 are calling to order the meeting of the Arlington Select Board for Monday, February 22nd, 2021. There's a preliminary matter. This is John Hurd, the Select Board Chair. Permit me to confirm that all members and persons anticipated on the agenda are present and can hear me. Members, when I call your name, please respond in the affirmative. Diane Mahan? Yes. Steve DeCorsi? Yes. Len Diggins? Yes. And staff, when I call your name, please respond in the affirmative. Adam Chapterland? Yes. Douglas Heim? Yes. And Board Administrator Ashumar is participating remotely. Good evening. This meeting of the Arlington Select Board is being conducted remotely consistent with Governor Baker's executive order of March 12th, 2020, due to the current state of emergency in the Commonwealth, given the outbreak of the novel coronavirus in order to mitigate the transmission of the virus and reduce risk of COVID-19 illness. We have been advised and directed by the Commonwealth to suspend public gatherings. And as such, the Governor's order suspends the requirement of the open meeting law to have all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location. Further, all members of public bodies are allowed and encouraged to participate remotely. The order which you can find posted with the agenda materials for this meeting allows public bodies to participate entirely remotely so long as reasonable public access is afforded. So that the public can follow along with the deliberations of the meeting. Ensuring public access does not ensure public participation and less such participation is required by law. This meeting will feature public comment, even if members of the public do not provide comment. Participants are advised that people may be listening who do not provide comment and those persons are not required to identify themselves. For this meeting, the Select Board is convening by Zoom as posted on the town's website, identifying how the public may join. Please note that this meeting is being recorded and that some attendees are participating by video conference. Accordingly, please be aware that other folks may be able to see you and take care not to screen share your computer. Anything that you broadcast may be captured by the recording. Please also take care to adjust your screen or device name if you would like to speak. In order for us to recognize speakers appropriately and develop accurate minutes, it is helpful for our participants to see your full first and last name when calling upon you rather than a nickname. All of the materials for this meeting, except any executive session materials are available on the Novus Agenda Dashboard. We recommend the members and public follow the agenda as posted on Novus unless a chair notes otherwise. We are now turning to the first item on the agenda. Before we do so, permit me to cover some ground rules for effective and clear conduct of our business and to ensure accurate meeting minutes. We'll introduce each speaker on the agenda after they conclude their remarks. The chair will go down the line of members, inviting each by name to provide any comments, questions or motions. Please hold until your name is called further. Please remember to mute your phone or computer when you're not speaking. Please remember to speak clearly in a way that helps generate accurate minutes. For any response, please wait until the chair yields the floor to you and state your name before speaking. If members wish to engage in colloquy with other members, please do so through the chair taking care to identify yourself. This meeting will feature opportunities for public comment on certain items. After members have spoken, I as the chair will afford public comment opportunities as follows. I'll first ask members of the public who wish to speak to identify their names and addresses only. Once the chair has a list of all public commentators, I will call on each by name and afford three minutes for any comments. Please keep in mind that all participants and members of the public must be recognized by the chair before speaking. Finally, each vote taken will be a roll call vote. All right, and that takes us to the next item on our agenda. We have a vacancy on the board due to Joseph Carrows resignation. So we have an appointment for interim select board member term to expire April 10th, 2021. So for this, we'll just... Yes, Ms. Nahn. If I could move to open nominations as well as invite our town moderator, Mr. Leone, to join us as a panelist and voting member. Yes. And if there's a second. Second. Mr. Leone, can you hear us? All right. Good evening. All right, and as is customary, the roomate, the open seat is filled by a vote of the select board along with our moderator, Mr. Leone. So as we've done before and we've done this a few times in the past few years, we will, we have a motion to open nominations that's been seconded. We will take nominations from the board. We have letters of interest from three individuals. We have Mr. Dan Dunn. We have Mr. Gordon Jamison. And we have Ms. Sandra Mestaho. And if any individuals are received nominations, we will then promote them to panelists for any comments or questions from the board, at which point we'll take a vote on that individual's appointments. So if... Mr. Chair, I'm not sure. It's just housekeeping, does Attorney Heim have to take a roll call vote on my motion or can we just proceed into it? Nope, we're gonna vote on it. I just want any questions for Attorney Heim before we start this process. All right, so Attorney Heim, we have a motion to open nominations that has been seconded by Mr. D'Corsi. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mrs. Mohan. Yes, thank you. Mr. D'Corsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Hurd. Yes. Yes, it's about to open nominations. Thank you. All right, with that, I will open it open to the board for any nominations that they wish to make. Oh, I guess. Mr. Diggins. Yeah, so used to raising my hand with the hand button. So I would like to nominate Mr. Jamison and can I say a few words in the process nominating him? Sure. Or should I wait until later? So you can say a few words as to why you want to nominate Mr. Jamison. Okay, so sure, so I'm just very impressed with Mr. Jamison. I have attended, I attended a fiscal resources task group meeting and I was really impressed with his breadth of knowledge to me and I have seen him at Tom meeting over probably the last seven or eight years. And there are a lot of Tom meeting members that can get me to change my mind. And he is one of them and I just have tremendous respect for his thinking ability and his reasoning. So I am in adherence to open meeting laws. I wanted to say I wanted to bend over backwards me to here to open meeting laws on this one. And so I didn't contact anyone in and so that's why I decided to nominate him. So thanks for listening to me. So we have a nomination for Mr. Gordon Jamison. Do we have any seconds? Second. All right, we have a second. And do you have any additional nominations? Mr. Gorsi? Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm gonna nominate Mr. Dunn for the interim position and we, well, several of us have served with him. He has been elected as a member of the board on several occasions. It's a short-term appointment and he has indicated that he has no intention of running for office in the future. And as a former member given a short period of time, I think his experience will be very useful to the board. So for that reason, I'm nominating him. Do we have a second? A second. And we have a second for Mr. Dunn. All right, and do we have any additional nominations at this time? And I just asked, was that second from Mr. Dunn or Mr. Diggins? The second was from Mr. Diggins. Sorry, my computer's not focusing well. All right. And with that, we will take a motion to close nominations. So move. This is from Mr. Dunn. Seconded by Mr. Diggins. Attorney Hyne? Mrs. Mahan. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Hurd. Yes. Mr. Diggins, vote to close nominations. Mr. Leone, I apologize. I'm so sorry. Mr. Leone. I second to close nominations. I wasn't sure if I actually had a vote during this part of the process. And I apologize. Yeah. So yes, Mr. Leone is a part of the board's appointment vacancy process. I should have put in Mr. Leone in previous votes. So Mr. Leone is affirmative vote. Mr. Dunn, this vote. Yep. All right, so I'll ask Mr. Chaplain if you could promote Mr. Jamison and Mr. Dunn. We'll start with Mr. Jamison. Mr. Jamison, if you could just give us a minute or two about your interest in the position and why you'd like to serve for the next few months until April 10th on the Suck Board. Thank you, Mr. Hurd. So Mr. Diggins approached me a couple of weeks ago about this and I was honored to be considered for the position. I've lived in town for almost 19 years since 2002. And I've been a town meeting member. I'm in my sixth term as a town meeting member. An active one as the board members probably recognize. I was a co-chair and chair of the Harlington Recycling Committee for 12 years during which time the town's tonnage that was incinerated was reduced by about 30%. Overlapping with that. And for the past 12 or so years and continuing on as Mr. Diggins mentioned, I've been co-chair and co-chair of Envision Arlington's Physical Resource Task Group. Several issues that we considered in that group have come before the board as it was also true for the Recycling Committee. I've been involved in a variety of other campaigns, overrides and including initially when I moved to town helping work on the community rebuild of Robin Farm playground. So I think I have a good consideration. Of course, Mr. Dunn has much more experience than I and so I would not be surprised if the board went with Mr. Dunn. And I then want to thank Mr. Diggins again for the kind invitation to serve the town in this manner. I always say that's why I don't mute myself. I'll open up to the board and Mr. Leone for any questions, Mrs. Mahan. I know, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Tune. No questions. I just want to thank Mr. Jamison and actually thank all three individuals who contacted us for their interest in serving. Thank you, Mr. Leone. Mr. Jamison, do you have any interest in running for the board at any point in the future? I thought about it in the past. I'm pretty happy with this. My role in Envision Arlington and other roles in town as town meeting member, perhaps in the distant future, but it's not something that is on the horizon for me now. I have other business concerns and things to worry about. Very good. Thank you. Mr. Diggins. I have no questions. Thank you. All right, and I just want to thank you for your interest. So with that, I'll turn to Mr. Dunn. Mr. Dunn, if you could just give us a minute or two about your interest in serving in the interim position on the slide board for Mr. Garrow. Sure. So thank you for the question. Thank you for the nomination. I just think I can do a service to the town by performing the role for a short period of time. I obviously know the role. I've, you know, I did it for a little more than nine years, unexpectedly nine years and two months because of the way the election ran last year. And I think that the board has had a practice in the past of putting on past members because it's who don't plan on running because it's non-controversial and it's quick to getting up to speed and that makes sense to me. So if I can be of service, I certainly will. All right, thank you. I appreciate it. Ms. Mahan. Along with Mr. Jamison. Thank you, Mr. Dunn. I'm my former colleague for stepping up to the plate. I never thought when we were meeting back in Kickstand back in 2019 that you thought I wouldn't be on the board right now. And I didn't think you might perhaps be coming back on the board. So I kind of have to note that. But I think both you and I still have the patients needed to listen to people. As you pointed out when we had that meeting there, I certainly have continued to have the fire in my belly and obviously you do to do that. So depending on how this vote goes, perhaps those what you thought were prophetic words will not come to light. And perhaps both you and I will once again be on the board which is probably something that you never envisioned. So thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. DeCorsi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, no questions. And as I said to Mr. Jamison, thank you, Mr. Dunn for your interest in serving over this next short period of time. Thank you. Mr. Leone. Same question. I know you're on before, Dean, but you ever gonna try again? I'll never say never because, you know, never is a long time. But I can, as I wrote in my letter, I have no plans on running. Very good. Thanks. And Mr. Niggans. Yes, thank you. So Mr. Dunn, I have to say, after being on the board two extra months, I thought that had I approached you, you would have laughed at me. So I didn't expect you to go for it. I am thrilled that you are. I'm also thrilled that I asked Mr. Jamison and I will vote for him because I feel that I should extend that courtesy. And I'm so happy that he did apply because I was so impressed with your professional experience and seeing your background is what makes me understand why I have so much respect for your thinking abilities. But there's no losing here as far as I'm concerned, you know, what's gonna happen with the interim position. So I'm excited for what's about to transpire. Thank you. All right. And again, thank you for your willingness to serve. With that, we're gonna send you guys back down and just have a little discussion here. So thank you both. Thank you. Mr. Chair. Yes. Is it my understanding that after the vote of this board the successful candidate will be sworn in by the town clerk and then join us later or what's the mechanism for that to work? So the town clerk is available in that whoever is so successful will let them know that the town clerk has their contact information and the town clerk will be reaching out with materials to provide them and give them the opportunity to be sworn in. And if they're able to then return to the meeting they'll be able to do so once they're sworn in. And if I could ask the chair or attorney Heim if the successful interim select board member does not have the information to contact our town clerk is that something we can post on the chat feature and or text that individual so they can accomplish that part and join us after that for the warrant out of the hearings if not sooner. Madam, Mrs. Mohan what I would propose to do is I will put my extension in the chat the successful candidate can call me and I will connect them to the town clerk if they would like to be they don't have to be sworn in so that they can participate in the later aspects of this meeting. So last question is it my understanding that if they're not sworn in tonight via technology they can perform their duties as an interim select board member and be sworn a delay to date. My big thing is when we get to the warrant article hearings will they have standing whether they are not sworn in by the town clerk tonight versus another day? Sure. So the thing that I guess I would just also be clear for the members of the public is that the sort of sense of I guess urgency if you will is that for the interim member of the board the board produces one report and produces votes and comments. So the ideal situation would be that if somebody can be sworn in and be available for one hour of hearings they can participate in that process and vote on warrant article hearings after having heard the presentations by all of the folks today who I think are mostly resident petitioners and one or two committees and commissions. If the person is not available, it's not a big deal. We can swear them in the more conventional fashion and they just join the board for its next meeting. Okay, thank you. So for them to participate tonight there needs to be that connection with the town clerk tonight. They need to be sworn. Mr. Chair. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Mr. Chair. I'm sorry, Ms. Mon. All right. Yep, I think we have that. Okay, so now we'll take a vote. Attorney Heim can correct me or add anything you need to but we'll just take a vote where we go down the line of the five voting members here and you can vote which of the two individuals nominated you'd like to vote for to be to fill Mr. Curl's spot. We just need a simple majority. So with five voting members and two nominees it should just take one round of voting and whoever has the majority of the votes will be appointed to the interim position. Is that correct Attorney Heim? That's correct. As long as someone gets three votes you won't need to go to another round. All right. So with that we will get right into it. Mrs. Mohan. Mr. Dunn. All right, Mr. Dunn, Mr. Corsi. Mr. Dunn. And Mr. Leone. Mr. Dunn. And Mr. Diggins. Mr. Jamison. And I will vote for Mr. Dunn as well. So that is four votes in favor of Mr. Dunn and one in favor of Mr. Jamison. So Mr. Dunn has been so appointed. So Mr. Chaplin, can you bring Mr. Dunn back up? Mrs. Mohan, I just want to make sure, can you hear us? Oh, sorry, sorry, my computer's gone down. If you get, we're voting on Mr. Dunn now. Nope. So Mr. Dunn's been appointed. I just want to make sure you could hear us because I couldn't see your video. All right. So Mr. Dunn, congratulations. You have been appointed to the interim position I assume you heard the town clerk, Mrs. Brazile is available to connect with you. And so if you are able to get in touch with her, you can do so, she can swear you in and then whenever you are sworn in you can just come on back to the meeting once we see you back in the meeting we'll promote you back up to panelist. Mr. Hardish, sorry. Yes. I've shown my cell phone number with Mr. Dunn via the chat if he needs it. Yep. All right. I will be, I'll be right back. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Dunn. And with that, we also thank Mr. Leone for his service in the process. I'll see you later tonight. All right. So that will bring us to item number three on our agenda, review and approve bond issue, bond, anticipation, note and related matters. Determination of maximum useful life of capital asset purchases and installation to be financed. Award sale of the $77,845 general obligation, municipal purpose loan of 2021, bonds of the town dated March 11th, 2021 to Janie Montgomery Scott LLC at the net interest of 1.77% award sale of the $100,000 general obligation bond anticipation notes dated March 11th, 2021, two century bank at the net interest of 0.55% in all related documentation required to execute the sale. We have Mrs. Phyllis Marshall, our town on treasure with us for any additional matters as well as our deputy town manager, Mr. Puler. Mrs. Marshall. Good evening. Thank you. Very happy to announce that we got a remarkable interest rate on the $77,845,000 bond issue. We had nine bids and they were all within 0.28% of each other. And we are, last year when we issued bonds 15 months ago, the rate that we were very happy with at that time was 2.69. So this interest rate is great. It's a sign of the AAA rating of the town and the market. We are very happy that the AAA rating was affirmed and so I am happy to speak to any questions anyone has. The item for maximum useful life is the result of four items that are listed in this vote of the select board that are technically equipment and under the statutes, equipment has a useful life of five years. The projects for the Odyssey, the HVAC rooftop units and the elevator are sometimes considered renovation work. In this case, they are not, they are equipment and so you're being asked to vote on the useful life for those two items of 10 years. And the other two items also equipment in this case, I spoke with Mike Rademacher from Public Works in Arlington, the useful life for a boom, dump, chip, truck is 15 years and the same was true for the bleacher lift which is I spoke with Joe and he indicated that the, he was comfortable that that was certainly the useful life or more for that lift at the rank. Mr. Puller, did you have anything additional to add on that? No, I just, I think this is, I would just add that this is one of the lowest bond interest rates I have ever seen in my life and we had a lot of bidders. So I think it will save the town about $300,000 a year on the capital side, capital planning side and about $400,000 a year on the high school side. All right, thank you. And I will turn to the board for any questions or comments or motions, Mr. DeCorsi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yeah, I will move the votes as contained in the report that Ms. Marshall provided to us in the packet. But I want to say congratulations to the town manager to Mr. Puller and Ms. Marshall for the great job because the AAA rating is really impressive and the comments in the ratings report are equally impressive in terms of the view of management and especially the view of the town's ability to engage in budgetary flexibility. It's in that really impressed that the ratings agency. So congratulations on a job well done. Yeah, thank you. Mr. Diggins. Yes, I will second that and echo what Mr. DeCorsi said. And yeah, I mean, that that range report was really very good. I was a little questioning about the first point and about the economy being strong, the Arlington economy being strong because I was like, well, how is anything, any place, any place of the economy strong, but they gave their justification later on. So I understand to the rationale, the section on post-employment, other post-employment benefits was a little, isn't I, I'm not an eye opener, we're aware of it at me, but it was interesting to see it from the point of view. I think this will be good. It's good to have this outside perspective of things that I think it can serve as well in discussions later when we have more budget conversation. I just had one technical question. I think I know the answer to it, but you can clarify for me. I think it's on the continuing disclosure certificate at the very end, it says in Exhibit B that there was a notice of failure to file an annual report. Is that just a timing issue that it's occurring at a point where it takes some time to do the annual report? I just didn't understand why that's there. This is Exhibit B. Mr. Chair. Yes. Sorry. I will check into it. The annual report is required to be filed in March and I was very happy last year because I was one of the first towns in. So I'll check on that and verify what annual report they're referring to because we're getting ready to prepare for this year and we're all set because we just issued debt. So our annual report should be good to go with the official statement that the final official statement that was posted on the webpage yet today. So I will check into that. I was just curious, I mean, don't spend any time. You're clearly just gonna fly through with me. So all right, thank you. I will note for the minutes that Mr. Dunn, who I assume has been newly sworn in to the select board has now joined us. Thank you very much, everyone for your faith in me. And yes, I have been sworn in. All right, Mrs. Mahan. Just I think two questions and perhaps a request for a comment. And the question is not in any way a criticism. I just wanna have clarity for myself in terms of the general obligation bonds at 1.77% in the general obligation bond anticipation notes at 0.55% which are both great rates. Am I correct that the difference in the two has to do with the amount that we're requesting to be bonded when you're going from 1.77 to 0.55. And also for Ms. Marshall, I'm assuming that all documents related to execute the sale do not have a monetary value assigned to it. And then I have a question for Mr. Cooler. Ms. Marshall. The first question, the first answer is that under the bond anticipation note, we're only borrowing 100,000 for three months. So I think it was the size of it and also the term that garnered that really low interest rate. It's pretty short window. So there's really no risk on that one. 30 years is a bit of a longer risk but I'm very happy with the rate. And I believe- And then my second question, the last part of the vote is all related documents required to execute this motion that does not include any further monetary items. No, the documents that were required to execute for the bond are, we will pay for the cost of bond counsel out of the proceeds. Those are eligible for the premium expense. And so that will be paid for out of the premium. That we receive it. Thank you. Thank you, sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. And then I don't know if it's a comment or a question to our deputy town manager and our town manager regarding, I know through the long range planning committee, we've probably made a presentation and the board accepted the task to look at a possible future override, which we promptly turned over to the town manager and deputy town manager to sort of undertake that task and come back with possibilities. If this is something, Mr. Puller or Mr. Chaplain, you can't give an answer on right now. I totally understand, but in light of the short-term months and long-term 30 years borrowing and the percentage rates that we have here, is that something that you're factoring into what will come back to long range planning or is it something that you're gonna do worst case, best case scenario? Like in this 0.55, 1.77, if I'm saying that correctly, is that a trend we can look towards or you're still looking at that? Any comment you can give on that? Mr. Puller. Thank you, Mr. Chair. The numbers that we're talking about here are all within the realm of our capital planning, which as I think you all are aware, makes up for our non-exempt at 5% of the budget. So when we have a good interest sale, such as this, it gives the plant capital planning committee a little more flexibility as to what things we can get accomplished within that capital plan. So when our borrowing is cheaper, it gives us a little more money to pay cash for some other things, all within that 5% cap. On the exempt side, on the high school side, what it will mean is that the amount that we have to put on the taxpayers, which they voted for a debt exclusion to support, will be somewhat less than we originally anticipated. So it will, over the next 30 years, continue to save our taxpayers money on their annual real estate bills. Those will be the two effects that I see. Okay, and then I guess my last comment on that would be, last two comments is moving forward with long range planning, what there's town school properties, how we can sort of guesstimate out what the interest borrowing rate is, and then I would leave it to our town manager in terms of the debt exclusion for the high school, where it sounds like it's not going, there's gonna be some cost savings or not the math that it could be. I think that's a message we need to get out if my colleagues in the town manager deem appropriate. Yeah, I think that is fair. I think it is something to celebrate and to inform taxpayers and voters about. So I think that's a good suggestion. Okay, thank you. Just where we're in the very infancy discussions of a possible impending override that we, as we have done consistently in the past, demonstrate to the voters that where there are cost savings, similar to the water sewer debt shift and property taxes, trying to level that off that this is, we can note this demonstration that we're doing everything we can to take the will of the voters, but also take the pocketbooks or wallets of the voters and make sure we're not reaching into it more than we need to. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. And Mr. Dunge, do you have any questions for Ms. Marshall on Mr. Buller? No, thank you. Thank you. All right, and I would just reiterate with the comments from the board that when I saw the, I know I'm in the real estate industry, so I know that rates are low, but when I saw those rates, I almost thought that they must be a typo. So that's certainly excellent work. So with that, we had a motion by Mr. DeCorsi, did you second the motion? I don't recall. I sure did, Mr. Hurd. No problem. And I'm happy to remind you. Of course, he's seconded by Mr. Dickens, Attorney Hine. Mrs. Mahan. Yeah. Mr. DeCorsi. Yes. Mr. Dickens. Yes. Mr. Dunge. Yes. Mr. Hurd. Yes. Mr. Nanner's vote. All right, and thank you both. All right, and that brings us to our next item on our agenda, Presentation, Community Preservation Act Committee by Eric Helmiuth, the Chair of the Community Preservation Committee. Community Preservation Committee, Act Committee. Sorry, did you have Mr. Helmi? No, now would be a good time. I did get a note from a resident asking me to announce at some point during the meeting how many participants we have. So as of right now, we have 66 participants in our meeting. All right, Mr. Helmiuth. Welcome. Good evening, can you hear me all right? We can. Good, and could I ask the Chair's permission to also promote Clarissa Rowe in case she needed to respond to questions? Yep, absolutely. Thank you very much. I'll switch to my slides here in a moment. So hello, I'm Eric Helmiuth, Chair of the Community Preservation Act Committee. Yeah, we used to be the Community Preservation Committee until we realized the initials were CPC. We had one of those with the Capital Planning Committee. So a couple of years ago, we inserted the A and the rest is history. So thank you for inviting us to present. The bylaw for the Community Preservation Act Committee stipulates, I think wisely, that although the committee presents its recommendations for projects and other budgets to regulate a town meeting by state law, that we consult with the Select Board Finance Committee and the Capital Planning Committee. And we found that to be a really good idea because it's an opportunity to inform you and the residents of the town what their tax dollars are doing for CPA and to solicit your feedback in questions because that makes us better. And we hope to also solicit a vote of support at some point should you deem that appropriate. So from that, I'll go ahead and share my screen. And I believe I need to have that enabled actually, whoever's hosting the meeting. Mr. Chaplin. All right. Here we go. Just a moment to launch this. All right, here it goes. All right, you should see a slide presentation. Okay, great. We'll skip the introductions. So these projects are in budget are for fiscal year 22 that we'll be voting on at town meeting. As you may remember, Community Preservation Act takes the 1.5% surcharge from the property taxes of the residents. Combines it with matching funds from the State Community Preservation Fund to fund projects in three areas. Historic preservation, open space and recreation and community or affordable housing. The projects tonight run the gamut of those and cover a lot of the town. And I know that you have a long agenda. I'm not gonna go to a lot of detail tonight. I will point out for you and for the residents watching that we publish the complete applications for these projects, which include budgets and timelines and voluminous letters of support from the community to the Community Preservation Act's webpage which is our allintonma.gov slash community preservation. And I would encourage you to check that out for all of the details as I'll just be doing a high level view tonight. So our first project we'd like to talk to you about tonight is from the Allinton Housing Authority. We did some work at Drake Village which is our senior housing facility here in town. Earlier on the house were building to work on the building envelope specifically the window restoration and one of our first rounds of CPA funding. And this year they've come to us to ask if we would help with a to fund part of a major project to renovate the nine other buildings in the complex. These are two-story buildings. I believe there's some eight units each. And specifically they asked us to help with the doors and this slide shows why. CPA funds need to work to preserve the building and the structure so that that housing, affordable housing remains available in the community. So this modest grant would fund the replacement of steel doors and there's quite a lot of doors across the nine buildings, each building. So that's why it adds up to what it does. So we're very happy to do that. Very glad that they came to us for that assistance. They have a much larger budget for different phases of the project. They're funding some of this with their own budget, reserves and some additional grant money. So we're glad to once again with CPA, it's not a lot of money per year, but we're really happy when that can fit into a larger funder funding package and leverage the local investment from Arlington taxpayers with other state and federal funds. So our next project is $27,000 in change to the Somerville Homeless Coalition for work I must emphasize in Arlington. Those of you on the board are well acquainted with the excellent work that this or a nonprofit organization does for the town of Arlington to support people living here who are formerly homeless and or disabled and to preserve their ability to remain in housing. So what this grant does is enable the homeless coalition which rents 25 apartments all across Arlington and these are market rate apartments. The nonprofit obtains federal funding to subsidize the cost of that so that the people who are staying in these apartments only pay what they can afford. But right now due to some problems in areas of federal federal funding, there's a gap between what the federal fund subsidy will cover and the market rate that the landlord need in order to keep providing that housing. So this would support that gap for 25 apartments and support 43 different individuals who are living there and keeping them in housing. The homeless coalition does an active job with case management and ensuring that the wellness needs of these individuals are met and that they are fully supported in the housing. They've had a tremendous track record of success and we are very pleased that they came to us this year for assistance. Moving on to the open space and recreation project. And by the way, when I get to the budget page I'll talk a little bit more about the overall affordable housing portfolio. So remind me if I didn't get there. So prior rounds of CPA funding have done extensive renovations to the Spipon Park area, the shoreline restoration and the erosion prevention. This is a small piece of that that actually didn't get funded just because of the in-budget and the cost overruns that come with any public project like this. So this is an opportunity to pick up and restore this. The rest of the surface area there is now looks nice and new and shiny with porous pavement and this is still a very old ramp got down to the park. So this would be replaced with that material and do a lot, do even better job for rainwater absorption and for erosion control. So just complete the job. And now to one of our largest projects and one that we are actually really happy to be able to do. The herd field is just shown on the map so people can see where it is. One thing that you may not recognize especially if you're a trader goes is how close this really is to the Arlington Reservoir and what opportunities there are recreationally if those can be better connected. And that is part of the vision of this project. So I think it won't be a surprise to any of you that herd field is really decades past a much overdue renovation. Anyone who has played there or used the park is well aware of this. The playing field has terrible drainage, weeds. It needs complete turf. It just needs to be completely redone. The fences, the benches, the dugouts, everything. The electrical panel is iffy. As you can see here, it's still, they wouldn't operate if it weren't safe but it's nearing the end of its life. And there are other conditions that again that are no surprise to anyone who's walked past there. There's no real path around it. There's no real good access to the reservoir area. So this is a project that would be funded in two phases. The first round would be this nearly $1.5 million for this coming fiscal year and the recreation department would tackle this to do an extensive planning and design process with community input in the current calendar year and then finalize everything, go out to bed at the very end of the year and be ready to start construction in calendar year 2022. There is additional budget to this. This is actually estimated to be about a $2.3 to $2.4 million project. And that's just because of the growing exponential expense of this kind of public works project but also the extent of the need that there is. It includes a well overdue need to replace the out-of-date lighting that will soon become unsafe in the electrical systems and a whole bunch of other things, amenities, site improvements that will make it a great part not just for people playing athletics there but for the community to enjoy and a better connection to the reservoir as I mentioned for more unified recreational experience. So the plan is to come back to the CPA committee or possibly to capital for the next fiscal year for about another $900,000 in funding to complete that but we thought that was wise and glad that Joe proposed your colleague proposed doing that because they're gonna go through a good design process this year and we'll have a much better idea of what the needs are at the end of the year when the CPA committee is in its funding cycle. So we're happy to do that. Staying in recreation land, we are also able this year because of our budget situation to take on the spy pond playground renovation which is also very much overdue as you can see by some of the pictures there. This is one of the most heavily used playgrounds in Arlington and beloved and it's well loved and the equipment is many years past its natural lifespan and there we are now dealing with some potentially hazardous conditions. So the need is clear and we're glad to be able to do this. One thing that we're interested to hear Mr. Connolly present is that studies of the park have shown that the age groups using this park have shifted and it's now much younger and these structures are not as appropriate for a much younger set. So when this design process is done in consultation with the community, some of the structure will be more age appropriate and just a great resource for the neighborhood and for the whole town. So now let's move on to the historic preservation end of this and in some ways I've often said that even though we spend less money in this area it's one of our favorite areas because this is an area where almost no money would go to these really important needs for the cultural and historical identity of the town if we didn't have CPA. And I think particularly with the Jason Russell house because they have been engaged in a multi-year restoration effort funded by CPA and by matching grant funds that the CPA funds are making possible we are going to save this house for another generation and that is immensely gratifying to all of us and I hope to you and to the town. And similarly, the old Schwann Mill nonprofit has been an excellent steward of some prior CPA funding. In this case, the Schwann Mill is having used wisely you CPA funding to replace and restore the windows and the main building is now wanting to do the same for 15 windows on the bar. And they also want to do a structural engineering report with the balance of the funds that would hire a structure engineer and just make sure that there aren't any surprises lurking in the main buildings of the mill which is a good investment in this priceless historic resources future. With the Jason Russell house, this $249,000 recommended appropriation is very, very interesting purpose. The house as you know is only open part of the year because it's not heated, not air conditioned either but the reason it's not open in the winter is pretty obvious. It's an uninsulated historic house. And so the Historical Society has done a lot of groundwork, a lot of research and they believe consulting with a number of experts that a heat pump solution can be implemented here. And more interestingly, very likely a geothermal source heat pump that could because of the nature of the property could go in there and because the rocks are a great thermal mass, it can be over the long term and especially with the yearly operating costs far less expensive to operate than an air source air to air heat pump. So they're wanting to do that. What we have asked them to do is with this proposed appropriation is to continue to do due diligence to get an independent evaluation and energy evaluation to make sure that that is the right decision for all considerations not only for cost but just for the building itself. Besides being able to open the building year round which would be the goal for this which would be really exciting for the cultural programming for Jason Russell. It would also allow the Historical Society to bring back some really important but fragile exhibits that are now in climate control storage and show them to us in the house to the public because of a climate control system. This would also replace the existing oil fire heating system in the caretakers cottage and frankly the Historical Society and all of us would really sleep better knowing that there is not a oil fired combustible heating system for any part of this including the attached cottage. So that's what this would accomplish. And finally in historic preservation this is something that was new to me until Altausta came forward and said, you know, guess what? Right around this location, I'll show you a little picture here is a little sliver of an historic park. And it turns out on the afternoon of April 19, 1775 that's famous day in our nation's history. The most casualties and some of the fiercest fighting happened right in this tiny triangle of land. Now it was a little bit bigger than this was not the tiniest battlefield in the world but is perhaps the tiniest battlefield memorial in the area. But there are some existing monuments and rocks there but we're not doing anything with it. Nobody knows about it. And I think Al recognized that this area of town is the center of some economic development. There's the plans for a hotel going in and there's other work that the ATAD and other folks are doing to raise the awareness of what we call the bloody mile going from Lexington all the way to the Jason Russell house for the battle that day. And there's a really interesting opportunity to make this much more of a landing spot and an attraction protects particularly in conjunction with some of the economic development. So this would fund a study that would even though it's proposed by a citizen would be overseen and administered by the town manager's office in conjunction with other town departments just to see what's possible, to see what we could do to make this cultural traction and maybe boost some of the economic activity in this area. So we plan to put that forward. I'll pause there before I go to this budget page and see if there are any questions about the projects particularly from the board. All right, Mr. Diggins, any questions? Yeah, questions and a couple of comments. So kind of jokingly, I'm just wondering like how did they live in the Jason Russell house back in the day? Because it certainly was cold back in the winter. So that's just a joking question. But I look at me, I really like about the Jason Russell house project is that the heat pump element of it because with that and with all the other projects that I want to encourage you to focus on sustainability even if the cost is a little higher. I know the goal is to stretch the dollars as much as we can, as much as we can but I think as a community, you really do need to focus more on sustainability because if we're not around the money that we spend on these projects will be for naught. And the last is on the foot of the hills. I'm a little familiar with that area because I walk a lot and so when looking into that we also focus on pedestrians because that can be a little tricky place to cross the street. So when we are going to maybe attract people towards it then let's think about how they can be in that area safely as pedestrians. Thank you. Thank you. Are you Mr. Dunn? I'm particularly happy to see the, I'm happy with the array of projects. I'm particularly happy to see support of the Summerville Homeless Coalition because I think they've been really good partners with the town and I'm glad that we can find a way to help support them as well. Thank you. Mrs. Mahan? Sorry. Oh, my computer's so slow. I wanna thank Mr. Helmets and my colleague Ms. Rowe on behalf of the CPA for their presentation and saving our necks on several projects. Just I think three, perhaps four comments to echo my colleague Mr. Dunn's sentiments on the Summerville Homeless Coalition. I too also am very grateful that CPA will be able to cover this expenditure but as myself and Mr. Herd knows, we're on the CDBG subcommittee and I'm just, I guess through the town manager with the planning department or through the town manager, the Summerville Homeless Coalition requested approximately the same amount and was approved under the general fund 37,000. Now it appears on the CPA 27, $228 and there was a request through CDBG of 38,201 which it appears to me that's all one request. So just on behalf of CDBG for public services, when we received the request from Summerville Homeless Coalition, it was not noted to us that it already was approved by for 37,000 for the general fund and anticipated through the CPA at 27,228 and we would have had to cut on CDBG on the public services approximately 20.2% services of $176,000 budget, which to all the different groups that are inherent in their seniors, Fidelity House, Boys and Girls Club, scholarship programs that would have been a difficult decision. So if we could somehow highlight if an individual and I'm not picking on some of the homeless coalition because I certainly stood by that and especially during COVID utilize their services intensely for outreach for people but that there needs to be some sort of asterisk or something that if a particular request is going to CDBG to CPA and to general fund that all those three entities know of that and that can be reconciled so that a decision is made that doesn't need to have to be. I don't know Adam if I'm being clear on that. I can turn to Adam on that. I can just comment too and because I did speak with Mike Libby the other day about the request that went through CBG. In my understanding and Adam can expound on this for me is that the request that went to CBG that was ultimately in the general fund was to fund efforts that some homeless coalition for the outreach program over in the MuGar area. And it sounds like for Mr. Helmuth's presentation that this is a different program that's meant to supplement rental income for the 25 units that they have in Arlington but Mr. Chapter Lane, do you have any? I would simply just confirm that Mr. Chairman that there is no duplication between the CPA request and the program where there was duplication between the request and the general fund and the CDBG this is a separate program as you just described. Okay, so if we can kind of get a handle on that I'm not saying they shouldn't request and duplicate a triple areas that needs to be noted so that, you know, I just would have fringe that that we made those cuts to cover HSC and it was already covered by the general fund. And then I guess a prominent question on the foot of the rocks allocation which I am along with my colleagues 100% behind just to throw my comments in on that. One of the things regarding tourism that Lexington's very good at and they always ask Arlington, you know how are you so good with restaurants and getting that economy going statues are a big thing. And I understand my colleague Mr. Diggins comments around pedestrian safety but if it's applicable if we could get some sort of statue out there I don't know if David Lansom I'm hearing something funny sorry if David Lansom would be appropriate or not but in terms of having a hotel there and encouraging tourism I just wanted to throw that out there and then my last question would be a future question and I don't know if Mr. Helmeth or perhaps our colleague Ms. Rowe because I know she and I started on this in the beginning regarding the recent national federal scenic byway designation that Arlington along with three or four other adjacent communities have received in light of that designation would it be a possibility that moving forward with that that CPA would play a role in either dovetailing on some scenic byway federal requesting funding and augmenting that program if that would be applicable to CPA I don't know if Clarissa can answer that. Clarissa please. Oh, thank you. Yes, last week we got notification that the Department of Transportation and Secretary Buttigieg had decided that we got a federal designation of an all American road and that means that the Battle Road Scenic Byway is now a federal program and this Battle Road Scenic Byway is the towns of Arlington, Lexington, Concord and Lincoln and the Minuteman National Park and what we will be able to do is leverage federal funds to do improvements in those four towns and at the Minuteman National Park. It's especially important right now because we will be celebrating the 250th birthday of the country and there are a lot of things planned for the Minuteman National Park and so we can start taking advantage of that and the foot of the rocks I think is an excellent idea and it's Mr. Tosti has the same ideas about sculpture as Mrs. Mahondas. There also is for Mr. Diggins, that whole intersection is being looked at from a traffic point of view so that we will be capturing more land in that area for people and not just for the statues. That's a very dangerous intersection and for cars and for people. So that will be part of the $55,000 study and I am the mother of a sculptor. So I don't think we wanna ask for too many pieces of sculpture because bronze pieces of sculpture are very expensive but I'm gonna try to help Al and so is Joanne Robinson of the Historical Commission to fulfill his dream. Okay, thank you, Ms. Rowe and thank you, Mr. Chair. I'd like to move approval of the CPA Committee's proposal. All right, and Mr. DeCorsi, any questions? Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all, thank you, Mr. Helmuth and Ms. Rowe for that great presentation. It's really an impressive list of projects here and just one question on Herdfield on behalf of the chairman, is there any new signage that's included in the project? That was meant as a joke. I am curious on Herdfield, do you know if that includes any work on Millbrook going around the outer boundaries of it if that was part of the application as well? No, look at it, look at it right now. Clarissa, do you remember a collection? I do remember, it is very much in the minds of Jill Connolly and the Parks and Rec Commission because of the pathway and the bike trail have been impinging on the field and a lot of people have been taking shortcuts because they're trying to get from the Millbrook and the bike path through the field. So they're reconfiguring the whole pathway as there's a circular system that will allow greater access to Millbrook and also to Drake Village. So it's really the proximity to the reservoir is a very important and one of the reasons that there is damage there is because of flooding in that area. Okay, thank you. And just a comment and to my colleagues who have already brought this up but on the leasing differential program and I'm glad that you have found the funds for that but an added benefit of that program too which helps landlords in town is my understanding is that the homeless coalition almost works as a guarantor for the individual rents. So not only are we helping people find apartments but we're also providing security for the landlords that are renting. And I think that's an added benefit of these funds. So I have a couple of other questions related to the budget but I'll hold off on that until after that part of the presentation. Thank you. And I just, I should say for the record I knew nothing about the renovation of Herdfield until Mr. Helmuth told me last week but I am glad to see it's moving forward because for many years people have come to me that use the field and complained about the conditions of the field and I tried to explain to them I have no control over what actually happens at the field. And then also the spypond playground which I think was put in when I was young and it felt new at the time but I took my boys there last year and it's definitely in need for some updates and I'm glad to see that moving forward and when we have these CPA presentations the bulk of the funds go towards such things as recreation but it's always so interesting and gratifying to see the CPA funds that go towards historic preservation which tend to be smaller amounts but in a tight budget that we have year after year it would always be hard to work those into a general fund budget. And so we're so grateful for the CPA for carving out that niche so we can do these upgrades to the historic structures that we have in Arlington and serving as the board designate on ATED. For years we've really been trying to come up with a plan to show how to spread the word and show individuals the great treasures that we have in Arlington and with the work of the CPA we can help do that and particularly the foot of the rocks that's an area that we try to incorporate on our walking tour and it's hard to get people to go to the recorder there just to see the rock. So I'm interested to see what updates we can do there and what the plan can come up with because there is certainly some really interesting history there. Ahead of as Ms. Rose said, we have the battle rolled 2025 committee that is a joint venture between some of the towns around there. We're looking for a pretty significant celebration which is when I first was involved in the committee it seemed like it was a long way away but I think as we get closer and closer there's a lot of work that will need to be done to get to show the history of Arlington for all the individuals that will be in the area at that time. So I'm really excited to see what the result of the study will be and thank you both for all your work in those areas. So with that I'll have Mr. Helmuth continue on with this presentation to the budgetary portion of this. Thank you very much. I do just want to suggest to Mr. Diggins initial questions that I think they had a really big fireplace to get to the winter when Jason Russell was living there. So as you can see from the budget grid many thanks to Julie Wayman for her usual excellent work with this. I wanted to explain a little bit about housing. So in last year's annual town meeting we actually traditionally not by any set policy but been funding at least a half million dollars a year to affordable housing. And I think as you know that just because of the cycle of affordable housing development some of that we had not had as much in the last couple of years for requests. So last year we town meeting with our recommendation reserved $500,000 to an affordable housing reserve fund that can only be used for more housing. And so this year we had a little bit as you can see in requests totaling about 280,000. So what we're going to do recommend that town meeting take so we have to spend 10% of the anticipated revenues on each CPA category. So that 10% of the projected revenues will be about 216 grand. So we'll put that towards housing and then we'll draw just a little bit down from that half million that's still there that'll leave about, you know that'll leave $470 or so thousand dollars or more available for future housing appropriation. The committee has not talked about the affordable housing trust but that is an option for some of that resources or other affordable housing expenditures that could come up in the future. I also point out that the two yellow highlighted cells here show, you know there are projected expenditures for the budget plus the little bit of administrative expenses we do comes to a little bit less than 2.7 million and we would have a little slightly less than about 3 million left available rather for appropriation. That's a combination of incoming revenues and project and a fund balance that will still be in the bank. So that would, if we funded everything that would still leave over $300,000 from this year and the committee has not yet determined what we would do with that whether we just leave that in the unrestricted fund balance or whether we would designate some of that for any other program area. We do budget conservatively. We recommend that we leave some balance there in the case there are opportunities that come up mid-year for a special town meeting that we want to urgently deal with. But yeah, that's just a quick overview of the budget and I believe one member at least had a question on that. So I'll turn it back over to the chair. We'll go back in order, Mr. Diggins. I have no questions, thank you. Mr. Dunn. No questions, thank you. Mrs. Mohan. Sorry, my computer stinks. In terms of the approximate unrestricted funds of 300,000, is that separate or a part of the program funds under CPA or turn back? So the 300,000 that would be sort of servicing or plus that we wouldn't spend from what we could spend would be whatever is left over. So we think there's about $3 million that we could appropriate. And that 3 million is comprised of anticipated revenues for next year, plus about $667,000 in the fund balance that just hasn't been spent yet that would include, and that includes the $500,000 in housing that's set aside. And then about 170 in turn backs. So that would really just sort of be a balance sheet if Tom meeting appropriates this 2.684, then there'd be about $300,000 that's not appropriated that would be available for future CPA preparations. And again, I'm going back to CDBG when we met as a subcommittee, there's close to 300,000 on program funds. And I asked the planning department to look into instead of just carrying that over allocating that under the appropriate percentage categories that we can do under HUD. I guess I would have the same question either if you or Ms. Rowe regarding CPA project turnbacks. Do you all have a policy for that? Or do you have, if it gets to a certain point, there is a spend out, I don't want to say spend down or I'm just thinking of possible override coming up in the future, looking at CDBG on program funds and looking at CPA turnback funds, what CPA's policy is regarding that. Clarissa, do you want to address? Sure. One of the reasons that we have those turnbacks is because the people on the staff including Jim Feeney and Julie Wegman are very, very good. And Jim especially, who is kind of our construction honcho is he's always looking for ways to cut the budget to make sure that things are well spent and the burial ground work, some of that has been turned back. There are little bits from every project but he develops a relationship with the grantees and because of the trust between him and the grantees, he is finding that there is turnback. One of the things when we started this process we weren't sure that we could fund all the projects that we had. And so we were looking for the turnbacks as it turns out the revenue from the state is much higher because there's been a lot of real estate action as probably the chair of this board knows. And so that came in higher but we were scrambling around for funds because the initial requests were higher than the amount of money we had. So Jim went and found some money for us. That isn't, it's not usually that much money. Yeah, we sent him hunting for it because of that. And I think I would just reiterate what Clarissa said that when the turnbacks happen is because of good management of the funds that sometimes happen with some of our nonprofit grantees they really work hard to only use the money that they need. So CPA funds are dispersed on a reimbursement basis. So these are actually, we call them turnbacks but they're actually funds that just haven't been drawn down because they found savings on the ground. So our policy, I think the answer to Ms. Mohan's entirely appropriate question is that those are plugged back into the, not for CPA committee operations but for future CPA projects. And that is actually, you know that's actually by state law as well. Okay, and my question and not that it was taken that way is in no way critical. Just again with, I think I had this question at our last select board meeting or just put it out as a comment that when we're looking at the possible number which Mr. DeCoursey chairs the committee the long range planning committee that Adam and Sandy and others are looking at my thing is I don't even want to say if when we do go to the voters that we've looked at every possible nook and cranny and looking at the unprogrammed funds of about 300,000 in possible turnback funds of 170 this half a million dollars right there. So my question from the last select board meeting and I don't know if Eric or Clarissa, Mr. Helmuth or Ms. Rowe or Mr. Chaplin want to comment on this they don't have to but my question or suggestion at the last meeting was that are we when we're coming up with what we're gonna return to as a result of Mr. Fossey's presentation looking at CPA looking at CDBG if it can take off half a million or whatever going forward. So what I would say to Mr. Helmuth and Ms. Rowe is if it's appropriate definitely want the CPA committee a partner in working towards what ultimately gets presented maybe not at the next meeting maybe a meeting after a long range planning that we can demonstrate to the voters that we've looked under every rocks and pebble that we can to arrive at that number. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. And Mr. Corsi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So question on the state match line and I see that's estimated at 17.7% and I think we're probably all concerned as to what may happen with that in the future. I'm just wondering you one, how do you feel about that estimate and two, how does that compare to let's say the past few years in terms of what the percent match has been? Mr. Helmuth? Mr. Helmuth? Oh, go ahead, Clarissa, I didn't see anything. You go ahead, Eric. I feel really good about this estimate because we think that the real estate matches is gonna be even higher. The DOR has not yet released its guidance for what to expect. So we're taking an extremely conservative, I believe this was what the state match was last year, but the actual transactions have been, we think this is probably gonna be over 20. So in that case, we'll even have additional funds to contemplate using or reserving. I think the trajectory is high and that's just because the legislature did pass a couple of years ago, a fix to increase the registry of these feeds that replenished the state fund for this. And it's a good thing they did because the match would have sunk. It was sinking down, perilously close to single digits was where we were heading. And it's now heading back up. And it's because they patched the revenue source from the state and they were heading down because more and more towns adopted, it was a victim of its own success. So now I think that with the real estate market continuing to thrive, that has been helpful. And that won't always be the case, but I think the fundamentals of the funder are better shaped than they were. Clarissa, do you wanna add? And I agree. I sit on the statewide coalition. So I have a pretty good handle on that. And one of the big problems this year had been the state because of the pandemic was having a hard time bringing their records up to date. So the first match that the Department of Revenue suggested was much lower. And that was because they'd only looked at six months of revenues. And so that's why the percentage is getting higher and higher. And I think we just have to, I think the most important thing is to listen to the real estate market and it's booming in Massachusetts. And I think that that gives us some hope for the next couple of years, we'll see. I mean, we're in the middle of pandemic, we're in great economic distress. So whether that will continue, I don't know, but it's counterintuitive to me. Great, thank you very much. And Mr. Chairman, I don't think there was a second of Mrs. Mahan's motion. So I'd like to offer a second on that. Thank you. Yep, and my only question was the same as Mr. Corsi's about the state match. And I know you mentioned the 17% was based on last year's. If you recall, where is that in relation to say the year before that and the year before that? Is there a trend where each year it seems to be a little higher than the next? Yes, it has been going up. Yeah, I'd have to go back and look at the chart, but it is increasing. And I think we think it'll be over 20. Yeah, and one of the things that's happening as more and more towns come into the CPA, I think we have now 370, between 371 and 378 communities. There is always the worry that with more and more communities, the money would get smaller. But what happens is there becomes with more and more communities getting into the program, there's more political will to make sure that the money in the fund continues to thrive. And that week, about two or three years ago, we got the deeds tax raised and some things that really helped the program. The program has been a tremendous success. And it's, I get great satisfaction to see all the work that's being done in Arlington because of it. It's small money, but it's certainly important in the human way of living in a community. And I mean, I can certainly attest that if it's based on funding from the registry deeds, that there's gonna be plenty of funds available. In past years, if you looked at the queue, when we submit documents to be recorded, there might be 10 to 15 documents. Now there's about 500. There's plenty of registrarities fees that should be coming in and we'll look forward to more great projects based on that. All right, so we have a motion to, was it a motion to receive or a motion to approve, Mr. Mon? No, approve. And second by Mr. D'Corsi, Attorney Heim. This is Mon. Yeah. Mr. D'Corsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Dunn. Yes. Mr. Herder. Yes. Mr. Adamsville. And thank you both. All right, at long last, that takes us to our consent agenda. We have item number five minutes of meetings, January 25th, 2021. January 25th, 2021, emergency addendum. We have a request for contractor drain layer license for Callanback Enterprises. Chris Callanback, 135 Bass Point Road, Nahat, Massachusetts, 01908. And we have a reappointment to the Arlington Tree Committee for Steve Moore term to expire, 1231, 2023. So I will separate the meeting minutes vote, just as I- Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Dunn will abstain. So on the item number five minutes of meetings, Mr. D'Corsi, do we have a motion? Yes, move approval. And Mr. Diggins, do we have a second? Yes, you do, second. Any comments, Mrs. Mon? No, thank you. All right, Attorney Heim. Mrs. Mohan? Yes. Mr. D'Corsi? Yes. Mr. Diggins? Yes. Mr. Heard? Yes. Mr. Annemarie's vote. All right, and do we need Mr. Dunn to abstain? I abstain. Okay, thank you, Mr. Dunn. All right, and then we'll take a motion for item number six and item number seven on the consent agenda, Mr. Diggins? I move to approve this consent agenda. All right, any second, Mr. Dunn? Second. All right, so we have a motion and a second. Attorney Heim. Mrs. Mohan? Yes. Mr. D'Corsi? Yes. Mr. Diggins? Yes. Mr. Dunn? Yes. Mr. Heard? Yes. All right, and that takes us to a public hearing. We have an ever source petition for Everett Street. We have Jacqueline Duffy, Supervisor for Overraids and Permits for Ever Source. All butters notified. We have Ms. Duffy with us. And Ms. Duffy, can you hear us? Hi, can you hear me now? Yes, we can hear you now. How are you? I'm Jacqueline Duffy. I'm the right away agent out of the Summable Service Center. The ever source energy respectfully requests a grant of location for the installation of a hip guy on Everett Street. Work is necessary to support the existing pole line on Everett Street. All right, and with that, I will turn to the board, Mr. Corsi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll move approval subject to the additional conditions contained in the engineering division memorandum. I also want to add a further condition beyond that, that if the work requires the installation of a second pole, that the first pole will be removed or the original pole will be removed within 90 days pursuant to chapter 164, section 34B. And the reason I bring that up is the last time ever source was before us for a hip guy. We approved it and it was on Mass Ave and the hip guy turned into a double pole that more than a year later is still a double pole. So I think it's appropriate in this circumstance. If it becomes necessary, it doesn't sound like it will be, but if it does, we really don't want a double pole at that site. Can I ask if the double pole on Mass Ave is still there? Yes, it is. Okay, well, I'll look into that tomorrow. Mrs. Mohan. Thank you. You're welcome. I am unmuted. I'll definitely second that. And I'm very encouraged by Jackie, Ms. Duffy, but Ladybug Jack, then she's got to look into that and she definitely will follow through because she's been very professional and responsive to Allington. So thank you, Ms. Duffy, for doing that. Thank you, Mr. Corsi, for pointing that out. So I will second. Mr. Diggins? I support what Mr. Corsi, I'm sorry. I support what Mr. Corsi said and I have no further comment. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Dunn. I don't think I heard a second and I'll be happy to second it. Or maybe Mrs. Mohan did and I missed it. I apologize. Yep, Mrs. Mohan seconded it. All right. And I have no further comments. This is a public hearing. If any members of the public would like to speak on this matter, please use the raise hand function in your Zoom application now and not see any hands. We have one. Did you promote Ms. Malofcheck? Yeah. Yes, your hands up. I can do that right now. Yep. Ms. Malofcheck, can you hear us? Can you hear me? We can, if you can just say your name for the record. Beth Malofcheck, Russell Street, town meeting member precinct nine. Is this about the polls? It was hard to follow. The ever sourced polls, that's what my comment is regarding Steve DeCorsi mentioned the double polls still existing on Mass Ave. I just wanted to point out that there are double polls all over town. I have one in front of the house I live in. They took out the rotten lower four feet of an existing poll and then lowered it to the ground. So now the wires connecting to the house are at a dangerously low level. I'm assuming it's not at a regulatory level. So that poll needs to be attended to as I think do all of the double polls all over town. And Mr. DeCorsi, the poll that you mentioned on Mass Ave, is that the one that looks shattered on the North side of Mass Ave up towards East Arlington? There was a pretty extravagant in the sense of appalling shattered poll towards East Arlington on the North side of Mass Ave. Mr. Gretchen. If I could, Mr. Chairman. Yes. Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. It's not that shattered poll, which is I think at the end of Foster Street, this is a little further down by the gas station before you get to Bates Road. That's where the last hip guy was put in. We had this discussion before when Verizon was in because I believe Verizon has the primary responsibility to maintain polls on Arlington. And so I hear you on your concerns and we're gonna continue to try to address that. But this was a particular poll on Everett Street. That's why I put that additional condition in. Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to speak and I'll follow up with Steve DeCorsi since he seems to be the one on top of this particular issue, but thank you. I have a question to Beth. What is your address, Beth? And I can look into that one also. It's 20 Russell Street. And my additional concern is a week or so prior to our poll becoming airborne. I mean, the bottom just rotted out on its own. The neighbor across the street had to call the fire department who called the whichever electric company to come and deal with it. So a week or so immediately prior, one of your contractors came and injected tons of, I don't know what you inject, but nasty smelling chemicals kind of smells like kerosene which is then leaking into the ground. We're on a slope. It's all ending up in Mill Brook. I mean, this is ridiculous. We have a higher level of environmental consciousness and we all know the polls are unsightly. We'd greatly appreciate it if they could be addressed. I mean, I'm concerned about mine, but I'm concerned about everyone's. If you can put their concerns in email to us and we'll forward along to and start on the particular poll. Thank you Chairman Hurd, I appreciate that. And Mr. DeCorsi, thank you very much. Thank you, Ms. Duffy. You're welcome. All right. And seeing no further hands raised, we have a motion by Mr. DeCorsi, seconded by Mrs. Mohan, attorney. Mrs. Mohan. Yeah. Mr. DeCorsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Dunn. Yes. Mr. Hurd. Yes. Mr. Ambersfield. Thank you, Ms. Duffy. Thank you. Stay positive, test negative. Right. That takes us to appointments. Item number nine on our agenda. We have an appointment to the Ireland to Redevelopment Board. Melissa Tino-Kalis, termed to expire January 31st, 2023 and we have an appointment to the Election Modernization Committee. Giovanna DeStefanis. Do we have these two individuals with us, Mr. Chaplin? All right. And Ms. Tino-Kalis. Apologize if I said your name incorrectly there. If you could just tell us a little bit about yourself and why you'd like to serve on the Redevelopment Board. Yeah. Can you hear me okay? Yes, we can. Great. My name is Melissa Tintoccalis and I live in Arlington. I've lived in Arlington for 12 years and my background is urban planning. So I studied urban planning at the University of Michigan, originally from California, but I've worked in Somerville, Lexington and now I'm working in Burlington with a focus on economic development. And I just saw the Redevelopment Board and the opening as an opportunity to kind of share my expertise and kind of contribute to the community I live. Yep. I will open up to the board. Mr. Dunn. Thank you very much for volunteering. The volunteers are, as you know, with your work in Lexington and Burlington, that the volunteers make it all work. So thank you. And Mr. Diggins. I'd like to move approval of her appointment and also say I'm really, really thrilled to have you on board and your CV, your resume is very impressive. It's good to have someone with a planning background in all the communities that you've worked with me as a part of the Redevelopment Board. And I would love to ask some, kind of like get to know your questions for me, but I'll save those for later and hopefully meet in person and discuss. So thank you so much. Welcome aboard. Great, thank you. Thank you. And Mrs. Mohan. Thank you, Mr. Tintacalas. I'm not sure if I'm saying that correctly. Melissa, I'm very impressed with your background, especially economic, economic planning. You're a captured audience. So I'm going to take advantage of the fact two things I've put before you, first and second, but especially the first and actually second to in light of your experience that you have in terms of Ellington just began a study and hired a consultant for our one true industrial zone, which is up by Gold Gym. I just want to highlight that to you in light of your experience with Lexington and Burlington and even before that in, I think, California, but or some of all, perhaps not mentioning that. That's been, I got on the board in 1999 and that was something that I thought was a vastly, if not overlooked, underplanned, underutilized area, whatever you can bring to process as a member of the planning board. And then I also noted that you were sort of, sort of took the initiative on Parklets for the pandemic, which is good insight on your part. But one of the things that I've heard from a lot of our small businesses in mid-sized businesses here in Ellington is that that was a solution because of need, but are there other solutions to make that constant, to make that better, to expand and or other ways to think outside of the box? Because if you said Parklet here in Ellington a year, three years before the pandemic, a lot of people would be like, that's a waste of time. You're going to lose some parking spaces. And I don't know if you have any comments on that. I'd welcome them if you don't, that's okay too. I mean, briefly speaking, I mean, part of why I'm here, I've been part of the master plan and the master plan's a good blueprint, but if it doesn't translate into zoning, you won't really reach any of the goals outlined there. So that's one thing. And if we focus, my approach has been focusing on places for people and what that means and not trying to drive it too much by car or things like that. So placemaking is part of that, creating these, I would say, public assembly spaces that allow for the civic engagement that are not entirely private. That public realm is critical to the quality and value of development over time. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Corsi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you, Mr. Tintacolas, for your willingness to serve. I imagine with your job in Burlington, there's a lot of nights that you're called on to do work. So the fact that you're volunteering to take on more here in Allington is really impressive. And we really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. And Mr. Corsi, I don't know if I got a second yet on that. Second. And again, just to reiterate the board's comments, thank you for your willingness to serve on. This is a board that we rely a lot on as far as the time commitment and your willingness to serve really says wonders about your commitment to the town. So I appreciate it. All right. We have a motion to approve by Mr. Diggins. Seconded by Mr. Corsi, attorney Hime. Mrs. Mahon. Yeah. Mr. Corsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Dunn. Yes. Mr. Herrick. Yes. unanimous vote. All right. Thank you very much. Okay. All right. Thanks dad and see you. Okay. Bye guys. All right. And do we have Ms. DeStefanis with us? Yeah. And I believe Jim O'Connor was raising his hand as well. Would you like me to? Yep. Mr. O'Connor, are you with us? Can you hear us? I am with you. All right. If you want to introduce Mr. DeStefanis. Yes. The election modernization committee interviewed three candidates. We found Giovanna DeStefanis to be excelling in both motivation and leadership skills having been actively involved at the high school as a junior in working on education and social media and election reform. In fact, his pre-registered devote and of all the candidates we enthusiastically recommend her appointment to the committee. Thank you. And Ms. DeStefanis, I apologize I'm having trouble with the last names today. If you want to just tell us a little bit about yourself and why you wanted to get involved with the committee. Yes, of course. Thank you so much for that introduction. That was so nice. My name is Giovanna DeStefanis and I'm a junior here at Arlington High School. And I would love to be on the election modernization committee in preparation for the general election and the Georgia runoff election. I phone banked through various organizations and while working with the center for common ground, it was just really cool to provide residents with voting information and registering them to vote and providing them with transportation if they needed it. And it was something that was small but I know that it did bring our country closer to a just democracy which is extremely important. And because voting is such a powerful tool, I mean, I'm only 17 so I can't vote yet. But I know that it is only fair if everyone is able to participate in it. And younger people statistically do not vote as much for various reasons but I'm hoping that on the committee I can help modernize it to make it more accessible to younger people and have our elected officials reflect everyone. And currently I'm on the local election committee of the Young Progressive Club and I joined it because I didn't know anything about local politics at all and Joe Kerro came in and we interviewed him and I asked, you know, how can the club get involved in local politics? And he said, I mean, he said many different ways but one of them that stood out was just to join a committee and then this was an opportunity and I think that it would be a really great way to get involved and educate myself. And I really think that I could do that while being on the committee. Thank you. All right, I'll turn to the board for any questions, comments or motions. Mr. Diggins. I will happily make a motion to approve our appointment and I'll be one of the best parts about this gig is reading CVZ and you already have an impressive CV. I can only imagine what it will be like in 10, 20 years from now. And it's great that you're getting involved in local elections read and what I really hope too is that the youth, as they say, can also get their parents involved in local elections because we really need more voting in local elections and people more engaged in their community because it's really where the rubber hits the road. So thank you very much for being a part of the AMC. Ms. Amon. I will definitely second Mr. Diggins' motion to Mr. DiStefanis. I'm envious of your opportunity that you availed yourself of to go down to Georgia and work on the boat down there. I watched it from afar, so I'm really admiring you for going down and being on the front lines. I don't know if you got to meet Stacey Abrams or Senator Warnock or Ostrich, but even if you didn't, you played a really important role in that happening. And I'm even more excited about the fact that two of my three children who went to public schools, I really tried to get them beyond minimal activists, meaning they voted for me and voted in other races. And I just was not successful. So if I could adopt you as my third daughter, I would do that. But I do want to say to you, I do admire you as a young woman. Class of 2022 goes by Pontus for taking this on and you can do far much more than any of us, any of my colleagues on the board in influencing the vote at the high school, the years that I coached there, talking to the young men and women who were moving forward and representing. I had a voice, but it was a small voice. You have a very loud voice. And I'm so grateful that I'm talking about everything else that you're doing in courses in Harvard and things like that before you even get out of high school. You know, God bless you. And myself or any of my colleagues can help you in any way in the future. You do have the Election Modernization Committee. That's a great resource that you'll contribute to and will be a resource to you, but please know we're all available to you. I just read your resume curriculum B.Tay and heard your presentation tonight, but I'm so proud of you. So I just wanted to relay that to you with my definite sincere thanks. Thank you so much. That's so sweet of you. Thank you, Mr. Dunn. Thank you, Mr. Hurd. I'm happy to support your appointment. Also, I actually was appointed my first committee when I was 17 before I could vote two is the Library Rebuilding Committee. And there were some people who were really unhappy because they're like, he can't, he doesn't pay taxes. Why is he serving on this committee? And I said, well, you know, I use the library. And so that was, I think it's a great way to look out. You might get appointed to be select board for your second time sometime in the future. You've got a great committee to be appointed to. There are some serious luminaries on that committee. When we put that committee together and we saw the nominees that got appointed to it, holy cow, you're with some world-class, literally world-class participants. And I think you're a great addition. Thank you for volunteering. Thank you. Mr. Corsi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yeah, and I want to echo the comments of my colleagues. I'm so impressed by what you've done in a short period of time. Congratulations for the work that you did in Georgia. The important work that you did in Georgia was seeing how crucial that the outcome of that is right now. And also I want to congratulate you for your induction into the National Honor Society. And I wish you the best of luck as you continue on at Allington High and also with your work on the committee. So thank you so much for applying and I hope you enjoy it. Thank you. I just want to reiterate what the board members said. Thank you for your time. Is tight with everything you have going on but your willingness to serve certainly says wonders about your personality and your commitment to the process. When I was in high school, my father served on this board and I had to be dragged out to participate in the election process. So the fact that you come out so willingly to participate is really amazing. All right, so with that, we have a motion to approve by Mr. Diggins seconded by Mrs. Mahan. Mr. Mahan. Yeah, thank you. Mr. DeCorsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Dunn. Yes. Mr. Hurd. Yes. To you in this vote. Thank you, Ms. Stefanis. Thank you, Mr. O'Connor. Thank you. Thank you so much. All right, and that takes us to licenses and permits for approval of food vendor license, Dell's Lemonade 1050 Massachusetts Avenue. Paul Pietelli, Mr. Pietelli with us. There was two Paul Pietelli, so I promoted both of them. We'll see who we, we'll see who we get. Hi, Mr. Pietelli. Hi, yes. Can you hear me? Yes, I can. If you could just tell us a little bit about your business. Yeah, absolutely. My, sorry, my father's on the line as well, those two of us. I'm Paul Jr. Hello. Hi, Ryan. Here we are. Here we are. How can we get my screen up? I'm gonna start video. Sorry. So yeah, I'm Paul Pietelli. My parents, Paul and Kathy, Pietelli. Together we are App Inc, Dell's Lemonade. Dell's Lemonade, if those of you aren't familiar, is an all-natural soft frozen lemonade. My parents and I have been in the organization since 2003. We have a storefront in North Avril, Massachusetts. Over the years, we've been bringing it to the Boston area. And for many of you these years, we've been looking for a place to find a place to storefront to bring our lemonade. We found Arlington and we love it. We found this space on 1050 Mass Ave. And yeah, so I don't know if Dad, Mom, you want to say anything else about the business? We're looking forward to coming to Arlington. I grew up in Brookline and we used to play sports against Arlington, a big rivalry. So I know the town very well. Great hockey players in Arlington. So we're also in Fenway Park and we're working with the Worcester Red Sox now to get in there. We do a lot of charitable events, donations, fundraisers, help the community, the youth. We want to hire local kids to work at the store. I think we'll be a good asset for the town to bring a nice refreshing drink in the warm weather. And we'll have a nice ice cream tool if you want a nice ice cream, we'll have a Sunday or ice cream cone. And we're looking forward to doing business here. Appreciate it. And Mr. DeCorsi. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yeah, I want to move approval and just let you know that I've been a longtime customer when I had the opportunity to buy it and really excited about having Dells in Arlington. So thank you for choosing Arlington and best of luck. Thank you. Mr. Dunn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was late-comer to DELL, I only found you when you showed up at Fenway Park. And I definitely did enjoy it there and exactly as Steve said, thank you for choosing Arlington and I really appreciate you coming to town. Thank you. Mr. Diggins. Yes, I will move acceptance of the license request. And I haven't been yet. I look forward to it. So thank you for coming to Arlington and I walk past that area a lot and so I'll stop in. Uh-huh, yeah. I want to say to all the Pietelli family, welcome to Arlington. Our town manager said he grew up on Dells and Fall River so you have a testament coming out from our town manager and that's pretty good for me and your location is literally down the street from where I am. So I'm really excited to welcome you to Arlington and I really commend you in the current pandemic for not only taking the chance on expanding your business but doing it here in Arlington, which I'm confident, especially close proximity to our middle school and me, you will be successful and the only other thing I would put out as just an opportunity, not a requirement. The planning department here in Arlington, especially during the pandemic for small businesses, it's a great resource, even just for information but please avail yourselves of that opportunity as well as our Chamber of Commerce, that they're working with small businesses, you do not have to join. What they're doing is, if you're not a member, you can get their services and you don't have to pay the dues and if you are a member, which right now you're not but I'm letting other people know, you are a member, they're waiving their fees because Arlington's really vested in doing everything that we can through the town and through our civic and business organizations to really try to do everything we can for small businesses and I really commend your courageousness for expanding a small business in this pandemic but you certainly have a lot of testaments from some of my current colleagues and Mr. Dickens and I seem to be the only two that haven't been indoctrinated into delts but we will be soon. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for that advice. And again, thank you for choosing Arlington. I haven't had delts, I don't think yet but I did just get a text from my wife upstairs that says, OMG, love delts. So you do have one client right there in the family but no, in all seriousness, I do appreciate it. You choose an Arlington during this time and we certainly look forward to it. So I have a motion by Mr. Dickens. Did we get a second? Yeah, I made the initial motion. Mr. Corsi made the motion. And Mr. Dunn, did you second the motion? I'd be happy to second it. All right. So we have a motion by Mr. Corsi, seconded by Mr. Dunn. Turni Heim. This is Mohan. Yes, thank you. Mr. Corsi. Yes. Mr. Dickens. Yes, sorry about that, Mr. Corsi. Mr. Dunn. Yes. Mr. Hurd. Yes. Janimus vote. Thank you. And thank you all. We'll see you all soon. All right. And that takes us to traffic rules in order in other business. We have for approval, board designee appointment to the election modernization committee to replace Mr. Currow. Do we have any nominations or interests in serving on the election modernization committee? Mr. Dickens, had you been serving on that? Well, I haven't been serving on it, but I've been attending as much as I could. So I'm pretty familiar with what's going on there. And so if no one else wants to me, I will be happy to do so. But if anyone else wants to, I'm content not to, and we'll just hang out as I have been hanging out. We'll call that a statement of interest. I'd like to nominate Mr. Dickens. All right. And Mr. Corsi. Second. All right. And so we have a motion to nominate Mr. Dickens. Seconded by Mr. Corsi, turn your hand. Mrs. Mohan. Yes, thank you. Mr. Corsi. Yes. Mr. Dickens. Yes. Mr. Dunn. Yes. Mr. Hurd. Yes. Mr. Yanemoto. All right. That takes us to item number 13 on our agenda, housing authority appointment process, turn your hand. I'm going to try to be really brief given the amount of items on the agenda tonight. I just want to put this item on the agenda, mostly for the public benefit, but also for the boards. The board may be aware that there was a reform bill to the appointment of a tenant represented on the housing authority that was passed and signed by the governor earlier this year. That bill has a little bit of quirky timing, but the long and short of it is, is that the board will now appoint a tenant going forward from a local tenant organization of the housing authority. There's a few complications. Some of our, I believe that there are several housing authority tenant organizations. There may be one or two housing authority complexes that don't have active tenant organizations, but because there are at least some tenant organizations, you basically will be soliciting folks to apply to be the tenant representative and then you'll be appointing them. And then that seat under normal circumstances would be valid for five years, just like an elected housing authority term because you've got somebody who's in there basically as an interim housing authority member and that seat was still has a year left. The basic upshot is that if when the time comes, you can reappoint or appoint someone new for an interim period of time until the tenant seat is eligible for appointment by some quirks of the law, the law doesn't technically go into effect until May. So there will be a very brief period of time on which your interim seat will have expired for the year, but your ability to appointed tenant won't have yet matured. My recommendation is basically just to solicit an appointment of a tenant seat in much the same way that you did last time, but following the new guidelines, which basically means that the housing authority helps to promote the fact that the board is gonna appoint a tenant seat and the board doesn't need to take any action tonight. I just wanted to advise you that that's basically what is now the board's responsibility. It's just gonna be the board. It's not gonna be the board and the housing authority. Because of the timing, it's a little bit odd that seat will expire basically day of the town election and you can either choose to essentially appoint somebody with the intention to appoint them for the full remainder of the term or you can appoint someone for the interim and have the appointment process again in May. My, I guess, feeling is that if the board appoints somebody with the intention of appointing them for the full term, I think that that's acceptable under the law and there may be a formality that needs to be observed when the law officially takes effect in May, but you'll be able to have some continuity there. So again, the basics of this, that the board essentially has now the authority to appoint a tenant member of the housing authority because of the way that the terms are staggered, that term will be for one year and then the next time it will be for five years. The board already appointed an interim housing authority member that seat expires of the town election. I think at that point in time, you can probably just fill the seat and notice that it's your intention to fill that seat for both the sort of lag period and the year that follows. I know that's a little bit convoluted. You can see from the reference material here, it makes your eyes glaze over, looking at the flow charts, but I think the spirit of it is fairly straightforward. The board doesn't need to take any action. I just wanted to advise the board of this. I think it's important so that folks know that there's a seat coming up that the board will definitely appoint for the year remaining on that term and then we'll be from here on out, appointing for five years. Just to see if anyone from the board has any questions on the process, Mr. Corsi? I have no question. Mr. Dunn? No questions. Mrs. Mahan? I just want to make sure I took in what you said that coming this May, the appropriate number of days before May, we need to notice and encourage people to apply to fill the year and then the following year, we notice legally under whatever it is, 30, 60 days for people to apply for a five year seat for the tenant. You said it better than you, Mrs. Mahan, that's correct. Okay, so I would leave it to the chair and town council to work with the select board office working backwards from May of this year to solicit applicants through the process and then the future chair after April, I guess the May meeting to have that as an agenda item. So thank you, I'm all set. Thank you, Mrs. Mahan. And any questions, Ms. Diggins? How could I possibly have any questions now, I'm all set. All right, and with that, we will close that item. Thank you, Attorney Hyme. Mr. Chair, is there any way to get like a three or five minute break before we go into warrant articles? Yep, so that's what I was going to ask. All right, so it's just about 9.30 now. We do have a number of warrant article hearings. So we're just looking to the board to see if we'd like to take a quick break and it looks like we do. So we'll break for about five minutes, which we'll bring, we'll call it seven minutes, we'll bring it back at 9.35. All right, it is now time for warrant article hearings. Item number 14, articles for review. We have article 12, 13, 85, 86, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 87, 88, 89, 90 and 91. So in order to streamline this process with all the articles that we have, what we're gonna do is we have a few articles that have the same proponent. We're gonna bring up the proponent, allow them to introduce all the articles that they have before us within their own, they each have their individual time periods for that. Then we'll open up to the boards for any questions, comments, motions in regards to the individual articles. And then we will open up for public comments for that block of articles as well, just so we're not bringing people up and down that have multiple articles before us today. So the first article that we have is article 12, a bylaw amendment changing Columbus Day to Indigenous People's Day. And that is inserted by the select board of the request of the Human Rights Commission. So as we bring them up, we will ask them to present on article 12, article 13, article 85 and article 86. And we have Mr. Pusey with us. Okay. Hi. Thank you, everyone. My name is Drake Pusey. I am a co-chair this year of the Human Rights Commission. And I'm from precinct 13. First of all, I wanted to thank Attorney Heim for his very detailed explainers for these, the background and guidance provided. And I also submitted some short introductions for these in the interest of time. I'm not gonna read them or really even extensively reference them. But I'll explain the four articles. Article 12 is the bylaw amendment. That one is to complete the changeover from Columbus Day to Indigenous People's Day. We wanted to make that change in the list of holidays. For the completeness of the changeover, we would prefer if Indigenous People's Day was explained by the date, second Monday in October. But I understand Attorney Heim's referencing of the state and federal legal holidays to explain it as well. And this is, as you may have mentioned, an extension of the proclamation that you passed on January 25th. Should I just go on to the next one? Or, okay. Article 13 is to insert Juneteenth Independence Day into that same list of holidays. It was passed by the state. We were reading the explainer from SHERM, the Society for Human Rights Management. And they explained that it is at the same tier of holidays, the partially restricted holidays as New Year's Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day and Labor Day in terms of time off and overtime and all that stuff. So the town hasn't really decided how it's gonna do that from an HR perspective, but we took it upon ourselves to make the article, to make that change. Article 85 is a resolution asking the town meeting to endorse the same land acknowledgement that you endorsed in the proclamation. It is an encouragement, not a mandate. Like Attorney Heim explained, every co-chair in a public meeting will have their discretion, but it's a town encouragement. There is a, sorry, this is scope creep, but an informal request along with this, if a member of the select board would be willing to read the land acknowledgement during announcements at the first night of town meeting, we would love that. We can talk about that later. If no one wants to do it, it'll probably fall to someone on the Human Rights Commission. And the last article is the resolution celebrating Indigenous People's Day. And this is to give town meeting an opportunity to endorse the same celebration that you endorsed in the proclamation. That's the shortest version. If you have any questions, let me know. All right, and thank you. I'll turn to the board for any questions, comments. Mrs. Mann. If it's appropriate, I'd like to move approval. Can we do all of them together? Attorney Heim or Attorney Cunningham, or should we do them separately? So we're going to vote them separately just for the sake of, in case any members want to vote separately on the individual articles. Mr. Chair, may I? Okay. Yup. I'm sorry. If Mrs. Mahan or any other board member would like to talk about each one of them in turn, I think that they can. It's just the votes that would need to be separate. Yup. Okay. Okay, I guess on article 12, I'd make a motion and then have a comment. I'd like to move approval on article 12. And I'd like to thank the Human Rights Commission and others on town staff that have worked with us first in the proclamation stage of it. And now moving forward, I just want to say one of my children wanted to be a teacher at their very core. And one of the reasons why they didn't continue on with that endeavor, a lot of it had to do with Columbus Day and having to be a teacher and teach Columbus Day and Christopher Columbus as traditionally has been taught in the past, that my child went into library services instead. So that's something that's very important to me through my child who educated me in terms of, I knew a little bit of the past history, but I didn't know the import or importance of it until they went to college and really had a conflict on wanting to be a teacher and not just around Christopher Columbus, but a couple of other naturally accepted academic teachings that really went against their core in terms of what they believe. So I'm definitely in favor of this and we'll take up the other articles that I'm in favor with in due course. So thank you to Mr. Pussy and everyone on Human Rights Commission and town staff. So thank you, Mr. Chair. And you can, if you'd like Ms. Mann, move in, Attorney Hyman, correct me, you can move approval of all the articles that are sitting before us and we can catch a second for those as well. We just need to vote them at the end separately. Okay, if I could move approval of articles 12, 13, 85 and 86, thank you, Mr. Chair. That's correct, Attorney Hyman. That's fine. It's really just the, yes, Mr. Chair, it's really just the end vote that should be parsed out. Yep, Mr. Corsi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, y'all second Mrs. Mahan's motion. And thank you, Mr. Pussy for bringing this forward. Just one quick comment on article 12 and I appreciate Attorney Hyman, Attorney Cunningham's comments about potentially, or not potentially that if the proposed by-law changes adopted, it wouldn't conflict with state law. And I think this goes to the discussion that we had when we talked about the resolution. There still is a statute that is referenced, Chapter 6, Section 12B, that as long as that's on the books, there will be a state holiday known as Columbus Day. And that's the reason for the reference at the end, at least for state law purposes. So I knew you had talked to the individuals who were on the night that the resolution came before us that there has been a new bill filed in the latest session, we'll see what happens with that. And if it is changed, we'll make a further change to the by-law. Just a question on Article 85, on the land acknowledgement, and this may be later for Attorney Hyman, we had a slightly different, we made some revisions to the land acknowledgement in terms of language that was slightly different than what the Human Rights Commission had proposed. So I would just ask Attorney Hyman to, when that comes back to us, just to take a look at that original resolution and if there are any inconsistencies, just to correct that. All right. Yes, sir. Yeah, Mr. Dunn. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm definitely curious about, I have some stress about holiday creep, but at the same time, I understand why we're making this choice. And I support it, but I definitely worry a little bit about how long the list gets and how it does it. Now, of course, I come from an industry where the normal thing is, is you, like we have a really short list of holidays and we let people take holiday time off whenever they want. We don't actually have like a counted number of holidays. So I come definitely from a different place on this particular one. So I guess I'm probably spending too much time to just say yes. All right. Thank you. And Mr. Diggins? Yeah, I understand the efficiency of combining things, but my brain's beginning to fry a little bit. I mean, so I'm just going to ask for some help. I mean, just list out the ones and I will give my comments or questions. I mean, so first is 12, right? On the indigenous people's day. So as I recall in the attorney's notes, there was a town or a city that did both. Was it Salem? Yeah, so it was Salem, Mr. Diggins. So as I said, when we were doing the proclamation, I don't like taking things away. I mean, I like adding and I'm all for celebrating or acknowledging indigenous people's day. Yeah, I don't like the notion of just completely eradicating Columbus Day. I've had a conversation with Mr. Pucey and I've had a conversation with other people and I just want to flow this idea, is that we do an indigenous people's month, and really be acknowledged be the importance of indigenous people and keep Columbus Day because I mean, that's a part of the historical records, it's a part of our existence really. And so regardless of what happens to me, I'd like to see us just be bolder. We may be the first municipality in the state to do it, but I think it's a worthy cause, whatever we do here. So as I count on these lines, I'll go to, I think it's 85, which is the proclamation. I mean, yes, Mr. Pucey is right, I mean, we did change things in the proclamation regarding the land acknowledgement. As I said, when we discussed this to me, there are any number of things that can be acknowledged at the beginning of a meeting. I don't like the notion of devoting that space to this topic only because there are any number of worthy topics that we can acknowledge at the beginning of a meeting. And I think that should be up to the chairs, those meetings and the committees to do whatever acknowledged that they want. And also, I mean, there's just something that's getting a little bit close to prayer territory for me on this. So I think that's what kind of gets me in the end with this meeting. Now, it's a resolution and I'm inclined to let resolutions go through, but I'd have a question to Mr. Heim. If I were to want to have a statement be indicating the way that I may vote on the resolution, do I need to make the gist of that statement in this meeting or can I just say, look, I mean, as a board, we will vote positive action on it. But in the statement that comes out, I have my own statement that wasn't necessarily made here. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And if I can just take the opportunity to acknowledge that Mr. Cunningham did the lion's share of the work on these specific four articles. So it's particularly appropriate to express gratitude for his hard work on this. Mr. Diggins, typically speaking, the board either expresses majority opinion that might have some nuance to it, or it expresses, you know, it's a four to one voter, three to two vote, and the minority of the board was concerned about A, B, and C. So when I draft a comment, I can certainly draft a comment with nuance, noting that the board discussed these things, this specific concern was raised, things of that nature. It can be a little bit tricky, depending on how strong the rest of the board feels about something, but you'll see in the draft open comment, you'll have the opportunity to approve it or say, you know, I'd really like to have this concern raised a little bit more, does the board feel okay with my concern being highlighted a little bit more or maybe toned down depending on how well I capture it? Gotcha. Okay, thank you. And so on Juneteenth day, I mean, I forget the number. Well, you know, I mean, I understand the financial aspect to things, but, you know, I'm off for more time off. And I think that's an important holiday to acknowledge. We, at this point, it seems like we have a holiday every month except for August, you know, and so on. And for most of the salary people, we know how that goes. I mean, we get the day off, we still get to do the work, in the other four days, we eat it. So the productivity tends to remain the same, but no, I mean, it's an important part of our history to acknowledge, and so I am very much supportive of that one. Was that it? I believe there's the resolution with respect to Indigenous Peoples' Day, Mr. Deans. Oh, okay, so yeah, I mean, it's kind of one of the lines of what I said about the holiday. So I don't think I need to repeat anything at this point. Thank you. I would just say, yeah, I'm happy to support these, you know, it's just natural extension from the discussion we had a few weeks back and we had some pretty moving presentations at that time on why there's a need to make the change. I just say to Mr. Deans's point, which I've had discussions with a number of people about Indigenous Peoples' Day. And I mean, it's still a state holiday of Columbus Day. So if somebody so chooses to celebrate Columbus Day, then they can do so. But I think what we're doing here is recognizing, you know, the injustice that Indigenous Peoples incurred and still do incur to this day as a result with these actions. And I'm happy to support this. And, you know, I think Juneteenth, we've learned about this day a lot in the past few years and it's probably one of the most important days in American history that no one ever knew about. So, you know, I think it's, again, long past time to start recognizing that day as well. So I'm happy to support that one as well. All right, so Attorney Heim, we have a motion to approve articles 12, 13, 85, and 86, which has been seconded. So we'll start with article 12. Oops, sorry. Sure, I'm sorry. This is a public hearing. Yep. This is a public hearing. So if there's any members of the public that wish to speak on article 12, 13, 85, or 86, please use the raise hand function on your Zoom application at this time. Martin wants to put the tray. We'll start with Carl Wagner. Mr. Wagner, if you could just say anything. I just unmuted myself, hopefully, and I'm just turning on my video. Hopefully you can see and hear me. We can see you, if you can say your name for the record. Carl Wagner, 30 Edge Hill Road, Arlington. Thanks for hearing me. I just wanted to say, I thought those were great words from the newest member of the select board. And I really wanna congratulate Mr. Diggins in his comments. I think they're exactly the right thing. I encourage the board, especially since you're not spending any money, I think, to not take anything away, but to add, especially where there have been injustices. So I really think those were great comments. And I hope any approval of the last proposal would not take anything away from what the people of Arlington expect to have. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, Lynette Martin. Miss Martin, if you can say your name for the record. Hi, my name is Lynette Martin. I'm a second generation Italian-American. My grandparents came here from Sicily. I was a proud Italian-American. I wanna say completely supportive of changing Columbus Day to Indigenous People's Day. I disagree with the assertion that we should be celebrating both holidays. Columbus Day celebrates the memory of somebody who committed tons of crimes against our Indigenous peoples and nations here in the United States. And I feel like saying that we should celebrate both and not turn our backs from one of them is similar to saying, we should put up a Black Lives Matter flag and also keep up Confederate flags. So I hope that in making this change, we also are facing, you know, the difficult parts of our history and by not keeping Columbus Day, that is a statement from our town that we recognize these histories and I want to make some reparations by changing the name to honor our Indigenous peoples. Thank you. Thank you. And we have Elizabeth Ray. Oh, did Mr. Ray show her hand down? Yes, yeah. We have Rajiv Sanaya. Hi, Mrs. Sanaya. Can you just say your name for the record? Sure, it's my name is Rajiv Soniaja, not Soniaja. I'm a member of the Arlington Human Rights Commission, although I speak in a personal capacity. I would like to reiterate my support for replacing Columbus Day with the Indigenous People's Day holiday. The reason being, I have worked with Drake Pusey on this resolution and we were part of the team that worked on bringing this proclamation to the select board. We worked extensively with people of Native American origin who spoke about the pain and the erasure of their history for hundreds of years, which was perpetrated by Christopher Columbus. So it's part of recorded history that is for the genocide. It was a cultural devastation they have suffered. And recognizing Indigenous People's Day is a way in some small measure to address that in Asia. So for us to say that we are going to celebrate both holidays is almost inhumane, I would say. So we have to acknowledge what's happened in the past and the way to do it is to replace the holiday or the observance of Columbus Day. Thank you. Thank you. And it looks like at this point, all hands are down. If any additional people, members of the public would like to speak, let us know now. All right, we have Elizabeth Dre. Hi, good evening, Elizabeth Dre. I was not intending to speak to support these articles because I really didn't think that it would be needed, but I can't let the idea that one of the reasons to support the passing or the celebrating of Juneteenth is because it's another day off. I'm really emotional, you can probably hear it in my voice, but I found that to be incredibly offensive. It is an important holiday and it needs to be celebrated for what it is and not because we get a day off. Thank you. And with that, that will close the public comment portion. All right, and I will look back to the board. Do you have any additional comments, questions on any of these articles for the proponent, Mr. Pusey? Hi, thank you. I just wanted to make one note in response to the idea of why is it a day and a replacement and not Indigenous Peoples Month? And I think the key reason for that is that in 1990, 120 Indigenous nations agreed that this was what they wanted. And so it is a concerted plan, which is important because if some people celebrated Independence Day and other people celebrated Independence Month, it would, or on different dates, it would dilute the awareness, right? So to have it all consistent is very important. That's all I wanted to say. Yep. Any additional comments, questions from the board? All right, with that, Attorney Heim, we will take article 12. Mr. Chair, if I may, each article just articulate my understanding of the board's position. And if there's any clarifications that folks want to make, I'll make sure that I understand them. So my understanding on article 12 is that the board votes in support of amending the town's bylaws section holidays to strike the word Columbus Day and insert Indigenous Peoples Day known as the State and Federal Holiday Columbus Day. I do want to reiterate my appreciation for Drake's point about what the Human Rights Commission would prefer. Again, I think this is purely a function of, as Mr. DeCorsi noted, a purely a function of making sure that it's clear that there aren't two separate holidays for the purposes of town personnel and that this is essentially a state holiday that town personnel are required to have off or some version of off. And we're trying to reconcile the important message that's being projected here about Indigenous Peoples Day with the understanding that it's in the context of a state and federal holiday that occurs at the same time. But other than that, my understanding is that there's unanimous support for this. I've got a good sense of the board's feeling about how important this is as something that we're trying to recognize for the reasons that Human Rights Commission has articulated here. Yes. If the board has any comments or contradictions to Attorney Hymes' comments, you can speak out. Okay. With that said, I'm ready for the board's vote. So, Mrs. Mohan. Yes, thank you. Mr. DeCorsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Dunn. Yes. Mr. Hurd. Yes. unanimous vote. All right. And with that, we are ready for article 13. Mr. Hurd, I think this is fairly straightforward. So I don't see any need for clarification or amendments. I'll certainly put the board's comments in as I hand them. Mrs. Mohan. Yes, thank you. Mr. DeCorsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. I'm sorry. I don't have that one. Which one is the... This is the Juneteenth insertion. Okay. Oh, yes, yes, yes. Definitely. Yes. Thank you. Mr. Dunn. Yes. Mr. Hurd. Yes. Junanimous vote on article 13. All right. And that takes us to article E6. My understanding. Sorry. Five, Mr. Chair. Yep. So my understanding is that the board unanimously... Oh, sorry. I shouldn't say that. The board supports this article, but would like the acknowledgement to be consistent with the acknowledgement that the board had previously endorsed for the board's internal purposes and the previous matter before it. If that's correct, then I'll be ready to take your votes. Yeah. So I would just say, I don't think we had any change to the actual language of the land acknowledgement. It was just consistent that was saying certain public meetings. But yeah, it's consistent with the language in the property. Yep. Okay. I think we're ready for a vote. Mrs. Mahan. Yes. Thank you. Mr. DeCorsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Dunn. Yes. Mr. Hurd. Yes. An anonymous vote. And now that will kick us to article 86. On article 86, I think I've got what I need. So unless there's any corrections or clarifications that members of the board would like to make. Okay. Mrs. Mahan. Yes. Mr. DeCorsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Dunn. Yes. Mr. Hurd. Yes. An anonymous vote. All right. And thank you, Mr. Pussy. Thank you very much. All right. So that will take us to article 78. I have here Mrs. Malofchuk. Is Mrs. Malofchuk with us? Mrs. Malofchuk, I'm gonna promote your article, but since they're two relatively separate items, article 78 and article 89, you can present on article 78. We'll turn to the board for any questions or comments and then we'll do article 89 right after while you're with us, if that works. If that works, I'm confused. So first I present on trees, then questions, and then the next one. Right. So we're gonna do the two article, one article here and separately. So this is just article 78. Okay. All right. Okay. Thank you. Beth Malofchuk, Russell Street, town meeting member precinct nine. We reside in our convene tonight on the ancestral lands of the Massachusetts nation and the indigenous people formerly residing here. They live sustainably with the environment. Let us learn from that model. I seek to have town meeting vote on a resolution to declare Arlington's tree canopy, a public health resource. I respectfully ask for your support. As I stated to the tree committee a week or so ago, I seek to raise awareness in the Arlington community as to the importance of our tree canopy. I seek to support the work of Tim Laquieve, Arlington's tree warden, and I seek to support the work of the Arlington tree committee. All of this we accomplished by the greater Arlington community being aware of the importance of trees to our mental and physical wellbeing. We also gained from the tree canopy's contribution to the reduction of greenhouse gases. All of these factors contribute to the community's public health. Let's demonstrate to the children and the grandchildren. We are after all answerable to them. Let us demonstrate our covenant with our immediate natural resources and recognize Arlington's tree canopy as the public health resource it is. In the scientific journal Urban Forestry and Urban Greening, they examine whether the public health benefits of urban trees are greater than the biophysical benefits, carbon sequestration, reduction of heat islands, et cetera. They found failure to account for the public health benefits of the tree canopy can lead to under-investment in the tree canopy. We see this in marginalized neighborhoods and cities and neighborhoods of people of color and poor sections of towns. COVID-19 has emphasized the importance on an immediate level that people in the community have access to safe green spaces. Some are fortunate to have their own yards. Others live near parks and pocket parks. Trees play a critical role in our personal and the community's wellbeing. This is reflected in the work of the tree committee and in the science. Greta Thunberg and the UN have stated no less. David Attenberg depicts this in his films. The New York Times article I cited in supporting documentation explains the importance of preserving older trees and heritage trees, not only for their beauty and carbon sequestration capabilities, but for the support and nurturing that they give, that they provide to nearby and surrounding younger and more vulnerable trees. There are decades of university research providing data on the importance of trees and their role in the health and safety and the quality of a community's life. Protect, restore and fund and I request your support for this resolution. Everything counts, everything what we do counts on this. Thank you. Great. We'll turn to the board, Mr. Corsi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank you, Mr. Lauchcich. I just have a question for you. And then this is from the memo we received from town council indicating or citing the language in title five, article 16 of the town bylaws regarding tree protection and preservation. And council has pointed out that that bylaw essentially agrees with what you're attempting to do here. And maybe you disagree with that, but I'd like you to comment on that in terms, if you would, what may be missing from this. And secondly, if you're proposing a resolution but you have specific language for the resolution for us to consider. Language for the resolution I submitted and had an email discussion with, I believe, Doug Heim. And I specifically seek to have the tree canopy recognized as a public health resource. If you can put the tree bylaw up on the share screen so I could see it. I'm unfamiliar, I don't have it memorized. I don't recall it, it refers to the tree canopy as a public health resource. Unfortunately, I don't have it. I have the written memorandum here in front of me but I don't have anything I can share with you. Does Doug Heim perhaps have that? I can't react to the bylaw when I can't see it, sorry. I'm not that adept at the computer. I think I can bring it up. If you can give me one second, Mr. Chairman. I did present this to the tree canopy and majority of the, I mean the tree committee rather and a majority of them were supportive of it and enthusiastic about it. Mr. DeCoursey, is this the section that you were referencing? Exactly, yeah. That's the language from the memorandum specifically for, well, both sentences. It doesn't say anything about public health. I see nothing, I do not see the words public health in there. Okay. And when you brought this for a while, it sounds like you weren't aware of the specific language. I'm wondering if you did have a conversation about perhaps putting that into the bylaw as opposed to having a separate resolution. I wasn't involved with the tree committee when this bylaw was written. And when I mentioned this to the tree committee, about 10 days or so ago, that didn't come up. Thank you. You're welcome. Mr. Diggins. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think Mr. DeCoursey's kind of headed along the lines that I am made with resolutions, I mean, unless they are, I think harmful to town meeting, do a disservice to town meeting, I am going to let them go, I'm going to vote approval of them because of the nature in which resolutions are treated in town meeting, but they bring up often being worthwhile issue, and so what I hope to get out of these is, is what can we do now to deal with this issue? So I would like to ask you what, if this resolution passes, what can we do? If it doesn't pass, what can we do? I mean, what more do you think we should do? That's a question to me. Yes. Yes, sorry, through the chair to you. I seek to raise awareness in Arlington, among the community, how comprehensive all of this is, respect for the environment, but specifically the role of the tree canopy, which the tree committee and the tree warden are doing very admirable work to protect, but I seek to raise awareness among the Arlington community, among the electorate, among those who don't vote. And also, I think it's very important, and as you kind of referred to about the resolutions to afford town meeting, our elected representatives, the deliberative body of our municipal government, the opportunity to weigh in on these citizen warrant resolutions, to assist more article resolutions. Okay, well, thank you. And also I want to express appreciation for the references that you included with the resolution, they're informative. Thank you. Thank you very much. Mrs. Mohan. Thank you. I guess what I would say is that Ms. Malakchuk has submitted this resolution, and I'm happy for a resolution to go to town meeting, but basically I see two parts of her proposals, which is recognized in Arlington's tree canopy as a public health resource. And we do have, when the tree committee created their town bylaws, there's a paragraph that the town manager just recently screen shared regarding the preservation of the tree canopy and planting of replacement trees. So I think the first part of the way I read it, Ms. Malakchuk's resolution is agreeing with what our tree committee has created through the town bylaw. And then the second part of your resolution is to take any action related there too. And that would be my question to you. You said you presented the tree committee, you agree with what they're doing. Support what they're doing. I support what the tree committee does. Right, so what is take any other actions there too, besides what the tree committee's doing? Let me speak to the first part of your comments, if I may. As I understand it, the tree committee's mandate is limited to street trees. And so I am looking at, I look at challenges holistically. And so I'm looking at the tree canopy in Arlington that would include parks and pocket parks and Arlington Great Meadows, which I think is a fabulous resource. But I am looking at the tree canopy as a whole, as a public health resource for the community of Arlington. So that's to your first, the first part of your comments. And as far as- Okay, and what I would say to that is we also have the bylaws under the Conservation Commission and the Wetlands Protection Act that's adopted in that. So what I'm asking you is what beyond that are you suggesting under that we're not doing? That's a loaded question. I attended many concerts. No, no, it's just a question. You say or take and take any other action related there too. I'm saying to you, we have a tree committee with their bylaws. We have the Conservation Commission with what they're charged with and the bylaws that they oversee. And we have the Wetlands Protection Act and the protection that that affords us. What are we missing that you're saying or take any action there too? Or you just wanna have this resolution to reiterate all that, which is fine. I would like to have this resolution come before town meeting. I would like, as I said, for the deliberative body of municipal government to vote on recognizing Arlington's tree canopy as a public health resource as to the language of the resolution, if it's incorrect, if a comm is out of place. Again, I'm not an attorney. I'm not an expert in municipal government. I'm a tree hugger. And I did submit the, and seek the advice of Douglas Heim and Mr. Leone. I don't know how. No, but all I'm saying to you is, well, what is it, you're saying you wanna submit this, but what are you asking, what's in the resolution beyond what we're already doing? What else should we be doing? I'm not saying that sarcastically beyond Wetlands Protection. I believe. I believe. You know, normally when you talk over someone, you're not listening so quick, go ahead. Just, I'm fine supporting this, but what is it you're asking us to support? Okay, I apologize for speaking over you. The Conservation Commission has a specific parameter of their responsibilities. The Wetlands Protection Act, which I believe we changed in 2019, has its own parameters. I think the Conservation Commission does not overlap with the Wetlands Protection Act. Again, I'm not, and as I said in the past, I've attended many meetings of the Conservation Commission where they in fact ignored the buffer zone and allowed trees to be cut down. I attended those spy pond lane meetings. So in listening for us, the other committees that we have, and I think it's wonderful we have all of these committees, I think sometimes there can be stove piping in municipal government, much as there is in federal government where sometimes committees don't know what other committees are doing, unless you're fortunate to have members that overlap or really illustrative minutes and agendas. So I think there's a need for this resolution, the 15 people who signed the paperwork think so. I've gotten a lot of support from neighbors and colleagues. So I don't know if I'm answering your question. I think there's a need for it. That's what I'm asking for. You know, I don't want to keep, I'll stop there, but I don't understand what your parameters of the resolution is regarding further defining this as a public health resource. And I'll stop there. I thought maybe you would provide that, but I'm hearing that that's not something you can do. All right, Mrs. Mahan, we're gonna move on to Mr. Dunn here. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I'm gonna, first I'm gonna politely disagree with at least one of my colleagues. And I'm gonna say it's not about the select board passing through resolutions for the town meeting to consider. The good news is it's not even in our power. We can't block this from going to town meeting even if we wanted to. It's in the town manager act. As soon as you get 10 signatures, it goes before town meeting. It's the way it is. I'm totally, and I support that. To me, what this hearing is about and what our vote is, is what we recommend that town meeting should do. And there are times where we think about it. We say, you know, we don't have a strong opinion. We should let the town meeting decide. And if we take a pass and we say that, all right. So be it. There'll be times when I've probably said that in the past. Most of the time though, I think town meeting is best served when we do our jobs well, when we have a hearing. And we consider the various voices and then we make a recommendation. And so I currently am not persuaded that this is unique or different than what we already have on the books. I think the tree bylaws pretty clear. I went back and I read the open space report a little bit before the meeting. I don't, I've heard the proponents suggest that we need to, the trees, we need to acknowledge that the tree canopy supports public health. And I think the language, while it doesn't use the words public and health in that order, it clearly indicates public health through everything else that it says. And I just don't, and the other reason to do it would be to publicize the importance of trees. And while I certainly, you know, as for many years as it does me to the tree committee and I certainly support a lot of the work that they do, I don't think that this is the right venue to do that kind of publicity work. So I, if Mr. Heard, if you're entertaining any motions, I move a recommendation of no action. Done. So I would just say, you know, I agree with the notion that our tree canopy is important and I would certainly think if it went to Tom meeting, they would, you would probably get the votes to agree with that statement as well. I think like Mr. Dunn said, it's just what is this article creating that hasn't, isn't already in place. And I think that's similar to what Mrs. Mahan was trying to get at. And way it comes down on is if there's any number of statements or about issues important to the town that we could put through as a resolution to town meeting to reiterate in this being one of them, it's just a matter of whether or not we want 30 art resolutions in every town meeting with a quality statement that, you know, the vast majority of town meeting members agree with already. And I think that's what we're looking here with this resolution is, you know, most if not all town meeting members agree with the statement that our tree canopy is a public health issue, it's just whether or not we need a resolution in order to reiterate that. And so that's just where I am on that. All right, with that, this is a public hearing. We have two hands raised, three hands raised. A few, okay. We're gonna start with Mona Mandel. Ms. Mandel, if you can just say your name for the record. Hi, my name is Mona Mandel. And I'm 14 Water Street unit two, increasing nine town meeting member. I speak in support of citizen warrant article 78 to have tree canopy as a public health resource. I deeply care about climate change issues and I really feel that our trees are biggest resource to fight climate change. This is just a resolution to support tree canopy as a holistic way to address it across the various committees that we have and to raise awareness on this topic. So if the select board takes a no action vote on this, this also reflects how the select board feels about tree canopy as a public health. So that's also a message that you're sending to the community. So I just wanted to put that out there as well. And I think right now with everything that we're seeing in Texas and all over the world, I think this is something that we are seeing as a community, as a resolution. So I wanted to support this, the article that Beth has come forward. Thank you very much. You have Carl Wagner. Mr. Wagner, say a name for the record. Thank you. Hopefully you can hear me and see me. We can. Thank you, Carl Wagner, 30 Edge Hill Road. I wasn't planning to speak on Ms. Milovchik's proposal 78, tree canopy as a public health resource, but I have to speak to you members of the select board honestly and say, why not allow the town meeting a body of elected officials just like you five are four plus one will be five, I hope are to reiterate what is important. Like affordability, tree canopy and open space and wetlands are something that is lost and never gained again. And right now there are forces including within unelected town officials here who want to push for the things that could potentially hurt affordability and potentially hurt our tree canopy. And the argument is always made this is better for the people who live here. But honestly, Ms. Milovchik is 100% right. And I think the earlier commenter also this doesn't cost you anything. And yet it could cost the people who live here their fresh air and the open space that they love. And everything that was said by Ms. Milovchik is entirely right. Since the law that you're talking about being the same as what she's giving to the town meeting to speak on was written developers pay a price per head on trees and the trees get taken down. And we've seen this happening over and over again. I believe our representative garbally is part of a project that's gonna take down trees right in the town center. It's very frustrating for people who don't love trees perhaps as much as she does, but we just want air. And given coronavirus, we need air. So thank you very much. Yeah, Lynette Culverhouse. Hi, Lynette Culverhouse, Draper Avenue, town meeting member in precinct 11. I wanna thank Ms. Milovchik for introducing this article to protect a tree canopy and for the other two people who spoke in favor of it. I am a citizen of the earth and a lover of nature who is deeply concerned about climate change and the impact it has on our planet. This includes everything that has life including plants and trees. Not everyone in town sees it this way. We need to do more. It saddens me greatly every time I witness trees and green spaces being destroyed to be replaced by man-made structures. While construction of homes is essential, the destruction of trees is optional. Trees are living organisms that absorb carbon dioxide and help to keep our air clean. They provide shelter from the scorching sun of summer from rain and from wind. And they are home to many creatures as well as contributing to our mental and physical well-being. They are in a symbiotic relationship with all other living beings. We cannot hurt trees without hurting all living things including humans. To some of you, this might seem sounds sappy but the science is clear and I believe that the future of humanity depends on our ability to live in harmony with other species and the natural world. There is a beautiful movie based on science about trees put out by Patagonia. May I suggest that we all watch it to help us grow a deeper respect for the valuable role played by trees in our ecosystem. I would like to urge the board to support this article that seeks to protect our trees that in turn protect and nourish us. Thank you. Yeah, Laura Kiesel. Hello, can you hear me? Yes, you can. Great. This is Laura Kiesel, Mass Ave, precinct six. I support Beth's resolution. I come from a background. I'm an environmental scientist by degree in training and I used to work for the town of Wellesley's Natural Resources Commission as their environmental education coordinator. I admit I don't know all the bylaws in Arlington but looking at the one that was just shared on the screen I do see differences in the nuances of language on that screen and what she's asking for. When you put in a request to have tree canopy considered as a public health resource explicitly it also calls in line in environmental equity and justice issue in terms of making sure that all of the residents throughout Arlington or in a given municipality where these kind of resolutions are proposed which I'm familiar with and other municipalities I've worked with have access to these resources. A lot of times in a given municipality they are concentrated in areas where there's more affluence and privilege and they can over time be deprived of certain areas or neighborhoods where there's less affluence and privilege. And I think we're having a lot of conversations here in Arlington about equity and access and I think tree canopy and the public health resources those offer especially when we're in the midst of a COVID pandemic which has disproportionately impact low income people and people of color is particularly important to consider. There was a very important peer review study that came out this summer that I would implore the select board to look at by urban ecologist, Chris Shell about the importance explicitly of tree canopy as a public health resources. And he looked at urban areas and suburbs that had trees versus less trees and the equity issues there and how if you don't enshrine that in the policy explicitly how that can have disproportionate impacts and just on the more local level there was just an op-ed this past week in Cambridge Day from Black Response Cambridge about affordable housing but also how a lot of times in that conversation access to green spaces and tree cover are often not considered or put into local policy. This is just a resolution but I think when we elevate that these considerations will come to the forefront of our policy considerations. So thank you for listening. Thank you. Elaine Crowder. Yes, hello. Yes, can you say a name for the record? My name is Elaine Crowder. Duke Glenbrook Lane unit 17, Tom meeting member from precinct 19. I heard the suggestion from the board. I have a question actually, not a statement. I heard a suggestion from the board in looking back at the bylaws that the possibility of amending the bylaw to add the language that Beth is proposing. So that would have to be a separate warrant article to amend. So that's what that was my question is that something number one that the board would entertain and if so, number two, what would be the way to do that? Thank you. So attorney Hyman, I don't think that's a possibility at this point. Correct. That's correct, Mr. Heard. So the warrant article is for a resolution. The resolution can resolve to do a number of things but it would have to advise of an intention to amend the bylaw. May I have my first question answered please? So the first, we can't do that is the answer. I'm not saying is that, I know you can't do that now. I'm saying, is this something that the board would entertain in the future? I think I can't speak on behalf of the board and this is a public comment question. So it's not a question to answer but I think it's certainly if someone were to propose it to us and made an argument, sure. Okay, thank you. Yep. And so there's no further public comment on this. There any additional comments from the board? Mrs. Mohan. I'll second Mr. Dunn's motion. On the basis of we have not been provided what the parameters are beyond what we have with the Wetlands Protection Act Conservation Commission and the Treat Committee. Thank you. Any additional comments Mr. Corsi? No further comments. Mr. Diggins. Oh, I do so many. But I just wonder, I know now isn't the time to discuss the philosophy of resolutions but my intention is not to shirk my responsibility and no, that's not what was said and no, that's not what was intended because I feel that our deliberation here be as it will be recorded or summarized by Mr. Heim will elucidate our feelings about this resolution and we can still put it in front of town meeting for the eight minutes that it's going to get. And so be whether resolutions mean or a good thing is a whole nother thing. But as I said, what I like about these, at least this one, is that it brings up an important issue that we can discuss and it's trying to find out what more the town can do. And so that's it, a little disjointed but there's more later on, thanks. Any additional comments Mr. Dunn? No, thank you. All right, yeah. And I would just, again, sort of reiterate where we were at the beginning of this conversation was that I don't think anybody on the board in any way, shape or form was trying to diminish the importance of our tree canopy. I think that's something that everyone on the board supports and has in many, many, many instances reiterated that support with not just warrant articles but just different agenda items that have come before us. I think we've always talked about the value of our tree canopy and how important it is to the town of Marlinton. It's just specifically on this resolution, whether or not this resolution to town meeting as drafted adds anything to the discussion and that's what the board will ultimately vote on. All right, with that, Attorney Heim, I think we're ready for a vote. Mrs. Mohan. Yes. Mr. Dacourcy. Yes. Mr. Diggins. I'm sorry, it's not going the way I thought it was. I think I am confused on the motion. So what's the motion to not vote no action? 10. Okay, so then no. Thanks. Mr. Dunn. Yes. Mr. Hurd. Yes. It's a four to one vote. All right. Now that will take us, Ms. Palakshak, if you can stay with us for article 89, we'll bump that up in our agenda here. So if you can present article 89 for us. Okay. Does the resolution still go before town meeting? I'm confused. Mr. Chair, would you like me to? So Ms. Malopchak, the board is just making a recommended vote of this board of select, or select board rather. You would submit a substitute motion if you wanted the town meeting to still discuss the resolution. Thank you. So Beth Malopchak, Russell Street, town meeting member precinct nine. The charge delivered to the African Lodge, June 24th, 1797 at Minotomy by the right worshipful Prince Hall is a document in the collection at the Library of Congress. It inspired me to submit to you a draft warrant article resolution to declare June 24th, Prince Hall Day. Democracy is an idea we believe in democracy. Prince Hall believed in democracy and in the promise it held to the enslaved. Prince Hall made democracy a verb. He was a community organizer. The 16 citizen warrant articles tonight and I understand there are more illustrate that Arlington is organizing. We are keeping covenant with democracy and with the intent of the founders among whom belongs Prince Hall. Community organizer, civic leader, abolitionist, first black and civil rights leader in America. Prince Hall created the first school organized by black citizens for black children. Prince Hall petitioned the great in general court of Massachusetts to end slavery and end the slave trade three years before John Adams drafted the state constitution. And Prince Hall's petition used the language of the Declaration of Independence only six months after the promulgation of the declaration. He was the first American to publicly use the language of the Declaration of Independence for a political purpose other than war with Britain. Prince Hall is the first African-American made a Mason in America. He met with George Washington July 2nd, 1775 in Cambridge to appeal to him to allow African-Americans to a list in the Revolutionary Army. July 3rd, he organized and founded the African Lodge in Boston now known as Prince Hall Grand Lodge. Prince Hall, a civic leader, a human rights advocate, an abolitionist in the 18th century. He demonstrated to Boston, to Massachusetts that black lives matter. It is fitting, it is time to declare June 24th Prince Hall Day in Monotomy in Arlington where he delivered a charge urging his brethren to see the suffering, to have compassion, to not lose hope, to assist the community and to do so respectfully. He described slavery, the passage and entreats his brethren to let Boston know, to let Boston know. I ask you to let Arlington know. I respectfully ask the select board to support this resolution. I urge the select board, if it is within their power to declare June 24th Prince Hall Day, please allow town meeting the opportunity to afford Prince Hall the respect and recognition he deserves. And again, I look forward to presenting this to town meeting that the elected representatives of the Arlington community, our deliberative body to offer them the opportunity to support this resolution. This is a community effort. I may have filed the papers, at least 15 people signed them. Many audience members here tonight and some who are unable to attend did research and discussed with me Prince Hall's legacy. Rosalyn Shaw published a letter to the editor in your Arlington. I relied on Danielle Allen's article in The Atlantic and on the material and speeches from Cambridge's 2009 dedication of their monument. I discussed with Alan Jones, a member of the local Mystic Valley Lodge himself and Mason and I conferred with librarians at the Scottish Wright Masonic Museum in Lexington. Let us highlight Prince Hall Cemetery in East Arlington. Let us inform the Arlington community as to Prince Hall's significance to our community and to the history of the establishment of this experiment in democracy as we approach the 250th anniversary of the events of 1775. We remain in democracy as of yet imperfect but with many supporters. There are eight black masons buried in the cemetery on Gardner Street. Prince Hall Day is envisioned as a first step in education, in an education effort. We hope to organize a speaker series and to support the inclusion of Prince Hall and his legacy in the school curricula. And Professor Danielle Allen and Professor of Ethics at Harvard has a grade eight curricula. We're in touch with her. She sent us an email today and I will be conferring with her assistance on this curricula and standalone courses that she has. So, thank you. Thank you with that. I will turn to the board, Mrs. Mahan. Move approval. All right, Mr. Dacorsi. Yeah, I'll set that in just a couple of comments. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank Ms. Milovchuk for bringing this forward. I did, in providing information, I found Professor Allen's article to be an excellent article. I also did a lot of research on what city councilor Simmons, then mayor Simmons did in Cambridge in developing the Prince Hall Memorial, which is on Cambridge Common, probably 10 yards from the monument to George Washington addressing the Continental Army. And I just have a question for you. As you brought this forward, Prince Hall Day, just wondering, was there any consideration of proposing a monument much the way Cambridge did, either in addition or not in lieu of it, but as an alternative to the print day? And I'm just wondering if you, how your thought process went forward selecting a day as opposed to maybe a process for a monument? First of all, I was very inspired when I read this charge because it so speaks to events happening today and happening over the course of the last decade and longer, as we all know, in the United States. I found it very inspiring. I found the language applicable. And my first thought was the speaker series, but because I believe in living monuments, I believe in monuments that are going to inform and educate and create discourse. So, but then I got to thinking and I met Alan Jones and Elizabeth Carr-Jones on Robbins Hill one day when I was up there walking and had just read a charge and we got into a conversation about it. I didn't even know at that point that he was a Mason. And so we shared our enthusiasm for it. And I said, speaker series would be great, people need to know about this. And then I got to thinking that before speaker series, the first step would be a day, a day to honor this towering figure of the revolutionary era, particularly as we approach 2025 and the 250th year anniversary of the events of 1775. Let's create this day and include this meritorious individual in our history. No one knows about him. No one knows that he's done these things. So I think, as I said, the first step is this day. I chose June 24th because that is the day that he gave this speech and monotony so that's our connection besides the cemetery. So we have the day, then a speaker series, there's a lot of enthusiasm for that among the Masons have expressed support for that. And I spoke to George Parsons of the Arlington Historical Society and he found the idea engaging. And then I think it's very important the development of the school curriculum. And Danielle Allen, the professor at Harvard already has a grade eight model that meets the state standards for what they need to study in grade eight, the different philosophers and writers. And then posing with, well, we've just exchanged that particular email today, but I'm eager to share that with you. Thank you. Have you had any contact with the Prince Hall Masons from the Dorchester Lodge? Yes, I have written to them. I have not heard back from them. I heard that that can be challenging, but I also contacted the NAACP and exchanged emails with them and they put me in touch with Pearl Morrison and Barbara Bolts, longstanding members of the NAACP from Arlington and they support this initiative. Thank you very much. I also point out that two houses up for me, 28 Russell Street is where the Arlington Civil Rights Committee had its first meetings in the 70s. This is another thing that no one knows. That's my next project. I'd like to get the Historical Society interested in doing some recordings so we can find any of the people still around. All right. Mr. Diggins? Thank you, Mr. Chair. And so a question through you, Ms. Belofchik. So my understanding is that there is an event on Memorial Day in which there's a commemoration of sorts to Mr. Hall. Are you aware of that? I'm aware that the Prince Hall Grand Lodge meets and I don't know where they initiate their stepping out but then they march to the cemetery on Gardner Street and then a personage from the Arlington Historical Society gives a speech. Rosemarie Zientski's speech of 2019 was very, very moving and George Parsons said that he would relay my admiration for her speech to her. I was unable to get in touch with her through their website. But this is different. I seek to create a living monument. It was more just a point of information. It wasn't really an argument against doing this because I'm for it. All I will ask is that the day be kept in memory. And so I hear that you have a speaker series but maybe not every year. I mean, maybe every X number of years means something is done so that the day is remembered because I don't know if we have done resolutions or proclamations creating other days and it may be my lack of connectedness that I'm not aware of those other days but I hope this isn't something that happens in 2021 and is forgotten in 2021. Thank you. Thank you. All right, Mr. Dunn. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I thought it was a really excellent proposal and I really liked the detail and I really liked what I learned and I liked that there is a lot more to learn and I'm happy to support this resolution. Thank you. And I'm happy to support this as well. Ms. Molafchuk had emailed me a while back now about this and I looked at the materials and did a little more research on Prince Hall and it's certainly a worthy person to recognize in this manner. So I thank you for bringing this forward. You're welcome. He's in the pantheon of founders and that needs to be known. Sure, thank you. All right, so at this point we will open up for public comment. We have three commenters for now. The first will be Elaine Crowder. I'm sorry, I had already promoted Rebecca Gruber who was first. Oh, sorry, it dropped off my list that's why. All right, Ms. Gruber. Thank you. Rebecca Gruber, Pleasant Street precinct eight. Well, you're all in support of this. So I'll be very brief since it doesn't seem like you need much convincing. I will say that over the last year or so I know that Arlington has initiated several efforts towards ending racial discrimination in our town and towards creating a more diverse, equitable and welcoming community. And I applaud these actions to improve our present and to ensure a better future. This is about not ignoring our history though. How wonderful that our history includes the personage of Prince Hall. Many of you have referred to Professor Daniel Allen a political philosopher and the James Bryant Conan University Professor at Harvard's work. And she describes Prince Hall as the embodiment of black agency. She promotes the value of featuring a man of color in the founding of our country. And she reminds us that understanding his black experience gives the fullest richest picture of what freedom is, why it means something and why we all need to hang on to it with all intensity and power. And as Ms. Milovchuk has said, Professor Allen is aware of and excited by this effort in Arlington to establish Prince Hall Day. The Prince Hall Cemetery on the National Register of Historic Places located in Arlington honors Prince Hall, community activists, abolitionists and leader in the free black community of 18th century America, allowing Arlington to claim a special connection to this important historical figure. And by resolving to declare June 24th as Prince Hall Day, Arlington further honors our town's connection to a man who fought for liberty and justice for all. Thank you. I am gonna interrupt the citizen forum for one moment and entertain a motion to allow our meeting to go past our 11 o'clock PM deadline. If we have a motion from the board. So moved. We grudge yes. For a second. All right. Do you have a motion by Mrs. Dickens? Seconded by Mrs. Mahan, attorney Han. Mrs. Mahan. I would say yes. And if you got the yes vote, please keep that in mind. Mr. Dacorsi. Yes. Mr. Dickens. Yes. Mr. Dunn. Yes. Mr. Hurd. Yes. All right. And Elaine Crowder is Ms. Crowder. If you could just say your name for the record. Elaine Crowder to Glenbrook town meeting member from precinct 19, I will also abbreviate my remarks. I enjoyed learning about Prince Hall when Beth mentioned that this is part of the town's legacy. One thing that hasn't been mentioned is that in 1868 Arlington town meeting approved locating the Prince Hall mystic cemetery in town as the final resting place for Prince Hall and his fellow masons. Over 150 years later, his legacy really has newfound relevance for our town. Town meeting can play a pivotal role today in elevating awareness of this important local change maker. As Beth mentioned, Prince Hall is a spiritual leader, a civic leader who established African-American Freemasonry in Boston and an abolitionist nearly 100 years before the Civil War. He was a patriot and many Arlingtonians today don't know his name as I didn't. So I see the resolution to establish June 24th as Prince Hall Day in Arlington as being something that would change that. Thank you. Mr. Wagner. Thank you, Carl Wagner, 30 Ed Show Road. Very briefly, because it sounds like you're going to rightly support this a couple of politically salient points to make. First of all, I believe it's Black History Month. So congratulations for saying yes to this as I hope you will do. Secondly, in following the words of Mr. Ducorsi, thank you for the select board's preliminary support for some kind of statue, which I think would be great in Arlington. I don't believe we have any statues to Black men in Arlington. Let's do it. Thirdly, there was some concern, perhaps about taking away from Memorial Day. And first of all, I just point out that everybody listening or watching the recording should go to the arlingtonhistorical.org website because there are like 24 years of great speeches that are listed there and you can read them and they are informational and emotional as well as informational. And also, I wanted to point out that in addition to Memorial Day, Beth's Day would give a second day and there's a third day which we probably don't want to put his day on. That is, he was probably born on September 12th, 1735 or 1738. We already have a town day and town day comes right around the time of our other great Arlingtonian, Uncle Sam, who was born on the 13th of 1766. Last point to make politically salient is that if we get this going in town meeting and they say, yes, fast enough and we talk about maybe doing something for a statue or a memorial, 1735 or 1738 was his birthday. And both of those have nice years coming up soon, either five year or 10 year anniversaries from his birthday. So this could all be stuck in a really nice way to commemorate some five year or 10 year anniversary of his birth, depending on what that is. So I hope you'll support this. Thank you very much. All right. Thank you. And Mr. Sonija. Hi, can I speak now? Yes. Hi, this is Rajiv Sonija, member of the Arlington Human Rights Commission, although I speak in a personal capacity, resident of Mary Street. I also don't want to reiterate all the comments many speakers have made before me. And I'm glad to hear that it seems like the members of the select board are inclined to support this article. I also want to express my support for this article. And I'm very happy to hear today continuing on the theme of supporting historical aspects of this nation, honoring Indigenous Peoples' Day, commemorating Juneteenth. We look to commemorate Prince Holiday as well. It's very important for our nation and our children to understand that this historical aspect of this country was founded by many diverse people and not just people of European ancestry. And to find the end, I just want to quote, which is of a special relevance to our town. Last year, on May 30th in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, the Arlington Human Rights Commission quoted Prince Hall in their commemoration. And they said, give the right hand of affection and fellowship to whom it justly belongs. Let their color and complexion be what it will. Let the nation be what it may, for they are your brethren and it is your indispensable duty so to do. So I thank the select board for considering this article and I hope to see you voted in town meeting. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And Ms. Bergman. Hi, can you hear me? If you can. Okay. I also would like to speak in favor of this resolution. A few things that you should know. Well, first of all, anything about Prince Hall, I didn't know anything about the participation of black Americans in the Revolutionary War, even though I spent a whole year learning about it when I was in fifth grade. And that's why I think it's really important to commemorate him with his own day rather than sharing it on Memorial Day. We've too often made our black heroes invisible and it's been missing from our history. So it's really important to call attention to Prince Hall. A few things you may not know about him. He fought at Bunker Hill. He, a hundred years before Frederick Douglass, he called for the abolition of slavery and for unalienable rights for all men, including black men. And he is considered by having created the Mason Lodge for the black Americans to have created the first official institution, black institution in America. So I think he's very important. And I'm glad that you are all in favor of this resolution. Thank you very much. And I think I forgot to say that I'm on Park Avenue. Thank you. All right, and that is all our public speakers. Do you have any additional comments from the board? Seeing none, Attorney Hyde? Mr. Heard, just so we're clear, I think based on the board's comments, what I'll do is work with Ms. Malakcheck to assemble something in a resolution format and codify the comments of the board. Mrs. Mohan? Yes. Mr. DeCorsi? Yes. Mr. Degans? Yes. Mr. Dunn? Yes. Mr. Heard? Yes. The unanimous vote. Could I just correct for the record, Prince Hall is not buried in the Arlington Cemetery. He's buried in Boston on Cops Hill. Thank you. Yes, I know that. I actually grew up on Goddus Street and Memorial Way and then Fremont Street. And I actually have been down there for cleanups, but there are seven or eight, I believe African-American Freemasons who are buried there. So definitely knew that. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Malakcheck. That will take us to Article 79, Resolution Encouragement of Energy, Efficient and or Sustainable Energy Installations in Historic Districts. Served by Sue Doctrow. Who's Doctrow with us? I'm here. Hi. Hi, Ms. Doctrow. If you could just tell us for your article. Yeah, I just wanna say I loved that last discussion and I thank you too for supporting the Prince Hall Day. It's really wonderful. Okay, so this article, I'm Sue Doctrow. I live in 99 Westminster Ave. I'm a town meeting member for Precinct 21 and I'm a resident of the Mount Gilboa Historic District. And I appreciate your consideration of this resolution. We sent a memo that's in your package. So I'll refer to it, but I'm not gonna summarize it in detail to save time. I'm just gonna touch on a few points and mention a couple others. The resolution that we seek would be to encourage the Arlington Historic Districts Commission, which I'm gonna call AHDC, to approve all clean energy projects that do not irreversibly change, that is, do not destroy historic architecture. Mostly addressing solar panels, but the intent is also to include heat pumps. Based on discussions I had recently with people from Bedford, our HDC is relatively welcoming already to solar panel projects. And I think we can be proud of that. In Bedford, the first parish church had to go to court to install panels on their historic buildings. So some solar panel projects are approved by our HDC, while others are not. Projects that don't show from the street are probably a fair the best. But our HDC clearly also approved some panels that do show from the street. When the commission has not approved them, the reasons have included that the panels would not match the roof color or the panels could not be placed in a regular rectangle because of dormers and other structures. And this irregular pattern was often regarded as unsightly described as jagged and mosaic in some of the hearings. But recently I learned that these standards do not always seem to be consistent. So there's one recent example and that's in the memo that showed unanimous approval of a project that shows from the street but the panels don't match the roof. The roof is red and they didn't have a regular array. So I was really glad to see that the recent project was approved and maybe it indicates that the views of the commissioners are moving toward more lenience in the design standards. But it also leaves me with some sympathy for the people whose projects were rejected before because of roof color and the regular patterns. So a successful vote by town meeting on this resolution, I think would at least convey a message that many of us believe that climate crisis is urgent and Arlington is committed to net zero carbon emissions and we believe that clean energy projects should be of a very high priority with fewer impediments even in our historic districts. So I think this is why Sustainable Arlington voted last year when we first introduced this before the pandemic, Sustainable Arlington voted to support this article. And also as I noted in the memo, we really appreciate that the Clean Energy Future Committee is including study of this issue in the net zero action plan. So as a resolution of course, this would be voluntary. It removes no authority from the AHDC. Town council advises that town meeting does not have the power to create a bylaw that would exempt solar panels from HDC review. This was actually demonstrated in Bedford in 2018. The attorney general rejected a bylaw change that was voted in overwhelmingly at their special town meeting. Their bylaw would have enabled certain solar panel projects without HDC review. But it was rejected by the attorney general because of the conflict with state law. So interestingly, because of the way the state law is written, Arlington has been able to exempt paint colors and importantly the color of roofing materials from HDC review. I just wanted to mention that because as I noted, some solar panel projects have not been allowed because the panels would not match the roof color. So color seems to be an important factor in some of these decisions. So I'll end here, but anyway, thank you for listening. And I hope that you'll support some positive action on this article. Thanks. Thank you. Ms. Liggins? Thank you, Mr. Chair. So for the reasons I've stated earlier, I am going to support this. I understand that you understand the limitations of what can be accomplished with this. If nothing else, we hopefully need someone from the AHRD. AHDC. Thank you. Thank you very much. Even if my brain wasn't fried, I would have gotten that one. It's not late. Yes, okay. And it'd be interesting to hear them make the argument against it. So they'll have four minutes. You'll have four minutes, I mean, have at it. There. Is there a question? Yeah, I was just going to second Mr. Diggins' motion and thank you, Ms. Doctor, for the presentation. And I think it's worth hearing from Tom, meeting on this issue and realizing that the Starrk District Commission still has authority here. But thank you for staying up with us here on another late night at the select board. Ms. Mahan? No question. I'm in favor. Thank you. Thanks. Mr. Dunn. Ironically, I actually wish that they were here to argue now because I think- I know. I wish they'd come. Yeah, exactly. To me, that's the point of the, you know, that's the point of these hearings is that you make a better resolution, you make a better article, and that's what a more efficient use of time meetings time. However, the merits of the article as per- or the resolution, excuse me, as proposed, certainly makes sense to me and I'm happy to support it. You don't know that they aren't here to argue this. All right, and I'll support it as well. I think this is touching on a really important subject in town where we've gone through, we've talked about historic structures earlier in this meeting. And one of the things that Mr. Helmuth said jokingly at the time was that they're happy at the Jason Russell House to put a more efficient heating system that isn't at risk or in the building down. And so I think that this competing interest with the historic structures and this sustainability is something that is really important to everyone in our community. So I will support this resolution as well. At this time, we will open this up to public comment. We have two raised hands right now. Do you have Stephen Macalca? Mr. Macalca, can you hear us? Hello, good evening. I'm Stephen Macalca, live on Russell Street in Precinct nine. I'm chair of the Arlington Historic Districts Commission. So we are here, they're not here to argue. We haven't met as a commission about this resolution. So these are my personal thoughts. First, I just want to say thank you to Ms. Dogtro for her civic engagement across the year. She's been to many of our hearings and I always find her to be very thoughtful. So I appreciate her thoughts here. I did want to just say a couple of things to put on the record. I think as a commission, we've been very supportive of energy efficiency, where it's appropriate. And I think what's really important here is something that was in the materials you had that said that often the issues are site-specific questions and challenges of how to accomplish energy efficiency at the same time as accomplishing the goal of preserving historic structures and historic legacy in town. I think we try really hard to do that. We develop guidelines that give a pathway to applicants on how to get there, how we can find common ground. And I think we work really hard with applicants in the hearings to find common ground. But often it's site-specific. It's project-specific. Language like any application get approved, I think is difficult because of the specific situations that come up that need to be considered individually. And I just want to end by saying that I think that I cannot think of any heat pump or mini-split that we've denied in historic district. We've required that they be sited along the side of the house and perhaps be screened as opposed to, I've had a couple of people say we want to install them in our front yard. And then we think that that's inappropriate in the historic district. But we work with the applicant to find a way of making that work. And in terms of solar panels, we've approved 19 installations at least. And I think I've missed some in my, going back through the record here at home. There have been a couple that have been denied but I think those are for specific reasons that are laid out in the guidelines. And at least, I can think of only three and one of those were the applicant proposed to take off very significant historic features from the house in order to accomplish. And they weren't willing to be flexible and try to accommodate. So I think that we are generally very much support energy efficiency. We're appropriate and we try to work when we, as much as we can with the applicants to reach that goal. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mishog. All right, Beth Milovchuk, Ms. Milovchuk, if you just say a name for the record. Beth Milovchuk, Russell Street. I actually live right across the street from Steve Mokoga. He's in an R2, I'm in R4. And I'm on the Arlington Historic District Commission, recent appointee. I don't think I'm there yet a year. I'd like to thank Sue Doctorow for pursuing and bringing this resolution forward. I think it's timely. I look forward to discussions on the issues that Sue's raised and to refining the guidelines so that applicants maybe find the whole process less onerous. I've gone through the process and I've sat in on a few before I was on the commission. And so I think revisiting some of these issues is, you know, it's all about educating everybody and looking at the issues from different perspectives. And so, Sue, I'd just like to thank you and I thank the board for considering this. Thanks, that's all. Thank you. All right, and that is all of our public commentators. Any additional comments or questions from the board? Mr. Dunn. Thank you, Mr. Herd. First of all, I would like to stand corrected. Steve Mokoga made some excellent and very thoughtful comments and I jumped the gun and saying that they wouldn't be here and I apologize. That said, I support the resolution and I move that we support the resolution proposed by Ms. Dr. O. All right. You have a second? Second. All right, we have a motion and a second. Attorney Hyde. This is Mohan. Yes. Mr. DeCoursey. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Dunn. Yes. Mr. Herd. Yes. Mr. Adams. Thank you, Mr. Axtrop. Thank you. And thank you, Steve. All right, so that takes us to article 80. Resolution Facilities Department report, clarify responsibilities, track progress of the Department of Facilities and Maintenance. Before we take this up, I'm gonna go to the board briefly for comment on whether or not we'd like to take Ms. Thornton articles together or individually just for guidance. Mr. DeCoursey. Yeah, thank you, Ms. I think I'd have to finish for Ms. Thornton if she's here, if she's comfortable with going through all of them rather than have her wait longer and come back later. So if it's all right with her, I think it makes sense to do all of them. She'll stay on for sure. I just a little feedback into my experiment into the consolidated hearing. So Ms. Thornton, if you're able to, what you can do is just run down the articles that you have before us and then we'll turn to the board for any questions, comments that they have on any of the articles that you're proposing. Can I make a suggestion, Mr. Chairman? Sure. First of all, I wanna say in all gratitude, I mean, this is a challenge to democracy and you guys are rising to the challenge and I am extremely grateful for your endurance. I just really appreciate it. Rather, I've been thinking about how to go through this quickly and there are these five different resolutions are batchable and what I'd like to do is take them out of numerical order and give them to you in batches and then let you ask questions and then take a vote at the end. Does that make sense? Yep, whatever you're comfortable with it. So we'll take separate votes on all of the articles at the end. Right, that would be terrific because I'm not sure I can hold all five in my head at this point. So the first of all, my name is Barbara Thornton. I'm at 223 Park Ave in Arlington. I'm a town meeting member in precinct 16, I think. The first theme of the two, including two articles, 84 and 81, is I wanted to address the housing problems in Arlington and I will preface this by saying that these were all prepared to come to you a year ago and as I re-looked at them to bring them forward to this town meeting, I realized that I would think that they are all as important, if not more important than they were when I brought them up a year ago. The first one, article 84 is for the request that the Arlington Housing Authority come before town meeting and give a report much like Mintmandas and other organizations do that are important to the town and to particularly the legislative body of the town to understand what they're doing. Arlington Housing Authority provides critical services, the most critical services for affordable housing in Arlington. Affordable housing is a major discussion in Arlington and I would like to have the town as people in the town are thinking about how to approach that issue, hear about all of the resources available which includes the Arlington Housing Authority. So a nice invitation to them suggesting talk about your budget, talk about your master plan, that is the resolution for article 84. The related resolution under the theme of addressing the housing problems in Arlington stems from a meeting that was or a report that was done by the MIT students over a year ago for the Broadway Corridor. And that report has become even more important, I think as the governor's transit communities discussion and recent legislation came up. That report suggests that we are going to be looking intensely at the housing issues in particularly in East Arlington and around the Broadway, around the made transit quarters and around A-Life. I suggest that we have a design competition and there are ways of doing that. There are organizations in the region that can provide us with architects and designers to come up with some designs and that will get the process moving in town because inevitably we are going to have zoning legislation a year on these issues. And this will get the conversation started. So those are the two articles on housing and I'll stop there for any questions from the board. Board for any questions on article 84 or article 81, Mr. Dunn? So I definitely understand why, my question is, is why do this in the form of a resolution? And so the question about asking the housing authority to speak to town meeting makes perfect sense. That's town meeting inviting another body and it's absolutely appropriate. On the competition, have you approached like for instance the planning director or the town manager and asked, hey, would you do this separately without putting it before town meeting first? Actually, no, I remember this conversation went back to a year ago. So I don't remember if I talked to Adam Chaplain about it. I did talk recently to Aaron Zwerko about it and I have been approached by an Arlington resident, Charles Blandy, who's at Tufts University and he's bringing another team of students to me with his negotiation class to talk about housing and to use this concept that we're gonna be getting into about what kind of housing should we have as part of their negotiation class on behalf of the town. Okay, so I guess my inclination then is to either, and I'm not making a motion right now. My inclination would be to table this one and invite a conversation with the town manager or the planning director and see if we can get to an agreement without actually putting it before town meeting or alternatively, I probably wouldn't be supporting it. I'm happy to support the one related to the housing authority. Mohan? Try to be expeditious. My comments would be exactly along the same lines as Mr. Dunn's housing authority. Definitely in support of that, regarding the Planning Department Redevelopment Board or the town manager, if perhaps those conversations through email or Zoom or some other way could happen and then see if this needs to continue as a resolution, that's sort of my line of thinking also. So I'm definitely on board with the housing authority invitation. I'm definitely on board with the sentiments of Article 81, but if we can sort of circumvent not just the conversation, but actually getting this done by Ms. Thornton is amenable to this. Speaking or communicating with the town manager, vis-a-vis Planning Department, vis-a-vis Redevelopment Board, that's where I'm inclined to go. Will, thank you. Thank you. Mr. Diggins? Yes, I'm kind of feeling the same way as my colleagues, although once again, I'm going to recommend that it go ahead to town meeting. But for the HA, I mean, do they issue a report of some sort to the state? I mean, they are set up by the state. I mean, so is that information out there? There's no, they don't issue any kind of report I've actually reached out to people at the state and asked them what they know. And they said, well, you know, not a lot. So I could be, there could be reports that they give that are HUD required reports that are specific, but not like this is what we're doing in the town. It's more like this is how we spent the federal money would be my guess. I see, I see. Okay. Alliance reports. Okay, all right. And along the lines of the design, yeah, I was wondering, so let's say we didn't have the resolution process. How would you go about getting that competition? I would go meet with Adam and meet with Jenny and say, this is such a great idea. And then I'd walk over to the foundation in Watertown where they have this stuff. And then I'd find some other people at MIT and Harvard that might do it. I just like, as long as I had permission from the town and people wanted it done, I'd see what I could do to make it happen. All right. Well, let's get started meeting then, you know, at Tom Beattie, if this should get by, you know, and you get to talk about it at Tom Beattie you can tell them what you're doing. Adam and ask them to join in. Thanks. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yeah, I'm in agreement with the comments that Mr. Dunn and Mrs. Mahan made earlier. And thank you for bringing these before us tonight. All right. So do we want to take a motion now or wait for public comment as far as two articles? Looks like we're hearing a motion to approve one. To approve one motion to table. Yes. My motion would be on the housing party. My eyes across like right now to move approval to formally invite them a resolution to formally invite them move approval on that. And the second Broadway corridor. I don't want to say competition. I don't want to say competition in any way. I'm going to want to just have a final decision on the reason why I've come to this table. Table that right now and allow the store to have conversations with Tom manager and supporting director. A second both. All right. Well, open up to public comment. We have one. Two hands raise. We have Mr. Wagner. Karl Wagner 30 HL road. authority is an important organization and just recently they started making their recordings of their meetings available on the ACMI and they have started to do many things that are really good like including some of their residents in their in their governing process. However, I want to direct the attention of the board. You know it's late. I don't know if you had a chance to look at the notes supplied on article 81. This is not the right way to do what the proponent hopes to do. It talks about changing East Arlington along Broadway Corridor to have units 50 to 200 per building. 25 25% units in affordable housing, but that's what we already have and it's area median income. So that would be for people potentially earning $100,000 or more. It talks about only really 75 to 100% one bedroom units. It talks about incredibly dense floor area ratio of 3.2. No height restrictions on building, waving other residential zoning restrictions. This is a Trojan horse and I would say to you please especially since the town meeting has voted no when they found out what density proponents like the proponent here were trying to push on us because they ruin our affordability. They heard our anti-racist action. They remove low and middle income people from Arlington and make it very difficult to move in. These kinds of actions are like a wet dream for developers. We really have to not do this as a as a motion of this sort. It should be completely open to debate in the town meeting. Thank you very much. Just a quick response. Those were not a question. We just got to continue with our public comments here. Mr. Leone. Good evening again. I would like to speak to Article 84. I can invite them this year. No use waiting for a resolution. I can formally invite them for the next annual town meeting and we don't even need a resolution to do that. It's not a problem. They'll be invited this year. Mr. Leone. Yes. Can you hear me? I just said I'll invite the Arlington Housing Authority this year. I have no problem doing that. We don't even need a resolution. Anything we can do to eliminate these resolutions from the town meeting, I'm a favor up because the way I look at it, each one is going to take 15 minutes. It's 16 of them. It's going to add three or four hours to town meeting for every resolution just to open it and vote it. At least we can eliminate this one. I'll formally invite them this year and every year after. Can I just ask a question of Mr. Leone? Yes, briefly. Can I work with you to word the resolution? I mean to word the invitation. You can send me your thoughts. I think that's the same thing. I'm not a lawyer. I'm always nervous. You can send me your thoughts and I'll write my own letter. Okay. Thank you. All right. Thank you. And Ms. Kiesel. Hi, this is Laura Kiesel from Mass Ave Precinct 6. I am a tenant at the Housing Corporation of Arlington and a Section 8 voucher holder with Arlington Housing Authority. And so I do think it's a good idea to have the Arlington Housing Authority to present at town meeting. But the one question or concern I would have is I would also hope that that would be balanced with having some kind of solicitation of listening to the tenants. I think that several of the properties have tenants unions. And again, I know Arlington is having a lot of questions about equity. And I think it's important to also hear from those who actually live at the properties. I know that they are starting to record the meetings and there have been a lot of concerns about maintenance issues, other things that aren't being addressed. I'm hoping that Barbara Thornton has solicited some input from AHA voucher holders in Arlington and tenants as well in considering this. Because I think that that would be a good thing for town meeting also to hear. I recently watched the town meeting recording from when the Affordable Housing Trust Act was voted on. And I saw that some AHA tenants were on the list to speak. But debate got shut down before they could even be heard from. And so no one who is actually a renter and particularly a renter living in affordable housing was listened to on that issue. Regarding the Broadway article, which I don't know much about, but I will say that I also recently watched the Arlington Human Rights Commission panel on housing and equity. And toward the end, this came up and Connor Ring, who is part of a tenants union renter here in Arlington and is an activist with City Life Vita Urbana, mentioned that if we're going to be developing Broadway or East Arlington Mass Ave corridors, it would be really important to also survey and listen to the renters and tenants and see what their concerns might be and how their rents are going to be impacted and their displacement concerns. So I also hope that will be considered or balanced in any of these articles. Thank you. Hello, can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you now. Hi, I'm sorry for the technical difficulties. This is Asha Kepka, precinct one. As a East Arlington resident, I would like to ask that you consider greater input when it comes to making decisions on starting design group competition from East Arlington residents. We are very concerned about redevelopment of Broadway corridor. And I even hosted one of the groups from MIT last year, year and a half ago, and we gave them a lot of input. And I don't believe our input was being considered in their design proposals. So I do urge you that you actually, before you even start any planning designs, you do ask residents for the input. Thank you. Thank you. All right. And that is all our public commentators. Do we have any additional comments from the board? Yes. I'm going to reverse my vote on the resolution. I think that the moderator has solved the question about the housing authority. All right. So we have a... I would say same thing on 84. Seems like the moderator is going to take that action. I'll move my vote. Dan was taking out his second time. No, no, I made the motion to approve 84 and table 81. So now I'll make the motion to withdraw from 84. Joining Mr. Dunn, who seconded my motion. Yep. All right. Any additional comments? So Mr. Hurch, for the sake of clarity, I move we recommend no action on 84. I think that's what you were intending, Ms. Mahan, correct, right? You were changing your motion to no action. Then I second. I just want to be really clear, but I'm happy to second it. All right. No, if Mr. Dunn wants to make that motion, I'll second it. All right. I've already moved on. Attorney Himes, we... I got it. I got it. So on the motion to table the design corridor article, Mrs. Mahan. Yes. Mr. Dacorsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Dunn. Yes. Mr. Hurd. Yes. unanimous vote to table. On the motion to... I'm sorry, Mr. Hurd. I don't mean to... On the motion with respect to the invitation of the housing authority of no action, Mrs. Mahan. Yes. Mr. Dacorsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Dunn. Yes. Mr. Hurd. Yes. It's unanimous vote. I will record that the board is essentially taking the representation of the moderator and the demoderator will receive input as generously offered to receive input from Mrs. Thornton. Right. And Mrs. Thornton, which articles did you want to present? 82 and 83. The themes that tie these two together are they strengthen the paths for productive citizen engagement. Yep. You can go ahead and present those two articles. The article 82 is to encourage a voluntary process where the practice of town meeting changes a little bit. And I've had conversations back and forth in the email with Mr. Leone about this article. And I think that there are ways, I know he's concerned about the losing his prerogatives and I don't intend that at all. But I think there are ways of simplifying the process around the one or two very contentious issues that come before town meeting that have a lot of moving parts. So I'm not talking about every article. And I'm not talking about lining people up in front of microphones for the floors and against. I'm talking about giving people that are proposing things in town meeting that are complicated an opportunity to break up their presentation so that that people can take part A, part B, part C, and all three parts are heard for the pros and for the cons. And that either Mr. Chapter Lane or Ms. Rate or somebody like that identifies those issues that before they come up and tells Mr. Leone about it ahead of time. And he either calls on those six people alternately or he says I'm reserving 20 minutes for those three people to come up and talk and the other three people to come up and talk so that the town meeting knows that everything has the main issues have been heard on these contentious issues. Okay. That's 82. All right. 83 is, and I think we've all sat through some testy meetings where people are not as civil and collegial as one might wish. And that's what happens in a democracy. But I think that there are ways when you have a lot of committees and a lot of people meeting and everybody is working on the best interests of the town, but things kind of get out of control if there is somebody in each of the meetings that is trained in facilitation and in setting an agenda and helping that meeting go through smoothly. So this is requesting that the town attempt to assign facilitation skills or train somebody in every one of the meetings that's set up in town. Somebody is there with facilitation skills that have been provided through the town. That's 83. So that is the summary of the strengthened paths for productive citizen engagement. And we'll turn to the board for any questions. Mr. Davis. Thank you. So the lighter one, was that the one that had a limit on the number of committees? Oh, I wanted to do that, but that didn't go through. You're probably remembering something. When I talked to Doug Heim about this, I said maybe we could just say we're only going to have seven committees in town. And that would make things simpler, but that didn't. I don't think I got down the stairs before thinking that. Okay, I thought I was like the limit of the number of committees that could be proposed. Yeah. No. Okay. All right. I did read something. I thought it was recent. So, well, once again, it's like, what can we do now? With respect to the me creating the facilitation while creating any training for facilities or having people trained to be good facilitators. What can we do now? What would you do if this warrant, I mean, this article doesn't pass. There's training out there, but if the town meeting doesn't feel like it's important, I don't think there's anything that I can that I can do. And the, I've talked with Julie Brazil about this a year and a half ago now, a year ago. And I, and I've talked with other people as well. There's, there's training available. But if the bulk of people in town meeting don't believe that it's important or that would be even useful to have that training, I don't think any committee is going to pick it up. Somebody, somebody in the town has to say to the committees, you know, this is a, this is a policy that we want to try and implement. Here are three ways you can get trained. Can you make sure that one or two people in your committee are trained? The training takes, you know, three hours, four hours, whatever. Please do it. I don't think it can be done without a resolution. So you don't think the town can, can, well, how would, how would it work if the, if it, if the resolution passed me? So then what would the town do? Well, then the town would have, it is a little bit intrusive. And without, without the legislative body saying to the executive body, we agree this is an important thing to do. I don't know that the executive body would make it a priority. Maybe they would. I mean, I think the executives in this town have suffered more than anybody from the, from the discord. All right. And I mean, I'm just suffering like massive short-term memory failure. What was the first one again in this? In this, in this group, the first one was to encourage the voluntary process between, let's say, Mr. Chapter Lane and Mr. Leone, sitting down and saying on town. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I'm just going to wait because I see Mr. Leone's hands raised. So I'll just sit back and watch that one. So thanks. This is Mohan. Oh my Lord. Oh, after these two articles, I'm going to need like another five minute break, honestly. I, on, is it the collaborative training citizen review? I'm really not in favor of that. So I would move no action on that. And then I would be interested in hearing from the town moderator regarding the discussion around people speaking or citizen initiative. But right now my brain's kind of fried. So after we do these two, I need like a five minute break. So that's where I'm at. I would no action on the previous one and would like to hear from Ms. Thornton, the town moderator, and the one, two, three, four people that want to speak on that. Does it make sense to postpone all of this? I mean, well, we have, we're going to have busy agendas for a while. So while we're in this, I think we should at least roll through. I know. I appreciate that. I just feel like I've been carrying this for over a year and it's now midnight and nobody, I can't focus. I'm sure everybody's having a hard time focusing. So that would be subject to a motion from the board. So right now I'm just going to go through the board members for any comments. So Mr. Dunn. I'd like to hear the public. I would like to finish these two. And then I think I would be very interested in a motion to move on to postpone the rest. All right. Mr. Corsi. Thank you. Yeah, I'd like to hear from Mr. Leone as well on Article 82. And on Article 83, I see the intent that you're bringing up there, Ms. Thornton, in the issues that may arise on various committees. But I almost look at that as something that perhaps is looked at on a case-by-case basis. And there may be a particular committee where they may need some assistance and it can be offered. But I'm not sure I would support a blanket resolution to provide that type of training to every committee. All right. We will look to the public for input. This is the public hearing. If our moderator, Ms. Leone. Hi, Ms. Leakon. Yep, for the third time. I would like to speak to both of these. Three extremely briefly. I'm not even sure what town meeting has the authority to direct other committees on how to act besides setting them up and saying who their members are and setting their guidelines and guidance, their mission statement. Beyond that, I don't think we can tell them how to conduct themselves or what training they should or shouldn't take. So I think if this is going to go through, it would be a bylaw from the select board and not a town meeting resolution on 84. Oh, excuse me, 82. I'm getting a little tired myself. I'm against this one. Flat out. The way the town meeting actually works is we don't do people calling up and getting on some sort of secret list beforehand. Even if it's not a secret list, we're an open town meeting. The way it represented the open town meeting, the way it works is the proponents, I reach out to proponents or they reach out to me and they say, I'm the proponent, I want to have the first up and they get it. But they get their seven minutes. They're not going to come up in batches of six people and seven minutes each. If the proponent wants their time, they have to request it right up front and ask the town meeting for permission to extend over their seven minutes. And it is often the case, Ms. Thornton, that they split their time up between different speakers and we allow that as of right as long as they're under seven minutes. I'm often contacted beforehand by opponents of an article and I do look for them to raise their hand. This would be against the way town meeting has always conducted itself, at least in the time that I've been there since early 90s, 93, 94, and the way town meeting has always functioned. The bylaw or the notes that you've picked out, which I have up here on my screen at least, are from the town of Brookline. Brookline does conduct their town meeting differently than us, just as Lexington conducts it differently. They have pro and con speaker microphones and they have neutral microphones. We don't do that. We don't have people line up. One of the reasons we don't do that is for fear, at least my belief in the people, if there are 15 people at the pro microphone, someone may not get up and speak against something out of intimidation by the other speakers. I've always believed that and I think it's a truth. The way they function their town meetings is different from ours and that's why these moderator rules in other towns would allow for this pre-registration. Frankly, whether Mr. Chapter Lane or Ms. Rait shouldn't be interfering with the way town meeting functions and taking speaker lists, that would be a job that the moderator would have to do on top of his or her own daily job. It's just going to add complexity to the moderator's life. It's going to add, I think, a feeling of hardship among town meeting members if a stream of people get up and speak and even before the town meeting members who were there and have raised their hand have had a chance to speak, they could coordinate and say, all right, I'm going to speak, then you speak, then you speak, then you move the question even before the other side has the possibility. And it's always up to the town meeting to vote to accept a motion to terminate debate or move on. But let's face it, after long nights such as this for you guys, someone gets up and moves the question. It's going to pass. And the one side who has had a coordinated campaign to get on that speaker list and make the speaker list controlled by their foresight isn't doing any justice or service to the town meeting or to the democracy as I see it. You've got to rely on your moderator to some extent to know the crowd. I've been doing moderating in here since 2008. I've been a town meeting member since 94. I can tell who's going to speak which way to a great extent. They fool me sometimes, but I think we get a pretty fair debate the way it is. We get both pros and cons. I don't really think that this is needed nor do I think it's a wise way to start regulating town meeting more than it already is. I'll bring this to the town meeting procedure committee, obviously, but I can't speak to them without a meeting of the procedure committee, which you'll be invited to. But I would urge the select board to just vote no action on this one. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Wagner. Thank you. Carl Wagner, 30 Edge Hill Road. I appreciate the moderator's comments just now. I have 15 or more years I think in the town meeting history behind me, and I just wanted to point out that despite the governor's new law, which removes a lot of local control by making almost all votes down to 50 percent, the proposal by Ms. Thornton is the worst attack on local control and democracy for our town I've ever seen. Thank you. Mr. O'Connor. Good evening. I must admit that I'm amused by this conversation. I realized that the November, James O'Connor, former member of precinct 19, I did relocate my official legal residence to air, but I am an experienced assistant moderator and I agree with Mr. Wagner and with Mr. Leone as the current continuing member of the town meeting procedures committee that the issue about regulating what town meeting members do since we are subject to the voters election is that we represent our precincts and any organizational training should come from precinct meetings, which I think one of our members, Mr. Diggins, has been promoting quite a bit. When we have precinct meetings, we discuss the warrant articles, we discuss procedures with new members, as somebody that's been involved with town meeting for 23 years. Every meeting opportunity I had, I talked with fellow members of our precinct to discuss the issues, but I think to address two issues. One, is this something that should be a resolution? I have to say I agree with Mr. Leone in that over the last several years there's been a lot more resolutions coming from town meeting that town meeting really doesn't regulate its body other than to ask for a bylaw to set speaker limits and we've done so, but the representation of the membership really enables everybody to represent their particular viewpoints and if you start regulating that, as Mr. Wagner said, you're disrupting democracy as it is. I know we're all tired, but I also think we need to enable people's fair communication as members of the body and I just really have concerns about how much you regulate and how much you suggest that one must be trained to act with the quorum. I mean, we're all grown-ups when we get representative, we fail to do our job as a representative of our precinct. I would expect the voters to speak up and just like they can see our votes, can say, I don't feel it's appropriate that you get reelected, but to try to legislate that and to create a resolution that I think as Mr. Leone has pointed out when our town meeting procedure is coming up. I'll just close by saying I agree that this is going too far and I would hope that we can find another way to demonstrate on better representation if people are concerned. Thank you. Mr. Chair, if I could, we're past 12 o'clock, so if we want to go further, we have to wait the 12 o'clock rule. I will just say to everyone, and I usually don't bear, I have to be up at 4.30 to start administering the three disabled family members that live with me, injections and medicines at 4.30. So I really can't last much longer because I legit can't sleep to five, six, or seven. I need to get up at four o'clock. So I'm not going to waive the 12 o'clock rule. If somebody else does, I'll abide by that, but I can't stay much longer because Attorney Hybe can correct me, but I think we, it's an 11 o'clock rule, which we just open it up into perpetuity. Right, but then when we get to 12 o'clock, if we go beyond that, we need to waive the 12 o'clock midnight rule, which I'm not sure. I think that the board has traditionally set a parameter for how long it extends. I'm not 100% familiar with where that rule is codified, but my understanding has been traditionally that you guys take another vote to keep extending. All right. On the past two or three nights that we've been at midnight, Mr. Carroll's waived the 12 o'clock rule and we've gone to like quarter one. I just can't do that again. But I'll be guided by my colleagues. All right. Does anyone want to make an additional motion on this? Mr. Diggins? I mean, I think we can probably wrap this up in 15, 20 minutes, Mrs. Mahan. Would that be okay with you? So, I mean, I think where we are is we have two more public commentators and then we'll take a vote and then we'll entertain a motion when we wrap up this particular article, if we want to table the remaining warrant article hearings. Thanks, Mr. Chair. That's what I was getting at. I think we're around five to seven minutes left on these two articles that we have in front of us. So, we'll go to Beth Milošek and we dropped a one. Beth Milošek. And address the record? Beth Milošek, Russell Street, town meeting member. I support Carl Wagner statements and I hardly support the commentary of the town moderator and the assistant town moderator. I think suggestions of regulating our municipal elected deliberative body would be anti-democratic. Thank you. All right. Rebecca Gruber, speaker, comment. Ms. Gruber, you have to unmute yourself. People noted. I'm going to speak briefly about the other warrant article 83. I'm very much afraid that this warrant will have unintended consequences. I should say, my prior career, I delivered corporate education to Fortune 500 companies and I have conducted training in both facilitation and on getting to yes negotiations. So, I'm a huge believer in the value of this type of training and if the town has the resources to offer training to committee members who want it, that would be great. But it's been my observation of the many town meetings I've attended over the last several months that for the most part, town meetings are remarkably well run. The town residents who generously volunteer their time like tonight to be on these committees are dedicated to successful efforts and the results of their committees. And on the very few occasions when a meeting has resulted in conflict or discourse has been problematic, my experience has been that the committee regrouped and established or recommitted to group norms to ensure that meetings resume in a productive congenial manner. And this is to be expected from people who volunteer their time to work towards a greater good of Arlington. I would suggest that any effort to completely avoid conflict like this warrant article attempts to do would not increase predictivity but would rather result in decrease predictivity as discourse and exchange would likely be overly constrained. And even worse, it might discourage town residents volunteering to serve on these committees and cause current committee members to resign. Town residents who are made to feel that they lack the professional skills and motivations to work effectively with their fellow residents are unlikely to want to provide their expertise, their energy, their time to work for the benefit of Arlington. In short, I don't believe this warrant article is necessary and more importantly could potentially have a negative effect on the ability of Arlington to tap into one of its greatest resources, its resident volunteers. Thank you. Thank you. And then we'll close our public participation. So I'll open up the board for motion on articles 82 and 83. Anyone like to make the motion? Ms. Dunn. I move. I recommend no action. I move that we on both articles. We have a second. Second. Any additional comments, Mr. Stiggins? Well, I feel that I'm not saying that we should mandate training need to be a good facilitator, but I think it'd be good to make that available. And I understand that that may be something that the select board should take up because I know that I would, I would take it because I feel I'd probably take it every time it was offered because I feel that things would change me and it'd be good to have some insights as to how I could do better if I were in a position of facilitating. And with respect to the lineup of speakers, there is something that is bothering. I think most of us about the way the speakers mean or selected mean, whether this process that we have is the best we can do. Maybe that's the case, but clearly there's something that bothers most of us about it. And I think we need to work some way to make people less bothered by it. I mean, so look, I mean, lots of things we go before Tom meeting out of these resolutions that shouldn't. I have problems with the resolution process, but as long as we have it, I'm going to let them go. Thank you. Ms. Mon. My brain is like really twisted right now. So I believe Mr. Dunn's motion was seconded. If it wasn't, I would second it. And I'll talk to the chair tomorrow the next day about if we keep doing these marathons after midnight nights or if we can do like a day, you know, a 10 to four thing during the day to get to stuff done because I feel to myself personally, I'm not, you know, once I get beyond 11 o'clock, I'm not the same day I am. I am at seven o'clock. And that's just not fair to these proponents that also are staying up this late. So if someone seconded Mr. Dunn's motion, that's fine. If they haven't, I would second it. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yep. All right, attorney. We have a motion by Mr. Dunn, seconded by Mr. Corsi. Mrs. Mon. Sorry, attorney. Yeah, you need to take them separately. I'll do, I'm sorry, I'll do 83 first. Is that what? 82. 82. On a motion to action on article 82, Mrs. Mon. Yes, thank you. Mr. Corsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. No. Mr. Dunn. Yes. Mr. Herd. Yes. Four to one vote. And on article 83 on a motion of no action, Mrs. Mon. Yes, thank you. Mr. Corsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. No. Mr. Dunn. Yes. Mr. Herd. Yes. So four to one vote. All right. And so thank you, Ms. Thornton, for participating. We're going to entertain a motion to table the hearings on articles 80, 87, 88, 90, and 91. So moved. Second. All right. Attorney Hyde. Mrs. Mon. Yes. Mr. Corsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Dunn. Yes. Mr. Herd. Yes. Yeah, Ms. Thornton. We have correspondents received road safety concerns, Stephen Chong, 104 Lane Caster Road, overnight parking concerns, Eamon Keating, 65 Freeman Street, number two, and Blossom Street dedication for Allen Hovernas, Ara Gazarians, Armenian Cultural Foundation. Move receipt. Second. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Dunn. Yes. Mr. Herd. Yes. Yes. Your business. Attorney Hyde. Another business. Mr. Chapter Lane. I wouldn't dare. Mr. Dunn. Thank you all for the pleasure. Thanks for being here. Mr. Diggins. Welcome aboard. And maybe you'll have more frequent, shorter meetings tonight. Thanks. Mr. Corsi. A new business. Ms. Mon. Stay for the chair, unless you have new business. I've moved to adjourn. Second. Do the second. Second. Mrs. Mon. Yes. Thank you, Lord Jesus. Mr. Corsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Dunn. Yes. Mr. Herd. Yes. You're nervous. Thank you. I'm legit up in like three and a half hours. I'm not even kidding. Not that you guys aren't, but God bless you and good night. So long. Take care, everybody. Good night, everybody. Good night.