 Ready, Al? Ready? Yep. You ready, Jane? Okay. Let's take our seats. Let's actually stand up. Tonight we have Jane Howard accompanying us on the Star Spangled Banner. Oh, okay. Thank you, Mrs. Howard. Just a couple of remarks tonight. Mary Deist, one of our own, has an art show. It's upstairs in the hallway. You may want to go up and look at it. It's going to be there for the next week or so. So you can go up and look at Mary's artwork during the break. Some of it's really nice. I like some of them. And the town hall staff asked that we pick up our chairs at the end of the night and pick the things off the floor and put them in the recycling bins on the way out. That way we're going to be more green and make Mr. Jameson happy because we're recycling this stuff instead of throwing it out. Any more town meeting members who have yet to be sworn in? Please rise. Repeat after me. Aye. What's your name? Tom Cameron. Pledge to attend all scheduled town meetings. Participate fully and fairly and evaluate all matters before town meeting. To vote in the best interests of the town with respect there too. Just port free and open speech. Port free and open speech. I will treat others with mutual respect in spite of conflicting opinions. I pledge to conduct myself in a civil manner that is becoming of an elected town meeting member. I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully and impartially perform the duties incumbent upon me as a town meeting member for the town of Arlington in accordance with the bylaws. The town may interact in the general laws of the commonwealth. So help me God. Thank you. Congratulations. Mr. Dunn. It is moved that if all business of the meeting as set forth in the warrant of the annual town meeting is not disposed of at the session when the meeting adjourns it adjourns to Monday, May 7th at 8 p.m. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Thank you. Any announcements or resolutions? Mr. Maher. I'm a member of the committee that makes up the Sims Medical Use Nonprofit Corporation, which is an entity established by the Supreme Judicial Court when the Sims Hospital and essentially was taken over by Lehi Clinic. There was substantial amount of money left from excess Medicare reimbursements. And along with Charlie Lyons, the former Board of Select, the current superintendent of Sharsheen Valley Technical High School and Dr. Mike Foley award each year a certain amount of money. We have currently about a million dollars in the fund and we give about 10%, 10% away each year. Many town departments have been submitted requests for proposals and received grants in the past such as the Council on Aging and the Department of Human Services as well as Minuteman Health Care and Like Organizations. And tomorrow's advocate will be the third round announcement of requests for proposals. And if anybody cares to have more information about that, please see me at the break or otherwise. My phone number is in the ad tomorrow on the legal notices. And again, this is the third year and we're looking to provide funds for local health care organizations. Thank you, Mr. Lauder. Thank you, Mr. O'Connor. James O'Connor, precinct 19. In the number of years I've been the chair of our precinct. I've never had to do this. But one of our members isn't here tonight and has not yet been sworn in. The first night of town meeting, he took ill and two nights later, he found out he had stage four pancreatic cancer. This is Mark Butler used to sit in the front, very quiet, unassuming fellow. Several people have known and thanks to those that have taken time, they've made a visit to his house or brought him something to cheer him up a little bit. So I'd ask you to keep him in your prayers. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Madam. Michelle DeRosha, precinct 19. Please join the Arlington Conservation Commission and the Arlington Land Stewards for a cleanup of Meadowbrook Park on Saturday, May 5th, from 9 a.m. to noon, rain or shine. Every year, volunteers are surprised at what has washed down Meadowbrook, including balls of every kind, plastic bottles, tires, carpet scraps, baskets of plastic flowers, and shopping carts, to name a few highlights. The group will be meeting on Brooks Avenue and Mount Pleasant Cemetery. Please bring garbage can for hauling, stuff, boots, gloves, long pants, and expect to get muddy. So come join us. Thank you. Very good. Thank you, Mr. Tosti. So let you know that we'll be taking up the Minuteman Articles, Articles 44 through 46 next Wednesday, a week from today on May 9th. As you know, the superintendent of Minuteman has to visit like 16 different town meetings, so that's the time. So the first thing Wednesday night, I will plan to take that up so we can get those articles. Budget materials will be on your seats or in the back of the town hall on Monday evening. Thank you very much. Thank you. Any other announcements or resolutions? Good evening, Kathleen Pote, Superintendent of Schools. Since there's a strong likelihood that the school budget will come up this evening, I wanted you to know that I will be here for questions as well as Diane Johnson, our CFO. However, I ask your indulgence to do the school report next Wednesday. I have asked to present that report at the beginning of the meeting on May 9th. I don't think you need to sit and listen to my voice for that whole presentation, so thank you. I just wanted you to be aware of that before we cut to the budget section. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Vode. Any other announcements? Resolutions? Seeing none. Any reports to be received? Mr. Gilligan, we have to take three off the table. Mr. Tosti? Move that Article 3 be taken from the table. All in favor of removing three from the table, please say yes. Opposed? It's off the table. Mr. Gilligan. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Stephen Gilligan, Town Treasurer, Town Meeting Member from Precinct 13. I ask that the report of the Treasurer to the 2012 annual Town Meeting be received. All in favor of receiving the report of the Treasurer, please say yes. Yes. So received. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. I trust Town Meeting will find it informative. There is some relatively new information, and if anyone has any questions, I'm available tonight or any Night of Town Meeting. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Thank you, sir. Any other reports? Mr. Tosti? Move that Article 3 be laid upon the table. All in favor? Opposed? Okay. That brings us back to Article 29, which was postponed this evening. Mr. Dunn? Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Dan Dunn from the Board of Selectment. Mr. Moderator, there's going to be three speakers that will fit well under 10 minutes. I'm going to talk for a few seconds, and then the Chairman of the Board of Assessors, Jim Doherty, is going to speak for a few minutes, and then one of the main proponents of this article, Senator Ken Donnelly, is going to speak for a couple minutes. Just speaking briefly for the Selectment, the current deferment rate floats, but it doesn't float low enough in the current environment. I think we anticipated, or this meeting anticipated such a low and long period of interest rates. In order to make this deferment a more viable option for our seniors, we think that the rate should be permitted to go lower. The other benefit of the particular rate mechanism was chosen is that it's floating and will automatically adjust upwards and downwards as the federal rate changes. So from your orange book, orange, it's Article 29, if you just want to give it a read. Mr. Doherty. Jim Doherty, Chairman of the Board of Assessors, Towne Media Member, Precinct 2. Thank you, Dean. I've been asked tonight to just briefly touch upon what the qualifications in the various limits and qualifications are for the tax deferral, which we're speaking about in this article. Basically, we have various types of property tax exemptions which reduce your property tax. That could be veterans, blind persons, two types of elderly and surviving spouse as well as widows. Those actually reduce your property tax bill. The exemption we're speaking about tonight does not technically reduce your property tax. It simply defers it to a later date. Currently, you need to be 65 years of age or older to qualify for this particular exemption. You may defer a portion of the tax or the entire tax. You can also defer your water and soar, if you'd like. Currently, the income limit is 30,000. There's another article that will come before you, and that will potentially increase that amount. There are no asset restrictions on this deferral, unlike some of the other exemptions. As I just previously mentioned, the requirement solely addresses the income. A couple of the other criteria in here is that you have to have a primary residence in Massachusetts for 10 years. You must have owned and occupied a piece of property for five years, anywhere in Massachusetts. There's another restriction, and we don't really see it come into play too often. Neither do many other communities. But essentially, by deferring your property tax, it can never exceed 50% of the value, the assessed value of the property. Again, we haven't seen that. It would take a fair amount of time before that would kick in, but it is something that people should be aware of before they enter in this. The other thing is that the tax as well as the interest needs to be paid back once the property is transferred or the ownership or the owner, I should say, passes away. At that time, and I couldn't find it specifically addressed in the statute, but at some point after that, if it is not addressed, then the interest rate would go up to 16%, which is the statutory interest rate. This exemption, as I mentioned earlier, no other exemption can you receive two. So if you're a veteran and you're an elderly person, you can't receive both. This particular exemption would be net of any other exemption. So anyone who currently receives the property tax exemption that I described earlier simply would still, if they qualify, be entitled to that. They would net that out and then the net amount would be the amount that would be deferred. The Board of Assessors did not actually take a vote on this. We felt quite frankly that we should defer it to our Chief Investment Officer or the FINCOM who actually invests our money. There was discussion at the meeting as to the Selectman's recommended vote, and there was concern about bringing the rate down too much. Historically, I've been on the Board of Assessors for 18 years. We have led the charge to increase property tax exemptions. We do support the whole idea of what we're trying to achieve here. But as I stated earlier, we would defer to someone else to actually decide what they believe a prudent interest rate should be. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Ken Donnelly, the State Senator, representing the Fourth Middle Sex District. I want to thank the Selectman and the Finance Committee for taking up this article, Article 29. As Selectman Don said, this was an issue that I had looked at. Last spring, we held an elderly forum. It was the Selectman with the Chair at the time, Clarissa Rowe, myself, the Assessors. And we did it at the Council of Agents. The room was full with elderly residents from Arlington. And what we heard loud and clear is many of them were struggling and needed help. They looked at the exemptions. The exemptions in many cases were too low. And in a lot of cases, the exemptions we had and the help we had wasn't quite enough to provide them the help we needed. Also, I do my office hours every month at the Council of Agents and every community. I had a gentleman in Wubin come up to me, a veteran, that had actually outlived his pension with him and his wife. And his social security was very small. And he was struggling to keep up his house and to stay in his home. I met in Arlington with the gentleman that was also a vet that lived in Arlington for 60 years. And his social security, again, was very little. And his money that he, again, the money he put away was small. So he was having a very difficult time making ends meet. So it made us take a look at some of these exemptions and what we can do for our elderly residents, especially when we had an override that I think was good for this community. But in some cases, some of the people that are trying to make ends meet made it very difficult. So this issue, again, I think that Jim is absolutely correct. This is a deferral. This is not a gift upon death or transfer. The money is in full. And at that time, if you don't put the money in full, the interest rate kicks in. We're taking a look at that also, but that would kick in immediately. Also, when you look at the interest rate, the interest rate was 6%. This is not a financial issue. This is a social issue. Do we want to keep our elderly in their homes? In this case, the gentleman I was talking to, 60 years in the town of Allington, wants to stay in his home. That's where he grew up. That's where he lives. And we're not saying it's for nothing. The interest rate would be somewhere around 1% and 3.25%. And actually, I would probably would love to be able to give him that money and get 1% and 3.25% because it's a lot more money than I'm getting for my money in the bank today. So 6% is obviously was way too high. I think the finance committee looked at this issue and they come up with a really good solution. I support that 100%. The Board of Select, when I applaud them, I support that 100%. And I hope that we can pass this and think about our elders that want to stay in Allington. I think make Allington a wonderful community and give them a little assistance. So thank you. Thank you. Is that it, Mr. Dunn? Thank you. Mr. Loretty. Thanks, Mr. Loretty. Crystal Loretty, precinct 7. Mr. Loretty, I have an amendment to the recommended vote of the Board of Selectmen. Shall I read it or do I need to? Do the, everyone have it? Does the crowd have it? Everyone can have it. Okay. Now we can waive the reading. Just tell us what it does. Thank you, Mr. Loretty. The amendment I'm proposing is to keep the formula for calculating the interest rate as it is. Indeed, the interest rate floats already. What my amendment would do is still allow the interest rate to float, but it would set a floor of 4% rather than 6%. And Mr. Good, if you have the handout that I had distributed, would you mind putting it up on the screen? I'd like to talk a little bit about the table at the bottom of that handout. Prior to 2006, Arlington was charging 8% on the property tax deferrals, and right now we're charging a rate that's based on the 10-year Treasury bond, and it's set at that bond, and as I said, it is, has a floor of 6% and a cap at 8%. That 8% cap is established by state law. The Selectmen's proposal would reduce the interest rate and use a different index, the federal discount rate, add a percent to that, and that's where that 1.75% comes from. And as I said, what I am proposing to do is keep the formula as it is except put a 4% floor on. So essentially tonight you have three options. You can vote for the Selectmen's recommended vote as it is, and currently you would have an interest rate of about 2%, actually 1.75%. You can vote for my amendment and have a current interest rate of 4%, or you can leave it as is and have a current interest rate of 6%. Mr. Rotary, there have been a lot of articles this year that seem to repeat things from the past, and indeed this is one of them. We took up the question of the interest rate on the property tax deferral in 2006, and I thought because we are essentially discussing the same thing it would be instructive to look at some of the comments that were made at that time because I think they're still applicable. And so what I thought I would do is summarize some of those comments. I'm going to leave out my own because at that time I was talking a lot about trying to get the town to raise the income limit to $40,000 instead of $30,000, and obviously I had failed at that. And just to be clear, in case you missed it when Mr. Dardi spoke, indeed we have voted to increase the limit to $52,000 for the current income limit. At the time we changed to the current formula, the Board of Selectment had recommended a fixed rate of 6%. There was a fear that that rate was too low, and that the rate needed to float as interest rates increased. So the Finance Committee proposed a substitute motion that had the floating rate. And let me give you a few of the statements they made at the time. They chose the 10-year T-bill note because they said it was the benchmark for many adjustable rates, including home mortgages and corporate bonds, and that it was a number that was readily available. And they noted that the interest rate of the 10-year T-note has historically only, has been only slightly higher than the most easily available conservative investment, commercial certificates of deposit. This rate can therefore reduce the likelihood that a taxpayer would take advantage of the deferral program as an investment vehicle while still charging a fair rate. The fear was that if you, and still is, that if you set the rate too low, people will defer paying their taxes and then invest that money at a higher interest rate than the rate they're paying to borrow. Another point that they made that was very important is that the rate accrued on deferred taxes does not impact the number of seniors eligible for the deferral. And it has no effect on the stated goal of helping seniors remain in their homes as property tax rates increase. The accrued interest only impacts the net proceeds upon the sale of properties, whether by homeowners or their heirs. And it's important to point out that for anyone who takes advantage of this program, they pay nothing on those taxes while those taxes are being deferred. The interest simply accrues, but they don't pay it until the property is transferred or until they pass away and the taxes are paid as part of settling the estate. So indeed, the important thing that town meeting did, the most important item in increasing eligibility was to increase the limit on the income. And that's what we voted on Monday night. And again, I checked the statistics by raising the income limit to $52,000 the number of senior household covers rose from about 50% to 70% probably higher than that because my numbers are out of date. So I just want to reiterate that as Mr. Daugherty said, there is no asset task for this. A very large fraction of Wellington seniors would be able to participate and they would pay nothing until the time that they transferred their house. Another important point I want to make is that while the interest rate is variable, I think that saying that is confusing because this does not work like a variable rate mortgage. I spoke to someone on the finance committee and they said they weren't too concerned that the interest rates were low because as the interest rates rise in the time we'll be collecting more interest on these deferred taxes. That's not really true. The way this program works is that when you defer your taxes over a period of years, it's like getting a fixed rate loan for each year. Once the interest rate is established for a particular year, it sticks with that year. So if you were to borrow currently at 1.75%, you will never pay more than 1.75% on this year's taxes. And I've spoken to Mr. Gilligan about this. He can confirm the methodology for doing the calculation. What that means is that if somebody defers their taxes for 30 years and interest rates go back up again, they are only paying 1.75% on that deferred amount while the town conceivably is borrowing at a much higher interest rate. So the other point I think I've already made is that there is an 8% cap. That cap is set by state law. Some people have thought the float rate should be able to go higher than that. It cannot. And the other point related to that cap is that the Selectman's vote does not mention that 8% cap. I would read that vote as inconsistent with state law and potentially flawed because it doesn't contain that cap. So in conclusion, I'd like to say I really do appreciate Senator Donnelly bringing this matter forward. When we discussed this in 2006, the reports I think of both the Selectman and the Finance Committee were very clear that we'd revisit this in a year or two. Obviously, that didn't happen and frankly I'm not sure if Senator Donnelly hadn't taken the initiative that we'd even be here tonight discussing it again. But I think it's prudent for the town not to decrease the interest rate as much as the Selectman are proposing and I offer my amendment as a middle ground. It will reduce the rates to something that's more consistent with long-term borrowing, but it will protect the town's interest and it will not at all decrease the eligibility of any seniors for this program. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Ms. Mahan. Hi, Diane Mahan, Member of the Board of Selectman. I just want to say on Moron Article 29 and 30 since they were discussed together at the Selectman's Moron Article hearing that I was not present at. I want to apologize. I had a family situation I had to deal with. In light of that, I want to join with my colleagues, Ms. Rowe, Mr. Don and Ms. LaCorte and also vote in an affirmative on 29 and 30 and applaud everybody who are trying to think about our seniors and those on a fixed income as a result of the 2011 override, which we're all very grateful for possibly providing them some relief. So I'd just like to let town meeting know. I'd like to be recorded in the affirmative of the 3-0 vote from the Board of Selectman to make the decision on 29 and 30. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Tosti. The Finance Committee voted unanimously to support the recommended vote of the Board of Selectman. I think there's a few reasons for that and I think one has been mentioned is that, you know, the last override was about a 10% increase in taxes and I remember opening my bill and I said, whoa, you know, it's one thing to think about it in general at a ballot question, so another would be, of course it was higher because it was all put on the last two bills because it wasn't on the first two, but still it was an increase in taxes. I think the Finance Committee felt in discussing this at the sessions and after the Selectman's Action that it was, the Selectman's Action is reasonable that we shouldn't be making a profit. In other words, if we're going to do this that we shouldn't be charging more than it cost the town and even at 1.75% for say the next year that's still above what is actually costing the town to borrow if we had to borrow revenue anticipation notes, so we're probably still making a small profit, but certainly not near what it would be if it was at 6%. I think the Selectman's motion to a certain degree is a compromise by itself. You're going to take this money now and invest it. Can you make more than 1.75%? Well yeah, if you go into Pakistani war bonds or you know something like that at a short-term basis, look at the CDs, look at the treasuries, look at the any investments that you have now money markets, both bank and brokerage money markets they're paying like 0.5% so you're not making a profit the only way you're going to make a profit is if you go out and invest long term, like a 20-year bond or put it in the stock market and I don't think you're seeing that happen. Is it frozen for a year? Yes, it's like a one-year CD and interest rates usually don't move quite that fast. They could also go down as well as go up and so one could think they can't really go down much further than that. Do we anticipate a huge number of people taking this? You know, probably not. There's a large number of people who simply don't want to do it. It goes against the values they have or something like that, they just won't do it. How many will take advantage of this? Well, we just don't know. The experience I think in other towns has been that there won't be a huge wave but this can provide some relief for people who might really, really need it. And if it does become a problem, a year or two down the line, the treasurer has to go out and borrow revenue anticipation notes and it's costing the town a lot of money this is a one-year thing. We could come back at a future town meeting and change it back to 6% or 4% or whatever we want. I think it's worthwhile to give this a try for a year to bring some relief to people who really need it and especially again after to use my baseball again they stepped to the plate and helped us last June and maybe it's our turn to step to the plate and help some people who need it. So the finance committee again unanimously supports the recommendation of the Board of Select. Thank you. Mr. Jamison. Thank you Mr. Monterey. Gordon Jamison I tried to listen very carefully to the previous speakers in the presentation by the Board and Mr. Daugherty and our senator but I have a large number of questions I anticipate that some of you may have the same questions. I get confused when people talk about assets versus income. Obviously if I live in a house I have a lot of assets this particular one is income based, is that correct? That's my understanding. Okay. Mr. Daugherty mentioned that you could take your water and sewer bill and also defer that. Is that just the debt shift portion or the whole part of the bill? Who knows the answer to that? Mr. Gilligan looks like he was. Mr. Rice can he can you put your water and sewer on this as well or just the taxes? The question is it the debt shift portion that's in your tax bill that you can defer or the whole water and sewer bill including the metered rate? Stephen Gilligan can you answer that question for us Mr. Gilligan? Thank you Mr. moderator. Stephen Gilligan town treasurer only the board of selectmen can waive a current water bill with the town manager. However anyone who does not pay a water bill within a calendar year the water and sewer bill is leaned on to real estate and that would then become deferred. Okay. So don't go away Mr. Gilligan you may have a follow up. My suggestion on the rate so we can monitor this is that perhaps Mr. Gilligan can report this in his report every year to what the current rate would be for someone going forward. I'd be happy to do that. I see little Mr. Gilligan provided us with very informative report. I was very pleased to see the end of year cast positions were presented. We have no risk from in my interpretation in the given the few people that would take advantage of this and going into a negative cash balance therefore we won't have to borrow anything but with our wonderful triple A rate what is our current bond rate long term bond rate and short term borrowing. Our current short term well the recent borrowing of a bond anticipation note given the structure of the borrowing which included a premium on net interest cost was 0.179 percent for a one year note. Okay. I think oh actually I'm confused by the statement the different statements have been presented by Mr. Loretty and Senator Donnelly. Senator Donnelly mentioned that when the person transferred the home or passed on that the interest rate would kick in is my interpretation that while this would be a year by year interest rate for that block of interest let's say I had $5,000 that I deferred for this current year or this coming year at 1.75 perhaps interest go up a little bit it's maybe 2 percent the next year that would be for the 5 plus whatever the new growth is. The interest rate is locked per year in order for a property owner to defer taxes they must apply on an annual basis so each year's deferment locks in the interest rate for that year the following year the interest rate could change. Okay I got the impression from Loretty's discussion that perhaps they don't pay any interest until the transfer of the property. That's correct nothing is paid until the end of until the ownership changes in some but I want to be clear the interest does accrue the interest does accrue each and every year. That's very important that it's not like you wait until then and then you pay a month's interest it's like the interest is accruing on each of these blocks for every year until the transfer event happens. That's correct. I would also interpret the risk here to the town as far as being paid as 0 this would be triple A risk basically the loan the town is extending to the property owner because anything happens to the property we're going to get our money and the interest it's due. As we all know we are fortunate to live in a very stable property environment in Arlington compared to the Arlington world. I think that does it. My confusions have been cleared up. Thank you Mr. Gilligan. My pleasure. Thank you Mr. Marator. I will definitely be voting in favor of this and ask you to join me. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. McKinney. Lawrence McKinney precinct seven. I am wholly in favor of this and I had one question which I might ask someone who could answer it. I have got to tell you that I'm older than I look. I shot past 65 two years ago. I get my rotator cuffs repaired for 200 bucks a piece of Medicare and two years ago I discovered I was eligible for a circuit breaker and they dropped another $900 on my head. Will I still be eligible for the circuit breaker if I'm taking advantage of this wonderful thing? Are you making less than $51,000? Oh yes. Okay Ms. Rice. Thank you Mr. Marator. The senior circuit breaker is a state program that relates to income tax. This is a local program that relates to property tax so there would be no effect of one upon the other. Gracious. Because although it's true that ... Is the question still open Mr. McKinney? Well if you want I mean no I want to continue that I like this very much because ... I think Mr. Donley is anxious to give you a further answer. Oh, Senator. What you pay on your property tax so that you would only have to ... If you partially deferred you could still take the circuit breaker but if you took the full amount into referral I believe that you would not have the circuit breaker available to you. That's what I wanted to check. I'm perfectly happy to give you ... The council was correct. There's a state program. This is a town program but it also was based on what you pay on your property tax. Well I'm perfectly happy. That means I give the state back 900 but they give me 8,000. I can go with that one. All I can think is that I can remember when I paid a public very famous public relations person $300 an hour when he was 95 years old. Kirk Corian is about to buy another studio. He's 94 years old. And although I was a non-fairpreneur I didn't have a lot of social security and so I can tell you that this is a substantial increase and I look forward to it tremendously because I mean this means a couple of teeth for me so I'm very happy for this. I won't bite anybody I assure you but thank you so much for coming up with this and I hope you all vote unanimously. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Kori. Human Kori precinct 20. I guess first of all I want to thank Senator Donnelly and people who have proposed article 30. I think article 30 actually is something which helps seniors. I guess I disagree with Mr. Tosti saying that in future time meetings we could raise the rate. I honestly don't believe that will happen. I hope it doesn't happen. So I think I take that with a pinch of salt. Talking about property taxes one way to increase our property taxes is to decrease our revenue. This article while the intent is good and I wholeheartedly supported article 30 I'm not so convinced on article 29. The reason why is because it makes no difference to whether people stay in their home because it's not helping people. It helps after the property is transferred but I don't see how that directly impacts or fellow residents or fellow citizens lives. I don't think we should be I don't think it makes sense to give a financial incentive not to pay taxes. Oh, I'm sorry. I don't think this article helps people stay in their homes. This article defers revenue to the town after the property is transferred or sold. Article 30 does and I support that and I think a lot of people did. That's why it passed so unanimously. Article 29 I think I'm surprised at the lack of data that we've presented with by the proponents of this article whether or not that's Senator Donnelly, the board selectman I think it's unrealistic for us to make a decision based on any kind of data. I mean how widely is this currently used and what's there's a cost. Can I ask that question through the moderator to the board selectman what data was used to evaluate the decision? Mr. Donnelly, do you have an answer to that question? I guess Mr. McCrory my first I will say that you said something earlier that the deferment is only on after the transfer. My understanding is this article is the money the revenue is owed once the property is transferred or sold. It is deferred. No money is paid by the property owner until they pass at which point then the money is collected after they passed. Correct. So in the answer to your specific question there are about 10 people who use this money. I do not have the exact cost. So any indication of how much this will cost us? Given that with the current interest rate of 6% and the current income that is being applied the income limit that is being applied we have 10 people who apply. So we have on Monday increased the number of people are eligible and tonight we would be lowering the interest rate. So we expect that it will increase a certain number. I do not know of any modeling that would tell me exactly how many it is. I expect it is going to be a relatively low amount and also just want to be a little bit more clear. It will not actually cost us money because we collect the money eventually in the end. It defers the money coming in. I do not have a valid estimate of how many new people will take the money. Do you have an estimate of the number of people you believe? What I can say is the total of the license plate went to one quarter of 1%. I think it is .026 and when they saw and they increased to $60,000 and they actually went from I think the numbers were I had the exact numbers. I do not have any. I think they went from 12 to 24 people. At least you would see a total of 20. That is what we have seen in other places when they dropped down. In Lexington again that was one quarter of 1%. My concern is that it is quite substantial decrease in percentage wise and does not have any immediate effect. I think the money would better spent reducing people's senior property taxes on basis on whether or not they can afford to pay. I have one final question moderator through yourself. What exactly is a senior who is not head of household? I am not quite clear on what it means by who are not heads of household. Maybe the Board of Selectment can answer that question. Mr. Rice is going to tell us. Thank you Mr. Moderator. It is not a calculus that would have to be done here as to whether a senior is or is not a head of household. It is merely a particular number that is set by the Commissioner of Revenue for the Senior Circuit Breaker Program every year. The Commissioner of Revenue sets a certain different types of income limits for that program and what this statute does, which is a separate statute, is it borrows that number. I clarify my question. What exactly is a senior who is not a single senior who is not a head of household? In that case who is the head of household? I don't know, but it is not anything that would have to be determined at the local level. It is not anything going to the eligibility of the seniors at the local level. It is purely the number that is being assigned to their income by the Commissioner of Revenue. I thought it was actually a criteria for whether or not they qualify. No. That has been voted. Thank you. Paul Schlickman, prec. 9. Motion to terminate debate on all items under this article. Okay, we have a motion to terminate debate on all items under the article. All in favor of terminating debate, please say yes. Opposed say no. My opinion it is a two-third vote. All right, we have before the recommended vote of the Board of Selectment is printed in the report. And, huh? Yeah, I was about to get there. I was going to say then we have Mr. Loretty's amendment that changes that to give us a 4% floor and tacking the interest rate to the 10-year U.S. bond rate as opposed to the one of the selectments report. First, we'll vote on Mr. Loretty's amendment. All in favor of the amendment, please say yes. Opposed say no. No. My opinion that is defeated. We now have a forced the recommended vote of the Board of Selectment as printed. All in favor, please say yes. Yes. Opposed? No. My opinion that is a positive vote. That terminates article 29. That brings us to article 31. We have a recommended vote of the Board of Selectment with no action. All in favor, please say yes. Yes. Opposed? Okay, no action. Article 32. I'm Andrew Adam, chapter lane to speak about this. Okay, we have the recommended vote of the Board of Selectment on this. Mr. Chapter Lane. Mr. Don, you jumped the gun. Well, Adam Chapter Lane, town manager while the presentation is being put up on the screen. What I'm going to do here is present the findings and recommendations contained within the department of revenue division of local services, town and school finance analysis. The full version was placed on town meeting member seats last week and the meeting was held in January or early February. For those who need an extra copy, there are about 30 copies on the back table this evening in the hall. As I go through the report, I want to be clear that I'm not presenting either my opinions or the opinions of any board or committee. Rather, I am presenting on the details that are found within the report. However, at the close of the presentation, I'm going to make my recommended actions for a process to move forward. So through this presentation, I'm going to be presenting on the details that are found within the report. How am I down below six minutes? You told me last night you only needed seven minutes, dude. Are you serious? You want 10? I said last night and he said skim me seven minutes. I thought you were serious. Wow. I only need seven minutes, he said. I didn't know it was going to be held to that. Can you do it in 10? I'm going to be presenting on the details of the findings that are contained within the report. The recommendations contained within the report by the DOR and then again my recommendations for a proposed process going forward. So the history, at least most recently began with a vote on article 51 at last year's town meeting and that was an affirmative vote to request the town manager research and consolidated town school finance department. That vote of town is reaching out to the department of revenue division of local services to conduct this financial management review. So what sources and methods did department of revenue use? So staff from the department of revenues division of local services technical assistance bureau as well as the department of elementary and secondary education school business services unit interviewed both in person and via the telephone, appointed committee members, elected board members as well as town and school board members, committee members and staff members that were interviewed are contained in the last page of the department of revenues report. What did they look at? They looked at annual budget documents, they looked at our tax recap sheet, they looked at balance sheets and audits prepared by our external auditors, they looked at the powers and Sullivan report that was a result of the FY10 school deficit, they looked at the Massachusetts association for school business officials report which also looks at how they put together the town's current financial structure and they really focused on three things where are we now in regards to our structure, what potential efficiencies or improvements could we make within our existing structure and what benefits or efficiencies could we realize through an altering or restructuring of the way we do it now. So starting with their findings, their initial finding was that despite the town's structural deficit for the past several years S&P, however they did comment that despite that rating S&P does rate the town's financial management as good rather than strong which is an indicator that financial practices do exist in most areas but might not be formalized or regularly monitored. They were also impressed and engaged with the experienced capital planning committee, the finance committee and the multiyear reports in the annual budgets produced as well as the capital reports produced for town meeting to vote on every year. Some of their general concerns are the issues that they see with independent finance officers as well as the lack of accountability that that independence creates and they talk about the issues that come from independent finance offices when you're dealing with a finance structure that has multi-departmental responsibilities and how the lack of coordinated centralized management can create difficulties in creating that multi-departmental cooperation. They talk about historically how the town manager excuse me the deputy town manager play a coordinating role amongst town finance departments but the cooperation is voluntary and there's no actual accountability that's held through that process. They mention and I don't have on the slide but they mention that Arlington has not followed the trend of many Massachusetts communities particularly among probably sized communities with a triple A bond rating to create a consolidated finance department with financial positions accountable to an administrator or as a question in the report if Arlington wants to raise its financial management to the strong level the question the town must address is who is in charge of financial management in general and in particular who is responsible for ensuring that consistent, effective control and monitoring practices are in place across departments. The short answer now is that there is no one officer aboard vested with the formal authority to fulfill this responsibility. Some of the direct findings they had were in regards to the issues in the issues that caused that or what they found the issues to be that caused that. An investment loss realized in FY 2009 through the Treasury and Collector's Office as well as an error on the FY 11 tax rate or tax recap sheet that resulted from a data entry based on the enterprise fund rink offset from the rink enterprise fund. The school department's FY $1.5 million deficit was also addressed several times within the report. Moving forward they looked at departmental budget processes and the preparation of annual budgets and the use of the MUNIS budget module. They had concerns with the lack of using the budget module as a centralized database for the budget process and recommended using it as a MUNIS's capabilities to go from start to finish in the preparation of a budget and also using MUNIS for both monthly and quarterly budget monitoring. They also addressed the situation between the Treasury's Office, the Treasury Collector's Office and the Comptroller's Office where both offices were keying in the same information because of the lack of integrated software existing between the two departments. And I think the final slide and findings talks about the town's process of using enterprise fund offsets as part of the operating budget. They had concerns with the use of tax they have on transparency with the town's budget. They also talked about the tax recap or the tax rate setting process. That's an annual process that occurs in late November and December in terms of setting the town's tax rate based on the appropriations that are made by town meeting and historically that process has been handled by the elected assessors and the Comptroller without a role for the town manager and they had concerns that the town manager who in working with the council for the manager in setting the tax rate seem to have left the rest of my notes right here. Apologize for that. So with those findings they have a list of recommendations that I don't want to read directly through. The first several talk about their recommendation to create a consolidated town finance department. So pursuing a change to the town manager act to accomplish that. Creating an appointed position for the treasurer collector to be the director of assessing that is appointed by the town manager. Consider making the board of assessors an appointed board and maintaining the appointed status of the Comptroller under the board of selectmen for both appointment and removal in order to provide some independence for what they label to be a critical position. They go into recommending exploring further the munis budget module for departmental budget submissions as well as using it as a centralized database as I mentioned earlier. The payroll and purchasing functions in a consolidated finance department and they recommend that while the town moves forward on looking at a townside restructuring that the town manager and the school superintendent work together to address what they identified as outstanding issues with previous town school consolidations and what would be included in that as facilities IT and the payroll functions. They go on further to recommend the school department purchase and implement those substitutes. They recommend improving administrative capacity at the building or cost center level in the school department. They recommend that any problems they've addressed with the facilities IT and payroll consolidations be addressed before moving farther with any larger consolidation between the town and school finance operations. Should there be a merged town and school finance operation they recommend the superintendent and the school board to have access to a dedicated staff member who has a school business official. They recommend that once the merged finance department is running smoothly that it conduct the complete review of the town's budget format as well as its chart of accounts and financial reporting. They also recommend the town and school work together to develop a written agreement concerning the allocation of municipal costs eligible to be included as net school spending in the school department. They also recommend reviewing and signing the school payroll warrant only after it's been completed and gross salary information by employees available for their review. So that is all that was contained in the department of revenue report and again paper copies have been made available, electronic copies are available, if anybody would like another electronic copy we'd be happy to make that available. The process I'm recommending is in August holding a series of stakeholder meetings bi-weekly over the course of those three months with all of the stakeholders of these departments that would be impacted by any financial restructuring to address all of the concerns and I do mention that anything that would be procedural and not structural we would try to address immediately to make the improvement. Going forward coming out of those meetings I propose a series of public meetings to be held which a menu of options would be available to the group and have feedback be solicited from the public in regards to those menu of options. In November have those options reduced to single recommended solutions based on the feedback and continued work of the stakeholder group. Then moving forward to next year in preparation for town meeting filing any necessary warrant articles and then potentially in town meeting next year taking any necessary action. That's my presentation. All right. Hold on. Do we get a second on receiving the report? All in favor of receiving the report say yes. Opposed? Okay. The report is received. Now about 10 people have raised their hand but there really is nothing to debate here. There's nothing before us. Wait Mr. Dari, let me finish. There's nothing for us to debate for those folks all we're doing is receiving the report. Next year we're going to come back and tell us the wonderful things they want to do. So I really don't want to get into a debate about the merits of the report. Yes Mr. Dori, what's your point of order? No? Okay. It's not in no action. I'll go receiving report just like the school committee is going to get up next week and present their report to us. The capital planning committee presents their reports to us. The select committee presents the reports. Mr. Gilligan gave a two minute presentation of his report. He said here's my report and we receive them. I gave them the benefit of giving the time to present the report because we asked them to come back and report to us. So we really have nothing to debate so I don't really want to continue to talk about it. Yes sir. Yeah, we are kind of getting a debate here Jim. I know but yeah, you have to come to the front and deduce yourself. But again, that's kind of fostering the debate. Yeah, I see Stephen. I think too, Chairman of the Board of Assessors. I just think that for someone to present a report such as Mr. Gilligan, such as I did the first night, such as many other people chose to do, they can present a report at any given time. However, this one was given under the auspices of two articles that were voted, no action. And I just think from the clarity standpoint, so it's a level playing field for everyone, it should be done at a given time and not in pot with two articles so that we've heard from one side. The only thing I would recommend is that everyone should read the report and should read the report and thoroughly be prepared because there's no support for any of their conclusions. Thank you. Thank you, sir. I urge everyone in the meeting and town to read the report because it puts drastic changes on our form of government. But this is not a no action article, it's a vote cleverly put in to receive the report. So I think that terminates debate on this. What's your point of order, Mr. Gilligan? Mr. Moderator, Stephen Gilligan Town Treasurer, I don't wish to debate the findings as listed in the DOR report, but there is a gross misrepresentation, if I may, of this presentation that I would like to correct. May I do so? Mr. Moderator, it casts aspersions on my professional performance as well as the performance of my office. And I think it's a gross misrepresentation. Ten seconds, Mr. Moderator. Then that's it. Then we're moving on to the next article. Thank you, Mr. Manager. And I don't fault Mr. Chapter Lane for putting this in, he's repeating it. But it is a gross misrepresentation that I don't want Town Mead in to take it as gospel. The comment is made that the Treasurer Collector's Office invested proceeds from property tax overrides that was set aside in a special purpose stabilization fund in risky investments at State Street Bank. During FY 2019's investments experience, the net loss of $50,000 from State Street Bank failing to fully disclose the risky nature of these investments. First and foremost, the investments were not risky. They were in a passive bond fund that State Street Bank purposefully moved without authorization. I uncovered that. I went to the Attorney General's Office, not only covered the full million dollars pristine and pure funds, but additional money due to the Town's efforts. The Attorney General's Office invested in the city of Town City for additional agencies of municipalities and states and recovered $333 million because of the effort that I initiated. That can be borne out by Town Council. Thank you very much, Mr. Mall. Thank you. Thank you for your efforts. That ends 32. 33 we have recommended vote of no action. All in favor. Opposed? No action. as Slechman's big report. Mr. Moderator, I thank you. The comment and the text of the article are fairly self-explanatory. This is something that we tried to do last year and the original vehicle for this sunsetted, we tried to create this vehicle last year. The legislature asked us to do it slightly differently. We're back to bring it back. Thank you. Mr. Laredi? Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Chris Laredi precinct seven. And one of the proud six who voted against us last year and who will vote against it again this year. And I hope we get more than six people who vote against it this year. This article is completely unnecessary. In past years, prior to last year, there were certain things in state law that required home rule legislation in order to affect the desired results. The state legislature changed that. We didn't need to pass this last year. This article in no way affects the amount of rents we will receive for wireless leases. They will be exactly the same whether this article passes or not. The only thing it does is it sets up a separate account. And what we're doing is we're saying to our state legislatures, you've gotta go and spend the effort to create this special account on our behalf because we're not adult enough to track funds ourselves. I think our finance committee, I think our capital planning committee does a great job in allocating funds for specific purposes. And they are entirely capable of doing that for the wireless lease proceeds. So I'm gonna vote against this because others say it isn't necessary. And I think we ask enough of our state legislatures. They spend way too much time on this type of local legislation. And it is simply a waste of effort. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else wish to speak to this article? Mr. McCurry, I'm sorry, Hugh. I'll be very brief. This article, I had a similar question in my mind last year when this article came before us. And I see it's come up again. We're trying to streamline our finance department, but yet the money for these antennas doesn't go into the general fund. It goes into a special fund for parks maintenance. I mean, is this real? Why aren't we? Why doesn't this revenue go into the general fund? And I urge you to not to support this article. Thanks. Did you wish to answer to that question, Mr. McCurry? If someone can answer why the revenue does not go into the general fund, I'd be very interested to hear them. Do you have anything? I can take it offline. The answer to that. Adam Chapter Lane, town manager. This fund was created, I believe, 10 or 12 years ago, based on a voter town meeting in order to set aside this antenna lease revenue to support capital expenditures on parks and recreational facilities. So annually, you may see in the capital budget an offset coming out of this fund appropriated by town meeting to support expenditures to upkeep and to renovate and reconstruct parks and recreational facilities. So that's why it was created. Town meeting sees it. It's not spent without town meeting, looking at its expenditures through the capital plan and the capital appropriation at town meeting every year. So I don't know if Joe Connolly would like to speak to some of the projects in the capital budget. I know we'll get to the capital budget in one day or another. We'll leave that. Okay, so that's the history of it. Why is it still the case, I guess, is really what I'm asking. It's still a mechanism that's there to be able to support continued investment in our parks. But we already invest in our parks. I mean, this isn't the only fund that we use to invest in our parks, correct? If this wasn't available as an offset to the capital budget, there would be less money that could be spent in the capital budget and decisions would have to be made to either invest less than parks or other potential town and school facilities. Okay, all right, thanks. Mr. LaCorte. Annie LaCorte, precinct 15. I'd like to speak to something that Mr. LaReady said. I have a couple of questions that I think might clarify something that I think is that I understand differently than he does. It is true that funds that go into the general fund may be used for operating costs. At the end of the year, if we have not spent our full budget, those funds then become free cash, have to be certified by the state and re-budgeted. And my understanding as a selectman was that these kinds of funds that are set aside for a special purpose have to be dealt with differently in order to avoid those monies simply rolling into the general fund and being generally appropriated. That yes, we could track them we could track them in the accounting system in some way, but it would not be quite the same as what we are trying to accomplish here. And the intention is that the money go from a particular revenue stream to a particular purpose similar to our revolving funds. Could perhaps somebody from the finance committee speak to whether or not I'm right about this assumption and whether or not it would be more difficult for us to segregate these funds if we didn't do it in this way and use them for the purpose town meeting intended them for 12 years ago? Mr. Tosti, is your assumption correct? No, what Mr. McCourt said is inherently accurate. You know, we have a set percentage of the total amount to be raised that is appropriated each year by this body and the capital budget. And if there wasn't a certain amount of money coming in from this antenna fund for parks, then we wouldn't be able to spend as much money on the parks. So yes, you are right, thank you. So essentially what town meeting did is they said we're creating a revenue stream based on something that suddenly became possible when cell towers and antennas became a thing that actually existed. And we wanna be sure if we're gonna give up whatever it is we're giving up to allow the use of public lands to put up these towers, so on and so forth, that we dedicate the return we get for that to a specific purpose. And I suspect that this was a specific purpose, the support of park maintenance and capital projects in the parks, that they felt was easily cut when the budget is under pressure and that they wanted to protect it and that that was the point of this. And I think it's a point that was well taken at the time and probably still is. So I'm in support of the article and I urge you to be in support of it as well. Mr. McCabe? Harry McCabe, Preaching 21. The correct answer to the question is because when this program started, the St. Paul Lutheran Church came to us and said, if you will allow us to put antennas on our church, we will make a contribution to the town for the town's parks and recreation program. That's the answer. These other answers are subsequent to that event. From that time on, it's just history. That's why the money is being put aside for parks and recreation. Thank you for that history lesson. Mr. Deist? That was John Deist, Preaching 13. Moving to question. All in favor, moving to question. Please say yes. Yes. Opposed? Opposed? Okay, the debate is terminated. We have a force of recommended report of the Board of Selectment. All in favor, please say yes. Yes. Opposed? No. In my opinion, it's a positive vote. We have brings us to article 35. Yes, sir. Mr. Rice, we need a two-third vote. Okay, then I can declare a two-third vote because that definitely was. And I'm gonna go back. Madam Clerk, do you certify the more than 85 members of the meeting here in present and voting in the affirmative? Yes. Okay, thank you. Yeah, Mr. Carman. Dean Carman there. Dean Carman, precinct 20. Mr. Moderator, unless my memory's gone, in prior years when we had home rule legislation, we've been told that we had to do a standing vote to show the legislature how much the meeting supported it. Does that not matter anymore? My understanding from the, when we researched the two-third vote being declared by the moderator, that was acceptable to the legislature. Correct, but I thought in the past we've been told it wasn't a matter of it was a majority or two-thirds, but when you sent something up for home rule, you wanted to show what the vote was because if it was overwhelming support, the legislature would be more likely to act. That's what I thought we've been told in the past. We can, if my understanding is they will, they like the two-third declared vote as well as long as it's certified. Which is why we made that rule, yes, sir. It's too late, we already voted. Yeah, we can't understand, you have to come forward, sir. Introduce yourself. Yeah, everybody's gotta do that, man. My precinct 14, having appeared before legislative committees on behalf of the town or home rule legislation, I was frequently asked the quantum of the vote, and it is my understanding that if we don't have a standing vote on this, it'll be the first time on special legislation in recent memory, in my memory at least, that we have not had it. So I respectfully suggest we have a standing vote. Well, that's the, this is the first time we've had the ability to declare a two-third vote. Ms. Rice, can you have your opinion as to whether the legislature will send us packing or whether this will be acceptable? I'd prefer just to move on. Wait, sit down. I have a question to council. He's next. Thank you, Mr. Moderator, Juliana, Rice Town Council. I will just point out that the rule that was adopted by this meeting last year and put into a bylaw concerning two-thirds votes really applied where the increased quantum was required by some other provision of law, either two-thirds or four-fifths or something else. So in this case, the quantum is just a majority, as it is for any piece of home rule legislation. So in order to be safe and deferring, of course, to the senator, it may be best to take the standing vote. Mr. Donnelly, can we hear what your opinion would be? The state administration regulatory oversight, the only time that we need to know how many, if it's two-thirds, is on an article 97. But other than that, we do not ask if you have a majority from home rule and it's a home rule petition. That's enough of the legislature, whether I'm presiding over the Senate or in committee. We never ask what the vote is. Okey-dokey, the horse's mouth. Article 35 is now before us. Recommended vote of no action. All in favor? Opposed? Unanimous no action. There we go. Tell the legislature. Article 36, endorsement of CBGB monies. We got a printed report and it's gonna tell us all the great things. Mr. Donnelly. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. You have on your chairs, and those of you who are on the town meeting email list received early in the week, the report of the CDBG application. As many of you remember, and some of you who are newer will not yet know, but you're about to learn, the federal government awards a block grant program that Arlington is eligible for a certain amount of money. That money is, it is an unusual piece of money for the town of Arlington in that it's actually voted for by the Board of Selectment. It's not actually controlled by town meeting, which is pretty much the only time that that happens. We do bring it to town meeting for your endorsement for the purposes of both transparency and for your guidance. The little bit about the process on this is that there are a number of applications, there's a call for applications that are put out. The applications are submitted to the town hall. They're reviewed by a subcommittee that consists of two selectmen, the town manager, and I believe Carol was on that committee, Kowalski, the planner is on that committee as well. I know she's at the meetings, I just can't remember if she's technically a part of the meeting. We get far more in terms of requests than we have the capability to, than we have the amount of money. Furthermore, the federal government has cut the amount of money that is available to us dramatically. As you can see in the report, it's down 13%. We do have one of our programs is a loan program where we loan out money to people who need their houses to be improved if they meet the criteria, and then that money comes back to us when they make repayments and interest. We are eligible to use that money that comes back to us, a fraction of it, as a part, like we are allowed to re-spend a part of that, so it's essentially another income stream for this program. So we used that money that comes back to us to essentially level fund the CDBG. So even though the amount that we got from the federal government is down 13%, with some exceptions, we level funded the policy here. We are here for any questions that you may have. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Harrington. Stephen Harrington, precinct 13. Thank you, Mr. Dunn, and for the planning committee for the CDBG report. The program income increase was something new last year. We actually found out about it because we wanted to increase the money for athletic scholarships for low-income students. And so if you'll look in your report, you'll see that the funding for low-income students is not level funded. It's decreased by a large fraction. The last year we had, I think it was $43,000. This year it'll be down to $8,000. So in fact, the reason that I bring this up is because there was a revenue stream for low-income students for scholarships that no longer exist. Mr. Moderator, I have a question to the planning department. How much money was deposited into the Athletic Fee Revolving Account for athletic scholarships so far this year? Ms. Kalski, do you have an answer for that? I don't know how much has been deposited, but the request for the reimbursement for them has not yet been made, and it's just about to be made from the information I have. So the point is, though, that that money will be deposited into the Revolving Fee Account for athletic fees. Is that the case? Kalski, director of planning. The scholarships have been made, and they'll be requesting to be reimbursed, is my understanding, for the grants administrator. Okay, so just to clarify, the monies that come from CDBG are deposited into the Athletic Fee Revolving Account. Now, so this year, there'll be $30,000 less, or so, deposited into that Revolving Account. Mr. Moderator, could I ask a question of the school department? I see that the finance people from the school department are here this evening. Do they intend to deposit the $35,000 difference into the Athletic Fee Revolving Account that is no longer being funded through the CDBG funds? What $35,000 difference? We're talking about the CDBG money here. So last year, it was a $43,000 CDBG grant for low-income scholarships that were deposited into the Athletic Fee Revolving Account. Mr. Chapter Lane's gonna enlighten us about what money was deposited where and how. Adam Chapter Lane, town manager. My understanding is out of that $43,000 that was requested last year from both the base budget and the program income that the need this year will be somewhere around $22,000 or $23,000, that will be submitted for reimbursement from the school department to the CDBG or to the planning office. The remainder of those funds are not expected to be needed by Athletic Scholarships, so they are planning to be redistributed to other programs listed on the public services that are currently funded by CDBG. We can't just transfer the money that has to be a reimbursement or an expense associated with it. So there isn't an Athletic Scholarship need in this current fiscal year up to that amount, so those funds will be redirected to other public service programs. I guess I'm not being clear. The money was transferred into the Revolving Fee Account. So it's a Revolving Account. I can't say that I know that any money's been transferred from the CDBG fund into an Athletic Revolving Account. So could I ask someone from the school department whether or not they deposit the money into a Revolving Account? Madam. So these are the kind of questions you're supposed to give us up front so they can have answers for you? I asked the board a select one meeting. Diane Johnson, Chief Financial Officer, Arlington Public Schools. Thank you. I'm sorry. Diane Johnson, Chief Financial Officer, Arlington Public Schools. Presently, we have not yet put in the request to CDGB, so no funds have been transferred to the school department at this time. We request reimbursement for those student athletes who meet the eligibility requirements of CDGB and whose athletic fees we have already waived because of their income status. CDGB serves to reimburse the school department partially for these fees we basically forgive otherwise. We have not yet done this transaction that customarily takes place in the spring after all of the spring sports have been settled down. So as a follow-up question, are you comfortable with the cut in the CDBG funding? Prior to FY12, $8,000 was the amount allocated each year. And so yes, I am. So the difference will be deposited into Revolving Account. The reason it matters is because that's how people pay, use of fees cover a large fraction of the sports costs. And so just like with the antennas, the revenue stream to support recreation, rehabilitation and maintenance, the monies from the CDBG on prior years goes into Revolving Fee Account that's dedicated for athletic fees. And so by taking it out of the CDBG funding now, that money will no longer be available. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Chappett. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Roland Chappett, precinct 12, a two-part question. At the end of the year, if there's any money left over in a particular part of the CDBG that was not spent, what happens to that money? The other half of the question is, it was a very large project and only a portion of the funds for that particular project are allocated in a particular year. Will it go into a kitty, if you will, until enough money is available to complete that project? Yep, go ahead. I got you, Paul. Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Thank you, Tom, meeting members. If money is left over in an allocated area, they like housing and urban development, likes us to reprogram it. If I can justify that there's a project for which we have to accumulate funds and I justify it well, they will let us do that. It's very challenging to do that. We've been asked not to do that. They would much rather have us reprogram it to another category where the demand is there. I hope that answers the question. It's satisfactory, Mr. Chappett. Okay, it's 9.30, 10-minute break. Let's start right back in 10 minutes, please. La Crosse kids are outside. Actually, the La Crosse kids' moms are outside. Go buy stuff from them. And Precinct 18 has yet to organize. Please go to your designated organization spot. All precincts should have been organized by now. Thank you. Precinct 19, back left corner. Ready, Sarah? Let's come to order. Let's come to order, please. Take your seats, sit down. We're just, flare gun here. Please come to order. Okay, we're discussing CBGB money. Again, remember we can't really change what they're recommending to us. We can only question and then endorse or turn it down in full. So the next speaker is Ms. LaCorte. There, is it on? Oh, there we go. So Annie LaCorte, Precinct 15. I'm probably being a little uptight here, but I just wanna clarify for everybody because it felt a little muddy to me that the CDBG program, when those funds get expended, it is on a reimbursement basis. You have to show that you spent the money for the purpose for what it was allocated and then a check is written to reimburse you for that. So there's no sense in which when we make an allocation for a particular purpose that it's deposited in the account of that organization and that's it. They actually have to do a pretty extensive reporting back and they have to provide invoices and so on and so forth so that we have proof for the people who are giving us the money, the HUD department that the money actually got spent as intended and that's really the answer to the question on the athletic scholarships is that we are waiting for the reimbursement request to be filed so that we can give them the money and I hope you will all forgive me. I really will get over this thinking. I'm still a selectman by the end of the town meeting. Thank you. Mr. Dunn. Mr. Loretty. 36. CBGB money. We endorse it or not. Thank you Mr. Loretty, Precinct 7. Just a couple of questions on the, I have a question on the very first item that's on in the table on the back page of this handout and what it says is affordable housing programs funded at $228,000 in change. What does that mean? Ms. Kowalski. Part of the affordable housing program includes our ability to work on housing programs. It also helps to offset the, partially offset the salary of the director of housing, the housing director, senior planner in the department. But is, I guess what I'm wondering is this funding for town entities or some of it going to nonprofit housing programs? Some of it goes to both. Some of it goes to a town staff position, a partial position and some of it goes to foster affordable housing programs. The, some of it will go to the housing corporation of Arlington. Who put in a request? So the request is part of that top line item. Item one, that's right. I guess I would ask Mr. Modder if it's possible. I have, it's a bit of a source of annoyance to me sometimes in town about the way that nonprofit organizations are confused with town entities. And I would ask whenever we're funding items that include nonprofit entities, that they're clearly identified as such and not mixed in or grouped with funding that may indeed be going to true town entities. Just one other question and this is underplanning. The first item underplanning is comprehensive master planning funded at $52,000. I thought I saw somewhere and I can't find it now. It might have been in the finance committee report. A line item for $75,000 for a master plan. And I'm wondering if this $52,000 is part of that $75,000 or is it additional? Ms. Kowalski. That's in addition to this allocation. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Judd. Thank you, Mr. Moderator Lyman, Judd precinct nine. I have two questions at least on the article as it is voted in the selectments report. The first two items are private way repair, public way repair, which seems to show that nothing happened, whether it was receipts or expenditures of their balances. You speak right into the mic. I'm having trouble hearing you. Oh, sorry. I saved it under this article. The first two items that are in the. The wrong article, Lyman. We're talking about 36 CBGBs. Well, this is the CDBG revolving funds. Okay, if you want to stick with 36, I would suggest the following. We have to balance our budget. The state has to balance itch budget. Wait, wait, Lyman. But we may not get any more CDBG funding because the federal government doesn't seem to be able to balance its budget. And I think that there is likely, depending on the electoral outcome in November, to be a severe cutback in federal funding. So I hope that the various agencies and projects that we are looking for are either quietly put away or at least some other provision made for them. This is the CDBG funding going back to when it started. As I remember it, it was originally for communities in excess of 50,000 population. Do you have questions about this year's funding as opposed to funding during the Nixon administration? Yes, sir. What is that question, sir? It's not a question. It's a simple statement. Sorry, I used the word question. Statement, the following, that since our population has fallen below 50,000, we have been very fortunate that through our government representatives, senators, et cetera, we have been able to be grandfathered in on the CDBG funding. And again, that grandfather clause could be kicked out the window by the next Congress. So we just have to at least consider what's to be done. And that's why I was saying in the next part of, in the article 37, I would suggest people just look at the balances and the beginning balance and ending balance to see where we're going. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Fuller? Mr. McCabe? Okay, we're motioned. Okay. Again, microphones. Mr. McCabe, precinct six has moved, precinct two has moved to terminate debate on all articles and decisions. All issues under this article. All in favor, please say yes. Yes. Opposed? Debate is terminated. We have before us a recommended vote of the Board of Selectment with the recommendations for CDBG money. All in favor, please say yes. Yes. Opposed? My opinion is a positive vote. We have novel force article 37, Revolving Funds. Mr. Dunn? Article 37 you have before you, it has the various funds, the amounts that were spent, and also note at the bottom, at page 16, we're creating a new one. Thank you. Mr. Jamison? Mr. Judd, next. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Gordon Jamison, precinct 12. Longstanding members of the meeting will realize that this is something I've taken in interest in the last couple of years, including the addition of the new Revolving Fund that Mr. Dunn mentioned. The net potential expenditures now totals in excess of $2 million. I believe these are under the auspices of the town manager and through him, the Board of Selectment. I'm quite pleased that we now have at least three members that are very interested in the Revolving Funds. Ms. Mahana has spoken eloquently on those in the past. Mr. Dunn has a significant experience in the finance committee in looking at outside funds, funds beyond the general fund, and Mr. Curl also has obviously experienced through his years in the school committee, in that this is a year where we've obviously done a lot of work, the people behind me have done a lot of work reviewing our bylaws and making changes where needed. I would hope that the Board and the manager and the town council and the department heads would review how these funds are being used. And so the initial intent as reported to the meeting when they were adopted all jibes with the current practice being involved with the use of the funds. I note that in another, in the report of the finance committee relating to a different potential fund creation event, that the finance committee reported under that article that they are in generally against the formation of funds that lie outside of the general fund. Perhaps the chair of the finance committee could comment on these funds in particular. Mr. Tuas, do you know of what he speaks? The finance committee is becoming more concerned with the creation of a lot of these different funds that don't flow through the general fund and even had a great deal of debate on the antenna fund. In the special town meeting, there is a motion to create a new fund for energy conservation and large number of the finance committee wants that funds to flow through the general fund like of others so priorities can be set. All of these revolving funds were created by town meeting. They're under the authority of the selectman. Not quite sure why, but that's the way the law was set. But yes, we do have some concern about a lot of the different funds that flow outside of the general fund. Thank you, Mr. Toskey. And on that line, I'm quite interested to understand some more details about this new fund with expenditures up to $450,000. So this is the central school building. I believe the building behind us that houses the Board of Health and such. Anticipated receipts, perhaps the manager could comment on that and the use of the funds. Mr. Chapter Lane. I'm Chapter Lane, town manager. That fund is proposed to be established this year based on the exploration of the urban renewal plan that has been in place for the central school and also 27 Maple Street, which is part of the central school property. And you are corrected as the property directly located behind town hall. That fund would be established to accept the rents and any lease proceeds from the tenants of those buildings and then go to pay both staff costs associated with custodial work in the buildings as well as utility costs and all other maintenance and repair costs associated with the buildings. So in these cases, beyond the custodial fees for like in other funds like that, there's the Whittemore House and the town hall fund are all very similar in that regard. But I am concerned that since we're in many of these funds there is some limited or in here specifically stated capital expenditures that we're doing this offset thing that you just told us the DOR was not terribly pleased with this offset approach to life. And that we're basically expanding our capital plan beyond the 5% out of the general fund through these mechanisms. Is that one interpretation? Yeah, I guess I'm not sure where you get the capital expenditures. Well, it says capital improvements, a revolving fund, blah, blah, blah, capital improvements and other costs. I suppose I guess that would be one interpretation that we would be circumventing the capital planning process, but right now any improvements to the central school as well as 27 maple do go through the capital planning process. Thank you, thank you. Thank you, Adam. So that's a rather large new one. And the two million that I mentioned up front, that number has grown substantially since my time on the committee as much as three to four fold. The other really large one is the life support services also known as the rescue fund. This comes from proceeds from transport and association with the Armstrong ambulance as I understand, I believe. Each of these segments for each one of these funds is basically a mini balance sheet for that fund. So if I report the balance sheet for my company, I have the beginning of the year, I have the receipts, I have the expenditures, and I have the end of the year cash position. That's what you have here. For some of these larger funds, I can track and the rescue fund if you will, about 175,000 of that because that appears as offsets against the cost of the rescue equipment in the capital plan and towards two EMTs that are being paid out of this, which I'm very supportive of both of those actions, the offset issue notwithstanding, but that leaves $600,000. And my request in the future would be that these that maybe not in this actual vote, but in ancillary information provided to the meeting that in some of these larger things above $50,000 in expenditures, that there might be some granularity on the types of expenditures that reported rather than just the line item expenditures to the meeting so we would have a better understanding of what we're voting to say, yes, that's great. And with that, I will recommend passage of the, with these caveats that we're making more and more of these funds and we need to think about that carefully in the future. I will vote be voting in favor of this. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Mr. Judd. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. We are talking now about Article 37. Yes, we ask, sir. Good, I've plowed up with it. The only, these are comments, as I said before, the first two item, private way repair, public way repair shown no receipts or expenditures. Now I do not know if this is being covered elsewhere by our expenditures, but I will have to say that some of the streets in this town are in need of repair, to say the least. So I don't know if we have any explanation for that. The only other thing I note too amongst these is if you look on page 15, second item from the bottom, town hall rental. That's the place we're in right now and apparently it's quite profitable. It started with $8,510.50. Balanced at the end, $29,904.19. So I think it behooves us to make sure that this building stays in good condition. And the last item, the addendum, a revolving fund for the central school rental to accept proceeds, short and et cetera, which is basically the senior center, the Council on Aging, the Board of Health. There is also an adult daycare center there. Now that building is over 100 years old. And of course we've had to alter the interior of the building for several reasons to accommodate the new uses. But I would dare say that as a general building it is more sound physically than half the brand new buildings that we've put hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars into. Like they say, they don't make them like that anymore. However, I think this is a very good article that's been overlooked because I know from people who go there to the senior center that there's been a history of, shall we say, not being clean, peeling paint and other things of that nature. Also I can remember earlier in, oh maybe eight or 10 years ago, that building has a slate roof, which very few people can afford now. And chunks of the slate were falling and they were chunks about that thick and could have been dangerous. And I think we had difficulty engaging someone who was an expert in slate roof repair. But that is the kind of thing we can't let get away and I think the interior deserves the same care. So I will very definitely support this and I just hope that we will be able to have enough funds to cover everything. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Mr. McCabe? Harry McCabe, preaching 21. The Adult Day Health Center, Adult Day Care Center is no longer a resident in the senior center. They have moved down to Broadway. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Wagner? Point of order, am I the last speaker? Yeah. Pass. Pass, thank you. Mr. Loretty? Thank you, Mr. Moderator, Chris Loretty, Precinct Seven. I appreciate the previous speakers raising the issue of the new central school fund and I have a couple of questions about that. Did I hear someone say that the expended, the monies that go into these funds are expended at the discretion of the Board of Selectment? Mr. Chapter Lane? Who controls these monies? The revolving funds after being authorized by town meeting are expended at the discretion of the town manager. I'm not sure if someone said they'd been expended at the discretion of the select man or not. I'm wondering about the jurisdictional relationship of the central school fund with the redevelopment board. I recall reading the town meeting vote that established that urban renewal plan and it laid out fairly specifically how those funds were to be used and how they were to be managed by the redevelopment board. And as I recall, they were supposed to be segregated and then the redevelopment board was responsible for running the buildings and then the excess would be turned over to the town. And it's, I guess it's not clear to me looking at this, whether the establishment of this fund respects the way that the urban renewal plan was established for the central school under the jurisdiction of the redevelopment board. And I guess the question would be was, was that town meeting action that goes back in a number of decades really considered when this fund was proposed? Adam Chapter Lane, town manager. I guess the best way I can answer that question is that the urban renewal plan has expired. So there needed to be a legal means of both accepting and then expending the revenue and expenditures. So this revolving fund will continue to be managed by the planning and community development office. So in practical terms, there won't be any changes but I don't believe that the terms set forth that urban renewal plan are in effect any longer. Thank you. I guess the prompts and other question is if the urban renewal plan has expired is the building still under the jurisdiction of the redevelopment board? I believe until we turn it back to somebody else, it remains ours. Thank you. Thank you. Nope, nope, lady behind you, Paul. You didn't even give me a chance to say the new lady. Serena Memmon, precinct 21. I just have a couple of questions on this white goods recycling. I don't understand what that means. Can somebody clarify that for me? And also a library of end. What's your question, man? The question is what does white goods recycling involve and what does a library vent? Is that a vending machine at the library? Mr. Chapter Link? Adam Chapter Link, town manager. The library vent is directly, as I understand, related to the vending machine in the library and the cost of that machine and the revenue that the machine takes in. The white goods fund is in regards to the pickup and the charge and pickup program for a washer, dryer, and I believe also TVs from home. So there's a fee charge to pick that up and then that takes care of the disposal charge. Okay, great. Also, I was wondering why Gibbs School Energy and Cemetery Chapel rental are on there because they have a balance of zero on the beginning and the balance. So I don't know if there's an explanation on that. The Adam Chapter Link, town manager. The Cemetery Chapel Revolving Fund was established at last year's town meeting and those balances are as of the end of last fiscal year, so last calendar year, June 30, 2011. So at that point, it had just been established by town meeting and no receipts had been received yet. Okay, and the Gibbs School Energy just, I mean, had funds for seats and expenditures balanced out, just curious about that. That fund was established to be able to collect from the tenants of the Gibbs Schools to pay their portion of the utility costs. So that should be a direct correlation every year between them paying the actual utility costs and us paying the utility out of the revolving fund for those costs. All right, comes very close to the maximum. All right, thank you. Thank you, ma'am. Mr. Berger. Thank you, Mr. Manager. Eric Berger, precinct six. I support Article 37 and I think Mr. Jamison's recommendation that next year we see what the expenditures, a more detail about what the expenditures are for each of these funds makes a lot of sense. And I'm concerned that next year when we get an article to support the revolving funds, that we won't have that or how will we get that? I'm not sure, because it makes a lot of sense. I'd like to know what the money was spent for rather than just a line item as Mr. Jamison pointed out. I think it would be a good improvement, but I'm afraid it won't happen or how will it happen? Does anybody know how that change would be so that next year's report would include what the expenditures included? Mr. Chaplain, I believe he's asking if you can give us some more detailed report next year that breaks down the subcategories within each budget. Or at least the expenditure one. Adam Chaplain, town manager. We can certainly take a look at what kind of format we could produce so that there could be more detail available. All right. Okay, thank you. And we're gonna start killing more and more trees. Mr. Schlickman. Paul Schlickman, precognite motion to terminate debate under all matters under this article. Motion to terminate debate. All in favor please say yes. Yes. Opposed? Debate is terminated. We have a force of recommended vote for revolving funds and establishing a new fund that caps the central school rental fund. All in favor of this, please say yes. Yes. Opposed? Unanimous vote at disposals of article 37. We have now before us article 38. Collective bargaining. Mr. Tosti. At the current time, the town managers in negotiations with the various town unions. At this point, there are no agreements and there might not be before the town meeting dissolves. But in case agreements are raised, I would like to move to table this and bring it back up either when we have agreements or at the end of town meeting. So I move to table article 38. All in favor of table 38, please say yes. Yes. Opposed? It is tabled. Brings us to article 39. Position reclassification. If any calm report next page, I think we also receive something on our chairs. Ms. Coyne, was that Ms. Cove? She give us position reclassification? Yeah. Oh, Ms. Molloy, she changed her name. We also received a memorandum today about position reclassification. Does anyone wish to speak to this article? Adam? Adam, chapter lane town manager. This article contains the incremental cost increases based on changes made to the paying classification plan. This is when a particular position is reevaluated based on the current duties and responsibilities compared to the duties and responsibilities that had been classified at before and it goes through a process through the director of human resources and then to the personnel board and ultimately either can be denied or if approved comes before town meeting for approval of a reclassification of the position. Anyone wish to speak to article 39? Seeing none, all in favor please say yes. Yes. Opposed? Say no. Unanimous, near unanimous. Positive vote. That brings us, disposes of article 39. Brings us to 40 appropriation town budgets. Mr. Tosti and I discuss this during the break. Seeing as the late hour of 10.15, we thought we would pull the meeting, see if they wanted to pass the budgets and start it in the night. We can debate them a whole full night and just continue on through some other articles after that. So Mr. Tosti's gonna put you a prerogative to the meeting to see if they wanna do that. Mr. Tosti? Yes, because usually the budgets take a half a night or sometimes longer and if we start now, we've only got about 45 minutes and then on Monday we have the special town meeting and the capital budget and so if you wanna start the budget's fine, you know, that'd be fine, but just to test how you feel, I move to table article 40. All in favor of tabling 40, please say yes. Yes. Opposed? I believe article 40 is tabled. You really? No. All in favor of adjourning at 10.15, please say yes. Yes. Opposed? It's a negative vote. Don't make that motion again, please. Ladies and gentlemen, what I'm gonna suggest is that there's a couple more budgets that we could set aside like the Minuteman budgets, you know, be next Wednesday, the capital budget, I'm gonna move that we set aside till Monday because the special town meeting articles and the capital budget are very intertwined and once we get through those, we can go through a lot of these other articles, discuss and decide on them because they sort of stand alone. So I would suggest that we postpone article 41, the capital budget to May 7th, which is next Monday, so we deal with that and the special town meeting at the same time. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? It is postponed. That brings us to article 42. Article 42 and 43 are articles that we deal with each year it basically allows the treasure with approval of the Board of Selectment to borrow certain sums of money that they do through the Mass Water Resource Authority on an interest-free basis and then those loans are paid back through the water and sewer budget. So move favorable action. Well, it's already before you. Article 42, be happy to answer any questions if you have any. Anyone, Mr. O'Brien? Just a couple of questions out of curiosity after hearing a lecture in Arlington's water last year. Is Arlington required to spend a certain amount of money every year because of a lawsuit brought by the state to repair the sewers? I guess this would be a question for the Director of Public Works. Mr. Rademacher? Thank you, Mike Rademacher, Director of Public Works. We are in an agreement with the Department of Environmental Protection to perform sewer improvements each year until we get through a certain program which encompasses the entire town. Approximately how many years will it take to complete the repairs of the sewer system? Currently it's proposed as a 12 to 14 year program of which we're four years into it. Does Arlington's water pipes leak? I mean, is there a certain percentage of leaking that occurs in our water pipes? Yes, the water system in Arlington, like many communities, is somewhat aged and there are leaks. And also, in your opinion, would you say our storm drains? Are they perhaps, say, during a rainy period over, are they sufficient enough or do they need repairs? We do have to do periodic repairs of the storm drain. The storm drainage is adequate for typical rain events but when we're inundated with a less frequent, more intense storm, they sometimes are over capacity but that's not necessarily a fault of the storm drain but just the fact that we can't accommodate every storm. Is it possible that there's cross-contamination of sewage and rainwater into the leaking pipes? There is the potential, yes. Arlington is fortunate that we don't have a combined sewer and storm drain system like a few of our neighboring communities but due to the aged system of both the sewer and the storm drain, there are occasions where you might get cross-contamination and we do deal with that on a fairly regular basis making repairs of that nature. I was under the impression that, I didn't thought it was sewer or water, one of those repairs, if we do it at the rate we're doing now, would be close to 100 years and I guess I'm wrong about that. I'm not sure I understand the question. If we were to repair our entire sewer system and the water, the pipes that all need replacing, it'd be close to about 100 years at the rate we're going now. I think maybe what you're referring to is the water system. We do, we have about 100 to 120 miles of water pipe in the streets and current funding allows us to replace about a mile a year. So yes, at a rate of replacing a mile a year you would take you over 100 years to replace all the water line but some lines we're finding last longer than that. So we're working on the more problematic areas currently. So, but approximately right now how much leakage do we have? Would you say the water that comes in Arlington, how much just goes away is leaks? We have a, and it's not necessarily attributed to leaks but we have what is a unaccounted for water. So what the community receives from the MWRA minus what we sell to residents and businesses we have approximately it varies from year to year but it can anywhere be 27 to 30% unaccounted for water. That could be attributable to many things. Leaks, a metering system that's a little bit more antiquated that isn't registering all the water that we're selling but it's something that we strive every year to try to reduce that number. Thank you very much. I urge very much that we pass this article. It's just a band-aid and we're not the only town that's in this situation but we do a lot of water is wasted. There is the danger of cross contamination and I think that this is actually fairly urgent and I recommend that we pass this article. Thank you, Mr. Judd, did you wish to speak? Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Lyman, Judd, Precinct 9. I don't pretend to be the town historian but this is a very important article. We had a fire at the Crosby School, I believe it was of 1955. I was in the junior high east at the time looking over and the fire department got there very quickly, connected up their hose and they found that all of the pipes going down Oxford Street and Winter Street were down to about this size from calcification and to be plain about it, I could have spit further than some of those hoses were doing but what they then had to do was run hose lines all the way out to Mass Ave and Broadway and as a result the fire did get a little bit of a head start on them but they were able to extinguish it without losing the whole school and fortunately none of the children were injured but this is the kind of thing that started us on a program of the fire department flowing every hydrant at least once a year to make sure that they were getting proper volume and pressure because we don't want to get into a situation like that again where unbeknownst to us because the water usage is so low that some of the pipes because of piled up a lime, calcium, whatever you want to call it, make the pipes and the flow rate so much smaller that it's a danger as far as fire protection so I hope that we will pass this and I hope also that if we have to borrow or issue bonds and notes that we can do it at a very low rate, thank you. Thank you, Ms. Fiori. I'll say Fiori, please say two. I had also not intended to speak but for years I used to wonder why we had the articles in for extending the sewer and water pipes and I finally came to understand that it had to be done because we didn't have enough as the town grew but a big problem now with the sewers and construction and sewers and water is that the combined sewer flow is done along Air Wife Brook are not all going to be closed. I've said this at a town meeting I think earlier. The, I think at least four are going to be left open. They're building in on the Cambridge side what they're calling a detention pond. It's actually going to take all the drainage from West Cambridge, which is going to come into this little so-called holding pond. But my understanding from a friend in Cambridge, he says that's not going to take care of all of the sewer water that goes through the pipes because people think it will just go right out to Dear Island but my understanding from the gentleman from Cambridge is that it'll only run for 12 hours to take out the sewage and water that we don't want and the other 12 hours there'll still be sewage in the water. I'm sorry if I'm not making myself clear but I think the bottom line I personally would like to see some kind of a meeting that perhaps could be set up by the engineer so that we would be able to see the connection and what we need to do particularly down around Air Wife Brook where we have all that building and other places like over on near the Mystic Lake because there's plenty of sewage coming in and the other towns, well, Belmont does care but they may be forced to hook up the new building that's going up on the old faces site to their sewer system. So we got plenty of trouble coming down the line and if our town officials could set up some kind of meeting for those of us who are interested I think we could get a few people to come and maybe we would understand better seeing it on a map and hearing some discussion where we're not limited in time about this problem, it's a serious problem. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Deist. All right, no one else wish to speak to the article. We have a worse recommended vote. The finance committee, $1 million for sore pipes all in favor please say yes. Yes. Opposed say no. Positive vote. That brings us to article 43. Oh, it's a two third vote. Oh, sorry about that Julianna. It's unanimous vote and I so declare Madam Clerk you declare to the 85 members of the meeting here present in voting in the affirmative. Thank you. Article 43, same thing except for verse this is money for water pipes and not sore pipes. Anyone wish to speak to this article? Seeing none, all in favor please say yes. Yes. Opposed? Positive vote and unanimous. Mr. Madam Clerk you declare 85 members of present in voting in the positive. Yes, thank you. Article 44, appropriation for court judgment at Minuteman. Oh, is this one we're gonna put off to Minuteman Day? Yes. In line with what I said at the beginning of the town meeting about Minuteman superintendent will be here next Wednesday. I move to postpone articles 44 through 46 to May 9th. All in favor postponing 44, 45 and 46 to May 9th. Please say yes. Yes. Opposed? May I postpone to article 47. This is an article where the school department is building up a special education reserve. I'm sure you've heard several times that special education costs can vary dramatically from one year to the other because of students moving in or students moving out of the town. And what the school department is trying to do here is set aside money that they have left over at the end of the year for a special education reserve so they can handle some of these ups and downs. The school department now is trying to figure out or trying to calculate how much money will be available to transfer and this is by the end of the year. So at this point they don't have a number to put in here by the end of the town meeting they should or maybe even before then. Therefore, I'd like to move to table article 47. All in favor, oh excuse me, yep. All in favor of tabling article 47, please say yes. Yes. Article 48, appropriation committees and commissions. We have a force recommended vote of historical commission. Give a bunch of money to a bunch of different commissions and things. Anyone wish to speak to this article? Nope, okay. Article 48, recommended vote. All in favor, please say yes. Yes. Opposed, say no. The unanimous vote and I so declare it. Article 49, appropriation town celebrations. Parade fund, placing flags on the graves of veterans. Anyone wish to speak to this article? Seeing none, all in favor, please say yes. Yes. All opposed? Positive vote, affirmative unanimous, I so declare it. That closes 49. We have now before us article 50, appropriation miscellaneous. We have a force of recommended vote of the finance committee. Spend 10,839 dollars. Anyone wish to discuss article 50? Seeing none. All in favor, please say yes. Yes. All opposed? Positive vote, unanimous, I so declare it. Unanimous. Article 51, appropriation, water bodies fund. Recommend a vote of the finance, $50,000 for water bodies, maintaining, treating oversight of the town's water bodies. Anyone wish to discuss ponds? Seeing none, all in favor, please say yes. Yes. All opposed, they know. It's unanimous vote, and I so declare it. Article 52, appropriation signage for historic sites. We have Mr. McKinney, we have, did the selectman wish to, oh, which he go? Clarissa wanted to make an amendment I think to this. Yeah. Okay, you wanna just present the article? Thought there was an amendment coming, but. Angela Olszewski, precinct 17, and chair of the Arlington Committee on Tourism and Economic Development. Clarissa Rowe is on our committee and she worked a lot on this article. She's not here this evening. I don't think we anticipated that. I'm actually not sure why, but I don't think we anticipated all the budgets were gonna be tabled and then what's gonna come up tonight. So I respectfully ask for town meetings, indulgence to table this article. Table. Table, just throw it on the table. Okay, article 52, motion to table. All in favor, please say yes. Yes. Opposed? Okay, this table. Article 53. We have a force to recommend to vote for no action for the FINCOM, all in favor of no action on the 53, please say yes. Yes. Opposed? It is no action. Article 54, appropriation parking paid study. Uh-oh, geez. We didn't expect to get there, huh? Yeah. We're gonna, Mr. Dunn, new lady had an amendment. We didn't expect it to come up to next week, but go ahead, Mr. Dunn, present your article. Mr. Moderator, I'd like to invite Carl Wagner, who's the original proponent of this article, to come forward and speak about it. No, no, FINCOM has no action and Board of Selectments has a substitute. You have to actually put your substitute in. Senator Sleckman's report, they have a recommended vote. Mr. Moderator, I move that we substitute motion under Article 54, which is in the Sleckman's book, Page 17. The town meeting hereby recommends the town manager and Board of Selectments study whether to implement paid on-street parking in town business districts. So, I'm gonna, I'll again ask Mr. Wagner to come up and speak. We considered spending some money to do a study about how we would implement parking meters. But then we said, wait, but then after discussion with the finance committee and other groups, they said, well, what if town meeting actually doesn't want to put those parking meters out there? We shouldn't spend the money on the study first. So, we're gonna be seeking the town meeting's opinion about whether we should be looking into this or whether we should just let the, or we should pursue other ways to talk about parking in the town. Wait a second, are we ready? Carl Wagner, Precinct 11. Is it too late for me to ask the body to table the discussion until May 9th? May 9th? You wanna take? Until the next session after the special election? Oh, after the special meeting. Well, you're making a motion. We have a second of his motion. All in favor of tabling. Do you wanna postpone to May 9th? Postpone, thank you. He wants to postpone to May 9th. All in favor of postponing to May 9th, please say yes. Yes. Opposed? No. Chairs in doubt, let's try that again. All in favor of postponing, please say yes. Yes. Opposed say no. No. I believe it's not postponed. All right, well, in the interest of being direct, I am a longtime resident of Arlington. I grew up here. We do not have parking meters on places like Mass Ave, the three main business districts. After listening to the discussions about how town could run better and looking at how some of our neighboring towns, Lexington, Belmont, some others, have over the years put in metering of parking, I decided that in line with trying to run things as well as possible, we should determine as a town if we wanna have parking metering. I also made a trip a couple of years ago to Montreal and I liked how they did it, but I'm not an expert in parking, so I wouldn't recommend myself that we do that. So I called around to the town officials and to people that I thought would have interesting views and perspectives on parking, and I generally got the sense that, yes, it's something that would make sense to bring up now, but we want to decide such a big question as do we wanna change from free parking in currently marked spots on Mass Ave to non-free parking by bringing such a question to you, the Democratic representatives of Arlington. However, I would like to cede my time that's remaining to, I think, the town manager to give a sort of more official discussion of that, and I hope that you'll listen to him. Thank you. Well, we generally don't see time, but keep it real quick, Adam. Yeah, seeding time isn't something we do. Adam Chapterling, town manager, very briefly to build on what Carl said. As he said, he had the thought of filing this motion, or excuse me, filing this warrant article, and he spoke with me as well as some of the selectmen in regards to the parking concept. Coming out of a discussion based upon the technology, the parking, pay for parking technology that currently exists in the town's two parking lots, which have needed parking, there had been some initial research into the technology that could be used, so there are various types of technology that the town could consider, whether it be individual meters or pay by space at one centralized terminal, pay in display where you put a tag back in your windshield, or you don't go back and put a tag in your windshield, you just type the parking spot that you're typed into, so there's a lot of options. But I think in terms of Mr. Wagner's approach, there'd be several key principles we want to look at with any parking research or parking study we would do. We'd want to view the town's parking and its business districts as an asset of the town and how to best utilize and best maintain that asset through the possible generation of revenue, and how to also possibly use that revenue to turn back into further development or upkeep or maintenance of a business district or wherever the paid parking was. Another principle would be making sure through any study that we work with the Chamber of Commerce and the tenants in any business district, such that we were confident that we would be putting in a system that would increase churn and would benefit the businesses located in a business district, so that there would be no negative effect on businesses just for the sake of revenue. So I think that's all I would add to the discussion at this point. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Gorman, your next doubt is fine, yes, ma'am. Chamber of Commerce, I want to hear what she has to say. Hi, Maureen Gormley, precinct 20. I'm here with my other hat on tonight, which is on the executive board of the Arlington Chamber of Commerce. About a month ago, I did a survey of the businesses in Arlington. I asked that the three business districts, this is of our Chamber members, so this is not of all the businesses in town, but as an informal survey, the three districts I asked them, are you in favor of on-street parking on Mass Ave? 72% said no. Their idea is that this would interfere with their businesses, and right now they're very concerned about the turnover and everything else with the streets and how they're gonna be able to maintain their businesses. We do wanna work with the businesses to try to remind them that they themselves should not be parking in front of their own business, which we do remind them on occasion and things of that nature. We do wanna see that there is a better flow of traffic because that's what is so unique about Arlington. We are not Cambridge, where people have to pay for parking. People can come in, grab something quick and leave, but we also have a parking lot for people who wanna stay longer in the different districts. Actually only in the center do we have paid parking in the Heights and in East Arlington, we do not. If you wanna have a study, that's fine, but I'm just giving you right now what an initial response from Chamber members have said. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Tosti. He didn't start. This is an important issue for the town. And the Finance Committee went back and forth on appropriating money for a paid parking study now. These studies can get quite expensive. I mean, we're talking 50, maybe even 75,000. And the Finance Committee didn't wanna appropriate any money unless there was the will of the town to move towards implementing parking meters on it. So that is the reason for our no-action vote. However, I think the purpose of the Selecman is trying to get feedback, and I think the Finance Committee have no problem with the Selecman's motion to try to get feedback on this. I think that having parking meters is not just a revenue producer, but it also, like the previous speaker said, keeps turnover going in the business district. And if you have turnover in the business district, you have more people parking there. And also the revenues from these can often help improve the business district. So paid on-street parking has several benefits for the businesses there. So again, you know, we have no objections to the Board of Selecman's motion. Mr. Schlichman. Paul Schlichman, Prec. 9. I like coffee. I particularly fond of the coffee at Cabrata, which is located next to the Capitol Theater in East Arlington, best coffee in town. They also have chocolate croissants that are to die for. I will often program my route to work going out of my way to go down Mass Ave to pass by Cabrata to get a coffee in a sinfully wonderful croissant on my way to Route 2 to head west toward Lowell. Unfortunately, there are often times when my desire for a Cabrata chocolate croissant cannot be fulfilled because I cannot easily park in the vicinity of Cabrata in the morning hours. Now we do have parking enforcement that comes through to enforce the two hour rules over there. However, the first pass of the parking enforcement official is merely with the old fashioned technology of long stick with chalk. So we are now paying a parking enforcement official charged with enforcing the two hour limit to walk the length of the town marking tires before he can come back two hours later and actually see if somebody is parked in excess of two hours. This is a densely populated municipality. We're not Acton, we're not Carlisle, we're not a town like that. We are among the 10 most densely populated municipalities in the state and we do have a parking issue and we do not manage our resources wisely. It is counterintuitive to go and make the premium parking on the avenue free and the supplemental parking in the lots, the satellite lots in the center metered. It makes no sense to have minimal enforcement on the avenue and surrounding streets but aggressive enforcement in the municipal lots because with the meters they're easy to enforce. The system is broken. We need to do something to fix it for the vitality of the businesses, also for the occasional croissant. We are not dedicating ourselves to installing parking meters next week, next month or even within the next year. We also have a previous study that was done a couple of years ago regarding the East Arlington Business District which talks about effectively managing parking resources. We have plenty of data. What this is telling our town manager to do is to say, okay, we're open to the idea, let's take a look at what the equipment is, what the resources available are, what the potential benefits might be and investing the money from the meters back into the business districts to make them more attractive would be a benefit. Having open parking spaces when you want to go to a business would be a benefit. There are many benefits that we can see down the road but we can't see them if we don't at least tell the town manager that we want him to go and look around, see what's available, see what might work for us, replace those awful meters in the municipal lots which everybody hates, side benefit and go forward with a study that just considers the possible improvements by managing our parking resource better. This is a common sense article. Please vote in favor. Ms. Maymone? Mr. Serene Amendment, Precinct 21. I'm here in support of article 54 but I'd like to see an amendment to it. Should I give you the amendment now? Yeah. Okay. I'd like to see a study that would help us figure out how efficient the parking meters are considering that they're mostly on Mass Ave. I don't think we really generate that much money and the parking lot that we have is also limited. I've seen people come to the selectsmen's meetings and complain there's no parking for residents in this town. So I'd like to see a proposal to see if we can add a garage in the study for this paid parking study. It would also improve the vitality of the businesses in the center and make us more efficient in our meters and collections. So I think what you, yeah, well let me read what her amendment is gonna say. She and I discussed this during the break. We surely didn't expect to get to it tonight. So I'm gonna accept her amendment because it is gonna be very simple. After the words paid on street parking, we're going to carry it in and or a parking garage in the center of town or just in town and or a parking garage. We have a second on that. Okay, thank you. Go ahead, ma'am. That's it for me. Okay, thank you. So she wants to add parking garage to the, yes, sir. No, no, she's trying to amend the, oh, hold on a second. You're bringing up whether it's a scope. Okay, let me look at that then. Parking meters is a similar instrument currently. No, no, hold on. I'm thinking. I got to read. I'm a slow reader. I will vote to appropriate funds, investigate and implement paid parking, parking meters and selected currently marked. Yeah, Mr. Oster is correct, ma'am. That would be out of scope. So we can't do that. But when they do meet and have their study, you can go and bring that up to them. Okay. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Oster for your scope. Okay, Mr. Warden is next on the list. Thank you, Mr. Moderator, John Warden, precinct eight. Those who've been around for a while, we remember when we did used to have parking meters on Massachusetts Avenue and perhaps on Broadway as well. And I thought that one of the best things that former manager, Don Marquis, did during his long tenure here was abolishing the parking meters on Massachusetts Avenue. And I sometimes do have to go to Lexington because if you want to buy a pair of shoes, for example, you can't get that in Arlington and there are many other things you have to go out of town for and then you've got to fish in your pocket and see if you've got a quarter or two quarters or whatever it is. And it is a nuisance and I can't believe that it's that much of a revenue raiser for the town. As far as the municipal lot is concerned, several people have spoken about that and that strikes me as the worst possible type of parking arrangement because you finally find a place and then you say, well, now how do I pay for this? And you walk a very long distance, you get to a machine, but it's out of order. So then, well, then you go look for another machine and hopefully that one is in or then you try to remember where your car is. You know, meanwhile, you've used, maybe the officers come around already giving you a ticket because it's spent so long to try to get the thing. So that system in the behind St. Agnes there, that really ought to be fixed and it's really best to have, we're gonna have meters have one place, one meter and we had an awful experience in Ireland once that we parked, we parked in what is that place with a trolley and we wanted to take my mother-in-law and to see the rose gardens, which are very famous. And there was a sign up that said disc parking in effect and I said, what the heck is disc parking? So we parked the car, we went in there, we looked at the roses, they had 40 different kinds of roses. It was lovely, we came back out, there was a ticket on the car. I said, oh God and so we called up the municipality and said, you know, we didn't know about this and we had my elderly mother-in-law here and well, you have to pay the ticket and if you don't, we're gonna send it to the rental company and they'll really get after you. So eventually I had to pay the ticket and I found out that disc parking is just supposed to go somewhere, put your money in, you get a disc and you hang it on the car somewhere and then they don't give you a ticket. So I hope you don't do that kind of system but the point is, don't take everything to Myerlin but the point is if you're gonna have a park system you really ought to have the facility for paying for the parking where it is but the main point is it's a tremendous convenience despite Mr. Schlickman's inability to get coffee. Now if I needed to keep out of coffee and one of those croissants, I would just get off the bus at the Capitol. Well, the bus would take me in an oil station, the train would take me to Lowe. Well, the point is we tried parking meters, we decided as a municipality a while ago we didn't like parking meters, we wanted to be rid of them. I think we should listen to the lady who spoke to the members of the chamber who said they thought it would be a detriment to their businesses. I think generally they are a nuisance, I think they're a small revenue item for the town and I think we should not even have this started. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Ms. Stamps. I'm Susan Stamps, precinct three and in precinct three it's East Arlington, Capitol Square area. So a lot of my constituents would be directly affected by having parking meters and I will tell you that the business owners that I've spoken to would really like to see parking meters on Mass Ave in East Arlington. And here's why, you've got a lot of small shops, they don't have a lot of people in them and the business owners that I've spoken to complain about the fact that there are people in East Arlington who leave their cars on Mass Ave all day long. And they leave their cars in front of other people's shops. And in particular I spoke to a woman who runs a really great funky women's clothing shop in East Arlington and I walked in there one day, it was very quiet and I said well, jeez, where's all your customers? This is such an awesome shop. And she said people come in and they complain to me that they've been driving around for 20 minutes trying to find a parking place. And they finally parked two or three blocks down the street. Some of their customers are older, they don't wanna park that far away. So I don't know who the members of the Chamber of Commerce were that the person who got up and spoke with, I wonder if a lot of them are people who have law firms, accountants, whoever who have businesses on the second story and they like the idea of leaving their cars all day on the street. But for the people who have shops who have walking customers, parking lot, parking meters would be a big help to their businesses and I hope that you vote in favor of this article. Mr. Smith, Scott. Scott Smith, precinct five, just speaking as a town meeting member not on behalf of any committee. I'm planning to vote in favor of this because it's just meaning looking at the issue and when I drive and try to find parking in the center or anywhere else, there are plenty of improvement opportunities in this town's parking system, library, whatever. And that's all it is, looking at the issues. But one thing we found is parking, changing how you do parking requires a fair bit of political will. So I think, you know, vote how you feel about this and that will be impact what, give some indication whether the political will is there to do anything. So thank you. Thank you, Mr. Laredi. Thank you, Mr. Laredi, precinct seven. Mr. Laredi, I'm a little bit confused about what we're doing here because originally this was an appropriation which the finance committee voted no action on and the article still in the selectments report calls an appropriation paid parking study but I don't see any sum being appropriated and what I'm trying to figure out is are we appropriating funds for this study or are we going to get the free labor of the town manager and the board of selectmen? Looks like they're gonna do the study for free. I don't see any money associated with this article. Somehow they're gonna fund it out of their internal budgets. Is that correct? No money. I'm chapterling town manager. No, there's no appropriation being requested in this article. However, approval of this article will allow us to go forward, get further in a process of determining what a potential parking study might cost, how much we can leverage from the parking study that Mr. Schlickman mentioned earlier that had been performed in East Arlington and then potentially come back for an appropriation request next year or depending on what the cost would be not come back for appropriation but this request is not requesting an appropriation. Thank you. Yeah, I guess just to speak a little bit more about the parking study that Mr. Schlickman for us alluded to, that was part of a, I believe it was called the commercial development study and at the time it was a fraction of it, maybe 25% or 20% of the funds and it was done, it focused on East Arlington simply because there wasn't enough money available to focus on all of the business districts and I believe it was done with some help from some staff in the planning department and I would suggest that it certainly is worthwhile to continue that type of study in the other business districts in the center and in the Heights and in particular in the Arlington center, it would certainly have value. So I would ask that town meeting support this article particularly since there is no appropriation. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Romano. Mr. Jamison. Mr. Judd. Okay, it's five of, got a motion to adjourn. All in favor of adjournment please say yes. Opposed? No. Okay, we're not adjourning. Mr. Logan. William Logan precinct two. If they do have a study, I hope that the study will include the impact on the side streets of all the people that will be trying to avoid the meters by parking in front of the resident's house on the side streets, particularly in East Arlington, that's what people will do. If I can't find a parking space on Mass Ave, I go on the side street, but that's because I can't find parking. But if there's a meter there, people will probably do that. So I would try to avoid it, but of course. Also, the impact of having to hire more meter maids, sorry, parking enforcement officials, that's what they're called nowadays, to get that right. With the impact of hiring more of those and having to give them benefits and all that, would that outdo the income need of the town by having the income of the parking meters? Because you need the current ones to do current things like that they're enforcing now. So if they can't enforce those things now by having trouble like Mr. Schlickman is suggesting, we're definitely gonna need more of them. So it might outdo the cost effectiveness. Also, with the Mass Ave plan, if we're gonna put meters in, wouldn't that affect the current Mass Ave plan? We have a plan set in place that's pretty much set in place. And if we're gonna have meters, wouldn't that affect that? That would be a question I would ask the town, someone in the town, about the meters affecting the plan if they did eventually have them. The planning department, would meters affect your plan for Eastern Mass Ave? Carol Kowalski, director of planning and community development. I don't believe they would. The plan has spaces already marked. I don't know why it would affect, it could, but I can't think of why it would affect the plan because the spaces are already accounted for in the design. Well, how about the placement of the devices? Would that affect the plan? That's a good question. Although there are so many different methods there too, I don't know why it would, but we could learn a lot from a study from a professional who could inform the town about the different methods of paying for parking. Thank you. My suggestion is to place this before the voters and stop it here, and then if the voters decide that we should have a committee to study it, then we should do that then. Otherwise, I would suggest voting no. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Fisher? I have a distinct memory. Name? I'm sorry, Andrew Fisher, precinct six. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. I have a distinct memory as one of your two town meeting representatives to the Vision 2020 Standing Committee that the previous town manager had a rather strong feeling that if we went to meters, they should not be a sort of profit center. They should just pay for themselves. Jane Howard might be able to correct me, but at any rate, I, no, at any rate, I wondered if the present town manager has an attitude about that one way or the other, a philosophy about it. And is it realistic to really do more than pay for the enforcement officers? Adam Chaptaling, town manager. So you're asking if I have a position on whether or not any paid parking would be a break-even? Yeah, as opposed to making money, because it's been alluded to as a way for the town to make money, which I would oppose myself. I would answer that by saying, my initial position before any study would be performed would be that any revenue that would be generated above and beyond the cost of operating and implementing the system should be targeted to the neighborhood through some means. However, I can't say that I would fully agree that, I don't know that financially it would be, I don't wanna say this. Models I've seen would demonstrate to me that it would be more than a break-even process and that there would be revenue generated that could be put in some direction or another. I think his question is, do you want it to generate profit or do you want it to break even, correct Andy? Yes. I guess standing here tonight, I would recommend it generate some profit that could be directed to the business district that it's located in. Okay. I was, I just wanted to know, and I'm opposed to this, so I don't wanna see them waste a lot of time and then see it voted down next year. So I would ask previous people to vote what you think rather than just preempt the thing. Thank you. Mr. Veriglou, you can move the question if you want. Mr. Macquarie. I think we're ready. Ready to vote here, you. Move the question. Hugh Macquarie, precinct 20. Mr. Moderator, I have a question. Time manager mentioned that there's no appropriation of funds, is that correct? Say it one more time. There is no appropriation of funds. There's no appropriation. So I'm just looking at this, what we're voting on exactly. And the question is it says, can you explain what exactly we're voting on? We're voting, well first we, if sub-selectment have a substitute motion, we rewreck where we as the body are recommending that the Board of Selectment and the manager study whether to implement paid on-street parking. Okay. That's what we're voting on, if. Yep, so not this. Not this one. Oh, I mean it just changed. That's the vote. Super. Okay, that clears that up. Next quick question. If this passes or fails, what's the impact? Is it enforceable? It's a recommendation we make to the time manager. Is it normal that we make policy requests through time meeting to the Board of Selectment? We as the Board, we as the town meeting cannot direct them to do anything. We can only make recommendations. I think if they're judging a feel of a meeting whether we want to do this or not, I think if we say no, they're gonna drop the idea. If we say yes, they're gonna go forward. That's what I'm going with this. Yeah. So I would recommend like has been done for the CLAM project that public hearing is held or a series of public hearings. I actually agreed a lot with what Mr. Slickman said regarding parking. There's a lot of anomalies in parking in Arlington. I would also recommend that the two hour limit could be reduced to stop people parking for long periods of time when they don't really need to park in those business districts. So thanks for the clarification. Thank you. Mr. Berger, feel free to move the question, Mr. Berger. Damn it. Nope. We have to wait for the next speaker, Nicole. You have to stand up. Give us your names. Say terminate debate. Okay. We have a motion to terminate debate and seconded. All in favor of termination debate. Please say yes. Yes. All opposed. Okay. The debate is terminated. Now we have before us the selectments substitute motion in favor of the, instead of the no action of the Fincom, all in favor of substituting the Board of Selectments substitute motion, please say yes. Yes. Opposed say no. Darn it. Chairs in doubt. Can we try it again? All in favor of the selectments substitute motion, please say yes. Yes. Opposed say no. No. My opinion is defeated. Okay, five people rose. Let's stand. Everybody who wants to substitute, please stand. Do you want to come for us, Mr. Tosti? Same tellers. Mr. Tosti, up front. Seven in favor. Mr. Schlickman, nine in favor up front. Mr. Schlickman, 18 on the left. Mr. O'Connor, 23, Mr. Tremblee, 30. And Mr. McCabe, 23. All opposed, please rise. Mr. Tosti, any up front? Zero up front, Mr. Schlickman. 11. Mr. O'Connor. 16. Mr. Tremblee, 11. Mr. McCabe, 11. The vote is in the positive 103 to 49, hold it. Now we have to vote as, the Fincom vote as substituted by the Board of Selectment vote. All in favor, please say yes. Yes. Opposed? No. It's a positive vote. Okay, we have a motion adjourned. Do we have any notices of reconsideration? Okay, is Fiori article 48. Fiori. 32. Fisher. Any others? No other motions for reconsideration. Mr. Tosti moved on 35, 42, 43, 48, 49, 50, 51, 53. All in favor with adjournment, please say yes. Yes. Opposed? We'll see you next Monday.