 Good evening. I'm calling to order the meeting of the Ellington Select Board for Monday, November 22nd, 2021. This is Select Board Chair Steve DeCorsi. Permit me to confirm that all members and persons anticipated on the agenda are present and can hear me. Members, when I call your name, please respond in the affirmative. Diane Mahon. Yes, thank you. John Hurd. Yes. Len Diggins. Yes. Eric Helman. Yes. Staff, when I call your name, please respond in the affirmative. Adam Chapter Lane. Yes. Doug Heim. Yes. And Board Administrator Ashley Maher is participating remotely. Tonight's meeting of the Ellington Select Board is being conducted remotely consistent with an act signed into law on June 16, 2021, that extends certain COVID-19 measures adopted during the state of emergency. The act includes an extension until April 1, 2022 of the remote meeting provisions of Governor Baker's March 12, 2020 executive order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law. The Governor's order, which is referenced with agenda materials on the town's website for this meeting, allows public bodies to meet entirely remotely so long as reasonable public access is afforded so that the public can follow along with the deliberations of the meeting. Before we begin, permit me to offer a few notes. First, this meeting is being conducted via Zoom, is being recorded, and is also being simultaneously broadcast on ACMI. 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 they may be visible to others and that if you wish to participate, you are asked to provide your full name in the interest of developing a record of the meeting. The 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 also found on the town's website using the Novus agenda platform. Finally, each vote tonight will be taken by roll call. We have a number of important items on the agenda. Let's see how much of the town's business we can get done tonight. I'll now turn to item two. Acceptance of funds received from various entities. Thank you, Mr. Chair. This has been our practice throughout this past year when donations or certain types of gifts are being provided to the town and its various departments. I would like to take this opportunity with you on the agenda to make sure that the select board finds the donors acceptable and any particular restrictions or conditions based on those gifts acceptable. In this case, you have a relatively straightforward slate in front of you. And with that, I would be happy to answer any questions or take a motion to accept these gifts. Thank you. Thank you, Attorney Heim. I'll start with the board. Mrs. Mahan. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would definitely like to move approval, as well as thank the two charitable donations. I know one is from the Cummings Power Group, which funds various charities across the state as well as the Ocean State Job Lot Charitable Foundation. First time I'm seeing that and they've done it before I apologize. I missed it, but I'm very thankful for that. So happy to move approval. Thank you, Mrs. Mahan. Mr. Heard. I'll second that. And again, echo Mrs. Mahan's thanks for the donations. Thank you, Mr. Heard. Mr. Diggins. Yes, I'm happy to support that. You know, no amount is too small. Me from $870 to $35,000. You know, it's all very welcome. And I have to say the Ocean State Job Log Logo. It's just the cutest thing. Well done on that. Thanks. Thank you, Mr. Diggins. Mr. Helman. Thank you. And I'm pleased that these are going to the Wellington Youth Counseling Center. They do such really good work for some of our most vulnerable residents. And so I appreciate the donation to support that as well. Great. Thank you, Mr. Helman. Yeah, and I'm grateful on behalf of the town as well to the Cummings Foundation and to Ocean State Job Lot. So on a motion by Mrs. Mahan, seconded by Mr. Heard, Attorney Heim. Mr. Heard. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Helman. Mrs. Mahan. Yes, thank you. Mr. Diggins. Yes. It's unanimous vote. Thank you. Item three, holiday stroll in Arlington Heights on December 11, 2021. Arlington Heights Community Association. Janet O'Riden. Is Mrs. O'Riden with us tonight? Yep. I've just promoted her to panelists. I'm mute. Hello, can you hear me? Good evening, Mrs. O'Riden. Hi. Okay. Thank you. Sorry. So you can see me. Oh, there we are. Okay. Great. Yeah. Thank you for joining us tonight. And we, we received the proposal, but if you could tell us a little bit about it. Okay. So actually, so in a couple of weeks, we're going to have another window painting in the Heights. Remember, I think most of you are probably seeing the Halloween. So we're going to follow up with a winter theme window painting. So we thought it would be 53 windows painted. And so we thought it might be nice to have sort of a holiday stroll to bring people out to the Heights community to view the windows and then also to shop and dine in the Heights. So, so to add to make it a little bit more interesting, we thought we would add a few sort of family fun activities to draw people. Um, we, I think I mentioned here, a couple of games. Ellie Cotter and I went over to the bus depot and we figured that that was the safest place to just have a couple of outdoor games for families. I was on the board from the Schwann mill that we're borrowing and I ordered a little ring toss that they're just small little games that we're going to put on on the cement brick walk, not on the, the, the, I mean, the cement sidewalk, not the brick sidewalk so it's right in front of the depot. So they won't even interfere with pedestrians walking by in the brick walk. So it's more than enough space for the, for the games. I'll be there with some volunteers and we'll just have people just, you know, participate in the games for a couple of hours and then we've also organized some other activities but they're mainly indoor activities. In fact, at the wonder you're where they're going to host a kid's craft for a couple of hours with a local art teacher and artist and then we're going to, we just recently just signed up Margaret Moody she's going to give a puppet show for some kids inside at 415 for a half hour. And then also since we've met. Norm McLeod is offered from ACMI to hold his tree lighting on the same day he normally has it on Friday but he's going to have it at five o'clock, sort of the end of our stroll so the store will go from two to five instead of two to four. So, so yeah so it we're starting small with some sort of a stroll I think years ago there was a stroll in the heights and so hopefully we can make this maybe an annual tradition. And just bring some more people from the town I'll pass the town to the heights and and discover all the nice businesses and restaurants so. Oh, I mentioned music we have not been able yet to find music I guess the musicians that were used for the haiku. They're just not available or some musicians just that it's just going to be too cold to perform outdoors. We're still waiting to hear from one more musician perhaps that could be located inside reparations. But we're still waiting to hear so if we do find a musician it would be non amplified music, and it would probably be indoors at the reparations on maybe someone on the sidewalk but I'm not sure at this point you know so. That's great. Thank you I'm sorry I didn't mean to interrupt you if you wanted to add anything else further but I just note that there's also a rain date of December 12. Yes, yes. Okay, good. I'll turn to the board Mr heard. Happy to move approval. And I look forward to it, it's good. Thanks, you're to start seeing events outside and done safely and done in a smart manner given the current climate but it is good to see people's faces outside of the zoom meetings. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mr. Dickens. I'm happy to second that if I've been thinking ahead more I would have come up with a high coup. Next year though, and definitely get the kids over to ACMI because that's it that's that's fun. You know they really do a good job for the kids so so encourage people to go there. Great. Thank you Mr. Dickens Mr helmet. Thank you. Of course I'll support this and thanks for for all the effort to do that and to get residents out in the neighborhood to support the businesses. And thanks to Ali Carter once again for her work and looking out for all the business districts in town. That's amazing I will will say that this has come out she holds meetings every month I'm not from, I don't know if all of you know that every month and it's brought people like me, representing the schwa mill and other residents of business owners and she's really been a pivotal for all of these, these things happening when you bring people together, things happen, and that's just what's happening now because of Ali so just want to thank her and we've also gotten a lot of support from the Chamber of Commerce, and the Wellington Commission for Arts and Culture. All right, so that's wonderful to hear thank you. No further comments. Great. Thank you. Mr. Helmets. Mrs. Mahon. Thank you Mr chair, my colleagues have said it all thank you to Miss already and your association and Miss Carter and others. I know that I think the town started in the Heights with their holiday decorating also with the new Heights pub opening up. I'm really pleased that Miss already and her group of the neighbors planning department are, as they always do focusing on. What we see is the three business districts on mass up so thank you again and looking forward to see you on the 11th. And if there's a rain. I don't want to say the s word. I'm with Moe, but if not, no, no, no, no. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Thank you, Mrs. Mahon. Yeah, and I'm happy to support this as well. And happy to receive this proposal and echo the comments of my colleagues so on a motion by Mr. Mr. Herd to approve the high holiday stroll on December 11, seconded by Mr. Diggins, Attorney Hyde. Mr. Herd. Yes, Mr. Diggins. Yes, Mr. Helmets. This is my hand. Yes, thank you. Mr. Decorsi. Yes. Great. Thank you, Mr. Redan. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay, see you in the 11th. Okay, great. Okay, goodbye. Thank you. Okay, item four, PJ Library, Hanukkah Lantrinwalk, Stephanie Marlin Curiel, Commission for Arts and Culture. I believe she's with us tonight. Okay, great. Good evening. Hi. Great. Thank you for joining us. I must apologize for having missed the previously scheduled meeting in which I was on the agenda and just the evening took off and I just completely completely slipped my mind so I apologize. Well, and we saw that the date was, we still had a meeting between the proposed events so we're able to move it here so happy to do that. Why don't you tell us a little bit about the event and what's being proposed and then I'll turn it to the board. Okay. The next event is for young families, families with children approximately three to eight years old. It begins at kickstand cafe, where we assemble simple Hanukkah lanterns like this their cupcake, cupcake boxes, and then we just put some fairy lights and some stickers. And then there will be a musician there and first we'll need to start with a Havdala prayer, which is just to sanctify the end of the day of rest Shabbat, and then we can move on with the with the Hanukkah celebrations. We will have Emily Shays permission who is the kickstand owner to use the parking lot. There will also be a public art piece there during for the duration of this event from 330 to 530, we will have a large lantern on a flat bed truck with all sorts of colored glass and it started with children by children using scratch art and I think there's a sound component as well, where they talk about their inner strength the children talk about their inner strength this is lantern you can actually enter into. And there is a docent going to be there from Jay Arts this is from from Jewish Arts Collaborative that they're bringing this lantern and it's by artist tova speeder. So we will then take our walk our lantern walk around Arlington Center with the strolling musician, and we plan to cross either at Medford Street or at Franklin Street. It depends a little bit on the size of the group. But now, now we do have 30 families registered so far for this. We have been in consultation with Arlington Police Department, and so they are going to be ready with officers to help us cross the streets safely and direct, you know, direct traffic. And so we'll come around to the other side, possibly if we go across at Franklin will go through Broadway Plaza, maybe we'll stop there and sing a song, sort of as a group, keep going, go into Whittemore Park, where I imagine we'll, you know, walk that the new walkway around the circular part and and the musician will probably stay in the middle in the park and do a little movement with them like, you know, spin the dreidel things like that. We'll get to spin around and move a little bit. And at least at that point I hope we'll all be able to hear the music. And then we will return to kickstand cafe and Emily Shay is selling us some hot chocolate and you're permitted to bring donuts which are traditional conica and to the premises. Thank you very much. I think thank you for explaining that and I will now turn to the board. Mr. Diggins. Thank you, Mr. Chair, I'll be happy to move approval of this request being and I'm glad that we did get Stephanie's on this curio. Ms. Marlon Curio's explanation of it because it's, it's, it's, it's exciting. It sounds like a lot of fun in and, and, and you be from the east, we're going to have to do something to ease to me and they're doing something in the heights to do something in the center and we're going to have to do something to ease at some point up. Yeah, well happy to do that. I just want to point out though I am from the Commission for Arts and Culture but this event is being done by the JCC Greater Boston which is my day job. So, this is the JCC event. Okay, but I'm their regional coordinator. Well, thanks for pointing that out because me, I guess you were kind of reading my mind I was associating it with ACAC, but hey, you know, we're all just one big community here that's just kind of, we have these somewhat arbitrary lines between us so but thanks for doing this thanks for organizing it. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Diggins. I'm Mr. Hellas. Thank you. I happily second the motion. Good luck with your event. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Helmut. Mrs. Mahan. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Very happy to support this and I appreciate Ms. Mylon Curiel's day job JCC and I thought I saw some other reference to another group. PJ Library is, that's a Jewish book club that we use that branding on our events for young children because they're books for young children so that we administer through the JCC. So, but it's not really a separate group. Okay, so it's PJ Library, J Arts Collaborative and JCC Greater Boston. What is the Chairman highlighted with the previous event that you two have a rain date and I forgot to ask this of the previous event. I'm assuming that your families who have signed up and our others, you've sort of either established. If there is a need for a rain date where they can get that information or. Absolutely. Well, first of all, we would email them all if they, if they're, if we were canceling in due to rain, but we also have a Facebook group and we encourage them to. We always say in case of inclement weather, check the Facebook group or contact Metro North at jccgp.org, which is my address. Thank you so much and thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mrs. Mahan. Mr. Hurd. Thank you for coming in and happy to support this. It looks like a really fun event and look forward to it. So good luck. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Hurd. I support it. Welcome with your kids, by the way, all are welcome. Thank you. I'm happy to support this as well and echo the statements of my colleagues. So, on a motion by Mr. Diggins seconded by Mr. Helmut attorney. Mr. Hurd. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Mr. Helmut. Yes. Mrs. Mahan. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Ms. Hope. Great. Thank you very much for joining us tonight. Okay. Next will be item five, which is the only item on the consent agenda. Minutes of meeting November 8, 2021. Mr. Helmut. Mr. Mrs. Mahan. Okay. So welcome back. We're sorry about that. They were having some zoom difficulties tonight. And this zoom account was double booked. So that is what caused us to have the blackout where we're back now and we were in the middle of the consent agenda. And we had received a motion from Mr. Helmut. And I was just about to turn our head turned to Mrs. Mahan. When we lost the connection. So, and if attorney, I think attorney, I was trying to work out some challenges if he could mute himself. I don't know if we can mute that account because we're getting some feedback on that. There we go. Perfect. Okay. Mrs. Mahan, it is to you now on the consent agenda agenda minutes of the November 8, 2021 meeting. Second, Mr. Helmut's motion. Great. Thank you. Mr. Heard. No comments. Mr. Diggins. No comments. Great. And I don't have any comments either. I'll run the role until we hear back from attorney Heim. So on a motion by Mr. Helmut seconded by Mrs. Mahan. Mr. Be afraid to make a motion from now on. But yes. That's right. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Heard. Yes. Mrs. Mahan. Yes. And I am yes as well. So it's a unanimous vote. Moving on to item number six, which is a public hearing. Which is Mr. Tierney, the director of assessments and Mr. Greeley, the chair of the board of assessors. We have two items, a vote on the MWRA debt shift and a discussion and vote on property tax classification tax rate. Good evening, Mr. Tierney. And good evening. And Mary O'Connor from the board of assessors is with us tonight. Good evening, Mr. O'Connor. Good evening. Great. So the, yeah, whoever wants to start. Go, go right ahead. Is anybody else joining you from the board of assessors or. Yeah, ma'am, Mr. Greeley is here. He just stepped up for a second. So he'll be back in a minute. So I can go ahead and let him speak after if that's okay. That's fine. Good evening, everybody. Before I start, I'd just like to thank the board of assessors, Mary O'Connor and Stanley, Robert Greeley and our newest member, William Zagata for all their help throughout the year. As most of you know, Mr. Zagata is new to our board and he's been a welcome addition so far. And I'd also like to give a shout out to my staff of Dana Mann, Mary McMacon and Jenny O'Rourke for all the work they do throughout the year. All right, I'll begin. First page to calculate the FY 22, 2022 levy limit. We have the 2021 levy limit of 126,776,920, add two and a half, two and a half percent to that of $3,169,423 new growth this year. And $33,510 to get to the FY 2022 levy limit of $130,879,853. Mr. Timmy, could I just interrupt you for one second? I'm just going to start out there. And you had sent us this package, it's part of our agenda. I don't know, Mr. Chapter only if you have it, or if there's any way we can screen share just for people following along at home, just, just to follow the presentation here. Okay, sure. Perfect. Okay. Okay, we're good. Yeah, so if you don't mind just reviewing those, those figures again that'd be great. To calculate the FY 2022 levy limit of 126, we use a FY 2021 levy limit of 126,776,920, add two and a half percent of $3,169,423 at 2022 new growth of $933,510 to give us the FY 2022 levy limit $130,879,853. So for FY 22, we are adding the school debt exclusion of $10,276,792. Also adding 2022 water and sewer debt of $1,845,727 to give us a maximum to be raised of $143,322. We are not the town is raising for the FY 22, 142,948 dollars 226 divided by all the taxable value in town times 1000 will give us a proposed tax rate of $11 and 42 cents. Next page shifting the tax rate. This page. We're getting a little feedback there. Yeah. So, shifting the tax rate this gives us our percentage share percentage of all the classes of property in town. For the residential we have 94.3154% commercial 4.1036% industrial 0.2034% personal property 1.3776% we go to page four. We just go down one more. Thank you. This page is piggybacks off the shift we have in our maximum residential factor. CIP share of the levy and our CIP maximum share of this page gives shows if we would, if we were to shift the tax rate from a single rate to a split rate. We can see if we shifted 5% commercial industrial properties would increase $286 while the residential would see a savings of $17 and 21 cents. If you go scroll all the way down to the bottom. If we did shift up to the maximum. We can see a commercial industrial personal property would see an increase of $2,855 and the residential open space would see a decrease of $172, 8 cents. Next page is if we if the town were to adopt the residential exemption. Our base rate tax rate proposed for the year for FY 22 is $11 and 42 cents. If we shifted 20% that tax rate would increase to $14 and 62 cents. If we shifted 15% would be $13 and 84 cents 10% $13 14 cents 5% $12 and 51 cents. The residential exemption is only adopted in a handful of communities. We would not see a decrease or increase would be $911,000 and approximately 17% of the homes in Allenton would show the burden of this exemption. This next page is just the tax rates for all the years previous. You can see at the last column. Our FY 22 is $11 and 42. This next page is what we call the LA for. It gives the parcel conflict each class of property, as well as the value for all those particular properties in that class. The total the totals are at the bottom. This page is our what we call the LA 13. This is where we enter our growth. Also our abatements from the prior year. We have, we had 24 abatements in the residential class last year. And our growth is in the lower right hand column of $933,000. $933,500 and $10. This page compares our FY 21 values to our FY 22 values. And also tells you how many parcels, the difference in parcels over a year to year. So if you want to take a minute to look everything over on that. Next page just shows a pie chart breaking down where the debt exclusion MWRA shift went to. This page breaks down where each from the proposed tax, the proposed tax rate of 1142. So for the levy base, it was $10 and 13 cents. That two and a half percent is 25 cents. Growth kind of a seven cents. The water and sewer debt exclusion 15 cents. And the school debt exclusion kind of 82 cents on the tax rate. So if you call them below that. It's just a mirror of the figures we've gone over already. Just go, if we point out at the bottom, the average single family value in town is now 844,657 dollars. And the average taxes on a single family this year will be $9,646. This last graph just shows our neighboring towns. But as I just said, Arlington's single family tax bill this year will be 9,646. Belmont and Winchester do not have their information yet. I will fill that in as soon as they give it to me in Lexington's single family tax bill this year on average is 16,553 dollars. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Cheney. Did Mr. Greeley want to add anything as part of the presentation or I don't know if Miss O'Connor is going to make the presentation. Any additional comments? I think Mr. Greeley would like to. Okay. Yeah, he might be whoever's speaking everybody else has to turn off their microphone if they're nearby. Or mute their microphone. Yeah. I don't know which account is Bob signed in under so I can promote him to speak. I'm going to let Bob sit in my seat and he can do it from here. What's the question? They just want to know if he has anything to say or a statement. We have a lot to say. Good evening, Mr. Greeley. Can you turn it up so I can hear it. Good evening, Mr. Greeley. Good evening. How is we all? How are you? No complaints. No complaints. I have a few things that I'd like to discuss with you. And the other members of the bullet. As you know, this is a very bittersweet night for me. It's three years ago Friday to Kevin passed away. I've been to I was going to say the office upstairs. Since that day that he died. You may not know, but I am in the process of selling my house. I need to downsize. I need flat living. And unfortunately, those requirements aren't met by the town of Allington. And therefore I will not. Seek reelection for assessor in the spring of 2022. Good and Jameson may be downstairs already. I'm not sure. Number three. I have worked for every town manager. Or with every town manager. Since the town manager act came in in 1952. I was the first job I had with this town. I was paid 75 cents an hour. To shovel stairs at the schools. Starting at midnight. When you would be picked up by the public works people. Fortunately, I've done a little bit better than that since then. I've had. Excuse me. I've had the benefit of working. I've had the benefit of working with. Great. As I just said. With every town manager. And I think there was only one other person left. And that person being Marie. Number four. I have had the benefit. Of working with great. Assessors. Great department heads. And especially. In the last program. I've had the benefit of working with in the first floor. And the report. Bill Waterman. Jim. Jim. Mary when Stanley. My great friend, Kevin Faley. And recently appointed Billy Zagata. Also, we would have been lost. Without. Our current director. in almost 39 years in this office. I enjoyed every minute of it. I found it fulfilling. And I found that I was able to learn that most people when you're dealing with a municipality, they want to ask a question and have it answered. They may find that that answer is not gonna be what they want. But what is important is that we listen. The greatest ability in my opinion in almost 39 years of municipal work is the ability to listen. I for one did not learn that from day one. I can assure you, it took me quite, Steven, do not laugh. It took me quite a while to learn that. Len, fortunately, you haven't met me. So you're lucky that way. The biggest thing that I'm gonna miss are the people. Work with great people. Again, I enjoyed every minute of it. And I'd like to believe professionally as I leave in specific date, I cannot say at this point in time. It will be when my house is actually sold. However, it's a town that I believe off is anything and everything from cradle to grave. I've always believed that it's a great town from the standpoint of tolerance. I believe it has always been an inclusive town. Excuse me. And I can assure you that I, again, at the risk of being repetitious, have enjoyed every minute of it. So in the end, I would like to offer two pieces of advice. One, get rid of the water and sewer, get exclusion off of the income tax, off of the real estate tax bill, which I have espoused since 1995. And last but not least, one of the things that I've admired most and I learned it from my father and I learned it from Kevin, who I believe is was maybe the greatest select man's town ever had. He was as compassionate, generous, kind as anybody I've ever known. And that has nothing to do with being his brother. Obviously he and I were not twins as you all probably know. But by the same token, what I would really like to see is what I view as the passion for doing what is in the best interest of the town of Allington. There have been many people in my 40 odd years down here that I may not have disagreed with. Names shall stay nameless, but I have had nothing but the greatest respect because their passion for the town was always in the best interests of the town. You do not find that, my opinion. You do not find that in many towns. Having been someone who I served on the Board of Assessors for 15 years and some of them. I served on the Board of Assessors in Everett. I did consulting work, Chelsea, Everett. Nadek framing him. You can't imagine how some of these communities are and how they run versus Allington. And I have always believed this. Their people having nothing to do with political philosophy believe that in what they're doing is for the best interest of Allington. So in the end, that's what I'd like to see always continue. And in the very end, no one could be more thankful or appreciative or have enjoyed this town as much as I have. Thank you all and God bless you all. One last thing. I forgot I mentioned my father and my brother. I also have a daughter who sat, smiled John, who sat as chairman of the Board of Selectment Student Government Day, 1990, I think it is. She is now a town meeting member and I have been trying to talk to her to get a little bit more involved. So even though for the last, and this is hard to believe, in the last 70 years, 52 of those 70 years have had a grilly sitting in one of those chairs. And in many cases, as many of you would say, thankfully it was not you, Bob. Again, good night. Thank you and I will miss you all. Thank you, Bob. And before you turn away, if you can stay on camera there. And thank you, certainly is a bittersweet night, but I wanna thank you for your friendship, your candor. Those of you who know Bob will know he's candid when he's telling you like it is. And for your service- Unlike you didn't appreciate that, Steve. Yeah, that's right. And for your service to the community because you have been a dedicated employee, a dedicated member of the Board of Assessors and a resource that we have turned to for expertise and for various other things. And I am sorry to see you leave the Board of Assessors. I know we will still stay in touch. And I really appreciate, as I said, the friendship that we've had over the years and wanna wish you all the best of luck. So this is a public hearing for our tax right. I think before we do that, maybe go around if any members wanna say something to Mr. Greeley, we will then return to what we need for our vote. But I think after 39 years, you're entitled to some additional comments, Mr. Greeley. So I will turn first to Mrs. Mahan. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you, Mr. Greeley. Yeah, I'm gonna sort of plagiarize a little bit about what you said. It is bittersweet, not just for yourself, but for all of us who have had the opportunity to meet you, to work with you. I didn't realize, I thought I knew all the Greeley history. I didn't realize 52 out of 70 years, there has been a Greeley on the then Board of Selectment, now Select Board. And I agree with you in terms of- My apologies for showing my age. Yeah, no. But one of the things that I definitely agree with is one of the best lessons learned is to listen. And one of the best lessons I learned with you is you cut right to it. There's no sugar coating, there's no adding fluff and stuff. You always were a straight shooter with me and I definitely appreciated that. And first and foremost, respected you as a family man, husband father, now grandfather. So thank you so much. Thank you, Daryl. And thank you, Mrs. Maher, and Mr. Herd. Thank you, Mr. Greeley for that very touching presentation. Certainly a major force in the town for a long, long time. But I have a question. Does this mean the Herds win? I didn't hear that, John. Does this mean the Herds win? Not yet. Well, I'll have work on Kristen for you. But it's certainly been talking to Kristen since she lives down my street. I'm just obviously joking. Don't forget my punches. I know, I know. But the Greeley's have had a long, long history and your service has been second to none. And we really appreciate everything that you've done for the town over the years and you certainly be missed. So good luck in the future. For all of you listening that don't know this, John's family, there was so many of them at one time, they had their own baseball team. No picture of that, but thanks, given dinner. All of your great uncles, et cetera, et cetera, John. Grandfather. Oh yeah, too many to name. But thank you. Thank you, Mr. Herd. Mr. Diggins. Thank you, Mr. Chair and we haven't met. Hopefully we will at some point. If not here in Arlington than somewhere else, but hopefully when you move, you'll come back to Arlington to visit. Hey, I did meet your brother a lot at this like board meetings when I covered them for ACMI. And as I often say, people in this town have always made me feel welcome and your brother was one of those people. And I agree with you about listening and, but also as you said, being people want a response and they want a candidate response. I mean, they don't necessarily feel that they have to, well, they want to agree with you. They do want you to side with them, but they will respect you if you tell them, you know how you really feel about things, mean and that you have a principal position. Doesn't mean that you're static. You can change. And what Mr. Curell told me often about your brother was that he had, he respected him a lot because he evolved on a lot of positions, I mean, and he thought that was admirable. And I hope to be able to say as much, I have my positions on things by trying to evaluate, being in change when it merits change. And finally, and I don't want, I'm gonna try not to sound political here, but the fact that there isn't the kind of housing here that you need to stay here is one of the things I feel that we really need to work on. We really do need a greater diversity of housing because I assume that you would like to stay here. And I assume a lot of other people would like to stay here. And so just indeed we need more affordable housing, but we just need more different kinds of housing so that people who want to stay here can, but still also the people who want to move here can move here too. So I'm good luck with everything, and thanks for all that you've done for the town. Thank you. I do not disagree with you concerning the housing, okay? But I'm gonna give you a quick example. My house is on the market currently for $1,050,000. 45 years ago, I paid $48,000 for that house. I believe in location, location, location. Then I believe in education, education, education. Then I believe in government being police, fire, and municipal services. And I challenge anyone to offer what we have that what I feel we have in the town of Allington, not that we can't improve it. I think the biggest problem, Len, is versus other parts of the country. We are so dense around here, there is no land. I mean, it's hard to believe if you look at East Allington, okay? That average size, two family home, which today is probably a million three, okay, is on 4,500 square feet of land. They were built before the war automobiles so that to some extent, where we're as old as we are, we can't do too much versus what we might really like to do. We need to go further out. But I don't pretend to have all the answers from it, but I do understand what you're saying. And I think of being in the neighborhood as long as I was, okay, what I'm gonna call the average working person, okay, I do not believe could afford that neighborhood today. Okay, and when I did it, I was a teacher and a janitor before I ever came to work full-time for the town. But those days, I think, unfortunately, you're gone. There has to be two strong incomes to buy into this town. Another problem, and I can't take any credit for this speed, is that people have done such a good job of going into this town that people want to live here. Okay, so maybe a victim of our own success. So, but I hear what you say, thank you very much. I hope to meet you in person. Thank you, Mr. Diggins. Mr. Helen. Thank you. Oh, Mr. Really, I'm glad that we had a chance to have a good long talk when I was running for this seat. Look what happened. And it is a privilege and it really is humbling to think about my first year of service compared to the exceptional legacy that you and your family have leaving and have made in this town of service. I know that when we talk, we talk about how much Kevin just loved people, how much he loved this town and how doing the right thing for all the people was his priority. And that's been the case with you, from everyone who knows you much better than I do, have said and all of your family and you will be missed, this town will not be the same, but that legacy of service will endure and it will remain part of what makes Arlington a great place to live. Thank you for that. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Helmuth. And Mr. Greed, I know we will talk before you leave the board, so I'm gonna return now to the public hearing and thank you for your comments. And again, for your friendship and for your service, we will now discuss the tax rate in the MWAR, a debt shift, it's a public hearing, so we may have people from the public who wish to be heard too. But if I could ask Mr. Chappellane, if we could go back to the presentation that Mr. Tierney made to page two, I just wanna frame with the vote or what the actions that we will be asked to take this evening. He didn't say we were at the little park. If we can mute the... Yes, Mr. Tierney, mute. So if we have... Ready for me to share the screen now. Yes, yes, thank you. So if we look at the total to be raised, there's two votes that we have tonight. If you look in the middle of the page there, item two C, add the fiscal 22, water and short debt, 1,845, 727. This is actually the last year that we're going to be adding water and short debt to the real estate tax bill. That number was 5.5 million a few years ago. It was reduced to 3.6 million last year. This year, the request is 1,845, and that's basically taking debt from the water and short system, adding it to the real estate tax bills. It was something that was done years ago because of the tax deduction. One of the main reasons was the tax deduction people received for state and local property taxes as part of their income taxes that no longer exists. So back in 2019, the board voted to incrementally remove that debt. So next year, that item is going to be zero. We do have to vote it at the bottom of the screen. Item three, we see a tax rate of $11.42. That is the rate that would be established if we have a single rate. And when I asked Ms. O'Connor and Mr. Tierney, we're voting on the debt shift and we're also voting on a minimum residential factor. And if you could just clarify for us, what is the minimum residential factor that we would be voting to have a single rate this year? The assessors typically recommend a residential factor of one. Okay, thank you. Single tax rate. Okay, so residential factor of one is what gets us to $11.42. I will now, well, actually I'll turn to the public. This is a public hearing. If anybody wishes to speak on the classification issues. Mr. Dacorsi. Yes. May I just point out a couple of things? Sure. I'm sure though, thanks to the board. I'm sure that the board of selectmen has noticed that the tax rate is only increasing by eight cents. And the values did not really increase significantly in town this year. But I say this every year and Mr. Tierney put together the comparison of the other communities. And I have to say that I think the people in this town get some wonderful services for the taxes that they pay here comparatively. And I attribute that to the town manager, the select board, the school committee and the other departments. This is a very well run town fiscally and as well as maintenance and the amenities that this town offers. But I thought it was important to point out because the public watching that it's an eight cent increase per thousand. Great, thank you Mr. Cronin for that clarification. Okay, is there anybody who members of the public who wish to be heard on this issue, Mr. Chapterland? I don't know if there's any hands up, just strictly. There are no hands raised right now, Mr. Chairman. Okay, thank you. So I will now turn to the board and I'll start with Mrs. Mahai. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I assume we should start with the vote on the MWRA debt shift. Yes. Okay, and not just because of what happened tonight every time I have a vote on the debt shift, I think of my colleague, Mr. Grayley, who one year unfortunately in the word shift dropped a letter and said it and then he turned and said, did I just say he said it twice? It was a very funny moment. I just have one question on the tax rate of 1142. Do I understand that 15 cents of that is also because of the MWRA assessment or let me see, an MWRA debt or are we voting 1142 plus 15 cents for the MWRA debt? That is part of the overall tax rate. Okay, so I guess the first vote would be to move approval on the MWRA debt shift. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman. So why don't we do that vote and we'll go back to the second vote. So I'll just go down the line on Mr. Heard. Back in. Okay, Mr. Diggins. I'm totally fine with that. And I have so many curiosity questions but I'm not gonna ask any of them. I'll talk with folks later on. This is a great presentation, Mr. Terny and everyone else who worked on it. I mean, there's such a wealth of information here. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Diggins. Mr. Helman. No comments. And I don't have any comment either other than to note that next year this vote won't be necessary. So we're on a motion by Mrs. Mahan, seconded by Mr. Heard, Attorney Heim. Mr. Heard. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Helman. Yes. Mrs. Mahan. Yes. Mr. Corsi. Yes. It's unanimous vote. Okay. And on the second part, I will return to the same order and start with Mrs. Mahan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman for the vote on property tax classification tax rate. I'd like to vote to approve a tax rate of $11.42 while also adapting a factor of one. And if that's not worded correctly, someone please let me know, but I think that's the appropriate motion. Yeah. I think that's fine. Related there that the factor of one is what results in the 11.42. So I think that's fine. Mr. Heard. Second. Okay. Mr. Diggins. Yes. I'm totally fine with that. I'll just say that during the presentation, when we were looking at page 16 and Mr. Terney quoted the figures about how things would change if we split the rate. Yeah, I just wanted to note that it was for per $500,000 of values. Is that correct, Mrs. Carly? Yes, that is correct. Okay, great. And that's it. Thank you. Okay, thank you, Mr. Diggins. Mr. Helmuth. Good comments. Okay, thank you. And I don't have any comment either. So on a motion by Mrs. Mahan seconded by Mr. Heard regarding the minimum residential factor and tax rate, Terney Heim. Mr. Heard. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Helmuth. Yes. Mrs. Mahan. Yes. Mr. Quistin. Yes. Shannon, I spoke. Great. Thank you, Mr. Terney, and thank you, Ms. O'Connor. Thank you. Okay. Good evening. Good evening. And. Okay. All right. Yes, Mr. Diggins. No, no, no problem. Well, actually, Mr. Terney is still here. So I just wanted to say thanks to Mr. Terney for all of his hard work. And I hope that Jameson and the fiscal resources task group didn't scare you away. But Burlington is gaining a good person. So you're not far away. So hopefully we can like have you come to another meeting sometime and give us a comparison of something. Sure. Thank you. You're all very welcome. Good night. Good night. Good night. Mr. Chairman, you're on mute. Okay. I'll do it again. Thank you for doing that. It was brief, but I think I can remember what I said. Item seven, human resource board term to expire June 30th, 2024. Andrea Haas. Good evening, Ms. Haas. Hello. Hello. Hi. Thank you for joining us tonight and for your interest to be on the human resource board. If you could tell us a little bit about yourself and your interest in serving on this board. Thank you for the opportunity to be considered for this position. I, as has been said, my name is Andrea Haas. I have lived in Arlington for about eight years. I currently serve on the Equal Employment Opportunity Committee with the HR director as chair. I've enjoyed that opportunity to contribute in the town and to continue to make sure that Arlington has just the most diverse and wonderful applicant pool for the many positions here in town. I know that Arlington does have just dedicated, dedicated staff from top to bottom across the town. And I seek the opportunity to act on the HR review board so that I can continue to, so that I can assist the town in making sure that our employees have an opportunity to be heard and to be compensated appropriately within their grades as is required by the HR bylaws. Professionally, I am a employment law attorney. I've worked in that field for about 10 years. I primarily worked on the plaintiff side and so I do have an ear for the employee's needs. And I think that that could be a nice balance on this board and I would be happy to answer any questions that this group might have. Great, thank you, Ms. Haas. And I will turn to the board starting with Mr. Heard. And my own mute problems here. Thank you, Ms. Haas, for your willingness to serve on many important boards. And this one is just like the rest. And happy to have you in town and glad you were able to step up and get involved. And I will note, I think you graduate a year before me as stuff at law school. So, and I did take a number. I was a day student, but I did take a number of evening classes so I could try to only come into Boston two days a week. But I crossed paths a few times in the hallway. So thank you for serving. Great, thank you, Mr. Heard, Mr. Diggins. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I can't believe Mr. Heard skipped the tough reference to me. So, it's like, he- I didn't see that one too, but I didn't want to overload her. Got to, you know, and I'm sure he, and Mr. Diggins and Mrs. Mohan, I mean, appreciate your law credentials a lot more than I do. I mean, I really don't know legal stuff that much, but it really is impressive being and thanks to me. And this may be something that Tom Beattie has to deal with, but maybe my recollection is wrong, but one deficiency I see me regarding staff is paternity leave, being, I'd like to see us do something about that. But once again, I think that's for the town meeting to take up. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. Thank you, Mr. Diggins. Mr. Helman. Thank you. Thank you for stepping up. You have a very impressive resume. It's clear that you have a passion for the work you're redoing. So we appreciate it and I wish you the best. Great, thank you, Mr. Helman. This is Mohan. Thank you, Ms. Haas, for volunteering to do this. I'm definitely impressed with a lot of your MCAT, Mass Commission Against Discrimination experience that you've had in at least three of your different job roles as well as also being on, and I assume, as you said, you'll continue on the Equal Employment Opportunity Advisory Committee. I think that's a strength and something that we really need to build upon with the current committee that you'll be joining. And as well as with your other, just as important role on the Equal Employment Opportunity Committee, whatever information or appropriate under the law, sort of, I know one of the things that you've highlighted that I'm definitely interested in is diversifying the workforce. And I definitely, when appropriate, would be interested to see that bottom up or top down. I know it's kind of focused on projects, but that's just a particular interest of mine. It may come to fruition, it may not. So once again, thank you so much. You're welcome. I will say that the town is certainly doing quite a bit to try to diversify its workforce, specifically through its applicant pool. And I know that the committee that I'm currently on is certainly doing a lot of that work. Great. Thank you, Ms. Mahan. And yeah, I'm happy to support your nomination as well, Ms. Haas. And thank you for your willingness. I know you're going to be asked to go to work with the personnel board if you give a meeting in early December. So it's going to start right away. So I certainly appreciate your willingness to do this and the different perspective that you'll bring to the board. So on a motion by Mr. Herd, seconded by Mr. Diggins, Attorney Hyman. Mr. Herd. Yes. Mr. Diggins? Yes. Mr. Helmer. Yes. Mrs. Mahan. I will second the motion and the cute little doggie bathroom. Great. Mr. Diggins? Yes. So you have a missed call. Great. Thank you and best of luck. Okay. Item eight is board update on the status of Planned Improvements to Chestnut Street and Mystic Street. Adam Chapter Lane, Town Manager. Mr. Chapter Lane. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I've also invited Mr. Arata Mocker, DPW Director, to join us for this agenda item. If that's okay with the board, just to be on hand to answer any questions the board might have. I wanted to take this opportunity to proactively provide the board with an update on the status of this project. I know the board is well aware that frustrations about the pace or even lack thereof were expressed at the board's last meeting. And as we know, comments under open form create a difficult situation for us to really not be able to respond. So really responding tonight and providing an update I thought was very important. So I'd like to just provide a little bit of history and then talk about where I think things are headed. So to start, I know the board recalls that this matter was before the board at its meeting of June 21st earlier this summer. And at that meeting, the board approved tax recommended safety improvements and the 50 vote was contingent upon appropriate reconciliation with the federal aid project of 1987. And again, as the board recalls, that is pursuant to a grant agreement that the town had with both the federal government and the state for that section of the road which required any future changes to the road to be reviewed and approved by MassDOT. That was discussed that night at the hearing. Frankly, would have assumed at that point that it would be a formality but it was discussed that we would need to run those changes by MassDOT. We also talked that night about needing to identify funding for what could have ultimately will be a fairly good sized project to make all of the improvements to that roadway. I'll start by saying, I think we have identified adequate funding within the town's mobility improvements line item within the capital budget to be able to make these improvements. So I think we're on a good track there. So as we get closer and hopefully get closer to getting MassDOT approval, we should have the resources that we need from at least an expense point of view to get this done quickly after getting MassDOT approval. But back to the timeline, June 21st, the board approved the project. On July 7th, the town council, Mr. Hyme, initiated contact with the state in regards to the grant agreement and tax recommendations. The next day, MassDOT very quickly responded requesting a copy of the plans that had been prepared by TAC and approved by the board. On July 22nd, we formally provided those plans to MassDOT. On July 30th, at the request of MassDOT, the town engineer, Wayne Schwinnard, provided more information to MassDOT that they had been asking about in terms of the plans. During the period between July 30th and September, at the end of September, the town engineer tells me that he made several phone calls to his contacts at the MassDOT district office inquiring about the status of the review of this project. On September 27th, town engineer follows up via email with MassDOT and on November 9th, frankly, quite disappointingly, town engineer follows up with MassDOT once again and MassDOT responds asking if we can resend plans. That's the upsetting part. We do that immediately. And on November 16th, they respond saying that they will review and respond. During this intervening period, we have put up the no turn on red side, which was actually part of the initial grant agreement. And we have replaced or changed out the existing parking signs per the TAC recommendations, which are not really directly pursuant to this grant agreement. So I would express frustration that has taken this long. And I certainly understand the frustration expressed by residents. But I think we're back on the radar of MassDOT. I know representative Sean Garberley has had a conversation with me and I believe with Mrs. Mahan as well. And he informed me and my conversation with him that he'd already called the state to ask for their expedited review of these materials. So as soon as we get that review, we will begin some of the short-term implementation of the tax recommended plan. Some of the longer-term aspects will require the resurfacing of the roads. We won't be able to do that until the next construction season. But as soon as we do, again, as soon as we get this review and approval from MassDOT, we will be able to start putting some of the bollards in the road and creating a safer pedestrian environment as is recommended by TAC. So I guess with that, is there, Mike, is there anything you wanted to add, Biano, when I just shared with the board? No, I guess except that we are also looking to make that, there was a repair recommendation to the sidewalk at the entry of municipal parking lot. And we wanted to do that in conjunction with the road repaving, but we're gonna accelerate that as a asphalt repair just to get a more smooth surface until we can do a final project. Thank you, Mr. Chapter-Lane and thank you, Mr. Rademacher. I will now turn to the board for any questions or comments. Mrs. Mahan. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I wanna thank you and the town manager. I know who have been working on this as recently, I believe, as last Tuesday or Wednesday. So I do appreciate following up on that and I share your frustration of kind of being in the little hamster wheel going round and round and round. But I believe an end is in sight and one of the other things is I would ask either the chair and or the town manager to contact our colleagues. This may have already been done on the housing authority to see if there was anything planned. I know some people spoke to me about the Ghostbite Memoriam, if there was anything planned down there. And I told them from the town side, I wasn't aware of anything, but it certainly could be considered, but I didn't want to sort of overstep bounds or recreate something that may already be in the works. So if someone could just follow up with our counterparts at the housing authority. And I have a quick question. If I could, Mr. Chair and Mr. Chapter-Lane through you to our DPW director, Mr. Rademacher. Just because when we do hit the construction season and we can make some changes out there, I was just curious if any of those changes sort of included reconfiguring what when you're on the snow fighter, you refer to that area as a thousand islands because if you're on one of those rigs, it's really tight. Do any of the design plans sort of address that or will sort of the island topography make up still be the same? I think in conjunction with this proposal, we are also going to be looking at potential improvements to those of the island you referenced. So we are actively seeking consultant to look at both projects together holistically and make sure we don't do anything that would prohibit improvements to the islands. Okay, thank you. And I think Mr. Chair, where this is just an update from the town manager, there is no vote needed. That's right. Yeah, I think that's right. Thank you, Mrs. Mahan. Mr. Herd. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you, Mr. Chapter-Lane and Mr. Rademacher for the update. Yeah, we've heard about this a lot recently. And I think it's just really communication issues on our end that, and so I do appreciate the update. I think with all work, we'd rather be able to just go out and approve it and do it. And it's just not the case here. And when we have to go through a process, it would go through a process that doesn't involve the wonderful and expeditious people that work for the town of Arlington, it can get slower. So I think the frustrations that we've heard are reasonable and they've, been heard, they've landed. And we're gonna stay in communication with our state representatives, with the state, coming out the Massachusetts and with the residents of Arlington, with updates to make sure that this can get done as quickly as possible to implement the safety improvements that are needed in the stretch of the road here. So thank you. Thank you, Mr. Herd. Mr. Diggins. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So the way the ball got dropped is, I mean, yes, frustrated, it's very odd. And so I wanna work on this with some rep garbally and folks I know at MassDOT to find out why it happened this way. Because I mean, I think we need to understand why this happened so as to try and put in place, make sure that MassDOT puts into place needs some mechanism so it doesn't happen. Again, because it's that lack of response for about three months, I mean, I've been in that situation, I send an email, you don't wanna bang too hard because you don't want people to shut you down, but then you find out that then they want you to send it again, it's like, it's just so odd. So I'll see what I can do to find out. I mean, it's not like I can do more than anyone else, but try, it's another being able to try and get an explanation for this. So thanks for the investigation, but more so thanks for the update. And as you said, I mean, we're in a situation where we often can't respond, I mean, right away, but we do care. And so you're showing that, I mean, and as Mr. Greeley said, people do wanna have a response and we're giving them a response. It may not be what they want to hear, but it's not a response. So thank you once again. Thank you, Mr. Diggins, Mr. Helmuth. Thank you. Yeah, thanks, Mr. Tom Manager and Mr. Luttermucker for the update, for your responsiveness to the residents who have expressed their concern to us recently in their last meeting and over-repeated emails. They have every right to be frustrated just as we are, it's clear that you are too. And I appreciate the careful documentation of the efforts that we have made recently and that we're doing everything we can. So yeah, I would just echo what Mr. Diggins says that I think that the folks who have been before us should be very confident that this is on our radar that we care about this both as a policy board and also our town manager. And we will, all we can do is what we have now, when we're at now and move forward and I feel like we've done everything we can to be ready and to try to shake that loose at Mass Dot. And I hope that that is successful sooner than later. Thank you, Mr. Helmuth. Yeah, and I also wanna thank Mr. Chapter Lane for the update. We had talked about this before the meeting and he had laid out the steps that the town had taken to seek the approval and the frustration particularly on November 9th being asked to resubmit plans and thank Mr. Rademacher for being here tonight. And as we talked about there are some projects that we were able to move forward on that we didn't need approval from the state. This one, we do need the approval. We understand the frustration that people have expressed and we will double our efforts with the state for the town manager and working with Representative Garberly to see this through. So thank you for that update and with that I will move to the next agenda item which is open forum. Except in unusual circumstances any matter presented for consideration of the board shall neither be acted upon nor a decision made the night of the presentation in accordance with the policy under which the open forum was established. It should be noted that there is a three minute time limit to present a concern or request before I open it up to hands. We will be taking comment on item nine the discussion on 21 precincts. So if you have something other than the precinct the representing discussion now is the time to raise your hand if you want to be heard. All right, there are two hands raised right now. Okay. First hand is Paul Schlickman. Good evening Mr. Schlickman. Good evening my friends on the select board. You know, at the end of the year we're gonna celebrate the second anniversary of the death of my neighbor who was killed in that crosswalk. And this feels from my point of view this is more than a dropped ball. The person that the town charged with interfacing with the state adamantly is opposed to the mere existence of this crosswalk. And if you take a look at the TAC minutes and the recommendations, the select board this is clear. I cannot express with more passion the fact that this state agreement popped up at the last minute and that the no turn on red sign was in the agreement and it took two months after the select board's vote to get that sign installed. And that it's just not moving. And all of a sudden on November 9th we've discovered that the state lost it and wants it resubmitted. When the person who's interacting the state is opposed to this plan, please I hope that you have this on your agenda at every meeting and update on what's happening because as a elected official in this town as well I wanna know where to apply my political pressure and where to direct folks who are concerned about the safety of the people who cross the street next to my building, trying to get to Arlington Center. This is not something we can let slide. This is not something we can just ignore for a few months and then call up the state at the end of construction season and say, gee, what happened to that? Because the next excuse in December is going to be, oh, well, there's snow when it's winter and we can't do anything to spring. Please push, push, push, tell me what to do, tell Representative Garberley what to do, tell my neighbors what to do, what do we need to do to get this town to do something to make this happen rather than just point the fingers up to Appleton Street to District 4. Thank you. Mr. Schluckman, Linda Varona's next is. Okay. Can you hear me now? Yes, good evening, Ms. Varona. All right, I will try to be short and to the point. Yeah, hearing about these delays is frustrating. I wanna second Mr. Schluckman's comments. I have a quick question for Mr. Chapter Lane. I think I heard you say something about some no parking signs have been posted. Did I hear that correctly? Ms. Varona, on open forum, we don't have a Q&A, so if I can have the town manager reach out to you separately or you can- And you can follow up at another time. I thought I heard Mr. Chapter Lane say that there have been no parking signs posted. I'm not clear where they've been posted and when they were. If they're anywhere on Chestnut Street, people are ignoring them. So that means that parking enforcement needs to really get on those illegal parking people and let them know that this is no longer an available street parking place for them. That's the end of my comment. Thank you very much. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, the next hand is Marcy Beck and Ms. Joanne Preston is unable to raise her hand but is asking to speak via the Q&A after Marcy Beck. Okay, all right. So we'll take Ms. Beck next. Hi. Good evening, Ms. Beck. Hi, thank you very much for allowing me to talk and thank you for the update. I appreciate your effort and for giving us an update and I just, I hate to be a broken record but I just wanna ask that you please keep persisting, keep on mass dot and just please get the changes going with pedestrian safety changes going and don't let this slip. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you very much. And I believe Ms. Preston is next. I believe that's the last individual for open forum. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Can you hear me? Yes, I can. Good evening, Ms. Preston. Joanne Preston, Mr. Clay Drive. I wanna third what Paul said. You can't imagine, it was wonderful for Marcy to come and speak yet again, the daughter of the woman who was killed on Chestnut Street because among other things, the Transportation Advisory Committee said this street is too wide. It needs to have these pedestrian safety measures put in as soon as possible. From the very first, I've worked on this for almost two years and from the very beginning, the town engineer was totally opposed to it. He said, we take the walkway away and they'll just have to cross the street, some other street. It seems unbelievable to me that there's such a colossal problem with communicating between the town and mass dot. I just can't believe it. I really don't, especially since we got such opposition and the very person who was in charge of this was the very person who fought any kind of pedestrian safety measures for almost two years. I suggest you put somebody else in charge of getting in touch with mass dot. I think you might find some improvement and we still have 100 residents in Chestnut Manor which is part of the Arlington Housing Authority whose only way really to get to their church, to the stores, to the bus, to the parks is to cross Chestnut Street which TAC pronounced as being too dangerous. At the very beginning when I talked to the chief of police, chief said you would call the town manager and they would at least paint the crosswalk. So it might be more visible. As you might remember, Mrs. Duroso was killed crossing in the crosswalk by a car doing the speed limit. So I wish you would think seriously about my suggestions which is having another town official be responsible to get in touch with mass dot, whatever it is, which I also think is unbelievable but the fact that because we can no longer, it's been a total failure in terms of the town engineer being able to do this. And secondly, why not paint the crosswalk? You've redoing right next to it is Mentford Street. They've taken up the sidewalks, they've done everything there. All the construction equipment was right by Chestnut Street. So I would think a very simple thing to do would be to paint the sidewalk. So it's a little bit more visible to oncoming traffic. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Preston. Okay, that concludes Open Forum for this evening. Before we go to the next item, it's 855, I don't know if members would care for a three to five minute break or if we want to just go right into the next item. If anybody or go ahead. I'm fine with going ahead. If Ms. Mahai wants to take a break, I'm fine with that too, but... Can I just chew to three minutes? I just want to run down and fill my water glass. That's fine. So take a three minute break and that might slide to five minutes but then we will then move on to our next item. I will introduce the next item on the traffic rules and orders of the business, discussion and vote 21 precinct map, the reprecincting working group, Julie Brazil, town clerk. Would you like me to promote the three members of the working group or four? Yes. Yeah, that'd be great. Good evening, Ms. Brazil. Good evening to the board. When we get everyone here, we're gonna just do a very quick presentation just to review the whole process very quickly. So I'll go ahead and get the slides going and Jillian Harvey, our director of DEI, will kick us off. Good evening, Ms. Harvey. Hi, hi, everyone. Is that happening Monday night? Okay, that's why it's up. All right, I guess we'll get started. Thanks for letting us down. So going over some reprecincting goals we're fortunate enough to have right now more data, mapping tools and resources available to us. So the working group felt confident and able to set more ambitious goals than in previous reprecincting efforts. The information we have not only allows us to use the data in an advantageous way, but it can also be shared with the public through our interactive maps. In past processes, the degree of community input has been limited to say the least. And this is the first time that an extensive effort to gather community input has been incorporated into this process. And so the working group intentionally prioritized the transparency of this process and access to the tools and resources for residents. Despite the burdens of the overall reprecincting process, this is an opportunity enshrined in state law for municipalities to reflect on local concerns and create new precinct boundaries that take into consideration communities of interest. In simple terms, it's our responsibility and our duty to use the data that we have to determine which community members may be disadvantaged by the precinct boundaries and what new boundaries might be established. To that point, Arlington has adopted a very clear statement. Arlington values equity, diversity and inclusion. We're committed to building a community where everyone is heard, respected and projected. And at this time, I can tell you we're not living up to that commitment. We're just at the very beginning stages of committing to these values. And while the select board and town meeting have taken a number of votes in support of diversity, equity, inclusion, efforts and initiatives, actions also need to be followed by these verbal commitments. In the context of reprecincting, local elections need precincts to elect a representative town meeting whose purpose is to approve budgets, bylaws and zoning bylaws. Thus, from an equity perspective, the debate is best served by having fair representation of not only racial makeup, but also renters, users of public transportation and those who live in densely populated parcels. Our final recommended map takes the first step into using data, as we should, to inform the placement of the lines with a stated goal of increasing representation in some neighborhoods that are underrepresented now in conjunction with community input on natural neighborhood boundaries. So just gonna cover DEI within this process. So committing to diversity and inclusion is not just a one-time statement. It's not a thing we just do. We're not checking a box. It's a lifelong commitment that often requires difficult conversations and sometimes unpopular decisions to be made. My job here for this town and in this town is not to maintain the status quo. It's to provide guidance and expertise in areas where improvements can and should be made. And before I pass it to Julie, I do wanna just take a minute to revisit and frame for you the values that the town has committed to and to remind everyone of what the working group kept in the forefront of our mapping process over the last few months. So the first term, diversity. We're at the beginning of this work. It's not the end goal. It's not diversification. It's not recruitment. It's actual culture. It's building empathy and making everyone feel seen. It is capturing data and asking who is here and who is not here, who is represented and who is missing from the decision-making table. Diversity goes hand-in-hand with belonging and the sense of belonging is lacking for a number of community members in town. Belonging is the culture that's created to have all people feel welcome across any and all differences. And it's about advocacy and being able to communicate and name when someone's not being included, which then leads us into inclusion, which is participation. It's when diverse populations are actually involved in the decision-making process that impacts policies and practices. And inclusion takes place when we shift to centering marginalized groups and focus on making sure that they're involved and have a seat at the table. And then lastly, there's equity. And to be quite frank, we're pretty far away from achieving that. Not just here in Arlington, but across the country. Equity is the hardest part and every action and step we take should have the goal in mind of getting just a little bit closer to reaching equity. And so what we're talking about when we say equity is collaboration and the ability for, again, all voices to inform how policies, practices, and culture are shaped. Not just those voices that are better off. It's the understanding that because of the history of systemic racism and marginalization in this country that different people need different things. And it also requires an understanding that structures and systems that are currently in place or deliberately not in place, inhibit certain voices and certain people from participating in decision-making. So the shift to having to actually share decision-making power with others often feels like a loss of some sort. That's normal. It's completely normal. It's actually expected that with any change, community members are going to feel that they're losing something. But what working towards equity requires is a divestment from privilege and a willingness to sit with a sense of loss and discomfort just for a little bit because really you're not losing anything at all. You're actually just sharing and you're gaining more perspective and a wider range of input that allows all community members to be represented and have a sense of voice that is being heard and feel like they actually do belong at the decision-making table. And in this case, that table is town meeting. So the working group has made decisions that are exhibited in our recommended map that allow for some and certainly not all barriers to come down for residents and to open up more opportunities for improved representation among precincts for residents. Thank you, Jill, very much. I will quickly review the process and our recommendations. So I won't belabor much of this. We're all familiar with the standards for rebalancing the population numbers and the need to protect minority voting rights. Compact and contiguous is specifically defined as without protruding fingers or long tails. We have some precincts that are rectalinear as opposed to square and they flow along Mass Ave. But that makes sense given our geography and they are all contiguous. Finally, Jill just spoke to the problem of neighborhoods that lack full representation in town meeting because the precinct mixes a wide range of household characteristics and that risks diluting the proportion of households earning a lower income or households who rent in a precinct where higher income homeowners predominate. Our process, once the select board narrowed the discussion to a 21 precinct model and with the additional constraint of the house district line, the working group opted to focus on incremental changes that were in line with our equity goals rather than attempting a complete redrawing of the map. The Mass Ave corridor had been an initial focus on our earlier maps, so that was a starting place. And we retained the important general goal to create precincts that have similar demographic profiles internally and demographic profiles are not limited to just race. In terms of equity outcomes, the changes on the recommended map create precincts along the Mass Ave corridor where there would be fewer than 12 incumbent town meeting members, which indicates those areas are underrepresented in town meeting now. Not running against incumbents reduces the barrier for residents who want to run for town meeting and we don't discount the amount of work needed to support that outcome, nor can we guarantee it, but it is a step we can take to make space for new voices. Those precincts are part of the broader trend of higher concentrations of racial minorities along the Mass Ave corridor. So open town meeting seats in these precincts is also preferable from a racial equity standpoint. In other neighborhoods, we took for opportunities to draw precincts that are more similar internally across the range of demographic characteristics. And we can't achieve all of the goals in every precinct given the constraints. Our recommendation to the select board is to make incremental changes now that move us toward the goals rather than maintaining the status quo and assuming that we could find a perfect map 10 years from now. So summing up just a few of the details, our precinct eight and 10 use Gray Street as the dividing line, which conforms to the differences in the neighborhood characteristics. And there would be three openings for town meeting and precinct eight. Currently in precinct nine, the webcam neighborhood shares characteristics with precinct five and is already part of this Thompson school district. It is also separated from the proposed precinct nine by the natural geographic boundary of the Mount Pleasant Cemetery. Moving that neighborhood into precinct five, let us define precinct nine more clearly as a Mass Ave corridor precinct and precinct nine will have 10 incumbents. Precinct 17 is a Mass Ave corridor precinct now and there would be one seat open in this precinct. Precincts 13 and 15 see modest increases in some racial minorities. On the current map precincts 11 and 15 both include a range of household profiles by creating new precincts 11 and 13 that are both more similar internally. We leave precinct 15 with that higher pluralism and that reduces the number of precincts with blended profiles by one. And in each map we have one contested town meeting raise. A review of where finance committee members live on both maps shows the two maps have similar impacts. There are always a few members representing a precinct they don't live in. In both cases, we will have three members living in precinct five and we can only allow for two. So only one of the two members living in precinct five and serving a different precinct could be reappointed. Some members would represent different precincts and they would live in different precincts but the short answer is that 20 of the 21 current members could continue to serve. So tonight we take that penultimate step as you vote to approve a map. Adam Korowski will then transmit the files for the map to the state and they will send us a package that you will need to review next week and that final vote will approve the underlying list of census blocks and a written description of each boundary. The local election district review commission will review our map and materials and approve them for our use for the next 10 years. All right, that's our presentation. So. Thank you, Ms. Brazil, but thank you, Ms. Harvey. I wanna also acknowledge Ms. Linema here tonight. Kelly Linema, Mr. Korowski, the four members of the working group. What I propose doing is starting with comments from members then taking comments from the public and then coming back to the members and I will start this evening with Mr. Helmuth. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you to the group for the presentation and for all your work. I'd like to start with a question, Mr. Chair, I could through you perhaps to the town council just in response to some feedback. And I also wanna thank the public for communicating with us. We've heard it, I've heard a diversity of views on these maps and I'm grateful for it. But one point that has come up quite a few times is could we do reprecincting somewhere between now and 10 years from now out of cycle of the decennial census? And I wonder if the town council through the chair if you approve, you know, could address that and I may have a follow up question for the clerk after that. Yes, Attorney Heim. So I'd like this answer to be a little bit more simple than it is, but the shortest version is a yes, but so the town cannot avail itself of this same process that we're in right now to accomplish reprecincting. What the town can do is it could engage in a process where reprecinct is accomplished by special legislation. You wouldn't be submitting a map to the local election district review commission and the secretary in quite the same way. You'd be submitting it first to town meaning the authorization to get special legislation and then you'd be submitting it to the legislature and the governor to get it approved. There's one really important caveat on all that. You can't change the, especially in this cycle because the legislature has already approved legislative districts. You cannot change the precincts for the purpose of voting in your state and federal elections. So if you changed a precinct in between now and the next decennial census, you'd essentially be developing two maps. You would have a precinct map for local elections and then you'd have a precinct map for state and federal elections. I know that I don't wanna go on for too long because there's some complicated reasons why this is the case that involves some conflicting laws and the secretary of state's interpretation of chapter 54. If folks want to talk about that again, but that's the basic answer is it's possible, but it is complicated and it comes with one big important caveat. Thank you, that's very helpful. Mr. Chair, if I could ask through you if the clerk has anything to add to that on the more practical end of the question of, well, can we just do this anytime? Why couldn't we just do this in a year or two? Because I appreciate the intent of the people who are suggesting that we take more time. Certainly, Ms. Brazil. Sure, thank you. Yes, it's hard to wrap my head around the logistics of having two different maps for two different elections. I'm not sure the current state of the law would help us make sense of that in terms of requirements for communicating with voters. If your precinct changes and we have to notify you all the time of where your polling location is, that's chaos. And of course, we also organize the street list, parts of the street list are published by precinct. So I think trying to manage maps where we're flopping back and forth would be unmanageable. I don't know if you could manage that. Yeah, I think that's fair. So that's helpful, thank you. So I wanna offer just a few thoughts. I wanna hear from my colleagues and I wanna hear from the public before I offer, I think in the second round, I think I'm prepared to make a motion and have further discussion. But just to frame this in my mind, I've long with my colleagues have spent a lot of time thinking about this. And I know that it has been an unusual process. There's been a lot of iterations. It's been compressed and it's been late through factors beyond anyone in the town's control. But I'm really comfortable with it. I'm comfortable that the working group has done its job and presented us with two clearly different alternatives and left it to the people who decide, which is the board, what our policy objectives are. That's our job. And I think that they have served us well in giving us two contrasting views that I really believe reflect the contrasting points of view in the community. Even though these maps, these particular maps tonight are a couple of weeks old, we've had several weeks of conversation around various other kinds of maps. And they've really all along been two flavors. There's been these sort of like do the minimum or really look at do we wanna make changes? And so, I want the public to know that at least this is like where a member feels confident that we understand how residents feel about this. It doesn't make a decision any easier. It's a tough decision. But I feel like for me, there has been enough process and to know where the public is. And I think the public is divided and that's healthy and that's normal. A few points of confusion that I have resolved myself through my own continuing conversation with officials. And I think some folks are under the impression that this would change school districts. Neither map does has any effect on school districts at all. Earlier on, there was some concern that this would have a really, one map would have a bigger effect on the finance community membership than the other. And I think a couple of independent analyses have shown that that effect is very, very, very small. So that I don't believe there's a significant difference worth swaying the decision about in that regard. The town council has a memo that is attached to the agenda items that addresses another concern I've heard, which is that one of the maps might be in danger of being overturned by the local election district review commission. And we have a good town council. I trust his legal advice that we are really can proceed with either map according to our policy goals without fear of one of those being overturned. And I think I'll stop there. For me, the bottom line is, for the central question for me is should, the changes of the recommended map is proposing, likely to work, are they likely to be effective between now and the next 10 years when we do this regular process, will they make it easier for the makeup of town meaning to be, to more closely resemble the diversity of the people who live here? And if we believe that they do, then I think that we should weigh the cost. And so those are the two decisions that we think we have to make. So I'll stop there. I'll hold off on the rest of my thoughts and a potential motion until we have to hear more from the public. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Helmuth. Mrs. Mahan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I wanna thank everyone who's either come to a forum in person or not, or answer a questionnaire about this. And a lot of the questions, queries that I have had, Mr. Helmuth, my colleague has already put out there. And here's my sort of worry, worry in three steps. I worry three steps forward. Having grown up in a family, we never owned a home. We lived in a monotony manner. I'm down there a lot. And precinct one is one of the precincts that you would hope to see even when I was growing up there, more diversity, more representative of the area down there. And here we are 45 years or 40 years, whatever, later. And it's still prevalent in terms of, I don't wanna say the psyche, Ms. Harvey could probably give me the more correct terms, but if you're a renter here in Allington, whether you're a minority ethnicity or your economic status puts you as a renter and or even more, it seems in terms of my real life experience, which going down monotony manner seems to continue today is that my only concern is if we create precincts and then the people that we're hoping will run, actually do run. And I'm just putting this out there because to have the conversation and sometimes it's uncomfortable and that's a good thing. We can listen and do better, but I think the town starting with myself, but others really needs to not only speak the words and the language to people who can barely afford to rent in Allington, who lived down a monotony manner and perhaps other Arizona, terrorist other places like that, can not only speak to them and get an understanding across, but there's a trust issue there. I know when I lived in monotony manner, we had very limited resources, nothing from the town and there were some opportunities available, not like that, a couple from the state, but it's sort of a psyche I see prevalent today that if you are a renter or you live in monotony manner or other private institutions like that, you generally have learned that or you have the impression that you shouldn't ask for any more help or maybe shouldn't ask for something that's available that you're fair share because something negative could come out of that or it's really not gonna happen for you. So I mean, I don't know if Ms. Harvey can speak to this, I don't know if I'm kind of hitting on, but I'm just saying that here's my concern that we, if we did not do the limited and then continue to study this in the year two or three and did the recommended just by opening up that opportunity is already with a majority of people having lived it that really does do not trust that they're wanted or will be accepted to that. I don't know if Ms. Harvey, maybe if you could just, if I could Mr. Jethry, maybe just like a minute, just laugh back on that. And maybe it's, you can tell me I'm really far field and I don't get it. Go ahead Ms. Harvey. Yeah, so what I think you're speaking to is a sense of internalized oppression and that you are stuck in the bubble that people put you in. That's part of what we're trying to break. So that sense of belonging that I was talking about, I've been doing some small focus groups around town in the last few weeks and there is a significant lack of sense of belonging. And so opportunities like this where folks who have never had the opportunity to be heard are able to, that's also on us to be able to provide them with the resources and the training and the guidance of how time government works because a lot of people also don't know that to make them feel welcome because a lot of folks will look at this process and say, I don't want in because it's not for me but that needs to change. So it's not gonna change if we don't try to make it happen. So it's a matter of opening up doors, inviting people, making them feel like they do belong and that it's not for someone else to make choices for them that they do belong at that decision-making table. So that's all internalized oppression because it's years of being told you're not. You don't belong here, but in fact you do. Does that help to answer your question? No, no, it definitely does. And I think not just this working group but this board, now the boards and committees and commission, especially as hopefully COVID is sort of something that's in the back of our minds to be concerned about that. I think we need to do a lot more outreach on that because I'm not saying that I know Ms. Harvey and others have definitely been doing due diligence to reach out to those populations but speaking for myself, it doesn't happen at a meeting. It really takes more time. And my biggest fear is that if we put something in place and we had all these empty town meeting member seats because I don't see that we're there yet, I think. But I'd like to also hear from my colleagues and take my experience and maybe it's a little better than it was when I was a little kid growing up as a renter and down with the manner and I'm just overthinking it. So thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mrs. Mohan, Mr. Diggins. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm gonna keep it short for now. I mean, I'll have a lot to say later on but it's gonna come as no surprise to folks mean as the four one on the first vote that I'm leaning very strongly in the direction of the recommended version and it's, I'm not entrenched. I have taken votes and regretted the votes. I mean, we'll probably hear about that when we do the next hearing on the marijuana shops. But in this case, the last case being I took that vote and I felt very good about it. And the more time went on, I felt even better about it, especially when I had to explain it to people, me. So that's where I am. And I'll have a whole lot more to say about it when we come back. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Diggins. Mr. Herd. In vision, Mr. Diggins, that you might have some company on this one. I wanna thank the working group, our town clerk, Ms. Alina, Ms. Harvey and Mr. Krosky for all the work. I said this at the last meeting that my head spins thinking about the amount of data that you have to go through in order to come up with these maps, both the limited change and the recommended change. And I don't think enough can be said for the work that you've put into this and the thought that you've all put into this. I wanna thank you all for meeting with me last week to have a little, have a more focused discussion to answer some of the questions that we had. And I think you all know I came into that meeting and I opened it up by saying that I still am not convinced or I still not 100% sure as to the rationale for it. And we've had a good discussion for about why, where the rationale comes in. You know, we've had a lot of people reach out to us about this and a lot of people are concerned because change is hard. And when significant changes come to something like our precincts, people always approach it with a great deal of skepticism. But I think the explanation that I received and I think have been thrown out to a lot of the members of the public who have reached out to the working group were pretty persuasive to me. And Ms. Harvey, if you don't mind if I could put you on the spot for a minute. We had as part of that conversation, Ms. Harvey, had a really honest and raw discussion about the current efforts in Arlington as far as diversity, equity and inclusion and particularly some of the conversations that she's had with people of color in town in her small focus groups that she referred to. And it reminded me that, you know, we can sit here as a board with, you know, we have a town in town management. We are mainly white individuals who sit here and repeatedly say how diversity, equity and inclusion is a goal in Arlington and we take a lot of stock in the fact that Arlington is very progressive town and our citizens are constantly supporting the goal of increasing diversity and equity and inclusion. But we have to put words to action and this type of change is something that puts us directly in line with that goal. And again, change is hard. And in this particular instance, it's even more difficult because if we adopt the recommended change, there are certain members of the town meeting and of the town that feel immediate impacts and they can characterize it as negative impacts that they have to bring around for town meeting. They might lose a spot in finance committee and might lose the spot in town meeting. But we can't just, because of the individual interests, not move forward with the goal that we've espoused over and over again to increase our efforts for diversity, equity and inclusion. And I think Ms. Harvey's discussion that I had with her was very persuasive that this is a real, it's a small step. Nobody, I don't think anybody here is saying that this is automatically gonna change the makeup of town meeting, but it is a step in the right direction that sends a signal out to some of our underrepresented populations in town that we're serious about inviting them to the table to participate in town government. So that is certainly, I'll listen to the public and obviously we'll always take their comments to heart and use it and make our decision. But I think again, change is hard, but I think with the work that you put into this and the efforts by the working group, I think the product that we are seeing is something that is pushing us in the right direction as a town. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Heard. Yeah, and I also wanna thank the working group. They have met with us, they've answered questions, they've had the public forums and we have to acknowledge we have received a lot of input from the public and a lot of questions, a lot of concerns. And we take those questions and comments very seriously as well. And before I open it up to the public, I do wanna say a couple of additional things just on the limitations that the working group had to deal with here and that had to do mainly with representative Rogers district. And so some people will look at these precincts and say, okay, I wish you would change something here or there. And just remember that precincts two, four, six, eight, 10 and 12 are all in representative Rogers district. So to the extent that earlier on there was discussions about maybe going to either side of Mass Ave with a precinct, that's not possible. Certainly not possible from precinct 10 or for a precinct 14 downward. And that's a real limitation in terms of the flexibility. The other thing is the census came back at 46,308 residents in Arlington. When you divide that by 21 precincts, that's 2,205, 2,205 is the target number for every precinct with a 5% deviation either way you have a range of 2,095 to 2,315. So as you look at some of these maps and I know people have reached out to us with concerns about, okay, why is this a certain shape or that's the limitation here in terms of working with numbers. And I'm gonna save some of my comments for later after we hear from the public. We did have a good discussion last week. I did have a good discussion last week with the working group. There was a couple of concerns I raised to them at that meeting. I'm gonna share them now and then hold off on specific comments later. And one of the concerns that I had a smaller one but one of the limitations on a precinct is to avoid fingers or areas that extend. And I had a conversation with Ms. Brazil about when you look at the revised precinct 11 and where it interacts with precinct 13, the Hutchinson Road, Windmill Lane, that is a finger that extends up from precinct 11 on the edge of precinct 13. I think maybe later, Ms. Brazil, I think you told me you looked at that to see what type of change that that would be. Mr. Chapterling, if you have that, I have a Hutchinson Ave, Windmill Lane, it's a small thing, but I just wanna bring that up and then one other larger point. So here's precinct 11, the big open area is the Winchester Country Club. Yeah, that slide right there. Okay. So the area that you see going up Hutchinson Road from Morningside up to Oldham, that would be in precinct 11, it used to be in precinct 13. There's nobody living on the country club land. So that was a concern that I raised in terms of is that something that is so separate from the rest of the precinct that could cause difficulty. And let's hold off Ms. Brazil on a response to that. That was one area that I had, just a comment on, we heard a lot from the neighborhood and the Webb Cowett neighborhood. And to me, keeping that neighborhood together, whether it's in precinct five or precinct nine is paramount. But one of the things that I don't wanna call it a distortion of the precinct, but Mount Pleasant Cemetery, if the precinct had been redrawn to include that portion of Mount Pleasant Cemetery on the Medford side, this is what the precinct would look like. There'd be no change in the population. So we received some emails, whether this would still be a compact precinct or precinct nine, whether it would or wouldn't. I don't know, Mr. Kurowski, if you are limited in terms of how you draw it, but just visually, again, it's not a big substantive point, but if you look at precinct five this way, to me, Webb Cowett fits nicely, that neighborhood into precinct five, it is a Thompson School District. I just wanted to show what that would look like and again, geographically. My more major point is a concern I had with precincts eight and 10. And this is a concern both with the limited map and with the recommended map. And the concern I raised to the working group here is, and it was a concern we received from a town meeting member, Ms. Pyle, about school districts and how things fall within other precincts and with this precinct here. And precinct 10 is mainly a bracket district, precinct eight is mainly a bishop district. When we look at the working group's recommendations for precinct five, for example, on Webb Cowett, one of the reasons to include the Webb Cowett neighborhood in precinct five is because it's part of the Thompson District. When we look at the changes for precincts 11, 13 and 15, one of the reasons cited was that the lines approximate the buffer zones and the districts for stratton and bishop. When I look at the recommended changes and I understand everything that was looked at, I see that going from Mass Ave to Route two is more of the flow for precincts eight and 10. And part of that is this three roads that go from Mass Ave to Route two, Highland Ave, Jason Street essentially does where it ends and Pleasant Street. And my concern here is not choosing one or the other, but to be honest, as I look at precinct eight and I don't know if this was looked at, when you look at the area in the lower right, when you go to the end of Jason Street, when you look at Pleasant View and you look at some of the other streets towards the back end of precinct eight, they feel like they belong in the precinct eight neighborhood to me and maybe some of the other areas as we look up at Mass Ave could have been looked at between precincts eight and 10. So I'm not particularly feeling that I'm comfortable with the limited map or the recommended map for precinct eight or precinct 10 because I think maybe there's another way to look at this and precinct eight and 10 is unique, 16 and 18 is unique as well, whereas no matter what happens here between the two precincts, you don't have to go to other precincts to make a change. The only other place that happens is with 16 and 18 where there's a couple of streets that were moved and I believe the working group said that they could have chosen another block near the Dallin School and still been able to fit it in. So I wanna raise that as a concern, talk about it later on when we come back and perhaps right now it's the best time to hear from the public and then come back to the members on that. So Mr. Chapellein, if there is a, their hands up, why don't we do that? Now bear in mind, we've heard from dozens of people, we have read the emails that people have sent in, we've taken the phone calls and I certainly don't want it to deprive anybody the opportunity to be heard this evening, but if it is something that you've already presented to us, it's just in the interest of time, I just ask that maybe you cite what you sent to us and try to move through this because it's quarter of 10 and we've got a lot to do, but it's an important subject so I don't wanna deprive anybody the opportunity. So why don't we go to the list now? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The first name is Annie LeCourt. Good evening, Mr. LeCourt. Good evening, Mr. DeCourcy. Are you able to hear me okay? I'm leaning into my mic. Yes, yeah, no, we can't hear you just fine. Great, I'm gonna take two sentences, Steve, to just say that the tax setting evening is always my favorite evening on board of selectments and you have no idea how much I'm gonna miss Bob and I'll tell you that story offline sometime. So I just want to say, having been to several of the forums and having talked to many people about this issue before you with repressink thing that I support the map recommended by the repressink thing working group. I understand the concerns others have expressed about the disruption some of us will experience if we adopt the recommended map. That said, we've been drawing precincts in Arlington for a couple of centuries. I doubt that there have always been 21 precincts or that there has never been a time when the boundaries changed substantially. There's nothing magic about the current status quo. It's just that when we went through this process in 1990, 2000 and 2010, the decades I know about because I was living here, not much changed. So there is now an assumption that minimal change is a goal. This year, we're looking at this process through an equity lens. We asked the repressinking working group, including our director of diversity, equity and inclusion, our GIS director and the assistant director of planning to look at the data and assess whether we might increase equitable representation on the issues of community concern by drawing the lines with that goal in mind. The result is the recommended map. I hear the concerns of those who are not sure that the equity gains we might achieve with the recommended map are worth the associated disruption. As an information systems professional myself, I believe that people are looking for a certainty that is not available. I work with nonprofits all the time that are struggling to find the metrics that will tell them if they have made progress on the issue they're trying to affect. Often they have to choose metrics, collect data and see what the correlations are before they know if the data will really answer the questions they are trying to ask. Further, I can produce reports and visualizations for them and I can advise them on how to collect the data but I cannot tell them what the data means because I'm not the expert on what they do, they are. I would suggest that we won't know if any map we adopt increases access to political power for those who are currently underrepresented until we try something different, something that disrupts the status quo. And I believe that the re-precincting working group members in particular, the director of diversity, equity and inclusion are the experts and the people best place to understand what the data means and how to use it to achieve our goal of increased equity. Still, if we don't know for sure that we are looking at the right measures or if the change resources result and what we hope for, why should we do this? If we're committed to an equitable future for Arlington, then it needs to start now. We need to change the old assumption that we set this map based on the least possible change to the status quo and create a new tradition that says that looking at this through an equity lens is the standard process, not the exception. I understand that this will make some of us uncomfortable. I will need to run again for a town meeting seat even though I ran last year, I will have a new group of constituents I will need to reach out to and so I will have to work harder than I did last year. If we are committed to making decisions and setting policies with equity in mind, we need to be prepared for discomfort. We need to consider the larger picture and not just our own narrow interests. We need to take chances. We need to choose the recommended map. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. LeCourt. I believe next, is Allen Linoff is next, Mr. Chappell? Correct. Good evening, Mr. Linoff. Good evening. I'll try to be very brief. I think that the members of the working group that spoke made a very good case for why the recommended map is advantageous in terms of the potential for representation in Arlington. And the kind of cost that's been alluded to certainly town meeting members in some precincts are going to have more work to do in this coming election than they would have otherwise. They're gonna have to reach out to constituents, potential constituents that they haven't been in touch with before. And while I certainly have some sympathy for the extra work involved, I think having those kinds of conversations is good for the town. It's good for the kind of representation that will come out of it. And I also recognize that some incumbents when the dust settles on those elections will no longer be having an opportunity to serve in town meeting. And some of those people have invested a lot of time and energy in a town meeting. But the objective of the precincting is it cannot be to protect the incumbents. It has to be to provide the best potential for representation for the town as a whole. And I think that the recommended precinct boundaries are the way that the select board should go. And I encourage you to adopt that. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Leno. Next speaker is Carl Wagner. I'm here to start video. Good evening, Mr. Wagner. Hi, can you hear me okay? Yes, we can. Thanks, I'm Carl Wagner, Edge Hill Road. I live in precinct 11. I'm not actually a town meeting member. I want to thank the members of the working group and the new town clerk for the process that they've been undertaking. And specifically, I'd like to thank you, the members of the select board for all the work that you've been putting through in this. It's actually a very big deal. And as much as the DEI coordinator spoke to the importance of us improving our racial and other protected status membership and involvement in town meeting and in all aspects of town life, an independent review has shown that the limited map and the so-called recommended map are no different in what they would do to those ends. Furthermore, I'd like to point out that the word recommended is recommended by four people on that group. And it would potentially change things for hundreds if not thousands of people via their representatives at town meeting because the recommended option is only recommended as opposed to limited because a limited option came in when citizens found out that there needed to be a plan B to the so-called recommended option. So I'd ask members of the select board to consider that what is being proposed by four people is going to cause a huge change if the recommended option goes through versus a lesser change. Now you might say, well, if we need to make this change and it made a positive effort, it made a positive goal in the areas that have been discussed, then we should do it, but they're not going to make the changes that we're looking for as far as racial and other protected groups. So what are they gonna do? They're going to cause strange shapes to form in what otherwise was sort of neighborhood-based precincts and they're going to kick more town meeting members out and that should be a real problem because we don't overthrow elections. We have to respect elections even though I'm not a town meeting member, I don't think somebody else should be kicked out so that I can have an easier chance to run for my precinct. And I attended the Civic Engagement Forum on the 15th of November or Monday ago and I was really shocked to hear members of the working group say that the goal of this action was actually to make space to get rid of town meeting members, that is, I'm parenthetically saying, to make it easier for new people to get into town meeting. The problem is that the citizens of Arlington, elected those town meeting members. The problem is that even though I'd like to get into town meeting, somebody got in ahead of me, they were elected and it's wrong to have a larger removal of those people than a smaller if we can do that. That's why we should go for the limited choice. And I would point out to you that, although I don't think your citizen commentary and correspondence received PDF file on your website is complete, all the members of the public who wrote in asked you to take the limited choice. I'd also point out that in the so-called Civic Engagement Forum where less than 25 members of the public attended, including me, all the members of the public said, please go with the limited choice except for one. So finally, I guess I have to use a phrase that they didn't like in the Civic Engagement Forum, but it really could seem to the election board like this is gerrymandering, like we're changing districts when we're not gonna be achieving anything more than we would in the so-called limited change if we went with recommended. We shouldn't do that therefore. We should choose to do limited changes when we're kicking out people who are elected duly. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Weger. And just one point on the correspondence that you made, there is additional correspondence that will be added to the record that did come in more recently. And Ms. Maher and I spoke about that earlier today. So that will be added. Okay, who's next, Mr. Chapter Lane? Paul Schlickman. Okay, good evening again, Mr. Schlickman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you members of the select board. I represent precinct nine, which is a perfectly sized precinct, but it's surrounded by precincts that are out of compliance. Minimal change or preferred change doesn't impact me. No matter what you're doing, I'm gonna have to run again next year. So if we're gonna make changes, let's make sure the change is changing to do the right thing. Some history. Arlington was developed as a streetcar suburb and the pattern of development was from the streetcars along Massachusetts Avenue and Broadway and it moved outward. The result is that there is a density of development along that central strip of town along the Avenue and Broadway. Smaller lots, multi-unit housing centered along the Avenue. This part of town has an urban field and more diverse neighborhoods. My 47 Unicondo building is one block from the Avenue right in the center of town. It may not be majority-minority now, but if it isn't, it certainly is trending. And in my precinct, a low-income senior in a housing authority building lost her bid for reelection because she could not afford a mailing to compete with more privileged candidates. Suburban development, larger lot sizes, single-family homes were the last to be built and they're the farthest from the Avenue. They are more wealthy, they're less diverse neighborhoods. That's just the pattern of our town. And if we take a look at precincts eight and 10 as the example, it is currently drawn with this North-South squiggle on artificial boundary that is poorly defined and looks like a gerrymander. And in fact, if you don't know that neighborhood really, really well, you don't know where that boundary is. And most of us refer to what is eight and 10 because there's no really coherent knowledge of how that splits. But using Gray Street as a divider, this separates some of our highest-value single-family homes south of Gray Street from the more dense and diverse housing to the North. Drawing a North-South line through eight into 10, devalues voters closer to the Avenue the way it's done right now. Minimal change is another word for status quo. Minimum change preserves is a bias for the more suburban neighborhoods. Minimal change does not advance the cause of equity. If you consider the current town meeting members and FINGCOM members in making the decision, it is the exact same thing as efforts to gerrymander state legislators in congressional districts in which office holders choose their voters. You know, if we have to make the changes, let's do the right thing. I support the clerk's goals. Her preferred map and the preferred map of this committee is the right thing to do. And I hope you have the courage to adopt it. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Schuchman. Next speaker is Lynn Bishop. Good evening, Ms. Bishop. Hi, Chairman. Hi, board. Hi, working group. This is my first time at Blackboard. I will be very brief. My name is Lynn Bishop. I live on Windmill Lane. I live on the Windmill Lane side that is currently increasing 13 and will continue to be increasing 13 in the recommended map, which is the map that I support. Even though I will need to run again and even though I just ran, I strongly support the values that are put forth in the recommended plan. I think that I moved to Arlington and I've lived in Arlington because of the way that we have celebrated diversity, equity, inclusion, and I think the recommended map goes a tiny bit towards those goals. So thank you very much. Thank you, Ms. Bishop. Next on the list is Ian Goodsell. Good evening, Mr. Goodsell. Hey, how are you? I'm good, actually. One question, I don't know if you're using your phone or but your sideways right now on the screen. I don't know if you can tilt the, there we are, perfect, no, no problem. Okay, yep, sorry about that. Thank you for letting me know. That was kind of funny. I just wanted to say thanks for letting me talk here. I think the working group did a great job. I think it's a thankless job and it's gonna make some people mad regardless of what we end up having. I am a town meeting member. I'm in precinct 11. Regardless of which option you take, I'm gonna have to choose whether to run again if I do. And if you look at the recommended changes map, I think it makes sense, especially like district 11, I mean precinct 11, it looks like it's kind of lining it up more along the Bishop School District. It might even make myself a little bit easier to get re-elected, because I was actually very friendly with some Bishop families that were just over the line in precinct 13. The one thing I was just not clear about from the presentation is that like out of the precincts that you're gonna change and the recommended changes map, I think there were 11 of them. That represents about a little bit over half the town, like maybe 24,000 people. And I'm wondering in the limited changes map, you mentioned that 11 census blocks will have their polling location changed. And with the recommended change map, I'm wondering like it's gotta be, like I'm just not very clear because it didn't say in the presentation like how many people you're expecting to have their polling location changed. One of the things I think that we should consider is the number of the people that are participating in elections. Typically in an off presidential year, it's very low to begin with. And I'm just really concerned that if we do make this, this quick change to the, without prepping the public about where their polling location is gonna be changed to, to a significant amount of the town, that's going to decrease voting even further. But again, it was a tough job. And I think you guys did, you did, I really respect what you're trying to do. I think what you did made a whole heck of a lot of sense, but I'm just concerned about the change of, the drastic change of polling locations for a majority of the town. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Goodsell. And just for the public's benefit, no matter what we decide here on the map, the select board will decide where the polling location's on. That's a job that we would have after the fact. And there are, Precinct 15 comes to mind that that would not be outside of its district if it's precinct or outside the location, if it was adopted. So, but that is something, not really a discussion for tonight, but something for the select board to consider later on down the road. Okay, with that, Mr. Chaplin, who is next? Next speaker is Alex Bagnell. Good evening, Alex Bagnell. Good evening, Mr. Bagnell. Good evening, Steve. Alex Bagnell, Wyman Street. When a town has a director of diversity, equity, inclusion, and that director's an integral part of a process that can have a significant effect on representation, we should believe her and take her recommendations. We should not put the discomfort of those firmly ensconced in the existing power structure over those recommendations. To choose the least change map, sends a powerful message that while we can talk a good game about DEI, we don't have the courage to act and make real and perhaps uncomfortable change. I urge you to choose the working groups recommended repressing team map. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Bagnell. Next speaker is Elizabeth Pyle. Good evening, Ms. Pyle. Hi. Thanks very much for recognizing me tonight. And I'd like to thank Selikman D'Corsi for acknowledging the problems with precinct eight and 10, which is where I live and where I'm a town meeting member. And I wish that there could be a change with regard to those two precincts on the map and the way that the reprecincting working group is proposing to divide them because it really doesn't make a lot of sense to divide them north and south because it separates the school districts from the precincts. And living in this area, the natural flow is from Mass Ave up to Route 2 and it's not an east-west orientation. I do support very much the idea of increasing diversity on town meeting, but before we make major changes to the map, I'd like to know what outreach has been done for the apartment districts. And I think that outreach would be the way to go to encourage more people to run for town meeting from different income levels and to encourage minority populations to run for town meeting. And I don't think that the recommended map is gonna do what we think it's going to without that outreach and there's gonna be a lot of disruption as a byproduct. I don't see in-company in town meeting as being an impediment to new people coming in. I think that our town meeting elections are not contested because people don't want to be on town meeting because it's a big commitment. And I don't think in-company is what's keeping people out. I think if we encourage people to run from different populations, we'll get different populations on town meeting and where there are these problems that haven't had time to be fixed like splitting eight and 10 horizontally rather than vertically or east-west rather than north-south, I just don't see that the benefits of the recommended map outweigh the drawbacks to community disruption. And I would urge you to vote for the limited map. So thank you very much. Thank you, Ms. Pyle. Next speaker is Judith Gorber. Good evening, Ms. Gorber. Hi, Judith Gorber, precinct four. I would like to agree with a lot of what has been said by previous speakers in favor of the recommended plan. I think it makes a lot of sense to have more districts with more unified interests. And a lot of that means having the massive corridor and the other corridors more together. Having the last couple of weeks we had a housing production plan meeting with a lot of really great ambitious goals and a lot of those goals are gonna need to happen through town meeting. And so in order that to happen, we need all the voices to be represented in town meeting. Obviously this itself is not going to make the difference. It's like once it's one small change, but it's a logical change. I think it's the right thing to do. I do wanna point out making the town meeting changes is gonna take a lot of community organizing. And there has been a lot of great work done over the past couple of years by some local community organizing groups. I do really appreciate that this is a compromise between the previous plan which required everybody to run because I think the groups that have been working to get new folks interested in town meeting, they've been doing a lot of work on this and to throw everyone back in the pot would, I think lose a lot of the progress that has been made in getting new voices to town meeting. So I do appreciate this compromise. I'm in favor of the recommended plan and thanks for letting me speak. Have a great night. Thank you, Ms. Garber. You as well. Next name on the list is Don Seltzer. Good evening, Mr. Seltzer. Good evening. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Don Seltzer, Irving Street. I live in Precinct 8. The select board has before two maps. One proposes conservative changes. The other more sweeping changes with the expectation that it will result in the election of more renters and fewer homeowners to town meeting. But to directly address Mr. Helmuth's question, is that the likely outcome? Suppose we were able to create a precinct in which renters predominated and for good measure, we make it racially diverse and we also make it the lowest household income precinct in town. As it turns out, we have already run this experiment for many years in precinct one. It has a renter majority. It has the lowest household income and is the most racially diverse population in town. The opportunity is already there for those residents. So how many renters and how many homeowners has it actually elected as its town meeting members? The answer is just one renter. All the others who have been elected are homeowners. This completely refutes their working group hypothesis. They won't achieve any equality equity goals and it's needlessly disruptive. It is time to move on to the other map for a less disruptive option. Let's look at the numbers for precincts, eight and 10 where I live. We're being told that we do not elect enough town meeting members who live near Mass Ave and we need to radically redraw the two precincts to create at least three openings by ousting three current town meeting members. They're all pretty good town meeting members. I don't agree with all of them, but they all work hard and I think that they represent different views. Precincts, eight and 10 have 1,820 households total. In last year's town election, we have three active voters for every fourth households. Now 117 of these households are located along Mass Ave in several large apartment buildings, garden apartments and some smaller houses. Their turnout rate was a dismal one active voter for every five households. If you don't show up at the polls, you won't be represented regardless of how many precinct lines are redrawn. If you do not first serve as a volunteer on boards and committees, you won't create the resume or gather the name recognition by which most town meeting members are elected. Redrawing lines to deliberately create open seats by sweeping out current town meeting members is not the answer. The real problem to be addressed is how to get these underserved residents more involved and actually participating in local government. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Seltzer. Next speaker is Elizabeth Dre. Good evening, Ms. Dre. Good evening. Thank you for hearing me this evening. I'd like to thank the repressing team working group for all the work that they've done. I come to you, I've really been conflicted about these final maps. And I know that change is hard and I'm not afraid of change. I'm not afraid of knocking on doors in your neighborhoods or the idea that I will now be running against 14 incumbents if you choose the recommended map. I agree with Mr. Linov that that's actually healthy for a town. It's really healthy for town meeting members to have to knock on doors and have these conversations. And I deeply support and applaud the goals of ensuring fair representation and equity in our precincts. The status quo regarding DEI in our town boards and committees and our town meeting should not be maintained. But I also feel like I'd like to comment that this process did not always feel right to me. It felt frantic. It was constantly shifting. It felt closed off and not open to outside input. It felt non-transparent. And the claims weren't consistently supported by clearly accessible data. I felt like it was more of a tell me process than a show me process. And I think part of that was because the goals shifted several times. First it was to save money and make the clerk's office run more efficiently. Plus it was thought that it might be fun for everyone to run for town meeting to increase voter turnout. But when the cost savings were found to be minimal and the fund was disputed the goal was then redefined as equity. And this idea of having fewer precincts that had larger percentages of these communities of interest. But the data didn't really support that. So then it was also shifted to deciding where town members should live and where space should be made for new voices. With still no clearly accessible data showing that that one map achieved that over the other. And then this late breaking news feels sort of weird that there is an option maybe not ideal but another is the possibility of redrawing the maps another year. But the goal of fair and equitable representation in town elections and government is an area that Arlington Fights racism has been leading on the last two years and it is right. And the town needs to focus on this with direct action beyond your vote tonight. We all know that redrawing the precinct lines will not magically make town meeting more diverse. And therefore, no matter what your vote is tonight I ask that you do not let it end tonight but that you make sure that whatever new map you choose is accompanied by a clearly defined strategic plan as to how we get there, how the town will reach out to these residents from typically underrepresented communities and encourage them to run for office and how they will increase voter turnout in these specific communities. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Next speaker is Lynette Culverhouse. And then after that, Joanne Preston has messaged me that she would like to speak as well. Okay. And before we're waiting for Ms. Culverhouse I want to thank the speakers for keeping it as close to three minutes as possible and recognizing that we have a lot of people tonight. I, yes, thank you. Good evening Ms. Culverhouse. Good evening, Lynette Culverhouse, Draper Avenue, precinct 11. I do want to acknowledge all the work that everyone has put into this. And I think that as select board members I appreciate that you have read all the correspondence and all of the material and really done your work. So I do appreciate that. And I want to say that while I really applaud the goals nothing would delight me more than to know that if we redraw these maps we will magically have some of our under representative community members want to run and be able to run for leadership in town, for town meeting and for other positions. But I'm not sure that I trust that's going to happen. And I certainly not without a lot of support and help and outreach from the town. This is not a magic, this is, I just don't see it as happening as magically as it's being presented. I wish it could. And I certainly support those goals but I think that we historically have done a good job of saying the right things and then not necessarily doing the work that's necessary to make them happen. There's a lot of work that needs to be done to really engage a diversity of voices in town. And I hope that in your consideration here I'm not sure that there's much difference between the two maps where that's concerned. So I think I would support the limited change map but that doesn't mean I'm not supporting diversity in our representation of our town. And I hope that we can follow through after this is all over and do the work to really engage more diversity in town government. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Culverhouse. Right, and I promoted Joanne Preston and that will be the last speaker. Hello, can you hear me? Yes, we can Ms. Preston. Thank you. Joanne Preston Mystic Lake Drive town meeting member precinct nine and a member of the webcam at neighborhood. I have two points I'd like to make a brief in support of the limited change map. But first I'd just like to say I've spent my entire adult life working for social change. There's nothing that frightens me about it or makes me afraid. I want social change. It's the very reason I ran for the Arlington Housing Authority Board. So I think we should put that to rest. I think that's a very unfair criticism of people who support the limited change map. Now, I'd like to talk first about, I'm glad you've had these very sophisticated and deep conversations in town hall about increasing diversity in town government. I would like to suggest you would learn just as much by going to monotony manner where people are out working in their community gardens on their watering the trees and you will find what are the realities of that. Changing precinct lines will not lead to inclusion of diverse populations in town meeting. That's all too facile and feel good frankly the way of thinking about it. For the people in monotony manner who've been, I would say fairly ignored in this, the step from them getting involved in town government is enormous. First of all, they have to become voters. Many of them are not citizens because they cannot afford the lawyers that they need to get them citizenship. Those that are have to be registered to vote. They need, they offer transportation, childcare. You need to go and talk to them about what the issues are. None of them, because I was just down there have ever heard about reprecincting. And if they do, the one person I talked to about it in depth was very surprised that that would lead to their civic engagement. Most of the diversity in Arlington is found in the housing authority. I think if you look even in your 2019 demographic data that you use to do these plans, that's the truth. And those are the people, if you're interested in diversity in town government that you need to engage. Moving around the precinct lines will not change that. In fact, your earlier recommended plan of 16 precincts would have diluted their voice because it would have added many white neighborhoods to monotony manner. So- Excuse me, Ms. Preston, you're just over three minutes. So if you can wrap it up, please. Yes, I want to talk about the webcow at neighborhood. All right, I'll just be there. We received your correspondence. It does not follow easily into precinct five. It defies the state regulations by putting it on the other side of Medford Street. The cemetery is actually what brings people together because it's a wildlife place. It does not separate people. The recommended plan would make precinct nine being three school districts, parts of it. So there's no- Excuse me, Ms. Preston, I'm going to have to cut you off that you're getting up to four minutes, but again, we did receive your correspondence and we appreciate your comments. I gave you all my arguments about webcow at and ignored. Not that they were ignored, they were considered, but we make our own decisions and we take the input and then it's up to us to process that and come to the best conclusion. Thank you for joining us tonight. That is going to conclude the public comment piece and I will turn it back to the board and I will return to Mr. Helmuth. Thank you. Thank you to all who come in tonight and again, to those who wrote to us and called us, it was all really beneficial. I've given this a lot of thought and Mr. Chair, I want to make a motion that this is like what accept the recommended map put forth by the precincting working group and I want to talk help briefly about why because I think that the residents who've contacted us deserve to know our thinking. I think everyone agrees that these are not large changes. They're incremental, but I believe that they are the only practical chance we have to do incremental changes that could lead to better representation in town meeting more fair representation for the next 10 years. I think a point that's been lost in a lot of this debate is that our experts and I really do believe that this is the team we would want. People with advanced degrees and expertise in urban planning, diversity and community engagement and GIS and a town clerk who knows the town backward and forward that they believe as they've told me in my conversations that over the next 10 years, the demographic trends will make the map, the recommended map even more clearly favorable towards people who are less represented. And it is our responsibility to not make a map for today but make a map for the best we can project where the town is going. And I think it's very persuasive that the Mass Ave area that these changes are built around are more likely to have people who are more racially diverse, economically diverse and have a lot more in common with each other than they do people that get further away from Mass Ave in either direction. And this matters because how many makes decisions that affect all residents. I think both sides also agree that the recommended map is not going to instantly solve the problem. I would argue that doesn't mean we can't do both. I think there's a little bit of a false choice here that just because it's not perfect doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. I think it's very clear and I appreciate some of the comments from people who have been working on diversity in town and our diversity director that we have a lot of work to do to make people feel like they are welcome, that they'd be long. And that work needs to be done no matter how we vote tonight. What I would like to do is because I do believe the recommended map makes it easier. It adds something that I want to do all that work and I want to do something that makes it easier to have representation in town, meaning that better reflects the diversity of people who live here. I don't think that we should make change for change's sake. A lot of folks wrote and said that and they're absolutely right. I know that it's difficult looking at the data to understand because all the constraints that the chair and others have explained. None of these precinct maps look perfect by all the demographic criteria but I am convinced that they do achieve the principal goal of reasonably grouping together people in a better way who are much more likely to have more in common. And I think they deserve a better chance to have a voice in town meeting. That means we have to work hard. We have to work hard no matter what vote we take but I'd like to work hard with that assistance. I think that's the right thing for us to do if we are serious about looking at, living up to our motto that we adopted that we look through things with a lens of diversity and equity. There are some things that I think that this map doesn't do. I don't think it targets specific town meeting members. I've made a point to not look where people live, where town meeting members live. I think that there's maybe some misunderstanding that talking about trying to make space is the same as trying to target people for removal. And I think for me, it's creating an opportunity over time for more people who have more in common in some of these areas of town to have more people similar to them in town meeting. And for me, that's the end of the story. I think that's what it's about. We are used to the status quo, and it seems normal to a lot of us that town meeting members are gonna be homeowners living single family homes who are older who are more established. And it's very easy to feel like that's just how it works. But that's just how it works is how the status quo is perpetuated. And I think that if we don't try, we know one thing that nothing will change structurally that that will try to change the status quo. I said in my early remarks that all that's fine but it really depends on whether you believe that the recommended map will do something good and it's worth the cost. I think that it does. I think it's pretty clear that it creates more precincts where there are less dominated by single family homes. And by the way, I don't believe that this will necessarily lead to any specific outcome in the legislature. I don't have a view on that. I think the voters and town meeting members decide that. It is purely for me a matter that whatever these folks have in common, I wanna make it easier for them to have more people who are like their neighborhood to be in town meeting. And that's for me where it stops far short of any sort of legislative or political agenda. The maps aren't perfect. It's hard to do this with 21 precincts, hard to do it with all the constraints we had. I've spent a few hours with the team looking at data even that's not on the maps. I'm personally persuaded that they are meaningful, that they do make sense. They are not perfect, they have problems. But I would just not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. So I think I'll stop there and hear from the rest of my colleagues, but I'm pleased to put the motion on the table and I look forward to hearing what my colleagues say. Thank you, Mr. Helmuth. And I'm gonna go in the same order that I went in in the first round. So I will turn to Mrs. Mahan. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to second Mr. Helmuth's motion. I will tell you, sat in this meeting tonight. I had no idea which side of the issue I was going to come down on. And I don't wanna in any way duplicate Mr. Helmuth's remarks except to say, I agree with them. And listening to the public speakers to me was a very learning experience for myself. But I think what we've been doing for the past 20, 30 years hasn't worked. I think we should try something different. Maybe that will be the sort of demonstration to these communities that we're trying to reach that the town, its town leaders, its community leaders are really committed to this sort of recognizing upfront it may not produce any substantive change in the next year, three year, five year. But I think if we keep putting, and I don't mean to minimize the represicting working groups efforts. But I think if we keep taking little steps and little building blocks upon which we can build, I think that's the best chance for, like I said, myself coming from that world. Some of it, I thought about it was definitely self-imposed. Maybe that's sort of a security kickback that you have to the environment that you're in. But just thinking about it, perhaps if we can put something in place that the next time we go through this in 10 years, this will be the building block. And I really feel that the working group is committed to this, especially I think Ms. LaNima is now our assistant planning director and is wearing 10,000 different hats. And our town clerk certainly has continued to put in a tremendous amount of work on the previous question and now the two different maps. And I think one of the things that really helps and I mean no disrespect is having our diversity, equity, inclusion director, a woman of color. Because I know I've gone down there and I've said, I came from here, but I am now a homeowner, which I wasn't before. And I may not be as approachable as I think I am. And certainly do not have the tools and the education in that field to speak, not just in a monotony manner, but to look at other places, whether it's apartment buildings or outlying districts on Mass Ave and the like. And I really, not to add to Ms. Harvey's plate platter, Thanksgiving, big, whatever. I have a lot of faith in that. And if we can just get even one person that is a person of color or socioeconomic, repressed, anything like that, to me it's a win. And I certainly think that this group of individuals can and will achieve that and go far beyond that. But I know it sounds like I'm being a cliche thing, but to me even getting one person that learns about the process this way through the town and isn't asked that we're just saying we want you to run. We're not telling you why to run. We're not telling you how you should vote, how you should not vote. To me, that's the purest way. And I think it's something this town should be doing. So I'm happy to second Mr. Helmets' motion. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mrs. Mahan. Mr. Diggins. Thank you, Mr. Chair. First one, quick question to the clerk through you. And that is, Ms. Brazil, what would you tell the clerk in 2031? And what advice would you give that person? To plan ahead by several years. I mean, I think we learned through this process that there's a lot of moving pieces. And I think the very real impact on reducing the number of precincts from 21 to 16 on the finance committee did make that a really hard conversation for the board. And I do understand that. So, you know, planning ahead and having that conversation about rewriting the rules that govern the town manager act that regoverns the finance committee so that that's a smoother transition whenever Arlington is ready to consider. I'm sure in 10 years after we've all gotten very used to whatever changes in election law, then maybe reducing the number of precincts at that time will make more sense to people. So that's, I'm definitely leaving a time capsule in my office for a future clerk. Great, thanks. Yes, Nina. It's a matter of how early we start, because one thing I was thinking is that we should start asking people who are running for select board in 20, 28, 29 and 30 or maybe it's 29, 30 and 31, being what their positions are on various things that we are thinking about with respect to re-precincting. So I have a bunch of things to say. And I'm gonna go fast because I don't wanna take much time being there loosely organized, but I just really wanna give people a sense of how I think means so that I am probably predictable to you all as we make more decisions. So first off, I appreciate all the feedback that I got from everyone. I do read it. There's just not enough time for me to respond. So I'm sorry that I don't respond to me, but I do read. Second is that I take a position and let's say it sort of hypothesis me, but I always entertain the arguments for and against it. And that's how I read my emails in and listen to what people have to say. But I am the sort of person that is predisposed me to try new things and to encourage people to develop bold ideas. I don't count the number of emails that I get being on a given topic, being when it is my decision to make or this board decision to make, being it's not a referendum, being and so if I get a hundred emails supporting a position that isn't gonna sway me. It's really the argument, being in the quality of the argument and how it weighs against the hypothesis that I have in mind. So because I don't think that re-presenting is the sort of thing that we should put up to a vote or let me rephrase that. It's that sort of thing that I would put up to a popular vote. I mean, it is the sort of thing that you should vote on or think about when you're voting for a member of the select board or the clerk. And so that's how it fits in with the question that I asked the clerk earlier. When do we start? What will we do in the future? I mean, as I said in my response to her, it's like, think about this when you're thinking about who's gonna be on select board in 20, 29, 30 and 31. Cause that is the time for the public to weigh in on decisions. So start asking people then, like what would you support in terms of re-presenting? Now, getting to re-presenting itself, there's a way to do this that is completely devoid of any social considerations. And one way would be to say we're going to set our polling stations at certain locations, maybe equal distance from each other or equally distant from each other. And then draw the precincts me so that the distance to the polls were minimum. And so that would give you a completely agnostic a precinct map. But to the extent that we're going to impose or consider any social values, it could be loosely defined as gerrymandering. And so the question is, what are we trying to achieve? And to the extent that it's a zero sum game, and some people will gain advantage, some people will lose, that's for me, it's a zero sum game in the micro scale. In the macro scale, what we're really trying to do is develop a society, a governing structure, me that is more resilient and that resilience I think comes from being more diverse and inclusive. And it may very well be that this will turn out not to be a good idea, but I think it's important that we try things, and then assess them and make our decisions about how to move forward based on how, on the outcome of this, what's really difficult in the situation is that it's hard to do a really good analysis because the N as in the number of precincts that we have to look at are really pretty small. And perhaps even the amount of time that we're going to be looking at things isn't enough time for us to really make, come to a firm conclusion. But I think we're aiming for the right thing. And our goals, we're aiming for the right goals, Mead. And I just want to encourage us and support us, Mead, in trying to achieve those goals. Because I think if we don't do anything, we really get into the habit of not doing anything. And that is not ever a recipe for change. So just a few other tidbit thoughts, Mead. I think the distribution within precincts outweigh neighborhoods. And perhaps for me, I think maybe the next time I wouldn't really focus on the notion of a neighborhood because I could imagine a situation where you could have a really cohesive neighborhood, Mead. But the constitution of it is such that you really need to draw the line through it in order to get the diversity that you want or whatever composition in that precinct that you want in order to achieve a goal. And I'm fine with that because I think the neighborhood, Mead, will stay together. And in regards to the precinct line that is going through it, which is why I don't have a concern about me running the precinct line for eight and 10, Mead down Gray Street. Because to the extent that you have a neighborhood based on people going up and down the street, really to the school districts, those neighborhoods are going to stay together. And it may be advantageous to them to be part of different precincts and have more people representing them and their concerns. And to the extent that a precinct does become equivalent to a neighborhood, Mead, then we will have to get people thinking about the notion that something's gonna change, Mead, in 10 years. I mean, it's very unlikely that we will get 10 years from now and I have at least two precincts Mead that change, Mead. And I have to say that I really, I appreciate the notion of having everyone run at some point in time. And that was one of the reasons that I liked the 16 precincts Mead. And for me, the challenge was gonna be how do we get it such that people have to run every 10 years because I was not gonna run for a town meeting member against four other incumbents and it wasn't because I was afraid to run against incumbents. I just felt like, who am I to challenge people who have been there and wanna do it again? But if it was all 12 of us or 12 going for it, then I just felt more comfortable with that notion and I can appreciate the kind of logic inconsistency in that, but nonetheless, Mead, that's how I felt. And so I would like for us to have some mechanism by which that can be kind of programmed in. And so that's why the 16 precincts appeal to me and that's why when this came up, I know that one of the conversations was that he will just open this up Mead and perhaps opening it up will make people much more engaged in the process. I don't know, but I thought it was a good goal and that's one of the reasons I supported it. And I will just throw in a little mention to Gordon Jameson and why I like Mead, what we're doing with focusing on Mass Ave because Mead, one of his ideas was 14 precincts Mead and we would cross over Mass Ave, pretty much going all the way down Mass Ave. And I think that would hopefully make more people who are focused on Mass Ave and who utilize Mass Ave in a way that's different from people who live further from Mass Ave have their interests better represented regardless of their ethnic group. And so in closing, I will just say, let's keep the debate going. And if representing is what gets people animated and wanna think about town meeting more than by all means, let's keep the debate going. There's this civic engagement group. We're always happy to talk about anything you wanna talk about. So this does not have to be a discussion and I welcome more of it, but you know how I'm going. So that's it, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Diggins, Mr. Herd. Thank you. So I think I spoke before where I stand on this and my reasons for doing so, but just to reiterate that we had a working group that was tasked with both the just practical matter of making our precincts conform with the law and the regulations and with the goal of increasing versatility inclusion. And I trust the work of the very qualified and competent professionals that we had doing that, that this recommended map is the map that best exemplifies those goals in compliance with the laws and the restrictions that they had. So I will support the motion. Again, change is hard. And I think in the short term, some people are gonna have to rerun for town meeting, might lose their spots and that's unfortunate. I would never wanna take participation away from anybody that wants to participate. But I mean, if somebody's losing their spot, that means that somebody else is jumping into the process. And we always welcome whether you're a town meeting member or not, we always welcome input at certainly our meetings and we have many town boards and openings for people to participate. If someone does lose a spot and still wants to participate in the discussion, we welcome that. So again, I will support the motion. We've heard a lot about neighborhoods as both a goal of the working group and the argument against the recommended group. And I would just note that I think very few people in town other than members of town meeting identify their neighborhoods as their precincts. You certainly don't have to stop being friends with people if they end up being in a precinct across the street from you. It wasn't until this process that I even realized that my neighbors right across the street from me are in precinct 16, who knew? I always thought we were all in the same precinct, but it turns out 50 feet from me is somebody that's in a different precinct. I still talk to them. So I think, again, and I don't mean to make overly light of the subject, but again, we have a product here that is really advancing a goal that we've established and we have to make sure as town and town leaders that we're not just saying these are our goals. We're supporting progress towards these goals. So I will support the motion. And I just want to thank everybody that's been involved in the process, the working group, town staff, and all the members of the public that reached out to us and participate in the forums. We can't make the decisions without hearing from both sides of the coin. And we certainly have listened to all the comments that we've gotten. And I think seems to be coming to a consensus, but so I'm happy to support the motion. Thank you, Mr. Hurd. Yeah, and I also, I'm going to raise a couple of the concerns I had, but overall, I support the recommended map. I had said I went through a detailed precinct by precinct Q&A the last meeting I had with members of the working group. I did raise a question to Ms. Brazil about that area up in Hutchinson. I would take it from the presentation tonight that you looked at it and determined that by changing that it may have compromised another objective that you had in the precinct. So I just want to confirm that in terms of would that make a difference? In your view, could it improve anything by including that uppermost area of Hutchinson and Wemmill in precinct 13 or does the tradeoff not worth it? No, we could, Mr. Korowski was able to move that block into 13 and move a couple nearby blocks from 13 and to 11 to keep the population numbers balanced. It doesn't appear to have any other unanticipated impacts on finance committee. So I'm happy to show the board that map. The presentation didn't focus on maps tonight. So I apologize for the miscommunication. Mr. Korowski. No problem and it's late in the night and everything but that was a concern I had just about that finger that we talked about because the country club is there and that neighborhood seems to be on its own. Did you reach a conclusion? I mean, I know you did the exercise but you have a thought of which one is better. I don't think I have a strong opinion. The working group did not have time to talk about it at length but it doesn't create any issues that take away from the recommended map and the goals and gains. Okay, all right. So why don't we do this? I mean, we've got to come back and for members, if you were looking at their clock, it's 10.50. We're going to get out up here by 11 but we have to come back and vote this a week from now. I'm going to post a meeting for next Monday, Ms. Brazility. You have to come back and vote again after you've picked a map. The state has to know the map we want so that they can generate the appropriate paperwork to take the final formal vote. Okay, and the final formal vote is to the LEDRC by, it's actually Saturday, December 4th because it's a Saturday, it'd be Monday but I know you want to get things done by Friday. Okay, all right. I don't want to hold that up for further discussion. What I would do for that one change, I want to just circulate it if we think that it's better. We'll move reconsideration after the fact but I do want to say of all of you- Do you want to look at it right now? It's up to you. Well, I'm just, no, I don't think I do because I think it's 10 of 11. I don't think the other members really want to look at it right now but might consider it if it's a better change after the fact. I do want to say I still remain concerned about Precinct 8 and 10 and I'm not supporting the limited map there. I think time has run out on us here I think but I think there may have been a way to reconsider things there a little bit in terms of the school districts and in terms of what we're doing on the backside of Precinct 8 and I really think Precinct 8 and 10 is different than 12 and 14. 12 and 14 run along Gray Street but because when they were first created the Cutter School was in Precinct 14. The Brackett School is in Precinct 12. There are different considerations for Precinct 8 and 10 and I think there may have been a way here to take a look at it. I understand the goals but I honestly believe that Gray Street while it's a good dividing line for 12 and 14 it's not the best dividing line for 8 and 10 with all the considerations but one thing that was very important to me and being on the board is that we develop consensus. There clearly is a consensus here. I may have discussions with you between now and next week in terms of what would it look like and how would this balance the objectives and the reason I bring it up I'm not ready to do that now because I don't have the answer but we do this once every 10 years if it is a change that we discover even if it's at the last minute that still achieves objectives and might improve things. I think it's worth doing it but I think given where the other members out this evening, given where I feel in general about the work that you did with the other precincts and the trade-offs that you had to make and the fact that I support those I am gonna go along with the other members of the board and thank you for the work but I do still wanna have that discussion and if something comes out of it, we'll address it but I think that's without having something specific and without seeing how this affects some of the other objectives that you had I'm not prepared to say that I'm against this so I will support this along with the other members and look forward to continued discussion before the deadline so the vote you're looking for tonight is the vote on the map and then we will have the final vote on November 29th if necessary, we'll go over to December 1 I don't think it will be necessary though so on a motion by Mr. Helmuth that was seconded by Mrs. Mahan for the recommended map, Attorney Heim Mr. Hurd? Yes. Mr. Diggins? Yes. Mr. Helmuth? Yes. Mrs. Mahan? Yes. Mr. Dacorsi? Yes. Mr. Diggins, vote. Okay, thank you for all your work. Thank you very much for your attention very thoughtful debate tonight, thank you. So, 1054 right on schedule in the next item is correspondence received we have two items and just bear with me a second. Okay, item 10 is a letter from Bethelach Executive Director of the Ewington Chamber of Commerce beautification of business districts in town item 11 is traffic concerns on recently changed Appleton Street here Flamencus, 6th Appleton Place Mr. Hurd? Sorry about that. Move receipt and I just would say that we did discuss at the parking advisory committee which sometimes sounds a little bit narrow and it's charged but it deals with a lot of honest center stuff we just discussed with representative of the chamber some of the contents that are in Ms. Locke's letter there. So town staff is working with the chamber to address some of the concerns with DBW so that's in the works. Okay, thank you Mr. Hurd. Mr. Diggins? I'll second that and I'll second the receipt of them and I'm thinking that the letter on Appleton what are we doing with that? Because my recommendation would be to get that to tack and get tacked to take that up meet like right away unless the town manager has some other thoughts about that. I think with a slight change I would suggest sending it to the design review committee. Oh, okay. But still have it taken up right away because I think it's a, I think it needs attention quickly. Do you have a different assessment? Do you have a different assessment of that, Mr. Chair? I mean, I'm Mr. Vanity. I don't know. No, I think Mr. Chapter only said the design review committee. Yeah, no. And I mean, I agree that I don't know what this solution is but I do think taking a quick look at it makes very good sense. All right, thank you. Great, thank you, Mr. Diggins. Mr. Helman. Yeah, happy to support that. So do we need to ask Mr. Hurd if that's a friendly amendment to the motion? Yeah, I thought I saw him nodding his head when Mr. Diggins said that. Yeah. Oh, yeah, no comments. Okay. I always refer traffic matters to Mr. Chapter Lane to send them to the appropriate place, but that's fine. Okay, Mrs. Mahan. No comments, thank you. Thank you. And I have no comments either. On a motion by Mr. Hurd, seconded by Mr. Diggins, Attorney Hyde. Mr. Hurd. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Helman. Yes. Mrs. Mahan. Yes. Yes. It's a unanimous vote. Okay, new business, Attorney Hyde. No new business. Mr. Chapter Lane. No new business. Okay, Mr. Helman. No new business. Okay, Mr. Diggins. When are we, have we determined time for the meeting next week? I was thinking 7.15. Could we, can we do seven? Hey, you know, cause I have a meeting at 7.45. Yeah, I just, I know at least one of the members has an issue at 7. Okay. And so we've kept it there at that. I'm sorry, but that's kind of been a standing time for us. I didn't know that someone had a conflict with it. So I will start at 7.15 and stay as long as I can. Okay, thank you, Mr. Diggins. Mr. Hurd. Hoping 7.45 is not a conflict of that meeting. No new business. I'm saving all mine to a meeting that ends before 10. Okay, great. I think you might, that might not be possible to share, but we'll, we'll stay. Mrs. Mahan. I actually have two pieces of new business that I'm going to save. So I'm copying Mr. Hurd. Okay. And I just want to wish everybody happy Thanksgiving. That's, that's my new business. And we will be back next Monday. So if we have a motion to adjourn. Second, Mr. Hurd. Okay, a motion by Mr. Hurd, seconded by Mrs. Mahan, attorney. Mr. Hurd. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Helmut. Yes. Mrs. Mahan. Really, yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Yeah, Mr. Hurd. Okay. 10.58. Have a good night. Happy Thanksgiving everybody. Bye-bye. Happy Thanksgiving. Good night. Happy Thanksgiving.