 We are so proudly weeping at the twine, Whose trust hearts and bright stars Through the perilous fight, O'er the ramparts we watched Were so gallantly streaming. We are so proudly weeping at the twine, Whose trust hearts and bright stars Through the perilous fight, O'er the ramparts we watched Were so gallantly streaming. So tonight's test vote as soon as we have two guys from OTI tonight. We're trained in replacements. Soon as they're ready, they're going to give me a signal. And our test question is going to be do you think the Patriots will win the pennant this year? One for yes, two for no. The Patriots, the Red Sox. Sorry Dan. I think the Red Sox are going to win the pennant this year. I'm seeing if you're awake. Oh, go ahead and vote I guess. I'm going to run through the screens afterwards on this vote. Yeah, okay. Okay, check to make sure your device is working properly. Oh, I got a yes, okay. Looks like they're going to win. We have 50, 125, 140, 151. All right, I recognize the vice chair of the Board of Selectment, Mr. Dunn. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Mr. Dunn and many others are still in the Task Force Enrollment Committee and I apologize for not being here. It is moved that if all of the business of the meeting as set forth in the warrant for the annual town meeting is not disposed of at this session, when the meeting adjourns, it adjourns to Wednesday, May 4th, 2016, at 8pm. All in favour of adjourning to May 4th, 2016, please say yes. Yes. All opposed. It's a vote and I saw to clear it. Mr. Dunn. We just did that. We don't have to do that second thing. Okay, revenue announcements or resolutions. Did you have announcement, Mr. Paluso? Ted. Good evening. My name is Ted Paluso. I'm from precinct number six, if I remember. In any event, I want to show you something. If you folks want to stop by the visitor center, you can find that we have as many attractions maybe more so than Lexington. Okay. Now, the reason I'm here and thank you for the time, John, is to tell you that I've lived here for approximately seven years and in those seven years, some of the happiest times I've spent, nearly 100, 200 hours has been in the visitor center. We are looking for volunteers to come by. And here's what happens if you show up. You can come for two hours, you can come for one hour. You can come once in a while. We're usually open only on the weekends. But here's what happens. You meet people from all over the world and I mean that literally. And you tell them about good stuff, no criticisms. And then the children show up with them. And the children are like a sight to behold. They run around the place. If you were there for Halloween, a year and a half ago, you guys would have been crazy about it. It was unbelievable. So if you like people, either talk to Angelo Ozuski or myself. We're on the list of town meeting members. We have our e-mails. We have our cell phones there, regular phones. Give us a call. We'd like you to come and help out. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Pluso. Any other announcements or resolutions? Mr. Warden. Mr. Moderator, John Warden, Precinct 8. I had an announcement about, a third announcement really about the longevity of the representative town meeting. Actually, it was in 1935 that the town adopted the standard form of town meeting. So that was 80 years ago. So we had 80 under that format. But it actually goes back a few years before that. In 1920, the open town meeting was here in this hall as they always had been. And the place was so filled with people, they were practically hanging from the rafters of what we were told. And of course, the room was a little larger because we didn't have the elevator kind of sticking into it. Anyway, the subject that drew so many people here, and that was a very substantial percentage of the town's population in those days. Guess what? School construction. We were talking about building the junior high school. So after that they said this is getting kind of out of hand. We should go to a representative or what they used to call a limited town meeting. So they petitioned the legislature and this was a fairly rare and new thing. But I guess there were a couple others before us. And the legislature passed a law allowing Arlington to adopt limited town meetings and which they did in a vote in February of 1921. So that they would have had their last open town meeting that year and the following year they would have gone to representative town meeting. So this would be the 94th representative town meeting if I did the math correctly. And if that's correct, I've been here for half of them. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Ms. Gorm. Good evening. Maureen Gormley, precinct 20. I'm rising to put on my other hat tonight as a member of the Arlington Chamber of Commerce. I've been a member for more than 25 years and proudly announcing we are celebrating 100 years as an Arlington Chamber of Commerce. We will be having a celebration in October, on October 6th, and we need your help. How we need your help is we want to nominate, have some of you nominate who you think would be the best citizen of the year for our 100th anniversary. So I have information that you can get from me. You just go online to a-r-l-c-c dot org and nominate somebody you think is worthy of being citizen of the year. Thank you and hope to see you in October. Thank you. Any other announcements or resolutions? Okay, the only announcement I have is that if you're precinct 1 through 14, you should have already organized and turned in your organizational slips to the clerk. If you haven't organized any of 1 through 14, please do so at the break. You all got a slip showing you where you're supposed to organize. Just go out and meet there at the break and please organize. Thank you. Any other announcements or resolutions? Seeing none, reports of committees. Mr. Tosti, Mr. Gilligan, you're next. In the back of the hallway is the Finance Committee recommendation on the Minuteman School Building Project. It's six pages, two-page analysis or description. The vote and then some spreadsheets for you to review. We will be taking these issues with Minuteman, both the budget and the building on Monday as hopefully as soon as the meeting starts. So Mr. Moderator, I move that these amended report be received. Second, all in favor of receiving the amended report of the Finance Committee, please say yes. Opposed? It is so received. Mr. Gilligan. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Steven Gilligan, Town Treasurer. Also in the back of the hall on the table are 300 copies of the Treasurer's report to Town Meeting. Mr. Moderator, I move that the report be received. All in favor of receiving the report of the Treasurer, please say yes. Opposed? It is so received. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Any other reports of committees? Seeing none. Okay, that's going to do that. Mr. Tosti. Move that Article 3 be laid upon the table. All in favor of laying Article 3 upon the table, please say yes. Opposed? Article 3 is laid upon the table. That brings us to Article 18. We have a bylaw amendment in Article 18 expanding the equal protection rights under the Human Rights Commission. Anyone want to speak to this? Human Rights Commission? Nobody? All right. I guess no one wants to talk about it. That's fine. Oh, yes. This Baron wants to talk about it. Hi, Sherry Baron, Precinct 7 and member of the Human Rights Commission. I would like to ask that a member of our commission who is a resident of Arlington obviously come up and speak just briefly about this. Her name is Mel Goldsite. She can come forward. What's going on here? Hi, I'm Mel Goldsite, Precinct 20, Mass Ave. and I'm with the Arlington Human Rights Commission. I appreciate this opportunity to speak with you about our warrant article to expand equal protection to gender diverse people in our town. Equality is a longstanding value in Arlington. The creation of this commission over 20 years ago at town meeting is proof of that. You tasked us with advancing issues related to the fair and equal treatment of individuals and providing a mechanism for addressing complaints arising out of these issues. In addition to investigating official complaints, your mandate to us includes conducting needs assessments and presenting educational programs to increase mutual respect. Two examples of this work are our LGBT survey and a recent workshop on understanding gender diversity for representatives from town groups, including the Board of Selectmen, police, schools, library, council on aging, and Youth Health and Safety Coalition. This bylaw amendment is part of that same work. Article 18 will extend equality to the transgender and gender non-conforming community. These are the exact same protections from discrimination that the town already guarantees based on race, color, religious views, national origin, gender, citizenship, age, ancestry, family marital status, sexual orientation, disability, source of income, or military status. Non-discrimination laws protecting gender identity have already passed across the nation in 17 states, D.C., and over 200 cities and towns. So far, a dozen communities here in Massachusetts have also added these protections, ranging from Boston and Cambridge to Lynn and Medford. We hope that Massachusetts state law will soon add gender identity protections for public spaces like medical offices, restaurants, libraries, public parks, and the Tee. That law is desperately needed because a recent survey found that 65% of transgender people in Massachusetts experienced discrimination in public spaces in the previous year. And 20% avoided necessary medical care because of prior mistreatment in healthcare settings. Support for the state bill finally seems to have reached a critical mass, but it's still not certain that it will pass this session. So it's crucial for communities like Arlington to create local laws to fill the gap. Even when the state law passes, it will still be important for Arlington's bylaws to fully reflect our town's values. The current wording of the non-discrimination bylaw makes explicit our commitment to diversity and tells the specific groups that are most often victims of discrimination and violence that we care about their safety and well-being. We have already declared Arlington to be a welcoming community to so many. Article 18 is an important way to show our continued commitment to equality and diversity for all vulnerable groups. I'm so grateful and proud that our Board of Selectmen voted unanimously to support this warrant article. I hope you agree with them that it's time for Arlington to take a stand on the right side of history. Please pass this. Thank you. Thank you very much. Anyone else wish to speak to this article? Seeing none, we have, of course, a recommended vote of the Board of Selectmen. Mr. Huron? No, you're the other one. Lathwood. Mr. Lathwood, are you ready? New guy is getting used to it. He's used to easy framing him, not Arlington. This works. This doesn't work. There's no data. Well, I don't know if you figured it out yet. Well, maybe we'll do this one by voice. Get the next one ready. We have a force of recommended vote of the Board of Selectmen. All in favor, please say yes. Yes. Opposed? It's a unanimous vote and I so declare it. That close is Article 18. It brings us to Article 19. We have a force of recommended vote of the Board of Selectmen at the Human Rights Commission May have an executive director, as opposed to Shell. Someone wanted to speak to this. They took it off the consent agenda. Who wanted to speak to it? Nobody. All in favor, a recommended vote of the Board of Selectmen is to change the executive director from May to Shell. Please say yes. All opposed, say no. It's unanimous vote and I so declare it. We now have a force that closes Article 19. It brings us to Article 20. We have a force recommend to vote of the Human Rights Commission regarding chair people. They want to have two chair persons. You guys ready on a vote yet? We're up to number 20. Now you can't figure it out. And someone took this one off the consent agenda too. Who wanted to talk to this one? You take it off the consent agenda. You really should have something to say about it. Otherwise you're just delaying everybody's time. All right, all in favor of recommend to vote of the Board of Selectment. Can you please say yes? Yes. Opposed? It's unanimous vote and I so declare it. Thank you very much. That brings us to article 22. The tree by law. Ms. Stamps, I think wanted to speak to that. 21 was on the consent agenda in the past. Yep, 22. Do you want to speak to Ms. Mahan? Ms. Mahan first? You'll next to Ms. Stamps. Thank you, Mr. moderator. Diane Mahan, chairman of the Board. I try not to get up when you have the Selectment's report before you and just repeat everything back because I know you've read everything that's in here. When I do rise, it's when I feel I have something to add. On this particular warrant article, the Board of Selectment had three meetings. We started back in August and then we had the proponents and Susan Stamps who I believe is on the list to speak. And when they came back the second time, the Board in theory agreed with the spirit of the article before us but we felt like the due diligence hadn't been done. We cited that similar to when we had snow plowing issues about cutting back corners and how that was done, a member of the Board of Selectment myself and the town manager met with the subcontractors, got feedback for them to find the best way to get it done. Then when we had leaf blower discussions, again we did a similar thing. A member of the Board of Selectment again didn't volunteer myself and the town manager met with the landscapers here in Arlington to get something that would work and basically talk to the people that we feel would be affected. At the second meeting when the members of the tree committee came before us, we didn't see that same due diligence. We had asked them previously but perhaps not artfully so as much as we should and we said we really need you to do similar to what we've done in the past. Talk to the end users, the Arlington developers in terms of what it is you're proposing and the developers that I had spoken to all said we love trees, we're not anti-trees or we want to save as much as we can but the original warrant article that was before us was for me laid in with a lot of roads that we could go down that I really think we shouldn't. So I said to the proponents we really need to do this due diligence and you need to come back when you get it done expecting that it would take them to maybe next year's town meeting but lo and behold two weeks later Susan Stamps and Mary Ellen Arano I'm going to say the names wrong and Sally McNair and I'm probably saying them wrong they went out and they spoke to Arlington developers they made many many changes from their suggestions the end result was this was something that both sides agreed upon when they came before the Board of Selectment I don't know how they got this Herculean task done in two weeks versus two months but they did, they went out and similar to other efforts that really have been at the forefront of Arlington this is really the best way to get accomplished here it would only affect trees in the setback as designed, as promulgated by our zoning bylaws and it's something that I really think it's an idea whose time has come and the time is right now because they really have done all the work so I would urge all members of town meeting especially after you hear the presentation from our representatives from the tree committee to join with the Selectment and vote positive action thank you thank you very much Ms. Mahon, Ms. Stamps Susan Stamps, Precinct 3 and I'd like to ask the co-chair of the tree committee Mary Ellen Arano to join me at the podium she can come up I think she's going to run the power point I hope because I don't know how to do it so the purpose of article 22 the tree preservation bylaw is to reduce the impact on the town's tree canopy of major development on private property and by major development we mean demolition building a new house or adding an addition that increases the size of the footprint 50% or more this does not apply to if you want to go in your backyard and take a tree down this only applies in major development very important distinction the as Ms. Mahon so nicely said the Selectment were they unanimously improved this bylaw we not only did that this through Arlington builders but we also talked to builders in other towns that have similar bylaws and we talked to them about what does it add to the process in terms of cost in time several of communities in Massachusetts have these tree bylaws including Lexington, Wellesley, Cambridge Newton and many other towns also in the last week or so we have gone around and we have also gotten unanimous support from the conservation commission the redevelopment board and the open space committee and also the Arlington land trust and some other town groups have endorsed this bylaw they think that time has come the master plan that town meeting oh man I got to really speed up here I can see the master plan last year how trees are really important to Arlington I don't think I need to explain that to you but the whole point is to not we can't prevent the removal of trees on during development but what we will do is ask for each tree that's removed for a payment to be made into the tree fund or for the tree to be replaced on the property so there won't be a net loss in tree canopy more or less we became aware of this problem in town a year ago when residents started coming to us worried about clear cutting in their neighborhoods trees were disappearing and they were starting sending us pictures that were pretty alarming like this one near spy pond where just a whole huge swath of trees were gone we knew the trees were very important to Arlington we couldn't help them we couldn't do anything and they said well you need to do something so we did a lot of research we found out that other towns do regulate removal of trees during major development and so that's why we put together this bylaw after all Arlington is a tree city USA which requires a lot of diligence commitment to trees in order to get that designation we don't lose our tree canopy which is dear to all residents the open space and recreation plan that we was presented to us last year also talked about the importance of trees as did the master plan which has trees all over it and talks about how development needs to be in harmony with the natural habitat and in fact one of the recommendations is to look into the removal of trees on private property during development but we realized last year that we needed to do more than look into it we needed to do something as quickly as we could as Ms. Mahan said at the end of the day we did work with a lot of disparate groups including the local builders to come up with a really simple bylaw that everybody could comply with I found out that builders actually really love trees they feel okay about having to compensate the town and the neighborhoods for trees that they remove so it's a very simple it's very simple that totally lost my place here you got two minutes to find it okay so just to quickly go through the elements of the bylaw again it only applies in major development it only applies to protected trees which are not all trees they are trees that are large mature trees they are 10 inches in diameter and they are healthy and they are not in imminent danger of disease or insect infestation and they are only trees in the setback now probably the town meeting members have a pretty good idea now of what the setback of the property is it's the frame around the inside of the property it's 20 feet in the back and it's 20 to 25 feet in the front we're only talking about trees in the setback any tree that so before any site work under this bylaw before any site work can be done the the builder has to submit a site plan that's the same one that they have done for their building permit it's just that they have the survey or put the protected trees on the site plan they take that to the tree warden and they say these are the ones I want to remove and then they pay their money $500 per tree or they have an obligation to replace the tree on the property okay so I think that pretty much sums it up there's an issue and they just go in and they do work without getting permission I'm not going to go into the details because I think the town council has some changes anyway to make this consistent with state law but just to sum up we love trees in Arlington they give us lots of benefits and we hope you'll vote yes on article 22 thank you very much Mr. Heim Mr. Heim has two technical corrections he has to make to this folks have done a really tremendous and very thorough work on this I have to apologize for this technical amendment it was something that I caught rather late in part due to the fact that there's a different set of general laws for fees for removal of public shade trees but in any event under article 22 section 5 enforcement and fines A1 and 2 there's a cap on the fine that the town can assess under chapter 40 so A2 should read $300 instead of $500 and A1 should read $300 per day of work rather than $1500 thank you so you'll see in 5A2 instead of $500 it should say $300 and in 5A1 it should say $300 per day of work instead of $1500 and my apologies to the tree committee for not raising for not catching that until now okay if you can all follow those two changes in section 5A1 and 2 we are going to make them administratively so that it's in conformance with state law did y'all follow what he did anybody didn't okay so in section 5A1 on the second line where it says section 4D $1500 we're crossing out $1500 and we're inserting in its place $300 per day that apparently is what state law allows and in section 5A2 we're crossing out $500 and reducing that to $300 that means $1500 is that now clear okay Mr. Trembly Tibbets I'm Gary Tibbets, precinct 5 and I'm here to ask you to support this bill I'm usually against government reaching into our private land and stuff like that but this is an important bill the tree canopy is important the tree committee Susan Stam said Trembly came to me during the winter to ask advice from the landscape industry I'm a landscape contractor and I gave them some they took a lot of it some of it's in this bill the tree canopy I've been doing this work all my life full time for almost 40 years now and we worked on a job about 20 years ago down in Braintree and it was in the site of a former rock quarry right near the Weymouth naval air station and there were no trees anywhere and that place you baked in I tan all the time I got sunburns down there because there were no trees my kids used to call it the rock when I was working down there for two years it was a big job and I went back about 8-10 years later when the trees that had gotten planted started to mature and come about it was just a totally different picture and a totally different environment so this in most cases this definitely only pertains to the setbacks which you can't build in anyway and in most cases the developers or homeowners when they're doing a big thing they're going to re-landscape anyway and they're going to plant a couple of trees it doesn't cost them anything and the money that is turned in on the ones that don't get replanted the town can plant them whether they're street trees or epochs we'll keep the canopy going the only adjustment I need and I hate to throw another one into the mix but I talked to John Leone earlier today it requires that the tree be replanted within 90 days of the primitive occupancy being issued and that from an industry is unattainable if a lot of people if they're doing in addition to something anybody that's remodeled their house knows sometimes you start it in the fall and you do it and you rush it to get it done for the holidays well if you get your primitive occupancy December 15th you can't plant a tree for three or four months probably four or five months number one the ground is usually frozen number two the tree is unavailable so I asked that it be changed to 180 days and Mr. Leone had said that could probably be done administratively that we didn't need to put out a pamphlet so with that change being made I request that you approve this I think it's a good article thank you do you have that in writing sir no I don't come up and make sure this says what you want to say so Mr. Tibbets is proposing on section four C first line replacing 90 days with 180 days Mr. Birkowitz thanks Mr. moderator Bill Birkowitz replacing eight I'm in support as well since there seems to be pretty clear support for this article in the house I'll skip most of my speech but simply to say that because yesterday was the gray and rainy Sunday I had the time to look up some research on trees which I didn't know before might guide not just our vote on this article but also on future articles that might relate to trees and tree protection in the town it's not just the protecting against climate change by trapping pollutants or the absorption of carbon dioxide or the health effects of preventing respiratory disease but two other points that struck me I didn't know before one being that people who live on according to a large scale study in Toronto in this case people who live on streets with number of street trees literally according to the study feel younger their self perceptions are more youthful another study deals with perhaps more salient issue for us having to do with money and studies of trees and property values this one taking place in Portland Oregon where the researchers measured the property values as a function in relation to street trees and found several things one is that number one the homes in areas with street trees sold faster second that the average increase in property sale values according to study was in the vicinity of $7,000 but that this extended not only to the house where street trees were planted in front of but also to neighbors houses within as far as 100 feet of the house with street trees that increased their property values as well according to the researchers of this study this indicated figuratively if not literally that money can grow on trees so I hope that we can take this into account not just for this article but for future articles that may come up before the meeting that regard trees and the role of trees in the community and their protection thank you thank you Mr. Berkowitz this gentleman over here yep thank you I'm a new town member Daniel Jalkett from Precinct 6 I don't have a lot to say on this except I do support it I am also would just like to say I think it's admirable that two sides that might have been combative about an issue like this were able to come together and compromise on something and personally I might like to see something that went further but I'm much happier to see something that stands a good chance of passing so I think that's something that both sides should feel good about and not feel like they've given up too much but we're getting hopefully get something good out of it the main reason I rose today Mr. moderator was I heard something in the modification with respect to the town council yes I don't know if this is important or not but I just want to point it out now so that I don't regret not saying anything if it is I recall the town council saying the amendment for the $1500 figure was to change it and to replace $300 per day of work and then when you restated it for the meeting I believe you said $300 per day and that sounds like it could be a tricky distinction especially if it's not clear what we are amending he's actually given it to me in writing now and it is $300 per day of work okay I've misunderstood them as well so it's $300 per day what does that mean week day five days a week Mr. Heim work day oh any day that they're working okay so it's any day that they're actually working without a tree plant I'm not satisfied with that and I don't know if there's anything else that needs to happen to make that official but I'm glad to also have my first chance to speak to you so thank you hmm Ms. Beaumont this is great I really enjoy the preservation of trees I think there's some towns like Burlington I know my sister lives there and they said that they have to have 50% of the trees per business area and so forth they have some odd rule that seems pretty sensible my concern is it says protected trees are 10 inches or greater in my neighborhood there's a lot of norwegian maples and I wish they were added not on the protected list because in my yard we have at least 10 in the backyard that I was hoping to remove to or adjust somehow to make a little sitting area so I think I have some just I think it should be enhanced a little bit and that's my only point otherwise I'm happy with this maybe Susan can comment on that do you have an actual question did they consider specific species of trees in this consideration Ms. Stamps we thought a lot about invasive species and the problem is invasive species do make for good tree canopy in many cases like you take the norway maple is a 50-55% of Arlington's tree canopy so I don't think we're going to want to get rid of those and we tried to pick winners and losers and we just gave up it was it's really about the tree canopy it's not about controlling invasive I think the tree department does have a program for trying to gradually over time replace invasive species healthy native species and that's about that's what you're going to get that's what I want to know so is there a program for replacing these trees so what would be other trees that you would consider give me some examples of the native trees I really that's fine thank you thank you Mr. Schlickman Paul Schlickman pre-signined motion to terminate debate on all items under this article we have motion to terminate debate on and it's been seconded let's do this motion to terminate debate by clicker you guys ready over there okay we're going to have a motion to terminate debate as soon as the light goes on one yes to terminate, two no you do not want to terminate one yes to terminate, two no to continue debating one yes to no did it reset oh yeah cause there's only 121 people voting there's more than 120 if you hear we're all set to go again cause we're going to do the amendment then the regular vote with these things so figure it out okay go ahead one yes two no the vote is terminated 194 in the affirmative 10 is a negative okay so votes terminate debates terminate we now have before us Mr. Tibbetts recommend excuse me he wants to amend section 4c to delete 90 in a certain its place 180 so he wants to give the folks 180 days to replant the trees instead of 90 all in favor of Mr. Tibbetts amendment please vote one yes two no as soon as we're ready this would be a majority vote no light cause he hasn't given us the high sign yet I know but we have to get it ready for the regular votes we're testing them now yes it is I'll give him 10 more seconds okay here we go this is for Mr. Tibbetts amendment 90 to 180 please one yes two no 203 in the affirmative 5 in the negative it is so amended 203 25 we now have before us a recommended vote of the Board of Selectment as amended all in favor please press 1 as soon as we get the high sign for yes to for no yes sir no we're going to do that administratively cause that's state law and that is the most state law allows I believe so we're just going to go with that otherwise AG would turn us down entirely on the bylaw so we don't really have a choice on that one so soon as you guys are ready alright one for yes two for no it's an affirmative vote 9 in the negative it's a vote and I so declare it passed 202 9 that's a vote on article 22 that brings us to article 23 electronic distribution of notices and materials I'm just going to speak to this for one second early this late last year madam clerk asked me if there was a way she could distribute to us all those various notices we get that you've been elected you're up for reelection town meeting is going to start here and then electronically there's nothing in our bylaws that approve it so with some of her help in mind in the town meeting procedure committee we came up with a bylaw that is modeled upon some other towns that will allow us if and only if you opt in meaning we're going to have a letter either sent around probably after town meeting for next year that you will have to affirmatively opt in to receive your notifications electronically I've spoken with Mr. Kruppelker in the selectments office as well they're in favor of this if you opt in you can also possibly we're working on it get all of your reports electronically too so if you have a device like Mr. Schlickman's plane with right now you will be able to get all of your warrant articles recommended votes everything right on your tablet so you can we can dispense with a lot of this paper that but only if you want to this would be the enabling legislation that allows us to let you opt in to do that if you don't opt in you're going to get paper Mr. Wagner then Mr. Helmuth thank you Mr. Carl Wagner precinct 11 I want to say I think that there is not a problem here but I was a new member a long time ago and I applaud to those that are trying to make the situation with the paper better we can save trees we can talk about it too but particularly we should find some way to distribute things and then in this room as we're trying to figure out what the heck we're talking about we should find a way to index to go more quickly to the actual comments so thank you to that thank you Mr. Helmuth Eric Helmuth precinct 12 I support this as well won't surprise any of you I think one thing that just caught my ear when the moderator was explaining this was the idea that one of the items that could be sent out electronically of putting in our reelection papers and occurred to me that because I send emails for a living sometimes emails don't make it through they get trapped in spam filters or an adverse gmail inbox tab so I don't know that I even have a specific question it's just something that I would suggest to people implementing this is to think about something like that where if you don't return it you're not on the ballot if mechanism maybe it's just a phone call or something like that just because although email is extremely convenient for certain really important documents like that you know I'd hate it if I missed that because of a technological problem or just email flood and missed my chance technological problems oh my goodness anyone else wish to speak to this article okay you guys ready sir oh go ahead I have a question on page 10 of the selectments report the last paragraph says that written confirmation shall require provision of an email address town meeting members may opt out at any time by written notice to the town clerk but their comment remarks indicate that that officials can have to opt in so which is it, opt out or opt in in if you want to get electronically you have to affirmatively do something so the comment is different from the actual section 12 oh that's if you are already opted in and you want to get out later on you can you're not bound forever it requires that you provide an email and then if you don't want that then you can opt out by written notice to the town clerk that's a lot different than everybody then having to say having to say you want to opt in that's a huge distinction and I'd like to that clarification on that very first line town meeting members may by written confirmation elect to receive electronic copies once you have done that I'm sorry I was looking at the last paragraph that indicated that you had to opt out that's if you don't want to get electronically anymore well I don't I'm old school thank you Mr. Auster do you have something to say ma'am go ahead as we're talking about best practices for electronic distribution I would also encourage to make sure that all the formats are ADA compliant and accessible so that we aren't alienating any access to documents as we implement this I like the idea of this because I live mostly paperlessly myself a couple of things that just don't seem clear to me I guess I have questions for the moderator probably Mr. moderator is there any kind of tacit understanding that the email documents would be identical to the documents that you might otherwise receive by paper I'm thinking specifically of documents with diagrams or like rich graphics and sometimes these things get converted in a way that might not be compatible with everybody's applications they have for instance I for instance don't have Microsoft Word would there be any kind of like standard by which people would be expected to deliver these probably by excuse me PDF okay PDF sounds good to me personally the other thing that I was confused with by reading this was it was sort of unclear to me whether it would apply to and it sounds like it's intended to eventually sort of apply to things like substitute motions kind of the stuff we get on our seats now what kind of thinking if any has gone into the question of like envisioning like a scenario where say 75% of us are enrolled for electronic distribution and so people know they only have to bring 25% worth of paper documents and then some of us who are enrolled for electronic distribution go ahead and grab a document anyway it's kind of a nice I don't like wasting all this paper but it's kind of a nice system now if it's as I assume it is everybody just kind of has to bring enough for everybody as far as our thinking has gone so far it's for those initial notices and the consultation with Mary and Sullivan she may be able to do all of the reports of committees the finance committee reports the select misreport just as if you ever look at the select men's agendas you'll be able to scroll right through every all of the paperwork they get using that same system that I've had initial discussions with her regarding that but I can't promise that's going to happen because we don't have any control over what they do or what they're getting for that but that's where we're heading hopefully so sort of just to understand amendments go yeah they're going to have to still put those until we have 100% buy-in I guess my concern is basically that I won't vote for something now that I'll end up feeling like I regretted because it put town meeting members in a situation where they weren't being informed so out of curiosity as far as legally as far as this goes legally what kind of process would there have to be gone through after this by-law is passed to say refine the rules like let's say somebody decided that 10% of town meeting members can't read PDFs I guess they would be advised to go back to paper or something but I guess I'm just kind of curious what are we getting into legally if we pass this it sounds like it's a great advisory thing but is the way that the by-law is written is it kind of advisory permission to do something it's permission to start the process and permission to start collecting people to opt into it but we're going to go baby steps here until we know what works we're not going to take away paper until such time as nobody wants paper anymore it's the first step down the road I really like the idea of getting rid of all those big stacks of paper so I would support this, thank you woman over here next to Mr. Kleinman and then you sir Mary and King, a precinct one although I really enjoy reading a lot of things online one thing I would find difficult about this is when arriving at town meeting to resource back to check up on data it would mean that we would all have to bring our electronics with us in order to be able to do that and being a low income person I do have a laptop but it's huge it's really not meant to be something you carry around it's kind of a keep it in one place kind of laptop and I would find it really difficult to keep up with things if it was my only source so it would be nice to be able to you know, read the pdf I don't see it as something that would be able to replace the papers and my other big concern is the mailing out of your renewal to be a town meeting member in which that paperwork does need to be returned by a certain date to get on the ballot I think that would be a really easy thing to miss if that particular paperwork were not mailed out thank you thank you the gentleman to your right first then Mr. Cook then this gentleman over here that's not Mr. Cook Steve Liggett precinct 9 I support this I think it's a great idea I want to join those who are offering suggestions upon implementation that I think it would be really really helpful to add a version identifier on every copy and I say that I rose to say you'll figure that out but I wanted to communicate it to everybody here as well because I know that when I was trying to sift through the seven copies of various different amendments that didn't have a date didn't have a version number I picked them up at different locations one was on my chair one I found outside one I'd gotten at an information session I had no idea which one we were actually voting on so a suggestion generally for all of us if we could put some sort of an identifier so that we have a clue which one we're focused on thanks thank you Ted chart precinct 7 I think that the burden of opting out electronically once you've opted in is sound sort of like corporate and burdensome I would suggest and I'm going to vote for it in its current form I'm not going to try to amend this on the floor it's a reasonable suggestion but I would suggest that the implement again another implementation suggestion I would suggest that the implementers decide that if they get a bouncer to they ought to opt out automatically just as a courtesy thank you sir anyone knows me I could talk about this topic at great length but I will surprise you by motioning to terminate debate y'all know you're sitting more than the magic words I can say when you want to terminate is motion to terminate debate on the matter on the article and all matters under it more than those magic words we can't do it maybe the next person up will do it okay my apologies sorry good try though now you know the magic words this is my mom I think they want to terminate the debate this is arena amendment precinct 21 to terminate this article or debate on this article and all matters related to it okay please say yes opposed it's not a unanimous vote debate is terminated and I so declare it we have now before a recommended vote of the board of selectmen ready go ahead and vote one yes to approve two no all in favor of vote one yes two opposed no 202 in the affirmative seven in the negative it's a positive vote and I so declare it that closes article 23 and brings us to article 26 oh you are not recognized you just don't get up because sit sit sit we have before it's a recommended vote of no action do I see anybody who wants to make a substitute miss pile I'm a town meeting member from precinct 10 I move that the recommended vote on article 26 be substituted with the motion that has been previously distributed in hard copy to all town meeting members and I'd like to introduce Christopher Loretty who is a Arlington resident to speak on this matter thank you Mr. Loretty thank you mr. Chris Loretty 56 Adams tree article 26 asked the town manager to provide individual town email addresses to members of five main boards and commissions or about 40 people it also gives him the option of including other board members if those boards are subject to the public records law and the reason I put that in is during the warrant article or the hearing before the board of select man the town manager indicated that he supports these board members using town email addresses and in fact suggested there were several other board that he would also like to have the members included now some people have asked whether this applies to town new meeting members and the answer is no it doesn't because town meeting members are not subject to the public records law and the town manager suggested he didn't want to include them prefer to start small should this article pass now there are several reasons for supporting this the first is that it provides better access to members of these boards both by members of the public and by town employees just this weekend I tried to email all the members of the Arlington redevelopment board but I didn't know the email address of the newest member I only knew his name I couldn't so I couldn't send him the email I had to ask the planning director to do so and while she was more than happy to do that for me she really that's not her job and she really shouldn't be bothered doing that sort of thing the other reason for supporting this is it's important to keep in mind that members of all of these boards are municipal employees they're subject to the open meeting law they're subject to the public meeting law and the state has very complex and comprehensive requirements about how municipal employees are to maintain their public records I distributed electronically the guidance from the town of Stowe and if you looked at that at all you saw how just how extensive it is in what the requirements were for emails and it's not just the body of an email it's the address information it's the metadata information that becomes a public record and has to be retained for five years or more in some cases and I would suggest that it's a real challenge when you have volunteer boards using their own personal email addresses to be in full compliance with those record retention requirements people change their email accounts they change their internet service providers their terms of office expire they move away and I would really ask you if you think that you asked for an email from one of these board members from five years ago do you really think you'd get it so I think the compliance is much easier with the town managing the process with its own email service and there would be no need to segregate personal emails from town business emails in that case because all of the town business emails would already be on the town server I would also point out that this practice of using the town email addresses has been identified as a best practice by the state supervisor of records and he's the person responsible for implementing and enforcing the state's public records law I would also suggest that it makes it much easier for town officials covered by this covered by this vote to comply with the public's records law I had a case this past fall where I requested emails from the finance committee and the board of selectmen related to lobbying against update in the state's public records law and frankly it involved a lot of energy and a lot of time by the people on those boards that really shouldn't have been required I think I had to ask four times from the selectmen to get everything I wanted I did get the emails or they weren't any but I did get a response from the finance committee but then the secretary or someone on the committee had to contact each member of the board individually to find out what emails existed or didn't exist that were applicable to the request had they been using town email addresses all could have been done by an administrative employee within the town government and none of these people would have had to have been involved it would have made things much easier for everyone few things that town meetings should know as I mentioned the town manager supports these board members using town email accounts but he recognizes he can't force them to do so and that's why there's a couple of parts to this vote that say it's too if the board members are provided town email addresses the in town employees will send email documents and correspondence to them at the town address and only those addresses will be listed on the town website so if there are members of these boards who are not or people who just don't like email this does not force them to use it I'd like to address a few comments in the selectmen's report one, this is not a bylaw change Ellington's town manager act allows town meetings to make requests of the town manager and that's all that you would be doing by voting on this article cost is not an issue mentioned in the report because the director of information technology at the selectmen's hearing indicated this is not a big deal the town already provides thousands of email addresses and only talking about 40 more and while I recognize this does place a small burden on the affected members of these boards and commissions I think that's a responsibility that comes with holding public office and I would point out that I did a quick search of other selectmen in other towns and quite quickly came up with more than 150 who are using individual town email addresses I would suggest that the board members affected by this vote are at least as technologically savvy as those people are and I would just ask you to support this for several reasons first it's good government and I would ask you also to support the town manager I would also ask you to support the volunteers who serve on these boards because I really believe it makes it easier for them and finally I think by supporting this you will be helping ensure that the town complies with the public record slot thank you thank you sir Paul Schlickman preset nine member of the school committee and I guess I would be covered under this resolution so I would like to ask first the town manager he has been cited on his opinion I would like to hear his opinion firsthand Mr. Chaplain I do have an opinion certainly from a public records point of view having control over the records does make responding to public records request more efficient and easier to do however I do also understand the desire of long serving board and committee members who have accounts some that have AOL.com accounts so that signifies how long they have been using those personal accounts not wanting to manage multiple multiple email addresses that said I've talked about this with the chief technology officer town council and I think if the meeting was to vote favorably on this what we could do is set up email addresses for all of the members that are outlined here put them on the website and then if the board members and committee members that were affected would like us to we could forward any email sent to those accounts to their personal accounts so they wouldn't have to manage multiple email addresses and then request and again we couldn't mandate they do this but request that when they are sending any town related emails they are responding that they simply copy their town accounts so that it is archived in that fashion so again we cannot force any member of a public body to do this but I think from a technical point of view we can't administer it. Okay I have another question perhaps more appropriate for town council but I'll ask the moderator hypothetically send me an email asking me my opinion on say a ballot question that would be in June my understanding is that I'm prohibited from using town resources to promote a vote either way on a ballot question or for any political purposes what would happen if I were to respond to that with my opinion on a ballot question using a town email address? Mr. Heim Doug Heim town council that's quite a question I think that what the office of campaign finance would likely say is that elected officials in particular afforded more latitude but are allowed to express their opinion if your email address was used to distribute a opinion essentially as a means of conveying your position on a ballot question it could be an issue responding to a question I think it would probably be a case by case basis I don't know that they'd find a violation sort of on the spot on this one but I think that the real key would be are you using something that's a town resource to basically broadcast a position and that there is some potential for liability I would just like to point out to the esteemed moderator that proposed votes are on my iPad and I'm using that as just as many of us are for electronic devices but I am somewhat Internet savvy and I do handle multiple email addresses I guess I can handle another email address switching back and forth when I need to say something as Paul Schlickman person or voter even when I'm lobbying on an education issue not as a school committee member but as a voter which is my first amendment right you have to go back and forth between addresses and check and make sure that you're sending it from the right address and sometimes I make a mistake and don't send things out from the email address I intended to so I hope that people would have some grace for us if this is adopted that we're not strictly enforcing all the rules here and looking to play gatchu with the elected officials that said I feel compelled to abide by the decision of this meeting so I will be abstaining from this vote to allow the rest of the meeting to make the decision thank you Miss LeCourt Annie LeCourt precinct 15 and it's relevant at the moment that I'm a former member of the Board of Select I think I have about 15 email addresses there's treasurer at AEFMA.org there's Annie at Exponent Partners there's Annie at LeCourt.net there's a couple new ones this week almost all of those email addresses forward to my main email address and I'm able to tell the source of my email and I'm able to respond appropriately I also happened to be in possession of a very old email file that contains probably five or six thousand emails that all relate to business that I undertook for the town when I was a member of the Board of Select that the town is not in possession of so I hate to say it but I think this is a really good idea and long overdue thank you gentlemen up here in the middle back pass Mr. Jamison thank you Mr. moderator Gordon Jamison precinct 12 so first off is this a resolution certainly sounds like one can someone please determine this is something we're asking to be done this is telling oh do you have an answer to that Mr. Laredi I think it's more of a request no it's just it's a simple question resolution yes or no dugheim town council it's not a resolution it's a directive under the town manager section 15j are we able to tell the manager how high to jump I thought we couldn't you can't tell the manager how high to jump necessarily to this type of directive that can make a request to the town manager this is likely something that's within the town meeting's power okay and so for those of you who are new to this this relates to the open meeting law in the state of Massachusetts the previous proponent of this listed employees well I'm on the recycling committee and I have to obey by open meeting law and reports and minutes and all those things and I am not an employee I am a volunteer I believe although the fincon members get pittance and 50 bucks a year they're basically volunteers as are the redevelopment board and the school committee does not get paid board of select men do but the amount of money they get for what they do we're basically all a bunch of volunteers we are characterized by state law as being quote-unquote employees of the town I think the manager for his thoughts the last line says no meeting no member of a public body clarifications public body relate to all of the boards listed or just to the other public bodies alluded to in the proposed article was there a question what did you mean by that the question is in the last line says no member of a public body affected by this vote shall be required to use email to conduct town business what does that relate to the other public bodies alluded to in the article in the motion or the listed boards and committees it refers to any public body affected by the vote so either the one specifically listed or any of that the town manager may deem appropriate does the town council consider that to be clear language that last sentence I take to mean you're not required to use email if you want to use snail mail you can that's how I interpret that last language I'm going to leave you all up to this bye Mr. Rocha I got you you want to talk Michelle Rocha precinct 19 I just wanted to add a couple notes one of which was about efficiencies as a former member of the conservation commission I'm aware that at times just to conduct some of the business of the board very large files would need to be sent to board members and this would be a way to ensure that some of the boards in town have some necessary support to work efficiently I can imagine the redevelopment board would have massive plans that they're occasionally reviewing so this may really help them also as a metadata librarian professionally I work with colleagues who do text mining and that ability would drastically improve efficiency when trying to comply with request for information and so in terms of cost savings I think this would be a real benefit to the town thank you thank you ma'am Mr. Maher John Maher precinct 14 I think some of the comments in this report bear emphasizing and I know you all have in front of you but this town is one of the great qualities of it is it's volunteers and my suggestion to you is that firing this of all volunteers board would be a recipe for disaster and would in fact inhibit volunteers from agreeing to serve parsing out social comments between and official comments and various emails we all have at least I have a number of email accounts and I suggest to you that this is not a workable solution I also suggest to you I'm also delighted to say Doug Hyme is the town council and I'm not but in my considered opinion based on my experience in my understanding of the general laws this can't be enacted unless it's by a bylaw a resolution will not do it so I think it is as I say very confusing not going to affect what's intended here we have an open meeting law we have a public records law and there are recourses under those for violations and securing matters that are within the ambit of the law and emails certainly qualify so I think that would not be advantageous for the town and as I said I think it would be a recipe for disaster and I urge you not to support the substitute motion you're going to take one more Ms. Mamone then we're going to go to break Serena Memmon Mr. Moderate I just want to clarify my name is Memmon not Mamon Memmon? Yes Thank you going on to this substitute motion I feel that this is an important topic considering what's happening in politics right now with Hillary Clinton using her personal emails versus the state department's emails for countries business I think for certain selected people as noted here as well as I'm not sure town manager may deem I'm not sure about that language but I think it's appropriate it gives accountability, transitions efficiency as somebody mentioned as well as no repeated labor if somebody has takes over the selection position that they can investigate this the interactions and bugging the previous selectmen and so forth so that being said I am in support of this holy second thing I want to point out is in the 5th 5th line it says pubic records not public records yeah it just gets voted through we'll make administrative change that'll give us a nice entertainment for the break I guess alright thanks we're going to make that change administratively thank you very much we're going to go to break come back in 7 minutes we're going to start with Mr. Tully essence of this article is good government and that was alluded to earlier I would second that sentiment I think there tends to be sort of this reaction that anytime we try to improve something there's the connotation that somebody is doing something wrong and I don't think that's the case I don't think anyone suggesting that any of these town boards are not honest worthy people that they're doing anything improper but anytime we have the opportunity to improve something I think we got to take that opportunity so I have a lot of respect for the folks that serve on these town boards but I would say that having read the selectmen's comment to be perfectly frank I found some of the some of the opposition a little bit weak I've stood here before and I told you I'm not that smart a guy and if I can figure out how to have two screens up on my desk at work one with my work email and one with my personal yahu email I'm certain that any of these other folks can figure it out it's just not that difficult it also doesn't create any more work for anybody there seem to be this implication from some of the other speakers that all these good volunteers and I don't say that sarcastically but all the good folks that volunteer so much time and effort on behalf of our town would somehow be burdened by this it doesn't create any more work for you it just requires you to send and receive your email from a different email account if you're going to be emailing anyway it's the same amount of work it's not a nuisance and I think a lot of these contrived arguments that we've been hearing against this are really simply an effort to try to crowbar the square peg into a round hole because there's this resistance to change I would also say that with respect to the comment that we do already have public records laws we do but in fact I know the Mr. Loretty and I know that myself and I'm sure many others have had our own frustrations at times trying to make request under those public records laws you don't need to do anything more than probably Google some news stories about them it's been written about extensively the mere fact that we have these public records laws doesn't necessarily mean that people are complying with them so anything that we can do to make make public records access more streamlined make government more transparent and improve upon government even an already good government I think we ought to take that opportunity thank you thank you Mr. Dennis thank you Mr. moderator Greg Dennis precinct one I'm very sympathetic to this motion but I think I'll be ultimately voting against it I consider myself a proponent of open and transparent government I recently lobbied the state legislature yep sorry about that now I can hear my echo I consider myself a proponent in open and transparent government and I lobbied recently lobbied our state legislature in favor of the public records law that's currently sitting before the legislature so I like the idea of doing something here where I find fault with it is that I feel it conflates a particular policy goal a good policy, a laudable policy goal which is email record retention with a specific technical solution which in this case is segregated email accounts I think the problem is that there's a whole space of potential technical solutions here from an email list with archives on which board members use to communicate with each other and the public is able to email to a dedicated retention address that is CC'd on town business-related emails and I don't feel like this motion as written gives the town manager the latitude to choose the appropriate technical solution and perhaps different technical solutions depending on the board or the commission or what have you so I like the idea I don't want to see this issue go away but I'll be voting against this as it's written thank you thank you Miss Mahan thank you Mr. Mayor and also a member of the board of selectmen I'm going to throw myself on the mercy of you all the reason why I was an amnotted favor of this and its current form is when I first ran for selectmen I thought it was like school committee and all those other unpaid positions $20,000 a year I do have two other quasi full time jobs what I do right now in order to contact my constituencies is probably six or seven different main sites whether it's my Facebook I'm not going to promote my political website but I do have a political website then I have my Verizon account and then there's LinkedIn and then I have to follow the Twitter and the Tweets and all that and you know one of my biggest fears because it has happened in the past is I have lost things in the shuffle there was a time I don't know six, seven, eight years ago there were town websites underneath my name and I didn't realize emails had gone to that account unbeknownst to me and it wasn't something that I could manage once I found out about it and I ended up with some people that had sent in questions three or four months ago in order for me to do my job the way I think I can do it most effectively right now for everything that I'm maintaining in the way it's set up it's what works best for me I'm not saying that this can't be solved in the future so that it doesn't ultimately work for me just speaking for myself personally I know as an elected official I'm always trying to think two, three steps out and I know that there was the sort of gotcha example given out but I also have to be very cognizant in my effort to get information out from the accounts in email in various form that I have now right now I have the protection that if I'm just not thinking and someone asks me a question and I wouldn't ask town council right now to give an opinion on the floor but there was a previous issue raised that it would depend on there are times that I get queries from people that I do check with town council and give them the heads up to find out the appropriate way to do it I would like to think that if I slipped up if this went through if I slipped up and inadvertently made a mistake that it wouldn't be pounced upon but I haven't necessarily found that to be the case in the past so just for me and I understand some people say you know have two different screens in my office at home and I'm also a court reporter I have four different workstations just for myself and one of the workstations is my personal select men emails and all the accounts are on that another one is my court reporting for all my depositions and transcribing so the twain never meet I have for my assistant coach job at the high school that has all the school links that I have to link into and then there's the fun one that the kids get to use so it's not a matter of just switching between two screens I literally go seat to seat to seat and right now the way this is presented I don't see enough in there just for myself personally to protect myself and to protect the job that I do for you all so again I'm at the mercy of you all you know perhaps if the town manager had time to look into it some more and we could come up with something in the future that could satisfy all those concerns it's mostly the legal aspect of it I think you all know what I'm getting at I'd be happy to make that happen as long as I can ensure similar to what happened six, seven years ago that my name is not out there I'm not checking and then I look like I'm not responsive so I would ask you respectfully right now to vote no on this but I'll certainly endeavor to work with my colleagues in the town manager on something that might be workable in the future because as we all know with technology you can fix it as long as you check all the different roads and links and everything that you have to do thank you very much thank you very much to the gentlemen who tried to terminate the student you're forever known by that that's where Greg Christiana precinct 15 so I like the general idea of this article but like mr. Dennis I just don't support it in this current form I'd like to address a few of the comments briefly that were made earlier one was about secretary of state Clinton obviously we know all about her email situation I think that's obviously a very different situation but the Secretary of state of the country arlington. It's very different scales of government, and I think it's perfectly acceptable to have very different types of solutions for these problems, and we don't need that level of security and confidentiality, I think, at this level. We're not dealing with national security issues. There was a previous comment about, I think Mr. Tully, I think, said that he has two screens of emails at work, and a lot of us are probably in that similar situation. But if you're like me, it's like your work emails are of a fundamentally different nature than your day-to-day conversations with normal, average people on the street. Whereas I think those conversations that I've had, for instance, with school committee members like Mr. Schlickman, I think they blur the line very naturally with personal life, and they have that responsibility of keeping that straight. But when I talk to Mr. Schlickman, he doesn't have to put on his school committee face versus his personal face, and our direct conversations kind of flow over those boundaries, and it's his job to keep those straight and have discipline about that. I think extending that to email, I think it's a burden. I think we're hearing that from some of our officials tonight from the Board of Schlickman's vote on this and so on. It might not seem like a burden for your private person's personal email, but I ask you to look at how your role at your job is probably more different from casual conversations than these elected officials are. And also for anyone, any elected officials who are not fully embracing the spirit of this, I don't think you're going to get a very good result. I think you're going to get a very confusing result that's going to be very inconsistent, and it's not going to have the desired effect. And like Mr. Dennis suggested, I think there are other ways to go about this that I'd like to pursue in the future. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Wagner. Thank you, Mr. Moderator Carl Wagner, precinct 11. I'd like to terminate debate on this article and all associated matters. Motion to terminate debate on the article and all matters underneath it. All in favor of terminating debate, please say yes. Yes. Opposed? No. My opinion is a two-thirds vote. Gentlemen, ready? Okay, we have before us the substitute motion of Ms. Pile. First we're going to vote on that. All in favor of Ms. Pile's substitute motion, please press one. All opposed, press two. One for yes to substitute, two no if you do not want to. Ninety-six in the affirmative. Ninety-two in the negative. It is substituted. So we now have before us the recommended vote of the vote of the select committee as substituted by Ms. Pile's motion. All in favor, please press one as soon as we get the green light. Yeah, we're going to get a vote on this one. Okay. I've got a head nod. All in favor, please press one. Yes, sir. Yes vote means we want. We've already substituted Ms. Pile's motion. And we are now voting on that to direct the town manager to do all those wonderful things she's telling us to do. So yes, if you want to have the town people to have e-mail addresses, we're going to reset the clock as no one voted yet. Yes vote means we're going to direct the manager to give all those people listed in the substitute motion e-mail addresses and to use those for town business. And no vote means you do not want the manager to do that in essence. As soon as we're ready, he has to reset the clock and go ahead and vote. One yes for the e-mail addresses, two no not have them. It is a yes vote, 105 in the affirmative, 95 in the negative. It is a vote and I so declare it. That closes article 26 and brings us to article 27. Lobbying on public officials, we have before us a recommended vote of no action by the board of select men. I see no substitute motions. All in favor of the recommended vote of the board of select men, please say yes. Yes. Opposed? It's a positive vote for no action and I so declare it. That closes article 27. That brings us to article 28. Vote authorizing community choice aggregation. Ms. Mahon. Mahon chairman of the board of select men. Article 28, besides what appears on page 13, the select men's report. Page is 23 and 27 and the select men's report has FAQs, frequently asked questions. And I'd like to yield the rest of my time on this warren article to the town manager and his presentation. Adam chapterling, town manager. Could you put my presentation up David? All right, thank you. So similar to the process that I followed with the MSBA high school feasibility study, I want to quickly walk through the process, provide a little more detail than what was provided in the select men's report and the FAQ provided by mothers out front at the end of the select men's report. So to start, what is community choice aggregation? I'm sure most of you have read a good deal of the material, but just to summarize, this is where the town can use its bulk purchasing power, all the residents and small businesses who currently buy from ever source on basic service to come together and negotiate electric supply on behalf of all those users. Then the town working under an adopted plan can contract for both competitive rates and the percentage of renewable energy content that is part of those rates being sold to the town. So what are the steps and these steps are also outlined in the select men's report. Tonight we're asking town meeting to authorize the community choice aggregation or the CCA. Step two is procuring an energy broker and that is done by town staff. Step three, working with that broker and town staff and the state's division of energy resources, we would develop an aggregation plan. Step four would be approval of that aggregation plan by the board of select men. Step five is submitting that approved plan to the department of public utilities with a DPU for their approval. Six is issuing an RFP for competitive supply to actually get prices from the market. Step seven, executing that contract with the competitive supplier. Eight, notifying customers that you're moving forward and nine, beginning enrollment. So quickly authorizing the CCA. Tonight that's what's being asked of town meeting. An affirmative vote would set in motion all of the other steps that we just took a look at. Step two, procuring the energy broker. So why do we need a broker? A broker would provide technical knowledge in the designing of the plan, implementation of the plan, and then the monitoring of the aggregation if we actually did award a competitive supply contract. The broker has no upfront compensation and actually no cost by the town government. What happens is the broker is compensated by the supplier based on actual kilowatt hours and you can see it's a hundredth of a penny for every kilowatt hour. We've actually as a town already participated in a collective procurement for a broker with the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, the MAPC. That procurement selected good energy. So the town has not contracted with good energy yet, but we'd be eligible to contract with good energy if town meeting voted affirmatively to move forward with the CCA. However, good energy has a representative here tonight, Phillip Carr, who if there's any questions that are best answered by the broker, he will be here able to answer questions if town meeting sees fit. So if we move through there, the next step is actually developing the aggregation plan with the Division of Energy Resources. And this has to demonstrate how this aggregation plan will make sure that all residents have access, reliability, and equitable treatment of everybody across the town. Design the plan based on what we're actually looking for, how much energy the town needs, what the renewable portfolio will look like. And again, we have to work with the Division of Energy Resources to make sure we avoid any pitfalls that we could run into before submitting to the DPU. Moving on from that, before that plan can be submitted to the DPU, it actually has to be approved by the Board of Selectment. And before they can approve it, there needs to be a public hearing on the plan. So this would give an opportunity for the public to provide feedback at this point in the discussion on what the plan looks like before the board actually approves it. Moving on from that, if approved by the Board of Selectment, the plan would be submitted to the Department of Public Utilities. The broker would actually be the one submitting it for their review and approval. This usually takes the longest, my understanding, it can take anywhere from six months or maybe even a little more depending on how many comments and how much feedback there is in the process. Once DPU approves the plan, we can actually then issue a request for proposals for a competitive supplier. So the broker issues that RFP, and that RFP really will articulate what's laid out in the plan in terms of the energy needs of the town. We can request different supply options, whether or not how much green energy or renewable energy you want, and we can also ask for different terms, whether it be a six-month, one-year, 18-month, two-year term, and take a look at what that actually yields in terms of pricing. And then the broker would work with the town to evaluate the bids and recommend a supplier. The next step would be actually executing a contract with a supplier, and I should say here there is absolutely no commitment to execute a contract with a supplier. Ultimately my understanding of the statute is that I would be able to sign off as town manager on the supply contract, but I would commit to not doing so until pricing parameters were endorsed by the Board of Selectment in a public meeting. But again, if we don't get pricing that we think is fair and equitable to the town, we would not execute a contract. Next, we would begin to notify customers. Again, as has been described in the materials, this is an opt-out program. Customers would have to be notified by mail at least 30 days prior to their being enrolled. They would then have 180 days to opt-out without an exit charge, and residents would be able to opt-out over the phone via mail or online. And then finally, enrollment would begin. If you don't choose to opt-out, you would be automatically enrolled in the program. And then once you're enrolled, you would still receive one bill from Eversource except your supply charge would come from the competitive supplier and your delivery charge would come from Eversource. So I hope that was helpful in terms of the process and I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have. Thank you. Thank you very much, sir. There's a woman over here on the right. Yeah. You had to end up... No, ma'am, you were up. Yeah, come on. You're up. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. My name is Jacqueline Chakrabarti and I'm from Precinct 9. I'm speaking in support of this article. My professional experience is I have almost a decade working on climate change and clean energy solutions. And I just wanted to share some of the perspectives I have based on my work. Just to start with the really big picture, climate change is happening already. It's real. There's more to come. And we need to do everything we can to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions. We've seen some progress with international discussions and we've also seen some progress at the federal level. It's slow. It can be two steps forward and one step back, but it is happening. At the same time, we additionally need these local solutions. We also need solutions at the individual level. They're really important and cumulatively they can have a significant effect. If you look at the average carbon footprint of the average American, over 30% of that comes from their home energy. So if we can take that carbon footprint, convert that energy use to renewable source to energy, then we'll make a lot of progress. I also want to think about Arlington and tell you what I see in terms of people's attitudes in Arlington. My offices in my labs are in South Boston every day I go out and I meet people who work across Metro Boston on clean energy. And it just surprises me that a disproportionate number of those people live in Arlington. Well, why is that happening? People move to Arlington for a number of reasons. One reason is that the schools are amazing, but there are many other reasons. You can get to Alewife and take the subway into town. You're on good bus routes. You're right on the bike path. You've got a walkable town. You've got lots of green spaces. I see this attracting a lot of people who want sustainable lifestyles and who want to reduce their carbon footprint. So really, I just see a lot of people in this town who are committed to making their life more green, to making our town more green. And I think that this community wants steps like the CCA. I'm really happy to see a lot of things that the town has done already. It's great that we have solar systems on our schools, for example. I think the CCA is one more logical next step. I'll just comment too that I know when you start talking about renewables there can be just a common instinctive fear of yikes. Surely that's going to cost us more. In this case, absolutely not. Typically, it's a cost reduction and a very high likelihood that the cost will be lower. There'll also be greater price stability. And finally, it's really going to benefit the local clean energy economy, keeping those jobs relatively nearby rather than going to the fossil fuel companies operating in other geographic areas. If you feel like I'm just somebody who drank the environmental correlate and you've still got reservations, I'll just point out that you individually can always opt out. But as I say, I really believe that many people in Arlington want this. So I'm going to be voting in favour and I hope that you'll support it too. Thank you. Thank you very much. Gentlemen next to Mr. Sharpe. Kevin Koch, Precinct 16. So we're all talking about how we're going to increase the amount of renewable energy that we're using and buy more renewable energy credits. Right now there aren't enough renewable energy credits to go around and it's a market and therefore the latest price that I got on my solar energy was 40 cents a kilowatt hour. So I have two questions. One is if we do this and we load up on renewable energy and the price gets anywhere near 40 cents a kilowatt hour which is what the state is requiring people to pay to the solar energy producers, what happens if like three years down the road the economics have switched around the other way and renewable energy is more expensive? Is there any mechanism prescribed for how to get out of this? And the second question is when I lived in Belmont like 40 years ago Belmont had their own municipal light department and if they're still doing that how's it working out for them and are they realizing cost savings versus ever source? Chapter Lane. Adam Chapter Lane, town manager. To the question of sort of long term risk here I would certainly be a proponent of us going for a much shorter timeframe and that would be the way you would avoid any long term negative impact from changes in the market changes in regulation so I would think starting with a six month to one year aggregation monitoring that, seeing how it goes and then making a decision of whether or not it is the right fit for the town from there would make the most sense. So by doing that we'd be able to avoid that three plus year scenario where regulations change and change the actual conditions in the market. In terms of the Belmont municipal light plant I can't really answer in any depth of how well it's working for them although it is my understanding that there is a moratorium on the establishment of any future municipal light plants at this current time so I don't know that that's something we could pursue. Thank you very much. It was a gentleman in the far back center. Thank you Mr. Bauderater. Flynn Monk, suppressing 19. May I ask if we know what percentage of the town's emissions comes from electricity? The town's emissions? You know that? No. I don't think anyone can answer that. Anyone have any answer? I have a secondary question. Go ahead. Do we have a sense of how many residents now choose a competitive supplier versus sticking with the resource? Mr. Chapter Lane. Adam Chapter Lane, town manager. My understanding from the mother's out front group that's really been spearheading this effort is that Arlington's percentage of those choosing a competitive supply is 11 percent but that's my understanding via them. Okay, great, thank you. Okay, I'm standing in favor of this article. I think we have a chance here to make a real collective dent in our carbon footprint as we've come to call it which fits the town's own sustainability action plan which is first presented on this floor. I believe almost ten years ago. As a consumer, I've tried to choose more clean energy myself through mass energy. I've done an energy audit. I now drive a hybrid car. I used to, I tried to do solar but it was too expensive. I didn't have a south-facing roof but I represent just one resident. With the CCA, we have an opportunity to get cleaner energy done in bulk, pooling our demand on the marketplace, ensuring we have a shot at getting a competitive price in comparison to our investor-owned utility and secure that rate for a longer term than the utility can offer. And that's basically price stability right there. That's a sell. Also, opt out. I mean, we've seen this in our retirement plans. People can select a green energy choice on their own but the forces against that are great. It takes time, energy, your weighing choices and frankly, busyness just kind of crowds that out. I mean, you may have noticed a number of calls on your landlines from competing energy suppliers. I get those about once or twice a week. It's confusing, isn't it? The thing is, if you don't choose ever source already chooses for you. This is saying we're taking that nice lazy not choosing ever source default and moving it away from the investor level and toward our own town level via our elected officials. That's a good thing. So choose aggregate, choose local control and let's vote for a better planet. I urge you to vote yes on Article 28. Thank you very much. Gentleman in the suit. I stand up here as somebody said there's a lot of renewable energy professionals in town. I happen to be one of them and as luck would have it I actually am working with a good energy team. I work for a company called Sustainable Energy Advantage and we're renewable energy experts and we're part of the consulting team, brokerage team. Not surprising, I stand here before you saying please vote for the article. I have three very short points to make. One, this is your best chance of... Sorry, this is... How about tall or shorter? First, this is your best chance if you haven't shopped to actually save money. There is aggregate buying group. It's going to be vetted by the town. I know a heck of a lot about the retail electricity market and I have never switched providers since 1997 and I'm sure many people are in the 89% that have not switched. The second thing, if you happen to be in the 11% that have switched, you will not be asked to opt out. You will not be segregated and you can stay with your current provider. The third point is that this one act is probably the single most effective thing we can do to move to reducing greenhouse gas emissions for the town of Arlington. It's just because it's such a big aggregation and mass change that we will be doing something that above and beyond all the energy efficiency and all the implementation of efficient transportation that we could be doing. Finally, I said only three things but I want to address what somebody said before. Another gentleman came up here and talked about that their renewable energy certificate prices were like at 40 cents a kilowatt hour. What he was referring to were solar renewable energy certificates which is a different class of certificates and the class one renewable energy certificates are selling for about 4 cents a kilowatt hour. Thank you very much. Thank you, sir. Mr. Quinn. Quinn Precinct 10. I'm also one of the energy, I guess professionals in the room, I'm an energy economist. I do not have any ties to any of the parties related to this at all. Other than I, about 10 years ago, I was one of the people who served on the committee that this town meeting put together to be the power company feasibility committee which would be the idea would be that we would buy out the wires from what was ANSTAR at the time and become something like the Belmont system. We set up a committee, we looked into that. We found out that just legally we would never succeed. It would take us 10 to 20 years. It would cost us millions of dollars. We disbanded the committee but we keep appearing in the warrant anyway. At the time we also looked into municipal aggregation. This was probably in the roughly the 2003 timeframe. We looked into that. We thought it was fairly interesting that there was no discussion at the time about renewable energy that really wasn't something that was out there. When we looked into it at that time, it wasn't going to be viable. There was really no chance of success for that. There just really wasn't a lot of aggregation taking place and we didn't have any degree of certainty that we would get better prices for people. That said, I don't know if we can get better prices for people now. I hear these guarantees. I haven't seen the data on that. We've seen one town dead them or somebody like that. The price promises about that concern me. We take this vote today. We need to bear in mind that this is the only time this comes before a town meeting and we're representing roughly 20,000 households. I would be awfully concerned if what we choose to put in place as a town raises the electric bills to all of these people. Now, that doesn't have to be the outcome. There's a process, a 10-12-step process that takes place. This is our one bite at the apple as a town meeting and it concerns me that we haven't really... This is the only time we'll see this. We'll go off and do this. If we put something together that raises people's electric bills, I don't think people would be very happy with that. A lot of people wouldn't and counting on them to opt out would be concerning. I think I'm going to vote in favor of this, but it is awfully concerning that we would be switching over all these people and we might be raising their bills. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Mr. O'Brien? I apologize if this question's already been answered. I'm not familiar with all the terminology, but if someone had solar panels or had a home co-heating and power generation unit in their home and they had excess supply, would that affect the price in any way that they might get from a utility? Mr. O'Brien? Mr. O'Brien, do you do that or should we refer that to the gentlemen in the blacks? Well, you... Yeah, one of you two guys who seem to be the experts. Tom Eichelman again, precinct 7, this time representing good energy. What you're speaking of is when you have excess energy, you create net metering and you create net metering credits. Those net metering credits are currently and still going to be based on every source's basic service rate so they will not change. Thank you. I very much support this warrant article. Thank you, Mr. O'Brien. This woman over here, five rows back. Yep, pass. Okay, Mr. Deist. John? John Deist, precinct 13. As you saw from his presentation, the manager is intimately involved with this process from beginning to end. Now, any of you who have dealt with the manager as I have probably know how well he operates and how much he does a good job about virtually everything involved in this town. So even though we may have some questions about how well this might operate, I'm more than willing to trust the manager to try to do it in our best interests so I recommend that you vote on this article. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Mr. Deist. Yep. I think I'm short enough for it. Debra Sirotkin, butler precinct 19. Two questions. The Eversource has a monthly stable pricing program. Would that be available under the aggregate program? Do you know? It's a direct expert. Would you know? It's Mr. Carr? No, no, you sir. Yep, kind of a lack suit right there. One reality in an open... Come on up and introduce yourself. Tell us who you are. The answer is a question. Could you name a Philip Carr director of New England energy sales for good energy? And my question was, especially in an all-electric home your electric use can vary rather widely and to facilitate budgeting one of the programs Eversource does have is to make available paying the same amount for electricity every month instead of say 900 one month in $75 another month. Yes, you can keep that. Because the way it works you still pay your bill to the utility to Eversource. They still collect the money so you can still maintain a budget payment plan. Thank you very much. Thank you. Sir, yep. I called you before but you didn't stand up. So you can get up now. Steve Liggett precinct nine. Thank you Mr. Marauder reader. I strongly support this. I think it's a terrific program and a great opportunity for those of us to make a difference when we may be hard pressed to make as much of a difference as we'd like to make. I did have a couple of questions that won't change my vote necessarily but I was wondering if do we know what the carbon footprint is for the town of Arlington today broken down by town and resident? Mr. Chaplain, do you know that answer? Adam Chaplain town manager I don't have that data handy. We could produce that for the town. I'm not sure how quickly we could produce it for the residents but I'm sure that data is available but I can't give it to you right now. I didn't expect you to get it now but I would be interested also in knowing the projected change in the footprint after this gets approved which I hope that it will both in the footprint and then finally the monetary side of it if there's a significant reduction in the footprint for the town are we likely to see any kind of a positive revenue or I guess a reduction in expense? And I think the answer is probably you don't know or you can't give it right now and that's totally fine but I'd like to request that perhaps reporting back on the success of this program at a future time. Adam Chaplain town manager I think that would be a great idea and we'd be very happy to do so. Excellent, thank you. Mr. Foskett. Thank you Mr. Moderator. I think I understand first of all I want to say I think I agree with most of the points that Michael Quinn raised earlier about some of his concerns with respect to the potential impact on rate payers. And I think I understand how the purpose of the aggregation market and how it works as I recall the market was deregulated about 10 or 15 years ago and it allows entities individuals, bodies, et cetera to buy energy supply in a competitive market and then have the distribution channel such as ever source delivered to you. But I'm confused about the conflation of carbon footprint and the aggregation market. I'm far from an expert at this but I understand that the renewable energy sources that are available in the market are more expensive than the non-renewable energy sources. In other words whether it's solar power or wind power the combination of the cost of generation and the cost of distribution means that the cost per kilowatt hour is actually higher than say natural gas which is as we all know getting lower. So I'm confused as to how the aggregators can deliver renewable energy at a lower cost if the data available seems to indicate that it costs more to produce it and possibly the answer is that it's subsidized by either the state or the federal government in which case perhaps we're not getting a savings perhaps we're paying for the higher energy through another channel and I wonder if the town manager could enlighten us on those points. Do you have the answers to those questions Mr. Chapterling? As best you can. Adam Chapterling, town manager I'll answer the best I can and perhaps the folks from Good Energy could add on. I would say I would imagine the number one way that an aggregation can work to save cost is through the bulk competition. This isn't one person or one entity going out to buy renewable energy from a source, it's 20,000 households give or take depending on how many people opt out so providing that bulk competition is at least a portion of where the savings comes from but I think the detail from either Phil or Tom would be helpful. In terms of subsidies I guess I would argue there's subsidies for fossil fuels there's subsidies for renewable energies the government subsidizes home ownership having children there's a lot of subsidies in government that support public goods and if the government is deciding that renewable energy is a public good there may be subsidies so that necessarily has a direct correlation to how the decision should be made about this. I'm sorry, you said there's not a direct correlation. I said I'm not sure that that larger matter should be directly correlated to making a decision about this matter. Okay well I guess with respect to that last point I'd like to disagree I think we are the government that's why we're here we're being asked to make a decision about this process and I think we ought to evaluate all of the aspects of it what's the raw cost of the energy what's the benefit of the aggregation and what's the impact of the town taking over the electric distribution system from the citizens in the community. So I guess I don't know maybe these gentlemen can tell us how we get renewable energy that's produced at a higher cost than carbon energy at a lower price. Mr. Carr, can you answer his question? Yes so that's a very fair question. Oh identify yourself on Phillip Carr, director regional New England for good energy so here's the thing so right now you are being passed on power by Eversource Eversource has an interesting way of procuring power to put it simplistically so if you're an energy consultant come to you and say I've got this absolutely brilliant way to buy power here's my plan I've got power on two specific days of the year and that is not going to change that is my strategy so are you going to hire that consultant? Well that's what's happening right now so you've seen some pretty intense volatility in your electric price over the last couple of years there's a whole bunch of good reasons behind that so as Tom Manchester said one strong reason is you have the purchasing power arguably you could say well you know Eversource is purchasing power as well well the real sort of catalyzing effect here is you can purchase strategically you do not have to buy power in the middle of the polar vortex like Eversource did so you can be nimble and that is a core advantage so when you take out Eversource's competitive advantage because you can get the purchasing power strategically that's why 90% of all large commercial industrial users in the commonwealth have used the open markets for buying their power so what this does is it brings all the purchasing power of the largest industrial user down to the residential household so that's where you're going to get your purchasing power so and that is where we believe that we can do better than the utility so second point so why would we be able to get the local renewable energy at a cheap rate well linked to the first point we have worked very hard to identify kind of a neat simple but relatively complicated operational trick which is to essentially incorporate just 5% local renewable energy into the municipal aggregation product and that's pretty meaningful we worked very hard with really what I'd call a gold standard for local renewable energy in the commonwealth that's mass energy consumers alliance to pioneer a product which got approved by the DPU which essentially means that by flowing 5% additional local renewable energy through all commercial and residential accounts eligible for this program you can have an absolutely massive impact on the environment with relatively little cost talking about two and a half maximum tens of a penny per kilowatt hour so you have 8 seconds okay so that's my thing thank you Mr. Foskin anything else I don't know who can answer this question but doesn't the state require that every source or whoever provides us with energy has a certain percentage of renewable energy in that component anyway and what's the difference between your component and their component I think it's 10% or something like that just a quick answer to that because we're over his time Tom Michaelman on behalf of good energy this year 11% of energy has to be provided by new renewable resources that's class one that would be going up a percent a year so if this program began in 2017 it would be 12% and the aggregation program would be 5% beyond that so 17% thank you Mr. Radosha thank you Mr. Marder right above Radosha precinct 11 as a participant in the 11% for the past five or more years I'm very happy with it and my concern is if this goes through will I be mandated to opt in will I be opted in automatically or do I I have to opt in I hope okay not out yeah Adam Chapsling town manager yes because you're not currently on basic service you will not be opted in you would have to opt yourself in myself in okay fine for what it's worth it's like I say I've been 10% under the generation rate at least 10% and I'm going to an alternate source thank you thank you Mr. Wagner thank you Mr. Marder Carl Wagner precinct 11 I move to terminate debate on the article on all associated matters if motion to terminate debate on the article on all associated matters so I have a second all in favor of terminating a debate please say yes post debate is terminated and I so declare we now have a force to recommend if you want to have community aggregation please vote one for yes and two for no as soon as we get the green light okay one for yes two for no is an affirmative vote of 177 in the affirmative 22 in the negative it's an affirmative vote and I so declare it that closes article 28 brings us to article 29 this is article 29 as I may have said at the beginning of the meeting I'm going to be stepping down on article 29 I have assisted the proponent of the article Mr. Dolan in the writing of the article in the negotiation with the town manager therefore I'm going to step down and let my able-bodied assistant who you voted in this year Mr. O'Connor take over the chair for this article Mr. O'Connor and because I'm not going to vote on this article I will be abstaining we have before us article 29 like to recognize Mr. Shaptilane Adam Shaptilane town manager as the body knows the Board of Selectment is recommending favourable action on this article so I just want to walk through the process behind that favourable vote so warrant article 29 was filed by 10 registered voters and involves a request from the owner of the property at 54 Pleasant View Road for the town to release exterior lines which were taken in 1942 these exterior lines allowed the town to hold the property as unbuildable so that a roadway could be constructed at a future date these exterior lines are the continuation of the same lines that were released by town meeting in 2014 in relation to the adjoining property at 55 Venner Road as was the case in 2014 the town no longer has any intention of constructing a roadway on this property I've negotiated with the property owner and their legal council in regard to terms under which the town may consider releasing exterior lines this discussion was informed by the prior debate of town meeting at a much prior debate in 2006 and then also in 2014 in regard to financial concerns I took the position that in order to consider releasing the exterior lines the town should be compensated for the present value of the amount the town paid for the property in 1942 I also took the position that the town should be compensated for the tax revenue since the lot has been classified as unbuildable should the town release the exterior lines the lot will become buildable and the current property owners will then get the financial benefit of the lot becoming buildable though masternal law doesn't specifically allow for this there is in masternal law a concept for rollback taxes to be collected when a property is allowed use is changed and it was that concept that guided my thinking and then finally I also looked at the amount that we agreed to in 2014 for the release of the lines at 55 Venner Road as my starting point so in 2014 town meeting voted affirmatively to release the exterior lines at 55 Venner Road in exchange for $65,000 in compensation based on the proportionals share of the square footage associated with 54 Pleasant View Road the requisite amount matching up proportionally with the $65,000 amount would be $28,000 so based on this the town has a tentative agreement that would be subject to approval by town meeting with the property owner based on the $28,000 amount should again should town meeting vote in favor of releasing these exterior lines again the Board of Selectment has moved favorable action in regard to this matter and we respectfully ask the town meeting approve the release of the exterior lines in accordance with the terms of the agreement Mr. Lyoni did you want to speak to the article John Lyoni precinct date I won't address the article Mr. Chaplain did a good job but Mr. Dolan is here if anyone has any questions of him or me, thank you Mr. Ruderman Thank you Mr. Moderator Michael Ruderman precinct 9 my question is how was the amount of compensation appraised was it trying to figure out the what the present value today would have been of the money that was paid for the original taking plus compensation for the increase in value of the lot now that it's buildable plus the rollback taxes or was it looking at the proportion of square footage in the lot so made buildable compared to the lot that we similarly released restrictions on two years ago yes Mr. Chaplain did you answer that Adam Chaplain town manager I guess to some degree Mr. Ruderman the answer is both the concepts laid out in terms of the amount the town paid back in 1942 and trying to collect some portion of rollback taxes was what that analysis that net present value analysis is what came to the $65,000 amount and then using that as the starting point we did the proportional share of how we got to the $65,000 based on the square footage of the totality of the exterior lines and then if you looked at it as a total of $28,000 amount would be the remaining proportion so if I understand what you just said we didn't do the whole net value the whole present value calculation again we simply took the ratio of area today of the lot in question compared to the area of the lot back in 2014 and came up with a ballpark figure that would be accurate thank you Mr. Worden Mr. moderator John Worden precinct date when the when the last lot of interior interior lines whatever they are we're given up by the town for a pittance of $66,000 a couple years ago there arose in place of one rather modest house two gigantic houses and anyone who's been in that part of town I think it's in my precinct has seen these these are the one of them actually was the one I had behind me when we were speaking about McMansionization the other night it's a three and a half story house that towers towers over everything else in the area and I'm sure that the owner of that property when they sold it to the developer to put up those two huge houses got a pretty good price in fact I know the kind of prices that the rare piece of vacant land gets in Arlington and they are very substantial six-figure prices but I would like to ask Mr. Chaplain how many houses they're going to be able to put in this piece of property Adam Chaplain town manager it's my understanding though I think the perhaps the owner of the property could speak more to his plan it's my understanding he can add an additional house but could redevelop the existing house it's my understanding that the square footage is the development of a second house but redevelopment of the existing house let's see well I it's a it's a concern that a lot has been voiced rather substantially throughout town and through the through the master plan the development of of extra large houses that are out of proportion with the other houses in the neighborhood and and so for that reason if you're concerned about that sort of thing which a lot of people apparently are I would urge you not to support this article thank you Mr. Karman Dean Karman precinct 20 I rise to ask you to support this article we had there's a couple of people have mentioned the 2014 article on Benner Road but for anyone who was in town meeting before that came up in the late 2000s there was a lot of discussion on it there was a lot of debate on it we didn't really have a process of how to go forward I think between the first time it came before us and the second time it came before us we had a process and and the reason the process is important is for covering the first its consistency but it also creates I think at the time what we realized was a fair roadmap because what we're talking about in this situation is in the 1940s it's probably not the right technical definition but I think of it as a form of eminent domain they came and they said we need this property for a public use we need to build a road here we may need to build a road here and they held the property and yeah compensation was given to the owners but they took it for a public use and subsequently many years after they said that the public use that they needed for the road in question they no longer need it's unfair as a town meeting to hold the secondary argument now saying sure the town no longer needs it for the public good but we're going to we're going to kind of hold it as a bargaining chip because we don't like what you may or may not build on the property I just don't think that's how the the bargain or the compromise of any form of eminent domain whether it's taking somebody's property outright for a public use or putting an easement or some kind of restriction on the development works and so when we got to this same situation a similar property in 2014 I felt we came up with the town manager came up with a reasonable compromise on how to do this again a couple of years earlier I thought the approach was quite unreasonable when the first time those the homeowners at Fennel Road came before us so that's really what you know what I would say to you the other thing I guess I will add is and I think we talked about this in 14 there are a lot of these around town people roads these different restrictions and things like that and so I think even though we're now talking about the second property in one area that was one sort of small taking back in the 1940s these pop up everywhere so I don't think it's fair to those homeowners whether they're in East Arlington or up on Morningside or over by me on the Lexington Line to you know to have a different path forward and people have to come up over and over again and sort of beg town meeting for their indulgence to release the property so I'd ask you to support it, thank you the individual in the fourth row fifth row back here on the corner by the door yes sir sorry you were in the dark William Burke precinct 17 I'm under the impression that in this piece of property they have already built two center entrance colonials the house that used to sit on the back of the property which the easement stopped them from remodeling the original house has been knocked down so I don't even see why we're talking about this particular thing when the houses have been already built and I'd like to know why we're taking this up again after we've already discussed it back two or three years ago that's all I have to say Mr. Klein Christian Klein precinct 10 I don't have any particular aversion to the recommendation my concern is that this is based on a plan the plan number 213 from 1942 if you try to look this plan up with the state records it's very difficult to locate and a few years ago when we were asked to remove an easement on a property we were provided with the plans we were shown what it would be like and we were shown the quality of the site and what the situation would be afterwards and that information has not been provided at all to town meeting this year and so I would ask Mr. moderator that could we have a description of this property how big is it is it still two lots in the original article what's the quality of the land is it with the easement in the middle is it on the side if we could have any indication as to what this property actually is can you answer that please the lot in question is a total of 4,882 square feet and it comes down it's actually on the corner of Pleasant View in spring at the end of a triangle that connects at the corner of those two streets is it a flat side hillside I believe it's a hillside and it's indicated here that it's sort of lots of 83 and 84 do you know if those are still independent lots or if those have been joined the documentation I have is that they're independent lots they're still independent lots but combined the square foot is Mr. Moore Christopher Moore, Precinct 14 I move to terminate debate on this article in all matters before it we have a motion to terminate debate Mr. Reneau are you ready when the green light comes on one for yes two for no for a motion to terminate debate please vote now one for yes two for no to terminate debate okay we're going to take a voice vote all those in favor of terminating debate please say aye all those opposed I feel the chair believes the motion carries we'll now take a vote Mr. Reneau we're going to need a vote for this it's a two thirds vote required because of real estate well for the moment because of the technical difficulties we'll take a voice vote it's not unanimous we may have five people arise and then we'll take a counted vote all those in favor please say aye all those opposed no I believe we have a two thirds vote I so declare it say it again okay are there any more questions for reconsideration then we are adjourned