 Good evening, calling to order the meeting for the Arlington Slackboard for Monday, February 8th, 2021. As a preliminary matter, this is John Hurd, select by bird chair. Well, try that again, select board chair. Permit me to confirm that all members and persons anticipated on the agenda are present and can hear me. Members, when I call your name, please respond in the affirmative. Diane Mahan. Yes, thank you. Steve DeCorsi. Yes. Len Diggins. Yes. And staff, when I call your name, please respond in the affirmative. Adam Chapdeline. Yes. Douglas Heim. Yes. And Ashley Maher, board administrator, is participating remotely. As an initial matter, just to discuss briefly, select board member, Currow is not going to be joining us at the meeting tonight. He did deliver a letter of resignation from his seat on the board, which will be effective on this Friday. So he will not be with us tonight. He will not be with us in any further meeting. So certainly a loss to the board. We'll miss Mr. Currow's insight. Good evening. This open meeting of the Island to Select Board is being conducted remotely consistent with Governor Baker's executive order of March 12th, 2020, due to the current state of emergency in the Commonwealth, given the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. In order to mitigate the transmission of the virus and reduce risk of COVID-19 illness, we have been advised and directed by the Commonwealth to suspend public gatherings. And as such, the governor's order suspends the requirement of the open meeting law to have all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location. Further, all members of public bodies are allowed in encourage to participate remotely. The order which you can find posted with the agenda materials for this meeting allows public bodies to meet entirely remotely. So long as reasonable public access is afforded so that the public can follow along with the deliberations of the meeting. Ensuring public access does not ensure public participation unless such participation is required by law. This meeting will feature public comment. Even if members of the public do not provide comment, participants are advised that people may be listening who do not provide comment, and those persons are not required to identify themselves. For this meeting, the select board is convening by Zoom as posted on the town's website, identifying how the public may join. Please note that this meeting is being recorded and that some attendees are participating by video conference. Accordingly, please be aware that other folks may be able to see you and take care not to screen share your computer. Anything that you broadcast may be captured by the recording. Please also take care to adjust your screen or device name if you would like to speak in order for us to recognize speakers appropriately and develop accurate minutes. It is helpful for participants to see your full first and last name when calling upon you rather than a nickname. All of the meeting materials for this meeting except any executive session materials are available on the Novus Agenda Dashboard. And we recommend the members and the public follow the agenda as posted on Novus unless the chair notes otherwise. We are now turning to our first item on our agenda before we do so permit me to cover some ground rules for effective and clear conduct of our business and to ensure accurate meeting minutes. I will introduce each speaker on the agenda after they conclude their remarks, the chair will go down the line of members inviting each by name to provide any comments, questions or motions. Please hold until your name is called. Further, please remember to mute your phone or computer when you're not speaking. Please remember to speak clearly in a way that helps generate accurate minutes. For any response, please wait until the chair yields the floor to you and state your name before speaking. If members wish to engage in colloquy with other members, please do so through the chair, taking care to identify yourself. This meeting will feature opportunities for public comment on certain items. After members have spoken, I as chair will afford public comment opportunities as follows. I will first ask members of the public who wish to speak to identify their names and addresses only. Once the chair has a list of all public commentators, I will call on each by name and afford three minutes for any comments. Please keep in mind that all participants and members of the public must be recognized by the chair before speaking. Finally, each vote tonight will be taken by roll call votes. Right. So we're gonna take a couple of items out of order here. We do have item number two on our agenda is a COVID-19 update with the town manager and Cristiano Bongiorno, our director of health and human services. But we're gonna wait till she's available, Mr. Chaplin. She will actually be with us in about five minutes. So if we could take item three and then take item two, that would work well. If the chair is okay with that. So item number three on our agenda is a facilities department update and introduction to the new facilities director, Mr. Chaplin. All right, thank you, Mr. Heard. I'm just promoting Mr. Feeney and Mr. Walters. So what we wanted to do tonight was twofold. First, we wanted to provide the board with an update from Mr. Feeney on his work in the facilities department over the last year plus and then give a chance for the board to virtually meet our new permanent facilities director Greg Walters. As you know, after our prior facilities director left for another opportunity, Jim Feeney, the assistant town manager at the time stepped over to the facilities department to act in an interim capacity that lasted a little longer than I think we initially expected. Given a number of circumstances, not the least of which was the onset of the pandemic but we feel very lucky to have been able to recruit and now have working for the town, Greg Walters. So again, what I wanna do is ask Jim to talk a little bit about his observations of the current status of the facilities department and then give a chance for you to meet Mr. Walters. So with the board's discretion, I'd ask Jim to say a few words. Thank you, Jim. Thank you, Adam. Good evening, members of the board. Appreciate the opportunity to speak about the facilities department tonight. Can honestly say it was wonderful to be a part of the department during such uncertain times. Many ways the circumstances brought upon by COVID shine the light on the importance of the work done by the facilities department, including things like increased disinfection, repairing and overhauling ventilation equipment, upgrading HVAC filters, procuring and distributing air cleaners and plastic barriers, among other things. The facilities department continues to have a critical role in keeping our building occupants safe and at ease. Historically, this work took place in the background but the women and men on the facilities department were up for the challenge as their work was catapulted to the forefront of everyone's mind. So, I just wanna take this moment to applaud and thank the folks in the facilities department for working tirelessly to get the schools ready for reoccupancy and for keeping them operating and also for providing assistance to various other departments throughout the various stages of the pandemic, including working alongside DPW to provide safe elections, staging an unprecedented outdoor town meeting to now coming around and supporting COVID testing sites and vaccination delivery at Arlington High School. So, with that, I'd also like to say a few words that are just past construction season was rather busy with various capital projects of all sizes, not the least of which were facilities department closely supporting construction projects at three occupied buildings, all with very time sensitive milestones, including reoccupying the apartment or school via the monotony preschool, shifting and moving many functions at AHS is a part of the early enabling phases of the rebuild project and moving and setting health and human services up in a new office suite, a newly renovated office suite at the central school. Very briefly, looking ahead, I'm pleased to report we have recently filled many key vacancies in the maintenance division and for the first time in a very, very long time have a full complement of custodial staff. So, with that, we have relaunched a work order system in the district and are considering ways to further expand its use as well as different options for expanding use with a focus towards asset management. I feel that that capturing asset specific data should help aid us with our capital needs forecasting and planning for various aging building systems. So, with our new director, Greg Walters, who you're about to meet will continue to assess the resources currently in place in the department and plan for what resources may be necessary in the future to manage a combined portfolio of nearly 40 buildings with a replacement value of just shy of $400 million. So it is a big job and there is a range of assets from aging historical buildings to increasingly complex modern buildings both of which present exciting but labor intensive challenges. So, with that, obviously we'd like to turn it over to Greg if I could. All right, Greg. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be on board here in Arlington. Just a little bit, I came over from UMass Dartmouth where I was associate vice chancellor for facilities management and capital planning. So familiar with this type of work that Jim's referencing. He and I had a good month of January turning over the department. This is now my second week with kind of all my own and we're getting into it. Take away the snow that's happened over the weekend and coming up and that's always out there but we got a lot of exciting things happening. Students returning to the high school in two weeks. So another milestone that we'll accomplish and really looking forward to working in the town of Arlington. Also happy that I'm a resident of the town and so it's another vested interest to make sure we're doing everything the best we can. Thank you. I'll turn to the board for any questions. Ms. Diggins? You know, welcome aboard. I mean, very impressive. I mean, of course the thing that sticks out is the nuclear submarine party resume. You know, I'm sure it's some way that'll come in handy, but also listening to what Mr. Feeney said, I am excited to hear about the asset management plan initiative because I know the MBTA is taking that on and it sounds so simple, but it's really hard to get in but when you have it, when you know what you have and you have a sense of how it's performing and be able to predict when things are gonna break down, it's just so valuable. So I really am happy to hear about that and good luck with that. Thank you. Thank you. This is Mahan. Thank you, Mr. Chair. First I'd like to say to Mr. Feeney, I cannot tell you how many accolades in your interim facilities director role that I've received from the employees that when you stepped into that role, so much so that they literally begged me, my brothers are custodian in the audience in middle school to keep you there. And I said, just as much as you want Mr. Feeney, Jim, to stay there, that's how much we need him back on the town side as the assistant town manager with our deputy town manager, a town manager. So once again, anything you've taken on outside the umbrella of what your original job description is, you definitely excel at it. And I just wanna say, I appreciate that. I know I was along with many others longing for your tenure to be shorter, but I understood the process COVID-19 hit and kind of put the brakes to everything. So I just wanted you to know what you probably know already because you have interactions with these employees that they wanted you there permanently in the worst way. But having said that, going through the process and what we did with Mr. Walters, and I know he's only been on, I think it's your second or third week. Sixth week. Sixth week, okay. I'm getting really positive reports back for someone that doesn't seem to be much of a learning curve. Some of it may be because you lived in Allington. Some may not. So what I'd like to say to Mr. Walters, Greg, in terms of facilities director oversight and moving forward with where we're upgrading our schools, our fire station, town departments, DPW, that's a whole nother host of issues. One of the things for me in the past that I've been really frustrated with was, and this may be rectified with the asset management that you and my colleague spoke to earlier is that one of my previous jobs was working for the phone company and I was in charge of not only all the linesmen, but the equipment they worked on. And back then there were no software programs like they are now as well as companies that I could tailor it for you. So I basically made between Lotus One, Two, Three and Debase. I don't know if any of you have heard that. I'm really old. Set up my own UF for trunks, senders, mockers. And one thing that I feel like we really should be working on more that I've seen has happened in the past, not under Mr. Feeney, but previous to him is that with a lot of our equipment in terms of maintenance, warranties and recalls. Cause the big thing is, like recalls would come in and they wouldn't be followed up on. And that simple part that they were saying, FOIL 257 is faulty, you need to replace it. And that wasn't followed up on. So then when it finally caused a major issue to that piece of equipment, they'd say, well, you didn't take the opportunity to follow up when we issued the recall and you waited so long that parts are not even available anymore. And it turns into a five or 10 fold cost ticket item to repair and or replace. So my big thing, and I know Jim could probably bring you up to speed on that is especially with all the new construction that we have on with HVAC. And I know all about chalk lines and how well that's not really HVAC but having worked for construction companies is if the asset management program that you have in place, you feel encompasses all that but for maintenance, getting that new piece of equipment, logging it in somewhere in a software program, data purchase yearly or by annual times that it needs to be inspected and upgraded, recalls when they're issued that that stuff really stays on top of because then you're paying dimes and nickels versus hundreds of dollars to thousands. So, and I think we can save a lot of money on that. And I wanna demonstrate to our town residents that we are doing things like that because that's one of the biggest things they say is you don't maintain this stuff. And that's why it kind of gets out of control. I mean, the perfect thing is the town hall door. We haven't been able to fix it forever. We're doing it now because we have construction going down there but that's plagued us for like five, 10 years. And if you're a disabled person or a senior, you had to be Hercules to get that door open. So I don't know if, I know I kind of went on and on with that but if you have any thoughts around managing the equipment, whether it's equipment, whether it's switching to clean energy things maybe if you could give me like a four to six of whatever amount of sentence answer on that. Sure, asset management is critical as Mr. Diggins pointed out. I mean, it's, we first need to know what we have in order to be able to properly maintain it. And so, you know, Jim started the legwork on this and I'm gonna continue it with the goal being getting our asset management system up and running. So when the new high school comes online as these new systems are transferred over to our ownership we're rolling those into the asset management. They'll come over with, you know how do you properly maintain them? How do you, the schedule for preventive maintenance the replacement parts, the warranties, the vendors who are gonna, you know help us troubleshoot it, should there be an issue? All those things kind of get into the system. And so it's a one stop shop to be able to do that. These asset management systems allow for us to say, well, we wanna do the monthly maintenance on this so we can click a button and here's all the parts you need in order to be able to do that maintenance. So it helps streamline it for us. And then the staff have an easier time to do that maintenance. So they don't have as many hurdles in front of them when they do it. So I think that's a big part of it is making sure we fully understand that asset management is everything, right? It's doorknobs to vehicles to HVAC equipment to flooring, you know, it's kind of everything and you really take a look at that and get it in there. When you have that in place it also allows you to develop a one year, five year, 20 year plan of replacement. You know, we know the life cycles for equipment and we can say that in 10 years we're gonna have to spend X amount of money to replace these pieces of equipment that are gonna come up at the end of their life. So it will do many things for us as we get that system online. As far as sustainability goes, I've already met Ken Pruitt. We're, you know, going through some things we've had some initial discussions. We've set up tri-weekly meetings of which I'll have my first with him tomorrow afternoon. And so we'll start working through that process because there's a lot of exciting initiatives out there and a lot of things we want to take advantage of. I know there's been a lot of work done to move towards electrification. I've already had a conversation with Ken about something I did at Dartmouth which was an energy master plan. And so what that laid out was when we go to replace a chiller or a piece of equipment how do we replace it in such a way that we're meeting our energy goals for the future, that we're not gonna replace it with something that in five years we're going and that there's a lot of emissions we should have replaced it with this, you know? And so kind of looking at an overall plan to make sure we're, you know moving toward that general direction. Okay, thank you. And if I could just ask one follow up question only because when this was first proposed many years ago the answer that was given to me when I'm still a member of the board was the town was employing town and school side something like school dog or school doc or something like that. And I looked at the software and it really was whatever you put in, it stored it. So my question to you is with the asset management program, software whatever that you have, is it like auto populated or auto generated or is it user driven? Meaning that, I understand the first step we took in Google or school doc or whatever which was just entering whatever but then it just sat there. It didn't sort of have like a tickler system that every month, like how does that work? Sure, it's school dude is the name of the program. I used it for about five years at a previous position I held. So I'm very familiar with their system and how they operate. Initially, you have to get the data in there. So there's a little bit of legwork that has to happen. Either our staff goes around and does all the information or we were looking at options to hire them to come out and walk through all the buildings, take all the pictures look up the information and populate that. Once that's in there, then you do have to maintain it. It will do things on its own. It will generate work orders, generate preventive maintenance schedules and do those things. But when you change the piece of equipment out you have to update it. When you complete the maintenance you got to tell the system that you completed the maintenance. So there is some user input that's gonna be required. And that is within the capability of an administrative assistant to handle. You don't necessarily need to be a trades person to do that. You just have to be, let's say computer savvy familiar with data entry, how databases work and those type of things. So it is something that where I was previously I had an admin assistant that maintained the system and it worked pretty well. Okay. And I promise this will be my last question. Just like this is my stomping ground, you know with then it was NT and T. Can you also use a school dude? I wish I had a different name. Like I'm just gonna give you an example. When I was in the phone company we had trunks, senders, markers, lines, things like that. I had a system set up that also had employee information within the system so that if a trunk or a marker needed just regular maintenance, I could click and it would tell me by designation numbers what employees, which was just about everybody that could do that. But if it was a complicated fix that you needed to work with the company that you know, it's someone who's a new hire that hasn't had the training and experience to do that. So if I knew I had a, you know severe issue on marker 427 I had a place where you could click and you could see there were probably four of your 62 employees that could fix that. Is that something that can be done in school dude or is that a little too ambitious? The capabilities there. So when a work order comes in, you can assign it. There's different ways you can assign it based on the skill level of the person which you can enter in. Is it a carpenter? Is it a carpenter helper? Is it an electrician? Is it a senior electrician? You know, who's capability could do that? Let's say plumbing might be one, right? Where you have a few plumbers on staff and somebody's really good at doing physical plumbing. Somebody else is really good at doing the heating plumbing. You know, it's more familiar with that. So you can assign it when it comes in. It is a user interface. So when that work order comes in, the person who's reviewing those work orders will need to be able to know, you know, what that work entails and who it fits best. And that's where that part would go to like the building maintenance supervisor. That position would be able to take those work orders in and then assign them to the correct person. The nice thing there is, you know, with mobile apps now and everything, so they'll have them on their phone and we can actually schedule out somebody's day. First two hours, you're gonna go up to the Dolan School and you're gonna work on this. Next two hours, you go over to Thompson and you're gonna work on these things. And so you kind of fill out the person's day and you help optimize, you know, their efficiency throughout that day as well. So you can schedule, but, you know, all the work at Dolan for one day, so they're not, you know, spending two hours driving around the different schools throughout the day and the like. So the capabilities there, I think for our staff, since we have one plumber, you know, two HVAC technicians, it's not as critical. So for us, it will either be, can we do the work in-house or do we have to call a vendor in to help us? Okay, thank you. And I will, in two or three weeks after I talk to the town manager, in some form, socially distancing, contact you with some more thoughts that I don't need to share at this board meeting. And I wanna thank the chair for indulging me and welcome aboard. Please don't take any of my questions as anything, you know, negative or criticism. I'm really excited that you're here and you're gonna carry on with what Mr. Feeney has instituted. And I feel a nine out of 10 comfortable that, and you can get to 10 out of 10, nine out of 10 in terms of your competence and expertise and experience. And this is a big thing. And I appreciate you coming, staying in Allington and now working in Allington. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And first of all, welcome, Mr. Walters. You really, we're lucky to have you in Allington, you're a very impressive resume and experience and thank you for your service in the Navy. Mr. Diggins already referenced that. The other thing I saw in your experience that could come in handy was your training as a court mediator because with competing interests that may come in handy and with the various needs of the different buildings. So I really look forward to getting to know you with as you progress in the job. It's really exciting time with the amount of construction going on in the community and the challenges that you're gonna face. So welcome to Allington in your position and thank you. And if I could, Mr. Chair, I also wanna congratulate Mr. Feeney for his promotion to deputy town manager of operations and thank him for the work as Mrs. Mahan said that he had done over the past year, year and a half. I don't know how long it is, Jim. I know it was a long time, but thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That's why I don't mute myself. Thank you to Mr. Walters, welcome. I also, I do wanna thank Jim for the work that he's done. I know all across town he's been doing a lot of work but as a parent of young kids who we like to stay, we want to stay in school. Just the job that both the school department has done in conjunction with the facility department to keep the kids safe in school has really been amazing and the results have been mind blowing, I think to a lot of people from where we thought we'd be at the end of the process. So I do wanna particularly thank you for that. And Mr. Walters again, thank you for your willingness to come and lend your expertise to the town of Allington. I don't know if you know this but the word around town hall is they refer to Jim as the legend. So you have some big shoes to fill but I think you are up to the task. There's a lot of work that has to be done that's certainly clear with, you knew what you were stepping into but I think you're with the help of our town staff and your experience, we're in good hands here. So I appreciate that. All right, with that, I don't believe we have any motions. So thank you, thank you for joining us tonight. Thank you. Thank you guys. Thank you. All right, so now we will skip back to item number two on our agenda COVID-19 update with Mr. Chaplin, our town manager and Ms. Bonjono, our director of health and human services. All right, Christine, there she is. So I will once again, very briefly just introduce this agenda item and let Christine speak to the board. But we thought this meeting would be a good opportunity to come and present to the board as we're in this place now where it's still very important to maintain restrictions or certain restrictions that have been in place for a long time now to keep people from transmitting the virus. But yet we're also transitioning into a time where we're trying to roll out more and more vaccinations to protect people from the virus. So we're in a sort of both a continuing and transitional period. And we thought this would be a good time to provide the board an update on both of those efforts. What I'll also add is for those watching as a team myself and Christine and a number of other town staff meet daily, still actually Monday through Thursday to check in on the status of our response to the pandemic. We provide weekly emails via the town notice system to communicate with the public on Thursday of each week coupled with an interview with ACMI that is packaged into that weekly notice either with myself or with Ms. Bonjono. And now as we're again getting deeper and deeper into the vaccination period, we'll be talking about whether or not we wanna increase the frequency of our communication as it was earlier in the pandemic. But we wanna make sure that at the end of the day that when we're communicating it's being heard and sometimes being more frequent helps you be heard and sometimes being less frequent helps you be heard depending on what you're dealing with. So we try to continually triangulate around that around that issue. But with that said, Christine, I know she's shared with a couple of groups today and updates so hopefully she feels well-prepared and well-practiced. So I'll turn to Christine and quickly before doing that just wanna compliment Christine on really for almost a year now just an exceptionally job well done and it's tiring, it's frankly exhausting and there's still a long runway ahead of us but Christine continues to be really a tremendous leader for this town on this front and on many fronts. So we're very fortunate to have her and I'm glad she's joining us here tonight. Great, thank you, Adam. Thank you for those kind words and thank you to the board for this opportunity. I know it's been a while since I've seen you in person and I was thankful for the opportunity tonight. So I do wanna just give you a quick run from the beginning of COVID back about a year ago. So it was right around February last year when we began quarantining cases coming back that had traveled to high-risk areas around the world and it was really just the beginning stages of hearing what COVID-19 was and what was happening around the world and our public health nurse was doing the quarantines as she does for any communicable disease and really it was the beginning. It really wasn't until March when we had our first case here in Arlington and one of the first cases actually in the state, it was a younger case that really sparked a lot of media attention. It was at that point when the state and our community began this journey and these efforts that we've been working through for the almost past year. Our office consisted of about 10 staff. We also in health and human services, we have the Council on Aging, Veteran Services and the Arlington Youth Counseling Center as well. So staff from all of our divisions have been participating in these efforts. Mostly the health department staff have been working around the clock doing contact tracing, which includes, when we receive a report of a positive case, we reach out to that positive case, determine who their contacts are and we trace back to make sure we prevent additional cases from happening. So if it's a young person in a school system, we try to figure out if they're involved in sports or where they may have traveled, trying to make sure we're kind of tamping down any additional cases that may pop up. So the health department staff have been leading that effort. Additionally, the team has been doing, has been enforcing all of the governor's orders. So early on, there were governor's orders coming out weekly daily, where we would receive information about potential outbreak, potential cluster areas. So whether it's restaurants or whatever the area was that we were seeing cases, the governor would come up with an order. Our office would be responsible for enforcing that. We continue to do that today. We continue to do that now. So both of those efforts continue currently. In addition to that, we're now faced with the opportunity, I would say, it's more of an opportunity, but the opportunity to begin vaccinating our communities, our populations. And so we've been working closely with our department of public health to access vaccine, to roll out vaccines to the groups within our community that are currently eligible. So you may have seen the state has put out three phase plan to roll out vaccine to the populations. The first phase included the individuals that could potentially be getting COVID and spreading it to others to higher risk people. So, you know, doctors and nurses, home healthcare, it also included nursing homes, which is a really big step for us. We saw a lot of cases, particularly in the spring, in our nursing homes. So we were really excited to see that, but phase one really covered a lot of those populations. Arlington began receiving vaccine to distribute within our community around the first responder category within phase one. So we rolled out 600 vaccinations to first responders in our neighboring communities and here in Arlington. So we partnered with Lexington, Belmont and Watertown to roll out vaccine to first responders. We also included other healthcare workers, such as nurses that may have been missed in previous categories within phase one. We then shifted gears and began vaccinating the other groups within phase one as vaccine became available. So the program started for us in the second week of January. We're now in the second week of February. So we're now starting our second doses. So each COVID vaccine required, you know, both Pfizer and Moderna require two doses. So we're starting our second doses this week for the first responders and that will be wrapped up by the end of this week. So we then began shifting after the first responders over to the additional healthcare workers, home health aides where we saw a lot of cases. A lot of our older people that have home health aides coming into their homes, we're getting COVID from those individuals. So we were really happy to be able to provide vaccine to those, that category. And then we, once the 75 and over population, which is the first category in phase two opened up, we received a small number of doses of vaccine and we began holding our 75 and over clinic last Wednesday. We are doing clinics on Wednesdays. We are lucky enough to have, you know, our schools are remote at the current time and we have a site that we use. It's a school site. We have our school nurses on board to help, which has been amazing. And so we, you know, at this point, our vaccinations, although very limited at the moment, we are hoping to ramp up and to be able to provide more as more opens up from the federal government. Here in Arlington, we've been very fortunate. We have long practiced dispensing vaccines to our community. If any of you are around and during H1N1, you may remember we held major mass vaccinations, you know, clinics at the Arlington High School. I think we were the highest, one of the highest vaccination sites in local public health across the state, which we are very proud of. We learned a lot from those efforts. COVID, vaccinating and COVID is a very different environment. So we obviously had to shift and change our efforts to address the fact that we have to be socially distanced. Everyone has to wear masks. We have to have appointments. Things shifted slightly. So, you know, it's been a challenge that we know how to address. And, you know, I think, although we have a small number of doses currently, we've been able to perfect each clinic. We look at what worked, what didn't work, and we're addressing those areas of concern and we fix it for the next clinic to make it even better for the next and safer. So, you know, I think we have an amazing team within Health and Human Services, but we also have an amazing town staff as well. So we've been able to pull staff from all of the various departments, from the schools to the facilities department, DPW, IT. I mean, I could go on and on. I literally, I'm amazed every day at the team we have here in Arlington, because when I talk to colleagues in other communities, we just don't, they just don't have that. So I do have to say, I feel like we are so lucky. We have a great staff and we just have an amazing team. So I wanna just make sure I do that little shout out because it wouldn't have happened without all of the hands on deck. So we've currently vaccinated 1,200 residents and our goal is to get up to about 1,000 per week once the vaccine becomes available. So I think that's really all I have. I know, Adam, you had mentioned we meet daily. I don't know if I've forgotten anything that you wanna add. I would only add that, you know, collectively between Christine, myself and other municipalities, we continue to advocate at the state level for expanding the role of municipalities in vaccinating its residents. As Christine mentioned, the 100 a week, we have a goal to get that up to 1,000, hopefully soon. And we think we started to make some strides in having the state view municipalities or at least those municipalities that have vaccination capacity at playing a larger role. So every week that goes by as hopefully supply loosens up and more is being sent by the federal government, we'll get a better and better idea of what might be available and what role municipalities might be able to play. But I think the message that we wanna send that I know Christine is sending is that we are ready as the vaccines arrive, we're ready, Christine and her team have a plan and we stand ready to begin vaccinating as many people as we can based on supply. Thank you. All right, I'll turn to the board for any questions, comments. Mr. Dacorsi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First, Ms. Bonjuano, I wanna thank you for all the work that you and your team have done since the onset of the pandemic and whether it's from members, people in the healthcare community, members of our state delegation, people work for the state, the work that you're doing comes up over and over again and how hard you've been working and how great a job you've been doing with your team. So thank you so much for that and we're still have a ways to go and people in town appreciate the update appreciate what's on the website and the references to different locations even outside of Arlington. And I just wanna touch on that for a second. I did see your update last week and one of the frustrations you expressed I think we all feel is right now we're trying to get as many people 75 and over vaccinated and it seems like there should be more of an emphasis to make those vaccinations available at the local level as opposed to pushing that age group to the mass vaccination sites. And I'm just wondering it sounds like there might be a little bit of hope in the interim to increase what we have but I'm just wondering what you might recommend to people who can't get in at the local level where they can go and where they can look and maybe where they can ask for help if they don't have access to the computer to be able to sign up for vaccination. Thank you. So it's been very challenging for over 75 population this was the rollout plan was probably one a lot of the most difficult phone calls we had ever received in our office in my 20 years of working for the town of Arlington because it is so frustrating and hard for people to navigate the system whether they have access to a computer or not it was really hard. So our council on aging has really been working around the clock to reach out to the populations that they work with. So we have a large number of residents that receive social work services. We have a lot of service providers we work with. So they've reached out to all of those populations we've been able to get people in for vaccination appointments through our office, through our clinic and I will say we also had a we had a we have a list on the website where people can sign up for notifications so that we were pulling names off of that we've been pulling names from our service providers our veteran services director our social workers our other service providers we work with really to try to find the people that we know can't get to Deladerie Fenway that can't find a parking garage in Boston and get to Fenway. I think that was our concern. We don't want to have 96 year olds or 104 year olds going on an icy day into sites that are just not safe. So we really tried to reach out and find those individuals in addition to those vaccinations that we've been able to provide we've also been able to, you know get people access to the VA system. So the VA has been a really big source for anyone that's a veteran. So our veteran services director has been working around the clock to get those veterans in and vaccinated and our hospitals have been amazing as well. So Leahy and Matt Auburn have been able to get a lot of people appointments. So as our council in aging is calling people a lot of the people on our list the 75 and over list have been able to access appointments. So we're really just trying to hit those that have not had any luck. I have to say I think the team's been quite successful. I think they started with a list of about 1200 and they've gotten a pretty good way through that list which has been great. We're also doing senior housing which is separate from this weekly allotment from DPH we're going to get all of the vaccine we need for senior housing. So we're going to go in and vaccinate everybody in senior housing that needs it regardless of age. So that actually opens up in the next category which is the category with the 65 and over. So they'll be done soon hopefully we'll be able to get that vaccine which is about 600 doses. And we're excited to start that process soon. That's great. I just have one or two more questions Mr. Chairman if I could. It's a question for people who are gonna be waiting for future phases of vaccinations and there still is a need for testing and a need to be careful with precautions but I'm just for that group and maybe this is just a request just to get out there what if there's gonna be any expansion of testing sites and I know maybe the system is too strained as it is but it's like we've got parallel things going on here and that there's still issues for the need for people to be tested if they're symptoms or I wonder if you could talk about that briefly. So the state has the stop the spread testing sites I do think testing is another it's one of the most important tools that we have to prevent future cases. So there is testing available through those sites we also have a grant to do testing down at the Menotomy Manor site as well as some of the senior housing sites. So we've done a round already at the Menotomy site and so we will continue to do that that's the CDBG grant that came out so we access some funds through that and have been running that and we'll continue to do that. So anyone else that needs testing we refer them to their physician to stop the spread sites. There's also private pay locations that are accessible so pro EMS in Cambridge is an $80 test. It's really just cost the cost to them. So there are sites that we do refer people to. And last question that I have on top of everything else you're doing and you're overseeing the COVID Relief Fund and I'm wondering how that is going and maybe information if people need to try to access those funds what they can do. Sure, I don't have the website right off the top of my head but they can access the information on the town website which can link to the COVID Relief Fund site. So the COVID Relief Fund is available to anyone that's been impacted by COVID. So if they've lost their job or hours have been cut back or I mean even with childcare issues with schools not being fully in session people may have a hard time just with coverage and hours and whatnot at work. So I think we've been very successful in the funds we've raised. We've been able to give out a significant amount of that money to help people in serious need. We've seen it, we've seen the need grow here in Arlington despite federal support and state supports. I think the local just someone to pay their mortgage someone to pay their rent for the month or their car payment so that they can continue getting to work has been really helpful for people that have been negatively impacted. So thank you for bringing that up. Sure, no, thank you again. Thank you so much for everything you're doing. Thank you. This is Mohan. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And as Ms. Bungiorno knows I have seen firsthand the clinic I brought my parents who are in their 80s who signed up through the town website. I signed them up because they don't have a computer they don't have internet they're both deaf as I said before any fish you can name. So even talking to them on the phone is a challenge. And you know, Christine Natasha, Kristen Shaw from Council on Aging who are overseeing this and I know I'm gonna miss someone but you know, APD, AFD, IT, DPW, COA, AHS I wanna thank Ms. Bungiorno for not only having such a successful clinic albeit we don't have as many vaccines that we could give out but I know you say you're meeting every day or daily or weekly to see how you can do it better and I know you are doing that but you really had it right down to, you know in terms of making sure, you know especially amongst 80 to 100 plus they tend to wander and having safe egress and explaining to them. And so I'm so appreciative of that and I do know the clinic probably could handle at least 1,000 a week if we have the vaccine and I know the town manager, Mr. Chaplin who's told me that he and our health and human services secretary, Ms. Bungiorno have been contacting the state and flooring, flooring, begging, cleaning whatever ING word to get it done and I'm just gonna assume part of that is contacting reps but especially our senator because you know, haven't been in the state house Senator Paul Feeney is a good friend of mine he's down in Foxboro it seems like, I hate to say this squeaky whale so I know you're exploring that but that seems to be the formula for going through that I'm just a member of the select board I'm always available for assistance but that seems to be the one that if you can get that on board which I'm sure you already are but maybe ramp it up a bit I do wanna say that for seniors and people who are disabled in some way who either don't have the technology or aren't as savvy and don't have a young sir family related I have been giving out the senior center phone number of 7813163400 to call they can always call the select board's office and you know, maybe it's a different town agency maybe it does go to the board of health but whatever way I had posed this question and Ms. Shaw had answered some of it and Ms. Blancherno may have also answered it but I have not checked my email since Friday a lot of people were saying and I guess it would be to the town manager and Mr. Chapter Lane is it feasible and or applicable to use the town's robocall system to make a phone call to various constituents residents in the town when the vaccine clinic in Allenton expands to notify them of that and what people have said to me because people said why don't you do a robocall once a week once a month to everybody in town especially around seniors and then some people said, you know well, can you do it so that you only call the seniors but my question would be and it doesn't have to be answered tonight for those people and perhaps it's an economic issue who aren't able to get this information and maybe don't watch ACMI I guess I'd leave it unless you have an answer right now tonight a lot of people are saying whether it's a robocall or a mailing to reach those people that aren't gonna be reached through technology. So I would say that we can look at that I think whether or not we would choose that mode of communication would depend on how much supply we would receive from the state I would be with limited supply I would be worried about calling broader swaths of the population given that we wouldn't be able to meet the demand but I think if supply opens up and we feel as though we have the need to make sure we're getting the right people into those seats to receive the vaccine that that is a tool that we could use. Okay, thank you and then I would just sort of an inherent I think understanding with our new facilities director Mr. Walters that I know that Ms. Bunjarno and Mr. Feeney have worked hand in hand a lot on the schools am I correct that that's just gonna carry over and that professional relationship will still exist? Yes and then my last question is I've gotten some emails and I've been referring them to the school committee chairwoman, Jane Morgan and this is something I'm not aware of and Jane has sent me something I haven't read it yet I'm getting questions around have we started or are we starting testing at the Gibbs middle Gibbs school for student and or staff and if we are if it could just give a sort of a brief of what that is so partly I get the knowledge too. Sure, so the school system is managing pool testing of staff and students in various schools it's a pilot the pilot is being run in nearly every sitting down across Massachusetts I shouldn't say nearly but a lot have joined this is a free pilot that is being rolled out there's been a pool testing collaborative that a number of communities have come around to discuss since last August Arlington was a part of those conversations and I can't really speak to the details of it because it's being ruled out by the schools Cindy shared and Karen in particular is sort of managing that whole process and obviously we provide support as we can but yeah, there is pool testing going on I think that pool testing is going to take samples from an entire group of individuals it's a much cheaper way of testing and making sure we're pulling any positives out of the stream to prevent the future spread of the disease after a pool comes back positive if a pool comes back positive I can't speak to what's going on currently in the schools I don't believe there were positive pools last week but they're by next testing each student so individual testing to determine who the positive is so that then we can do our contact tracing and make sure we prevent future cases I hope that answered your question Nope, it definitely does and thank you Ms. Bocharno, thank you Mr. Chair My kindergarten got tested today in class he was very excited to come up and tell us he went around three times so Do they do the nose testing, do you know Mr. Hart or is that how they test? I know my second grader, the other cohort got tested and they all came back negative and it's just great to see a little bit peace of mind as we send the kids to school so it's something that I think a lot of the parents were excited about not to jump in there Thank you very much All right, Mr. Viggins Thank you Mr. Chair and thanks Ms. Bocharno you've been doing a great job I just echo everyone on that I'm very confident in you and the rest of the department and I also appreciate the cautious approach that the town has advocated all on me and there's always pressures for me to open things faster or be looser but we haven't done that and I think that is a good thing and so I'm very supportive of that just a couple of a few short questions how do things go out at Monotomy Matter with respect to vaccinations and how do you anticipate perhaps dealing with the population there in order to make sure that when vaccinations become more widely available they'll be in a position to take advantage of it So I just want to clarify at Monotomy Matter we did testing, we did a round of testing it went well, it was on a Sunday we learned a little bit about maybe timing I think we're gonna do it during the week and maybe a little later in the day so we have funding to continue doing that on a more regular basis so we'll continue to do it as far as vaccinations that's an under 65 population living in that area so we would not be vaccinating them until phase three unless individuals fall into other phases before such as healthcare workers or person 75 and over I think there may be some residents that fall in those categories but for the most part they're under phase three likely Gotcha, all right, but just kind of looking forward to you, are you anticipating, I mean I'm just trying to be delicate in the way that I put the question but also kind of get at the potential issue is that are we looking at how to make sure that the population over there gets vaccinated? Yeah, sure, so in the past we have done flu clinics we use our flu vaccine our flu clinics has practiced for pandemics and here we are with the years of experience we have run flu clinics in that area before to capture the population that will definitely benefit greatly from the vaccine so yeah, I mean once we get to that point we'll definitely be looking at some targeted clinics some targeted advertising so yeah, I mean I think we've got a really good relationship working relationship with the housing authority and the staff in that location so it'll be a simple ask a simple process and also the Thompson School but the school staff there are amazing and being able to access that school for a site if needed would also be an opportunity for us as well Great, and here's maybe an opportunity to explain to people how they should behave after they get vaccinated and what the rationale is for being a behavior that they might think is a little more intense than they would have thought otherwise. Thank you, I'm glad you brought that up there, a vaccination is not a ticket to do whatever you want you can't get your vaccine and go to dinner and feel as if you're invincible there are definitely concerns about that I think we know now in Massachusetts as of last Friday there were seven people that tested positive for the variants the variants are spreading fast we can assume there are more people out there with those we don't know how the vaccinations will respond to those variants so I think it's really important that people continue to wear masks, continue to socially distance and continue to be vigilant despite vaccinations until we have a greater number of people in our communities vaccinated we really have to continue to be vigilant until we hear from the CDC that we're in the clear I feel like we should just continue to be aware that there is still risk. Right, and one of the other things that I've heard too is that we're not really clear that when you get vaccinated that you still don't get the virus and then shut it, so that's why I think another reason they're asking people when you're vaccinated, still continue to wear your mask because you may get it and still spread it to people who haven't been vaccinated so I just wanted to point that out and if I'm incorrect about any of this please point that out too so when you're correct they can still spread it and that's the concern that we would have thanks and the last thing and you give a short answer on this one has there been any modeling? Is the vaccine strategies based on any modeling mean as to various types of vaccinations strategies for like being a little redundant? I'll give you an example of what I'm getting at is that we are vaccinating the elderly people first mean and people more vulnerable first mean I could see almost an argument me for vaccinating those who are likely to spread mean I mean it would seem like you're rewarding bad behavior but for the younger people who just can't control themselves and I understand that mean and if they are likely to be the ones that spread you can almost see the rationale of all vaccinate them and I understand that we don't know that people don't spread it but let's say there's a probability that they don't mean so I'm just wondering has there been any like modeling to try to tease out what might be a better strategy? It's a little esoteric question if the answer is no. That's more of a state level or a federal level question but I will say that the state the Massachusetts plan to vaccinate healthcare workers and individuals that are coming in contact with those that will likely have a really hard time getting over COVID has been I think a pretty positive strategy vaccinating the 75 and over population that's where we see most of our hospitalizations and deaths I have to say that I'm really eager to get them vaccinated we're seeing our nursing home cases just basically at zero now after having both doses of vaccines so I mean there's arguments to be made to vaccinate the younger population but right now I think that we really have to get our older population vaccinated or we're going to still see deaths and hospitalizations and we don't, I just I'm strongly advocating for continuing with the older population next we go into 65 and over and two comorbidities I think those are the other areas that will be high, extremely high risk so I think that getting these two groups vaccinated will help significantly in reducing our hospitalization rates and deaths. Thank you very much, appreciate it. Thank you and I do just wanna echo the comments that my other board members have made about the incredible work that you and the entire health department have done in the past year it's, I've said this before but in the midst of this horrible virus I feel like Arlington's really felt like a safe place to live or as safe as a place can be because of both the town staff and the residents we have amazing residents who listen to the guidance that you provide so I think that certainly helps and I can attest from personal experience we've had a few instances where we've had questions about exposures and the health department has been incredible and responding weekends, nights you can always get somebody on the phone in the health department to answer a question and it helps alleviate the stress when something like that happens so I know, I'm sure you've done that for many, many, many residents in town so we do appreciate that as well. So regarding the vaccinations that's coming up in the housing once that rolls out is there sort of building on what Mr. Diggins had said is there any feasibility to like a door to door type of vaccination approach as opposed to a clinic set up where just given the importance in housing to make sure everyone's vaccinated just for the health of the individual resident but also the people that they live with is that anything that's been discussed or anything that could be a possibility? I think we lost you. Yep, I'm back, sorry, I guess it's a slow moment. No, we have our plans for housing all set and ready to go we just need the vaccine, we're going to do door to door I think that's a great point because we know that our plan is to dispatch teams that will go floor to floor. We have to have people wait 15 minutes after each dose so we're gonna bring chairs, everybody will sit in the hallway in front of the door, St. Wolf carts we have teams of nurses and EMTs we're just waiting for the vaccine so once we get it we'll be able to go door to door to each of the sites, Winslow Tower, Drake we've got a lot of large buildings we're planning on doing that over the course of a number of days we have five sites so we'll probably do one site per day possibly two sites if they're smaller on one day but it will take some time I think that people just have to realize they have to be patient once we start that we'll get to everyone in housing I know that there's always concern that we didn't do their building yet and I think that's where we have to make sure people understand we will get there we will do it within one week and we're very, we're just as eager as them to get the vaccine in them so Yeah, sure Then I was watching CNN this morning I was very interested to be see that there was a speaker speaking from Arlington name was Olivia Adams and she worked across your radar by now and she created a website from Massachusetts have we had any discussions with Olivia helping connect our residents with that site or is that something that could be a resource for us We have certainly been using that in the Council on Aging Adam, I don't know if you want to speak to Joan's efforts and reaching up to her Yeah, so we actually were in communication with Miss Adams today Joan Roman reached out to her and I don't know if it's been posted yet but our plan is to post a link to that site on the town website and likely excuse me included in our communication later this week as well certainly a proud moment for the town Yeah, testament to our residents that someone created something not it looks like not just Massachusetts will be using potentially many other states in the country so that was a cool thing to see Well, with that, I want to thank Mrs. Bonjuano for joining us and the update and all the work that you do and good night All right, next is the consent agenda We have reappointments to the Board of Youth Services term to expire January 31st, 2024 Joan Axelrod, Commission on Arts and Culture also term to expire January 31st, 2024 Stephanie Marlin-Curiel to the Disability Commission, Kerry Fallon and to the LGBTQIA plus Rainbow Commission Brooks Harrelson, both terms to expire January 31st, 2024 We also have four approval Arlington Reads Together banners Anna Litton, Assistant Director, Robbins Library So Mr. Chaplin, do we have anyone from the library that wanted to speak to this? They were not able to make it to the meeting tonight, no And if any of the three appointments we don't generally have required people to be present but if you would like to speak you can use the raise hand function on your Zoom application right now Seeing none, I will take a motion Mrs. Mahan Will the approval? Mr. Corsi Second Stiggins, any additional comments? Nope, thank you very much Turn right On the motion by Ms. Mahan Mrs. Mahan Yes Mr. Corsi Yes Mr. Diggins Yes Mr. Herd Yes Shunan Aspo And that takes us to item number six on our agenda This is now 7.30 p.m. RCN Cable Television License Transfer to Stone Speak Associates for LLC Attorney Hyman Thank you, Mr. Chairman I just want to note very briefly in advance of the presentation by the applicant for transfer that the basic nature of this is only limited to the transfer of this license from basically one parent company which holds RCN to a new parent company which holds RCN It's not similar to a renewal so there's nothing on the table with respect to programming or anything regarding peg access It's basically limited to basically vetting whether or not there's any reason to be concerned about these folks' ability to financially, legally, technically or from a management perspective own RCN and continue to operate it as if they stood in the shoes of the current owner of RCN So I'll let these folks make their presentation You've received some information about the applicant that is under the law allowed to be kept confidential because it's primarily things like financial in nature And obviously if the board has any questions or the public has any questions they should feel free to ask the applicant with that I'll leave it to the applicant to make their pitch Thank you Mr. Chair Thank you And turn to Mr. Nielsen and Mr. Steele Thank you Thank you Mr. Chairman My name is Thomas Steele I am Vice President and Regulatory Counsel for RCN have been for all these years We were happy to serve Ellington some 20 years ago and had a couple of renewals since then So we have our regional office down the street so I venture into the town quite a bit and although not lately And we, as Doug said, we're here tonight to talk about a change in ownership In 2010, RCN was bought by an investment company and the investment company hired a management team Patriot management team to run the company In 2016 and 17, the company was sold to another investment company and the management team was asked to stay on Now in 2021, we have yet another investment company looking to buy their interest in the company and they too are asking the management team to stay on So as Mike will tell you shortly nothing much is going to change from your perspective while there is a transfer and control at the very top however indirectly it affects our business that requires us to have this hearing and seek your approval So with that, I'll turn it over to Mike Nielsen who will speak as Stonepeak, our new buyer representative Mike Thanks so much My name is Mike Nielsen I'm with a law, a little law firm down here in Washington DC And I'm speaking on behalf of Stonepeak who is the transfer in this transaction Look, we've submitted extensive materials which we've had the chance to look at I think rather than walking you through all of those materials Let me just briefly describe kind of what I think the transaction is about and why I think it shouldn't be of concern to you So the first and probably the most important point is that from your perspective as RCN's franchise authority nothing changes at all, right? As Tom mentioned, this is an indirect change of control the ultimate owner of RCN RCN will remain the franchisee RCN will remain responsible for compliance with the franchise RCN will remain a business in the same way it is a business today And so, and I think what that also means is that you can look to RCN itself both in terms of its financial and its legal qualifications to run a cable system which were beyond question RCN will remain and it will remain and it has its own financial books that you can look to and its own legal qualification to run a cable system Second, from the customer's short-term perspective again, nothing changes at all, right? Unlike some private equity situation where you go around looking for a distressed asset that you think you need to fix in this case, Stone Peak chose RCN precisely because it thinks it's a very well managed and run cable system competitive cable system competing with the incumbents and so Stone Peak has no plans to change the management and it has no plans to change the operations and so from the perspective of kinda what's happening for the consumer the day this closes, nothing changes and again, so in terms of the managerial qualifications again, you can continue to look at the excellent management of RCN and in particular, Tom Steele who's we're not gonna let him go anywhere I've known Tom for 15 years and then we're not gonna let him go anywhere but the good news is that from the medium to long-term perspective this transaction kind of gives you the prospect for better service and again unlike some other private equity situations Stone Peak has a history of holding on to assets a little bit longer it has a history of providing them with managerial and more importantly, financial resources and helping them grow that sort of Stone Peaks the way that Stone Peaks kind of thinks of this stuff most recently in the telecom space there's a company called Externet which provides equipment used for wireless carriers in areas where they need extra capacity and Stone Peaks has held on to Externet and kind of helped it grow and so that's sort of the idea here and it manages 29 billion of its investors funds and so again, the idea of the transaction is to make more resources available and again, that can only help in terms of improving the network, in terms of improving the management in terms of whatever it is that they decide to use those resources for and then the last thing I wanna say is that if you've taken a look at the application it has a fairly complicated corporate structure and I wanted to sort of relieve your in any concerns you might have the ultimate control goes to Michael Durrell who's Stone Peaks co-founder and that's kind of where all the action is there are a lot of boxes and arrows on the org chart because there are and there will be additional passive investors because one of the things that happens in private equity is you go around and you find co-investors to help you to fund transactions and to fund investments and so that process continues but those are passive investors so they're not gonna affect what I think matters to you the most which is kind of who's the person who's ultimately, ultimately, ultimately in charge that's Michael Durrell but again, RCN is gonna kind of remain where it is and who it is and so I'm happy to answer any questions you have and happy to be of any help that I can possibly be. Thank you. With that, we'll turn to the board after we go to the board members we'll open it up to the public for any questions or comments or any comments. Mr. Diggins? Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I appreciate you saying that Stone Peaks will have a tendency to hang on to its investments longer because it does strike me as curious that there's been a number of transfers recently. It's not particularly a problem and I understand why it is that you want to buy me but can you give some maybe insight as to why the sellers want to sell? I really don't mean to be glib. I'm not the seller's lawyer and so I don't know why TPG wanted to sell. May I engage in some rank speculation? Sure, please. Happy to do it. There's a press report saying that TPG is negotiating with AT&T to buy Direct TV and so it's possible that the price of this allowed them to do that. Now, why they would want to do that? You know, I don't know but that is, you know, again, rank speculation but that may be what's going on. Yeah, and while I'm more directly, I mean, that was just my curiosity question. You know, on page 12, you mentioned how this proposed transaction will serve the public interest. Can you just expand or just elucidate me for those who haven't read this? Maybe one is that what your purchase is going to serve the public interest. And look, there's always two ways to answer this. The first thing that you want to know, I think, as a regulator is that there aren't any, it's not gonna cause any problems, right? This is not a combination that causes competitive concerns. It's not an owner with a history of treating its investments badly, right? So I hope we can take that as a given and then again, you know, the idea here is that if you make additional resources available, which is kind of, let me back up here. TPG, who is the ultimate, I guess, transferor, they looked at several bids, right, on this. And I can tell you, because I actually saw Stone Peak's bid, one of the things that Stone Peak emphasized is that its interest was sort of in helping the asset grow as opposed to kind of getting out and taking some money, right? And that was, you know, in the cover letters that was sent, that was sort of in the way that they did the bid. And so again, if you have an entity that is well funded like Stone Peak is, and you have an entity that has a history of making financial investments or making financial resources available to its investments, you know, then those are things that you can use again, you know, faster broadband speeds, a better network, maybe you're extending fiber out into different places. Maybe you are, you're investing in your call centers, maybe you are investing, you know, in terms of additional programming that you couldn't have done before. These are all things that you can do. Those discussions about exactly what you will do, they've barely started. And I think that the real meat and potatoes of those discussions happen after you close. But I think, again, if you have financial resources to bring to bear, that's just a good thing. So that's the basic story of why this is a public interest benefit is that you just have a better competitor to Comcast and the others. Thank you very much, sir. Thank you, Mr. Carson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a couple of questions on the letter that the cover letter for the application, that's dated November 30th. And there's a reference to a 120 day period that if we don't take any action, it's an effective grant of the application. When does a 120, when did that begin? As it begin as of the hearing or as of the date that we received the letter? It's the date that we submit the complete application. So that should have been that date. Okay, all right. And then a question for, and I see, thank you for including a draft resolution with the letter, just a question for town council. And this just goes to whether we take any action, just let the 120 days run or we sign the resolution, I approve the resolution. Do we have any issues with the resolution? It seems like it's a boilerplate type situation, but if there are any, I might as well get them on the table. Mr. Chairman. Yes. Yeah, Mr. Carson, I don't see any issues with the resolution. I think at the end of the day, again, whether you passively allow the transfer, you affirmatively support the transfer, the real crux of this is, is the board satisfied that RCN gets to maintain its posture as a real asset to the town as a cable franchise. I mean, I don't know if that has a position on that, but I certainly don't have any issues with the resolution. Yeah, no, that's fine. Thank you very much. Thank you. And Mrs. Mahan. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I might have drifted off during that, but is Attorney Heim suggesting that we do vote this? So we left 120 days pass and it's deemed accepted. I think it's my understanding from the applicants that they'd like you to endorse, that they'd like your endorsement. And I think that provides a little bit of timely finality to something that they're trying to complete and puts RCN in the best position that it can be in. And again, I think that overall, just to really condense all this stuff, the whole point of this is everybody wants to make sure that everybody knows it's very valuable to have three viable cable franchises in a community. I can say that with a little bit of levity, living in a community that only has one, it's not great. So yeah, I think that you're in good shape as long as you're satisfied that there's nothing to be concerned about about this company's ability to maintain RCN. Okay, and since I have the platform, I just would put it out there. I don't know if Mr. Steele can speak to this or maybe speak to it when the contract comes up with all of our cable providers. I just wanted to put a pitch, a plea in for, especially in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, there are a very small minority set of user groups, especially around churches, because of the way the contract is written, not just with RCN, but the other two providers that they're not guaranteed sort of service upgrades. And I'm not sure if Mr. Steele is aware of this. I know different churches have contacted different providers, but I just wanted to kind of pose that, put that out there, that this may not be the appropriate time to have the conversation and have an answer to it, as well as make Attorney Nielsen aware. I think it's the way the contract was originally drafted, I think with just the original continental cable, somehow very small user groups, I know a lot of them are churches who are now trying to upgrade. They weren't included in that group and it's made it harder for them to kind of maneuver that and get that service upgrade. So I'm not saying you should have an answer to that, but I just want it, since I have the captive captured audience, just make you all aware of that, especially with moving forward. Technology is, as it would be, whether there was COVID-19 or not, technology is more important. There's a very small minority user group there. And then my other question would be, and I did read the application for transfer in terms of, I was looking for it maybe perhaps in section B on pages 12 of 13 or 14 that talk about sort of the crux of where I'm going. Again, I don't know either Attorney Nielsen and or Mr. Steele, my question would be, I understand that there's an agreement to keep RCN and the management team in place. Once this contract transfer for control is executed, is there, I don't see any language in there that says if you decided one day, one month, one year after that, that you wanted to change everything. Does that allow you to do that? If you do decide to do that, is there some sort of a notification to the town and do we have any seat at the table to speak to that? I'm not saying you're not going to stay true to your commitments. I just don't see, and I'm not an attorney, but I just don't see the language in there that specifies. It says the intent to retain RCN and its management team, but I didn't see any sort of finality to that. I mean, I want to make sure that I'm answering this sort of carefully and so that I'd like to remain Stone Peaks lawyer in the future and not talk. I don't think that there's anything in the purchase agreement itself that says, we are keeping Tom Steele for five years or anything of that nature. And so I don't know that there's something like in the agreement itself that you would look to sort of as a lawyer and say, we are bound to do that. On the other hand, we have been running around Massachusetts telling everybody the same thing that we've told you. We are making it pretty clear that this is sort of our intention is to not change anything and not change the management. So I never want to say what my client could do at some point if circumstances were changed, but I think that we've been pretty clear that we like what's going on and we're going to keep it. And I think it would be hard for them if all of a sudden they tried to pull a bait and switch. I think that would be hard for them. So is that a fair answer? It's actually very fair and you've answered my question that there's not language in there. Cause I've read everything and I am a court reporter so a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. And so I think those three steps out. So the only part of it, and if you can't answer this I understand cause you're an attorney for Stone Peak maybe attorney Heim and two of my colleagues are attorneys cause I don't see it in there if, which it would be Stone Peaks, right? If they do choose for some reason they all of a sudden got brainwashed and decided to do a 180 on that. Do we, the town of Wellington for our customers here have any legal protection or legal options or rights that we somehow get notified? And we have a say in that process or is it there's no language in here? I don't see it and it's a good faith effort. I think that your remedy would go more to the franchise agreement itself which has a certain level of, again I spent October and November looking at hundreds of these agreements so I can't tell you what's in yours but your franchise agreement, these are pretty specific things about the level of service they're gonna provide most of them have a provision in terms of what was the phrase? It was almost like a technical most favored nation if somebody else offers something kind of a better service than, again I don't know if that's in yours. So I think your legal remedy if you wanted to talk about legal remedy would be under your franchise agreement but my sense of all of this is that if we're a year from now and you guys are thinking about your legal remedy against RCN, things have gone horribly, horribly wrong. That's not the way this ought to work out. And so, but to answer your question I think you would look to your franchise agreement. If I could through you Mr. Chair, Attorney Heim is there anything you can sort of guide me on that? So I wanna be very clear that the answer I hope that Mr. Steele knows how much Arlington appreciates them based on this dialogue. And I think having been part of the negotiations with Campbell franchise agreement and the frankness and the efficiency with which Mr. Steele handled those things I think it's well deserved as well as much of what he's done within this community. I agree that the major thing that I think folks should take away from this is that somebody wanted to buy this business because it's being run well rather than the other way around. So because the business is being acquired the major character is to keep the RCN team the way it is because it's doing well. In terms of our remedy, I don't wanna sugarcoat it. I don't think that we have a specific right to say this team has to stay in place. I don't think that we ultimately will have that right even if you were not to approve the transfer. I think that we would be entitled or we would put ourselves in a certain negotiating position if when the Campbell franchise agreement comes up if we felt like we were not being dealt with fairly and honest. So I think that's our real stick. I don't think it's so much that we're gonna be able to say we get to choose who's on their team. It's more you want us to negotiate the next franchise agreement. Mr. Nielsen is correct that there are provisions in that where we basically have the right to go to RCN if there's some piece that Comcast is offering us or something like that. It's different, but I don't think that one of those things would be the management team. I think it would be more, hey, look, we are negotiating with Campbell franchise agreement. We really like the team that we had. You guys put that team to the curve. That's informing our position in terms of how we negotiate. That's what I would say. Sorry, that's a long-winded answer for that. Okay, so I'd like to move approval of the resolution for the consolidated application for Consent to Transfer Control of section 214. Just throw it for a second, Mr. Corsi. Second. Yeah. And I just add to the discussion that attorney Heim just said is that any of the options and remedies that the new owner is going to have is the same options or remedies that the current owner would have had if, for instance, they don't like the way if the location in Arlington isn't working or the management team isn't working, they would still have the same option. So it doesn't expand it with the transfer agreement. I, based on the materials, have no issues with the new owner. And I know RCN is a really important entity in town many residents like to say how easy it is to just go and drop the cable boxes off, right? Right there on Mass Ave, and we see the trucks and we see the workers at Duncan's and the Heights all the time. So they really are a part of our community. So we want to make it very easy for you guys to continue to be a part of the community. So I'm certainly happy to support that. At this time, if there's any members of the public that wish to comment, could you use the raise hand function on your Zoom application now? All evidence of a very thorough conversation. So with that, we have a motion by Mrs. Mahan seconded by Mr. D'Corsi, Attorney Ham. Mrs. Mahan. Yes, thank you. Mr. D'Corsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Herb. Yes. And let's vote. And thank you both for sticking with us. 50 minutes past here, a lot at start time. I hope you enjoyed our discussion. Thank you. It was worth the wait. Over there. Thanks for having us. Thank you. Bye, guys. All right. So that takes us to appointments. We have three appointments to the Arlington Committee on Tourism and Economic Development. All terms to expire December 31st, 2022. We have Christopher D'Angelo, James Burns, and Michelle Deacon. Can you promote all three? All right. So I'll give you each a few minutes just to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about yourself and why you wanted to serve in that commission. Then we'll go to the board to ask any questions they may have collectively. So I'll start with Mr. D'Angelo. Hey, everyone. Thanks for the opportunity to be here tonight. I'm fairly new to Arlington actually. So my wife and I moved here about a year ago right at the beginning of the pandemic, which was great or terrible timing, depending on your perspective, I guess. But it's been great to be here and to be in this town. I think one of the things that stuck out to us is how welcoming our neighbors have been. We're up here on Mount Vernon Street. And it's just been a real pleasure to be able to become involved and be part of this crew here even at a distance. I think where we were coming from before, we were down in North Carolina, I was getting my MBA and then we moved up to Boston for my job. In terms of my desire to be a part of ATED, it comes down to the immediate feeling of kind of being connected to the neighborhood. And then in my past life, before my current role, I was working on Capitol Hill and I had the opportunity to do a lot of work with the District of Columbia, kind of working in different economic, economic development issues there that were very fascinating and I thought important to the district. And so seeing that opportunity to do it with my own neighborhood, my own home, really hit home and felt like a great way to stay connected, great way to serve the community and to join with my neighbors who have welcomed us with open arms into this town. Thank you. And Mr. Burns. Yep, hi, everyone. Thanks for having me tonight. So I am a two-year Arlington resident. I live in East Arlington near the Capitol Theater with my wife and three-year-old daughter who is thankfully asleep right now. By day, I am an attorney for QuickBooks, small business software. So I update and maintain a lot of the tax rules that are within the software. And I work directly with a lot of small businesses who use the software, either testing out new features or troubleshooting problems that they're having. And I find that part of the job very enjoyable helping out small businesses, which is why I would like to serve on this committee. I love, you know, especially COVID times, supporting via the local businesses that are either a short drive or a very short walk from our house. So trying to just carry forward some of the work I've been doing during the day and to back into the community, helping out the small businesses of the town. Thank you. And Ms. Deacon. So I think you need to unmute yourself there, yeah. Thank you. It wouldn't be a Zoom meeting without somebody not unmuting themselves. So I just wanted to make sure I did that. I'm really pleased to be here tonight. Thank you for having me. I love Arlington and I'm really excited for the opportunity to serve on this committee, to try to get the word out about why other people should spend time here, spend money here. I am a writer by trade and a public relations professional. And I currently am the communications director for the Massachusetts Legal Assistance Corporation which provides civil legal aid for low-income people in Massachusetts, provides funding for organizations that provide civil legal aid. And I do a lot of work with websites and social media. So what I do is get the word out and I thought if I can help Arlington with that I'd be very happy to spend my time doing that. Yep, and I will turn to the board. Mrs. Mohan. Thank you, Ms. Deakin for taking my forgetting to unmute myself task first. To all three of you, first I'd like to move approval. Secondly, I have not followed as closely as I was in the beginning, the minutes in workings of the Tourism and Economic Development Committee. So the two things I mentioned may already be in place but since you're new members and also have different areas of expertise given the current economic situation that Arlington businesses and by absentia residents are facing right now. I know that the town has received on the federal level through the Community Development Block Grant Program CDBG monies specifically geared towards maybe not so much tourism and maybe that should change but definitely economic development. So if there already is an existing relationship between the Committee on Tourism and Economic Development and the CDBG committee, that's great. If not, whoever is the person that does the admin role could contact Mallory Sullivan who works for the planning department. And the other reason I say that I have something that when we first started getting federal CDBG monies and we offered the programs in the traditional way we didn't have a great pool of applicants. And a lot of it was because kind of similar to what we're seeing with COVID-19 vaccines but with business owners and small business owners again, not having access and English is a second language and the planning department and myself and a few volunteers went and did the outreach safely and also made available that they could call the town and get translation services. So I don't know if that's and you could speak to the committee if that's something that maybe you all could be a resource for, it wasn't a lot of work but it was just connecting with what needs do you have there is some relief through the federal government. And then likewise, as you begin your work on the committee there are a lot of state programs that again our planning department has knowledge of and gets the word out but there's also grant writing opportunities. So maybe that this committee could look at that to see if you're a standalone entity that could apply for those state grants or if again in concert with our planning department with Jenny Rae, our planning director sort of be there, my only thing is I don't want to have an missed opportunity of relief that's out there. So it may go beyond the charge of this particular committee but to me it seemed like it's sort of like a partner in there. So again, like the previous speakers here captive audience. So I'm taking advantage of that opportunity. I look forward to seeing you at Zoom can't wait till we can see each other actual at actual meetings when we're all safe, vaccinated and socially distancing. And again, thank you for your willingness to serve. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I can tell you both the CDBG and ATAR chair the same select board doesn't mean I don't know how well he does and connecting the two entities, but we also do have our electronic for economic development coordinator from the planning department serves as liaison. She's on the committee often. So we balance ideas for economic development offer her in roles into the planning department. All right. Is it a question? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all, second Mrs. Mahan's motion and I wanna thank each of you for your willingness to serve on the tourism and economic development committee. Mr. D'Angelo, welcome to Arlington. I know we haven't been here long. Thank you for stepping up, Mr. Burns. Thank you as well. And Ms. Deacon, nice to see you again. Our sons played hockey over the years. I used to see a lot at the hockey rink but that's nice to see you in this setting and I think it's great. Each one of you brings some different experience to the committee. So thank you so much for your willingness. Thank you, Mr. Diggins. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I mean, and I'll just echo my colleagues and express gratitude for you all stepping up into this role. And I'll also express my regret because I didn't see resumes. Maybe I just missed them, but usually when we get these kind of appointments we get to see resumes and be even more impressed by the caliber of people who are going forward these positions. But anyways, thank you very much, I mean, and economic development. I enjoy talking and thinking about that. And so I look forward to interacting with you in some way or another over the years. Thanks again. Yep. And thank you all again for your willingness to serve. I do serve on this committee and I will see you guys on meetings very soon. It's really, it's a great group of people to start off with a lot of a combination between people that have been in town for a long time. They can speak to events that we had in 1976 at the Bicentennial and people that have just moved into town that have new ideas about how we can spread tourism and economic development. When I first got on the committee we really, often we focus on tourism but right now we're really shifting on economic development and how the committee can brainstorm ideas to help get the word out for local businesses and help get people in new doors and help promote our local businesses. So that's something that I think all three you bring a wealth of knowledge to and I certainly look forward to working with you all. So with that, we have a motion to approve by Mrs. Mahan, seconded by Mr. Corsi, attorney Han. Mrs. Mahan. Yes, thank you. Mr. Corsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Herd. Yes. So Ann, let's vote. Thank you all. All right, that takes us to our open forum except in unusual circumstances any matter presented for consideration of the board shall neither be acted upon nor a decision made the night of the presentation in accordance with the policy under which the open forum was established. It should be noted that there's a three minute time limit to present a concern or request. If you would like to speak at our open forum please use the raise hand function on your Zoom application now. And once, go into it. So we have one speaker, let's smell off check. All right, so we'll have one speaker we can promote Ms. Malafcheck. Ms. Malafcheck, can you hear us? Hello, yes. Thank you. If you just say your name for the record. Beth Malafcheck, Russell Street town meeting member precinct nine. Many of my constituents have lost work and or have reduced income due to COVID. And so curious, we've heard and or read about the recent finance committee meeting and the projected or forecasted potential override of 13 to $15 million in 2023 or 2024. And so I'd like to ask whether any budget cuts are being considered. And I understand that town manager has significant outside responsibilities. So I'd like to ask whether a portion of the town manager's income is being paid by Metropolitan Area Planning Council, Metropolitan Mayor's Coalition, their affiliates or sponsors. Thank you very much. Thank you. And that closes our open forum. Takes us to traffic rules and order in other business for discussion future select board meetings. Actually don't have my calendar in front of me as to where we are now. Can someone throw out what meetings we have scheduled? We have one for the 22nd. So 22nd, yeah. The weeks from now, that's the last one scheduled. The next thing about March is that it lines up the same way as February in terms of date, day of the month and day of the week. So we have the 22nd. And could I ask you, Mr. Chair? Yeah. Directly or through you and maybe I can't be answered tonight, but in terms of the amount of warrant article hearings we need to have if we're gonna keep just doing them Monday nights at an infant item, which means depending on what I see right now, I don't know if all five Mondays in March will cover it or there's something else being contemplated. So I'm open to the experience of the members of the board to see what we'll look like as the warrant closes or as the warrant gets finalized. Do you have a second? Perhaps Attorney Heim who probably doesn't know 100% of the amount of warrant articles, but has a pretty good sense right now. Will our typical Monday night meetings and or Monday Wednesday night meetings or something else or can we continue business as usual? So Mr. Chairman. Yep. Thank you, Mrs. Mann. It is gonna be tight this year. There are, we're looking at a warrant in the high 80s most likely. And there are somewhere between 13 and 14 resolution type articles alone for the select board to consider along with about 13 or so bylaw amendments and probably somewhere between six and 10 home rule or it's not exactly clear. There's a bunch of articles that are essentially votes either because there's something like a school committee stipend article where you, town meetings only required action is a vote to set a stipend if a town meeting is so inclined or there are things that are, it's not 100% clear how the applicants, I mean how the petitioners proposed to proceed on a specific matter and they've sort of articulated their warrant articles to vote. So, you know, you're looking at somewhere in the mid 30s to 40s or to low 40s for warrant articles. I do think a lot of them could potentially be tackled in one sitting if the board, you know, is willing to have a sort of later night and has a lighter agenda. For example, if the board could figure out a way to get most of the resolutions in on one night, the legal posture of resolutions is very straightforward. It just depends a lot on how many speakers wanna speak to a specific warrant article in here. So, my guess is that it could be done with some longer nights, but that it is certainly possible if not likely that some sort of supplemental meeting, whether you decide to do that as a Monday and a Wednesday or you decide to do that in some other fashion is probably gonna be necessary. Here's my suggestion in terms of setting meetings for March, April and May, I'm assuming at least that far out, that we set the traditional select board where we meet typically every other Monday, but that the chair, Mr. Heard and attorney Heim have conversation, communication and perhaps in order to as an adjunct to that sort of discuss having an additional select board meeting. I think there was conversation about, perhaps having one day designated to a certain category or a mixture of categories, resolutions or whatever. And it's, we do it on a different day of the week and perhaps start at nine or 10 o'clock in the morning and go to some time in the afternoon. So that would involve the chair and town council looking at the warrant articles to say, if we do, instead of having meetings that go to midnight or even longer, I know I'm not giving my best at 12, 30 and I wanna make sure we are look into the possibility of calling the board and working with the town manager maybe to set one day select board meeting. And I'm not looking for a marathon session, but I know if you get me from nine or 10 o'clock in the morning to three or four o'clock in the afternoon, I'd like to cut it off at four with a break in between if we can, especially around the resolutions. I mean, this is a high number of hearings that we have to have as well as I anticipate there are gonna be not five, 10 minute items. So is that okay, Mr. Chair? If you and Attorney Hyme sort of look into that. So right now, so if we do that, we have March 8th, March 22nd and then we can look at the warrant and determine what, if any additional meetings that would be needed, we could go to March, I mean, April 5th, which would be two weeks after the 22nd, then we will have to meet on the 12th as that would be our traditional structural meeting. So I'm okay with it. In March, I'm fine with March 8th and 22nd. I don't know about Mr. Degans or Mr. DeCorsi. Well, I was gonna suggest to me that we maybe line up all the Mondays in March. I'm not, I'm hard pressed to say that I'm gonna be available any weekday or Saturday to meet, my days are, my days are pretty stacked. And so I'd rather do me more, more night times to meet. I would say do every Monday in March, if we wrap up early, that would be good because that means we could get the report out to the town meeting members early because I remember coming to these like board meetings and asking, can we get that report early so that we can talk to our precinct, so when we have our precinct meetings here, we can really talk about a, that's like board report. So and then we could have shorter nights and just kind of line up March, if we're done early, then we can not have being some meetings in March. So that's my alternative suggestion. Well, that would be tough for me. I have other things that, okay, I wanna hear from my colleagues. That's fine. I didn't understand, I didn't realize that Miss, I didn't realize that it'd be a difficulty for you. So since that's the case to me, then I pull back from being so enthusiastic about that. But I hear you, thanks for letting me know. Well, I can just say March 29th would not be possible for me, but if we wanted to do four Mondays, I'll leave, how about tonight, Mr. Chair? Can we definitely do eight and 22? Yep, assuming that those two dates work for Mr. Corsi and Mr. Deggins. Yeah, yeah, that's fine. And Mr. Corsi, thoughts on, I mean, if you wanna put down eight, 22 and the fifth, then the 12th, I think traditionally we schedule out to our structural meeting. I don't know unless I'm wrong. Well, can I suggest that we do eight, 22 in March, five, 12, and 26th in April. The 26th is the hour before town meeting. And it's just things that definitely need to happen. And then we also do one, two, May 3rd, which we have to have the Monday after the, wait, when's the town election? Oh, no, we have that covered. Yeah, the 10th. Okay, that's fine, thank you. So we have eight, 22 in March, and five, 12 in April. And then if we need to add more Monday nights, and then as a last resort, if we need to look at some other meeting day or time, if we can't get it done in just the 29th, it's difficult for me. Yep. And as always, we can, if a Monday night doesn't work, we can figure out another night that works, but why don't we just put those in the schedule now and then we'll all connect with the training home to see what the warrant looks like and what we anticipate longer hearings to see if it'll be sufficient or if we need to add meetings, we can do so. Yeah, and I'll request that we add the meetings earlier rather than later because if I schedule something, I'll have to blow it out me in order to attend these meetings because this does take priority. So to the extent I can avoid having that happen, that would be really great. So as soon as we know, let's just block out those dates and if we don't need them, we don't need them, but I'd rather block out those dates and not schedule something for them than to schedule something than to have to break that obligation because of this higher obligation. Thank you. Well, I'll talk to attorney Heim by the next meeting to have an additional item on this to discuss. Appreciate it. Your question? Yeah, no, I think that's fine. I think we can wait until that discussion. I was gonna say, we'll know by the 22nd if we're way behind and maybe if you wanna hold off on a date, hold off on the 24th and 31st, Mrs. Mohan said she's not available on the 29th and maybe we have the meeting, maybe we don't, but we should know by the beginning of the meeting on March 22nd, if we're gonna need to add more nights. Yep. Mr. Chairman? Yes. I just wanted to note that both Ashley and Maureen in your office has done a great job. They had a fairly long meeting this morning to start discussing scheduling more in order for us. So they are on top of it. It's just gonna be a vital issue. So I'm available all these times, of course, and any supplemental time she folks need, I'll be ready. Thank you. Thank you. Do not need to vote for that item. So that will take us to item number nine, Chief Information Officer Search Process, Mr. Chapter. Mr. Mayor, I try to unmute myself and I closed the window there for a second. Sorry about that. I hope you don't kick me out of the Zoom again. I almost kicked Ms. Mohan up by accident earlier when I was trying to have one of the people from ATED go back to the attendees list. But so I will be very brief. As it's been practiced, I wanted to provide the board with an update on what we are contemplating in terms of searching for a new department head. I think as the board knows, David Goode has recently retired as the town's chief technology officer. David gave well over a decade of really tremendous service to the town and will be sorely missed. He's not entirely going away. He's willing to come back in a limited capacity to help us through the transition period, but yet leaves very big shoes to fill. So we did a little bit of research before putting this before you and learned that today's standards suggest that the job we are actually looking to fill and the job David was doing would be better titled chief information officer, as opposed to chief technology officer. So that's why you see it titled as such. So what we've laid out for you in the memo is a process that you can see, tries to cast a wide net, both from a technology expertise point of view, as well as a diversity point of view in terms of attracting candidates. And then we go through a multi-step process that is inclusive of IT experts within the community that we often rely on. You see members of ITAC being solicited to be part of this recruitment and screening process because this is a position that is shared with the schools, much like facilities. The school administration will be very much included in this process. So we hope to go through both a recruitment where we're soliciting applicants, a screening process, a multi-stage interview and panel process, and hopefully have a selected candidate sometime by the end of April. Overall, we would like to have someone likely able to start just around the end of the school year. We more than likely wanna keep the existing interim structure in place through the school year due to the importance of, IT is always important to the schools, but given the remote learning that's happening, we wanna keep what we have in place through the end of the school year and then hopefully be able to recruit a candidate to have them start just as the transition to the summer is beginning. So we are looking to post this very soon and I'd be happy to answer any questions you have. But again, I wanted to make sure the board was aware of what our thoughts were about recruiting for this very important position. Mr. Dacorsi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll move receipt of the memorandum and I thank the town manager for the outline there and I have no questions. Mrs. Mahan. I'll second that and similar to Mr. Dacorsi, the town manager's explanation as well as Memo. Pretty much covers it. Thank you. Mr. Dacorsi. Yeah, I'm fine. I mean, in the April seems a little aggressive. So if it takes more time to get quality candidate, I'll understand. And I'll say, I appreciate that. I think we often in recruitment will put an aggressive timeline to give ourselves sort of a push goal to get to. It often can take longer depending on who applies or even sometimes just scheduling of the panel interviews when you really get into the nitty gritty of it. But I think historically we've tried to set set goals that we know might be a little aggressive but just to try to keep us on pace to make sure we get the key personnel that we need. Great, thanks. All right, and so we have a motion to receive by Mr. Dacorsi, seconded by Mrs. Mahan, Attorney Hyme. Mrs. Mahan. Yes, thank you. Mr. Dacorsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Herd. Yes. C9's foot. Thank you. All right, that things that's item number 10 on our agenda discussion and vote, town managers contract renewal. And I wanna thank Mr. Dacorsi for noting this from town manager's contract to me and Attorney Hyme, I'll rely heavily on your expertise and jump in if I am getting anything incorrectly but the town manager's contract is I understand it sets a date of February 11th by which we would have to notify the town manager of our intent to not renew his contract or all certain provisions would kick in. So we just wanted to put this on to make sure we had a discussion about that prior to that date passing and then the discussions to start the process of renegotiating any contract if at the time is so to do so. Attorney Hyme, any additions to that? Yeah, if I may, Mr. Herd, I just wanna clarify for folks that the real crux of what's going on here is that the manager's contract has a built in sort of non-renewal notice typing. That's what's right in front of you in terms of the sort of immediacy of it. If you intend not to renew the town manager, you have to give notice or the manager's entitled to a certain amount of severance under his contract. If you do intend to renew the manager, you can say we intend to renew the manager tonight and that we'll set forth a schedule for discussion of violations and contracts and all that kind of stuff over the course of the next year. Yep, thank you. Are there any motions to not renew the manager? All right, any discussion of the board? Mr. Corsi. But thank you, Mr. Chairman. And yeah, I view this as the, we were entering the last year of the town manager's contracts. Well, it's later this week on February 11th. And I think it is an appropriate time for us to start thinking about discussing renewal or at least laying out a schedule to discuss renewal with the manager. And we talked about this previously. And I think we also are behind as a board on the evaluation process. So we didn't, as guilty as maybe other members that we should be doing that as well. So I raise this because I knew the one year period was coming up and I think we should be moving forward with those discussions at some points, probably before the end of the fiscal year. It is a good time to reiterate. I also am deficient in my own, on the town manager's evaluations which I'm supposed to be overseeing. Those will go directly to Ms. Cove. Ms. Karen Cove, I think it's reasonable at this point to maybe prioritize that and say, would the board be able to get those into her by the next seven days, 14 days? I know Mr. Dickens is the one member who has been on top of it. But I would say it's Mr. Ducorsi and Mrs. Mahan if that's a feasible timeframe. That's feasible for me. I just would put it out. Should it be 14 days? Taking into account that Mr. Carol will be officially resigning this Friday. So it will give the person that is appointed to fill out the remaining three or four meetings. If we say seven days, that person may technically only get one or two days to complete that versus 14 days gives them, in 14 actual days, not 14 business days. So I put that out. And then am I correct that we don't have to do anything tonight, like we don't have to take a motion to say that the board is not, not inciting, not voting for section 13 of the town manager contract by virtue of us doing nothing that meets the legal bar that the town manager needs. Correct, yep. So we just wanted to put it out there for discussion just to make sure that the date didn't pass with us acknowledging that. So if we could do 14 days, is that okay, Mr. Chair? Yep. My colleagues? Yep. Well, it's up to you all, me, whatever. You decide how much time you want, you know, so. Yeah, I'm just trying to get, I mean, certainly things come up and we all know that with the current world happenings, but I wanted to try to, at least for Ms. Cove's sake, get that into her. So she doesn't have to keep reminding me that the evaluations are still pending. Yeah, yeah. And there is one facet of the contract which has nothing to do with sort of an outside allowance that I've had conversations with the town manager and he's indicated that would be the proper form. So once the evaluation, all the evaluations are in, then we can, I can have those conversations legally, not so much with the town manager, but with my colleagues, I can't do it unless I'm wearing those negotiations. And it's nothing untoward or critique or criticism or anything like that. But I have spoken with the manager about it, in the past, so I don't want anyone to think I'm trying to, you know, slip something in. So thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. And Attorney Hyman, so no motions are necessary on this particular item tonight, right? There's nothing necessary. I mean, the board can make a, whatever statement it wants in terms of emotion, but the only thing that would be necessary is you would have to move to say, we're not renewing the manager if you wanted to afford yourself that under the contract and you could, you know, I mean, obviously by your discussion, it seems pretty clear that you intend to pursue renewal. So you could make that motion as well, that we intend to pursue renewal and we'll seek that out following our evaluation period. Mr. Chair. If you wanted to catch it in a positive light. Mr. Course, would you like to make that motion? Yeah, I think that makes good sense. Thank you, Attorney Hyman. And so I would move that. And I think it's important as we enter the last year, we value the manager's services and we want to continue that relationship. And so you said it so well, Attorney Hyman. I don't know how the exact words, but yeah, I want to move that we intend to renew the manager and have discussions with him following the evaluations. Thank you, Ms. Mann. I would definitely second that. I was kind of fishing to see if that's what I should be doing because I wanted to, no, no, no, not for you. That's all right. That's what I was asking you, Attorney Hyman, but that's okay. I'm sorry. I'll evaluate you on your advice you just gave me, but I just won't make it. And I'm saying that I just, that I want to send a very clear message as, so I will second Mr. DeCorsi's motion, very clear message in terms of, similar to what we heard on the agenda here tonight, Mr. Chapter Lane is a vital asset employee manager that the town of Allenton needs to retain not just in light of COVID, but that on top of it. So I'm glad that we are, I didn't want to just do nothing. So that means we're not doing anything and have anyone interpret that as any sort of anything besides the exemplary town manager that we have and that we need and we need to retain. So thank you, Mr. Chair. So Chapter Lane is vital to the town just like RCN. That's what we learned tonight. All right, Mr. Diggins, anything additional? All right, great staff too. All right, so we have a motion by Mr. DeCorsi seconded by Mrs. Mahan, Attorney Hime. Mrs. Mahan. Yes, thank you, Attorney Hime. Mr. DeCorsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Heard. Yes. It's unanimous vote. Thank you. I am number 11 on our agenda, discussion and approval, second supplemental comment letter to ZBA rethorndyke place for the application, Attorney Hime. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll be brief. I hope you folks have gotten an opportunity to review this. I had an opportunity to work a little bit with Mr. Heard and Mr. DeCorsi and trying to incorporate some of the discussions that we've had, some of the comments that individual members have made, concerns expressed, the correspondence from the land trust, just to reiterate what I understand to be the board's position that, yes, there have been some incremental changes proposed by the applicant, but it really doesn't change the picture from the board's perspective on why this project doesn't make sense for our weekend. So I'm happy to receive any feedback and make any changes, tweaks. I know that I apologize, Mr. DeCorsi. You had mentioned a few to me that I'm fear that I may have missed in one of the iterations of this. Any other things that you folks need, think I need to update this, I'm happy to do so. I've got it ready to go. Mr. DeCorsi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And first I'd like to thank Attorney Heim. He had a lot of play last week and he had produced this drafts, among other things he was working on with the closing of the warrant. And so we appreciate that to keep things moving here. And what I was gonna move is that we move approval of the letter subject to final edits that you and town council may have, Mr. Heard. I believe it's gonna do your signature, but there's a couple of things here or there. It doesn't change the substance of the letter and rather than your wordsmith every point, I didn't wanna bring that up. I do wanna say two things that, in addition to what's in here and I appreciate the language at footnote one where we talked about how this project has changed since so the proposed project's changed since it was first submitted. And so now what we have is a 176 unit building that is with frontage on Dorothy Road, the perhaps the least objectionable piece of the proposed project as initially proposed was the 12 townhouses. Those are gone now. And so we put in that language that we know this isn't an improvement, at least as to those townhouses. I also wanna raise the issue, it's on page two of the letter that talks about undevelopable portions of the Muigar Woods in terms of what's being proposed. And at the last EVA meeting, there was a statement by the developer from Oak Tree that their stated desire is to deed the excess land beyond throwing that place to the town for future conservation improvements. Well, as far as I'm concerned, that if there's any discussion about what happens with that property, there's gonna be standards that are put in place for the cleanup of that property and the maintenance of that property before there's any approval or any discussion about it being transferred to the town for the town's cleanup after the fact. So I appreciate attorney, I'm mentioning that. I think there was gonna be a footnote added on that point. And last thing I wanna say, it just goes beyond the letter but things are moving along before the ZBA, there was a meeting, the last meeting before the ZBA to do with the architectural design of the property. And there was a long statement that was made by the representatives from Oak Tree in terms of what they're doing. And one thing that just struck me that time was a statement that they made that we listened to your concerns about size and spread. Well, I don't see that there has been any listening to those concerns. And I think we need to still, as we're doing now, reiterate our opposition to the size and scope of this project and send this along to the ZBA. And I think we're doing that through this letter. So thank you to Attorney Heim for producing this on short notice. Thank you, Mr. Mahan. I'd like to second Mr. DeCourse's motion and I'm not gonna repeat what he said, which is exactly what I had written down on my piece of paper in terms of the letter in the conservation area. The only other question I have, which is perhaps not germane directly to this agenda item is the other action step that we spoke about which is sending a letter to Peter Mugar regarding some corrections to the site, cleanup of the site, has that letter been sent? Is it still being drafted to be sent? Yeah, either Mr. Chair or the town manager, if anyone could enlighten me on that. The town manager can add to this, but the letter will go tomorrow. The letter is ready to be drafted. We're just waiting on the correct address to make sure it gets to the right location, but Mr. Chaplin can speak to that as well. Yeah, you certainly, just to reiterate that, Mr. Heard. Yeah, the letters printed my signatures on it, we'll get that address, we'll get Mr. Heard's signature on it. Mr. DeCorsi took the lead in drafting it, and Attorney Heim made some minutes, but yes, it's ready to go. And if you can give a quick summary of what the letter contains to the Mugar's, Peter Mugar and or will the board, after that's all compiled, just see a copy of it. I'm not saying it doesn't need to go out. It should go out. So I can definitely forward the board, the final copy at that without question. And Mr. DeCorsi or Attorney Heim, please feel free to add to anything I missed, but I think that the general message is we feel as though the family has long been negligent in their upkeep and maintenance of the site, that we have been putting a lot of town resources into working and providing services to the population that's housed on the site, and that we would like to engage the Mugar's in a conversation about playing the role they should be playing in the upkeep and maintenance of the site, and potentially even providing services to those residing on the site, and to begin such a conversation or asking them for a site visit within the next several weeks to begin, for them to both witness firsthand the state of the site, as well as starting a conversation about what role they can play. That sounds great. Thank you. So I don't wanna slow up the process. It's going out tomorrow. The rest of the board, when it's finalized, we'll see a copy of it. Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Mr. Diggins. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I mean, I think it's a well-crafted letter. I mean, I think it's very respectful. I can easily put myself in the place of someone on a board like ZVA receiving a letter like this from a board such as a life board, and feeling respected being so it's done. It's good in that respect. I'm not gonna award Smith, but I will just say the last sentence of the force paragraph, I find confusing, you know? So if that's not one of your things to check, I'll just flag that as something to check. I didn't quite understand it. I mean, I kind of get where it's going, but then when I try reading it, I get a little lost at the end. So that's it. Thank you. Mr. Diggins, I'm sorry. Can you just tell me which page and paragraph that is again? It's the last sentence of the force paragraph. Let me just double-check that. The significantly we recall that applicants had previously claimed. Okay, got it. Is that it, Mr. Diggins? I'm gonna have to pull it back up. Sorry, I accidentally closed it, you know? Almost there. Those first, second, third. Yes, the force paragraph, yeah, significantly we recall that the applicants had previously claimed. No, I'm sorry. It's in the third paragraph. I'm sorry, I was a little confused because of the footnote, I mean, so the sentence starts at this juncture, common sense, and force is bored. And then it ends with some concerns for your deliberations. So that one is confusing. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Diggins. Yep. Oh, we're good. Thank you, Mr. Diggins. Thanks. Mr. Chairman? Yeah, thank you. I did two things I didn't mention earlier, and I think we had talked about this last time. We want to continue to respect the ZBA's role here. They're the ones that are deciding the comprehensive permanent application. These are comments for their consideration, but it's before them right now and we need to respect that process. I did want to add one other suggestion if we could somehow work it into the letter that we encourage the ZBA as part of their deliberations. They haven't already to make a site visit as part of their overall determination because I think that is helpful in terms of looking at the site and what's there and what limitations there are for both environmentally, traffic and otherwise. Yep. We'll do. Yep. And I just want to thank Mr. Corsi for his insight and Terry Hine for his work on the letter. I think it's, you know, another, it's good for us to continue to make sure that the ZBA is supported by the select board. It's their decision, but for them to know that they have our support as they go through the process, looking at the updated project, it's clear that the developer just wants to rely on the benefits that they receive from the 40B statute rather than instituting the town, the feedback and the suggestions of the residents of the area and the town. So, you know, we want to make sure that they have our support and whatever resources necessary as they go through this process. So we'll be, I will connect with Attorney Hime to make the final edits, institutes and suggestions that we've received and we'll get this out to the ZBA ASAP. All right. So we have a motion from Mr. Corsi, seconded by Mrs. Mahan, Attorney Hime. This is Mahan. Yes, thank you. Mr. Corsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Herrick. Yes. It's unanimous vote. All right. That takes us to correspondence receive, correspondence from town council. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm happy to take something off the agenda. I thought that there was gonna be some other correspondence received. Doesn't look like it's on there. It doesn't seem to make a lot of sense, but this correspondence for me was basically in response to correspondence to the board about the town staff's support of our articulation of the 1.5% before the agency. And I have drafted something. I've communicated to the board, but I don't want to unnecessarily take the board's time tonight if the other correspondence isn't on the agenda. Thank you. All right. That brings us to new business. Attorney Hyde. No new business. Thank you. Mr. Chaplin. One brief piece of new business I just want to express a very sincere thank you to the DPW and all the staff who have worked hard over the past couple of weeks that always working on specifically over the past couple of weeks with the snow we've received. I feel like this has been a sneaky winter where we've gotten a pretty significant amount of snow and it might not seem like it because it's had a couple of melt cycles. But as always, they've gone above and beyond. And I think in some cases yesterday weren't able to watch the Super Bowl or miss a good portion of the Super Bowl because of the work they were doing. But they continue to do a great job and they're very deserving of our thanks and appreciation. And I wanted to express that tonight. Thank you, Mr. Biggins. Yeah, I echo Mr. Chaplin on that and three things kind of short. First is, I like to, Sandy Poole actually responded to me regarding the blue bikes conversation that we had and when we did the quarterly budget update and there was a question that had regarding it seemed like the blue bikes were over budget but it was just really a transposed line me. So he got back to me and explained that the blue bikes were indeed on budget. The second thing, maybe not so short but I'll try and keep it short and it's a little personal. And when I ran for select board, I intentionally did not run on identity because I'm not really a big fan of identity politics. But it is black history, it must mean. And I have to say that it was so positive running for select board and feeling totally welcomed by this town and that I remember just recently I heard a woman who was like refereeing for the Super Bowl who said the goal is that for it not to be a big deal when a woman is refereeing for a football game. And I kind of felt that that was how it was being when I was running, it just wasn't that big a deal. It was definitely noteworthy but there was like no consternation and as I said in an article for me, the advocate, it was interesting that I was considered be one of the more establishment candidates. I wasn't the first gay guy on the board. There was another gorgeous select board member who had that honor. So in light of Black History Months, I just wanted to kind of flag that because it just means a lot to me that I am part of what I consider a very warm and welcoming community. And I have to thank Mr. Kuro Meadam as one of the people that encouraged me to run Meadam. He kind of shift suits me. Was the one who initially talked to me and told me that the community Meadam there was backing for the community for me to, not backing but encouragement for me to run in. I remember once I sat at Mr. Kuro's seat while testing microphones for ACMI and he took a picture of me at the seat. I guess that started wheels turning for everybody. And he is just such a warm and loving and wonderful person. And so I wore this tie for him. It's all hearts, Meadam, partly for him and partly for him for Valentine's Day and of course partly for him, Marika Palka. So that's it. Thanks for indulging me on this, these three. Did you tell Dan to stick around till new business so we could receive that wonderful compliment? No, I didn't even know he was gonna be on, Meadam. All right, Mr. Kursing. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yeah, just two things briefly. I apologize, I'm having some speaker issues. So hopefully you can hear me. But earlier in the night, you had mentioned it, Mr. Chairman, the site that Olivia Adams and Arlington resident have created and there was a discussion whether there's a link already. That link is indeed already on the town's website. So if you go on that, there's a link to macovidvaccines.com and it really gives people access to the regional sites, what's available in Springfield, what's available at your Latin, what's available at Fenway. And I think there's a couple of others, but it's a remarkable program. It's a user-friendly program, which is really what we need. So thank you to Olivia Adams and Arlington resident who did that. The second thing I wanted to bring up is tonight, last meeting was Mr. Kuros last meeting with the board and I'm hoping that when we're back in the chamber, we can give him an appropriate thank you and recognition for his years of service. I just want to thank him briefly tonight. I first met Joe back in the early 2000s. I was on the Sims Advisory Committee and he was a neighbor who was concerned about what was going into the site and he showed up to every meeting, got involved and from there he took that to working on the Sims Neighborhood Committee. He served on the school committee for four years and of course on the select board for nine years and he gave valuable service to the town. He was a real resource for me over the years when while he was on finance committee, we would chat often about school committee, school budget issues and in my two years on the board, I've really enjoyed working with him and I know we're gonna miss him as a colleague. We're still gonna see him in town and I wanna wish Mr. Kuros all the best and to thank him for everything that he has done both as a colleague and as a leader in this community. One good thing about Joe, he's a walker so you can always see him walking up and down Mass Ave or some street in Allentown. Yeah, I also just wanted to again thank Mr. Kuros for his years of service to the town both as a select board member, school committee member and beyond, I've always looked at him as a resource and someone to bounce advice off of and he always gave you his honest opinion and I really do appreciate that and all the work that he's done for the town. We always bonded as the jumbos on the board in town politics so we could always, so always the jumbos against the MIT guys but we seem to be outnumbered but jumbos strong. All right, so the other item is just it's been touched on. We do need to fill his seat within 30 days under the town manager act. We have meeting that's coming up. We've gone through this process, unfortunately a number of times in fact, we seem to be all pros at filling seats late in a term and so this is our third time in the past six years so we're going to simplify the process. There's no specific requirement that we go through any individual process which attorney Han can correct me. So what we'll do is at the next meeting we'll just take nominations and vote. So if anyone is interested in serving they can reach out to the select board office but other than that, we're not going to set any specific parameters for how we're going to fill that seat, we'll put it on the agenda, we'll take nominations and we'll vote as a board. Attorney Han, is that all square with your understanding? Sorry, I think Ms. Wahan also had a new business but- Sorry, Ms. Wahan. No, I'm waiting, I was just waiting. And one of my questions is going to be about Mr. Kiro's temporary fill-in. I will say that this Sunday I did call Clarissa Brady kind of jumping the gun hoping that we could bring her back for yet another ring but considering that, you know she's on the, I know different people apply so I'm amenable to the process that the chair has outlined and to Mr. Diggins Ramak Sara Thomas Sara Thomas is the coach, a referee at the NFL game and she's been at previous games. She started back in the 90s and we also have two female coaches, not head coaches yet but in the NFL football is very near and dear to all of our hearts. And the only other thing I had under new business is either to the chair or through the chair regarding the committee that was set forth by town meeting regarding the police civilian review board. I may not be saying that right, which outlined the members as well as outlined three of them being ex officio so they can't vote, meaning the police chief town council and member of the board or their designee which I do not take in a positive light but that's the committee, how it was voted. Gonna put someone on the committee they should vote. My question is, can someone let me know, here's what I'm wondering about. Have all the committee members been appointed to that committee? So it now means that a member of the select board or its designee who was chosen that we can't vote but we have to be the admin person. Are we at that point and if that's the case, I don't want the select board to be accused of delaying the process that either if we're at that point that it has to be a member of the board and I'm not volunteering for it or it's designee. When do we have to do our part in that process? I believe we appointed Ms. Karpaka to run that, correct? At the last meeting for the sole purpose of facilitating the first meeting. Mr. Chairman, if I can actually, if it would be most efficient, I'll address these couple of points in a row. First and foremost, I think that it's a fair, a good question by Ms. Mahan. I also know that there's a bunch of other folks, some of the folks who were the original performance of that article that wanted to sort of update. I'd be happy to, I've been meaning to catch up with the manager and maybe Ms. Roman to see if we can sort of do an inventory of where we are and who's made all their appointments so we know how close we are because there were so many different appointing authorities and there's not one centralized one. And I apologize for not sort of being around on top of that. So Ms. Mahan, I'm happy to sort of take the lead on that and make sure that we know where everybody is and if there are any outstanding appointments. The last time I checked, they weren't all done yet but it'd be nice for me to give the board that information and some of the interested members of the public. And then on the, yes, Mr. Chair, on the vacancy, there's no real requirement under the town manager act. You just have to fill within 30 days, you guys vote with the moderator. The process makes sense to me, especially given the short hour while we've unfortunately had to do this a couple of times. I'm not sure we've had to do it so close to the election previously. So obviously there's not a ton of time to get things together, but I'll also work to see whether or not it's possible to appoint somebody and have them start that evening if you guys want to get going on and we're not a clearance. So thank you guys and I'll make sure to keep folks posted if that's okay. Ms. Mahan, I'm sorry. No, no, that's fine. And my only thing is since the member of the Slack board or the designee also has to be the person who takes not only sets up the meeting but takes the minutes of the first meeting, whether that still will be Mrs. Kropalka or whether that will be Ms. Ma. That's the only reason I raise that. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Okay. All right. With that, just slightly before 10 o'clock, an improvement, I'll take it a motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn. Second. All right. Motion to adjourn for Mr. Diggins, seconded by Mr. Dacorsi, Attorney Ham. Mrs. Mahan. Mrs. Kropalka and I had a friendly, non-monetary bet. I was close to winning it, but yes, Mrs. Kropalka, you won. I... I can really slow this down, but I love Maria. No, no, she already won. I should have been done 30 minutes ago. Oh, okay. I was gonna win. Mr. Dacorsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Herg. Yes. CNN, Ms. Vogue. Hi, folks. Good night. Take care. Good night, everybody. Thank you.