 Hello everyone, welcome. I'm James Milan and this is an episode of our series Town Meeting Matters where we prepare and provide information for town meeting members and for the Arlington public in general around things that will be coming up in town meeting and we've got a number of warrant articles as always on the agenda for this town meeting coming up and with us to kind of walk us through some of the main ones is our town manager, Adam Chapdelane. Adam you know you are a voice of authority on these things I think so we appreciate your taking the time to be with us. Of course, my pleasure. I'll do my best. Appreciate it. We won't go through all 25 of the warrant articles but we will take several of the either more significant, the higher profile etc. ones and speaking about high profile I'd like to start I know that there are a couple of warrant articles and they're dealing with very different aspects of policing in Arlington but I wanted just to ask you about those first if you can explain the two warrant articles dealing with police matters. Of course so there the I would say that the primary article dealing with policing is around establishing a study committee to look at some type of either civilian review or civilian advisory committee and that was filed by a group of residents back in the spring and as part of the select board's commitment the select board refiled that on behalf of the residents for this special town meeting. Some slight changes were made in cooperation with the article proponents just I would I think I would simply describe it as to make the potential scope of what's recommended the town meeting a little more broad than what had been what had been put forth in the spring and that was that was a nice effort between the residents town council and some members of the board. So ultimately what the board voted on was favorable action to create a study committee that would look at the potential establishment of some type of third party or independent board that could receive complaints about the police department but also for this study committee to look at various policing models and police staffing to be able to come back to town meeting in the future and advise us as to whether or not a new body should be created or if this body finds that there should be other changes made to the way we police in Arlington. I think there's you know certainly a lot of opinions on all sides of this matter and I can't obviously speak for each individual member of the select board but I think the general sense the general sense from the board is that we're proud of the Arlington police department for the good work that they have done for a long time and the good work that they continue to do but we've been at a moment in this nation also for a long time where making sure we're doing our due diligence to analyze and study the way we police and potentially the way we receive complaints about policing is a worthwhile endeavor and now certainly speaking for myself I don't see it as any indictment of the Arlington police department. I see it as a recognition of the need to have these discussions in Arlington and frankly I'm sure it's a discussion I know it's a discussion that's happening in many communities across both Massachusetts and the nation. So again what would be established if town meeting voted favorably on this article is a study committee. It wouldn't actually establish a civilian review board or make any changes just a committee that would study and have to bring something back to town meeting at the latest by the annual town meeting of 2022. Certainly could bring back recommendations sooner than that but we want to make sure that the reality is working on such a complicated matter and bringing something back by the spring of 2021 is probably very difficult to do. Could be some recommendations that come forth sooner but the entire analysis will likely take longer and frankly the entire community engagement that will be required will take longer. So we'll have a broad and diverse membership on this committee if put together representatives of both town government and the community the police department and the community and hopefully it will be both a committee that in and of itself works very well together to tackle these challenging issues but also engages the community to make sure that we're doing the best we can based on how Arlington wants to be policed. Okay yeah I just had one quick question before you move on to the other Warren article related to the police and that is yeah you mentioned the composition of the committee is a cross-section of different folks or different representatives of different bodies in town and my understanding is that it will be 10 members of the committee seven of whom will be voting members and then the other three coming from you know the police department and other other representative agencies but how were those to the extent that you know how were those the seven voting members how were they how were they chosen and can you give us an idea of you know perhaps not cataloging all seven but just an idea of some of the groups that are going to be represented there. Yeah absolutely so the initial proposal was made by the article proponents so made by community members and then feedback was given by the select board on either changing the way the membership looked and I think a few potential members were added at the recommendation of some of the select board members during the hearing for this warrant article so that's sort of the how how we got there and we're looking at having town meeting members be part of it members of the Human Rights Commission and other committees in town so we're trying to take from I think the idea was to take from established groups that have knowledge and expertise about how some of these things work as well as having an opportunity for people in the community who maybe have had their voices marginalized in the past to be able to be part of this discussion as well so again I think there will be a good balance between people that are already familiarized with town government and others who might not be so familiarized with town government or at least not with the inner workings of the police department and hopefully that will be a good balance that can create an engaging dialogue okay thank you for that and the other article related to the police has to do with something very very different but that's going to be a potential new role for retired police officers go ahead and explain that please yes so this this is certainly separate from the article we just talked about but via collective bargaining a couple years ago or maybe better part of a year ago the town agreed via via my office to bring forward a request to town meeting and ultimately to the legislature to allow retired police officers in Arlington to work traffic details it's a common practice in many other municipalities but I actually don't know the history of it entirely but was never something adopted in Arlington and really what this will do is is just deepen our ranks to allow for traffic details to be filled right now when a traffic detail goes unfilled in Arlington it can often go to police officers from outside of Arlington so we regularly have police officers from surrounding communities that come in and perform traffic detail work in Arlington I feel pretty strongly that with no nothing untoward to be said about those departments or officers but I'd rather have officers that are under the command of chief flurry policing in Arlington even if it's a traffic detail and I think it will take a little bit of pressure off of our own officers for feeling like they need to feel feel every detail I know officers certainly will continue to feel feel details as that's a significant part of their earning but but I think it will take a little bit of pressure of them knowing that there's a you know more of a force behind them that can take some of these details and I also know completely separate from the police department often especially in the summer months when we're we are trying to get a lot of work done as the town the utilities are trying to get a lot of work done it's tough to fill these details you know sort of the overlap with the construction season and the vacation season can create this situation where we don't we're not always able to fill details and that can make it hard to get work done so if we have a deeper pool of people who can fill these details I know again separate from the police department other departments will be able to get work done more effectively yeah that makes a lot of sense I know that there are a number of restrictions I looked at the the warrant article long enough to realize just to see that there are a number of restrictions as to who would qualify and what it is that they need to to do and my understanding is that one of those that are that seem significant to me is that it's got to be retired officers for with less than five years off the force yes yeah I mean we want to make sure that these are retired officers who are capable of performing the duties we want to be performed by a traffic detail officer and so yeah there are yeah we're we're making sure that the people were putting forth their fit and let me just clarify one last thing and that is my understanding from from reading the article is that they will have the ability the special officers will have the ability to operate just like police officers in both the detail the the the things that are predictable within a detail and then anything else that might arise correct they will have police power as well working these traffic details they won't be working doing shift work or working police overtime but when they are in detail if there was a situation that arise that required a police response they could be utilized in that regard okay thanks thanks for that clarification moving on there is another warrant article that is basically meant as I understand it to set up a trust fund to apply or to support affordable housing I have a couple of questions about it but why don't you explain it first sure so to take the words of director of planning and community development Jenny rate at the select board meeting on Wednesday I think nearly everybody agrees in Arlington that we need more affordable housing how we do that where it should go the level of density required to achieve it significant disagreement in the community but yet I certainly have heard over the years almost universal agreement that we need affordable housing what this will do is allow us to create a pot of money that once it's capitalized and to be clear this proposal does not capitalize it we're not asking we're not raising new money or appropriating money it just creates the vehicle but once available this will give the town more flexibility to be able to incentivize assist or create affordable housing whether it be with a private developer who is working through the process of inclusionary zoning with the ARB or with our existing community development corporation the housing corporation of Arlington or potentially even with the Arlington housing authority this will give us a pot of money that won't have to wait to go back to a town meeting for appropriation or wait for CDBG funding or a future grant application for CPA so it allows us to be more nimble and hopefully more effectively create affordable housing when opportunities arise okay so you mentioned that it is just that this proposal is simply to create this vehicle correct and that it is not being capitalized within this proposal in other words no money is being promised or supplied at the moment correct however if it's gonna if there's gonna be any effectiveness to it at all money will have to be invested and so are we to assume that that will be a separate warrant article at some point how to capitalize it or you know I think people are going to be interested to know okay let's say we create this thing and we all agree that it that it it merits uh you know being here but how are we gonna fund it oh is that more money out of my pocket uh many people might wonder that a completely fair question and I think the first thing I'd say is this the creation of this vehicle does not pre does not absolutely mean future funding happens right so that the town meeting will still have the discretion to decide what type of funding to put into this fund one possibility in the future is that Community Preservation Act CPA money could be put into this fund they could decide they want to put some amount of money into this trust so that this trust could be had more nimble again to incentivize or create affordable housing that's one and that's not that wouldn't be a new source of money that would be an existing source of money that a portion of which is supposed to go towards housing related matters another possibility is there could be a general fund capitalization we could look at whether or not either from the operating budget or capital budget there is some amount of money that we want to set aside to put into this fund I'm not proposing that in this conversation but that's something we could look at and that also wouldn't necessarily be a new amount of money that we're asking for residents to contribute I'd say the third possibility would be the creation of a new fee or transfer tax there's been a lot of talk in the state about creating a real estate transfer tax places like Arlington and in Metro Boston people are selling their homes for significant I hate to use the word profit but for significant gain depending on how long they've owned the property so there's been an idea circulating around creating a transfer tax that would then go towards producing affordable housing and there was a discussion in the spring about creating such a transfer tax obviously with everything else that was held off that was held off we decided not to bring that forward for this special virtual town meeting but we'll likely consider bringing that forward in the spring as well and that could serve as a pretty significant capitalization tool for this fund in the future so I guess to start to finish where I started on this this proposal alone does not bind the hands of future town meetings to fund it or to spend more money but certainly as I laid out there's some existing pots of money or potential future pots of money that we could look at to capitalize the fund and that makes sense last question on this topic and that is there is no language in the current war article and again you've made it very clear that all this is doing is creating a vehicle but what about oversight assuming it is created assuming it is funded you know how do you figure out oversight of a fund like that so along with the fund it goes a creation of a committee that would provide the oversight on the expenditures of the funds or it would not be solely staff making these decisions additionally there would be regular reporting requirements to the select board as well as potentially back to the finance committee and even reporting back to town meeting on the activities of the fund and if I recall correctly the fund would have the potential to borrow money but would only be able to do so with the authorization of the select board which is I think a critical oversight tool so I think there will be adequate transparency and oversight available via both the fact that this will be a public body that has to publicly post their meetings as well as their connection to the select board in that regard okay a real staple of yours and my conversations over the years has been Arlington as an environmental innovator I would say as a green community as one that is committed in a very profound way to making effective change in the area of environmental protection so there is a warrant article proposed having to do with fossil fuel infrastructure go ahead and explain that please yeah absolutely so there's been a movement in the state over the past couple of years to try to find the right way to start moving homes off of fossil fuels and onto electric heating sources and the first reaction to that is often electric heat like electric heats terrible it's inefficient doesn't really create a good comfort level in my house and I think all of us of a certain age have that understanding of electric heat but electric heat has changed there are new technologies that don't have the same challenges as sort of the old electric coil heating that had been utilized you know decades ago and the reason that getting on electric heat is being promoted is that by statute the grid where we get our electricity is becoming more green so based on the renewable portfolio standard the amount of green energy on the grid has to go up every year used to go up by one percent I think we're at 17 percent of the grid right now is green I might have that number off by one or two percentage points and now every year between now and 2030 it's going to go up by an additional two percentage points so the grid is going to become greener so if you're heating your house with electricity you are going to move to becoming greener and greener and using less and less fossil fuels so what what some communities have tried and I'll talk about this a little bit is banning the new installation of fossil fuel infrastructure in homes so that we would really be forcing this electric heating and cooling to be included in either major renovations or new homes in communities and that would be sort of again a mandated greening of heating equipment in people's homes so Brookline tried to do this in the spring actually in the winter and then it bled on through the spring by bylaw they tried to ban fossil fuel infrastructure by bylaw and as we know the attorney general has to approve bylaws that towns approve and based on the attorney general's office review of the bylaw they did not approve it they they actually went to great lengths to explain that from a policy perspective they support it but that based on their review of how it interacts with the I believe both the statutes and the constitution they couldn't maybe not the constitution but at least statutorily they couldn't approve it so that made Arlington and a number of other communities as well as Brookline pivot to figure out how to achieve this so what we are bringing forth and I should say this is a this is a resident led effort can prove the energy manager has been working very closely with them and and I know I've been talking with them a lot as I've been very interested in this effort as well but what's being brought forward is instead of a local bylaw proposal a piece of home rule legislation so what we'd be saying is we'd be asking the state to pass a law that would pertain only to Arlington that would allow us to adopt the bylaw to restrict new fossil fuel infrastructure and we we don't know how well the strategy will work but we at least from the possibility of whether or not the legislature will pass it but we do know that from a legal perspective if the legislature passes it we will be able to then adopt a bylaw to achieve this goal a couple other important things to mention is we are only attempting to to restrict new fossil fuel infrastructure if you are doing a major renovation to your house or if a new home is being built we are not forcing any existing homes to change the way they heat or cool their homes if you're only doing a minor renovation we're not we're not going to make you rip out your boiler so just to ease people's fears about this you know some some folks might think we're not going far enough in that regard but but we are not doing those things there would also be certain dispensations for commercial cooking for restaurants if they were being built anew to make sure that we're not limiting the ability for economic development and restaurants to be able to flourish in Arlington so we're we're very hopeful that town meeting will support this and eventually the legislature will support it and we're we're hopeful because it's a good measure in and of itself and it's also a key part of what we want to achieve through our net zero plan to try to achieve net zero status by 2050 um so I think I've gone a little bit uh gone a little bit on this one but I think that is a a decent synopsis of what we're trying to do and I think just one last point of clarification you referred a couple of times today as that them being the authors or the kind of instigators of the of the of the article and that's the the the clean energy future committee I believe right so the clean energy future committee which is a town body it supported this and I believe it's their name says uh you know inserted on this warrant at the request of the clean energy future committee but the real engine behind this effort uh is a group called clean heat for Arlington that is helmed by Pat Hanlon and Wright and Amos Meeks uh in no particular order they're all awesome and they're all working very hard on this effort um I know Brucey Moulton from Sustainable Arlington has also been working very hard on this so there's a real there's a core group of committed citizens that are doing a lot of brain work and legwork on this issue in cooperation with Ken Pruitt the town's energy manager so there is uh that that's a lot of they but I think it's good that we have a lot of they that are putting their effort into this great thank you very much one last uh our warrant article to ask you about today um and that has to do with a uh I think a a public service uh that touches literally everybody in Arlington and um that the the changes uh are going to be visible uh to everybody in Arlington because so much happens around the DPW building and in the yard that being the department of public works and there are changes afoot um so I'll ask you once again just to explain so we are coming back to town meeting to ask for further capital funds uh to get to the amount of funding or budget that we think we need to do the entire DPW yard project um we're we're really shifting or have shifted now over the past couple years from what we're trying to do uh becoming more of a municipal campus than just a DPW yard and a lot of that has to do with the fact that as we were making decisions about the high school uh we moved the information technology department to this new DPW facility out of the high school we took out of the high school the facilities department and are putting it in this DPW facility and as I think most people know inspectional services is already housed in the DPW facility so we're really trying to outfit space for four critical town departments as part of this project we also had uh this project also I think was appropriately slowed as decisions were being finalized about the high school so that we could design the final product so that sort of the two Lego pieces came together appropriately in the adjacent site let make sure that people everybody understands I'm sure they do already these two these two pieces of property the high school and the DPW yard about each other yeah they they about each other now and they will about each other when they're done um and there isn't there isn't really a ton of interaction between the two sites but there is this connection between the two sites especially with an aspect of the high school being a new parking lot put on the practice soccer field that will connect with the DPW parking lot that will be put on the other half of the practice soccer field the existing practice soccer field so there were you know not to get into the nitty gritty there was a lot of details to work out in the the safe and appropriate way to create that connectivity um and I know I had to manage some challenging situations through all of this but making sure the high school was prioritized was something I think we all ultimately agreed to and so finalizing DPW's decisions once the high school was finalized is the path we took so ultimately the combination of a little bit more time going by uh the addition of new departments moving to the facility as well as accounting for contaminated soils uh underneath the facility that we we knew were there as well as changing our construction delivery model from a traditional design bid to a construction manager at risk model all have collectively produced the project that is going to be more costly than what we originally estimated so we are coming to a town meeting to ask for an approximately approximately eight million dollars more to be able to fund what we think the construction costs will be we don't have bids in hand yet but we've gone through a round of cost estimates and believe we have a good handle on what the project costs will be so I do believe this is a critical project to the town um you you sort of said this in your intro that the DPW touches everything and unfortunately as often maybe the most underappreciated department in town only because they do much of their work invisibly you know they don't have loud sirens on their on their vehicles without no insult intended to those that do but yeah yeah they they really do work and keep a lot of things in town running and have done so through the pandemic but but that aside the existing facility is updated outmoded insufficient and um and and really to some degree this facility was really the next one in line after major investments have been made in all three fire stations the police station schools across the town this is really what the next one that hasn't been I don't believe invested in since maybe the late 70s in any significant way so it is I think it's it's time the time is now to make these investments and really really bring them up to the 21st century um I had mentioned at the outset of our conversation today that you are uh the or a at least at least a voice of authority uh on these matters and you have proven it in spades once again by providing a you know very comprehensive but also quite a deep dive into a number of these questions we do want to acknowledge to you the audience that we did not cover all the warrant articles today by any means there are 25 of them as I mentioned there are a number that deal with zoning there is you know there are a number of of different ones that we just don't have time to get to within this conversation you can I would invite you to go to ACMI and ACMI's website at acmi.tv over the coming weeks if you wish where we will be lodging videos that are made by the advocates for various warrant articles so you can find potentially more information about warrant articles that we did not cover here today by going to acmi.tv and searching for them um Adam sorry for to hold you up please explain that but um again uh we appreciate both the thoroughness and uh and the completeness of your explanations uh we hope that they are useful for our audience um we will talk to you again undoubtedly sometime soon um this has been town meeting matters um I've been talking to our town manager Adam chapter lane I'm James Milan thanks for joining us