 Mr. Helmuth is going to play the 88 for us tonight. Joining us at the Star Spangled banner please rise in about three seconds. Thank you very much. If any precincts have not organized please do so at the break. 17 will be upstairs at the break and 16 or 13 over here. So if you haven't organized please do so and get your nomination papers and things back to Ms. Luccarelli. 18 over here. Okay with the tennis kids selling cookies you're still going to be over there. Okay buy some cookies from the tennis girls and you're out there. Anybody not been sworn in yet? Any town meeting members not been sworn in? If so please rise. Seeing none. Okay I recognize the chair of the board of select and Ms. Mohan. Thank you Mr. Moderator. It is requested that the members of board of select and elected to the next one. To the next one? You gave me it so I'll skip to seven. All right I didn't do it. It is moved that if all the business of the meeting is set forth in the warrant for the annual town meetings not disposed of at this session when the meeting adjourns at adjourns Monday May 9th 2016 at 8 p.m. Second all in favor please say yes. Opposed? Well I think you're going to be back anyways. Announcements of resolution anyone have announcements Ms. Mohan. I just want to apologize for town meeting and thank you all for waiting for the board of selectmen I appreciate your time I know it's valuable I just want to let you know we were discussing a very important gender item and as a result of that for the June 14th 2016 dead exclusion election polls open at 7 a.m. Close at 8 p.m. We voted to place on three ballot questions the first ballot question is a question concerning the Thompson and Gibbs rebuild or renovate the second question is the Allington High School feasibility study request and the third question is the Minuteman Regional Vocational School request and they will appear in that order so again our apologies but we didn't want to we wanted to make sure we discussed everything that needed to be discussed on such an important issue that we now have a lot of work to get the message out and see what the citizens of Allington say so thank you very much for being patient with us. Thank you Ms. Mohan. Mr. Tosti. I just want to remind you that next week two critically important issues to the to the town will be coming up on Monday will be taking up the Minuteman budget and the Minuteman building project and on Wednesday the will be taking up the school construction project specifically the middle school. The both of these issues are tough the vote on the Minuteman issue was 10 to 8 on the finance committee the vote on the school project was 11 to 8 so you really need to investigate this you need to talk to people you need to find out reasons pro and con and really answer this because these are tough issues thank you. Thank you Mr. Tosti. Mr. Chaplain did you have an announcement? Good evening Adam Chaplain town manager I actually had two announcements first some of you may know that I believe about just about two weeks ago we kicked off a conceptual planning process for what we're calling Mass Ave phase two from Pond Lane to the intersection of Mass Mill and Jason in terms of streetscape and improvements to be made to Mass Ave so we had a public meeting on April 16th right here and we had very good attendance on that and then next Thursday May 12th starting at 6 p.m. we're gonna have something we're calling a walk shop where people will be able to meet in front of town hall and then walk to four different hot spots that were identified at the first public meeting along that portion of the corridor to sort of have some on-site discussion about what people would like to see again as part of this conceptual planning process so if any of you are able to attend that should be a great session. David if you could put that up. The second announcement that I wanted to make was a clarification and an apology in my answer to a town meeting members question on Monday evening under article 29 I was asked whether or not the removal of easement restriction would allow for the creation or the building of a second home and I said it was my understanding that there would just be the renovation of the existing home however I learned that I was mistaken and I think the map is here behind on that site this isn't working but on the site you can see the existing home at 54 Pleasant View Road and below would be the building footprint that could be built at the second site with the release of the exterior line so I was mistaken I want to make that very clear so that if there's any town meeting members who felt that their vote was impacted by that answer I didn't want that to have any impact so again my apologies. Miss Howard. Thank you Mr. moderator Jane Howard from precinct 10 also a member of vision 2020 spy pond committee I announced that on a week from Saturday May 14th there will be the 11th spy pond trails day and I hope that some of you can join us we'll be doing the same things that we've done for the last 11 years protect the pond improve the access to the to the pond try to remove the invasives especially the bittersweet and the garlic mustard and pick up trash last Saturday the same effort took place but the people who were working on it were 50 kids from the Arlington Belmont crew so this time we will meet with the Appalachian Mountain Club volunteers and they'll guide us through these these efforts if you do come and children are invited but children under 12 should be supervised by their own parents or guardians and those under 18 have to have permission from the parent or guardian that they bring with them otherwise do come bring gloves and pruning shears and lots of energy will have snacks and if you want to gather at the end of the effort bring a lunch and we can share it together so it's from 9 to 11 at that path a budding route to from Pleasant Street to Lake Street thank you there are cards in the back of the on the table thank you Miss Howard any other announcements or resolutions okay I'll get you a second we have our clickers back tonight we have the owner of the company Mark flight here with us we know about Mr. Renaud couldn't make it the first night last time from what I understand that big box with the silver side the mace master controller kept losing touch with our clickers every time we went to have a vote so we would turn the vote on and all the clickers would disappear that's what the problem was the fixed it they got a new computer for us rebooted I don't know what they did but Mr. Lathwood it ensures me it's working and in that regard he's written us a test question I'm not taking credit for this one as today is Star Wars day may the fourth be with you are you a Star Wars fan or not if one if you are two if you're not are you ready Mr. Lathwood he's ready so here we go we're going to get a green light and block and we can now vote hey Dave is our resolution right we're missing part of our numbers and then we're going to scrolls through find out who's not check check make sure you you showed up properly so it looks like it's a yes vote even by two thirds so the town of Arlington is officially Star Wars fans there we go perfect thank you that's okay thank you Mr. Good while we finish that Mr. Tosti yes sir oh you're going to put out Charles Foskett precinct eight and chairman of Charlie wait a second I'll have to take three off the table for us move that article three be taken from the table second okay article please on the table Mr. Mr. Foskett Charlie Foskett precinct eight and chairman of capital planning committee I'd like to ask that the capital planning committee report be received all in favor of see the capital planning report please say yes see an interest vote now the capital planning report is not before us any other reports of committees nope okay go ahead Charlie put three back on the table move the three be placed on the table all in favor please say yes article three is on the table that brings us to article eight miss sir one of the one of our members Christian Klein did file a motion for reconsideration you would speak with him we have the force to recommend a vote of ARB of no action miss miss Warden Patricia Warden precinct eight I know of the substitute motion on article eight which was placed on your seats and would like to introduce Arlington resident Chris Loretty to speak on it thank you miss moderate Chris Loretty precinct I'm sorry 56 Adam Street if you could bring up the PDF slide please I'd like to point out one Scrivener's error under gross floor area on B at the end of the line please scratch out the comma after more through except as excluded in four below and leave the semicolon four was excluded below the original four so that line is now support superfluous if you can leave that up and I'll go on while people make that change I'd like to make a few things perfectly clear as I start and in particular one key difference between this substitute motion in ARB vote is that this motion does not amend the definition of a seller or a basement and therefore it has no effect on whether a seller or basement is counted as a story it does make two changes to the zoning bylaw the first is to return the ceiling height used in the definition of a half story to seven feet in the second is to eliminate an exception in the floor area calculation for mechanical spaces in the attic when they are in a space that has more than seven feet their reasons for going back to that seven foot change required me to give you a little background on the history of the zoning bylaw our current bylaw was passed in nineteen seventy five at that time the ceiling height was set at seven feet to be consistent with the building code it remained that way until two thousand and one and then the building code change in the height in the building code was raised to seven feet three inches at that time town meeting changed the zoning bylaw to be consistent the the building code has since reverted to seven feet and the reason for changing the zoning bylaw is to be consistent with the building code as ARB reported in their two thousand and one report to town meeting having two different heights was was very confusing to people and if you saw the letter in the advocate this past week there was one poor fellow who was completely confused about these two things and thought there was some conspiracy going on to limit the height of ceilings and addicts to seven feet that's not the case at all you can build your ceiling height as high as you want in the attic and this bylaw change has no effect on it the other thing that this does is it makes it administratively easy easier for the building inspectors now they only have to deal with one ceiling height the same for this the building code as in the zoning bylaw so given that history if anyone tries to tell you that this change to seven feet is not ready for prime time tell them it's been prime time for 25 years and now it's time to return to maintain that consistency the reason for excluding the mechanical areas from the calculation of the gross floria stems from a recommendation of the zoning board of appeals which is the board that deals with special permits for one and two family homes they candle the vast majority of them it's rarity that the air be itself deals with them and they have noted that people try to come in with large areas that are very obviously going to be converted to to habitable space and try to claim that they qualify for that exemption so we put that eliminate that exemption at the recommendation if I could have the fourth slide please the fourth one right there thank you I live in one of these two family houses on an undersized lot in East Arlington so I naturally and frankly when I retire I may be one of these people who want to build out that third floor as much as they can so I took a look at just what the effect would be on this and if you look at that you'll see two squares up there one the larger square has an outline in red and the inner square is in white and you can see there's very little difference what this change would mean is that you would have count roughly 28 more square feet in the attic as gross floor area that would mean for a new house 2.8 or 2 yeah 2.8 more square feet of landscaped open space and three times that much of usable open space it would also mean perhaps a reduction of 28 feet square feet if I wanted to build a dormer it's a trivial change and I think you really need to understand that I also want to talk a little bit about the politics of all of the opposition we've been hearing about these owning by law changes I served on the redevelopment board for over five years and I never saw such orchestrated opposition to such minor changes and I suggest to you that you know that we've been hearing a lot about property rights from Arlington's Tea Party Democrats but we really need to think about community because when I look at this change and consider the effect on my home I'm quite willing to give up that small amount of extra space in my attic based on the expectation that my neighbors will do the same and I understand and they understand that that is to the benefit of the town as a whole and you know if you're new to town meeting must be confusing to you but why the ARB switched its vote at the very last minute and I would suggest to you that some of that has to do with pressure from the select men who are very closely aligned with the real estate machine in Arlington. You're speculating there Chris. You're speculating to the motive. It's clear to me that if the town is going to just take a just say no approach to residential zoning changes such as this one there is no hope whatsoever for the more substantial changes described in the master plan ever being implemented. So I asked you to support the substitute motion to show your support for the inspectional services staff who recommended the seven foot change for the zoning board of appeals who recommended closing the loophole for the planning department staff who were working on this for months before all of this opposition emerged and for the ARB itself which recommended the seven foot change to that ceiling height. And I also ask you to support this motion to show that you understand the importance of doing what's best for the community rather than looking at just what all the special interests have been putting forward on this article. Again this is something that is critical if the master plan recommendations as they pertain to residential zoning are going to be implemented. As I said the town in the past has kept the seven foot ceiling height consistent with the building code. It's important to continue doing so. Thank you. Thank you. Miss Mahan. I would respectfully request through you that Arlington resident Lynn Lohenstein be permitted to speak to the body. She's an Arlington citizen she can talk. So Lohenstein. Good evening. Lynn Lohenstein precinct 11 former town meeting member, former member of the redevelopment board, former member of the Sims advisory committee medical use group, former member of the town day volunteer committee, member of the town day. I'm not very good at public speaking. I get very nervous so you'll have to forgive me as I applaud through this hoping I do right by my colleagues. I'm going to take my father's advice which is stand up to be seen, speak up to be heard and then sit down to be appreciated. If you could indulge me just one minute to give you some personal background which I think is pertinent to why I'm standing here. Many of you in here know me and know that I love the town of Arlington. My family has lived here for almost 60 years. While a member of the board of directors at the boys and girls club I put together a fundraiser called a touch of Ireland which was held here in town hall and we raised $30,000. To celebrate my five year mark as a breast cancer survivor, I formed a 501c3 corporation called let's tackle breast cancer, the purpose of which is to raise money to help breast cancer patients and survivors in Arlington. Our first fundraising effort raised almost $30,000. I mentioned these things to you not to be self serving but so that you might understand how much I care about this town. So when I stand before you to talk about article eight and the zoning articles as a whole I do so because I care. Mr. Loretty I'm sorry I am a realtor so let's get that on the table because I think that was a dirty word to some people. But I've been helping people buy and sell homes here for over 20 years and I'll always be able to do that. That's not going to change. I'm part of this effort because I see how these changes will affect individual homeowners. We're all in agreement that changes need to be made to the zoning bylaws. Please don't think otherwise. My colleagues in this effort and I all live here. In fact with the birth of his granddaughter Corey Bill Coppethorn's family is now a sixth generation Arlington family. I'm not sure too many people can boast that. We care about the future of our town and we have a personal vested interest in making this the best place to live for future generations. It's the overall effect of these changes that is of utmost concern to us. We don't feel we should be taking the residential zoning bylaws out of context and piecemealing them as part of a knee jerk reaction. We feel they need to be considered as part of a cumulative cohesive whole unit not individually. Article 8 is so confusing to me as well as to my colleagues. It claims to drop all references to basements and whether basements are stories yet in the third line of the definition for story it clearly states a basement shall be deemed to be a story when its ceiling is four feet six inches or more above the finish grade. And the new definition of gross floor area includes basement. So what if the basements less than five seven feet in height? It's not considered habitable space but it's still factored into the overall gross floor area and open space requirements. So ultimately this could prevent a homeowner from adding on to his or her home. And I'm sorry I don't understand the seven foot story half story measured from sub floor to bottom of the roof choice. I know that you tried to make it simple but I can't get my head around it. I know I'm an intelligent person but it's very confusing to me and I'm sure confusing to a lot of the people here. I hope that a future speaker can provide some clarity. As the ARB stated zoning is complicated. Any zoning proposal put before town meeting should be as clear and readily understandable as possible particularly when it has such a major effect. This is certainly not readily understandable. All I know is that these changes if adopted will impact many homeowners in Arlington some of whom are probably sitting right in this room. To put solve on the wound article eight defaults to buy special permit. The zoning board is already overburdened. If each of these special cases now has to go through the special permit process. The ZBA will not be able to handle the case load. Having been a member of the ARB during the Sims hospital Arlington three sixty era I am very well aware of the enormous amount of time that these processes involve. We need to respect the fact that these are volunteer positions but most importantly you need to consider the impact that this will have for homeowners planning additions and renovations to say nothing of the amount of money involved in hiring architects site engineers and attorneys and then waiting to get on the docket for an already overworked committee. It will be frustrating at best. Currently I understand that there's a five month backlog I can't imagine what will happen if these changes are to take place. One thing I do fear is people will be so frustrated and disillusioned that they'll no longer go through the permit process and that will have a huge impact on homeowners. The first thing a home inspector will say to a buyer is check with the building department to be sure they pulled a permit to do the work. I'm afraid that more and more buyers will back out of potential purchases if permits were not pulled because permits give them a sense of security that the job was done correctly in a workman like manner and it was signed off bond by appropriate personnel. I want to reiterate contrary to popular belief we are not by any means out of context picking and choosing and instituting policies and regulations that have not been fully vetted. It's our belief that much more focus has to be concentrated on the residential zoning bylaws. We feel that a committee should be formed with members of the community including the ARB, planning department, inspectional services, member of the citizen zoning reform group, individual homeowners who are considering renovations and additions, homeowners configurations, multifamily owners, builders, contractors and realtors. There needs to be representation from each of these groups so that all concerns are heard and that everybody knows how any proposed zoning changes will directly affect them. Finally to the citizens group, we know that you have put a great deal of time and effort into this process as have we and although we may disagree we certainly appreciate your dedication. You have some valid concerns but these cannot and should not be discussed in a vacuum. Zoning is complex, changing one provision creates a domino effect that may have unintended consequences. Let's take a step back and do this in a smart, sensitive, open manner with much better communication through public outreach and input. The number of people we've spoken to have absolutely no idea about any of this is mind boggling. Let's make sure the word gets out and the process is much more inclusive. I respectfully ask that you please go on article 8 substitute motion. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much. No, no, no. We don't know clapping. Ms. Knoblock. Mr. Klein, I got you. Nicole Knoblock, precinct 8. I'm going to speak for a couple of minutes and I'm going to introduce a member of the town who wanted to speak who's also a realtor. One thing, turn on the time please. One thing I did want to say is I think it is valid that it's a complicated issue and as a homeowner who has had to pull a permit simply to replace a rotting porch they experienced a lot of frustration even getting that done. I am totally sympathetic to how difficult it is when you want to maintain the value of your home and improve it. And I also, to that point, I really appreciated all the letters from the homeowners that were in our packets on the first day of town meeting. So I think it's a good idea to have dialogue and good examples that we need about what kinds of things people are considering so that people can avoid feeling like we're under siege by villainous developers. Having said that, I worry a little when I hear people say let's make sure we hear from everyone, let's make sure we consider property rights. And I just want to urge that when the redevelopment board does go over this issue again that the property rights of people who are not planning to revise their home in any way are also considered in this process. And that's the right to live in a neighborhood that looks a certain way in a neighborhood that has a certain kind of landscape in a home that is not overshadowed by a home right next to it very close to it. All of those concerns are also very valid property rights concerns and I think they're incredibly important because the voices of people who are not under contract or about to be could be lost when making these decisions. I have personal experience with what can happen to a neighborhood when there are tear-downs kind of relentlessly without good zoning. I grew up in a suburb of Chicago that was a 1950s suburb with smaller homes, many of which actually were very well built and didn't necessarily need to be torn down like some of the ones do in fact in our neighborhoods here. But what we've seen there is some really enormous houses that are out of scale not simply because they're tall or wide but because they are so close to the adjoining houses. We've seen a lot of paving over of grass and of their permeable surfaces. We've seen trees come down and the effect of that is aesthetic. It also threatens properties like the one that I grew up in, a beautiful home that is now totally overshadowed and literally cheek by jowl in a former prairie neighborhood with this enormous house that has come in. But the other issue there is a very real one, which is flash flooding. We're having terrible storms out in the Chicago area just like we're starting to see here where we're having changing precipitation now from having drought to having deluges and we have to think about permeable surfaces. So there are a lot of considerations when people talk about balance that I hope will still be balanced in as the redevelopment board goes through this process. Having said that, I also want to see the rest of my time to Jonathan Nyberg who is also a realtor and who is a member of the Town of Arlington. Thank you. Mr. Nyberg is a citizen of Arlington. He can speak. You have three minutes and 46 seconds left, Mr. Nyberg. Thank you. I'm Jonathan Nyberg, 129 Lake Street. As I read the article that are before us, I honestly feel there's good pieces of this and then other pieces that don't fit so well. And I feel in these articles we're asked to put together a bit of a zoning puzzle. We're getting pieces of the puzzle but we're not seeing the whole puzzle and I think it's important as with my niece and nephew when they get a thousand piece puzzle, they put the picture of it in front of them and then they go and work on all the pieces. I think we need a bigger picture before we can vote on each of the pieces of that picture. I feel as Annie La Courte said last week if we have more facts and more figures and understand the full impact I think we can make a more rational decision instead of an emotional decision. And I think we owe it to the residents of Arlington to make a fully rounded decision. Having gone to the ARB meetings I think we should follow their vote of no action until we get more facts. Thank you and I wish you the best tonight. Thank you very much sir. Mr. Warden you're next. Thank you Mr. moderator John Warden precinct date. Well first seem to me the speaker a couple back Ms. Lowenstein seem to be at a high rate about special permits. There's no special permits in article 8. This is just definition so she was I guess thinking of something that was taken care of last week so that was a little disconcerting. The other point I should like to make to her and her community and the last speaker is and this idea of we'll get to it in 11 minutes. I don't know if you have any questions about having another study committee fine we need to talk but will the building and demolition lobby will they have a moratorium for the period while we're talking. That would make everybody happy I think. I wanted to point out that the there's been some thought that the redevelopment board that they must know about the area and I just wanted to say a couple things on that Mr. Loretty who addressed you at the beginning was on I would say Mr. Loretty knows more about zoning particularly Arlington zoning bylaw than anyone else in his room. He was on the redevelopment board himself for five years he was a chairman for a year and I think I need not say more Mrs. Pile is a zoning attorney that has been in business for a number of years and she does the very hard work of defending neighborhoods from 40B developers. It doesn't get much tougher than that as a lawyer. I'm a lawyer and I know about that myself I am a lawyer I've helped hundreds of people buy homes sell homes period before zoning boards planning boards, conservation commissions and so on. The when my very first town meeting in 1970 I stood with the people of East Arlington who were opposing three 20 story towers that the Muogars wanted to put on their swamp down in East Arlington we didn't have wetlands then we had swamps but so that was how I got started. In 1978 I don't know most of you are probably too young to remember the great blizzard of 1978 but that night the very night the blizzard struck the redevelopment board was sitting right here in this hall with the developers team holding a so called public hearing on a proposal to put a 13 story tower almost across the street from town hall down in Mill Street. There was one member of the public there me because I lived just around the corner they approved that building but I led the fight in town meeting and we changed the zoning bylaw to five stories so that and that's been the cap on building heights in Arlington ever since. Now there has been a lot of confusion the redevelopment board sites confusion is the reason that they withdrew their articles to their own work of their own planning staff under the bus. Well I would say that the confusion is caused not because zoning is that difficult but because of the propaganda that was put out and first we had the scary anonymous postcard and then we had what's called the lion flyer anybody struck by the coincidence how similar these proposals were in their format and so on probably just a coincidence and the point is that not one of the buildings additions whatever they're talking about here that they say couldn't happen is true every one of those none of those things would be barred by any of the articles not only particularly article eight but the other articles that we dealt with last week so so much for confusion that the zoning is complicated but it's the job of the experts to try to not just cave in so I would ask you to support article eight it's a very minor change Mr. already pointed out and yes the basement is mentioned but the one thing that people were most concerned about the development board forum took place in this room no it took place next door at central school was that their basement the redevelopment board wanted to change the height the countable height of a basement from four six to three six that's out we haven't changed that so yes still in there it's always been there it's not changed so that that will not have any effect so I urge you to support this this minor thing zoning has a large number of moving parts you can't deal with them all at once you have to deal with them one by one and this is one that has very little effect but it's important that it be done thank you thank you very much come on we're not supposed to clap and do that sort of stuff I keep asking every time you guys keep doing it Mr. Bernal thank you Mr. moderator good evening Andrew Bernal chair of the Arlington redevelopment board it is the job of the experts to decomplicate zoning that's why the Arlington redevelopment board decided to vote no action on articles eight nine and ten any other article that proposes substantive changes in the zoning bylaws this year it's the opinion of the board that these articles require more input more education or outreach to the town make sure that any and all stakeholders voices are heard taking into consideration so that all the facts all the figures can be taken into consideration so that we can put something in front of town meeting that we feel supported we feel we can support and we feel that we can ask for town meetings vote on any substantive change needs to go through a process and I would urge that any substance change be voted down this year thank you thank you Mr. Bernal Mr. Fisher Andrew Fisher precinct six ready for the mic I'm sorry Andrew Fisher precinct six I just want to make 100% sure of what we're talking about there are two article eight amendments here in my packet it's the one signed by Patricia Warden will you yes sir we're talking about the substitute motion Andrew not the amendments they will last week they're gone we now have a substitute two and I have two that are in one package one is signed by Mr. Warden and one is signed by Mrs. Warden what's it say up top one says article eight amendment and the that's gone the other says also article eight amendment we're looking at one that says article eight substitute motion and down the bottom it should have relatively recent date today or two days ago uh okay I don't have it I'm sorry it should have a date of May 2 down the bottom let me ask you this is this only dealing with ceiling height excuse me it's dealing with mechanical rooms and ceiling height they are striking out but excluding attic space and other areas for elevated machinery or mechanical equipment necessary to the operation of the building can you show that Mr. Good there you go okay thank you I'm going to vote yes but mainly I want to speak about the seven foot rule um in 1986 I did the drawings for my own house 135 Wildwood at the time is right behind the shell gas station and it really truly is simple but you have to know about it um some people think you can only develop the front half or the back half of your attic but the way it works is as the roof line goes up the square feet don't count until this until the ceiling becomes seven feet tall so you do a drawing and I have no training I just did it except for reading blueprints and you figure out what you can build the seven feet or the seven feet three doesn't affect the way it looks on the outside if it was up to me people could have seven foot three or seven foot six even if you move the front wall back a foot because it makes it look like a cottage um um a few months after I did my attic um Jack DeMille on Coleman wanted to do his and he was fiddling with it and he was told just make the whole ceiling under seven feet and what he did was was uh the side wall was simply three stories it was simply straight up so what I'm saying is the seven foot or seven foot three doesn't affect the aesthetics and I would not be afraid to address this in a way that does affect the aesthetics and I could guarantee you um that developers and neighbors would both like it uh I suppose I'm remiss for never having addressed it but I'm gonna vote yes for this just because I want to say we can and should take action also nobody asked for great big data when we went from seven foot to seven three we were simply told the state had changed or the state standard was seven foot three and Alan McLennan said we want to make ours in in harmony with the state I voted against that um and to tell you the truth for not very good reasons but I'm gonna vote for this and it's honestly if we did vote yes then there will be force to make real change I want to make that statement if we vote no who knows it'll just keep going on so I'm trying to think if there was anything else but the seven foot thing is not interest it's not complicated it when we went from seven foot to seven foot three it didn't enable all kinds of development to happen any differently and going from seven to three to seven foot also is thank you thank you sir Mr. Jamison thank you Mr. moderator Gordon Jamison precinct 12 I move this article and all matters before us thank you we have motion to terminate the debate second all in favor of terminating the debate please say yes opposed in my opinion it is a two third vote yes Mr. Paluso is it a point of order I'm glad you called Ted Paluso from precinct six I'm glad you called on me after the vote because here's what I feel well Ted you can't get up and argue we've terminated the debate excuse me no you give me a minute no no sir sir we've terminated debate Mr. Paluso I'm not talking about terminating the debate this is not a debate you're done yeah excuse me everybody in this room took Ted please we voted to terminate the debate we can't get up and I'm not debating the issue there's nothing on the table sir we're at the vote stage how do I get two minutes of time you raise your hand and then some I raised my hand I'm not debating the issue Ted it's something entirely different please more important no Ted Mr. Paluso please what's your point of order sir we have then you have to parse out what was said before debate was terminated look at the papers we were given and make your vote based upon the facts that were given to us before Mr. Jamison terminated the debate Ms. Mimone what's your point of off you can contest my call of a two thirds vote alright we'll do it with a clicker alright we're going to do a clicker vote of the termination of debate all in favor of terminating debate please press one when we get the light all opposed press two alright debates not terminated Mr. Paluso you're actually next on the list I don't care how you vote yes no I don't care but I have to tell you something it doesn't matter I want to take a minute I heard a man insult our select men everybody in this room took an oath to treat people civilly and I'm going to make a motion that Mr. Leone call that guy up here and have him apologize to our select men unless I'm misunderstanding he said something that was accusatory and completely unallowable who wasn't Mr. Paluso is Mr. Loretty come forward and apologize alright Mr. Deist Mr. Loretty no more insulting people Mr. Deist you're next Mr. McCabe you are next Mach McCabe and I stand to terminate debate on article 8 and all matters before let's use the clickers we have a motion to terminate debate it's been second and all in favor of terminating debate as soon as Mr. Lathwood is ready to vote so all in favor please press 1 all opposed press 2 160 that passes it is a two-thirds vote and I so declare it we have now terminated debate on the article we are voting on the substitute motion of Ms. Warden it's a majority vote to substitute all in favor of substituting the Ms. Warden please vote 1 all opposed vote 2 146 in the negative 70 in the positive it is not substituted we now have a force recommended vote of the ARB of no action all in favor of no action please say yes opposed say no it is a vote of no action for no action now the reason I ask people not to clap after a speaker it's a subtle form of intimidation as Mr. Paluso correctly pointed out we shouldn't be saying bad things to other people and we shouldn't be intimidating speakers and the town meeting members by clapping or expressing satisfaction or dissatisfaction with what the speaker says that's why I don't allow people to speak out between speakers thank you very much for that we now have article 8 9 excuse me we've got close to article 8 brings us to article 9 we have the recommended vote of the board of ARB of no action I'm going to translate it all in favor of no action on article 9 please say yes all opposed say no it is a vote and I so declare it that closes article 9 that brings us to article 10 we have the recommended vote of the ARB of no action Ms. Pyle good evening everyone my name is Elizabeth Pyle and I'm a town meeting member from precinct 10 I move that the redevelopment boards recommended vote on article 10 be substituted with the motion included in hard copy on your chairs to all town meeting members and that was emailed to you we have a second it's been second go ahead Ms. Pyle the substitute motion contains the exact same language as the Arlington redevelopment boards article 10 which amends the zoning bylaw on parking in residential districts can you put up the the thing thank you by stating that any driveway leading to parking on a lot cannot exceed a 15% slope except by special permit I have brought this substitute motion tonight because this is a matter of public safety the redevelopment board originally proposed this article because driveways steeper than 15% grade create public safety hazards when a car is backing out of a driveway with a grade steeper than 15% the rear windshield is pointed up too much to the sky and the driver cannot see small children on the sidewalk children and other pedestrians are also not used to looking down to see an exiting car which exacerbates the situation I am very concerned about this public safety hazard driveways with steep grades can also cause problems because shoveling them in the winter can be too difficult for some people meaning more cars stick out into the sidewalk this forces people to walk around the cars and out into the street in the snow causing a further potential safety hazard cars can also have more difficulty getting into and out of a steep driveway in the ice and snow in the winter time the planning department has informed me that the 15% grade was recommended by the town's engineering department based on safety concerns I also understand from an architect on the redevelopment board that the standard for commercial development in driveway slope is 10 to 12% grade now you may ask how will this amendment affect my house the answer is that this article will not require any changes to any existing homes it will apply only to new driveways you may wonder how does this apply to houses on hills I understand that the redevelopment board considered houses on hills when drafting this amendment and that's why they added the special permit provision this means that for unusual situations driveways with a steeper grade may be allowed by special permit so that someone who can show that their proposed driveway is not a public safety hazard may be permitted to build one this amendment will not prevent renovations or new construction it may require architects or builders to come up with a way of housing a garage that does not have such a steep slope by slightly pushing the garage back or having some of the garage below grade and some of it be above grade for example but this is a small price to pay for the public safety benefits that our town officials originally intended with this article it would be a tragedy if we failed to take action on this amendment tonight and a house was built in the next year with a steep driveway and sometime in the future backing out of that driveway struck and injured or killed a small child let's not allow that to happen we cannot wait for further study on this one I strongly urge you to vote yes on the substitute motion for article 10 to protect Arlington's children and pedestrians thank you very much thank you ma'am hello Steve Rabelak precinct 1 111 sunny side avenue I sympathize with the safety concerns that Midspile expressed it would be indeed be a tragedy to see someone T-boned while trying to back out of the driveway but as a safety measure there's I do have some reservations about what's left out of it so really one of the issues backing out of a driveway is it's not so much a slope but it's a field of vision it's how far can you see to the left, how far can you see to the right how well are other vehicles able to see you and there's nothing there is nothing in this substitute motion that specifies a person six feet from the edge of the roadway shall be able to see X number of feet in either direction I've seen driveway mirrors in use where buildings are packed closely together so the idea behind a driveway mirror is there's a building or something it's blocking your view up the road and you can't see what's coming but the mirror allows you to basically see around the corner and this I think could be an effective mitigation measure for you know for safety and for improving the field of vision but that's not something that's mentioned in this substitute motion we also have visual notifications as another option if you've walked by the exit to a parking garage and seen a little sign that flashes inside the vehicle exiting this could also be a mitigating measure but that's not mentioned either even the basic rectangular yellow sign that says blind driveway ahead would be a form of mitigation or simply a parking ordinance that increase the distance that a parked vehicle had to be back away from the curb again being able to increase increase the field of vision so I'm I think it's I think the it's well intentioned but I do believe that I am concerned that it falls short in terms of the stated goal of creating a safer environment so I will not be supporting this thank you thank you sir Mr. Tibbets Gary Tibbets from Precinct 5 and the previous speaker just took a lot of what I had to say and I agree with him and I think this is somewhat a back door measure to shrink the size of new houses and I've said before I think that affects the value of the houses and the value of the houses to the people that have owned them for 40, 50, 60 years when they go on to sell them and I'm against that I'd like to turn the rest of my time over to Bill Copathon from Precinct 5 who can probably talk to this better than I can thank you Mr. Copathon is a town resident you've got 6 minutes and 23 seconds I'll be brief Bill Copathon many of you may know me about lifelong resident of the town I'm a lifelong resident of the town and property owner my family with the addition of my granddaughter has now lived in this town for six generations I am very concerned with the fabric and look of this town I'm also the broker owner of Sweeney O'Connor Real Estate for full disclosure here and speaking on a professional level I've represented hundreds of buyers coming into this town and I am concerned on how some of these proposed changes are going to affect these folks that have scrimped and saved and gotten their way into the great town that we all enjoy I agree with many who have spoken before me that there's a need for a thorough review of the bylaws and that is what should be done a very thorough and thoughtful review of the bylaws as we go forward not the piecemeal approach as it's been presented to you over the past week or so I ask that we continue to vote in accordance with the ARB the board has been tasked to address these issues and with their vote has been suggested to you the board has no action speaking directly to article 10 the changes that are before you may seem small in scope insignificant but put into the broadest scope of the bylaws have many unintended consequences depending on where you live in town what fits in East Arlington does not work for homes in Heights Morningside, Jason Heights or around Mount Gilboa where many houses are built on hills not all lots are the same there are certain characteristics to them the previous speaker mentioned that this article was specific to new construction I did not see anything in that article that was making this specific to new construction the proposed driveway grade it passed may result in several homes in Arlington becoming non-conforming structures because of their driveway exceeding their grade whether it's down or up it would have an impact on what their view may be coming in and out of the driveway proponents want you to believe this is a safety issue I would submit that pulling in and out of the driveway is a safety issue regardless of the grade caution should be exercised at all times if you have a steep driveway you are aware of its proclivities during times of inclement weather and realize that caution should be exercised common sense I ask that you vote in accordance with the no action vote of the ARB and allow time for thoughtful and thorough review of the by-laws thank you thank you very much sir Ms. Weber thank you Mr. Moderator Janice Weber precinct 21 although I was in agreement with Elizabeth on her other article I would like to vote for no action on article 10 I live on Mt. Gilboa not the mountain but up there my driveway is by 515 degrees or 20 whatever it's extremely narrow I share it with the people next door it has been widened actually my father got his big cable telephone truck up there and I don't know how the thing is you need to use common sense I back up my driveway I don't back down into the street even though the people across the street choose to park across my driveway and as far as the snow if you don't have all-wheel drive full-wheel drive living in this town then there's something wrong I think if you just use a little common sense I know you do have to be careful I do understand the issues and we do have a lot of children going by my driveway in the morning but I'm always sure to if I pull in I turn around at the end of the driveway but most of the time I do back up and I've hardly ever scraped Mr. Klein Christian Klein Precinct 10 I'm rising just to add a little bit of context what is 15% so a ramp that you have to have handles on for accessibility into a building is 8.3% is as steep as that can get my driveway is 7% the street in front of my house is 5% the hill going up to bracket school is about 10% the access road along route 2 where it passes Highland is 7% you can tell I spent the afternoon with a measuring device checking these things I took a tour over Park and Beacon Street most of those driveways, the lowered ones are in the 19 to 24% grade the steepest I found was 28 over on Dorothy and Mott they're sort of similar in that range and then there's a lot of houses that also have flat driveways that lead to their things so that just sort of gives you a sense it's sort of the scale of some of these dimensions that we're talking about putting on my hat as a member of the zoning board of appeals should you I like this I like the notion of this I like the notion that there are situations that require special consideration if you have a driveway that's an excess of 15% and it's because of the topography of your site I would hope that the zoning board would look upon that very favorably but obviously I'm unable to speak on behalf of the zoning board the only thing I would ask is that if you do vote to accept this and to open these cases up for special permit review that as we look at article 35 that includes the budget for the zoning board of appeals that you consider offering us a little extra money so we can do the administration that will be required for these thank you thank you Mr. Klein gentlemen back here three up from the rear back on the right right up there yeah nope nope not you him thank you Mr. moderator John Hoppe precinct three so I'd like to speak in favor of this the safety concerns have already been gone over but there are aesthetic concerns for this as well a house on my street I live over on teal street in East Arlington was recently built that has a middle driveway underneath one of the town side by side townhouses and our architect friend of mine and neighbor we were walking around and he pointed out and what that does is it creates about a 20 by 20 sort of just blank hole in front of a house you can't wash a car there it's too steep to stand on you can't have a yard sale there you can't kid can't put up a lemonade stand there nothing it's just I think we need to think about what would happen if the entire street and over on my end of town is a real possibility I think that a lot of these are going to start going up in fact they already have been I would hate to see a street where you just walk down or drive down and it's just nothing but sort of big black spaces in front of the houses as opposed to the driveways and yards that we that we currently have thank you sir know your turn thank you Mr. moderator my name is Phil Goff in precinct number seven I wanted to ask this for just about all the zoning measures I'm finally getting the chance if I could ask Mr. Brinnell or any others from the ARB to just simply explain why this particular warrant article was pulled at in my interpretation at the last moment I just want to get a sense for something that on one hand seems pretty clearly about safety was and was voted on unanimously by the ARB was then removed before town meeting last week decided to have a discussion or reconsideration of the votes on articles eight nine and ten we had decided to reconsider the votes on articles eight nine and ten together because they all affected residential properties as opposed to article six and seven which really impacted commercial districts at the time it was felt that more study was needed on across the board on all residential zoning articles and therefore we revised our vote to no action on all three okay thank you very much something I've been curious about I this has been a very difficult one for me I've gone back and forth a lot to be honest on this one in particular I appreciate the effort originally I guess by the ARB and then from others in the citizens group who have put the substitute motion in front of us I think pedestrian safety is a critical thing of course throughout the town including East Arlington I think there are other issues that were echoed I think quite well Mr. Hopp kind of stole some of my thunder because I did want to speak to some of the aesthetic although they're not just purely aesthetic it's really about sort of the community interaction of a street and think about especially in East Arlington where obviously the parcels are much smaller think about the long view we know that on a handful of streets in East Arlington there are a number of duplexes that have been redeveloped with the subgrade garages I personally I call them pit houses it creates that large pit in front of the house I'm an urban designer I have a background in planning I work for the planning department in Portland, Oregon which is a city known for its livability they had a problem with what people called snout houses those were garages that were protruding from houses and really dominated the sidewalk in the streetscape it started out with just a few houses here and there in different neighborhoods and people weren't so concerned then it started to be spread all over simply because for developers and others who were rebuilding properties it was certainly the least expensive thing to do based on the small lot zoning and a number of particular neighborhoods and whole neighborhoods became dominated by these snout houses people rose up and sort of thought about the long view as I think we need to think about here especially in East Arlington I can envision every year somewhere in East Arlington somewhere in the town itself home burns down in the two family zoning for the most part it seems as though there's certainly a few exceptions but generally they're being replaced by the pit houses the pit houses are sort of disrespecting the general rhythm of the street and the architecture throughout East Arlington they're not providing for the kind of community interactions that can happen on the sidewalk because there is that in essence dead zone in front of the house I don't want all the streets you know 10, 20, 30, 40 years from now to be dominated by those kinds of developments I don't want convex mirrors I don't want flashing signs to warn people of those walking by that there are cars backing out that may in fact be a hazard to pedestrians coming by so I do think this is a critical issue I'm probably going to surprise a lot of people though and say I do plan on boarding this down simply because I think it's critical enough that it be studied some more it isn't just about restricting the slope of a driveway I think that we also need to look at perhaps some incentives and other things that actually incentivize developers and others who are redeveloping properties to put driveways on the sides to put garages towards the back so that new houses are respecting roughly the fabric of the East Arlington neighborhood that exists throughout throughout East Arlington with driveways on the sides garages in the back I know perhaps from a development perspective that isn't creating two fee simple properties that road houses produce and when you're doing a single driveway with a garage in the back perhaps there isn't quite the same profit but I could assure you that any of the condominiums in the older homes that in fact aren't fee simple properties they're not the side to side road houses they are selling like hotcakes throughout East Arlington there's huge profits to be made and I think that with a little more study that takes into account perhaps some of these slope issues perhaps some other incentives that I think the ARB in conjunction with town meeting the planning department zoning board appeals etc we can develop some measures that we at town meeting can look at perhaps next year I think are a little more thought out and again I want to express my appreciation for some of these substitute motions that have come up but I think that there's more to be done to create a longer term solution to the issue of the pit houses and I'd like to see that perhaps done next year so I personally will be voting no on the substitute amendment but I have all the sympathies in the world for what it's trying to do both from a pedestrian safety point of view and from an urban design point of view thank you thank you very much sir Mr. Blu I have a couple of questions that have been touched on but not exactly answered so if this passes I take it that this would become any house with such a driveway would become a non conforming driveway at that time Mr. Heim Mr. Heim can you answer that I'm sorry I don't know a lot about these types of laws Doug Heim town council those prior non conformance can be a little bit of a complicated issue in and of itself but as a general matter I'd assume that most of the driveways that are not in compliance with the current bylaw with a change would be a non conforming status if there was some later construction that happened with respect to that same issue my question really came down to if somebody wants to repave their driveway or otherwise in a sort of logical way do the sidewall of it I'm not talking about rebuilding the whole house or the whole driveway but do the sort of maintenance people need to do every decade or two would that go to a zoning board or what would be the implications for the people that actually own these properties already I think I'd have to defer to the building inspector on that Mr. Byrne Good evening thank you actually today we're trying to figure out how it would all work I think with repaving it would be the same grade would be there and that would be fine I think it gets a little trickier if you're going to expand the driveway I think if you're going to a lot of them are 10 feet now and you're going to be 20 feet you want to get 20 feet the maximum that new pot would I think would have to be that maximum 50% grade or if you're going to extend it longer that would have to I do believe just like any other zoning and then my last question I'm not sure to who but I don't understand how something would be retroactively allowed or not allowed and I understood if it's not compliant it sounded like it would be allowed because it's I don't understand the statement was made that this would not be a retroactive action but it's not actually written anywhere in the article Mr. Heim I'm sorry that I'm moving around podiums here Doug Heim Town Council I think what I think the proponents and everyone else would agree that I think that the proponents and everyone else would agree that if you're changing the zoning bylaw if something's not in conformance with that new zoning bylaw with the new change but it was a pre-existing condition like that it's not going to penalize somebody or tell them that they have to go and then change their driveway to make it comply with the new zoning bylaw its greatest effect might be on some folks who currently have a permit to do that kind of work but it might retroactively affect those folks if they haven't already completed their work but for everybody else it's essentially a grandfathered situation thank you I'm still figuring this one out but I want to understand what the ramifications are if you already own one of these driveways or have people in your neighborhood that own them, thank you thank you sir Ms. LaCorte Annie LaCorte precinct 15 I have three questions so my first question is the proponent of the article alluded to the idea that the original request for this article, for the redevelopment board to consider, this topic came from the engineering department if that's true and Mike Rudemacher is here, any chance we could get a comment on that from TPW or from the ARB? let's find out if that is actually the case one of the planning Mr. Bernal where did the original idea for this come from? Andrew Bernal chair of the redevelopment board, the original idea for this article came from the master plan implementation committee not from the town engineering department but somewhere in here was the engineering department asked for an opinion, did they have an opinion I mean you referenced the engineering department so I'm just trying to get to the bottom of that they were asked for an opinion, yes and I'm not sure what that opinion was, I'll defer to Jenny actually defer to either Jenny or Laura to answer that question looks like Ms. Wiener is going to answer that fourth Laura Wiener assistant director of planning we asked the town engineer and he said that he thought 15% was a reasonable number so it was about just finding out whether this was a reasonable restriction so I guess my second question and perhaps the building inspector can speak to this is how many of these driveways have been built in say the last three years Mr. Byrne do you have any idea he has no idea or the planning department okay so we don't have any data about no not on hand I don't know okay how many new houses but not all of them had driveways that went under I don't know so we don't have a way of knowing if a new house is built that isn't required to pull a special permit whether or not they're building a downslope driveway to a garage under currently no but we'd have to come up with a process okay all right I'm sorry I'm leaning right into the mic no you can hear me fine can you repeat your answer Mr. Byrne right into the microphone I don't know how many houses that were built in the last three years have these types of driveways who was the rest of that no I just was wondering if we had any idea if we had an accelerating problem with some urgency yeah you're waiting a year would be a problem I don't know again it's all numbers all right that's okay my third question maybe out of scope moderator but I would like to ask Mr. Binnell to speak to since the subject of the idea that we need to look at the zoning bylaw as a whole with regards to residential properties was raised in the answer to one of the previous speakers questions I'm wondering whether or not the ARB has thought about how they're going to run that process and is able to commit to a time frame for doing that like are we going to be able to see what they think are solid modifications to that bylaw by next town meeting wait for the scope determination a real quick answer Andrew Binnell chair of the redevelopment board at the time we don't have a timetable I can assure you that the plan is as soon as time town meeting has finished and completed and the board is back to its regular business that we intend to put forth a work schedule to put some sort of timetable in place I can tell you it is my goal to have something reasonable before town meeting next year and if I may be so bold to ask one more question let's keep it within scope of this one if you want to find out what the work schedule is you're going to have to go to their meeting as soon as town meeting ends I'll be available at the break to answer any questions no it's information I want to get to the meeting but if it's not in scope it's not in scope it's just an extension of the same discussion John ask it I'll see if it's in scope so the question that I'm asking is it would seem to me that this needs to be a public process that involves all the stakeholders and it's going to be pretty intensive like not just your regular meetings but something extraordinary in order to come to a set of bylaws that are clear to all of us and clear to our constituents so can you I think all of the meetings have an agenda issued and they are all public meetings and I urge them to let everybody in town know by whatever means you have possible it really is out of scope of this article so they will I assume tell us all when it's going to happen all our meetings are publicized all our agendas are made public at least 48 hours ahead of the meeting ok we'll talk at the break you guys talk at the break let's take our 5, 10, 7 minute break it's 9.35 come back at 9.40 thank you Mr. moderator John Worden precinct 8 and I shall only take a minute or a minute and 30 seconds I just wanted to point out to the the fellow town meeting members that the master master plan implement the master plan implementation committee had this in their report that has been distributed to us that has not been changed, revoked, revised or anything as far as I can tell and it says and I quote after talking about the mixed youth stuff it says and I put some controls on the size of new housing development in residential neighborhoods to protect the existing character of neighborhoods throughout the town MPIC endorsed those warrant articles 6 through 10 so these are the people that have been appointed by directed by vote of this body to be the sort of guardians of the master plan I think you should pass this and I just want to say one other thing if you pass this and something doesn't work out you can always change it but if you don't pass it and some little kid is run down could be your child your grandchild your godchild any little kid is run down and killed or something that is going to be on your conscience and you want to bear that burden Mr. Belkis well Mr. Belkis wasn't on the list but he's not here so Mr. Berkowitz thanks Mr. moderator Bill Berkowitz precinct aid the key question in this article to me is one of applicability and whether it applies to new construction or existing driveways as well the way I heard Mr. Heim answer Mr. Veroglu's question in the last five years driveways would be exempted they'd be grandfathered if that's correct if that's the case and this applies only to new construction then that seems to be eminently right and reasonable and a good reason to vote for the article which I intend to do and to encourage others here to do so thank you Mr. Slickman Paul Slickman precinct aid motion to terminate debate on all items under this article we have motion to terminate this article everything under it all in favor of terminating debate we're going to use our clickters one to terminate debate two to not terminate debate and vote one to terminate debate two not debate is terminated 160 in the positive 37 in the negative we have a force to substitute motion of Ms. Pile please vote one if you do not want Ms. Pile's motion vote two as soon as we're ready the Lath would really figure this out so one if you want the substitute motion two if you do not one yes two no negative vote 126 negative 74 in the positive we have now a force I recommend to vote of the ARB of no action all in favor of no action please say yes opposed it's a vote of no action that ends article 10 and brings us to article 11 we have a force a recommended vote of the ARB of no action Mr. Oster thank you Mr. moderator Adam Oster precinct 3 and I'm going to actually say more about my neighborhood a little later but I'm offering this substitute motion two things really before I get started there's a slight change that I wanted to make when I make the motion although if you if the moderator prefers I'll make it as an amendment to my motion we can vote on both of them the change is at the request of the town manager in the very last paragraph of the article 11 substitute motion that everyone got on your chairs it says report on these issues at the next regular or special town meeting and I'd like to delete the words the next regular or special so that it says these issues at town meeting I regret having to do this from my point of view I wish we had this kind of legislation to vote on right now tonight but the town manager says that can't necessarily do it by the fall when there very well might be a special town meeting so I feel obliged to take it out is that all right mr. moderator you can delete those words so that that last sentence will read these issues at town meeting so we're going to get rid of those words correct thank you mr. moderator yes that's exactly what I was proposing I also want to explain and maybe apologize a little bit for the unusual form of this article which creates another committee I don't really want to do that we're blessed with many committees with jurisdiction over this some of which even meet regularly and I don't want to layer on another one but I was advised that this is the correct way to keep it in scope with this article is to make it a motion to commit so just to be clear I'm not trying to set up another committee I just want us to if we agree give some direction to this process that's unfolding that's going to happen over the next year I live very far east Arlington in what's called the Hendersonville neighborhood it's the north side of Mass Ave and back of the CVS you right by the ale wife and it's it's kind of a historically anyway a humble part of town it's not a fancy kind of place it used to be the poor part of town used to be a lot of malaria there there used to be well I won't go into it too much I don't want to run down my neighborhood either which is a great place but my point is it's not full of stately homes and I don't want to go into the houses there which predate zoning are nonconforming mine certainly is it's really really close to the property line and it's interesting because these are very basic houses you know pitched roof like a kid withdraw a little kid withdraw front door and in fact I think the whole back half of the neighborhood from teal street to the cemetery and I bet a hundred years ago it looked like the version of Levittown the little boxes all in a row but what's interesting is that what's happened in the in that century is that people have changed their houses in little ways and now they're all different I mean they're all the same but they're all different they have some that have dormers some of them have big ports some of them have different windows and architecturally they sort of work with each other really well and it creates a very harmonious neighborhood the buildings relate to the street in the same way they relate to each other in the same way and I think even if you had different style of building as long as it played by those rules it would be fine we've had five tear downs in the past ten years three of them in the last year really at least that's when they went on the market I couldn't tell you exactly when the permits were pulled or anything like that and some of these are not successful not because I don't like them as houses not because they're bad but because they don't sit in with the neighborhood it's sometimes it's size it's not always size it might be orientation to the street there's one that doesn't have a front door on the street which might be fine someplace else but it doesn't work in our neighborhood I'm I'm not anti-tear down I've I've testified in favor of at least one of these before the ARB some of these are successful I know the builders can do this right they're just not getting the right incentives to do it none of these are McMansions whatever that is they're not big you know mansion type houses there a lot of some of them are duplexes some of them are single family none of them are evil any might fit into some neighborhoods they just don't fit into mine the trend is we'll do real damage I'm afraid if we don't act I was told at our precinct meeting that there are a bunch of these new houses in the pipeline zoning is a pretty technical thing it's certainly beyond my competence I feel like I can describe a problem pretty well so my motion would turn this problem over to the professionals and get all of these committees sort of pulling in the same direction and give them a general mandate to get something before us next year I know from attending the hearing the ARB hearing on these warrant articles and also a workshop that they held about zoning in general that there are tools that are available to Arlington that other communities use to deal with these problems these include for example the use of overlay districts to specify requirements not by use as we do now but by location so we don't have to say gee every house in Arlington has to do this or every single family has to do this we could say in this neighborhood these rules apply now is that a good idea it kind of sounds like it but I don't know that's why I don't have a proposal to do it two minutes gotcha but just your proposal to consider it and to get back to us about it so here's my pitch I guess if you believe that the town has zero business telling you what to do on your property if that's your position you want to vote this down but if you believe in an ethos of stewardship if you think it's fair to say to people leave the neighborhood as good as you found it then I think I hope that you'll join me in voting for this and for stalling what I see potentially as a serious threat to at least some parts of town and the quality of life there thank you Mr. Moderator did we get a second on his proposal? okay thank you seconded Mr. Bernal thank you Mr. Moderator Andrew Bernal chair of the Arlington Redevelopment Board I can speak for myself and I want to thank Mr. Oster for his substitute motion I think this accomplishes some of what you've heard me talk about over the last several nights as far as a need to involve all the stakeholders in town make sure that whatever zoning is being done is being done right and fits the master plan fits the town goals and fits Arlington as a whole thank you thank you sir Mrs. Warden thank you Mr. Moderator fellow town meeting members Arlington is a very crowded and land poor town presenting problems and confrontations among builders and realtors versus advocates of open space and quality of life issue for neighbourhoods hopefully a committed as was maybe suggested under this article will help solve some of those problems there is also competition between officials who want to raise revenues for the town by building more and more housing as those who look longer term realising that the cost of new school buildings if any land can even be found for them could cripple the town in the long run many of us would like to leave technical matters to the experts this proposed article 11 committee or whatever group is suggested which I strongly support if properly appointed, balanced and monitored might be composed largely of experts but these experts would also include members who are known to have the good of residents at heart in addition to familiarity of course with the zoning by a lot of the selection of members will be key to the success of whatever action occurs from this article we in Arlington are coming late to the teardown control efforts in other nearby towns such as Winchester, Belmont, Lexington and Wellesley planning departments seeing the damage done by teardowns to neighbourhoods have themselves taken care to initiate and implement zoning protections and already have these in place since our redevelopment port has not put any protection whatsoever in place this article 11 actions if you vote favourably tonight will hopefully do so that is why it is so important it would function almost as a planning department for the teardown issue when a clinical study is conducted of a drug's efficacy or something like that the results of the study may become compelling much before the scheduled end date of the study for instance if there are a large number of deaths from the drug use in that case in order to benefit or protect patients these results might be taken immediately into account in clinical practice without waiting for the appointed study end date with Arlington's more than two years of master plan study it became abundantly clear very early on from hundreds of residents that serious damage is being done to our neighbourhoods by teardown rebuilds but nothing was done there was no interest from the redevelopment board during the entire two years of the study even after we voted approval of the master plan a year ago here at Tom meeting there was still nothing done by the redevelopment board eventually six months after the master plan approval some of us became afraid that if no zoning changes to protect our neighbourhoods were prepared for this annual Tom meeting then another whole year it would go by and it would be 2017 before we could get any relief and so our goal was to work with the redevelopment board to solve this teardown rebuild problem and at their suggestion we conferred multiple times with their staff to design appropriate zoning articles however the redevelopment board never really discussed the articles with us a few moments that most were allowed us on their agenda nor did they let us know what their intentions were it was a very disappointing experience we had no idea we would have to work without them they simply ran out the clock on us and so we were forced to file our articles and go alone in order to meet the deadline for filing warrant articles now of course with the loss of our major article 15 there cannot be any slowdown in the teardown rebuild until 2017 at the earliest by which time the builder broker teardown cartels will have ruined more neighbourhoods there are many millions of dollars involved here for these mansion operators and they unlock the wealth in Arlington houses for themselves and to leave us with scarred and mutilated neighbourhoods where average people can no longer afford to buy a home while the teardown cartel operators take the wealth to some place whatever like maybe like Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago or who knows according to the bylaws of the town the responsibilities of the Arlington Redevelopment Board in implementing zoning include and I quote to provide adequate light and air to prevent overcrowding of land to avoid undue concentration of population to encourage housing to protect and preserve open space and that redevelopment of land should be made with reasonable consideration of the character of the district etc etc nowhere nowhere can we find that it is the duty of town officials to maximise opportunity, feasibility and profits for teardown developers and yet that is what the redevelopment board has been doing by willingness to provide only baby steps to protect residents from harmful construction and after intensive false propaganda from developer realtor teardown operators the redevelopment board even decided to withdraw their own baby steps and to cancel the residential zoning articles designed by their own staff endorsed by the master plan implementation committee they did that just an hour before time meeting started the redevelopment board simply rejected as confusing as confusing all that residential zoning that they had recently praised to the heavens being a wonderful job worked on for many months by their staff and the master plan implementation committee and so the town has been left without any protection remaining a cash car for teardown operators and brokers this proposed committee can change that the aren't a redevelopment board members should not be faulted for their attitudes they are what they are and they just happen to be very much pro developer they are doing the first rate jobs serving those whom they consider to be their most important constituency the real estate development community however the advisers to the redevelopment board appointing authority have failed to achieve a balanced board as a former member of the human rights commission in fact I was a charter member of that commission I think it's important to recognize the rights of all Arlington residents to a reasonably stable quality of life and environment those rights should not be subjugated to the rights of developers the proposed article 11 committee if dominated by the current redevelopment board members and representatives of the development realtor community will end up in 2017 as we have this year with no protection we must have a well balanced committee to bring us real protective reform not just window dressing please vote yes for this committee thank you Mr. Belkis John Belkis precinct 18 I'm a little intrigued with this amendment I haven't quite made up my mind I'm going through my head though is I want to see if there are any more real estate people that want to speak to this argument because every article we've had about these is involved the real estate people in town which I find kind of interesting a lot of the work that was done on these articles and I was part of the group that worked on them were based on contacts with other towns and some of these were mirror image we met numerous times with the three development board we thought there were some good things going here because there was a lot of concern I had a personal concern because one of these things was built right next door to me and believe me everyone should have the experience of having a tear down and a new house replace the property next to it is frightening when power trucks show up at 7 o'clock in the morning diesel engines it's just out of control it's kind of fascinating that the real estate develop within the scope of the article I think we're let's keep all our discussions on everybody out on the scope of this article whether we like Mr. Oster's amendment or not on to the issue of tear downs I didn't have a chance to interject that during mrs. Warden's speech but let's keep it the scope of the article I support I probably support this though I don't have much hope for it because it's something that I've seen before where committees are organized we got some people that supposedly very experienced in zoning that put these articles forth and it's kind of frightening that all of a sudden they took them away and at the same time we were getting flyers in the mail I got flyers from the greater Boston real estate board these things were done in other towns and I didn't see the greater Boston real estate board sending out correspondence to all the town meeting members and the neighborhoods it just strikes me as strange scope back into do you like Mr. his article do you want to committee or not what's bad about the committee what's good about it not the greater Boston real estate board okay I guess I just want to make the point we seem to have some strange it's a resolution voices speaking against these I'm speaking for them it's something to be considered and I will vote for this amendment thank you sir yeah we're just talking about a resolution to set up a committee Mr. Jamison your Mr. McCabe Mr. Jamison Mr. McCabe you're soon thank you Mr. moderator Gordon Jamison Mr. McCabe okay so some history I understand it about three years ago you started a master planning process many of those of you in the room who've been in town and many people who are at home took part in that process and last year on the last day of town meeting as the last thing we voted on I believe we adopted the master plan now sort of under the radar is the master plan implementation committee report to town meeting and I really Mr. Oster is one of my favorite members of town meeting he really is he's often brings up extremely insightful comments that turn me on articles unfortunately Adam I'm against you on this one so and the reason I'm against is because look at this report which speaks directly to the type of committee that's implementing the master plan that is set to address these issues as expressed and is referenced by many of the proponents of the articles that have been before is over the last god knows how many hours this committee had to be convened after town meeting that took until October they have been very thoughtful I know one of the members personally Mr. Howard who is on one of two of the other committees I serve on and he's also a finance committee member they've set out a really aggressive I think comprehensive approach towards implementing over the next 10 to 15 years the master plan which includes so many articles if you go to page 2 there's a large paragraph if you have this in front of you it basically says during the coming year the committee in conjunction with the ARB is going to oversee the rewriting of the new zoning bylaw known as recodification and as I spoke earlier and others have spoken earlier last time this was done was 1975 so hence I believe that the master plan implementation committee is the committee that is tasked already by the town to do this and with all due respect again to Mr. I don't think we need another committee we have one that having been said all those who are very interested in these these activities should become part of the working groups if that's possible and attend as many meetings as possible I hope that we have a large series next year of monthly meetings for people to come and learn about zoning and what we can do to come up with this comprehensive recodification that we will be able to work hopefully vote through next year at town meeting so thank you very much Ms. moderator thank you gentlemen back there in the white shirt you have your hand up yes you did Len Carden precinct 20 as we look at this motion I'm all four committees and everybody coming together to look at issues but what bothers me is the assumption that there is a problem and you know zoning bylaw amendments require two-thirds of this body support and while I agree that some of these houses that have gone up the duplexes in East Arlington and the one next to the previous speaker are out of character with the neighborhoods I'm not certain that we have consensus in town that it really is a serious problem that requires action and that will get a two-thirds majority in this body so we spent two full nights debating these articles and it's been good time we've had good discussions but in voting on this don't just don't just look at it as sending something to a committee if you do think there's an issue with these homes then vote yes if you're not sure or you want to defer to the ARB into the master planning committee then vote no sending a message like we've had so many people cite the master plan but we also had everybody tell us last year the master plan was non-binding so just think about this carefully before you vote whether or not there is this issue thank you it's woman over here on the right yep do you have your hand up miss with yeah you just moved through you yeah did you have your hand up ah sir ah wrong she said it was a guy and I thought by your hair I feel embarrassed now sorry that wasn't civil I have glasses I can't see that far I'm going to get a perspective evening Andrew Banks in precinct 7 alright how's this good so I support the substitute motion and that will give the ARB the planning department and the town manager more time to develop more comprehensive zoning reform and I think they could use a little help you can pass a couple of nights we've maybe been short on visuals no one knows whether it's 30 feet or 25 feet or 25 and made up of 10 and 15 so I think that something that is more comprehensive visually would be helpful so I have a couple questions Mr. moderator and so I'm wondering would it be useful to have a summer intern test the code on several sites around town and then once they're tested create visualizations of the allowable building massing and maybe they could also document buildings take measurements photos of typical older houses and then also the newer build outs or the pit houses so that would be the first question would it be would anyone find that useful oh you want me to pull the crowd oh I don't know how about Mr. Benel would you find that useful in your studies Andrew Benel chair of the Arlington Development Board I would find that useful okay now we just got to find the money but that's my second question so then oh you already asked the question then so but relatively short money they could do these tests without pulling resources away from the A or B or the planning department can these funds somewhere be found can they be made available Jenny do you have that in your budget Miss Rates says no maybe Mr. Chapter Link can find an intern somewhere for us an architectural school guy for free Adam Chapter Link town manager before I could before I could commit to saying yes we have the funding I think we'd have to scope out exactly what we're doing there are some planning funds available but you know a large scale visualization probably no but I think we could get creative and see what we can do yeah I'm thinking something along the lines of a summer intern you know two months anyway it wouldn't be a big a number well maybe it would Adam Chapter Link town manager I'm not sure that a summer intern would necessarily have the skills we're looking for to put together a sort of the comprehensive really you know easy to utilize visualizations but if you have any suggestions of an intern to be happy to hear it alright cool I'll talk to you later thank you Mr. Revolac Steve Revolac 111 Sunnyside Avenue Precinct 1 I echo some of Adam's sentiments I live on Sunnyside Avenue which is I guess you could call it Far East Arlington there were any further east we'd be in the Alewife which we sometimes are from time to time the character of my neighborhood is really small row houses there were 80 of them built in 1948 and since like Adam's neighborhood they started off the same and then they changed in their own quirky ways you could tell it was all the same house but now they're a little different now obviously my neighborhood is different than the houses you'd say between Broadway and Mass Ave and it's completely different than what you would see on Jason Street or the article yes so I do have two questions regarding you know the proposed committee one is how would it overlap with the current master plan implementation committee sort of going back to Gordon's point and the second the master plan mentions something called an architectural protection district an APD where I guess the idea was to it seemed like the idea was to you know have different architectural design guidelines for different areas of town to I guess preserve local neighborhood character what I'm just wondering is would there be overlaps between either of those two bodies and the body being proposed here thank you Mr. chapter lane can you address those try a new podium Adam chapter lane town manager I've had some discussions with the planning director miss rate on this issue frankly I think I would utilize the existing master plan implementation committee either either as the committee or as an overseer of a separate larger committee to broaden the stakeholders to look at this issue okay thank you Mr. Wagner thank you Mr. moderator Carl Wagner precinct 11 I used to live in Henderson street I think Adams substitute motion makes a lot of good sense I'd draw your attention to two towns two cities a tale of two cities even Lexington Arlington sometimes we think Lexington is so much more whatever it's west of us and those houses in those streets on that scope are actually facing the same problem Henderson and other streets we know have houses put in sideways effectively they have people living in them great people I'm sure but the the situation I've seen is happening in many communities if you voted against the measures that were put through earlier in the session this year that would have tried to bring some rationality to the process of keeping the town feeling like our town then I'd suggest you should consider voting yes on this if this committee is in fact duplicating what the existing master plan committee is going to do or a group will do then we can dissolve it but as people have said we need to think more seriously about what we're going to do before we take individual actions and if you voted against the individual actions this time let's use this committee as a chance to make that bigger decision together thank you thank you yep no behind you your hand just went up you're Debbie Edelstein precinct nine I had two I had a comment and a question the comment was as much as I support the the sentiment in this particular substitute motion I've been troubled all week about motions that have things in them that are become omnibus motions and have things in them that I can't support even though I might support the principle in this case there's a lot of editorializing that's part of the motion instead of part of a background and I'm not I personally don't necessarily find it appropriate to to vote for a resolution without amount of editorializing even if I agree with it I'm in the second thing is I just want to agree with some of the people who came ahead of me I thought we had a master plan implementation committee for this and so it seems like the appropriate place for it although I support the sentiment of it thank you very much thank you Mr. McCabe you're next Mark McCabe precinct two I stand to terminate debate on article 11 and all matters before we have a motion to terminate debate on article 11 and all matters before it has been seconded all in favor of terminating debate press one when the light goes on if you do not want to terminate debate press two and click once terminate debate two to continue talking debate is terminated 174 in the positive 22 in the negative we have now before Mr. Oster substitute motion excuse me it's a resolution setting up a committee as far as I can figure so I have before Mr. Oster substitute motion if you want Mr. Oster substitute motion please vote yes if you do not want it vote two for no it is a positive vote 107 in the positive affirmative 95 in the negative we now have a force to recommend vote of the ARB as substituted by Mr. Oster's vote all in favor please vote one for yes two for no we have to take two votes we have to be voted now we're voting as amended so now we have to vote take two votes so yeah no this is just setting up a committee and a resolution so all in favor please vote one for yes two for no okay 118 in the affirmative 85 in the negative we made another committee good luck Mr. Chaplain that ends the debate on number 11 and that brings us now to number 30 we have before us a recommended vote of the no of the Board of Selection of no action some of your make sure your recommended vote actually says that no action be taken under article 30 there may be some typos in some of your reports we're not sure how that happened if it says 25 make it say 30 all in favor recommended vote of no action of the Board of Selection under number 30 please say yes all opposed say no that is a positive vote of no action that terminates article 30 and brings us to article 31 acceptance of local option taxes Mr. Tosti are you going to report on article 31 this is one of those articles where we thought the select one were going to do it they thought we were going to do it so there's no report in your packets but there's been no new revenues or new regulations allowing us to raise any additional money fees anything like that therefore the finance committee recommends no action we have a force to recommend the vote of the finance committee on article 31 of no action all in favor please say yes all opposed is unanimous vote of no action I so declare that terminates the article 31 brings us to article 32 endorsement of CBGB applications Mr. Dunn thank you Mr. moderator Dan Dunn vice chair of the Board of Selection this year and I serve on the committee with selectman Stephen Byrne for those of you who do not know the CDBG is the community development block fund grant which comes directly from the federal government to us it is then allocated by a vote of six people which is the Board of Selection plus the town manager it actually is an unusual pot of money because it is not subject to town meeting official approval but we come here to give you a brief feedback and seeking your blessing for the choices that we have made we do public hearing where we receive requests from the various applicants and then we do at least two sub committee meetings where we review the various proposals and we weigh them against each other and try to make some hard choices the reason the choices are hard is because the requests for the money that is available in the CDBG grant it's worth noting that the grant gets smaller every year and so while the needs do not seem to get smaller but the amount of money available does the money is distributed in according to some of the need categories that you see written into the report and we operate within restrictions about how much can be put forward to any specific category so in particular the public services category is the one that is the most hotly requested and in high demand and we give the most we can to that to the dollar but and then some of the other ones we balance out against it. One more consideration is just that last year what we did we went through some of the past allocations from many previous years and we repurposed them significantly larger than we were able to put forward this year because that repurposing that we did last year was essentially a one-time fund so with all that said I ask for your support for the allocations of the CDBG. You have a question, ma'am? Linda Hansen, precinct 7 just for your consideration going forward I would be interested in seeing a little more historical perspective maybe a couple years just to see how things have shifted and gotten better over time so just that suggestion, thank you. Anyone else wish to discuss CDBG money? Mr. Klein? Christian Klein, precinct 10 just a very quick question. Under administration number two, grant administrator salary and benefits the request was for 65,000 but the grant was for 84 and I just wanted to know why that was increased beyond what was requested. Mr. Dunn? Oh, Ms. Raeke? Jennifer Raeke, Planning and Administration Director in at the time that the applications were being put forward including by my staff for general planning and administration we were thinking that that particular position would be funded in part by CDBG and possibly in part by the Community Preservation Act during the course of time that we were reviewing the applications and putting the budget together we learned that that was not going to be possible so that's why the allocation is higher Thank you very much. Thank you. Any other questions? Seeing none. All in favor of the recommended vote of the board to select and please say yes. Yes. All opposed? It is a positive vote and I so declare it. That terminates article 32 and brings us to article 33. Mr. Chapter Lane, Revolving Funds Adam Chapter Lane, Town Manager You'll see in the board's report the report on revolving funds. These are the annual report where town meeting authorizes the expenditure limits for all of these revolving funds. Revolving funds are basically program funds where we collect fees for a certain program and then are able to pay expenditures related to the implementation of those programs. So you have in the Selectman's report the beginning balance receipts expenditures and then the ending balance at the end of last fiscal year and then we have a meeting member email list and placed on your chairs a more detailed report about the actual expenditures in each fund last year. Be happy to answer any questions you might have. Thank you. Any questions on revolving funds? Seeing none. All in favor of the recommended vote of the board to select and please say yes. Yes. All opposed? It is unanimous vote and I so declare it. That terminates article 33 and brings us to article 34. Appropriations, town's budgets. Anyone want to talk about town budgets? Do you want to present first? You want me to go through them first. Thank you. Anybody have questions about position reclassifications? Seeing none. All in favor of the recommended vote of the board to select with the position reclassification please say yes. Yes. All opposed? It is unanimous vote and I so declare it. That terminates article 34 and brings us to article 35. Anyone want to present first? You want me to go through them first, Mr. Tosti? Mr. Tosti is floating the idea of whether we should bypass the budgets now so we can spend a good part of a full day on them and just work on other warrant articles. Mr. Chaplain, did you have an opinion? Yep. Adam Chaplain, town manager, certainly willing to listen to the will of the body but department heads here specifically expecting the budgets would come up tonight and I think it would be a shame to lose that opportunity to at least begin the discussion. Do you want to make a motion or not? No? I guess he's not going to make a motion to postpone. So what we do on the budgets, I'm going to read through the budgets. If anyone wants to discuss one of the particular budgets you'll hold and discuss the ones where someone has yelled hold. Finance committee, board of select men, hold on the board of select men. Finance? Mr. Jameson, hold on the board of select men, town manager, human resources, information technology, comptroller, treasurer collector, postage, board of assessors, legal, town clerk, board of registrars, parking, planning and community development, redevelopment board, zoning, board of appeals, hold. Public works, facilities, community safety, inspections, education, libraries, health and human services, retirement, insurance, hold. Reserve funds, water and sewer, water and sewer, recreation, these are small budgets. Ed Burns arena, hold. Council on aging, transportation and youth services. Okay. Now I'll go back to discuss the couple we know we're going to talk about, finance committee. Thank you, Mr. moderator, Gordon Jameson, precinct 12, my pen. First I want to thank the finance committee for their work. I think we should all give them a round of applause. Given that our budget is in the $140 million range, I would ask in future years that the finance committee consider that perhaps it's time for the town to foot half the bill for town day and half the bill for the patriots parade and gives more consideration to the art project, which was given a motion of no action. But beyond that I thank them very much. Thank you very much. Any else we should discuss finance committee. Mr. Wagner. Thank you, Mr. moderator, Carl Wagner, precinct 11. I don't know if this is in scope. I hope it is because I just heard the parade mentioned. I donated money to the parade and was told it is not a taxable, tax savings possibility for me and I think that if we do want the citizens of the town to support the parade, I hope we will have a charity set up for that. Thank you. Thank you very much. Anyone else in the Fincom? Mr. Gilligan. Thank you, Mr. moderator, Stephen Gilligan, town treasurer. I want to correct the previous speaker. Contributions to town day are tax deductible under new IRS guidelines. How about the parade? It's a public service that's not a typical municipal service to residents. It is also tax deductible. Cool. Okay. Anyone else in the Fincom? Seeing none, we're going to jump to town manager. Who want to discuss town manager? Mr. Leonard. Thank you, Mr. moderator, John Leonard, precinct 17. Mr. moderator, it is my understanding that deputy town manager, Andrew Flanagan, left last year for a new post and was officially gone from the town in October 1st. It is also my understanding then that from October 1st to January of this year, we did not have a deputy town manager. Due to the calculations I roughly put down here, we budgeted last year for the deputy town manager for the fiscal year $116,000. Could somebody please tell me that for the three months that we did not have a deputy town manager averaging out to be $9,680 a month for the tune of $29,000. Where did that $29,000 go? Where we did not have a deputy town manager to give it to. Mr. Chapter Lane. Adam Chapter Lane town manager, any unexpended funds in any appropriation at the end of the year would roll into free cash. My next question, Mr. moderator, is could somebody tell me the difference between a deputy town manager and an assistant town manager? Adam Chapter Lane town manager, as you can see in the finance committee report, the assistant town manager is a proposed new position this year. The differences I would lay out are here in Arlington, the deputy town manager, though having comprehensive duties, is a de facto finance director with a lack of a consolidated finance department. So there are very many financial responsibilities that fall to the deputy town manager. What we are looking at for this assistant town manager is more of an operational community affairs based role. Looking at serving as a liaison between various departments and citizens, working on implementing capital projects, actually especially CPA projects that don't have a department overseeing them. Serving as a public records officer, we anticipate the passage of a new public records law that we are looking at a new position doing as well as doing other various project management responsibilities. One more succinctly, the deputy town manager would have comprehensive yet very specific financial roles and the assistant town manager would have more directly operational roles. Mr. moderator, if I read this right, meaning no disrespect whatsoever to Mr. Pooler who has joined the committee as of January of this year. After four months on the job we are going to give him a raise of $6,000. Is that the way I understand this report? I see a raise in the position of $6,237. I don't know what his deal was when he was hired if he is getting a raise at this point or not. Mr. Chapter Lane is going to tell us Mr. Chapter Lane town manager we certainly negotiated compensation with Mr. Pooler before hiring him. One thing that affects though that year over year look is in FY 16 the current fiscal year there was collective bargaining and cost of living increases appropriated in a separate warrant article. The total amount appropriated last year was $700,000. Those are not allocated into the FY 16 year but in FY 17 basically you get a $6,000 raise as I see it after four months on the job it's doing pretty good. My last question is basically I feel a little bit uncomfortable about the way the budget is being presented. My only point Mr. moderator and I do not want to offend anybody is that getting a $6,000 raise as I see it after four months on the job I feel a little bit uncomfortable with this because I've seen in other departments that there is mentioned of assistance to directors in other departments and I'm just worried that now we might be setting a precedent that all departments are going to positively entertain the idea of not only getting deputies but assistance in the future. Thank you. Thank you sir. Pass. Anyone else with to discuss the town manager? Mr. Wagner. Thank you Mr. moderator, Carl Wagner precinct 11. I wish to ask a question Mr. moderator about amounts that are in the detail of personnel services, town manager 2016 to 2017 and before I ask you to tell me if you can what that increase is about I want to say that I and some others have some concerns from an advocate article that talked about maybe a contract and then some large increase in the offer that was made to the town manager position I'm glad to see that that large increase is lower there but I guess I would just like to ask the town to explain to this body and the people watching what exactly happened over the raise for 2017 please. Ms. Mahan. Ms. Mahan chairman of the board of select men succinctly as possible and I'll elaborate if anyone wants to and many of you are probably aware of this the town manager informed the board of select men that he had received, entertained and was about to accept an offer in another community the board of select men under the previous chair called for a meeting to discuss this very important issue as well as what it is the combined board of select men wanted to do on that we were very unanimous that losing Mr. Chapter Lane at this point in time with all the important projects that the town is facing in terms of schools and buildings and the long range planning committee and looking at the operating budget and all his institutional knowledge that we really would just basically be left with in my opinion in dire straits so in an effort to look at the town manager and exactly what his job has really grown into and sometimes I said to him you're a victim of your own success because he really was doing the job of my personal opinion of two or three people and the board of select men sat down looked at what it is we expected of this town manager at this time and felt very strongly we couldn't afford to lose him so it was a three or four pot package one was the assistant town manager position which since I've been on the board every town manager previous to Mr. Chapter Lane had a deputy and assistant and if you think of when I first got on the board in 99 to what the duties of the town manager are now they have surpassed and expanded the other thing was financial compensation in terms of what we would offer the town manager we felt that myself personally I felt that what we presented to him and he accepted was definitely something that he was worthy of as well as he is in my opinion the top level in the town and then there were a few other areas that didn't necessarily involve financial so what it was is in order to retain the town manager to me and my colleagues this was never about money but that was like one fourth of the pie and so we looked at comparable communities because Arlington is a town but it's really at the top of the echelon of the town myself I looked at the superintendent of schools salary the board amongst ourselves had a discussion and then we authorized the chairman to go down and negotiate with certain parameters of course taking into double checking in the financial background that we had the ability to make the offer that we hoped and were successful to keep Mr. Chapter Lane. I don't mean any disrespect to any individuals that are involved I simply was shocked to see what seemed like a quick handout and I hope that there will be financial measures to restrict or at least control that in the future, thank you. Thank you sir. Mr. Dice did you want to speak? Yep. John Dice precinct 13 and a member of the finance committee as a member of the finance committee I and the other members of the finance committee have an awful lot to do with the town manager and in my opinion he is an absolutely superb manager of this town this town has run very very well he was almost a whirling dervish last year I thought I didn't understand how he even managed to do what he did so I think this is well deserved but last year he was making less money than some of the people he managed so I think this is very well deserved along with a good plan now for allotting some of the responsibilities to the new people that have been brought on board so thank you very much and I hope you will certainly support this this budget. I have some questions just because I applaud the town manager doing a great job I think he's a valuable asset to the town I think we're getting more clear picture thankfully due to him but I wanted to know the expenses have stayed the same if you look at the expenses of the others like the finance finance committee I was wondering why are these numbers same from 2014 to 2017 what is it about? Mr. Tosti they didn't ask for anymore I'm sorry they didn't ask for anymore and the expenditures were in the proper range so we left it alone I understand but I was wondering did they spend less than that amount possibly or is that a variation not present in the town manager's office with expenses? when we vote the budgets we vote a bottom line if you'll give me a minute so you know sometimes the expenses were higher sometimes they might have been lower 14 and 15 they were higher often from having to hire consultants to deal with specific issues on that but if they're not going to ask for more money we're sort of hesitant to give them unless it's something where they're deliberately low balling gas or heat like electricity stuff like that they requested it was reasonable that's what we recommended to you okay number two question would be what is steps it's base salary plus steps what does that mean under details of personnel services everybody in the in the town they usually come in at a base salary and then they have steps could be any place from five to seven steps over a period of time so they might start off at 70,000 and then the steps are usually in the four to five percent range and then they'll get to the max and then that's it after they get to the max all they get is a COLA all they get is what a COLA cost of living raise what is longevity I noticed that it went up about double from 2015 to 2016 and then it's going down in 2017 longevity is sort of a reward for lasting long enough if you're here for five years you get a certain longevity if you're here for 10 or for 15 or for 20 and that will vary depending upon who's coming and who's going and lastly other benefits it seems like they're increasing by about three times from 2016 to 2017 and they've gone up from 2014 about four times plus most of that are benefits for the manager the last one was a housing allowance that he was awarded by the Board of Selection if they wish they could talk to that a little bit more but that's what that is I'd like to hear a little bit about the housing benefit for the town manager from Selection please Mr. Don's going to speak to that elaborating on what Chairwoman Dan Dunn, Vice-Chair of the Board of Selection elaborating on what Chairwoman Mahan said earlier about the negotiation as a Board we evaluated Adam very highly and one of the things when you get that feedback from a variety of sources you get it from the department heads you get it from the people who are I understand Mr. Don I just want to know what that would entail part of the reason that we were risking losing him was because he was having a difficulty finding housing that he appropriate in Arlington and so part of the package to retain him was housing support which we very specifically did not set as a standard going forward for future town managers just for him good to know thank you Mr. Tosti I just wanted to talk about this for a minute if you go to a lot of other towns some of which are even smaller than us Lexington Concord in other places quite often like Mr. Chapoen said you have a finance director and you have an assistant town manager the finance director's overall responsibility in the finance area sometimes he's called the chief budget officer I think my title for Mr. Puer would be sort of chief budget officer that's the focus of this the assistant town manager is to carry out whatever tasks it could be so for example we have a CPA now CPA is going to need support and the manager's office provided support over the last six months even thought they really didn't have the personnel at the time to do it but they did it but I see the assistant town manager is providing some of that support if you go back in the town manager's budgets ways back we always had a deputy town manager and an assistant town manager Nancy Gokowski was the deputy town manager at one point there was Therese D. Benedict East was the assistant town manager they performed different things if you go to Lexington the assistant town manager for finance and then you'll have the assistant town manager for administration same out and conquered in a lot of these other places we believe that this administrative expertise and resources is absolutely crucial to running a town in these very complex times when we are hurting for money virtually all of the time let me just give you an example several years ago town manager Brian Sullivan at that point deputy town manager Adam Chappellane jumped on the GIC the governor Patrick signed the bill on like July 1 and they called a select meeting literally about three days later and they adopted the GIC they jumped on it we were one of the first ones in that one change has saved us millions of dollars a year in health insurance costs if you don't have the capability to do the analysis to see what happens and health insurance is very complex I mean most of it is done by the human resources director but they quite often need help in a lot of these areas so I think adding to the capabilities of our management to do the things that we need to do is critical and we hope you support Mr. Schlickman Paul Schlickman pre-sign motion to terminate debate under budget three under the town manager budget all in favor opposed motion is terminated under this budget it's 11 o'clock motion to adjourn any motions for reconsideration any notices of reconsideration on anything we did tonight seeing none we are adjourned until Monday