meet you. I became the union president about a year or a half ago. I'm a 30-year veteran of the Fire Department. And I see my old colleague here, John. We've had our few arguments over our years. But I just wanted to let the selectmen know that we have a good working relationship with Adam and Karen and I look forward to this. You know, they were open-minded to us. I put two of my smartest guys on this. I have Paul McPhail and this guy Marty Conroy. Very intelligent guys and they really dug deep into this and they did their own little background and they found a few mistakes that benefited the Fire Department. We also found mistakes that benefited the town. And there was a discussion in the executive session is that how do we handle this? And we said that we're going to be honest with the town, show them their mistakes that benefit us and hopefully it goes a long way to say that we want to work together. And it seems to be working very well. I have good faith in Adam and Karen that when we come to negotiations in about six months that we'll use this data and we'll negotiate fairly and I see us not having any problems. Right, Adam? I'm glad to hear that. Like I said, I thank you very much for taking care, you know, looking at this and you know, I really haven't seen the study that much. I've seen a little bout of it. I've seen the preliminaries but I haven't seen the final report. But I just want to thank you for doing a great job and taking care of us. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else want to, from the audience want to speak on it? So I, my comments are that I'm really glad that we got here. I know that I, like I know we've been chomping at the bit to have this one done for a bit and I think it took longer than a lot of us hoped it would. But at the same time, it was more important to get it done right than to get it done. And I'm really glad to hear that the process went as smoothly as it did. And it has, I think the biggest thing about this was that it has support of everybody at the table that we can set, find a bunch of data that we all agree on and sets a common conversation to hopefully go forward and I'm really, really very glad about that. I did have a couple of comments about the specific data that came out of it and I shared those with the manager earlier. But I'm really delighted. I just want to add one more footnote. As we know that under the municipal departments, the town manager is delegated with the authority to undertake negotiations on behalf of the town. But I can tell you from my previous position on the school department, the former school committee member, we actually would sit as part of the bargaining team for the town. And I can tell you that just as Bob said, coming to and agreeing on the set of data and comparables that you're going to use as the basis of the conversation is an awful lot of the beginning of any negotiation. And having this done before negotiations even commenced is just a huge win for all of us. Sam? Just one quick question. I don't know if Sandy or Adam were to answer this. Just taking from your presentation, I'm not asking the slide to be drawn back up. But it's my memory, the fifth or sixth slide, Sandy, when you were making the overall presentation. And I was trying to listen and read and write down on the same time. You mentioned that there were four boxes on the screen. And one of the boxes you were talking about that HRS? HRS, yes. HRS. I wrote down as quick as I could, one of those boxes on that fifth or sixth slide, you said would provide the town with tools to, tools to enhance and update management and salary. What I'm wondering is, what is the tool? Is it a software program that we got from this? Is it the actual data that's here? Is it something else? It's the actual data in the macros in the methodology of how we pulled it together and how it's presented and how it all adds up. So it's sort of a package. I wouldn't call it a software program, but I'd call it more computerized tools that the town could use to update. Is that something that? Yeah, well, I mean, now that we have, the documents that before you are in spreadsheets, so now that we have those spreadsheets as appropriate through negotiations, working with unions who are much more readily able to make updates as we can get the data. That's not to say that every year we can reproduce this. But if we gain some information about what kind of cost of living increase was given in some towns, we can update. Or if we wanna focus on one position, we have that tool now where it's much easier to update than starting from scratch. So when you say tool, it's what we have before us, and if you do wanna go in your case in point, it's something that you, the town manager, or Mrs. Malloy can do, we won't have to keep bringing poor Sandy Hunter. And I'm not saying we don't want you back. I'm just, okay, when you said it was a new tool, I wanted to find. Think of it as a footprint that you can work off of. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Kevin, may I ask one more question? Is the police and fire chief in here somewhere and I just haven't come across it. It is okay. Yes, yes, on page two. Yeah. All right, thank you. Yeah. Do I have a motion for receipt? Moves to receive. No, Mr. Kuro should do that. I move receipt. Kuro. I don't want a second. No. No. Do you have a second? Second. Mr. Greenway. No, he did. After all, Mr. Greenway. After you jump the gun. Adam, did you have any final comment? I neglected to say earlier we will be working to get all of this information posted on the town's website later this week. Great. Any further comment? Anybody else in the audience who wanted to make a comment? All right, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. All those opposed, five, zero. Thank you. Thank you. It was a pleasure. Thank you, Sandy. Sorry for what you lost name there. Sorry. Smith. So while you're packing up, Sandy, you've been in front of a lot of boards and committees. That's the best one you've been in front of, would you say? It's pretty well-noted, yes. So it's pretty well-noted. Sure. Just procedural on that, would her report be similar to like a powers and sell of an audit that we really shouldn't Xerox it, or is it something that's sort of covered by that? So I think the public information, it's, yeah. OK, thank you. That's right, you put it on the wall. Maria, is the temperature set at steam bath, or a little below that? I'm getting like it. I'm totally. You don't have to have a glass of wine. Just come to this meeting. You don't need to save the calories and anything. I seriously considered when that this was going to be a meeting without jacket. And I just decided I couldn't pull it off. Now that that's over, you might hear it. I wore short sleeves. I know. It's going to ice up, though. Might it still be coming in, though? Might it still be coming in tonight? No, I don't know. I know, freezing up. Getting cold, yeah. 75, thank you. Florida likes. My husband likes to keep it on 60. Go crazy. I like 60. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next up on our agenda is the Citizens Open Forum, except in unusual circumstances. Any matter presented for consideration of the board shall neither be acted upon, nor a decision made the night of the presentation in accordance with the policy under which the open forum was established. It should be noted there's a three minute time limit to present a concern or request. Mr. Marr, welcome. Some of you may remember me. I worked for the town for a little while. I think when you did that, we didn't have this three minute limit, though. Actually, I was chatting with Adam before. And the board used to meet every week. And Kevin and Diane might remember that. And I calculated just roughly how many select wins meetings I've been to. And it's literally well over 1,000 if I was to say after 34 years. What a hole it's left in my life. What are you doing? Desolation. On Monday nights, I just sit home, stare out the window. But it's good to see everybody, seriously. I appreciate an opportunity to come here tonight. And I want to acknowledge Doug. I've met with Doug, and we've been chatting about various things. I think the town's going to be very, very well served by his appointment. And of course, Marie, dear and near and dear to me. I'm here tonight on behalf of the Kentwood Association, where I'm the counsel and a longtime resident I have with me. Ann Darley, who's the president of the board of directors and Gary Tibbets, who does some of the administrative work and his firm handles the maintenance of the property. We're here to make a respectful point. And by the way, I've met with Adam and Mike Rademacher on this. We had a very cordial, respectful meeting. And just by way of background, essentially our point is that when the town comes to read the water meter, there's one water meter in the garage. But we're charged 64 fees. By means of background, in 1994, your board voted to charge condo unit owners the residential rate, which was very well received. We appreciate that. As a matter of fact, Kentwood led that effort back in 1994. And the board then voted, these are individual units, just like individual homes. And they ought to be charged the lowest residential rate, which was fair. We appreciate that. It's met a great deal of savings, not only for the Kentwood Association unit members, but all the other condominiums in town. However, what the board did not do, it did not change, or an institute is not clear to me whether or not it didn't change the policy, or your institute did a new policy, where notwithstanding that there is one meter, there is an administrative fee times 64 for the condominium, or the Kentwood. Now, we don't think that's particularly fair, and deferred of the town council, but I think it's also illegal. Under the city of Boston versus Emerson College case, which indicates, at a very definitive ruling by the Supreme Judicial Court, that you can't charge a fee, except as it offsets the expense in providing that service. So if there is about one meter to read, with all due respect, we don't think it's appropriate or fair that you multiply that number by 64. Now, it's true that it's a larger meter that has to be read, and eventually that meter will have to be replaced. So perhaps a little bit, one fee might be higher for then say a single family home. So we did have a meeting, as I said, and I think Adam can speak for himself, but I think he feels constrained by the board's policy enacted in 1994. So we would ask you to consider altering the fee to be not times 64, perhaps a larger fee than applies to a single family residence, because it is a smaller, is a larger meter to read, and when it's replaced, it's gonna be more expensive, but certainly not times 64. So it's good to see everybody. I appreciate it, and thank you for your consideration. Thank you. We're not done with you yet. Kevin? Yeah, thank you. So does this apply to all condominiums? Yes, it would be a fairly significant revenue loss for the town. I mean, there's no question, it would be a revenue loss for the town. May I? Yes, please. So there's sort of a larger policy issue that the board would have to consider if it wanted to take a look at changing this. Crosstown, if there's one larger meter serving what would be a business, an apartment complex, or a condo complex, if the system that John is describing was not in place, they would be charged at the tiers, so based on usage. And admittedly, it would be very difficult for them to do any kind of conservation that would get them down into the lower tiers. So in either the old system or the new system, the new tiers that the board voted that just went into effect on January 1st, the Kentwood would be paying a higher bill without the existence of the system that Attorney Marge has described. Because it's actually more cost effective for them to have their bill divided by 64 and have the administrative fee put on as opposed to paying at the higher usage tiers. So that would really be the policy question the board would have to consider if it wanted to create really a special case for condos where they would not pay administrative fees like single-family homeowners pay or pay higher usage fees like potentially single-family homeowners pay if they use more. It would kind of create a little bit of a soft zone for them to use as much water as they want without getting the penalty of a higher rate. So that's my take tonight, happy to provide more analysis for the board to think about before we talk about water rates again this year. Thank you, Mayor. Sort of along that vein. Within the past year when we were going through the discussions with Mike Radamaker and others and this came up, you said about the three tiered and I'm pretty sure the way it was put before us, I'm just trying to understand it. I'm not debating it at all. That replacement water meters had to do with size of pipe and something like CCF or CFF. Correct. That's what you're referencing there. And what I think I'm hearing from now is the second part of the time 64 are not divided by 64. Was that contained in that presentation or it wasn't contained in there but as a result of our vote, that was an offshoot? No, so Attorney Marr is not referencing something that changed with the board's recent vote. This has been an existing condition for the past 20 years. Yeah, about 20 years this has been in effect. The Kentwater Association recently started these discussions with myself and with the board but nothing the board did last year created the situation. All right, I was wondering why I didn't pick. Okay, and then you said city of Boston versus Andover? Emerson College. The other thing is I'll leave it to the town manager and the proponents in terms of what the next step is. I think I'm hearing that the manager will encapsulate the discussions and the points and then I don't know if this is a warrant article, if this is a vote of the board, I'll wait till we get to that step in the future. I think it's the board, you're the water commissioners and I think the town meeting and my humble opinion has a say on it. Yeah, that's fine. John, I just want to clarify something that I didn't and between the two of you, I wasn't quite sure. So you're currently charged, so with the tiering system, if you use a little bit of water, you get charged a rate. You get charged, use more water, you get charged a higher rate. If you use more water, you get charged a higher rate. That's the new tier that we're not doing. It's been a three-tier system, we changed the number, somewhat triggers those tiers. And so your association is getting charged 64 fees and is it also getting, like what rate and is it ending up being charged at? Like the high level, the middle or the low one? The lower level. The lower one. Okay, so one could argue then that the fee is really, like so perhaps all the thing to do is to, I mean, this is not practical or necessarily wise, but just for the sake of argument, we could generate 64 different bills and then that would justify the fee and that would be at the low rate. You could do that, you could do that, but it's still just one meter to read. And that's the key, someone goes out there and reads the meter. And the fee is to defray the expense of reading the meter. And the bills. And the bills. Okay. But if you said, I'm not sure that would make a lot of sense is that, I mean, technically I guess you're right. Okay, because I'm just trying to think about what the right way to do, because if you are getting, because obviously we rely on that fee for part of our revenue or part of the, I mean, the revenue to offset all the costs. And so if we were to undertake this and like take that significant hit, we'd have to figure out some way to recoup it. One way to look at it would be to say, the condominium is getting a benefit for the, it's both getting the benefit of getting their usage split in 64, but it is also getting the benefit of not paying the same usage fee. And that would be a tricky situation for us. Well, yes, but if, you know, if it's probably not directly on point, but the majority of people who live in the, in the Kentwood are single people. And something about two thirds of them are single family, single individual there. And presumably the water usage is considerably less than, I mean, it does point out that we've just installed new toilet fixtures where we're making an effort to conserve water. So, you know, it's not directly on point, but you know, we are, we do try hard to be responsible water users at the Kentwood. Does someone want to make a motion to refer to Kevin? Well, I wanted to seek our former town council's council and let the new town council decide whether it's any good or not. What would be the ideal motion you'd like this board to make right now? Move to refer to. I would, I would, the motion I would, I guess, we would like to suggest. And I guess I'm feeling the loyalty to the town on the one side and loyalty to the condo on the other. And I'm certainly not gonna do anything without further input from the town manager. I certainly would not want to, not suggest that you want to do that. But the motion would be to make condo fees, water meter reading fees in Arlington, commensurate with the expense of reading that meter. And not to multiply it by the individual unit owners. And I think I would probably rule that motion as out of order, as not properly noted. I'm moving to refer, but I wanted to give him a moment. You know what I mean? Yeah, thank you. I love this guy. You put him on the spot, he's worked. Doug gave me the look, Kevin, he can't do that, so. But Mr. Tibbetts didn't want to speak. Gary, did you want to say something? Could you come up with a mic for us, Gary? Thank you. Gary Tibbetts, I'm gonna let the property manager just come up with it. They don't get 64 bills. I know. They just get one. But we could. Right, but it's almost $30 per unit for a bill. I mean, that's a lot for a stamp and reason. It would be dumb, I agree. And it's twice a year right now. We wanna make sure it's not gonna be four times a year. So I move to refer to the manager. Anything else I need to say there? Second. We have motion in a second. Any further discussion or comment? Just whenever we get information in the future, I know I'd be interested in the actual vote and law citation that the Board of Selection in 1994 took. If the town council and town manager think it's appropriate, I'd like at least the citation of the city of Boston versus Emerson. So I can, that's a case that basically tells all municipalities you can't charge more for something than the costs to produce it. I'd just like to see, or you can just refer me where it is in the legal docket or in the green books in a while and I'll find it myself. And then the other thing is, I think what I'm hearing is how do we balance, one of the things I think the town manager and the proponents and Mr. Rademacher are looking at, how do we balance the lower rate water usage charge with the 64 feet charge and what the happy medium is? Yeah, I mean, if it's the Board's prerogative, what we'll do when we come back with a water rate recommendation for FY15 at some point later this spring, we can provide a series of options. I was just saying if you wanna provide recommendations and then we can have a further discussion. Thank you. If we have a motion and we have a second, is there any further discussion? Well, just a clarification. So there will be no resolution to this until spring? Should the Board want something sooner? We can consider that. Do we? Aye. Do we? I'm content to look at it in the context of our regular water discussions. My, sorry, as am I. Well then. One, two, three. I'm done. The honest answer is part of depending on what decision the Board made, the overall rates for the entire town might need to be higher based on the decision that's made for condo associations. It's that much. Could be. Yeah. We have to take time. Okay. Any further discussion? Anne, are you happy? Are you all right? Well. Yeah, okay. I'm sorry, ma'am, we could come on up to the mic. Sorry. I apologize. Sorry, friends. I spoke with her about this today. I think I've taken the right path in sending letters to the town manager and the Department of Public Works and we walked through and I finally was able to recalculate the bill based on the numbers on the bill. And I was surprised to see that the $21 rate that's charged to me when I owned a house is going to be multiplied by 64 here. And of course I complained and I was told that there was this law case that said that was illegal. I think that the reason that tier one was granted to us through Dr. Simpson, the previous, the earlier president, was because some of these condos got together and they came up with the average rate, which was a low rate. It doesn't compare to some big industry or whatever. So I think we're talking in the first place, tier one is being very fair. And because I think the people that are deciding decided that tier one was giving in to us or granting us a favor that the idea of multiplying the admin fee times 64 was an okay way to go to sell some water bills. Now the thing is that our meter size is two inch. So the fee now is $52. And if you do four bills and multiply 52 times 64, you know what was costing us $2,600 a year, where instead of like $40 a year is really gonna magnify. And our condo fees have gone up. The water bill, each water bill represents one month's maintenance fee. And as I said, there's 50 units out of 64 and only have a single owner. So I hope you'll think those things through in your future work. Thank you for the time. Can I ask a question? I just wanna make sure I followed something there. So when did the, tell me about the change in the administrative fee? Was there a change in the administrative fee recently? Administrative fee I believe was initiated in 1994. But it didn't change recently. It's changing this year coming up towards the July bill. So the board's vote. It's changing to equal the, depending on the size of the meter. The board's vote was to increase all meter fees based on the size of the meter, but it's going to be divided by four and not two. So it was $21, the increase will be $26. Not 52 four times a year, but it'll be 52 divided by four instead of 52 divided by two, as it would have been in the past. It's gonna be 52, what? When we go to quarterly billing on July 1st, it will be 52 divided by four, not divided by two as it is now. Yeah. Or 52 times 64 divided by four. Yeah, correct. We're hoping against that. Okay, yeah. Right, all right. We got it. Thank you. Okay, thank you for it. So any further comments? All of those in favor, please say aye. Aye. All those opposed? Five-zero. Very welcome. Is there anyone else here who wishes to speak under the Citizens Open Forum? Representative Garberley, you must have something for us. And I figured I'd call your name out since I saw that you arrived. Anybody else who's open forum? Closed. Next up, discussion. 1207 Mass Ave. Mr. Chappell. So I wanted to start a discussion with the board tonight and I provided a memo in regard to that discussion. In regards to, there's a lot of regards, 1207 Massachusetts Ave currently inhabited by the Disabled American Veterans Association of the DAV. As the board knows, that is a town-owned property owned by the board of selectmen. And there's currently no valid lease for the current tenants. So I wanted to initiate a discussion where the board could start a process where we take feedback from the board, take public's feedback, and think about drafting an RFP or some other process whereby we decide, or the board decides, excuse me, what the next use or what the appropriate use of that facility is. Could be for a town use, for town business. Could be for lease. The board could issue an RFP to lease the property. Or the board could consider working with town meeting in the future to completely sell and dispose of the property. Those are options the board could consider. What I would ask the board to do, consider doing tonight, is forming an ad hoc subcommittee of the board of selectmen to meet with, at the very least, myself and town council and any other people from the town, either within government or outside of government that you think should be part of that subcommittee to take feedback, have a public meeting, get public feedback, and then come back with a larger recommendation to the board at a future meeting. Joe. Thank you. Thank you for bringing this forward. I know that this has been kind of on our docket for a while. Are you making a recommendation as to form that would be most useful to you as far as a working group might be concerned? Are you kind of putting that in our court? Well, I mean, since the, and I had a discussion. And I recognize that ultimately the decision is with us. Any recommendations with us? But we're gonna rely on you quite a bit, I think, on this. Yeah, so I want the board to be an active part of this. And so that's why I'm asking for a sort of a board subcommittee with board representation, I think would be an inappropriate move. And since it would be the board making a recommendation to the board, it is acceptable for the board to have such a subcommittee. Okay. Okay. I would hope that if we, I mean, I think we do have to take this on. And working group does seem to be the most logical way to go. I know I for one, whether I serve on that working group or not, I hope that we can arrange a tour of the property for the members of the board though, because I've never been inside the building to be honest and be useful to see. And I hope that if we form this working group that in its charge and in its scope that we actually look at facility needs we have for the town down the road. I mean, I'm thinking front of mind for me right now is that we have potential need for swing space for some of the town offices at the high school if we take on that project. For example, there's a potential that we may need to shuffle things a little bit and that there would be potential needs. I hope that that would be in the charge. So I'm happy to make a motion. I don't know what form we would want this to, to take though. If you have something you're excited about, I'd say make it and if not, let's kick it around a little bit. Okay, let's kick it. Okay. I'm gonna, I generally invite other members to speak before I, but I actually have some thought I'm gonna jump in ahead of my usual space in line. I'm thinking on this one has really evolved a lot over the time since we found out about this and every time I thought about it again I came up with like a new reason or a new thing to think about but I'm feeling reasonably good about where I am right now which is in some ways this is like the town like did the wash and it came out and it like found a $20 bill in his pocket. Like this is an asset that the town owned that we frankly just did not remember that we owned. It was not in our, in the front of our brain. And so you say, okay, great, we've got this. Now what is it that we should do with it? And I think some of our first instincts were, okay, well we've got this need for office space where we've got this need for this town function let's move it over into that. And I thought I heard some of the proposals that were being kicked around informally and I said, you know, that just doesn't feel right because what we've got is this essentially fairly prime real estate on Massachusetts Avenue that could be part of our economic engine and it's probably when we talk about the compromises that we make in terms of density and where we put parking and noise and stuff like that that's one of those places where if you're gonna make a noisy busy establishment Mass Ave is really one of those places that you should be doing it. But on the other hand there are things that the town does that would benefit from visibility. So for instance, veteran services comes to mind. The retirement services which right now, all the retirees who need to talk to the retirement board go into the basement of the high school which is awkward to put it mildly for everyone involved. That's the type of thing that theoretically could be there. And there's other services that the town provides that simply are better when they're better publicized. So some of the health and human services work that we do. So there is an argument to be made for me that we use not just the piece of property but we have a very limited resource which is space on Mass Ave. But then there's this other part that says, you know, a lot of those things can be done on a back street or a side street when they don't need Mass Ave location. And maybe we're best served by turning that into capital funds that we can then use towards capital costs in the future. And I don't know where it is but that's like my thinking of the continuum that I think we should be thinking of. And so that's why I think a working group to look at it more appropriately and get more heads and more eyes on it is the, I support what the manager's recommending here. Kevin? I move that we develop this working group that you serve on, along with your choice of one other member that's forward to serve on. No, I think all of us would like this one. I think it's an exciting opportunity but before I do that and finish who else you think Adam, I know it's you and who else do you think we should have in this working group? Just at a minimum myself in town council. So that's four, should there be five? I was gonna ask if you thought, if I may. Yeah, please. If it's appropriate to have the veteran service agent be a member of the committee. And the point I was going to make when Mr. Greely's done, I don't wanna jump on your time. Well, why the veterans? I just want to, I haven't asked members of the DAV officially but you know, that's where we gather. It's in the like and I've been in there and I've heard from individuals that one of the benefits of the three veterans club DAV, BFW, American Legion, that the DAV is truly the only handicap accessible club that they have right now. So that's why I'm thinking whether it's a use of providing veterans retiree services, whether it's a split use pantry but maybe if we had the veteran service agent officer as a member of this committee it doesn't necessarily have to have a vote. I think could also have that conversation with all the veterans clubs in town. And I think what I'm hearing from Mr. Greely is set up this working group that ultimately will hold a public hearing. At least one. Yes, definitely. A public hearing and or a public hearing and a public hearing that brings stakeholders in and then come back to the board. So I would just offer if we could have the veteran service agent. Kevin, do you mind if I go down to Steve first? Oh, okay. Yeah. I wasn't done. I mean, no, no, that's all right. I'm sorry. Do you want to finish? No, no, no, I'd love to hear from you. Thanks, I appreciate that. Do I have a couple thoughts as well? I actually, after looking at this, I came in thinking to definitely keep it in town hands. But after what Dan said, I'm open to considering otherwise. I also came in thinking that we shouldn't form a working group. We could do it up here. But now, after the conversation, I think a working group is the right avenue. As long as it doesn't drag on. And why I didn't want to form a working group is because I know how sometimes working groups can be formed and then work on something for a year. And I think this has to be rather expedited. I don't want to see this drag along for too long. And I think it might not be an easy decision, but it's one that we have to make. And I think that we can make it sooner than later after the correct inputs being had. And the only other thing I will say about is if the Veterans Agent is going to be on this and he retiring at the start of his retirement party, notice, so is there going to be a new one hired that could partake in this? So, so that's when Mohan did take a piece of my new business. Sorry. So, yes, we have made a new hire of a new veteran service officer, his name is Jeffrey Chunglow. And I'm working with Christine Barger in order to have him before the board at either the February 10th or 24th meeting depending on his availability. Okay, thank you. And yeah, and not that I think that as long as the new veteran service agent comes in knowing that the current space is no longer for the DAV's use, I feel like he's appropriate to be there. Thank you. Yeah, may I do think it would be appropriate to have him as part of that team, even if it's just from the perspective of working for a potential transition of the DAV out of the building, I think it would be a valuable resource to have. I was going to disagree because he's new and if I'm out of town, I didn't think it's a good idea. I think the principle's a good idea, but I'd like someone to be more familiar with Arlington. But that aside, it seems that the board wants that that's okay with me. But I was going to ask that, does this subgroup also deal with how are we transitioning the DAV? What's the current status with the DAV? Part of the recommendation that I would expect the group would come back to this board with is just that. I think Stephen was volunteering, by the way, but my motion still says you and you're appointee. But am I right, the board feels the new veterans agent would be the one to include that for the fifth member? Because I do think there should be five. I think that, I'm weighing in my head whether or not, for the reasons that you're saying, whether or not we should ask to avail ourselves of the service of the outgoing veterans agent. It's not a bad thought either. I think it would be ideal, I think. I wanted to have that be our first question. Yeah, let's see how that goes. So, Steve, I really like your idea about the timeframe. Adam, what do you think about putting on a deadline for this? And obviously, if we need to exceed that, we can come back to the board and ask for an extension, but otherwise, I know I kicked around a timeframe with you on a phone call, and I can't remember what we said about how long we've been here. We talked about trying to have a recommendation by June. Okay. I'm sorry, a decision prior to June to have action by June, whether it be an RFP or something starting to happen. So how about ask it for a report back for the first meeting in May? Yeah, I think that's, yeah. And just one clarifying point, I just wanna say that as a result of the previous town council going through an exercise, she came upon this situation that is sort of in legal status limbo, and we do have to make a decision on this. It's not that this is, you know, we can't leave it like this in limbo under the current state laws that we have. So we do have to make a decision or decisions. It would be financially irresponsible for us to not do something. I just wanted to clarify that. It wasn't any specific targeting or anything like that. Absolutely not. Absolutely great. All right, so Mr. Realy has made a motion. Second. Second. You're okay, Dan. I'm going to decline to try and name someone right now, but I'm going to see if anyone wants to do it and go from there. Yeah. Unless, yeah. Further conversation, discussion, thoughts? Adam, are you happy? Yes. All right. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? None, 5-0. Mr. Realy, public memorial. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, I would like to move that we, the Board of Selectmen refer to the Public Memorial Committee for their advice that we name the Selectman's hearing room to be the Charles H. Lyons Selectman's hearing room. In my opinion, the present company, past company, living, dead, all other select persons excluded. I personally think Mr. Lyons, up until a certain point in time, was the longest serving member of this Board of Selectmen, served on the Arlington School Committee, was the first 18-year-old elected to public office in the United States. His service on the MWRA, which was good and bad, his initiation of the Budget Revenue Task Force, and the initial one on the five-year plan, which has more to do with our AAA rating than any other element, I believe, in this town, that we, as a group, this Board, the School Committee, finance all the town manager, that's, it's just been invaluable as I would joke. Also in that room, Mr. Lyons talked more and required hearing by people more than any other person in history, and I wanna be clear, there's actually some confusion by people, which is, what's the hearing room, all right? We are in the Selectman's chamber now. The hearing room is out there in the hallway, and it is where Budget Revenue Task Force meets, and others, so I would like to make that motion and ask this Board to support me and refer this to the Public Memorial Committee. I am very happy to second that motion. I'll just say, my comment is that my, the first Selectman's campaign I worked on was one running against Charlie, and I am really glad to support it still, because I agree, because of the impact that he had on the town, it was good at times. I worked on people, but yeah, he deserves the recognition for the effort and what he did for us. But President of NLC, you know, Charlie, Alan McLennan, I think it was Don Marquis, saved CDBG funding for us by getting into Tip O'Neill's office, and because Charlie was not to be denied access to Tip O'Neill's office, you know what I mean? Not a perfect human being, and I truly love him. President of NLC, but he did sometimes attack the person instead of the issue, but there's so many issues that I really believe affordable housing, and there's just so many ways that he impacted this community. I truly believe he deserves, and I'm not big on naming things after Selectman. I'm really not, and have three things in this town are named after Greeley, so certainly there's enough Greeley stuff out there, but we haven't in the past done a lot of things identifying Selectman, because I really don't think we should. We're a board, and we act as five individuals, but it's the board. We are the executive branch of this government, along with Adam, and, but, you know, we have now done something for our pigs, fangalow down in Town Hall, and I'm just determined and feel something should be needed for Charlie. Shut the hell up, Kevin, so I made that motion. Joe? I think it's appropriate, I mean, I think Mr. Lyons actually had a moniker which has kind of faded away with time, which was the five-year plan was referred to as the Lyons plan for a number of years when it first rolled out, so I will hardly support the motion. Further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Five-zero, thank you. Thank you. Next up, Utility Pool Working Group. First, I want to apologize to the group for getting this, the document to you late. It just sat in my inbox and I forgot to forward it until this morning. And I see we have a member in back. Do you want to talk or do you want me to talk? Thank you for helping out. So Dick is being shy in the back, but he is the person who's doing a lot of work on, or excuse me, Richard's in the back doing a lot of work on, he's been doing a lot of the heavy lifting on this working group. And so Julie, Richard, and Robert, we had a meeting most recently, it was either late November or early December, and this is the report they put out. They've made some progress. There were some polls in particular that have been moved along. And they've made some progress in identifying where the problems are, and in particular you'll notice that like we had, there were actually, so you guys know the system where the polls get into this database and then there's somebody whose court the poll is in, and we actually did have a few polls that were in the town's court, and once that was pointed out, they rapidly moved out of the town's court into the other ones. The poll, the truly hideous one at Edgerton Road has been, and Mass Ave has gone away. But I think that the big thing that I feel like the group has taken away, and you can see this in the report, is that it's hard to get the data into the Verizon database. There are double polls that we know about that they tell Verizon, and then Verizon doesn't get them into the database, and then we have to go back and tell them again, no, you really still have to get this. And the actual number of double polls has declined a little bit, and some have been created and some have been, it's only just a couple of them. And really we've got this data problem that we can't resolve. And so I think that the step for us to take going forward is to take this up with Verizon and say, the biggest obstacle we have to removing this problem is the fact that the polls aren't getting into your database fast enough. What are you going to do about it? So I guess I've been looking for the board's support in heading in that direction and seeing if there's any other comments you might have. Some. Thank you. Second. Did you have an additional? Yeah. Yeah. Richard, do you want to come on up? Thank you for all the work you're doing on this group. I have made some progress with the different companies. I have been after Verizon since December to get to find out. I've sent them 32 of their own forms on polls. Seven made it into the database. 25 have not. But the third time this afternoon I spoke with the public relations person and he's going to try and find out if they still have them. I sent them to someone else. Got chewed out for that. So I sent them to him because that's the right way. He sent them to a middleman. They never left his desk, so he's out of the middle and he's going directly to the source. But it's improving. And thanks to you, I did get contacts or found out where to go to get the contacts. And so I've done, I've got a contact at Comcast. They responded in a day to my one particular one. ASEAN was a little different. They're in style. They were owned by Insta or something. The separate group, but it's in style. And the town, Mike has been great. I went to see him, finally caught him. And he took care of a lot of the street lights. Who else? The fire alarm, the fire chief. So I've got the contacts in line now and I've just got to get the polls in the database again, like you're saying now. Hopefully I'll hear from him tomorrow because he was sending a letter to somebody's boss or something. This is one poll I've been chasing since June. Someone gave one of the residents my name and number. And since June, he's been trying to get it out of the edge of his driveway. I got it all the way down and just pulled the poll out but hasn't gone yet. But he's working on that too. Other than that, once we get them in the database, they seem to be moving. They're all working on them. There is progress every month. This month they took down six polls but it only showed one because they set five. So there's five new ones in there but six have gone. And he's got roughly 25 pounds to deal with and half the manpower we used to have in the old days, so or less. But they are working. All of the companies are working on them. It's just that they have to do it in order so they're all held up. Verizon is held up until everybody else gets off. Thank you. Joe. Thank you. I thank you for your work on this. It sounds like it takes a lot of persistence. You said they do them in order. Is it in order that they actually get added to the database or do they, how are they prioritizing which ones they take up? When, Verizon is the maintaining company here for 99% of the polls. Sure. When they set a new poll, they make out this form that I have. So they have this, it's their form. Yeah. Listing all of the attaches. They put it into the database. It automatically goes down the list by the position on the poll. The top people have to transfer for a speed and insight normally. And then FireLamb, but there's problem now there's private cable companies in between FireLamb and Phone Company and so forth. So each one has to go down the line. And usually the Phone Company is the last, well usually the last one to transfer, although if they can they usually do it when they set the poll. But they have to come back and take hopefully just the top down. But like this one that I've been trying to get done, it was a relocation out of the edge of his driveway. So the poll poll is still in the ground. So that has to be pulled out also. But basically it's from top to bottom. So we have a physical list then of all of these polls. So it looks like you were able to get the list from them. But do you have to ask for it each time? You don't have any. I don't have access to it. No, I asked to get access to the database. Just read only even. That isn't happening. I don't even know who she was that sent me the nasty-gram, but that won't happen. So I can only get what I can get. And then I try to compare. Only through a few of the people that I knew. I think that that access is exactly part of the stuff that we're pushing forward because I was talking to Adam earlier. And the building inspector has access to the things that are in, the ones that are in our court, but doesn't even have access to the global picture of Arlington. So the thing that was in, so he's gotten these emails that have the list of the actual polls that is obtained from Verizon, but we don't have official access to the database. That's part of what we need to, so that he can push people along. And Mike, I think they all get an email, the named people for the different companies when it's added to the database. And Mike Burns gets the ones for the fire alarm and the street lights. He gets the fire alarm, and I'm not sure who gets the street lights because that's now, it's gone through every employee in the town's hands and nobody wants it. So it's gone to the public works now, but so he gets them now. Thanks, because I think we had said initially when we went down this path that the next time that coming in front of us with a request, we want to have this list in our hands to wave in the faces and just ask what's up? What's up? And I think these, you know this, but we'll want to get. I want to attend those two and get a name and a face. Excellent, thank you for your work. Thank you for your confidence. Diane. Just to leave on the table with the committee and the deck, I do have contacts with Verizon and Instar that I can't necessarily give out their contact information, but if you really do hit a wall, whether it's getting pulls onto the database or whether it's getting access to this list, whether it's somebody from this committee or whether it's somebody from the town manager's office or town department head, I'd be happy to make that phone call, but I don't want to, I mean, I can't necessarily, I mean, some people are aware of the contacts that I have with Verizon and Instar, but I want to let the committee do its work, but truly if you're hitting the stumbling block, just let me know and I will make a call and I'll make sure that if you're not getting the right contact person's name or her son's and or the town manager, I'd be happy to help work on that and facilitate it. But I haven't done anything because that's the charge of this committee and you're on it, but I don't want to sound like if you want to make a phone call, make a phone call, but it's basically that offer. Okay. I know no one there and would be of no help, but Richard did an excellent job for us on the leaf blower committee. He's clearly doing an excellent job on this committee. Are there other committees we could interest you in looking at Richard by any chance since they're, you have enough right now? I have more than I can handle. Thank you for how well you're handling it. Thank you very much. Adam, did you have any thoughts or do you want to add or? You know, I would add the anecdote. You mentioned the poll, the corner of Mass in Edgerton. For whatever reason that particular poll, probably based on some resident or neighborhood input, became the passion of the fire chief to have that double poll removed. And at least from where I was sitting, and maybe you had some involvement in that as well, but from where I was sitting, it was literally the fire chief of our community spending inordinate amounts of time fighting with NSTAR and Verizon and Comcast to get that thing moved, that actually got it moved. And my point in telling you that is that, that is a demonstration of the problem. You know, it should not take that much effort for this to, for this to happen. Representative Garbelli, listening to this one? You're right. And the problem is that, you know, oh, well, this one has to get off first and that one has to get out. They've got a hundred excuses and there's no, you know, as you stated in the media, one of the meetings there. There's no teeth in the law they passed. So, you know, Israeli isn't much. And in this day of no, you know, everybody's cut back, there's no employees, they have no money, they're spent on it. So, it's an expense. It's, you know. You're right. So I think actually you made a motion earlier, which was to endorse, the board of circuit endorsed following up with Verizon and pursuing this further. Right, and I moved to us. Yeah. And second. Is there any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Five, zero. Thank you very much. Correspondent's received. Move receipt. Anthony Vogel, president of Friends for Robbins Park as opposed to fee charge for the use of meetings and rooms in public committees. And Elizabeth Carr-Jones is retiring from the Transportation Advisory Committee. We have a motion, is there a second? Second, I do want to discuss one of them. Joe. And I don't know if Mr. Chappatt is here on the, do you hear on this or not on the Robbins farm? Yeah, we, I think we've all been, I know I have been contacted by quite a few people regarding the new user fees that have gone in for Jefferson Cutter and for House and for the senior center. And I know that this is under the jurisdiction of the redevelopment board, but it would be helpful to get an update on it. I don't know if the chair's discretion if you wanted to recognize Mr. Chappatt or not. I think he's on the board of directors that sent us this letter. I think it would be appropriate. Crowley, do you want to share, let's say a few words? Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. I'll be very brief. Tony couldn't make it tonight. I think he's over at the CPA meeting. And so we had to kind of split our duties tonight. The reason for that letter obviously was because of a consternation that we had when we received the notice from the planning department that there was going to be fees. Historically, bringing going back a little ways as a member of the Friends of Robbins farm, I was traditionally the guy who went over to talk to the planning department, make arrangements for the year to use the basement of the Jefferson Cutter House for our meetings, which we held once a month. Typically the meetings ran about two hours. And the last time I went there in perhaps late October to set up for 2014, I was told that they couldn't really do it right away because there was some discussion relative to making some changes in the program. And of course we found out after the fact that yes, in fact the planning department and this wisdom determined that there was going to be some fees set for the rental of those rooms to private organizations like ourselves. We were not particularly happy about this, particularly when we initially found out that the rate was gonna be $30 per hour. If we ran a two hour meeting, which we always do, that ran over $600 a year. Now, I'm not telling you that we're broke, not by any means. And in fact, we're probably a little better off financially than many of the organizations that wanted to be able to use those rooms. However, based on what Tony has told you in that letter, and of course the copy went to the planning department, we kind of felt that it was a disincentive to use a public place to hold a meeting that had a benefit to the community. I'm sure you're all aware that the friends up here at Robin's Fund have done quite a few things for the community in Pro Bono, picnic tables and events that we hold and so forth. So we kind of felt there was a bit of a slap in the face to be told going forward that this was gonna be a charge that just didn't make sense to us. So the reason for the letter from Tony was to ask you folks, can we arrange to get together? We, some of the organizations like ourselves and the planning department and perhaps someone from the board of selectmen have come up with a resolution on how to solve this particular problem. We were not particularly happy with finding out in January, in January, about this business without any prior knowledge that we were gonna be able to talk about it. So that's kind of where we're at. Be honest with you, the meeting that we hold is about anywhere from 10 to 12 people, the members of the board of directors. We can hold the meetings in our houses or somewhere else. So if the town maintains its attitude, the death's gonna be the problem. There's no incentive for us to continue to use it down. It was just kind of unfortunate because the museum is over there, there's plenty of parking back there and it works out very well for us. So that's where we're at. We'd like to see some, let's talk about it. Sorry, did you have a follow-up? No, I'm done. I hope that during this discussion maybe we could hear from the manager. Okay. There's some update on this. I sort of referenced this at the last meeting two weeks ago that we had when we were discussing a different item and a $10,000 cost tag there. I wasn't aware of myself until I started getting phone calls, especially from the Senior Association and where we pride ourselves in Arlington as being community and volunteerism. I would like to get from the town manager sort of why this decision was made. I don't see why we need to sort of, to some of these groups, some people may say, well, we're just nickel and dime in them, but a lot of these groups and Senior Association and community groups, they're running on nickels and dimes. And I would hate to see those meetings go back into private homes, whereas we encourage people to come down and get involved in part of the process. So I'm really questioning this. I enter $25 per hour, maybe it's $30 per hour. Why we're doing that, along with the Kelleher Center decision. Now I will say I have, I come from sort of a somewhat biased background, but also I do come from a background where, and this board is very cognizant of the points made in the Kelleher Center in terms of space, the clientele that that serves, moving that the higher rate that the Kelleher Center's paying versus other tenants, I'd like to maybe have the town manager wrap all these discussions in, or if you feel it needs to be two separate discussions, but when we received the letter from the Kelleher Center about their rates and being moved, and I wasn't happy with that, and it's my understanding it's a planning department decision, but I would like to hear from the town manager. I can tell you, my colleagues can speak from themselves, but we seem to be speaking with one voice. Why the $25, $30 per hour fee? For the senior association, for the Jefferson Cutter, do we look at the user groups, as well as I want to have the discussion about the Kelleher Center, that's a separate one, because that's something that's really not sitting well with me either. So I always worry about putting you on the spot, so I'm going to invite you to either defer or weigh in or what do you want to look at? I guess I'll weigh in. It's not an agenda item, so it is tough to always be prepared. In terms of, I'll start with the Kelleher Center, that is really a completely unrelated item to this matter, but it is a matter that I've been meeting along with the planning department and the management analyst in my office with the folks from the Kelleher Center, and I think we're going to work the resolution on that, on that matter. In regards to this, this was something initiated by the planning department, and as I believe Sutton Kira mentioned earlier in the discussion, this is under the jurisdiction of the ARB, so it's not something actually issued by the planning department or by the town manager, but rather the ARB, but really they looked at two issues. Most other space in town already had a fee associated with it for private groups. Fox Library, I'm pretty sure all of the schools have a fee for usage for private groups, so there's a bit of an inequitable situation happening here where these private groups were having access to the senior center as well as the Jefferson Cutter House. One thing I'll say, the senior association is not part of someone who has to pay fees, that's a bit of a different situation than what's happening here. Also, there was a management issue. The senior center, 23 Maple next door to it, and Jefferson Cutter House are part of an urban renewal fund that's supposed to be self-sufficient and not put any weight on the general fund, so being able to manage the resource and have personnel available to open the building, lock the building, protect the building, make sure it's secure, there were no resources to do that and it was becoming more and more problematic to do so. And there is an odd relationship in that building where we have town offices, we have privately rented offices, we have wide open space that's used for senior center programming, then we have night space that's used for all manner of private groups. So some enhanced management in terms of the use of that space is what really prompted the planning department to recommend it to the ARB and to adopt these fees. With that said, since the Friends of the Robbins Farm group and other groups have raised their concern, I've asked Carol Kowalski to take a look at whether or not these fees are fair if there's an ability for us to see, are we just covering our costs or are we exceeding our costs? And if we are exceeding our costs even we were a month in, let's see if we can make them more fair so the groups can have a more reasonable ability to pay these fees. So that's my take. And thank you, Adam. And I appreciate you looking into that with the planning department. Just some food with that perhaps there's a way to reclassify certain groups as that are now considered private as a public-private partnership or something where we can look at what the group is bringing to the town and how they're benefiting the community to then say whether or not they have to pay these fees and not pay these fees. So we kind of look at the groups that are putting into the community as opposed to just saying right at the front door that your private group, you have to pay. And I think that it's a great return on our investment. Yeah, that's fair to look at. So did I understand you to say the seniors group is not part of this because I thought it was a $50 an hour fee they were gonna have to pay to use the senior center. Was I misinformed on that? To my knowledge that's not the case. Okay. The ASA, the Arlington Senior Association. The Arlington Senior Association may not hold the St. Patrick's Day party this year because it's a charge of $50 an hour. I've got the same one. Is it a special evening event? That's Saturday afternoon. So that could be the case. I mean, they have rent-free space, run of the building all day. So I thought that's what you're alluding to when you said they would have to pay for space. But if they've run of the building, why do they, and this is just, I don't know, it's a rent-free, non-existent lease they have. So if a total non-Arlington group wanted to rent a room, would they pay the same as this Robin's Farm group to rent the room for $30 an hour? They would pay the private rate, depending on whether or not they're a private or non-profit. Right. So there is a tier, so it's a different pricing for private versus non-profit. What's the private charge? What would the- I don't have it in front of me but I think it's $50 an hour. I'd have to verify that. I think they did low it to $25 an hour for us. The original plan was $30. That was a number that was quoted to me back in November but by January it had dropped to 25. Well, I honestly can see both. I mean, these are public buildings and I'd like whatever degree we could to allow for the use of them. But I can understand that charges in terms of janitor has to be on, use of electricity, blah, blah, blah. But I'd like to see it stratified so Arlington Groups, especially non-profits, get it for a lower cost than this. Yeah, I guess my, I have a very similar thought which is that I definitely, I understand the motivation but I also think that the point about groups that push back or give to the town if we're pushing them back into a house as opposed to embracing them and bringing out other people that we are causing a bit of a self-inflicted wound. So, but I definitely trust the planning department to take this advice and hear the arguments and see what comes out. And could they also take into account just on this senior St. Patrick's Day afternoon. I know when I work behind the scenes we do all the set up, we do all the takedown, we sweep the floors, we do all that. And for me, for something for the seniors who do come out to events like that and it's rarely very healthy for them because some of them, those are the only events to come out to now say that that event that has continued in Arlington for I don't know how many years is gonna be canceled because they have to pay the 50, the 30 or the $25 an hour where we're doing all the late, I should say we, where volunteers are, you know, when I've been there, I can tell you, we do everything ourselves and clean it, you've been there. So I'm just saying, can we look at those case in points and it doesn't really justify going there but I think I'm hearing that from the town manager. I just hate to see stuff like that just be canceled because we're gonna make 150 bucks or not. So at the moment we have a motion for receipt and a bunch of conversation. Is there any other further thoughts? I was gonna make a comment on the other one. Elizabeth Carr-Jones retiring. This is actually a big deal but we're gonna have further conversation about it so we're gonna let it pass without too much notice right now and talk about it more later. But I'm sorry that she's indeed stepping down tonight and hoping she's gonna remain otherwise engaged town meeting or other but an original member of that committee. So yes, there are more to come. But so I'm feeling we should refer and put this one on the manager too. This pricing or the room rental. That sounded like a motion to me. That's a very good one. But I wanted to what degree I think there's a huge problem with the coordination of all of our meeting rooms across this town. And you know, this building is taken care of in one way, the senior center I think by another way. Actually this room is building is not even taken care of one way. Different rooms are taken care of by different departments. See what I mean? And I think I wanted to what degree that across all of our meeting rooms across the town whether there could whether a coordination of that I'm almost in a public calendaring but look into that too, would you? All right, we have a most shizzy week for that. Joe? I'm almost hesitant to even prolong the discussion. I'll just say this has always been a tricky discussion. We we grappled with this in the school department when I was over there also because over the years, different arrangements had been reached between principals and certain groups and such. And so we did move to a very explicit tiering structure and the rates there but the tiering structure, well like this tier took into account whether or not I think it took into account whether or not residents were using it but it also took into account the mission of the organization. And if the mission of the organization that was renting it was in some way consistent with the mission of in that case the school department and education of our Arlington kids then that was taken into account in the tiers. So I think to the chairman's point, I mean we do shoot ourselves in the foot when we have organizations that their mission is to contribute to municipal resources. And so if the mission could be taken into account, it's very difficult because somebody has to be the arbiter of that. Okay, we have a motion from Mr. Greely. Is there a second? Second. Second. So we're gonna refer the Robbins farm, the global question related to the farm to the manager for and ask him to report back. Is there any further discussion on that one? All those in favor please say aye. Five zero. We have a motion to receipt on Elizabeth Carr Jones. So moved. Second. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Excuse me, Mr. Chairman. Yes. I need to go back to my people and tell them what happened here. Wherever we have our meeting, within a week or two. I think that what you wanna mean is what should I tell them? I think what you should tell them is that we're really glad that you brought up the concerns that you did and we sympathize with a lot of them. And we also understand the underlying policy and we've asked the town manager to look into it more detail and see if there is a better path available to us. So we can expect to. We did not make a concrete decision to change anything. But we can expect to hear from Adam. We specifically asked Adam to report back to us, but obviously that will be in public and we'd like you to know. Sure, fine. Thank you. I think it's important to note to the decision to change anything, Rolly, is with the redevelopment board, ultimately. On all properties? No, on those specific properties. Those that are specifically under your judgment. Rolly, did you catch that new one? But just to be clear that it is the ARB's ultimate decision on this one. Okay, all right. On some properties. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Public, sorry, new business. I just want to remind you if any of you can go tomorrow, they're having the retirement collation for Bill McCarthy from three to four in the select committee if anyone can make it. Thank you. No new business. Adam. You can tell Bill McCarthy has a new assignment in retirement. I'm just getting up nice and close. Just a few quick pieces of new business. Representative Garberley was here earlier tonight with us and just this past week he was able to include in a recently filed transportation bond bill by the House of Representatives, $1.5 million for the resurfacing of Gray Street and its sidewalks. So that doesn't mean that we've gotten the money for the project. The governor would still have to authorize, but it's a great first step and we really appreciate Representative Garberley doing that for us. Also aligned with that I knew Representative Rogers is working to have $500,000 included for our resurfacing and sidewalk repair to Pleasant Street. So we don't know if that was successful yet, but he's working on that as well. So our delegation is definitely working for us. Related to that, I know I shared with the board in last week's packet, the governor's budget information. Local aid was not nearly as good from the governor as we had expected. The MMA was very disappointed and I felt the same way in that regard. But at the MMA conference on Friday, Speaker DeLeo spoke and addressed the entire MMA and said that the House would do better. So that was pretty direct from the House of Representatives that there would be better local aid numbers coming out in the House's budget. So we'll have to stay tuned and see what that means, but a little update on state budget happenings and that's all I have for new business. Kevin? No, no business, sir. Dan? Just very briefly, I'm not sure if it got forwarded to you all, but I've been working with the manager and our contacts over at DCR. It seems like we finally have some agreed upon resolution for repairing, not replacing or repaving the street behind Sunnyside as well as I feel encouraged the town manager contacted Dan Dunn's replacement, Dan is now running for Mayor Walsh's former seat. Not me, Dan Hunt. Oh, I mean, Dan Hunt. Oh gosh, oh my Lord, oh my Lord. You're running for something, aren't you? But anyways, Tony Arletta, but I made sure that the selectman's office has all that contact info and asked for to my colleagues and I feel confident come spring. Definitely that road will be somehow patched with hot topped or hot boxed or whatever, as well as I know the manager's following up on ongoing maintenance and vegetation replacement tonight. I think we feel like we're making progress. Frankly, Tony Barletta's response was some of the most responsive, was the most responsive, I think I've experienced at DCR, so I was pleased with that. And I will say there has been sort of a backdrop scenario going on and I've been using that issue along with the town manager to make sure that we actually get this thing done, put to bed and move on. So I feel confident that that will happen. Thank you. Thank you, Joe. Just one thing, I was able to go up to the Odyssey Middle School the other day when District Attorney Ryan came to town. She's been presenting a program on cyber safety for the students. She and her general counsel was an excellent program. I think we all know we had an unfortunate occurrence a couple months up at the middle school, so it was really quite timely. And I wanted to give a big shout out also to the school resource officer, Poncello, also participated and spoke to the students. Definitely very approachable, and I think a great guy to have in that spot for them. And so I think we all thank the District Attorney for reaching out and sharing the resources. And it was a very quiet group of middle schoolers, which you don't see very often, so I think they got through. No new business. I actually have three items to talk about. First off, Minuteman. The school committee did in fact vote the Minuteman School Committee voted 13-3 to recommend a new regional agreement, which we're gonna be asked to look at both as selectmen of recommendations for a town meeting. So Charlie Foskett represented Arlington on the regional agreement, the most recent committee, and he's being pushed to support that and he is ready to do so, but at the same time, he does not want to get out in front of the town and make sure, as in, you know, he wants to make sure that we're all on board. And so I'm putting him on our agenda two weeks from now, and he's gonna have a memo for us to talk about some of the key points. And I guess, I mean, I talked about this two weeks ago, and I'll say it again, this is not, like, we're not gonna be bringing, there's no bells of joy about this regional agreement, but I suspect that we, as a group, will come to the conclusion that it's something that we should support, but it's not gonna be easy. And there's also, the regional agreement is just one part of this bigger picture, and I think that at the next meeting, I suspect we're only gonna be really ready to talk about the regional agreement, not the bigger picture, but you'll have some probably some dense reading before we get to that in two weeks. My other two items are just meetings that I went to of private corporations that are sort of Arlington pretty well. One was the Arlington Housing Corporation. Joe was there, and Adam was there, and we got some speakers from people who benefited from the Arlington Housing Corporation who talked about the housing and the services that they got, and they give out their rewards. And Tango is not open for breakfast, but it probably should be, because there's some really pretty good stuff to do in the morning. And the owner gave one of the best speeches of the day, too. Yeah, who knew? Like he used to work, it was in Boston that he worked in, as a helping, doing section eight. Yeah, housing, so he was talking about the forums and how to help people fill out the forums. It was not the speech that I expected from him. It was good. And just before the meeting, next door, I was at the very opening of the Arlington Land Trust meeting, or who are having their annual cooperation meeting. So just worth talking about these groups that I think are helping us out in costing us. All right, those are my three items. Mr. Durham. Just before, I didn't mean to mention in our packets, I thought Adam's self-evaluation was an excellent document. I don't know, I'm not, don't need to talk about it, so do we have a schedule on when we need to fill out that? We do, and I don't remember what the time is. I think it's two weeks from now. So I'm not late yet. You are not late yet. Did we say, was it February 13th? I don't remember, I don't have to go to the point. I think it was to get it to you by February. February 13th, I think it was by February 13th. Right, and there's no changes in the reform and the correctives. As we approved it, yeah, exactly. We're gonna vote on it, and I think on the 24th or something. If they have to, you have to get it. The goal is to have it, the compiled document before the board by the 24th. Let me see if I can find a board that will indulge me. Thank you very much, Mr. Giles. Well, I just, I just gotta make sure I got it done on time. Well, he's looking for that, can I ask, how many warrant articles have we received so far? In terms of citizen warrant articles or your standard total, well, just tell me. Is it that I actually have my hand now to 10 registered voters, but I understand we may have maybe five more? I think about that, yeah. There's a number of articles that are being put forth by various boards and commissions as well. We'll be happy to know that I was able to dissuade at least one from an unnecessary article. So, saving time where we can. We might have another one, because tonight someone just came in and told me they were coming in and I told them they had until Friday morning, so they should be adjourned. So, I can't find it, but my recollection was generally, so it was delivered now back to you within two weeks so that you could work with Karen Malloy to compile it, so it could be back before the board on February 24th, which would be another two weeks. So, Valentine's Day, unless you hear otherwise. We're adjourned. We have motions, and a second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. We are adjourned. Thank you, everyone.