 Good evening. Welcome. I'm calling to order this meeting of the Arlington Select Board on Monday, August 14th, 2023. I am Select Board Chair, Eric Helmuth. Tonight's meeting is being conducted in a hybrid format consistent with Chapter Two of the Acts of 2023 signed into law on March 29th, 2023, which further extends certain COVID-19 measures regarding remote participation in public meetings until March 31st of 2025. Before we begin, please note the following. First, this meeting is being conducted in the Select Board chambers and over Zoom. It is being recorded and simultaneously broadcasted on ACMI. Second, persons wishing to join the meeting by Zoom may find information on how to do so on the town's website. Persons participating by Zoom are reminded that you may be visible to others and that if you wish to participate, we ask you to provide your full name in the interest of developing a record of the meeting. Third, all participants are advised that people may be listening who do not provide comment. Those persons are not required to identify themselves. Both Zoom participants and persons watching on ACMI can follow the posted agenda materials found on the town's website, specifically the Select Board Agendas and Minutes page. For those people on Zoom who wish to make public comment tonight, we do have an open forum on the agenda which you can follow along and during the license and permits, those will be public hearings. So if you wanna comment specifically on the licenses and permits, I'll have a public comment period at that time. Everything else will be for open forum and if you are on Zoom, what we will do when we get to public comment on either of those occasions is that I will announce it and if you are on Zoom and want to comment, please raise your hand in Zoom. So this would be an excellent time to go Google how to do that if you don't know how. Let's see how much of the town's business we can get done tonight. First order of business is to welcome a couple of new faces. I believe we have a new town manager in attendance if you care to introduce yourself and also your sidekick this evening. Good evening, Mr. Chair, thank you. James Feeney, proud new town manager. Thank you for having me. Accompanied this evening by attorney Michael Cunningham, the town's deputy town council and workers compensation agent. Thank you. Thank you and thank you, Mr. Cunningham for filling in for Attorney Hyme. Welcome, Mr. Feeney. It is a joy to have you with us tonight as you're first in what I hope will be many select board meetings. So on the consent agenda, we have a number of items and I will say to my, the colleagues, there's a couple of items here that if you want to discuss them, the town manager is prepared to do so or I can as well, but we just thought putting them in the consent agenda might make it possible to do these on one vote. So I'll read this now. We have removal of temporary parking restrictions in front of 23 Maple Street in addition to parking time limitations, 51 Grove Street from the DPW director. Requests for a previously approved special one day beer and wine license, a change of times for Matt Guernsey at Drink Arlington beer. And those are spilled out in the reservoir events on our printed agenda. Request for a special one day beer and wine license on September 3rd at Robin Sound Hall for a private event. Actually, we have two of those by Geoffrey O'Connell and Grace Yell. We have a special one day beer and wine license at David Lamson Way for Town Hall Day, Town Day Beer Garden by Matt Guernsey. Another request for a similar license at Arlington Reservoir for Town Day Road Race Beer Garden. We have a change of location for Bluebike Station expansion to Russell Place from Mr. John Alessi, senior transportation planner. Mr. Alessi is present tonight, by the way, if any members do have questions on that. Number nine, on the consent agenda, we have additional parking restrictions to support the electric school bus parking and Odyssey Middle School, submitted by Talia Fox, our sustainability manager. This is a continuation and a follow-up for an item that was discussed extensively at our last meeting. So with that, I will turn to the board for motions or comments. Mr. Diggins. So I will want to talk about the Bluebikes, mainly a question, but on the road race, the Reservoir dogs event, there was a note from Officer Roteau saying that, I mean, there may be staffing issues that day because of Town Day, of course. So I guess we should just make it really clear, I mean, that the, I guess I'm not quite sure. I mean, he says like, the staffing issues may preclude the ability to provide the detail. And so that's introduced a bit of uncertainty into that. And so I'm just wondering if the person requesting it, I mean, is aware of this and what they are planning as a contingency, perhaps? I don't know if we asked Mr. Guernsey to attend and Ms. Marr. All right, all right. So there's that, I mean, and well, he's not here so I can't really have a discussion, but I was just kind of wondering, I mean, he also indicates, I mean, that he's expected about 500 people, I mean, 300 to 500 people, which is why they needed the extra detail. And this is Town Day, you know, and so I was just kind of wondering, like, what's the, what did people do with the road race beforehand? I mean, did they like run and then run over the Town Day or did they just run and go home or what? Mrs. Marr. Both. As well as, and I'll leave it to the Town Manager to sort of follow up on this, but previous with Town Day and Town Day, the road race and police details, especially for that day, what's happened in the past is when they have roll call very, very early in the morning on Mass Ave, the shift commander, he or she, she or he, sees what officers they have and then disperses them accordingly. So that's what they always did with the road race, with the understanding they would come back to Town Day. So traditionally in the past, Town Day starting, now it's starting later, so that'll be even better, because whatever officers, unless all details can be filled, which is really not usually the case for the road race and Town Day, they siphon over and they'll come back. Yeah, I got that. I was just wondering about the people who did the race, you know, so, so it's like they expected three or five hundred people there. And so it's funny, I mean, the competition's good, we'll just have to like make Town Day especially appealing down here so that people will run the race and then want to come back to the center. But I just really wanted to flag maybe what officer until it said there and just wonder what the contingency was. And so I'll stop there and then maybe ask Mr. Alassi a question if my colleagues, unless my colleagues don't have any other things. Mrs. Mohan? First of all, second Mr. Diggins' motion to move approval? Yeah, I didn't, but I will now, yes. And then after Mr. Diggins, I did just had some very brief remarks on number nine, the school bus parking and odyssey. So, but I'll go after, when the chair tells him to go. Now it's fine. On, as we all did read the memorandum provided by the police department and others, Ms. Fox, et cetera, regarding this electric school bus parking, which I was already thinking of that area even before this and living sort of kitty corner. Literally, I can see that exact parking lot. And I know what how parents park in the morning. I'm assuming it isn't in there that the first week or so either some besides just signage saying where you should impart. And I think once those electric school buses start coming in, we may want to expand that because they legit park like everywhere, which I understand. But I don't know if the town manager knows or could follow up with that. Are we just putting the signs up, saying the restricted parking, and I think it's 45 feet on the resident, or maybe the first week will we have somebody down there for sort of a friend or cones or something? Mr. Feeney? Sure, thank you, Mr. Chair. Mrs. Mahan, the plan was to post them as no parking for during the school day for the first 55 feet heading east from Fessenden down Appleton Place. So of course, as you know, signage is not necessarily self-enforcing. So I think it would be prudent if we considered at least for the first week, perhaps placing some additional cones. And based on feedback from the folks within our transportation department, if we need to deploy officers or something to help ensure that what we're calling swing space is available, we can do so. And I'm not looking for anyone to get a ticket, it's just, it's crazy. It's gonna be some education at first. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So Mr. Alessi, you know, so there's a couple of questions and a suggestion. So the question is... Give me just a moment to the table here. Mr. Alessi, you can come on up to the table and just introduce yourself for the public. My name is John Alessi. I'm the Senior Transportation Planner in the Department of Planning and Community Development. Great, thank you. So I'm all in favor of this. I just wanted to know what were the safety issues that you discovered when you... Well, can I ask because I have conversations about these things, both in town and out of town. I just kind of wonder if there are any lessons from this that might be able to apply in another situation, so... Sure, the issue here identified by Officer Corey Rato when we did an in-person site visit is that he felt upon further inspection of the area that at this particular intersection, there would be potential conflicts with trail users. And I think that Mill Street in particular has been a safety concern according to Officer Rato. There was a collision with the bicyclist at that crossing in the past week or two. So, you know, he just had more concerns as he looked into the issue more in depth. So when we went to the site, he suggested a nearby location that would kind of achieve the same proximity to other stations in the blue bike system, but not necessarily at a crossing where there could be potential obstructions with trail users where there's already an ongoing safety issue. Great, and that was a collision between a cyclist and... And a vehicle, I think. Okay, all right, cool, thank you. And so my suggestion, because you said that you were going to work with the MBTA, meaning that it might take up to a year, during Mr. Heim's... Well, during the interregnum, when Mr. Heim was king for a day, I had my usual conversation with the town manager on that day, and we talked a bit about the work that I'd done with the advisory board to try to work through this issue about access. So I'm going to suggest, meaning that he actually told me too to take a work with the town manager on this, so I'll suggest that maybe you contact the town manager, and maybe all three of us, and maybe even one of my other colleagues mean, or someone from TAC can work with us on that, but I just want to kind of update you on what I've learned, meaning that maybe we can take a multi-prong approach on this, meaning both with respect to how we approach it as a town, but also maybe try and get other towns on board with this, because I think if we go for the regional solution, it might give us a greater probability of success. It may slow it down too, but I think it increases chances, meaning that we'll get some real movement on this. So that's it, thank you. Mr. Heim. I think the new location's fine. Again, as a temporary location, it's already noted in the memo that we're going to continue to work with the NBCA to find a better location. I would only say to the town manager, I had mentioned this before, and it's kind of unrelated, but related to this request, that those particular spaces, after hours always seem to be, there's no one in there, so I don't think this is going to be overly burdensome to lose four of the permanent parking spaces, but I would like to look into the feasibility. I know we don't have it anywhere in town right now. I had mentioned this to Attorney Heim, so Attorney Conningham, you can forward this along, but the feasibility of having permanent parking in those spaces till, say, five o'clock as a baseball parent who just came in hot from the baseball field, it's always a little frustrating because there are the safety issues on the other side of the field because people are parking everywhere and they're parking out in the neighborhoods, then you go around back and all the permit spaces are empty, every one of them, and we get tickets if we roll the dice and park there because they're still ticketing as they should because it's restricted, but if there's a feasibility of having some sort of a permit system until five o'clock or whatever the time is that works based on the usage of people that work there, now I'd be very interested to see because I think that solves a lot of problems in the area, alleviates the burden of taking away some of the spaces, so I would just throw that out as a comment there, but again, this is fine as a temporary location, assuming we can work with the MBTA to get a better spot. Any further discussion? All right, so on a motion for approval of the consent agenda by Mr. Diggins and seconded by Mrs. Mahan on Fiverr favor, please say aye. Aye. The 5-0 vote in favor. Thank you very much. We'll see you again, Mr. Alessi. We move on now to the items 10 through 13, which are appointments, and the first item is the board of registrar of voters, so if you're in the room tonight and you are a candidate for an appointment to that, would you please raise your hand? All right, if you are in. Mr. McDonald is here. Oh, there he goes, sir. Sorry, I didn't see you there, all right, good. I got you, I'm just identifying who's here. And then if you are on Zoom and you are a candidate for appointment to the board of registrar of voters, would you please raise your hand in Zoom so we can identify you and bring you in to the meeting as a speaker? We have Mr. Murray, Robert Murray. All right, so let's start with Mr. McDonald in the room, sir. You could come up to the table, introduce yourself. So for the benefit of the public and my colleagues, this is, these are appointments that are recommended by the Republican Town Committee, and my understanding is we have one appointment to make to the board of registrar of voters, and we've had four people express interest, so we've invited you to come before us tonight. Good evening, sir. If you would be so kind as to introduce yourself and say where you live and say anything you want to the board about your interest in serving in this capacity. All right, my name's Ralph McDonald. Present time, I live at Drake Village. I grew up in Allington, Puritan Road up at the frown. There was six of us in our family. Graduated from Allington. I lived here most of my life and everything. And just wanted to be active with something in the town. You know, I always loved the town and I heard there was an opening with this, so I'm going to allow it. Thank you very much. That's the spirit that makes Allington a great place to live. In terms of my colleagues, if you have any questions for Mr. McDonald? Mrs. Mahon. I have to divulge that. I do know Mr. McDonald very well. Thank you for your service, sir. I appreciate that. He's been very active in the Allington community. I've worked with him on many endeavors, mostly sort of around social programs with programs for children or adults, fundraising, for friends of ours and friends that we meet in the time of need. So I'm thrilled to see Mr. McDonald here tonight and I just wanted to take that opportunity. Thank you, sir. Mr. Dickens. I'll say I recognize Mr. McDonald, too, you know. So we spend a fair amount of time and goals together. You know, so our true fitness, I guess, is in the name of Jesus, yes, you know. So, yeah, I like your attitude, you know, a lot. If it doesn't work out for you here, you have a lot of energy. I mean, there are a lot of things that you can do in town. And so I'd be happy to tell you more about that. You probably know already, but certainly could encourage you to join some other boards and conditions. Even if you get this, there are those opportunities. I mean, so it doesn't preclude by any stretch to me. So thank you. Any other questions? Thank you, sir. You're welcome. And Ms. Murray, if you'd bring in Mr. Murray from Zoom, Mr. Murray should be able to unmute and turn your camera if you so desire. Good evening, sir. Can you hear us? I believe you're muted, Mr. Murray. Moment here to unmute. Hello. Yeah, we got you. Thank you very much. Oh, okay, I guess I was muted. Yeah, just an intro. Yes, we can. Just if you would introduce yourself, say where you live and express your reasons for wanting to serve in this capacity. I think I submitted a resume as suggested in the letter. Yes. What I didn't indicate, though, was that I did grow up in Arlington. I attended the Brackett School, what used to be called the Junior High West, Arlington High School class of 1965. And I lived in Arlington until I graduated from Tufts in 1970. And unfortunately, when I got back from military service, I was unable to afford to live this close to the city of Austin. So I ended up out in the Lemons to Fitchburg area. And that's where I began practicing law for 30 years. And I moved back to Arlington, I think in 2008. And I now reside with my wife, Cynthia Hamilton. She's also class of Arlington High in 1965. And we moved back into her childhood home at 45 Jason Street and purchased it back from a party that her parents had sold it to almost 50 years earlier. In any event, I then moved my law practice down to Arlington in 2008 and had my office at the corner of Jason Street and Mass Ave opposite the Jason Russell House. And I continued practicing there for a good 10 or so years. And presently I'm 95% retired. I have one or two clients that simply won't let me retire. And insist that I hang in there until they retire. So I have a few cases that I'm working on. As my resume indicated, I have been involved in a lot of civic activities when I was living out in the Shirley Mass. I moved out there after the service in the mid-70s. And I served in a variety of capacities. And when my practice got to the point where I had to cut back a little bit, I did so. And then I moved over and lived in Lüneburg for a number of years. And as I say, I moved back to Arlington in 2008. I was approached by someone who said that they would like to nominate me for a position on the board. And I said, you know, by all means, I have the time and experience and the inclination. And so here I am. I apologize for my appearance. We had a pipe break here in the house today on our second floor. And we've been mopping and soaking up. And it was a total disaster, but everything is under control. No problem. And good luck with your home repairs. Thank you, sir. Any questions or comments from the board? Any questions for Mr. Murray? Mrs. Mohan. Just very briefly, I also wanted to acknowledge and thank Attorney Murray as a US Navy veteran. I want to thank you for your service. I'm sorry, I can't hear. How about now? Is that better? It's a little better. Sorry. My laptop bottom is all the way up and it just doesn't seem to be very good. That's okay. Excuse me, I was noting that you are a US Navy veteran and I'm very impressed by that. And I want to thank you for your service and your family for doing that for us. And I'm thrilled to see you here tonight, volunteering for something else. Thank you. I was drafted, of course, into the Army after I graduated from college. And I had hoped not to spend much time on the ground in Vietnam, so I grew in the Navy. In my four years, I never was on a ship. And I spent 42 months in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Three and a half years. Very good. Thank you. Any further questions? Okay, thank you, sir. I want to make sure that do we have Joyce Mooney, Clark, or Mary Ellen Curle, Vakarello, present? Yes, please come on up up to the table, make yourself comfortable. And as usual, introduce yourself and say what you'd like to us about this position. Mary Ellen Curle, Vakarello. I grew up in Arlington. We moved here from Cambridge when I was five. Class of 76 from Arlington High School. I was married to a military member. We were in Hawaii. We're in Scott Air Force Base in Illinois. And then we came back here to take care of my dad. He lived to be 93, and we're back at the family home up on Hawthorne, so actually right around the corner from Ralph, where he's doing it. A lot of my friends were town meeting members growing up. I don't know if you were new Earl Rowe or any of the Rose. Chuck Pappas, I don't know if that name rings a bell. Anybody? It's in Florida now, Chuck and Nancy. I know, I love their whole thing. So, I don't know what else I can tell you. Not working, worked at Leahy Clinic when it first opened years ago. Worked for the phone company for over 25 years. But other than that, just getting back into doing other stuff, the kids are gone. They're often married, so start doing other things. Thank you. You're welcome. Excellent, any questions from the board? Thank you very much for your willingness to serve. Okay, thanks. And then the final name we had was Joyce Mooney-Clark. So, did we see her on Zoom? Did we see her on Zoom? Not in the room? Okay, so at this point, thanks to all who are willing, we have one position to fill here, so I will look to the board for further discussion, no nominations. Mrs. Mohan. Okay, I wish we had more than one. For some reason I had it in my head too, but it's just the one. Oh my goodness. Definitely want to thank everybody for submitting their name. And as my colleague, Mr. Diggins said, if we can't plug you into this position, we certainly look forward. Or if you do get this position, we look forward to seeing the involvement and the energy for other endeavors in the town. But I would like to nominate Mr. Ralph McDonald. Second? Second for Ms. James Corsi. Any further nominations? I'm, yes, I'm going to nominate Mr. Murray. You know, I just feel that his legal experience, I mean, and his civic, experience to me, you know, I think it's going to stand him well if this board gets activated, meaning for some issue. I mean, remember in my first election, we had a recount even, so that's when I became very aware, I mean, of the existence and the role that this board can play. I mean, a few votes got changed. I mean, other than that, I mean, I guess, you know, and my other question is that maybe for the caucus of someone, but I'd really like to see this board just kind of get a little energized and really do something more. It says, I mean, that they used to be involved in getting people registered. We certainly use a lot more of that. I mean, and so I'm not sure where that role went. I mean, is it in the caucus position or what? You know, but I could see maybe the next time. I mean, if the position gets renewed, we ask them, well, how many people do you get registered being in and if they didn't get any, you know, then maybe look for someone. I'm being a little humorous here, but I'm just saying, I think, I'd like to see something more happen with this role. I'm not saying that Mr. Murray would do that, but I just say, looking at his resume, I'm really impressed, so we'll make a little bit of a race out of it if I get a second, you know. Second. So we have a second for Mr., the nomination of Mr. Murray by Mr. Diggins, seconded by Mr. Heard. Any further discussion? Do we need to close the nominations or no? We didn't formally open them, so I'm fine with just being informal there. All right, so I'm going to ask Attorney Cunningham if you would pull each board member for their vote. Mr. Diggins. Mr. Murray. Mr. D'Corsi. Hi, Mr. McDonald. Mr. Mahan. Mr. McDonald. Mr. Heard. Mr. McDonald. Mr. Allen. Mr. Murray. And the result is, I believe, three votes for Mr. McDonald. So recorded. Thank you, sir. Congratulations to Mr. McDonald, and thank you to all candidates who were willing to serve. Thank you. All right, we'll move on to item 11, appointments to the Conservation Commission. This item might have been called deja vu, because Mr. McBride, if you'd like to come forward, the source of my remark is that we very recently appointed Mr. McBride and his Associate Member of the Conservation Commission, and he's done so well that they've decided to make him an honest member. So, as a full member of the commission. So, I know that you've recently talked with us so we can make this certainly very brief, but if you just introduce yourself and where you live and anything you wanna say to us about this opportunity. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks to the board for giving me this opportunity. Brian McBride, I live on 36 Eastern Avenue. I've been there for 23 years or so. Raised my child there. I recently retired, as you may remember from last time. I'm involved in the Open Space Committee, and was an Associate Member of the Conservation Commission for the past three or four months. I really enjoyed the work there. I feel like I've clicked well with the team. I'm learning more. There's a lot to learn in this job. I don't presume to be by any stretch an expert, but I think I can contribute given my background in chemistry and water treatment early in my career and my work with the Open Space Committee. I think it's an important role. I think we need to continue to find a balance between progress and habitat protection. I think the Conservation Commission plays an important role there. I'd love to have an opportunity to serve in that manner. Terrific. Thank you, sir. Any discussion of the word? Mr. DeCorsi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll move approval of Mr. McBride's appointment, and I did do want to point out this is probably one of the quickest firms I've ever seen, because you've been here before us on May 8th, so assuming there is a positive vote. Congratulations, but also thank you for your interest and for the important work that you've done today on the Conservation Commission. Welcome. Second. Is this Mr. Diggins? Yeah, I'll just make a comment. I mean, seeing this again, I mean, I noticed this time that you did Peace Corps work in Malaysia, impressive, and you also say that active in local community service, is that still the case? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm involved with the Peace Corps Board in Boston area. I'm involved with some Afghan refugee resettlement work. I'm trying to keep myself busy during my retirement. It's been a great pleasure, honestly. I got it, but that local community service isn't involved in Malaysia at that time. No, no, although we did do a project a couple years ago where we built a boardwalk in this water village in Malaysia who raised funds locally during COVID. That was fun. We were able to do it without a visit. Good work. I mean, thanks. Happy having you on board. Okay. Any further discussion? Okay, on a motion by Mr. D'Corsi and seconded a minister heard to appoint Mr. McBride to the Conservation Commission as a full member. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Five-nothing vote. Thank you again and congratulations. Thank you very much. Moving on to item 12, Library Board of Trustees. We have, and I believe both of these people are in Zoom, so let's bring them in. We have Rebecca Gruber and Rebecca Steinitz. So this is the season to appoint people named Rebecca to the Library Board of Trustees. Let's start with, she's on the camera first. We'll start with Rebecca Steinitz. You can unmute yourself and there we go. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Can you hear me? For your very fancy office there. Good evening. Please just, we've read you, have your materials, but feel free to introduce yourself, say where you live and give a brief statement to the board. I apologize for calling in from my car. I am on vacation, but it is a pleasure to be here. I'm very excited and it's nice to see you all. My name is Rebecca Steinitz. I live on Cleveland Street, which anyone in East Arlington will know is the street that the fox is on. And I am a, I am somebody who is on a personal name basis with my librarians at the fox. I am a book reviewer, a writer, a literacy coach in urban schools, and I'm also a communications consultant. And I am somebody who is, well, let me also say that I was very involved in the Arlington schools for about 10 years. I was the president, the first president of the Arlington Education Foundation. Before that, I was on the board of the Arlington Schools Foundation. I was on the Thompson School Council. I was on two hiring committees for Arlington High School Principals. And I was also on what might have been the first book challenge in the Arlington Public Schools. I was on that committee as well and wrote the decision we did not ban the book. We kept the book. I am a passionate book and library person and I am now, after several years of being on boards outside of Arlington, excited to get involved in the community again. And I realized that the library at this moment when libraries across the country are under challenges and libraries across the country and especially in Arlington are such valuable resources for their communities. This was the perfect place for me to get involved again. And when I met with Anna and Sandy, I was even more excited on his last day of work. I was even more excited about the potential for growing support and growing new buildings and growing collections for the Arlington libraries. Thank you and thank you for calling in on vacation. It's great to see you. You need questions for the board? Excellent. Thank you very much. Now we'll now turn to Ms. Gruber. Welcome. Good evening, everyone. I know all of you and you know that I do a lot of different volunteer work in town. But this opportunity is maybe the most special. I've been a lifelong lover of reading. I'm a retired librarian. And all of the volunteer work I've been doing in the town has been towards the goal of making Arlington a more welcoming and inclusive community and facilitating accessibility and information sharing with community members. And to me, libraries are really the nexus of those goals of a space for our community to come together and share information, be that books or other types of media. I've also been attending the library's board meetings for more than a year now. So I know many of the initiatives that they have ongoing, two of which are particularly exciting to me. One is the expansion of the team programming. And the other is the potential rebuild of the Fox Library with the opportunity for housing. So I'm super excited that I'm being considered for this and I'm anxious to get to work with the board. Thank you very much. And I want to say to both of our applicants who I know from their extensive community service that we are very lucky to have both of you willing to serve in this capacity. You're both tremendously valuable members of our community. Any discussion, further discussion from the board? Because they'll need a motion. Mrs. Mahun. Well, since I have Ms. Gruber and Ms. Steinitz sort of as a captive, captured audience, I just wanted to pass something along to you. The library is, some of both of you probably hear it as really my first love. That's where I started in Arlington when I was 14. Had three jobs after school. The library was my favorite. And back then, there was no Google. It was the cod system, Dewey Desmo. So it kind of played into that. But I just saw recently in, I don't know if it was Leminster or Fitchburg, but they're a board of library trustees. And I'm just throwing this out after the vote when you are on the library board of trustees. And I know one of the initiatives Ms. Gruber spoke about was a teen initiative. But either Leminster or Fitchburg recently announced a teen seat for their board of library trustees. And I thought that was so exciting. I know I would have been all over that 100 years ago back when I was in Arlington High. So I'm not saying teens aren't involved with the library or the board of library trustees, but since I said I have two of you here tonight, I'd like to sort of pass that on to you. I'm not saying that's the answer to it, but maybe there's something else. And I'm thrilled that I actually do know both of you. You got a great name, that's my Rebecca, who is also a librarian. And up until she started having babies, worked at the library. So I would like to, on behalf of Ms. Gruber, Ms. Steinitz, the Rebecca team, move a little while. We have heard from Team Rebecca. I'll second that. All right, any further discussion? And I'll add, Ms. Mahan, what a great idea. I love that idea. I mean, I don't know if they can do anything with it, but that's a great idea. So yeah, and no need to apologize for being remote folks. I mean, it's great that the technology allows us to be in this opportunity. So thank you for joining us. All right. So on a motion to repoint both Rebecca's to the library board of trustees by Mrs. Mahan, a seconded by Mr. Diggins. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, five nothing. Thank you both very much. Thank you. Okay, finally, we have appointment to the Transportation Advisor Committee, John Aslanian, term to expire January 31st of 2025. So do we have John here or online in any capacity? There he is. He'll also take a hello, sir. Good evening. Introduce yourself, tell us where you live and then you briefly express your interest in serving in this capacity. All right, thank you. I'm John Aslanian. I live on Top Street in East Arlington, moved to Arlington about 12 years ago with the primary reason I think was transportation. Just I feel that Arlington is a sort of transportation vortex in the greater Boston area. I teach in Lynn and I'm able to commute when the weather is nice, I commute by bike using the Northern Strand. We're able to get around on the Minuteman. We have two highways, we have Route 60 and Route 16 which are sort of older, cross town if you will, roads. So I value the position of the town but I also appreciate the fact that transportation is one of those issues that really cuts across a lot of different divides that we find in society. So it's important to me that our senior residents are able to get around easily. It's important that our parents and children can get around easily and multimodal aspects of that. So I've been serving on the committee in a large position for about a year and I've enjoyed it. I'd like to continue serving on the committee and serving the town. And especially as we kind of deal with this post pandemic madness of drivers and electric bikes and things, there's a lot of interesting opportunities coming up to sort of make sure that Arlington stays safe and stays accessible and mobility's at the top of that. Thank you, sir. And as someone who rode an electric bike at the meeting tonight, I can verify that that is indeed a wonderful new opportunity and does prevent, present challenges as well. So, but thanks to our good town manager, I had a good place to lock it up tonight. So, well done, sir. Any discussion from the board? Guess we need a nomination? Sorry, motion. I'll make a motion to approve the nomination. Second. Okay, on a motion to approve the appointment by Mr. Biggins is seconded by Mr. DeCorsi. All in favor please say aye. Opposed, five-nothing. Welcome. Thank you for your service, sir. Thank you. All right, now we move on to the licenses and permits section of the agenda. So now we have first up for approval a change of license category from one amount beverages to all alcoholic beverages and a change of manager. This is the Burritos Corporation, Arlington Restaurant and Diner. And we have the musculoskeletal Burritos from 134 Masters Avenue. Do we have representatives tonight? Please come up to the table. And I, please correct my pronunciation of your name, sir. Welcome, so please introduce yourselves and just give us a brief explanation of the request. My name is Janice Pascucci. I represent the Burritos family. My name is Temis Burritos. I'm the owner of the Arlington Diner. Excellent. Good. So just give us a brief rundown of the request. The diner has been serving breakfast and lunch for a period of time. They closed down for dinner for a while and now are interested in reopening at dinner time and thought that they would benefit from supplementing their dinners with changing the alcohol permit that we have. And Mr. Burritos is requested that he be named as a manager as he is the full-time onsite manager now. And he manages all of the alcohol that's purchased, where it's placed, where it's locked up at night and the serving, what is there? Turn to the board, Mrs. Mohan. Good to see you, Mr. Burritos. I am no stranger to the Arlington Restaurant Diner. I have to profess that right away. And I'm thrilled to hear that you're dipping your toe back into the dinner venue. And I know how difficult that is, so I'd like to move approval. Second. Any discussion from the board? Any questions? All right, and a motion to approve by Mrs. Mohan, a second by Mr. Hurd. All in favor, please say aye. Oh, I'm sorry, Attorney Cunningham, thank you. Please, sir. Just, there's a public comment. Public comment. Thank you. Before the meeting, I said, please stop me if I'm about to do something wrong and he did. So we have a good man here, good job. This is a public hearing. So is there any public comment in the room? Please raise your hand or the same on Zoom with this comment on this proposal. Takes a village to help a chair. All right, I think we're ready for a vote now. So on a motion by Mrs. Mohan and second by Mr. Hurd, all in favor, please say aye. Opposed, unanimous. Thank you and good luck, sir. Thank you. All right, next up we have for approval common vitular license for Zomsa at 434 to 436 Massachusetts Avenue, Ravi Raj Kharkonar. That's the best I can do, but please say it correctly for me and introduce yourself, sir, and tell us about this request. Good evening, everyone. Good evening, Mr. Chairman and time manager. My name is Ravi Raj Kedekar. I live in Burlington. Previously I used to live in Arlington. And now we are in process to buy a restaurant, which is already closed, Taipei. So we have applied for the food license. That's the reason why we're here. Me and my friend partner for the license. And if you have any question about my experience running the kitchen and restaurants, I can answer. Excellent, thank you, sir. I'll turn to my colleagues for any questions or comments or motions. Mrs. Mohan. I've gone through your menu. I can make next to nothing that's on your menu. But I know you can. And my daughter-in-law is from Kathmandu, Nepal. So I'm familiar with the cuisine. I'm trying to master it. It's the spices, I know. So I'm very appreciative that you've chosen Arlington along with the thoroughfare, foods that you'll be offering. And my family's also in the restaurant business. So I know how difficult that is and I know how much of a commitment it is for you and your family and your staff. So I do appreciate that. So I'd like to move approval. If you don't know any law is from Kathmandu, she might know. We are in also all generations. My ancestors, we're all in food business. And in 1975, we started a restaurant called Sumai. So as you mentioned, she's from Kathmandu. She might know that. She's a Joshi, I don't know. I'm told that's a common name in Nepal, but maybe not. The headline for me will be that the momos are coming to Arlington. Yes. I'm a fan of that particular item. So back home, our restaurant is a momo special. Excellent. The Sumai is the name of the momo. It's a different kind of momo. Keeps getting better and better. Any further discussion from the board? Okay, who was the second on that? Mr. Diggins. Mr. Diggins, yes. All right, so we have a motion for approval of the common ritual of the license by Mrs. Mohan is seconded by Mr. Diggins. All in favor? Public comment. He's earning us keep tonight, folks. Do we have public comment in Zoom? Please raise your hand, or in the room please raise your hand as well. All right. Seeing none, all in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Good luck, sir. Thank you for choosing Arlington. Thank you very much, sir. And I look forward to those momos. Nobody in the room. Thank you. All right, let's see how I do in the third one. For approval of a food vendor license of Ulta Coffee Roasters 805 Mass Ave, Jason Montagno. Welcome, sir. Thank you very much. Good to see you. Introduce yourself and tell us about your business. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for the time. My name is Jason Montagno. I'm a resident here in Arlington as well. My wife and two kids and I live in Arlington Heights. I'm looking to follow a passion of mine and spend for a long time to open up a micro artisanal coffee roastery. And I've been looking in Arlington for quite some time to do that. And this location has presented itself coming available in October. And so I'm trying to move on that. We're gonna be a small roastery. It's just gonna square foot location at the moment. So we're looking to start small. We're gonna start with just whole bean coffee sales and then grow into our three-year plan, grow into coffee drinks as well. And so very excited about the opportunity, excited to help give back to Arlington, bring this to a place that has been a little bit overlooked and brings some life to that location and look to give back to Arlington. I would say that one more item that we're looking for and also a passion of ours is a reduction of plastics, single-use plastics in our environment. And so we're looking to utilize compostable materials in our shop. So through bags to drink, to drink holders, to everything, try to be zero waste as possible. So it's what we're looking to do. Terrific. Thank you, sir. I'll turn to the board for comments, motions. Mr. DeCorsi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll move approval and I wanna wish you the best of luck. Just one question from the information on your application you would mention that you're gonna seek to resell baked goods produced by local locations. And I'm just wondering, is that Arlington, not that it matters, but just out of curiosity, is it Arlington businesses that you would use? I mean, it's a great question. We certainly would like to do that for sure. And it's also part of our three-year plan. So I would say we're starting out just with the whole coffee beans and we'll grow towards selling baked goods. And certainly we would love to have it be Arlington goods if at all possible. Thank you. Mr. Dickens. I'll second it and you sealed it there with zero waste. So more power to you on that one. Thank you. Yeah, thanks. Mrs. Mohan. Very intrigued that I could see in your floor plan. You have a coffee roaster. Which I have no idea what that means. Could you give me like a three or four sentence of you going out and picking the plant and putting it in and waiting a certain amount of hours or days? What does that involve? Sure, so essentially we'll be initially importing coffee. So we'll go through an importer. There's one located in New Jersey that I've been developing a relationship with. And we'll get green coffee beans from them. Usually in a large burlap sack and that's usually about 150 pounds of coffee beans. I'll take that, break it up into small individual bins off the floor, of course. And then take about 12 kilos of those at a time into the roaster that I will then roast. A roast takes about, depending on what type of level you're going for, light, medium or dark. It's about 13 minutes to roast a 12 kilo batch of coffee beans. And then you take that out, you cool them in a bin and then package them for sale. So if I'm really dragging and running on fumes I can just stand right next to it. Thankfully it doesn't put off that much, but I don't know how much of that goes through. Caffeine goes through that. But yeah, that's how we'll find out. It's exciting. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have my only comment will be this sounds wonderful. And apparently we have not reached a saturation point for caffeine in Arlington, having recently approved a Tate coffee shop and now an additional roastery. So that's all to the good as far as I'm concerned. This is a public hearing. So do we have any comment from the room or on Zoom? Please raise your hand. Okay. Seeing none, a motion from Mr. DeCorsi. Seconded by Mr. Diggins for approval. All in favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Unanimous. Congratulations and good luck. When do you expect to open? So October is when we're gonna be able to move in and start build out and we're looking at probably January or February to open up fully. All right, good luck. Thank you so much. Thank you, board. Thank you. Okay, we have now reached citizens. Well, we see open forum now because it's open to all who live in Arlington except in unusual circumstances any matter presented for consideration of the board shall neither be acted on nor a decision made the night of the presentation in accordance with the policy under which the open forum was established. Should be noted there is a three minute time limit to present a concern or request. I'm gonna call it my trusty iPhone timer. Set that to three minutes. And do we have anybody in the room who's here to make a comment on any matter? Please come to the table and introduce yourself and where you live. Take your time. We'll start the timer till you get going. Thank you very much. I think we're speaking more than anything. Welcome. So my name is Corey Spaulding and I live in Framingham. And you know from our emails that I have to have a very difficult conversation here. I happen to be an accidental whistleblower. I inadvertently stumbled upon some fraud Framingham native schools. Started in 2010. My daughter was terribly abused to the point she's now fully disabled. She's required hospitalization. Anyways, as you know, I did find that the fraud was happening here in Arlington as well. January 2020, corresponded with Al Tosti and the school committee. And I re-sent my, I connected again with Al Tosti. He didn't respond. He's aware of the retaliation against my child. Christine Deschle, who is now the finance committee chair. So she, I'm continuing to be retaliated against them. She's abusing her power as the board of bar oversee issues. I've gone to, like, Laura Healy was the attorney general for seven years. She knew about it. Senator Warren. I mean, I've met with everybody. Six US attorneys acting in, you know, acting in assistant. And so I am asking that the matter be put on the agenda so that the public is aware what happens when you question the financial practices of a town. Arlington's great. I hate having to come here because you guys are all just so wonderful and everybody loves Arlington. Unfortunately, I am here for the children and I just want to make sure that no child ever goes through what my family has gone through and the retaliation. I mean, my house has been broken into and somebody hid knives around and the police refused to arrest them. You just have no idea how terrible, horrible, and my daughter now 20, never been allowed to return to public high school. It's a violation of federal. I just want the whole matter to be put on the agenda. Please invite the FinCon, invite the school committee, and let's just let the evidence be presented. And again, I really appreciate that. Okay, it's very difficult for me to talk about this. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right, let's now turn to Zoom. We have Catherine Farrell, who'd like to speak. Can bring her into Zoom. And we have an additional person you can bring into Zoom to have them ready too, actually. Oh, did Catherine disappear? Yeah, I tried to promote her as panelists and bumps. All right, perhaps hopefully she'll try to reconnect. We have, yeah, go ahead and bring in David T. All right, oh, yes. Oh, David, hi. And I'm not sure why it said David T. This is David Watson from 170 Franklin Street. Very good. Well, we'll take you under any less initial but we appreciate your past service to the town. Go ahead, sir. Just wanted to check, I have some comments about the Medford Street bike lane issue and wasn't sure whether now was the appropriate time or whether there would be an opportunity to comment during that discussion. I think now would be great. Great. Well, as I said, I live on Franklin Street and have been here for a bit over 15 years. I am on Medford Street almost daily, whether I'm walking, driving, or very frequently biking. And I'm very much in support of adding bike lanes. I wish it had happened already earlier in the project, but I understand the need to move through the process and get public input. The road is definitely wide enough for bike lanes. And as the town transportation planners report noted, all of the residences along that stretch of the road have driveways and there's also parking available on all the side streets. So I personally have experienced numerous instances as a bicyclist of cars driving too fast, passing me too closely and only two weeks ago was involved in a road rage incident where a motorist passed myself and a friend on bicycles too closely and then followed us into the neighborhood and confronted us in front of my house to continue the confrontation. Now that I was able to diffuse and the gentleman ended up apologizing to us for what he'd done, but I'm sorry to say that I don't believe that that is an infrequent occurrence on Medford Street. And so I would very much like to see bike safety improved there by the addition of bike lanes. Thanks very much. And Catherine Farrell has reappeared in Zoom. And so, get it Harry, good to go. And hold on a second Catherine. Ms. Marr, if you're able to make her, make the speaker larger in Zoom. Okay, go ahead Catherine. Good to see you. Okay, thanks for your patience. It said Zoom put it unexpectedly. Anyway, I appreciate you're letting me speak. I'm five streets, I'm speaking in favor also of the last speaker of making bike lanes on Medford Street. And I live on Park Street at five parallel streets away. And about eight times a week I cross Medford Street on my way to run in the Arlington Cemetery. And I have to say that the cars go quickly. And I think that the bike lanes will really improve the safety for the bicyclists will not be any problem with the Medford Street residents. I was part of that parking study that was done by John Alessi's predecessor where we go out and for four hours, it was in October of 2022 and for four hours you walk, once an hour you walk the street. And the longest I saw one car there was for three hours. So I don't think we're gonna create an impediment to people who need to park. And then on behalf of East Arlington, or everywhere Arlington livable streets we submitted something in writing to you. And one of the things I'd like to note is that we took a picture two Saturdays ago and you can see in the picture that a bicyclist to safely navigate Medford Street when there's a car there, they have to go into the traffic lane and you saw that picture. And I think that by doing this you're gonna add a great improvement to Arlington and you're also gonna help us on completing the bike lanes that we want for complete streets and so forth. Anyway, thank you very much for letting me speak. Thank you, Ms. Ferrell. Good to see you. And we have Krista Kelleher and Charles Deverglu who'd also like to comment from Zoom. And is anybody in the room? And yeah, we have some people who can come in to Zoom. So I tell you what, let's go ahead and switch to the Zoom just to switch to the room from the Zoom and bring in one of the gentlemen here who'd like to address the board. We'll get to everybody. So now your time is coming on the do not enter in Lake Street. That'd be fine, yeah. Yeah, good. Introduce yourself, sir. Good afternoon, select board. My name is Derek Straub. I live on Dorothy Road. I've been Arlington resident for about 10 years, work for MIT as an engineer for Lincoln Laboratory. Recently, the police department has been enforcing the do not enter signs off of Lake Street. They've been there for all 10 years that I've lived here. Residents routinely ignore those signs and go into their homes that are a street way. Dorothy Road is obviously off that area in between Lake, Route 2 and the bike path. That is the only way I can access my house. So when I'm coming home during rush hour traffic, you can easily have up to 15 minutes added to my commute to get there, not to mention if we're enforcing this and enforcing residents of that area to go on to Lake Ave and not come off of it, that adds more traffic. And I think the three things I wanna urge the select board to think about when this topic comes up is safety, environmental, and also the inconvenience and inefficiency to the town. So safety reasons, getting vehicles, whether they're fire trucks, you name it, to an emergency if there happens to be one, and Lake Street is gridlocked, that's not good. Lake Street that's nearest point is 28 feet wide. 28 feet wide is not wide enough when you have two lanes of bumper to bumper traffic, they can't go anywhere, you can't get a fire truck through. So that's one thing to think about. So we're adding more people. There's about 450 households in that triangle space. And if we add that new development in the New York lands, that adds another 136 households. Altogether, that's about over a thousand vehicles that would be going in there and not being on Lake Street traffic. But instead with the enforcement policy we have today, that's adding another thousand vehicles to that rush hour traffic. So safety is the first thing getting vehicles through, especially emergency vehicles. Secondly, environmental, the time idling, again, up to 15 minutes to go to the, to Birch Street to eventually turn right and get into my neighborhood. That idling for about 1,000 cars adds about 2.5 tons of carbon dioxide, a day, in addition to the people who are already sitting there, else wise. So obviously we don't want that in our town of Arlington, no one does. And lastly, again, it's not just the inconvenience to the people who live in that development, my neighborhood. It's also the people who don't live there, but have to use Lake Street to get elsewhere in Arlington. So those are the three points I just wanted to add. There's a comment, I think a correspondence that's coming up on the agenda. I just wanted to add some numbers. I'm an engineer, so that's kind of how I relate. But I think there are some easy solutions to this. Other towns have, do not enter signs that say accept residents. Right now they're policing it, they're asking for your license and registration. They quickly see what street you live on and say, hey, you're a resident, that's fine, pass, come by. I think they've been doing it like every day for the past however many weeks now. That's a lot of police details and they actually had three or four cruises at a time. But I think if we did this once a month, we enforced it. I think you'd cut down on the people cutting through because obviously no one wants that. But I think at the same time, you'd be able to let the residents off the street and relieve the traffic off of Lake Street. Thank you. Thank you. There's three minutes on exactly that. That must have been well rehearsed. Thank you. And let's go back to Joe. You want to make a comment? Sure. Welcome, sir. Yeah, introduce yourself. Good evening. I'd like to remember, thank you for the opportunity to speak. Joe Barr, Park Street in East Arlington, town meeting member from precinct five. I'm here as you might have guessed to support the proposal for bike lanes on Medford Street. Also just for what it's worth, mention my prior employment as the former commissioner of transportation in Cambridge. And I'm not going to speak from that perspective as much as from the perspective of my child who you all had the opportunity to meet a little while ago in the context of our so-called survey, one of their best friends, actually the son of the one of the people who's in line to comment next, lives on Medford Street. And so we often find ourselves traveling there for that reason, by car, by bike, walking. As hard as it may be to believe I also run on Medford Street. But the point I wanted to make is just that I've seen it from a lot of different perspectives and I think parking a bike lanes on the street would be extremely valuable in terms of safety and mobility, but also parking on that street is mildly terrifying. And I actually think from a sort of safety perspective, not allowing parking on Medford Street, even though I recognize that there may be some inconvenience to residents is actually beneficial from a safety perspective because when you, as I have occasionally done and then thought better of in more recent years park there or stop there, you are constantly worried that you're gonna get rear-ended by the trucks and buses unless we forget. This is really the major truck route to the town unfortunately due to the truck restrictions on other roads and particularly for hazardous materials. And so there are a lot of trucks and a lot of trucks carrying not very fun things as those of you who may recall the oil spill from several years ago will remember. So I think this is, the memo from staff speaks for itself I think in terms of the benefits and in terms of the response from residents but I just wanted to add my voice saying that I think this will be a safety improvement not just for cyclists but really for all users of the street and I highly encourage this select board to move forward with this proposal. So thank you very much. Have a good night. Good to see you again. Are there any other members, are there anybody in Zoom who was just to do public comment and this should be for any of the future agenda items including Medford Street bike lanes. So we have Charles coming in. Oh, Christa Kelleher is in. So let's go to Christa. Good evening Miss Kelleher. Hi everyone. Thanks so much for offering time for comment. I wanted to be there in person but I really am thankful to have the opportunity to be on remote mode of communication this evening. So my name is Christa Kelleher. I'm at 153 Medford Street in Arlington. I'm a town meeting member from precinct five. I fully support the proposed consolidation of on street parking to one side of Medford Street for bike safety improvements. So as a resident of Medford Street for nearly 20 years, I have seen Medford Street used for parking in very limited ways. And I actually do encourage people who are visiting us not to park on Medford Street because it feels dangerous for a parking situation and it's even more dangerous, I think sometimes to bike on it. So my younger son, I think quite accurately noted earlier today that hardly anybody parks on Medford Street and that most parking is limited to postal service trucks and delivery vehicles. Providing space for bike lanes is absolutely necessary to ensure the safety of all bicyclists, including what seems to me to be a growing number of parents biking with children, younger children around our neighborhood and children biking to school. I think it's a great development but I think we need to be very careful in how we promote or ensure that there's bike safety for everyone, children and adults. As the parent of a 16-year-old and of a 12-year-old, I'm consistently, I'm always concerned about my kids' safety as they bike on Medford Street. I've actually asked my 12-year-old to stay on the sidewalk when riding his bike, even though I know this is expressly prohibited by our town bylaws. The proposed parking modifications provide a critical opportunity, I think, to move forward with ensuring bike safety on a well-traveled street in Arlington and I hope you will move positive action in this case. And I thank you very much for considering my remarks tonight. Thank you very much, Ms. Killeher. And do we have anybody else in Zoom or in the room who'd like to comment and sit and open forum tonight? We've had a hand raised by Charles D'Vergilio a couple of times. So, give him a couple of minutes there. Yes? I don't know what he did ask earlier, so maybe I'll just promote him to see. Yeah, go ahead and see if that works, yeah. Thank you, Ms. Maher. Moment to bring Charles into speaker mode. And Charles, if you would like to comment, you can unmute yourself and turn your camera on this time. Good evening, sir. And you're still coming. Thank you all very much. My name is Charles D'Vergilio. I own Alton Street Boxing and Fitness in Genre and Tron Marshall Arts. We're at the corner of Alton and Broadway in Arlington Plaza. At this time, there's five parking spots right in front of our school taken up by the parklet. And they're not being used and it does impact our commerce. I was wondering if there was any way that we could either relocate the parklet in front of Fusion Tate or and or minimize the number of benches and parking spots that are absorbed by this parklet. It's really all I had at this time. Thank you. Thank you very much, sir. In part for our open forum policy, we won't comment on that, but I think the commentator has taken a note to do with the absorb that comment. And go from there. Thank you very much. All right. Any further participants in open forum tonight? Okay, then we'll conclude that portion of the agenda. Thank you to all who took the time to communicate their views to this elect board. Now we'll move on to traffic rules and orders and other business. And we have item 17, the Medford Street Bicycle Lanes. Time for a revisit from Mr. Alessi. Welcome back to the hot seat, sir. Okay, good evening. Good evening. John Alessi, Senior Transportation Planner for the Department of Planning and Community Development. Thank you, select board members, for giving me the opportunity to speak for you this evening. I have a PowerPoint presentation prepared, so just one moment. Yeah. So my request to the select board is to approve the removal of on-street parking on Medford Street to accommodate the installation of bicycle lanes from Warren Street Domestic Valley Parkway. Next slide, please. So you can see on this map proposed bike lanes on Medford Street in green, which is approximately a third of a mile. The project will connect directly to the bike lanes implemented as part of the nearly complete Chestnut Street project outlined in orange to the left. The bike lanes will also tie directly into the future of Mystic River Path Connection to the Minimad Bikeway in blue to the right. If implemented, Chestnut Street and Medford Street will be a half mile corridor of bike lanes that provide increased mobility for our residents who would like to bike while narrowing the roadway to calm traffic and increase safety for all roadway users. Next slide. So the purpose of installing these bike lanes is because Medford Street is identified in multiple planning documents as a priority for bike lanes and installing them aligns with other town projects that I've mentioned. Medford Street is identified in the bike facility design guides lane sharing network passed by the select board in 2015 and connect Arlington's priority bike lane network passed by the select board in 2021. This project will help build out a townwide network of safer, more comfortable, convenient bike facilities to encourage bicyclists of varying levels of experience and comfort to move around reducing the need or preference to drive. Narrowing the roadway will also make drivers less comfortable to speed on this corridor creating safety benefits for drivers, pedestrians, transit users and bicyclists. All of these goals outlined are in the town's planning documents. Next slide, please. So for background, Medford Street was repaved in summer 2022 and currently has a double yellow line. Curbside use is allocated for parking and bus stops though parking regulations are currently unmarked. It is designated as state route 60 and also a trucking route between route two and 993 and the MBTA bus routes 1895 also use this corridor. So to get an idea of what modes travel along Medford Street, DPCD, Department of Planning and Community Development analyze traffic counts conducted as part of the Chestnut Street Safety Project. So an outside contractor precision data industries collected 24 hour counts for all travel modes between Thursday, May 12th and Saturday, May 14th. So daily vehicle traffic volumes range from 14,700 and 16,500 per day. Over the course of the three days a total of 613 bicyclists traveled along Chestnut Street and most likely Medford Street as well, averaging about 200 riders per day. That's a very high number of bicyclists traveling along a corridor without bike lanes, especially early in the biking season and on a heavily traffic roadway. This indicates that there is the demand for bicycle lanes here, the potential to induce further use and therefore the need to create safer facilities for riders of all ages and abilities. Next slide. Medford Street bike lanes will also tie directly into the Chestnut Street Safety Project. I've included an excerpt from the Pave and Marking Plan here for reference. If bike lanes are approved for Medford Street and Green to the right, this will create a half mile corridor with safe connected lanes for the 613 bicyclists recorded traveling along this corridor over those three days in May and for many future riders too. Next slide please. DPCD conducted a parking study in September 2022 before my time in the town on a Wednesday from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. and then 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. On a Thursday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and a Sunday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. This reflects when Arlington Catholic High School and the St. Agnes School are in session during the school week, a Wednesday when the farmer's market is open and a Sunday when church services take place. Data was collected by walking the corridor during hourly increments to record use and turnover. The parking study revealed very low parking use. The greatest number of cars parked during one observation period was six total. That is less than 10% of the total number of potential parking spaces estimated to be at 77 using industry standards. DPCD determined that the residential nature of this area, off street parking options, higher traffic volumes and heavy trucking and buses help explain the low parking use, thus suggesting that curb space can be repurposed to prioritize bicycle mobility, safety and connectivity in line with the goals of the Connect Arlington plan and others. Next slide. DPCD also released a survey in September, 2022 to understand residents thoughts on the project. A postcard was sent directly to project of butters on Medford Street and the survey was distributed through town email notice and committees. It garnered 549 responses, including 59 from Medford Street residents. There was a majority support for bike lanes along the corridor both among Arlington residents and project slash neighborhood of butters who filled out the surveys open into questions. Some of butters noted that they park on Medford Street frequently, but parking data and anecdotal observations revealed lower parking activity than was claimed. I'll also note that all residences appear to have off street parking and have direct access to eight side streets, meaning that there are options for visitors to park away from the busier Medford Street. If approved, DPCD will contract with Stan Tech to develop pavement marking plans that incorporate bike lanes from Warren Street to Mystic Valley Parkway. An example bike lane is included to the right. We will retain parking spaces if roadway width allows like near the Warren Street intersection and at Mount Pleasant Cemetery. We will also integrate all MBT bus stops into the design and once finalized, we will coordinate with DBW to install. We hope to complete this work by the fall if approved by the board. Slide. Again, my request before the select board this evening is to approve the removal of on street parking on Medford Street to accommodate the installation of bike lanes from Warren Street to Mystic Valley Parkway. This will bring the town and its residents one step closer to achieving the vision it has set out in multiple planning projects, especially Connect Arlington. Since parking use is so low on this heavily trafficked corridor, this is a unique opportunity to implement traffic calming and support people who would like to safely bike in Arlington, including the 613 riders I previously mentioned traveling along the corridor over that three day period. Thank you for considering this request and I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you, sir. Just before we go to the board, any comments from the town manager? If I could, I just wanted to thank John for his thorough and detailed presentation but also for picking up where his predecessor left off. As I know you didn't start this project but I appreciate you taking it on and trying to see it through. So thank you. Thank you. Was that you, Mr. Hird? Thank you for some approval. Then, I apologize that I wasn't able to get back to you about me, the pre-presentation. I was away last week and had some crazy weeks at work. You know, we've had a few of these projects in the past couple of years and when it comes to parking, for me it always becomes cost-benefit analysis. What are you getting and what are we losing? And I'm always much more sensitive to parking in business districts or adjacent businesses because that's critical parking for the use of those areas. I've never, I mean, we've had conversations with people about on-street parking in front of the house and a number of forums. I'm not of the opinion that anyone's entitled to park it in front of their house. It's public property, unless it's private way, but that's a whole different story. So, and there are just streets in town where on-street parking just doesn't seem appropriate like Lake Street. If you saw cars parked on Lake Street, you'd say that's a safety issue. I think Medford Street is certainly one of those streets where if there were a lot of cars, that would be concerning too because that would create even more safety issues, but the parking study showed that there's not a lot of utilization. That's not surprising given the topography of the street and the fact that all the houses, it's all residences and they all have off-street parking. So I think the risk or the loss is relatively low if not an improvement and the gain of the bike safety is certainly significant here for all the cyclists that use this stretch of Violington. I know Connect Violington has been on a lot of people's mind for years as we kind of piece the town together and this is a very important piece to connect a couple of critical roadways. So I'm happy to support it. I think it moves us forward and is certainly going to create a much safer area for cyclists and motorists and pedestrians and anyone that use that area. So Mr. Mrs. Mohan? Excuse me, I'd like to second Mr. Herb's motion and also thank Mr. Lessie as the town manager pointed out. Mr. Feeney, you certainly jumped into spearheading projects from the beginning to some that have already started and moving on. I almost think we would be negligent in our duties if we didn't approve this plan before us, especially with the Mystic River bike path plans that will be kicking off in the fall. I believe, I was wondering if I could, Mr. Chair, if I could ask Mr. Lessie, four to six, seven sentences. I think it's about a million dollar airlock. Once we have these bike lanes, if you could just give us a little bit of brief description on that project, where it is, is it just going out to bid for the plans or is it going to go out to be built? Sure, so thank you. Mrs. Mohan? We actually, our department has a meeting with the Department of Conservation and Recreation tomorrow to discuss the one million dollar earmark we've received. So we will be receiving that and the town plans on coordinating with DCR in order to design the project. So right now we're in the design stage, we don't know what the outlook is for construction, but that project will be starting relatively soon. And based on the feasibility that was completed last year, the scope of work will be beginning at the Miniman Crossing on Mill Street, continuing along Summer Street and then at that point connecting to the Mystic Valley Parkway, which is DCR owned property and it will involve the redesign of the Medford Street Rotary, also on the other side with Medford as well, and down to, I forget the limit of that, but it will involve that entire scope of work. It will be an 11 foot separated shared use path similar to the Miniman that will expand the region's shared use path network and create more opportunities for recreation and transportation. And if I could just be indulged just a teeny, teeny bit. Part of my new business, I can sort of take care now, but I'll also speak about this under new business. Since you are meeting with DCR tomorrow, if you could speak with the town manager and if appropriate, if not appropriate, well, that's fine, but if you could just mention to DCR, their Greenway Trail, which is a pedestrian, bicyclist, et cetera trail. This most recent storm in previous storms, CSOs have flooded that. And we had some residents and town meeting members down there, Kristen Anderson, David Stoff. And you could see in the trees, they use toilet paper, they use feminine personal hygiene, as well as going through that puddle, which is sewage, which you can get really, really sick from that. When DCR initially proposed that, they indicated that they would be putting signage up to, because if you go on the Arlington List Facebook page, you can see people going through with strollers, with babies in it. You can see people on bicycles just swishing through this and it's excrement, sewage, and I don't think they're aware of that. So I'm not saying that's necessarily the town's responsibility. If you could, after this meeting, I have a conversation with Mr. Feeney, maybe it's not appropriate to bring that up tomorrow, because this is an important project and it doesn't have anything to do with it. But since you were here, and I'll bring it up again under new business, and I will say the town of Arlington is probably the least culpable in terms of this CSO situation. It's really going EPA and other routes, which I'm going to go. So I'm not asking you to raise that topic tomorrow. If you could just have a talk and I have a tentative time slot for a phone call with the town manager tomorrow. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate it. Oh, Mr. Whitmer. So, well, sure, sure. No surprise where I am on this. So, and I'm so happy, being on that we have a motion a second already in place. So I think Mr. Amstitz did an amazing study. I mean, as I read it to me, it's like there's some really nice document, nice footnotes and everything. And I did notice me in the section on pedestrian safety and crossings. It seems like we can do more. And I know that's not your ask tonight, but I'd like to pursue some of these additional factors, like the cross blocks. And so the question that I will bring up to the town manager when we have our first check-in eventually is like, how can we move forward with these, is it something that needs to come to select board and then to attack or can we just kind of move forward with some of them here now? Well, excuse me. Whether we can just move forward with the recommendations here, I mean, through you. So we'll take that up. And also I'll look into what happened in 2018 with the recommendation that was made by TAC and apparently came to select board. It's before my time, but I'm certainly happy to look into that. So, so great work being on. Thank you. And that's it, thank you. Thank you, Mr. DeCorsi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you, Mr. Alessio, for the presentation and I'm gonna support this along with my colleagues as well. But just a question for clarification. You had mentioned the first block, you mentioned the Warren Street intersection. I believe that first block to Louis Ave if you're going towards Medford with a road widens, you had mentioned your presentation and when you and I discussed last week, is that still something that you may be looking into because the road widens either attempting to keep parking there or if it's feasible or I'm just wondering if you can elaborate a little bit on what you're thinking for that first block. Sure, so I believe that the roadway with there is wide enough probably to accommodate both a bicycle lane, a travel lane and parking. I cannot say for sure I would have to work with a contract or consultant that would be contract with STAN Tech to determine if it's feasible there because if there is roadway width available, we should use it somehow and if we can preserve parking, I think it's completely feasible there. Okay, that's really the only block that as I was looking at it as we discussed. So subject to that type of investigation and studying clearly we wanna do what's safe since I spoke to you I did speak to some residents on Medford Street and they had confirmed that the little usage in front of their homes but the other thing they did comment on as you did is a number of side streets that are available in addition to the driveway. So I appreciate the work that you've done on this and the additional investigation that may take place and as I said, happy to support it. Thank you, Mr. Corsi and I'll add my voice of support as well. I did a little field work yesterday. I took my trusty e-bike to Medford Street and gave it a tour and that was a Sunday with a little traffic and even then I really would have been very glad to be in a bike lane because of the traffic coming through and the width of that. So in addition, as a cyclist, I certainly appreciate this addition to our cycling infrastructure but I think just for as other speakers have noted including Mr. Barr that narrowing that roadway and using yourself so that it can really benefit safety for everybody including pedestrians by just the psychological effect that we have in that. So I think it's a win all around. I'm delighted that my board colleagues are cognizant of the Connect Arlington plan that we did adopt this board two years ago and I think this is a tremendous addition to that and will be an investment in the future for exciting connections that are happening and it's gonna be in place. Any further discussion? Okay, so we have a motion to approve by Mr. Herd and seconded by Mrs. Mahan. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Five-zero approval. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Wilson. Good to see you. Thanks for coming. Nice to see you too. All right, that brings us to items 18 and really 18 and 19 are very closely related. Let me just get to this point in my notes and I will do some explanation of this and kind of report to the board of my research and the options here. So we have in front of, we do have in our materials a memo from Town Council that will provide general considerations and motions but what we need to do is vote on a date to call a special town meeting on a specific date and of course then for opening and closing the special town meeting warrant. So the context of this for the benefit of the public and also my colleagues, although they're certainly aware of this, is there are a couple of things we need to do in the fall for a special town meeting. One of them and the biggest one of them is to take up the proposed changes to zoning that would bring Arlington in compliance with the MBTA community's requirements in state law. At the same time, compliance with that also would qualify Arlington to keep its place as one of the 10 communities that are on the list to participate in a state program, a state demonstration pilot that will allow up to 10 communities to restrict or ban fossil fuel connections in certain new construction or major renovations. So at this town meeting, there's been a long months long, almost a year long process by led by the planning department and some very hardworking community volunteers in the working group to develop a proposal to hand off to the Arlington Redevelopment Board and that handoff is happening very soon. And Redevelopment Board will bring in zoning, our bylaw requirements or recommendations to town meeting. So we'll do that in the fall. We also have a zoning bylaw coming up by the way for the fossil fuel restriction itself and that's being led by the town manager and his team, particularly Ms. Fox for our assistant ability manager. In addition to those items and I guess just further explain that these things are all connected, but to set the stage, the town manager and I have consulted and I've consulted with the ED, Ms. Ricker, the head of planning, the town clerk, the moderator. And it really looks like we are looking at it between at least four nights if we do three hour nights and up to six for special town meeting. There's a lot and the one thing I didn't mention is that in addition to the zoning bylaws for MBT communities, we have nine additional zoning items that are being carried over from the spring. You may remember that the previous town manager requested that those be deferred to the fall so that we could have a more streamlined spring town meeting. So those are business zoning requirements that the ARB chair and planning department feel are important to take care of this year to keep the planning process moving. So we also have the approval of collective bargaining for the police patrolmen's. We have a couple of financial articles, a contingent appropriations vote for the override. If that passes, there'll be some money to appropriate. There might be one or two other administrative items. Mr. Tomanger, am I missing anything just to enumerate what we've got in front of us? I think the only other consideration that we had, though it hasn't been determined if it would be necessary this fall, would be a consideration to establish a new revolving account that would be authorized to accept money from state and federal energy programs that's becoming available so that we can then receive it and put it back towards the projects that are seeing those installations and initiatives or feed it forward to future energy related projects. And this is due to both the availability of ARPA funds as well as inflation reduction act programs. So that's a consideration that we're talking about. When we may project to be receiving those funds and if it would be necessary to seek authorization this fall, but it's still yet to be determined, but on the list. Yeah. So I think considering all of that, I've spoken with the ARB chair this weekend. I think four nights minimum is a pretty good bet. I think it's fairly likely we could see five and possible that we could see six. So that's kind of the context for the decisions about when we were to start top meeting. The other contingencies that I'd like to make the board aware of and make the public aware of is that the MBTA communities in the fossil fuel pilot participation eligibility are linked and they're linked specifically by the state. So if the eligibility to, we stay in the pilot if we are able to adopt compliant MBTA communities zoning. So that's what the state decided to do. So they're functionally one in the same. And we need to be recognized by the state and validated as compliant no later than February 11th in order to keep our place in line to participate in the fossil fuel free pilot program. So what happens between here and now and there with respect to these programs, the fossil fuel bylaws well underway. I think we're not too worried about that. That'll be before town meeting. And it's an update to a bylaw that town meeting approved two or three years ago that wasn't adopted because there was no state provision so it wasn't approved by the attorney general. But the planning department is planning to submit a draft proposal for MBTA communities to the state for pre-review in the next week or two. That will give the state some time to start looking at the proposal, give them some time to give feedback to the redevelopment board. They're planning to have their warrant article hearings starting September the 11th, so two or three hearings, nights of hearings in the middle of September. So the idea is that the pre-review process will give them some feedback and really get the state review on this started very early. So that we'll have a really good idea of how close we are to compliance and what we would need to do if we're not there to get there. The ARB, the redevelopment board, then make changes and tweaks to that in which case the hope would be to have enough time after that to get some more feedback from the state before we take this to town meeting. And so in recognition of that, the redevelopment board chair and the planning department head director are asking the select board that they think that October 23rd would be a good earliest date to take up MBTA communities. However, everyone I've talked to has no objection if we were to start town meeting earlier than that and start working on other things like the other zoning articles or some of these non-zoning pieces. So the timing from that, then once town meeting, if town meeting does pass the zoning articles that would create a district for MBTA communities, then those go to the state for formal approval and feedback. I think it's kind of obvious, I'll state the obvious that the sooner that the town meeting finishes those changes, the more time there is for the state to review it and the more time potentially, if the state says this isn't quite work, if the select board would wanna go back and call another special town meeting to fix it, that option would be on the table, whatever appetite there would be for that. The later that we go, of course, the shorter the window for the state review process to happen. So working with all the players, and I've also met with the ACMI, the Jeff Monroe, and the people who run the electronic voting and trying to get everyone's schedules together, I have a couple of scenarios to propose to the board for discussion and have lots of room for questions. And Attorney Cunningham is prepared to kind of go into more detail in a moment about the state approvals of what we do and what we don't know about that. But I'll start with the dates and if you have a calendar in front of you in your packet, it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to take a look. So because of the holiday on October the 9th and because of commitments of Town Hall being reserved for the Friday the 13th, 14th, and 15th, the earliest availability that I think that we have a consensus is that we could start potentially on the 16th, but it would probably be better to start in the 17th and that is because Town Hall will not be available for setup until Sunday night, first thing Monday morning and the technical setup for the voting and for ACMI really needs a full day before then plus to establish the connections and with all the voting with the satellite room and then another day into that. It's possible that that first day of setup could happen the week before that would require setting everything up, testing it, unplugging everything and coming back. I talked to the moderator this afternoon and his view is that if that's the board wants to do we can work with that. He would feel better about not having to unplug the equipment and maybe be a little nontraditional and perhaps start, if we choose October we could start town meeting on the 17th, perhaps invite town meeting too to reconvene on that Thursday and then if we wanted to go back to a Monday, Wednesday routine there'd be no reason we couldn't. If we did six nights we would end on November 1st. So that's kind of that timeline starting the 16th or perhaps the 17th and going until we finish. November 1st is six days before the town election for the proposition two and a half override. And I would say from just talking with folks the advantages of that of October it does allow the maximum time for state approval and feedback for the zoning. I don't know what's gonna be more popular with town meeting members, October versus November but there'll be some effect there. And by the way the clerk is attending tonight so if you have any questions specifically for the clerk about how this would affect the town elections she is available and happy to be brought in for discussion. But in general she said to me October would be a little harder than doing it after the election but it's possible. I think the closer we get to the election the more effect that could have. The moderator felt like again he's happy to work with either on October or November cycle. His concern I think very properly so is the quality of participation in town meeting. So would there be people, override will be, will probably, definitely as a yes campaign it may very well have an active opposition campaign. People working on that will they be less inclined to come to town meeting if the town meeting member is the closer it gets to the election. I think that's an unknown that we don't know. It's a focus of attention question. So that's October. If we were to another option I think that's before us. Can I ask one question? Oh please, I'm sorry. I'm just barely one. No, no, no, no, no. I know you're seeing the week of the ninth. We could do it but we'd have to plug in unplug. I think that's just too burdensome. So then the following week of the 16th possibly doing a Tuesday or Thursday or just thinking of people that say Monday, Wednesday it's always been Monday, Wednesday, Tuesday, Thursday have something else. Are we bound, could we perhaps start on Wednesday the 18th and then go, just not asking an answer on that but I'm assuming if we can do a Tuesday, Thursday perhaps we could do start on the 18th. That's a Wednesday and then Monday, Wednesday, Monday, Wednesday. That gives us five if we go four to six. So I just wanted to put that out there just because, but it is a special and then my other question would be if either the Chair and or Attorney Cunningham could answer in their remarks. I think the answer is no. But just in light of the fact of using the memorandum we got from Attorney Hyman and Attorney Cunningham regarding the state certification and the November 12th date. Yeah. Sure the answer is no but if you could address and or Attorney Cunningham, can we do a special within the special that we take care of MBTA communities? For earlier terms. For fossil fuels. It's a very special town meeting right? I do want to address that. I think, yeah, that's good to have those. I'll just, I'll try to be quicker just to lay out the November option so we can kind of have both things in the table and then have a really robust discussion about the implications. Yes. I just want to ask two occupants just so you know. Oh yeah. When that item comes up we're just going to receive it. We're not going to talk about it. Yeah. So I don't want you. Oh thank you. Yes. I have a conversation about the town meeting. Are you sure you don't want to stay for this? You know. This is the. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you Mr. Hurt. Okay so alternatively if the board wanted to wait until after the election to make things easier for everybody working on the election either as clerk staff or you know as campaigning yes or no on the override. The earliest that we could start would be November 13th and that is just because of unavailability of our electronic voting vendor. Frankly they have two other town meetings that week that they're doing in Massachusetts. So I mean we could start without electronic voting. That would be the only option. But town hall would be available. But I think assuming we want electronic voting would be starting the 13th. You start counting out the days from there and obviously we run into Thanksgiving week very quickly. I'm guessing that there wouldn't be much appetite for meeting the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. But I don't know again and again that would be up to town meetings after I so speak. So you know then if you count that out then we're talking about coming back after Thanksgiving maybe taking a week off and finishing perhaps the end of November perhaps the first week of December. So pros of that would be that we know conflict with the election. Everybody would be more focused on just one thing. It would just shift the timeline for the work in MBD communities. But that may also have the moderator's view was again that could affect town meeting member attendance because people are less likely to come in Thanksgiving. We just, it's hard to predict. And I think the other risk with November is and this is where I'm gonna bring in Attorney Cunningham is less time for the different parts of the state to have to review the MBTA community's compliance. I think the big picture view I have from talking with various people including Attorney Cunningham and Ms. Fox today and the town manager is that it's probably a low risk that there'd be a problem but it's not, it's a non zero. So I'll leave this to Attorney Cunningham and Attorney Cunningham and the town manager if you wanna further elaborate on the implications there. Thank you Mr. Chair. I just wanna address what's in the memo and what you've already talked about. To remain eligible for the fossil fuel free demonstration project, the town needs to demonstrate compliance with the MBTA community's general law. What that means is a somewhat of an open question. Would it be compliance if we as a town pass the bylaw? Probably not. I think that's more likely than not. They wouldn't answer that question directly but I'd say it's unlikely that demonstrates compliance. So that means demonstrating compliance most likely means that it has to be not only passed by the special town meaning but then approved review and approved by the Attorney General's municipal law unit. They have 90 days to review and approve any zoning bylaw or any bylaw passed by municipality. So to really get that done, we need to have it to them prior to November 11th, 12th. It's likely that they expedited for us and perhaps get it back to us within 30 to 45 days but that's something that cannot be guaranteed. The only way to guarantee it is the 98 period and the special town meaning is scheduled for a period outside the 90 days so that we're safe. It's again, it's likely that the Attorney General will help us out, then they use that word that we'll do what we can. I think we've reached out to them and that's the information they gave us but again, that's not a guarantee. So there is some risk. Now, Mr. Tom Ender, Mr. Feeney, have any comments? Thank you, Attorney Cunningham. I think this really does boil down to what the appetite for risk is based on what I've heard and the fact that we have been very diligent about reaching out in advance to all of the state entities who would be involved in this process and letting them know where we are and how things are progressing. I very much so do believe they would work with us but I also understand, you know, it's a fairly complicated review and it's a fairly new review to them that we'd be putting forth. So again, I don't, you know, I agree that they would work with us and it wouldn't be likely a full 90 day period but beyond that, what an acceptable risk is, I think we'd all be really trying to guess that, you know, is it 30 days, 45 days, 60 days, 75 days? Like, you know, what is sufficient time for that process to play out and I'm not sure any of us have a very clear and firm grasp yet or other scenarios or experiences to point back to from other communities is exactly how quickly this may transpire. So, you know, to sum it up, it could be done more quickly than 90 days but I'm not sure we're in a position to say that, you know, perhaps 60 days is a safe number or not. Yeah, we just don't know. Do either of you have an, in response to Mrs. Mahan's question about an embedded special that, you know, would allow us to close out like a special for MBD communities and close that out and just get that more to the state more quickly. If I may, Mr. Chair. Please. I don't think there's anything that precludes that option. I would have to, I want to look at it more closely to provide a firm answer, but I think that that if, I think you mentioned that the 23rd of October was the date that Ms. Ricker looked at is the date that she'd probably be ready to go. Right, we're ready to start with MBD communities. Yeah. I don't think there's a preclusion to that but I'd want to check and confirm that, Mrs. Mahan. And I think, and would we, if we, I don't think, correct me if we're wrong, we would have to decide that now, like we could call the special for earlier and then in a subsequent meeting, you know, and maybe I'd have to call one in time. You know, we could, we could also declare a special in time for the warrants to be. That would be an option for the board, as long as that is permitted. Correct. That's permitted, okay, yeah. I think the other thing Ms. Mahan's question about October is the other limiting factor of starting much earlier is just the readiness for MBD communities, so. Mr. Dickinson, well, I had that question too, that we could embed them and then send it out, you know, once we're done with it. And so it would come in after, you know, the 90 day, you know, mats me, but well, or within that frame, but still it would give more time. And I'm thinking, you know, we are doing so much work with the state be that, I think if, just, I just don't think there'll be that much more to review, you know, and then we can get a yes or no pretty quickly. But when you said, if they don't accept it, we could then have another Tom meeting. Would the clock then start again when we finish the Tom meeting and then there'd be another 90 days? I mean, because I mean, what would, if we're, you understand what I'm getting at, is that really a possibility? Yeah, it's highly, highly hypothetical. Okay, fine, fine. So yeah, I think actually you raise it, you know, raise a point that the AG review is still what it is and, you know, they have 90 days if they want it, so. Yeah, yeah, I mean, and just think. I'm sure I think Tony Cunningham has a better answer probably. And thank you, Mr. Chair, Mr. Diggins. And hopefully some of those issues might be headed off by the, I think Mr. Rickers seeking pre-approval of the MBTA community's plan. And then I think, but I think the timing of her, is she's talked about the, you know, the warrant article hearings not being done in time. And she's looking at really the 23rd of October as the earliest that a special Tom meeting could address that particular, the MBTA community's bylaw. I don't think she's on a timeline that could, based on what I've been reported, she'd be able to deal with it prior to that. But you're right, it's something that hopefully the pre-approval process will help head off any rejection at 90 days or otherwise when the attorney general's office. Well, I'll just say, you know, doing it October just stresses me out. Just the thought of it stresses me out. And me a lot of times I have choices to make. Me and one of them, I breathe much more easily than the other one. And that's the one that I go with me, you know. And me not only is it me because of the election, me and I'm thinking about the clerk, me, but it's more so. It is prop two and a half, you know. And it isn't that the people, we won't participate in Tom meeting. It's more that we're gonna try and do it all. And I'm just, I'm a mess. Me, the day after Tom meeting, because I'm just exhausted, you know. And so I just kinda grind through me in the day after Tom meeting. And we're gonna wanna be doing things. Me and I think, I mean, prop two and a half is just the most important thing in coming up. Me, we need, we gotta have that done. I mean, to a communities act is important too, very important. Fossil fields down pilot is very important. But prop two and a half is paramount. And now I don't want us to be in a position where we regret it that we didn't do more because we were focused on other things. I mean, I think we can do, tell me, do focus on that, focus on prop two and a half. And then start Tom meeting. I think we're, it's a risk I'm willing to take, you know. And so, because the deal is that we're gonna, chances are we're gonna get MBT communities done, you know. And then it's really a matter of whether the town, AG is willing to work with us. Me and I know, I mean, they may have other things when they're played and they're gonna have holidays too, you know. But whether they can work with us in order to make the deadline that has been put in place by the state. Another thing I want to add too, is that we try to do precinct meetings, before town meeting, you know. And I think, if we do it earlier, that's going to pull that up in the schedule and make it harder to do that. But I think it'd be really good to do the precinct meetings because that would allow us to discuss MBT communities, you know. And depending on timing of the precinct meetings, also the override, you know. But just, I think, let's just make sure that we have that we put ourselves in a good position, you know, for the override. That's all. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Diggins. Mr. DeCorsi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I understand Mr. Diggins' concerns with timing in terms of what you do. But the way you laid it out, Mr. Chairman, I look at October as the preferable time for the special town meeting for a number of reasons. And I think if we do wait until November, we can't start before the 13th. Thanksgiving is really a Thanksgiving. We call it a day now. It's not really Thanksgiving Day. And so you really lose the Monday, too. You're going to lose a lot of town meeting members that week as well. And then you're really bumping up against a deadline of February 11th. So as I look at it, there are going to be hearings that are taking place in September. There's going to be feedback. It's not ideal. But for me, I think a mid-October special town meeting is preferable. And to Mrs. Mahon's point to this whole Tuesday, Thursday thing versus Monday, Wednesday, I mean, you know, I suppose we could start on the 18th and only go one day that week. And maybe that provides some incentive to town meeting that you basically have five dates. And that extra day may be the week of October 30th. So maybe you go an extra day that week to finish up. But it just seems to me fitting this in and getting the request for approval while there are concerns, October just seems to work better. As far as I see it. Yeah, I think, I mean, I hear all concerns. I think when in doubt, be early and give yourself time. So I think October sounds more preferable to me. I don't have strong feelings on it because starting September 6th, I'm busy every night until April. So it's only my schedule, wouldn't affect whether we do it in October or November, but I know it's different for different individuals and but just when it comes to deadlines, Murphy's law, you start as early as you can and you finish up as early as you can and you deal with any issues that come up in between. So I think I'm leaning more towards the October start. I'm still 98% at starting on Wednesday, October 18th with the November 11th deadline with the question of can we have an embedded special town meeting as well as I'm hoping by, well, we have the Truman's contract which needs to be voted by special town meeting and they've been three years in the town, also has been negotiating three years for that. Hopefully, hoping by then the ranking officers will also have that and then we'll have a clean sweep. So, but I do want to hear from the chair because if I, right now, sort of echoing Mr. D'Corsi and Mr. Herd's remarks, it's a special, it's the override on November 7th. It's Thanksgiving week, December, forget it and we have a light winter again, we're lucky but we may not, I'm still looking towards, but we'll wait and see if someone else makes a motion I'd be willing to make a motion but I'm looking around October 18th but I'd like to hear what the chair or anyone else has to say. Thank you, Mr. Mohan. My recommendation and my preference I should say is actually even though we're not used to doing a town meeting on any other night than Monday and Wednesday, the only time we're required to do that is the start of annual town meeting where the by-law say has to be on a Monday. I would feel better about having the potential for two nights that we can, which would be starting the 17th and maybe doing the 19th, which isn't to say town meeting could, if someone makes the motion to start bunching up meetings, we could just, town meeting could decide to come in on a Saturday. I mean, there's a lot of ways we could do this but I think, and one thing the moderator said to me in the clerk as well is that we could do town meeting two nights in a row one of these weeks. It allows a little bit less time to process a motion amendments and substitute motions and things like that. So having that space is helpful administratively but none of this is set in stone. Everyone I talked to said they would work with whatever we want to do. If I, I'm not going to make the motion because the chair of difficulty doesn't, I would move for the 17th. So we'd be aiming to be done in by me in November 1st. That would be the idea. So, yeah, all right. So, I'm not going to win this one and I'll probably vote, I'm not sure I'm going to vote. It doesn't really matter at this point but I will say that I just don't like rushing town meeting. I don't like town meeting feeling rushed. Now you can say that's going to cut both ways me. It'll cut if we're trying to be done before the election. It will cut that way because people just want to be done as early in the summer as possible. But, yeah, I'm exhausted just thinking about it. I mean, one thing that I have thought about going through this planning process is this is very much in the hands of town meeting. How they can determinate debate earlier or later. They can accept or reject the default motion about when to reconvene. I think that town meeting has a substantial degree of control over how compressed it ends up being and how much trust or not. And my looking at both of these scenarios, I do favor October. I could see it cutting either way in unpredictable ways in terms of the effect of the quality of town meeting. I kind of with Mr. Hurd on the if it's a deadline, let's air torts, getting it done sooner. But I appreciate, I think there's arguments to be made for November too. Good ones. That's a good last question. Did you get any feedback? Have any thoughts? If not, I'd say maybe September 11th in terms of the one day that we open and close. I think there was nobody had strong feelings that I think if we decide when we're gonna start town meeting, we work back from that for the warrant then. So I guess in my current, we also have to pick that date tonight. We should, yeah. And it's whether I know our next meeting September 11th, I think our meeting after that's the 20. We haven't said it yet. Oh, we haven't said it yet. Okay, so for opening and closing the warrant on the same day, do we wanna look at the week of September 11th? Do we wanna do it on September 11th? Do we wanna do it on Wednesday, September 13th? I'm thinking, or what you, the Chair would say or anyone else. Yeah, I'm turning it up. Go ahead and give me advice about timing issues with the warrant. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yeah, all those would be fine. I think those dates, you have to, as you know, you have to provide five days before opening the warrant, five days notice. And then you have to leave the warrant open for a minimum of one day. And then you have to have 14 days minimum before you have special time meeting. So those are the parameters. So a September 11th date, if you're looking at a October 17th special time meeting date, all of those would, if you looked at, you know, you said it right there at the round that timeframe, you'd probably be good. And I'll ask our board administrator, Ms. Marti, if there are anything you've liked about the mailing of the warrant and the operational ends of this that concern you with this commission? The earlier, the better. As soon as I have the date, I'll reach out to the printer and kind of see a timeline on his behalf. I would say, again, the sooner, the better. Yeah. So questions for colleagues. Do you all think that the way Tom meeting goes in terms of just the discussion, the issues in the nature of the liberation could have an effect on the mood of the town with respect to the override or is that something? Did you see the mood? The mood. I mean, yeah, or is that something we should just go, no, we can't think about that. That's just whatever it is, we just deal with it. I would say you're talking 252 town meeting members, most of which are pretty much involved and they'll stand on the override on November 7th. No disrespect, we won't count department heads, which is another 20 or 30. But in terms of the mood, I think we're talking 252 if everybody shows up. I think they'd appreciate the earlier versus bunching everything up, suspending or starting mid November going into December. Then I think we'd have a cranky town meeting and lower attendance than we would with the October. And to your question about the override of those 252 town meeting members, 75% of them are probably, I would anticipate, are going to be plugged into the override. And a majority of them have done these exclusions, overrides in the past, so we know what work needs to happen on those weeks and things like that. So it may be 20, 30 people that can't make phone calls for nights, but then I would say to them, find someone else to take your spot and make those phone calls. But, and we have the chair is one of the three, the triad, the trinity of the invest in Arlington, November 7th override. So are we a point to make a motion? I'm sorry. But my question is really geared more towards me, residents as opposed to town meeting members, me. So it seems like residents are kind of engaged on the intake communities issue. So I was just wondering, so that was the point of my question, not so much to the town meeting members. I agree with you on that one, so that's it. But I think we're ready to move on. Yeah, I mean, I've talked about this with different stakeholders and I think no one I've talked to has a strong opinion because it could go both ways. And I think you'd also ask if we do the override vote first, what effect does that have on these communities? And it's hard to tell, but I kind of agree with Mrs. Mohan that I think people, this crowd probably knows where they're at. So does anyone feel like making a motion? Mrs. Mohan. I would like to make a motion that the Arlington Select Board hereby call a special meeting on Tuesday, October 16th, 2023 at Arlington Town Hall. And further that the warrant for such meeting shall open at 8 a.m. on Monday, September 11th, 2023 and close the same day, Monday, September 11th, 2023 at 4 p.m. And Mrs. Mohan, did you intend to say Tuesday the 17th? I did. Yeah, I think we've got it. See, I get so many dates written. That was, so I meant to say. We have come to rely on Mrs. Mohan for the articulations. And I messed it up, Tuesday the 17th. Second. Any further discussion? Okay, on a motion by Mrs. Mohan, seconded by Mr. Herd. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? No. There's a 4-1 vote. All right. That takes care of it. And the chair will follow up with the manager and town council about the question. Yes, yeah, about the possibility of a better question. Anybody else's question? Yeah, I think that that will be kind of a tactical question with timing. That'll become more clear in the next few days. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to thank all of my colleagues for the very careful consideration and into the multiple town staff who have been helping me do this research and have worked really hard on this. So I think, once again, it's just a demonstration of the value that we get out of our professional staff in town is led by our department heads and the town manager. Okay, item 20, future select board meetings. So as was recently observed, we have one for September the 11th. And I also want to bring up the question for when we want to do the town manager's goal session. So I think I'll put that in the mix and I'll toss that particular question to Mr. Feeney because we've had some discussion today about that. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think my position on the future goal setting meeting is I think that any time mid to late September would work, still mapping out a transition period for bringing the new deputy town manager for operations, Christine Bonjuano on board. And it would be in my intention to hopefully bring both of the deputies with myself to that goal setting session so that we could all be on the same page from the beginning. Thank you, Mr. Towneager. So we've got Tuesday the 11th would, for our regular select board meeting, would the 25th work out for people? I think just now before. I'm sorry. It's not before. So it does not. Yeah, thank you. That's why we didn't think about it. Oh yeah, they have that on the calendar. I should look at my own materials. All right, so any recommendations for our second meeting in September? 27th. Looks good. Okay, so let's set that for the 27th. Thank you. I have this Justin Pierce's birthday, so. Well, that is a significant holiday for our former school committee members. I have Mike Shampa's birthday in October that pops up. I'm like, how did he get in there? I think it's safe to say that the most awkward coincidence of a birthday this year is on town at day, because the certain chair of the select board might be celebrating age 58 on that day. All right, let's see. What about October? So now we have a town meeting scheduled to consider. We have a holiday on the 9th, but if we went two weeks, what do you think, folks? 11th? Yeah, it works for me. I have attack meeting, but I'll just have to let it go. Yeah, but that's the only day I think it's gonna really work for me. 11th? Do you anticipate, in terms of warrant article hearings, the revolving fund that's a select board warrant article hearing, is there anything else? The patrolman's contract? That's Fincom, or is that joint Fincom select board, as well as are there any, how many warrant article hearings are we going to operate? Of course, it depends if there's just Fincom for the board department. So we don't do that, but revolving fund we do, right? And do we do revolving funds? No, I don't think so. We would for the fossil fuel free bylaw program, that's ours, correct, yeah. So that's the only one. So we have one, yeah, so we will have to be cognizant of that, though. Okay, I'll leave that to the chair. Yeah, exactly. And if I could too, if I, for scheduling the goals meeting, I want to check on my personal schedule for late September on that, but we can do that formally and I'll be in touch with everybody to get that schedule over the next few days. Who's the 18th? Work for folks now? Great, for the 18th, for the goals? For the goals, is that it? Of September? Yeah. I might be a way that we can, I'd say can I, I promise I will do it tomorrow, Mr. Chairman, that I will email you, my husband typically goes, has something. Yeah. That would make it difficult for me. Yeah, and then that might be a week in a way that, that way I'll know in the next few days, so. But I'll do that tomorrow, I promise. All right, so we've got, as Ms. Marr brings up today when we are with the settled meetings, we have the. I have 9.27 and a tentative of 10.11, is that correct? Yeah. And then we head into special town meetings, so I think we're going to be doing meetings, you know, our business before, yeah, before those to take us through October. Do we want to go any farther? I'm sorry, can you repeat that? Oh, I said so, you know, we can. Go back to like the. We can go back to, yeah, so on, after October the 11th, you know, we'll have, we'll need to do like one hour meetings before town meeting. Oh, I mean, yeah, correct, yeah. Do we want to schedule a regular one for the 23rd or? For in October? So we'd be in town meeting. We'll still be in town meeting, but yeah. I mean, we can always start earlier. Yeah, okay. Yeah, that makes sense. But that's up to obviously the board. Yeah, oh no, let's do that. Yeah, I'm just. All right. 10, 23. Yeah, yeah, just so those are on the calendar. You know, and if we have more to do, you know, we can do short meetings before that. Do we want to go any further in November or? If we could. Yeah, please. All right, so how's November 6th look? Well, that's right before election day, but be that as it may or what are we going to do after the election? I don't, whatever the point. I mean, I don't, we typically don't have a lot to do for. Okay, so six, eight. Yeah, okay. Look at the six, then what about the 20th? That is Thanksgiving week. I'll be here. Six and 20. Okay, six and 20. All right, that's good. We want to stop there. Mr. Chairman, do we want to notice a meeting on October 17th, like earlier that night or? Yeah, let's do that just in case we need it for an hour before. Does anyone want to go into December? We're going to stop where we're at. Maybe not December. What was that, Mr. Chairman? I'm fine with going into December, I'm fine. Okay, so what's the latest one on November, Mr. Miller? The last one we had was 1120. All right. Okay. 12-4-18. Yeah, how's that, the fourth and the 18th in December? If that works very well. All right, sounds good. And I can send out the schedule. Please do, yes, yes, thank you. Yes, short meeting on the 18th. That's usually just licensed. Yes, indeed, for tradition. Very good. Please note that in your, yeah. Short meeting, I'll write. Remind me. I will. So I keep it that way. All right. I think that concludes for each of those board meetings. We have item 21, correspondence received, concerns regarding to do not enter signs along Lake Street Wilson Avenue, Little John Street, Homestead Road by 50 Brown and Mary Street, and number 22, concerns regarding a sign into Ike Grafton Streets from Lonnie Scott at 12 Grafton Street. Turn to the board for comments and motions. I'll move motion received, but I'm going to suggest that we direct them to the town manager rather than sending them to TAC and then we can, we want a cover discussion about what is those attack afterwards. Okay. Second. Excuse me. Any further discussion, correspondence received? Motion from Mr. Diggins, seconded by Mrs. Mahon. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Aye. Nothing to vote. Board and staff announcements. All right. Ms. Maher. No board and staff announcements, thank you. Attorney Cunningham. No announcements, thank you. Mr. Feeney. Mr. Sheriff, the board with indulge, I would like to use the staff announcements to make a few staff announcements. Entirely appropriate, I'd say. So I first would want to recognize the recently retired Vinnie Kill Commons. He served in the engineering division for over 50 years, which is a tenure we just don't see and likely may not see for decades to come with our employees. He retired on July 28th, had a nice send off farm and he got the customary DPW street sign with his last name on it. It was a great celebration. I just wanted to take a moment to publicly thank Vinnie for his service. But also, again, if the board will indulge me, we need to take a few minutes to announce and welcome slash introduce some of the new hires we've made in the past few weeks. So we've hired Ashie Bayram in the treasurer's office as an assistant collector of excise. We've welcomed Eric Tai to the library as a library assistant. Lori Kenshaft, who many of you know is joining the planning department as an energy advocate in the Electrify Arlington campaign to help people move forward with heat pumps. Both Ellie Bartholomew and Ellen Contini have been promoted from different existing positions within the kid care program to become co-directors. Ellie will be on the operations side and Ellen will be on the curriculum side. And that's sort of the preschool but mainly the afterschool programs run through our recreation department. Pleased to report that Wolfgang Kierstein is joining engineering as a new civil engineer. We've been understaffed for some time so this is an important hire with keeping many of our roadway projects on track. Jamie Lambie has been hired as the Fox Children's Librarian. Tara Arsenault, who Attorney Cunningham knows is moving over from the Youth Counseling Center records cleric position to becoming the assistant claims coordinator in the legal department. Also, Lauren Healy was offered and accepted the position of office manager with the facilities department. Obviously a very critical position, serving both the town and the schools and she will be starting a little bit later this month. As of today, we have made an offer and it was accepted by Katie Luzé to serve as the town's next economic development coordinator. And finally, as I shared with the board offline that Christine Bonjournault has accepted the position as Arlington's next deputy town manager for operations. So thank you for that. I know that was a long list, you know. And you. And myself. That's a recent hire. Yeah, recent start date. So welcome to all these new employees to the organization. Just wanted their sort of names to be out there and let them know. We're thrilled that they're joining the team. Thank you, Mr. Feeney. I think that is a wonderful reminder of the richness we have in our staff. And that is really the bottom line, you know, for the services we delivered to residents. So thank you for taking the time. Mrs. Mohan. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Please note, I haven't had board and staff announcements for a while. And I want to thank the town manager for keeping a surprise of the new hires as well as Vinn's retirement. I did see on Facebook page for Arlington D.P. Arlington, Massachusetts, D.P.W. There's five to seven really good pictures of the party that Mr. Feeney and others and Mr. Radamaka had along with his green and white sign. So you can definitely take advantage and look at that. Two. Board announcement. The first one I talked about earlier about the L.Y.V.C.S.O. issue. I am going to have a conversation with the town manager tomorrow, recognizing that he's, you know, really new to this in the sense of being in the town manager role. But I do want to follow up that the EPA comment period is open right now regarding the CSO's one-summable and three or four Cambridge. And I had asked the previous, the previous town manager, Mr. Chapterling, and the previous town manager, Mr. Pooleur, if we were combining a team, which possibly could also include the D.P.W. director, to submit comments on behalf of the town of Arlington. I used to always do it, you know, 20, 25 years ago by myself and then Clarissa Roll, when she was on the board, she joined with me. But Cambridge, Summable, and Belmont have their team set and have been involved in the process with the EPA, with the MWRA around the CSO project. As I noted right now, the EPA comment period is open and I do know that, I can't even find it when I wrote it down, but Save the Owl Life and other neighborhood groups are submitting comments to the EPA regarding the CSO's. And one of them is, I want to say this right, she sent it to me, here it is. They are asking the town's assistance with anything that can be done regarding their request to the EPA that they're submitting regarding a real-time system with colored lights. It's similar to what they have at Boston's Potomac River when sewage goes into a pedestrian bikeway. The lights go off and there are signs that let people know. And if you go on to the Arlington lists or Kristen Anderson's Facebook page, she has live video of people at this past storm where previously when they were CSO discharges, somehow the town would get the notice out and we haven't been doing that. So we need to, perhaps Ms. Buongiorno can give us a little bit of advice on that. But further conversations regarding what the town is doing and are we prepared to submit comments? I know Attorney Hyman, town manager, Chapter Lane and then Pooler also said that we supposedly have outside council, environmental council that is also working on these comments because the variants in the MWRA, the EPA, and the CSO common period only comes up once every 10 years. So this is our shot. And I honestly, goodness, you can ask my poor colleagues who have had to listen to this. I've been talking about this for going on two years now. So I'm just concerned that I'd like to see what it is we're doing. And I will follow up with the town manager but I will say if the town manager or if my colleagues have any other ideas that the DCR Greenway, which is Boulevard Road, it's a pedestrian pathway, it's a bicyclist, it's a baby stroller, all that flooded with sewage, E. Coli, Gaga, as they say in Sicilian, and there's pitches of that. And this video that you could see, whether they're Allenton residents or not, you can see one gentleman with the baby and the stroller going through it and David Stoff was down there telling people, you're going through E. Coli, you could get very, very sick after this and nobody has any idea, you know. I mean, some of the adults I saw going through on bicycles reminded me when I was like 10, 11 years old when you'd see a big puddle so you'd get speed going so you can really go through that. But there's really no notice down there. And again, the town of Allenton has the least culpability but I think there should be something there. I think we should join in, save the L. Y. Brooks request to the EPA about similar to Petro McRiver having those flashing lights that would be an EPA TCR project that they would have to pay for that do go off but as well as signage but perhaps you could talk to the Board of Health, is there anything Allenton can do just in the interim to just say this area subject to sewage overflows because a lot of people don't know what CSOs are or something like that or health risk. And then the second piece of new business and if any of my colleagues have any ideas, please get them to Mr. Saphini. I've never seen an event at the res where and I did not know that we have a crowd capacity for the recreation department. I know one of the beer gardens that became an issue and I'm not expecting an answer tonight unless it's a quick one that you have but I was just curious and I'm thrilled that the beer gardens up at the Allenton Reservoir off of Lowell Street and the Heights are very, very successful but I know at one point there was an issue regarding attendees and I'm just wondering when there's a crowd maximum number, is that number of people or is that effect on the neighborhood because I got a sense from other people the one time where we sort of had to and I wasn't there so I don't know this firsthand. Is there any few sentences you give? People were saying to me it wasn't the number of people, it was the number of cars parking both sides on these small streets in the neighborhood, fire trucks, police trucks, I mean fire trucks emergency vehicles couldn't get through and that's what the closing was. Is that something you can answer real quickly or you wanna get back to us on that? If I could, I think what I would say is I'm not necessarily aware of what may have transpired out in the neighborhood but the limit and capacity on the number of people was being calculated and dictated by both swimming area and beach space so the formula that we were using was based on the actual asset itself and how many people could be reasonably contained within that area and still be appropriately monitored and supervised. Okay so if you could just look into, I probably had five or six neighbors who said the town stopped letting cars come in and come in our neighborhoods because it was unsafe because of the parking issue and emergency vehicles not being able to get through. If you could look into if that was an issue and if that also is a response to it or if neighbors were maybe just anecdotally surmising, oh that's why I got shut down because it's so crowded on my neighborhood street here you couldn't get an emergency vehicle through. Thank you Mr. Chairman. Thank you Mrs. Mohan. Mr. Hurd. Announcements. No announcements. Mr. Dacourcy. Thank you Mr. Chairman. Yeah I wanted to say I was very sad over the weekend to hear that Rick Fenton who was a member of the Council on Aging passed away last week. He was a six year member of the Council on Aging and then for the past three years he's been an associate member. He also was a volunteer financial consultant to the Council on Aging and he would take calls, meet people in person and just provided a lot of good answers and advice to people. We had named him in March of 2022 to the elderly and disabled tax relief committee and the last time I actually spoke to Rick was in June and he had been working on concerns with the tax deferral program in its relationship to the senior circuit breaker and talked to the town manager today and we're going to discuss that with our legislative delegation, those concerns that Rick had mentioned but I want to send condolences to his wife Tony and just recognize that the number of years and the number of hours that Rick had volunteered to the town is very valuable member to the Council on Aging. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Dickens. And thanks. And I will follow up on this at our next meeting but I am so happy to hear that. We have a couple of donated AEDs that were installed at Thornback Field and at Buckfield, so I know people when you really need an AED, you want it there. And so it's really, I was glad to read that. So I guess I could find out who made the donation but come on more, but I'm just happy that you installed them there and those two places. Thank you sir. My announcement is an invitation to the community and to my fellow board members to have an event to meet and greet and welcome our new town manager on September the 14th from four to five, 30 p.m. and the Town Hall Gardens. I announcement promises light refreshments. So I hope that many people can turn out and warmly welcome our new town manager at that time. And with that, I think we have conducted our business. I will indicate a motion to adjourn to adjourn. Second. So we have an motion to adjourn by Mr. Hurd and seconded by Mr. Diggins. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? We are adjourned.