 Good evening. Calling to order this meeting of the Arlington Select Board on Monday, June 5th. I am Select Board Chair Eric Helmuth. Tonight's meeting is being conducted in a hybrid format, consistent with Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2023, signed into law on March 29th, 2023, which further extends certain COVID-19 measures regarding remote participation in public meetings until March 31st, 2025. Before we begin, please note the following. First, this meeting is being conducted in the Select Board Chambers and over Zoom. It is being recorded and simultaneously broadcast on ACMI. Second, persons wishing to join the meeting by Zoom may find information on how to do so on the town's website. Persons participating by Zoom are reminded that you may be visible to others and that if you wish to participate, we ask you to provide your full name and interest in developing a record of the meeting. Third, all participants are advised that people may be listening who do not provide comment, and those persons are not required to identify themselves. Both Zoom participants and persons watching on ACMI can follow the posted agenda materials found on the town's website, specifically the Select Board Agendas and Minutes page. Let's see how much of the town's business we can get done tonight. Two preliminary items. First, for anybody joining us by Zoom or in the room, I am going to take one item out of order, and that is the request for a package store license at 232 Mass Ave. The applicant has requested a continuance, so I will bring that to the board first, the first thing that we do after this. So, if anybody's joined for that, just be aware that we're going to very likely ask the board to continue that to June 26. And secondly, for public comment tonight, in general, we have applicants for the Housing Authority, so they will each be given time to speak as part of that agenda item for the Housing Authority Board. But otherwise, the only public comment period tonight is the Open Forum, which follows the Item Agenda 18. So, anything that you want to talk to the board about that we're going to talk about after that meeting or anything else you care to discuss, be sure to be ready to do that in Open Forum. If you're joining us by Zoom and you want to participate in Open Forum, all you need to do when we get to Open Forum, I will announce that, and you just need to raise your hand in Zoom. Don't do it now, but be ready to do that, so if you don't know how to raise your hand in Zoom, now is an excellent time to look that up. With that, and I will also note that Mr. DeCorsi will not be joining us this evening, either in person or remotely, and with all members physically present, we will take votes by voice and less legally required to take by roll call. Have I got anything, Mr. Vice Chair? He keeps me honest. All right, all good. All right, so let's take this item out of order. Let me find the exact name for it. This is Item 18 for approval all package stores, City 1 and Spirits and Smoke Shop, that was proposed for 232 Mass Ave. The applicant through their attorney has asked for a continuance due to illness to June 26th, so I would welcome discussion or a motion from the board. Motion to table to June 26th. Any discussion? All in favor say aye. Opposed? It is continued to June 26th through our next meeting. Thank you. All right, that takes us to back to the top of the agenda, and we have the FY 2023 quarter financial report, and I believe we have Ms. Cody, our controller. Welcome, Ms. Cody. Thank you. Good evening, Ida Cody, Town Comptroller. You received the quarterly revenue and expenditure report. I see that you have a packed agenda, so I will give you a summary of the summary. Again, it's for the period ending March 31st, 2023. This is the third quarter. The burn rate should be at 75%. We're right on target, and we just have a few, very few exceptions. Several departments appear to be burning their budgets a little faster, and this is due to incumbrances or the timing of the charges. Some departments charge the directs, let's say the enterprise. We charge them at the beginning of the fiscal year, retirement, and insurance as well. We also have some departments that are below the 75%, and this is mostly due to the staff vacancies. We do not anticipate any reserve fund transfers this year except the facilities. Facilities department has experienced an increase in the energy costs, so we think we might need roughly $40,000 by the end of the fiscal year. On the revenue side, there are a few items that I would like to highlight. One of them is the obvious, the interest income, which is 984%, but again, we have to look at the denominator. We had a very conservative estimate of $200,000, and this was a combination of large volume of amounts of cash in the bank. Also, the interest rates that went really high, and some of them were almost 5%. The building permits are 136% collection. This is mostly because the construction costs went up, and we charge 2% of the total project. Also, the electrical is at 324%, but this is because of a particular building on Mass Ave, like the MIRAC, I believe, at 1165 Mass Ave. The building permits were granted last year, but the wire permits, the electrical were collected in October 22, which falls in fiscal year 23. Finally, the hotel and motel tax, the revenue is 199% and 106% respectively, and this is a combination of volume, as well as the price increases. Enterprise funds are right where they're supposed to be, and we anticipate increases in retained earnings. If you have any questions, I'm happy to answer. Thank you, Ms. Cody. Turn to the board. Thank you. Just three quick questions. One might be more of a comment, and then something that's sort of off the beaten path. Am I correct on the school Medicaid collection? Is that something the town oversees and reimburses the schools, or is that just something under the purview of the schools, and they report back to us for this report? It's the school department only. So the nurses enter the data in the system, and this consultant PCG collects all the data, applies for reimbursement quarterly, and the town receives the money. And then this I just sort of raised, because this will be the third meeting that I've raised to that, and it's just to raise a point on the earnings on investments, just because when I first became a member of the board, I spent lots and lots of times with people who are actuaries, people in Comptroller, CPAs, to explain budgets, how you project, and finances. So I guess I would just, when you're talking with the town manager and whomever else, this is the third time, which is a good thing, but earnings on investment at the 984%, I think it's been trending that way. This is now the third time that it's come in that way. So I have a standing question, are we being too conservative with our $200,000 estimate? And I only say that for the tight budget decisions we need to make like the 83,000, 103,000 COVID reimbursement for retirees, things like that. So I'm not asking you to give me that answer tonight, but when you all go back and have your audit meeting internally or whatever, if you could just raise that, I had asked that. If we stay super, super conservative and keep it at 200, that's what greater minds than me decide, but I was always told, because I remember sitting down with budgets initially saying, oh, this is a great thing. And it was told to me that if you're projecting and something comes in and it's an anomaly, either way, that's okay. But if it goes consistently, that really isn't budgeting wisely or appropriately. So unless that's changed in years. And then the, so if you could just carry that to whomever. And I could be way off base, the last two times, I think there was agreement. So like I said, this year we had large amounts of cash in the banks because of the high school and the DPW. We almost had a hundred million dollars. And we made interest of that. So that sparked it. I'm just thinking when I go home, my husband cries about the tax bill. He's watching this, which he probably is. And then I just want to note that I'm really happy to see that under the recreation fund for the longest time because of COVID. We haven't really seen any encouraging numbers because of circumstances, despite the fact that we have Joe Conley, our recreation director and our Poxson Rec Commission that have done unbelievable jobs with the programs they have. So I'm really, really excited that they've only expended 88% of their budget. They're over, like, $118,000 collected. And then my off-the-road comment and last comment is, besides move receipt of this report, when it's an appropriate time, and if you know the answer now, that's great, I know the last audit meeting that I sat in when I was chair. So that's two, three years old, three years ago, when we first started discussing opera funding, it was my understanding after that meeting that opera funds would be overseen, administered, audited, and federal submissions by the town comptroller and powers in Sullivan. And one of the questions I had was about an annual or biannual report of opera funding. I haven't seen that, so I'm just wondering, am I still asking too soon or is it coming soon? It is my understanding that the town manager is working on preparing this report as he will be coming back with the revised framework. So that will be the time when he will present all the expenditures under opera. I just gave you a summary to have an idea of how much we got in and how much we spent to date. But you will have more details, I believe, soon coming. He's working on a report. Okay, thank you, Mr. Chair, for that leeway. All done. Mr. Thank you. Thank you for the report. It seems like we get one of these every month, so time flies, I guess, when you're having fun. You can tell the town manager on the opera funding the report he's running out of time. We'll get that in the next month and a half. Just a general comment, and this has nothing to do with you. This would be directed to somebody sitting in that seat. And next time you give one of these quarterly reports, there'll be a new name tag there. So I think something that strikes me that you would think is a good thing is that we have under expended some of our budgets. But then you go down the line and it says vacancy, vacancy, vacancy. And it seems like in all the departments we're experiencing, I don't know if I'll call it a crisis, but a lot of vacancies where, you know, we didn't have an economic development coordinator for a while and we're working with other towns in 2025 events. And they're like, Oh, who's your economic development coordinator? And it just seems like we do have a lot of vacancies, both on the town side and on the union side. And we know there's a lot of transfers on the union side do really squarely to pay. I don't know what is causing the transfers and the vacancies on the town side. But I think it's something that, you know, in the coming months, we're going to want to sit down and talk to the new town manager about to make sure that we're retaining the town for years and years in this town. We have the same talent that were department heads and that worked in the planning department. And so we have to make sure that we as a town don't have so much turnover that members of the Slack board don't know who department heads are, who the transportation platter is. So again, that's not for you. That's a discussion that I think we as a board are going to have to have at some point. But it is sort of a stark item on this report that jumps out to me is just all these budgets are underspent because of vacancies. So it's not only leaving people leaving the town, but also retirements as well. And it takes a while to fill the positions. Well, they might be following us, Mr. Mr. Diggins, please. I'm sorry. Yeah, well, they might be following us and honest to her that we had four new members in four years here. You know, so just recently we've become stable. I'll show you this. They're not going to work for the MTA. So I just say that by virtue of saying like every place I know is having problems, you know, finding people, you know, the the Central Transportation Planning Staff, which is the staff for the Boston Region Metropolitan Planning Organization, they have people leaving. It's just, it's just hard for everyone to find people and to retain people. And last time you told me and it was really reassuring because you mentioned interest rates this time that it's because we have a lot of money in the bank that that 5% is helping us. Because otherwise I'd be concerned when we go to submit issues new debt towards the beginning of the year, that's going to come back to bite us. I mean, I'm sure to a certain extent it will. I mean, I'm sure you're thinking about that. But otherwise, let's get recorded. Look forward to three months, two months from now, whatever. Thank you. Thank you. I actually have nothing to add to the excellent observations and comments from my colleagues, except my thanks. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you for coming tonight. Next item is the Friday Night Concert Beer, sorry, Friday Night Concert Series beer garden at the Arlington Reservoir proposed Fridays from June 30th to August 11th, 2023, because this is a new license by a new vendor. We've asked to have a brief appearance by the applicant so that the board can have a discussion. Is Thomas Allen here tonight or on Zoom? Oh, there we go. Welcome, sir. We'd love to hear about your business and I know it's new to Arlington and I do want to say I appreciate the completeness of the application and particularly the safety plan and the server training. And so we look forward to hearing about what you propose and then give a presentation. The board will ask some questions and we'll take a vote. Sure, I don't have any prepared materials, but I want to just start off by thanking select board. I think as of today, we've talked just about everybody in town. And I want to say thank you to everybody in the town of Arlington because we've encountered nothing but support from the Economic Development Department to the Planning Department and the Cleric, everybody. We're very excited to start. This will be our first event for new business here in Arlington. We are a fully licensed brewery. We are producing our beer here in Arlington and we started the business because we believe this community is great and this community deserves great beer and we're excited to start sharing that beer with our friends and neighbors. Our location doesn't allow us to have customers on site right now. It's very small and as part of the discussions we've been having over the last couple of years, we had a discussion with Joe Conley and he's been another great supporter and he suggested that maybe we could find a way to partner up and this is kind of the culmination of those discussions. So we're very excited to be providing beer for this event and then the town I believe is sponsoring the, there are bands on Friday night as well and it'll be at the Arlington Res and everybody likes hanging out at the res. So we're looking forward to having a good time. Thank you, sir. I'll turn to the board for any motions or comments or questions. Mr. Hurd. I'll move approval. I'm very excited about this. I've always been a fan of the beer garden. My first year on the board was the first time they proposed the beer garden and it got some tough reception to start. I don't know what people's ideas what a beer garden was going to be and you know and every year that we've had it it's been a wild success especially up at the Jason Russell houses. I mean I don't even think you get a spot in there these days but it's very cool to see an Arlington based company. I love the email address. Tom at drinkonlingtonbeer writeupmyally.com and I also appreciate the Friday nights because with the boys I have two boys Saturdays are always a whirlwind and sometimes it's been hard in the past couple of years for me to get to the Saturday beer gardens so I think going to the res is a great spot for it where the kids can do their thing. There's plenty of new playground there and a lot for the kids there and live music is always great. So I'm excited for this. I'll second that. Two beer gardens. It'll be interesting to see how that works out. It'll be interesting to see if there are people who go to the beer gardens on Friday and on Saturday. I agree with my colleague. It's a great domain name. So thanks for doing this in Arlington. I hope this is a lot of success. Thank you. This is my heart. Thank you. Mr. Chairman. I'm really excited about this. And I'm sure we'll probably be seeing you at other future town events like Town Day perhaps with the beer garden. The Schwann Mill. Yep. They have beer gardens. So I would definitely like to keep it home grown. So thank you for doing this and I know it was already noted by somebody else that anything that goes out reservoir will hit a spell check on that. So I know it's crazy. I'm also a court reporter and I do transcription so I do a lot of proofing and you can't believe how many times people will call me up and say sometimes town meeting we had two hours extra because of Collins and semicolon so great to see you. Thank you so much. Thank you Mr. Chairman. Sorry. One other question just to plug your business. I know you said that you can't serve. I'll call on site. Do you are you in retailers right now? Is there any weather? No not yet. Our production is pretty limited. Yeah. Right now we're reserving all of that production for this event. Okay. And we'll see how it goes. I hope we have enough beer for everybody. I also kind of hope we sell out. So we'll see how it goes. But our license allows us to sell to distribute to sell the bars and restaurants and things like that. So after we get through this first series events then we're going to kind of assess what our inventory looks like and of the production plan going forward. Okay. Great. Thank you. As you can tell this was a really tough sell. I do appreciate as I said before the completeness of the application. It's very clear that you take the server training the alcohol service very seriously. The tip certification was front and center and repeated. And that's really important to the board. And it gives us a lot of confidence that you'll be very, very careful with the safety plan. And that's worked really well for Arlington that the beer gardens have gone well because the vendors and the servers are being very strict in following the latest standards and how to deal with intoxicated customers and making sure that we don't serve underage people and all the things that you do so well. So I don't have any other questions and comments. Anything else from the board? Did anyone second that motion? Thank you. All right. So on a motion by Mr. Herd and seconded by Mr. Diggins. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Congratulations. We look forward to it. Thank you very much. And a couple people just joined the meeting tonight and I wanted to just for in case you were here for the package store application at 232 Mass Ave that has been postponed until June 26th. So we won't be taking that up tonight. I thought that might be the case, sir. See you later this month. Next brings us to the consent agenda. The containing the following items. The minutes of the meeting from May 22nd. Rainbow Commission requests for crosswalk paintings, banners and a proclamation, which we do every year. Request for a contractor drain layer license from Philip McLaughlin. Reappointments to the Arlington Commission of our Arts and Culture Grants Committee, specifically Andrew Conway. Reappointments to the Arlington Historic Districts Commission, Charles Berry, Beth Miloftrick, David Baldwin, Beth Cohen, Steven McHawa, NKLT. Appointments and reappointments rather to the Public Memorials Committee, Alexander Salopante, Bill Capathorn, William McCarthy. And there's more. The nice thing is we generally take one vote on this. We have the Garage Band Festival on Saturday, June 17th at Wyman Terrace presented by the Arlington Commission of Arts and Culture and Ed Blundell from the Community Engagement Committee thereof. A reauthorization of the beer garden that we have authorized in past years at Jason Russell House from June through September 23rd from the Arlington Historical Society. Request for a special one-day beer and wine license at Robbins Memorial Town Hall for a private event by Jody and Jeremy Keivel. Another one of those special one-day beer and wine licenses from the Arlington Garden Club. Another request for special one-day beer and wine license by Judy Weinberg for Arlington Friends of the Drama. Another request for a one-day special beer and wine license for a private event by Robert Marchant. And finally another special one-day beer and wine license for a private event by Jennifer Chan. Clearly this is the season for celebrations. So we typically don't have presentations about this but do we have anybody here that wants to speak about the Garage Band or any of the other of the special events briefly? Okay. Seeing none, I'll turn to the board. Mrs. Bonnably, you're first. I'd like to move report. I'd like to be able to speak correctly and enunciate. Move approval on all the items in Consent Agenda. And if I could ask the chair on Consent Agenda Item 13, if you could, perhaps this week, follow up with the town manager, Mr. Pooler, regarding the request that sort of goes piggyback with Mr. Marchant's request, which I know the town manager was working on and we're getting close to June 24th and I thought that that was resolved but someone else called me and said that they hadn't heard anything. So if you could just- Okay, so check in and for the communication. Yes. Okay. Thank you. And that's it. Thanks. Mr. Dickens. I'll second it and I'll also say congratulations to the Friends of the Drama on their 100th anniversary. That's what that's all about, you know. So yeah, you know, I always thought Friends of the Drama meant Friends of the Select Board because we're all up drama. It's right across the street. Oh, that's spectacular. Thank you for saying so. Sure. Mr. Heard. Yeah, I just wanted to note on item number nine for the beer garden adjacent Russell House, they've been doing this for years and I'm fine with being on the Consent Agenda because it's a local company but there is a new vendor who is serving the alcohol. You see, it's monotony tavern. It was a brewer in past years. So this year it's going to be monotony tavern who did the food for those local for those beer gardens in past years but now they'll be doing the alcohol in the Celsius too which I just figured I'd note that as a plug from monotony tavern and just as it's not, you know, it's not a straight renewal from a license from last year. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Mr. I'm sorry. That's a worthwhile clarification and I also wanted to note the also the completeness of the alcohol safety plan, the service safety plan for monotony tavern. They did a good job. All those servers are TIPS certified which is the program from the state to do that and so I appreciate that as well but yeah they were a known local business and well worth promoting as well. Okay, so we have and I'm sorry I did not write down the second for the consent agenda. Was that Mr. Diggins again? Nothing personal Mr. Diggins at all in my adult brain. All right, so on a motion to prove the consent agenda by Mrs. Mohan and seconded by Mr. Diggins. All in favor say aye. Opposed? Because you four nothing unanimous vote. And with that we take care of 14 items of business. Pretty nifty. That takes us to item 15 Arlington Housing Authority tenant member. Let me call it my list here. So we have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight nominees. So just for the public's information by state law most of the Housing Authority board members are elected by the residents of Arlington, the voters, but one position is appointed by the select board and that person must be nominated by Housing Authority local tenant association. So the process the board has established is to solicit those nominations and then ask the nominees to appear tonight either in person or over zoom and just in the interest of time in the agenda as we have did in past years I'm going to give each person two minutes to give a brief presentation. Most of the nominees have sent in materials already attesting to the which we've all read. And Mr. Herd. Oh yes. And before we get started I believe Mr. Herd has something to say. So I'm going to recuse myself on this item as I've done in past for items relative to the Housing Authority. The current executive director is my brother-in-law. So just as to avoid any appearance of impropriety. Thank you Mr. Herd. Sorry I forgot that at the very beginning. All right put crazy glue on your seats over there. That's it. We're down to three. Yeah no we're down. We're down to a quorum. The bare minimum. So um so that's what we're doing and um and uh Ms. Marr do you do you have anybody that you recognize on Zoom who's on our nominee list? I will say so if anybody is of the nominees I know we have some some good folks here in the room. If anybody is on Zoom who is a nominee um and let me just read the list. We've got Fiorella Badilla, Charlotte Ray, Michael McGinty, Timothy O'Leary, the third, Roy Eisner, Jay Steven Ward, John Nealon, and Pam Hauser. So if any of you folks are on Zoom please raise your hand because we might not recognize your name. Um and and before we begin with the two minute presentations I want to thank each of the nominees for being willing to serve. We can only choose one. I think it is to your credit that your fellow residents have seen fit to nominate you and willingness to public service is to be credited. So thank you. I'm just going to start in the order I have on my list starting with Fiorella Badilla. Hi and please correct me if I'm pronouncing your last name wrong. But uh Badilla. Yeah, all right. I was being a little too careful. Yeah, thank you. Um so I'm just going to read off please. All right uh dear members of the board, my name is Fiorella Badilla and I am the current tenant representative to the board of commissioners for the Arlington Housing Authority. I have thoroughly enjoyed the past three years on the board as a tenant representative and respectfully, I am very much interested in seeking your appointment for another term as the tenant representative. During my time as the tenant representative, I have quickly advanced my knowledge of the AHA policies and procedures as well as the HUD and DHCD regulations, rules, policies and procedures that have allowed me to contribute greatly to the business of the AHA. In addition, I have completed the Massachusetts DHCD training course for the um for the housing authority board for new housing authority board members. I have made a positive contribution to the board in representing the needs and wishes of the tenants since I have been privileged to have served at the AHA board since December of 2020. I made small changes such as renaming the Christmas dinner, the holiday dinner, to respect all cultural and religious traditions for residents, to much larger projects such as beginning the monotony manner garden project and supporting the monotony manner tenants in re-establishing the monotony manner tenants organization. Being bilingual has also helped me communicate effectively with Spanish speaking tenants that also have concerns and may not easily voice them. I very much would love to continue on the board as a member who can represent the interests and aspirations of the Arlington Housing Authority residents. I am so inspired by my work with the board I am now starting college this fall to study public policy and management. Being part of a board that takes the work seriously and whose mission is to provide and advocate for high quality affordable housing while promoting social and economic diversity has been the best experience I have had in my professional life. I look forward to continuing my work with not only the Arlington Housing Authority Board of Commissioners but with you to select board as well. I appreciate the time you have taken to review my application letter. If you have any questions or would like more information please let me know. Thank you for your time. That was two minutes on the nose. Thank you so much. Thank you Ms. Bedella. Any questions actually? I think we'll probably hear all the statements and then is that all right with the board? All right. Yeah, thank you. And next we have Charlotte Ray. Charlotte Ray, are you in the presence? And let's just check Zoom. Okay, let's just take a take a note and if Ms. Ray appears back on Zoom we can give her the chance. Next on my list is Michael McGinty. McGinty, present. Similar check on Zoom. Okay, and if any of these folks are on Zoom please do raise your hand and Zoom. Timothy O'Leary III. There we go. Good evening, sir. Good evening. My name's Timothy O'Leary. I'm a tenant in Winslow Towers, apartment number 1103. And what's different about me is I've been there two and a half years. I'm involved in the Veterans Affair, some participation in the Veterans Memorial, as well as Robin's Organic Farm. And one of the things that the benefit I see and myself is listening and coordinating because you just started a little vegetable garden that the Housing Authority built for us for knee-high and we're planting and we're going to have someone from Robin's Gardens, a husband and wife present themselves to teach us about vegetables and flowers. I'm also involved with the Association at Winslow Towers. And also I have knowledge of the other six buildings that the authorities have known and had knowledge for them. As far as my personal skills, in negotiation I graduated from Harvard Law School, graduated in 1994, program on negotiation. I'm a retired veteran. I have skills to complete the job and I have, you know, I'm going to advocate for the tenants and I've taught classes 40 years at Northeastern University, continue education, I own my own company and I'm really grateful for the town of Allenton allowing me to be in the Housing Authority and participating in these various organizations of the town. And I'd like to have the opportunity to serve on the Board of Commissioners for the Allenton Housing Authority and that's what I have to present and I hopefully I'll accept your job and do a good job if you offer me the job. Thank you, sir. Yes, sir. Thank you. Next we have Roy Eisner. Good evening. Can you step a little closer to the microphone so that they can hear you on the broadcast? My name is Roy Eisner and I've been a tenant at Winslow Towers for quite a few years and lately I've seen a lot of good things happen. We've gotten a lot of things done there and I think the two things that I'd like to work on safety and health and also the water quality and the air quality in the building those are two things that I would be interested in and I gave my resume but I didn't put much in in there other than I have a degree from Wentworth Institute and I'm also a certified public accountant so I could run the numbers good if we had money and I'm interested in getting money for some of the tenant activities the board not the board but the people who run the tenants association every month they should get a stipend and have some money for the the coffee and donuts and that kind of thing. Okay thank you. Thank you sir. Next we have Jay Steven Ward. As he's walking up one of our department heads Liz and Allenton just texted me there's no audio on ACMI so I know they're monitoring this. All right we'll communicate that to the control room. We'll just address the board here. Good evening Mr. Ward. Good evening my name is John Steven Ward. I have a few words here to share with you. When the state legislature created the housing authority tenant member of the board directors it was published by DHCD in public housing notice 2021-1. They failed to clearly spell out in full detail just how all of those housing authorities should go about informing all the residents on how to go about selecting the candidates for this important position. As a result here in Allenton less than one-third of the housing authority residents were individually notified of the position. The slam-bam approach used by HA and the town to arrive at the current batch of candidates is an embarrassment to all of us. I'm relatively certain that few in this room knows that the Allenton housing authority represents over 60 million dollars in taxpayer funded properties and that the residents of Allenton forego over $600,000 in taxes each year to subsidize that operation. It has an operational budget in the neighborhood of four and a half million dollars. That's a lot of money. Widespread ignorance of the operational facts and practices of such an organization is unacceptable to me and anyone else seriously concerned with fiscal responsibility. I can no longer in good conscience allow myself to be a part of this corrupted process and respectfully withdraw my name from this body's consideration. Thank you sir. Next we have John Nieland for John Nieland on the zoom. If you're on the zoom please raise your hand. Okay let's move on to Pam Hauser. Good evening Ms. Hauser. Yeah you can put yeah that's fine. There you go. I'm short what can I say. That's right. As a lifelong resident of this town I was born and raised in the town of Allenton. I was involved with the housing authority since my date of birth since my father Robert Hauser was the previous was the first director from 49 to 75. I have been past president of the Tennis Association for 10 years and of course since I moved in I had only missed five board meetings. I feel I'm the best candidate you have for this position. I know what's going on I know what to do and I intend to visit every single property try to talk to the tenants myself and be involved. I know what's going on and I feel that I am your best candidate. Thank you. Thank you Ms. Hauser. So let's circle back to a list of candidates that we did not hear from and I might need a little help from colleagues but well I will just let you identify yourselves. Anybody in the room who is a nominee or anybody on zoom a nominee please raise your hand at this time. Okay seeing none I'll turn to the board for discussion and motions. I have two options. Mrs. Mahon. I think we're hesitant because we want to point more than one but there only can be one. I think another good opportunity for here tonight is you all may have met face to face not just virtually but this may be the first time so I would encourage everyone because I've heard a lot of energy and enthusiasm. I myself I didn't know I lived in the manor when I was a kid. 103 A. Godda street four memorial way and then got married and my parents and remaining siblings lived on Fremont street so my dad served in the Korean War so we were in the veterans' housing. So I'm very familiar with someone who lives in one of the Allington housing authority properties and familiar with not the current environment but I think I know I have a really a good idea of all the challenges that everyone has regardless of their socio-economic status but especially coming from the opportunity that the town of Allington has you know with Drake, Winslow, Cusack, Chestnut Manor in monotony manner as well as some other properties we've acquired along the way. So and it's really nice to see some of these names I've heard of before but I've never had the pleasure to meet in person. With that being said I would like to nominate to appoint or reappoint Fiorella Badilla. I've been very impressed with besides the interface between the Allington housing authority commissioners, our colleagues on the AHA. I've been impressed with reports that I've gotten from other people in terms of Ms. Badilla's when she first was appointed. Spent numerous hours down at the community safety building going over state law, HUD law, federal law, as well as other projects and I do appreciate that up until her appointment we didn't have a representative from monotony manner but that's been rectified. Now would I like to see more for everything for all the sites I named of course I would and I also appreciate that Ms. Badilla as well as the rest of the housing authority which in the past eight weeks I've had the opportunity to speak to Mr. Natropolis, Nick Natropolis and Ms. Preston, Ms. Joanne Preston and I'm really encouraged that there are several partnerships between our colleagues on the AHA through CDBG community development block grant through the Community Preservation Act which I think you're familiar with as being the former chair for getting some improvements to the Allington housing authority projects. Granted they do receive federal funds money money from the from HUD but it's also places where Allington residents live and whether it's new roofs the electricity issue. I know I've worked with Ms. Badilla and others on a very small world chord meeting that so that would be my motion please. Thank you Mr. Chair and I will be happy to second that you know this is behind has been my plus one on this. I mean just why I waited for you to talk because we we talked this morning because I wanted to get some insights. I mean it's how she felt about this because that was going to mean a lot and so I was very happy to hear that you know you were very favorably disposed you know towards Ms. Badilla you know and and after I read the the the mature that we got I was still very favorably disposed me but me when we get to hear from people that gives you an even stronger impression and and certainly you know a couple candidates tonight have impressed me even more you know but I mean one of the reasons I was very much in favor of Ms. Badilla and the first opportunity we had me was for that element of diversity you know and and so I think you've done very well you know in three years I mean you you uh very young you know and you had a lot to learn and you've risen to the occasion in and and that's really what I wanted to see and I'm glad to see that you're taking that now and launching yourself me even deeper you know into this kind of work I mean I think you will do very well and and and not only personally but also the people who you can use in the type of knowledge that you'll bring you know and and on top of that you know you got recommendations meaning from the executive director me which says a whole lot to me you know because Mr. Nagle had conversations with me Mr. Nagle you know and he has some really good ideas meaning there's a lot he wants to do you know with the AHA and I think with Monami Nanner specifically mean and so so I think being the combination of you and him and and ongoing collaborations perhaps with the not ongoing but hopefully some collaborations with with the board you know select board you know we can we can do some things to me that can really help this town help meet people who need the facilities of Monami Nanner and the the town at large you know so I want to get a hardly second this behind this motion thank you mr. Diggins and I will also support the motion and I want to really what I said before I wish we could appoint the whole lot of you you know that you are your commitment to your community is admirable I think that that you should feel proud that you were nominated by your tenants those Asians and you know I think my view is when you have an incumbent who's done a good job they they deserve another another term and so any further discussion so on a nomination by mrs. Mahant to appoint if you're a little bit let bedilla to an additional term and seconded by mr. Diggins all in favor I suppose it's a three zero unanimous vote thank you mrs. Bedilla and thank you to all of you who are willing to serve we can recall mr. Herd thank you very much thank you have a good evening ma'am okay we call mr. Herd thank you been informed that by the control room that the audio has been restored to acmi so thank you to the community member who let us know about that all right we'll wait for mr. Herd to return and we have brings us to item 16 appointment to the disability commission do we have a Janice Kagan-Tuber and I'm sure I'm mispronouncing that name with us this evening in the hall or by zoom mr. Harris mrs. checking mrs. Mar do you say do you see our our nominee appointee I am familiar with with the nominee actually served with her on the remote participation study committees I don't see her in the room either tonight so you know I turned to my colleagues for a preference about whether we were to proceed or or a delay a table to another meeting I'm happy to move approval on your recommendation I'll second it and if the chair perhaps through the select board's office could just follow up with mrs. Kagan-Tuber and I apologize if I'm saying that wrong maybe at the next meeting that she could be here either in person or remote just so we can have a face to the name so I like that mr. Diggins I'm fine with that yeah I will happily vouch vouch for Ms. Kagan-Tuber she was a very helpful and insightful member of the remote participation study committee and I think admirably represented the interests of the disability community and of the commission so Cooley understands their work was pleasure to work with so I think that's a good call and I will invite her to to come before so we can get to know her at the next meeting any further discussion in a motion to appoint by to confirm the appointment by mr. Herd and seconded by mrs. Mahan all in favor say aye opposed unanimous 4-0 vote I'm having to keep up with the math tonight we've got okay that brings us to item 17 for approval all alcohol license transfer for Zomsa we have Ravi Raj Raj Kanakar at 434 to 436 Massachusetts Avenue is this applicant with us this evening either in person or on zoom or the representative please welcome and please correct my pronunciation of your name if necessary we want to get that right for the record good evening mr. chairman and you can move the microphone back up to your to your level good evening good evening welcome our attorney supposed to be joining the zoom too but I'm not sure what's the name of the attorney Mr. Dan we'll see if we can locate okay we'll bring him in just give us a moment mr. Bronsky is coming up all right mr. Bronsky you should be able to unmute and go to video if you want to here we go good evening sir can you hear us remuted here give a moment for the zoom to work itself out okay can you hear me now yes sir okay my name is Daniel Bronsky I'm an attorney in Boston and I represent the applicant the applicant is seeking an all alcoholic beverages license for the premises at 434 dash 436 Massachusetts Avenue it's my I'm led to believe that they are going to be serving who from Nepal which is a small country in Asia as everybody's aware and I also believe that the the manager of the LLC as well who is also the who is also the proposed manager of the for the liquor license mr. Raj Karnikar I hope I'm not mispronouncing his name I believe he is or he will be very very shortly tip certified and I believe there's another member of the of the of the group of the LLC Jenny Tamang she also is or will be very shortly tip certified thank you sir I did you have any further comments please good evening my name is Ravi Raj Karnikar me and as our attorney just mentioned we are already tip certified and I'm also certified I've been in this food industry for more than 35 years and we are hoping to we're planning to open a restaurant here in Arlington the reason why we chose Arlington because we used to leave in Arlington my partner here she graduated from Arlington High my daughter she graduated from Arlington High we love Arlington but now we don't leave in Arlington but we love Arlington community and the food we're trying to serve is basically going to be South Asian food it's not only in Nepali it's going to be in Nepali Tibetan Indian and most likely it's going to be a little bit of fusion too so that's why we're applying for the legal license for the the premises 434 currently it's Taipei and the Jomsa is a Tibetan word that means a gathering place so I hope we get the permit for this thank you very much thank you sir I'll be turn to the board for any discussion or motions mrs. Mahon um I would like to move approval and were you mr. Raj Kanekar is that you and I think I heard you but I might get a little ringing in my ear all of a sudden so both the uh servers that it was representative represented we were told that um they are a will be you're saying both our tips certified yes as of tonight today we got those certified today okay and I have the certification here okay and will you be the manager yes okay um one of the things when um we're giving out the alcohol licenses whether to restaurants packaged stores others um to really know others um beer garden is um as you know being a resident of allington allington is very active and going in and doing checks um at certain times of the year that we don't even know when they are so we do have a very vigorous program and and when we found the few violations that happened it's almost 99 percent that the two to three tips certified employees and our manager aren't there just a culmination of you know I I know what the restaurant businesses like my family also has been in it for many years um and it's that one day that nobody's there who knows what is to be done so I I would recommend that um in your employee handbook uh that you have uh something that if none of the tips servers are available that you you know have a backup plan or maybe you look at maybe that's a case something that never happens but if you see that it is maybe you need to do um a fourth or a fifth and also my um approval would be continued upon what our building commissioner mr. champa has um he has no objections to your license but he does have some conditions and I believe you are aware of him if not your attorney is so the approval would also be subject to those conditions being met um which we are aware of that and now we're gonna we're planning to train more people in wherever we're gonna hire for the tips also as well as for the service also and we're also aware of as you say um we're gonna be hiring all the license we have a plan to risk renovate so we're gonna be planning um hiring all the licensed people so we're not going to have any issues with that and you will have some nepalese food yes okay because my daughter-in-law's kept mendu and her mom's over so um first time I met her I went to another restaurant that was nepalese to say that is she married or widowed red not black certain food it's not going to be typically nipali nipali only it's going to be a little fusion also because I've been working in the U.S. also I work at the Hyatt Hotel and currently I'm working at the Lee Hospital in Burlington as a sushi executive sushi so I have many so different knowledge about different ethnic foods so it's going to be combined for not only nipali typical nipali food oh no well I look forward with armor we'll be in with my grandsons and we'll let you know how many stars we give you thank you who will be very honored heavy my nepalese cooking I can barely I don't even think I've got an A star yet but I'm trying thank you now I'm hungry Mr. Herd I'll second the motion and just say thank you for choosing Arlington to open a business and I'll look forward to your common vix application because that's when we get to see the menus and our taste buds start to tingle a little bit yeah I'll say the same thing you know so so I'll thank you Mr. Chair thank you Mr. Herd I agree wholeheartedly and since Mrs. Mohan is giving you like the the hard speech I can go I can go easy to say not only did you have me at Nepali's but you really had me a fusion you know so I'm really looking forward to that and of course the Arlington background makes me even happier to you know support this so thank you great and I will just add that we're delighted that you love the town and I want to say welcome back home thank you very much on a motion by Mrs. Mohan and for the discussion by the board motion by Mrs. Mohan for approval conditions subject to conditions and seconded by Mr. Herd all in favor say aye aye opposed or nothing unanimous vote we look forward to having you back for the other license thank you very much okay that brings us to open forum so except in unusual circumstances any manner presented for consideration of the board shall neither be acted upon nor a decision made the night of the presentation in accordance with the policy under which the open forum was established it should be noted that there is a three-minute time limit to present a concern or request so if you are on zoom and you want to participate and give a three-minute presentation to the board on a topic of your choice as a reminder this is the the remaining opportunity for public comment in the meeting and the only opportunity please raise your hand in zoom at this time and your name will be noted and if we have people both in zoom and in person who want to participate i will alternate between the two platforms so with that said if there are people in the room Mr. Foskett please believe i saw his hand first we'll we'll get to everyone get my trusty timer thank you mr. chairman and honorable members of the board i appreciate the opportunity to speak to you tonight my subject is the substance in nature of the proposed override vote which you which is on your agenda this evening there's no argument that we need to address the deficits a while ahead but i have two fundamental issues with how we might yield forward the first is the nature of our current and planned deficit spending and the second is town transparency and the degree to which the voters have a real not a Hobbesian choice i'm going to talk about spending and expenses not about the date of the next override which i think is akin to moving desk chairs on the titanic from 2018 through 2023 arlington taxes have grown at the rate of 5.1 a year the average inflation rate has been 2.4 percent average per house average per capita income has been 3.8 in that period according to town manager poolers long-range model our 2.5 growth per year will add 22.2 million dollars over the next five years of the long-range plan this doesn't address the deficit which demands that the town raise another 46.9 million dollars and if the select board recommends additional spending level as proposed of 7.3 million dollars then the taxes cumulative all the next five years will be an additional 27.7 million dollars that all is up to 94.7 million dollars the average household tax burden will raise with with the deficit and the ads will raise not the 464 dollars per household discussed at the long-range planning committee but actually 986 dollars per household which is about 10 percent of the most recent years average household tax rate i strongly recommend that in addressing the deficit the board separate the deficit from any additional spending and give taxpayers the ability to make a true choice even with the 7 million dollars we will have a 10 million dollar deficit in 2028 and if we have the additional spending it'll be a 21 million dollar deficit now the current deficit in 2026 i think it is is 8 million dollars think about the size of the override we will need to address the 21 million dollar deficit it's enormous so i think i just strongly urge that you give taxpayers the choice take care of the deficit or increase the deficit which is what you'd actually be asking thank you very much thank you sir and turning to zoom is marty see anybody with their hand raised and zoom okay we'll go back to the i believe it mr redosha we have a couple other people here for this good evening sir and good evening you state your name for the record oh bob redosha columbia road i'm here to speak to my letter that i sent about a week ago as a follow-up seven years ago i sent the same letter to the board and it went somewhere i don't know where i tried to track it down but couldn't and it basically says the same thing winter street there's a section of the street that's about 400 linear feet that's under 24 feet across curb to curb and i've been told that the minimum should be 24 feet and that it should have a 10 foot wide traffic aisle now 10 feet and what we have done is when they're parking on both sides of the street we're running short people can't get out of their driveways and people can narrowly get through and constantly people are hearing about trucks and rigs that can't get blowing it on trying to get through it and recently uh in fact last week uh the school has been uh getting receiving a lot of complaints from neighbors about parking they parking to their driveways and all of that the school has been very good about it very attentive to trying to deal with the issue and last week there was a police detail down there to oversee some program and they're having one night and what they were doing was trying to keep them from parking on both sides of the street in that particular area and i i understand do t requires the 24 feet and whether that can be work through them or not but a simple solution is to add about three or four no parking signs on the left side of the street where you have them going up just beyond the school and then the bad that's that's where it begins to drop down is the width and to the end of the tennis courts then it goes back to 24 feet and it's it's possible 24 feet works you can make it happen seven and a half feet is what the typical car is off the curb and so seven and a half seven that's 15 and a 10 foot lane that doesn't cut it but uh to have no parking on that side of the street at least down to the back side of the tennis courts then it widens out a little more than 24 feet so um if i'd like some i'm asking that i'd be involved somehow when somebody wants to look at it i'd like to take my hundred foot tape down there and show them where it is and what it is and we can park some cars and show them what it's like it's okay thank you thank you sir still see no hands in rays i believe we have some more speakers in the room dr alcine the state your name any relevant positions comments thank you i'm kirstie allison ampie i'm at governor road and i'm the chair of the arlington school committee so first i thank the select board for their collaborative work over the past few months and also your leadership in bringing this override to the table i very much encourage you all to vote in the affirmative because i'm on school committee i'm going to focus on the school side of the plan the commitments outlined include allowing the school budgets for general and special education to increase annually in addition there are new increases to the school budget base that will allow for the implementation of our strategic plan these increases have been negotiated over months in the long-range planning committee we on the school side have looked at our requests and cut numbers are stretched out timelines in order to decrease the total as much as we could if the voters approve the override the arlington public schools will see increases for f y 24 of 400 000 beyond what was already approved by town meeting 3.1 million for f y 25 and 1.7 million for f y 26 this additional investment would allow the schools to implement this plan the significant dollar amounts additions in f y 25 and 26 are heavily weighted towards providing the district the opportunity to bargain with the teachers paraprofessional units more competitively with the intention of increasing compensation other initiatives include implementing a robust multi-tiered system of support which is critical for to provide inclusive access to the core curriculum for all students and to improve the experiences of students who have individual individualized education plans they also include in creating a pathway to teacher program term for hiring especially of diverse staff and a welcome center that will enable centralized registration better communication and an improved experience for families who do not speak english as their first language one big question that's come up is why now i feel it's incredibly important to move forward in this moment for several reasons first we want to build on the momentum of the development of the strategic plan rather than let it language on the shelf we've identified many aspects of a ps that can use improving and how to improve them i want us to implement these changes now so we can offer a better experience for all our students second our students have been through several difficult years because of kovat which has has significantly exacerbated gaps in academic achievement for all students many components of this plan help address this learning gap finally teacher hiring and retention has become more difficult and our current offered salaries do not allow us to improve our standing the override would enable us to do a lift of salaries to get us at parity with the town manager 12 and i feel will significantly aid our ability to retain our teachers and to hire the best thank you again for putting this forward tonight and i hope that on behalf of our linkedin's teachers students and families you will vote strong you will strongly consider a positive vote thank you thank you any other speakers on zoom or in the room for open forum seeing none seeing none that concludes open forum thank you each for taking the time to speak out that moves us to item 19 discussion and vote mass outbound bustling and stuff safety improvements mr lessey senior transportation planner philip cherry and benjamin case from the mbta and i think some of these folks may well be online or any of them in the room tonight um so let's hope they're all online so uh folks would assist us by raising your hands looks like we're all so mr lessey is on as usual mismaras on top of things so let's give folks a chance um there you go good evening i look forward to meeting you in person but this will have to do for now welcome welcome to the to the town by the way mr lessey i believe is our new transportation planner thank you chair yes you're right i'm thrilled thrilled to have you sir please proceed so thank you mr chair my name is john lessey i'm a new senior transportation planner for the town i started about a month and a half ago very much looking forward to meeting you all in person um tonight i'm here to discuss a project that i was um that i bring to the finish line that um the former assistant director of the planning community development office kelly linema what started but now i'm taking over it right now the request tonight is in regard to the mass outbound bustling and safety improvements that the town has um jointly worked with the mbta on in the past and i'm joined by philip cherry from the mbta who is the project manager for this um for this initiative so um i'll let philip go over the majority of the presentation the design but this evening we're requesting approval of the roadway layout that has been designed by the mbta and philip will get a little bit more to that and then the second request is a conditional um approval of an extension of the 24-7 bustling so i'll repeat those requests again at the end of the presentation but right now i'll um hand it over to philip welcome philip do you have a presentation to uh share on your screen or are you just going to speak to you i've been telling the share i don't know if you're going to talk on the area and you can share it and you can walk through these slides and talk to the studio um and yeah if you just pause for a second i think that the we're having some problems with your audio quality is anything i can i thought it was just me i can't yeah is there anything you can do uh to get closer to your microphone or improve your microphone sir i still can't understand if i'm the only one continue on no i'm having some trouble as well we need to get closer mr leslie could you say a few words just for an audio comparison for audio levels sure um this working better yeah yes thank you and thank you so i don't proceed i'm gonna step away for some water folks but please please continue i'll be able to hear you from the other room okay so this is this working okay for you guys yeah yes thank you yep apologies for that i did swap microphones on me there uh as john mentioned and maybe uh one of you said my name is philip chair i'm a senior project manager um in the acting transit priority director here at the nbta excited to be here with you tonight and appreciate your time uh this is a request again as john mentioned um for for two approvals we will walk through the project as quickly and efficiently as we can here this is for a a grant funded project from mass dots shared streets and spaces program that grant was applied for back in march of 2022 that request was for approximately $133,000 for both transit priority improvements as well as safety improvements mainly in the area of massav between uh roughly lafayette and elwepark parkway we entered into funding agreement of in august of last year and i've been working on the design there was both turnover on our end as well as obviously john being new i i joined the nbta in the fall of last year so we've we've each sort of helped carry this along the finish line in different ways again just just some context of where this is massav right near elwepark parkway and then also some proposed improvements to the minor intersection where uh boulevard and lafayette meet each other we identified some potential improvements there um over the course of the project uh looking at the transit priority scope and benefits of this project i think many of you are familiar with the existing uh what we would say inbound amp only lane that exists on massav now that's shown on the screen there that was implemented as a pilot measure several years ago and then uh affirmed to be there more prominently this would extend that from boulevard where it ends now all the way to elwepark parkway as you'll see in the later slide that extension would be formalizing it through another couple hundred feet of red paint it would also formalize some of the lane lines in this area if you if you drive in this area you can see this this lane right here actually gets squeezed down a bit so we would be working it would not be changing the number of lanes or the lane configuration per se other than extending that that bus lane but we did notice there were some uh some narrow general travel lanes that we also had worked with with kelly and now john to try to correct as part of this and then in the outbound or northbound direction many of you are probably aware of the bus lanes in cambridge that end at elwepark parkway this would be extending that lane over the town line to the existing bus stop there just north of sunopee road at which location the bus lane would end and buses would exit that bus stop and continue north so really just providing that transit priority through the intersection over the town line there would be no parking impact as part of this i'll touch on that a little bit more in a following slide then there's a safety element to this uh the primary there's there's sort of three different elements so i'll walk through each of those in this slide in the following two the primary benefit would be a proposed new rectangular rapid flashing beacon or rfb the mass avid lafayette intersection both john and my predecessor in writing the grant identified this as an as a need for pedestrian safety so you can see there's an existing crosswalk here these two figures i just overlaid on the image those don't exist now but this is roughly what this would look like so additional traffic control to help with pedestrian crossing here as this was identified as a safety need the next patent on the next safety component would be precluding that would be sort of eastbound to northbound left turns from lafayette street onto northbound mass av for an observation it was determined that it was there was there was a safety impact to turning left there were some sight line issues and that it would be safer to formally preclude those left turns through a no left turn sign that would be placed at this location and then the third component is this is a little bit further this is at the away to the west just off of mass av at the lafayette at boulevard intersection you'll see this in plan view shortly in an upcoming slide but but right now this intersection at lafayette and boulevard is a fairly wide sort of undefined intersection and it would be using striping and uh flex post vertical flex post to try to provide some traffic calming at this location now there was some feedback that folks sometimes speed through here towards uh towards boulevard additional design nuance on the parking side we had initially proposed this part of this design to eliminate these two parking spaces however and john can can provide additional feedback if requested there was a little bit of pushback from some of the businesses right at this site especially from the physical therapy center who felt like their customers needed to have direct access to those spaces given some of their mobility limitations so those two spaces are slated to remain as part of this design however we are requesting to see if it would be possible if this site is ever redeveloped in the future to codify as part of that redevelopment plan that these two spaces be sort of given be removed and this this space would be dedicated to transit priority to provide greater continuity for the bus lane in this area from what i hear from conversations with john and kelly before she left there's not a specific timeline on this site but um it's it's an interest we would have to uh to try to formalize that for for you know in the future i'll just chime in quickly fill up to give some context as well so um after starting with my position i went to all these business owners who spoke with them it was just the peak performance physical therapy center that did have some concerns about removing those parking spaces they felt that any of their clients who are limited in mobility you know usually post-surgery would have difficulty accessing the um center without those parking spots there um other than that none of the other business owners um showed any objections to it so we felt that you know once the adjacent parcel is developed redeveloped in the future that it would be a good opportunity to create some incremental change and um prioritizing transit in this area of the town thanks john so this is a plan view of what that would look like um this existing bus lane exists up to boulevard uh so this this is already in existence so it would really be extending uh extending that inbound or southbound bus lane to elwep parkway this segment of bus lane here uh sort of gets the northbound buses in the in the cambridge transit priority bus lane through the intersection and up to this bus stop here just north of centipede road uh where the where the red pane and transit priority would end and then this signifies the proposed new rectangular rapid flashing beacon at the existing crosswalk uh this no left turn sign signifies the the proposal to preclude left turns out of this traffic could reroute to lafayette street or to other intersections in this neighborhood and then uh this intersection shows the traffic calming here which it's really kind of tease up um tease up boulevard into a little bit more of a right angle and provide some traffic calming so that folks can't just sort of fly through this area as we've received some feedback that sometimes there is some speeding there um as far as next steps on the projects uh the plan is to finalize engineering in the coming months it is a fairly you know as these projects go fairly straightforward design and then implement in through the fall and maybe early winter of this year but still still goal would be to implement in calendar 2023 and then uh typically the nbta and other municipalities enters into a memorandum of understanding to identify maintenance responsibilities on projects like these so which which entity is responsible for um you know maintaining and operating which which element of of the project and i believe that was it so phyllis you can go back to the design i can go over the request again for the um board so as i mentioned everybody the first request is to approve the roadway layout design that you're seeing in front of you right now that has the traffic calming at boulevard and lafayette the rrfb at the lafayette street crosswalk and then the extension of the inbound bus lane and then the extension of the outbound bus lane um i'll point out there's no um impact parking when with this design and the second request is to approve the conditional removal of the two parking spots um i don't know if you can point out don't go thank you so conditional only upon the adjacent parcel being redeveloped um to create a 24 seven bus bike lane so with that thank you so much for your consideration and phyllis and i will be here to answer any questions you've missed your uh diggins in first correct thank you mr chair you know so so the rest of the bus priority of uh lane is still going to be um it will not be 24 seven right just this news section we 24 seven correct it will be everything up to boulevard and the inbound or southbound direction will remain peak opening it will be essentially this this block that is that is formalized to be more permanent and and you can see here the sort of skip striping indicates that there's a shared bus right turn lane um you know we we've found through our analysis that it's that's the am peak hour in which buses are the most delayed and then in the outbound direction this this segment here would be uh would be 24 seven building upon um this shared bus right turn lane northbound coming from the cambridge line so southbound is going to be 24 seven at some point or it's always going to be only rush hour so the inbound is you know extended the existing uh am peak only lane extends to the north off of what you see on the screen here that will remain am peak only um technically that that segment ends right here at boulevard so this this segment here um between boulevard and a white park parkway as we stand now is proposed to be 24 seven we understand that that you know transitioning from a peak only section for several blocks to a one block of uh of 24 seven you know there may be some some folks who are who are staying in this lane we understand that but we do feel like the benefit overall um is worthwhile especially when when buses need it the most so all of the existing uh bus lane north of here would remain as as am peak only all right i'm so fine because i thought i i thought i understood the right way but and then but then you said something that made me a little bit confused and what you said was that it's during the morning rush that the that area i mean from from boulevard made up or from lafayette made to uh rule 16 is most heavily used or the buses are most affected by the traffic so i guess i'm just trying to understand why it is that we need to make it 24 seven in that stretch in this in this specific stretch yeah why not why not just make it also i mean i'm only doing my doing my morning rush part of it is based on uh queuing analysis for buses so when the traffic is higher in the morning uh those queues extend further so if you the more priority you have for buses the greater the greater what's the right way to phrase this look when the traffic is heaviest in the morning for buses to receive the most priority you want a a longer area dedicated to those buses certainly there are other periods throughout the day when when traffic is higher but on the whole those queues are less than than during the morning peak so we felt like at least retaining this stretch on a more consistent basis does maintain that priority for buses and you know i think broadly throughout our network we've we've found that when you have more consistent and longer areas of of the red pain and and designating buses that sort of you know legibility for drivers if you will uh does provide some some network benefits i understand that i mean but my question though is why why why not me make it all me only for the morning peak i mean as it is now i mean i'm just trying to stand the rationale for moving making the new section 24 seven because the the the peak i mean the morning peak is apparently when the 77 is affected me you know by the the traffic the morning traffic right correct that's that's when the traffic is most intense and when a longer area of transit priority is is the most beneficial look i'm here i just want you to know i'm generally supportive of this i'm just trying to be able to be when people ask me you know because i'm they know that i'm very transit friendly and and for me i mean i like to take me the the the priority back to lake street because i agree having a longer stretch will make the 77 run better i just need to be able to explain to people why it is that that needs to be be 24 seven when the peak is in the morning and that's what affects the bus most mean if we if if come midday afternoon the traffic is going to that opposite direction i just want to understand why that needs to be 24 seven and the rest of it doesn't sure let me let me let me try one more time and i'll i'll try to do my best so in the in the morning you have longer queuing from general traffic so providing a longer area of transit priorities obviously more beneficial i think i think if we could we would have you know we would have consistent 24 seven space for buses extending back to lafayette i think the feedback on these two parking spaces and accommodating the folks at the physical therapy you know if you could have if you could have had a consistent 24 seven bustling from lafayette we feel like that would have provided even more legibility so we're trying to sort of straddle the line here and claim what we can for transit priority while while also you know respecting the feedback we receive from the from the businesses at this location i think even if even if we're only receiving this one block at other times of day when those queues are less the analysis indicates that you don't need the same degree or same length of transit priority because you're not the bus isn't sort of having them to circumvent as long of a queue if that makes sense i'll stop now thanks you know but i just said i'm generous supportive mean i may have some other questions later on but i'm gonna stop now so thank you thank you very much absolutely mr hurt thank you um thank you for the presentation before i jump into this i just want to comment generally i don't think we have any from what we do have our transportation planner here there's been a few agenda items in the past couple months that i feel like have been dropped onto our agenda and we come and look at the agenda on fridays look at it over the weekend and for these traffic items just happened a couple months ago with a with the appleton design we had no idea that this was coming up the pike none and then we have the weekend to review the plan and try to solicit feedback so for something like this it would be helpful at least for me and maybe it's just me to have a little bit of lead time to know that some significant redesign of one of our public ways is going to be put on an agenda more lead time than just when we post the agenda and it gets submitted so that's just a general comment because sometimes we read these and then we hear the presentation and we're kind of thinking our questions on the fly then we're being asked to submit an approval based on what we hear just in the meeting um i do appreciate that you listen to the business and took their feedback into account here um a couple questions about this so i see we're from boulevard to our wife parkway on i think a little bit confusion and you might be directionally correct but i think we always refer to mass staff is eastbound and westbound so that's where we're kind of north and south so i'm going to call it the eastbound side where uh there's arrows that go right where this is going to be a 24 seven bus priority are cars able to go into that lane where the arrows are or is it still just for buses to take a right onto alway for parkway general traffic is able to to enter that to turn right um where where the red is broken down so so where there's the skip stripes say at the LNP and at boulevard that that's sort of indicating just like if you've seen the similar skip striping for green high friction paint for cyclists that's sort of indicating you know you have you have that specific lane use straddling that intersection as you approach alway for parkway and you have the larger skip striping there that is that is also the signified you know right turning certainly if if you had an instance in which you had eight or ten cars waiting to turn right vehicles are allowed to enter that queue further upstream from where uh from where that skip striping starts that skip striping is a is a fairly common you know at least relative to our to our transit priority lanes throughout the MBTA system there's there's dozens of other locations like that where where you have that sort of curb or side running bus lane with the larger skip striping approaching a right turn lane so you know it's at least consistent with other applications of that throughout the MBTA system as well as just over the the line in in Cambridge you can see sort of faded in the I guess you would say westbound direction approaching alway for parkway you can kind of see that um as it's shown there and then several other locations along along Mass Ave in in Cambridge as well as throughout Boston and elsewhere yeah that that's what I thought my my sons play a lot of hockey in Malden and Malden just restriped the entire center with uh similar markings and I have seen that there um so in just to consider then there's a lane of traffic then the other lane of traffic where you currently take the left turn and I'm trying and it could be my eyes but that's still I don't know if those are arrows or it looks like a bicyclist that's still a lane of traffic right this this so there's two lanes of traffic outside of the the bus lane that we're so there's a lane that goes either straight or left and then a lane that goes straight correct and those two lanes are exactly as they are today yeah and and I think I I mentioned during my presentation we we've actually we'll be doing some work to to sort of improve some of those lane widths as you approach the intersection we noticed as we were laying this out that I believe it's I believe it's the middle through lane um gets uh is is sort of deficient it's like nine feet at a few locations just because the the lane widths the the total width there is kind of an awkward width that's more than it should be for one amount but kind of less than another so we're we're trying to formalize that for for general traffic as well um in there so that would just be grinding out some existing like white markings and then reapplying it at a at a better spacing but the actual lane configuration would be the same as it is now for that for that general traffic okay and so you'd mentioned that no parking is being affected so right I haven't been down there recently and looked at this so between Lafayette and Boulevard right now there's just the two parking spaces on that stretch all right yeah so I mean I had similar thoughts as Mr. Diggins we we did this I think back in 2018 initially when we did the pilot we came up with the time frames in the morning and the reason we did time frames in the morning is because that's when the queuing was outside of those time frames this it's really not a necessity for a dedicated bike lane but because there's no queuing there that said I'm where the two areas are small and where there's no parking right now I really don't have any objections if the proponents are telling me that there's a positive reason why we make that 24-7 you know if all of a sudden we start extending it back into the business districts and father down mass have then it's certainly a longer conversation but again I don't know that it's necessary but again I don't think it has a major impact where there's no parking spaces there currently cars that are taking a right can jump into that lane towards the end of it so I mean I think everything here is good I think it will help out and again in the future I'd like to have a little bit more notice in case there was something on here that we didn't think was was good for the area it helps us to have that discussion with town staff ahead of time to try to get fix it either before the meeting or at least know where we are coming into the meeting but as it's presented I don't see anything that causes an issue on my end. What did be helpful in the future and I apologize if this is coming out the right field but in the future maybe having a presentation on a project beforehand but not having a request for approval so that you can learn about the project and answer questions and then take your time to perform site visits. Is that what I'm hearing? I just where there's a something that's going to be provided just last month's screen where something is going to be proposed to us such that requires a change in the traffic rules and order in the public ways it helps especially if there's a plan to have that sent to us ahead of time before it gets dropped on the agenda just say hey heads up this is what we're looking at to put on an agenda in the next couple weeks let us know if you have any comments. I'd be happy to do that over the board. And sorry I just thought of something regarding the second request I mean quite understand it but I have a little bit of hesitation just generally voting to say that we're in the future going to remove parking spaces if some hypothetical redesign happens and if that's what was being asked of us then I would separate that out because I'm again I'm not quite I think we would take a request such as remove parking spaces on a case-by-case basis with the totality of the plan that's being presented to us so to just generally say in the future we'd commit to removing these parking spaces I don't think I could support. Just before we get to Mrs. Mahan Mr. Lessie did you want to clarify it all with the nature of that second request requested vote of the board would be the conditional removal of the spaces? Yep absolutely so just to summarize request number one approved the current design that you're looking at on your screen right now if it doesn't include any parking removal the second request is the conditional approval of the removal of those two parking spots between Lafayette and Boulevard Road in order to as Phillip indicated earlier use that roadway space as a transit priority area so that during the peak hours or just 24-7 during the day giving those buses a little bit of extra queue length in order to move through the portal and Phillip I don't know if you want to add anything to that or not. No I think you said it well it would just it would just form a lot you know I can understand with a with a short block between you know essentially Boulevard and NY for Parkway only a couple hundred feet coming off of a peak hour lane you know having a single block that's 24-7 presents both sort of communication and design challenges for how do you sign and mark that change having having two full blocks provides a little bit more resiliency if you will in the face of of queues throughout the day and maintaining transit priority as traffic conditions may change so I can understand the feedback of you know not sort of unconditionally approving that but we are we are looking to try to in some way codify or at least you know put out there that this is something that we think long term would be would be beneficial um you know to have those two spaces removed and have that continuity thank you and I'll say my further questions for for my turn thank you I'll thank you miss non please okay um thank you mr chair um I'll second my colleague mr. Herds remarks regarding um having some more lead time to review changes you know whether it's mass av apple tin whether it's these changes on east and westbound which is how I know this part of mass av um as well as up at park av uh and I heard I believe I heard from our senior transportation planner mr lessee which I anticipate the next time you'll be here would love you know love to see our employees in person um that uh I heard you say to uh mr herd and my other colleagues to provide the basically power point or presentation of plan two weeks in advance would definitely be appropriate and if you want to just put the light face draft across every page then that's fine um just so that we have pretty much 90 95 percent of it so then because we do get an awful lot of questions and um in order to best defend all these projects which ultimately are uh improving first pedestrian safety and then everything else falls down the line um we want to be able to explain that appropriately for all the hard work that everybody else is doing um and then for someone like me to come in and really mess it up as not doing the town or any of you all any favors so what I'd like to do first is uh make a motion just one motion um to uh approve the mass av outward bound bust lane and safety improvements design um I understand the second part which I'm not making part of my motion the conditional approval of removing parking spaces um I I think we've discussed it enough that mr lessee our town manager and our planning director will certainly have that on their sort of tickle file um moving forward in the future um and it may be a different compilation of the board that gets to make that decision so that that would be my uh motion just that one part so we could keep moving um with the design not the conditional approval of removing parking spaces that's to tba which I'm certainly if it comes before us when I'm on the board um I already have the knowledge of where you're coming from that and then I just have uh one question and maybe I just zoned out or I'm not um interpreting the materials submitted to me it was on um the traffic calming it's I don't know if it's powerpoint slide seven page seven under safety scope and benefits traffic calming lafayette street of boulevard road what the board has is um a picture of boulevard road at the stop sign where boulevard meets lafayette and then there's um two imposed sort of one sticker than the other white lines I'm assuming that that's indicating some sort of traffic calming or and if it is what is that I'll stop sure sure absolutely and it may be clear from uh from the plan view actually in this case but I think if you can you know look at the the layout of boulevard and lafayette it's a it's a fairly sort of greater than 90 degree angle which which often in in the context of geometric street design um can lead to higher speeds so the thought here when we were we were looking at this project and it and I actually sort of came about a little bit after the fact just looking at circulation was this is a fairly low cost treatment to sort of make a little bit more of a right angle here this would be just applying um a new stop bar a very short segment of a dividing line and then these would likely be we envision as as flex posts or other hardened but not like concrete type type materials to uh to just sort of slow down traffic and formalize this intersection a little bit more rather than excuse me um having this higher speed approach so this was this was a traffic calming measure that that actually wasn't in the original concept application submitted back in February of of 2022 but something that we identified with with Kelly and um actually John's predecessor early on in this project as a as a potential very low cost add-on that could that could improve some safety at that minor intersection no no and that's well needed and um what I'm thinking of is the notorious cutthroat especially in the peak hours in the morning when everyone's using the dcr greenway pathway as well as walking to school as well as going to Magnolia Thondike Park um just looking at the picture that you've provided us I've always wondered and I don't know if it's included and my visual perception is off or if it's beyond what this project can cover but if I was going eastbound on Herbert Road um you know basically I'm thinking of the traffic that Waze has shown them a way to take a right on Brooks then a left on Chandler or one of those other feeder roads to get on to Herbert um the town has done some uh steps to try to slow down that traffic on Herbert but when they come to Herbert and to take a left to shoot up to Boulevard because of the topography of the road which I see these improvements here um which is to try to calm the traffic and you know to find that road a little bit more but I think what it is is where they really chug up to speed as soon as they take that left off of Herbert to go on to Boulevard and they could also go on to Lafayette is the darker white line that abuts the dcr property I see where it goes all the way down to the end is that going all the way down to that intersection that I cited which is if you were on Herbert going west and you wanted to take a left on Boulevard because I'm trying to slow down when they whip around that corner or is it no it's a few houses up and it's not that close to that particular intersection I will I will apologize for my my limited artistic uh ability here this was this was just kind of showing the right sizing more 90 degree nature of this intersection I think it's it's more accurately you know conceptually engineered here so this would be um you know and I see that it sort of tapers off right at right of the path interest here but it would just be a couple of houses to really kind of formalize this it would not be extending all the way back to Herbert and and really this that's kind of like a you know additional safety frosting on this cake if you will the real scope and concept of of the initial grant application was was really in in this area but we felt like um due to the proposed term preclusion here and some of the other you know safety improvements that thinking about this uh thinking about Lafayette Boulevard and Massav is a little bit of kind of a a system if you will was was fair to the safety of this project so that's how this additional um small component was added so apologies that that wasn't clear on how far that extended back no and I just want to say it's very appreciated because you could technically say where Massav that's it we're out of here um but you did extend into Lafayette and Boulevard and I do appreciate that so what I would um ask that uh the town manager and or the transportation planner Mr. Alessi uh after these the design plan is implemented and these improvements are put in if um when appropriate and I don't think it needs to go through tax because we're trying to limit everything we send to them if they if we could go out and evaluate that particular intersection Herbert going left onto Boulevard which also you could go left on to Lafayette but precluding the left hand turn um off of Lafayette to go westbound I think will I know will stifle a lot of people who take that as a cut through but the real big is the traffic being able to queue and really speed up there so these improvements which I do appreciate you're extending really beyond what you had to do and I'm very grateful and appreciative but um if that doesn't a hundred percent solve that speedway sort of ability meant uh mindset that um after this goes in six months 12 months whatever is the appropriate interval time from a planning perspective um that if those that's still a problem it's going to have to be the town's responsibility to look at that and come up with something to sort of adjunct what this is so I appreciate and thank you Mr. Chair for letting me be a little long-winded there um I made my motion um regarding the design and I'll stop there thank you thank you Mrs. Mohan um so I I'll make it have some questions and I'll come back to you Mr. Hurd um and anybody else who wants to do that so um I wonder if uh Mr. Leslie if you could elaborate still a little bit more on your on your requested second motion which is not currently on the table but you said can if I might not say conditional removal of those future removal of those parking spaces um upon for for the development do you mean further development to that business like that different business goes in or what can you clarify what you mean by that so it's my understanding from um Kelly Leidemann the former assistant planning director that there was interest in redeveloping the entire parcel adjacent to those parking spots not just the not just the physical therapy center but the entire block right there so the idea was to let's not impact the current businesses right now but when it is redeveloped where there's no plans right now set in stone but when it gets to that point when it's happening that if there would be the you know approval already made that when it's being redeveloped that the parking spaces can be removed in order to make it 24-7 plus day okay that's that's helpful um one thing that occurs to me is that we might want some specificity about what we mean by redevelopment like is it any redevelopment is it a certain you know threshold um what what we had in mind was not just a business turning over but just the entire parcel turning into a different type of development here after it's a multi-use development with um presidential housing on top um i'm not i i didn't think of the specifics of that but the thought here was that when the parcel gets redeveloped we would be able to remove the parking spaces so that there isn't the expectation that the parking spaces exist yeah that's kind of what i was thinking that this might be getting at is that it's a way for us to influence future development if it's known as a given that the priority for us is the best priority so to speak um and that that would influence future development that you know in a direction that i think would be transit oriented which is in alignment with our our our goals and um you know i think i'd be i would be favorable to that it also occurs to me of course that we could take that vote at another time um you know whether one such development looms and and you know we might lose the the effect of sort of the shaping effect of that i think on on developer planning um so um i would consider putting that amendment i'd like to hear from my colleagues to see if there'd be enough support before i go to that that trouble i think mr hurt his hand up and we'll go to mr yeah i did it it occurred to me sometimes you think about the things you say after you say i'm i just want to say mr leslie my comments about the uh the notice this is long before you were the transportation planet so that was not directed at you i think that's just for future if we could get some more lead time that that would help um for similar to my comments and what mr digging said regarding peak time i don't as i sit here i'm not inclined to support a motion or amendments to commit to take taking taking out those spaces again we could in in an earlier time at a later date here arguments as to why that's important but taking those two parking spaces i mean i'm not aware that this can just be a residential development there so if it would have to be a mixed use development and not having those two parking spaces could you know be a significant factor in whether or not a developer wants to move forward with the plan if they're going to build businesses that don't have parking in front and again at that time i would be open up here arguments and you know rationale for why it's important to take that those two spaces up but that particular part of mass have again in the morning this queuing that's why why we committed to the but the bustling there i'm not convinced at this time that the significant queuing 24 7 that would justify taking the parking spaces out so as i say here today and again i don't want to put vote on a hypothetical and that's just where i am well i can answer that and i have a few other things to say if you would like to because you haven't gone if you'd like to say or ask more questions i mean i'm i'm i'm waiting no i'm good okay sure sure thank you man so sure the problem so um so me for me the the long term goal is to get as such that people don't want to park you know and so it can happen a couple of ways one is that we do developments where we there's no need for parking you know we could be you know it may influence the kind of businesses that go in there you know and so it may attract a certain kind of developer you know but i like to transit you know to be so good being that people want to do it first being and and therefore for me it's like you know what we we have your parking you know and like i said let's move things towards not needing to have the parking but if we can at least get cars moving cars out of those lanes you know then i think that will help transit you know overall too so so i'm fine you know however we go on this i think i think i think we'll be fine too you know so that's my take on the the parking you know the the more lead time me i think what often will help with us is when there's something big ish you know uh to have a conversation with each of us individually about it me i know it takes more time to do that but gives each of us you know more time needs first off before you present to us have that conversation with us you'll give us a presentation gives a chance to have questions and then we can just monopolize your time without me dragging things out a whole lot in the context of the meeting so i'll suggest that and in terms of um even longer lead time i guess the question is when do we find out that something like this is in the works you know uh so is it when there's an application going in um for it you know i mean do we want to influence me what is being applied for i mean i just put that out there because it's like the i like more of the time but at the same time i mean i can understand that staff might say well first off we don't have enough time and secondly you know you're asking questions when you don't really see you know the big picture so are your questions going to be good but i would say if the application is really well developed we might have some input that would be useful at that point in time so just something else to take into account with respect to when we get involved in the process because i wouldn't normally say that for everything involved in planning but when it comes to the roadways where we actually have to do the approval then it may be in everyone's best interest to get us involved earlier um relative later and the last question is what is really the um the maintenance meaning um that we would be doing that mou on i mean is it me that we are going to be taking charge of the painting or or or what so do we have a sense of what that mou is going to involve so through you mr chair there's a question to our guest that one was not rhetorical all right so we had a question now would either of our guests like to address that i i can start with that i mean i think for this project that the typical maintenance elements just just sort of listing them from left to right on the on the page right near the boulevard of apia intersection you you might have you know flex post or some other materials like that a a quasi permanent quasi temporary type material for that traffic calming you would have the rapid flashing beacon which you know is a traffic control device you would have the high friction red paint and then you would have a few other um you know associated signage elements and typically when we've done these projects we just kind of have like a very depending on the scale of the project like a little matrix or term sheet where each party um you know agrees to maintain what so you know that that high friction red surface uh treatment you know does last for several years before it's worn down enough to be replaced the flashing beacon really shouldn't need to be affected for for a while you know depending on the flex post type material that that may vary um and then obviously the sign should last a long time so that's those are those are the items and we typically work with with each municipality identifying who's responsible for what thank you appreciate it because I thank you um I thought it was to conclude my my own remarks by first of all expressing appreciation I also wanted to be clear that if I if I don't if I'm not misremembering I may have given my blessing to our town staffs participation by remote tonight um as the chair so um I appreciate that feedback from my colleague but I want to be clear that uh I want to take the bullet for that one um secondly I really appreciate the consideration of adding the traffic calming we hear a lot from residents about intersections that that have safety concerns so I'm very glad to see a low cost and thoughtful approach my only suggestion would be by some extra flex posts because we know what happens to them once the motorists start getting used to them and maybe don't always clean make a clean cut that turn um just as for expedience although it may be slightly regular I'm going to second mrs. Mahan's motion because somebody needs to um even though the chair doesn't usually but why not as their further discussion from my uh questions from my colleagues no so you didn't make it I did not yeah I'll be happy to second it I thought I thought I seconded oh yeah oh I'll give you I'll give credit where it's due then let's give this one to Mr. Diggins how's that it's how many will roll back the tape somebody will as no he's talking about I said he's seconded we're gonna it'll be an exercise in memory examination all right probably talk so much that I talked to mr. helmets memory of someone seconding my motion I apologize the memory and ratio all right are we good excuse me yes okay so we have a motion to approve the design by mrs. Mahan seconded by various members including mr. Diggins that's true all in favor say aye aye opposed thank you thank you gentlemen moving on to um let me just check with my my colleagues I have a lot of people here does anyone need a recess before we finish that okay um thank you for uh for joining us uh mr. and mr. town manager for this important agenda item um and just just to be clear the town manager had a board sanctioned a leave before this so he's not slacking but he did very generously come and return for for this discussion for the operating override so um I want to point out some materials in front of the board so we have the draft override commitments that the long-range planning committee and its board representatives myself and mr. de Corsi who is not present with us tonight but was involved in this document and also the town manager um in consultation with the superintendent and and I have consulted with the school committee a few teams uh subquorum of the school committee members as well so a lot of eyes have been on these documents there is just to point out to my colleagues a couple of very small and non substantive um wording changes since the version that that was posted on uh on the weekend but this was updated this morning um and I will suggest that as the board contemplates this um that if the board does decide to move to put an override before the voters that we do what we have done in other years which is include these override commitments in that motion um so that we as a board are making those public commitments you know to the residents of the town for how we will spend the additional revenue if the voters agree to grant it um from that point on though I think I will um start by giving the town manager an opportunity to disframe this and then we've had several discussions uh for this but I think summary for both the board members and also the public about about your recommendation and that of the long-range planning committee uh would be in order mr. Thank you mr. Chair um so at first I want to make clear I am reporting on conversations from the long-range planning committee um and uh I think there was a very thorough discussion about uh the needs for the school department and for the town for extra revenue uh there was a lot of discussion about how big an override we should have uh what the impact would be to uh taxpayers um a proposal for a seven million dollar override to be voted on this fall and I would suggest that the right date for that would be Tuesday November 7th uh would allow us to go forward uh three years without having to go back to the voters for another override um that may change it may extend out further if we get additional state aid or additional um new growth but I think given some realistic assumptions about where I see both those areas going over the next few years I think that we can say for sure that we don't move on for another three years um we would continue to constrain our spending on uh the school side at uh three and a half percent per year for general education costs and three and a quarter percent for the town side for uh operating costs and an increase per year of six and a half percent for spread costs which is frankly lower than it has been uh in previous years it used to be seven percent so in some discussions with uh the school committee representatives at the long range planning committee uh we came to that we would continue I'm sorry so I just wanted did you just say that I should we should change six point five to seven no no it is changing from seven down six point five I'm sorry I'm sorry if I wasn't there no thank you thank you no I just want to make sure thank you thank you Mrs. Mouhan please continue sir we would continue to adjust the school budget up or down at a rate of 50 percent uh of the uh most recent per student people expenditures that were reported to us by desi by the state um we have uh been doing that consistently um and uh I think that makes sense for us to continue to do that going forward and again that represents the consensus from the long range planning committee um the school committee has a strategic plan that they've outlined at the um finance committee uh just recently uh and on their uh through their own website and so forth uh which would include adding to the school budget on a permanent basis an FY 24 a million dollars an FY 25 3.1 million dollars an FY 26 1.7 million dollars and an FY 27 uh 600,000 and an FY 28 300,000 um I would just note that the million dollar increase in FY 24 would be a permanent one and it would replace what is in the current uh long range plan and as was voted um by town meeting of a 600,000 dollar one time increase and in FY 25 uh the increase of a 3.1 would supplant a one time increase of 300,000 dollars just in case anybody had questions about the money that was previously been voted um the I'm not here tonight to speak about all the school committee strategic plans I know that they will do that on their own and they've been doing that but these are the dollar figures that uh represented by that on the town side um I think that we need to continue to make a commitment to increasing work on our roads and sidewalks as we've done in the last two overrides where we expanded our spending on capital that way I would uh I think we do need to spend another 200,000 dollars there um I set aside I've recommended 250,000 dollars generally to go to the public works department both to allow them initially to transition toward more organic uh fields at our grass fields in town uh following the lead of what other communities such as Springfield has done where they it's interesting they have a combination of some turf fields but they also have taken all their uh grass fields and converted them to organic uh organic fields what that really means is the type of fertilizer we'll use would be organic right now they're chemical fertilizers um we do use integrated pest management on our fields so we don't use chemical poisons and so forth um but to make them fully organic um some of that would be for some initial transition to that and then ultimately I think we need to make sure that we've boosted the public works department enough as we look at possible changes for new trash contracts in the next couple of years as our current contracts run out in the possibility those will go up finally um we've put a lot of money into OPEB Arlington has done a very good job of doing that uh we have about 20 million dollars in there now and then town meeting recently voted to add another 1.4 million which will then in the future take away the town's ability to take from the fund that that 1.4 million came from an annual 300,000 dollar appropriation into the OPEB fund so instead I would recommend that the um the override cover and increase or an additional 150,000 dollars going into the OPEB fund I would just the one caveat I would say to this is it um as I was going to announce during announcements um we have a settlement of our contract with our patrol union they have ratified that um overwhelmingly we are now looking at the um final cost of that and how much of that we can pay out of the current year budget and how much we're going to have to take out of um the salary reserve if for some reason it seems that we need to cover that contract and or the um the ranking officers contract um we will know that I think later in the summer and I would expect that uh Jim Finney when he becomes manager may make a recommendation to you about having to make some tweaks to the recommendations I have here about town spending it's it's just too early to know that until we've settled that that second contract with the ranking officers the other thing I just mentioned uh as we go to the voters uh to ask them to support the override at the same time uh we need to ask them to support the municipal circuit breaker that was passed by town meeting and uh passed by the legislature uh that would allow uh there'd be a limit uh to the amount of taxes that certain seniors and low-income people low-income seniors will be paying um it's similar to the state circuit breaker um we have gotten permission from the legislature to do that we held off implementing it because there was some thought that the legislature might enact a change to state circuit breaker that is not happening so is the time now for the town to move forward in that direction we will continue to pursue new revenue sources um and uh you know there continues to be talks at the state level of the cities and towns some options again those aren't on the table as actual things yet but we will continue to look at that um and uh we'll continue to develop our bonding structures in the sale of bonds for the high school which is a debt excluded cost to minimize the any single year increases to our residents we've frankly done well with that by borrowing more than we needed to two years ago at low interest rates and not borrowing anything this year at high interest rates um so we hope to keep that pattern going um and um we will continue to maintain our reserves so that we always have these uh reserves at five percent of our revenue or better going forward uh which has been important for our bond rating um so i think this is the time to put this forward so that the public is aware that uh vote will be coming up so that the people who are interested in campaigning around this issue will have enough time um and uh so at this time that is the recommendation from a long-range planning committee and i'd be happy to answer any questions members have thank you mr pooler i do want to offer a correction and an apology this was a very the commitment document was a moving target and the town manager was traveling and i was uh had a particularly intense past day or two um so one change that um mr decorsi and i discussed um that i have reflected in this edit i had just completely slipped my mind was uh our feeling and i want to suggest to the board that we actually omit the commitment for the organic field um not we think that that's actually really worth doing but that uh we want to suggest the board and i'm happy to put that language back in if my colleagues wish but you know these are the board's commitments to the to the voters uh the thinking simply being that overrides traditionally have been um aimed at essential and core services or or um conversation to our employees so wanting to kind of constrain that uh we're suggesting that we constrain uh that to and use the you know that since it's a small amount of money anyway and we suspect that the new trash contract will easily consume two hundred fifty thousand or more um so that was our thinking but i i respect my and i apologize to the town manager for spring that i knew that was uh that was a function of the days we've we've both had um but um but ultimately it is a board decision for that so that's just that's just before you if you want to add that back in please do that in your motion or your or your discussions um and i'm just going to just lead off this time um this is a really it's sober and important discussion and you know i take very seriously the obligation of the select board to recommend to the public when and how much to do an override the reality is that an override is needed every few years because of the structural deficit and the structural deficit is that we the town are only allowed to raise tax revenues by two and a half percent a year plus a marginal amount for new growth and that our costs for providing just the same amount of services are significantly growing significantly higher rate than two and a half percent plus new growth that structural deficit means that every few years the town needs to ask voters to raise the base tax rate to a certain level higher in order to just keep providing the same services and at the same time arlington has a history of looking for opportunities to make investments and i think that the school committee has made a very good case for a a very pressing need to make some investments that do suggest increased spending in order to ensure the greatest possible quality education for our students i think one of the things that i mean there's a lot in the school strategic plan i encourage people to read the plan and to speak to the school committee about it but that the the compensation rates for teachers need to be more competitive among among many other needs and i think that just from the interest of our community and for our students although there are risks to asking residents to raise to voluntarily raise our own taxes there are also risks in failing to make these critical investments for our particularly for our students and i share the concern that mr foskey and others whose opinion i deeply respect i share the the um the concern of the long-term picture that you know this that overrides uh that add new spending are not necessarily sustainable in the future we are looking at potentially large deficits down the road i am comfortable though that the board's political responsibility and political leadership is to say to voters we think this investment is worth making do you want to pay for it you know and so the board's uh obligation i think is to make give the community the best advice that we can and and then let the voters decide so i am comfortable supporting the outlines of of the of the plan and the draft motion um and then for that i will uh yield to my colleagues for their comments oh mr heim you have a uh attorney i could i don't want to speak yes please no please i don't when you raise your hand it always always worth listening to sir i don't want to speak in advance the board but i just want to highlight something uh that the board knows well but that's for the public's information before you begin further discussion deliberation yeah there's really three different votes that the board takes first is a vote to place an override on the ballot and we call a special election for that purpose in this case and only the board may do the second is to is a very um straightforward question the board is not afforded a lot of discretion and how they frame an override question so if a member of the board makes a motion to place a override question the override question may not include these committees that you're going to discuss right then the third board vote that this board has traditionally taken is about its commitments which is what the board sort of pledges to do in its capacity in consultation with the school committee the school department and the town manager so i just wanted to make that clear before you guys got into this that would be a third if we chose to make the commitments that would be a third vote correct turning thank you for that clarification to train and once again saving us from ourselves question so uh any sense of how this vote falls vis-a-vis uh special town meeting i will speak for myself there's i've had some discussions with that long-range planning touched upon this and i think i've had some other discussions privately um right now the the urgent question for the for the timing is to set the override so i think that we will then need to work from that when we look at the date of the special time meeting most of the people i have personally talked to feel like we need to allow some space for for the town to focus its attention on the peak of its attention on these two things so my personal view would be that we'd be looking at a special town meeting in mid-october and welcome the town manager's view and that because i know you're talking with your staff about about the readiness aspects of that of the zoning and and the redevelopment board's work thank you mr uh chair yes i think that would be fine i think having a vote then and uh that vote would be to uh include adjusting some of the budgets and making those adjustments contingent upon a successful override when i heard that it was like oh then okay i got it all right thank you mr i'll just say first off attorney i'm we assume every voter in allentine watches our meeting so they'll know these commitments we don't have to put them on in the question regarding the turf field i was a little confused as to why we're talking about that in an override commitment document so i'm fine not having that in the override commitments one thing i think this comes up every time with that we put this document together and whether or not this language has too much bearing or not i think we should add a section for d and i think i'm stepping on mrs mohan who would say this that just says department heads in town staff will review budgets on an annual basis and try to determine where any spending cuts can be made so so the residents know that we are instructing town staff as part of this looking at an ominous deficit on the back end of this commitment cycle to know that that we're trying to trim the fat where possible and that's not in staffing it's not in critical areas but it is it would be helpful for our residents to know that our town department heads are continually trying to find areas where they can trim down their budgets without impacting the services that get provided and i think that adding that to that section is helpful um nobody likes override he wants to spend more money i think you know we are in a as the chair explained with our limited limited opportunities for new growth and now that we don't have the committee on on new growth i mean we talk about new growth all the time and it's just never going to be a several bullet that comes in and solves all of our problems just because the limited areas that we can do it even with zoning changes and increased density in the zoning that's good but it's not going to solve our problems it will eventually become a time when we can't sustain an override every four years because it will just be unaffordable for anyone to live here but i am convinced that right now at this time the work and the recommendations of long-range planning committee are appropriate for allington um in we need to pay all of our all of our employees more to make them synonymous with other towns to prevent transfers and the school department is definitely our teaching salaries are right in that argument um we my i always talk about my kids i'm just here but my son westley had an amazing second grade teacher at the deland school and when dylan came up the second grade we're like oh great and i'm not gonna say her by name but we found out a couple months before that she was moving on and it was just like and it's story after story of teachers that are transferring out of the allington system and it's just like with the officers that we're dealing with where there's eight officers that are trying to transfer it to other jurisdictions is that we're just if you you can make 20 000 dollars more somewhere else what are you going to do they all love their classrooms they love their students they love their schools but eventually money talks so i mean i i do think that the commitment to the schools and to try to you know incentivize teachers and really important staff to stay in the school department is important and again stink staff to pay for it but that's just and we all we've always said we get a lot of bang for our buck in this town and even with what we're paying with the override we still get a lot of bang for our buck if you look at the budgets and services provided in neighboring towns but with and we have stuck to the schedule that we provided in our last set of commitments we're on track unfortunately these these projections are pretty concrete where we know after the four years that we're requesting that we're going to need another override it's just going to be a matter of what that looks like so we can pray and hope for the best of for some good financial news from whether it be the state or some increased revenue sources in the interim but we will be here again in or some of us will be here in four years having this discussion again but like i said for right now i think that this is the appropriate course of action and i'll support what's being put in front of us mrs mahogany um if i could uh first i'd like to make the three separate motions and then hopefully for me be brief um and uh attorney iam has provided the wording as well as the order recommended so the first motion would be that the town shall hold a special election on tuesday november 7 2023 7 a.m to 8 p.m for the purposes of voting on a proposition two and a half override question to be approved by the select board that timely written notice of such election shall be directed to the town clerk and compliance with general laws chapter 54 section 42 c should i just make all three of them and then so on second all three and then the second will be uh to place as a special election ballot question on november 7 2023 proposition two and a half override shall the town of allington be allowed to assess an additional seven million dollars in real estate and personal property taxes for the purposes of funding the operating budgets of the town and the public schools for the fiscal year beginning july 1 2024 yes no and then my third motion would be to uh receive and approve the fiscal 24 override commitments for the november 7 2023 override vote with the amendment that uh mr. herd stated as well as the chair with the amendment of um not including specific language regarding sharp or organic fields so those would be my three motions um i couldn't make any more stronger statements uh about the need for retention for our teachers and our professional and paraprofessional staff including special education um that's sort of one of the core fabrics of this town um and i even hear from people who don't have anymore or have made a choice that won't have um children in the schools but that's one of the things that they always say to me is what attracts either attracted them to allington and or kept them here because of the town's commitment to that um and i think when i looked at teachers comparable salary they're in the when you look at the comparable communities that uh compared against like in the low 50 percent sometimes if you look at some other communities they're up to about 62 percent and um you know some may say well you know this is your location this is what you want to do you know this is how you want to serve and i agree with that um but you also have to in order to be the best professional whether you're a teacher police fire public works employee you also have to be able to maintain your family and have a roof over their heads and pay your bills and feed um your own so um this is something that that's definitely needed i have had conversations when this first came up three years ago previously when i was on uh long-range planning because i do feel just as strongly um for our town employees that that also is a standard uh that we also need to reach with public works fire and police and i am i you know had a conversation i told the town manager i didn't want to congratulate and get you know really excited too soon until it was ratified and it was ratified i believe it was 31 to 5 i'll find out who the five were no i'm only kidding i'm only kidding um which brings all of our uh subject to the vote at special town meeting our union contracts up to i believe f y 24 um so the process will be beginning again so i know a higher override number was discussed but um years stepped away from it and i am a bit remiss that i really don't see anything in there i mean i haven't had coffee with the public works director mr rottemacher yet because i want to meet with him because sometimes i've learned in my earnest to advocate for something and be a proponent of it sometimes something i mean to do good might not have that uh desired result plus i also want to get i've been putting out um the figures of just two departments that have seven openings and nine openings which i know we filled two of them um i believe in parks and we're looking at i had a conversation with the human resources director sort of kind of retooling um but the same with the issue we have with retaining our teacher staff we're having that with police fire and public works i mean they're still not if you do the arlington 12 the you know tuxedo junction eight whatever um they're at the bottom end and and when i see that someone can go to melrose or a redding which isn't comparable um and or stonem i think they have 20 something thousand residents um from the town side i mean i the our colleagues on the school committee are doing a superb job for advocating for teachers professionals and power professionals to get comparative pay um and i'd rather be on the higher end than low i have that same concern um for police fire and public works and they're kind of in a different situation because a lot of their pay the base pay is so woefully low and inadequate the only way they can and through the contracts where um additional hours over time whether it's public works or police um then they can work 38 40 hours a week and then work anywhere from 28 to 32 more hours that week whereas if they look at another city or town they know they can go there put their 40 hours in and maybe only have to do 12 15 hours and not miss all the family events but more importantly what i'm concerned about is if the staff on the town side says i'm gonna stay in there and and work for the town of allington and i'm gonna put in a ridiculous amount of over time hours i'm concerned about their safety and the residents of the town safety you know they're working 40 hours a week and then they realize i gotta work 20 to 30 more hours a week not just miss family events but to um have a pace stop that breaks even so i know that's a conversation that the current town manager and then mr feeney will have to pick up and figure out um and i do anticipate that we will so i but i'm a little like i don't see anything really in here for town employees but i do understand that you know this has been something that's been discussed for the better part of almost three years and i know it was a higher number and um everybody on the town and school side looked at that for as much as that they could trim it down um to go to the voters with pain but hopefully the least amount of pain um so it wasn't like we just came out with this number i heard a much higher number i think it started in the double digits which was really scary so i do appreciate that and i just would ask um that uh regarding for a this is probably something that's already in the works but that where we do have um the new civic engagement not officer i don't know if there's officer mismar zilly um if that's something um on foray that we can i know she's doing a lot with getting out to constituencies that don't come to the town and its information in the natural course it's a business of the natural way um and i know that uh there was something else besides mvta communities if uh we could add the spirit of foray into um which you know not asking you to necessarily create more to her job but when she's going out and doing the civic engagement for mvta communities and i'm blanking on the second one um that add this on to it to really get that info information out there and then um i had something else sort of uh following in what mr heard said about positions and examining and evaluating but i'll do it under new business because it's an opera thing which has nothing to do with this and i don't want to confuse the two issues but um i know myself and all my colleagues we're sort of veterans of overrides and debt exclusions and we know that the work that's needed you know from our colleagues on the school committee but definitely here also on the town side um and i don't know that we necessarily need a vote for this um and but i think it's something that will be on a future agenda where um traditionally there's been sort of a trinity a triad of debt exclusion and overrides um with the representatives from finance committee school committee and the select board i'm looking you at you mr chair um but but i think it's some meeting in the future we do need to at least codify that from from the select board's position but we that's not something that we have to do here tonight so i stand by those not stand by i have those three motions on the table i'll wait for a second and i'll end it there thank you very much and i would just want to say i really appreciate you expanding uh very properly the the mention of knowledge teacher salaries but the paraprofessionals and all the other personnel who who serve such an important role in our students education so thank you for that mr digas give me comments you not only get one second you get three you know because for you three motions so second second that's right you know so so for those that even been around you know i have a question so have we had a vote on the first tuesday of november in november i want to say we have frequently done overrides on tuesdays yeah but oh you mean for an override normally overrides have been in in june but i think for timing issues this year so probably not because they've historically been in june yeah i was just wondering because of me because we we had a survey question you know the last indiginarity survey about being whether the people like to vote being in town elections you know on the first tuesday in november and it had a pretty positive you know result being people kind of like that idea this will be you know a town election i mean not not for us like for anything but it will be you know on that first tuesday so it'll be interesting to see i mean what can be kind of now interestingly i mean because it's an odd year and he's not going to correlate with any kind of state election so so it's kind of going to be on his own in that respect but people being that kind of like november i think that was the idea mr yes you're all geniuses of that long-race planning committee eight hours of uh uh hey that's why i'm no longer on it so um so he as missus but not this is my husband said me there was contemplation of uh larger number being uh and and a longer span between uh the overrides and i know when i was on it made up i was telling of a smaller you know number and a more frequent you know override because i think we should just reframe me the notion overrides is that are like it's painful it's awful i mean we don't want to do it it's like it's like it's an opportunity for us to determine what it is that we want and how we want to invest in the town you know objection this and and and think of as a positive thing because because it's like we benefit me when each of us toss in a sum of money and we combine it and we do things it's much less expensive if we do it as a group then if we try to do it individually you know and so so and i think if we do it more frequently you know first off mathematically it's smaller and more frequent it's less money you know than if we do a larger one and less frequent you know of course depends on the numbers meaning that will determine that if you just do a simple little equation on your out of you you know did like 120 percent override you know four years versus five four five percent overrides i mean it's just mathematically a smaller number i mean and so i would like to see us also take because it is an opportunity for us to talk about our values you know we commit to doing that we don't have to like put it in a commitment thing but but every year i think we should have conversations with residents i mean what isn't that you want you know because we we are a community we're a species i mean that wants to grow you know we're not satisfied with status quo i mean and so so it's like what more do we want how much is it gonna cost how do we prioritize it and that's the way i think of getting with my mr foskets being suggested that we be transparent about things i'm not suggesting that we do menu if we were to do a menu though i would say it would include a certain number of base things you know which would be more than just the status quo it would be like the status quo plus the money for the teachers and then maybe a selection of things i mean is it organic fields is it charging stations whoever should be a menu with me a certain small discretionary items but i think we could have that kind of transparency if we have a conversation a frequent conversation with residents about what it is i mean that they want i mean and say look every three years whatever i mean we're going to do a variety it's just going to be a matter of how much because it's really going to be a function of what it is uh that you want and so for those of you have your your cards out it's not much you're going to say new growth because that is a way you know to try to uh decrease the impact or decrease the amount of of overrides mean and and uh it's in my campaign i said that i'm determined you know i'm a determined person and you're only determined when when things don't go your way and you have to keep at it so i know that you had doubts about the the ability for us to you know study new growth without getting staff involved to be but you know there were a number of people that voted for it and i'm going to work with them and we're going to try and come up with some ideas about how to increase new growth in a bold way you know that will really make a big difference meet i mean not only the amount of revenue that we can bring in me but the amount of housing that we can provide me for for me more people need more businesses i just think there are things that we can explore need i can really do some real positive things for the town and help the budget because that is the way to really mitigate need or even remove the needs into uh uh the the overrides mean we just have to determine how it is as a community that we want to grow and once again it gives us a chance to have conversations mean with without fellow residents mean and and uh i enjoy doing i think most of us enjoy doing it and so we just now need to do it and i think if we tell people and that was one of the reasons i was really kind of pushed for me the the study is to let people realize we go into this override that we're not simply depending on overrides mean for uh in particular for a long period of time that we do that we are seriously trying to figure out how to do new growth meet up because because there's a way that we're doing it now that isn't really accomplishing much so i'm not sure that we're really trying mean but let's figure out what it is that we can do do and i personally think that should drive the master plan you know and not be have the master plan make this as a subset of what is going to explore i mean uh and if i were doing things i would probably like say let's figure out what it is that we need to do to generate mean a lot more new growth and then how does that the master plan support that but but it is what it is uh uh so um and and i'll just say i mean i understand too that that um mathematically we can't keep you know doing compounding growth mean um in any system um compounding you know uh fails you know and so so the part of what we need to talk about as a community is how do we get into equilibrium being and of course we exist in a larger context but that's also just part of us being a part of the world just trying to influence how the world works that we started having that conversation too so so um so that's just my long way to say that's what it is but thank you mr. Diggins any further discussion from my colleagues we have three motions friend is attorney high me recommend three separate votes correct okay so let's do these uh in a row so the first motion by mason mohan seconded by my mr. Diggins is uh to hold a special 10 election on tuesday november 7 2023 the details she read in her motion so all in favor say aye aye opposed it is a unanimous for nothing vote second motion by mrs ha mrs mohan seconded by mr. Diggins is a motion to approve a propositional tunef override local ballot question onset election date the amount of seven million dollars um with the language also having been read in mrs. mohan's motion all in favor say aye opposed it is a for nothing unanimous vote the third motion by mrs. mohan seconded by mr. Diggins is adopt the commitments by the select board to the residents of ronaldton with an amendment made by um mr. herd and affirming mr. helmets prior amendment regarding the organic fields all in favor say aye aye opposed it is also a for nothing unanimous vote thank you i think that concludes the regular business for our agenda with the exception of i have to get to my last page here um correspondence received oh future select oh select thank you there it is future select board meetings all right so we have scheduled um we have um our second meeting of june scheduled for the 26th because owing to the juneteenth uh town and state holiday on the 19th and then other than that uh that's so um i think that we should i would suggest that we look at a single meeting in july single meeting in august with um as our usual and then you know of course the chair will have to see how much work comes in for that but are there any particular um thoughts and i will also consult with mr. de coursey so we can amend this on june 26 but um and of course we don't vote on this this is just advice to the chair um is there any particular uh out at days that are not good for the board um either those months i'd say the 17th just because it's right in the middle is that's a good day well i think yeah it's a few weeks in between that in the 26th and since we're going to just do one in august them i'm thinking that obviously i might want to have the goals meeting i mean normally i think we do that in july but given me that you know manager doesn't start until august right but i know august is also a big vacation month for people so so that may not work you know but i just put that out there is something to consider would um and can someone remind me do we do the gold meet goals meeting as a standalone separate meeting or in combination with other business so stay in limiting yeah um and i did check with mr. finney's schedule and um you know he does not have any um major blocks of time you know it planned i think he's planning to to to dive in i think we should give him the benefit of some time in office however before we ask him to have goals um so um because he starts right at the first of the month what about if we did july 17th and august 14th just to pick dates that are right in the middle of each month okay that's good and uh mr. attorney hyme i know i'm not as i'm sure of this i will not be here august 14th so uh well let's get any council coming in or let's see yeah all right um maybe the seventh because i think that you oftentimes your presence is relevant i'm just saying yeah please don't plan around me i just want to make sure yeah all right well i'll check with mr. de coursey as well since he's not able to be with us tonight and i would say for august just for the select board yeah um say 14 or 21 i think the seven is too close to the pre you know yeah for common vixx and things like that and then did you with those two dates set and i i agree i it has it's much more beneficial maybe it'll be a shorter meeting but there's a standalone meeting as well as i'll leave it to the chair but um i've done both where one time we i think it was during covid and office space was limited we were trying to shut things down but um i think meeting in the conference room uh of the town manager's office is really more conducive um versus this is sort of like battle not battle i'm strong but do you want to sit that meeting now or do you want to wait until mr. phoenix i think maybe i'll check on the since we have to wait on mr. de coursey schedule anyway and find out what his vacation schedule would be and then i'll have further conversation with mr phoenix just to make sure that that makes sense but we can we can look certainly look for august he was very open to that and in the past which doesn't mean we have to do this it's traditionally it's been held on it two different days two different ways yeah i uh a couple of times it was on a thursday from like six thirty eight thirty one time it was seven to nine but where um it may be a little more truncated with you know it'll be more of a focus on the select or it could be on other times we've had it on a saturday um sounds like thursday's popular right or if it if it's if it's a different not sunday if it's a different other if it's another day it doesn't necessarily because we originally just us and the manager and the any public yeah so whatever the chair and the manager thinks um but yeah the weekends especially in the summer but okay well that's that's helpful it's general guidance uh spline july 17th and let's put august 20 and 21 in for now pending my consultation with with our colleague not present tonight and i'll reconnect with mr phoenix on just um on a good time for when he thinks he'll he'll be ready for goals because he'll have a lot of things to do very can we set at least one medium in september sure just for planning purposes we should is that all right yeah is that enough just yeah want to do um that would be nine that would be nine yeah september 11th 11th and maybe 25th and so they're just two weeks all right oh good yeah i may as well although i think you're clear of the jewish holidays then because i think i know that i'd check the calendar yeah mrs marlton we'll check them out but yeah and if there's any conflict you can let us know next so okay maybe not so much let's let's let's let's go let's go with the 11th for now and then we'll we'll figure out what the policies it looks like yeah good thank you thank you of course we'll just have had town day on the 23rd so and another celebrate so i was going to say i knew the town they was clear i could have checked that i'm not sure if uh we're if we were like between yeah yeah exactly or if we were on a slash tell me to manage my birthday no no mine here's birthday oh i'll just for the first time be able to tell that i had a birthday in the hotel right oh you were wedding it's right okay you i think that's that's helpful all right let's move to correspondence receive a request for stop sign and read this road from erin charlwood request to address clearance issues called by reduct caused by reduction of street with from uh mr bob rdosha and update a mass avan avan corridor at mass avan appleton corridor project and chestnut street safety project from claire breaker the director of planning and community development any motions so i'll i'll motion to accept a lot of the letters made and sent the request for stop signs and the clearance caused by the drug industry to attack send the first two to attack you know and i'll have a conversation with the tax chair about them you know and the third one of course we'll receive it you know there's just something content that kind of bothered me because i think it framed it such that it made it seem like the that safety wasn't the priority means that the prioritization of the conservative parking spaces was a big factor in it you know it may seem like it wasn't the factor in it and and i know that wasn't the sentiment of all of us here i mean we had differences about how we how much parking or whether we wanted parking you know on the south side you know a mass avan that intersection but it was never an issue of safety i mean everyone felt that safety was number one and so i just kind of wanted to at least clarify that for i believe that i didn't think that it was not a lack of concern about safety just more that folks wanted to you know get as much parking there as possible so that's all mr jiggins would you suggest i may have on the on the referral motion so i have a motion receive and then referral attack on the on the stop sign i've been in contact with the with the town manager the resident who sent us that felt that there was some urgency and to my judgment perhaps more that that that the usual attack schedule of consideration might might consider so would you consider a joint referral to the town manager for any just the evaluation with with the police um in dbw for any um short term action in addition to referral to tack for a longer term view sure sure i'm i'm fine with that but but as you know we often get on the transportation and on the issues a level of urgency because we we had that with gray street right you know maybe we got like a bunch of letters from people though i like this is busy down the street so so i'm fine with that you know but just keep in mind that when people generally have a concern about traffic it's urgent for them yeah um sure so i think we have a friendly amendment accepted but to that and i think you know my intent for that is just if it's if appropriate and if it's not particularly urgent then i think the normal referral would certainly be sense any further comments from my colleagues i'll second mr diggins motion to receive and refer and obviously since you were here and you heard mr redosha if um you could just contact him and you know make sure or have the office contact him when winter street will be on the tack agenda so he can avail himself of the opportunity to come in and reiterate his offer to if appropriate work with tack you know when they go out on the site visit because i know other people in neighborhoods have sometimes found out when tacks coming out for a site visit and sometimes go out and say see this is what we're over here and over that and nine times out of ten somebody from chat comes up with a completely different solution and the person's like oh that's even better than i thought what yeah so um if we could somehow keep mr redosha in the loop on that and then um on the update from our planning director which i definitely appreciate and and then your comments about appleton street and now that the election's over um having somebody i'm not supposed to say lie so i'm supposed to say uh misinterpret uh my position on uh the project for uh mass avan appleton carter project um the update that we've received and where it's at now is basically to fulfill the state's guidelines it's my understanding from talking to the planning director um the state has uh regulations stipulating everything you have to look at including the area and um they received a um concern and notification from the myrack development which falls into the project goes from foot of the rocks um down to mass in forest um so that should have been in terms of traffic counts in terms of if you need an additional traffic signal or maybe you don't need an additional one but you need an alteration in terms of timing um and that's a big piece so that's what stopped the project um it wasn't any member of the board it was we have to fulfill the state's guidelines and um and that's what kind of put us back into a year thing so that's thank you i don't like you talking about this because i was just gonna let the letter pass by but i mean back if you look back at the meeting the parking was an issue but the whole point of what we said was all the safety concerns can be addressed in keeping the parking there so the safety's always been the number one issue that we've dealt with and to say otherwise is a lie so we our concern was is you know we're competing interest there is that we had the two lights and we had the bike lanes that we could put we could do everything with the parking there so and that is what was said at that meeting and to say otherwise is wrong and someone can just rewatch the meeting to see that so good so yeah i talked with um the time manager to about um the design review committee you know um and and so because in the letter it said that uh things that come out of well that as we work through the um reexamining that intersection that plans would be brought to tack and i talked to the time manager said that we do have that design review committee for that amplitude intersection i mean it was a committee that was created by the select board and it has the attack attack representative business representative uh it's pretty impressive committee put the time manager at the time allows them to pull together and meet and so it hasn't been officially disbanded so i suggested that it be good to keep them uh and and the little uh and maybe uh run things so by them as well as by tack i don't know off to the forum and you can pull me back at any time if we're going beyond board announcements we're not there yet yeah but we haven't made it to board now oh yeah so i guess we're still we are still a little bit scope um yeah i mean my thought is that they that committee was put together for the initial thoughts and we we got step one at this point this is a especially the way that played out where we were hit on a left field with this plan that we we didn't even know was coming on and that one today was a little irritating that one was just like mind blowing that that was put on an agenda and i mean i think the conversation should be between whoever the architect that we have and this board and not i mean we can get tack involved too but we are the decision makers and this isn't something that needs to be studied at length it's we have to come up with a design that this board's gonna approve and so with all due respect i i don't think it should go to i think the committee the recommendations from the appleton design committee initially were great i'm a little bit suspicious of how the committee's waited i don't know the membership given some of the recommendations that we've gotten so my suggestion going forward with appleton is a discussion between whoever the consultant we hire is in this board and that eliminates the situation where we get i mean that was there's public forums to look at a plan that we had never seen before it's just ludicrous and so then after all that after all that staff time is spent it comes to us even though town staff should have known that this board would not support that plan that's another story but again i think this the conversations with us and whoever a consultant is that we hire thank you and i do want to remind the board that we have a motion before us to simply receive the memo i'm not saying the discussion telescope i think it is on on topic but i do want to help remind us what we are actually doing with this memo tonight uh mr brodie i would just if i could just briefly after i talked to mr diggins earlier today about the design review committee i did check in with the planning director it is my understanding that that committee uh has not met for a long time and is not still active uh i just want to report that to the committee members for your understanding of the situation good thank you so in a motion by mr diggins to receive all the items and uh to refer the stop sign request to the town manager um as appropriate and the tech full consideration did anyone second those motions it's been a while second it's behind it it's behind it okay thank you um so second by mr missus mahat all in favor say i think i'll miss this sometimes all in favor say i please i pose it is for nothing unanimous on correspondence received now we go to the item formally known as new business and is now currently called board and staff announcements mismar no thank you attorney heim no one else is thank you mr mr pruler um i just want to say one other thing about the police settlement and which i think the board members know uh it was 31 to 5 vote it included um various financial uh changes for the police contract but also that um in that was that they will agree to start wearing uh cameras and as soon as we can deploy them and we're in conversations with them about policy about that uh we'll try to move forward with that mrs mahat thank you three is briefly as i can i i just want to say again i did call it town manager mr pruler and i meant this with all sincerity that i was not expecting um the police contract uh to be resolved i was unfortunately having nightmares about long weeks of arbitration so i want to say thank you to mr pruler as well as you know the rest of the team i know the attorneys were involved um not meaning attorney heim but attorneys for the town as well as uh the patrolman's association and um carol molloy and the deputy town manager um mr mickey um and um i'm you know i'm sometimes i can be highly critical but you you pulled that off and um that's as a good town manager can do and i i can't thank you enough for doing that because i think that with all the contracts sort of now all things being equal and but and the the vote we need at the special town meeting to um accept and approve the lost contract with our town unions i think it sets up us going forward kind of starting on it on an even field and then in that same conversation um i had with mr pruler i was pushing it i felt good i thought it might go there um i did bring up the uh covered reimbursement for our retirees the last little sad group that's out there that certainly i think should have gotten it in it's about 83 thousand dollars i've heard as high as 103 mr pruler indicated to me and i i don't mean to speak to himself but um admittedly so the the town manager and the staff have been focused on contract negotiations with the patrolman association and that really took sort of yeoman's large amount of um besides doing the day today day to day responsibilities that need to keep the town running but having said that i said you know um can negotiations that are now settled can the issue regarding the COVID possible COVID reimbursement for retirees um maybe take that place and um he indicated you know it's something he's been discussing and will continue and and will speak to town staff around that and um and i said well if you want i can find the money for you um and he said where would you find it and i said i'll tell you monday night um so two places i would point to um because we're talking 83 thousand dollars for retirees um and i raised this earlier and i know miss cody will have the conversation with you once again our earnings on investment um were like 984 percent over than what we projected and i did i just want to let you know i did raise to miss cody if she could since this is the third time we've gotten this report and i cited that in the past financial people told me when you're out of whack on a positive a negative end consistently that that's not a good thing you may think oh boy that windfall is great is our 200 thousand estimate too low so i said that but that so that's one place i would point to the 83 thousand dollars because it's a one-time expense i also brought up that um i asked about the opera update because i know that the town manager the comptroller empowers and Sullivan are in charge of receiving at administrating administering as well as the report to the federal government the u.s treasury department and i'd like to see report on that and she indicated that that is something the town manager and we should see um soon so the second place that i would point to and this ties into what i'm anticipating that we're going to get i went back in my notes um when we received the covert the opera funding um and the town manager mr chapter lane presented to us um an initial framework and got public comment including from this board um and thank you mr jaykins for texting me a little after five this morning we got to i missed those texts and talking so early but um i wanted to make sure my memory was correct um what happened in the end was there are 17 uh categories and this is from the october 25th 2021 meeting 17 categories that ultimately the town manager presented um to the board and what he did was on certain things like behavior health support you see 300 000 dollars in bold but then underneath you see 250 000 allocations and um i spoke to mr jaykins because i know one of the things that he um put in a request for that the board supported supported was a request for a million dollars for premium pay for private sector essential workers and he was um targeting uh lower income allington residents that during covid you know people were saying thank goodness you know the grocery store workers are there you know the custodians cleaning the facility medical facilities and allington residents and he requested uh a million dollars to go to that and mr chapter lane allocated 500 000 for that um that money is still there it's never that program was never created and we were talking about that this morning you know maybe what happened in the city of cambridge we can look for a framework but um so that's the other place i would point to was uh mr chapter lane had of the 17 items that he listed one of them was 500 000 dollars for premium pay for private private sector essential workers and again that's the october 25th 2021 meeting so those are the two places that you know kind of bantering with the town manager when he said well i need time to find the money if it's there and they didn't say it was there and i said i'll find it so there's the two places but i also anticipate that um because this is what um it was ultimately miss as we know the town manager mr chapter lanes recommendation um he he got us to endorse it but um just like we said we wanted a million and he powered it down to 500 000 i do anticipate that the uh report that we'll get regarding the opera funding that that's where the money should have been going so i i that's kind that's what i want to see in terms of um the report that we get back on that and then the last thing was in i discussed this um with mr pooler and i i don't expect an answer tonight but um got an awful lot of emails again on trash uh republic i think is our trash company um we seem to have fallen into a pattern whenever there's a holiday it throws uh trash collection collection off and each time there seems to be more and more slippage in terms of what that delay means and i noticed on one of the lists that i'm on on that um people on something like that that's not something the select board has any purview or it's trash collection so you know give out information of the process of you can contact the recycling coordinator but here's the number for republic and then people had posted and it's town-wide initially was just one area up on i forget what they call little scotland which is kill scythe and but it's also east allington orvis road so the real concern that i had have in i spoke to the manager and i know he's going to look into this is um that and i didn't believe this was actually the case but our recycling coordinator confirmed it that um residents are being told that if you're and i'm not talking recycling i'm not talking yard trimming i'm talking trash that you've got to hang on to it for a week it's not going to be picked up and the recycling director sent an email to the list saying that um and angry that she had composed an angry email and sent it to the uh department of public works i'm just going by my memory um as well as um to the board um so i've asked the town manager to look into that for someone's trash to hang and hang around for a week if it's a one-off okay we can do that but it doesn't seem to be this is the second time that i've heard that this has happened that people had to hang and that you know i don't know what relief we can get out of the contract it may be nothing but if this is going to be a consistent thing especially with an override coming up and people can't get their trash picked up then we're going to have to try to figure out some fix to it as well as i definitely would be interested in this i know the rest of the board would be interested in seeing exactly what that email is from the recycling coordinator if there's anything that we should be doing on our end which i don't think there is but um because the email that i saw on one of the lists that i saw it didn't contain what the angry email was so i i definitely want to see that so and that's it thank you thank you mrs mahan mr herd i forget what i was going to say we're worried we talked to out of your board announcement no he got bored with my board announcement go ahead sorry two things so one i admit this is part of my board announcement before but we did have the herd field of rededication again i want to thank town staff including town manager who attended um members of recreation commission were in attendance um conservation commission there's very well a very well attended event and i actually hadn't been down there i don't maybe in my mind i wanted to like christmas morning i wanted to open up my presence and be surprised but the end result of herd field is just unbelievable the benches there the the new memorial the the walking path um there's a new batting cage there so it really is an amazing looking field and they it boy the all the boys of my team and on the giants had a really great experience getting to participate in the rededication so it was really well well uh put on event by the recreation department and i want to thank joe connelly who actually wasn't able to attend because he had a wedding but uh shan gaveli there was there um steve was there so i i think that was but um yeah that was a that was a fun event we unfortunately lost a controversial home plate call but you know it's youth sports i guess um and then the other thing last week i attended a joint committee meeting for the arlington 2020 so the 2025 celebrations of conquer lexington um bedford carlyle um lincoln so it was good to get to participate with us other towns in the region to see what they were doing and kind of bounce some ideas off each other and it's clear that a few of the other towns are a little ahead of us so i think with me and uh jim feney was there and a couple of the members of our committee it is going to catapult us to get going and get some more planning done um but it was a really well well run event by the town of bedford that was the bedford public library so more to come on that mr diggins so how did the first pitches go they went supposed to deliberate on on our board with seven announcements so you know well westley and dylan's was good my nephew gave who's four threw it about five feet and my nephew peter just ran it in so the chair will overlook the uh i was i was i was i was in an applet so i would have been there it uh nothing nothing for me and i also have no announcements i want to adjourn second and a motion to adjourn by mrs mohan seconded by mr diggins all in favor say aye aye post it is really unanimous