 I call this meeting to order. Good evening. Welcome to night four of the 216th annual Arlington Town Meeting, and night one of what will be the Special Town Meeting. Tonight, we'll first take up the Special Town Meeting, then return to Article 9, which was previously postponed, then resume the natural sequence of articles with Article 24 after that. On Monday, we'll first take up the Minuteman budget under Article 44. After that, we'll return to Article 12, which was previously postponed. Article 12 is shaping up to be procedurally complex, with multiple subsidiary motions that may interact with each other. Let's curb the conversations, please. With the 48-hour rule, that's two business days, in effect, amendments and substitute motions need to be submitted to me by 8 p.m. tomorrow night for articles that come up on Monday. Now, you might say, what about simple amendments? There are no simple amendments in this case because the main motion is no action. So the options are substitute motion, which must always be submitted in advance, an amendment to a substitute motion, which is called a second-degree amendment, which is subtle enough to warrant submission in advance, or other less common motions, which are also subtle enough that I'm going to require they be submitted in advance as well. You can find a list of these motions on the inside cover of your copy of Town Meeting Time. So, if you're going to think hard about any interesting procedural maneuvers on Article 12, please do it in the next 23 hours and 56 minutes by sharing your intentions with me in advance or forever hold your peace. If there are any conflicts, such as incompatibilities between submitted motions, I'll be sure to be in touch with the proponents of those motions to discuss options. Giving the advance notice of your motions is going to be essential so that on Monday, we can focus on substantive debate and not on complicated procedural wrangling. Do we have a point of order? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. John Worden, Precinct 8. We have discussed the 48-hour rule before, and 48 hours before Monday night is Saturday according to my counting of the days. Right. The online instructions and guidelines and rules specify that 48 hours in advance and specifically two business days. But we're volunteers, we're not in business. I'm a volunteer as well, and I have a day job, and I need time in advance to be able to process these requests. Very good. Your rule doesn't make it right. But it makes it the rule. Thank you. Also, a reminder to silence your phones or other devices so that your fellow town meeting members can hear the proceedings of the meeting and not your device's notifications. And lastly, I just wanted to remind folks that when voting is open, you do have the option to change your vote up until the point that voting is closed. So if you hit the wrong button, you can hit the right button after that so long as voting is still open, and that will be registered. Point of order? That microphone, please. Jordan Weinstein, Precinct 21. Could I ask once again that the countdown clock for voting doesn't begin until you finish your description of what we're voting on? Often, it's still, by the time the voting elapses and there's no time to vote, you're still describing what's happening. I'll give that verbal cue to the folks who are running electronic voting. It got their thumbs up. So I will summarize the vote line. I won't read all the detail because some of the main motions are quite lengthy, but I'll try to summarize it as best as I can. And I'll finish those summaries before we open the voting. Okay, thank you. We now need to take a few quick steps to adjourn the annual town meeting and open our special town meeting. I now recognize the Chair of the Select Board, Mr. Helmuth. Good evening. Thank you, Mr. Oh, that was exciting. Thank you, Mr. Moderator Eric Helmuth, Chair of the Arlington Select Board. I move to adjourn the annual town meeting until immediately after the special town meeting dissolves or to Monday, May 8th, 2023, whichever comes sooner. Okay, we have a motion that if we need to reconvene the special town meeting. Wait, well, no, we haven't adjourned yet. I called the meeting to order. That means the meeting started. So we have a motion to adjourn the annual town meeting until immediately after the special town meeting dissolves or to Monday, May 8th, 2023, whichever comes sooner. Do we have a second? We have a second. All those in favor say yes. Yes. All those opposed? It is unanimous. Point of order. Yes, Mr. Wagner? Point of order. Point of order, Mr. Wagner, I'm sorry, Carl Wagner, precinct 15, point of order. I didn't hear the traditional way we start our service, our proceedings. Which is what? The singing of the national anthem. We're not doing that every night necessarily. Why are we not doing that? I'm not going to cover that here. I think we've always done it. It's not a partisan thing, except if you're against our country. This point of order is out of order. I'm speaking as a liberal. I think we should be doing it. Thank you. Thank you. OK, so we have now adjourned the annual town meeting. I call this special town meeting to order. This is Wednesday, May 3rd, 2023. Mr. Hamlet? Thank you, Mr. Moderator. It is requested that members of the select board and elected officials of the town, town manager, department heads of the town and staff, superintendent of schools and staff, committees commissioned and boards of the town, Minuteman regional vocational technical school district committee and superintendent, members of the general court representing Arlington, members of the Arlington Redevelopment Board, employees and volunteers supporting electronic voting, and also any consultants who have been retained to work for the town relative to articles to be acted on by this meeting, and representatives of the news media be permitted to sit within the town meeting enclosure. We have a second. All those in favor of Mr. Hamlet's request, say yes. All those opposed? It is unanimous. Now, at the Constable's return, Madam Clerk, do you have reason to believe that this meeting was appropriately called by the select board and that the Constable made a return of service on the warrant in accordance with the laws? Mr. Hamlet? It is moved that if all the business of the meeting is set forth in the warrant for the special town meeting is not disposed up at this session when the meeting adjourns and adjourns to Monday, May 8th, 2023, at 8 p.m. OK, we have a motion by Mr. Hamlet. So we have a second. All those in favor? All those opposed? Motion carries. If we don't finish the special town meeting tonight, we'll adjourn to Monday, May 8th at 8 p.m. Are there, now we're only going to do the announcements and resolutions once tonight. We'll do that within the special since it's at the beginning of the meeting. Are there any announcements or resolutions? Mr. Foskett? I think we have a slide to show, maybe. Thank you, Mr. Moderator Charles Foskett, precinct 10. I'd like to ask that Ms. Nancy Feeney, a resident of town, take the podium and make an important announcement about a benefit for metastatic breast cancer patients. Is that approved, Mr. Moderator? Oh, I'm sorry. Is she a resident of Arlington? Yes. OK, then she has the right to speak. Thank you. Thank you, Charlie. Thank you, Mr. Moderator, offices of the team of the town and the town meeting members. My name is Nancy Feeney. I'm a resident of Arlington. I live in precinct 13. And I'm here because my friend, Julie Bankovich, passed away in 2020 of metastatic breast cancer. And I'm having a fundraiser on Mother's Day and I wanted to share this information with all of you and hopefully you'll come join us. The foundation was created in March of 2021. Julie passed away on April 5th, 2020 of metastatic breast cancer at the age of 43. She left her husband, Joe, and her 11-year-old daughter, Savannah. Julie grew up in Arlington. And her husband, her sister, Val, and her own Kathy, who are both residents of Arlington, started this foundation to raise money for others that are living with metastatic breast cancer so that they can have memories with their family to last a lifetime. The fundraiser will be on Mother's Day, which is a week from Sunday. And you can buy tickets online at the website that's on the hot pink flyer in the back on your way out. And I thank you for your time. All right, thank you. Any other announcements or resolutions? Mr. Helmuth? Oh, is this for an announcement? Oh, yes. It's an announcement. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Eric Helmuth, chair of the Select Board. Two quick announcements. The first one is just the report of the Select Board for this special town meeting has been distributed tonight. So you'll need that in a few minutes. Copies are in the back table if you don't have one. And secondly, applications are open still through May 31st for the membership in the Arlington Civilian Police Advisory Commission. This is a new nine-member panel that you, Town Meeting, established last year. Its purpose is to provide an opportunity for increased understanding and trust between the community and the Arlington Police Department to help members of the public with any complaints, concerns, or commendations about policing or specific police personnel in Arlington, and to provide APD and town management with the public forum for feedback about police personnel, policies, procedures, and data. So various town bodies have nomination seats for this commission as created by this meeting. And currently, two of them are still accepting applications. That's the Diversity Task Group and the Select Board until May 31st. We both very much hope to reach a wide range of community members in this, so we ask your help in spreading the word. People can learn more and apply to be a nominee of either the Diversity Task Group or the Select Board by going to ArlingtonMA.gov, search for committee openings, or find the Boards and Committees page. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Thank you. Any other announcements or resolutions you have on over here? Good evening. I'm Laura Wiener, precinct 8. I'm also a board member of the Housing Corporation of Arlington. HCA is having a fundraising walk of affordable housing on May 21st. HCA is a nonprofit that owns and operates 150 units of affordable housing. It's an independent organization. It's not to be confused with the Housing Authority. All of our units are affordable to households who make 60% of median income or less. These homes have been developed or purchased and rehabged since 2000. The Housing Corporation does its work with the help of the community, the town, and its members. To support more affordable housing in Arlington, please support HCA through the walk for affordable housing by walking with us, making a donation, and or joining the organization. I'm now going to introduce my fellow town meeting member Stephanie Ford-Wheames to talk more about HCA. I'm Stephanie Ford-Wheames, precinct 8. We have our slide with some photos and a QR code for you. Thank you for allowing us to introduce our walk to town meeting. To give you an opportunity to support affordable housing in Arlington, have any of you asked yourself, what steps could you take to support affordable housing in Arlington? We have this walk. We have many opportunities for you to support us. We won't solve everything from affordable housing for tonight, but I'd like to point out quickly two things that HCA does and two things that we can do. HCA works with local tenants who are in danger of losing their housing. Their landlord is selling their home. They're being asked to leave in 60 days, 30 days, they must go. HCA is there at that moment of crisis to help this family, this resident, find new housing, support the fees to move from one home to another, and to support them through this process where they could very well become homeless in that moment. HCA also, and it feels magical to me, builds housing. They build these beautiful buildings with affordable apartments for our town, and they are supporting the residents of Arlington through these difficult changes now and with affordable units in the future. For the walk, looking, we have a walk on Sunday, noon to three. This is where you can take your steps to support affordable housing, and there are two things that we can ask you to do. Come to this walk. There will be food, there will be games, there will be fun, there will be raffles and prizes, and you can meet the staff, the tenants, and the members of the Housing Corporation of Arlington. And secondly, we have this link. This is your other step. Click this link. I hope it works from your chair. We have flyers in the back with the same link that takes you to our walk page where you can donate, volunteer and support affordable housing. Share our link and come walk with us. Thank you. Thank you. Any other announcements or resolutions? Yeah, Mr. Fuller? Mr. Fuller, town manager, thank you. There's a follow up to Eric's Mr. Helmuth's announcement about the citizen of police advisory committee. I wanted to tell town meeting that we were consulting with the police chief. We decided that in following up on your vote the other night about BOLO restraints that we will not be purchasing those either with capital money or with non-capital money, but that what we in fact will do is once the committee's names are in and I get to appoint all those members, we will refer the issue of how to deal with those who may need to be restrained or controlled to the citizens police advisory committee for a discussion and eventually recommendation back to us and to town meeting. So just want to update you on the status of that issue. Thank you, Mr. Fuller. Mr. Ruderman? Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Michael Ruderman, please sink nine and Arlington's representative to the Minuteman School Committee. We have scheduled with the moderators to have the team from Minuteman present Monday. At the beginning of the meeting, the superintendent and the budget director and myself, we will present to you Article 44, the Minuteman budget explanations and requests. The same has been transmitted to the moderator today and should be posted on the page with the other reports. It should also be linked soon to Article 44 in your annotated agenda. I don't expect the school to bring 20 pages times 300 for all of us in hard copy but should be uploaded by today or tomorrow at the latest. Have a look at it. If you enjoy budgets, you can give me a call anytime, weekdays, working days or weekends with any questions and we'll take off the matter later. Are there any other announcements or resolutions? Seeing none, Article 1 of the special town meeting is the reports of boards and committees. Mr. Helmuth. I move that the report of the select board be received. We have a second. All those in favor? The report of the select board for the special town meeting is the report of the select board for the meeting without further motion. I move that the recommended votes contained in the select board's report be before the meeting without further motion. We have a second for the motion to receive the recommended votes in the report to be before the meeting without further motion. All those in favor? The report of the select board for the meeting without further motion. We have a second to lay Article 1 upon the table. All those in favor say yes. All those opposed? It is unanimous. Article 1 is on the table. Article 2 of the special town meeting is now before us. Mr. Helmuth. Thank you, Mr. moderator Eric Helmuth, chair of the select board for the initial discussion of the presentation. We open the speaker queue at this point. We have a point of order. Mr. Rosenfall. Are we going to do a test vote to verify that the equipment is working properly. We should have. Thank you, Mr. Rosenfall. Let's bring up the test vote at this point. than keys on a stenographic keyboard. It's a true-false question, but one for true, but two for false. There are no precincts on a stenographic keyboard, but it's not a true question. Okay, let's close voting, and then we'll show all the screen so you can verify your vote. And the motion carries. Town meeting says that there are more precincts in Arlington than keys on a stenographic keyboard, even though it is a false statement. There are 21 precincts in Arlington and there are 22 keys on a standard stenographic keyboard. Okay, that's all precincts. So now I believe we were gonna invite up Ms. Gruber to introduce this article from the Town Meeting Procedures Committee. I'll also point out that I am the chair of, by Exoficio as moderator. I am the chair of the Town Meeting Procedures Committee. I would recuse myself in this article, but I would put the assistant town moderator in the seat. He is also a member of this committee, so this is the best we can do. Ms. Gruber. Good evening, everyone. Rebecca Gruber, Town Meeting Member precinct 10 and member of the Town Meeting Procedures Committee. I'm honored to present to you on behalf of the other members of the Town Meeting Procedures Committee has stated Mr. Oster, Mr. Cristiana, Mr. Chris Moore and Mr. Warden, our article to form a committee to study the feasibility of conducting future town meetings in a hybrid format, supporting both in-person and virtual participation in town meeting. Made up of town meeting members, the study committee will operate on behalf of you, town meeting, soliciting your input and reporting back to you. The committee's investigation will include but not be limited to the legal, technological, and procedural and financial impacts of conducting town meeting in a hybrid format. If warranted, the study committee will develop specific proposals for implementing a hybrid town meeting. And if town meeting decides to pursue that implementation, the study committee will provide support as needed. The town meeting procedures committee hopes you'll vote positively for this article. Thank you. Great, thank you, Ms. Gruber. Let's take Mr. Sullivan from the speaker queue. Mr. Sullivan. Pass, Mr. Hamlin. Guillermo Hamlin, precinct 14. I'm interested in this committee and I look forward to seeing what comes of it. I set up hybrid meetings every day at work. And the one thing I can say that I look forward to is just how much is actually gonna be invested into this in order to fulfill the mission. I understand that there's a higher stake when it comes to public records for the use of hybrid events. So you don't want any network-based disruptions or stuff that could more or less inadvertently end a meeting prematurely or what have you. So I just advise if we're gonna do this to consider the cost and to figure out ways to do so. Other than that, I'm very interested and I look forward to voting in the affirmative for this committee. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Radokia. Radosha. Apologize if I'm not pronouncing that correctly. Pass. Mr. Leone. John Leone, precinct eight, former moderator. I'm gonna ask you to vote against this. As someone who ran two hybrid town meetings or actually Zoom town meetings, my own opinion of it is it's a disaster. The level of participation is greatly reduced than an in-person meeting. We don't have the cleat reality that we have in the room to break the meeting up into a meeting room with us all in it. And then some people out there in the Zoom world would be, I think, very disrespectful to the people who are out there because I think they're in the same class as all of us in the hall. It is very hard to run a Zoom meeting with 252 people. It took at least eight to 10 town employees to run the meeting at a cost that I don't even know. I was never able to actually get that figure, but it also extends the length of the meetings. Before COVID, we had gotten the meetings down to six, eight meetings on a regular straightforward 70, 80 article. We would get down to six to eight meetings. Last two years, we were there 13 plus nights. And that also causes a lot of, we lost a lot of seasoned town meeting members these last couple of years because of the hybrid town meetings, because of the Zoom meetings, they just couldn't take it. And frankly, after my second Zoom meeting and after last year, I had a lot of people come up to me and said, they couldn't take it anymore. How do we turn Arlington into a city? Because they didn't feel the town meeting was functioning as a Zoom town meeting. It just isn't the same as us in person. We're all here talking to each other. We meet in the hall. Maybe they have snacks, maybe they don't, but we've lost that when we do it on the web. So I'm gonna ask you to vote against this for those reasons. And just we've did in person for 215, 217 years as a town meeting open and almost 100 years as a representative town meeting. Just cause we can doesn't mean we should. So I'm gonna ask you to vote against this and just let's go back to the way. It should be in person, get these done. And another thing with the hybrid and with the Zoom, we all thought we were having a full discussion, but from what I learned, there were all these other Slack channels and secret groups of people texting each other and communicating behind the scenes that now you're laughing. That wasn't sanctioned by anybody who always had discussed. No, the whole group of 252 of us were not invited to these. So it does create different classes of people. You have people in those groups and people out of those groups. So it's not how town meetings supposed to be. So you laugh, but you're changing the culture of town meeting and the culture of the town. If that's what you wanna do and you wanna create that, then you're gonna just create a whole different type of meeting than we've used to. So I'm gonna ask you to vote against this and let's just go back to town meeting. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Leonie. Let's take Nick Pretzer from the satellite room. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Zaven Pretzer, pre-617. I rise in favor of this article. I think the core of town meeting is democracy. And for democracy, we need to remove barriers to participation. We need to have as many contested races as possible for town meeting members to give the residents of Arlington meaningful votes. And we need to ensure that there are no barriers to participation that might inadvertently create some bias in who's able to be a town meeting member and who isn't. I definitely agree that there are advantages to in-person. And one of the great things about a hybrid town meeting is people who want to participate in-person would have the ability to do so, to buy cookies, to interact in-person the way they are at this meeting. But not everyone might be able to participate in that meeting. People with childcare responsibilities, people who are ill, or people with disabilities and they get difficult for them to sit in the town hall chairs for three hours at night to get excluded from an in-person only town meeting. A hybrid town meeting would allow those people to run for town meeting to represent their precincts without preventing people who prefer to attend in-person for attending in-person. I think if done properly, a hybrid town meeting would be the best of both worlds, maximizing the ability for anyone who wants to in Arlington to participate in town meeting, to serve as a town meeting member, to make our town better and removing the barriers to participation that might inadvertently prevent that today. So I think that the study committee will do an excellent job of weighing the trade-offs and coming up with good recommendations and that this is the best step forward. I will also note that other communities are considering various options for hybrid town meeting. Arlington would not be alone. And I think just as those communities see the value in hybrid town meeting, we in Arlington can see the value as well. So I encourage everyone to vote for this article. Thank you. Thank you. Let's take Mr. Rudick next. Ben Rudick precinct five, my first time ever addressing town meeting in person as a town meeting member, yay. So I have an interesting bit of experience here in that I've been a town meeting member for two years, one year in Zoomland and one year now with all of you. I will also say that I am a parent of three small children under five, Micah who's almost five, Tali who's three, and Tova who is 11 months today. And I was late today. And I will be late for every single town meeting that I am a part of as long as I am a representative because my children, if I'm lucky, go to bed exactly at 8 p.m., which is to say that I support this motion, which to be clear is not, we're not deciding tonight whether or not we have hybrid town meeting, we are just studying whether to have it. And you know what? There are real upsides to being in person with all of you. It's wonderful to see your faces. I kept yelling scope at the Zoom screen last year and nothing happened. I don't understand why we don't have that functionality. We don't have the voice votes for fun. So, you know, I hear there are cookies at some point. But you know, obviously there are trade-offs, but I am someone who is deeply affected by what you decide here and what's decided by the committee. And I hope that there's an option that if my children do not go to bed, that I can still be part of this wonderful process. So, thank you. All right, thank you. Mr. Newton, I'll make the jokes here. Yeah. Senator Newton, for using 10, I move to terminate debate. Okay, we have a motion to terminate debate. We have a second. Let's go to electronic vote on this. And we can do that without clearing the speaker queue. Is that correct? Okay, so voting is now open. If you want to terminate debate on this article, vote yes. If you want to continue debate, press two. Okay, let's close voting. And debate is terminated. So let's now move to vote on the main motion. And before we open voting, let me explain with a point of order. Yes, Mr. Badek. Adam Badek, precinct five. I'm confused as to what the actual action is here. There's no action. There's only a request that we support a vote, which is not the same thing as a vote. Are you looking at the developed language for article two in the special? Okay, so let's bring that up. I know it's a formalism and I kind of feel bad asking, but normally we stand pretty with pedantry, so. So I see here that the vote language is a town meeting hereby established as a hybrid town meeting study committee to be structured, organized, and charged as well. That's the warn article, the action of the committee. No, if you scroll down to the vote language. It says to support a vote, it does not say to vote. They did not vote to create the meeting. Are you looking at the warrant or the report? The report. Do you have the report? So we open up the, this is the report of the select board to the special town meeting. If I open it up, let's say I see voted that the town, that town meeting hereby establishes a hybrid town meeting study committee. Are you looking at a different page? That's the warrant. We don't vote on the warrant. We vote on the recommended action. No, this is the report of the select board. Thank you. So just to summarize, I'm not gonna read the entire vote language because it's fairly detailed, but a yes vote will mean that you vote to establish a hybrid town meeting study committee that is charged with comprehensively examining options and requirements for conducting town meeting with hybrid participation, which is defined as a combination of in-person and remote participation. Okay, let's open voting now on the main motion. So if you're in favor of establishing a hybrid town meeting study committee, vote yes. If you're opposed, vote no. One for yes, two for no, three for abstaining. Okay, let's close voting. And the motion passes. 183 in the affirmative, 33 in the negative and one abstention. That brings us to article three in the special town meeting warrant. Mr. Pooler. Sandy Pooler, town manager and I, Mr. Moderator, I'd like to- Hold on one second, one second. So can we have Ms. Mahon introduce? I'm sorry, and then we'll come to the presentation. Thank you. Sorry, Mr. Pooler. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Diane Mahon, member of the select board. The board voted for, as you can see on page three of the select board special town meeting report, voted 4-0 with the chairman, Mr. Hamlet, for accusing himself. The board feels that this is an important issue for the police chief and town manager who have requested to make a presentation to you for the board to hear debate at town meeting and ultimately also hear your vote. Thank you. Okay, and the speaker queue is now, can we switch over to, we don't need to show the speaker queue right now, but let's just show it in case folks weren't sure if they got added or not. Okay. Just for a moment and then we'll switch over to the presentation for Mr. Pooler. Thank you, Sandy Pooler, town manager. I would like to request 10 minutes to present. Do we have a point of order? Mr. Moderator, I did not hear you, maybe I missed it, but I did not hear you announce that the speaker queue was open. So how did we know when to start pressing the button? Right, we did not have that up at the time and that has been our practice. So I apologize for that. Let's switch back. Just everyone's on the same playing field here because some folks might have clicked in before or didn't know when it was opening. So can we clear the speaker queue? And when it gets cleared, it is now open. I apologize for that. There we go. Okay, and back to the presentation. Mr. Pooler. Sandy Pooler, town manager. I would like to request 10 minutes for this presentation. Okay, we have a second for a request for an extension to 10 minutes for this presentation. All those in favor say yes. All those opposed? Okay, it carries, you have 10 minutes. Thank you. Could you advance the slide to the second slide and give it one more click, please? What we have before us is an article that would, if passed, would allow us to file a homeral petition with Massachusetts legislature that would change how we hire police officers. We are currently under the civil service system. The civil service system for reasons that the police chief will explain in a few minutes has not worked very well for us in hiring police officers recently. What this would do would be to send a bill to the legislature that would allow us to hire police officers outside of civil service. And then once people are permanently hired, there are permanent members on the police force, they would then have full civil service protections going forward. So this is sort of in between our current status of being in civil service and the status of communities I've worked in and more and more communities across the state that have gotten out of civil service completely. This is also just for the police department. It would not affect the fire department. Under the current system, civil service prepares an exam. There's also a physical exam. The top scores on our exam are listed out and the town can hire two X plus one people. In other words, if there is, or we can interview two X plus one. So if there's one vacancy, we can interview three people. If there are two, we can interview five and so forth. And then depending on how many people we're trying to hire, we then have to go down that list according to their scores. It often has been the case that in going down that list, the person who is able to score best on the test is not the person who we think would make the best police officer. And so in order to bypass as person, we have to go through a civil service bypass procedure, which is essentially like an arbitration. It gets very litigious. It's costly and it's time consuming. The current system has in civil service a preference for Arlington residents. It has a mandatory preference for veterans and once people are hired, they get civil service protections. So what we wanna change, if you could click again please, and then one more time. First, we would have a town administered either exam or exam an assessment center. Assessment center is something where we, it's like a role play where we put people through a number of tests and interviews and examinations dealing with real life situations. Second, we would also have a physical exam just like we have now. You can keep advancing that, thank you. Next, I would say the town can hire the best candidates. We would not be limited by that two X plus one role. We could hire people out of order depending on how they perform on an assessment center or how they perform in interviews. We could skip over the person who has the highest score. Next, we would not have an automatic preference for Arlington residents. We think that is important because we need to diversify our police department to hire people who have different races of different language skills and given the composition of the town now that is very difficult to do hiring just Arlington residents. Next, we would get rid of the preference for veterans because we think it would make sense for us to have a wider variety of people being hired. Preferring veterans, automatically preferring veterans tends to give us people who have a sort of military view of policing. We think that their veterans are important. We would certainly hire veterans but we don't think there should be an automatic preference and then once they are hired they get civil service protections. So I've used up half the time. I at this point would like to request the police chief to come up and if you would please advance the slide to the next slide. Chief Florida. I'd like to talk to some of the benefits of this article. In the past few years we have seen a decrease in the amount of Arlington residents who have signed up to take the civil service test to be police officers. This past March civil service gave a police test and only nine Arlington residents signed up to take the test. Last year in 2022, 16 Arlington residents signed up to take the test. I talked to many other departments, the leadership and other departments who have left civil service and they're not seeing this problem. So our neighbors in Lexington, in Burlington, Acton, Concord and Reading, when they are hiring for police officers they're seeing anywhere from 50 to 100 applicants for one position. So they have a wider pool of people to choose from. They also have flexibility in the hiring process. So civil service right now every March they're administering a test and then after the candidates take the test we get the results in September once the list is certified and then we start our hiring process. So with this article we would be able to administer our own test one, two, three, maybe four times a year so we would always have an active test. And lastly, as the town manager mentioned, there's a bypass process in civil service. So we have our interviews, we interview a candidate, we do very in-depth background investigations and if someone doesn't meet our standards we have to go through a bypass process. So we initiate that, we write to civil service and the candidate has a right to appeal that. We could skip that whole bypass process. We would also be able to increase diversity. For the past couple of years I think I've been very vocal about my desire to move away from civil service so we can increase diversity for the police department. We would be able to recruit from other police departments, civil service and non-civil service. We would be able to go to job fairs and we would be able to go to college fairs and recruit from college programs, recruit from police officers at college campuses who are already certified police officers within the Commonwealth. So in closing I'll just say that we're trying to fix a problem that we're having right now and by passing this article I believe that we would be able to fix it. Three minutes we have. I'd just like to address the issue of, civil service was created more than a century ago in order to clean up frankly a patronage system of hiring that existed at that time. It was a good idea I think at the time. Over the years it has fallen into a not-so-clean system, a system that really doesn't work. The Civil Service Commission has not been adequately funded at the state level for a lot of reasons. I think people have talked about this for many years, talked about funding them more. It just hasn't happened and they are just not able to process things in a timely manner, give tests frequently enough and so forth. I have worked in other communities and I worked in EMRs. We did not have civil service. We had a very good police force. It wasn't everybody's cousins or everybody's nephews or nieces. It was an excellent set of police officers. More and more communities are getting out of civil service completely. That has been an issue we've discussed with the police union and because that's been in our discussions with them it is not something that we're going forward to and asking you to do tonight. We're asking just for a mid-step. At some point that may change if we have agreement with them on that issue but I just wanted to give you the background of why we're taking what we think as a good half step. The city of Attleboro was the first one to initiate this idea. There are many other communities now including some around us, including Cambridge. There's also moving forward to file a similar home repetition to allow this kind of hiring practice. So for all those reasons, I respectfully request your support for this article. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Cooler. Okay, can we show the speaker cue? So I'm gonna just jump around a little bit to get some voices up here that we haven't heard yet. So let's take Mr. Harrelson. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Brooks Harrelson, precinct 16. I happen to be working with an organization that does testing and application for non-civil service police departments. So I'm interested in whether or not you would continue to only use a civil service exam, an exam of your own kind or some of the exams that are being offered in the public for other non-civil service departments. And the second question would be the issue of diversity, certain characteristics of applicants are protected categories and can not be made publicly available. How would you approach that? And I'm hoping that the chief can answer these questions. Chief Laury? Thank you for your question, Julie Laury, chief of police, for your first question on testing. We would research and come up with policy that would kind of mirror other police departments who have left civil service. So I know that the police departments that I have mentioned use companies that will come in and administer tests to candidates. Yeah. And your second question, I'm sorry, can you repeat that? The company we're working with, the department specifically also have the same goal of increasing diversity. However, certain elements of applicants are protected categories and can't be disclosed on applications. How would you handle that in any, would that be part of a confidential application or how would you increase diversity? So our goal is to be able to choose candidates from a wider pool of candidates. So we would be able to, like I mentioned, go to job fairs and try to bring in candidates from colleges and from campus police departments and from larger Boston hospital police departments. Thank you very much. All right, thank you. Let's take Ms. Ryan Vollmar next. I don't think we've heard from her yet. Hi, Susan Ryan Vollmar from Precinct 19. I have some questions for Chief Flaherty. About half of Allington's residents are women. How many women are on the force currently? Chief Flaherty. Thank you for your question, Julie Flaherty, Chief of Police. We currently have eight women police officers on the police department out of 61 police officers. Okay, so that's about 13%. About 20 to 25% of Allington residents are BIPOC, meaning black, indigenous people of color. How many officers identify as BIPOC? Out of our 61 police officers, we have five officers that identify as people of color. Based on your experience that you've accumulated throughout your career, can you offer an opinion about whether it's important for a police force to mirror the cultural, linguistic, and racial diversity of the population it serves? Yes, so I think it's very important to building community and building trust. Having a more diverse police department would certainly build trust within the community. Can you talk a little bit more about how moving to this system would help hire for diversity? I'm sorry, could you repeat it? Can you talk a little bit more about how moving to this system, this new system, would help hire for diversity, keeping in mind? Laws that you have to obey. Right, so as I stated, we would be able to choose from a wider pool of candidates. Does that answer your question? Yeah. Is this something that only Allington is doing, this sort of hybrid move, or other communities thinking of it? Right, so other communities, I think Mr. Poole mentioned that Attleboro just passed a similar article Monday night that took Spurry Police Department in their town meeting past this article and I believe there's 24 or 25 other communities in our area that are looking to do something similar. The Cambridge Police Department, Plymouth, Belmont, Bedford are all trying to move in the same direction because a lot of other police departments are also experiencing the same issues that we're having with civil service. How would current employees of the department be affected? Current employees of the police department would not be affected by this. How would Arlington Residence be affected? So Arlington Residence would expect to have a more diverse police department over the long term. Over the long term, okay, that's all. Thank you. Great, thank you. Let's take Mr. Kepline next. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Mark Kepline, precinct nine. So I have a number of questions. I had a look at the state civil service website and there were cues for both the police and the fire of plenty of people waiting in line to be hired. So I don't see where having fewer people taking the exams is an issue. Can you tell me why the fire department isn't included in this? They respond mostly with medical calls and these are people in distress. And they might like... Well, the warrant article is what the warrant article is, right, so the warrant article is specific, I believe, to the positions in the police department. So that would really be out of scope for town meeting, but within the scope of a select board hearing on the warrant article itself. All right, I'm wondering if somebody could tell me what sort of interactions the police are finding themselves in now where they don't match the people in need of service? Don't matter, you mean... Oh, they're demographically... Chief Flowerty, do you have an answer to that question? Julie Flowerty, Chief of Police, could you please repeat the question? We do see the biggest gap between the police officer and the people who are now needing support and service calling in. For example, you showed up Muslim police officers or any other minority. So we have 61 police officers, and as I mentioned, we have five offices that identify as people of color, right? So... Well, and are you finding more calls from people of color? Sure, well, we want to make sure that we look like the community that we're serving, right? We want to be able to communicate with the community that we're serving, and we want to be able to build trust with all members of the community. I'm just wondering what gaps you intend to fill. Are there any sort of demographics or races? Nothing specific. So where is the need if you don't have a goal? Where's the gap? I guess I don't understand your question, sir. I think what Mr. Kepline is getting at is the granularity of the demographic match between the officers and the individuals that they're encountering during their police work. Yes, essentially the mismatch. Yeah, so Allington is a diverse community, as we know, and we're attempting to diversify the department to match the people that are in the community that we're serving. The current list, the cube, is that going to get reset for people in civil service while they need to reapply? Chief Larrity, or Mr. Poehler, if you have an answer? Julie Larrity, Chief of Police, could you please repeat the question? There's quite a number of people already on the higher list on the state civil service website. Would they need to reapply? So for Allington residents right now, there's 16 candidates on the civil service list that are Allington residents. After those residents, they're residents of other communities. What we find is when we go down to that list and hire people from other communities, when their communities call them to join their police department, they leave Allington. So we invest time and money into those candidates, putting them through a police academy, outfitting them with equipment, training, and then they eventually leave. So we try to stay within the Allington residents, so we are able to retain those people. After this list expires, and if this weren't passed, then we would use a new list that we create on our own. Oh, so after the current list is expired, you're gonna go to a new list? Okay. So I noted the fire department, this non-resonance at the top of that list. I don't know anything about the fire department. The fire departments and positions in the fire department are not within scope of this article. All right, thank you very much. You're welcome. All right, thank you. I'll take Mr. Prokosh next. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Arthur Prokosh, precinct four. I move to terminate debate. We have a motion to terminate debate and we have a second. Yelling no is not in order. All those in favor of terminating debate say yes. Yes. All those opposed. I don't think we have a termination of debate. We'll continue with a cue. Okay. Okay, we have five standing, we'll take an electronic vote. A vote on termination of debate. Okay, voting is now open. If you wish to terminate debate, article three of the special town meeting, one, press one. If you wish to continue debate, press two. Okay, let's close voting on termination of debate. And the motion carries. His nose are just louder, aren't they? Okay, so let's bring up a vote on the main motion for article three of the special town meeting warrants. I'm sorry. Let's pause the counter. Debate, the voting is open, but I apologize. Let me just give the summary first before we continue the countdown for voting. Vote yes if you want to authorize the select board to file home rule legislation that would exempt the town of Arlington from chapter 31 of the general laws concerning the recruiting and hiring of permanent full-time police officers. And vote no if you don't want to do that. Okay, we can start the countdown now. Okay, let's close voting on the main motion. And it passes. One 99 in the affirmative, 17 in the negative, and three abstentions. Okay, Ms. Deschler. Justine Deschler, chair of the Allington Finance Committee and prec 19 town meeting member. Quiet in the audience, please. Ms. Deschler. Mr. Moderator, I move that article one of the special town meeting be taken from the table. Okay, we have a motion to take the article one, the reports of committees from the table. We have a second. All those in favor of removing article one from the table say yes. All those opposed. Article one is now removed from the table by unanimous vote. Mr. Moderator, it is moved that the special town meeting be dissolved. We have a motion to dissolve the special town meeting and a second. All those in favor say yes. All those opposed. Special town meeting is dissolved by a majority vote. Mr. Moderator, I move that articles nine and 24 through 36 of the annual town meeting be taken from the table. Let me just say just to be clear, we now resume the annual town meeting and we have a motion that articles nine and 24 to 36 be taken from the table. Notably absent from that is article 12, which will remain on the table, just FYI. Do we have a second for the motion to lay those articles on the table? We have a second. All those in favor of taking those articles from the table say yes. All those opposed. It's unanimous vote. The articles are now removed from the table except for article 12. And I believe three. Article nine is now before us. And let's see. Can we open the speaker queue for article nine? And let's see, we had already started article nine, but then we had a substitute motion that was rejected at the time just to catch us all up. And Mr. Helmuth, would you like to speak to us? Thank you, Mr. Moderator, Eric Helmuth, chair of the Select Board. On Monday night at our Select Board meeting, we took a vote to endorse the substitute motion offered by Mr. Badek. We appreciated the intent of this, which was to respect Tom Meading's expressed desire to continue having a complete record of the proceedings, but to give the town clerk flexibility in how that is done, particularly if it could be done more efficiently and at a lower cost, but with the same quality of results. And I think that in discussing this with my colleagues, we recalled our prior discussion when we first heard this warrant, and that was actually the sense of the board. It was unspoken and it was unwritten, but our thinking about this would be that's what would happen if the original motion passed because it's been a tradition and it's not particularly difficult to do that now with the technology available. So we just wanted to offer that support and our appreciation to Mr. Badek for his constructive substitute. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Thank you, and let me call up Mr. Badek to introduce and move his substitute motion. And can we bring up the Badek substitute motion under Article 9, please? Adam Badek, Precinct 5. I'd like to apologize for my earlier confusion. I misread it. To this motion that's before you is as previously described and as displayed above is to restore the original bylaw language and then to only strike the words stenographic and to add the words of proceedings just for clarity. I'm not making any other changes and I think that should be clear. Great, thank you. Oh, I have a motion to have this substitute motion before the time. Okay, do we have a second for Mr. Badek's substitute motion? So we now have two stacked motions in front of us. We have the main motion of Article 9 and we have Mr. Badek's substitute motion now pending. And so debate is now open for both of those topics. Thank you. Let's take, I don't think we've heard from Mr. Tosti. And while Mr. Tosti, that's interesting, okay. Let's take Mr. Bowdoin, I'm sorry. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Vincent Bowdoin, Precinct 1. I understand the term complete scenographic record to have a certain accepted meaning. The term a complete record. I'm just not clear if it has a similar meaning and I'd like to ask if perhaps the town clerk or somebody else could explain how they would interpret the term a complete record of town meeting. Thank you. Mr. Hyman? Okay. Doug Hyman, Town Council. I think the main difference between what the current bylaw states and what the proposed amendment would essentially accomplish is that the current bylaw requires essentially live stenographer to take what's considered an official transcript as town meeting proceeds, produce a draft and then a version of that that sort of meets the stenographer standard. The motion as amended essentially provides a little bit of flexibility for the clerk that might allow us to use what's called like an otter transcription, which is an electronic transcription to create an immediate record and then to go in and as necessary fill in some gaps and correct that record potentially including a stenographer who would then go back and look at the proceedings instead of having somebody sit night by night live to take the proceedings as they go. There may be some other ways that I'm not thinking of right now, some technology that advances and allows us to essentially provide a record of the proceedings that's sufficient to essentially capture the debate that people have talked about here, but that's essentially what it would allow. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Let's take Mr. Greenspawn. Let's go to Mr. Rosenthal. Mr. Moderator, I intend to address both the substitute motion and the main motion. Okay. Thank you. Oh yeah, name and precinct please. I'm sorry. Mark Rosenthal, precinct 14. What do we lose if the main motion to article nine passes? This article doesn't just remove the requirement to hire a stenographer, it completely removes the only thing that requires a record of the town meetings proceedings be kept. It's very nicely volunteers like ACMI to help out, but this is our town meeting and keeping a record of our deliberations shouldn't be left to the goodwill of volunteers. Bylaws tell us what we can and cannot do, but they don't tell us why. The rationale behind a bylaw is in the record of our deliberations. Without transcripts of town meeting proceedings, we'll constantly be attributing incorrect interpretations to sections of our bylaws. We've been told that article nine will save money somewhere between 4,000 and $13,000 per year. The larger number itself is a mere eight 100s of 1% of the projected deficit. It's not going to change anybody's vote on the override. We're also told that sometimes the stenographer doesn't show up. I spoke with the two previous moderators and found that this has happened exactly three times in 33 years. The town manager told us paper is going away, paper gets eaten by rats and paper consumes lots of space. He's identified legitimate problems, but like most people who aren't software engineers, he has serious misconceptions about what you can count on from computers. Computers are not magic. They have their own constraints, records made with pre-computer technology have significantly longer longevity than digital records. Clay tablets with uniform writing from thousands of years ago still exist. Original copies of the Magna Carta still exist. Yes, they're vulnerable to the forces of nature, but digital records? Besides risks from nature, they can also be made unreadable by the forces of business competition. I've been a software engineer since the early 70s. I've seen a wide variety of ways that data is represented inside files, and I've also seen the business motivation behind choices of how to represent data. It may not be obvious to the typical computer user, but files don't actually contain text or images. They just contain ones and zeros. It's the software that displays the information that knows how to decipher the meaning of those bits. Without that software, you've got to document, you've got no documents, no recordings, only impenetrable ones and zeros. Software companies go to extraordinary lengths to prevent others from writing code that understands how their file, that understands their file format, and the reason is that's how they maintain their dominance. So- This is a long windup that's speaking about file formats, and if you can tie it back quickly. If only one company's software can display your files, what happens when the company decides it's no longer profitable to maintain that software? What happens if the company goes out of business? I'm sure glad the Bill of Rights wasn't stored digitally back in 1789. Did you store documents using WordStar or WordPerfect back in the day? They got killed off by Microsoft. Good luck reading those files today. Is Microsoft Word a safe bet? Maybe for a while, but even behemoths can suddenly go bust. Anyone remember Arthur Anderson going bankrupt? Could that happen to Microsoft? Maybe. Will it? Who knows? Last week, I decided to address the data longevity problem by writing a substitute motion to minimize the risk of losing our data to the vagaries of the computer business. The town moderator decided my motion was out of scope because as he explained, quote, the warrant article does not call for an expansion of the clerk's responsibilities in the record keeping of the proceedings, only an arrowing, unquote. This means that any motion that specifies a way of keeping records that's not in the current bylaw constitutes an expansion, so any attempt to solve the problems of digital records would be out of scope, and therefore it can only be considered as a warrant article for next year's town meeting. The problems identified by the town clerk and the town manager are legitimate, but removing the requirement to keep a transcript is not the way to address this. Mr. Badick's substitute motion preserves the requirement that a record be made, but stays in scope by avoiding addressing the problems of digital storage. Unfortunately, that's- Mr. Rosenthal, the digital storage is not really in scope here. Mr. Fosk has a point of order. I disagree. Mr. Rosenthal, proceed. Okay, the best solution to this would be to preserve the bylaw that requires records of this body's proceedings by saying no to Article 9 and addressing the problems with digital records in a warrant article next year. Since the substitute motion would still require that records be kept, it's better than allowing that section of the bylaw to be completely removed. Therefore, I urge you to vote yes to replace the main motion with the substitute motion, and then, whichever way that vote goes, vote no to leave the current bylaw unchanged until we can have a discussion informed by technologists who understand both the upsides and the downsides of digital record storage. Thank you very much. Thank you. Let's thank Mr. Moore next. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Christopher Moore, Precinct 14. I think we've gotten a little tangled up here. The warrant article is about the nature of the record that is kept. Is it a stenographic record, or is it something else? Is it a complete record, as the substitute motion proposes? None of this has anything to do with how the clerk maintains the record. So it could be, I don't know, that those stenographic records that we have from recent town meetings exist only in digital form. I don't think the bylaw says anything about how the clerk maintains the record. We've heard that some of the records are being eaten by rats in the basement of this building, I hope it's not too true, but if we want to address record storage, how the clerk maintains records, that's a completely different issue, and I think it belongs in next year's town meeting if we want to do it. The change to take away the word stenographic, but still require a complete record, is very sensible, and I think we should vote for the substitute motion as a result. And it doesn't really have any impact on how the clerk chooses to do her job of maintaining that record. So I urge you to vote yes on the substitute motion and yes on the overall article, and if you have deep concerns about how the clerk is accomplishing the maintenance of those records, let's talk about it next year. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Thank you, Mr. Moore. Mr. Tosti. I move to terminate debate on all issues involved in this article. We'll most terminate today, and we have a second, all those in favor of terminating, we'll do a voice vote, all those in favor of terminating debate on all the motions under article nine, say yes. Yes. All those opposed? No. The yeses have it. Debate is terminated. So let's bring up a vote on the the Batec substitute motion. And so what we'll be voting on here is whether to substitute Mr. Batec's substitute motion in place of the main motion. This is just about substitution. So voting is now open. So if you want to restore the, if you want a substitute motion that restores the bylaws to the original form, but making changes specifically in striking stenographic, you would vote yes. No vote means that the main motion is left intact, unmodified. Okay, let's close voting. Okay, the motion carries 204 in the affirmative 12 and negative two abstentions. So the substitute motion has now replaced the main motion. It's now bringing up a vote on the main motion as substituted. So hold on, I'm seeing the speaker queue fill up on my screen. Oh, are you waiting for me to finish explaining the vote? Okay, thank you. My bad. Sorry. So if we could actually, let's see. So what you see in Mr. Batec's substitute motion that is now the main motion. So let me, I'm sorry, let me just describe that here. I didn't have that in my notes, I apologize. Right, so if you wish to strike the word stenographic from the town bylaws in Title I Article I, Section IV, Part, or Item B, and change stenographic record to record of proceedings and strike the word stenographic from a complete stenographic record. So it reads just a complete record and so on of the proceedings. So if you're in favor, that is now the main motion. If you are in favor of that, that is voting now open. Okay, voting's now open. If you're in favor of that change to the town bylaws to strike the word stenographic and have a record of the proceedings instead, that does not have a stenographic requirement you could vote yes. And if you wanna leave the bylaws as is without being amended, you can vote no. And that'll leave the stenographic requirements in place. Okay, let's close voting on the main motion. And the motion passes. 184 in the affirmative, 40 in the negative. Okay, and that takes us to Article 24. Mr. Helmuth, do you want to introduce this for us? Thank you, Mr. Moderator, Eric Helmuth, Chair of the Select Board. Oh, wait one second, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, can we open the speaker queue and show that so folks can see if they're clicking in to request the speech? Thank you. Thank you, sir. No, no problem. Eric Helmuth, Chair of the Select Board. So Article 24 is the annual opportunity for Town Meeting to endorse the application of the Community Development Block Grant funds that are voted by the, or that are decision made by the Town Manager and by the Select Board. We do this every year. I think it's worth doing because it's a really important program that meets needs in our community and the manager will now make a presentation and is available to answer questions about this year's expenditures. Sandy Puehler, Town Manager. You all were sent a report about the CDBG application. It's about a six page report. This year, the amount of money we're getting from the federal government under the Community Development Block Grant is $1,058,933. We had a CDBG review committee that's made up of a couple of members of the Select Board. Select Board Member Diane Mahon and John Herd, myself and several community members. And we reviewed a number of different applications. We had a whole ranking system and we came out with these final recommendations that were then presented to the Select Board. There are four main categories of expenditures this year. There are 49th year of receiving CDBG funds. The largest is under housing where we are spending $402,500. 302,500 is going to build a new exhaust system for the Arlington Housing Authority at the Houser Building and there's another $100,000 that is going to go to the Housing Corporation of Arlington for some upgrades to their portfolio. Pardon me. The second category, the second largest is public facilities and improvements. There were three applications and we funded two. One for an accessible restroom at the Robbins Library for $152,320, second for $133,486 to help toward the cost of the Arlington Veterans Memorial Park. That will be part of many other sources for that project. Public services by law are limited to 15% of our spending. I won't go through all of these because you do have a new report but I will say there are a number of grants to the Arlington Boys and Girls Club, Arlington Center for the Arts, Arlington Public Schools, the Housing Authority, AYCC, Council on Aging, Fidelity House and the Recreation Department for various smaller grant programs ranging everywhere from $2,000 to $53,000 to allow people in town to get direct services or subsidize their getting services. And finally, under law, we are allowed to spend 20% of these funds which amount to $211,787 on administration. Some of that pays for some of the staff in the Planning Department, for some studies in the Planning Department, for an annual town survey conducted by Envision Arlington and for the Grants Administrator and General Administration in the Planning Department. So that was a lot of talking for a lot of information that's on paper. I would be happy to answer any questions members have and I respectfully request your endorsement of this spending. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Puller. Let's take Ms. Elliott. Hello, Beth Elliott, precinct 10. I wanted to urge you town meeting members to support this article in the programs that the town is dedicating its CDBG funding towards. However, I also wanted to call attention of town meeting to the fact that almost a third of our CDBG budget is going to be spent on very necessary improvements to the house or building which is owned and operated by our public housing authority here in Arlington. And this is an incredibly worthy project that quite frankly we should not have to fund. The housing that is provided by AHA is supposed to be funded by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. They're supposed to provide adequate capital and operating subsidy for the residents that they have promised to support and that we have agreed in partnership with them to support. They are not meeting those obligations. They are not making good on the promises they've made to low income housing residents of public housing funded by the state. The state budget for affordable, I'm sorry. The state budget for public housing is set every year as part of the governor's budget that's approved by the state house. The governor this year is proposing to level fund public housing operating subsidies at $92 million, which is the same as last year. You all know there's been a lot of inflation. None of that is reflected. This $92 million is in fact only half of what housing advocates think that public housing residents in Massachusetts need and deserve to have safe adequate housing, which the Commonwealth has promised to provide to them. So I urge you to support this application. These are incredibly worthy projects. There is a lot more that we could be doing here in Arlington with our CDBG dollars if the Commonwealth was making good on its obligations. So I urge you not only to support this, but also to consider reaching out to your Commonwealth representatives and urging them to increase the public housing operating subsidy that is currently going to be inadequately funded under the Haley budget. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Elliott. I'll take Mr. Moore next, okay. Mr. Jalkett. Daniel Jalkett, precinct six, move to terminate debate on this article. We have most to terminate debate. Do we have a second? Okay, let's try a voice vote. All those in favor of terminating debate on article 24, say yes. Yes. All those opposed? No. The yeses have it. Let's bring up a vote. Well, before we bring up the vote, sorry. A vote, when voting opens, you can vote yes to endorse the annual application for CDBG or community development block grant funds. And if you are not in favor of endorsing the annual application for CDGP funds, you can vote no. So let's open voting now on the main motion. Again, if you are in favor of endorsing the annual application for CDGP funds, you can vote yes. Okay, let's close voting. And it passes. It's unanimous, 218 affirmative and four abstentions, which did not change the denominator. So it is now 934. Let's take a 10 minute break and then we will come back with article 25. Okay, everyone, let's quiet down and find our seats. If you're a fan of revolving funds, please sit. If you're not, you still have to sit. Okay, Mr. Hamlet, you wanna introduce this? Thank you, Mr. Moderator, Eric Hamlet, Chair of the Select Board. Article 25 is our annual endorsement or annual approval, sorry, of the revolving funds. It is my pleasure to introduce for his maiden presentation at town meeting our newish Deputy Town Manager, Alex McGee. Mr. McGee, and the speaker queue is open. Thank you, Mr. Moderator, Alex McGee, Deputy Town Manager. Before us tonight are revolving fund authorizations. Each year, town meeting is required to authorize the various revolving funds within the town. Our revolving fund essentially operates where the programmatic or user fees fund the operation. It has both revenues and expenditures associated with it. These were included as an appendix within the article in the Select Board Report. Be happy to take any questions. Thank you. Mr. Loretty, you're up. Thank you, Mr. Loretty, I'm precinct seven. I had a couple of questions and comments about the white goods recycling fees. And I noticed that currently the balance is about $58,000 and it's increasing. It seems fairly significantly each year. Last year the expenditures were $15,000 less than the intake. And I'm wondering if someone could explain why that is. Mr. McGee, do you have an answer for Mr. Puehler? Cindy Puehler, Town Manager, I believe it's because we've had more fees on recycling white goods than we had before. There are different policies that have been instituted by the Department of Public Works to comply with state law. Thank you. I just like to make a couple of comments, Mr. Watter. And I'm concerned that it seems like we're taking in more money than we're putting out for these. The understanding of a fee is that it's supposed to reflect the cost of providing the service. When you do that for something like recycling, you're encouraging people to find other means of disposal. If I pay the town to recycle something I'm confident it's recycled properly. If I find somebody else to do it or just leave it on the curb, I don't know that. And I think particularly for white goods that have cooling equipment in them, I'm thinking refrigerators and air conditioners, you don't want them recycled improperly and have the refrigerants released because they're strong greenhouse gases and they're strong ozone-deplaning substances. And the other thing I would mention is that white goods are not just white goods, they also include black goods and electronics like TVs. And the same thing applies there. The fee for picking up a television at your curb, a larger one is $50. When that happened to me, I said, you know, I don't want to pay that fee. What it did is it incentivized me to try and fix it myself by watching YouTube videos. And I was able to do it and I didn't injure myself, but I really don't think you want to have amateurs doing that kind of thing. So I would ask that the town try to balance the actual cost of disposing of these things properly with how much they're charging people to be sure to the extent possible they're recycled or disposed of properly. Thank you. Thank you. Let's take Mr. Benson next. Pass. Mr. Kepline. Mark Kepline, precinct nine. I'm concerned about cleaning fees that were for places not being rented. It was a worse problem last year, but I see it's still with us. Anybody can speak to that, Mr. Moderator? Mr. Poole or Mr. McGee, can you speak to those fees? Sandy Poole Town Manager, could you clarify your question for me? I'm not sure what you're asking. Some of the rental halls, for example, Town Hall or the library courtyard, there's often expenses related to cleaning fees. Are they long-term contracted because it seems the fees all still continue even though the facility isn't being rented out and there's no revenue from rentals? I'm not sure which revolving fund you're talking about there. There is the whole issue of, we do rent out this facility for things like weddings and bar expo's and so forth. We do then pay staff over time or so forth and they clean up and so forth. So we do cover the cost of what it does, takes to maintain the public buildings after private events. So during COVID, there weren't any rentals going on, but we were still paying cleaning fees. I'm not sure. Mr. Poole, are those covered in revolving funds? I don't believe that they are. I'm not really sure. So yes, I have no further information about that. Thank you. Okay, all right, thank you. Thank you. Mr. Foskett. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Charles Foskett, precinct 10. I'm wondering if we get an explanation about the Conservation Commission Revolving Fund why it's disappeared. And secondly, how are the ambulance receipts and expenditures in the revolving fund doing compared to the previous years? Thank you. Mr. Poole or Mr. Heim? Doug Heim, Town Council. I'm only gonna speak to your first question, Mr. Foskett. The one item that you see there was a redundant fund that was essentially obviated by the way 53G funds work. So anyone who's familiar with our different committees and commissions that have to hire independent peer review consultants to vet applications such as a notice of intent, we're allowed to request funds from the applicant to pay for those peer review consultants. Apparently historically, we put this money into revolving fund that we didn't need to use anymore. The comptroller did fantastic work, identified that this has basically been a legacy that's been sitting around for a while and the Conservation Commission was able to zero out those funds so it's no longer necessary to use as a repelling fund. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. McGee, do you have an answer to that as well? Thanks, Mr. Moderator. Alex McGee, Deputy Town Manager. To your second question, the ambulance fee, which is known as the Life Support Services Fund, there's been a slight change in how our ALS and BLS services in town operate. And correspondingly, we are now collecting more revenues as a general fund revenue from basic life services. And so you'll see that the revenues are lower in our ambulance fund and correspondingly, they're higher on our general fund for the same types of fees. Great, thank you. Let's take Mr. Schlickman next. Mr. Schlickman, please deny motion to terminate debate on all items under this article. Okay, we have a motion to terminate debate and we have a second. All those in favor of terminating debate on article 25 say yes. All those opposed? If debate is terminated. Let's move to, before we move to a vote on the main motion, just to summarize, you will vote yes if you want to reauthorize the revolving funds for fiscal year 2024 detailed on pages 14 to 18 of the Select Board Report. Let's open voting now on the main motion. If you just clicked in, you were just added to a speaker queue, which doesn't exist anymore and voting is open now. Okay, let's close voting. And the main motion passes 270 affirmative one and a negative one abstention. That brings up article 26. We've now come to the zoning portion of town meeting. Ms. Zembury, do you want to introduce us to article 26? Thank you, Mr. Moderator. I'm Rachel Zembury, Chair of the Redevelopment Board. Thank you for sharing the slides that we have regarding article 26. So I'll be taking you through article 26, the proposed zoning bylaw amendment related to development standards in the industrial district. Next slide. This article is an update to clarify the development standards in the zoning bylaws related to the industrial district. This is passed by town meeting in 2021. The development standards passed in 2021 included the provisions for the allowance of an additional height only if a project meets higher performance standards, including standards for stormwater management. However, when proposed projects in the industrial district came in front of the ARB in 2022, the board identified some ambiguity in the stormwater requirement. The ARB worked together with the town's conservation agent and town engineer to establish specific criteria to be met to clarify this existing ambiguity. Next slide, please. The standards defined by the town engineer and environmental planner and conservation agent are supported by and reference state policies. These clarifications include establishing a design storm event consistent with state requirements and suitable for 99% of Arlington soils, setting contaminant loading standards based on mass DEP stormwater policy, and in combination, these thresholds set high standards for stormwater control while still being achievable. Next slide, please. If you can go to the next slide, thank you. As this amendment text shows, this amendment provides clarity to the zoning by-law and does not alter the substance of the by-law. The ARB voted four to zero at our April 3rd meeting to recommend favorable action for Article 26. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Zembery. Let's take, can we show the speaker queue now? Actually, let's take Ms. Dre. I don't think you've spoken yet. Mr. Schwartz, is there Mr. Schwartz in the balcony? Okay. I see no one else in the speaker queue after that. And so we can just go straight to a vote. And before we open voting, I just want to say this is a two-thirds vote. Vote yes if you want to insert into section 5.6.2 of the zoning by-law, the size of the storm event and the total suspended solid standard which complies with state regulations which was previously unspecified. So let's open voting now. If you're in favor of that, vote yes. If you're opposed, vote no. That's the revolving funds vote from Article 25. Okay, here we go. So voting is now open on Article 26. It's a two-thirds vote as I described. So vote yes if you want to specify the standard. Vote no if you like undefined behavior. Okay, let's close voting. And it passes 203 in the affirmative three in the negative one abstention. Let's move on now to Article 27. Let's show the speaker queue so people can, so let's open the speaker queue and show that briefly before we go into the slides. Okay, the speaker queue's open. Ms. Zembery, now we can switch over to the slides. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Rachel Zembery, Chair of the Redevelopment Board. I will be taking you through Warren Article 27, a proposed zoning by-law amendment related to the solar by-law in the industrial districts. Next slide, please. This article was proposed to ensure compliance between two existing sections of the zoning by-law, including the development standards in the zoning by-laws related to the industrial district passed by town meeting in 2021, and the new section 6.4, solar energy systems, approved by town meeting in 2022. The development standards passed in 2021 included a requirement for all new developments and additions over 50% in the industrial districts to be solar-ready. However, this section now needs to be brought into compliance with the new solar energy system requirements in section 6.4. Next slide. Next slide, please. Thank you. Section 5.6.2 D1 refers to the new solar by-law in section 6.4 for projects subject to environmental design review. Next slide. Section 5.6.2 D7 additionally refers to the new solar by-laws in section 6.4, as well as sustainable roof infrastructure components. This amendment provides alignment between the sections of the zoning by-law and does not alter the substance of the by-law. The ARB voted four to zero at our April 3rd meeting to recommend favorable action on Article 27. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Zember. Let's take Ms. Lynn Miller. Let's take Ms. Farrell. Pass. We have no more speakers in the queue, so we will go straight to a vote. And before we open that, the summary is you can vote yes if you wanna update the references in the zoning by-law so that sections 5.6.2 and 6.4 become consistent. Let's open voting now. Voting is now open. Okay, let's close voting. Motion passes 270 affirmative, the two in the negative one abstention. That brings up Article 28. Let's show the speaker queue so folks can see that it's cleared and open. And Ms. Zembery, can you introduce? Let's just show the speaker queue first. Okay, speaker queue's open. Ms. Zembery, and we'll switch over to the slides. Thank you. Great, thank you, Mr. Moderator. Rachel Zembery, chair of the Redevelopment Board. I'll be taking you through war on Article 28, a proposed zoning by-law amendment related to building inspector enforcement. Next slide, please. A bit of history about this provision of the by-law. At the 2020 special town meeting, the ARB voted no action on a citizen petition to amend the by-laws to require that the building inspector withhold building permits for non-compliments with a section of the town by-laws due to the direct conflict with the state building code, excuse me. However, the amendment was reintroduced by a citizen through a substitute motion. Even with the ARB's vote of no action, special town meeting passed the amendment. The Attorney General reviewed the amendment and noted that the zoning by-law specifically subsection 3.1b cannot legally authorize the withholding of a building permit for failure to comply with general by-law requirements, thus reinforcing the original assessment that the amendment was unenforceable and in conflict with the state building code. Next slide. This amendment removes a section of the zoning by-law that was inserted by town meeting in 2020 and was deemed unenforceable by the Attorney General's office. The ARB voted 4-0 at our April 3rd meeting to recommend favorable action on Article 28. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Let's take Ms. Gruber first from the speaker queue. Pass. Mr. Dutulio. Okay, we have nothing left. And so just to reiterate this, we're basically cleaning up from the 2020 special town meeting where a town meeting voted for a substitute motion that added a provision that was struck down by the Attorney General's office as unenforceable. So before we go to voting, the summary is that vote yes, if you want to remove an unenforceable provision from section three of the zoning by-law that was added by an amendment to Article 17 at the 2020 special town meeting. And so, okay, is voting now open? Voting is now open. Okay, let's close voting. The motion carries 203 in the affirmative, one in the negative, five abstentions. That brings up Article 29. So let's show the speaker queue so folks can see that it's cleared and open. It's open. And so Ms. Zembury, can you introduce Article 29, please? Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Rachel Zembury, Chair of the Redevelopment Board. Article 29 is a proposed zoning by-law amendment related to downtown business parking minimums inserted by James Fleming. The Board supports this article because it simplifies the zoning by-law regarding non-residential parking requirements in the B-5 zoning district and is consistent with the master plan and connect Arlington the Sustainable Transportation Plan. The ARB voted 4-0 at our April 3rd meeting to recommend favorable action on Article 29. Thank you. Thank you, and I believe Mr. Baudouin, I believe you were the sponsor for the petitioner. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Vincent Baudouin, Precinct One. I would like to introduce James Fleming, Arlington resident, Precinct Three to the citizen petitioner to present his article. Thank you. Okay, and since Mr. Fleming is a resident of Arlington, he has the right to speak. Introduced by a town meeting member. Thank you. Mr. Fleming. Okay, come on up. And name and address, and if we bring up the other slides, you ready? This one? All right, anyone you want. One in the center is fine. All right, awesome, thank you. James Fleming, Precinct Three, article proponent. Oh, fantastic, thank you. Yeah, and address, please. 58 Oxford Street. Next slide, please. Let me first walk you through what a parking minimum is for businesses. The town requires that every business has a minimum amount of parking depending on the size and type of business. For example, and I hope it comes across in the slides, a retail business has to have one parking space for 300 square feet of floor space that they have. Next, please. This proposal would remove the parking requirement for businesses in this part of, or in the, in part of the downtown, which is called the B5. You can think of it sort of at the Mass Ave, Mystic Street intersection, approximately thereabout. The key part of this proposal is that it would reduce the number of special permits which would remove some friction to having businesses open. Next, please. Oh, I think we're ahead on the slides. Can you go back one, please? Oh, never mind, I was wrong. Thank you, please go back. Sorry. Let me tell you why this matters. Remember the one parking space for 300 square foot that we just talked about. A parking space plus the drive aisle is also about 300 square feet. So if we apply the rules as is, half of property has to be dedicated to parking if the other half has to be business. Next, please. So here's the hypothetical parking that would apply in this instance. So to comply, we'd have to cut these buildings in half and remove all of that useful stuff to make room for parking, which is, in my opinion, at least kind of ridiculous. Like that makes the downtown a whole lot less fun to be in. Next, please. It also isn't necessary. If you've ever been in that area, you might notice that a lot of these businesses don't have their own dedicated parking. Next. This isn't a problem for two reasons. One is that the area is at the intersection of multiple bus routes and the bike path. So not everyone has to show up in a car, which is great because then we don't need as much parking. Next. The other is that the town already runs paid parking lots in red here and then paid on street parking shown in orange. That meter parking lowers demand for parking so that people generally don't like to pay for parking, so that encourages them to get in and get out so that someone else can take that space, which is great for businesses because that means that every time you have someone turn over in the parking spot, you have another potential customer for that business. Next, please. This is a different view of the downtown on the zoning map which shows the affected buildings in purple. This is the only part of town that is affected by this proposal and it was chosen because it was a convenient location that was already served by paid parking in its entirety. Next, please. One question we haven't answered is those businesses are there. They don't have parking. How is that possible? The reason is that the buildings have been there forever and we wanna keep those spaces in use so the town allows them to avoid the requirement by providing a plan to reduce demand for parking or by using space in the public parking lots. But all of that happens by a special permit process which takes about two months if you have a changeover in business where something like a restaurant becomes retail or retail becomes a restaurant. Basically where the business changes is where this gets triggered. So that's extra time and effort that the business has to take to open. Next, please. Under this proposal, all those same provisions apply but now the only thing that has to happen is they go through town staff which makes sure are you in the V5 district in which case, yes, we assume you're gonna use the parking lots that are already there. Great. Next, please. In summary, under this proposal, this part of town gets the same parking reductions as before but this time we save a little bit of red tape. Businesses open a little bit faster. Good things. You should support this in my opinion because business is important to make around in fun and we should do a little bit more to help them open faster. Thank you. Great, thank you, Mr. Fleming. Let's take Mr. Kenny from the speaker queue. Is Mr. Kenny here? Pass. Okay. Mr. Rudick. Hello again. Ben Rudick, precinct five. I'd like to address the parking minimums generally and address what might be a narrow concern about businesses being built whether here or elsewhere that do not provide enough parking. My day job is in commercial real estate. I spent 15 years working for a global real estate developer and investor. I have absolutely no business in Arlington or Massachusetts or New England and will tell you if that ever changes. I do spend a lot of time interacting with commercial developments, mixed use developments and so forth, specifically talking to banks about borrowing money for them in the world called capital markets. A big part of borrowing money for any sort of real estate project is a parking or traffic study. So the key determinant, I believe, to what gets developed is not necessarily what we allow but what is economically possible. And so banks and developers are extremely intelligent when it comes to figuring out if a proposed project is going to provide enough parking for the tenant and for whatever proposed lease and use is there. And so I wouldn't personally be concerned about an issue about a business being built or a commercial project being built that does not have sufficient parking as there is a very strong. Oh, hey, James. Let me walk you through what a parking minimum is for businesses. All right. Hi, James! The ghost of James. What happened? Anyway, to sum up my point, there is a very robust process driven by the economics of what gets built and what projects get financed. That involves a very deep parking and traffic study to make sure that sufficient parking is available. So I would not be worried about that particular concern when it comes to this. That's it. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Grinichie next? Carmine Grinichie, precinct 21. I move to terminate debate and I'll matters before it. Okay, we have a motion to terminate debate and we have a second. All those in favor say yes. Yes! All those opposed? It's not terminated. Take Mr. Greenspawn next. We have a three, four, five. Okay, let's go to electronic vote. Vote voting is now open on terminating debate on article 29. And we have a much larger speaker queue. Thank you. This is a two-thirds vote. Okay, let's close voting. And it fails. Okay, let's take Mr. Greenspawn. Yes, okay. Andy Greenspawn, precinct five. I rise in support of the amendment. I've worked in, I worked in Somerville a fair bit as co-chair of the Union Square Neighborhood Council which worked with a lot of developers in building developments and parking requirements. Similarly to what the previous person said, the banks will know how much parking is generally needed or not needed for a business to be financially viable. So this just removes parking minimums. If somehow the people financing the project think that the business still needs parking, they would not fund it absent that parking. In fact, a lot of these developers say they would like to avoid parking because building parking is quite expensive and detract from being able to make sustainable businesses. So only put the parking in when it's financially feasible. The other point is I walk Tarlington Center all the time from my house and see the open store fronts and see the struggles that small businesses have. In anything we can do on the margins, a lot of these businesses have incredibly thin margins for making just money to stay in business. So anything we can do to help them that has essentially in my personal view limited impact on the town in general we should try to support. Thanks. Thank you. I'll take someone out of order this time. We'll take Mr. Gibson. Sure. We have a pass. Let's say Mr. Tremblay. I don't think we've heard from you yet. At Tremblay Precinct 19, Mr. Moderator, I have a question. The proponents had of a picture of municipal parking lots. Am I mistaken? I think there's a fair number of those parking spaces are leased to businesses that are not actually available for parking. Is that true? I don't know if Mr. Poole, do you know the answer to that question? Sandy Poole, our town manager. Yeah, some of them are at least, they can, businesses can go through the select board and apply to get lease on some of those spaces. Do we have any idea how many open parking spaces actually exist around our Lincoln Center? Mr. Poole? I do not know that number. I'm sorry, but I think that number of lease spaces, it's mostly the spaces, I think, right along behind Arlington Catholic and the school there. So there's just a fraction of the total spaces in that lot. I thought there were a whole bunch of them along the bike path behind Railroad Street. That may be, but I don't happen to know. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you. Let's take, I don't think we've heard from Ms. Hyam. Yeah, Mr. Tosti. Oh, I see what's happening here. Okay, you're gonna pass, okay. Ms. Thornton, let's say Ms. Preston. Joanne Preston, precinct five. I don't think banks should make these decisions for us. I think we should make our decisions. I happen to be on the board of the Arlington Housing Authority. Most of our senior residents shop, but they don't ride bicycles, not in large numbers. They very much need parking spaces near where they're shopping. And so I'm for maintaining our parking spaces. So I hope you'll think of it as a social policy, not a bank financial policy. Thank you. Thank you. Let's go back up to the top. Ms. Pretzer. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. David Pretzer, precinct 17. I rise in support of this. I want to be clear about what this will do. This is not a big practical change. The B five districts do not currently have private parking and they seem unlikely to develop private parking in the future because of the shared parking that is readily available. And I think this is a great thing. I think shared parking allows for much more efficient use of our limited space. If each business has their own private parking, that a business like a bank that's open during the day, we'll have the parking spaces unused at night. And then a restaurant that might get most of its business at night might have the parking spaces unused during the day, you know, leading to wasteful use of impermeable surfaces that aren't providing benefit. By this article supports local businesses by removing a barrier that could add time or money to opening a new business. And it supports a more efficient shared parking in the system in our LinkedIn Center. So I urge everyone to support this small change. And I hope that this leads in the future to us being willing to consider more efficient and more, you know, ways of managing parking to encourage local businesses. Thank you. Thank you. Let's take Mr. Hamlin next. Guillermo Hamlin, Precinct 14, and move to terminate debate. We have a motion to terminate debate. We have a second. All those in favor of terminating debate say yes. All those opposed? I'll say debate is terminated. If we have one standing, two, three, four, five. Let's go to an electronic vote. Voting is now open for termination of debate. If you want to terminate debate, press one. If you want to continue debate, press two. If you like chaos, you can press three. Okay, let's close voting. And it passes this time. 167, the affirmative, 44, and the negative. Let's go to a vote on the main motion for Article 29. And before we open voting, just a reminder, this is a two-thirds vote on the main motion. Vote yes if you want to remove the minimum parking requirements for all non-residential uses in the B-5 district. Okay, let's open voting. Voting is now open. Okay, let's close voting. And the motion passes. 177, in the affirmative, 29, and the negative, and two abstentions. That brings us to Article 30. So let's show the speaker queue. Let's show that it's opening clear. And while we're waiting for that, let's bring up Ms. Zembury to introduce Article 30. And I believe she has slides. Speaker queues open. Let's switch over to the slides. Ms. Zembury, you have the floor. Great, thank you, Mr. Moderator. Rachel Zembury, Chair of the Redevelopment Board. Article 30 is a proposed zoning amendment related to one and two family usable open space inserted by James Fleming. The ARB supports this article because it simplifies and improves usability of the zoning by-law by eliminating overlapping dimensional requirements, which is consistent with the recommendations of the master plan. And although it eliminates the category of usable open space from the dimensional requirements, it maintains the other requirements for open space within the town's low density residential uses. The ARB voted four to zero at our April 3rd meeting to recommend favorable action on Article 30. Thank you. Thank you. I apologize. These are Mr. Fleming's slides. Let's bring up Mr. Baudouin as the sponsor for Mr. Fleming. Oh yeah, can we bring up the speaker queue while we're waiting? Thank you. Mr. Baudouin. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Vincent Baudouin, Precinct One. I would like to reintroduce James Fleming as the proponent of Article 30. Thank you. Okay, I believe Mr. Fleming is still a resident of Arlington. You have right to speak. And let's turn back to the slides. James Fleming, Precinct Three. I will warn you in advance. This one is a little bit long, so I'm sorry in advance. And please settle in. Next, please. Don't get too comfortable. Yeah, don't get too good. Let me walk you through what usable open space is. It's a continuous amount of space. Each lot has to have a minimum of 25 feet on one side and the requirement gets bigger if your house effectively gets bigger. And to be clear, this space does not have to be grass nor does it have to be trees. It can be a swimming pool or it can be a fully paved patio. And the stated purpose in the bylaw is that it is for the enjoyment by residents. Hopefully you can see in the slides. There is a 30 by 30 square of yards shown in red that counts as usable open space because both dimensions are larger than 25 feet. However, the orange block next to it does not count because one of its dimensions is less than 25 feet. Next, please. This proposal would remove the requirement for one in two family homes to have this usable open space requirement and leave the decision up to the homeowner. They can have it if they want, but if they decide they'd rather put something else in, then they can do that instead. Next, please. You might ask what our neighbors are doing. Lexington, Belmont, Winchester, and Waltham don't even have a concept of usable open space. Medford does, and it's similar to the Waltham that the dimensions are minimum and the requirement goes to the floor area, but they don't require it for one in two family homes. Their requirement is for everything above that. So this would make us match them in that respect. Next, please. You may also ask if removing this rule will allow for more parking where previously it wouldn't be allowed. This is possible only if a property is just barely conforming with the requirement, where they previously could not replace that space with parking now they would be able to. But these cases are not very common. Next, please. Additionally, this slide, hopefully, demonstrates that our current regulations allow backyards to be paved for parking as long as there is enough usable open space somewhere else in the property. So the example here on the left is something like an R0 low density single family lot where the front yard is enough usable open space and the backyard can be all parking. Or on the far left, or on the far right, a two family home that is non-conforming and where they have no usable open space to begin with. The, this change to the usable open space rule does not change the fact that this is an outcome that can happen right now. Next, please. Also, before we get started, I will again note that single family homes have a minimum of 25 feet in the front setback, so they will always have usable open space in the front yard. Next, please. The other thing I want to set your expectations about is that open space. So the zoning has a limitation right now where you cannot cover more than 35% of a lot with a building. And again, removing this rule does not change that. The only thing that it will allow you to do is make the unbuilt area of the lot to be a different shape and not have this 25 foot square on it. Next, please. The main things this proposal affects are the older one and two family homes in town, which there are quite a few, which have two small front yard to count as usable open space. And in this case, the usable open space can only happen in the backyard. Next, please. So the reason this matters to me is that because the requirement grows as you increase the amount of living space you have, that you can increase your yard space and you can run into conflicts there. I originally had filed this article to reduce friction for homeowners making small additions. And this requirement can add a lot of friction to homeowners trying to make incremental additions to meet their needs. Next, please. I'm sorry about math in advance. So as an example, take this two family home on a 5,000 square foot lot. It is just barely conforming to the usable open space requirements, having 810 square feet of usable open space with a requirement of 795. And in the next few slides, we'll see how this is very bad for them. Next, please. As an example, suppose they don't have a back porch and they want to add one. In this case, they can't because that would be into the usable open space on the property reducing it to zero. This creates a nonconformity in the zoning bylaw, which you just can't do under any circumstance. Even though this porch is relatively small in scale, they could not add this porch, even though they meet other requirements of the zoning bylaw. Next, please. As a different example, suppose the top floor residents need to add another bedroom in their attic. And in this case, they can't because they would need, they're adding living space, which means they need a bigger yard, but again, they can't grow their yard. So now they would need 840 square feet in this example, but they only have 810. Even though this is a relatively small addition, they couldn't add this addition. Next, please. And there is a particularly unfair way that the zoning works. Suppose instead that the house was just barely nonconforming, as this example is. Now we have a house that isn't conforming and under our zoning bylaws, if you are adding a set of dormers and you are nonconforming, you can do it by right. There's no review involved. This seems a little unfair because if your home is slightly bigger or differently situated, such that you don't have this usable open space, you can just put dormers on, but if you are conforming just barely, you can't do anything. It doesn't seem very fair to me. Next, please. It's particularly unfair because you won't see this coming in advance because you'd have to basically do a survey of the property, which no one can do when you're buying a house. And I think that no matter how your house is situated, this rule or any of the rules shouldn't prevent you from making incremental additions to your house if you need to make a change in your life. Next, please. One thing you might ask is, why would I remove the requirements instead of just modifying it? And I'm sorry that I have to gloss over complexity here. There are a few reasons how we might lessen the requirement, but the reason I chose to remove it is that none of the options for lessening it solves the problems I'm trying to solve without creating other ones. Next, please. As an example, if we add the porch, the usable open space goes to zero. That doesn't help us in this case. We have to get rid of it to make that case work. Next. I also think that it isn't helpful because this requirement is supposed to be for the residents, not for the neighbors. There are other requirements in place for neighbors. And if you need to add a porch because you want more outdoor space, you should be allowed to give up a little bit of yard if that's better for you. You've already made that trade-off in your mind. Next, please. Again, we have other dimensional requirements in place, lock coverage being I think the most relevant one, and setbacks that already mean there's going to be open space. Additionally, if you are making a very big addition, there's a special permit having no matter what. You have, if you make a big addition, you just have to go through that process. Next. And it. Ooh, time's up. So you just want to finish your last sentence. In summary, this will remove the requirement for a usable open space. I think you should support this because in some cases, it can limit the ability of old homes to adapt and we have other constraints in place to keep development in check. Great, thank you, Mr. Flanagan. Thank you for letting me finish. Let's start the speaker queue with Ms. Evans. Thank you. Winnell Evans, precinct 14. As described, our current zoning bylaw requires usable open space to be 30% of the gross floor area and a minimum of 25 by 25 of mainly flat yard area. Today, we do allow a 20 by 20 area for newer homes if they have parking at ground level. Our zoning board of appeals reviewed this amendment and while no formal vote was taken, most members spoke in favor of retaining usable open space requirement, saying that when it matters, it really matters. With the great number of undersized lots in Arlington, setbacks aren't always sufficient and usable open space acts as a guardrail in these cases. The proponent presents nearby towns with no usable open space requirement as examples of communities that do just fine without it. But Lexington, Belmont, Winchester and Waltham all have much larger minimum lot sizes than we do. Winchester has some minimum lot sizes of 120,000 square feet. They also have much lower population and housing densities per square mile. Plus, we already have a mechanism in place to allow people to seek relief from our usable open space requirement in order to build additions or new houses. And that is to apply to the ZBA, the zoning board of appeals for a special permit. The ZBA almost always allows some expansion for prior non-conforming lots in homes with insufficient usable open space. Rather than eliminate usable open space, one change to consider might be to make it a percentage of the lot area rather than the gross floor area of the house. This would allow any homeowner to expand within the footprint of the existing house by adding dormers or going up a floor without triggering an increase in the amount of required usable open space. But changes to the definition of usable open space are entirely out of the scope of this article. The overall point is that usable open space should not be totally discarded, but amended to better meet contemporary needs in conjunction with the other dimensional requirements of the zoning bylaw. Please vote no on Article 30. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Evans. Let's take Ms. Garber next. Judith Garber, precinct four. A big concern I've heard about this from constituents in precinct four was a house that sought a variance from the zoning board of appeals to build more parking in their backyard and in their driveway. So, and the issue with that was that the neighbors would have additional flooding as that area near Magnolia Park is right in the floodplain area. So my question, I have a question which is, does the current usable open space law that we have act as a sufficient guardrail for people trying to build parking in their backyards near floodplain areas? I heard the word law. Mr. Heim, do you want to take that word? Ms. Zembury. Or maybe someone from ZVA, I don't know. Yeah. Ms. Zembury, do you have an answer to that or someone from the zoning board of appeals perhaps? Mr. Champa. Mike Champa, director of inspectional services. So the zoning bylaw already provides regulations that only allow for a maximum width driveway of 20 feet. If a certain amount of impervious areas added such as a driveway over 350 square feet, there's storm water management that's required. So there's a lot of things that come into play that regulate the size and installations of driveways rather than open space. Okay. And then does it depend on what type of, what the layout of the house would be that it would trigger the usable open space requirement? For a driveway? Yeah, or sorry, for paving your backyard to put parking in. So I mean, your driveway is only allowed to be 20 feet wide. So to pave your whole backyard, you would need to go to the zoning board of appeals. And you would need to go to the zoning board of appeals no matter what to pave over your backyard to park there? To do it legally, yes. Okay. So it seems like there's already a process for, so I guess in your opinion, if this passed, would this result in people being able to pave over their backyard for parking by right? They would not be able to do that. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Let's take Ms. Anderson next. Thank you, Kristin Anderson, precinct 11. The proposed article to eliminate usable open space would incentivize the elimination of some of the town's local businesses in favor of luxury low density housing. All of Arlington's business districts allow for single and two family dwellings. Without usable open space, it is easy to fit a condo complex on a 7,500 to 9,000 square foot lot. There are numerous B district lots of that size, and many of those lots are assessed at around a million dollars. This article would incentivize demolishing the existing commercial buildings to build luxury duplex condos that could sell for $3 million in total. Here are a few examples of businesses that would be threatened. Breadboard Bakery, upholstery on Broadway, Fenway Market, and Mystic Wine Shop, there are others. And I would like to just say that for as long as I have lived in Arlington, there have always been really amazing businesses at 203 Broadway. Zocalo, Cachina, Mexicana used to be there, and that restaurant was really great. Commune Kitchen's pizza was amazing, I thought. And now we have the artisanal breadboard bakery. These businesses have existed because we make space for them through zoning regulation. Article 30 would completely eliminate our existing usable open space requirement for one and two family homes and incentivize the elimination of more of our small local businesses. Arlington needs more businesses, not fewer. Businesses make for a more vibrant town, a town that is worth living in. Please show that you value Arlington's local businesses by voting no on article 30. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Anderson. Let's see if we have a speaker. Let's skip to Mr. Weinstein. I don't think you've spoken in a while. Ms. Kepka. Hi, Asha Kepka, precinct one. I'd like to introduce our little resident, Tanya Hughes, to speak on this article. Okay, she's a resident. Come on up, take a podium. And just introduce yourself by name and address, please. I'm Tanya Hughes, and I live at 87 Varnum Street. Thank you for the opportunity to address town meeting. I have four comments I'd like to make explaining why I'm opposed to the article and how my neighborhood and I would be harmed if it passes and why your neighborhood could also be harmed. And then I have a final comment on a point from Mr. Fleming's presentation. My first comment is that, and this probably refers to the same thing that one of the previous speakers was referring to, the developer of a two-family home on my street wants to turn the backyard of his investment property into a parking lot. There was a public hearing on his request last week before the ZVA because his proposal violated the existing usable open space requirement. All parties agreed that the proposal does not qualify for a variance, so the developer is waiting for town meetings decision on this article to eliminate the usable open space requirement. If this article passes, all safeguards regarding backyard parking lot or parking will be eliminated and the developer will be able to construct his backyard parking lot by right. And I'm not sure if I understood that correctly because I think I might have heard something from somebody a couple minutes ago that I'm not sure if that's completely right. But that does mean that no town official will have to review the change and my neighbors and I will lose our right to comment on the proposal. Second, in small lot neighborhoods, passing this article could mean that many backyards and safeguards would be eliminated and converted to parking. I am confident that there are many lots in my neighborhood, Magnolia, where this would happen. There are homes that have done this already without any permission or enforcement actions that I'm aware of to the detriment of their neighbors. For the people living on those lots, that means no barbecuing, no having dinner outside in a summer evening, no outdoor green space for kids to play at home because the yards are used for parking instead. For neighbors of those lots, it means doing all of those things next to a parking lot. I know I personally don't enjoy eating my dinner or trying to relax with a book next to a parking lot. Third, most of the homes in my neighborhood have sufficient off-street parking already without turning their backyards or side yards into parking lots. The nearby home where the developer wants a parking lot already has four to five cars, space for four to five cars in the, not 45, four to five cars in the driveway. Four, finally, the existing usable open space requirement certainly is not stopping home owners from rehabbing their homes, making additions, or converting two families into expensive condos, nor is it leading to a lot of tear downs. And then, I apologize to Mr. Fleming if I misunderstood what he was saying in his presentation, but I think I heard him assert that the front yard will always count as usable open space, but I wanna say that not my yard, my front yard is tiny and would not qualify. So please don't eliminate the usable open space requirement given the potential for negative impacts on residents, neighbors, and quality of life in general, especially in small lot neighborhoods like mine. And please don't eliminate the right of neighbors like me to participate in the approval process for projects that violate the usable open space requirements. Even one of the supporters of the backyard parking lot proposal said that such proposals should be considered on a case by case basis. The complete elimination of the usable open space requirement would prevent even that. We need to consider what changes could be made to the usable open space requirement rather than outright eliminating it. Please vote no on Article 30. Thank you. All right, thank you. And Mr. Champa, I saw you shaking your head about, was there one point you wanted to make briefly? Yeah, good. Yeah, at the podium? So Mike Champa, Director of Inspectional Services. So I'm familiar with the property that she was speaking about not just because I live on Bonham Street, but also because I work in Inspectional Services. But so aside from needing a variance for removing their open space, they would also need a special permit for exceeding the 20-foot maximum. So even if this did pass, they would not be able to expand their driveway the way that they want to without going back to the zoning board. Great, thank you. Let's take Ms. Litausky next. I don't believe she's spoken. Jennifer Litausky, Precinct 3. I think we all value the idea of open space. We all value the idea of open space. This is something that I think all of us agree is a good thing to have in our community and in our neighborhoods. The usable open space requirement does not appear to be giving us that. There are other rules that look like they're doing a much better job, including the lot coverage, setbacks, et cetera. So despite the name, it's a misnomer. It's not working the way it's supposed to. What it's really doing is things like with folks that I know who were doing a renovation of a two-family home, and when they converted an attic to a bedroom, it changed the amount of living space, all of a sudden they're not conforming and they have to go for a special permit. This is a waste of time. It's added stress and time and expense to an expensive process. I think it's conflicting with other rules that we have that are doing a better job. If we want to be protecting green space and non-permeable surfaces, the lot coverage and those requirements are where we should be making those efforts. Usable open space is adding complications that aren't helping and are just causing trouble and time and stress for people. So please support this Usable Space Amendment Article 30, removing the Usable Space Amendment Article 30. Thank you. Great, thank you, Ms. Latosky. Let's take Ms. Seuss next. I don't think we've heard from her. Jennifer Seuss, Precinct Three. I'll be very quick. So the main reason I'm unfair of this is about fairness. And it was a long presentation. There was a lot of points presented. But the thing that struck me is that if you have a house that is slightly non-conforming, you do not have to go for a special permit. You can do this by right. If your house is conforming just above and you want to do something that slightly takes away that conformance, then all of a sudden you have to go through this lengthy special permitting process. That seems fundamentally unfair to the residents of Arlington. We've had some clarity about whether you can pay over your backyard for parking. It sounds like you can't without a special permit. Can I get someone to answer the question of, because I just didn't understand the logic, whether this would hurt small businesses on Broadway? Like what would be the pressure? Is there anyone who can speak to that? Because it sounds like it's about one and two family houses, right? Is there any additional pressure that would be on small businesses? Any town staff that can answer that? No, I think it's okay. Ms. Ricker? Mr. Benson? Eugene Benson, a member of the Redevelopment Board. This proposal only applies to single-family homes and two-family homes. It doesn't apply to businesses. So I don't really quite understand, I don't really quite understand how this would incentivize homes to be turned into businesses. Okay, great. Thanks. Order here, order. So Jessica, I still have time. It sounded like there was a worry about pressure on small businesses, that they might be converted to residential. And it sounds like that is not a worry. And I'm seeing a lot of shaking hands, heads. Okay, great. Thank you. Ms. Evans, are you the one who raised that point? Okay, can you address that then? Because, can you come to the microphone? Since Ms. Seuss is addressing a specific question around a point that you raised. Winell Evans, precinct 14. This applies to one and two-family homes in all districts. So that includes B districts. So development in B districts could then replace existing businesses with new homes. And without this usable open space requirement, it's a vast incentive to a developer. Okay, I still don't buy it. I quite get it. We're talking about the difference between things that are conforming and things that are not conforming. Those businesses are not conforming. They don't have the kind of space that's conforming. So it wouldn't sort of trigger that, but. Okay, thank you. I urge passage of this. Thank you. Can we get clarification maybe from someone from the air, but does this affect, because you might notice I have this as affecting the requirements for one and two-family uses. Is it actually for zones with one and two-family residences instead? Hello, Mr. Moderator. Rachel Zanbury, Chair of the Redevelopment Board. It affects the article is proposed for one and two-family residences in business districts as well as residential districts. It is quite a leap to then make a judgment on a developer purchasing a single-family home to then change that or a business into a residential property. Okay, so some of my notes are correct, but this would remove the usable open space requirements for one and two-family uses. Correct, it was for the low-density residential only. Got it, thank you. So let's now go to Mr. Holman. Aaron Holman, Precinct Six. I speak in opposition to this. I hope you will vote against it. I have a few comments on Mr. Fleming's presentation. One is that he repeatedly referred to what homeowners wanted to do. I think we should realize that the operative word here is not homeowners, but what developers plan to do. I think that's just being realistic. Mr. Fleming mentioned that the addition of floor space to one's home could cause- I'm sorry, Mr. Holman, you might be a little close to the microphone. I'll move back, sorry. Okay, thank you. Mr. Fleming mentioned that adding space to one's home could cause one to be non-conforming. And he criticized that. I don't think that's a bug. I think that's a feature. This is a limitation on how much you can put, how much additional home you can put. We want that- I'm sorry, but let's be careful about reading into intentions, okay. He, I'm responding to what he said that this was a problem if one increased the square footage of one's home, that this could cause what you want to do to become non-conforming. I think that's factual. At any rate, I think that's something that we want to keep. And I think Arlington, at over 8,000 people per square mile, is sufficiently dense. I urge you to vote against this. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Holman. Let's take Mr. Wagner next. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Carl Wagner, Precinct 15. I think we really should note that we are 250 people potentially deciding for 40,000 people, something here, that is a radical change to Arlington. We're talking about either mostly or all paving or making the ability to pave over backyards of our neighbor's houses, the future renters, the future purchasers of properties here. It's very important that we think how does this town work? It works by making incremental changes. The proponent is also saying that he's trying to address a problem where if a house is enlarged, it can't do exactly what it wants. Yet what's been said already and is worth remembering is that if you are gonna go outside the law, you can go get a variance from the ZBA, the Zoning Board of Appeals, so you can petition. And that involves just making sure that what you're doing makes sense. It involves the town and the butters, I think, in making a good decision, not just paving over and dramatically making your neighborhood worse for everybody around you, and for the people who live in your home in the future. I think we should remember the master plan, which this body voted in. It talks about the appropriate size of a building on a lot. And for all single and two family, this would change that. When all the proponent was trying to do is allow people that wanna go a bit more or a bit outside the rules to get what they want. Remember that most of the members of the ZBA themselves said, this is a bad idea. We should keep the oversight. We should keep the vision of the master plan. And we shouldn't make this huge change for 40,000 people when we're 250. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Wagner. Let's take Ms. Point of Infrared. Ms. A point of information does not appear in this book. Let's take Ms. Hyam. I don't think she's had an appearance here. Mr. Klein, did you wanna clarify something? Mr. Klein's a member of the Zoning Board of Appeals. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Christian Klein, precinct 10, chair of the Arlington Zoning Board of Appeals. The board had received a request from Mr. Fleming to come before the board and explain what he was intending. This was made at the recommendation of the redevelopment board that he talked to us about what the implications would be. He appeared before us at one of our hearings. I apologize, I cannot tell you the date because I just don't recall. And the board has made no formal recommendations on this article. They have made no formal motions or anything in regards to it. We did have a discussion about it. I think there is a variety of opinions on the board as to what the implications of this will be and how it will be interpreted. Interpretation of zoning bylaws is a very complicated issue. There's a lot of competing issues. I can absolutely confirm that there is a case before the board right now on Barnum Street where there is a developer who is requesting permission to add parking into the rear yard of the house that currently does not have such parking. And the house is conforming with usable open space at this time. And so that would be a consideration before them. But I just wanted to address the statement that the board seems to be overwhelmingly opposed to this article. The board has made no statement in that regarding whatsoever. And there are a couple of us at least who are on town meeting. But I would not take that as a statement of any one way or another by any member of the Zoning Board of Appeals. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Klein. Let's take one more speaker. I'm going to skip down to Ms. May, who I believe is not spoken. There was a Ms. Barron. Did you want to speak? It's after 11 o'clock. We have a motion to adjourn. Before we take that, do we have any notices of reconsideration? Seeing no notices of reconsideration, do we have a motion to adjourn? Do we have a second? Okay. All those in favor of adjourning? Say yes. All those opposed? The yeses have it. On Monday, we'll be taking up article 44, the Minuteman budget, then article 12 on artificial turf. And remember to please return your handsets to the plastic bins as you exit. And if you are interested in a motion on article 12 that will need to get to me, submit it to me by 8 p.m. tomorrow, Thursday night. Thank you.