 Thank you very much, Mr. Gallagher. There's a gray Honda Civic next to the senior center with your lights on. You have a gray Honda Civic next to the senior center, your lights are on. That's my announcement for the evening. Are there any town, that's you, okay. Any town meeting members who have yet to be sworn in? Nope, seeing none. Ms. Rowe? Yes, it is moved that if all the business of the meeting is set forth in the ward for the annual town meeting is not disposed of at this session. When the meeting adjourns, it adjourns to Monday, May 23rd, 2011, at 8 p.m. All in favor? Opposed? Man after my own heart. Actually, what we are probably gonna do is if we can get through all the articles except for the budgets and the pay as you throw articles. And I think article 51, we're gonna adjourn till after the override. So we move along tonight, we could be gone for a couple of weeks and come back on June 8th. So we may be modifying that resolution. So let's see what happens. Are there any announcements or resolutions? Mr. Tosti? Fellow town meeting members, could you all take the finance committee report out? I have a correction. Would you turn to B7? Thank you, Norm. B7, public works, B7, B as in boy. Okay, on B7, up at the top, this doesn't affect fiscal 2012, but it affects 2011 and it impacts the whole change between 11 and 12. So if you go to the top of page B7, it has all public works, personnel services, then it goes to expenses, and then it goes to subtotal. And the subtotal there is $7,802,000 in change. That number, instead of $7,802,000, should be $8,222,815, $8,222,815. Again, this is all under fiscal 2011. Then you follow that down to the total, which now reads $6,776,000 in change. That number should be $7,195,729. So instead of $6,776, it's $7,195,729. Now you follow that across, and right now it reads an increase of $496,000. That should be an increase of $77,375. For an increase of 1.08%, instead of the 732. So again, the increase is $77,375, not $490,258. What happened here was in the 11 budget, it didn't pick up the street lighting in the formula. And so therefore, that appeared much lower than it should have been, making the increase to 2012 appear much higher than it really was. Now keep in mind when you're going through the public works budget that the real cutback is we lost $230,000 in tip fee stabilization money that goes into this. So automatically, they had to cut $230,000 just to stay in the same place. So that's a major factor in that budget. If you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer them at the break or at the break because I get to get home for 1.0. But anyway, you'd be happy to answer any questions for you. Thank you very much. Okay, we'll make that change administratively. Ms. LaRoyer. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Anne LaRoyer from Precinct 17. I'm also the chair of the Open Space Committee in town. When some of you arrived tonight, I hope you noticed the display panels in the front lobby. They're illustrating a vision that we have for the Millbrook linear park and the panels will be on view during the break at 9.30. So, but I want to give you a brief introduction about them and hope you can take some time to look at them later. The Open Space Committee is appointed by the town manager to prepare and monitor the town's official open space and recreation plan. This plan was last approved by the town and the state in 2007. It presents a number of goals and objectives to be met during each five-year term of the plan. But actually, last year, the state gave Arlington a two-year extension, so the next revision will be in 2014. One of the goals in the plan is to protect and maintain the waterways and natural open spaces in Arlington. And another goal addresses community education. So, the vision for the Millbrook linear park seeks to incorporate both of these goals and many more things that are in the open space plan. And in fact, revitalize a concept for a Millbrook corridor park that has been talked about in town since the 1920s. For example, did you know that Millbrook travels nearly three miles through the center of Arlington, starting at the reservoir, going all the way down to the lower Mystic Lake? And historically, the Brook fed at least seven mill ponds and numerous mill dams that powered the Gris Mills and other early commercial endeavors that made Arlington a town, starting with Captain George Cook's mill during the near Mystic Street, which is now, of course, Cook's Hollow. All the mill ponds have been filled over the years, and about 40 percent of the Brook is actually hidden from view in underground culverts, but there are still some lovely natural areas that remain. And we're trying to draw some attention to those. More than 35 percent of the land within 100 yards of the Brook is owned by the town, and the remaining sections include a variety of industrial commercial properties, several important historic sites, and then also some residential neighborhoods. Our goal in presenting these preliminary visions for a linear park concept, it's all just very conceptual at the moment, but is to draw attention to the important historical and natural resources in the town, continue to work with other town committees and departments to enhance the public sections of the Brook, focus on improving the water quality and flooding problems that are associated with the Brook that many of us know, and also to make these areas more accessible and enjoyable for residents. So let me just mention a couple of the highlights. You'll see them on the display panels outside, and it's important to mention that the Brook goes through the major part of Arlington starting at the reservoir to down past the center, and it's bordered by Mass Ave on one side, which of course is a commercial strip, and the bike path on the other. So there's some very interesting connections that go all through town over the Brook and around it. So it begins at the reservoir behind Drake Village, winds through some wooded areas along herd and reservoir fields, but then it gets forced into a channel around the Colonial Village Apartments, which of course been a site of major flooding in the past. It passes under the bikeway behind Sunrise Assisted Living, and then it is mostly inaccessible in channels and underground until it comes out near the Olschwa Mill at Mill Lane, and you may have known that recently the DPW and others re-landscaped and rebuilt the bridge over the Mill Brook there right by Olschwa Mill, and it's really quite a lovely spot to go and visit. The Brook again goes underground and through private property, and then it comes out near Brattle Street, and it enters another really pretty area that runs between Brattle and Grove Streets, and then it comes into Wellington Park where the tennis courts are currently being rebuilt and doing some improvements to the waterway there. It goes under Grove Street again and past the DPW building, then it disappears, as I'm sure you probably know, under Pierce Field behind the high school, comes it back up again on the other side of the high school at Mill Brook Road near the old Brigham site and the 22 Mill Street, and this is another short open stretch that's very accessible and hopefully the new developer of the Brigham's property there that's building some apartments has promised when working with the Arlington Redevelopment Board to do some enhancements to a lovely small pocket park that's there that's really been neglected over the years. So that'll make a really nice entrance to the high school as well as to the new apartments. Then the Brook continues, it goes under Mill Street and then behind the Mill Brook Square Apartments which are elderly housing I think, then it goes, it disappears again for quite a long stretch under the bikeway and Buzzel Field and the Arlington Catholic Fields, and then it becomes most visible at Cook's Hollow where it falls about six feet and creates Arlington's only waterfall. The Brook then continues in an open channel and open pathway through the cemetery and down into Metta Brook Park finally falling a few more feet into Mystic, the lower Mystic Lake. So that's, you know, for those of you that live along parts of this you probably know it, but you know a lot of people seem to, you know, are not aware of how this important resource that we have so really this is an educational purpose to draw some attention to the Mill Brook corridor to start thinking, you know, into the future about how we can enhance the area and so as you're just driving around town or walking preferably or biking just remember to look at the Brook when you pass any of the streets like Park Avenue, Forest Street, Brattle, Grove, Mill Street, Mystic Street, they all pass over the Brook but you know we're so busy running around all the time we hardly see it. So anyway take a look at the panels and take a look at the Brook. Thank you. Thank you. Any other announcements for resolutions? Mr. Chappell. Thank you Mr. Moderator Owen Chappell, precinct 12. Just very briefly I want to let you all know that the Friends of Robin's Farm Park is conducting a fundraiser to replace the slides that are up here. I'm sure most of you have seen those wonderful double slides that have been there for quite a number of years well this past winter one of them ended up with a huge hole at the bottom that became a safety problem and so it was necessary to take both out because they were hooked together. So if you go up there now there's just grass in between. We want to replace those slides because they are a real attraction to the town and to the folks who use the park. So if you are interested in helping us out with the donation of one kind or another the simple thing you just do is go on the website friendsofrobinsfarm.org read the information about it mail us a check or use PayPal. Thank you. Thank you. Any others? Any reports or committees? Want to take three off the table Mr. Tosti? Oh no no she has a report of a committee. Angela yeah. Move that article three be taken from the table. All in favor? Opposed? Miss Olszewski? Angela Olszewski precinct 17 and chair of the Arlington Committee on Tourism and Economic Development. Mr. moderator I move that the committee's report be received. Second all in favor? All received. We're a new committee that was formed by the board of selectmen dedicated to encouraging residents and visitors alike to take advantage of all that Arlington has to offer from dining and shopping to culture and entertainment. We plan to promote and market our town as a destination for tourism and a great place to do business. A list of our current activities is provided on the written report that's on the back table. This summer we plan to promote all the cultural activities that are taking place in town and hope to host a summer concert series similar to the popular one that the Chamber of Commerce used to host. Watch for the launch of our website where all these activities will be listed. We actively support the implementation of the Battle Road Scenic Byway which also includes the towns of Lexington, Lincoln and Concord. In the lobby in the back we have one easel in the back I know there's a lot others for the Melbroke corridor but there's right outside the door you'll find an easel that has a couple of maps that describe the Byway. Come visit us at our booth at Town Day and we look forward to seeing you at the events around town this summer. Thank you very much Mrs. Linske. Any other reports or committees? Seeing none. Mr. Tosti? Lay three upon the table. Lay three upon the table. All in favor? That brings us back to article 24. Ms. Rowe, you are next. Call the question. On odd items underneath the article. Okay we have a motion to terminate the debate on all items underneath article 24. All in favor? Opposed? Okay that's two-thirds. We have before us the substitute motion of Mr. Loretty which we'll now vote on. All in favor of Mr. Loretty substitute motion please say yes. Opposed say no. Chairs in doubt. All in favor please rise. Same tellers please. Ms. Mahan? How many up front? Two in favor up front? Mr. Schlickman? Twenty on my left. Eighteen left center. Twenty-six right center. Mr. McCabe? Fifteen. All opposed please rise. Up front Ms. Mahan? Ten. Mr. Schlickman? Eleven. Mr. O'Connor? Twenty-three. Twenty-three. Mr. Trembly? Sixteen. Mr. McCabe? Eighteen. It is an affirmative vote 81 to 76. Well we're not done yet. We're now going to substitute Mr. Loretty's motion for the recommended vote of the Board of Selectment. All in favor of the motion as article is substituted please say yes. Opposed say no. I bet it comes out the same. The chairs again in doubt. All in favor please rise. Ms. Mahan? How many up front? One. Someone flipped. Mr. Schlickman? Twenty-two. Mr. O'Connor? Twenty. Mr. Trembly? Twenty-seven. Mr. McCabe? Thirteen. All opposed please rise. Ms. Mahan? Nine. Nine. Up front nine. Mr. Schlickman? Ten. Oops. Mr. O'Connor? Twenty-two. Twenty-two. Mr. Trembly? Fifteen. Fifteen. And Mr. McCabe? Twenty-three. Twenty-three. It is an affirmative vote 83 to 79. So it passes. Okay. The I understand the order of things. We have 38 would be next because it's 31 is still on the table and that brings us to number 34 is also on the table and 35 they're staying on the table. So that brings us to 38. Who's going to introduce it for this segment? Oh, Mr. Sullivan's going to speak on it. Let me get the list. As you may be aware last year the school committee declared Department of School as well as Crosby School. Sorry about that. As you may be aware last year the school committee declared Department of School as well as the Crosby School as surplus properties on a permanent basis and return them to the town for disposition. Since then other town departments have indicated that they too have no use for the properties. Both have not been used for public purposes since the early 80s without further public purpose for these properties in some three decades. Now the question arises as to their disposition. This question takes on a greater urgency due to the need for additional funds to help fund the rebuild of the Thompson School as was described to you Monday night. Article 38 deals with the palm of the school property but the principles that I'll discuss here really apply as well to Crosby School on the article 39. As some background information on palm of the school the school was built in 1926 and sits at the corner of Academy and Irving Streets. It's an historic structure and an historic district so that any renovation reconstruction or demolition would be subject to the approval of the Pleasant Street Historic District Commission. As I mentioned the building has not served as a public building since at least 1983 and is currently being rented as a private educational space by two tenants Alleyton Children's Center in the International School of Boston. The current lease on the property expires June 30th 2013. The building contains 27,616 square feet of space sits on 52,781 square feet of land made up of several contiguous parcels. The parcel right at the corner of Academy and Irving which contains approximately 21,780 square feet is used as a public playground. The property is located in the R1 Single Family Zoning District where the predominant use is single family. Tau Meeting has already expressed its preference for continued private educational use of this property so that is what is being proposed in the motion tonight. Now whether this property is sold or leased the proposal is to continue the current lease as I said as private educational use giving preference to the current tenants and to retain the front area being used as a public playground. The minimum sale price has been set at $1.7 million. By way of information the assessed value of the property without the playground area is approximately $2.5 million. An earlier study done by RKG associates put the estimated value at just over $1.3 million. This likely underestimates the true value given that they had used a capitalization rate of 12% which seemed excessively high. In any event the final sale price would ultimately be determined based upon the appraisals that are done on the property and the actual bids received. Generally it would make sense for the town to sell the property where there is no longer any public use for the property. Final determination of benefits of sale versus lease however cannot be made until we actually go through a bid process. The bid process would involve obtaining an appraisal as I mentioned earlier issuing requests for proposals and we do that for both sale and lease and doing a side-by-side comparison of the proposal so we can see the disadvantages of both sale and lease. As we all already know owning and maintaining a property particularly a property that's of significant age as this one is can be a very costly proposition. I feel strongly that the financial exposure and the risk as of continued ownership of these properties requires that we give serious consideration to their sale. Some of the ownership concerns that I have include the following. I given that the property is over 85 years old and has a great deal of deferred maintenance on the property. The true cost of maintaining and managing the property exceeds or at best equals the lease income that will bring into the property and it represents really a growing liability for the town. Secondly the town is not in a position to assume this risk and financial exposure of being a commercial landlord to this property and the town really should not be in the business of being the commercial real estate property manager. We don't have the expertise we don't have the resources to deal with this and it really takes away from the true core mission of the community. And just by way of examples the Sims project I guess is a good example of the risk of being in the commercial real estate business without the expertise and resources to properly manage it. The permanent across the leases themselves are another example of this. It was not until I raised the issue a few years ago with the redevelopment board about the low rents that they really focused on it and ended up raising those rents fairly significantly and that's not a criticism of ARB but this is really not their core mission and it really wasn't something that they were focused on. With respect to the annual cost of owning and maintaining a building it's universally accepted that building and its various components depreciate every year to determine the true cost accurate cost of the maintenance of the building and the capital replacement is really to do a life cycle cost analysis or a building condition analysis of the property. It's a very costly thing but you'd actually go through each of the components of the building like the roofing, the electrical system, plumbing system so forth you determine the condition of it the remaining useful life of it and then calculate the useful life of the building and then calculate actual annual cost of maintaining it at that point and also the built up deferred maintenance liability for that property but that's a costly proposition to do that so what many organizations do is actually use a set percentage of replacement value based upon useful life of the building to determine what the annual maintenance cost or capital replacement cost of the property is and generally this would put you know if it's a 50 year estimated life for the property this would put the annual capital replacement cost of liability at about 2% of the current replacement value of the building a lot of the institutions use as low as 1% some use as high as 4% but I think generally most use in the neighborhood about 2% of replacement value as your real true cost of owning and maintaining that building and if you add to this the cost of property management expenses along with other costs and you compare that against our current lease rates I believe the town's barely breaking even on the proposition and when you factor in the deferred maintenance I think it's really a losing proposition for the town I'd say that the current tenants would certainly prefer to have a long-term lease to ensure the stability there and not to take on the risk of ownership but given the fact that we're taking that risk I would prefer that we actually go out and take a look at sale versus lease and make sure what is the best option for the town I think it's you know for this reason when we look at any future lease if we're going to continue to lease it I want to make sure that we have the provision in the lease that they would be responsible for any capital replacement that we'd actually establish a fund where they'd put money aside for future capital repairs rather than the town taking on that liability a few have suggested to us during this process that we can increase current rents significantly and have the tenants fund this capital renewal fund under this scenario I believe that it's unlikely that the tenants would want to invest in capital improvements to buildings they do not own and in the case of buildings with significant age the risks are even higher we would still explore this option but I'm not optimistic that the tenants would find this attractive in any event having the option of selling the property will put the town I believe in the best position to obtain the most financially advantageous result whether it be sale or lease and maximize the funding assistance for the Thompson School in addition the conditions that's proposed or placed upon any potential sale I think contain appropriate protections for both the town and the neighborhood so I urge you to support the motion before you to allow us to explore both sale and lease options and determine what is in the best interest in the town for the long run thank you yes sir I think this is Rose about to answer it but are we are we debating the what's in the selectments report or the vote on the back of the map I think Mr. Rose is going to get up and introduce the substitute okay but Mr. Sullivan seemed to be speaking to the motion that wasn't yet properly before us thank you I think Miss Rowe thank you I am putting forward the substitute motion that's been on your seats for a while it's the one on the back of the map and it says that the board of selectmen be and hereby is authorized to dispose of the primary school and it's impertinent land by sale lease or otherwise provided that any sale of the property shall not be less than seven 100 1,700,000 dollars shall include a right of first refusal in favor of the town and in the event the property is offered for resale shall restrict future use of the property to educational use and shall exclude approximately 21,870 square feet of land currently in use as a public playground I think this is self-evident this is something that we thought about for a while we had always thought of having the first refusal come back to the town if the land was ever for sale again I have a detailed map of the parcels that have been acquired over time if anybody wants to look at them at the break we have one two three four five six different parcels taken by eminent domain at different times and gift so I can certainly show that to you and I'm looking for a second for the motion thank you seconded Mr. Mrs. Warden thank you Mr. moderator Patricia Warden precinct eight during my final year in the school committee we decided to renovate and upgrade all our elementary schools to bring them into the computer age and get them ready for the 21st century so now almost 20 years later we've reached that point thanks to a great deal of hard work by many in bringing our vision forward surely but steadily thank you town meeting for your vote on Thompson school and thanks to the permanent town building committee and the capital budget committee and many others now we must select the best option and lowest risk for funding the Thompson school rebuild from Parmenter and Crosby so fellow town meeting members please vote no on articles 38 and 39 and oh here are five main points about these schools one Parmenter and Crosby are pots of gold at the end of the rainbow which have been selected as town assets to be a revenue source for rebuilding another town asset the Thompson school to persuade us to allow the schools to be sold rather than granted the administration presented some smoke and mirror arguments and some would imagine early facts tonight which simply do not have your authenticity or for example the figures carefully researched over the years by the Arlington redevelopment board for capital costs and other projections I have familiarity with these buildings both as a former school committee member and as a resident in a house older than Parmenter and I find the administration's figures to have little relevance to reality the RKG report which was distributed to you on the listserv two weeks ago describes on pages six through eight preferability of rental market rates rather than sale rental would provide long-term revenue sufficient to support four to five million dollars of debt obligations for the Thompson school rebuild the current lease situation is good for the town and would be even better at market rates if it ain't broke don't fix it town meeting to be very careful not to sell these buildings and give them away at a pittance years ago when country school was closed by the school committee a financial windfall was expected by the town from itself it didn't happen someone else got the windfall second point when the administration decides that dollars are needed or some other project how will they go about selecting the next capital asset to be used as the part of gold is there any comprehensive open communication between the Selectman Redevelopment Board Park and Recreation Commission School Committee and Chamber of Commerce about such assets where is the transparency in such considerations many of which need our vote as town meeting members how can we be sure that informational reports even to us by the administration are complete or in fact if they have had important information removed as happened with the RKG report version given us last year which was missing important information on rental data essentially then what will be the domino effect of these articles on all our town properties and assets the third point is quality of life issues which could be very negative for various Arlington residents if these buildings are sold without long-term deed restrictions parents of Arlington Children's Centre and of the other schools are enthusiastic about them the open space around the schools is very important for recreation in both these neighbourhoods the articles on which we are being asked to vote do not spell out precisely the amounts or dimensions and boundaries of the land involved it would be irresponsible for us as town meeting members to vote to enable the sale of a pertinent land without knowing exactly in the vote specifications what we're actually voting on and what protections are to be provided by means of deed restrictions that has not been defined in writing without that the selected assurances are simply wishful thinking and to do not have the force of law we will be voting on a pig in the Pope some of the land is protected as open space in recreation and cannot be sold without permission and votes of various bodies including the park and recreation commission and the Massachusetts legislature point number four addresses the town's desirable core function in today's work of two in today's world of two working parents child care accessibility should be considered a core municipal function not necessarily one which the town can fund operationally but most certainly one which we can facilitate to the maximum extent possible just as we do with the senior centre and senior services or for example the standard day kindergarten both of which are housed in school buildings or former school buildings and both of which are obviously now core municipal functions when the school committee voted to release car for imprimatur school to the redevelopment board i was delighted that the board rented them to these respective private schools good child care and varied educational programs are very important to Arlington's overall continuum of educational services the only fault one can find with the current arrangement is that too often parents find that their child cannot be accommodated in Arlington Children's Centre because it is so popular there are rarely vacancies for late applicants i do hope that the chairman of the board of selectmen who was so eloquent in persuading town meeting members to vote for a wide geographical distribution in Arlington of numerous liquor stores so that we can all conveniently purchase our liquor in any region of town that she will be equally eloquent about protecting with a degrestriction for these schools of thought the advantages of convenient access to good child care for those who need it the selectmen need to rationalize and codify their priorities what are the core municipal functions why for example according to information i have received of mystic river watershed association have a rent free accommodation in the central school whereas the town manager has been allowed to endanger continuance of our excellent schools and daycare centre in crossway and pomegranate even though these schools pay good rent to the town and provide building maintenance my final point addresses risk to the town this is of great importance for your consideration the lowest options of greatest value are to continue rentals the rpg report corroborates this if you give selectmen the power to sell these buildings you risk creating a sims type scenario at either pomegranate or crossway even the argument used tonight that the town used for this whole situation that the town needs your vote to optimize negotiations was repeatedly used for various dubious maneuvers for sims to get town meetings yes vote resulting in increasing misfortune for the town i've seen it all up close and personal having served during the sim saga in various committees of the member of the housing authority attempts to sell these school buildings could be a reenactment of bait and switch activities failed promises unadulterated overriding of all interests of historic preservation overriding of promises of recreation of facilities overriding of maintenance of a once attractive neighborhood the administration is not without blaming all of that there are numerous instances of the roads not taken along the way in that development which could have given us a modest development at sims and honored some of the promises that were made by the board of selectmen instead of that we have perpetrated literally a dump in the sims neighborhood the town actually allowed the site to be used as a dump for other towns for the excess snow tainted with roadway pollution which eventually would drain into our mill group sims neighbors deserve special treatment from the town to compensate for the depressing scenario and litigation they have suffered and we should make sure that we do not enable perpetration of such a disaster in the costly empowerment in neighborhoods those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it let the administration focus on turning sims around in conclusion if we do give the administration the power to sell these schools without adequate deed restrictions and the risk factors are as high as expected then dear fellow town meeting members for the ensuing disaster will lie not in the stars but in ourselves the administration already has all the power it needs to raise the funding from cars being permitted by renting they do not need and should not have a guess vote on these articles please vote no on the final votes and articles 38 and 39 whether substituted or not thank you thank you mr. mccabe thank you mr. moderator harry mccabe precinct 21 uh with all due respect to the presentation made by the manager i have a question for the town council and then i would like to further address the question what is the question sir my understanding of the town charter the town manager act is that the the manager is the custodian of all town properties and my understanding of the charter the town manager act etc is that only the manager may dispose of town properties subject to the approval of the town meeting would the would the council clarify that for me mr. rice new addresses question might need one second to find the specific references thank you mr. moderator juliana rice town council i i have to disagree respectfully with mr. mccabe the town manager has jurisdiction over the rental and use of all town property except for schools but disposition of property is governed by state law chapter 40 section 3 which allows the board of selection to dispose of property if duly authorized by this town meeting thank you very much mr. moderator i don't believe this this is a good idea i know a lot of hard work has gone into it but it seems to me that it's taking us in the wrong direction we should be conserving our town property not disposing of it the town is land poor if we needed a piece of land for a fire station for a school for a cemetery for a playground what do we do we know we're not going to take private property it's too expensive and politically unwise what are we going to do next year we're going to start selling off our wall fields our playgrounds it doesn't make sense it it it just seems to me that we're panicking i i understand the the town is experiencing financial hardship but i don't think that things are so bad off that we have to start selling town properties now with respect to the thompson school question i voted in favor of it and i would vote in favor of it in favor of it again if it came before us and i don't recall that there was any language in the vote that conditioned the construction of the new thompson school on the sale of these two properties 38 39 article 38 article 39 and if if there was a condition in that vote i didn't see it uh i know we've talked about how the monies derived from these sales could be applied to the thompson school but to the thompson school project but uh i think uh that was a little Machiavellian in my opinion uh i think we can we can do better than that we should be thinking about what we want the town to look like next year five years from now 10 20 30 and who knows what the future is going to bring in terms of need for a piece of land for the town for a project we don't know but we do know this that if we dispose of these properties it's forever they're not going to come back i understand that in the proposed vote there's a couple of caveats about restricting the use and towns right of first refusal etc but my understanding is that these restrictions are not forever that from what the town council has told me they would expire after a period of years i don't remember the number she gave me she could probably tell us that again but again i think there are other ways i believe to get us through this financial difficulty that the town's experiencing one of the ways in my opinion is that we should be talking to the judge about whether or not restricting our budget to two and a half percent of last year's budget is really legal number one and appropriate allington is one of two towns in the commonwealth there are 351 cities and towns but allington is one of two in the commonwealth that operates under this uh stranglehold on our budget as i recall proposition two and a half and i was the moderator when it was passed the town is restricted to two and a half percent of the total fair market value of all real and personal property in the town oh here is that please stay within the scope of the article we're talking about the sale of pomegranate it is because i believe that there are other options and i am suggesting one well okay may i continue yeah it's kind of raining in a little if you look at the town report that we received this year and use your simple fourth grade mathematics two and a half percent of the total value of all real personal property in the town is approximately 172 million dollars why are we limiting ourselves to 114 million dollars why is allington forced to exist under this restriction have we been bad have we done something wrong miss rice i don't i don't think so i think uh the the united states constitution as i understand it says that we're entitled to miss rice can you tell me equal equal treatment under the law why is allington and one other town in the come well treated so differently do you want an answer miss rice can tell you why you you may answer on your time sir okay go ahead keep going got two minutes left thank you so the point i'm trying to make is that if we are as i think panicking and i'm beginning to think we are and i think it's time that we're gonna start thinking outside the box this business of just turning the crank every year it's not working for allington it works for 349 other cities and towns in the Commonwealth but it's not working for allington and it's not working for another town in the Commonwealth i think it's east hand down the cape although i'm not sure don't quote me on that so i think it's time to see the judge i think it's time to take this whole question of the noose that's around our neck into court and find out why a bureaucrat at the state level has the right to dictate to us how much we may appropriate within the limits of 172 million dollars i always understood that we were a nation of laws not of men yet a man a commission of corporations taxation at the state house made that decision 20 or 30 years ago and we've been suffering with it ever since and it's not right in my opinion it's not legal i recommend very strongly that you vote no on these articles it will not injure the Thompson project because the vote that we made did not condition the construction of the new school to the sale of these two properties thank you very much thank you mr warden mr moderator son warden precinct eight when i when i first saw mrs roe's substitute motion and that's the one she brought forward tonight but we've all had it for a while um it seemed uh it seemed as though things were moving in the right direction uh they had accepted that is a selectman had accepted mr loretty's idea of setting minimum prices they'd accepted mr rarig's idea of removing from consideration the portions that are supposed to be parkland and they they had accepted my idea of providing some level of protection for the neighborhoods against unfortunate developments in the future then excuse me i watched the tape of the board of selectman meeting at which these revised votes recommended votes were approved for presentation to you the town meeting and miss rice was good enough to explain that a restriction contained in a recorded deed could be in effect for 30 years but if they operated under a land disposition agreement or lda it could be much more flexible for example suppose the property were sold to a school and the school people came around in five years to the board of selectman and said we've had an offer we can't refuse from a 40b developer who will pay us three times what we paid so would you please back off your restriction so we can take all that money and build a new school elsewhere there are currently two pro 40b members on the board of selectman they will only take one more to sell the neighborhood down the drain as you probably know a 40b developer can ignore all our zoning protections and exploit the land to the max with no regard for the damage to the neighborhood and that would that includes in the case of power mender of course they can blow by the protections that mr Sullivan so correctly described with respect to the historic district the right of first refusal mentioned in the vote is essentially useless since i can't imagine the town coming up with the money to match such an offer and miss rice did not mention that even a recorded restriction is not automatically for 30 years it can be any period of time up to 30 years that is selected by the seller or negotiated by the patties the seller in this case the town could the selectman could select a short shorter period such as three five or ten years which would essentially be just lip service and essentially worthless in this type of transaction that's why i would like to specify the maximum period allowed by law and in that for that reason i would like to move to amend the recommended vote the board of selectmen and i will hand that up now this is this this is on the on the screen and there were copies of the back of the hall both tonight and and monday night and i did post it to the to the town being listserv whether that got through was successful to everybody i i i i don't know thank you thank you i'll uh but i will uh i will read it just in case anybody didn't wasn't able to to get it one of those sources i hereby submit the following amendment to substitute motion to board of selectmen insert after figure uh 1.7 million in the fourth line the following words and shall be conveyed by deed which and after the word use six line the following words for at least 30 years and the motion uh as so amended would read as follows the board of selectmen being hereby is authorized to dispose of the parliament or school and to pertinent land by sale lease or otherwise provided that any sale the property shall be for not less than one million seven hundred thousand dollars and shall be conveyed by a deed which shall include a right of first refusal in favor of the town event the properties offered for resale and shall restrict future use of the property for educational use to educational use for at least 30 years and shall exclude approximately 21870 square feet of land currently in use as public playground although i agree with the previous two speakers that we should not sell these valuable town assets uh which which does require ultimately two-thirds vote by the town meeting if we do decide to empower the selectmen to sell want uh to sell then we owe it to the neighborhoods in which the schools and i will be speaking really of both schools are located to protect them from any inappropriate development in the future or at least for 30 years by restricting the use to educational by a recorded deed not by a wishy washy land disposition agreement perhaps after 30 years 40 b will have been repealed or arlington will have passed the 10 percent affordable level so that will not then be a threat now do we really need this tightening up of the board of selectmen's motion do you remember the sims hospital fiasco in order to persuade the town's people to vote for the 14 million dollar debt exclusion again to protect us from the threat of 40 b the board of selectmen made a number of commitments and here are some excerpts i happened to have in 10 years ago arlington board of selectmen official policy statement the town commits to a balanced mixed-use redevelopment of predominantly general office and some medical uses with a limited residential component that includes affordable housing the town commits to a redevelopment that is at least self-supporting generating income after a three to four year startup period sufficient to offset the cost of acquisition renovation maintenance the town commits promoting expanded health care services on the site that sounds great doesn't it and we were convinced but what do we have 10 years later two perfectly good buildings which any developer with any imagination would convert it to new uses were destroyed and we have a dust fall in the summer and a snow dump in the winter completely unfair to the people who live in that neighborhood for these schools we need something more binding than the commitments to the board of selectmen so the purpose of my amendment something we owe to the residents of the palm enter and cross the neighborhoods is to ensure that in the event of any subsequent sale of these properties they will be limited to educational use because that would be right there in the recorded deed I can't see why anyone who cares about our neighborhoods would object to my amendment all it does is to require that any subsequent use of these parcels would be substantially what they are now educational uses even if there were to be new construction on the land it would have to be for educational uses and in accordance with our zoning bylaws and in the case of parmenter our historic district protections so if you're in favor of selling the parmenter and cross these schools please vote for my amendment to give the neighborhoods the protections they deserve if you're against selling as I am please vote yes please vote yes for my amendment in case the other side wins at least in that case the neighborhoods will have some level of protection thank you Mr. Loretty I rise in opposition to this article because I'm not prepared at this time to give the board of the selectman the authority to sell the parmenter school before I begin with presenting a few slides I'd like to ask a few questions though and the first is if this article does not pass can the selectman sign a long term lease for the parmenter school Ms. Rice thank you Mr. moderator Juliana Rice Town Council last year town meeting voted to transfer care custody management and control of the former parmenter school in all apartment land to the board of selectmen for the purpose of managing the property including but not limiting to continuing or extending the current lease arrangement while exploring options for the property's future use I'm sorry was that a yes or no could they lease it for long term under that last year's town meeting voted to authorize the board of selectmen to manage the property including continuing or extending the current lease arrangement okay I'm going to take that as a yes thank you very much I'd like to explore this question that Mr. McCabe raised in regard to the linkage of the sale of this school and indeed the Crosby School to the Thompson rebuild and in particular the slides presented on Monday indicated that the available non-exempt debt for the school rebuild program is twelve point seven million dollars yet the Thompson plan is to use six point seven million dollars right now I would like to know whether that additional six million dollars of non-exempt debt that has already been authorized by the voters could be used in lieu of selling this building someone of finance committee want to address that for the treasurer Charles Foskett precinct eight member of the finance committee the former town council explored this issue with the Department of Revenue about seven years ago I think and the Department of Revenue ruled that there is no limit on how much of the towns available debt exclusion can be used in other words the the town does not have to officially live within the commitment to get reimbursement from the state if the town wanted to spend the full 34 million dollars that was voted in the debt exclusion vote of April 2000 it could spend the entire 34 million dollars of course that entire 34 million dollars would go on the tax rate the reason that this was presented in the fashion that it was presented with the state reimbursement being applied to the available unused debt excluded amount is because the voters were told in 2000 that they would be spending somewhere between 37 cents and 50 cents on the dollar so the town has lived since that time within that commitment if we were to apply the full amount of the available debt exclusion to the Thompson project the the amount that was shown on a per parcel basis would essentially would essentially double so in the financing proposal that was presented to you the other night every attempt was made to stay within the original commitment to the voters as to how much their taxes would be increased by this project thank you I calculated that between both the Parmenter and Crosby school if indeed the three million dollars between the two schools was to go on the tax rate it would add a total of 15 dollars per year over about 20 years as opposed to the current 30 dollars per year that was in the material that was given out on Monday and indeed actually one of the tables they showed there seems to indicate that one of the scenarios was indeed to put that three million dollars with the exempt debt there's a well I won't get into it now but I would just make the point that we do not have to sell the Parmenter school or the Crosby school to rebuild the Thompson school and that the impact on the tax rate is very very small my next question and Mr. Good if you could bring up the aerial photograph that was shown previously I'd like to know whether there any of the land that is to be disposed of is Article 97 land under the Massachusetts Constitution Thank you Mr. Audurator, Juliana Ristown Council, none of the land on the Parmenter site is Article 97 protected. Thank you. Will any of the original parcel that the school was situated on be sold? I'm sorry will any of it be kept from the by the town and not sold? If the question is the parcel on which the original school sat which is indicated by the plan to retain on the corner of academy and Irving most of that parcel except the part on which the kindergarten addition which is parallel to Irving street encroaches the rest of that would be carved out and retained in its current use as recreational space. Thank you I think there's some real issues here in zoning if you have a lot that's already undersized as this one is you cannot carve out part of that or sell part of that property to someone else because you have a non-conforming lot that you're making more non-conforming and Mr. Good if we could have the slides now I appreciate it. I'm not going to read through every one of these but I would ask you to look at item C have we looked at all the current and foreseeable public uses of the property. Last year when these buildings were turned over to the select men the commitment was that they would do a thorough study of the most beneficial uses over the coming year which means the past year we haven't seen them and that alone is sufficient reason for me not to vote for this article. I think we need to know what they are first also the town manager talked about these being private entities that are using renting the school they are but they very much serve a public purpose and I think we need to consider that. If you can move to the next slide under B it talks about the financial impact to the town and if you look at page D one of your finance committee report it gives the local receipts over the next five years that amount is going to go down by $300,000 a year if we sell these schools the rental income from the two schools is substantial it's being used right now to help fund the town particularly if we don't have an override or successful override we're really going to need that money and if you look at the analysis or the this year's report to town meeting by the select men they talk about you know doing this analysis of the best uses in the future again I think that needs to be done now before we actually vote on this could have the next slide please and I'm going to the next one yeah I wanted to address the point of the town manager about the potential to increase the rents in this school and I have very different recollection of what happened when the redevelopment board last signed the leases back in 2009 in fact what had happened is staff had presented us with the proposal for very modest rental increases the redevelopment board asked for a market study to be done we found that the rents were substantially below market rate we were able to negotiate rental increases the first year of over 50 percent or around 50 percent and in subsequent year significant increases as well we did not need the authorization to sell the school at that time to get those increases in place that's always an option and it's always there on the table you don't the select men don't need it we don't need it now unfortunately if you look at what happened in 2012 and 2013 the select men shows not to continue that trend I calculate that between the Crosby school and the Parmenter school the town probably lost about $50,000 by not keeping that trend over the past couple years so if we could have the last slide the next slide there's no one that in summary I'd say the town is not ready to authorize the sale selling is a risky proposition because of the zoning issues and I think the town really ought to be realizing long-term value and not short-term cash there's still potential to raise the rents in this building and we have the capacity in the debt exclusion that's already been authorized let's use it let's get the thompson school rebuild thank you I'm here to offer one more nightmare scenario I'm not going to come and speak in favor or opposed to this motion per se at this point but I would like to illustrate some possibilities that are open under the terms of the present motion with the hopes that if somebody can come up to the podium and come up with a solid argument that this would not be possible then I might be able to vote for it but I'd first like to direct your attention to page c1 in the finance committee report and if you take a look at page c1 down in the lower left hand corner you will see way down the bottom tuition assessments charter school sending tuition in the amount of 252,662 dollars according to the state department of education this is the assessment for 20 students this is an average assessment which is deducted immediately off the top of our chapter 70 we have no choice of 12,633 dollars per pupil now a charter school is an educational use but it could be a very costly educational use to the town of Arlington and if one of the current occupants buys the building and either sells it to a charter school or leases it to a charter school that is housed in Arlington and is attracting students from Arlington if it attracts a hundred students which is not that many it's 1.26 million dollars per year almost the total amount that we would receive in payment for the Crosby school if we had a few more children 135 going to a charter school in Arlington that will be 1.7 million dollars the total amount we would be receiving for the Parmenter school in educational use we have a state board of education that has had an aggressive policy and authorizing commonwealth charter schools we have 20 people going to commonwealth charter schools outside of Arlington in some at a considerable distance given the deterioration of services to schoolchildren in the town of Arlington over the past 10 years lack of library services increased class size increased user fees a charter school receiving 12 000 dollars per pupil can afford to provide a premium service extended day and no user fees in comparison to what we can afford to do that's a bargain totally free to the parent 12,633 per pupil if you multiply that by the 4,713 students we have according to the Department of Education that's 59 million almost 60 million dollars as it stands now we're looking to appropriate 38 million dollars with an additional 6.8 million dollars expected in chapter 70 state aid of 45 million minus of course the 250,000 dollars of state aid that is being directed over to the charter schools for fiscal 12 unless i am convinced that this educational purpose would not allow somebody who buys this to transfer ownership or lease to a charter school we could end up losing more money in one year and be liable for that amount year after year after year then we would collect in the total sale of this property so that is my concern that's what makes me anxious about the wording of the vote that's what makes me anxious about keeping this as an educational use that's why i hope we can take a look at this and ensure that a property that retains educational use doesn't get into a situation where it could be hugely costly for our town thank you Mr. Foskett Charles Machiavelli Foskett precinct eight i would like to point out in the presentation that we gave you the night on page 11 the frequently asked questions it mentions that the disposition of the Crosby and Parment to schools are entirely up to the to the town meeting and what happens if you select not to vote in favor of them and on page six of that report it also points out that the msba wants a full unrestricted vote without any contingency such as msba reimbursement or the sale of the Parment or Crosby buildings so i just want to clear the year that there was no misrepresentations in that presentation there were none this is a complex and sensitive issue and um and i recognize that there are many different viewpoints on this mr schlickman just gave us one he neglected to point out that and i'm not speaking here in front in favor of charter schools but he neglected to point out that in principle if a student goes to a charter school and we have to pay for that cost we don't have to pay for the cost in the educational system it may not be a one-for-one equivalency but i think his argument was a little bit distorted in this presentation i'm fundamentally going to focus on minimizing risk to the town while reallocating resources for future use now on slide two behind me here is the present is the slide that you saw yesterday um Monday i'm sorry with respect to uh and approach the funding the thompson and we suggested that approximately three million dollars could be gained by the sale or long-term lease of the Crosby apartment of schools um as has been reported by the town manager they are no longer directly used by the town they're rented the third parties and they have been for about 20 years the um i i would like to suggest that there are some core missions that are part of the town's charter if you will and they include ensuring the public safety maintaining public works and infrastructure educating children and providing for other needed social services managing real estate for third parties is a permitted activity for municipality but i'm suggesting to you that this is not a core part of our mission and educating our children is a core part of our mission now the basic issue the basic reason why the manager and board of select men are are trying to take these assets and convert them into other assets is because of the cost of ownership the mantle of ownership assumes includes in assuming the cost of maintenance and reinvestment to avoid the risk of building decay and collapse into gross unfitness for the original purpose this is a basic concept that's embodied in the idea of depreciation and if we own the Crosby and Parment of buildings like any other asset owner we ultimately assume this risk let's think about how old these buildings are the Parmenter is 85 years old there's a report this slide number six has a an excerpt from the back of the capital planning report on the age of various buildings the Parment of school is is now 85 years old the Crosby school is 116 years old these buildings are at risk for causing costing us a great deal of money and as we know from our school rebuilding money school rebuilding program this can be large the next slide just shows graphically the cost of our our school rebuilding program over the last dozen years or so it's a very strong tribute to the citizens of Arlington who have voted and to this town meeting who voted on Monday night to rebuild Thompson that we have undertaken this program that's approaching in a dozen years a hundred million dollars in cost combined with our efforts in fire stations parks playgrounds and our library and our town hall this posture suggests that we have in this town a citizenry that has embraced the civic virtue that it will pass to the next generation future the future value that its predecessors have passed to it to it in the past but as you can see from this chart this civic virtue doesn't come without cost we've had cost in other in other town buildings for example you don't have to pick that up David that's okay thank you oh thank you too much the other buildings have recently cost us a fair amount of money as well for example the park circle fire station at 3.8 million community safety we're looking at spending eight million dollars over several years we've just spent last year a million and a quarter dollars on fixing the decaying outside of the central fire station we still have to do the inside now it's there's there are a number of data reports on the cost of building reconstruction and building replacement that are available in public databases one such report reports that in the boston area commercial one-story single simple office building has a replacement cost of 190 dollars a square foot and our area is substantially more expensive than places like portland oregon oregon or phoenix arizona so um the this replacement cost is something that we have to consider in what our future exposure is with respect to the farm renter and the koresby schools now one view of one way to estimate the cost or the value of building is to just take the current rents uh plug those values into a traditional um traditional um mortgage calculation and we can estimate that these uh two buildings together have a value of somewhere around four to four and a half million dollars at this time um there is a a more sophisticated way of looking at maintenance costs um the manager referred to these earlier in um and basically the the maintenance and replacement costs are between one and a half and two and a half or three percent of the replacement value of the buildings one of the formulas that are used in these various analyses is something called the sherman dirges formula and incidentally if you apply that to the koresby school the the maintenance value is not two percent but six percent so you just gives you an example of what our exposure might be so um if you can skip to uh page to slide number uh 12 uh i've taken these different um formulas and calculated uh what the future income might be from the farm renter and the koresby and what the future costs might be and if you take the current lease rates over 20 years the koresby uh total income is about 2.79 million dollars and the farm renter income is about 3.6 million dollars if you add to that a two and a half percent per year growth you pick up another in respectively 800,000 or a million dollars so the total 20 year income is about three and a half million or 4.6 million for respectively for each of those buildings now it might be possible to raise rents beyond the current rent and the expected interest rates but that's an expected inflation rates but that's a negotiation between the owner and the and the renters or lessies and if the if the rate goes too high uh people people might move out or leave on the other hand if we borrow the money that we need for the thompson school and traditional bond 20 year bond that to 4.1 interest we're winding up with uh around 2.3 million dollars in cost applied to those buildings and the um the total cost of that bond the capital cost of improving the buildings the operating cost in the case of the koresby will come to about 4. to about 5.4 million in the case of the pormenter around 4.5 million so in the koresby case we'd be substantially losing money and in the case of the pormenter we'd be roughly about break even now this is using a theoretical formula but you and i know that we have had huge expenses we're looking at eight million dollars for the for the community safety building we've spent tens of million dollars on our different school buildings so this is this is in a in the gross sense a very conservative cost so i think that the the town is highly exposed in in continuing to own these buildings and at the same time we have the obligation to finance the building of the tomson school there is a lease price which would make it possible to to fund these schools and there's also a sale price that would do it it's important i think to give the town the town manager and the board of selectmen the flexibility to lease or sell so that they have some teeth in their in their negotiations if we put total constraints on their negotiating activities we can be sure that we won't get a good lease deal and we won't get a good sale deal so i suggest that if possible i ask you to vote and support the recommendations of the board of selectmen thank you it's nine thirty let's take our ten minute break there's some kids of some sort out there selling stuff no thanks no thanks please come on in and take your seats mr. karmann your next on the list mr. karmann has the floor please be quiet should i wait no whatever they're quiet enough for you go ahead ready yep yeah i'm good thank you mr. moderator dean karmann precinct 20 and a member of the finance committee i rise in support of the selectmen's motion as amended by mr warden um i'll try not to duplicate a lot of what mr foskett said and maybe talk about some of the things some of the other speakers said and hopefully had a few new items um i just touching on with mr foskett said i i agree with his main point and his main point was that there's significant risk in owning a building that's not the core mission of the town um you know when we just look at the kai just look at the cost of the tomption i try not to get into debating facts and i try not to get in this person's chart versus that person's chart and i look at the simple realization that we have old buildings and that we have a tomption school that's going to cost 20 million to rebuild so to think that rebuilding these two schools could be done cheaper or easier it just it doesn't sort of it doesn't pass a smell test another issue i have and i just want to talk about these sort of competing arguments about disposing of the assets through sale versus renting them out during the finance committee hearings when we were trying to figure this out we had both renters in there and we had different people in there one of the things we talked about at great length was increasing the value of the rent you know because it's one of the things we hear if we just manage the building better if we just increase the value of the rent it's all going to be easy because we can fund we can fund the the capital expenditures and we can make everything perfect well one of the things we learned is in 2009 these two buildings were put out to bid the par mentor and the crossbeam they're put out with their restrictions on them so let's just i walk through this logically in my head the buildings were put out to bid it was a public bid process the highest bidder was awarded the lease therefore my logic contends that the buildings are leased at fair market value should it turn on and make an assessment that in a public to say that in a public bid process where the buildings went out to bid and the highest value is picked that that's not the highest value there's a mysterious higher value out there that we can get we don't know who it is we don't know where it is but apparently they'll materialize one of the other interesting things of note was we found out what the crossbeam when the crossbeam you know the par mentor we heard the rent went up the last time significantly the crossbeam did not the crossbeam didn't go up because the tenant who's there now was the only person who bid and when you're bidding against yourself it's difficult when it's difficult to have the rent go up but it also poses another problem it means we're one bidder away from having an empty building the par mentor was a little bit of a different story they had multiple bidders the price could be moved up and it could get to a point where you could get a higher rent which is but still not enough as mr. Foskett showed when you combine them to support the building so that gets back to my whole contention when i look at this of risk if we have to dump significant money into these buildings at some point there isn't a cash flow source though there's a cash flow positive source right now there will not be a positive cash flow source to sustain them i also want to you know talk about sort of another false trace that i thought was interesting mr schlickman had a point that these two schools could be you know sold or transferred to a charter school well saint agnes and arlington catholic could be closed tomorrow and transferred to charter schools should we go in like marauders and shut the schools down and knock them down and do something no a lot of other buildings in this town maybe even the old brigham site could be converted into a school really any building that zoned correctly could be converted into a charter school should oppose a false choice to the town or the town meeting that this could be a charter school is just that it lacks in my opinion it lacks reason to work and it also lacks reason for the first thing that i mentioned there weren't any bidders the last time nobody wanted to cross me charter schools didn't want them they didn't come rushing in and said man we're going to build a charter school here this will be great there wasn't the market demand for it and so you know and then the last point that i look at and mrs marquette was talking about keeping the buildings in reserve for future use future use of any land requires a political process and so i think of other things we're doing i mean i guess we could say we left part of mass avan reserve for a future use so we could redesign it the mass every design is a very contentious process right now some people are for it some people are against it this very town meeting voted down alternative uses of cemetery space sure are we going to hold that space and reserve for cemeteries i mean it didn't work very well you know that proposal had been a lot of difficulty when it was here before this meeting so i don't think that any proposal or any sort of glowing hope that we're going to have a future need for this space or a future you know you know pressing town need that we're just going to call upon it and use the building is realistic lastly i also think in that future need you know one of the thoughts that always goes back is you know maybe we can use them for schools if we ever need the school space again but that goes back to the whole rebuild you know do we how much is it going to cost to rebuild these schools million tens of millions of dollars so after weighing sort of the choices and what i had the choice of that i don't think are very plausible and looking at the risk i always come back to the same thing over the long over the short term we can make money on these spaces absolutely you know we can have a positive cash flow depending on who puts their charts up of 300 000 plus what we what we what we have though is a longer term risk and to me when we do like mr foskett said have an immediate need for a core service in this town which is educating our children in adequate space and we can help fund it with the money from the Thompson from the sale of these buildings and at the same time not impact our other core services because if we can't use this funding source we're going to have to take out of the capital budget which you know it's not widely discussed we pull it up at the finance committee every now and then something on the order 50% of all capital expenditures go to the children in the schools of this town so you're just you know you think to yourself well there's another choice you know we just fund it through the capital budget well you can but now you're going to have to take away from other services half of which are going to be the children of this town so at the end i would urge everybody or i would urge you to support the main motion of the select man as amended by mr warden who i did do think put in great and reasonable protections and help us rebuild the Thompson thank you thank you sir mr maher john maher precinct 14 i stand as strong support of the select miss motion and strong opposition to mr warden's proposed amendment like each of you i like to think that i like to live my life according to some principles one of them i like to keep my promises we kept our promise to the Thompson neighborhood the other night but i think that there are other promises that we have to keep up a most and one is the lesson is the extent possible the impact of the rebuild the project as a whole and Thompson in particular as it affects the taxpayers now it's been suggested that it is a day minimus effect whether or not we sell these two schools on that impact on the tax rate but i think we need to send a message as we go out on an override in a very short period of time to taxpayers that we are taking a look at what the town can do to reduce the tax rate and and the impact of the rebuild to me that's a promise that we need to keep as well if you look at the process of the schools as a whole over the years we had a larger number of schools we had nine elementary schools at one point was felt that the population of the students was such that we needed to reduce them and constrain those and reduce the number of schools available this is a continuation in my mind of that continuum those schools were left over they are available now to help us finish our rebuild promise to the town please keep in mind the promise that we i think we have made as well for the taxpayers another principle as i say we all live our our lives by principles i think a principle that this town ought to stand for is affordable housing now mr warden's amendment although it's dressed up in educational clothes is an anti affordable housing amendment in my view its first permutation was quite explicit that it said that any use that would be devoted to affordable housing would take advantage of chapter 40 b would would be restricted couldn't have that he was advised presumably that's illegal and it was but now it's here in i think a wolf in sheep's clothing and i think that this town has stood for affordable housing we need to do that now i would therefore suggest that you strongly support the selectives of proposed motion and defeat mr warden's amendment i would also like to just respond to a couple of other issues that were raised most first and foremost why are we holding these buildings they are not our core mission as mr poskin so eloquently suggested to you i think that you know these are not like playground we have a paucity of playgrounds now but i think we can certainly get rid of these to sell them at an appropriate price but again i strongly urge you to stand up for promises that we made not only to the Thompson neighborhood but to our taxpayers as well as promises that why i think the town should stand for and that's affordable housing thank you thank you sir mr hainer thank you mr moderita bill hainer precinct too uh i think i have an answer for mr schlickman uh charter schools uh take public funds and as such they're required to upgrade for handicapped people and things of that nature and if any charter school can afford to bring either of these buildings up to code good luck to them i don't think they would even consider it i would ask like to ask the slackman of the town manager if i understood it right any money on the sales of these buildings would be going to uh to lower the uh thompson mr sullivan can you direct such money in that way the money would go into the general fund and then could be redirected by town meeting towards the project so the town media would would control that aspect of it yes thank you i would recommend that you hold out for 10 million on each building and that should take care of the thompson schools the the other fact uh on this i i have mixed feelings about supporting uh the amendments on this i do i did have a concern as mr schlickman at the beginning on the charter schools because i think that could have a devastating effect on the public schools in the town but i think that's covered with the the cost is the pommeter school uh i was told at the break it's in the historic district does that mean that it cannot be torn down at any time mr roe no there's um um it would have to go to the historic district commission and they would have to give you permission there is a something called a demolition delay so there's about a year's worth of um delay if somebody did that but it's it's um it goes to the historic district commission they just but that delay the the only thing they could hold it up for is just one year not no is it a two-year delay mr warden yeah it's cool john warden precinct eight and a member of the historic district commission um in the historic district which the pommeter is the crowsby is not the historic district commission could prohibit the demolition it controls any any change to the exterior of the building that's not to say that changes aren't allowed but they're only allowed if the commission finds that they are appropriate for the building the site and the and the neighborhood in general now the and the demolition delay bylaw with respect to the chairman um that does not apply in the historic district because the historic district is supposed to provide the protections that the demolition delay would provide for houses or buildings on the inventory that are not within districts and the exception to that is a 40 b developer can blow through the historic district protections and there's a case down at the cape which specifically said that it was approved by the supreme judicial court they make mistakes too and so because the the developer need get only one permit from the zoning board of appeals and and and they can get consultation with the historic district commission but they don't have to necessarily listen to them and adhere to them so that that that that that that that's why we thought restricting it to education use now i won't when i get when i get the floor again if i will refer to mr marz uh arguments which i'm certainly not against affordable housing thank you in that case uh i'm going to support and i urge the uh town may need to support the amendments thank you thank you sir uh miss hooper uh gwyneth thank you very much miss marator gwyneth hooper precinct 14 i've been a member of town meeting for 18 years and a resident of arlington for 42 years and i'm just going to speak for a very few minutes about how i as co-founder of the arlington children's center felt a need to start such a program in arlington because there there were none uh in 1969 and 70 as many of you might remember women were going into the workforce in a way that they never had before and there were no full day year-round programs to support working families uh there were traditional nursery schools and head start which is a income eligible program um and my former husband and i and two other couples in arlington none of us early childhood people decided as community activists that we would open such a lovely quality program that families could use it took us a year and a half because it was a great deal of resistance in arlington at that time and i was told in this very hall over and over again with the man holding his finger at me like this do you think i'll ever forget that mrs hooper women with children belong at home and you mrs hooper you belong at home with your children that's what they would say to me publicly in this room in that hallway over there they said to me mrs hooper women should not be taking jobs away from men i had grown up in pennsylvania new jersey and i had thought that those issues had been put to rest but that had not was not true here there were many folks in arlington who helped us start the the program and who were in support of a full day program and we thank them we did open in 1971 in the trinity baptist church with nine children as we grew through the years we then moved to the unitarian church to have more space and we evacuated 43 children the day of that fire when the church burned march 1975 we then opened more classrooms in the first baptist church across from johnny foodmaster and then in 1982 i got a lovely phone call from alan mclendon telling me that they were going to be closing par mentor that next year and uh he knew that we were looking for space and so we applied and we were happy to move in there the summer of 1983 i was familiar with the building i had lived up the street my own children had gone to par mentor i had been a a parent volunteer there a girl scout leader a cub scout leader there and knew the space inside and out really well we grew while we were there and we had children as young as two-year-olds toddlers up through after school grades one through five we actually opened the first after school program in this whole part of massachusetts and when we had the licensing ceremony the commissioner came channels four five and seven came and we had this little ceremony in the third floor of the auditorium at par mentor some of our families who left us uh as their children outgrew our program we often had children with us for eight years they would start out as two-year-olds in the toddler room and they would age out as 10-year-olds in the fifth grade of our after school program so and this was year-round we're open from 7 30 a.m to 6 p.m year-round not closed for snow days unless the governor declares a state of emergency and we had degree teachers on our staff there was a team of four degree teachers in every classroom one of whom was a head teacher we had a director an assistant director an educational director who met with it each team of teachers once a week to play in curriculum we had a part-time nurse we had a woodworking teacher and a music teacher and often people coming in to work with specialty art media such as clay or whatever with children then a group of our parents who had children had outgrown our school were in we're bracket parents and they said we need an after school program here Gwen will you help us open a program so we helped to open we're not the legal entity of but we helped to open the bracket after school program which takes care of children grades one through five at the present time in par mentor which we've loved being in that building we have 188 children 144 of whom are Arlington families at the bracket after school program we have 171 children and of course they're all Arlington families so total we have 360 children 315 of whom are Arlington families our staff of 64 teachers half almost half 27 are Arlington residents we would very much love to stay in the par mentor building we love the space inside and out we love the neighborhood it's a great location uh and our preference would be for a long-term lease if there are any questions that any of you have and i am retired but i'm a board member if i can't answer them Matthew Dolan the president director a resident of marshield mass is in the building and we would ask permission for him to speak if he needs to answer questions thank you thank you miss hooper miss lecourt annie lecourt precinct 15 and a member of the board of selectmen um so obviously i support my own motion um i would like to address one thing that mr warden raised about uh that is pertinent to his amendment which i don't support and then um talk to you a little bit about how i came to this decision and urge you to support this as well um i'm not pro 40 b i am pro affordable housing and i am pro appropriate development for every site in arlington one of the things that uh might happen if we um well to respond to mr warden's point about flexibility in the use on the property the discussion that the board of selectmen had was about whether or not a 30 year or 20 year deed restriction would be appropriate and the question that was raised by my colleague dan don was what happens if they're both the owner of the new owner of the property and the board of selectmen and the community as a whole agree that there's some new use that would be good on that property and good for the neighborhood but it's not educational use and we've tied our hands and so it's difficult i think to imagine making a 30 year decision that uh there's no possibility of our regretting but i don't think anybody on the board of selectmen would be terribly interested in um allowing a school that came to us and said oh we want to sell the building for 10 times as much as we paid for it and take all that money and you're going to be saddled with a denser development than you would allow by zoning that anybody on the board of selectmen would vote to do that now or any future board okay so um i don't think that that is a fear and that's not why i would prefer that rather than tying our hands to a 30 year deed restriction as the only way that we can protect the use of the property that you leave us the flexibility to have several options because it would also be part of the negotiation around the value that we'll get out of either a long-term lease or the sale of the building it's just another tool in the toolbox because putting a 30 year deed restriction on that building and on that piece of land also reduces the value of it to some people who might be interested in buying it so every restriction you put on the property is going to reduce its value in the marketplace because it narrows the number of people who might compete for the property okay so why do i support the flexibility to either do a long-term lease or sell these buildings in order to support the rebuild of thompson okay we are not in an economic climate where there are easy choices left to make these are resources that we have in our hands we're not getting a lot of resources any longer from outside from the state or the federal government we can't count on increases in those resources we made a promise to our children that we would rebuild the thompson school yes there's more money than we're going to spend left in the debt exclusion as mr. loretty raised okay for those of you who know where i live you'll understand why it is that i'm reminding you of this we have a seventh school and as passionate as each group of parents as each school has come up to be rebuilt as passionate as those parents have felt and as you can see the passion that was in this room the other night and they come in here and they are so relieved when we vote to fund the money for the building project they've all been dying for i've been working on these rebuild projects since my oldest child was in kindergarten and she is now a freshman in college just finished her freshman year quite successfully thank you very much and i am dying to have a construction project in my front yard we have a seventh school to do the strant community is waiting and despite the fact that my children are not in that building i am as passionate about the eventual need to rebuild that school as any parent to any of the six other schools even now when i have no children in that building and even knowing i will have no children in the public schools by the time that we do it so i would suggest that we need to reserve some portion of this debt exclusion for that final school building so how are we to fund this rebuild well when it was first proposed to me the one way we could fund this rebuild was by disposing of on a long-term basis these properties i was actually very excited about it because i don't consider managing real estate part of our core responsibilities and i don't think we do it very well and since i work for a consortium of affordable housing developers and i spend a lot of time on the phone looking at proformas and budgets and actual budget with asset managers i can tell you it's a high art we are probably not getting the maximum value we can out of those buildings and we are never going to they're never going to be anything in terms of property management but a distraction to us i don't think there's a future use for these buildings but we asked the school committee to tell us that when we asked them to vote on whether or not to surplus those buildings and the school committee i hope made a smart forward-thinking data-driven decision surplus those buildings and that we will not be putting schools back on those properties at any time in the future the cost of any other use of in renovating those buildings or rousing those buildings and having open space is enormous and you've heard mr foskett explain to you what all the risks are in continuing to own them we have 12 to 15 years of deferred maintenance on those buildings and we are not going to be able to pass all of that onto the leaseholders certainly not unless we're able to exchange it for a very long-term lease and we need the money that we are going to be able to get from these assets to maintain another asset that we're actively using which is the thompson school okay often these days i am told in the political sphere that what government has to learn to do is to make hard choices well we are the government and we have to make some hard choices i know this is a hard choice to give up town properties it's not a decision you take lightly i certainly wouldn't be standing here before you asking you to give up an asset for any other purpose than to maintain another asset you know you don't borrow on your home equity to pay your amex bill so i hope that you will support the board's vote and you will give us the flexibility to maximize what we can get out of these buildings to put towards the renovation of the thompson school and i hope that you will not support mr warden's amendment because i think that it may take away flexibility from us that we need to maximize the value that we get out of these properties and may at some future point need to maximize the value the community gets out of them should there be some idea that comes up in the next 30 years other than using these properties as a school building that looks like a win win for both the community and whoever the private owner at that time is i don't want our hands to be tied any more than they absolutely need to be to protect the community's interest thank you thank you mr ruderman thank you mr moderator michael ruderman precinct nine boy has the weather been lousy lately if there's any benefit to a long cold rainy weekend it gives you time to play with numbers and go through some exercises that that if you didn't have a professor standing over you waiting for comparative use and redevelopment analysis in a real estate finance class you wouldn't be doing anyway except if the issue we're coming up a town meeting so i bring i bring some uh some uh shop worn but but recently refreshed analytical skills to looking at at the abundance of data we've been presented with um costs and and benefits of of a proposed sale of the parmeter school let me first say that i i believe in my heart that affordable housing is a moral imperative and 40 b stinks as a means of instituting it i respectfully disagree with mr carman's analysis that in the last two years the climate for the formation of new charter schools has accelerated rapidly especially in densely populated towns in the greater boston greater boston metropolitan core that have old and disused buildings which the neighborhood already likes having schools in in towns which are experiencing upheaval in their school departments causing the layoff of teachers and the overcrowding of children in the existing public school classrooms i believe that the thompson rebuild issue that i have been working on ever since i was a member of the school facilities working group more than 10 years ago is a canard a false question a total obfuscation of the purpose of our vote two nights ago and a perversion of all the discussions that have gone into rebuilding thompson and stratton up to this date never never did anyone come before us or was it ever proposed in the school facilities working group that we should sell the fox branch library to rebuild the dalin or that we should re we should sell the community safety building to rebuild the bracket or the pierce why well we could we could move people around they're old they cost a lot of money to maintain the roof leaks like a sieve and the cracks are yay deep in the concrete no we didn't even consider the the question of selling town assets we weren't going to look at selling off one piece of our patrimony in order to preserve another and i would contend that that the present use of the parliament of school while not strictly public in the legal definition of we the taxpayers are funding something that happens there it is a school and it is beloved by the people that use it it's beloved by the neighborhood it's beloved by the generations of students who've passed through it i believe that the assumptions that we're getting tonight are fueled by what if i may term the gibson principle which is the selectman want this money like i want wings on game day that the assumptions that are made in in the numerical analysis all tend to err or nudge on the side of the sale in fact i can speak with some familiarity to two harbing universities deferred maintenance number has bounced wildly over the number of years that they've been trying to hit me up to fund it the sherman the sherman dirges analysis misses two two very significant pillars when it comes to the parameter school one it's based on post-work construction to it's based on modified accelerated cost recovery depreciation they don't apply to something that's 85 years old maxed out in depreciation and built in an age where school buildings were expected to live for a century do you notice something about our public buildings in town that there seems to be this gulf around the 40 50 55 year mark that the ones that were built in that gulf were crap and the ones that were built before it are still here so some old buildings are worth saving i believe the loss of usefulness of the park would be serious given given a maxed out redevelopment of the of the property immediately next door to it i think that this is a sad and somewhat ingenuous conflation of goals to polled at least in principle the rebuild of the thompson and future rebuild of the stratum hostage or in any way connected because it doesn't say here in any way connected with what town assets we may or may not decide to sell i will vote against this i hope you will too thank you sir mr dunn thank you mr moderator dan dunn precinct 21 and a member of the board of selectmen uh as town meeting we need to do what is best for the town and one of the and what's best for the town is at least partially a financial question but it's also partially what is the best use for the town it's not just about the money it's also about what we're going to be using these properties for i'm asking you to support this motion and to vote against mr warden's amendment because it permits us to keep our options open and it permits us to maximize the value that we're going to get from these town assets over the long run keep in mind when i said that value i'm saying that that value is composed of two parts both the financial part and the usage that we've got there it's uh i thought mrs hooper's speech about uh the history was fascinating i learned things tonight that i didn't know about it i have also toured some of these buildings and looked at them and talked about what the schools are we have some really good usage that is happening in both of these places the tenant the current tenants are adding a lot of value to the town and so i think that we should continue to support that so as a board of and i mean this as the board of selectmen we're going to try also try to do what is best for the town and we're and when we do that that's probably that's also going to involve supporting the current tenants let's let's walk through what that'll look like if we the town meeting move votes to move forward with this what we'll do is we'll get an appraisal done of the two properties uh which is different from the rkg report a different but like an honest to god appraisal of what they're worth we'll put it out to bid and we'll see what bids do we come back and then we'll decide there's some really important things to think about that that are underneath that word decide first of all we will not be obligated to do anything we do not have if we vote this if town meeting votes us today and if the bids we do the appraisal and the bids come in the board of selectmen are not obligated to sell they are not obligated to enter into a long-term lease we get to evaluate all of the options and make a decision it's also important that we're not obligated to treat them the same parmenter and cross be are two very different buildings in two very different situations with very different tenants some of those tenants have indicated that they're much more interested in leasing some of them interested indicated that they're more interested in buying and we can work with that to see what works out best the reason that we have to approve this in order for this to work and go forward is that we need that appraisal and we need those bids in order to figure out what the financial value of this property is if we vote no on this then there won't be a meaningful price there won't be meaningful bids and we will have a very difficult time maximizing the value of this asset for the town so i ask you to uh and support the motion vote against the amendment and please keep our options open so we can maximize the value of this asset both the financial and the gifts that it gives to the town oh and by the way red socks are tied in the bottom of the eight zero zero i believe it's mr i believe it's mr simus oops short in a couple seconds thank you mr maria my name is charlie simus precinct three and i rise to support the article with mr warden's amendment i'm not going to talk about any kind of figures which is because i don't care about that i'm talking as a resident it was 1962 when i first bought the house 42 oxford street it's a cross from the crossbee school and uh since they i've been there many years i saw it as a grammar school fine and when i saw it close it was quite disappointed didn't know what was going to happen when schools for children came in there i really didn't know what's going to happen but i didn't know what they were going to do i don't think they knew what they were going to do with the place but since they've been there how life they can say they have been very good neighbors and i'm quite happy with them as a neighbor like to see them stay there as a neighbor that's why i like to see mr warden's amendment come in here and keep it with the schools for children and stay there now i don't think there's a line of people coming to give bids for the crossbee school there isn't that many people interested in the crossbee school as far as the rents go you're not going to go too high on the rents over there schools for children mr wilson his hands are tied he can only go so high on students that are coming in there so i'd like to see the town get the biggest bang for buck great but yeah i don't think you're really going to see it so that's all that i have to say and i'm a longtime member first time talking to this body and i'm looking around here i don't think that many of us are going to be here in 30 years i know i won't have a good day thank you mr fischer andrew fischer precinct six uh i'm opposed to selling these two buildings and i hope you all know um first i want to respond to the idea that we have an obligation to vote yes in order to fund the uh thompson's um i did work on the earlier uh override and i guarantee you i would have opposed the override if it had said we're going to sell any town property um in order to fund any of the schools it uh i think it's unwise um both of these locations are part of the heritage of the town and i almost feel that this generation doesn't have the right to to sell that heritage and it's more than heritage it's also the potential to use the building for other uses uh in the future specifically um there's a paul paul krugman article in the new york times uh friday right now there are 20 seniors for every 100 people in the workforce on medicare and in a few years that number is going to be 29 so i don't know exactly how many people are going to be elderly in arlington 10 or 20 years from now but it's going to be a lot and we may need another senior center who knows not that those not that either of those buildings are perfectly suited but when we sell them we lose that flexibility and that is part of the town's core mission is is to maintain our heritage and maintain as one slide above said uh the social safety net for seniors and that sort of thing um i believe that the thompson can be funded in other ways and i'm going to vote no on this thank you thank you mr trembling harry i got you it's not going to make you come any quicker could you keep your hand go ahead ed sorry that's right uh at trembling prec 19 um i have some questions about the the lease rates um we've we've talked some about how the um we put these out to bid and the the leases came back not the with not the highest value in the world i'm curious if uh if anybody knows if we put these out to a long-term lease where the tenant could be assured that they were going to be there for a while if uh if the the lease rates might be more advantageous mr selen who let the last leases that was the a rb i believe they were relatively short-term renewals but if we were to go out to bid for leases they would be long-term and and would financially would they be more advantageous to the time town do you think with a long-term lease rather than a short-term lease i suspect uh it would provide the most stability and probably would be better but as i mentioned earlier we probably would require them to put into escrow some type of capital renewal fund so i don't know how that'll play into it but that'll be one of the provisions in the long-term lease um the mr selen when he was making his initial comments said something about the age of the plumbing and the wiring and i think i remember reading in paperwork something about the boiler um i was just curious the the current lease that uh is currently in place who's responsible for maintaining those who knows the intimate details of the lease mr selen in terms of maintaining the lease it's the board of selectmen that signed the lease no if if the boiler breaks who fixes it oh it's the actual maintenance of it every town uh facilities people really because every commercial property that i've ever been involved with and uh i've been aware uh either part of or aware of the details on a number of commercial leases were all triple net which meant that as a tenant we had to take care of everything we were responsible for the wiring the plumbing if the heat didn't work that was our problem and the only thing that the landlord ever took care of was the outside envelope of the building so i'm wondering if if we're having long-term leases on these buildings or even short term why are why aren't we writing the leases with the standard commercial triple net leases that that make the tenants responsible for all the interior stuff yeah as i mentioned earlier uh we don't have the expertise for property management that's probably one of the things that should have been in there and will be in any long-term lease going forward okay so so then uh as far as the uh the the risk factors involved here the risk is substantially reduced if we're not in charge of if we don't have to worry about the uh you know the day-to-day wiring and plumbing and and boilers and things like that that's correct as i mentioned like the capital renewal fund that's the type of thing uh that the tenant will be required to put aside so that there'll be money there for those type of repairs so i mean it sounds to me like if if we lease these on a long-term basis um the terms could be much more advantageous to the town than they currently are because a will reduce our liability our our risk to problems and will increase the amount of money we get from from this and it's and it's a recurring thing every every year i mean i'm struck by you know you drive around Boston or drive around the entire country and there's commercial properties all over the place and i haven't really noticed that many commercial landlords are really trying to get rid of their properties because they're afraid of the risk and so it seems to me that if we can't hang on to them and and actually lease them out at advantage how do i put this lease this out on the terms that that standard commercial leases are are are issued that the town might actually do all right with us thank you mr. Lobel uh josh Lobel precinct eight this is a very interesting question and uh an interesting group of people have spoken on it when mr. McCabe spoke i thought well when it got to me by turn i would pass because he said most of the things i was planning to say but since we've had so many uh conversations after that i just wanted to bring up a few things um the first question is to the moderator if we vote this is this a two-thirds vote for this or is there a subsequent vote that has to be taken if they were if they say i was going to be made the final vote would have to be two-thirds of this motion oh well i mean we're not voting to kind of study it and then vote next year we're voting if we vote to sell it we're selling it we're done it's up to them so this is a two-thirds vote yes okay um and it seems to me there's sort of two things that we're uh juggling one is the amount of income we would get from a sale and again my finances aren't very uh sophisticated i oftentimes miss a decimal but i think if we're getting three million dollars if we divide that by roughly 20 000 households by 20 years it is uh ten dollars a month ten dollars a year per household something like that is that anyone want to confirm that your math is better than mine it's i think that number is about right so it's ten dollars maybe it's twenty dollars a household per year if we want to factor in more things so in terms of the income of the sale i think that that doesn't persuade me in terms of the risk of the maintenance on the building i think that mr trembley has brought that up there are probably ways to deal with that and again that's not a huge amount of money and so that doesn't really persuade me either in terms of management of the building have we looked at private management or having a private company to do that Mr Sullivan have anybody done that uh no done it in a house okay so i mean that that would be another possibility i i don't really know the cost but one of my colleagues said that might be six percent of the of the income per year so maybe 18 000 a year for that service that seems reasonable reasonable to me some people have mentioned the word override i want to make it clear to everybody an override is much different than a debt exclusion a debt exclusion is three million dollars over 20 years let's say whereas an override is three million dollars per year so that's much different in terms of the cost of the taxpayers in terms of the use of the building uh acc i think is a great use of it they've said that they want to stay there and it's my impression that they would find that much easier to do if it was leased versus they put them in a position where they have to buy it in terms of use of the space it's my understanding that the enrollment in the schools is currently growing we live in a town where we have a very high ratio of adults to students i think we have 40 000 plus people with a school population 4 000 lexington has 25 000 people with roughly the same population so there is possibility that we could grow and actually we we work quite a bit larger in terms of enrollment a number of years ago and i can tell you right now that i know the oddison is kind of bursting at the seams um as are many of the elementary schools um in terms of charter school use of the building uh i don't know if a charter school could perhaps just use the first floor and not have to make a lot of a da modifications one thing that's very appealing to me is uh maybe we could do some of the benefits that a charter school offers in our own buildings with our own personnel maybe we could have a small magnet school that is kind of centered around a particular um strength if it's the arts or whatever um so that's that and then finally i'd have to echo uh mr schlickman's comments from uh the beginning of town meeting which seems like a long time ago when we were talking about cemeteries and he said that decision is forever if we if we turn it over if we sell this building and especially if we do it at a time of sort of tight economic times i think that's the the worst reason to do it because we're hopefully going to pass out of that um and if we sell it's gone and if we do want to use some that space for something else we're never going to be able to buy up that much space again or it's certainly it's going to be much more difficult to buy it than to sell it so uh summing up i'm not in favor of selling it i think it would be a large mistake and um i urge you to agree with me thank you thank you sir mr coke kevin coke precinct 16 uh i share many of mr caves and uh and mr lowbell's concerns um if if building maintenance were such a risk then in the limit we would sell all of our buildings and lease them back but guess what if we did that the owner would charge us the cost of maintaining the building plus a return on their investment so that's why people build buildings to to make a return on their investment so i i can't buy into the argument that that owning buildings is intrinsically risky all buildings need maintenance um so i i i guess i have one question which is would there be any way to take the sale option off the table from this uh measure and only uh entertain lease options you you could make them and a motion to amend if you wished um the uh select one have the authority to lease on their own so if you just wanted the lease option i suppose you just vote the article down because the select one could do the select one have the option to uh engage in a long-term lease at this point yes yes they could they could engage in a long-term lease and as i mentioned they could require a capital replacement fund so they're responsible for all that um but i'm not sure that if you own the property i own the property i'd want to do that i'd want to make sure that i get you know the best price possible that i could i want to have all the options open in front of me and have the people that are bidding on it know that i have options and weigh all those options uh if we go out to bid with just a lease option um i'm not sure what kind of bids we'll get what if they get no bids or very low bids no one's willing to fund the capital replacement fund where do we go from there just having the two options i think is in the best interest of the town i think really i think in a way carrying out our fiduciary responsibility tax payers to get the most that we can well at the same time building in the protections for the neighborhood you know for the existing tenants giving them preference restricting it to private private educational use i think that's the best option well i think that this is probably close to the worst possible time to sell property based on the current state of the economy so with the same concerns as mr mccabe and mr labelle i uh urge voting this down thank you mr burger thank you mr moderator excuse me eric burger precinct uh six i uh i urge you to vote against uh the sale of these buildings and i want to speak in particular to uh article 38 because i'm familiar with uh the parmenter school i mentioned last week in remarks to you that um i was a educational uh administrator in the past and a teacher i mentioned it only now because you know i worked for 29 years as an administrator in elementary schools and high schools and as a district administrator i mentioned it because i do know something about the educational environment educational um philosophy educational research now i want to tell you what i didn't tell you though is that for the last three years once a week i volunteer at the arlington children's center and i bring that up to tell you that i know this school i see it i know at first hand and i am telling you we talk tonight about resources and getting the most from our assets that school is fabulous i am telling you that is one heck of a resource not only does it provide child care for kids from age two up but it provides it's a school it doesn't just take care of kids you know filling the day i mean there is a excellent curriculum in that school it's guided by a philosophy to treat those kids with love and respect and i and i see it the relationships in that school between the staff and the and the kids is beautiful it's consistent whether it's in the playground in the classes wherever that is a gem i'm telling you it's fabulous and you heard before tonight about how many kids it serves in arlington over 140 a vital service to working families in this town now i i believe that if this if that building is sold or that option is out there i believe they'll drive away the school i think when you heard tonight from the you know the woman who who's started this school fabulous uh mrs hooper she said that she prefers a long-term lease now this that that school has been there since 1983 in that building it's served many families in this town it's a very good you know it's paid its money every year and i'm sure the town can negotiate a long-term lease that meets its needs for a renovation etc etc maintenance upkeep with the arlington children's center if that school leaves this town and has to go somewhere else find another building it's one heck of a loss to the town you talk about resources assets you lost a big one right there and i'm not kidding you because as i said i've been in that school every week for three years and i know something about what what good not and that is a gem a gem and if you don't believe me go go spend time there and watch the staff with those kids two years and up and sit in a classroom and watch what they teach those kids and how they work with them they have a core mission that's beautiful early childhood oriented creative thank you thank you sir mr dority leo dority prison 19 we move the question everything on the question thank you i'm on issues before the article absolutely okay we have a motion to terminate the debate on all issues before the article all in favor please say yes opposed say no no my opinion it is a two-thirds vote okay we have two substitute motions before one substitute and then an amendment we have miss rose substitute motion and then mr warden's amendment so it will only make sense in my opinion to vote on miss rose substitute motion if that passes then we'll vote on mr warden's amendment to her motion then we're going to vote on the final vote as amended or not mr moderate is that kind of clear could i have some clarification please yeah if we have a two-thirds vote is it two-thirds of the 250 town meeting members are two-thirds of the amount of people who checked in tonight it's two-thirds of the people in the hall voting right now so do you know how many are here do you want to stand and vote well i know but i can tell you six people voted no what i could hear six voices say no no i don't mean that i mean when we vote on this do you know how i mean everybody doesn't know we we don't it's not how many people checked in tonight it's not how many people our quorum is 62 people okay it's two-thirds of the people in the hall at the moment we vote who votes yeah okay so i'll say it again first we're going to vote on miss rose substitute if that passes then we're going to vote on mr warden's amendment to her substitute motion whether or not that passes we are then going to vote again for the final vote if miss rose passes as amended or not amended wait a second mr haney what purpose do you rise mr mar yes i understand miss rose motion to be a substitute my understanding that it was it's adopted by the select men and therefore is the by definition of the bylaws is the main motion no they had they had a different motion in their report that said voted the select and i and that she's presented a substitute motion tonight it's my understanding i'll correct me if i'm wrong i might be wrong that uh they simply decided to abandon the original one and now making this the select man's main motion if that is the case i have never sat in this assembly before and have a main motion voted before the amendment the amendment is always voted for us because that informs people about what eventually they're going to be voting on seems to be the common sense way and a subject to your rule in which i will of course respect that the amendment ought to be voted for us known what drew the initial motion of the the select man so it's still before us the original one in their report is still before us we have to substitute it which their substitute motion did she didn't get up and say we withdraw our original motion we're going to substitute it so we got to vote on it we could have voted on it by now but but why wouldn't that it amends it amends the select man's motion regardless of a substitute no she is substituting her motion for the motion that's currently before i'm not going to argue with you mr ma i'm going to do the way i want to simply say the fur to the chair i am going to do the both way i want to because it's clear to me and i think it's clear to everybody else mrs ma mrs roe has a substitute motion which she discussed tonight which takes place of the one which was in their voted package they gave us earlier that that has not been withdrawn we have may 11th motion that says substitute motion we're going to vote on that yes mr mccabe we have three things before us now thank you mr moderator harry mccabe preaching 21 i believe the quantum of vote is two thirds of those present and voting that's true that's not what you said yeah you said it was two thirds of those in the hall present and voting so if they don't vote we don't count them correct and they're not part of the vote i agree with you thank you now in my opinion we have three things for mrs fiori yes i can't hear you i'm sorry else if you're a precinct too and i'm i'm still confused because if the original motion has not been taken out correct and we're going to vote on uh the chairman's substitute motion correct and then if we turn that down we're going to vote on no if we turn that down there's no use voting on mr mars mr excuse me mr warden's motion because it's nothing to amend if if clarissa's motion dated may 11th wins we're going to vote on mr warden's see if we want to amend it or not if it loses then we have before us their original vote which was printed in their report that was given to us but i thought that's what we've been discussing all night we've been discussing the may 11th mr warden's we're going to discuss and whether or not we just want to sell the parliament to school and why vote against uh if you vote against everything they can't sell the school okay so that means we have to vote against the original motion too if we don't want if you don't want to sell the school you vote no every time i ask you to vote okay thank you come on let's can we just vote on this no no mom stop stop why why is this confusing this is not confusing this is ridiculous what i have to start a list for points of order no more points of order it's very simple you know i have four guys back there yeah put put uh can you put miss clarissa rose motion up no mr murray have it what mr telly thank you joe telly precinct 14 is there a reason why the chair cannot withdraw the original we could have voted on the darn thing by now and been done and not the 39 i agree but it seems to be causing some confusion is there a reason why she can't withdraw it at this point let's just vote get it done with clarissa can you withdraw your original motion as presented in your reports no we can't do it let's just vote no more points of order no no what who are you anyways carl wagner hey carl yeah usually sit up front and move the question i like you because uh because you may be against the idea of disposing of article 38's property you might be given to support uh mr warden's amendment in the order that you propose you basically have to vote yes yes yes i think that that's ridiculous we should vote on the amendment mr warden proposed first if you want to vote there's nothing to amend i'm the guy who makes a decision on how we vote we can vote on mr warden's amendment but there's nothing to amend because we haven't accepted the substitute it makes no sense all right we're going to vote now we're going to vote now stop asking me questions it took 10 minutes we could have been done around the 39 we're now going to vote on miss rose substitute motion dated may 11th which specifically asks if you want to sell the buildings for not less than a million seven all in favor of her substitute motion please say yes all opposed say no no my opinion her substitute motion is defeated so now we don't have to vote on mr warden's substitute motion because there's nothing to vote on yeah there's nothing to vote on now we go back to the original motion of the board of selection that says the board being here by his authorized to dispose of the apartment to school and it's a pertinent lands by sale lease or otherwise all in favor of that original motion please say yes opposed say no thank you well we could either journal go to 39 that brings us to article 39 yes mr mccory i didn't hear you mentioned that you're ruling on the previous voice vote it's it's a negative vote yes i didn't hear you say that i didn't hear you say that thank you thank you it was defeated all right we have novel force article 39 um miss row thank you mr moderator um i would like first of all to withdraw the original motion excuse me ma'am i would like to withdraw the original motion all in favor withdrawing the original motion of order select when it's printed in their report please say yes all opposed it is the original motion is withdrawn all right um i would like to propose the substitute motion which you all hopefully have in front of you it's the one on the back of the with a map on the back that the board of select from the b and hereby is authorized to dispose of the cross v school um i don't need to read it do i um what i want to say about this motion and what i was going to try to get up and talk about before is um yes these are money making articles but it's more important to really talk about the entities that are in the school now like when's um school for children um and how important that has been in our town we're now talking about the cross v school which has been a wonderful neighbor for um the people that live around the cross v school they are we want to work with them they have tremendous interest in buying this this piece of land so i'd like you to open your minds up a little bit and think that please don't think about the schools in the same way the um the perimeter people did want a long term lease i'm sorry ted wilson isn't here but he's oh he is here hi ted but he is very interested in the his organization is interested in buying that beautiful building so i'd like you to think about the arguments that we brought up tonight and think about how we can keep these institutions in town um i don't often agree with mr burger but tonight i do because we're not trying to get top dollar the reason that these substitute motions talk about an educational use is we're looking at schools that have been part of our our town for a very long time if we were looking for more money we'd be talking to housing developers we're not we want to keep the same tenants that we have and that has been the board of selectman's desire since last year when you all got up and said that that's what you wanted we like these tenants they've taken great care the cross v school is a beautiful old building the dearborn academy has done wonderful work in that building they've made it work for their students they they serve a very valuable um function not just for our arlington people but for the surrounding students that need the special needs that they accomplish they have one of the most wonderful shop shop places to do shop that i've ever seen in my life and um i think that they what we need to do is not just think about the board of selectmen and our power grabbing but let's think about the tenants no well this is there has been sort of a theme during this town meeting of distrust of the selectmen please with this one think about the tenants that we have we really like them we want to keep them yet as tenants i'm hoping maybe somebody will get up and ask ted wilson if he come and address this meeting but i think this is a very different um situation so i urge you to think carefully about um demanding that this tenant go for a long-term lease because they might not want to do that i don't believe they want to do that they might um obviously it would be great to have both options but we really want to keep them um they have been a wonderful neighbor they really really worked hard they've reached out to the neighborhood and um so i urge you to really think this time very seriously about the substitute motion thank you motion to adjourn any notices of reconsideration notices of reconsideration okay do you have a second on the motion to adjourn all in favor of adjournment we are coming back monday monday night all in favor opposed we'll see you monday