 Okay it's 8.03. I call this meeting to order. This is Wednesday, June 8th, 2022, and night 13 of annual town meeting. So let's close voting now on the attendance check-in. Again, if you didn't get your vote in, that's no problem. It's just a test vote. And we'll just cycle through the screen so everyone can check that they're voting whether it worked. And while we're waiting for these screens, I just want to apologize in advance if I have a sneezing fit through the meeting, as my allergies have been pretty out of control today. Okay, so let's bring up the performance of the Star Spangled Banner. Okay, so I'll just make some brief opening remarks, and then we'll dive right in. So good evening everyone. This is hopefully our last session of the 2022 annual town meeting. We have four resolutions remaining and at least one reconsideration to consider. I want to thank everyone for their forbearance and endurance with this remote town meeting. By any measure this has been a long town meeting by Arlington standards and by the standards of town meetings across the entire Commonwealth. I sincerely hope that the next time we meet conditions will be safe enough that we can meet in person and see each other's faces and smiles as town meeting was intended. To any town meeting members out there who question their ability to endure more lengthy town meetings like this. I want to assure you that I will do whatever I can to make town meeting work for town meeting members. Next time, I'll have a lot more than just three weeks to handle the logistics and complexities involved in planning town meeting. And between now and our next time meeting whenever that's going to be. I want us to approach this institution as a collaborative partnership. In the coming days, I'm going to send out a survey to town meeting members to ask about your experiences at this town meeting, what worked and what didn't work with the caveat that if we meet in person next time and I hope that that's the case. The format will clearly be different from what you experienced in in town meeting this time. I want to thank everyone who participated in this town meeting. I've heard from town meeting members who participated remotely from all sorts of places under all sorts of conditions, even a hospital room. Your dedication is what continues to inspire me about the dedication and seriousness of the people of Arlington to continue this long experiment in democracy. We're only ever a generation away from losing it and the responsibilities we share serve not just the current residents of Arlington but future generations. A special thanks to everyone who helped in the preparation of this town meeting, the team that pulled together a remote town meeting and record time, the staff running the technical aspects of the meeting that are kind of invisible to everyone that you don't see the boards and committees that submitted reports and brought forward the articles that we've been deliberating, and also the residents who did the legwork to create petitions and gather signatures to shepherd ideas into action. My effort is democracy at its finest, and I'm just so proud to be a part of it and you should be too. Without further ado, I recognize the chair of the select board, Mr. Diggins. Thank you, Miss moderator, it is moved that if all business meeting is set forth in the warrant for the annual town meeting is not disposed of at this session, then when the meeting adjourns, it adjourns to Monday, June 13 2022 at 8pm. Motion I second, I suppose I should recognize the second even though I very sincerely hope we don't need this. And so please raise your hands and zoom if you have any objections to us reconvening if we don't finish tonight on Monday, June 13 at 8pm. We're seeing no hands raised it's unanimous vote. And now call for announcements or resolutions, please raise your hand and zoom if you have an announcement or resolution you'd like to share with the meeting. Okay, let's bring up Ms. Hyam. Okay, before we take that it sounds I'm seeing some notes and some messages in the q amp a that raise hands were not enabled. So let's actually just back up for a second. And that's exactly what I was going to bring up. Okay, thank you. So let's back up. Now that raise hands clearly are enabled. As evidenced by Ms. Hyam's raised hand. Are there any objections to recon if we don't finish tonight reconvening as Mr. Foskets motion seconded by Ms. Brazil to reconvene on Monday, June 13. Okay, so there are some hands. So I declared a majority vote an overwhelming majority vote that we will reconvene on Monday. If we're actually running close to the three hours of tonight's meeting later on, and we have the end in sight. I, I will kind of. I will consider us staying longer to just finish it out and we'll see what the circumstances are and play it by year. Thank you. So the motion by Mr. Foskets, seconded by Ms. Brazil passes. And so I now again call for announcements for resolutions raise hands and zoom if you have an announcement of resolution. Okay, I recognize Ms. Keller. Thank you. I'm sorry, there's a question that you know this is not about receiving reports this is announcements and resolutions. If I misspoke I apologize I think I called for announcements and resolutions. Ms. Keller. Yes, I have an announcement from the affordable housing trust fund. As Karen Gallagher freezing five and chair of the Arlington affordable housing trust fund. As most of you know town meeting created the affordable housing trust fund to provide for the preservation and creation of low and moderate income housing in Arlington. And then commitments were made to prepare an action plan informed by a community process to establish the initial priorities and strategies that will guide the trustees in the exercise of our duties. Tonight we would like to invite town meeting members to participate in the action plan process over the next several months. We've broken this process down into four stages. The planning and preparation process which has occurred in the first part of this year. The community engagement process which will kick off this month and extend through June and July. The lease of a draft action plan at the end of the summer, and a public review and comment period in September. At the end of this process the action plan will be presented to the select board for approval. There's more detail in some slides that not checked around the screen because I'm looking at my text but they'll be posted on the trust with trust funds website. We will build on not duplicate the town's prior work challenges and opportunities, and we'll place a particular focus on engaging the voices of those most likely to need and benefit from affordable housing for low and moderate households. Realizing our mission will require collaboration and alignment among the town bodies that have an interest in or authority over housing will be soliciting input from the town manager, the planning staff. Select board redevelopment boards CPA committee the ZBA the housing authority, the housing corporation of Arlington and of course town meeting members. I'd like to ask trustee Calpurnia Roberts to describe the upcoming community. Office and ways that the town meeting members can participate and support the trust efforts to develop a proactive plan to create and preserve affordable housing. And is Ms Roberts a resident of Arlington. Yes, I am. Okay, can you state your welcome to town meeting. Can you state your, your name and address please for the meeting. My name is Calpurnia Roberts. I live at 420 mass Avenue. Thank you. You can go ahead. Okay, thank you. Good evening. I am Calpurnia Roberts. I'm a trustee of the Arlington affordable housing trust fund and a resident of Arlington. I like to describe the community engagement process that will inform the action plan that Karen referred to earlier during the second half of June will be inviting residents to participate in a brief survey to solicit their input about Arlington affordable housing needs and priorities. The survey will be available online and will be organizing volunteers to take the survey out into the community to solicit responses from the public on the sidewalk via a street intercept survey process. The results of the survey will be analyzed and shared and will inform the action plan. After the 4th of July will be conducting targeted listening sessions specifically with people who are underrepresented, including seniors, young people, renters, people of color, and people with disabilities or special needs. These will be held in places and formats that are convenient and comfortable for the target group and outreach will be tailored accordingly. While these will have limited attendance, the results again will be analyzed, shared, and informed the action plan. Finally, we'll host open public forums to engage and invite input from the general public, both during the community engagement process and during the review period for the draft action plan. Dr. Roberts, I just want to let you have about 30, 35 seconds left. Okay. The trustees know Tom meeting was overwhelmingly supportive of the trust fund and we'd like to offer several options for you to be engaged. We invite you to promote and take the survey. We will be soliciting volunteers to help with the intercept survey. We hope you'll participate in the public forums so you can share your ideas and learn about what we found. Finally, while we are pleased to have some early funding opportunities, the trust fund does not have a sustainable source of funding to fuel our work over the long term. In the near term, we encourage you to when ask your state legislatures to pass the transfer fee home rule petition that town meetings sent to the state house for approval last year. We also hope we can count your support to protect and expand local. Dr. Roberts available. Dr. Roberts. I'm sorry, we're at the four minute mark. If you can just wrap up very, very quickly. I will. Thank you. We hope that you support and protect and expand local offer funds available for proper house initiatives. Thank you very much. Thank you for your time. Great. Thank you. I should have mentioned ahead of time. There is a four minute time limit on announcements and resolutions. As well as reports from committees, which we'll, we'll do shortly. Okay, do we have any of, as I see another hand, I assume that this is still for an announcement of resolution spring up. Mr. Jefferson. Thank you, Mr. monitor, Bob Jefferson, precinct 12, I'll be brief. Hopefully this being our last night of town meeting. I would like to personally, and I believe on behalf of a lot of family members, acknowledge and thank the work that Adam chapter and a town manager has done for us over the past 12 years. As a lifelong citizen of the town of Wellington, a town meeting member for over 30 years in the town employee of 36 years. I always found Adam to be professional and very open minded. I feel that he's done very well for the town. I think he brought us to new places. And I think this being our last town meeting, hopefully our last night of town meeting this year. I just want to acknowledge and thank him. And if I was in town meeting right in town hall right now, I would be standing and applauding him and I believe many of my fellow town meeting members would be joining me. Adam, thank you. I wish you the best in your new endeavors. Thank you, Mr. moderator. Thank you, Mr. Jefferson. And likewise, many thanks and much gratitude to Mr chapter lane for all the work he's done for our town. Thank you. Any other announcements or resolutions before we move on. Okay, seeing none. We have a motion for reports that are ready to be received. Mr. Foskett. Mr. moderator Charles Foskett precinct 10 and move that article three be removed from the table. Okay, do we have a second. Okay, we have a motion by Mr Foskett to remove article three from the table to bring it before us and a second by Ms Brazil. You can please raise hands and zoom if you object to removing article three from the table for us to receive reports from committees. I have no objections declare that unanimous vote, and we are now ready to receive reports. If anyone has a report that's ready to be received. Please raise your hand and zoom I see. Ms, so Calia has her hand raised by go ahead. Good evening, Mr. moderator. Thank you, Priya San Calia precinct 13 co chair of zero waste Allington. I'd like to submit the report for zero waste Allington committee to town meeting. I won't go into the details hope all of you will take a look at it sorry to be submitting it on the last day of town meeting hopefully. I just want to make a statement to say that we appreciate all the support that we got on article 12. And I know that there were several people who said a lot of things about, you know, future implementation. We need help. And so we are welcoming town meeting members and other citizens who would be Allington residents would be willing to come and help us out there, you know, we meet on the fourth Thursday of every month and volunteers are very very welcome so thank you Mr. moderator. Great. Thank you, Mr. Calia. Okay. Are there any other reports to be received you can raise your hands and zoom if you do miss stamps. Let's bring up miss stamps. Thank you Mr. moderator, can you hear me tonight. Yes, I can go ahead. That's great. Susan stamps precinct three a member of the tree committee and I have the tree committee report for 2021. Briefly. We continued to use the tree inventory and the tree management plan which we produced in prior years to continue to plant trees where the tree department has planted about 150 trees in the spring and 150 trees in the fall over the last couple of years. And particularly, we are advising the tree warden on where to plant, or we're helping to advise him, and he is has been targeting, particularly environmental justice areas, IE low camp low income areas that typically need more tree canopy than other areas because we've been focusing on heat islands in town, and heat islands are places that everyone's familiar with where you walk down the street and it's just really hot and we wish you had a tree nearby. So we're really focusing on that with climate change. The reality now, we are continuing the community canopy program we're selling trees to discount to to residents we've had very positive impact and we, we hope to expand the community tree canopy program in many different ways. Over the next year and or two to plant many, many more trees in town. Including on commercial property and just getting more trees in the ground. We have, we started an adopted tree program to water trees a couple of years ago, early in the pandemic, because we just we didn't have, we didn't have personnel to water the trees enough. And we, we've had many, many people in town step forward adopted a new baby tree with a water bag near their house, keep it watered. I just want everybody to know we still need people to step forward if you go to the town website or to the tree committee website Arlington trees dot org and sign up to adopt a tree for watering the trees will very much thank you. I think I'm going to stop right there because we have a lot of work to do tonight but we really appreciate everybody's support of the tree committee and there was a meeting tonight, which Mary Ellen Aaron oh another time meeting member, and I belong, we're at briefly and we were so excited to see that Con Con has appointed a liaison to our to the tree committee, and he was there for the first time tonight and his, his name is Mike Gilster Gilder Gilder game I think. And that is just wonderful collaboration and we're excited about having more collaboration with other committees going forward thank you. Right thank you miss stamps. Let's see any other raised hands and zoomed for any reports from committees that are ready to be received. Okay, seeing none. Mr POSCA. It's the moderator Charles Foskett precinct 10. I moved that article three be laid upon the table. That's late article three on the table it was second from miss Brazil, please raise hands and zoom if you have any objections to laying article three upon the table. And we'll leave that on the table until we're done with the meeting we have one objection. Okay, it is an overwhelmingly positive vote that I declare. And so we now have article 74 before us. And so now that we're into the resolutions portion of town meeting, we're going to have different rules that we're going to follow which I emailed a letter in advance about this. I will step us through that will first hear from the slack board chair about the vote from the slack board, and then I'll bring up the proponent. And then if there's anyone to speak against, like if anyone kind of notified me in advance of interest in speaking against which was only one of those on one of the articles, then I'll take up that speaker, and then I will entertain a motion to terminate debate. So then it'll be up to the meeting to decide if they want more deliberation on any of these resolutions. Mr. Diggins, you want to kick us off with article 74 and tell us about the select board vote on this resolution. Thank you, Mr. moderator and just so you know my my computer is needing a reboot in a bad way. I'm trying not to but if I disappear. That's often is article 74 support of the mass fair share constitutional amendment. So we had to wag up finger a bit and warn that we shouldn't chime in on every state ballot initiative. The select board voted unanimously and enthusiastically in favor of this resolution. So I'm sure that there are some cogent arguments against this constitutional amendment. And my humble opinion, one of the best arguments in his favor is that it will increase the wealth in our common wells. So whereas millionaires will have a smaller piece of the pie, the price will the pie will be bigger, and they may well even have more as a result. I'll keep this brief and end with a haiku support 74 demonstrate how much we care. Let's pay our fair share. Thank you, Mr. moderator. Okay, thank you, Mr. Diggins. And also a late addition to the procedures for the resolutions. And I'll, I'll, I accepted questions in advance. And so I'll read off some of the questions before I call for termination of debate on any of these articles, any of these resolutions. Okay, so now let's, let's bring up. Mr. bagnell who is a town meeting member and one of the proponents. And then I believe he has someone to introduce Mr. bagnell. Good evening, Mr. moderator, I'd like to introduce Linda Hansen of Webster street and fellow resident of precinct nine. Okay, so Miss Hansen is a resident you say so let's bring up. Let's start the timer as well. And Miss Hansen are you with us. Can you hear me. Yes, name and address please. Good evening Linda Hansen precinct nine. I want to begin by thanking Mr. Diggins and the select board for their support for this resolution. I created a video that outlines my reasons for putting this resolution in support of the mass fair share constitutional amendment before town meeting, and for encouraging you to support it. I also want you to know that I support the proposed amendment from precinct 17 town meeting member Amy Slutsky, I consider the additional language a friendly amendment. At this point, I will ask you to please play the pre recorded video. My name is Linda Hansen precinct nine. I am the proponent of warrant article 74, a resolution in support of the mass fair share constitutional amendment. The fair share amendment is a ballot question that will be on the upcoming November 8 statewide ballot. In this article before town meeting because of this amendments potential to positively and significantly impact residents across the state, as well as its potential to positively affect our municipal budget here in Arlington. Our current state constitution prohibits a graduated income tax, all residents regardless of income pay the same income tax rate. The first million would amend the state constitution to create an additional surtax of 4% on annual income that exceeds $1 million. The first million would be taxed at the flat tax rate of 5%. Only income above that amount would be subject to the surtax funds raised from the surtax would be specifically directed to transportation and public education. This is an estimated additional $2 billion in revenue per year, every year, and the fact that it would be sustained funding is incredibly important. In these sectors in particular, one time funding is not enough. Ongoing sustained revenue is critical for long term planning and investments. If passed on the transportation front, this additional revenue would serve to maintain and improve our public transportation system. It would support climate resilient transportation measures like electrifying more of our public transit system and allow us to invest in alternative transportation modes like protected bike lanes. It would also provide funding to repair and maintain our roads and bridges. On the public education front, this additional revenue could help pay for universal pre-K for working families. Allow the state to fully fund the Student Opportunity Act for K-12, which increases state funding to municipalities to more accurately reflect the true cost of educating students. Finally, it could help the state reinvest in public higher education, including community colleges and state colleges and universities, allowing young people to graduate without crushing debt. This amendment was carefully crafted to consider which residents are in the best position to pay a little more toward these critical state services. By directing this tax at those earning in excess of $1 million annually, this tax targets the increasing income inequality in our state. The top 1% of income earners in Massachusetts now collect 24% of the total income in the state. You need to make almost $600,000 a year to be counted among the top 1% of earners, so this measure would affect less than 1% of mass residents. The additional 4% surtax on income over a million dollars would bring the top earners into closer alignment with everybody else in terms of percentage of total taxes paid relative to income. The additional revenue would support citizens across the state, particularly lower income residents and people of color, who have been disproportionately impacted by reduced state aid going to these sectors. Finally, this change would benefit our municipal budget by increasing state aid for public school students and increasing funds available for transportation-related projects. In closing, I urge you to support this resolution at town meeting and to consider supporting this amendment on November 8th. Thank you so much. Thank you. Was there anything else to add? Either Ms. Hansen or Mr. Baglow? Nope. Thank you. Great. Thank you. And so one thing I had not considered when putting together the procedures for the resolutions was handling of amendments. And so we do actually have an amendment on this one. So I'm going to allow the proponent for the amendment, Ms. Slutsky, to introduce her amendment and then we'll have one speaker who I've already selected ahead of time. Mr. Kepline who contacted me to speak against. So let's take Ms. Slutsky first to introduce the amendment as we ordinarily do, introduce amendments immediately after the proponent. So can we bring up Ms. Slutsky and also display on screen her amendment. Thank you. This is Amy Slutsky, p. 17. Thank you so much to Linda Hansen for bringing this really important article to our town meeting. This, my amendment addresses two additional critical issues of child development that have profound far reaching consequences regarding an individual's quality of life. First, that it is most effective to enrich to catch and treat the very same issue during the earliest years. That's because it provides better long term results. It's much less frustrating for the child and parents is an issue of social equity and is more cost effective. I saw this in a way I did not imagine when he began work with two year olds after 15 years into my practice as a pediatric occupational therapist and the elementary schools. Ms. Slutsky, sorry to interrupt. Someone's asking if you can speak. I don't know if you're maybe you're not close enough to your microphone or it's not you're not coming in as as as loud as other speakers. Do you want me to start again. I think that's fine to continue where you are but maybe just get closer to your microphone or just speak up a bit better. Is this better. I think so. Okay, yeah, go ahead. Okay, so, so the first issue was just providing enriching opportunities and and intervention support. The earlier, the better. Much less frustrating for the child and parents. It's an issue of social equity. The second issue points to the role that movement exploration plays in building competence in every aspect of life. Including social emotional and cognitive development and the way to do that in the earliest years and even beyond is by doing what Arlington is now finally doing, providing compelling accessible and highly stimulating playgrounds and playscapes. These areas are typically omitted because this, this area of development sensory motor development operates mostly below our level of awareness. So I want to thank again Linda Hansen for bringing up this entire article and supporting this. The amendments that I that I propose. Thank you. Okay, Ms. let's see we actually need a motion from you to amend the main motion with your. Thank you for that coaching. I now request a motion to include my amendment to the main resolution article. 74 to support the Massachusetts fair share constitutional amendment. That'll do it. So we have a motion to amend the main motion here. Do we have a second. Let's see we have some seconds in the portal from the second from his baby ours was the first one to get a second in. So, we now have the main motion and miss Lutsky's amendments before us. Thank you. And so we have one speaker that requested to speak against the resolution. Mr. Kepline. Thank you, Mr. moderator Mark Kepline precinct nine. About half an hour ago I sent out a letter to all the meeting members. I don't know if you had a chance to read it. Maybe I'll start out by highlighting some of the issues. At the most superficial level attacks on millionaires and going to schools and transportation has appeal. It's always popular that other people pay more taxes that you and I but many in Marlington will be hurt by this tax increase. The proposal has been a populist goal for years and defeated each time. The last by the Massachusetts State Judicial Court declaring it on constitutional. A bad idea that refuses to die is back this year again as a legislative question with fewer restrictions. The one declared unconstitutional by the SJC was done so because the funds were E mark earmarked for to to destinations to uses and and fungible funds could have been taken away from them. So this year by by the legislators submitting it. The more additional money can go to those destinations. So the state funding is fungible, meaning that. Yes, the money earmarked in this bill that's coming up in November will go to those transportation and educational uses. However, the state legislature may take away other funds that would have gone there instead. So it's a simple replacement. It's not getting additional funding to to either of those. When proposed when this bill was proposed, the state did not have a nearly $5 billion surplus, which is it's been running a surplus for the last couple of years. So there's no need for a new tax. The state already has excess revenue that they fight over what to do with. Secondly, the estimated extra revenue from this 80% tax increase for millionaires is grossly overstated. It's really studies have shown that it's only about half of the amount will be actually delivered. The bill will create a exodus of businesses and jobs from the state. An estimated 4000 household and nine and 9000 jobs will be lost, which will then reduce the state income taxes from all those departed workers. The former residents also won't be paying state income taxes on goods or gasoline. They won't be spending household money on local goods and services. These workers won't also won't be adding to the state's growth domestic product gross domestic product. And so I've linked to the analysis in 2021 published by the Beacon Hill Institute. Raytheon just announced its moving headquarters from Waltham to Virginia be certain that its top earners will move with it if voters approve this tax hike. The bill could greatly reduce startup funding for new businesses with entrepreneurs and money going to other states. If you already have ownership in businesses or stock options, you could be subject to this personal tax increase if you sell other than long term. If you own an Arlington house or condo, you might be subject to this tax if it's not your primary residence. The tax will reduce homes on the market and turnover at least until trusts are set up to protect the proceeds. That will happen and the tax increase bill only helps lawyers that bill could help your hurt your children. Massachusetts has one of the highest estate taxes in the country up to 16% starting from the first dollar when the when the estate exceeds one million again unless you set up a trust. A recent law change requires people inheriting 401ks and other deferred tax investments to draw them down within 10 years. So again, you know, there's more tax implement implications. So for a state with excess revenues, this tax is not just for the few earning one million every year, but it will hurt many Arlington residents with one year windfall events like selling a income producing house. It's like all the houses in Arlington are one million dollars now. And so it's a million areas and what it used to be. It will drive many businesses and jobs out of state along with future jobs not created here by startup companies. So this is a tax without a need. The money won't be spent as promised. Yeah, this money will go directly to those needs, but other money will be taken away and used elsewhere by the legislature. So I urge you to vote no state has plenty of tax money does not need more. And this is an example of the equality versus equity. Our situation where our taxes were equal. Everybody pay the same percentage tax. And now this is one that penalizes higher earners and higher producers. Thank you. I hope you vote now. Thank you, Mr. Kepline. There was I just want to address there was a question in the Q&A about whether the speaker was going over time. It does state in our bylaws that let's see, I have it right here. Under the category, the under the agenda category for announcements and resolutions, there's a limit of four minutes. But that is announcements and resolutions which occurs in the agenda earlier in the evening, which at least my reading of that and Mr. Hind Town Council can correct me if I'm wrong. My understanding is that this that does not apply to resolutions that appear as articles that come before us. That the term resolution I believe is overloaded in that sense. So I'm taking the interpretation that it's a seven minute limit like, like any other article. Thank you. There's no other speakers in the queue. And I just want to make sure that we're doing this correctly here and by the book. It may be the case that there are no speakers in the queue because I said I wouldn't take any more speakers until we had a motion to terminate debate. So what I want to do at this point is if anyone else is interested in speaking on this article. You can add yourself to the queue. Now, I won't necessarily I won't pick on you right away, but I want to see if there's any interest. And the reason why I'm asking for anyone who's interested in speaking is even though I don't intend to select you right away is that I want to know that it's ambiguous at this point, whether the absence of any speakers requesting to speak is because I said that I wouldn't take any more speakers, or because genuinely no one actually wishes to speak. And if it's the latter, then we could actually go straight to voting on the amendment and then the main motion, and we don't have to take a vote on termination of debate. However, if people are withholding putting their names in the speaker queue, because they believe that I'm not going to pick on them anyway to speak. Then, again, like that that could be an ambiguous situation I sort of make the intention clear here so if anyone wishes to speak. You can add yourself to the speaker queue so that we can know whether to take a vote on termination of debate. Okay, so seeing no speakers. Let's now bring up a vote on the Slutsky amendment. Okay, so voting should be opening up now. We're still doing the the waves of voting by blocks of precincts. So if you're, if you're in favor of the Slutsky amendment vote yes, if you're opposed to it vote no. And again like the waves of precincts are being enabled. One by one so if you see the yellow highlighted text in the voting portal saying that your controls will be enabled in the next wave, then just just hold tight for several seconds and you'll be then allowed to vote. There's only a voting button like to cast your vote, please vote and confirm your vote. And can we bring up the text of the Slutsky amendment while, while folks are voting so they know what they were voting on. Yeah, and the only, if we can bring up the first two paragraphs that begin with whereas, because that's where the, the changes are in this amendment. The underlined text in those two, whereas paragraphs are what the amendment is seeking to add to the main motion. So it's the with robust therapeutic development developmental supports the at birth. Early intervention then in the first paragraph and then the that starts with challenging and accessible playground slash place scapes in the second paragraph. And those are the proposed changes in this amendment so if you're in favor of those, those, those pieces of additional text being inserted into the main motion of this resolution for article 74 vote yes. If you are against adding those new pieces of text then you can vote now. And we're coming up to about 200 votes cast now so just wait a little bit longer. There was a comment in the Q amp a about, you know, to please not encourage people to speak on these resolutions. My intention is not to encourage people to speak but to make sure that folks know that they have an opportunity to at least register their desire to speak if they actually have a desire to speak. So let's just wait another 20 seconds before we close voting on the amendment. 10 seconds. Okay, let's close voting on this let's get amendment. And as always, amendments are always a majority vote and vote, and the amendment passes is a positive vote, and I declare it it's 147 and the affirmative 46 the negative will wait for the screens to go by. That's only the termination of debate, debate vote screens that will skip. I should also point out while we're waiting for the screens that there were questions submitted for the remaining resolutions articles 75 through 77. There are no speakers who no one requested to speak in opposition to articles 75 through 77, but we do have questions that were submitted. So I will read off some of those questions and try to get answers. And hopefully we could do that fairly efficiently. Okay, so let's now bring up a vote on the main motion as amended or 74. This is a majority vote for this resolution. So if you are in favor of the select boards recommended vote of favorable action an article on this resolution support of the, the mass fair share constitutional amendment vote yes. If you're opposed vote no. Again we're voting on the main motion of article 74. This is a majority vote by the Salisbury amendment that we just recently voted on and passed. I didn't vote on you all voted on 200 votes cast with just a little bit longer to please try to get your votes in as quickly as you can. Okay, so we're another. So another 20 seconds, 15 seconds until we close voting. 10 seconds. Okay, let's close voting on the main motion of article 74. This is a majority vote. The vote passes 165 in the affirmative 28 negative it is a positive vote. And so we just wait for the voting screens to cycle through all the precincts. And then we will have articles 75 before us. As I said, I didn't get any requests from anyone to speak in opposition to any of the remaining articles 75 through 77, but there were questions submitted, which I'll ask and try to get answers to. Let's bring up article 75. Okay, so, Mr. Diggins, why don't you kick us off with the select board to vote on this resolution. Yes, Mr. Roderator thank you. Article 75 commitment to increase diversity in talent appointments. We are up for the challenge is our hope that we will support this resolution and the select board will try to lead by example, and making a stronger effort. And just know someone's going to quote me on that, but that's okay. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Thank you, Mr. Diggins and let's bring up Ms. Dre, who's the proponent of this resolution. Good evening, Mr. Moderator. Elizabeth Dre precinct 10. Good evening town meeting. I apologize in advance for my croaky voice. Resolutions are non binding. I do believe they have an important role to play in town meeting resolution serve as not only a public statement of a town's values but also of a town's aspirations, reflecting who we desire to be as a community and guiding policy decisions that will get us there. Recent examples of such resolutions include the rehanging of the black lives matter banner, the land acknowledgement, and the honoring of indigenous people's day and Prince holiday. And the resolution before you serves to focus our collective energy to Arlington stated commitment to building a community where everyone is heard respected and protected. It asks appointing authorities to identify and actively break down the barriers that maintain the status quo, and that prevent us from benefiting from the rich diversity of experiences, perspectives and ideas found in our community. We can intentionally create space on our public bodies for people from typically underrepresented groups. This resolution adds another tool to our diversity, equity and inclusion toolkit. One we can use to create public bodies that more accurately reflect the diversity of Arlington residents. Arlington has repeatedly affirmed its commitment to DEI. Most recently they'll select board acknowledged that our public bodies do not reflect the true enriched diversity of our town, and demonstrated their commitment to tackling this challenge by voting to approve the DEI director's proposal for an equity audit in part to identify barriers to access and engagement, and with the goal of bringing unheard voices to the table. Increasing diversity in our public bodies was so important that the select board last fall voted to significantly redraw precinct boundaries to create a political landscape with a specific goal of increasing the diversity of town meeting. This resolution builds upon that work to achieve the same goal, but in our broader public bodies by asking that specific attention be paid to the goal of identifying and breaking down the barriers that inhibit diversity. It also asks that when appointing authorities have two qualified candidates that they consider diversity and representation of underrepresented residents in making their final decision. Diversity in our public bodies will benefit Arlington in many ways. It will make Arlington more welcoming and inclusive to a broader swath of residents, which may lead to increase diversity of those who choose to live, work and own a business here. In addition, research shows that diverse teams are often more innovative, productive, engaged, and are better problem solvers due to the addition of new perspectives and experiences. There will likely be long term benefits to engaging a wider group of residents to serve on our public bodies. Membership on those boards and committees is often an on ramp to further civic and political engagement. Today's committee members may be tomorrow's town meeting members, thus helping to achieve the select board's repressing goals. While a lack of diversity in public bodies is a concern shared by many here in Arlington, it's not a unique challenge. Boston is working on closing similar opportunity gaps. And some of them recently announced a new initiative to create a standardized process for recruiting community members that is inclusive and transparent. There are no easy answers in Arlington is taking steps to improve diversity, yet progress is slow. This resolution focuses on the one group that's uniquely positioned to most quickly move the town towards meeting this goal. Arlington's appointing authorities. This resolution is supported by the town of Arlington diversity equity and inclusion division envision Arlington diversity task group and standing committee and the human rights committee. I respectfully ask for your support as well. Thank you very much. Great. Thank you, Ms. Dre. There were comments in the Q&A about the timer. I apologize, we didn't have the timer going. When I realized that I started a separate timer that you can't see, but even that started late. And I didn't want to interrupt the speaker to explain that we didn't have an accurate timing, but I was trying to track that as best I could. Thank you. So we don't have any speakers who asked to speak against. I do have a number of questions who were submitted by Ms. LeCourt, which I will relate to the meeting now. These are slightly edited from, from Ms. LeCourt submission to try to kind of condense things a bit. So, and I believe these are mostly if not entirely directed at the select board so Mr. Diggins, if you could answer any of these questions that would be helpful for the meeting. First question from Ms. LeCourt is, what steps is the select board going to take to improve the pipeline of candidates of committees and boards of the town? Well, I mean, the select board doesn't get to pick all of the candidates me for, for those that we get to choose me, I will work with my colleagues to more broadly advertise me for those positions mean and try to put in place. transparent policy by which we select those candidates mean so. Oh, no, so I'm sorry, can we start the timer on this? Even though Ms. LeCourt isn't speaking, I hopefully we can address these within seven minutes as if she was actually using her speaking time. Mr. Diggins, sorry, go ahead. So those are the things that I would propose to my colleagues mean so, so I can't say right now exactly what we're going to do because I'll have to work with my colleagues to do it but I've given you some insights as to what I would like to do in this chair and propose to my colleagues. Okay, and what is the select board's plan for developing new procedures guidance for appointing authorities and committee chairs, etc. And what metrics will they use to measure success and how the select board be accountable to town meeting for reporting on results. Well, those are all very good questions that we'll have to work on answering, you know, there's no way I can answer those in the detail that would be satisfactory to herself or me at this point in time but we I certainly urge Mrs. LeCourt to send those questions and to the extent that they aren't questions that we already have will work on answering them and presenting something putting something forward forward because this is serious mean I am serious about this and I think we really do need to give serious answers and and and and advance the cause mean I am I myself care very much about metrics mean and it is something that's very hard to measure. In this case mean success or failure success in particular, but that doesn't mean we don't try first off to measure, but also don't try to accomplish the goal in the face of not having a good way to make the measurements. Yeah, and why did the select board not outline these commitments in their report to town meeting. Well, that's another good question and you know what we didn't, but going forward, we should mean and so so we will going forward and circle back maybe to answer those to do that mean for this resolution in the process of moving it forward. Okay, and I see Ms. Dray suggesting that she can answer as Ms. Dray. Can you answer that. Why the select board. Elizabeth Dray precinct 10. I don't have the exact answers but I do know that some of that is going to come out of the equity audit that is will be undertaken this year. And so I think that we don't. That's going to help us get the data that we need and to will also hopefully help identify what the barriers are. And with that information, we can use it then to to sort of roadmap how we get to where we want to be. But I think the equity audit is going to give us a lot of the information that Mr court is asking for and from that will come a plan. Thank you. Thank you Mr. And the last question if you make this brief, why does why does the select board, Mr. Diggins think that passing this resolution and hoping it will have an effect on residents who might want to volunteer will actually change anything. Why, why do we think it will, you know, well, we certainly hope it will be doing nothing is really not a preferred course of action. And so we, we try, if it doesn't yield any positive results and then we try something else, you know. Okay, fair enough. So that's all the questions. We do have a couple speakers in the speaker queue which I'll assume are folks who are actually interested in speaking and not looking to terminate debate. So at this point I will ask for we enable raised hands and zoom. And, and so anyone who is, I will now entertain a motion to terminate debate. If anyone wishes to make such a motion, and you can register your interest in terminating bait, or making a motion to terminate debate by raising your hand and zoom so I see. Mr. Klein's was the first hand that I saw so we bring up Mr. Klein. Christian Klein precinct 10 move them article and all miles before it. Okay, so we have motion to terminate debate from Mr. Klein we have a second from Mr. Moore so because we have speakers in the queue we will actually take a vote so let's let's vote on termination of debate. And as always this is a two thirds vote. Okay, so if you, if you would like to terminate debate on article 75 vote. Yes, if you want to continue debate. But no, just reach the 200 votes mark. Let's just give another. Another 20 seconds before we close voting 10 seconds. Okay, let's close voting on termination of debate of article 75. Okay. Someone has an open mic. And so the, I didn't see what the vote was. Can we just bring that yet 189 affirmative 14 and the negative. And so debate is terminated. So let's now open up voting on the main motion of article 75. Okay, so voting should be opening shortly. And this is a majority vote. Whether to accept the select board recommended vote of favorable, favorable action on article 75 resolution for a commitment to increase diversity in town appointments and can we bring up the, the vote language on this while, while folks are voting. Okay. We're at 197 votes cast now we have a point of order from this bloom let's bring up miss bloom. Precinct 18. I have a question. In regards to the wording. I saw the word. It's moved now, but the word priorities I was wondering whether they had prioritize in the warrant article text. Second line. It should be prioritize. Authorities. Let me read the whole sentence to see if the town will vote to deepen Arlington's commitment to diversity equity and inclusion by resolving that it is the desire of town meeting that the town's appointing authorities. Prioritize and center I believe yeah should just be. The authorities prioritize. Yes, so the spelling is incorrect. Okay, thank you. Thank you. So, miss clerk, if you could make that change. I'd be appreciated. Okay, so we're at 202 votes cast. Let's just wait another, another 30 seconds before we close voting on article 75. 20 seconds. Until we close voting 10 seconds. Last chance to get your votes in. Okay, let's close voting on article 75. Motion passes 177 in the affirmative 12 and the negative. We'll wait for the voting screens. And when that's done. That'll bring us to article 76. And in preparation for article 76 if we can bring up. Thank you. Miss Anderson who's the proponent just in preparation. Okay. And so let's now go to article 76, which is now before us. Open that up and Mr. Diggins. Once again, can you tell us about the select board's vote on article 76. Please. Thank you. Miss moderator. Article 76 resolution. or perhaps we have a bias to support this resolution as we did unanimously. No need for bias to be a factor, though, because this article stands on its own merits. At the risk of stealing some of the proponent's thunder, it seems like the U.S. EPA is on the side of the Alewife Brooke—I'm sorry, the Alewife Brooke—I'm sorry, the Alewife Brooke. Nonetheless, let us resolve to keep working on behalf of the Alewife Brooke, and maybe someday it will be teaming with Alewife. And for those of you who might be on jeopardy at some point, here's a little fact. According to an article published a couple of months ago on the Cambridge State website, the fist that we call Alewife was originally called Aleuth by the dissidents' people, but apparently the Europeans call it Alewife because it resembles the stereotype of its cabin keeper's wife. Thank you, Ms. Moderative. Thank you, Mr. Diggins. Then let's bring up Ms. Anderson as the proponent of this resolution. Do you wish to speak to it? Yes, thank you. Kristin Anderson, Pre-Sync 11. I am here tonight with long-time Conservation Commissioner David White, who also serves on the Water Bodies Working Group and is a town meeting member in Pre-Sync 21. David and I founded Save the Alewife Brooke. Also working as core group members are David Stoff, an Alewife abutter who lives on Fairmont Street, and Gwen Spieth, our representative in North Cambridge. Jean Benson serves as an advisor. Save the Alewife Brooke is a growing grass-roots environmental activist group with supporters in Somerville, Cambridge, Arlington, Belmont, and Medford. We are concerned about Alewife Brooke water quality issues and flooding and are working towards a political solution to a century-old problem. We wouldn't be able to do much without the support of Arlington. We deeply appreciate the support from the select board, the town manager Adam Capcolane, the town council attorney Heim, and the engineering department, in particular Wayne Schenard. We also acknowledge the important work of Alewife activists who came before us, including Clarissa Rowe, Elsie Fiori, Diane Mahon, Carolyn Meath, George Leight, and others. Two things that town meeting members can do tonight to help end the sewage pollution in the Alewife Brooke are one, vote in favor of our article and two, go to our website and sign our email petition to end the sewage pollution in the Alewife Brooke. And if you could show the video that that I sent you, that would be awesome. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, Ms. Anderson. The cities of Cambridge and Somerville have very old combined sewer pipes located under their streets and sidewalks. They are called combined because sanitary sewage, which is the stuff that you flush, mixes with stormwater runoff. That's the water that flows into the catchment basins near the curb on the city streets. This similar structure leads back to the 19th century. Can we do something to make that overlay UI from YouTube disappear? Because it's hard to read the text at the bottom when the video is playing. And if that's not possible, maybe we could run it not as full screen and try to make it as large as we can. We can go back to just playing it full screen, if that's the best we could do. During some rain storms involving an inch of rain or more, the regional sewer system becomes overwhelmed and there is not enough capacity in the pipes for the sewage to flow to the Deer Island wastewater treatment plant. This is when the old combined sewer systems in Cambridge and Somerville discharge raw untreated sewage pollution through combined sewer outfalls into Ale Wife Brook. Too much rain causes the regional sewer system to run out of capacity and raw untreated sewage is then dumped into Ale Wife Brook. Why is this a problem? The Ale Wife Basin is prone to flooding. An estimated 5,000 residents live in the Ale Wife's 100-year flood plain. During major flood events, sewage-contaminated water from the Ale Wife Brook flows into the homes, yards and parks of the area's residents. There are documented cases of residents becoming sick with flu-like digestive disorders after forced exposure to hazardous sewage-contaminated flood water. These are folks living in our most diverse and vulnerable neighborhoods which the Federal Environmental Protection Agency identifies as environmental justice populations. The EPA has a mandate to protect our environmental justice populations. For over 150 years, the state of Massachusetts has encouraged Cambridge to separate their sanitary sewage from their stormwater runoff. As a result of the ongoing 1983 federal lawsuit known as the Boston Harbor Cleanup Court case, the EPA was called upon to uphold the Clean Water Act. Because of the involvement of the EPA, Cambridge and Somerville closed half of their sewer outfalls into this Ale Wife. Cambridge has separated some of their underground combined pipes and paid for the construction of the Ale Wife Reservation Stormwater Wetland on state land. The Boston Harbor Cleanup Court case has been a remarkable success for Boston Harbor and its waterfront properties. However, despite over a hundred million dollars spent in the Ale Wife, we are seeing little improvement in the annual volume of untreated sewage pollution that is discharged into Ale Wife Brook by Somerville, Cambridge, and the MWRA. In fact, the sewage pollution problem is getting worse with time. This is because of an increase in rainfall and an increase in severity of storm events due to climate change, as well as an increase in impervious surfaces, continuing tree loss, and the capacity failures of the MWRA's regional sewer system. In 2021, over 50 million gallons of sewage pollution was discharged into Ale Wife Brook. This is the same volume as was discharged in 1992 before money was spent in the Ale Wife to control combined sewer overflows. We are at a point now in the regulatory process where we may see a significant investment in fixing the Ale Wife's sewage pollution problems. We will see investments made in and around the Ale Wife Brook in the coming decade, but we must work towards a regional and political solution to the water quality and flooding problems. Otherwise, nothing will happen. We must work for it. One of our goals is to win Arlington a seat at the negotiating table. Arlington has long had little voice in the matter, because Arlington does not own the sewer infrastructure that is directly responsible for the sewage pollution. Arlington has never had a combined sewer system. We have already achieved some success in getting the EPA's support and defining a framework for the new Ale Wife long-term CSO control plan. Among other things, this framework includes our recommendation that climate change projections are used to design new area sewer infrastructure, flood control, green infrastructure, and creative funding sources, including available infrastructure money. But the planning alone is a two-year process, so there is much organizing work to do. Why is this article important and why is your vote important? This resolution seeks to collect political support to engage the town in the issue. We need your vote. We thank the members of the select board, town council, town manager, town engineer, and the town meeting for their support. Thank you. Great. Thank you, Ms. Anderson. So we didn't have anyone interested in speaking against, at least no one notified me in advance of speaking against this resolution. However, I do have a couple of, I do have some questions that were submitted also by Ms. LaCorte. I've called some of these questions to keep them in the scope. I want to be responsible for the work comments in the Q&A earlier. I'm one of the early resolutions about scope, and I do want to be responsive and sensitive to that. So the first question, which I'll direct to you, Mr. Diggins, is why does this select board think that passing a resolution, this resolution will help make Arlington's case for closing CSOs? So we are supporting the proponents in their effort to work with other entities that are trying to get the MWRA and the EPA to do more, to close down more of the CSOs more quickly. I can't say that this is going to do anything more, but it certainly doesn't hurt for us to try. And it's more advocacy and we support the overall effort. And I'm a little bit at a loss for words on this right now, because what I kind of hinted at in my introduction is that the EPA has made some arguments, proposed a response to the MWRA telling them that they need to take into account the effects of climate change and asking them to work faster to close down some of these CSOs. I wish I had that information pulled up right now, because the Save the Alewife book actually set out a nice email about the recent changes or responses that the EPA made to the MWRA and I think it's Cambridge and Somerville. So whether or not these efforts resulted in that, and I think they did have an impact, we are making progress and to the extent I think the effort of the Save the Alewife book and the proponents in Cambridge and Somerville be pushing for this, we had some impact then. I think we should join that effort. I mean, our residents have asked us to join that effort and I'm supportive and my colleagues are supportive of it. So can we quantify what effects it's had? No, not yet, but maybe at some point we can. And the last question is how will the select board hold itself accountable to town meeting based on this resolution? And with the caveat that of course, this is my own commentary that just for the benefit of the meeting that this is a non-binding resolution. So the select board is not technically or legally required to do anything, but of course there could be political pressure and other means. So just want to give that caveat that. So how would the select board hold itself accountable to town meeting based on this resolution? Well, you know, I think what we'll have to do is figure out how we hold ourselves accountable on our resolution to town meeting, you know, to the extent that we want a formalized mechanism, me for doing that, me and then less work on doing that. Otherwise, I mean, I would say me the onus is really on being the residents and opponents mean to hold the select board accountable. Yep. With that, I see there is a speaker in the queue, but I do at this point want to invite anyone who is interested in moving to terminate debate to raise their hands and zoom could we enable raise hands and zoom please. And if you're interested in terminating debate, you can raise your hand now. And so I see the first time I saw was Ms. Rowe. So let's bring up Ms. Rowe to make her motion. Yes, Mr. moderator. Thank you. I move to terminate debate on this article on all items under the article. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Rowe. We have a motion to terminate debate from Ms. Rowe. We have a second from Mr. Moore. So let's go ahead and vote on termination of debate. If you're in favor of terminating debate on article 76, vote yes. If you want to continue debate, vote no. This is a two-thirds vote. All waves of precinct should be enabled for voting. So please vote in the portal. If you want to terminate debate, vote yes. If you want to continue debate, vote no. We're at 200 votes cast. Let's just give another 30 seconds before we close voting on termination of debate. 20 seconds, 10 seconds, until we close voting on terminating debate on article 76. Okay, let's close voting. And this is a two-thirds vote. And the vote passes. 200 in the affirmative, eight in the negative. Debate is terminated. So let's now open voting on the main motion for article 76. Okay, so seeing the delay screen, hopefully we don't see this too much tonight. Okay, so voting should be opening for waves of precincts. If you're still seeing the yellow highlighted text, just please sit tight and it should open up momentarily. Don't go away. And if you're able to vote, please vote. Is there a report in the Q&A that someone's seeing a too many users screen? Oh, this one here. Okay, we'll have someone looking at that. Okay, so we the vote count is still increasing. It's at 198 right now. I will make sure that as many folks can vote as possible within some kind of reasonable time limits. Now, 203 votes cast. Apologize for the technical difficulties. The vendor who developed the portal is being contacted to see if there's anything that we could do to adjust any of the settings to make this run a little more smoothly. Okay, so we have 207 votes cast. Okay, that's almost every vote. Let's just wait another 30 seconds because there's only a handful of folks who have not voted yet. 20 seconds until we close voting on article 76. 10 seconds. Okay, let's close voting on article 76. And this is a majority vote. And the vote passes. 190, 70 affirmative, one in the negative, and several abstentions. So we'll just wait for these vote screens. And after these screens are done, I'll say let's take a shorter break than we normally do just to make sure that we can squeeze in all the business that we need to to finish and dissolve time meeting tonight. So we'll just take a five minute break tonight. And so well, after these screens are done, so that'll put us at 937. So please return by 937 and we'll continue at that point with article 77, which is the last article on the warrant that we haven't yet disposed of, but there is at least one article that there is interest in potentially reconsidering. And so we will take those up after the break. So we're just going to take a short five minute break. Please come back by 937. Thank you. Okay, it's 937. So let's let's get started again. And let's bring up article 77. And also, while we're bringing that up, let's prepare to bring up Ms. Crowder, who's a proponent of this article. And to get us started, let's let's hear from Mr. Diggins, the chair of the select board to tell us about the select board vote on this resolution. Mr. Diggins. Thank you, Ms. Moderator. Article 77, resolution establishing an integrated pest management apology, policy for townland, prohibitions and public education about Rosentasite hazards. I'm sure that the proponent will make a strong case for this resolution. So I'll be brief. I'll just point out that this resolution is a third component of the effort undertaken by article 18, which was on the consent agenda. The select board supported article 18 and this resolution unanimously. And we applaud Ms. Crowder for her persistent effort over the course of two town meetings. We hope that upon becoming more aware of this issue, our residents will do all that they can to eliminate Rosentasite hazards is all a part of taking care of this planet that we call Earth. And Mr. Moderator, if you will indulge me for five short sentences. I just want to say that this is it for me in this 2022 annual town meeting. It's been an honor and a pleasure to be the select board chair for this ATM. Regardless of the format, I love town meeting. Town meeting is a precious form of democracy. And I feel that we have conducted ourselves well and in a manner in which we can be proud. I wish each and every one of you the best. Thank you, Ms. Moderator. Thank you, Mr. Diggins. And let's bring up Ms. Crowder as the proponent to speak in favor of this resolution. And if we can start the timer when Ms. Crowder begins speaking. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Elaine Crowder, precinct 19. Thank you to Kerry Teal, an invaluable co-proponent in this effort. And thank you to fellow town meeting members for sticking it out to the bitter end. I'll be brief. First reminder, the ultimate combined goals of article 18 special legislation to prohibit escars on non-public property and resolution 77 is that of protecting our newest Arlington wildlife resource, nesting bald eagles, and preventing our newest deaths. Three great horned owls in the last couple of weeks of suspected second generation anti-coagulant ligandicide poisoning or escar poisoning. Really, the only logical way to protect wildlife, our own health, and that of our pets from such exposure is to reduce escar to use everywhere in Arlington on private property through the special legislation request and crucially on public town property. We in town can't do this through a bylaw but a resolution backed by unanimous vote of the select board can. That's what the article, this article 77 resolution proposes to do. With the executive stamp of the select board, it seeks to establish a unified and explicit integrated pest management policy or IPM in town and prohibit second generation anti-coagulant use on town land. This policy will define and clarify town practices with respect to road control. It provides a very important final prompt to the three pronged approach we've crafted for safeguarding Arlington's residents from exposure to escars. The first two prongs as mentioned, passed town meeting on the consent agenda, putting in place a tracking system and public education prong one and sending special legislation request to state legislature that would allow Arlington to prohibit escar use on commercial property and private properties in Arlington, something currently prohibited by the state. That's prong three. However, we cannot be sure the special legislation will pass the state legislature. That's why it is critically important that we commit here to stopping the use of escars where we have the most control on town land. Passing prong two, the article 77 resolution will demonstrate that town meeting joins the manager's office and the select board in prioritizing the creation of a unified town IPM policy. We urge this policy to state that town departments will consistently use least toxic methods of road and control first. We also urge that it prohibit escars as routine road and control on all town properties. Please join me in voting yes to pass this real work resolution. Thank you. Good night and good luck. Great. Thank you, Ms. Crowder. So no one took me up on my offer to speak in opposition to this in advance, but we do have one question on this from Ms. LaCorte, which I'll direct to you, Mr. Diggins. I think you know the drill by now. Why does the select board need town meeting to pass this resolution? Can they not impose a policy on health and human services facilities and DPW with regard to the use of particular rodenticides and integrated pest management? Well, my understanding is that this is pretty much the policy of the town when the town manager addressed this issue when we were hearing it. It's very clear that the town is if not already doing this totally on board with doing it. And in targeting back me to some earlier questions on related, well, this general theme, with respect to what the select board can do in general, we can set goals and we can set the goals for the town manager. And we do an evaluation and we can see the extent to which the town manager adheres to the goals, which would be the implementation of policies that come out of these resolutions. So that's one way we can be more accountable. But like I said, we are working towards this and I guess in general, I understand where the tension is made with resolutions and policies. But I would say to the extent that we ask residents to be more engaged and we want them to see their government as their own, that they are part of. I'm inclined to support them in these efforts. And unless there's a compelling reason to vote negative action against the article, I'm inclined to support it and make it clear to residents that we welcome their interaction. There may be a better way of doing it. I mean, and if so, let's try and come up with it. I mean, if Mrs. Court has some ideas, she knows them all ears. I mean, anyone else, but that's my take generally. I went a little bit beyond the scope of the question, but I was just trying to answer some other questions a little more coherently than I did earlier. So that's it, Ms. Moderator. Great. So is the choice coherence or scope? Is that just kidding? So I don't see anyone in the speaker queue and there's no other questions that were submitted in advance. So let's go straight to a vote on the main motion of Article 77. So if you are in favor of the resolution for Article 77, establishing an integrated pest management policy for town, land, prohibitions and public education about redenticide hazards, vote yes. Again, this is a resolution. If you are against this resolution, vote no. And this is a majority vote. And could we bring up the text of the vote language for this resolution? Yeah, especially at the bottom, the last section, therefore be it resolved that since that's technically the heart of the resolution. So if you're in favor of this resolution, vote yes. If you are opposed, vote no. Your voting seems to be going more smoothly this time, which is good news. We just passed the 200 vote mark. So let's just skip folks another 30 seconds before we close voting on the main motion of Article 77. 20 seconds until we close voting. 10 seconds. Five seconds. Last chance to get your votes in. Let's close voting on Article 77. The vote passes 185 in the affirmative, three in the negative, and several abstentions. We'll just wait for the vote screens. So we've now disposed of all the articles on the annual town meeting with the exception of Article 3, which is still on the table, which I'm going to leave it there just as a placeholder. So no one can claim that town meeting is automatically dissolved. We have a few precincts left to show the votes for. Because I do want to give an opportunity for motions to reconsider. I know that there's one one such motion that's been seriously considered by a number of folks. Okay, so we've gone through other voting screens. So I will now, we don't actually have any articles before us. As I said, Article 3 is still on the table. I do want to, at this point, let's enable raise hands and zoom. And I want to entertain any motions for reconsideration. These are not notices of reconsideration. Notices of reconsideration tonight don't really mean anything because if this is in fact our last night of this annual town meeting, and there are no further sessions, then there's no point giving notices of reconsideration because it won't be an opportunity to actually to reconsider anything because there's no there's no future sessions. So this is actual motions to reconsider. And so if there's a motion to reconsider and it gets seconded, then we will have debate and we will vote by two thirds vote on whether to reconsider an article that has already been disposed of at this annual town meeting. So I see a hand from Mr. Ruderman. So let's bring up Mr. Ruderman to offer his motion of reconsideration. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Michael Ruderman, Precinct 9. And thank you to the members of this meeting. We have all put in a tremendous amount of time and effort this year. And it is in full understanding and appreciation of that time that I ask you for just a few minutes more. I voted in the majority on article 62. I gave notice of reconsideration on the night of that vote. And now I wish to move reconsideration of article two and I'll pause here for a second. Okay, do we have a second to Mr. Ruderman's motion to reconsider article 52? We have a second from Mr. Siano in the portal. So, okay, so here's how this is. Let me explain. At first, what we're going to do is we're going to have debate on whether to reconsider article 62. And the debate should be scoped to whether or not we should reconsider article 62, which essentially means reopening it. Should we reopen it to have debate on it again and allow amendments to it? And I know that there has been a proposed amendment which folks should have seen on the annotated warrant. And so it'll open the out if we vote to reconsider article 62, we'll open it back up for debate and voting and amendments and so on. And that is a two-thirds vote according to our town bylaws. If that vote fails, then article 62 will not be before us. And then we can proceed to take article three off the table and effectively dissolve town meetings. So if, however, the vote to reconsider article 62 succeeds, when we open it, we will then have debate on the merits of the main motion of article 62 and the amendments. So hopefully that's clear. We don't do this often. So I appreciate that the procedures for this can be confusing. So we haven't really reopened article 62 yet. We're going to have debate now on whether to reopen article 62. That's what reconsideration is. And yeah, so the scopes of the two debates are going to have some overlap. But I want to make sure that the first debate that we have, which might be the only debate depending on how the vote goes, is about whether we should reconsider it. And I understand that it'll be kind of impossible for the folks who do want to reconsider article 62 to not talk about some of the merits of the amendment that they wish to put forward. And so while it will be, I will consider it in scope to make mention of that. So folks, how many members understand if they vote for reconsideration, it's important that they understand what they're getting into. And what exactly is going to be reconsidered. But I don't want us to spend too much time during the debate on reconsideration talking about the details of the amendment that may be proposed if we reconsider the article. Hopefully that's clear. It's probably confusing though, and I apologize. So with that, can we open up a, can we open up reconsideration of article 62 so that we actually have a speaker queue for folks to request to speak on? Let's see, in my version of the portal I'm seeing that article 77 is still open. So can are we able to bring up debate on reconsideration of article 62? I think we have a, we have like a generic motion for reconsideration that we'll bring up, which I believe has been prepared in advance. In the meantime, while we're waiting for to bring up that display, we have a point of order from Ms. Bergman. So let's bring up that point of order. And are we having some technical difficulties bringing up reconsideration on article 62? Because I don't see it on my screen. Can you hear me? Yes, I go ahead and name and precinct in your point of order. Robin Bergman, precinct 12. I just wanted to point out that the second that you said was for this was actually from the previous resolution. So you might have to do that again. Oh, I see. Yeah, I apologize. I didn't realize that we still had article 77 that folks were requesting to speak on. So apologies for that confusion. Let's see. So let's clear this out and bring up reconsideration. Oh, is this to, that's a reconsider 77 because, oh, it says article 77 reconsider. Just to avoid any confusion, can we, do we have an article 62 reconsider? Apologize that we didn't get this right ahead of time. Not the amendment, but apologies for that. Do we have a generic? I thought we had a generic reconsideration that we could bring up. Greg, the reconsideration needs to be tied to an article. So if you want me to open article 62, I can do that, but it's going to bring up probably that speaker queue that had been frozen prior. It's up to you. I said there's no way to rename what we're seeing here, like the article 77 reconsider to 62. I said that that's probably fixed once it's created. Right. I mean, I can maybe create another article 62 and we can potentially and we can then use the reconsider for that article that I've created. Let's do that. Apologize that this will take a little longer, but I don't want there to be any confusion about what folks are seeing on screen. Like if it says one number, but we're actually reconsidering a different article's number. We should be able to, I think, associate it with the original article 62, I think. We could do that. It's just going to bring up that whole speaker queue and it's probably going to go back to the history as we had it when we closed. Oh, when there was a speaker queue for the first time, we considered article 62. I'm going to try to do this. Yeah, let's try this. See what happens. Okay. So we have article 62 reconsideration. And okay, so folks should be able to, okay, so I see the speaker queue starting to populate. So if you want to speak on whether to reconsider article 62, feel free to get in the speaker queue. And let's see. And well, let's, I want to make sure that if Mr. Ruderman is still there, I would make sure he finished his remarks as he moved to reconsider and then we got into this kind of technical mess here. So I'm going to make sure that Mr. Ruderman finishes his comments. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. I'm ready to present the outline of the reconsideration motion. Okay. Please go ahead. I think that'll help clarify the folks. Sure. A motion to reconsider needs to be based on certain evidence. In this case, it is new information which has become available to us, the members of town meeting, since we originally considered the article when it was introduced. And I'll run through that very briefly. The result, in addition to the new information, there is also a way of acting upon this information, way of acting upon the information that comports with the Community Preservation Act Committee's obligation to fund certain obligations as a requirement each year. And let me start from the top then. The new information was what was alluded to but not specified in the report of the Community Preservation Act. That was consultation of some form with town council on making sure that a grant to, in this case, Covenant Church would not violate the Massachusetts State Constitution article that prohibits aid to religious institutions. Having attorney Heim's memo in hand, we see that his logic puts out that there is a three-part test for when it is allowable to grant aid to a religious institution, excuse me. And these three tests are basically disallowing tests that you cannot have something, something else or something else. Two of those points that would disallow an aid to a religious institution by a town in some form would be grants that support the purpose of the organization and grants that, I'll quote here, the primary effect would be to substantially aid the church. The grant cannot be for the purposes of, quote, founding, maintaining or aiding a church or substantially aid a church. Since we took the original vote on the article, we've had a chance to confer with members of the Covenant Church community and find out, is there in fact a history of activities which would say that the grant would not be for simply the maintenance of the religious community or substantially aid the community, but it would further the religious organization's efforts to bring in and involve the public to reach out to create a benefit to the general community such that we would have an interest in promoting that. We've had a chance to look at this record and we have found it lacking that the proponents, excuse me, that the members of the Covenant Church congregation have every intention, which we take in complete good faith, they have every intention of offering their space to the community or public activities, but there's no record of that yet. We have intentions, but not a record, not a history. One might say words, not deeds. We put forth that the lack of such a record of actual activities that bring in and involve the community that would be furthered by the proposed grant constitute a failure to meet the tests which are outlined in Council Hymes Memo on Case Law in Massachusetts. Further, new information is that should members feel that this lack of activity of bringing in the public or reaching out to the public, should that constitute a reason to doubt the validity of the grant, there is in fact an avenue for acting upon it. This is not like the Community Development Block Grant, which although it looks very similar to the way the Community Preservation Act Committee, you know, formulates their report, CDBG money is in fact one sum which is voted yes or no. Community Preservation Act money is actually a series of grants which Town Meeting has the power to look at individually. Therefore, an avenue for acting upon new information, if we feel that it calls into question the validity of a grant, there is an avenue to act on that and that is by moving an amended motion that would affect the actual grants which we vote for. In short, take out the money from the proposed motion, take out the money that was earmarked for for the grant to Covenant Church. We can go into further details about why we feel that the circumstances, the facts we have gathered here, you know, fail to meet the criteria of the test of validity, but I'll leave it at this that there are new facts to be considered. The facts, when we present them, will draw into question whether or not this is a proper use of the town's money. There is a way of acting upon that and we will put forth an amendment to the main motion which will give effect to that action. And with that, I'll conclude my remarks and ask for any other speakers. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Thank you, Mr. Ruderman. Okay, Mr. Ruderman did reference Mr. Heim and a memo that he wrote. So I did want to give Mr. Heim an opportunity. Obviously, Mr. Heim is not on the speaker queue. He's not a Town Meeting member, but I wanted to give him the opportunity since his memo was referenced in the prior remarks. So I'm going to give Mr. Heim now an opportunity to speak to any of the claims or the assertions that were made in regard to this article and specifically the Community Preservation Act funding for the Covenant Church. Mr. Heim? Douglas Heim, Town Council. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. And I'll work to be as efficient as possible. I think I appreciate that Mr. Ruderman is also a little bit constrained by the scope of the motion reconsideration. And I'm kind of similarly constrained because I don't know what the new evidence there is. Talking about, I'm not quite sure whether I'm not quite sure what the scope of my own remarks should be, but let me just say a few things and Town Meeting will indulge me in walking through what this is sort of talking about. I'll be available for questions that people want me to talk about the actual merits of it. But I do want to just clarify for some folks since I believe my memo is available for Town Meeting members. I believe the CPA application is available for Meeting members. I think there's some correspondence as well as some other documents. But I want to just set the table for this because it's important to understand a few things when we're discussing this. Sorry for the interruption. I see that there are a number of hands raised in Zoom. I'm not sure what the intention of those hands are at this point, but if anyone wishes to speak about reconsideration of Article 62, you can add yourself to the speaker queue. If you're having some trouble with that, you can ask for technical support. You can get help in the portal or put something in the Q&A. Thank you. Sorry, Mr. Heim. Go ahead. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Just for the purposes of this debate on reconsideration, I'll try to outline a little bit more what Mr. Ruderman alluded to, just in case there's not. Everybody hasn't read this memo. So there's an important sort of table setting matter that I need to get out of the way first. It's Blackler law that the Town can exclude a House of Worship from a grant program solely because it's the House of Worship. You can exclude churches, synagogues, temples from a government grant program just because their House is a worship. That would violate the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. That's what a case called Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia was about. It's a 2017 Supreme Court decision, a U.S. Supreme Court. Mr. Heim, I'm sorry to interrupt again, but I believe the memo that you're referring to and that Mr. Ruderman was referring to is attached to the, as an additional material in the annotated warrant. So if we can show that, if we can bring that up, it's the memo to BOS about high rock church concerns. And on page three of that memo, I believe, is the three-factor test that I believe Mr. Ruderman was referring to. Apologies again, Mr. Heim, for the interruption. Go ahead. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. So it's very important to understand and analysis what Mr. Ruderman is referencing is the anti-aid amendment to the Massachusetts Constitution within the context that the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment informs the Massachusetts Court's analysis of saint. So with the understanding that not only can public grants be awarded to a church, but we can't categorically exclude them because their churches, Massachusetts courts have developed this sort of three-factor test for determining when government funds, not just CPA funds, can be provided to religious institutions. And the sort of three-factor test, I'm kind of summarizing here to try to keep this a little bit tighter, is purpose, the grants for the purposes of founding, maintaining, or creating a church trigger. Can we show that again what Mr. Heim is referring to in the memo? Great. Thank you. The second is substantiality. It's the primary effect of the grant shouldn't be to substantially aid a church. Actually, if we can go down to page three, I think we lost our position in that. It's the three-factor test. Yep. Sorry again, Mr. Heim. Go ahead. No problem. Risks are basically a way of trying to condense what's a fairly lengthy discussion by the courts about improper entanglement between the House of Worship that would infringe on quote-unquote liberty of conscience. It's not, to be honest, the clearest articulation thinks it's a little bit like the standard for obscenity. People say the old quote is people know it when they see it, but the reality is that not everybody thinks the same things are to see. So this sort of liberty of conscience test, these are all sort of three factors that are sort of wound together in what's sort of balancing test. Is it maybe the best way I can articulate it? There's a lot of projects that are historic preservation projects for churches, synagogues, things like that throughout the Commonwealth. There's probably been several hundred. The Kaplan case is relatively recent. I think it's 2019 where they sort of reaffirmed this balancing test after the Trinity Lutheran case that I talked about. So I don't want to say anything more unless people have specific questions about how I would apply the analysis to the facts and circumstances presented in the application. But I just want to go, I just want folks to understand that these things exist in a little bit of an equilibrium with each other between the free exercise clause which mandates that we can't categorically say houses of worship are excluded from government programs and this idea that you have to be cognizant and careful about how much aid you can give to a religious institution in the way in which you give it. In this case, it's accessibility improvements and historic preservation element of the CPA. Sorry to interrupt again. Just so we can bring it to the point, do you agree or disagree with or have any opinion about the conclusions that Mr. Rudin has drawn about your memo? Well, Mr. Moderator, to be fair to Mr. Rudin and Frank with the meeting, my memo outlined should be done to make sure that this project meets the criteria. If I can be very brief, my understanding is that the CPAC essentially established a record and made sure that the application did those things. I don't think that there's a high, I would say that there's a very low risk that it violates the anti-aid amendment in my opinion. But again, to be fair to Mr. Rudin and the other folks looking to be consider, I'm not sure what evidence they're saying that they have uncovered and I don't want to speak out of turn. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Thank you, Mr. Heim. Okay, so let's now go to the speaker queue. Let's take Mr. Moore first, who's first in the list. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Christopher Moore, Precinct 14. Having reviewed Mr. Heim's memo, I would say that he lays out the path that the CPAC could follow to be sure that making this grant would not cause us trouble with respect to the anti-aid amendment. Did the CPAC review the three-factor test and what was their conclusion? Are you right in this in this instance? So can we bring up, do we have the chair of the CPA committee here, Ms. Rowe? I believe Ms. Rowe is the current chair of the CPA committee. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. We did in fact. I'm sorry, name and precinct, please. Clarissa Rowe, precinct four, chair of the CPAC committee. We did in fact review his three-pronged approach to this. Unfortunately, and Chris and I have been talking our minutes for the meetings do not reflect that, but my committee is a wonderful, very thorough, very careful committee that was very concerned about this religious institution to make sure that the work that we were doing was not doing anything but providing accessibility to this place and to protect the church building itself, which is a Queen Anne building. It's on both the Arlington Register and the state register. It's something called MACRAS, M-A-C-R-I-S, and it is an historic structure. And that is why we went ahead and gave them the grant. In our deliberations, it was very important to us as we have for every other nonprofit organization that we have given grants to that we discuss how they let, how accessible they are to the public. And this was true for the Jason Russell House. It was true for the old Schwab Mill. It was even true for the Wittemore House's garage that we renovated. There had to be a public purpose in everything that we were funding because this is public money. This is not expendable money. This is public money. And we need to make sure that there is a really good history of people reaching out to the community. And I know that both Don Mills from the church, the Covenant Church is here tonight, as well as the pastor who unfortunately has just had surgery on his voice. But Don is here to answer any questions that anybody has. But I have a nine-member committee who are very, very careful. And like many people on the committee, we are not necessarily people that believe there shouldn't be separation between religion and the state. We're very careful about that. I think we reached out to find out exactly what the church was doing. And they did give us a very long documented history of what they were doing in the community. I actually went to the church. I'm actually handicapped, so I had to take a special route to get into the door. But it was for the opening of the Housing Corporation of Arlington's units across the street. And I felt that it was very much a community-based church. They were looking forward to welcoming the new people that were living in those units. So not just me, but other members on the committee. And there were some very skeptical ones. Really looked at it in detail and we came out in favor of this grant. Now, maybe other town meeting members, if they were sitting on this committee, wouldn't have felt the same way. But I rely on the people that I work with. And they are just wonderful people. They're very careful people. And they're very, you know, they listen to what Doug said. They listen to what the church said. And that's why we gave them the grant. But we really worked very hard at it. I want to say one thing. One of the things that's come up recently is I was told that there was a member of the committee that was part of the church congregation. That is not true. It's absolutely not true. So, you know, this, there's one person who lives on the same street with the church, but she is not a member of the congregation. So I just, you know, I urge you to turn down this reconsideration motion. We did our job. We have public meetings in January. And we urge town meeting members to really look at the end of January for what our Community Preservation Act agenda is. And if there are any items that you want to know more about, please do it in January and not on June 8th. So thank you very much, Mr. moderator. Thank you, Mr. Moore. Anything else? Thank you, Ms. Rowe. My understanding is that the basis of reconsideration is new information. And I would submit to the meeting that there is no new information here. Town Council's review was dated December 1st, 2021, sorry, 2021. And public meetings were held by the CPAC committee. We delegated this task of betting these things to the CPAC committee and we should not second guess their work. It's true that they didn't put every small item of every decision in front of us in town meeting, but I don't think we want them to. So I think we should not second guess their work. They've clearly done a detailed job and we should not reconsider this. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. And so here's what I'm going to do next. Mr. Ruderman earlier, he kind of gave a bit of a teaser, right, that there's evidence to be shown and that this is new information they wanted to bring to light at town meeting. And so if you vote to reconsider, then we can look at that evidence. It kind of, I think it puts town meeting in sort of an impossible situation, like that if we don't see what that evidence is, then you can't really make an informed vote on whether to reconsider. So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to call Mr. Ruderman back up. This will be a second appearance on this motion. So we'll afford him five minutes of speaking time as outlined in our bylaws. And so I want to offer Mr. Ruderman the opportunity to show his evidence so that the meeting can make an informed decision about whether this is sufficiently new information that warrants reconsideration of Article 62. So if we can bring Mr. Ruderman back up and start the timer, Mr. Ruderman, you have five minutes to present your evidence that you referred to earlier. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Michael Ruderman, Precinct 9, I was trying to stay within the confines of simply making the motion to reconsider, but upon your invitation, I'll go one step beyond that. The new information that I believe town meetings should have a chance to consider is the fact that there is a test for whether or not a grant to a religious institution is an appropriate use of the public money. There is a process here. It's very clearly laid out. This was only alluded to in the Community Preservation Act's committee's report. So we only had had their assertion that they had been careful about this. We did not have the actual steps for how to reconcile the process. And I believe it is in the details of looking at the process and testing whether or not a grant is appropriate, and then looking at the evidence that we can pull in to say, well, what do we know about the evidence of this situation? And I would offer to you and to the members of this very long and hardworking meeting that there is no evidence that this grant furthers an established public purpose outside of the one bare example of one public meeting having to do with housing that previous speaker had referenced. There is no history here of this institution offering its space to the public or inviting the public in to use its space such that a grant of the public money would support the public purpose. We're not fixing historical architecture. We are not, you know, bringing back stained glass windows or a bell tower of significance. The church is on the historic inventory of the town and incorporated in the state's, you know, record of historic properties referred to by its acronym, MACRAS. That's not in contention. Also, what's not in contention is that a grant to a religious institution from a town is allowable. What I'm saying the new information is, is that there's a way of testing that which we did not see in the Community Preservation Act Committee's report. We have the lack of public involvement to balance against the purposes of is this bringing in the public and furthering the history of how the public uses the church's space or is it simply support, maintenance, sidewalk and bathroom. I mean, there's nothing in here that we would compare even to what we see in town that that different religious institutions offer their spaces to the public for, you know, musical group rehearsal space for Al-Anon meetings. There are no historic tours of the Covenant Church. There's no program that regularly invites in the public. There's no history here that we can say, yes, we are supporting that public purpose rather than simply saying, well, we're underwriting the maintenance budget. And that's the new information which we wish to put before town meeting that gives them the tools to decide is this an appropriate grant. And with every bit of good faith and generosity of spirit towards the members of the Community Preservation Act Committee, I believe in their analysis, which we are asked to take take on faith, and I will, it's not in the minutes, but we are asked to think that they considered these questions and came down on the side of, yes, it's allowable. I would offer to the meeting that if we look at it together, it is not an allowable grant. That is the new information that there's a test process, there is a lack of substantiating information, and that we in town meeting can act upon that information and amend the original article to express our feelings. That's all, Mr. Moderator, thank you. Okay, so if I could just try to summarize, it sounds like the new information, like for the benefit of the meeting, it sounds like the new information that Mr. Ruderman that you're expressing here is the new information is essentially a lack of public information that you were able to find that satisfied the criteria for this funding to go forward. Is that fair? That there is a process of testing the validity of such a grant. It depends upon specific criteria. Those criteria for disallowance can be assuaged by a history of public involvement and we can consider those. We are at the five minute mark. Thank you. We do have a point of order from Ms. Hayam, so let's take that now. Mr. Moderator, I'm not sure if this is appropriate under... Oh, so sorry. Leba Hayam precinct 15. I'm not sure if this is appropriate under a point of order, but nothing that was just stated in the argument was information that I had not had access to prior to the original vote on article 62 and therefore... That is not a point of order. I think... I'll stick with the summary that I made at the tail end of Mr. Ruderman's remarks that appears that the new information that Mr. Ruderman is saying is presented for the meeting is the lack of public information that he was able to find about satisfying the criteria. So I think I'll leave it at that. And so we are now... We just reached 29 minutes into debate on this article... I'm sorry, on reconsideration of article 62. And so I am now going to entertain. I'm going to invoke the so-called 15 minute rule, although applying at 29 minutes in. And so can we enable raised hands in Zoom? And I'm going to ask for anyone who is interested in terminating debate to raise their hand. And I'll give folks a minute to just find the button. Okay, well, the number keeps going up. So we are... I see 100 raised hands and as others have pointed out... So we're over 50% of the participants have raised their hands. It's not a two-thirds threshold. What I'm going to do in this case is... I'm just going to call on someone to bring up a vote of terminated debate because we've seen that historically these raised hands appear to be a significant undercount. We've seen this a number of times in termination of debate straw polls. So I think the fairest thing to do at this point, since there is clearly considerable interest in terminating debate, to actually put it to an official electronically tallyed vote. And if more than one-third of the meeting wishes to continue debate, then that's what we'll do. So, okay, we have a point of order from Mr. Wagner. So let's take that. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Carl Wagner, Precinct 15. I'm surprised that the order or the rules for the meeting are changing based on the determination of the time or the time of the meeting in the month. I wish you would not do that. And I think this is not the right way to proceed. Thank you. Okay. Your objection is noted and will proceed. And I'll let's say I will call on Ms. Henkin, who has a hand raised. She is interested in terminating debate to make her motion. Can you hear me? Yes, I can. Name and precinct place. Anna Henkin, precinct six. I'd like to move the reconsideration and all things before it. Okay. So we have a motion to terminate debate. So let's bring up a vote to terminate debate on reconsideration of Article 62. Okay. So voting should be opening momentarily based on waves of precincts. If you see the yellow text, please sit tight. Don't just walk away. Just within several seconds, your precinct will be enabled for voting. And we're voting here on whether to terminate debate on the motion to reconsider Article 62. If you're in favor of terminating debate, vote yes. If you want to continue debate on reconsideration, vote no. And I say we have an old point of order from, I'm sorry, we had a second from Ms. Giddelson. I don't think I mentioned that earlier. We had a motion to terminate debate and a second from Ms. Giddelson. I say we have an old point of order from Ms. Bergman, which was from 9.55 p.m. So if we can clear that to avoid confusion, that'd be great. Okay. We have about almost 200 votes cast, which is another 30 seconds before we close voting on termination of debate of reconsideration of Article 62. 20 seconds until we close voting on termination of debate. 10 seconds until we close voting. Okay. Let's close voting. Okay. And the motion passes 168 in the affirmative, 28 in the negative. Debate is terminated. So let's now open up voting on the main motion to reconsider Article 62. Okay. And while we're bringing that up, we have a point of order from Mr. D'Tulio. Let's bring that up. If this is related to Mr. D'Tulio's comment in the Q&A about restating the standard for a motion to reconsider before we vote. But why don't we bring up Mr. D'Tulio? I'm not sure if he's referring to the quantum of vote, which is two thirds, according to our town bylaws. Let's bring up Mr. D'Tulio to make sure that I'm not misinterpreting his Q&A comment. Can you hear me, Mr. Moderator? Yes, I can. Name a precinct, please. James D'Tulio, Precinct 12. No, I was referring not to the quantum, but to the, I guess, the rule or the standard. We've heard discussion about must provide new information or things of that nature. And I just wanted to be sure that before we vote, we know what the Right. So that's up to how it's defined. Sure. So that's up to whether there's sufficiently new information. I mean, there's kind of a first pass that I as moderator take. And if there's reason to believe that like there's new information that's been brought to light, which isn't necessarily the creation of information. It could be information that previously existed, but wasn't widely known or understood, right? So I take a pretty broad interpretation of that. And then a finer grained interpretation of that is really, I leave that to town meeting, for town meeting members to vote on whether they feel that there's sufficiently new information that they wish to reconsider. So I'm leaving that to the meeting to decide if you've heard so far that there's reason enough to believe that there's new information that's been brought to light to you as a town meeting member that you wish to have debate on the merits of article 62 and to entertain motions to amend it, then that's up to town meeting members to decide at this point. But the formal requirements are pretty broad. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. I thought we had a general reconsideration entry in the, in the menu. Is that not appearing? It looked as though we had created one, that one was created earlier, but not seeing it here in this menu. Are we able to just create a, like, yeah, I think all we can do at this point, I apologize for the delay is to just create a new agenda item for article 62 reconsideration. Okay. And that's what we're going to do. Apologies for that. Someone says they saw it reconsider two-thirds option. Is that not? Oh, looks like we have that there. Okay. Apologies for that. And while I bring that, I saw a point of order, but it just disappeared. So we still have the outdated point of order from Ms. Bergman. Okay. So we now have before us a vote on whether to reconsider article 62. If you feel that there is sufficiently new information or context or understanding that warrants reopening article 62, so we can debate it again and potentially amend that and change the vote on the main motion. Vote yes. If you do not wish to reconsider article 62 any further, you can vote no. And can we put in the Q&A as folks are asking for the number to call in? The town clerk's number has changed. For this meeting, I apologize for that. There was a technical reason why we needed to use a different number for her tonight. And so can we put in the Q&A the instructions for voting, like especially Ms. Brazil's number? Thank you. Okay, that information should now be in the, I'm sorry, in the chat. Yep. And so that number if you need to reach it is, the town clerk's number is 761-608-6308. And we have a point of order from Mr. Rosenthal. Let's bring that up. Can you hear me? Yes, I can. Any increasing please? Mark Rosenthal, precinct 14. You gave the area code as 761. Is that correct? I would think I'm sorry. That's why someone wrote 781 in the chat here. My apologies. I misread that. Ms. Brazil's number, thank you, Mr. Rosenthal. Ms. Brazil's number is 781-608-6308. Okay, again, if you wish to reconsider article 62, vote yes. If you do not wish to reconsider article 62, vote no. Article 62, it's currently disposed of and so a two-thirds vote to reconsider would essentially reopen article 62 and bring it before us. So if you feel that there's sufficiently new information or context or understanding that's been brought to light since the first time we debated and voted on article 62, you can vote yes to reconsider. If you want to keep the article 62 closed, keep it disposed of. Without reopening it, you can vote no. Okay, we've had 200 votes cast so far. So let's just wait another 30 seconds to make sure we get as many votes in as we can without waiting an inordinate amount of time. So if you haven't voted yet, please get your vote in. 20 seconds until we close voting on reconsideration of article 62. 10 seconds until we close voting and this is a two-thirds vote. Okay, let's close voting. Okay, and the motion fails. 79 in the affirmative, 121 in negative article 62 is not reconsidered and while there were multiple individuals who gave notice of reconsideration on article 62, according to our town bylaws, once there has been a vote on reconsideration of an action, no further reconsideration can be made. There's basically one shot at reconsideration and this was it. So article 62 remains disposed of and we'll just wait for the screens, the voting screens to go by. And with that, we have one last article in the annual town meeting warrant that has not been disposed of. And now that we're done with all the articles and before we dissolve the meeting, let's see, are there any motions for reconsideration? Sorry, I already did the motions for reconsideration. We're done with that. All the articles have been disposed of. Mr. Foskett, that's your cue. Yep. I move that article three be taken from the table. Okay, so a motion from Mr. Foskett to remove article three from the table and we have a second from Ms. Brazil. Let's make sure that raised hands in Zoom are enabled. Anyone who objects to taking article three from the table, you can raise your hands now to object to that. Seeing no objections, I see one hand raised hand from the panel. I don't know if that's just from before from Mr. Oster. Okay, that hand has been lowered. So there are no objections. It's unanimous vote. Article three is now before us. Are there, this is last chance for any raised hands for any reports of committees to be received? Seeing none. Mr. Moderator. Yes, Mr. Foskett. Charles Foskett precinct 10. I move that the 2022 annual town meeting be dissolved. Okay, we have a motion to dissolve the annual town meeting. Do we have a second? Second. We have a second from Ms. Brazil. Please make sure that raised hands are enabled in Zoom. Any objections to dissolving the 2022 annual town meeting and any hands raised? I will recite your name for public shaming. Okay, I see no objections. So consider that unanimous vote. The 2022 annual town meeting is hereby dissolved. So thank you, everyone, for bearing with us. This was a very long slog of a town meeting. Thanks, everyone, for sticking it out to the end and all the participation. And hopefully next time we meet, hopefully that'll be in person at Town Hall. I sincerely hope so. All right, have a good night, everybody.