 Good morning. This open meeting of the Arlington Select Board is being conducted remotely consistent with Governor Baker's executive order of March 12, 2020, due to the current state of emergency in the Commonwealth, given the outbreak of the novel coronavirus in order to mitigate the transmission of the virus and reduce risk of COVID-19 illness. As an advice and directed by the Commonwealth to suspend public gatherings and as such, the Governor's order suspends the requirements of the open meeting law to have all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location. Further, all members of public bodies are allowed and encouraged to participate remotely. The order which you can find posted with the agenda materials for this meeting allows public bodies to meet entirely remotely, so long as reasonable public access is afforded so that the public can follow along with the deliberations of the meeting. 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So that brings us to our consent agenda. So at the agenda we have meeting minutes of meetings. June 29 2020 and July 7 2020. We have for approval Arlington Community card lawn signs through September 1 2020 CC Wendell co chair Thompson School PTO. We have a request for a contracted drain layer license from asphalt services 210 new Boston street street woman and a request for contractor drain drain layers license from roots and shoots 86 Boston road in Chelmsford. In our first look to miss Mahan for a motion. No approval. And Mr. DeCorsi second. Mr. Dickens any comments. Sorry about that no comments. And Mr. Carol any comments. None. Thank you. All right. So we have a motion by Mr. Hans seconded by Mr. DeCorsi. Yes. Mr. DeCorsi. Yes. Mr. Dickens. Yes. Mr. Carol. Yes. Mr. DeCorsi. Yes. That brings us to appointments. Number six on our agenda. An appointment to the grants committee of the Arlington Commission for Arts and Culture, formerly the Arlington Cultural Council. Andrew Conway term to expire. 630 2023. Do you have Mr. Conway with us. Hello everyone. Thank you for your willingness to serve. If you can just tell us a little bit about yourself and why you decided to apply for the position. Sure. Let's see I moved to Arlington from London about 14 years ago. I have two daughters in Arlington public schools. They will one will be a junior this coming year and the other one will be a freshman. They've both been very involved in the performing arts in Arlington and elsewhere. They were very small. I myself am a trombone player. I've done some professional gigs around town. I've played at town day and various other places and local community theater as well. My musical interests have led to a lot of involvement in the nonprofit community theater and community music scene in other neighboring towns, including the Chomsford and Sudbury as the president of the Chomsford community band for several years. And in that capacity, I essentially oversaw the operational aspects of the band and recruited the music director and participated in the artistic direction as well. I'm currently a trustee of the other Sudbury Saviards, which is a Gilbert and Sullivan group that's been around for almost 60 years. Now we're celebrating our 60th next year. And interestingly, there are more Arlingtonians in that group, both on the on stage and in the orchestra and in tech. There are more Arlingtonians than there are Sudbury people. So we're very proud of that. And so essentially I've been involved in musical performing arts groups for years and years, but not so much here in Arlington. And when I heard about the opportunity to participate on this board, I thought it would be a terrific chance for me to get more involved and promote the arts community here in Arlington. Thank you. I will turn to Mr. Carlos for any comments, questions or motions. No, I just want to say thank you very much for your willingness to serve. As I noted, the last appointee to this body, you know, this grants committee, formerly the Arlington Cultural Council is very important that the state funding that comes through every year is quite modest but I'm always blown away with the talent of the committee and leveraging that for very interesting projects. And we're going to need the arts more than ever, I think, as we someday start to emerge from the pandemic particularly. So really appreciate you stepping up and, you know, offering your talents and I'd like to move approval of the appointment. Thank you. And Mr. Diggins, any second questions or comments? I hold hardly second, you know, but I do have a couple of questions. I read through the resume, very impressive, you know, even although you're in the PM, you do a lot of project management and from a technology realm, I could imagine putting forth a similar resume myself. So I'm kind of wondering about the grant writing or grant aspect of this gig and the background that you have in that. So as a trustee of both of the groups that I've participated in for years, I've been part of the, I've written grants and applied for grants in a lot of the neighboring towns. And I've done a couple of workshops in grant writing and I'm, you know, that's a skill that I'm still developing. But I, you know, I do, I approach the whole, you know, grant funding process like I would, I think like I would, you know, anything that I encounter in the business world. You know, as long as you're, you have to be very clear about what the expectations are need to have clear criteria. And then one of the things I really would I really like about this role is that once the grant has once the funding has been approved. You know, the, the people on in the committee actually work side by side with the artists to ensure that they're making use of the grant money effectively but also to nurture them and and to help them grow in the, you know, in the community so that they're not just artists in their own right they're artists within the Arlington community. Well, thanks for explaining that second part of the job. I wasn't aware of that and that's that's actually very important. So thank you very much and welcome aboard. Thank you. And Mr. Excuse me, I just want to thank Mr. Conway, Andrew. I'm definitely cognizant in reading everything of the vast grant writing experience as well as being a musician. And in the theater so you also know the best way to form the grant as well as the few grants that you can get through the state but I know you're much more well versed in terms of different organizations that are sort of expanding their grant opportunities, you know, like the foundation coming to organization. That's something you're on top of and I do really appreciate that because that's unfortunately we always need grants. Currently for the arts and data but now with COVID-19 it's really kind of tripled that effect. So get a lot of work ahead of you, sir. Up sound. And Mr. DeCorsi. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I just like to thank Mr. Conway as well for your willingness to serve and for your volunteerism in the community. Thank you, Mr. Conway. Just like the second, what I've heard from my colleagues just thank you for your willingness to step up and serve in this really important committee. All right, so we have a motion for approval by Mr. Currow seconded by Mr. Diggins, Attorney Hyde. Ms. LaHon. Yes. Mr. DeCorsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Currow. Yes. Mr. Hurd. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Conway. Thank you very much. All right. So that brings us to item number seven on the agenda, discussion and vote, Black Lives Matter banner. So I will open this up. I'll turn to the Tom manager just to give us a brief introduction then we'll take over. Thank you, Chair Hurd. Very, very briefly I'll say when we put the banner up just about a month ago or a little over a month ago. I don't think there was any intention or feeling that that it was something we wanted to take down but proclamation or the resolution, excuse me, as was drafted and approved by the board. We talk about taking the banner down after the acknowledgement and celebration of Black Lives Matter a week ago today to become clear at least me in the community that in terms of acknowledging this value of Black Lives Matter that continuing to acknowledge it in the community is of importance. So my suggestion for the board is that we keep the banner up for a period of time until I can come back after working with the Human Rights Commission, the Diversity Equity and Inclusion Coordinator and other community stakeholders and recommend how we will properly acknowledge that value in the community. But until we come back with that plan, keep it on Town Hall until a new plan has been brought forth. Thank you. And this is certainly an issue that's been prevalent for all of us in the past week or so since the 13th came up, that was the original date in the proclamation and we are still doing lots of work. It's still very much in the minds of Arlington residents and, you know, we've gotten input on both sides of the issue on whether or not to leave it up and keep it up, keep it down. But I have spoken to the Town Manager and what I would propose based on what the manager's recommending is to give, like he said, him some time to talk to the, you know, the necessary parties, the Human Rights Commission and all everyone that needs to comment on this and come back with a permanent plan for the banner, which I, you know, our August meeting is coming up in just a couple of weeks. And I think we'll need a little, it will be the will of Town to have it up a little longer than that. But, you know, my plan would be to shoot to have some sort of further discussion on this in our September meeting. So with that, I'll turn to the board for discussion as to any motions or comments or thoughts as to how we proceed here. So, Mr. Carl. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Obviously, we've heard a lot of passions around this. And it's understandable. I mean, this, this raised the banner and the way we know we raised the banner in the wake of a horrific murder of George Floyd and recognition similar incidents like, like that. We come together tonight. I don't think any of us could have imagined that we'd be coming together together in the wake of losing two Titans of the Civil Rights Movement, Reverend Vivian and Congressman Lewis, both of them, freedom writers and associates of Dr. King and presidential medal of freedom winners. So I think the values that are expressed in those three words, Black Lives Matter, I think they do reflect the value that we banner or no banner, it's incumbent upon us to continue living that those values. We've heard from a lot of members of the community overwhelmingly, the correspondence I've received would like to see that that statement there, you know, for the foreseeable future. And we've heard others who have been concerned either with any types of messages on town hall or, or conflating that statement of principle with organizations by the same name or specific policies or whatnot. But I think that especially during this season of really distress for the country, it makes a lot of sense for us to continue for the foreseeable future, wait for a further plan. Thankfully, I mean, one of the things that we always face ourselves as a board, whenever we're looking at the use of public property, I mean, as a board, our specific jurisdiction, I think most analogous is the, the light poles up and down Mass Ave. And we have in the past, we frequently give permission either for Black History Month, we get permission for the hanging some beautiful banners which stayed there one book beyond that recognition. But there are other groups in town that that that do seek use of the space, we typically would have had some contention for town day, as we know, town day has canceled so we have some time I think to consider not not just. And how do we live without that the, the principles Black Lives Matter it's not a binary choice either you know we've heard from some people have said, Well, all lives matter nobody's disputing that folks are just recognizing that that our black brothers and sisters have not always enjoyed the full fruits of the citizenship. That's what that that's what to me that that means. So, I'm, I'm happy to move that the banner stay in play to endorse that the banner stay in place for the foreseeable future, and that the board consider a future plan for enshrining those values. With, I would say with a recommendation the time manager that a policy also be developed for how how the space is allocated as well. Okay, thank you. Mr. Dagens. I will second it. And I'll speak with respect to my principles and then with respect to what I think is the pragmatic thing to do. The one, one thing about being in this position is that you recognize that you have to be cognizant and sensitive to and and everyone's everyone in town and their concerns. And so, be I talk with people and my understanding about how that spaces, the use of that space has changed me used to be that it only had announcements for things like town day. And then it became a place for making people aware of various months like autism months and breast cancer. And then at one point it I think hosted the pride banner or the pride flag. And I think from from that point on, it became a bit of a contentious space, potentially. And my feels about town hall schools, the police department, and we don't have any courthouses here but if we did it is that those should be neutral spaces. Because I feel that in being neutral is actually more inclusive than putting up a sign you know that on its on its face speed is trying to make us a better place and and and a more inclusive place. And certainly, the Black Lives Matters is important. And it is, it is, I want to see that movement succeed and get as much out of this moment as it can, just as I am all in favor of gay pride. But when I try to put myself in someone else's position, like if there was a sign up there that says the family equals one man and one woman. We are assigned a sense you know we value life. Then for me going into town hall seeing that we maybe just feel a bit excluded and even though I support the all these things and I'm in favor of having the use of government space to espouse the values of the town, ie the polls or maybe come up with some other space. I mean I just feel that there are some places where we need to make it clear to everyone that that this is this town. Not so much represents you but but but that this is your town and we're going to work with you and and those of us who are on the leading the edge in progressive values. I mean we just have to keep in mind that some people are coming along a more slowly mean and I don't mean it's on and that probably sounds kind of sending and patronizing that's not my point but the point is that we just need to be diversity is not only simply of how people look meaning they're raised with self diversity of thought and we need to provide that space for them and make every critical place in town especially the places where they go to go to conduct government business to be a welcoming space for them on the pragmatic side. I support the town manager on this. I know where his heart is in and I trust in his thinking process, he has got a lot of input, he has a good sense of the space in which we are dealing feed and I have confidence in him and and even if I don't particularly agree with the eventual outcome of this I think this is a good place to be a part of the support is is is even if I don't necessarily agree. With everything be I can support the decision and so that's why I enthusiastically second this. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I also agree with my previous colleagues in the town managers suggested course of action. And I just want to make sure that all sides around the Black Lives Matter banner do not get too overly fixated on the banner. The other thing that is important to me as the town manager works with the Human Rights Commission is that I'd like to see at least half if not more a majority of people of color consulted on this issue and other issues. I'm very heartened by the fact that the town manager and Human Rights Commission, chaired by Crystal Haynes, along with Jill Harvey, our diversity, equity and inclusion coordinator are reaching out to persons of color, especially through I always like to talk about high school students, whether they be athletes or not, but especially with the inclusion of the Allington High School Black Student Union and Alumni group. I can tell you myself personally having coached for a little over a decade at Allington High School. I think I could with any other sport or maybe even how to build an odds and drama, a majority of my former cheerleaders, some Allington residents and some not, are still active as alumni and have been very visible. And they have stressed to me the importance over yes, the Black Lives Matter banner is appropriate at the time right now, but just as important if not more important is exactly what the town is doing with the community conversations on racism and reform. I'm pleased that when I go on there, I don't see all white men and women. I see I think appropriate panelists for including people of color. My daughter, Mar falls into that. And I think really if I had to focus, I'd pick one thing. I think that's something that should be one of the main drivers of how Allington talks about our values. It continues to talk about it so that my biggest fear is we, I honestly thought back in 1991-92 with the beating of Rodney King and the quiddle at his trial. That also was on television and media shock that that kind of went away. And what I've heard from people of color is that they want to start laying the foundation. And it's going to have to be many, many things, not just one thing that we put in place for the future so that we don't backtrack and we put something in place that cannot be ignored in the future. And I'd like to thank Allington through the town manager, Human Rights Commission and the DEI coordinator have really laid out a good roadmap on how to do that. And most importantly, when I've spoken to them and former students and family members is that if everyone just works together respectfully, even if you hear something that for some reason, you know, raises the hair on your back of your neck or whatever, that if everyone taking them sincerely for what they're saying is, I think the community conversations and what steps we take coming from out of that is a really, as I said, important driver to make sure that we actually learned from current day history, something we didn't do back in the 90s, and we as residents, citizens and leaders of the town, basically put in something that cannot be ignored in the future so that we continue to move forward and not have to have all that's what happened in 2020. And here we are in another decade. So I apologize for being so lengthy on that. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. DeCorsi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I also support Mr. Kuro's motion and we had endorsed or voted the proclamation on June 8 and it was just a short time ago and at the time you heard from Mr. Chaplain earlier that this month went by very quickly. We haven't completed the webinars. There is still an ongoing dialogue in the community and in the nation and it just feels like this is not the time to bring down the banner. So I support the motion and look forward to continued conversations and speaking of the webinars, one of them is tomorrow night and it's an opportunity to listen tomorrow morning, tomorrow night rather, to the titles of suppressed voices and it's an opportunity for the community to listen. We still have a few more left and there's still much to do. So I look forward to hearing back from the town manager and continuing to work, continuing to listen and continuing to talk. Thank you, Mr. DeCorsi. Again, I will support the motion as well. You know, we back in June we raised this banner in response to a horrific event. But that came within the midst of a couple of years that we've spent working to raise awareness for institutional racism both in the town and abroad, and we did that in June. And so we're going to hold it with our APD and, you know, at the time, the, I think the length of time that we put in the proclamation made sense. But as we're still continuing these conversations, it's, it's not the time to take it down. And then I look forward to hearing back from the town manager in a few months with a long term plan, as well as a plan for the use of the space in general. So, you know, in the future, we can have a little clearer cut, you know, idea of what we're looking for when we put any banner up in this location. So I'll support the motion as well. All right, so I have a motion from Mr. Carl, seconded by Mr. Diggins. And Mr. McCormick. Yes. Mr. Dick Horsey? Yes. Mr. Diggins? Yes. Mr. Ciara? Yes. Sorry, did we get Mr. Diggins vote? Mr. Diggins, is that a yes? Yeah, I mean, my, my connection is a little unstable. So sorry about that. Thank you, Mr. Diggins. Welcome. Mr. Horrit? Yes. To unanimous vote. Thank you. Our citizens open forum, accepting unusual circumstances any matter presented for consideration of the board shall neither be acted upon nor decision made the night of the presentation according to the policy under which the open forum was established. It should be noted that there is a three minute time limit to present a concern or request. So we'll open up the list for our citizens open forum if you can use the raise hand function on your Zoom app. And I apologize if someone can remind me what the key code is on if you're calling in on the phone. I believe it's star nine. Star nine, thank you. All right, we have four hands raised right now Mr. Heard. Okay, you can start reading them today. Lynette Culverhouse, Atherin Conley. Yup. Chris Loretty and Elizabeth Dre. Give a few more seconds to see if anyone else raises their hand. All right, we'll start with Lynette Culverhouse. You're muted Lynette. Hi, my name is- Culverhouse, if you can say your name and address for the record. My name is Lynette Culverhouse and I live on Draper app. I wanna thank the town manager and the select board for supporting keeping the Black Lives Matter banner up. And I would like to suggest that it remains up until the Black community says that it's no longer necessary. And by the Black community, I don't just mean a select number of token Black people but reaching out and hearing from our Black community in the food pantry, in affordable housing, all of the Black community needs to feel safe in this town. And until all of them do, this banner needs to remain up. Whether it's a token or not, it is performative, but it's also a message. And I think it's important to keep it up. I am a proud member of Arlington Fights Racism, a group that's been fighting systemic racism in our town since the racist police officer was allowed to retain his job after publishing hate files. After publishing hate filled and racist articles in a statewide publication, I would like to read you our mission statement. We are a committed group of Arlington residents striving to promote a more compassionate, inclusive, engaged and welcoming town by collaborating and networking with others to increase diversity, dismantle racism, bias and inequity and to create a richer, more culturally representative community and town government. We have been working hard to define ourselves and make our voices heard for over a year and a half. In that time, we have been criticized, insulted, ignored, sidelined and during the recent campaign maligned by many of our town leaders. I'd like to read our mission again. We are a committed group of Arlington residents striving to promote a more compassionate, inclusive, engaged and welcoming town by collaborating and networking with others to increase diversity, dismantle racism, bias and inequity and to create a richer, more culturally representative community and town government. Now please tell us what in this statement has been so distasteful to our leaders and their followers. I have yet to understand why so many people would oppose the inclusion of marginalized voices in our town government. What about our mission statement is so threatening. Perhaps sharing power with marginalized people is hard. Whatever it is, I hope we can all move on and do the work, our own personal work of overcoming our egos and biases to ensure that every voice in Arlington is valued, encouraged and heard, even when those voices might be hard to hear, even when those voices may not follow our own personal interpretation of civility. We were promised by Ms. Chapter Lane that he would include AFR in the planning of any town-wide events related to anti-racism. We have not been consulted about any of the recent events planned and held by the town to address racism. I can't imagine- Overhouse here at three minutes right now if you can just wrap up. Almost finished. I can't in my heart understand why unless it's a conscious decision. I hope that's not the case, but either way, we were not included in the planning. We're the ones who raised this issue and have worked tirelessly to bring our own systemic racism into the light and with the opposition of most of the town establishment. So we currently can now show a little humility and have the integrity to act without malice and give AFR the respect it has earned. We have not waived it in our- Overhouse, if you can please wrap up. You're about three and a half minutes here. I'm very strict. We will continue our work with or without you and continue to wait patiently for you to include us. Thank you. Thank you. All right, next we have Catherine Connelly. Hello. Hi, Ms. Connelly. Can you hear me? Yeah, can you hear me? Okay. If you can just say your name and address for the record. Sure, it's good evening everybody. I'm Kathy Connelly and I live on Forest Street in Arlington. And tonight I am speaking on the Pedrini case and the restorative justice process used by the town leadership to handle this issue. I've lived in Arlington for 16 years and I really love living here. In my neighborhood, the streets are safe enough that children play outside on a regular basis. They ride their bikes. They have squirt gun bites and they decorate the sidewalks with chalk drawings. Adults tend to their gardens. They run a cycle around the neighborhood or they just enjoy sitting on their porches watching all this activity. I want every human being to have the opportunity to live here and experience this because it seems like a safe, secure and good place to live. That is unless you are a person of color, an immigrant, a protester or an other. How can anyone be safe when our town continues to employ a cop, Lieutenant Pedrini who published racist hate filled writings on a statewide police website directed at the community and the people he serves? Lieutenant Pedrini with his racist beliefs is responsible for protecting and serving our community. He carries a gun. He earns a high salary. And the fact that he was not fired immediately is a stain in the smear on the reputation of our town, its citizens, civil servants, town leadership. Instead, the town leadership used restorative justice process to handle this issue. The risk assessment used to consider and select restorative justice was not transparent to the community. The restorative justice process itself was not transparent. The process was not followed correctly, steps were skipped or fast tracked to benefit Pedrini. And the community was not fully involved except for select individuals. The restorative justice process used to discipline Pedrini is widely viewed among Arlington citizens and residents as a failure and is not representative of our culture or values. When we come together on August 4th, I asked two things. One, that the town leadership does not compound this bad decision by closing this case and labeling it a success. This will set a dangerous precedent that is forever linked to Arlington. And two, I also asked the community members be able to speak directly to Pedrini unfettered by the town select board or the manager. In closing, I asked, how can we be proud of our community and our town when our leadership and the decisions they make enable racism? This is never acceptable, not then and not now. How do we diversify our town and build a more inclusive culture? This is 2020 and there's a huge wave of change coming. What side will you be on? Where is your moral courage and leadership on this issue? Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Conley. Here we have Christopher Loretty. Chris, I think you just have to unmute yourself. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chris Loretty, 56 Adams Street. Can you hear me now? Yes, we can hear you now. I am here to address the June 29 letter from Attorney Robert Inessy, which you included his correspondence received in the agenda for this meeting. I'm disappointed that you chose not to also include my response as I requested. I ask that you do so with your next agenda. I will not spend much time addressing Mr. Inessy's baseless attack against me. I would refer you and anyone listening to the website for Arlington residents for responsible redevelopment, a-r-f-r-r.org. And under meetings, you can watch the June 23 hearing on 339 Massachusetts Avenue. There you will see how far off base Mr. Inessy's comments are about me. And more importantly, you will see how baseless his comments are concerning the chair of the ZBA, Kristen Klein, and you'll see what a fine job Mr. Klein did running the meeting. Mr. Inessy does make a couple of excellent points in his letter, however, one that your board needs to address. First, the select board must improve the administrative process for special permits, both those acted on by the ZBA and the ARB. You can do that by making enforcement of Arlington zoning bylaw a priority. Far too many special permit applications are directed to the ARB and ZBA without adequate prior review. Hearings turn into a game in which attorneys seek to privilege their clients with violations of the zoning bylaw by telling them, by telling the special permit granting authority and may grant relief even when the zoning bylaw does not allow it and a variance is required. This has happened multiple times for mixed use development proposals, including a Teriah Block redevelopment and Hotel Lexington. Second, Mr. Inessy quite properly raises the issue of ex-party communications with members of quasi judicial boards in the course of a public hearing. The select board needs to ensure that all written communications with the boards are promptly posted to a webpage created for each hearing docket so that all interested parties have equal access to them. The select board also needs to put an end to private meetings between one or more ARB members and interested parties during the course of a hearing to buy knowledge that never happened when I served on the ARB and it should not be happening now. It has occurred with the Teriah development which Mr. Inessy represents and I also understand with Hotel Lexington. From Mr. Inessy's letter in my email response as well as public comments, it should be clear to the select board that neither the applicants and their attorneys nor residents are satisfied with the way the special permit processes are working. I suspect the same is true for ARB and ZVA members themselves. I asked the select board to take these issues seriously and work to achieve a prompt and equitable resolution. Thank you. Thank you. All right, next we have Elizabeth Dre and then after that we have Sherry Barron, Ms. Dre. Elizabeth, we have you, you just need to unmute yourself. Hi, thank you. Good evening, good evening. Select board, Elizabeth Dre, Jason Street. I'd like to thank you for your decision tonight about the Black Lives Matter banner and I would ask that Mr. Chapter Lane, when you do get people together and include community stakeholders that you invite Erlington Fights Racism and the Diversity Task Group to also participate in that discussion. But on a different note, I'd like to ask again, I've asked this before, that participants in these meetings be allowed to see each other. During the meetings, as we would normally be able to see each other if we were attending a select board meeting in person. I don't understand why we can't see each other. I don't understand why we can't know who else is on this call and in this virtual meeting with us. I don't know what the legal precedent is if there even is one. I believe there's options that we can see each other and you can keep us muted until it's our turn to talk to prevent disruption. But I really don't understand why we cannot see who else is on this call with us. It just makes no sense to me. And I'll finish by just following up on the email I sent to Chair Mr. Herd about renaming the Citizens Open Forum to Residents Open Forum. Thank you for your time. Thank you and I'll touch on that in new business. All right, and Sherry Barron. Can you hear me? We can hear you now Ms. Barron. Hi everyone, sorry. I had no intention of speaking, otherwise I wouldn't look like Daisy May but I've been in the garden a lot today. Thank you for letting me speak. If you don't mind, just sorry, if you could just take your name and address. Sherry Barron, 10 Raleigh Street, Arlene. Thank you. I'm a member of the Human Rights Commission but I'm speaking for myself this evening. I didn't quite hear the resolution of the banner although I heard that it would stay up until something. I'm very concerned that the banner and the sentiment behind it reaches the audience that it ought to reach. I mean, who is the banner up for? And how do we want people in our town, people of color to feel? And in that question, why aren't we asking them what they want in terms of where the banner should hang? I'd like to see the banner go up Mass Ave and spend time at a variety of different places. I know that there are people, Elizabeth Dre, for example, is suggesting that it stay at the either town hall or the police department to represent the town's commitment to this. But we are not the audience. We're not the people who need to feel safe and secure and feel that our town is behind them and willing to do what it takes to help make this better. I don't know what that is, but how are we involving the real buyers of this? I'm not clear how that's happening and I would like to see that happen. I'd like to, for you people, you folks, to determine who you're, I mean, in advertising, you build your campaign for your audience. Who's your audience here and who and what do we want this banner to say to them? And how do we know that? I don't know that. I'm a white, middle-class, Jewish woman and I haven't felt this. How do we do that? I'd like to see a plan for that kind of a collaboration to come to a decision or come to a plan protocol for how do we do that? How do we make people feel that this banner really represents what they needed to feel? Ready. Thank you, Ms. Barron. All right, so that closes Citizens Open Forum. As always, to residents, any other comments or questions you have, you can forward them to the board via email. That takes us to traffic rules in order. First is item number eight on our agenda, a request from a memorial for Daniel Rossetti, Otto X Cordero, Associate Professor at MIT. And Ms. Chaplin, do we have Mr. Cordero with us? All right. Okay, Mr. Cordero, we have you there and I see that you're now unmuted. So if you could just introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your request. Yes, thank you for the opportunity. My name is Otto Cordero. I live in Medford and I'm a professor at MIT, a member of our department, the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT. Someone who has been with us since 1996. Recently, her son died in tragic circumstances. She lives in Arlington. She has lived in Arlington for many years. Her son was 27 years old when he passed away on June 30. And it is my understanding from talking to Denise, she's the name of our colleague, that there were many moments in the formative years of Daniel that happened in Arlington along the bike path, the boys and girls club, et cetera. And so we thought that a way to bring some solace to the family was to have a small memorial. And I'm not an expert. I don't have experience in this matters, but we were thinking something like a tree, perhaps a bench with a small plaque that says in memory of something of that nature. And of course, the specifics we will need to adjust because I don't know exactly how these things work. And the department at my laboratory, we will be happy to make a contribution if this is pertinent to the town. And that's more or less the case. If you have any questions, I'm here to answer. Thank you. And I'll open it up to the board if they have any questions, comments or motions. Mr. Carl. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. And first, my condolences on this tragic loss. It's a very kind gesture of you to come forward and on behalf of your colleague. So I would like to move that we refer this request to the public memorials committee. That's our usual process. Yeah, and Ms. Mahan. Definitely will. Oh, hotly second that, as well as extend my condolences and I want to thank Mr. Cadero, Otto and the others that worked with this Allington resident. And I know sometimes your work fellow employees become your work family. And I'm very grateful that you're taking the steps to try to find some way to provide some outlet grieving. My only thing, and I'm assuming it's going to be you, Otto, I've, having gone through this, a very tragic death in my family many years ago, I'm always caught aware of the fact that if the family member just doesn't feel she's in the right place to participate, she's certainly welcome that somebody, and I assume it would be you, Otto, be the point person to, you know, and it may be she just, you know, she's not in that point. She wants this. So I just would put that to you. Yeah, yeah, thank you. Yeah, you're right. I agree with everything you said. I've been in contact with her. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Corsi. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to thank Professor Cadero for the letter and my condolences to the Rosetti family and I certainly support the motion. Thank you, Mr. Viggins. Yes, I support the motion too. And every death is important to the people that remain with me, but having had my mom lose her daughter, my sister, yeah, I know how much it really impacts a parent, and so anything that we can do to help with that process. It's great. I don't know what the Memorial Committee will do, but I hope they do something that helps in the process. So thanks for coming to us. Yep, and I just add, you know, my condolences to the family after a tragic loss, but my heartfelt thanks to you and your department for stepping up and having even just the idea to come and do this and then following through with it and seeing this to the end to put something up that memorializes this tragic life loss. So we have a motion by Mr. Carlos, seconded by Ms. Mahan to refer this matter to the Public Memorials Committee, Attorney Heim. Mahan. Yes. Mr. Corsi. Yes. Mr. Davis. Yes. Mr. Curie. Yes. Mr. Hurdle. Yes. Mr. Hernandez. All right, thank you. And thank you, Mr. Cordero. Thank you very much. Item number nine under traffic rules and order, we have a request for a memorial bench for Stan Rezendiz from Kathy and Kathleen Rezendiz. Do we have a member of the Rezendiz family with us? Hi, Mr. Rezendiz. So we have you with us. You just need to unmute your computer. Or is it star nine, Mr. Chair, that are on the phone? It's not a six to unmute yourself. Let me see if I can help her out here. Unmute. I think we've got it now. Thank you. You can hear you now. Thank you so much. This is my mother, Kathy Rezendiz. I'm Kathleen Rezendiz. We have lived in Arlington since my parents bought the house on Dorothy Road. We lived there since 1966, back when the bike path was an operational B&M railroad. And so we are interested also, we have in common with Mr. Cordero and we also want to praise him for stepping up and helping his colleague. It's a very noble thing to do. We are interested in donating the possibility of donating a bench in memory of my father, Stan Rezendiz, who passed away in 2014, just before his 82nd birthday. I'll let my mom speak a bit. I'm a remarks a brief. My husband and I watched the bike path well into our 80s. And many times stopped at the bench at Lake Street. And we often thought how nice it would be to have a bench on the opposite side of Lake Street. And so I would be interested in donating a bench that would be on the even side of Lake Street that would be a twin to the other one. And so far as this native recycled material. Then we did a little bit of homework. We had the privilege of the goodness of Arlington's town leaders that we could find out some information before we joined this meeting. And in particular, we received the public memorial criteria from, and forgive me if I don't pronounce the name right, Mr. Alexander Salepante. And as we read it, we recognize that while my father was a wonderful man and a great father, and he asked military service. He was in the Arlington Men in the early days of that. And he attended with my mom meetings, visualizing the railroad tracks becoming today's bike path. We don't believe he meets the criteria that's specifically listed in this document from 1988 that was just mailed to us in this longstanding document. So we're looking to do this from one family to the people who live and visit Arlington that they would have a nice bench to sit on when they're out walking, especially those people who may have difficulty walking. They have a spot to rest and sit for a couple of minutes before they walk again. And we're inspired particularly by the precedent that exists in Squab Scott over by Hawthorne's, by the sea, by King's Beach on the sidewalk there. There are several benches donated by families in honor of their loved ones. And we're looking to do the same. We would look to you for guidance, regarding what next step we should take. Also, what would be the cost and would the town pay for the installation granted that this proposal would be approved. We would like to donate the bench very much because the bike path was special to myself and my husband over the years. Thank you. They biked well into the 60s too. But also with our, I think I'm ready to close it. We wanna say thank you for the opportunity and the time and the consideration that we could come forward to your board and ask about this. And we are interested in exploring the steps and moving forward with your guidance. All right, thank you. And let me first express my condolences for the loss of your husband and father. And just thank you for your willingness to do this and to help beautify the town honoring your husband and father as well. So for this one, I will turn to Ms. Mahan for any comments, motions. I'd like to make a motion that we also refer this to the Public Memorials Committee. And I believe they're meeting on July 27th. And Mrs. Rosendez and Kathleen, same way you zoomed in or accessed this meeting, you would do that in that case. I do wanna say I met a few times through Kathleen in my days as a page at the Robbins Library, her mom and dad, who were always so respectful, always cared so deeply and still cares deeply about the town of Allenton. We're great husband and wife team, best friends and supporters of each other. So I definitely wanna thank Mrs. Rosendez and Kathleen for coming forth and doing this for your dad, who was a great man and continues to be. Just because he's not here doesn't mean he isn't still great. And we'll certainly work through the Public Memorials Committee. I understand you read the guidelines, I think from 1988, but we always try to, as things come in, find a way to get things done. And perhaps there needs to be some other language added or edited for that. So I certainly stand committed to working with you, Kathleen and Mrs. Rosendez, as well as the Public Memorial Committee. Thank you for doing this. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. And Mr. Diggins? Yes, and now my condolences to, and it doesn't matter the age of the person that has deceased me, they're important to everyone. It's always good to see someone trying to make something positive out of a loss. And like I said, I don't know how things work in the Memorials Committee. You certainly don't want to try to pressure them to do anything, but I do like the idea of a bench. You know, there's someone who walks a lot and walks along the bike path speed and I'm often carrying things. It's nice to have a place to stop sometimes and just rest a little bit. And when I do see these memorials, I see the name. It's, even if you don't know them, you know that someone cared and it had the resources to do something like that. So I hope it works out for you. Thanks. Thank you. And Mr. DeCorsi? Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you, Mrs. Rosendez and then Kathleen for the remembrance of your husband and father and support the motion and sure we'll be able to work with you on this with the Memorials Committee and perhaps through the Department of Public Works as well. I just want to stress, thank you for your attention, but I want to stress to us the importance of it being recycled material. We don't want one of those wire benches. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Kerl? Thank you very much. I've heard all my colleagues supporting this. I don't know if there's a formal second. So there isn't. I'm happy to formally second Ms. Mahan's motion. And thank you. This is just very thoughtful the way that you have approached this and thinking of a place that had so much meaning for you and your husband and father, but also fits with the amenities that we have there and we'll serve others. So I'm happy to refer to the Memorials Committee. I see that you talked to Mr. Amstutz. So I think you're probably aware that we were. You're very helpful. Yeah, I think you're aware that we're about to have some work at that intersection. So I trust that this would fit in with the plans there. So thank you very much. It's a wonderful way to honor your father and husband. Just one last question. I was curious in the course of the work they're going to do, do they have any plans on putting a flowering tree there on that side? Cause there is one on the other side, but there isn't any on the even side. Is it chapterling? Do you know the answer to that? I do know there's a large amount of plan that's planned. I don't recall if there's a flowering tree or not, but I could, I can look into it and I can find a way to contact you, Mr. Zendis. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And again, just thank you for your willingness to step up and not just remember your husband and father, but also to do it in a way that helps the community. So we appreciate that. So I have a motion to refer this to the public memorials committee by Ms. Mahan, seconded by Mr. Carl, attorney Heim. Mr. Chair, may I just offer one quick observation that might be helpful to the rest of the family? I'm so excited to share it in offering condolences and I've got this wonderful board, but I just- I don't know if it's just my speaker, but I'm having trouble hearing you. I just want to echo the board's condolences and the lovely sentiments they expressed. I do want to let you know that there may be an additional layer to this because the MBT, the bike path is licensed to the town from the MBTA. We only want to make sure that anything that we're putting up as a memorial stays for a long time, obviously. So I just want to give you guys the heads up that as this committee is in place, we're going to be able to make sure so I just want to give you guys the heads up that as this goes to the public memorials committee, one thing that we'll just have to try to look at is what the dividing line is between the MBTA bike path and town of Brawlington proper. I'm sure we can work it out, but I just wanted to give you the heads up on that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That Mr. Chairman, I'm sorry, I will. Thank you. Ms. Mahan. Yes. Mr. DeCorsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Cura. Yes. Mr. Hurd. Yes. unanimous vote. And thank you to Mrs. Rosendez and Mrs. Rosendez. Thank you. Thank you. All right. And this brings us to item number 10 under traffic rules and order discussion of potential approval and potential approval Parklets and Allington Heights. We have generate our director of planning, community developments, Allie Conner, our economic development coordinator and Dan Insitz, our senior presentation coordinator with us. We have Allie and Dan. Jenny is doing double B at an ARB meeting and they're still in the middle of a hearing. So I think we're in very capable hands with Allie and Dan and Jenny will join us when she can. Okay. Okay. Allie, do you want to kick this off? Would you like me to share the presentation or would one of you share or? I can share. Okay. Oh, actually Adam, maybe you should. I think I just gave you permission. Oh, okay. There we go. That's great. All right. Thank you all for having me back here again tonight. My name is Allie Carter. I'm the economic development coordinator in the department of planning and community development and bringing some more ideas from the Allington Economic Development Recovery Task Force, again, trying to be responsive to our residents' needs that they expressed in the consumer survey for more outdoor opportunities for conducting commerce and supporting local businesses. So tonight we bring you to Arlington Heights and we're discussing parklets in Arlington Heights, a particular need there. In this instance, parklets would be outdoor seating and dining setups in parking spaces. So why parklets right now? Well, according to our survey, people want as many outdoor options as possible and to shop in places where proper social distancing protocols are in place and maximizing online curbside low contact options as long as we're living with COVID as a threat. So we did a little bit more of a public process this time. We put out a poll. It was open for one week. Pretty short period of time. We presented five parklet options in Arlington Heights. We got 806 responses in a week, which is pretty impressive, or I was impressed, I'll just speak for myself. And so we wanted to create options because those sidewalks in Arlington Heights are so narrow and the business owners were having a hard time just figuring out how to configure these spaces. And so we thought we'd come up with a bunch of concepts for them. So we put the survey out by town channels and with the help of groups like Support Arlington Heights and through our task force members as well. And two came out as the clear favorites. So we're just going to focus on those two as the proposed options for tonight. So these are, this is a temporary seating installation at 1346 through 1360 Mass Ave, essentially from the roasted granola through Galaxy Market and Sichuan dumpling on the south side of Mass Ave. And so it could provide seating for one or two of these businesses. One expressed definite interest in the other two less, but were still supportive, just not for having outdoor seating themselves. And the second one that public seemed to like the most was also on the south side of Mass Ave. And in front of 1306 and 1308 Mass Ave, which is long time been a vacant building, but also extending over to the next building in front of the home taste restaurant. And I actually spoke with them and they're not ready at the moment to have their own licensed outdoor seating, but they still would welcome public seating there to allow people to take their takeout and eat it nearby. So we got some really great comments about this in the survey. People loved that we were bringing this strategy forward, that we need to save the local businesses while protecting our house, do these more, do them fast, lots of excitement. And Arlington Heights has always needed more outdoor eating spaces, which is something we heard when we were making the Arlington Heights Neighborhood Action Plan as well. So for approval, what we're asking for is to prohibit parking on 12 feet of curb length, immediately west. Oh, actually, yeah. I'm going to back up for a second to explain that. For this particular, that should have been the last bullet point, sorry, but for this particular installation, you can see over on the left side of the screen, there's this little piece of curb just on the left side of that crosswalk that's really short, but people still kind of park there illegally all the time. And it's not great for pedestrian safety. And so we thought, while we were asking for this parklet, we would ask for prohibit parking there too. Save us another meeting. Repurpose approximately four parking spaces because the spaces aren't striped in the heights from 1346 to 1360 Mass Ave to convert to a seating area. And repurpose approximately five parking spaces between 1306 and 1312 Mass Ave to convert to a seating area. That's it. Thank you for your questions. Thank you. Good. All right, and I'll move to the board for any questions, comments, or motions. Mr. Ducorsi. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yeah, I'll move approval of the creation of the parklet as contained in the report and the removal of the parking spot. And I want to thank Ms. Carter for the presentation and then Mr. Amstutz as well for his work on it. And when we spoke with Ms. Rae at an earlier meeting about creating more dining options in the center, that's just one of the questions that came up. What can we do in other parts of town? So I'm glad to see that you came back to us on this and fully, this can help the businesses up and. Thank you. And Mr. Diggins. I'm happy to second it and I'd like to express my appreciation to Ms. Carter for sending me that information that I asked for in her previous presentation where she was telling us about the psychology behind the people. Well, the psychology of how they feel about being outdoors or being more active as we deal with the pandemic. I checked it out, the National Main Street Center. These are quite interesting organizations, so I appreciate that. I noticed in the survey that there were some people that didn't want these spaces. Were there any comments from them? I'm kind of curious as to what they have been objecting to. Yes, and thank you for bringing that up. Sometimes I just rush through these things, but you'll see that there were some people, 47 said they do not want anything like this in the Heights. And that is fair. There are lots of folks who don't want any parking to be disrupted at all, ever. But when I think compared to the other responses, the majority of the responses were favorable. And also when you compare to the consumer survey and the response we got from that, that people prefer these options, I think it made us feel comfortable bringing this proposal forward. Yeah, and I'm comfortable too, me. I'm just always interested in the other point of view, and the arguments that they're making, and then the rebuttal to it. So thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Mahan. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I just would say the fourth part of the motion that Mr. DeCorsi spoke about, I know exactly where that area is right by the crosswalk. It barely can fit a compact car or a car that just is a two-seater, but I have been up there for the past years and I've had a lot of business owners concerned about citizens crossing in that crosswalk, because sometimes you'll even see a commercial truck or something. And I've spoken to people when I've stood there, when they come back and I've said, this is not safe, it's not a crosswalk. And they say, well, it doesn't say it's not a parking space and it looks like one, even though they're walking the driveway usually, with at least a third of their vehicle, of the cleaners that's right near Seshwanam. I'm blanking on it. So I guess I would ask, suggest, through the chair, to Ms. Crowder and Mr. Amstutz, if there's any way everything we can do there, if we could put, I don't know what your plan's are to put a no parking sign, can you also paint the curb red? I don't think you can do something that someone parks there and a lawn goes off, but a lot of the people that I did talk to said, oh, I know it probably isn't a parking space, but I'm just going in real quick. So I really, if it's appropriate, there may be some rule to say, if you do a sign, you can't do a red curb or vice versa. But whatever you can do so that it will minimize the amount of people, you'll probably still have a few that do it because they've been doing it for so long and I have it. But for the rest of the people, the people rightly or maybe not feigned that, oh, I thought it was a spot. It's something you can clearly say, no, we got you every way, it's not a spot. And it is dangerous to people crossing, it really is. Especially when they're coming in from Lexington going towards Arlington. And a lot of times, they'll be looking at the light ahead and the pedestrian basically has to stick their head out to see if a car is coming and the person traveling on Mass Ave, there's no way they can see that. But thank you very much for all your work on that and I'll leave that to the Planning Department, Ms. Cotter and Mr. Amstutz for what we are allowed to do and what you think we should do. All right, Mr. Carl. Thank you very much and thank you for this work. I'm very happy to see the pace of innovation coming through as we enter later reopening phases. I just wanted one bit of clarification. Now this is different from the outdoor seating that we, outdoor licensed seating that we talked about in the center, right? So the parklets, are we anticipating that the town is going to provide some of the furnishings for these? Not necessarily, no. So similar to, in the center, we had a pretty clear sense of who would want to apply for what when we came to you that evening. So it seems like the restaurants would pass for permission and furnish their own spaces. In this situation, it actually is a little different. So we know that the 1346 to 1360 space, there's at least one restaurant who would definitely make use of that space. And the other could potentially be more of a public space. And so we do, we're investigating sources of funding and support to get that seating, but not necessarily that the town would provide it. Okay, yeah, that's exactly what I was getting. Getting it, because you had mentioned that the restaurant there said that they're not really interested in doing outdoor dining, but they'd be fine if there was a place for people to take their takeouts. So furnishing it is going to be important for this to be operable. But thank you for the work. Sure, thank you. Thank you. And I also will support this. We've all seen the data from the polls regarding people's coverage outside versus inside. So we need to do what we can to help all of our businesses, particularly our restaurants that need places for people to consume their food. And the one good thing about the heights is up and down Park Ave. We have plenty of additional parking that people can utilize to access the businesses there. So I'm happy to support this. All right, so I have a motion by Mr. D'Corsi. And seconded by Mr. Diggins. Attorney Hyde. Ms. Mohan. Yes. Mr. D'Corsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Sure. Yes. Mr. Hurd. Yes. Turn it down, Ms. Wood. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you, Ms. Carter. I think you are done. And moving on to item number 11 on our agenda under traffic rules and order discussion of potential and potential approval shared streets. So we have Mr. Amstus, our senior transportation planner. Yes, thank you. And I will share my screen with a brief presentation that I have. Thank you. All right. And everyone can see that. Okay. So I'm here to mostly provide an update on how things have been going with the shared streets after the pilot that we had on Brooks Avenue was done in late May. So I'll go through a few slides about kind of where the program could go next. And I, yes, where the program will go next and we'll talk a little bit about some different things that we can do with this program going forward. So where we are now. So again, with the pilot that we had on Brooks Avenue was very successful. I would say we got quite a lot of support for that. I think about three quarters of people were very happy with it and did want it to come back. This board approved a framework for the next steps at the June 1st meeting. And some of the lessons that we learned from the demonstration that we did on Brooks Ave is that some of the signage needs to be clear. As you can see from the picture on the right, there was some confusion about what local access means. Definitely some, what we learned was to have public engagement with the wider neighborhood not strictly with the residents or property owners that are on the streets where we would do this. More types of traffic calming, even though the speed limit is 25 that still can feel quite fast for people that are trying to actually mix in on the street for traffic that's coming through, trying to get it somewhere down to more like 15 or 20 miles an hour is really more of the ideal situation. Again, more messaging and interventions that might include come with some of this traffic calming to say this is a shared street and make it a little bit more consistent. Leveraging volunteers, I think will be important as we move forward and perhaps not have as much, we had support from the Lawrence and Lillian Solomon Foundation. So not having that people that are living in the neighborhood that feel very strongly about this can we could leverage them as volunteers to help with letting people know about it and sort of helping us look at this program more. And then there was lots of community interest more than 120 shared streets nominations and I'll talk about that a little bit more further. And this is more about the neighborhood level with what Allie Carter was talking about and with the work that we've done in the center is a bit more focused on commercial areas. This is more focused on the neighborhood areas providing that additional street space for people to social distance and travel and recreate actively as part of the COVID-19 response of the town. They need to get outside and be active and stay healthy, but also we need to try they need social distance from one another. So as we talked about in June 1st these ideas of localized interventions and sort of connected street networks that sort of more narrow versus more widespread and I'll talk a little bit more of that later. One of the first things I started looking at was the design guidelines of how we would do this. We had a sort of standard design when we did the demonstration and so I've advanced that a little bit more so that we can have something that's consistent and incorporates more elements of traffic coming and then again trying to use the materials that we already have, but there is a grant program out there that we can look to try to get materials that we don't have on hand and that we'll need to be out there for longer than sort of we can spare them. So there's this idea of gateway treatments where when you're actually entering a street that you have a sign or information telling you that you're entering a shared street or a different space than what you might be used to and the sort of hard and soft ideas more about with the Brooks Avenue Pile we kind of try to direct traffic away from this entire zone and so divert traffic all the way around and to change that a little bit so that it's not quite so hard and fast where there's certain areas where you want to try to divert traffic in the larger intersections and not push it so hard on the smaller intersections and then with the in-road traffic calming these are different kinds of things that I'll talk about on the next slide that we can do with short-term materials that can put on under the street these are more of what I would call horizontal traffic calming we're not talking about putting in speed humps or things although there are temporary things that you can do for that. So this is sort of the gateway idea very similar to what you saw in the demonstration there'd be a larger presence of two signs and so a horse rode close to through traffic at some of the major intersections so like something coming off of Mass Ave for example whereas the smaller one would be just over a side street that would be part of the internal street network and then this again, these are the common traffic calming measures that you can do with short-term cones and signs and rubber curbs and different kinds of things or these flex posts that you see on the second set of pictures right there for the curb extensions that can be installed and can sit out there for a little while but they're not necessarily meant to be a long-term permanent solution and so they can be removed if something isn't going right with them or if say winter is coming and we need to take them out. So like the mini traffic circles something that we've I think the public works has looked into before that we more of like replacing a four-way stop or at a four-way intersection to try to slow traffic down. The curb extensions are something that we're familiar with in terms of the very hardscape that you get through say the massive redesign for example and the curb extensions through there but this would be more of a temporary measure to try to narrow the street so that it is not as wide as it appears because the wider the street is and the more pavement space you have the faster people are going to travel and then chicane's to sort of make a car sort of slalom back and forth again to slow them down so they don't have kind of a visual viewpoint at the end of the street that's a straight on which can easily lead somebody to just go faster. Some potential projects that I started looking at are based a lot of these are based off of the shared street nominations and also looking at so partly looking at places where people want them we don't want us to necessarily try to impose a lot of this in certain areas but also connective networks that would require a bit more work but we could start with some of these the neighborhood-based areas and work off from there. Mary Street was mentioned quite a number of times Waldo Street and Ameson Road these are all in East Arlington we didn't get as much from Arlington Heights but I'll talk about that more and then an idea for the actually connected network is something from the Van Bijkway to the Mystic River to be a sort of alternative try to take some pressure off the bikeway this is what Brooks Avenue couldn't really do because it was too small and located very discreetly and the Robbins Farm Park area is one idea I have that's later on and then Ronald Road has actually come up there are a number of residents that wrote to the town manager concerned about traffic speed and that's another possibility I had a conversation with them last week Mary Street again this could be more of similar to Brooks Road it's a longer segment but you can see some of the comments that we received we know that we put up a lot of these or no right turn signs or no left turn signs off of Lake Street during the rush hour periods but still there's certainly a lot of concern about cars going through there to try to get around traffic at Lake Street and at the very least if they're going through there that they could be going slower than they are and so there's a lot of neighborhood community there that I think could be worked from to help gain support for this kind of project and then it's kind of a bigger picture if you see Mary Street on the right hand side again this is just a concept and you could have a type of connected street worker that actually leads over to Mononomy Rocks Park utilizing the, there's a little path that goes between Route 2 and Spy Pond it's fairly narrow but it's a very interesting little spot that you can actually get from this side of Spy Pond to the other side without having to go all the way around on the north side of the pond on the bikeway and so this is again an idea sort of formulating how you could work off Mary Street to get to something a little bit larger and more connective. Walderon and Amson Street again something that a number of people mentioned that had lived on those streets, lots of kids people always certainly concerned about kids and road traffic and so on people being excited about the project that's kind of what we're looking for so that people again that there is support there already that can be worked off of we don't want to again try to put this on people on a residential neighborhood that doesn't necessarily want to try it and then again part of if you see Waldo and Amson Street right here on the sort of lower part of the map this could be a way to connect over to Gardner Street Gardner Street was another one next to Monotomy Manor and so on that came up a few times in the nominations. The reason why this kind of ends at the very top of the map here is that that is at that point that Gardner becomes a private way and so that again we would still be able to get people to come through there but that's sort of as far as we can go we didn't want to get into issues of our private ways through this type of program. When it comes to again another idea to the Bistick River the bike way to the Bistick River this goes uses Orvis Road and Grafton Street and kind of works its way down to either Everett Street or North Union Street over to the Mystic Valley Parkway where you have the Mystic River path you can get over to Medford as well and so this could be another direction to go but I know that this would take a little bit more work. For Arlington Heights for the nominations we did not get quite as much activity or interest from that side of the town for whatever reason there was I think some interest with Glenburn Road on the lower left hand side and then again with there are a number of private ways especially in the Heights and on the sort of North West side of Robbins Farm Park that make it extremely difficult to try to stitch something together without getting into what this means for private ways which I can't really answer that but this would be a way to get to help people get more safely or more comfortably from the park down to the Whole Foods or down to the Stop and Shop and to other areas as part of town. There's sort of different ways of looking at this so you could be accessed better more to essential services that are right down there on Mass Ave. And so basically the next steps is that I'm planning to reach out to the residents who nominated Mary Street, Wald Road and Amson Street. As I mentioned very briefly I talked to residents of Ronald Road last Friday about their concerns about how we could potentially use this program to try out some things. We've heard about Ronald Road and Washington Street, they talked about that intersection as being challenging and just speed on Washington Street was a concern and this provides a sort of challenge because it's a narrow street, it's a steep road and sort of figuring out how to address traffic speed issues on those kinds of situations would be useful to understand how that we can do that better. Trying to returning the street, the shared street to Brooks Avenue I think is important. It was very successful and we left it hanging a little bit but having that back on Brooks Avenue and with this different approach to it with the different design and signage I think would be very good to continue with that. Again, gathering support from the local residents on the street and the wider neighborhood is important part of this. And then MassDOT has a shared streets and spaces grant for materials and implementation that is currently going right now. Applications are being accepted on a rolling basis. It takes them about two weeks to review and potentially approve and then we would need to actually implement it within 15 to 30 days. And so things like not just the shared streets but also the outdoor dining and materials for doing parklets and bus lanes are actually all part of this. So there's a lot of different projects that are eligible for that funding source. So that would be the idea in talking with Public Works we would need to order some more materials, get some funding to order some more materials so that they can be used for these applications because they have things that they use on a weekly basis that they can't sort of have tied up for weeks or months on end. And so that's the end I think I would, so I would start having these conversations and then actually come back to the board at a later time to get approval for moving forward with these concepts before actually putting things down on the ground would be the idea. So thank you very much. Sorry about that. I'm gonna unmute myself. I'll turn to Mr. Carl for any comments, questions or motions. Thank you very much. I appreciate all of the work here. I assume that you're looking for, at a bare minimum, you're looking for approval to reopen the Brooks Ave shared space. Would that be correct? Through you, Mr. Chair. Yeah. Mr. Hanses. Yes, I think so. I think that would be, like I said, it was very successful and I think we would like to bring it back to show sort of continuing momentum with this. And then start to see how we can connect it to other projects as well, other areas. Okay, so for the only thing you need really though as a motion right now is to reopen Brooks. Right, the other areas are conceptual and we haven't done any outreach to the residents right now. So that's what would be the next step for those areas. Okay, so I'll make that motion to reopen the Brooks shared streets area, I guess until the board comes back to the board for a change or are you looking for a particular season? I mean, I assume you're not wanting this open during winter or am I wrong? That would be correct. I think that certainly with snow and ice and snow removal and so on, we would need to remove these from the streets. So I think the idea is that they would live on for a few months and we can do a reevaluation at that time. So probably through October and to early November. Mr. Verde, can I jump in quickly? Yes. I think I would suggest if you're willing, Mr. Carrow, that we have a check-in point at the start of school. So have a check-in point earlier than the onset of winter that we can make. I don't know what school will look like this fall. I know it's still an acting discussion, but I think having like a built an opportunity to make sure that we're accounting and planning for school traffic impacts with the Brooks pilot or the Brooks closure in particular would be key. Okay. So I'll make my motion in that form that we prove the green statement of the Brooks Ave shared street project and to be discussed again after the commencement of school. So I just had a couple of comments and questions. So in the Brooks Ave follow up through you, Mr. Chair, Mr. Anstance, did you get a sense of the ways that this was being used or who was using this? And I have a reason for that question. I mean, were you getting a sense that it was mostly folks who were trying to get their kids out in the street in a safe manner or were just looking kind of for a neighborhood hangout area so to speak where they could socially distance but still see their neighbors or were you getting a sense that people were actually using it as a connecting route for walking or biking? So off the top of my head, I definitely heard from several people that they felt more comfortable with having, with biking in the street with their children. Imagine some children that are old enough to bike on their own but obviously still need their parents' guidance. And I think we didn't see much or it was not obvious that there were people that were actually sort of using it from the bikeway, for example, we didn't sign it to say, you know, come to Brooks Avenue instead of using the bikeway. It's a pretty small section or a pretty small area that you wouldn't really get much benefit out of making a diversion and then going back onto the bikeway since it's only about a little over a quarter of a mile. But I definitely heard and from the observations that we did and that Neighborways did was that it was people who were just, who were walking with their children in strollers, families on bikes or just sort of traveling or walking for exercise. So we didn't get the sense that there was any sort of congregation happening with it. Okay. I mean, I was just curious because I noticed that you said Mary Street and Amazon Waldo. I mean, it seems to be similar, of a similar character to Brooks where I could imagine that those are places where people are looking to get their kids out. And they seem very different from some of the other concepts that you showed us which are really much more intentionally focused on building out an alternate pedestrian route and crossing major roads as well, which is a little bit different I think from these three from Brooks and Mary Waldo and Hamston. Yes. The idea is that you could build off of these into some larger network as the connected networks framework that I discussed at the beginning. And it's so people can use them to get somewhere as opposed to just sort of walk around in their own neighborhood or bike around in their own neighborhood. So that would be the idea and having people be able to do that again in a socially distant way. And at the same time, trying to address some of the longstanding concerns about traffic speed, which I think in a previous presentation talked about the issue of less, although we are seeing an uptick of volume, of course, but having less cars or having less vehicles leading to higher speeds because of less congestion and seeing that sort of vanishing point where you can just continue going straight on. So there's sort of a dual nature to this. Yeah. I mean, I think that point's well taken about speed. I think as you look at some of those scenarios with the larger networks, I would just be interested in what kind of demand there is there for a larger network like that. And a lot of those routes look, at first blush, I think a lot of those routes have pretty good sidewalk infrastructure, but I'm not 100% sure. So just something to think about as you do your outreach, what kind of demand there would be for those larger networks. Okay, thank you. Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Mr. Diggins. I will second Mr. Kuro's motion and a couple of questions through you, Mr. Chair. So it was interesting that you were planning on taking this through the winter, or at least stopping before the winter, because even before COVID, I found walking along sidewalks, especially once there's no little challenging for two reasons. The pathways are usually smaller. And secondly, even when people do diligently shovel their sidewalks in the daytime, it will warm up, melt, and then around the dark dusk, maybe when you're heading back home, it glazes over. So I find myself trying to walk into the streets more just because it's safer. So I understand that you're not planning on doing this through the winter, but it's just one thing to think about in case you do consider going beyond the fall. And as with Allie, I'm interested in any negative feedback that you had about this, and maybe your responses to it, because I know that we're gonna get some. Thank you. Sure. To the first point, I think that's certainly well taken about when the winter comes and there's lots of snow and everything it's harder to travel in all kinds of ways. I think the trouble is, is that using things like saw horses or sandwich boards or things that are very movable, means that they're also very easy to get knocked around during the winter by snow plows and so on. So I don't think we've quite crossed that bridge. I'm not sure. I know some of the other cities, Summerville, Cambridge, they use things like flex posts that tend to, I don't know how well they survive the winter, but those are a little bit more semi-permanent I suppose, because they can be bolted into the ground and sort of knocked over and then come back again. So it kind of depends on the materials that you use, but I think for this, I think we're not currently looking at something that permanent, but for the second point about the feedback, so again, I'm thinking back to when it came to the shared streets, the pilot that would put it to our demonstration that we did on Brooks Avenue. I think some of it that I recall was concerns about, I guess, how shall I put this? I guess removing the priority of people to be able to drive easily through these areas, that was some of it, some of it I would call sort of ideological that we just simply shouldn't be doing this. There was concern about what I mentioned that sort of mixing people walking with vehicles and the speeds being too great and the additional traffic calming is something that we can look at to try to deal with that particular concern. There was concerns about congregating initially, but we simply didn't see that on Brooks Avenue. Again, we thought about having people, dragging people from the bikeway onto Brooks, but we were concerned that that would lead to a crowding issue and we wouldn't, didn't want that. So those are the types of concerns that come to mind. Great, thank you very much. All right, Mr. Ducasi. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a question that based on Mr. Kerr's motion and Mr. Chapterlain had said on Brooks, are you looking to open up that shared street now and then revisit it in September or is it, are we gonna look at it in September based on what happens with school? I guess the way that I heard that is that we would see if it has an impact, a significant impact on school traffic. I'm, unfortunately, I'm not quite certain what's going to happen with the, or what's expected to happen with the elementary schools with the coming fall, since that number of places is up in the air. But I think one of the things that we would change would be probably putting less emphasis on trying to divert traffic away from this area to try to deal with some of the potential school traffic concerns. One other thing that did come up was changing the sort of scope of the area so that it wouldn't, it wouldn't be a closure stricter diversion away from the intersection at Lake and Brooks, but would be pushed back to Chandler Street. And that's an alternative that we could look at to allow for that school traffic circulation to continue around Chandler Street and not sort of try to hard stop right at Lake Street. And I'm glad you said that because I would encourage you to do that. What I was gonna raise based on my question is there's work being done currently at that intersection related to the bike path crossing and the new signalization that's going on there. So there's a lot going on at that intersection right now and probably will continue for a while. So to the extent that we're allowing that approval, I did encourage you to start at Chandler Street. That's a very good point. And I agree with that, actually. So I would, yes, for this, I think we would make that change to the scope of the area. Thank you, Chair. I'm happy to adjust my motion accordingly. Thank you. Yeah, I'll second that. I'll second the adjustment. And then Ms. Mohan. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thanks for all the work on this. I know we're sort of because of COVID-19 trying to do as much as we can and expedite the process. And this is another form of that. And I know you'll be coming back with what the actual application will be for the state grant shed street use program. And my only point, I agree with what my colleagues have said and amended. I know sometimes some people think it's futile, but if as we go through these shared streets and make even temporary traffic changes to it, to me, the worst violator is Waze. If we could just keep notifying them that there is limited local access, et cetera. Because I kind of feel like if we keep doing it, I know there's a process and some people say to me, well, yeah, but they really don't pay attention to it. It's kind of like you keep doing it each and every time squeaky rail, maybe they might actually incorporate that because I did speak to some neighbors down afterwards about the experiment. And it was just their anecdotal history and sort of them surmising that the people who were wanted the wider street to be able to travel by and large, they weren't people who not only didn't live in the neighborhood, but didn't live in Arlington. And that was the identified shortcut to get through. So I know it may be some say, you always don't really listen, but if we could just throw in that into the process. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you and thank you, Mr. Amses, for the presentation. I'm excited about this project, as I mentioned before, as a father of two young kids that ride their bikes in the street, I think this is a great way for kids to get out there safely and families to social distance out on the streets. My only disappointment is that they didn't have anything up in my area of the Heights, but hopefully I can get some neighbors together to make a recommendation. So just for clarity of the minutes, I just want to confirm that we have motion by Mr. Karo as revised. And then we have an original second by Mr. Diggins. And Mr. Diggins, I'm just going to turn to you just to make sure that you second Mr. Karo's revised motion. Actually, Mr. DeCorsi did. I'll be happy to do it if that, you know, Mr. DeCorsi did, he's seconded it to revise Mr. Karo. I thought you were the original second on it. Okay. I was, but then Mr. Corsi did, but if you want me to, I'll be happy to. So I'll tell you what, why don't I just second it? Okay. Okay, there we go. All right. So we have a motion by Mr. Karo, seconded by Mr. Diggins. I'll turn you behind. Ms. Mohan. Yes. Mr. DeCorsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Karo. Yes. Mr. Hurd. Yes. Ms. Boeb. Thank you. All right. So that takes us to item number 12 on our discussion on the traffic rules and order, one which I'm very excited about. Endorsement and approval, Blue Bike Share Agreement and Blue Bike and Bike Share License, Attorney Hyme. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Before the board tonight is a request for two things. First is to endorse a bike share agreement with Blue Bikes, otherwise known as Motivate, Massachusetts, which is a subsidiary of Lyft, to enter essentially a contract for Motivate, Lyft, to service Blue Bikes expanding to Arlington. I'm gonna expand on that in a second. And the second piece is asking the board for a license to run a bike share program on Arlington's public and private ways. If I could take a step back for a second. Folks will obviously remember a previous pilot program that we engaged in for a dockless bike share. The business model there, as well as the sort of vector to how we got a bike share of the dockless variety in Arlington was a little bit different. In this particular case, in part through a grant from MassDot and in part through a donation from Metro Future, a nonprofit, and as well as a $20,000 appropriation from town meeting, we are gonna own the components of the system. We will own the docks, we will own the bikes, we will essentially be contracting the Blue Bikes to run this system for a period of roughly two years while this license is at work. I wanna focus, I wanna take a moment to notice that the work was primarily done by Dan Amstutz, who's still with us, who worked really tirelessly with a number of current non-member communities, planners, council, and the MAPC to try to have this option be available in Arlington. As my memo outlines, we're just again sort of endorsing this contract which has to be executed by the town manager tonight if the board so chooses and grant this license if the board so chooses. There's still a little bit of work to be done in terms of establishing where exactly the Blue Bikes stations would go. I think Dan could speak to that. If you have questions about that, but he'd be looking to come back to you, I believe, at your August meeting with some suggestions as to where we would place those. And I think the goal is for the system to launch sometime around Labor Day. A few other observations. Whereas most of the sort of regulatory aspects of the previous Dockless Bikes system were in these sort of pilot regulations that were promulgated by the board, here most of the regulation of the Blue Bikes system is through the contract. And it's a little bit complicated because the contract is part of a wider system that needs to have interoperability. And some of the rights, as I put in my memo of folks who first built out the system are different than newer community members. There's sort of three main groups. They're sort of Boston who launched Hubway, which became Blue Bikes, and they have some sponsorship and sort of legacy rights, if you will, with respect to the system, because they invested a tremendous amount of money in building the system. Then there's communities that joined a little later. I believe every, for example, was one of the more recent folks to join. And now there's a group of more suburban communities, more metro area communities, like Arlington, who is being offered an opportunity to join at what's a pretty good financial deal. But that does mean that there was also less leverage and sort of purchase relative to negotiation of some of these terms. There are a few things that are a little bit, I'm sorry, I couldn't provide a little bit more information on, including the sort of Blue Bikes governance council. But for the most part, again, the sort of agreement itself, the town manager would execute, contains most of the provisions about how Blue Bikes work in Arlington. You'll notice that there's a reference to Boston's contract. And the reason there's a reference to Boston's contract is in an effort to sort of simplify the contracts for new members and streamline them so that they essentially are compatible. Some of the specific things that the board's been concerned about in other communities and that's under such as data. Those things were essentially controlled by a reference to the Boston agreement which says we have the same rights with respect to data privacy and access to data as Boston, one of the founding members. I know that's a lot of information, but I just wanted to put that out there, not only for the board, but for the public. And I know that Dan is with us who can provide even more detail on both what still needs to be done and certain aspects of the agreement. Thank you. Mr. Hurd, I think you're still muted. I gotta stop muting myself. Dan, was there anything that you wanted to add to Attorney Hyam's presentation before I turn to the board? Sure, I can just add, thank you, Mr. Chair. The intention with regards to the station sighting, so we would receive or we would begin with six stations and in terms of sighting those, I've worked with a few members from ABAC and from EELS to look at some of those locations and also in talking with blue bikes. So we've created sort of three different possible sort of slates of station locations to because the nearest stations to us are in Cambridge and Somerville. It logically progresses that we have to start in the East Arlington area. And so the stations themselves have to be no more than a third of a mile apart. So it sort of leads to sighting the stations we can get as far as Arlington center, but it's progressively difficult to try to get further than that. So the idea is that if the board endorses this and we move forward with the contract with blue bikes that we would begin public engagement on those station sightings in the next few days and have that try to complete that within the next couple of weeks so that we can be very specific, understand what the public thinks is very important in terms of which locations, for example, Capital Square is one that keeps coming up and it's in a very good sort of geographical location for this. And so to see after we look at that, where would those stations go very specifically and detailed and understanding, making sure we don't have utility conflicts or public works has work that they need to do in the near future and so on. And so communicating with public works in the police department on those specific, very specific locations. And that's what we would come back to you at the August meeting was to actually have those specific locations so that we can move forward with installing them in the next weeks following that. I do want to add also that Dominic Trebone is in the attendance here as a participant. He is, I believe the general manager of the, there he is, he's in the general, excuse me, general manager of the blue bike system. And so if you have any blue bike specific questions you could also go ask him. Thank you. And I will turn to Ms. Mohan for any questions, comments or motions? Thank you, Mr. Chair. First, I'd like to make a motion that we approve and endorse the blue bike share agreement and it's affiliated bike share license. And I understand that this will be coming back to us again in August, but if I could through you, Mr. Chair, ask if Mr. Trebone or Dominic could understanding the finalized license and agreement will come back in August. But if there's anything he feels comfortable adding to the discussion right now. Sure. Mr. Chappell, can you promote Mr. Trebone? He's here, yep. I'll thank you for having me. I have nothing particular to add, I think Dan summarized it well, but I'm just, you know, we're here to kind of work with you at two site stations and we're excited at the prospect of Arlington and several other communities joining Blue X Network and expanding it this summer. All right, thank you. And we'll keep you as a panelist in case we have any more questions from the board members. All right, I'll turn to Mr. DeCorsi. Thank you, Mr. Chair, I'll second Mrs. Mahan's motion. Couple of questions on the agreement and one of the things that is mentioned is moving equipment in the event of a winter storm. And I know in Boston, the docks come down, I don't know if it's December or late November, but what's the intention over the winter with the operation of the system? I can answer that. Since 2017, actually all stations that are on the sidewalk, basically not in the streets, stay up over winter. And that is what we would intend to do with Arlington and the new community is that street stations on the street generally are removed for winter, so that you all can plow, but stations that are on sidewalks or plazas stay down so that we have a bike share system in the winter. I'll note that as we've been having increasingly warmer winters, our ridership has gone up each winter to the point where we were seeing several thousand trips a day even in February this year before the entire pandemic happened. Okay, thank you, and one other question just on the Boston agreement. I know right now their agreement runs through April, 2022. Have they already extended their term or is that an event that happens later because our period is tied into the termination of the Boston agreement? They have not. There is a specific timeline in that contract when they begin that discussion, but it's in 2021. Okay, all right, thank you. And one question from Mr. Heim, if I could Mr. Chair, just having to do with advertising and I understand that the Blue Bikes has a right to advertise on the stations and the sponsorships are on the bikes, but is there any issues, I guess it would depend where the station goes, whether there could be any conflicts with our sign by law? Sure, so my perspective on this is to be safe. We should make sure that there's an application under the sign by law of the zoning by law. Whether or not each one of these things would count as something covered by a sign by law, I have to take a little bit of closer look at the stations themselves and what the advertisements and promotions look like. There's sort of two pieces to it, as far as I understand it, Mr. Chabon may correct me, but there's the sort of overall sponsorship that makes HUB-Way bikes, I shouldn't call them, that makes the bikes Blue Bikes, the Blue Cross Shield, and then there's the sort of secondary piece of it which is the docking stations themselves occasionally have, I've seen some sort of advertising signage or promotional signage, but I think that that type of thing could probably be handled before the zoning authority for the museum. Okay, and just one comment, Mr. Chair. I think it's great to be joining this system because it's in Cambridge, it's in Stonewall, and it's in Boston, and it's just a nice extension. That was one of the, you call it a deficiency of the last system we had just because the network wasn't as expensive as Blue Bikes. I think it's a real exciting opportunity for bikers and I know that there's a low-income pricing model that Blue Bikes has as well, and I imagine that will apply to users in town. I think that's great as well. Yep. All right, Mr. Diggins. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and through you to Mr. Chabon. Good to see you, Dom, so wow, I know Dom from his days at the MBTA, so he's just a small world. Anyways, what happens after two years? So I just, the group goes for two years, then what happens after that in terms of the cost of the town? Mr. Chair, do you want me to answer that or do you want Mr. Chabon to answer that? Whomever. Any time, you can take a crack at it if you can. So as Mr. DeCorsi sort of alluded to earlier, our contract is sort of overall tied to the other Blue Bikes units. There's a provision in the agreement that allows Blue Bikes sort of right of first refusal to buy back the system if essentially there's not an extension of the license by Arlington or there's not an extension of the program by Blue Bikes. Is that a fair summary from your perspective, Dominic? Yeah, and I think the terms of the two years are partly, if I remember partly tied to the MASDOT grant, there isn't, nothing totally defined happens at the end of two years. We intentionally left that open to negotiation with the understanding that the town may like this and the town may not like this and you all have the flexibility to make another decision in two years, assuming the Boston contract is extended. That is the one criterion that has to be met. It doesn't exactly make sense to operate a dock bike shore system in Arlington if there isn't one in Cambridge and Boston. And there is a threshold on the contract above which we are very willing to continue operating the system. The number escapes you at the moment but we figured out what we think ridership revenue will exceed the cost of operating the system and we think at that point, we should just continue operating the system and assuming the town has sense to that. Gotcha, okay, and so you're branching out. I mean, do we have a sense of how many people, how much do systems use in comparable towns to Arlington? You know, I would say that Arlington has no peers. Well, actually, this is our first experiment sort of into a town like Arlington. The Everett is a different model. Everett's a very different place. It was driven by the casino going in and that's the money that was used to pay for it. So, you know, there isn't really an analogous town in the Boston area that I can think of. Yeah, working model. My guess is Arlington will perform, if I had to guess, Arlington will perform somewhat like parts of Brooklyn as an area that's close to other dense portions of the metro area but slightly more residential, still with a nice commercial strip or two and sort of a very good bicycle network. Well, it'd be interesting to see how you make that up. That third mile jump me from the nearest location that I can think of which is at the bike path is in Cambridge, aid to Arlington or from a ill wife to Arlington but we'll leave that for the next meeting and the placement of the racks. So, this is maybe a little a feel to me but I suspect that exclusivity is just kind of general. But, it's just there but I'm just trying to understand why it's there and so, I'll get at something a little bit after you answer the question as best you can. Yeah, I mean, exclusivity is because this is a system where we are paying all of the operating costs and we are keeping the revenue and so, that is the balance. You all own the equipment but you're not paying for any operations except for like, there's some very specific circumstances where you will ask us to move a station or something like that. But otherwise, to keep the lights on, effectively, we've got to make revenues cover costs and having exclusivity makes it much more likely that we do that. That is how the blue bike system works. That's why Lyme wasn't in Boston because the system in the Boston area owned by the towns as a public or the cities in that case, as a public transportation system needs the exclusivity in order to effectively cover costs with the revenues that are coming in. So, splitting that among multiple operators makes it just less likely that you're going to have a sustainable system that will stay around. I understand that and so, I'm curious so what are people competing? I mean, first off, are there competitors and then what are they competing on? Sorry, I could go on if you cut offer. Sure, so who are the competitors and what are they competing on? Meaning is it that they offer a cheaper ride or they offer the lower installation cost? Yeah, well, and pricing is publicly controlled. So, pricing is controlled by the governance council. So, that is contractual. So, we don't have unilateral authority over pricing. That is part of the public nature of the system. So, the governance council has set the price at $250 for a single ride, $99 for a regular annual pass, $50 for an incompatible pass and all of these can only be changed either with approval of the council or I think we're allowed to go up by inflation although we haven't actually done that. It gets you to weird numbers. The internet. So, that's part of the public nature is in exchange for exclusivity. We have given up some control in pricing. We've given you all a lot of control in some way or another over station siting, et cetera. And we have many contractual obligations in order to keep people's data safe, et cetera. So, that's one of the things like in terms of who are the competitors, think of this in two ways. If you think of it, this is competition for the market in a way that say the MBTA competes the commuter rail contract every couple of years or 10 years, you have other operators who will also operate docked bike share systems. You will have other operators who will provide equipment for bike share systems. And then you have other micro mobility companies that operate as LIME and OVOE and several others do. But they don't operate under contracts, the governments usually they operate under permits or other agreements that allow them to just operate a private business. And that is not currently the model that blue exists under a model where it is a public service provided under public contract with pretty substantial amounts of public control. All right. Thank you. So that's it for me. Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's good to see you too, Len. Thanks. All right, Mr. Carroll. Thank you very much. I'm very excited about this. I know when we had looked at as a board and I think some of our members weren't on yet, we had looked at a number of different options and we were very, very interested in, I think it was still Humbway at that time. predecessor to blue bikes. I loved the dockless, but it did have its issues. So I'm so enthusiastic that we have this option available to us. And for those residents who are listening, you should recognize that part of what we're getting ready to endorse is an agreement which comes along with the package of grants as well, which once it's fully executed will have the town actually outlaying $20,000, but we will receive a benefit of $254,000 in infrastructure for this. And that's a pretty good deal. I think that this is gonna be very important, especially as we're emerging from the pandemic. And some people are still afraid to get into buses but they'll be happy to take a shared bike down to Alewife. We see them on the trail now, even though we're not part of the system. I just had a couple of questions. One of them has to do with the third of a mile spacing. Is that a third of a mile as the crow flies or is that a third of a mile travel distance? How is that requirement interpreted? It's just as the crow flies. A third of a mile as the crow flies, okay. That gives us a lot more flexibility, I think. Yeah. And is anyone in a position to say what other communities are looking at joining into the network because it looks like from the memo that there are a number of other communities that are looking to join in as well. I believe at least the grant application, those who apply for the grant is public information. Does that sound right Council? I could say that. Yes. Yeah. So the other communities that apply for the grant with you and all received it are Watertown, Newton and Chelsea. So those are the other three communities. And so obviously Watertown shares a border. No, it gets close, doesn't it? Yeah. Gotta go through Cambridge. Cambridge and Buckeye. Yeah. But that's nearby and Newton as well. Okay. Okay, great. Thank you very much. I'm very enthusiastic about this. I look forward to supporting it. Thank you. Thank you. And as I mentioned before, I'm excited about this. I would... Yep. Go ahead, Mr. Carl. I'm sorry. One more question. There was reference in, I think in the Boston contract of public employees discounted rate. Does that carry over to our agreement as well where we're referencing the Boston contract? I don't believe so. I'm still enthusiastic, maybe not quite as enthusiastic. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. All right, no problem. I still have you up on my screen so I was able to see you. No, I'm excited about this. I was excited about the bike share system with our line bikes, but as I texted the town manager many times, every time I went to look for a line bike, but I needed it, I couldn't find one. So I like the idea that this, they'll always be bikes in a location where we know how to access them. So I think this is good for the town, good for our continued efforts to improve transportation and non-vehicular transportation at that. So I'm happy to support this. All right, I lost my notes. All right, so I have a motion for approval by Ms. Mahan, seconded by Mr. D'Corsi. Turn your hand. Ms. Mahan. Yes. Mr. D'Corsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Curell. Yes. Mr. Hurd. Yes. Madam's vote. And thank you, Mr. D'Bone, for all of your help tonight. Thank you. All right, move on to item number 13, the agenda discussion of board designee committee assignments. So we did have posted with the agenda our current list of committee assignments. Obviously, Mr. Dunn is no longer with us and Mr. Diggins has joined us and is looking to serve. Of course. Of course. I think I'll open up to the board to see if there's any particular committees that they currently serve on that they want to give up. Otherwise, I can go through Dan's committee assignments and just get someone to fill his positions because he does have a number of them on the field. So, Mr. Curell, is there anything that you particularly want to put out there for another member or? If I have any assignments that somebody's really interested in, I'm happy to consider it, but I'm not jumping at the bit to jump off of anything either. I'd only note that there are a couple here that jump out at me that like the school enrollment task force, that doesn't really exist anymore, that's defunct. And I also think that the application permit working group, that, for all intents and purposes, is defunct as well. I was charged with making some proposals around the handbook to come back to the board with them and I'll come back with some of the things that have been discussed a couple of years ago. That's basically defunct as well. But beyond that, I'm not jumping at the bit to give anything up, but frankly, if somebody has a real burning interest, I'm happy to. Okay, Mr. Mahan. The ones that are still active, I think I'm on two. So, I'd like to keep them. Okay, thank you. And Mr. Corsi. Yeah, I'd like to keep what I'm on as well. The one that they've been on, probably spent the most time the past year, is long-range planning. If there is another committee that I'm on, and someone else feels very strongly about getting on it, I'm happy to step aside. But the long-range planning is one that I'd like to continue. You have everyone just about on my screen here. I think for this one, we can do a show of hands as I go down. So, we have the treatment that Dan was on. Is there anyone that wants to take over the tree committee? Can I say something, Mr. Chair? That may help things? Yes. I think Dan had like a great suite. So, unless people really want them, I'm happy with them. So, you can default to me, and then people just can grab what they want. But I can see the way that you're going. So, since I'm the junior member, I should just take whatever's left over. And I'll be happy to take whatever's left over. So, that's it. Thank you. All right. I'm awarding you the tree committee. If there is a committee that multiple people want to, somebody wants to jump on to, that Dan was on, I'm just going to lay it out there, in case we have two people that want to do so. All right. So, Marijuana Study Committee, I'll lend that to you. Thank you. Snow and Ice Committee, I'll give you that. Yeah, we'll ban snow and ice in town, all right? And I know we've already had some email correspondence about having you replace Dan on the Rainbow Commission, and that's a great fit. So, I'm going to put you down on the Rainbow Commission. That would be fabulous. So, Dan is on long-range planning with Steve. Is there anyone to have Diane? You're interested? All right. So, I'm going to put Diane and Steve will be on long-range planning. Information, technology, advisory committee, which I think that is right up your alley. So, Mr. Diggins, I'll put you on that. Or Mr. Curos, I mean, so Mr. Curos, would you be interested in that? If you're not particularly interested, I'm happy to step in, but. Hey, well, I am interested, but I don't want to take all the good ones. I mean, I think you really have a lot of expertise, you know? So, I'd be interested, I mean, if you want, please take it, you know, and to accept that. I mean, I think it's, you haven't participated. Take my committee, please. Is it token? I'll take it. Yeah, no line, John. It's consistent with my profession. I don't want to overload you too fast. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and then I can get insights from you so that maybe later on, yeah, thanks. And I don't want to be greedy. Great, we have the investment policy working group. By a show of hands, anyone want to take that? I could verify, I think the treasurer has come back policy or has done that work. That might be one that doesn't need to meet anymore, but I could verify that. I believe that's correct, Mr. Chaplin. All right, so we will X that out as one of our defunct groups if needed, we'll read it, all right. And then the last one that Dan was on is the Clean Energy Future Committee. Diane? Yep. All right. Yes, please, I mean. We'll put Diane on that. All right, so we'll have these updated and we'll circulate them. Everyone has their committee assignments. So Mr. Heard? Yes. So I respect TAC, so I am a member of TAC still. I guess maybe we need to resolve that because I'm a member as a, I'm representing in ACMI as part of the Chamber of Commerce. Now I can continue in that role or I can be a liaison from the select board. I mean, but I am attending the meeting, so it's really up to you. I'm happy to pass that over to you. But let's just give it to Attorney Heim to confirm if one person can serve two roles or if there's one role that takes precedence over the other. If there's two spots, Mr. Degen shouldn't occupy two spots. If he would like to be the board representative that would open up for somebody else. But you could, in theory, have Mr. Degen's continue in that spot and appoint another board member. It sort of depends on the board's bandwidth, to be frank. So I think what you could do if it's okay with you is you could be the board representative on TAC, it's a voting position and then you can, or I don't know if it's a voting position, but you can resign as the chamber of commerce representative and they could fill that with another person. Yeah, so I was really just trying to verify what it is that you wanted to do and then just kind of clarify my role there. And so I guess it'll be legit for me to continue maybe this conversation with Mr. Herd. We won't be violating open meeting laws. I mean, yeah. Sorry, Mr. Chair, I apologize. Sorry, go ahead. Mr. Chair, I would just say that if the board was inclined to just sort of let the discussion continue offline between you and Mr. Degen's about how he wants to fill that seat. That's fine. Great, we're working out. All right, thank you. All right, so we have our updated committee assignments. I'll circulate these, we do not need to vote since it's my decision. So we'll close that and that takes us to correspondence received. So we have correspondence related to the property at 1207 to 1212 Massachusetts Avenue from Don Seltzer of Irving Street. Correspondence requesting safety signage on the Miniman bike path from Joshua Martin via the request answer center. We have correspondence from the appointment of an election officer for the retirement system September 29th election from Richard Greco, election officer, retirement administrator on the retirement board in a letter regarding 339 Mass Ave, LLC from attorney Robert Anessi. And so on the first one, do you have a motion to receive? Or do you? I'd make a motion, move receipt if correspondence received. And do we have a second? Second. Second. All right, so attorney Hyme. Ms. Bihon? Yes. Mr. DeCoursey? Yes. Mr. Diggins? Yes. Mr. Cureau? Yes. Mr. Hurd? Yes. All right. And that takes us to new business. Attorney Hyme? Just want to highlight again how a terrific game Amstutz was in pulling together a lot of meetings and a lot of discussions about the bike share matters. And I really appreciate all of his patients on this matter as we've got a lot of things tugging at all of our attention and he's been coordinating with a lot of different folks. So I just want to share that he was an exercise in wonderful leadership. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Chaplain? Yes, thank you, Mr. Hurd. I speak up fast enough under correspondence received number 15, the request regarding safety signage on the bike path. I'll ask again Amstutz to look at that and work with Mr. Martin that wrote in that regard. I believe that APAC, APAC, APAC and had already put together some safety signage that we're thinking of proposing on the bike path that may cover this request. But we will take a look at that and respond to Mr. Martin. I just wanted to state that I was really... Couple other things I wanted to mention. One that I just learned of while we were sitting here tonight and is at least related to something that was mentioned during open forum. So Winchester Select Board's also meeting right now and they've been conducting their meetings with the Zoom meeting platform and they were Zoom bombed and some very graphic pornography was shown on the screen. That was very disturbing. Everybody participating and the town manager was referred to by a racial slur, which has obviously shook her up very bad. Though I know that there is concern and system that we are using right here might not be perfect. Acts against issues like that from occurring. I think it is your main to bring up that as we're sitting here having this discussion right next door in a neighboring town. A very disturbing event happened as Zoom bombed. So again, a discussion we can keep having but I think we might be limiting on one side or protecting against upsetting things happening. I'm using another path, I just wanted to share that. And then finally, I wanted to share that this week I'm interviewing what I think is now nine applicants for the design review committee for the Mass Ave and Appleton intersection discussion. So we hopefully will be able to get that design review committee up and running very soon. A lot of applicants, a lot of talented and interested applicants and almost as always our LinkedIn doesn't surprise or doesn't get to point with how many interested, willing volunteers there are to serve and try to make the time throw play. That's all I have for you. Thank you. Mr. Chair, if I may on that? Yep. If you could just briefly either the share or the town manager refresh my memory because I'm going blank on it now but with regards to Charlie Proctor and I know his memorial was going to go in concert with what's being designed out there. And am I correct that my memory was we didn't send that request or did we to public memorial or did we send it directly to who's overseeing the process the manager just spoke to? So my recollection is the board approved the placement of memorial and I just now need to work with public work or the placement of the bike somewhere appropriate in the intersection. Okay. I was thinking, I don't remember doing that. I think we should just went the direct work. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chair. On any new business? I have had conversations with the chair and with Mr. Chapter Lane regarding when the town of Allentons next regular town meeting would be. I think from talking with Mr. Hurd, perhaps we might ask the moderator to come in when the chair deems appropriate to talk about that. But one of the things I wanted to put out there for everyone just to start thinking about and if the chair or the town manager is the person after it's determined when Mr. Leone, the moderator should come in. It seems Lexington was fortunate enough that they had a resident and I want to say I think I know the gentleman's name but I don't want to misspeak but I believe he's also a town meeting member and from what I read of the coverage of that on the Lexington list this gentleman, Lexington resident, basically what they said was he created his own framework platform for Lexington's regular town meeting, which allowed, because a lot of people say why don't you just do a big Zoom meeting? We can't just do that because Zoom does not have the features to when a town meeting member wants to raise their hand to speak as well as recording votes. And the way they accomplished it in Lexington is they were fortunate to have a resident like that. So one of the things I would say through the chair and when we do have this as an agenda item, do we want to maybe put that plea out along with our IT department that we have or is it something that when we have that meeting the town manager might say through IT we can accomplish 50%, this is the other thing we need. But I'll leave it to you Mr. Heard when that meeting with Mr. Naomi should happen. Yep, and yeah, I'll cover that in my new business. Oh yes, sorry. And Mr. Corsings? Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just to, this is maybe perhaps a question through new business, but we had to receive the notification from Mass Housing on the MIRAC proposed development. And I believe the deadline for responding to that is on August 10th. And I'm just wondering if a request for further time can be done administratively through the town manager's office or through town council or if not, if maybe we need to meet before August 10th just to vote an extension on that. Mr. Heard? So let me confirm this, but I do think that if the chair were comfortable authorizing the request for an extension of time just to submit the board's comments, I think that can be done. If it can't be done, I will definitely let the board know to make sure that we have a meeting for that soul, for that limited business. Thank you, Mr. Corsings. Thank you. Thank you. Any more new business, Mr. Corsings? I don't know, that's all I have. Mr. Carroll? No, no business, thank you. Mr. Viggins? Excuse me, just to clarify, so the clock has started ticking on the comment period in the deadline, it's August 10th. So my understanding is that the clock starts ticking when we get a notification from mass housing. I want to take a look at that a little bit more closely, but in the event that we need additional time, I believe that it can be done through the chair, but for whatever reason it can't, I'll make sure to let the board know why you're at that service. Okay, all right, thank you. But right now just operate as if the deadline is 10th, August. Yes. Okay, thank you. So I was going to raise similar new business as to Ms. Mohan. You say that you're going to speak to that, Mr. Herd. I was going to go so far as to maybe beg the rest of you all to maybe have a meeting on August 3rd to meet with the town moderator to determine something because I'm a little bit concerned about the amount of time that we have left to pull this all together if we're going to do it this fall. And I have spoken with people, anyone, but any of you all because I don't want to violate overmeaning laws. And I know that we have the people in town that can pull this off and people in town that have connections with people in Lexington. So that we can do this, we can do this. Thank you. So I can make sure I didn't miss anything. Yeah, so I mean, we got a few inquiries about what town meeting is going to look like in the fall since when we had pushed off a number of articles, we had told them they'd be taken up in a fall special town meeting. I had, there was a request to put on the agenda tonight. I thought that it was still a little early in the summer to determine what that would look like. So likely we'll put that on our August agenda to invite the moderator and if he's able to do so and just have a discussion as to where we are as far as the virus and what our options are to put together a special town meeting as presented. Mr. Chair. Yep. I apologize, I should have added this. I'm wondering, and I'll leave it to you and the town manager to see if it's appropriate and I don't want to waste anyone's time. If either we have our Health and Human Services director, Christine Bungerno, either at the meeting or and or provide documentation submission for her from the Board of Health Ends. So I'll leave that for you all to figure out. Thank you. Yep, okay. And then one another piece of business that was just alluded to at one point in the meeting is that we had a couple of requests and I think we're all copied on this to rename Citizens Open Forum due to the fact that we don't require citizenship. So we will likely post it with a different name whether it will be residents open forum part of the name that will be posted differently on our next agenda. And I just want to add to that when the Board back first established that this is an open forum the reason, cause I know there was a suggestion of residents reason they didn't do that is some of the people who appear before us are not Allington residents. They're Allington business owners and sometimes they're like with the case of Charlie Proctor as well as Daniel Rosetti, the people appearing before us. It wasn't a matter of using citizen because you could say the same thing for residents. So, but we'll have further discussion. I have a different name. I don't, I am leaning towards open forum. But it's your agenda, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. All right. And then the last thing I just want to, you know, at this point we're months into the crisis and we do, we've had, you know, a number of, we've had our first responders we've had our town workers in just town residents that are healthcare workers and essential workers that have really carried the town through. And, you know, at the beginning of pandemic we acknowledge them often and, you know, I just don't want that to fade away. So I'd like to, I think I can just work with the town manager on this, but at the next August meeting, kind of brainstorm some way to acknowledge the work of the AFD, the APD, our Board of Health, our town staff and, you know, all of the medical professionals that have been working hard to get our town through this ordeal and as well as all the essential workers that we all encompassing essential workers and just have some way for us to commemorate those. Cause we have, I have seen those in other towns I think it would be appropriate to do so at this point. So I can work with the town manager to put something together to present to the next meeting. And that is all the new business I have. Move to adjourn. Seconds. Automotion to adjourn by Ms. Mahan, seconded by Mr. Curl, attorney Han. Ms. Mahan. Yes, thank you. Mr. Nkorsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Curl. Yes. Mr. Herd. Yes. Well, it's not 1130, so. Yes. I'll be there.