 Tonight, we're going to be led by the Star Spangled Banner by Mr. Helmut. Please rise. Thank you very much, Ms. Thomas. Oh, I just broke my thing. Ah, Shawn, I broke your microphone. Good evening. Good evening. Tonight, we're going to start with the special town meeting, finish that up, and then go back into the regular town meeting. One of the members asked me how many articles we have left. We have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18. We have 18 articles left once we finish the special. So there's only one left on that. Are there any town meeting members who have yet to be sworn in? Seeing none. Ms. Mahan. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. It is moved that if the business of the meeting is set forth in the warrant for the annual town meeting is not disposed of at this session, when the meeting adjourns, it adjourns on Monday, May 16, 2016 at 8 p.m. All in favor? Opposed? Okay. It carries. Okay, test question. Get your clickers. We all said over there, oh, that's not Mr. Lathwood if I forget your name. I'm sorry. Mike. Mike, oh, like the other Mike. Okay, Mike, whenever you're ready, the question is, only Americans of Soviet have walked on the moon, one for yes, two for no. So only Americans and Soviets have walked on the moon, one for yes, two for no. No, correct. Only Americans, 12 Americans have walked on the moon between 1969 and 1972. So check your clicker to make sure it's correct. So 49 people have gone back to school for geography and history. Okay, no, okay. Any announcements, Ms. Brazil? You don't want to give your announcement now. Oh, you have a report. I'm sorry. Any announcements? Ms. Mahan. Thank you, Mr. moderator. Diane Mahan, chairman of the board of select men. What I'd like to do is give 20 seconds of an announcement and then call up Greg Christiana. As you all are aware, the board of select men voted to put a debt exclusion on June 14th regarding our growing enrollment and how to address that myself as chairman of the board of select men, Jennifer Seuss as chairman of the school committee and Steve DeCorsi. If I could ask Steve to come up here. Here's Dr. Seuss. We'll be chairing the effort and I'd like to ask Greg Christiana to give a very brief remarks on that. Thank you, Diane. I'm Greg Christiana from precinct 15. I am a manager of the build Arlington's future campaign, which was launched to support the debt exclusions will vote on as a town on June 14th. I'm proud to be standing up here with the three chairs of this campaign who kindly introduced me. Thank you all for your, the three of you for your leadership in this campaign and in our town's government. Thank you. I also want to acknowledge the other people in this room who have volunteered their time to work on this campaign. If you're a campaign volunteer, will you please stand up briefly right now to identify yourselves? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all. As of today we have 265 volunteers and it's growing every day. Each of the three questions on the ballot represent an important piece of the long-term plan developed by the town to address enrollment growth and the facilities needs at every level of our public school system. The board of select men voted unanimously to place these questions on the ballot because these debt exclusions are essential to the future of our schools and our town. You should have a yellow fact sheet on your chair with more details about the debt exclusions and the campaign. If you did not stand up I urge you to go to our website, buildarlingtonfuture.org where you can volunteer, donate or add your name to the list of supporters. And I invite you all to come to the build Arlington's future campaign rally this Sunday, May 15th from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Arlington Masonic Temple at 19 Academy Street. All are welcome. Diane and Jennifer will both be there speaking and you'll have a chance to learn more about the debt exclusions and the campaign. Most importantly we will have refreshments. I hope to see you all there or as many of you who can make it. We believe that together as a community we can build Arlington's future. Thank you. Thank you. Any other reports of committees or reports? No, excuse me. Announcements. Mr. Jamison. Then Mr. Heiner. Jamison first then Heiner. He's getting in the standby box. Thank you Mr. Moderator. Gordon Jamison preaching 12 and in this capacity co-chair of the Arlington Recycling Committee. First of all I want to thank the body for, I want to thank the body for Gordon Jamison for the recycling committee. I want to thank the body for attending to our waste into the recycling bins during the meeting. You've all been very cooperative and I want to thank you for that and as does the staff of the town. Next, as those are who are longtime members, in this every spring I come up and remind you that the community collection day that everyone loves is this Saturday between nine and one at the town yard. Don't come early. Don't come late. There's a small flyer in the back that you can read more on and for the folks at home there's information on the website. Next, do not confuse community collection day with household hazardous waste day, which is in Lexington also on Saturday. Bring your household hazardous waste to Lexington, not to Arlington. Bring your community collection stuff to Arlington, not to Lexington. Next, we also have a smaller version of collection day and in the lobby is Charlotte Milan, the recycling coordinator and she can help you learn more about that. There's also information on here so you can actually do this every month. A big kit there is Styrofoam. You might have noticed in the paper if you're an advocate subscriber online or in print version that we have launched a series of recycling write articles for those to continue through the summer. We also have launched the community compost or neighborhood shared composting initiative. In this initiative, if two or more families band together and say that they'll share a bin, the recycling committee will give you the bin for free. And lastly, I want to thank everyone for helping to make Arlington a high recycling community and Charlotte's in the lobby at half time to give you more information about those two events. Thank you. Thank you very much, sir. Mr. Hanna. Thank you, Mr. moderator. Bill Hanna, precinct two. I have two announcements. One, the Arlington Rotary would like to invite members here and the community to the annual Paul Harris dinner. It will be on June 13th at the Sons of Italy. And we are honoring Richard Duffy and Anthony Carson for the Paul Harris Award and for community service award will be Lauren Ledger, Susan Stewart, Vicki Rose and Nicole Melnick. Second announcement I would like to make as a member of the Veterans Council, the Arlington Department of Veterans Services in conjunction with the Veterans Council will be conducting the annual Memorial Day ceremony on May 30th, 2016 at 9.30 a.m. in the auditorium of the town hall. Unlike previous years, there will be no parade from Walgreens to Monument Park. Instead, the entire ceremony will be conducted at the town hall. Following the observance, re-claying ceremonies and the unveiling of a new veterans memorial will be conducted at Mount Pleasant Cemetery. This year Arlington will be dedicating the final veterans burial plot at Mount Pleasant Cemetery. This veterans lot will be dedicated in honor of the men and women that have served our country throughout the ongoing global war on terrorism campaign. The keynote speaker will be Major General Jeffrey Clark. General Clark is the current director of the Defense Health Agency and former commanding officer of the National Military Medical Center at Bethesda. Medal of Honor recipient Captain Thomas Kelly has sent remarks that will be sheared. Please join the tribute at town hall to honor the men and women that have served and sacrificed so much for our country. Thank you. Thank you very much. Any other reports or announcements or resolutions? Sir. Thank you. Charles Hartzahn precinct one on Saturday, June 11th. The Arlington Center for the Arts is going to host its or it will have the first ever Arlington porch fest, which is an outdoor musical event that's going to have like a more than 100 bands are going to be playing on over 60 porches distributed around East Arlington from one to five o'clock. So it should be great. There's a hard working committee hammering out the final details, but you can get information at Arlington porchfest.org. And that's June 11th, one to five Saturday. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Any others? Seeing none, any reports of committees? This presale. Julie Brazil precinct 12 and chair of the vision 2020 standing committee. I move that town meeting receive the report of vision 2020. All in favor receive the report of the vision 2020 committee. Please say yes. I'll oppose it. It is so received. Thank you very much. Thank you. The report is on the back table and will be distributed electronically to the town meeting member list. I just want to highlight a couple of things. Arlington received a national endowment for the arts grant last year. True story theater is a local performing group and they got a two year grant to support civic engagement and work with town committees. Vision 2020 is the lead partner. We are joined by the human rights commission, the commission on disability and three vision 2020 committees. Sustainable Arlington, the diversity task group and Arlington public art. Keep an eye out for articles and emails. It's the living brochure is the name of the project. And the grant funds performances and workshops. And the workshops can be tailored to the needs and interests of the town committees. True story theater does really interesting work. Attending one of their performances or workshops can bring new insight and inspiration to long time volunteers. And of course we hope that the performances will illustrate to potential new volunteers the work that the committees do in a way they can really connect to. If you know of any committee in town that's interested in participating, please contact me. And then I want to give a quick update about one of vision 2020's biggest projects, which is the annual town survey. This year we received 7,386 responses. That is a 38% response rate, which does set a new record. We'll begin work on a more detailed analysis, but the report to town meeting contains the basic summary of the data. I of course invite any of you here tonight or those watching at home to consider volunteering. The survey is a fascinating project and we can always use more help. We have new software that helps with both scanning and data analysis. And we can use volunteers who know something about survey design or who like to do data analysis. And of course we can always use extra hands unfolding and scanning all those pieces of paper. Of particular interest to town meeting members may be the increase in the number of households who participate in precinct meetings. We asked in 2013 and 3% of households then had attended a precinct meeting. This year it was up to 12%. So that's a nice increase. Vision 2020 will continue to help explore ideas and work with precincts to build on that progress. And of course we'll keep you all up to date. We also have a new very colorful display about vision 2020 in the lobby and I hope you'll take a look at it. Thank you. Any other reports of committees? Seeing none. Mr. Tosti. Move to article 3. Be laid upon the table. All in favor lay in 3 upon the table. Please say yes. Yes. The closed article 3 is on the table. That brings us back to the special town meeting. We're going to take up article 3 which is the only one left. Mr. Karman. Thank you Mr. Mutter. Dean Karman Arlington Finance Committee. I thought I was here on Monday. I handed out a three page memo on the topic. If you go to the last page we have the recommended vote. Also there is the recommended vote. Finance committee is recommending that the town appropriate and borrow some of money of 2.55 million dollars for the architectural design, engineering and project management of the Gibbs school building contingent upon the prop tune debt exclusion. So before we ask for a whole bunch of money I figured I would like to explain to everybody why we need it. The simple answer is that school enrollment in Arlington has been growing and is projected to continue to grow. The first chart I have behind me shows enrollment on, can't hear me. Can you hear me? I'll lean into it. Okay. The first chart behind me shows school enrollment over five points in time. I started with the year 2000 when our enrollment leveled off as we were beginning the second phase of the elementary school rebuild campaign. We had 4200, approximately 4200 students in the system. This is what we based our rebuilds on. By the year 2010 we had grown to 4800 students. Currently we are at 5300 students and the projections are estimating that we will currently top off at 5900 students. This is done, this growth from 4200 to 5300 then to 5900 with no net new increase in school capacity. The schools we had in 2000 are the schools we have now. It's also worth noting, because I think some people say, well, we had seven schools, but did we have a lot of capacity at that time? Did we not have a lot of capacity? Prior to enrollment leveling off, or bottoming out in 2000, in the 1980s we had gone through a process of closing schools. We closed four elementary schools. We closed the Crosby department, the Lock and the Cutter. We closed the junior high and that was done at the time to optimize capacity, to bring the overall school capacity in line with what we believed was the student population moving forward. To illustrate what's going on on a macro level, I like to use this chart behind me, which is one elementary school that Thompson School. And what I do here is I take three points in time, October 2010, October 2015, and the 2021 McKim projection. I do that because the three points in time actually link the kindergarten cohorts and the fifth grade cohorts, which is why I do the shading. If you notice back in 2010, Thompson had approximately 335 students. The distribution of students by grade was in the, you know, it was a low of let's say 45, a high of 65, but it looks stable. Move forward to this past fall, and you can see that kindergarten cohorts, they moved to fifth grade, stayed steady at about 60 students, but the cohorts coming in behind them are coming through a lot bigger. They're coming through at about 80. And so if you think about that, projecting that out to 2020, 2021, the school will now move to an even larger size. And that's the general gist of the school enrollment challenge. Smaller cohorts are leaving, large kindergarten classes are showing up. And so before I ask you to spend, oh actually no, I'm going to go to this one. And so as they push up in the future into the Odyssey, it's really going to explode a school that's not built for that many students. And so why we're asking you to appropriate money for the Gibbs, why we're asking to bring the Gibbs back online is simply to alleviate 1400 students at some point from arriving at the Odyssey. Not only would that make us the biggest middle school in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the school is simply not built for that many children. So if I was sitting in your seats and someone was standing up asking for a heck of a lot of money, I'd ask the first question I'd ask is why do you feel comfortable that these projections are going to continue? Why do you feel that these large cohort sizes are going to keep arriving in waves to drive up enrollment? And I think this chart here does a good job of showing it because what we've learned through research is there's a correlation from the births of children that occurred five years earlier to the children that show up in kindergarten. And so if you look at the top where I wrote actual, that first column of K class or the kindergarten classes that arrived, the next column is the births that occurred five years earlier. And so you see a conversion anywhere from 80 to 100% of children that were born five years earlier showed up in the kindergarten class. So down below where I say projected, it's not just, they're not all projections. Those births are the actual births that occurred in town for the years where the kids will arrive. And what you notice quickly is while the numbers of the kids who were there and those births seem big, they're getting even bigger. And so there's just, there's no quantifiable evidence that would say that this is going to slow down. So why the Gibbs? The biggest thing after I set up and told you what I think is going to happen is there's a recognition that the Gibbs is the most flexible option we have. You know, it provides immediate relief to the Ottison Middle School. It could bring down the enrollment. It would be very helpful. But we don't necessarily know if these projections will hit exactly where we say they are. They could come in above. They could be, we think they'll be about 6,000. They could be 6,500. They could be 7,000. I mean, they could be 5,500. But by doing that, by opening the Gibbs is we have the flexibility to do something with that building. It might have to be a K to 5 school someday. It might have to be a fifth grade only school someday. We could have roaring enrollment for 20 years. And then we might have to close it because enrollment might go back down again. And that's what the Gibbs does. I mean, the school enrollment task force met. A lot of people have been looking at this issue. There's no other option out there that allows us to see flexibility to move with, you know, what could be the, you know, projections converting into actuals. You know, it's also the choice of the experts in this town, whether it's the superintendent of schools who I spelled superintendent wrong, or it's the sixth grade teacher at the middle school. And I do think in a lot of ways that holds credibility in the town meeting. You know, when the police chief and the fire chief and our experts weigh in, we hold that, you know, as a strong condition. But for some reason, when the superintendent talks, I think largely because it's our kids, we tend to have 252 educational experts in the room. I know I'm running out of time, so I'll skip over that one. You know, as a point of note, we've talked about modular classrooms in the past. I will point out modulars are no longer cost-effective. We spent $3.1 million on modulars for the Stratton. And the Thompson modulars, which are coming online, are going to come online at 735,000. And if we do pass this, this will be a continuation of a long-standing effort by the town to address the school enrollment challenge. Everything up there is what we've done from, you know, 2011 when we inflated special education costs by 7%. We implemented the growth factor of 25% in 2014. We adjusted it to the past year. I'll be done in one second. Okay, okay. We've done it. We've done it to the growth factor in 35%. You know, we funded the Thompson, we rebuilt the Stratton, and now here we are. And so, you know, I ask you to support this motion, this spending article, because it is the right decision. It will provide us the flexibility that we need for our school enrollment population and it will prepare us for, you know, whatever comes forward in the future. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Mr. Chapter Lane. All right. Good evening. Adam Chapter Lane, town manager. I'm going to try to not repeat much of what Dean said and take a bit of a 10,000-foot view in terms of the process that the school enrollment task force followed over the past several months. So, first off, the school enrollment task force was formed in response to the McKibben demographic forecast that was performed by the school department last year. And really it was pulled together to analyze and then make recommendations for how to deal with these enrollment pressures and what the corresponding space solutions would be. The task force was actually pulled together in November of 2015. So, who was on the school enrollment task force? We had two members of the board of selectmen, Diane Mahon and Joe Currow. We had three school committee members, Cindy Starks, Jeff Thielman and Bill Hainer. We had the chair of the finance committee, Al Tosti. We had the chair of the capital planning committee, Charlie Foskett. We had the chair of the permanent town building committee, John Cole. We had the superintendent of schools, Kathleen Bodey and myself as town manager. And the primary reason that I'm here speaking about this is I was asked to facilitate slash chair the task force. So, what did we focus on? Well, as Dean touched on, we immediately focused on the enrollment pressures at the Thompson Elementary School that were projected, well, they're currently hitting and really projecting to hit in September of 2016. We then focused on the near term enrollment pressures at the Otis and Middle School, also outlined by Dean. And we also discussed or began discussing projected pressures at the Hardy Elementary School in the future. So, in terms of our early recommendations, again, we did recommend two town meeting in January, placing two modular classrooms at the Thompson Elementary School. Town meeting endorsed having the finance committee fund that via a reserve fund transfer. Those are now procured and will be installed in time for September 2016. We also, as a task force, recommended advancement of design of, excuse me, a permanent expansion of six classrooms at the Thompson Elementary School. We're currently interviewing designers for that. Should have a designer named by next week with the plan to actually hold off on asking for final construction money until it's been designed, cost estimates are in hand, and then have actual enrollment figures in hand in October, and then come back to town meeting and ask for construction money. So, what about the task forces analysis of these middle school pressures? So, we began by reviewing multiple options that were presented by the superintendent. We looked at the potential of building an entirely new middle school on a yet to be identified site. We talked about an eighth grade building or wing at a new Orlington High School. We talked about a renovation or reuse of the Gibbs School or in addition at the Addison Middle. So, we took the new middle school off the table for primarily cost implications, the estimates where that a new school would be 40 to 50 million dollars, and also a very strong reason being that there was no identified site and the cost of site acquisition would be prohibitive. Next, we took the eighth grade building off the table primarily because of academic concerns as well as timeline concerns. A new high school, even though town meeting voted favorably to kick off the feasibility process earlier in town meeting session, we wouldn't have a new high school online for the next four or five years which would create pretty tremendous modular costs of actually getting something online to deal with the enrollment pressures at the middle school. So, that left us with the renovation or reuse of the Gibbs or building an addition at the Addison Middle School. So, based on that, the task force requested more in-depth study of those two remaining options so that an informed decision could be made. HMFH architects were brought on board to perform feasibility studies for both options. They came back and delivered an interim report to the task force in March, and then a final report that included questions and answers from both task force members and the public in April, actually just a few weeks ago in April. So, the task force's recommendation. After review and deliberation, the task force voted 7 to 2 to recommend moving forward with the Gibbs option. And that's why this vote is before you tonight. And some of the reasons that were cited by task force members, somewhat repeating some of the things that Dean said, were that the Gibbs option was academically preferred and voted by the school committee as the academically preferred options. There were a number of site, neighborhood, and traffic impacts surrounding the Addison addition that were cited as a reason that it was not necessarily a viable alternative. And also, again, as Dean said, the future flexibility that's provided by the Gibbs option as opposed to the Gibbs option. As opposed to the Addison option was a very compelling reason to move forward with the Gibbs. But how about impacts of the recommendation of going forward with the Gibbs? The task force certainly considered those. There are operating cost concerns with opening up a new middle school, whether it be a 6 or 6, 7, 8. The superintendent provided incremental cost comparisons between an expansion on the Addison or operating the Gibbs in either of those alternatives. And they both have incremental costs above and beyond what opening up an addition or building an opening in addition of the Addison would cost. And those were considered. And I know the finance committee and the school committee will be working together to try to responsibly manage those incremental costs should this go forward. Also, very important is the impact on the existing Gibbs tenants. There's five very important tenants in the Gibbs school. They all provide very critical and valuable community services and community resources. And impacting them and having them have to leave the space and have them take very seriously. The Arlington Center for the Arts or the ACA probably been the most vocal and most publicly discussed in terms of finding a new home. And I can't stand before you tonight and tell you that there is a solution in place or that they have a new home. But I can tell you I've been working regularly with the leadership of the ACA on the potential for them to find a new home and soon to be vacated space in the central school. And not, again, I cannot commit that that will happen but I cannot commit that I cannot commit that I cannot commit that I cannot commit that I cannot commit that I cannot commit that I cannot commit that that will happen but can commit that from the town administration point of view we're working hard to see that they do have a future in Arlington. And then finally, very specifically, what will tonight's vote get the town? So if tonight's vote is successful it would allow the town to move forward subject to the successful passage of the debt exclusion on June 14th to procure owner's project management services or OPM services and design services for this Gibbs renovation option. And then that resulting design would allow a future town meeting to consider construction funding for the project. So I ask for your favorable action on this article tonight and would be happy to answer any questions. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Mr. Thielman. Thank you, Mr. moderator. Jeff Thielman, precinct 12 and a member of the school committee and the school enrollment task force. So I want to give a little more history and perspective on the process that led to this evening's vote. In July of 2015, Dr. Bode our superintendent let the tenants of the Gibbs school know that the school district might exercise its right to repurpose the building as the town's 10th public school building. The tenants had signed three year leases in 2014 and the superintendent's notice gave them two years to find alternative space. One tenant, the lesliella school, has already a plan to relocate here in Arlington in July of 2017. For a long time now, the school committee has been in a conversation about what information we need and what we should do about expanded enrollment. Last summer, our focus on this issue intensified. We contracted with a consulting firm, McKibben and Associates, to do a better enrollment forecasting than we had done in the past. The analysis which Dean Carmen shared tonight showed us the town's enrollment will continue to grow basically because houses owned by people without children are being purchased by those who have children or who are likely to have children. In the fall, the school enrollment task force was formed and in January, the school committee organized a community forum that filled town hall with hundreds of people who weighed in on what to do about increased enrollment in the town. We have had more than 20 public meetings between subcommittees, the school committee, the task force, the forum and we're going to have some more and we've heard from hundreds of people. I began the process in favor of finding a way to expand the Odyssey Middle School. There were three reasons for my position, two of which were personal. First, my three children attended programming at the Arlington Center for the Arts. They loved the camp and between the three of them they'll spend about eight weeks there this summer. As we looked more closely at using the Gibbs for a middle school, my children lobbied against the idea and sang the ACA song. ACA is awesome. Night after night. The second reason was that our family purchased a home in a part of town that allows our children to walk to their elementary school, to the Odyssey Middle School and to the high school. I was reluctant to vote in a way that changed our family's plan. But the third and final reason is that I initially felt that the increased operating costs of running a school at the Gibbs would be a lot more than operating a larger Odyssey Middle School and would have a serious negative impact on our budget. In the course of 20 public meetings and with the input of many people here in the room, my analysis of all the data and my own viewpoint changed. And I became an enthusiastic proponent of using the Gibbs as a middle school. Here's what happened and I think this happened to a lot of members or some members of the task force. First it was clear that we could not build an appropriate addition to the Odyssey Middle School. The site simply would not permit it. An architect's analysis showed us that an addition would force us to do costly work inside the current building and we would be creating a school where students were likely to lose classroom time because of the distance between classes. In addition, the new school would house 1,400 sixth through eighth graders and be the largest middle school in the commonwealth. A large school is not ideal for the social emotional growth of many of our students. Second, the Gibbs facility is in need of serious repair. The tenants would need to bear the cost of repairs and whether the tenants stayed at Gibbs or moved elsewhere, they would see an increase in their expenses. Third, as Dean Karman said, preserving the Gibbs as an asset of the town would give the school department maximum flexibility to address enrollment issues going forward. We can no longer plan and execute quality education in the town of Arlington in just nine school buildings. Fourth, one option we are exploring but have not made a final decision on and all town sixth grade at the Gibbs is somewhat more expensive to operate than an expanded oddison but not dramatically more expensive. The savings in our operating budget that I initially hoped for represented by an oddison, expanded oddison was outweighed in my mind and in the mind of many members of the task force by doing what is best for teaching and learning. Fifth, the Gibbs presents an opportunity to create a smaller learning space which will improve learning outcomes for students who are arguably in the most vulnerable part of their educational journey and our school system. Finally, the town is offered to help all tenants find alternative space. The school district is offering the ACA camp space in one of our schools going forward and the town has proposed alternative sites for ACA. While ACA will be in different sites in their future and where they're going to be located isn't clear yet, ACA will still be awesome. With your vote tonight in favor of the finance committee's recommendation, our town, our schools, and our kids will be even more awesome than we are today. Repurposing the Gibbs is our tenth public school makes Arlington a better place to live and a better place to educate our young people. As we prepare for the June 14th exclusion, I urge you to give a resounding yes for all of the town's children tonight by voting in favor of the finance committee's recommendation. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Mr. Liggett. Good evening. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Steve Liggett, precinct nine. I stand before you. I stood before you at the special town meeting in January of this year to discuss the school enrollment challenges facing our town. I rose in support of article four to pay for the modular classrooms for the Thompson school, but I also talked about the enrollment challenges as being far larger than just one elementary school. Sorry. I also spoke about the enrollment challenges being larger than just one elementary school, larger than East Arlington. In fact, they affect all of us. It's a town-wide issue. Whether you, and it affects every resident in our town, whether you happen to have students in the school system or not. I closed with a graph showing how big the issue is at the oddison and a promise to report back to the town meeting in April. Here I am. It's April-ish. And I'm thrilled to be standing before you tonight in support of article three. I believe this to be the best solution we could ask for to address the enrollment challenges facing our middle schools. Is it a perfect solution? No. It isn't. Are there downsides and disappointments? Absolutely. However, we are not starting from a clean slate as we wrestle with this complex problem. There are many constraints, many conflicting priorities, and even more opinions about how to actually fix the problem. There is no perfect solution. The leadership of our town has been working diligently, and you've heard a lot about that already, to navigate and balance those competing and conflicting factors to figure out the best overall solution. There have been countless meetings. Actually, I guess they are counted because Jeff just said there were 20. So there have been 20 meetings involving more committees and sub-committees than I could possibly name. It doesn't include the hours of activity that have taken place behind the scenes, allowing that public face to be shown. For those efforts, and for arriving at a solution that I believe to be the best one, I thank you all. Now, I'm a visual guy, so I want to pivot and take a look at what approval of this article actually looks like. This is the slide I closed with last January. I increased the font sizes because I personally have been struggling to be able to read the slides over the last few weeks, and you might notice a version number in the lower left corner, but I didn't touch the content in any way. It's the same as you saw previously. The legend at the bottom identifies each of the schools and the number of students that particular school was designed to build, or built to educate. The axis on the left shows the number of students that are above or below that capacity at each school. You can see that Audison was built for 1,050 students and is currently teaching about 130 using round numbers, about 80 more students than it's supposed to be holding. The red line climbing into the stratosphere speaks for itself. This is the same graph, but I've adjusted it and rescaled so that it actually also shows under capacity. That's not something we've talked about much. Schools that are under capacity. You'll see the legend, Audison with no Gibbs. That's what we will live with if we vote no tonight. This slide shows what it looks like when you vote yes tonight. The Gibbs comes back online for middle school students and there's a huge impact on the overcrowding at Audison. Huge. This graph shows the Audison capacity below at below capacity by anywhere from 124 to 264 students. Why that big a range? Because we don't exactly know who would go to the Gibbs yet when the renovation is complete. But that's okay. The critical thing is that we're solving the enrollment problem at the Audison. Now a quick comment about the two blue lines. I'm not advocating for one particular grade configuration. Instead I'm showing two options based on the information we have available today. We know how big the sixth grades are projected to be. I lifted that information directly off the McKibben report. That's the dotted line. I have no idea how to project what a six through eight Gibbs middle school might look like. So I assume the maximum number of students would be sent to the Gibbs. 500. That's the dashed line representing the extreme end. Finally on this slide. If anyone is concerned that we suddenly have this extra capacity at Audison and feels that the cost is too high and it's wasteful, rest assured that there are many ways that space will be used or could be used. It won't gather dust. Whether it's relocating the school department offices during the high school rebuild, relocating the preschool during the rebuild, providing facilities to the ACA, or simply allowing the OMS students and faculty to decompress and spread out. The space will be used. That's all great, but it isn't reality yet and there are a number of challenging steps that remain after tonight's vote on article three. The graph you just saw assumes that the Gibbs renovation is completed in time for students to attend in the fall of 2018. That may sound easy for those of us who are not in the field, but the experts involved all agree that will be a very tight timeline. The stakes are high though. If we don't get the job done and the Gibbs can't be used in September of 2018, all of those students will be packed into the autism. That has major implications from a financial perspective and frankly may not even be possible from a logistical perspective. Between now and then we have two years of increasing enrollment where we will be adding 8 to 10 modulars, there's not going to be space for additional modulars for 2018, not to mention the cost of those modulars. During those two years there will be another 160-ish students packed into the same facility. There will be no relief for the bursting cafeteria, the media center, or the gyms. We can't absorb another year. We just can't. So to wrap this up, please be part of the solution to the middle school problem by voting yes tonight and then continuing to support the debt exclusion going forward and helping in whatever way you're able to to prevent delays and accelerate and make sure we get into the Gibbs in 2018. I ask for your vote. Thank you very much. Thank you, sir. Ms. Moyer. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. My name is Juliette Moyer, precinct one. I stand before you in support of Article 3 as recommended by the finance committee. I would like to cede my time to Jason Levy, Arlington resident and teacher at the Ottison Middle School. Mr. Levy has been a teacher at Ottison for nine years and was involved in the effort to collect the perspective of teachers at Ottison with regard to the options for addressing the enrollment challenges facing the middle school, specifically around use of the Gibbs versus expanding the Ottison. I believe he will provide a unique and valuable perspective to tonight's deliberation of the article. Mr. Levy is speaking on his own behalf. He is not speaking as a formal representative of Ottison or Arlington Public Schools. Thank you. Thank you. Sir, you have six minutes and 18 seconds. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. My name is Jason Levy and I live at 64 Mystic Street. I come before you to speak in support of article three. This is my ninth year teaching at Ottison Middle School. I started out when sixth grade had five clusters, then it had four. This year it currently has 3.6 clusters of sixth grade. I currently teach sixth and seventh grade. I'm part of the split cluster. When I first started teaching, I did not have many concerns of social-emotional needs of my students. As the population of Ottison has increased, so has the social-emotional needs of my sixth and now seventh graders. Back in March, faculty at Ottison took a survey presenting three options to deal with the increasing enrollment at Ottison. The three options were expanding OMS, sixth grade at Gibbs, or sixth through eight at Gibbs. Ninety percent of teachers picked one of the Gibbs options as their top choice. I am here today to voice my own opinion why Gibbs is the best option to meet the needs of our students. Expanding OMS simply will not work. So you may ask why not expand Ottison? It is already one of the biggest middle schools in the state. The recommended size of a middle school is between six to eight hundred students. There is infrastructure stress, kitchen, plumbing, heat, and pipes have already burst. Removing outdoor space will prevent classes from using traditional space, which will prohibit teachers from meeting the curriculum, especially physical education. With possible blasting, this will be disruption to learning and to the neighborhood. Unsupervised areas in shared spaces are overcrowded, such as the media center and especially the hallways. This is causing students to come late to class. This will not be the best environment for learning. Expansion is not the best option for students having a sense of community. It would violate the middle school model in needs of young adolescents. It would make it harder to build teacher-student relationships, challenges to teaching and learning in a large space, challenges to teaching and learning in a large space, situations with class is talking, which is an issue. Traffic issues in the mornings and afternoons, this is already a major issue and during special events. Will the increase of students mean no school assemblies? How will the expansion affect the schedule if a fourth block lunch is added? How early or late will students now have to have make the schedule. We are currently today at 1,128 students at Audison Middle School. Within five to six years, we will increase the school's population by 200. Within eight years, we are forecast to hit 1,400 students. Based on the School Enrollment Task Force report of this past December, OMS is consistently forecast to have within 200 less students compared to the entire student population of Arlington High School. This illustrates that the increase in student enrollment is making Audison feel more of a junior higher high school than a traditional middle school model which includes our cluster system. So you may ask why Gibbs? Smaller student population will not be as overcrowded as OMS is now and especially if there is the expansion. It will allow the relationships between students and teachers to flourish. There will be a better sense of community. It will allow better support for the social-emotional needs of students. This will make it a truer middle school model of individualized instruction and community building. In conclusion, these are the reasons why Gibbs is a better option than expanding Audison Middle School to deal with the increase of enrollment. The expansion of Audison will only lead to an environment that prohibits students from reaching their potential. Gibbs will provide all students whether they attend Audison or Gibbs, a better learning environment, and a better sense of belonging to their community. It will also allow relationships with their peers and teachers to flourish. As a veteran 6th grade teacher, I support the Gibbs option over the Audison expansion. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Mr. Leonard. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. John Leonard, precinct 17. A question if I could on the module classrooms aspect of this conversation. One thing I'm not hearing a lot about, I'm hearing that module classrooms could be a permanent situation, could be a temporary situation, but let's take for instance, and maybe like with the Thompson School where it possibly might be a temporary situation, those classrooms are going to be on what I would call Thompson property while they're temporary. So it's not to be confusing is the appropriations when these schools are done over to repair any damage that might have been incurred when these module classrooms were installed. Is that included in the appropriation to make the properties such as the basketball court parking lot or whatever back to the way it was before those module classrooms were installed? Mr. Chaplain, does the appropriation include remediation? Adam Chaplain, town manager. Tonight's appropriation has no funds being requested for module classrooms. However, when contracts are signed in terms of module classroom placement, there is site remediation costs included. The only reason I bought it up, Mr. Chaplain, is because it talked about the design, construction, expansion, temporary, permanent or whatever, and that's why I bought up the subject for the module classrooms. I just wanted to find out if, which you might have already answered, could we be looking at something like the job is done at Thompson School, but now we're coming back a year later for an appropriation to do a new basketball court, a new parking area due to the damage that was caused by the module classrooms being installed. Mr. Chaplain. Adam Chaplain, town manager. The modular units being installed at the Thompson will not be on any basketball court or parking area. They will be predominantly on the grass area in front of the main entrance to the school. The most damage I could see being done is to the grass in that area, perhaps one sidewalk, so any remediation costs should be admittable at most and are again included in the budget. Thank you. Thank you, sir. It's one right over here. Yep. No, no, no, behind you, the lady. Yep. Right in front of Ms. Hansen. That's it. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Betty Stone, precinct seven. And I'm also a on the board of directors of the awesome Arlington Center for the Arts. I've lived in East Arlington for almost 13 years and I chose to make my home in Arlington for its sense of neighborhood and community for its coffee shops, restaurants and interesting mix of retail for the capital and region theaters for its green spaces and the commitment of its citizens to civic engagement and for its lively arts and culture scene. The Arlington Center for the Arts is extremely important to our town and to me personally. The ACA is a 27 year old treasure that neighboring towns around this area envy Arlington would simply not be the same without the ACA. My adult daughter is grown and out of town, so I'm not directly affected by our school enrollment issues. I am however an educator by training. I had a career of 32 years in education and a property owner. Great schools, vibrant town and strong property values go hand in hand. You want services, you got to pay taxes. I intend to support this article as proposed by the finance committee. But I do so mindful of the fact that its very success creates enormous challenges for the Arlington Center for the Arts. So I urge you all to cast your vote and then stay in the conversation after town meeting adjourns and see what you can do to help keep the Arlington Center for the Arts alive and healthy. I would like to see the remainder of my time to Linda Shoemaker, Executive Director of the Arlington Center for the Arts and an Arlington resident. Five minutes, 10 seconds Miss Shoemaker. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Linda Shoemaker, 33 Warren Street. I am the Executive Director of the Arlington Center for the Arts. Of all of the displacements triggered by Gibbs decision tonight, the Arlington Center for the Arts is the little guy in the equation, most at risk of not surviving this change. So I'm here tonight not to oppose the motion, but to ask for your help. Because while ACA may be small, we're passionate and we're committed to the importance of the arts for our kids and teens, for ourselves, for the flavor for the identity and the well-being of our community. And we have a great song. Thank you, Jeff. So as an organization, we want to grow to meet this challenge, so that the Arlington Center for the Arts will be able to leave the Gibbs building if that's what you decide and not simply survive, but to grow and become an even better asset for the town. But tonight what I need you to know is that we have an enormous challenge in front of us. We don't yet know how and where we're going to land next June. We're working hard to create our own best future. And you've already heard tonight really significant statements of support from the town manager and the school committee, and we are incredibly grateful for that. But this will need to be a public-private partnership to save the Arlington Center for the Arts. And we will need partners and investors and supporters of all kinds. We will need you to help save the Arlington Center for the Arts. Now, I don't want to assume that you know who we are. So tonight we distributed a handout that tries to summarize some of the value we think we bring to the town. And in case you don't know the history, when the Gibbs building went offline about 30 years ago, town leaders and town meeting here in this room decided to create space to build an art center in Arlington, to offer a subsidized rent in the Gibbs building that would be offset by the higher capacity organizations that share that building with us. And I want to say I think after 30 years the Arlington Center for the Arts has made good on that investment. As you have some time to renew the handout, I think some of the things I'd just like to surface right now. The Arlington Center for the Arts provides Arlington with a home for our creative kids and teens. Serving over 1,500 kids a year with camps and classes and opportunities for kids for our kids to develop self-esteem, critical and creative thinking skills and to find their own voice, their place and their people through the arts. ACA also is a is a source of cultural vibrancy for our town presenting programs that make Arlington an attractive place to live and work and visit programs like Shakespeare in the Park, like Arlington Open Studios, like Porch Fest, coming to us this June. These are some of the things that we want to make sure don't go away with this decision tonight. So what does the future look like and how can you help? So I can't say tonight as Mr. Chapter Lane said earlier, we don't know. We don't know. For the last nine months we've been scanning the town, talking to realtors, looking at properties, exploring all kinds of options, under one roof options, dispersed options and we've been talking with the town about what might be possible in town property. We're deeply appreciative of the support and the effort of the town manager, Adam Chapter Lane and also Selectman Joe Kiro and members of the school committee in this process. There's a real commitment. I believe there's a real public commitment from the town to find a path forward to save the Arlington Center for the Arts. So we were asked a lot, what can I do? How can I help? And I think the first thing that you can do to help is to support the town in its willingness, in its effort to help find a place for ACA. We are going to need that. We are going to need that support and they're going to need your support to take us down that path. We also need to ask you, we need to ask our community as a whole to support ACA's fundraising efforts going forward as generously as you can. We've been lucky as an arts organization and unique as an arts organization in town that we've had the subsidized rent from the town in the past, which has meant we've been able to devote our time and our money and our effort to presenting programs. And what we know now is we're going to need to grow as an organization and develop ourselves into the next stage of as a nonprofit organization. I believe as an organization and as a community, we have the passion and the vision to do this, but we're going to need a lot of money. We're going to need a lot of money to make it happen. Mr. Chapter Lane described the possibility of moving the Arlington Center for the Arts into the central school. Oh gosh, we're out of time. You can wrap it up. Okay. So it's a fascinating possibility. It could be a really exciting possibility for us in the community. We need help to meet the town in the middle to make that a realistic possibility. So we are in short order going to be going to be launching a capital campaign to to to get the money together that we need to do that. We're estimating conservatively $500,000. That's a big chunk to make a move in the next 14 months. And between now and then the launch of the capital campaign, I invite you to visit arlingtoncenterforthearts.org. The ACA Future Fund is online and starting today you can give to ensure future for the Arlington Center for the Arts. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Weber. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Janice Weber, precinct 21. I've had several calls to my home and to my office concerning the schools. And most people up far, they're not against it, but they do have questions. One of the questions is, are these feasibility studies necessary for every time we make a move? Is it a lot to have them or do we have engineers in town that could easily study? Does anyone know that? Mr. Chapter Lane. Yes, Mr. Chapter Lane, town manager. It's certainly not the law that these feasibility studies need to be performed. If it was an MSBA process, like we're going through the high school, it would not be necessarily law but regulation that we'd follow feasibility study. In this particular case, the school enrollment task force felt like a deeper dive into the buildings and their systems and the sort of high level architecture would be very important. So we don't have in-house the architectural or design expertise or the building systems engineering expertise that you would need to do the level of analysis that these feasibility studies provide us. Thank you. And someone asked me about the extra resource rooms in one of the schools. I don't know if it was the rebuilding or the addition to the Thompson or whatever, but they seemed to think there were too many resource extra rooms and they wanted to know why they were all there and if they would really be necessary. I don't know if anyone has the answer to that. Dr. Vody? Oh, yeah, that's true. Kathleen Vody, superintendent. In the All-Inch Public Schools, we provide support services for special education students that require academic support. We require classroom space for English-language learners. We also have at the middle school level interventions for mathematics support and we also have counseling spaces. We need to have room for occupational therapy, physical therapy. There are a lot of services that are part of a public school education today, which I think for many people may not have been there years ago. So yes, there are a lot of small spaces that have to be carved out in a school for all of these services. And you have people to go into all of these facilities. I mean, they're not just gonna be empty every day? No, they will not be empty. All right, thank you. Now, you're talking about engineers, task force, enrollment cost, expansions, architects. We have three tax increases because of the three school questions and also because of the CPA. But what I really wanted to ask you is why we never ever have anything for maintenance for these buildings. Everyone that owns a home in this town, I'm sure, maintains it well, as well as they can. And a lot of us have old houses like old people like me. But I wanna know why there's never any maintenance put into these buildings because they shouldn't be falling down. And it seems strange to me that the cutter, the lock, the powerment, all of those schools that were so decrepit managed to research into something better. And I wanna know, I want to know if we're ever going to have maintenance. I know that public works was cut drastically. And I think that maybe outsourcing it isn't the question, but that's not for now. I just wanna know why maintenance is not ever built into these. Mr. Chapterlain, are you going to budget for maintenance if we build you these schools? Adam Chapterlain, town manager. I think that's a very fair question. And the way I would answer that is last year at town meeting voted for the first time to create a facilities department so that we can actually focus on these very issues, implement, which we're already beginning to do, implement a systematic maintenance program for all of our buildings, schools and town buildings. We've invested a lot of money in the new elementary schools in our fire stations. We're investing money right now in the police station, high school to come, public work. So I think it is very important in last year establishing that facilities department, continuing to put it together, consolidate it from the school and the town. Hopefully we'll achieve exactly what you're asking for. Good, thank you. And one more thing, there is land for sale behind Gold's Gym, so we could develop that. And maybe the Arlington Center for the Arts could go there. That's all, thank you. Thank you. Mr. Moore. Christopher Moore, precinct 14, motion to terminate debate. We have a motion to terminate debate on special town meeting article three. All in favor, please say yes. Yes. Opposed? In my opinion, it is a two thirds vote. The debate is terminated. We now have before us a recommended vote of the finance committee to appropriate and borrow $2,550,000. This is a two thirds vote because it's bonding. So we're gonna use our clickers soon as Mike is ready. Okay, go ahead and vote one for yes, two for no. It's an affirmative vote, 187 in the positive, seven in the negative. It's a vote and I so declare it. That ends all of the articles in the special town meeting. Mr. Tosti. Ladies and gentlemen, I move that the- Quiet please. I move that the special town meeting be dissolved. All in favor of dissolving the special town meeting of 2016, please say yes. Yes. All opposed? It's a vote and I so declare it. The town meeting is dissolved. Special town meeting is dissolved. I would elect to have done the regular. Hold on, Mr. Klein. That brings us back to the article 35 of the regular town meeting. Mr. Klein, for what purpose do you rise? Quiet please. Christian Klein, precinct 10, I rise to move reconsideration on article 29. Okay, because I already stepped down to this other article, I'm gonna step down on this article. Mr. McConnell, let's take over for the reconsideration vote and if we reconsider. Just to remind the members, we have an article one, section 10E of the bylaws regarding a motion for reconsideration. That first of all, the proponent of the mover, this motion must have requested the moderator to give notice of reconsideration and voted on the prevailing side. I do believe you voted on the prevailing side. It requires a two-thirds vote of town meeting and one of the criteria for this purpose is that new information came before us. So has new information come before us, Mr. Klein? Since the time of vote, yes. Okay, so we'll hereby take a vote for an article for reconsideration. May I speak to the article? What's that? May I speak to the motion? It's a debatable motion. It's a debatable motion, but you can't speak to the content of the article itself. Absolutely. Thank you. I think everyone would have received through email. I had sent out my reasoning behind asking for reconsideration, essentially. There is new information. It was made apparent on Monday night by the town manager in regards to the size of the parcel that was originally presented and other issues related to it. So I ask that we reconsider this vote in light of the full information that we have available to us. Thank you. The gentleman on the right side, I didn't get the name of the person who wanted to speak. I think it was somebody right there. Mr. Worden? Thank you, Mr. Assistant Moderator. Yes, you're good. Well, we're not debating the article, we're only debating the purpose of whether the motion should be voted upon. I realize that. I presided a few of those. John Worden, a precinct aide. All right, we're only talking about the need to reconsider. And I think the need to reconsider is extraordinarily clear in this case, because the issue before us was the release of an easement for a road taking made back in the 50s, the public purpose at that time to extend the street. And upon questions, it was asked whether the abandonment of this easement would create a buildable lot. And the information we were giving is that it would not do so. That information was incorrect. And therefore we did not have a debate based upon the situation it actually obtains. And that is the debate that we had a couple years ago. Mr. Worden, I hate to interrupt, but I must request that we keep this just to the matter of whether there is new information. So to speak about the history from the prior votes, I don't think that is within the scope of our discussion at this time. Well, we're using a different criteria for reconsideration than we used to use, Mr. Conner. However, there is clearly new information, and we need to bring that forward and discuss it in order to reach a proper decision on this article, on which we hurriedly made a decision on inadequate and incomplete information at the previous session. So please vote yes on the reconsideration. It doesn't mean you have to vote differently than you did before, but at least let's vote on with all the facts in front of us. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Worden. Ms. Deschler? Christine Deschler, precinct 19, motion to terminate debate on the motion for reconsideration. Having heard a second. Okay. We'll take a vote, Mike, on reconsideration. So if you'd like to terminate debate, press one. If not, press two as the light goes green. The motion carries, and I so declare it. So we'll now take a vote for reconsideration and requires a two-thirds vote. If you'd like to reconsider the motion or reconsider article 29, please press one. If not, press two when the light goes green. It is a two-thirds vote, so we will reconsider. The percentage was 72%. Okay, we'll now take up article 29. Yes. Who's asking to table it? Since this came as a surprise to us tonight, I believe that we should hear this at a later date and proceed with the rest of town meeting with the new information that we have. So I'm asking to table it. Okay, the motion to table has been heard. All in favor of tabling article 29 until next, what, you have a date certain? We just table it, we don't have, are we gonna postpone it or are we gonna table it? I would table it at least until the end of the night if we get finished and if we don't, then next, until next Wednesday. They said they can't hear you. No, I, they said, they said you. Oh, the mic was turned off, sorry about that. Okay, so we're gonna hear, we're gonna vote on whether to table the article until later on. All those in favor of tabling, say aye. Aye. All those opposed? No. Motion against carries, so we'll take up the motion right now. Anyone wishing to speak to this article? Mr. Leone. John Leone, precinct eight, I'm here as a representative. Does this one, oh, here we go. John Leone, precinct eight, I'm here as a representative with time with David Dolan, the owner of the parcel in question. The, there we go. I got you, John. So this is actually, we were here on article 29 for $28,000 to release a sideline agreement. Back in April of 1942, the town of Arlington took, this thing doesn't really work well. So you see where it says 30,094 square feet taken above lots, 83 and 84. The town took what they call a sideline agreement back then for a couple, or like a thousand something dollars. That, all that does is prevent the homeowner from being able to build within those lines in case the town ever wants to build a road. If they want to build a road, we have to go back and actually do a taking and take the property for good. Two years ago, we released the sideline agreement where it says 43,007 and to the left of that. We released that a couple of years ago. It's the second time we had come back. We got about 60,000, 65,000 for that. It's more than twice as big as the piece we're releasing. So what we now have is a sideline agreement and basically that little triangular piece up the top of lots, 83 and 84. That's now owned by Mr. Dolan. He'll answer any questions you have. Can I have the next slide, please, David? So what he owns now is about a year, year and a half ago, he'll tell you if I'm wrong, he bought that house which owned the whole 14,000 square feet of land. I can show you. Oops, well, there we go, look, I got a dot. So scroll down some. So right there, he put a line in and made two lots out of his 14,000 square feet. So he has a 7,000 square foot lot with a house on it that he's rebuilding. If you've driven down Pleasant View Ave, you'd seen that house. It literally had trees growing through the porch. It was a wreck. He's rebuilding that now. What he's asking us to do is release that sideline agreement which cuts through from that dot right there to about the corner of the lot here. So what you see with these dotted lines is the building envelope. That is where he can place a home on that property as of and by right without having to ask permission of the town except for a building permit which he can get. So what we're really doing is just releasing that sideline agreement over the corner of that building envelope. It's not really gonna change anything. He's got a new, he's got that lot that he can have as a right. He's paying us to release it. 28,000? Yeah, $28,000. We're getting back our initial payment to him brought to the current present day value as well as recapturing as many years back taxes as Mr. Chaplin can legally do. So we're releasing that little agreement off of the property. He's gonna be able to place his house if he wants to build one. He's not even sure he's gonna build one. He'll get up and tell you if you ask him. In that space somewhere. So he has that big spot, he can do it. All we're doing is cutting off the bottom. He's just asking us to release it. What it really does is he can do it, he could sell it, but title insurance companies don't like it because the town could always come along in the future and say, we wanna put a ethereal road through that little tiny triangle where that road's gonna go. I don't know, cause we've released the rest of the road. So we're generally just kind of cleaning up our own mess by releasing it and he's paying us to do it. Yes, it's making his piece of property more sellable in the future, but he can put the house there anyways. People think that maybe we're gonna prevent him from some sort of, by some sort of zoning maybe, by not letting him build a house there, but really he's got a right to do it. We're just making it easier for him in the future to place the house and to sell the property in a more efficient manner. If you have any questions, I'll gladly answer them or Mr. Dolan's here, so please, we'll answer any questions you have. Thank you. Mr. Klein, should be one slide from me. All right, well essentially the Christian Klein Precinct 10. The slide I had was sort of a side-by-side look at the two, sort of as they described them before. So essentially, as far as the registry of deeds, I did a deed search last week on this. Currently the lots are 10,000 and 3,000 and so they're being combined and really subdivided as was explained. The question I have for the proponent is this new lot that's being created in the, just the new 7,000 square foot lot is have they had it surveyed and will it meet, will they be able to construct a building and make a 30% usable open space? If it has been surveyed, this is official surveyed lot. You can see the seal. John Leone Precinct 8 on behalf of David Dolan, by the owner. This is a survey right here. That's why it's sealed as far as the 30% open space that will be when he decides to place the house on the lot, the size of the house he will have to meet those requirements with his building permit with Mr. Byrne. Right, because usable open space requires that 75% of the 30% is less than 8% grade and it seems to be quite a steep site and so I'm curious if it is developed within that guideline. I don't really know. That's up to our building inspector to determine at the time the house is placed on the site and the grade designations are made. Very good, thank you. Thank you. Mr. Worden. Thank you, Mr. Assistant Moderator. John Worden, Precinct 8. It would be helpful if the plans showed actually how much, where this street taking or this sidelines whatever is with relation to the lot. To the, no. All right, so again, precisely, is it this bulgy thing here or what? We have to speak into the map. I'm sorry, it's hard to look at the map and speak to you. Anyway, it seems that, remember this, it's the master plan. We, and the master plan speaks, among other things, of the need to preserve open space in our town and if there's one thing that's really in very short supply here, it's open space and it's also the one thing that you can't hardly get more of. And in fact, one of the implementation steps is to use CPA funds to acquire more open space. Here it seems to me is we have an opportunity to acquire open space for free because we have already, the town has a long time ago, took a slice of this land as for a public purpose, that is the construction of a street. That public purpose is no longer deemed necessary and so, but there's a new public purpose, the preservation of open space, which those of you who were here last year and that's most of you, endorse this plan and I think we're really having a discussion of whether it means anything or it's just another thing to gather dust on a shelf somewhere. So we're now told both that it wasn't a building lot and it's a building lot but you don't need this piece of it. You know, I don't know which of these things is the case. The fellow wants to build this house and if you look at that building envelope, is that still up here, the building envelope, if you look at that, and you look at the house that's just above it, which would be just north of it, which is either totally reconstructed or a new house, it's about twice as big. So it would be on the scale, if they built into that envelope, it would be on the scale of the mega buildings which are next to it in the parcel which was released a couple of years ago. So the, so that's what apparently could be built and I guess Mr. Leone is telling you that it could be built whether we released this or not. They'd like to have us theoretical street taking going right by the front porch. I guess they could. This is, but if we're going to release this piece of land which it seems to me we should not, it's because it opens face being so rare in our town, at least it seems to me we should get a decent price for it. Well, a building lot in this town, as you perhaps know, goes for around a quarter of a million dollars. We're selling this slice to make this a better sized lot for a tenth of that. So I would urge you to have, having reconsidered to reject this vote and let them come back next year, at least with an appropriate price, we're spending all this money for our schools and so on. And I don't think we can afford to give away this slice of land. Thank you. Mr. Deist, gentlemen in the white shirt in the back of the center left, center left. Not you, it was the center row. Yes, sir, you. Okay, we'll take a five minute break, seven minute break. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Michael Ruderman, precinct nine. There's a word that we're all grasping for tonight and that's appraisal. We're asking, do we agree with the idea of the town giving up an interest in real estate? And if we do, do we feel that the amount of money, value, consideration in real estate talk, the consideration that the town is expecting to receive for this is valid and sufficient. I don't know how to do an appraisal. I know how appraisers work. I know that three competent licensed experienced appraisers can bring you back at least five opinions on what the value of some piece of real estate is. But this is where they make their living. It's a special situation. Can you really simply say that it's, you know, a couple of years ago, we had a situation similar to this and we gave them that much money and this one is like that but it's a little smaller, so a little bit less. This was the question I raised in the original debate. To me, that's just not sufficient. That's not detailed enough. We don't have a method here to look at. There are all kinds of questions that are going around the room tonight. Would, what would the value, what would the fair market value of the resulting property be should the town decide to give up this interest in its real estate? Is it a buildable lot? Is it more valuable to another purchaser? Could it be bought for open space? Is there even a market? Is there, are there buyers out there that would be willing to buy this interest for open space? So what are the market conditions? What would the resultant value be? Do we look at this strictly as, you know, it was X dollars in 1942. Let's figure in the interest, throw in a figure for taxes and think that all we're doing is, you know, running the federal bond charge forward 70-something years when we know how much real estate has appreciated from pre-war prices to today. Is there a better way that takes more facts into consideration? I think there is. I think we should have an appraisal in front of us. I wish we had one tonight. We could look at its presumptions and test those conditions and facts, and then we would be informed. Tonight we're not informed. This can always come back to us at another time. So I'm going to ask you to vote no. Ms. LaCourt. Annie LaCourt, precinct 15. Is there someone here who can tell me how many of these kinds of parcels of land the town has? How many places we have outside lines? Mr. Town Manager. Adam, Chapter Lane Town Manager. The legal department in engineering did take a look. The level of work that it would take to go through the paper files, frankly, was too time consuming and cumbersome to be able to quickly put together a list we did not, we have not performed that. Okay, thank you. So when the issue of dropping lines like this on the original parcel that we debated a few years ago first came up, and I was on the Board of Selectment, I asked that same question and got the same answer. We do not know how many of these kinds of properties we own. And the difficulty was that whatever we did about one, we were setting a precedent for all of the others. And we set that precedent. And I think as a town meeting, we were pretty happy with that precedent at the time. And the town manager has applied the same formula to this property. The good news is that if this kind of an issue comes up again, okay, we will ask for the same consideration. And to me, that's what's important here. I don't think, I think you could make a cogent argument for why we shouldn't ask for anything at all. Because these outside lines would have been completely valueless to us in 1970 and things change over time. But now we have a precedent and a formula, and I think that that's what we should vote on. Yeah, it makes a buildable lot. There may be many of these around town that we don't know about. There have been instances where, because it suited the town's purposes, that we dropped outside lines for nothing. So the fact that we're getting any money at all seems like a bonus to me. And I think that this fairly balances the needs of the community against the rights of the property owner. So that's my opinion. Mr. Jamison. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Minister Moderator Gordon Jamison, Precinct 12. This one really is low tonight, isn't it? So I want to clear up things that I think people are mixing here. So, Mr. Moderator, who owns the land? Eastman, the whole block, who owns that land? Eastman aside. Mr. Leone, can you come forward and answer that? Perhaps the town council. Okay, Mr. Heim, but Mr. Jamison, please refer to the moderator for appointment of this meeting. Yes, Mr. Moderator, thank you. Thank you. Good evening, Doug Heim, town council. The property owner owns the land. We don't own the actual land itself. And then who owns the Eastman? It's technically called an exterior line. It's a property interest that basically gives us the ability to establish a road and there would have to have been some further steps. So it's an interest that we possess. You could characterize it as ownership, but it's a highly unusual type of situation. So a different interpretation through the moderator might be that it enables us to build a road should we choose as a town. That's a fair characterization. But we would still, after that, still have to acquire the property proper. That's correct. Okay, so all we're doing is selling back to the property owner, the right of the town to build a road and that would require us to then buy the property from the property owner. Is that confusing enough? We don't own the property. We own the right to build a road through that property, but to do that, we would have to acquire that property. Okay, so we're not selling them the property. We're just selling the right that the town currently has if it decided, which it didn't decide to do to subsequently acquire that property in full and build a road through it. I'm in favor of this article. I don't think this is really something we should spend this much time with. I know some people are vehemently against that. And to that argument, I would suggest that this is analogous to spot zoning, which is illegal. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. You're welcome. Mr. Revolac. Steve Revolac, 111 Sunnyside Avenue. Would it be possible to bring that land plan back? Would it be possible to bring the land plan back? No, not that one, the one that was stamped by the surveyor. It says Spring Street right at the bottom. That's the plan, okay. At first, I want to thank Mr. Klein or whomever provided this because gosh, with all the talk about property and stuff, it's actually great to be able to look at something and it just makes it a lot more concrete. Mr. Moderator, if I can, I'd like to walk through a couple of aspects of this plan and maybe Mr. Leonie or Mr. Klein or someone from the building department who's familiar with land plans would like to entertain a couple of questions? Yes, we could do that. Mr. Moderator? Yes, we could do that. Okay, so basically we have two lots here. There's, I'll just call them the top one and the bottom one. So on the top one, there is a cross-hatched area which is roughly two, sort of two rectangles. It's currently a, so that denotes an existing structure? Correct, okay. And it actually, there's basically a main house and the lower part is labeled garage to be removed. Correct, okay. And now there's all, and then there's like a proposed garage up towards the top. Now this, relative to the new building footprint, there is a trapezoidal-shaped dashed line that encompasses the whole thing. That is, those are the property setbacks. Correct? The dotted trapezoidal lines are called the building envelope where he could build inside of if he wished. Okay, and it's a much larger area than the house that's currently there. There's no house in the bottom lot. No, no, we're talking about the top one right now. Oh yeah, but yes. We'll get to the bottom one. Yes. We'll get there. Okay, so now in terms of the bottom one, so as you said, it's just a property, it's just an envelope. There's no building shown on that whatsoever. Correct. And roughly, do you know the area of that envelope in the lower portion? No. Okay. I can't, I'm sure someone could figure it out. Well, I mean, I sat down with my pocket ruler and drew some triangles and did some measurements and I came up with between 1,900 and 2,000 square feet. So it's not, and by the time you fit a building in there because it would be expensive to build something that shape, that kind of a polygon, it would be like the status center of Arlington. By the time, but you're probably talking a property that's a house that's much smaller. Just out of curiosity, I took a bike ride up there Monday night before town meeting to just get an idea of what it looked like. And to me, it's on a hill, but it struck me as the idea of putting a house that seemed completely reasonable. If that's what ends up happening at the moment, we don't know that that will in fact happen. The one thing that struck me about the property was, wow, it's got great southern exposure. They could probably do something wicked with solar there. But yeah, I like solar, I like earth covered homes but I think this is a very reasonable, I have no issues with someone putting a house there if they choose to do so. And I support releasing these landlines. Thank you. Gentlemen in the center right in the pink shirt. Brendan Sullivan, precinct two. I'm just trying to get an understanding of how we're using this new information. And to me, it seems like we're encroaching on, we took this land through basically like imminent domain a long time ago. We have no use for the road and now we're arguing zoning laws basically. It seems to me anyway about whether or not they're allowed to build something on a piece of land that they own. And then also, just I'm trying to get an understanding of if that's the way we wanna use imminent domain is to say, okay, we're not gonna use it for its original intended purpose, but now we're gonna take it back because we wanna create open space. I think that we need a separate procedure for something like that. If we're gonna take something back through imminent domain separately to create open space or to say or change the zoning laws if we don't want them to build something on it. So I'm standing in support of the original vote and feel like the new information is somewhat irrelevant whether or not he can build a lot. Thank you. Mr. Connors. Madam clerk told me it was Mr. Connors, but the second row behind Mr. Fisher. We missed Mr. Connors. Bill Kaplan precinct six. Earlier there was a question of how we value, how can you put a value on this restriction on the property? And I mean, there's probably a lot of ways to do it. One thought, I guess getting back to this idea that you can't build your way out of a financial crisis. As we build more houses, we actually generally will be spending more money on services for that household than they're paying in taxes. So if you build a new house and a family moves in and they're paying 10,000 a year in taxes but they're getting 30,000 a year in services, there's actually a cost to the town of $20,000 a year for that house. And so if you say that we're gonna get paid $28,000 and so that a house can be built and then a family can move in and pay 10,000 a year in taxes, which is, I think, you know, that's higher than the average taxes. Well, the question is how do you value it? And so that's my question is if we're considering these things, the town making $28,000 to release a property that will cost a town $20,000 a year isn't really a good investment if you look at it that way. There are other, I mean, there's other arguments to be made. The idea of the town, you know, taking away the rights of a citizen is, it's not great but those rights were taken away, you know, 60 years ago, that owner's long gone. The most previous owner sold the property just a year or two ago to a developer who I think saw how we voted two years ago and thought, aha, I see a way to make some money by turning this one lot into two houses. And so, I mean, I think he's thinking, and he should be, I mean, that's what he does. He's a developer, he's looking at a way to make a profit. So he came up with a way to make a profit. I just wonder if we as a town should be thinking in similar terms when we make these decisions. You know, he wants to build two houses and make a nice profit on his investment. There was no guarantee. I mean, he rolled the dice when he bought it because he knew that that restriction was there. So really, he was gambling and he probably got a decent price for it because it was a gamble. So the question is, you know, well, again, it comes down to if we release the property for $28,000, is that in our best interest as a town? Forgetting about open space, but just that $28,000 will be gone in a year and a half after the house is built and the family moves in. So, and then after that, it's a $20,000 a year cost to us every year. Anyway, that's, I mean, that's one way to look at it. There's other ways to value it. I just thought no one had brought that up, so it seemed worth mentioning it as a possible thought. Mr. Gilligan. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Steven Gilligan, Precinct 13 and Town Treasurer. I'm gonna reiterate what some other town meeting members have said quite factually. The town does not own the property. It's owned by a private property owner. The only interest the town has is in an easement that maybe sometime the town may wanna build a road. That easement or that interest was purchased by the town over 65 years ago. The town is now collecting, based on that original fee, time value on money, $28,000 to release an easement. That the town really can't control unless it comes to town meeting and says, we wanna take this property by eminent domain and oh, by the way, we're gonna have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for it. So look at the economy of scale. Also keep in mind what was previously said, the property owner can still build on that property, easement or no easement. The difficulty is in title insurance. It will cost the property owner more money to deal with securing a proper title. It's not insurmountable, but it's a pain in the neck and it's expensive. The town's collecting an additional $28,000 on that property. I don't believe the town should collect a dime. The town had its interest for 65 years and it paid for that interest. Now the property owner wants that interest released because the town has no intention of using that interest whatsoever. I think we've been spinning our wheels here. We should vote positively like we did before and end this article. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Gillian. Mr. Helmuth, Mr. Paluso. Yes, Mr. Paluso. Paluso from precinct six. I have a couple of questions. Is this town in the business of selling easements? It doesn't sound logical to me. If the fella has an easement on his property for 60 years, I don't care how many property owners they're in there. We don't want the easement anymore. So why are we trying to hold them up? It doesn't sound fair. We're not in the business of selling easements, are we? Are we in the business of using easements for zoning? I don't think so, right? So I agree 100% with Mr. Gilligan. You should just let this guy use his property. This is the United States. He has rights, yes? So I don't know what we're talking about this over and over and over again. There's something really off base here. Mr. Schlickman, he's on the list. Paul Schlickman, precinct nine motion to terminate debate on all items that are this article. Motion to terminate debate. All those in favor of terminating debate, please say aye. Any opposed? We have an unanimous vote. We'll now take a vote on article 29. We have a two thirds majority requirement as per the article and we have it from the Board of Selectments. What's that? Oh, we already terminated debate. We took a voice vote on terminating debate. So the vote right now is on article 29. All those in favor of article 29 as proposed by the Board of Selectments, please vote one. If not, vote two. Yes, article 29. The vote carries and passes. So we, it's a vote and I so declare it. I terminated debate on article 29 and brings us back to the budgets. Article 35, Mr. O'Connor stole my pen. All right, we're in the middle of the budgets. I believe we had finished the town manager's budget. Oh, we're in the middle of the budgets. Article 35, I believe we had finished the town manager's budget and the next budget hold was the Treasurer Collector. Who wanted to speak about Treasurer Collector? Ms. LaCorte and then Mr. Jamison. Annie LaCorte, precinct 15. Mr. Moderator, you'll have to help me out with scope here. What I wanted to ask is that we have been waiting for many years for the Treasurer to replace an outmoded collection system with a new system. My understanding is it's in the capital plan but I know it's been in the capital plan several times. I'm wondering whether we could prevail upon the Treasurer to speak to his plan for finally replacing this collection system if that seems appropriate under this article. Mr. Gilligan, can you answer her question please? Yes, Mr. Moderator, I can. Steven Gilligan's town pressure. We are replacing the integrated collection systems utilized by the Treasurer Collector's Office for the collection of real estate tax, personal property tax, motor vehicle excise tax, water and sewer utility billing, and parking violation collections and permit authorizations. The purchase order has been issued for the real estate tax module from Tyler Technologies to replace the package with their munis addition. I have to preface that by saying we are also implementing a new accounts receivable package and a new cash management package. Those purchase orders have already been issued. An RFP request for proposal is being issued for motor vehicle excise tax as well as water and sewer utility billing. The final draft of that is under review as we speak. The parking violation collection and permit authorization system has also been ordered through cardinal tracking, which is a core module of the system used by the police department. We are well underway. The plan is that all of these new collection systems will be integrated and up and running. We've slipped a little bit, but the plan was by the end of this calendar year. So we will certainly have those applications installed and implemented. There will be transition time and there will be training time involved, but we are more than well underway. Could you speak to whether or not you believe that this will create efficiencies that will save money in your budget? We're expecting that it will create efficiencies. We're expecting or hoping that it may reduce over time in the long run. We have retained the services of a consultant to look at all the business operations packages. So we are always looking at ways to improve the operations of the Treasurer's Office. It should be understood that new applications does not necessarily save money in and of itself. It creates efficiencies, but those efficiencies don't necessarily save money. It depends what other work is put placed on the authority of the Treasurer's Office. So I can't tell you how much money that may save, but I can tell you that that's the goal. Right, it may save money or it may increase your operational capacity. Correct. Excellent. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Ms. Jamison, do you have a question about the Treasurer's Budget? Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Gordon Jamison, precinct 12. As Mr. Gilligan eloquently characterized, the Treasurer's Office collects a huge number of different types of bills. Now, I don't know about the rest of the body, but I pay 99% of my bills online. And so, and the vast majority of those are electronic fund transfers that I accomplish at no cost. I would, it's about 200,000 of these. I went through the financial plan and where the Treasurer's Office reports all those. And I would be interested in learning when we can anticipate such a system coming to Arlington. Mr. Gilligan. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Steven Gilligan, Town Treasurer. Currently, there are several methods of taxpayers paying their bills. They can pay in person, they can pay through the mail, and they can pay online by going to the town's website. There are other methods whereby in various industries today, individuals may set up what's often referred to as automatic payment, such that you can go into your financial institution, we'll call it a bank for the moment, and say I wanna pay my real estate tax on such and such a day every year or four times a year. Of course, you have to guess at what that amount is because the bills keep changing, if not by pennies, but by a few dollars. That is sort of what we'll call in a forecast or in our long range planning. But given all the things that I've just described in answering Ms. LaCorte's questions, we've got a full plate at the moment. We have implemented all kinds of new procedures in the office over the years, lock box, online bill paying, et cetera. New banking services, we just changed our bank over the past year. So yes, is it on the calendar? Yes. When will it get accommodated? Can't answer the question. There are, we have to do this in concert and in partnership with the IT department, and I wanna thank Mr. Good for the excellent support he's been given the Treasurer's Office over many a hurdle. But we have to take things in stride, and one of the things that we have to take in stride with is each bank or financial institution operates their data transport, their EFT, their ACH transactions slightly differently. So if we implement a plan to allow such a thing as automatic payments, we have to work with multiple banks. There's no one single standard. Are we moving in that direction? Yes. Will that be done in the next year? No. Okay, and the packages, the modules that you discussed in response to Mr. LaCourts' question, I would like to know whether they are fully compatible with EFT transfers. They are. Excellent. So I'll look forward to that in the future, and I'll continue to acquire until we reach that threshold. Thank you, Mr. Of the future, Mr. Gilligan. Thank you. Mr. Deist. Thank you, Mr. Moderator, Peter Fuller, Precinct 20. I noticed that the position of management analyst in the Treasurer's budget, the budget drops down to zero, and presumably the position goes away. What's going on, and who will pick up the duties of that position? Mr. Gilligan. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Steven Gilligan, Town Treasurer. I'm hoping this mic works a little better. You're correct. The management analyst position has been rated as zero. We have eliminated the position. I continually look at the operations of the office and the organizational resource required to meet the Treasurer and Collector's operations. I will state, personally, I'll use the word saddened to see that position go. However, in conversations I've had with the town manager and looking to meet the needs of the Treasurer Collector's office, as well as in supporting the entire town and its operations. One of the things I learned at AT&T is sometimes you have to give up some things to make the whole team work a little better. So in my discussions with the town manager, he expressed to me that there were other needs that the town needed to fund. Was there a way that I could build a better mousetrap and still meet the ever-increasing workload that's being placed on my office? I agreed to eliminate that position, restructure, create a new position called Principal Clerk and Assistant Cashier to help us with the workload in what I'll call the front office. And as you may have read in the annual report section of the town's annual report, by doing that I've saved $45,000 this current fiscal year, that money's being turned over to the town manager, and the savings will be $30,000 per year going forward. And the town manager will be using those funds to support increased police services and law enforcement in the community. Thank you, very informative. Thanks for running a tight ship in your office and thanks for cooperating with the manager. You're welcome. Anyone else wish to discuss the treasurer's budget? Okay, seeing none, the next budget on hold was Board of Assessors. Who wanted to discuss the Board of Assessors? Nobody, okay. Next budget held was, who? They do? Nah. Sorry. Yeah. It's only Board of Appeals, someone put a hold on ZVA. Who wants to talk about that, Mr. Klein? He's talking about his own board. Christian Klein, Precinct 10, member of the Arlington CBA. There were a lot of discussions this year in regards to zoning articles and putting things into the special permit category out of the general permit category. I would just request in future years if that is an intention that our budget be looked at. We currently have one part-time clerical position. Ashley does a tremendous amount of work for us on a part-time salary, but if we triple her workload, we're gonna need more people. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? Okay, the next public works. Who wanted to discuss public works? Mr. Trembly. And then, Mr. Mr. Trembly, Precinct 19, Mr. Moderator, could anybody tell me how much salt we use this year? I don't use salt anymore. My doctor said it's bad for my heart. Yeah, it's also bad for our cars and storm drains and all kinds of stuff. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Michael Rautemarker, Director of Public Works. This year we used approximately 57,000 tons of salt, plus or minus a few pounds, at a cost of about $490,000. Ooh, that's a significant amount less than we've ever used, isn't it? It was considerably milder winter this year. It was, yes. And I had one other question for the, I'm sorry? We had to ask. I'm kind of curious what's happening with Gray Street. I think that's tossed my list as the worst street in town now. Or at least the worst major street. I'm just curious what's happening with that. Academy and Gray. Yes, Mr. Rautemarker. The street is pretty bad too. I agree. Thank you, Mike Rautemarker, Director of Public Works. You may have some challenges on the worst street in town designation for that particular road. But it is on our short list of road that need work. It isn't on this year's paving program to be completely resurfaced. We do expect to make spot improvements to that road. We are also looking to seek or to see if Gray Street would qualify for complete streets funding, which the town recently adopted a complete streets policy, which requires us to revitalize sidewalks and intersections at the same time as doing paving projects. And Gray Street may be a good candidate for that funding and we will be pursuing that for next year. But does that mean we get bike lanes too? Gray Street is not on a matrix of roadways in town that we had considered for bike lanes. Thank you very much. Thank you. Mr. Fiori. Peter Fiori, Precinct 2. Now, Mr. Moderator, I have two questions. One is sidewalk repair, the other is street repair. Today I was going to work and the town's down on Little John repair on the sidewalks and I think they're doing a good job. Then when I walk up Mott Street, where six houses have been torn down and rebuilt over the past several years, two of them even now under construction, I look at the work that the developer's doing, rebuilding the sidewalks that he's destroyed with this heavy equipment, with the tear downs and rebuilds and it doesn't look like the same kind of quality work. I see the town employees doing. So I'm just wondering if I'm right, who signs off on the developer's work after they've torn up a good town sidewalk and they've rebuilt it, who sees that they're doing it up to standards or in that the taxpayers in this town aren't gonna have to go in and rebuild it in a couple of years? Mr. Radamaka, so there is a question. New answers question. Michael Radamaka, Director of Public Works. Sidewalk construction is required to take a permit with the Public Works Department, Engineering Department, and those permits are reviewed and the work is reviewed after completion. I can have someone go down to Little John in particular to look at that work, but we do review this. No, no, not Little John. The town's working on Little John. The work on Mott Street, sorry, I probably didn't say that. We can have someone go down and take a look at that in particular. So then my street question is Mott Street. Because of these six chairdowns and rebuilds, and I haven't looked on Dorothy Road where there's, I think it's half a dozen homes that have been torn down and rebuilt there as well. So on Mott Street, because of the six homes that have been torn down and rebuilt, and Dorothy Road in the same block section between Parker and Little John, there's another half dozen. I haven't really looked at Dorothy closely. But on Mott Street where these six houses have been torn down and rebuilt, the heavy equipment that's gone up and down the road, the debris haulers, the back hose, the tractor trailer delivery trucks, the cement mixers, the street's been cut into, and you can go see for yourself, anybody, 20 times. And I can see where some of these patches, they're concave, the street's broken up, it's sunken, and so anyway, it's not in good shape anymore, although it's not grossly deteriorated. So my question is, the developer, and I'm not gonna mention any names, but it seems to me there's a single developer, will that developer be required to rebuild, re-crown, resurface that section of street that's pretty beat up? We do require, well, any trench in town is the maintenance of it, is owned by the utility or the contractor that caused the trench to be created for the life of that roadway. And the town and the engineering department does review trench permits on an annual basis to identify if trenches need to be repaired. We do a case by case basis when a contractor takes out a permit, if they're going to be replacing sewer, water, and other utilities in a close proximity, we do put a contingent on that they resurface the entire stretch of road in front of that project. If it's just one utility or another, they're just required to player that trench. So to answer your question, we do review those permits and we will be back in on those areas to make sure that the trenches are holding up. So when you say the trenches, and I don't, I'm not obviously not an expert on McCat and a street constructioner. The trenches you're talking to are the cuts that I'm talking about, where they've cut in for utilities, I suppose, gas, sewer, water. I just, maybe you might go down and look, this isn't really a complaint, it's not a complaint against DPW, but like I say, this development, these half a dozen homes, that street might need to be redone, that section of, I don't know, 50 yards in its entirety. And I just, again, I guess the tax base will have to do it as opposed to developer. Well, that's not necessarily true. I'd have to look, I don't know if to top my head what exact permits were issued for that project, but depending on the amount of utility work that was required for those buildings, we may have put a contingent on the permit that they patch a larger section of road than just the trench itself. So I will review that and let's see what we have there. All right, great, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Fiori. Mr. Koch? Kevin Koch, precinct 16. So we have a lot of LED street lights in town, which are fairly new, and I'm surprised that I see lots of, the little dots are like broken, and the street lights are progressively failing, and I'm wondering what recourse the town has in that regard. Mr. Rademacher? Oh, Mr. Chapellein. Adam Chapellein, town manager. The first round of LED street lights that we purchased, I guess it would be five years ago now, have a seven year warranty with what is now Siemens, who we have both the maintenance contract with and hold the warranty. So if they're broken and reported to DPW, we report it to Siemens and they come out and replace it at their expense. The second round of street lights that we purchased, I wanna say four years ago now have a 10 year warranty. So during that first seven and then a second 10 year warranty period, they are fully warrantied, both the actual parts and the installation. After that, if it's continuing failing, it will be on the town, but right now they're all still under warranty. Thank you. Mr. Radosha? Thank you, Mr. Moderator Bob. Radosha, precinct 11. It seems the Mystic Street between Medford Street and Summer Street has been in a state of turmoil for the past three or four years. There's been a lot going on down there and we were, we, the people I talked to in fact tonight, as I was walking my dog, I was verbally abused by one of my neighbors about when are we gonna do something about that? And so I'd like to report back to my constituents and others that complain about it all the time as to when we might see that get repaid. We were under the impression it was gonna happen last November, but that didn't happen, so. Michael Radomarka, Director of Public Works. That, it is slated to be paved this year. We've had a string of one utility after the next doing their work in that road to gas company, electric company, and we did some water work there. All that work is now complete and it is in our plan to pave this year. This year, not soon, but sometimes. This summer, this construction season. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Anything else in public works? Sir. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. David Watson, Precinct Five. Just had a question in the properties and natural resources section of the budget on the expense line. There's a 41% increase there, about $116,000, and I just wanted to ask where that was coming from. Mr. Radomaker. Thank you, Michael Radomarka, Director of Public Works. The increase in that line is to assist with tree-related maintenance and care. We have a significant backlog of tree work and we hope to use those funds to get some contracted help. Great, thank you. Mr. Fisher. I guess I'm assuming that the water bill is under public works. I just wanted to say we had a $900 water bill for this summer watering season and we were hoping that the powers that be were gonna cause your summer bill to be an average of the winter bill. At any rate, I wish that some adjustment could be made for water use that doesn't use the sewage. That's all, thank you. Thank you. Anything else on public works? Seeing none, the next budget that was held was facilities. Mr. Leonard, then Mr. LeCourt. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. John Leonard, precinct 17. Mr. Moderator, I wonder on the facilities that somebody could explain to me while the Director of Facilities is getting a raise of over $70,000 to the tune of 137% this year. Mr. Chapter Lane. Adam Chapter Lane, Town Manager. So I think the Director would very much like that raise. It's not in fact a raise. Last year, the way it was budgeted was half of the salary was budgeted in the town budget, half was budgeted in the school department budget. This year, the salary is budgeted in full in the town budget, but the school department's contribution is included as an offset below the actual appropriation amounts. Could we have that a little bit clearer please because as I read it in the book, reading all the other assessments, it's saying it's going from 51 to $122,000 for an individual. Adam Chapter Lane, Town Manager. There's actually a footnote that describes what I just described in that the Facilities Department was created in FY16. The Director, Energy Manager, and Administrative Assistant were funded 50% in the school budget in FY16, and 50% through transfer of funds in FY17. So I guess we could talk with the Finance Committee about a clear depiction, but the footnote certainly describes the changes between 16 and 17. So the guy's getting the same amount of money which is funding it through two different budgets last year, and this year it's in one budget. I'm getting a head nod, yes. Yes, okay. Is that clear, Mr. Leonard? Not really, Mr. Moderator. So last year, the school paid half as salary and the town paid half. This year, the town's paying the entire budget salary. Which is 122? Looks that way. Is that 122, Mr. Chapter Lane? Adam, Chapter Lane Town Manager, the Director of Facilities is a her. Ruthie Bennett, not a he. And so last year, I guess I apologize for any lack of clarity. We had a budgeted amount before we had anybody hired and after going through the recruitment and interview process, settled on a contractual amount. So it's not representative of 50-50, but 17 is the amount that we actually hired the Director at. Mr. Moderator, is it my understanding that you can make an amendment or ask something to be amended under these budgets, such as a salary for an individual? You can amend a budget, but we have to maintain a balanced budget overall. So I would not be possible to ask for a figure for an individual to be amended. Mr. Heim, what do you think? Doug Heim, Doug Heim Town Council. So town meeting can appropriate a bottom line number for a department, but it would exceed town meetings authority to negotiate or try to negotiate a specific salary for an individual employee. That's best. Sorry. Town meeting can give a bottom line number for a budget, but it can't negotiate a salary for an individual employee. So it would be outside the scope of town meetings power to essentially say, we're assigning this specific salary number to an employee that the town manager and others or others had negotiated with. Does that answer your question, Mr. Leonard? It does, it does. Mr. Moderator, I'll just end by saying, going through the book is roughly nine other, let's call them directors and other departments, all seeking raises which they are probably entitled to, but none of the other nine come anywhere near to the amount of money that looks like it's going to this particular director. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Thank you. Anything else on facilities? Ms. LaCourte, do you want to speak to it? Annie LaCourte, precinct 15, I have two questions relative to the facilities budget. One thing that I would like to do is that the facilities budget is new and this is a new department. And I wonder whether either the director of facilities or the town manager wants to speak to how well the facilities department is going and particularly in light of our concerns about the long-term maintenance in buildings that we're now renovating or have renovated in the past and our assumption that creating this department would help us to extend the life of those buildings. Mr. Chapter Lane. Adam Chapter Lane, town manager. I'll take a crack and then I'd actually, I'd ask if the director of facilities could add into what I said, Mr. Moderator. I think out of the gates in the past year, we've done very well. The department has implemented a work order system that has inventoried all of the systems in the town that allow all departments to make maintenance requests or repair requests so that it's all documented and tracked and the workload can be managed much more effectively than it had been done in the past. Also, the director is now sitting at the Permanent Town Building Committee. So this facilities department is having a strong voice in the development of all design for all buildings that we have going forward. So we're putting in HVAC systems that are in coordination with what we have in place. We're putting in energy management systems that are in coordination with what we have putting in place. So I think we've taken very good strides in the first year of starting to coordinate and manage our maintenance and our construction of new buildings. Excellent. Did the facilities director wanted to add to that or? Sure. Come on up and give us your two cents worth in your department. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Ruthie Bennett, director of facilities. We're doing actually two other things. We've created a preventive maintenance software module. So we're taking all the pieces of equipment, the roofs, the windows, all the envelope, putting it into a software program so that every year or every number of years, everything that needs to be maintained on a preventive schedule comes up automatically as a work order, consistent with the work order system that we've created. The other thing we're working on is a 20 year capital forecast. Again, trying to understand the new and the old buildings, what they need on a rolling basis, looking out 20 years. Excellent. Thank you very much. I have another question that you might want to hang around for, well, assuming it's all right with the moderator. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about energy management, in particular the school energy offset and the savings that our energy manager has been finding for us, et cetera, just in general, I'd like to call this out for folks. The energy manager position and the school offset on energy management. Ms. Bennett. Ruthie Bennett, director of facilities. I'm not sure what you mean by school offset. I can talk about energy management. Here in the budget, there's a line that says school energy offset $130,000. Yes, you got it. Mr. Chapter Link, can you explain what that is? Adam Chapter Link, town manager. That's listed as school energy offset and I apologize for not noticing that before you asking. That's actually the school department funding half of the director's position. Okay. The energy manager position and the administrative assistance position. Okay. So that's the school offset. It was last year just the school energy offset. It's no longer just that. But I know that we put solar panels on the roofs of a bunch of buildings and I'm wondering how that's going in terms of savings and efficiency and whether we're looking to do more. So Ruthie Bennett, director of facilities. We did put solar panels on six of our schools. In this weather, they're producing incredible amounts of clean energy. We're very excited about that. We have thought about possibly putting them at the DPW. That's under designing and conceptual now. So we're not sure about that. We also have, I think you mentioned energy management systems. Which we have now in roughly 10 buildings in town. And I can go into this in a much deeper level another time, but they are definitely helping us manage our HVAC run time and not cooling and heating at the same time. We're seeing everything online. We can fix a lot of it online. We know what we're looking for. So we're really managing the consumption of the energy much tighter than we've done before and also remotely. So we don't always have to run to the school to do it. Excellent. Thank you very much. Thank you. Ms. Memmon. Mr. Koch. Kevin Koch, precinct 16. With regard to the solar panels, how much of the, how much, we heard that we have them. I thought part of the question was how much are we saving with them and I didn't hear an answer to that. Are we saving any money, Ms. Bennett? Ruthie Bennett, director of facilities. We are estimated to save $80,000 a year on the solar panels. That depends on how much sun we have, but that's a general estimate of a per year savings from all six schools. Wow, Ms. Mayer. Leslie Mayer, precinct 21. It sounds like the new facilities department is well on its way to helping address the maintenance needs of our buildings. Last year I asked about our outdoor assets and our outdoor facilities and what plans we had for looking at the maintenance requirements there. I'm wondering whether we've made any progress at coming up with a plan for how we're gonna address those needs. Is outdoors under your jurisdiction, Ms. Bennett? No, Ms. Chapter Lane. Adam Chapter Lane, town manager. We've certainly been focused on facilities as they're defined by four walls, as they'd be. I think we still have work to do in outlining, as you know, it's a shared responsibility between the recreation department under Joe Connolly as well as the staff of DPW, but we sort of have this ongoing conversation about how we can better, I guess you could call it, put together a preventative maintenance program for our outdoor facilities. As well as the schools. The schools are also in that mix, so I know that last year we talked about getting something together to start to look at those needs and how we address them, and I'm just hoping that we haven't left them completely behind. Yeah, I would, I mean, we actually had a meeting this week with the superintendent specifically about the high school athletic facilities and how they should be managed, certainly on the radar, but they fully admit there's more work to do. Thank you. Anyone else on facilities? Seeing none, the community safety was next. Who want to discuss community safety? Mr. Schlickman, and then Mr. Fiore. Paul Schlickman, Pre-Signite. How much salt, no. I see we are maintaining just one full time and two part time parking control officers in our densely populated municipality that has more illegally parked cars than parking tickets. My question is, given that the parking study is resulting in new regulations in the center and that enforcement would be a cornerstone of making it work, wouldn't it be logical that we would need to increase the number of parking control officers, position that would seem to generate revenue for the town rather than cost revenue? Chief. Oh, Mr. Chaplain. Adam Chaplain, town manager. So Mr. Schlickman is referring to the Arlington Center parking management plan. We have five new, one is an additional meter in both the Russell Common lot and the Water Street lot. And we are moving forward with putting on street meters sometime within the next six months in Arlington Center. What I would say is these parking control officers still will have the same amount of ground to cover, same amount of spots to manage as they currently do. So it's not immediately apparent to me that we need to increase the workforce. Also the meter technology that we'll be installing will be smart technology that will be able to inform parking control officers of where violations are occurring. I'm not opposed to increasing staff if it so calls for it, but I'd prefer to have the meters installed, see how the current staffing level is working out before making a recommendation to town meeting of increasing staffing. I would just think that given the ratio of illegally parked cars to parking tickets in this municipality that our parking signs are often viewed as suggestions and not regulations and that more enforcement agents would both bring folks into compliance and generate a little more revenue for the town. Thank you. Mr. Fiori, I don't know about that, Paul. My dad got a ticket in the rain while he was at church. No, he should have been. He might not have gotten a ticket. Peter Fiori, precinct two. Mr. Moderator, since all politics is vocal, I'm going back to Mott Street. Yeah. One of the houses, the sixth house that was torn down, there was a, this was three years ago and it became the nonstop construction zone that it is. There was a firefighter on duty and I called the fire department and they told me he was there to suppress dust, which I can understand. So I don't know that I saw a firefighter on duty for these other tear-downs on Mott Street or Dorothy Road and I may have missed it because they demolished these houses pretty quickly. And so I'm wondering is there a requirement for public safety that a developer, when he's tearing down a house, has a firefighter on duty with a hose attached to the hydrant in case of an emergency? Is that a requirement? Chief Jefferson. Bob Jefferson, fire chief. There is a regulation that's actually governed by the Board of Health that whenever there is a demolition, a firefighter is hired to be there with the hose off the hydrant to control the dust as the demolition of the building is occurring and as the debris is being hauled away. They have to come in, they have to get demolition permits from the building department and then they have to go through the police, fire, Board of Health, get all their sign-offs. When they come in, we inform them that they need to have a demolition and they need to contact us. So there's kind of a checks and balances between the building department, the Board of Health and everybody telling us that it needs to be done and then the contract has to contact us. Mostly all those houses, if not all, did have dust control down there. So I'm sorry, you said most of them, but not all of them? They should, any demolition should have it. Again, they have to apply for demolition permits. That's what we find out about it and that's when you notify the contractor or the owner of that property that they're gonna have to hire a firefighter to do that dust control for them. Okay, I think that's great. And so now, Mr. Fisher's question about his $900 water bill, does the developer pay for the water that comes out of the hydrant to do that? Yes, they do. We actually put a standard fee of $50 on there, which is well above what it would be. We don't have a meter to meter what we're taking off the hydrant. We discussed it with the water department, as well as charging them for the firefighter to do the detail. We charge them a $50 flat fee for the water and that's returned back to the water department. Okay, great, thank you. Now I'm gonna beat up Chief Ryan. This nonstop construction zone, this isn't your neighbor's addition or remodeling. Three houses were demolished at once. Two of them were still under construction. Heavy equipment comes and goes, debris haulers, cement mixers, flatbed tractor trailer delivery trucks, back hose with metal treads. And even now, this little bobcat, I was walking up the street because you can't, well you can walk on the sidewalk now, but I had to walk on the street and this bobcat darts out from between the parked contractor's cars and fortunately one of the other guys worked and stopped them from running me over. So my question is, I called the police when the first house came down because the developer put up a sign that said street closed, police officer head. Well having walked up the street not seeing the police officer, I called the police and said, why, where's the detail? And the response is, there's no detail. So the police came down and the sign came down. And they said that you can't, they can't require a police officer to be on duty no matter what's going on for construction. So my question, Chief, is what would it take to have a police officer signed to these days when there are, there is heavy equipment coming and going, debris haulers back on the wrong way up a one way street and cement mixers and everything else. What would it take to require them to hire police detail for public safety the way they have to hire a firefighter? Chief Ryan? Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Frederick Ryan, Chief of Police. The bottom line is public safety. You know, we don't require details that create an income for police officers or for any other reason but public safety. So if it's on a secondary road where traffic signs and cones will suffice, then we don't require the presence of a police officer. Now if you're suggesting that public safety was at risk, we're happy to visit that site and have a conversation with the contractor overseeing the site but the bottom line is public safety. And if safety is at risk, then we will take action. If it's just a matter of setting up traffic control devices that will remedy the safety concern, we do that. So I'm not familiar with the situation you're speaking of. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, sirs. Mr. Trembly? Mr. Trembly, precinct 19. I understand the town is trying to promote business in the center and like that. You know, there's nothing that says shop here like parking tickets. Mr. Fisher? Andrew Fisher, precinct six. I feel that what I'm gonna raise is within the scope because some efforts of the efficiency ought to be discussed town-wide and decided town-wide. I'm talking about the new app by which people are able to take photographs of other people in the park. If their dog is off leash. And I don't wanna discuss dogs at all. It's just that this is such a departure. Other examples might be too inflammatory but I'd be equally horrified if someone wanted to have camping permits and encouraged photographs of people camping out. Or if people were fanatic about, I don't know if they're fanatic, but were really, really serious about open meeting laws and had an app that would take photographs of three or more selectmen or school committee members. And if their lips are moving, take video. Thank you for laughing. I was been searching for examples that would, you know, so or littering or so on. So I feel if we're gonna go down this road, the selectmen ought to be involved in setting policy and supporting the decision. I'll do respect. I know it's frustrating what goes on in the park. So thank you very much. Thank you. Anyone else on community safety? Ma'am. Thank you, Betty. Stone, Precinct 7. I would like to ask for an explanation from in terms of both police services and fire services about the how you use overtime versus hiring more firefighters and police officers. And I know that that's probably, possibly connected to unions and other things, but in both services, the overtime lines are quite high in the police department, the police services it's... First we'll have Mr. Chief Jefferson answer and then we'll have Mr. Ryan give you the answer. Love, Jefferson, fire chief. I'll be happy to answer for Fred. He may not be right. Overtime is based on whether we have minimum manning and how many people on a shift. When people retire, it takes a long process to refill those positions. At times, I know my department, I know the police department is very similar. We'll run anywhere from four to 10 vacancies because it takes that long to replace those bodies. Interview process, all that gets with the academy. Anywhere from nine months to a year to replace those bodies. Most of our overtime is incurred when there are vacancies within the department and then we have to backfill. Now some of that backfill will be covered by those vacancies, but naturally you're paying out a high premium for the overtime. So it's not as though we have overtime there just for the sake of filling it. It's more when we hit minimum manning, you know, they're entitled to so many days off, so much vacation, so much holiday. It really comes down to when we have vacancies or if someone's on an extended injury or extended sick leave, we have to backfill. We don't use it to say, okay, it's cheaper to use overtime because then you don't have to pay benefits. It's just a matter of trying to get people back into the buildings. Chief Ryan, are you using essentially the same process? Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Yeah, Chief Ryan, I went to the police department. Yes, and I would just remind Tom, meaning once upon a time we had many more police officers that didn't require every time an officer took a vacation day to backfill with overtime. So when we reduce the number of sworn police officers that drives up the need to fund overtime. Basically every time a police officer takes a vacation day or a personal day, it requires a backfill and overtime. That wasn't the case many years ago. Anything else on community safety? Okay, seeing none. We'll got a motion to adjourn. We'll take up with inspections number 20. When we come back, all in favor for adjournment, please say yes. Yes. Opposed? We're so adjourned. Any motions for reconsideration? Seeing none, thank you very much.