 Welcome to the High School of Magical Singers. We're going to sing a Star-Spangled Banner for us in another couple of pieces. We're supposed to have some of our organizational meetings this evening. If precincts 127 didn't do it, they can do it at the break. Precinct one will be in the corridor outside the clerk's office. Precinct two will also be meeting outside the clerk's office a little further down the hall. Precinct three and four, well, the baked goods are over there, so maybe you'll meet in the front hall somewhere. Five and six, five, six and seven can meet over in this corridor, which is going to pick little rearrangements because of the bake sale, which is the Arlington Boys lacrosse team, so if you go out and visit them during the break, they'd appreciate it. Any town meeting members who have yet to be sworn in, any new or recently elected town meeting members, if so, please stand. Raise your right hand. I've got to hear you have to speak loud about it. I pledge to attend all town meetings to participate fully and evaluate fairly all matters before town meeting and to vote in the best interest of the town. I support free speech and will treat others with mutual respect in spite of conflicting opinions and will conduct myself in a civil manner that is becoming of an elected town meeting member. I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully and impartially perform the duties incumbent upon me as a town meeting member of the town of Arlington in accordance with the bylaws, the town manager act, and the laws, the general laws of the Commonwealth so help me God. The general laws of the Commonwealth so help me God. Thank you. We get to close at a last meeting. One of our oaths was violated. One of our particular member of this body did not conduct him or herself in a civil manner. An ad hominem attack was made, a person was called on it, and I reference that perhaps they wanted to look it up. I take the liberty of looking it up for the person. Ad hominem, appealing to feelings other than prejudice rather than intellect. Marked by and being an attack on an opponent's character rather than by an answer to the contentions made. This is the kind of thing we are all been avoiding for the last couple years and I hope that we can continue to do so in the future and for the close of the meeting. Thank you. Recognize Mr. Dunn. We're doing the special again. You got the slow version on Monday. You get the fast version today. It is requested that members of the Board of Select, and elected officials of the Town, Town Manager, Department Heads of the Town of Staff, Superintendents Schools, and Staff Committee Commissions and Boards of the Town, Minuteman Regional Vocational Technical School District, Committee and Superintendent Members of the General Court, representing Arlington and also any consultants who have been retained to work for the Town relative to the articles to be acted on by this meeting, representatives of interested parties of Article I, representatives of the news media be permitted to sit within the special Town meeting enclosure. Do I have a second? All in favor? Opposed? Mr. Sonographer, you were able to get that word for work, correct? Moderator's return on the cons... Constable's return. Madam Clerk, do you have reason to believe that this meeting was appropriately called by the Board of Selectmen and that the Constable made a return of service on the warrant in accordance with the laws? She swears she does. Mr. Dunn. It is moved that if all of the business of the meeting, as set forth in the warrant for the special Town meeting, is not disposed of at this session when the meeting adjourns, it adjourns to Monday, April 29th, 2013 at 8 p.m. Second. All in favor? All opposed? All opposed? All opposed. A affirmative vote. Any announcements or resolutions? Mr. Smith. Scott Smith, Precinct 5. He's both pertain to that walking in by-path that runs through the middle of Town. First time for spring cleaning. The Bicycle Committee with some help from East Arlington Levelable Streets and DPW is organizing a cleanup Saturday, 9.30. There's some flyers in the back of the room. It's been posted on the Town website. Basically three meeting places. The Heights by the Park Avenue Bridge and along No Name Brook in the center by Mill Street and East Arlington near the Thorn Dyke Field parking lot. This Saturday, flyers in the back of the room. Second announcement is that the three bikeway communities, Arlington, Lexington and Bedford, have been working on improving wayfinding on the path and their consultants will be holding a public open house on Sunday May 5th at the Lexington Depot up in Lexington Center Sunday afternoon May 5th from 1 to 4 p.m. And finally, Precinct 5 will organize over there. Thanks. Ms. Kowalski, did you have an announcement? Thank you, Mr. Moderator. I'm Carol Kowalski. I'm Director of Planning and Community Development. Town meeting members may be aware that we have launched a long-range comprehensive master plan for the town. Many of you participated in a workshop in October that started this endeavor for the vision and goals of the workshop. Because town meeting approved a capital budget item for this project, we wanted to give you a brief update. And I wanted to take the opportunity to introduce you to the face of the project, our consultant, Judy Barrett. And I want to give Judy an opportunity to introduce herself to you. Through you, Mr. Moderator, good evening town meeting members. I'm delighted to be here and very excited about this project. So I'd like to talk a little bit about what a master plan is and why you create one, who's going to participate and what the structure of the project will look like over the next 18 months or so. A master plan is a plan for the physical evolution of a community taking into account the community's future needs in the areas of housing and business development, parks and open space, historic preservation, kind of being able to sort of say, that's where we want to be 10 or 20 years from now. And here are the things that we need to do to get there and to arrive at a plan that's ultimately balanced and therefore implementable. Why create one? Because first of all, I find that often in local government we're so focused on the decisions that have to be made today because sometimes it's hard for us to see the consequences of those decisions for the future. So the master plan process helps to just educate people about that. But the other reason I think the more important one is that the master plan itself helps the community assert more control over its destiny and its future. Who participates? We hope everybody's going to participate. We have a variety of events and activities planned, ranging from community meetings, you know, sort of big venues to smaller meetings at the neighborhood or precinct level. We're going to try to get beyond the traditional meeting format for this plan and reach out to where people actually are, whether it's at the soccer games or the coffee shop or whatever. So you'll be seeing master plan people out there for quite a while. There will be a project webpage on the town's website and, you know, we'll be working very closely with the master plan advisory committee, which was recently appointed. And I'm going to let Carol tell you a little bit more about that. The master plan advisory committee is 11 members, three of whom are town meeting members. They meet the first Thursday of every month. Their May meeting is next week. May 2nd, they'll meet in the selectman's hearing room next week. And you're all welcome to attend and participate. And I'm going to let Judy tell you a little bit more about what you can expect over the next 18 months. We're sort of early on in this process. We've met with the master plan committee a couple of times. We will be meeting with them monthly, as Carol said, on the first Thursday of the month. So there'll be a lot of just discussion. I'm not the only person working on this plan. I'm actually leading a team that includes a variety of experts in transportation and historic preservation, housing, and so forth. So we're really sort of bringing you the best expertise out there that we can. We will be working on two levels mainly. One is sort of helping to move the public participation process along and providing support to your 11 member master plan committee. And the other thing is that there's just a lot of work involved in research and data analysis, getting data, looking at it, thinking about what the data say. So there'll be products from this process as the process goes forward. Basically working papers that describe where you are today, where you're likely to go in the future based on your existing policies. We'll be working with the committee to articulate the goals and vision for the plan, starting with the, you know, the workshop that was done last fall, and continuing to build on that so that in the end, what you have is a plan. Some people think of it as a report, but it's a plan that says, here's where you want to go, and this is where, this is how you're going to get there. So it's very much an iterative process back and forth between research, consultation, and public participation. And we'll probably be doing some very specific area studies as well, perhaps looking at, you know, some of your business districts or something, and thinking about the what-ifs for those areas. So that's the 18 months, next 18 month horizon, I think it's going to be a lot of fun. We also want you to prepare to see us again in the fall if there is a special town meeting, we'll give you an update then, and certainly an update at next year's annual town meeting. And we expect to also contact the precinct chairs to try to get in on your precinct meetings for an update and to engage you and hear more from you on this process. Please mark your calendars for June 1st at the high school. We'll have an early afternoon event that should be fun and we'll have food too. So I thank you very much for your time, and good night. Michelle DeRosher. Michelle DeRosher from Precinct 19. I just wanted to let you know about two additional neighborhood cleanups in addition to the one announced about the bikeway. On Saturday in Meadowbrook Park, the Conservation Commission is holding their annual spring cleanup, and that'll be from 9 to noon. There are pink flyers in the back if you need more details. And on Sunday from 10.30 to noon, in McClendon Park, Reeds Brook area, the neighbors are seeking volunteers for a cleanup there. I hope that you can turn out for one of these events. Thank you. Thank you, and ma'am. Kate Lucian, Precinct 20. I guess we're all about spring cleaning. I am here to ask time meeting's permission to have Arlington resident Maya Gin speak about the Arlington clean team and a town-wide cleanup event that is planned for May. Mr. Moderator, can Maya speak? Thank you for having me. Clearly, there's a lot of concern about cleaning up the town, which is great. I'm Maya Ginz, and together with a group of other concerned Arlington parents, we've created a group called the Arlington Clean Team Act. And as our first project, we've also organized a town-wide cleanup event that's going to take place May 11th, which by then the town should be very clean, so we should come out. It'll be easy by then. So, our concept is that we're going to meet at the parking lot where the farmer's market takes place and will supply people with bags and whatever else they need and some snacks, coffee, et cetera, that's being donated by different places in the town. And then we'll have a list of suggested places that people can go. We've gotten a great response so far, and I'm bringing it to this group because you guys are leaders in the town and hopefully active participants, and I would love your help in making this a very successful event. Thank you. Thank you. Good luck. Any other announcements or resolutions? Mr. O'Connor. I just, Jim O'Connor, a precinct 19, your assistant moderator, and a list moderator. There are two things, and I just wanted to clarify. The sheets that are in the back of the room, if you complete these for the town clerk, it gets posted on the town website with whatever email address you want, phone number, and other information. The sheet that's up here on the town meeting email list, if you could just click on that. It's the second tab. There's a form. It looks like it's a little large. I don't know if you can reduce it in size, but that's the page that you use to either subscribe to the town meeting exclusive list. It's not exclusive for reading purposes. Anyone in the town is eligible to look at the threads and the archives list. But if you want to get information ahead of time, all the department heads and committees have been really eager to get the information out to people soon enough so that you can read their reports, the substitute motions. Much of this was out in the last two weeks and was posted. Even the town report Joan Roman had out two weeks ago to all the town meeting members that received it on the list. If you want to, in the words of cleanup as we talked about, if you have an old email address that's on there you're no longer using, you can unsubscribe from an email address using this sheet. You can also add a new address. Some people prefer to have more than one in case they're at work and they want to be able to post. But only those that are subscribed can post and only members of the town meeting or departments that serve the town can be on this list. Anyone can read the information, but it'll be real helpful if you use this sheet and to post something all you have to do is say please post and send it to town meeting at ArlingtonList.org and I'll do my best to get it out as soon as possible. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Laredi was next. Mr. McCabe, then you. Thank you, Ms. Monterey. Chris Laredi, precinct seven. As I was leaving town hall on Monday night, I found a pair of glasses. They were in front of the, or just before the beginning of the crosswalk in front of town hall. So if anyone lost a pair of black rimmed glasses, these could be them. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Laredi. Mr. McCabe, do you have an announcement of resolution? Thank you, Mr. Monterey. Thank you. That one doesn't seem to work, Harry. Thank you, Mr. Monterey. May I ask a question of Ms. Kowalski regarding her report on the master planning process? A very, very short, because we're not... Thank you. Ms. Kowalski, many years ago when we did the last master plan, the town meeting voted a moratorium on all zoning changes for two years, which was challenged and helped held by the courts. Why aren't we doing that this time? Isn't it kind of hard to get on a moving train? I appreciate the question, Mr. McCabe. Carol Kowalski, director of planning and community development. It's not unusual in certain circumstances to require or for it to be desirable to have a moratorium if you're going to be making recommendations for dramatic zoning changes. With this master plan, I don't yet know what zoning changes will propose or that will come out of this master plan process. At that time, there was a great deal of reaction against some high-rise apartments that had been constructed at that time. And I think there was a feeling that they wanted to control that for a time until they could get a new zoning code, an entire new zoning code adopted, which I believe they did do in 1974. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Thank you, Mr. Kowalski. Thank you, Mr. McCabe. Any other announcements or resolutions? Mr. Judd, do you have an announcement or resolution? Thank you. Just to make sure I'm heard, Lyman Judd, precinct nine, just for those who may have a problem with their hearing. The reason I'm up here is because I was ordered to apologize to the town meeting, et cetera, for my remarks. Unfortunately, I'm just sorry that I seem to offend some people here, but there's a matter of definition, which I heard a little bit about a while ago. The definition of a dictator is someone who cannot be challenged, whether it's a king or a president or a secretary of the party, what have you. And according to the moderator, the general laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts do not allow the moderator to be challenged. This town meeting, even if it voted unanimously, could not overturn or change any decision made by the moderator. Now, I don't just refer, in particular, to the present moderator. This has been true for a long time because, obviously, that's the general laws of Massachusetts. And I really don't know if they were passed in the days of the open town meeting, which I think is somewhat different than a elected representative town meeting. However, on threat of never being recognized again, I have been asked, and as I say, it's an offer I can't refuse, to apologize. Well, as I said, I thought that I was using the English language correctly. If somebody thinks otherwise, okay, that's your privilege. And also, I don't know where this oath of office came from, but it certainly doesn't match anything that I've had before. I've been an elected town meeting member since 1972, with the exception of two years when, apparently, the voters thought I needed a sabbatical. Which, yeah, I didn't mind the time off. It was interesting, too, because everyone seemed to think that the town meeting was being held up by me, bloviating, so to speak. And I noted, by watching on television, that the town meeting did not proceed any more rapidly or efficiently in my absence than if I had been there. So, be that as it may, I still ought to maybe introduce myself. My name is Lyman G. Judd, Jr. I was born at Sims Hospital in 1940. I have legally been a resident of this town since then. I could give you a long bio, but I won't. I've been around and I have a memory of town meeting and what goes on at town meeting. Mr. Judd, please get to your point. My point still, and by the way, thank you for your splendid introduction this evening. And it's obvious the moderator and I, or Mr, should I say Mr. Leone and I, do not see eye to eye. However, there is a point of sometimes getting overwrought, which happens particularly if you've been in this town all your life and you see things changing severely. However, not to go on any further because most people here don't want to listen to somebody who is conservative or even believes in the Constitution of the United States. I apologize already. This is why this is an elective body. It's up to the people. Good luck. Thank you. If I heard an apology, Mr. Judd, I would have accepted it. Any other announcements or resolutions? Good. Report your committees. Call for any reports of committees to receive. This is done. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. I move that the report of the Board of Select will be received. In the blue book that you've received in the general on page 29 is the start of our report of the Special Town Meeting. And also we have an updated article to comment that is on everyone's seat. The actual vote is identical and the comment is four words different under the letter C. So, if you are really intently reading the Selectman comment, take the piece of paper and compare the difference on letter C between what's in your blue book but the main vote is unchanged. Yep. Now we're going into the special now. It's starting from fresh. Thank you, Mr. Don. Any other reports, committees? Move that the Finance Committee be received. It's part of the annual report that you received. It's on page, the Special Town Meeting starts on page 27. Do you have a report, Mr. Quinn? Do you have a report? Yes, sir. Michael Quinn. We're going to do them all at once. Receive all reports at once. Yeah. So this is to dissolve a committee. Oh, sorry. I got to do it. Oh, okay. To dissolve a committee. Michael Quinn, precinct 10. I'm the chair of the Power Company Feasibility Committee. I have been in touch with other members, for the previous members of this committee, including the originator of the warrant article that led to the committee's creation and they and I all agree the committee should be dissolved. Should the need arise, we can always form again. I move to dissolve the Power Company Feasibility Committee. Thank you. Thank you. All in favor, dissolve the Power Company Committee. Please say yes. Yes. Opposed, so dissolved. Any other reports of committees? Okay, Mr. Tosti. I move that the recommended votes are contained in the respective reports of the Finance Committee and the Board of Select will be before the committee meeting without further action. Second, all in favor, please say yes. Bless you, Mr. O'Connor. Opposed? All reports are received before the meeting. Move that Article 1 be laid on the table. Second. All in favor? All in favor. Opposed? Okay, that brings us to Article 2. 2, leaf blowers. We have the recommended vote of the Board of Selectments printed in their reports. It just is a preface. Last fall, we thoroughly ventilated this article whether or not leaf blowers are good or bad. Now we're going to talk about whether we like the bylaw amendments or not. Let's try to keep our discussion focused upon those, the bylaw and what's in front of us, and not get into the pros and cons of the machines themselves. Thank you. Who's going to present this report? Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Kevin Greeley, Board of Selectmen. The committee took a vote and asked that I make this report to the committee. And on behalf of the Board of Selectmen, we ask that you please support our recommendation of favorable action on Article 2. Many of you are very familiar with this particular warrant article. Sorry. I think I've used up a second so far. Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Greeley. So I was born in Sims Hospital. In 2013, as you know, it was recommended that we completely ban the use of gasoline-powered leaf blowers on an amendment that they be banned from May 15th to October 15th. The professional landscapers formed, organized and formed a committee and gathered enough signatures to hold a special election in the summer of 2013. And while the vote did not rate, what's the matter? 2012. Does that count on my time, too? So in 2012, the vote did not raise to the level of 20% of the registered voters to overturn the town meeting vote, but the Board of Selectmen feels that in an opinion survey, if you will, it was 70 to 30 against the ban. So the Board of Selectmen believes, and any of my colleagues can correct me, that there's three basic positions. We support the status quo, which is a complete ban on the use from May 15th to October 15th, or we do away with that ban, and what we present to you tonight is an attempt to compromise between those two positions. The Board of Selectmen's feeling is compromise is the best way to go on this, and so we formed a committee which had four professional leaf blowers on it and four professional leaf blowers. Professional landscapers, my sincere apologies. So, not much help here, am I, so far. So professional landscapers, and then four who were appointed by the moderator, and we encouraged him to make sure that if he could, and he did, appoint those who favored the ban, because our goal is to find a compromise between the two. Then a special town meeting was called, the Board of Selectmen recommended to you and you supported that what we do is we put this off until this town meeting and here we stand tonight, and that we should continue with this committee, although we then at that point turned it over to town meeting, and the moderator appointed four more members of that committee, and I became an ex-officer member of that committee instead of the chair. And that committee met a number of times, and what you have before you is a recommendation from that committee, which again I want to emphasize, I believe, is an attempt to find a compromise between these two positions. I won't read through it, I think you can see it. I think the best thing if you'd like is to read the comment, which does indeed point out the differences between that which exists and what is now being recommended. Different period of times. It applies to professional landscapers and to the town of Arlington as well, but does not other than those that already exist, it does not apply to private homeowners. So, we've talked about this a lot, I believe, and again I would ask you to please consider supporting the vote of favorable action by the Board of Selectmen on this compromise, which has been put together by this committee. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Mr. Moore. Christopher Moore from Crescent 14. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. The language in the Selectmen's suggested vote explicitly exempts from regulation leaf blowers which are fueled by anything other than gasoline. Propane-fueled leaf blowers are becoming more available, and if we intend to create a regulatory scheme which will last over time, it should apply equally to both propane-gasoline and any other appropriate fuels for leaf blowers. Therefore, I move to amend the recommended vote of the Board of Selectmen on Article 2 by changing the words gas-powered leaf blowers to leaf blowers powered by internal combustion engines where they appear both in the recommended amendment to Title 5 Article 12, Section 2J, and in the recommended replacement for Title 5 Article 12, Section 3D1. Thank you. Thank you, sir, presented and seconded. You done, sir? You done? Okay. Mr. Beal? Let's see here. Good evening, West Beal, precinct 4. I've got a substitute motion you all should have a copy of. The purpose of this motion is essentially to hit the pause button. It delays the changes made to the bylaws we passed last year by another year, and it forms a new committee and gives them a crack at coming up with some solutions. I believe leaf blowers can be used responsibly, and whether or not I think they're the right tool in a specific job is not something I want to legislate. However, I also believe that we've seen... Oh, sorry, ma'am. However, I also believe we've seen plenty of examples of where leaf blowers have not been used responsibly. So I don't want what we passed last year and reading through what is in front of us now. I've seen some good ideas there, but I don't really see a solution to what we were presented with. And as much as I would like to never talk about leaf blowers again, I don't believe we'd be doing right by the town or by the job we were given to pass what is in front of us now and pretend we've dealt with the issues. So my suggestion again is to delay the seasonal ban we passed last year, let a new group go to work and see if they can come up with something better. Thank you. Okay, just seconded. Okay, Mr. Schlickman. Paul Schlickman, Precinct 9. I respect the spirit of compromise, but the Selectman's motion before us tonight doesn't quite feel like a compromise. It feels like an evisceration of the by-law that this body passed last year. There have been legitimate concerns from both sides of the discussion, legitimate concerns of people who want to maintain their property, legitimate concerns of business owners who want to use efficient tools to do that work, and legitimate concerns of neighbors who object to what I would say overuse and abuse of leaf blowers are. For example, a couple of Saturdays ago, I awoke to have three people, landscape employees, across the street at the MIRAC property, which is the DSS 30 Mystic Street. There isn't a tree on the property, but they were blowing the entire parking lot with three leaf blowers. There are places to use leaf blowers, such as where there's a bunch of leaves. There are places where we shouldn't be using leaf blowers like big asphalt parking lots with no trees and no leaves. There are properties that are large that need a lot of power. There are little properties where, no matter where you're standing, you're no more than five feet from the property line and guaranteed to disturb a neighbor. Compromise is important. I'd like to see something different evolve than what we've got right now. But what we've got right now, I think, is better than what is proposed, which basically eviscerates the by-law and doesn't engage the logical protections for neighbors that should be in this by-law. I would like to see people with large lots not have many restrictions. People in smaller lots be more restricted and the use of leaf blowers to do things other than blow leaves, in other words, blowing up dust and parking lots, be prohibited. We could compromise by working off of the zoning by-law and permitting unlimited use in an R0 residential district. There are a lot of ways to approach that. I just don't think what is before us tonight is a compromise situation. It doesn't meet the needs of everybody. And I think that if the professional landscapers work with the community, scale back on the leaf blowers when there are no leaves, we could all tone down the conversation and come up with a solution that will meet the needs of neighbors and landscapers and property owners. I would prefer not seeing the selectman's by-law past, but in light of Mr. Beal's motion, I would hope that we conduct a moratorium, put everything off for a year and come back with a better solution. So I urge you to support Mr. Beal's substitute motion and if that doesn't pass, not to support action under this article. Thank you. Hold on, Hans for a second. Mr. Tibbets. Hi, my name is Gary Tibbets. I'm a Landscape Contractor in Islington, increasing five. And I'd just like to remind you, voters of Islington turned out in greater numbers for that election last July. Despite it was only a six-hour voting window, instead of the usual 12, despite the fact that East Islington had been hit by a microburst the night before the election, despite the fact that many of the backers that were up for the repeal were helping people that were affected by it and couldn't be at the polls. Despite the fact that many of us were stuck in homes with damage and a lot of electricity, they showed up in greater numbers than they have. I think there were more people voted against this than voted for any elected official behind me. Even though we won by three-to-one, we missed by a little bit of a margin because it was a great up, we had to meet a great mark. But it showed that people in Islington had an interest in overturning this law. Because of all this interest, town meeting created this leaf-lower compromise committee, which we were on, we met with people that were completely against it and people that were far. We worked together. The article that's before you is a result of that and everything in it, some of those changes were put in there unanimously, but all of them were put in by a majority vote. Nothing was pushed through. We had a public hearing as part of this. People were invited to come up and make their comments. Basically, the comments that came out were three-to-one in favor of either no ban or accepting the compromise that we came up with. As part of our agreement with this committee and with the selectmen, the landscape has agreed to monitor ourselves and police ourselves. We've provided through Mrs. Mahon on the Islington list a 24-hour answering number if they have concerns about a landscape or using a blower. We've only gotten a couple of calls through it. We've handled them. Mrs. Mahon made a point to calling me back and thanking me for how fast we responded to it and took care of it. This isn't something we're just doing now. We know this is the way things are going. We've been in business. Billy and I have been in business over 30 years. The two Joes have been in business 20 years. You people know us. We know what we do. We have agreed to police ourselves and stay on top of this. I'd really like to just put this down tonight, get it over with, and get on with the other business that I'm learning about in Islington now. Thank you. We're not doing the parliament stuff. We don't clap and yell and hoot. Never did. Never did. Don't give me that look. Mr. Ruderman. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I was also a member of this committee and I did come away with a different perspective and without having discussed or organized this with my other committee members, I'd like to offer you a minority opinion of one mine, but I'd like to offer you a rationale for that. It all depends upon perspective. One could just as rightly say that the opponents of a leaf blower ban gained a three to one plurality in the summer special referendum. It's as equally valid to say that the proponents of the ban, knowing that the state constitution, thank you, Mr. Adams, places an extremely high bar on a referendum for overturning the town meetings motion knew that it was not likely to pass and stayed home in order to make sure that it wouldn't pass and they won. Like I said, different perspective, equally valid viewpoint. You could say that the existing bylaw which will go into effect on May 15 if not otherwise changed is too harsh and goes too far. You could also say that it was amended, compromised, just debated for more than, what was it, two hours at our last annual town meeting and then it passed. I can't believe that a small majority, but a majority still of the members of this body as then constituted were deluded or so mistaken on the facts or so misled by someone's opinions to have gotten it completely wrong. Yet it was felt that in light of the numbers returned in the referendum, a compromise committee was was, I don't know, called for appropriate fine. I'll take that in good faith. It was done in the spirit of compromise. Our former chair of the select is an honorable man. So are they all honorable men who constituted the representatives of the professional landscaping association? But I offer to you this observation. I've never before served on a committee and town meeting in the decade that I've been a member where membership was dictated by the existence of direct financial interest in the outcome of a vote. Now I know that we've in past years asked speakers before this body to disclose if it's not obvious I have a financial interest in the way this vote may go. So I ask you to read the recommended vote of the select men as formulated by the committee as discussed and pushed forward by a block of its members as having a direct financial interest to those members. And again, I do not allege any kind of collusion or conspiracy here but I would say that we are all honorable men and they wanted to represent what they felt were expert opinions. Of course you could have also represented expert opinions if you had looked in the town phone book past the page that says L on it and looked for someone who might have been an audiologist or a mechanical engineer or a acoustician or someone else, a mechanical engineer of are these good for the public? These gas powered leaf blower devices and if they are under what circumstances should they be is no. The experts on the committee and a couple more members nominated at large one again with another financial interest another person who an employee of the largest private landowner, a Winchester country club in town there was a clear and direct course to the discussions it was roll back roll back roll back and not in a very sophisticated way you see which you have in front the rollback of the restrictions on leaf blowers is based upon time and place and as our esteemed colleague Mr. Beal said basically it says you can't be a jerk and spray the dust and leaves onto your neighbor's yard and that's about it all we seem to have accomplished in all of our meetings and public hearings I offer to you that we tried in this body a year ago upheld in a special referendum and present to you tonight the option of saying no we think we got it right we think we got it right back at the last annual town meeting and we'd like to give it at least one year to see if it works before we decide to rip it apart top to bottom so I offer you this rationale two minutes again minority opinion of one to reject the select men's recommended vote as promulgated by the committee and to maintain the existing bylaw and see what happens when it goes into effect thank you thank you Mr. Ruderman Miss Band Hi Carol Band precinct 8 I noticed there was a full moon while I was driving over here tonight just saying I was also a member of the committee that drafted the so-called compromise that's before you tonight and feel that the composition of the committee which included a lot of landscapers who have contracts for the town was not really representative and that the crafting of this amendment is not a compromise it's an evisceration to use Mr. Schlickman's word of the seasonal restriction voted by the town meeting a decision that hasn't even had a chance to be experienced last year in this hall you saw a compelling presentation that led to a vote to approve the seasonal restriction of gas powered blowers you learned about the health hazards that these machines present to their operators to pedestrians walking by and to neighbors and to residents that they create and the toll that the noise takes on the health of individuals and the quality of community life here in Arlington and you voted to enact a compromise not a complete ban on leaf blowers as originally proposed by me but a compromise a compromise that restricted their use to the months of the year when there are no leaves on the ground when their use is even more unnecessary and harmful than usual a time when people are outside enjoying their porches their patios and the opportunity to open their windows and let the fresh air inside a time of year when all that there is for leaf blowers to blow is dirt, animal feces, carcinogens and dust this compromise that you voted to approve last year won't be in effect until May 15th let's give it a chance what is before you tonight is not a compromise you've already voted on a compromise in last spring's town meeting there was a fair vote that made a good decision and the town backed up that good decision in a special election in July as a matter of fact after that special election someone from Newton called me and said congratulations Arlington 80% of your town backs a restriction on leaf blowers and that's the way I like to look at it despite the efforts of a special interest group that poured money and misinformation into trying to change the result of town meetings vote you've already voted on a compromise I've held it in the special town meeting in October in this very hall you've already voted on a compromise and notes from constituents across the town are asking us to uphold this compromise and tonight I ask you to again stand by your decision to support the seasonal restriction on gas powered blowers your original decision was a good one and informed one and the right one vote to keep the decision making power of town meeting from being derailed say yes to quieter neighborhoods and a true democratic process vote no on the amendment before you thank you very much Mr. Mark McCabe Mark Mark McCabe, Precision 2 I stand to terminate all debate on article 2 and all motions before it thank you we have a motion to terminate debate on the article and all matters before it all in favor please say yes yes opposed say no Mr. O'Brien Andy Andy O'Brien, Precinct 16 I was really looking for some kind of compromise when it came to sound and emissions I don't know I think the last time when I spoke I talked about the edmunds.com testing of off the shelf and four stroke leaf blowers from Home Depot and in most cases the greenhouse emissions were about 15 times that of a F-150 pickup truck I think everyone knows which leaf blowers the most bothersome it's the two stroke leaf blower the large two stroke leaf blower very noisy sets out the most amount of emissions if that had been on there I'd probably voting for the compromise you know I understand that you might need the extra power during the fall or the spring but you don't need it in the summertime we just don't need that kind of noise we don't need that kind of emissions especially in the summer months when people are suffering from respiratory ailments but I'm also going to go on now to one of the bylaw amendments the house to deal with propane propane is a natural gas distillate it's liquid natural gas liquid distillate and natural gas is fairly clean produces fairly few greenhouse emissions propane produces almost no greenhouse emissions propane unless you're getting your electricity from a renewable resource or hydro or nuclear an electric leaf blower is likely to produce indirectly more emissions than a propane leaf blower when electricity produces about one third of energies lost in terms of heat loss and another third is lost in the transmission of electricity some states like Texas have been really pushing propane for landscape equipment that would include lawn mowers during summer months in Texas the communities are often in violation of EPA emissions regulations propane though is still used and many landscapers use propane in their lawn tractors and in other landscape equipment it is my hope that in the future rather than using gasoline as the source for our lawn equipment that we will switch to propane so I will probably vote against the compromise bylaw amendment but if it comes to propane I probably will vote against that as well thanks thank you Mr. Klein thank you Mr. Moderator, Christian Klein a quick question about the committee is it an official committee of the town? which committee? the compromise committee the leaf flow committee that met over I believe it is an official committee they had open meeting law they advertised they posted their minutes on the hometown website are they providing us with a report? I think the report is the recommended vote okay I would like to ask Mr. Moderator there has been some contention about the compromise of the committee what the composition was could I ask what the vote was on the recommendation we have in front of us from the compromise committee? Ms. Mahan, the chairman of that committee can you answer that question? Diane Mahan, town meeting member precinct 14 and I had the dubious distinction of being your chair of this town meeting committee on leaf blowers answered as distinctly as possible in order to allow every committee member to feel as though they could represent their views what I said to everybody who was on the committee because we had two distinct camps of school of thought we only had one, ten to zero we had four, twelve, thirteen members we only had ten members who showed up who were able to be at the final meeting where we voted we only had one ten to zero vote and that was to change gas to gasoline and then what I did was put a bullet point on everything else and every other vote was seven to three okay I have a question about item number five excuse me item number six which says the restrictions set forth here in does that does that only apply to line two A, B and C I believe it would apply to all restrictions set forth in the bylaw my question is the article line three at no time any leaf blowers should be used in a way to permit the distribution of leaves, dust, debris etc is that only applying to the town and to commercial or does that apply to everybody can you answer that very distinctly what we did was the current noise abatement bylaw as well as other bylaws it states that no debris whether it's snow leaves, dust whatever can be distributed on property but since we were saying that this bylaw would just apply to municipalities in the town we wanted to restate that so I guess the short answer is number three while it states it just applies to the town it applies to businesses on the current existing bylaws it also applies to residents or it applies to everybody is it a point of information or a point of interruption Giuliano can you tell us exactly what that says if your interpretation is wrong you don't have the floor the initial question was whether line six which says that the restriction whether that only is referencing to the listed restrictions under two which is A, B, and C or whether it applies to all of the five appearing before that Giuliano Rice Town Council my view is it would apply to the whole thing the definition in D1 of gas powered leaf blowers for purposes of this bylaw is gas powered leaf blowers used for commercial and municipal purposes so my reading would be that the entire rest of section D would apply only to commercial or municipal use of leaf blowers any questions sir that does answer that question the one remaining question I do have is when there are considered violations of this ordinance what is the proper enforcement mechanism the enforcement mechanism is the same as for the remainder of the noise of A, B bylaw which is a $200 ticket per violation is it the is it the responsibility of the health department or the police department it is both the police department and the health department okay and so if a violation is occurs who would be the homeowner obviously the homeowner should attempt to speak with the individual involved but at that point do they call the police is that the they could do so yes okay thank you thank you sir Mr. Berkowitz thanks Mr. Monterey to Bill Berkowitz thank you Mr. Berkowitz thank you Mr. 18 thank you Mr. B. thank you Mr. Vettel thank you Mr. Blank we have four meeting members in many public policy issues there are competing rights on both sides and I think legitimate rights too and part of our job is to find a proper balance between the what I feel are the legitimate were here and as background for those new town meeting members. That was done that was done itself after several compromises. It was a contested vote and a close vote of course but was also upheld by several different on several different occasions by a vote of that town meeting. The proposed vote before us from the select men when you get down to the specifics essentially restricts leaf blowers on Sundays from June 15th to September 15th. Essentially it says that you can't use leaf blowers on summer Sundays. That amounts by my count to 15 days give or take. On the other hand the original vote that we took last year at last year's town meeting was to restrict use between May 15th and October 15th which amounts to 150 days give or take. So as contrasted with the original 150 days and the proposed vote of the board of select men we would go to 15. That's a decrease of 90%. Question before us I think now is that what we want more specifically in deciding these questions I hope we will consider whether first whether this proposed vote includes significant restrictions on the use of leaf blowers at all. Secondly excuse me whether it's in the spirit of our town meeting vote last year and third is it a fair compromise? Does it fairly reflect the balancing of legitimate rights and legitimate positions on both sides? I would leave these questions to you to all of us to consider before voting. If your answers are no then I hope you will reject the proposed vote of the board of select men. Thank you. This lady in blue I forget your name I'm sorry. Yep I'm Debbie Edelstein from Precinct 9. I applaud the effort to reach a compromise and I would like to say that the select men's comment in plain English actually makes sense but the rest of the document as written when all two years from now when different town meeting members are here and different town councils are around will be meaningless. I kind of find it linguistic nonsense. It seems to be self-contradictory. It's a bunch of embedded negatives that don't won't be meaningful down the road. I think we'll have a hard time interpreting it. It's meaning down the road once stripped of the plain English version from the comment. So I think that regardless of how you feel about the issue this as written is not adequate to to enforce to even understand what it is we're trying to accomplish so on that basis alone let alone however you might feel about the issue I suggest we reject this and go back and write it in a way that could be understood by somebody not in this room today. Thank you. Mr. Leonard. Thank you Mr. moderator John Leonard Precinct 17. Two points of clarification if I could in the comment six lines down three quarters of the way through the sentence where it begins the central changes being. I'm confused to the point where it talks about commercial and municipal operations in individual homeowners and residents. Does any of that also include apartment buildings. I know it sounds like splitting hairs but to me commercial would be businesses. Municipal operations would be town yards individual homeowners would be homeowners and the residents in the homeowners. I'm wondering should an amendment be in there that basically says oh by the way brick apartment buildings are also included in this. Ms. Rice apartment complex is considered commercial and would they fall within the purview of this bylaw. I would think that under this bylaw they would be viewed as residential unless they were being cleaned up by a commercial landscaping firm. Thank you. Could I have that clarified a little bit better. Residential. They are so let us say brick apartment buildings are considered residential. People live them. Secondly in the handout under section six manner of enforcement the last line stating in a court competent jurisdiction. Could somebody clarify what we're calling in a town of Allington a court of competent jurisdiction. A court of competent jurisdiction under this I think would be the Middlesex District Court located 10 10 Mystic Valley Parkway in Medford. Why Cambridge is in Medford it is but that our court of competent jurisdiction on matters such as this. So as it is self-explanatory. A complaint would then go from the town manager to the board of selectmen. To possibly a court of competent jurisdiction before a person would possibly be able to get any satisfaction. Yes you towns have to follow an administrative procedure and if people don't follow what they're told to do they end up in court. Thank you sir. Yeah. Thank you. Mr. Han you had your hand up. You wish to continue speaking. Go ahead. Oops. I am on town meeting member precinct 14 and chairman elected by the committee by this town meeting who who set up what happened basically was we had the town meeting where we discuss this at length. The vote went through. There was a special election. We had a special town meeting. This town meeting said basically we're going to take the selectmen's committee and make it a town meeting committee add some more members on to it and proceed there too. I was elected by my colleagues on the town meeting leaf blower committee to come up with some sort of a compromise and I think what I heard initially and read initially and spoke initially with town meeting members who saw the results of the special election both sides said they won and both sides said the other side lost and that's open for interpretation. But basically the reason this committee was set up was because of the result of that special election to ask the original committee to be expanded which it was. We had four landscape contractors. We had four town meeting members which were pretty much in my personal opinion split two to two. We had four citizens at large which were added after the special election which pretty much were split two to two. We had myself and then we had a few other members from the board of health ex officio. In the end we had 10 members present who voted and pretty much the vote when seven or three which is kind of similar to the special election vote that we had back in the summer. What we did was we also had a public hearing which is what town meeting asked us to do and what I it was really difficult task for me because I had three or four sides but basically at least three sides that came into the meeting and I said let's just come to this meeting let's look at everything let's come up with a compromise in the end you don't have to agree to it which is why I feel we had the seven to three votes on everything except for changing gas to gasoline. I will tell you that every single committee member including two previous speakers who have spoken before before town meeting had extensive conversations and recommendations that were adopted as well as suggestions that were put forth that said if you agreed all of this then I can agree to something else if not it's all or nothing that didn't come out in the end. The bottom line is this town meeting set up a committee because the residents came out and spoke however they spoke it's for you to interpret it it's not for me to tell you how that vote was. What we did was and what we heard from the one public hearing we set up our structure and we had a lot a lot of meetings not as anything looking for sympathy I'm a court reporter I lost a client in terms of all the time I spent on this and I know my fellow committee members spent a lot of time on it but we set up so that we could have two public meetings we only had one and what we heard was that we heard from residents saying if I go out there and I need to do an hour on a Saturday or two Saturdays I want to be able to do that and we do have a current noise abatement law that signifies decibel levels. What we did was because it seemed like the main offenders that people were concerned about were the landscape contractors were the town of Allington municipalities people who were running this for an hour hour and a half on end with two three four five and what you see in here is we say one leaf blower per six thousand square feet no more than 30 minutes at a time no use at all on a Sunday afternoon that doesn't apply to residents because we heard from residents sometimes I can only do I get home from church I can do it from one to three one to five. We spoke about where the debris would be you could not put it on property lines I did speak to Town Council in terms of private residents you can't do that either so I mean it's up to this town meeting if you want to set up another study committee to look at possibly another compromise I think what we need to do is we took a vote we had a special election you all set up a subcommittee that was said to look at this I do know the minute that the restrictions and some people say a different word but it's a restriction right now what we have currently I only got two calls or two emails and referred it to a number and I put that number out because the landscape contractors have said and they're all Allington residents all Allington business people we want to work with each other they've all said let us know we'll police ourselves I've only gotten two complaints I've probably heard more than two complaints in this town hall you do have a compromise before you to say let's not do anything and go back for another compromise that's your that your purview to do that but I want to tell you that the current leaf blower town meeting subcommittee everyone keeps saying select men it came in through the select men's report because the select men ultimately said we're going to present the findings to you but this was a town committee subcommittee that was formed from the special town meeting that we had last fall they said come up with some sort of a compromise we have a compromise here everybody was heard even as I said before speakers that are saying please don't vote for this now they had they were never limited they had a lot of input into what is before you you want to compromise it's here before you if not I say God bless to the next committee I can't go through this again it was a lot of time a lot of public hearing and I just hope you would put your faith and trust and the subcommittee that was formed by you at the last special town meeting that had a public hearing that came up with these recommendations let's give them a shot and see where they go and as far as the amendment by Mr. Moore or the previous speaker myself personally I have no issue with that I was asked why we didn't look at propane we weren't charged by this town meeting to look at propane or any other combustible material we will look charge a look at gas which we changed the gasoline but I have no issue and I would support his amendment thank you thank you let's take a ten minute break come back at 20 of the precincts that have meetings please go and organize mr. Downing has the floor mr. Downing you have the floor mr. Downing you have the floor please come forward Jim Downing or Bill Downing where's Billy calling Bill Downing yeah he's got about 10 seconds before I'm gonna move on is he here what happened to him they leave at the break I don't see him I don't know maybe that is organization meeting I don't know well I'll go to someone else and come back to him next miss Mamon Zarene amendment in precinct 12 I'm sorry 21 back lips here anyways I have some concerns about what was written for the recommendations by the select men in that I feel that they should have been a little bit more clear on the lot size versus acres our properties are listed under acres and this is lot size I think there's no consistency there so that was a concern also and portion see they've worked on leaf blowers and my understanding was a one single leaf floor was going to be used for property of 6,000 square feet so they're assuming there's gonna be multiple leaf blowers being used per per property and so that was concerning the biggest things that I have for concern are that we have a tight-knit community here in Arlington it's very dense and I think that we do need the ban in effect I'm curious about the committee that was formed I want to know the breakdown of how people voted with a seven and three is it mostly who was the voters and did Diane did you mr. moderate could you find out the chairwoman of the the committee there had she voted also or was it was she part of the what was that the board that was used I was a member of the committee I believe she did take votes on each issue as they voted the committee voted on each issue I think short of getting the minutes well she probably would have an idea right I mean since there's a miss Mahan can you enlighten her that one works now yep are able body miss Brandt house got it going of the 10 voting members present and yes I did vote mr. Greeley was ex-officio he did not vote mr. Feeney and miss Conley from the board of health where ex-officio did not vote as well as we did have a attorney rice town council and the town manager there who also did not vote there were ex-officio but on the seven to three vote it's easier for me to say from my memory we had for the three mr. Ruderman mr. Adelman and I can't remember who the other third person was it's so these are both town members were saying that are the contractors and I'm sorry miss Jill Snyder you were there and voted in the negative okay so those were the three who voted in the negative and then you weren't there that we voted miss Ban I apologize but you weren't there you had a I think you were way on business so miss Snyder mr. Adelman miss Snyder was I believe through a town meeting member appointed by the moderator mr. Adelman was right okay so so the understanding I'm getting is the four were contractors and one was yourself chairwoman so that's five votes and then two other citizens voted for this okay I just wanted to say that one was a town meeting member so if you if you're doing the math we have three and two okay I have another question for me if you don't mind moderate mr. Moderator I want to know what was the history in other towns that have had past this ban such as Brookline and Cambridge Cambridge does she have any understanding of that does she understand I'm just saying if they had a they had a committee and they discussed this I want to know what the results that they discuss other towns if they had any issues with Brookline and Cambridge as reference materials the town of Brookline and city of Cambridge and from those materials and others we crafted the compromise as before you today tonight alright so I understand the Brookline has violations listed in their bands I also understand that Cambridge has a lot sizes larger than ours they also have a real restriction real heavy restrictions including for the contractors they have to ask the town manager by written notice to use the leaf blowers and I also understand that even large property over 10,000 square feet which are limited to one leaf blower actually they also have to ask for permission to use the leaf blowers during the summertime my concern is that I feel that the original article that was voted on with the special election was fair I do not favor this recommended vote by the select men and I feel that there are certain environmental issues that has still not been addressed such as the health concerns top soil removal which can cause problems with desiccating roots and I also feel that there are no violations noted in this recommendation by the select men so I I'm in favor of trying the measure that was voted and by us thank you mr. Downey hi my name is Bill Downey precinct 15 I was a member of the leaf blow committee I'd like to share some facts with you miss mr. Downey you also have to disclose that you have an interest in the article as a business I am the owner of let me start over my name is Bill Downey precinct 15 I was a member of the leaf blow committee I also own Downey landscape services and I'd like to share some facts with you leaf blowers are getting quieter and cleaner manufacturers have worked hard to meet the new EPA standard set for machine sold in 2012 they had a drastically reduced emissions while at the same time not reduced power they have met the EPA standards in the next issue they are working on is noise levels many are 75 percent quieter than they were a decade ago the goal is that all of these machines will be operating at 65 decibels or less in the next two or three years they were also talking about a buyback program to get older blowers out of circulation going forward I feel that leaf blowers won't even be a concern three or four years from now the question of cost increases come up the cost increased to our clientele is a minimum of 35 percent 20 percent in any increased time and 15 percent in increased payroll to retain our good employees they could go to another company in Lexington or Winchester and not have to broom out a driveway not have to sweep out a driveway and just run a leaf blower their job is much easier people have come up here and told you all kinds of things please base your opinion on the facts not scare tactics we use these blowers every day and our lead levels and overall health is fine the Board of Health has had no problems arising from the use of these machines the Mass Department of Health reports the childhood lead poisoning in Arlington has been zero for the past two years we are some of the first to donate to schools islands and everything else in town please work with us over the next two or three years don't make a tough job tougher I believe town government should be working with small business not against it seven out of ten people in town voted no ban on leaf blowers my precinct voted 75 percent against the ban and I am here to represent them with my vote please join me in vote for the compromise thank you very much thank you mr. dory do you were next nope you got a microphone thing TV can't catch it back yet Jim Jim dory precinct to move the question and all matters were related to it we have a motion to terminate debate on all matters before the article all in favor please say yes opposed in my opinion that is a two-thirds vote okay so to express we have the recommended vote of the select men which is in your report we have Mr. Moore's amendment to that vote which changes gas-powered leaf blowers the leaf blowers powered by internal combustion motors engines use me internal combustion engines and then we have mr. Beals substitute which basically puts a moratorium on the bylaw in existence until January of 2014 and forms another committee so first we're going to vote on mr. Beals because if that wins that's the substitute and the other two were not even bother voting on if it loses we'll go to mr. Moore's internal combustion and then we'll go to the recommended vote of the select men if depending upon how our two previous votes go okay everyone is the end okay I'm not here no so all in favor of mr. Beals substitute motion please yes sir okay we have mr. Beals substitute motion on article two to put a moratorium on the current one that's on the books until January of 2014 and form a new committee as detailed you should have that on your seats all right so we're going to vote on that all in favor of that substitute motion please say yes opposed say no I'm sorry West that loses that's done now we have mr. Moore substitute which is going to substitute the words leaf blowers powered by internal combustion engines for the words gas-powered leaf blowers so this is the propane ones this will cover any internally combustible engine all in favor of that amendment please say yes yes opposed cheers and doubt all in favor of the amendment please rise mr. schlickman mr. O'Connor mr. Tremblay and Harry why don't we let the young woman right next to you count your little one steady tonight up Harry's gonna go forward anyways you're his daughter right this mahan how many up front six up front six for the amendment up front mr. Schlickman how many to my left 24 mr. O'Connor 43 mr. Tremblay 30 mr. McCabe 22 all opposed to that amendment please rise all against the amendment mr. Mahan five mr. Schlickman how many to my left 19 mr. O'Connor 15 mr. Tremblay 20 mr. McCabe 15 the amendment passes 125 to 74 so it is amended 74 that now brings us to the recommended a board of selection as amended all in favor of the recommended vote please say yes opposed my opinion that is a negative vote five people have arisen five people have arisen same tellers all in favor of the recommended vote please rise this mahan how many up front 10 mr. Schlickman how many to my left 27 27 mr. O'Connor 28 mr. Tremblay 34 and mr. McCabe 14 all opposed to the recommended vote please rise this mahan how many up front one mr. Schlickman 17 mr. O'Connor 31 mr. Tremblay 21 and mr. McCabe 25 the vote passes as amended 113 in the affirmative 95 in the negative the vote passes gentlemen please please we're not the English parliament that closes article 2 brings us to article 3 appropriation visitor center uncle Sam Plaza they're looking for ten thousand dollars what 10 10 oh wait a second that's in the corner who's gonna speak to this mr. Tosti mr. Tosti you addressing this mr. Dunn are you presenting this someone's got to get up and ask for the money select minority I got a recommended vote of the thin client who oh Angela's gonna present come on up Angela someone's got to get up and ask for the money miss old loose old Zulski has the floor please Angela old Zulski precinct 17 and chair of the Arlington committee on tourism and economic development I want to ask you all for just a moment to pretend you don't live in Arlington you live in one of the suburbs further west and it's a really nice day and you've decided to take a long bike ride along the Minuteman bikeway you're riding along and you've been traveling for quite a while and you're just about ready to take a break you've come to Arlington center and you hear some music so you decided this sounds good I think I'll stop so you go over and there's a small musical group playing on the brick terrace by a statue and there's people gathered so you stop to listen and while you're looking at the statue you realize it looks familiar it's uncle Sam and then you read further and you find out that uncle Sam was born in Arlington now you're kind of interested and you see a little booth with a visitor information sign and you decide to walk over there's a friendly volunteer there to greet you and he welcomes you in and you see a video playing and it tells you about all the great things to see and do in Arlington and there's all kinds of brochures and there's fun souvenirs and the volunteer just wants to tell you all about everything so before you leave you ask for some recommendations for where you can have lunch and the volunteers happy to provide that so you go and you have lunch and you think I never realized how much there was to do here I want to come back so what does a visitor information booth do it says welcome to Arlington it gives people a reason to stop it gives us a place to distribute information and to encourage people to come here and visit and spend money we want to talk about people ask well what would it look like so the picture behind me is a prototype if you decide this evening to appropriate the funds that we've asked for the town will go through the procurement process and the booth will look we can't pick the booth before the procurement process but I can assure you that everyone's who's been involved wants something that's attractive and that the town can be proud of we're asking you to locate it at the uncle Sam statue the site plan please with the other slide the other slides on the site plan we went out with our booth our tent that we use for town day and we tried in front of the Jefferson Cutter House and we tried at this site and we thought that this site was better for us for traffic we've been working with the town because we know that the bikeway is going to be reconfigured and so you know we're going to work on the site plan with that there's also historic restrictions in front of the Jefferson Cutter House so that played into it in the article you'll see that it says temporary we kind of like to say semi-permanent and when what we mean by this is that we're asking you to make a relatively modest expenditure this isn't a big facility or building with restrooms right now it's something that we want to try out we want to see how it goes we we want to we know that there's also a grant for the bike path the multi-town grant that was mentioned that's going to have some signage and some amenities and so we want to give the town the option if we choose that we should do something later that this type of structure could be picked up and moved and reused by the town for another purpose so that you know we make that investment but it can be used later we've reached out to businesses we've reached out to the chamber and we've gotten lots of support we have a budget of $25,000 and most of you I think we got every chair but it has the budget on there which talks about one-time costs and some operating expenses we we're looking to continue operating expenses at later dates with support from the businesses we're hoping to have sponsorships we want to sell souvenirs we're also hoping to use that performance base next to the Uncle Sam statue to you know permit for other reasons for people to stop so it's things like music and everything what this does for Arlington is it gives us a place to tell our story because everyone always says oh you know we don't talk about our history we don't do this we don't do that and I tell people tell a story just keep telling the story and people will listen and this is a way for us to tell the story and it brings people in and we know that we have we have a hotel we have restaurants and when people go to those institutions specifically that revenue goes back directly to the town and then if they shop they come for a movie at the Capitol or they go to the Regent Theater they're supporting our business community and that keeps us vibrant I sometimes go to community development workshops and it's about you know revitalizing your downtown and if I say one disparaging word about oh you know this or that or anything everyone looks at me and they're like you're Arlington you have you have everything and you have all of those people coming in from out of town on the bike path and we do what we want to do is get everybody to just stop and pay attention and visit here and spend money so on behalf of a 10 we this is a really big priority for our committee we respectfully request your support for this article thank you thank you Mr. Tosti Allen by the way this is on page 27 of the Finance Committee report ever since I became part of the Arlington community in the late 60s we have complained about how conquered Lexington get all the glory and the visitors and the money and Arlington were as we've seen many times where the action was gets a footnote if we're lucky the only way to turn this around there was a Lexington Patriots Day Parade there was a conquered Patriots Day Parade there was a Boston Patriots Day Parade not even a mention of us in our parade the only way to turn this around is to educate people as they drive by as they walk by and as they bike by and show them the great restaurants we have the museums we have and tell them about this place and its history we finally have a group who is doing the legwork but they need our support to move their efforts along we think this is a great first step the visitor booth combined with the improved signage that we're going to see in the annual town media articles could put us on our way to improving our economy you know in our sort of place in history in our place in the world I think one common has been made sometimes you know a temporary booth isn't this a lot of money to spend for a booth that might not be there well first of all there's not a lot of places to put a visitor center in the town of Arlington it's not like Lexington that has a fairly expansive place so I have a feeling this visitor center visitors booth is going to be there for a long time and if we even if we decide like two years down the road or three years down the road this is working great we ought to find a place to put a permanent visitor center with facilities my guess is it's probably going to take another three or four or five years to find that to go through town meeting to go through the bids to find a process so I think it says temporary in the warrant but I think this booth will be around for quite a while no matter how successful it is so again we think this is a great first step this should move it along and we ask for your support thank you very much thank you mr. Leonard I'm interested in wherever this building is after we've spent the money and everything how can how can it be preventative maintenance be taken care of on it to prevent it from possibly being an object of tagging to me it sounds like it's a very nice idea but it's just basically a bull's-eye thought let's tag that as you all know tagging is a problem in the town of Arlington what preventative measures could be taken now to prevent possible tagging on a brand new building in town of Arlington mr. Tosti can you address that please well I think that the major thing is it's right in the crosshairs of two of our major streets in town there's traffic coming up Mystic Street all the time the area is well with and then you got traffic on Mass Ave so I think it's location when I've seen tagging especially on the bike path it's in secluded areas but this Clarissa could thank you Clarissa row precinct for as a person who deals with tagging in their everyday business as a landscape architect the most important thing to keep people from tagging is having a place staffed and that's the point of this building is that when people are out we'll have people in the booth to prevent the tagging but we appreciate John's concern and if he would like to sign up to be there we would accept his help you have such a way with words Carissa tagging is spray painting your name on something what do you call graffiti it's the new word for graffiti and right what I'm curious about mr. moderator is naturally somebody can't be there 24 hours a day mr. chaplain how are you going to protect this building from such bad things and how are you going to keep it nice repair over the next couple years Adam chaplain town manager frankly I don't think there is a way to absolutely prevent tagging of this building or any public or private building during overnight hours but as the as a Ted comes forward with implementation plan based on Mr. Leonard's concerns I'd I'd push them to put together within their operating costs that they budgeted a preventive maintenance plan in general for the building as well as possibly considering consider security cameras as well okay my second question mr. moderator at one particular time I was on the Patriot today committee in the town day committee and we had a couple of times were incidents would come up that the town to the best of my knowledge paid for walkie-talkies and there was a contest going back and forth between the two committees who owned the walkie-talkies who had the rights to use them they were town owned property it was like a contest back and forth that's what I'm about to say mr. moderate yeah if this is not going to be a permanent building at this particular time on a permanent site let's say are we possibly going to enter into a contest again where some people could say I don't know what you've said about the town page for this building we have something going up in the heights we'd like to take this building up in the heights for a day or so and put it up there you can't say no because it's town owned building mr. chapter lane how are you going to keep this building permanently affixed to that site and if you don't who's going to get the play with it Adam chapter lane town manager I we'd have to we obviously have to go through a procurement process but I don't foresee this building being so flexible that it can be trucked around and brought to different locations so where there will not be a problem in regards to it will I mean from from what I understand it's not that big that maybe a flatbed or something could possibly move it I suppose a flatbed couldn't move it because a flatbed would probably bring it in but I wouldn't foresee that happening without there being a greater public discussion with a 10 about whether or not it's successful in the location that it's in if it did come to it one last question if it did come to it who would would you with the the Allington tourist board if I'm getting it right would they be the people to give the last say on whether that building would be moved any other place in town I would imagine the last say would come between myself and the board of selection the board of selection as jurisdiction over the space it's in currently and wherever the other space was would be based on who has jurisdiction over that space okay thank you thank you sir mr. Hanna mr. Harrington Stephen Stephen Harrington precinct 13 I just have I'm going to vote no on this I have three issues one's location you know where they're talking about it's right at the intersection of Mass Ave 60 that's not really an attractive part of Allington even with a reconfiguration this is a building that's going to be shoe horned in and you've got to look at the backdrop it's a big building behind it two or three stories the only business that is close there I suppose I'm Miss moderators what's the closest business to this building that's Frank Chiara he's an attorney next to me yeah so attorneys so so it's not like you're gonna have visitors come in and spend dollars unless they're injured crossing the bike path or trying to get across Mass Ave or or Mystic Street there it's it's not a very attractive location and and so locations everything here and I can think of a dozen other locations in Allington that are so much better we've got a garden over here it's a great place for visitors to come you go up and look at visitor senators and other cities and towns and their attractive places are in attractive it's not shoehorned in as though and it would be out of scale I think it's not I don't think it's a well thought-out location for it I'm second I'm not too happy about you know the amount of money that's being spent on it you know eight head is sort of it's 25 thousand here it's 20,000 on designing signs it's gonna get $20,000 on another sign later today we're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars that is being done by a thousand cuts and you know we should have a plan and there should be a plan that's laid out and it should say this is how we're gonna do it and there should be quantitative metrics to say this money is going to earn this type of return to us and none of that exists and so so I don't like this because of you know it's yet another expenditure and $25,000 it's money it's real money and then finally I don't like this because I think that it's important that you know the town meeting consider carefully why this type of thing would be introduced now you know sort of between two controversial bands and on a special town meeting and and and what I mean by now is we're gonna tear apart that area soon and that's gonna take a year or more and there's gonna be a lot of changes in Eilinton on Mass Ave and we don't need to do this now and in fact I'd urge you not to do it now because there's plenty of time to do this later we can come back here next year there won't be a chance really to to put this building in place and then have it around a construction site which is again not the place you want visitors to congregate there's no parking and finally you know I just like to say that putting a visitor center in a location that's not attractive is cost money that you know I think is just thrown away and it's an it's a location that's better served by open space it's a I think there's plenty of storefronts in Eilinton you want a temporary site there's plenty of places to put it with a temporary location to start up a visitor center to do a capital expense which is what this is I don't know why it's not through the capital expenditure committee but to make a capital expense on something that is temporary certainly is no financially thank you very much I think this is a great idea I think it would be a real asset to the town so precinct name and precinct I'm very sorry Ted sharp precinct seven but I have to contradict my esteemed colleagues vision of this imagine it in total silence because as we all know busking is not allowed in the town of Arlington well actually it is if you get a permit busking is playing music making a public performance for money and this is prohibited by by law in the town of Arlington unless you get a license from the board of select men which is of course completely unavailable from the board of select men because there is no process so the vision of music I think is a wonderful vision that is currently impossible in our town and I would encourage you to encourage the board of select men to put in place a process by which people who wanted to play some music in town could have the right to do so thank you very much Mr. Reedy Allen Reedy precinct 16 I also think this is a fantastic idea and a relatively modest investment and you should go ahead and vote in favor of this mr. moderator with town meetings permission and like to request permission for Bruce Fitzsimmons to address this issue okay he's a resident he's also on the ARB so come on forward thank you mr. moderator thank you Allen just by two points of clarification Bruce Fitzsimmons I'm speaking tonight on behalf of the board of directors of the Arlington Chamber of Commerce and not as a member of the Arlington Redevelopment Board second point of clarification my office is also adjacent to this site I do not depend on walk-in business so I do not foresee that this is going to have any impact on my own financial well-being direct impact the Chamber of Commerce strongly supports this article and urges town meeting to adopted the town for the past several years has made a concerted effort to expand the role of tourism as a component of our economic development the visitors center will help these efforts take shape by providing a focal point for tourists visiting the town and will orient them to the town's historic sites and other points of interest this is really an investment in the town's future increasing public awareness of Arlington as a tourist destination bringing revenue to the town and its businesses and increasing the vitality of the town's commercial centers and heritage sites the Chamber enthusiastically supports this effort looks forward to working with the town and a Ted and strongly hope that town meeting will approve the article thank you thank you mr. Wagner you're next thank you mr. moderator Carl Wagner precinct 11 I'm also a recently turned former member of the uncle Sam committee of Arlington so I can't speak for the committee but I can say that this is a great location for a small building that kind of takes the vision of what mr. Fitzsimmons just said about our hiring of a tourism person our creation and building of the volunteer led a Ted committee to the logical next step which is to bring the people traveling through the town to see more and her hear more and learn more from a Uncle Sam perspective speaking personally I would say this is the house that we should call at least jokingly Uncle Sam's house the reason is the location obviously I would hope it looks a bit more like Uncle Sam's house might have looked I can't tell you what it looked like because Arlington knocked it down and its wisdom back between 1750 and 1800 so it was not so it was monotomy or West Cambridge or whatever that knocked it down but I hope you see this not just as an Arlington house but really as the place to turn more focus on Uncle Sam and I just say parenthetically that if you ask the Arlington historical committee or if you ask the Arlington historical society about Uncle Sam they really don't have anything to say so I hope that that'll be a major part of this house thanks thank you mr. Wagner Sean Harrington Sean Harrington precinct 15 move the question we'll motion to terminate debate all in favor of terminating the Blake debate please say yes my opinion that is a two-third vote we have a recommended vote of the finance committee for $25,000 all in favor please say yes my opinion that is an affirmative vote that brings us to article 4 mr. McCabe I recognize you mr. moderator Harry McCabe precinct 21 yes sir I rise to propose a substitute motion for article 4 yes sir copy was put on everybody's chair and there's a stack on the table at the rear of the hall if anybody hasn't received a copy these are on your chair Monday night yes mr. moderator I got you Sean yes sir mr. moderator it's an honor and a privilege to be asked to sponsor this proposed substitute motion who by the original petition is three of our finest young ladies members of the graduating class at Arlington high school not members of the body so they could not make this motion and I'm honored and privileged that they asked me to do that in any event I have a big town meeting member precinct 21 do hereby submit the following substitute motion for article 4 of the special town meeting yes sir you can submit it drive a second drive a second on mr. McCabe's motion it's before us mr. McCabe thank you before I read voted title 8 of the town by law B and hereby is amended by adding the following new article 9 following section article 8 article 9 sale of mr. McCabe it's not necessary to read it it's before us so you may want to preserve your time for the thank you I'd just like to read the first section okay go ahead thank you sales prohibited section one it shall be unlawful to sell non-carbonated unflavored drinking water in single serving polyethylene turf valet bottles of 1 liter 34 fluid ounces or less in the town of Arlington on or at the January 1 2014 the remaining sections deal with exceptions and enforcement and potential suspension of the bylaw mr. moderator the young ladies that proposing this sponsoring this article actually are in the auditorium and I request your permission and the permission of the meeting to have them come forward to speak to the article they are miss Sonia Zacher miss Amy Curl and miss Marina Milan and my understanding is that Amy Curl will speak for the group I believe all young women are residents of the town of Arlington so they have residents and citizens of the town yes they have permission to speak could they come forward please yes it is my pleasure to introduce Amy Curl the other two young women can come out if they want to and join in the fun second lady is miss Zacher third lady is Marina Milan I hope I got the pronunciation correct thank you mr. moderator thank you mr. moderator thank you Harry McCabe I'm Amy Curl precinct 13 and I'm here to propose article number four which is the substitute motion to ban the sale of non-sparkling unflavored drinking water and single-serving PET bottles of one liter or less in the town of Arlington I'll try to be brief but please bear with me I'm a little nervous this is my first time doing this I'm sure won't be my last as the president of safe club the environmental club at the high school I've been studying this issue extensively for the last four years and this year with the recent progress of concrete similar bylaw we believe that this could be the next step for Arlington as well bottled water is a small product but it has a large impact when it comes to the earth's future it is a product that was created to make money and when people while people may be able to afford bottled water the earth will not be able to sustain the current level of production and over consumption of it for much longer bottled water companies are using dangerous amounts of natural resources to package and market their product the production and transportation of bottled water uses more than 17 million barrels of crude oil every year if we the town of Arlington pass this article and stop the sale of bottled water the effects would be monumental the goal of this article is not merely to reduce our plastic consumption but also to educate Arlington about an environmentally friendly and healthier alternative tap water the tap water in Arlington is some of the cleanest water in the country as found in a study done by the MWRA Arlington residents can put their mind at ease knowing that what comes out of their tap is just as clean as bottled water if not more so tap water is regulated by the EPA while the FDA regulates bottled water the EPA the Environmental Protection Agency does hundreds of tests each month on tap water but the FDA the Food and Drug Administration only requires one report every month from a bottled water company furthermore major bottle water companies such as Aquafina and Desani sell bottled tap water and pass it off as spring water the water sources they use are not always as clean as the Arlington water supply additionally bottled water is often stored for long periods of time before consumption resulting in chemicals from the plastic like BPA leaching into the water health issues aside disposable water bottles have further environmental repercussions plastic water bottles are often thrown in the trash instead of being recycled and they still contain water this may not seem like a problem but the extra weight and energy required to burn the plastic and water costs the town of Arlington and its taxpayers more money every year even when they are recycled the harmful production of the bottles has disastrous environmental effects we also want to address some of the concerns that have come to light since the final of this substitute motion we would like to ban the sale of water bottles and not soda bottles because water is available free from the tap and the expensive bottled water is unnecessary it's a fairly new product and has only really come out in the last 20 years or so in addition Arlington was found in a study done by the Department of Public Health to have the least percent of overweight students out of any town in the state of Massachusetts we have faith in Arlington residents that they will be able to make smart decisions when it comes to their beverages and alternatives we wish to encourage those who want to make healthy choices to use reusable bottles as an alternative which saves money and resources in the long run this proposal is not about taking away people's liberties or their freedom to choose but about saving the planet and working towards a better future removing bottled water is a small task but it will have a big payoff when it comes to the environment and our planet's future buying soda should not be the natural alternative to buying bottled water carrying a reusable water bottle should be the natural alternative to buying bottled water and we hope to change that starting here and now there is an alternate substitute motion I understand to form a committee to study this but forming a committee will not be enough I have studied this issue for four years and banning the sale of single serving water bottles is the best solution for the problem at hand earth supply of natural resources will continue to deplete and if we refuse to take action now how would a committee be able to do better over the next year we have already done excuse me I and Sony Marina have already done over the last four years what this committee would be doing over the next year it's time to stop talking and start taking action you can take action tonight by voting in favor of article four and in favor of banning single serving bottled water thank you and I'm available for any questions should you have them thank you very much no this parliament stuff this behind if someone gets up and ask you a question I can just kind of wait over there by Chief Jefferson Diane behind town meeting member precinct 14 just very briefly and then Mr. Zeiner who is the store manager of Stop and Shop here in Arlington who's not an Arlington resident I'd like to he's requested to respect the request to speak to town meeting at the end of my very brief remarks I will just say on this I want to say kudos to Amy Corell and her two colleagues in terms of their presentation not only here tonight but at the Board of Selections meeting they've certainly done the research and I know they've worked on this for two or three years and then now appear before town meeting the Board of Selections I'll just say as my hat as a youth cheerleading coach yes it's a sport and a high school cheerleading coach this would not work for me as a coach of a youth sport right now we have very limited fountains in our fields as a matter of fact a lot of them get vandalized and they don't get replaced as well as you can't put your bottles under there and I can tell you when we're doing double sessions in August from 9 to 4 everyone does come down with a water bottle I do have a water bottle here tonight I've used it this is my third time I've refilled it with my Brita filter water so I say hats off to what they're trying to do and everything that the save club does but I can tell you as a youth and high school coach this would put undue burden on the the athletes that I coach in terms of keeping them hydrated as there are no alternative uses on our poxson fields as well as at the high school so with that if I could mr. moderator through you ask if mr. Zeiner the store manager of stock and shop could address town meeting what time does he live in I believe it's boxford we need the permission of the meeting for mr. Zeiman to speak all in favor please say yes the post mr. Zeiman please come forward you have remaining time five minutes and six seconds first I'd like to thank the town members introduce yourself Andrew Zeiner store manager stop and shop 56 burning bush drive in boxford thank you thank you I'd like to thank everyone for allowing me to speak Amy I believe your brother does work for me and if they should pass promise of the employee for at least a couple days so he has avoided the topic and I don't believe you know again I'd like to thank everyone I'm Andrew Zeiner and the store manager at your local stop and shop down the street as I'm often reminded the only supermarket in town I believe that will be changing soon on behalf of the stop and shop supermarkets we have concerns with the petition to amend the time by laws of Allenton to the prohibit the sales of non sparkling unflaved drinking waters and single-serve containers of one liter or less for the town at stop and shop we offer a variety of product to our customers a space constraint that we are in the store we strive to offer the wide selection of product throughout the store consumers now a time stop today a lot of demands for convenience bottled water is certainly a commodity that has just taken off as you can see in our weekly ad bottled water is in every single week Poland spring Aquafina the sunny every single week this proposal will impact sales and availability of product but will not address the major issue at hand which has been discussed we believe this proposal will force Allenton residents to purchase water bottles out of town it does not prevent individuals from bringing such containers into town in neighboring towns or when visiting relatives or vacationing but merely prevents the sales of one particular class of liquid it will reduce the consumption of water which the healthy and viable product for our consumers of all ages although it the intention is well deemed we feel the proposal ordinates is unfairly targets a single safe product and only dress a small portion of the litter expense and a single vital source which is water how often do we hear no soda but water this does not address the complex problem of what we do as a society with our waste the bottled water container itself is not the problem but the problem exists of what people do with container after consumption this represents a small segment of the waste stream stop and shop is strongly committed to being sustainable company and protecting the environment we strongly recommend believe in educating our consumers our customers and encouraging the recycling program is the best solution to aid in the protection of the environment we know that promoting the proper disposal recycling of such commodities is important since containers are such recyclable commodity they should be placed in those used in the small container for example local curbside collection of which I'm sure the town has and other collection agents that we have in town two minutes I run paragraph so we oppose the adoption of this measurement like to partner with the town of island to educate promotion recycling in fact tonight April 24th the town of conquered is holding and I'm sure everyone's talked about conquered in their minds and in their committees the town of conquered is voting on if they want to maintain their ban on water bottles so very interesting to see what their outcome is but stop and shop is going to record as opposing this we thank you for your time and consideration thank you miss Rice informs me the motion to appeal in conquered failed okay just for your information I was at it sir mr. Harrington thank you mr. moderator Sean Harrington precinct 15 I would like to first inform the committee that I will be withdrawing my substitute motion on article 4 but I will I would still like to speak on the never made it so you don't have to withdraw wise well throw it away then or recycle it well it's a good alternative so it's not hidden that I'm against a bottle water ban in Arlington and there are many reasons and I'm going to go into them for starters the claim by proponents of this ban is that it will reduce our plastic waste this is simply not true businesses will replace water with soda and other sugary drinks in plastic bottles PET and non-PET not only do these drinks have large amounts of sugar but contain higher plastic content not only that Arlington's trash does not go to a landfill it goes to an incinerator the bit this ban ignores environmental impact of other containers as well for example glass bottles there are many stores which sell water and glass bottles and glass bottles take more energy to produce and transport them plastic and wreak havoc upon recycling equipment a second claim is that if we ban bottled water then people will in turn go to tap water instead this claim has this claim has also been debunked the reality is that when bottled water is not available people will be more likely to simply buy other plastic bottled drinks instead of using reusable containers are searching for public sources this has been proven by our neighbors in the North Concord many businesses have shown an increase in soda soft drinks and what have you once the ban on water happened Arlington has a safe water supply however some dispensers of that water are not as clean as us like a mohan stated early according to the National Sanitation Foundation public water fountains contain 2.7 million bacteria cells in one cubic inch even more than public toilets which are sanitized more often using reusable reusable bottles isn't always an option either and sometimes you forget them you know people shouldn't be punished for forgetting that also this ban has a negative impact on people with medical issues that require drinking water that is filtered beyond municipal requirements there's a case in Concord where there's an 82-year-old woman whose body takes in more iron than it's supposed to so she drinks bottled a certain type of bottled water because of the way it's excuse me because of the way that the it's filtered but when she goes out into town she can't buy that bottled water yes she can bring reusable tainer with the water in it but she has arthritis so howling one of those big containers isn't necessarily good option for her this band would harm our weakest residents this band counters the idea of buying local it hurts commerce as experienced in Concord this band will lead Arlingtonians to buy bottled water and other commute in another community it would only make sense that when people leave to spend their money on water they will also buy other goods outside of Arlington instead of supporting local businesses in January Maria Rodale the CEO and chairman of Rodale Inc wrote an article called the bizarre insanity of banning bottled water for the for the Huffington Post Maria's company is the world's largest publisher of health and environmental content content and actually her company is the book that published an inconvenient truth and in her article she wrote banning bottled water might feel like a win in the short term but it's a major loss in the long term and the biggest loss is its misdirection of energy it creates in very intelligent people who could otherwise be solving real problems we should be putting efforts toward increasing business recycling in town other positive efforts could be to increasing recycling bins in public I've been up massive all the time I rarely see a recycling bin except one or two in the center I think that's something that we should remedy and not only that bottled water is a hundred percent recyclable we need to change minds not take away something because minds haven't been changed yet so in conclusion I please ask this body to vote down this substitute motion it's really a bad idea for the town of Arlington and quite honestly a bad thing for consumer choice thank you thank you thank you miss moderate Chris Loretty precinct seven in my day job I work as an environmental consultant and while I don't claim to have done a lot of work in the area of PET bottles I have looked some at the issue of their recyclability after I got a phone call last night after I had dozed off to sleep by one of the proponents I had asked her if she'd be willing to send me any background information they had on this article and she gave me the handout that she had emailed me the handout she had prepared for the select man and some of the content of which was recited earlier tonight and so I was inspired to do a little bit of research on my own and in these type of questions about different products and what's better tap water bottled water there's a whole field called life cycle assessment that's been established over the past ten or twenty years probably more common in Europe than in this country but still quite a few people do it and I found one nice study that was done by a graduate student at the university of Michigan called comparative life cycle assessment of bottled versus tap water systems and in it he compares tap water with various forms forms of bottled water and looks at the energy consumption the greenhouse gas emissions and other forms and environmental impacts and I think to the proponents larger point that we have tap water and it's a better choice than bottled water I'd say they're absolutely right the impacts of bottled water significantly greater than tap water and we do have very good tap water in this community but nevertheless I rise in opposition to the substitute motion and I do that because I think it lacks perspective and as Mr. Harrington said it's a distraction from really more important issues and activities that people could be focusing on to improve the environment I'd like to address a few of the specific points that were made by the proponents and some of them they may have stated tonight others they might have mentioned solely to this selectment one of them is the issue of BPA which is a chemical that's used in making some forms of plastic however it is not used in self-serve water bottles the citation that the students used was from a website for the American Camp Association and what they were talking about were polycarbonate bottles and polycarbonate bottles are the ones you used for reuse of water they've been largely replaced now by stainless steel bottles and in some cases the polycarbonate bottles are used for the five gallon five gallon water bottles but it is BPA is not used in self small single-serve drinking water bottles so you can eliminate any concern you might have about that the other thing I'd like to address is the question of recycling as Mr. Harrington noted PET is very easily recycled and as I looked around this room Mr. moderator I saw any number of people who are very likely wearing recycled PET bottles and the reason for that is is PET is a form of polyester and it's very commonly used in fleece manufacture some manufacturers of fleece like Polar Tech claim that all of their product contains at least some recycled PET and so Mr. Harrington assures me that he is wearing a jacket that contains recycled PET bottles most most polyester carpet sold in this country is the majority of that material is recycled PET this is a material that can be used and is used extensively in recycled form and certainly there is there are opportunities for a lot more of it to be recycled I'm not sure it's quite as low as as the students have have asserted but that's an opportunity the other thing I think we need to give some perspective on is the greenhouse gas emissions that result from these systems or the you know the manufacturer the bottles use the water the one study I looked at when you did the calculations it worked out of greenhouse gas emissions of about point three pounds per bottle to put that in perspective every time you use a gas burn a gallon of gasoline in your car you burn you're releasing about 20 pounds of CO2 emissions for about 70 times as much the figure of 17 million barrels of oil equivalent being used to manufacture the bottles is correct but you need to put that in perspective a year that perspective as well that's an annual figure this country uses 19 million barrels of oil per day what that means is the amount of oil equivalent going into these bottles is less than one quarter of one percent of our energy consumption I think it's hard to argue that we're really looking at a depletion issue here and what that suggests to me is that the energies really should be should be focusing on that other 99.75 percent and so I'd suggest the the real opportunities are increasing recycling and also increasing the availability of tap water I'm glad here one of the select and mentioned the issues with the town parks there's things that can be done locally like establishing policies for ensuring that all of the drinking water fountains in town are continuously operating that they have filling stations for bottles there's also opportunities at the state level this state has a very weak building code in terms of requiring drinking water fountains right now I believe TD garden has none because they're allowed to do that other states are far more progressive in requiring that that public buildings and any building indeed that's open to the public has drinking water available and indeed I understand that one of the proponents works for one of our state representatives I think that would be a far more effective and useful activity than trying to limit bottles just in the town of Arlington so in closing I do appreciate the activity of the proponents but they're really much better in much more significant actions they could take than than what they're doing by trying to ban bottled water here in Arlington thank you thank you Mr. Dunn Mr. Swilling Nathan Swilling precinct four and move the terminate debate on matters Mr. Swilling's made a motion to terminate debate on matters before the article all in favor please say yes opposed in my opinion that is a two-thirds vote okay okay we have before us the substitute motion made by Mr. McCabe you all have had this on your chair all in favor of Mr. McCabe substitute motion please say yes opposed okay that is approved now we're going to have the recommended vote no wait a second defeated I'm sorry the nose one it's getting late I'm sorry okay now we have the recommended vote of the Board of Selectment of no action all in favor please say yes opposed no at recommended vote of no action wins no gonna do some things first first of all I want to congratulate the three young women on their civic exercise in learning how to bring an article before town meeting going through all the motions and doing it properly and with respect everybody thank you very much and good luck next time and join town meeting when you turn 18 oh why aren't you here why aren't you here mr. Tosti I move that article one be taken from the table all in favor please say yes I move that the special town meeting be dissolved all in favor dissolving this special town meeting please say yes all opposed I declare a special town meeting absorbed we are adjourned for the evening see you next Monday