 Okay, thanks. Well, thanks everybody for attending our forum tonight. I'm Ann LaRoyer. I'm the chair of the open space committee and really want to thank you for participating in this important planning process for the town. So joining me tonight are as you may be able to see on your screen other members of the open space committee. And, along with Kelly line Emma who's the assistant director of planning, and David Morgan, the environmental planner and a conservation member of the town, as well as Christian Moravek and her some of her other staff members from Horsley Witten group. That's the consultant group that we're working with to prepare this open space and recreation plan update. We especially want to thank the Community Preservation Act committee for awarding us a CPA grant so that we could hire this great firm to help to help us on this process. We have a short introductory presentation about the plan, and you'll be hearing about the feedback we've received already from the survey which I'm sure most of you probably already took. We received over 1000 responses which was a really great response so we have lots of good ideas from that, and lots of other information that Horsley Witten and the town has staff has been collecting about the current status of life in Arlington that we would like to put into this plan. You'll also be hearing about some of our key priorities and the community needs that have been expressed already. And then we'll be breaking out into small groups for about 45 minutes or so to brainstorm how these issues can be crafted into new goals and objectives to address the needs that have been expressed. Then at the end, we'll come back together to share these ideas from each of the different groups. Briefly, the open space committee is a volunteer town committee that's responsible for preparing and monitoring the town's open space and recreation plan. We have to follow state guidelines in this comprehensive document that describes the community's current open space and recreation resources and outlines an action plan to address the documented needs over the next seven years. Arlington has had an approved open space and recreation plan in place since 1996 when the open space committee was first established. Keeping the plan current through regular updates like this one helps to maintain and enhance the environmental social and economic benefits for all of Arlington's residents and makes the town eligible for a variety of state grants for implementing new projects. For example, Arlington has just been, has been awarded over a million dollars from the Land and Water Conservation Fund for numerous projects across town over the past decades and most recently more than $300,000 toward the Arlington Reservoir Reservation Project, which has been ongoing for several years. Since the plan was last updated in 2015, we've accomplished a lot of the goals and objectives that were set out in that plan. But now here we are revisiting those goals and trying to put together a new set of objectives and needs for the for the next seven years ahead. So Kristen Moravik from Horsley Whitten is going to provide more information about the background, and then later we'll get into the breakout group so thanks again for coming and enjoy the show. Thanks. Thank you very much and so I'm just going to do a high level overview of the plan itself. And to touch on some of these pieces. So, what first, what is open space so when we talk about open space and the open space and recreation plan we're talking about public and private land that is underdeveloped for a variety of reasons. That might provide public access to nature, it protects water quality or might protect habitat, like wetlands or threatened species. The location piece of the open space and recreation plan is a little more understandable these are indoor outdoor facilities so these are parks or playgrounds or ball fields or basketball courts, all of those things. So why do we have a plan so and touched on some of these we want to maintain the benefits of these resources, the economic benefits, they bring people into town. So places where we gather as a community and obviously they have environmental benefits, cleaning our air and cleaning and having clean water. They also guide decisions, policy decisions for open space, natural resources, and recreational issues so it's a policy plan is a policy document that's helping the town make these decisions. And then as and mentioned it supports efforts to acquire funding through DCS and other sources, having an approved plan ensures that the town remains eligible for those DCS funds. So this is an overview of our process and our milestones so we started looking at data and reports and plans and doing interviews we updated all those inventories in the plan looking at local conditions. We held a public forum in June and talked about community needs we also did a survey and as mentioned we had incredible response over 1000 responses. So right now we're talking about goals and objectives in this this evening and that will help us move forward and drafting our plan will distribute that plan for comment and support, specifically looking for those letters of support from the select board the redevelopment board and the Metropolitan Area Planning Council MAPC and we then then submit it to DCS for their review and approval. We anticipate doing that either late winter so after the new year or early spring. So there have been a lot of efforts planning efforts and other other effort studies that have been done around open space and recreational planning these are also informing the update process and we don't want to repeat what's already been done we want to build on these so we're taking a lot of this into consideration as we update the open space and recreation plan. So what is in the plan so it does have 11 required sections that I will not touch on but it offers a community snapshot so demographics housing information it has environmental inventories. So needs so needs for natural resource protection needs for the community needs of the town to help manage these resources has goals and objectives and then there's a seven year action plan that offers detailed strategies to meet those goals and objectives who's responsible for them in the timeframe that the town expects to get them implemented. So what have we heard so far. So around those sections of needs. What have we heard so natural resource protection. So there, there's a need to continue to improve water quality and access to resources and add green space, and specifically around trees already work being done around that spy pond and the and the res Arlington reservoir. There was a lot of input around public trees and protecting public trees and increasing the tree canopy in the community, educating the public about trees on private trees and their importance. And then also thinking about a tree management, the tree management plan and managing all that information around new trees that are being planted and wildlife habitat and quarter so building corridors between these open spaces and parkland and conservation areas so creating those borders not only for wildlife but also for us to move between them and enhancing them in different ways if it's through native plantings, or other water quality improvements like this one here at Wellington Park. So community needs. We heard a lot about walking and biking safety, specifically around the minimum bikeway safety, using the bike path, the bikeway access to it so identifying some limited access points, but also connections to that bikeway from neighboring community neighboring residences, and the safety of those connections. And also when we think about walking and biking connections also between resources. There was also some needs expressed around new resources and amenities on new opportunities so more space for on programmed or unstructured events or activities. There was a lot of input around an indoor outdoor pool, new way finding signs that kind of link all of the town resources together. There's also a lot of discussion about new popularity around new activities like pickleball. So we heard a lot about new opportunities that the community is looking for. So finally, environmental justice and equity so thinking about who has access to resources, do all neighborhoods have access, thinking about 80 accessibility and how to improve that, and then priority areas that that need additional resources. And finally management needs. So improvements upgrades and maintenance of existing resources so having the need for a long term management plan of those resources, either the town properties and all their lands. There's a lot of regulatory scheduled maintenance for recreational areas. Also, in management of conservation areas, whether it's invasive species management or those types of needs, and sort of the connections that departments make and their roles and those and those capacity to build to do that maintenance and that improvement. And then development and redevelopment with protecting enhancing natural resources so integrating useful open spaces and new development projects and and thinking about infill and those new efforts and how to enhance them with more green space connecting to nearby amenities and building those connections. And finally climate change and natural hazards so you know that that there's two pieces to that so adapting to changes that are already happening related to climate or anticipated, and then being proactive and reducing, for example, the, the town's plan and, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions so different ways that the town can have policies to do that the town has a net zero plan so building on that. And how do we incorporate that into the open space and recreation plan. Okay, so tonight's discussion so and and mentioned we're interested. So we're focusing on the open space and recreation plan goals so we're going to look at the goals from the theme plan, and think about are they still relevant. Are they are they meeting the needs that we've heard from the community, what needs to change are their things missing. So I'm going to touch on each of one of those. And we've sort of we're not interested in wordsmithing tonight we're really interested in ideas and themes that we should be focusing on. So we'll start with goal one so goal one is focused around conservation and preservation so this is how it reads so acquire ecologically value undeveloped lands, or ensure their protection through conservation restrictions and other means. So here the theme is conservation and preservation of undeveloped lands. So we're really interested in thinking about is this goal still relevant is this theme still relevant and what are some ways in which the town can make action on that so thinking about directing statements policies objectives that the town should be thinking about under that goal. The second goals around maintenance enhancement so this is for both open space resources like watersheds water bodies natural areas but also parks playgrounds and outdoor recreational areas, historic and cultural landscapes as well so thinking about the maintenance enhancement of existing resources in Arlington. Both three focuses on local and regional coordination and communication so this is talking about coordination and communication between town departments between different commissions and volunteer groups, but also on a regional level with neighboring towns and other regional agencies, state agencies, federal agencies that help with natural resource and open space recreational planning issues. goal number four is public awareness and access so increasing the public's knowledge of the resources in town, increasing accessibility to those resources promoting stewardship of those resources. Finally sustainability and resilience so this is around the client around addressing climate change, meeting climate change challenges and natural resource management associated with those issues. So what I want to do is just do a quick temperature check with just those gold with those. Just as your quick reaction, are they still relevant. Are they, they're relevant but they do need to be updated or you feel like this goal or this theme around this goal is no longer relevant and it really should be removed so I'm going to pop up a poll. Each goal is listed and you can answer that those three choices for each goal so the first goal conservation preservation is this goal still relevant. Yes, yes but needs to be updated no no longer relevant and should be removed. Goal to on maintenance and enhancement. All three. There we go. Goal three on local and regional coordination and communication, both form public awareness and access, and then finally goal five on sustainability and resiliency. So we're just doing a quick temperature check. So feel free to for taking our poll. Can you explain how to do it because I'm clicking on the yes, but so I think our open space members who are co hosts. Oh, don't think you will be okay the quiz or the poll I'm sorry. So we're asked. Sorry about that. All the, all our resident guests, please do it. Anyone who's able please click and answer. So we're just trying to get an idea before we go into our rooms. I see some updates, people need to be updated so I'm going to give it. One more seconds. I'm going to end the poll, and now I'm going to share the results. So folks can see the results so it looks like most folks feel the goals are still relevant, relevant but need to be updated. There is, maybe we'll need to revisit goal for if that is still relevant on should be removed we did have a response to that so that I appreciate you taking that it helps us when we go before we go into our rooms. So we're going to help us sort of decide where we might be focusing our efforts. So in our rooms as I mentioned so we're going to each room will have a facilitator, and I'll walk you through each of the five goals and really the themes like I could said we're not we're not trying to wordsmith we will do that the open space committee is definitely going to do that but we're going to run the goal as a theme, and what are the key issues that it meets, and what are the key issues that it might not meet but what are those key issues and how will it address those. And then we want to know what are some principles or direction that statements or other sorts of suggestions to help guide the town as it makes decisions to meet that goal. So is there sort of an overarching policy or direction that it should be taken, and then thinking about environmental justice and equity and how can we use that goal and in the in that theme of that goal to meet those sort of those objectives around environmental justice and equity. So we all like to think about actions so taking an opportunity to think about what might some of those priority actions would be under this goal, and we think about priority actions you know this is a seven year plan so priorities were one that we probably would think we would want to address in the first, you know three years, once this plan gets underway. So giving an opportunity to think about that a little bit. And then finally, after you've gone through all those goals you know what is there anything that's missing you know what else should we be thinking about is there another goal or another theme that's not being addressed in those five that the committee should be thinking about a few ground goals. Obviously we want to be kind and respectful of each other. You know we want to be concise we want to be respectful of people's time. So we're going to spend about 45 minutes in the room. So try to be focused in your in your, in your answers there is an email and that will present at the end so if you have further ideas you can always reach back out to us. We want to be open to new ideas. We want to be patient with technology as always. And we want to have fun. So here's an opportunity to talk with your neighbors and your, your friends about these issues. And I'm going to stop sharing my screen. So we can see each other. Thank you. How many groups. I have to break our groups all set I have three groups of about eight or nine people. Right. And so everyone I will be issuing invitations to those breakout groups, please hit accept, although if you don't or you miss it. I'll be able to put you in a breakout group as soon as we all break out. So have everyone reconvene in about 45 minutes and I'll send out a warning, but a minute in advance of that so everybody knows that it's coming. All right, so if we're ready. I'm going to open these rooms. And here we go. You should be seeing a invitation on your screen. You just have to hit you have to accept. I don't see an invitation. I can join a breakup room. If you wish you're hanging out. I'm going to, I'll try to send you to do something pop up just now. No, I can. I, I said, are you hoping assigned to break up room three. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Hi, Ed, are you having a problem joining a breakout group or just not feeling it tonight. Hey, Kelly. Hey, Susan, how are you? Good. How are you? I have to leave for the tree committee meeting a 730 unfortunately. Oh, okay. Well, it's good to see you. How are you doing? Did you want to join a group for five minutes or just one of them? Well, I'm actually like hysterically looking for the tree committee agenda. So, which, you know, in the starts in five minutes. Okay. We don't take it personally. I'm sure we'll have an, we'll have an opportunity for you to provide feedback. I just want to say something very quickly to you about that. You sent today. Oh no, I think I actually responded. We're talking about by law changes. Sure. And it made us feel so good that you quoted, you sent us the quote of the consultant. On the housing plan. You said that we, you know, it would be, yeah, that there was a value in encouraging builders to save trees. Absolutely. But you know what, which is the whole point of the bylaw, of course, but we never presented it that way. I mean, it's not like it right now, it's kind of punitive, like you can't take this down. If you take this down, you need to be able to pay all this money rather than let's figure out a way to preserve the trees rather than let's figure out a way to punish you for taking down the trees. So, the goal is to keep the older trees up. I know that is the best, but it's so much, so much more of a positive. Oh, sure. And it's often that, you know, people see development and especially development of affordable housing is somehow against environmental goals and I just think they're, I think, there are so many ways about thinking them in, in companionship with each other. In particular, when you're thinking about households who need affordable housing, having access to those environmental resources and, and, you know, the benefits of a large tree canopy, that's, that's even more important. So, yeah, yeah. So anyway, I want to tell you that you know, I'm so I'm glad I'm glad and I know it's probably a little weird to just see that probably not the place you were expecting to see a recommendation about the tree bylaw pop up. But I'm glad you bought into my attention and I'm glad our consultants were so quick to respond. So, yeah, and tell the consultant that you, that he or she I don't know what it is really made our day. Okay, great. I will. Well, good luck finding your agenda and all right. Thank you. Bye bye. Hi, thanks. That's for my life son. Hi Kelly, thanks for saying hello. Nice to see you. Nice to see you too. Nice to see you too. I hope the breakout group was good. Yes, and I dread them but they're really good. It's interesting and a lot of meetings you mentioned breakout groups and suddenly like five people leave. Welcome back everyone we're just pulling everyone in from the breakout groups. I hope everyone had a fruitful discussion. Okay, I think we have everyone back. Hello. Looks like everyone. Oh, there we are. Hi everyone so what I thought we could do is have our facilitator sort of give us a little bit of feedback on some of the goals that they had. And I can maybe assign a goal to a particular facilitator and they can just give us some feedback on on that goal. So I'm going to go ahead five so I'll start with our first goal which was on conservation and and preservation and could I start with you Jeff, and maybe if there was some, you know maybe a guiding direction that came out of your group related to conservation and preservation or some priority strategies that might have been brought up. And the group was, you know, first of all questioning how many opportunities are for new conservation land in the town, a lot of most obvious places are already accounted for. So there was discussion of of course to move your property, but also for brainstorming some of those smaller areas that might have some have some good value so areas along no brook that might be conserved. Not only conservation but help with water quality and so forth. We're talking about hooks hollow talking about some areas around spy pond that might be appropriate for conservation. To what extent we can encourage private property owners who have large expanse of open space or larger expensive open space to accept conservation easements for their properties. Great. Thank you. Kelly, how about gold to maintenance and enhancement, maybe some guidance or some priorities that may have come out of that goal to help support it. Sure, we definitely had a few priority actions that we had some interest in. Obviously, we acknowledge that maintenance and enhancement is reliant on costs and funding which can sometimes be a challenge. One of the things that we were interested in is thinking about signage and educational signage so again tying into kind of more the public awareness aspect of that. And how can you enhance park space to also serve that educational benefit. And also some interest in bathroom facilities and thinking how can we make our bathroom facilities not just nicer but also a little greener thinking about composting facilities. And then just making sure that facilities like trash cans and whatnot are available and accessible and actually usable for for individuals visiting town facilities. So I'll take goal three which was local and regional coordination and communication and so we talked a little bit about the coordination between the different departments and their different roles and maintaining in the upkeep of the, you know, recreational spaces and open space areas and just having that communication and enhance and making sure that everyone understands their role and how that happens. We did have a touch on schools so we didn't, you know, and they also have facilities that are related to recreation like playgrounds and ball fields and sort of have a better understanding and how that coordinates and usage of those with outside communities throughout the whole time. And there were some. We had some discussion about communication between the different committees and you know if there are there's a lot of areas of interest, you know, a lot of objectives cross over the different committees so finding ways to make communication and to bring folks aware of a meeting like this. So we had someone from the disability Commission so obviously an issue that's important to them also important to different, the open space committee who's hosting tonight so making sure there's that cross connection between those two. So I have goals four and five which I'm going to circle back to Jeff. And if he wanted to touch base on public awareness and access. And, you know, I will say we did realize you know a lot of our these goals there's elements that overlap, and it's hard to put things in a single bucket and we do recognize that so. Some things that we talked about in one goal may have been talked about in another so, and I'm just thinking about the public awareness and access may have been one of those but I'll throw it back to you Jeff. Absolutely. So we did. We also had someone representing accessibility in our group, so did discuss improving the accessibility, making sure that roadways sidewalks ramps. All of the facilities are accessible for all. Talked about this also specifically in regards to community gardens, make sure the elderly. You know the community gardens are, you know, sometimes you only can't bend over to plant something so you can have raised beds or whatnot to keep the elderly involved in in gardening. Definitely talked about partnering with the school system. Working environmental awareness and stewardship of the land into the school curriculum. Someone noted that there is a sustainability coordinator at the Arlington public schools was a great resource for making those connections. Also just wondering ways you know like not everyone has the capacity to join a friends of group we had a lot of conversation about the friends of groups of various groups in in the town on you know. There are people who are going to want to get very involved in that and there's some people who just you know, want to do their part but don't have time to be part of a committee. So how can we better communicate to the public here are some simple things that you can do in your homes in your day to day life to improve sustainability. Talked about maybe getting neighborhood block leaders to serve as those points of communication within neighborhoods because people are more likely to listen to their neighbors, then you know having to look up information actively from from the town website or what have you also talked a lot about signage like there are ways that at conservation properties at park lands use signage to educate the public about the different strategies in terms of plantings or native species, or you know reducing invasive species, or not dumping into the sewer system just that whole range of using signs to improve public awareness about maintaining our public properties and maintaining the environments in general and then finally talked about being aware of accessibility in terms of language, or for the hearing impaired, or the visually impaired, and making sure that all that communication is available different languages and other sources. Thank you, Jeff. And Kelly if you don't mind I'm going to throw goal five at you and see what your group talked about around sustainability and resilience. sustainability and resilience. We talked a lot about stormwater management. And so we had a couple of individuals mentioned that there's a lot of asphalt and so thinking how can we better improve coordination within the town. If we have some sort of road repaving project is that an opportunity for us to install green stormwater infrastructure and thinking about how to better coordinate. So we had a time table of not just improving the roads pavement wise but improving them so that there is better stormwater management. We also mentioned that this might be a chance to kind of look at town ordinances and see whether the current stormwater management ordinance is proactive enough and doing a good job mitigating flooding in the area and improving water quality. And last but not least time back into this public education piece we talked about, you know, is this an opportunity to inventory where we're using green stormwater infrastructure throughout the town, making some sort of map and visual for individuals to use to explore GSI facilities in the town and learn more about that potential model. Thank you. So we, one of our last asks was any, anything that we missed our new goals and I will be honest our group didn't get to that and I didn't know if Jeff or Kelly if you had any new ideas that came out of your group, or if you had a chance to get to that piece. No, we were talking about goal five right up until the last few seconds. We talked about it for a few minutes and echoing I think Jeff's group. We really focused in again on the value of signage and using signage to raise public awareness and, you know, enhance existing facilities. Yeah, great. Thank you. So that I all valuable information and we, you know that's really we're really appreciative of your time this evening and so our, our charge now is to take your direction or your ideas and sort of revisit these goals and, and update them where they need to be updated just to sort of meet the challenges of the needs that we heard. So with that, I don't know if and if you had any closing remarks I can share the email that folks you know after you leave tonight you might have an aha moment, and you want to reach back out to us. We do have a website, many screens. And as you care that I do want to know. So, I know everyone here may have seen the announcement that David Morgan is our new environmental planner and conservation agent so this is. He is managing this project now and he is here tonight and we have, we've asked him to provide the clinics closing statement but also just a big round of welcome to David, we're very excited to have you with us. And so thank you so much for joining the DPCD team. And we look forward to working with you on this and other initiatives. Absolutely. Thank you. And if you, if you wanted to give your closing remarks first I'd be happy to follow up on this. Just briefly I didn't I just realized I was unmuted before when I started, but mostly I just want to thank everybody for for coming here and we really value your input at this phase. So, you know that we have a way to for you to continue to communicate with us through this OSRP update email or contacting any of us individually. And if you have friends and other people that you know around town and your neighbors, please, you know after this event share what you've learned and, you know, be sure that they feel like they can access our website and email address to continue to this process and we will be drafting up the document, the plan itself as Christa mentioned and we'll be sharing at least parts of it with the community in the future so hope to continue to get your input on that. So thanks again. All right, go. David welcome. Thank you everybody as I described and others. It's been wonderful to hear from you tonight. We heard some very important and insightful feedback. So, on behalf of the department planning and community development, just want to thank you for your time and efforts. You're all very committed folks and appreciate your involvement. And mentioned that we're going to be compiling things will be circulating that with the open space committee, as well as other municipal departments that will become part of the record and ultimately shape the plan as it is developed the spring and I heard a number of important questions that I wanted to raise up a few themes that I caught over the breakout groups. One was engaging private land home land holders to support town initiatives, especially around best management practices for for stormwater, but also other concerns and also how to encourage owners of larger lots to share land to the town, or perhaps a third party as a conservation restriction. There's a lot of arm around signage. We heard about providing cues for, you know, indicating the use of open space it's management, the history, the potential of the space. There are a couple of places where the town should improve thinking about communications from the town to the citizens and also amongst committees within sort of the town circles, and certainly on ADA accessibility that came up a number of times. So that's how to improve from the bikeway to gardens parks, and so forth. So, the final steps of course will be delivering an action plan. We're working on this seven year timeline and will be starting to circulate some of these new objectives as they've been discussed tonight and reshaped in the early spring of the coming year. Thank you again for all of your participation. I hope you'll continue giving feedback. I know this is the last public meeting but we do certainly welcome all of your input and thank you. Have a great rest of your evening. And thanks again for your participation. Thank you all. Thank you very much. And everyone. Thanks, Krista. Thank you. Thank you. Good night.