 Please come on and sit down. We're going to get going. Joining us on the piano tonight for the Star Spangled Banner's Mr. Charles Gallagher. You all please rise. Thank you very much, Mr. Gallagher. We have any town meeting members who have yet to be sworn in? Anyone who's just shown up? Okay, I don't see any. Ms. Rowe? Yes, Mr. Moderator. It is moved if all the business of the meeting is set forth in the warrant for the annual town meeting is not disposed of at this session when the meeting adjourns and adjourns to Monday, May 16th, 2011 at 8 p.m. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? No. So moved. One of our town meeting members brought his daughter to see around. She was wondering where Daddy goes every Monday and Wednesday, so I'm going to say hi to her because she was about five. Hi, Megan. I told her I would. Any other announcements or resolutions? Any announcements or resolutions? Good, none. Any reports or committees to be submitted this evening? I wasn't moving right along. So we don't need Article 23. That brings us back to Article 21. Mr. Tosti was next on the list. Mr. Moderator, fellow town meeting members, I would like to move to amend the proposed vote under Article 21. By replacing in the last line the word last before Friday with third. Shall not be open or shall open not later than the first week of December, nor shall it be closed earlier than the third Friday of the following January. That's been seconded. You have it in writing? You gave it to me? I gave it to you. Okay. Okay. Give it to me. That's within the minor change. Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, I think the Board of Selection have usually handled this reasonably well over the years. I'm not quite sure why we need this article. But if we do have this article, I'd really urge that you not keep the warrant open until the last Friday of January. In the first week in December, I don't really care, but it's sort of irrelevant because like 90 percent, and I think the Selections Office can reinforce this, probably 90 percent of all the articles that come into the warrant come in on the last day or two. So it doesn't matter how early you open it. They're all going to come in on the last couple of days. Once the warrants all come into the Board of Selection, they all get reviewed by the town council, Board of Selection, the office then starts putting them together into a warrant. That whole process takes several weeks. It might seem simple to you, but it's not. It takes a while to pull that together. Meanwhile, the Board of Selection and the Finance Committee and even the Redevelopment Board are waiting for these things to all get fit into a form so they could start their hearings. Now, what the Finance Committee is usually doing is in last week of January, really pretty much throughout February, we're meeting with department heads, going with the manager, being with the school department, and trying to analyze all of the different budgets because we take care of those in March. So what we're trying to do is fill out February with all the hearings on the warrant articles. It's probably even a tougher job for the Selection than for us, but hearing these warrant articles and then trying to come up with a solution is usually not, let's just vote on it, type of thing. People have got to be discussed. Other people have got to be consulted. Other committees and stuff to try to come up with an article which makes sense, which everybody's behind, so we don't fight all these things out before town meeting. The Finance Committee is going to do the same thing to a somewhat lesser degree, but so all this whole process takes a great deal of time, including just scheduling and getting people to come in. So we, the Selection get their warrant out, their reports to you on the Redevelopment Board, they mail them so you have them at least a week before town meeting starts. The Finance Committee works very hard to have them on your seats. The first night of town meetings, you have a couple of weeks to review them before they get into the actual budgets. If you want to have that continue to happen, you can't squeezes on the other side. A week might not seem like a great deal, but it is a great deal, because we're being squeezed in April to get all of this done. So again, I urge you to vote for the amendment, making it simply the third Friday of January as opposed to the last Friday of January. People have got, as it is, six weeks, seven weeks to get their warrant articles in. They don't need an eighth week. So again, I ask you to vote for my amendment, making it the third Friday instead of the last Friday. Thank you very much. Thank you, sir. Ms. Rowe, you are next on the list. Yep, I'm keeping the list from last week. For Mr. Rowe, precinct six, I just want to echo what Al Tosti said. We had to have public hearings for 40 warrant articles in five nights. We can do that, but I don't want to repeat everything he said, but it's terribly hard on the staff. It's not so much the select minutes, our staff that suffer. So I ask you to please consider what Mr. Tosti said. Thank you. Mr. Maher. John Maher, precinct 14, I'll be brief. I think the motion of the town meeting procedures committee is as ill-advised as it is well-intentioned. To me, this is a solution in search of a problem. The warrant is open now for upwards of six to seven weeks. As Mr. Tosti has indicated, Ms. Rowe has indicated, the warrant articles come in no matter when you open it and when you close it, they come in at the very last week. And to further constrain the ability of the select men, the board of the finance committee and the redevelopment board who has statutory time periods they have to comply with if zoning articles come in under Chapter 40A, the extent that you try to constrain that, you're really not, it's not going to be productive. Even now the select men come up and ask for postponements because they simply have not had an opportunity to hear all the arguments pro and con on various articles. It sounds like a long time that they have, but they have the people, 10 registered voters, they have to schedule people to come in. They could discuss it, they need more information from department heads and so forth. And it really, really takes a long time. And to the extent that you try, again, the sandwich, get it further out. And now it has surface appeal. Oh, it's our warrant, we want to keep it open, townspeople. That's not really a realistic viewpoint at all. I guess I'm going to support Mr. Tosti's motion, the amended motion, but the original motion of the town many procedures committees, do they really mean to have it in the first week of December and the last Friday in January? That could be as many as eight weeks. Why do you need to have the warrant open for eight weeks? Six or seven weeks is plenty. By the way, in some instances, and I sat where Ms. Rice sits now, and she reviews, as I did, the warrant articles for many years, and I can count on one hand the time the people have come up to me and said, you know, the warrant closed too early, I wanted to put articles in, doesn't happen. And even if it does, and those few occasions when it does happen, the Selectment Under Chapter 39, as Ms. Rice will agree, I know, because I just spoke to her about it, Section 10 recites that the warrant is drawn under the hands of the Selectment, meaning they can put in warrant articles in right up to the day that it goes to the print. And I think any, by the way, it's been suggested by some members of the town many procedures committees, they don't like that to happen, the Selectment have too much authority. Well, folks, it's the general laws. So in those particular occasions where someone missed it and it's important enough, the Selectment can still insert it. The attempt by the town meeting procedures committee to squeeze the time between when the warrant closes and when the town meeting is, you know, it's well-intentioned, no question about that, but it's very ill-advised and I would urge you to defeat that. And if you're inclined to put any constraints here, then support Mr. Tosti's motion. Thanks very much. Mr. Schlickman? Paul Schlickman, Pre-Signal, Long Time Town Meeting Member. I seem to think that there are a bunch of red herrings swimming around here now and no amount of herring aids will help this one. If you look at the warrant, go look at the 76 articles in the regular warrant and the seven articles in the special. Only nine were submitted as 10 registered voter articles and that's all we are talking about is the right of citizens to submit 10 registered voter articles. As the Distinguished Former Town Council just said, the select bin can continue to insert past the, quote, closing of the warrant up until the time they send it to the printer. It is there right under the law. I also agree with Mr. Maher. It is the law, it's a select man's responsibility and I wouldn't want to address that. I think that that's the way the government was designed to work and it should go that way. But what we're saying to the citizens is that we're going to hold a meeting at the end of April and if you want to get something on the agenda you'd better get it in by the sometime in January, second week, third week, first week, sometimes when we push it and if it's special you've got to get it in between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. It tends to be a roadblock to citizen participation and it is a needless roadblock. I would also like to point out to this meeting sort of a continuing saga if you are a reader of the Arlington List and have been since 2006 you would see a regular DAX that occurs around February when the first select man's agenda shows up announcing warrant article hearings. In 2008, there was indeed a warrant article submitted identical to this one from the same group. It was announced as a warrant article hearing for the first meeting in February before any draft of the warrant was made available to the general public. This is a continuing problem. I would hope that this committee who's making procedural recommendations on behalf of the meeting and I would hope the select man who we're listening will do something to ensure that the legislature of this town knows what the content of this hearing is before we start to schedule hearings. I remind you of the public records and open meeting laws which state that any time they put something in print and send it to the select man, it is a public document. The select man have the draft of the warrant in their hands. One of the members of the select man has been kind enough to type in the text of the proposed articles that has not been made available to us. I think it is essential and I hope the town meeting procedures committee insists upon it that as soon as the articles are in print and delivered to the select man that they may be made available in electronic format so that we can monitor them and monitor the hearings as well because it is inexcusable for every year since 2006 to go through the same thing where Peter Fuller has his annual question you've got these warrant articles up for hearings and nobody knows what they are. We deserve to know that and I hope that as soon as it's closed as soon as it's typed up as soon as it's in print as soon as it's a public document it be made available to us electronically and I kept back for whatever reason it's kept back. Thank you very much. Thank you, sir. Mr. Loretty. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Crystal Loretty precinct 7. I rise in support of Mr. O'Connor's substitute motion and against Mr. Tosti's amendment. I would like to ask if anyone can recount all the problems that was had when the warrant closed in the year 2007. Can anyone remember all the problems? I think so. It closed on the last Friday of January. And I say that because as Mr. Slickman just said there's a lot of red herrings going around here. One of them was that we need to protect the redevelopment board. I can tell you as the chair of the redevelopment board this year redevelopment board was completely taken aback by the early closing of the warrant. We had no idea it was going to close so early and it caused a lot of problems for the redevelopment board because the Slickman did not notify the board when it was going to be closed or that it would be closed that early. It's actually very rare, pretty rare for citizens to submit warrant articles for zoning changes. And frankly if they're submitted the last day of January I don't believe that causes any problems whatsoever for the redevelopment board. What does cause problems is when town officials submit them well after the end of January and that's the real problem but that does not apply in this case. I don't see any problems whatsoever. Let me just read for you some of the closing dates for recent years. 2010, January 22nd. 2008, January 23rd. Another week, another eight days is not going to make any difference. I urge you to support the original substitute motion of Mr. LaConnor and reject the amendment of Mr. Tosti. Thank you. Mr. LaCourt. Annie LaCourt, precinct 15 although I'm speaking as a selectman at the moment. I voted against this article and that is I voted no action for it when it first came before us this year and I voted for it, I voted no action against it when it was before us a few years ago for one very simple reason and that is because I believe that what we are trying to do here is enshrine a policy and a bylaw. That is what should be a Board of Selectments policy about when the warrant opens and closes. Yes, and Mr. Warden is very amused because he's right this year we close the warrant sooner than our stated policy requires and he had to remind us and we had to reopen it and hence this article has been re-raised. I don't have trouble with the restrictions in the article. I do support Mr. Tosti's amendment because I think that's more reasonable for my staff but since people have raised this set of issues I'd like to tease out a couple of things here. So the first thing is that we're balancing three sets of things here. One is making sure citizens have access to insert articles in the warrant another is making sure the selectman's office has enough time to do all the things they have to do to prepare the warrant have the warrant looked at by the various people who look at it if necessary organize us for hearings for us to hold the hearings for the votes to get into the warrant and the warrant to get to the printer. So there is a big process crunch for them and then there's the issue of when can we start holding the hearings so that we can further that process crunch along. And Mr. Schlickman is suggesting that we can't start the hearings until we have a draft warrant ready to go and the problem with that is that the draft warrant doesn't come out until several weeks after we close the warrant and the reason that we don't issue it as a public document at that point is that until certain sets of eyes have gone over it and the moderator and Mr. Tosti and Mr. Sullivan have all agreed about the order of the articles we may be publishing a draft where literally the number on the article is going to change. So that I think that would be very confusing particularly for those of you who are used to referring to articles by their number if some time between a draft that came out this week in February and a draft that came out the second week and a draft that came out at the end the warrant numbers were changing because the order in which we were planning to present the articles changed. So we're trying to balance all of these competing interests. So if you don't trust us to do what we said we would do and I must apologize because I'm usually the niggle about this because I think the warrant should be open for a while then I suppose you might enshrine this in a bylaw rather than leaving it as a policy but I personally think that's just as a precedent a bad idea. However I would suggest then that you vote for Mr. Tosti's amendment because there's plenty of time over that period of time in practical fact the only reason we leave the warrant open that long is because we all know there's this dead zone in the middle there that is the last two weeks in December and the first week in January everybody is busy with family and holidays and is not running around getting their 10 signatures on warrant articles and we need to leave the warrant open a few weeks after that in order to allow the citizens who suddenly go oh there's a thing I want to do and I need to do a warrant article and how do I go about this and how do I get it to Julianna and all that stuff so that they have a little time to process that even if we're already deep into January okay but make no mistake the staff needs a couple of weeks before they can put a draft out for you and if you want the rule to be that we don't hold hearings until you have a draft in your hands so you know what articles we're discussing then it's really critical that we close that warrant either the second or third Friday in January so that we have the time to get that draft to you before we start our warrant article hearings I suppose it would be possible for us to hold the warrant open longer but begin the hearings but then you won't have a draft of the articles okay and in fact I'm informed by my town council I was amazed to discover this that we're not actually technically required by a lot of hold hearings on the Selectman's articles so but we do try to hold a hearing on every article including the citizens articles and the Selectman's articles and so on and so forth and sometimes we even hold hearings on articles that aren't ours just because we have opinions so I hope we can have some balance here on this article and I do urge you to consider seriously whether you want to enshrine a policy and a bylaw because I've worked very hard over the course of my six years as a Selectman to see that we don't do that with many articles that come before us where we can solve the problem by just doing what's being asked of us rather than creating a whole bylaw that will tie our hands thank you Mr. Healy Mr. Warden Thank you Mr. Moderator Town Warden Precinct 8 for the town meeting procedures committee okay I just want to make a few points here in support of the committee's recommendation to you back in the old days when say Mr. Healy's father was on the board of Selectman the warrant was closed around the end of January elections were held on the first Saturday of March town meeting began on the second Monday of March so you had about maybe a six week interval between the closing of the warrant and the opening of town meeting now somehow everything got done and the finance committee got its act together and the redevelopment board and the Selectman and but then it was decided that to avoid having to vote in the snow we would move the election from the first Saturday of March the first Saturday of April there's a gentleman in the hall that's part plugged that and look what happened this year we had snow so it doesn't always work but the point of it is that suddenly another six weeks was added on to the period between the closing of the warrant and the beginning of the town meeting and now we've heard that well they really need all these weeks to do all their things and certainly we don't want to over burden anyone but I just point out that it wasn't always dust and somehow the town survived for really centuries without having this great gap between and we're not trying to the article before you is not trying to change that really I mean one week I can't see that one week would make much difference one way or the other if subtracting a week will bring the affection of Mr. Tosti and his allies to the cause of this article then fine but and as far as not having hearings till the warrant is in final form I think that's unnecessary I think you can deal with that I'd just like to point out that when we brought this before the the selectmen and the town meeting back in I think it was in 2008 I did a little survey and the moderators have a thing we call the gavel line where we ask each other questions and get advice and so on and of those that responded Arlington had the second longest window between the closing of the warrant and beginning of the meeting of any other community Stoton has a lot of very odd and convoluted rules and they they had a longer period than we did now of course even though citizens are and other boards I mean you say there's only 9 articles submitted by 10 registered voters but there are also articles submitted by other boards committees and so on such as the town government organization committee to redevelopment board maybe vision 2020 or something like that so it's not just the citizens articles which are put in kind of a straight jacket when you try to shut it off early but the selection of course have the right as mentioned by Mr. Mar to insert articles whenever they want or up until it goes to the printer and they say well you can you know if you have a real problem you go to the select and they'll put it in for you well they may or they may not I think it maybe depends on who you are and but back in 2008 or 2007 whenever it was we the town meeting town meeting procedures committee withdrew or or assented to a no action didn't press the thing because the selectmen adopted a policy and it said they will be open not later in the first week of December nor closed earlier in the end of the third week of third full week of January will not depart from this policy without prior consultation with the town meeting procedures committee well this this year in the sort of the run up to the Christmas season I read the advocate and I said the warrant has been opened and will close on January 7th and I thought man and I look back in the old records and dug up the policy and sent an email to the chairman of the board of selectmen and said you know what's going on here I thought we had agreed that the warrant wouldn't close until the end of the third week and I didn't get a response but the next thing I heard was that they were scheduling a special meeting on a Thursday afternoon at 3 o'clock some strange time someone's ever met before and they had a very quick meeting and they decided to oh that was a mistake we'll make it to January 23rd or some date more in accordance with the policy and well that's good and we asked what happened and they said well we forgot so that's why we thought it was important that policies I guess can be forgotten and who in this hall has not forgotten something one time or another maybe your wife's anniversary or your birthday or something like that but but the point is with the policy you won't always and I'm sure they'll be glad they won't always have John Worden to send them an email and say what happened to the policy so we thought it was important and worthwhile that it would be enshrined in the bylaw and then presumably won't forget the bylaws and everybody will know there will be a constant date that anybody can look at it's going to be the same this year ten years from now will know when the warrant will open will know when the warrant will close and everybody will have a shot to get their articles in so I appreciate your ask for your support on the committee's recommendation under article 21 thank you thank you Mr. Warden Mr. McCrory thank you Mr. moderator humor query precinct 20 the purpose intent of this article is basically to provide a residence more time to file articles to the selectman I should also disclose that I'm also on the time procedures committee with respect to the selectman when we were deliberating this we were essentially to quote a verb we trust the selectman when we were deliberating on this you know we're not trying to put more pressure on the selectman we're just trying to leave they give good guidance to the residence of Arlington when the when the article period should be opened basically to Mr. Tosti's point and I respect Mr. Tosti if we were to close the warrant article on the 15th period on the third Friday if the first of January was a Friday that means we'll be closing the article on the 15th of January since the first is a Friday the 8th is a Friday the 15th in theory we'll be closing it that's a bit early people have referenced holidays from different categories to get those signatures and submit this time meeting has already required department heads to have submitted their budgets by I think the second day of January that should also keep things running smoothly and should help the selectman I guess you have to ask yourself why was this article brought up and it's not to add more pressure to the selectman it's really to the residents a little bit of time in January to submit their 10 registered voter articles so I ask you to to support the amendment proposed by Mr. O'Connor I ask you not to support the amendment proposed by Mr. Tosti with respect to the selectman and the proponent of that so please support Mr. O'Connor's amendment thank you Mr. McQuarrie Mr. Hayner Bill Hayner precinct too Mr. moderator just what the last speaker said you initially accepted Mr. Tosti's amendment based that it did not substantially change it not that it substantially changed it that it was a simple change a simple change so the actual do you accept the fact that it could potentially change the effect of this it would yeah but it's a simple change no I understand I wanted to clarify another question when an article is submitted does it go directly to council or do all the articles have to be submitted before they go to council the articles are submitted to the selectman's office and what Ms. Rice is available for is to help someone draft an article and that we would actually have something to vote on so once just my own understanding once an article is submitted the procedure can start right away if it's submitted as the warrant is open am I correct you'd have to ask Ms. Kruppelka and Ms. Rowe what the internal procedures are and I would ask that through the chair so the basic process that has been outlined by several people starts right away so the hearings could start once that process is done the warrant has to close before the hearings Ms. Rowe or Ms. Kruppelka would you like to address Mr. Hanner's questions these are things I don't know no the warrant hearings can't begin until the war is closed okay so the sent to you legal the drafting of it the legal part of it all that part can be done when different articles come in so what would be left for those articles would be the actual hearing right it's not so much the hearing part of it it's the time consuming part is number one not everybody goes to the town council first before they submit their warrant article I understand that where I'm coming from is that based on another previous speaker the majority of these articles are coming from the ten registered voters that if we can get the town side and granted they're not all going to be coming in that first week but if part of the different departments can be get them in earlier this may alleviate part of this problem I'm in support of the maximum amount of time for the ten registered voters I'll leave it at that thank you thank you we the town departments are just like everybody else they wait until the last minute as well hmm no they do they do a good thing to clock still excuse me but correct me if I'm wrong don't the town departments work for you folks yes but they're thank you that's that should not be the ten tax payers in the regular people's problem that belongs to the town thank you Mr. Jamison thank you Mr. moderator Gordon Jamison well first off I hope Mr. Warden is always here to correct the slackman should they err in their ways tribute to the slackman in that they do most of the time bend over backwards to address constituents concerns but I want to just look at the flip side of what Mr. Schlickman talked about yes there's only nine or ten registered voter articles there's nine or ten from committees thirty of the articles are the slackman and the managers so my question is addressing the issue that came up when Mr. Heiner was up here which was why do we have to wait on those articles until the warrants is closed can someone explain that to me Mr. Price fifty of the articles out of these seventy six are either finance articles many of which are placeholders that happen every year and they're from the slackman and the town manager why can't those hearings begin once the warrant is open can someone explain that to me I think his question is can you have hearings as the warrant articles roll in is that correctly essentially at Mr. Jamison absolutely thank you Mr. moderator Juliana Rice Town Council I think that would be exceedingly inefficient frequently articles come in from various places that deal with the same subject articles may not be final until the warrant is closed and I can sort of only be in one place at once and if I'm helping people to write articles I can't really at the very same time prepare the slackman's materials for the hearings so I do the best I can I start writing articles at the beginning of December and I pretty much don't stop with warrant related activities until June so you could but I think you'd end up repeating a lot of the hearings and having to call the same people back and one thing that we try to do once we have all the articles in one place is to organize the hearings so one department head doesn't have to attend every slackman's meeting for a month so maybe you could I don't think it'd be very practical I think we'd miss a lot so you know I get upset sometimes when people fail to think out of the box and this is a moment when I'm a little bit perturbed by that you know lots of people are familiar I don't have children but lots of my friends have children who have applied to college many colleges have something called rolling admissions and I understand that some people like to have a certain number next to their article and everyone gets perturbed about that but I know the finance committee looks at a draft warrant that doesn't have the same numbers so I don't understand why the discrepancy in our staff who I admire immensely why the main bodies can't get these regular articles taken care of and maybe the finance committee can vote you know some of these placeholders they just have to fit in a number but why this can't happen and then we can't have Mr. O'Connor's thing pass so I'm in support of Mr. O'Connor's motion and I think that the most vast huge majority of the articles come from people other than the town's folks so that the town manager has asked for the budget to be done early we can begin reviewing articles the moment the warrant begins I see no hindrance to do that thank you thank you sir Mr. Tully Joe Tully, Precinct 14 can someone just clarify for me the selectmen have a policy that's reflected in our new selectmen's report Mr. Tosti's amendment would make that window shorter smaller earlier correct there you want to speak to this no their policy closes it I believe the last Friday of the last of the third full week the third full week and Mr. Tosti's amendment is the third Friday which potentially could come before the end of the third full week correct in the scenario Mr. McCory pointed out yes Mr. O'Connor a second time James O'Connor Precinct 19 I rise again as part of the town meeting procedures committee because our charter when you all voted in 2007 was to make town meeting more attractive how do we have it more attractive because we feel useful if we come before this body we sit here and all the boards have already made all the decisions were nothing but what they used to call a Stamp Act Congress I rose before you several times last year and said we're asking to adopt resolutions which have recommendations that we haven't really fully debated our charge from the people when they vote for us and in the gavel which I've been reading as your assistant moderator I also read all these other towns of issues that come up and they really address how people want to be heard we need to keep the warrant open you've heard Mr. Loretty Mr. Worden Mr. Schlickman other people speak to the past history the main problem here is we don't have anything in writing and I hate to say this but I went to the town clerk's office and I asked for the selectman's procedure manual there is no procedure manual unfortunately the procedures get done each and every year as they go along as a course of business I think Ms. Krupp-Hulke is a wonderful administrator I would never fault her but she can't be Mr. Worden and all of us together now can she the second thing is that I want to tell you in putting up the minutes for the town meeting procedures committee I had the opportunity to talk to Joan Roman Joan Roman is one of our town employees that works on the website it's really easy to work with it's very easy to get things done and all we have to do is use the technology before us the internet, Microsoft Word we're not using punch cards anymore we're being asked you know to as boards to give to the manager copies of reports copies of budgets that are balanced beforehand I happen to know that back in 2008 the board of select men met and discussed an article that any court recommended for all of us to consider in that subsequent year and that was the technology developments for the town because the board looks at these issues all year long we're not in a vacuum of just saying January December we talk about the warrant we should be looking at it all year there's an article that somebody didn't prevail upon this year we have the right to change that but we're more learned about the procedures because we sit here and get copies of the finance report we get copies of the select men's report not everybody in the town gets one and I got to tell you Arlington's very fortunate because one of the towns raised cane because their board of select men decided to save money and said we're not going to send select men's reports or fincom reports or any other reports to anybody in the town anymore for an open town meeting because it costs too much money and that's unfortunate but we're here in Arlington we have a wonderful supply of resources we have an incredible array of volunteers and I think we owe it to the taxpayers to let them have an open warrant for as long as feasibly possible it seems it's worked before I have a friend who has many more years than I have standing before you said it used to work when there was only six weeks for a warrant to be processed why can't it be done now so please vote for my motion to keep the warrant open to the last Friday in January thank you thank you Mr. Marquis can Marquis present nine I'm wondering what specifically you're doing the bylaws and I'm an extremely intelligent person but I'm not a lawyer and I think that explanations should be offered when we are asked to amend the bylaws so that people understand more what we are trying to do thank you Mr. Deist John Deist precinct 13 I speak to you in the context of having been on the finance committee for I guess it's more than 20 years now and realizing that the process by which the finance committee does what it does has gotten more and more complex as we've had more and more difficulties with the budget the hearings and our own meetings with department heads begin to crowd our time rather severely Alan spoke about it but if you truly want us to try to do the job that I think we can do very well which is to try hard in the budget to balance the priorities against the money that's available then we really do have to have the time to be able to deliberate about the budgets and that if that time is to be there that means that in addition to that time we have to have the time for the hearings and I can simply tell you that it gets rather hectic toward the end of our process especially for us to put out to you what I think is a quality finance committee report it really is very very difficult for us to do the job in the time available to us it isn't just hearings it's hearings, it's deliberation to try to figure out how to balance the budget in the context of the priorities and as well meeting many many times with with the the various directors of divisions of the town in order to be able to try to understand what it is that we might or might not want to do in order to try to achieve the priorities so if you want the quality report that you've seen in the past from the finance committee maybe I'm pretentious to think that it's a quality report but I think it is then quite frankly I strongly urge you to vote for Alan Tosti's amendment thank you very much thank you sir Mr. West call ahead to you end up Mr. McKinney Eric Berger Lawrence McKinney seventh precinct land of horrible sidewalks first I have not seen this even brought up and perhaps far outside the box to think of this but as William Ockham once spoke the simplest answer to a question is sometimes the best it's apparent here that everyone seems to be rushing to get things through the door before it comes down as one of those people with getting the 10 and therefore probably being 10% of that entire problem I sort of wonder why we just don't open the warrant soon as the town meeting is over we can close it anytime we want to and that's when things have to start but you know give them a whole lot of time if they want that's one reason I think we should probably think about doing that the second part is that this is sort of a niggling thing we don't have the time I want my staff to have more time this is the town of Arlington for goodness sake we can find some part time people from a job assistant bureau for that kind of work if we seriously need it of course that they could go sooner we could all work a little faster and it would be helpful if they were always there I was making a bad joke the other day that Mr. Presence's first name should be Mr. Greeley Knot because every time we see things Mr. Greeley is not present I don't see him here either scope okay well if we are to believe that the people are having difficulty finishing the work on time perhaps if a roll call were held and they didn't do it until they were all there they could do it that much faster second thirdly having received one tongue lashing from Mr. Tosti with my respect amazingly for getting an amendment in late and a few more later on I don't think that we would have a town meeting if Mr. Tosti didn't get an opportunity to tongue lash a few people once a year and if we keep it the way it is Mr. McKinney keep your remarks not at home in a moment close to the I'm speaking as a sidewalk at any rate I would have you support Mr. Connors and go with the committee and give us the time that we need to do as much as we can thank you very much thank you Mr. Lavalli Brian Lavalle precinct 15 motion to terminate debate on all matters under this article thank you motion to terminate debate on all matters for the article all in favor please say yes opposed debate is terminated we have I terminated debate you lose we have before us the recommended vote of the town meeting procedure committee by Mr. O'Connor and the amendment by Mr. Tosti changing the last Friday to the third Friday first we're going to vote on Mr. Tosti's amendment all in favor Mr. Tosti's amendment please say yes yes opposed say no my opinion is defeated we have now before us the recommended vote of the sir I see three people arising so come on guys everybody opposed to Mr. Tosti's amendment everybody four Mr. Tosti's amendment please rise all in favor of Mr. Tosti's amendment Mr. Slickman has eight that's on the left Mr. O'Connor 16 Mr. Trembly 13 Mr. McCabe 16 all opposed Mr. Tosti's amendment please rise sir zero up front Mr. Slickman 30 Mr. O'Connor 24 Mr. Trembly 29 Mr. McCabe 27 the vote is in the negative 110 in the negative 61 in the positive the motion is defeated we have now before us the recommended excuse me the substitute motion of the town meeting procedure committee by Mr. O'Connor all in favor please say yes opposed say no my opinion is an affirmative vote that brings us back to article yes sir the motion has substituted it didn't get we have to do it again well they didn't have a motion the Slickman did not have a motion or a recommended vote thank you sir that brings us back to 17 which was on the second night the 27th they put a postponement on and I understand Mr. Sear wants to talk about this thank you Mike Care we are back to article 17 the temporary seasonal signs at athletic fields we are back after having worked with town council the original proponent the planning director and the moderator with a substitute article that has been unanimously approved by the redevelopment board there is one small change to the substitute article that was left on your chairs realized after the fact that I'm a real bad typist and missed one change that was in the ARB vote that did not make it into the vote of that's on your chairs I just want to point it out it's the one that you'll see up here and what it is is the difference is simply that instead of saying at a fenced athletic field with a permanent structure to seat more than 300 persons it should have said with one or more permanent structures to seat more than 300 persons and that flows in two different places within the vote itself and then there's one place that's affected within the red line that is shown in your vote so I apologize for any confusion that that might make it. The this article looks a lot different than the one that was presented earlier but with Town Council's help and all the different folks that I mentioned it accomplishes what we believe the original intent was and it's a good article and will make for a good bylaw the article would allow for temporary seasonal signs with a seating capacity of more than 300 the season that we're talking about would be between March 15th and December 15th and any signs would have to be part of a plan that would be subject to the special permit process of the ARB including the public hearings associated with the plan the notion is that the plan itself would be part of the special permit that we have to be put up in accordance with that plan the article would accommodate signs at the Pierce Field at Arlington High School in order to raise funds for the schools it's that's really all I've got to say about the article I would ask Mr. Moderator if we would like Steven Harrington the original proponent of the article it came from the Arlington Athletic Advisory Committee it was interesting to listen to the discussion about the citizen initiative warrant articles that preceded this since this is the discussion about the citizen initiative warrant article we started on December 16th when we were in panel and we knew we wanted to raise funds to support athletics at the Arlington High School and when we did that we thought we looked through what had been done in the past and we saw that these types of warrant articles to do advertising had been before you in the past so we thought this was a good way to raise funds for the schools and so what we did is we actually submitted an article to our group then we talked to the chair of the redevelopment board and that took about a week and then we talked to town council and had to approve the original language and that took about a week and then we went out and got signatures and we got 72 signatures in one weekend so there was widespread support in the community to do this if we had had the warrant open for a couple weeks we probably could have gotten 700 signatures everyone we've talked to has really supported this article and I think that I don't have a lot to add other than to say that if you have any questions I'd be more than happy to answer them this intent of this article is to have advertising for the spectators and the participants on the playing field and nowhere else so we're looking to have people who are coming to sporting events at the playing fields behind the high school see these sponsorship signs and if you what we're really looking to do is have a very tasteful set of sponsorship signs that mostly display the logo of the high school the colors of the high school along with the sponsors name and the sponsors symbol in some cases so I ask that you support this article and that it's really a good thing for us to be able to raise some funds to the school thank you thank you sir we had a list before I'm just going to go keep the list that we had and add the new people if your questions have been answered feel free to say pass Mr. Schlickman Mr. Kleinman you pass Mr. Berkowitz thanks Mr. Battery I'm a little confused about the difference between the wording of the substitute and what were and the original wording in the ARB report that we originally have specifically in the original ARB report and I'm looking at bottom of page 15 if people have that where it refers to changes in language of in section 7.12 and on the top of page 16 refers excuse me on the top three lines it refers to page 16 underlined it may contain the name and graphical symbol of the school under sponsorship and may contain the name and trademark of the organization sponsoring the school however in the current recommended vote that recommended vote seems to refer to a different section and I'm not reading the same restriction on the signage that would be contained in that recommended vote so as I'm reading this and hope I can be corrected if I'm wrong the current motion is less restrictive less specific than the original which seemed to me a preferable way to go. As I mentioned we work with a lot of parties in coming up with a new language so you're right it's a true substitute motion dealing with things differently one of the things that was of concern was some content regulations with respect to signs and that type of thing so in working with town council it was determined that the way that it's structured now without those same restrictions was a better way to do it. Once again working with town council as you know we had the issue before. Given that it's not clear to me what types of signs would be permitted under this new substitute notion so for example would it be required that the insignia of the school be kept as was the case in the previous motion? The expectation but you're correct the by-law does not say that. Could somebody put up a sign saying just for example drink Coca-Cola without other language? The expectation is not that but according to this by-law you're correct there's no restrictions on content. We would expect the policy of the school department to address many of these different things. Mr. Hanner thinks he can answer a question. Bill Hayne and school committee member and I would ask the other school committee members that are present to correct me if I'm wrong but I think there is a policy in the works dealing with this particular issue that would come from the school committee. I'll stand corrected if I'm wrong on that but it deals just with content of signs and things of this nature for the purpose of advertising on school property. And that may be but this is what we're voting on right here and now. Seeing school property that the actual content would be further restrictions would be within the school committee's province. If your concern is that an inappropriate sign or someone else might be free to do that because you feel that it's open-ended by the by-law I tell you that the school committee will be dealing with that aspect of it and not in places yet but they are dealing with it in the positive manner. I hear that and thank you but as of now given the votes that we are called to make at this town meeting I guess I'm regarding the original that we were asked to vote on back in the ARB report as superior to the construction in this substitute and I would want to be convinced otherwise before I could vote for this. Thank you. Thank you sir. Still ready? I would like to clarify a couple things I'm not sure if it was clear to people when this article first came up that someone made mention of the fact that the zoning board of appeals has already granted a special permit for these signs or this type of signage at the high school and through you Mr. moderator I would like to ask whether town council believes that this passage of this application of the redevelopment board is necessary. Madam counsel. Thank you Mr. moderator and Juliana right town council I'm not sure that I understand what is meant by necessary but I do think that the relief that the proponents were seeking which was the right to put sponsorship signs up around Pierce field has already been granted and that this zoning bylaw changes this matter could you through you could I ask whether town council believes that it's possible for the zoning board of appeals to allow not accessory signs by special permit Mr. Rice do you have an opinionist of that. Thank you Mr. moderator Juliana rice town council I do have an opinion that the zoning board of appeals may do so however the special permit decision that I have reviewed that I believe is on file with the clerk's office the zoning board of appeals granted the permit for these signs as accessory signs. Thank you Mr. moderator. I'm really concerned about the special permit that the zoning board of appeals has granted for these signs and the reason is that in that decision they cite a memorandum from town council stating that in her opinion as she just said non accessory signs can be permitted by special permit of the zoning board of appeals and here's the problem with that we talked about non accessory signs that may not make a whole lot of sense to people but both the best and the worst example of a non accessory sign is a billboard and in the Ellington zoning bylaw the last section of the chapter on signs is a page and a half non accessory signs and it deals with the regulation of such signs indeed the regulation of billboards and it's something that our former planning director Mr. McClennan has put in and it has withstood legal challenge it has withstood the test of time it has served as a model for other communities and if you don't think it has been effective I would ask you to think of how many billboards how many non accessory signs we see in this town can bring it within the scope yes and I'm coming to that and the opinion that Ms. Rice has just expressed and the opinion of the zoning board of appeals effectively eliminates those protections that Mr. McClennan has put into the zoning bylaw that have been so effective over the years so one of the reasons I'm going to ask you to support the substitute motion of the redevelopment board it's not that it's because it is superfluous on the contrary I think it's very necessary and by approving that substitute motion you will reduce and hopefully eliminate the any precedential value of the decision of the zoning board of appeals and in fact at this time that decision of the zoning board of appeals is subject to appeal it's been filed with the time clerk I believe there's a few days left of appeal it in some ways I hope they do because it is such a bad decision and set such a bad precedence for the town but if that doesn't happen and frankly it's probably unlikely that it will I think it's really important that town meetings show the support for this substitute motion to negate any of the or try to negate any of the bad precedence of that decision creates thank you thank you sir next on the list is with Weber Janice Weber precinct 21 I don't know if this is an order can I ask any questions about the signs rather than the zoning part are there any proposed signs yet very well I'll allow but let's not really get off with this no I just want the article go ahead I just want to know if the money that they're going to collect for these signs is going directly to the fees for sports no that's not that doesn't have to do with the zoning okay are we who's collecting the money whoever gets the signs the school department or somebody would do that yeah this would allow them to do it but I don't know who actually is going to do it are we going to be able to find that out at some point because I don't think the school committee should have any money other than the fees directly to the reporting department the athletic department Ms. Chairman do you have any Ms. Roe who's going to actually let the signs actually it's the school department because it's their property so you'd have to go to the school committee so we have no say in where the money is going from this yeah you've got to go to the school committee we were only allowing it to happen Mr. Hander have you voted on a procedure yet yes or no talking about what they're going to do I'm sure Bill Hayne a precinct on the school committee what was your question again are you guys going to be the ones who sell the signs I will stand corrected again with my other school committee members as of right now money coming in under this would go to the school committee but it is my understanding there will be a proposal from the advisory committee for the athletic trust and these are the people that have brought forward with the redevelopment board this article and this would be in the future to go to that trust again it will take a vote nothing has happened as yet but this is the intent of this as of right now and again I will stand corrected by my school committee members is that into your question Ms. Woodward partially but also is there any details like spy pond which isn't you know that doesn't fit the criteria and just who's responsible if the signs are you know that's going to be whoever's responsible for renting them okay thank you what sir what purpose do your eyes point of order that means you're like caught or cold or can't hear like but my understanding is the warrant article says any fenced in field with a capacity of 300 people it doesn't limit it to property under the jurisdiction of the school committee does it what other field and I can fix that description I would think spy pond field does it mean it's not fenced in on all four sides it's got a fence did the article say four signs fenced in come on if you have a pool fenced in means all around your property the only fence on spy pond field is right in front of the boys and girls club not along the edge of the tennis courts and then back along whatever the there by answer to tennis courts courts of fenced in okay thank you that's the only one that fits the definition that's what took them three days to work on anything else miss weaver what about summer street isn't that fenced in nope has been ever since I've been here nope okay next on this mr. trembling yeah okay it's friendly precinct 19 I had actually several questions Mr. trembling has the floor please one of them is I'm not sure why we're could have something answer why we're concerned about the other parks and fields in town and why it's limited to just 300 and just peers field I had one of one of my neighbors tell me that the even the little league park in Cooperstown has signs on it and if we could generate some more money on some of the other fields why not Mr. care well he could he could actually make a motion to change the article to include every park in town if you wanted but that'd be kind of wild yeah the scope of the article was peers field that's what we were doing other things but it's also the recommended vote of the arm to to accommodate that particular field for now it might make sense in the future but something now I think that'd be an issue for another day you're telling us yeah I understand but I would like to to get people thinking about expanding this program a little bit I had another question how much money do you think the does the school committee think that they might make from this mr. Harrington you had an estimate of that I believe somewhere between fifty thousand a hundred thousand dollars per year on an annual basis okay my recollection is that the town manager said that if somebody were to vandalize these sound these signs it would be the town's responsibility to correct it so I think that's going to be one of the school committee's votes that they're going to take as they set their policies it wouldn't be the town's because it's not the town's property or the school's Mr. Haener is going to give us another answer about what the school committee is going to vote on Bill Haener town meeting member from precinct two and just as a town meeting member with a minimal legal experience all you have to do is write the contract and put that on the person that's renting it if they want the sign they're responsible for dealing with anything on it and if the sign gets tagged and the contract it says if you don't remove it in an appropriate sign the sign's down so it falls to the person that's the way the contract is written take the burden off the person that's renting the sign put it on the person that is I mean off the person's property put it on the person that's renting it well I recommend that the school committee is right in the contract you get that in there Mr. Tremblay continue well I mean the school the athletic fees make a little bit money and there's no liability it sounds great to me thank you thank you Madam is this the right microphone anyone you want citizen stamps precinct three new Arlington resident and new town meeting member so my reading of this article is that any actual permission to erect any documents is subject to a special permit is that correct he says yes so that's correct there would be a public hearing so there can be discussions of what the signs the signs look like that sort of thing I think there is some concern that this is kind of open-ended in the describing that the signage plan will apply to quote 8th and staff athletic field the permanent structure to seat more than 300 persons everybody's been very clear tonight that they're talking about Pierce field so I would move to amend this art this this motion to delete the two places in this motion that those words that I just said and replace them with Pierce field before we take a second on that that was why we adjourn because we'd be engaging in spot zoning which we're not allowed to do that true or am I making stuff up thank you Mr. moderator Juliana it is true Mr. moderator that one of the concerns that I had raised with the proposed vote in its original form was that it would be subject to disapproval by the Attorney General as spot zoning Ms. Stamps you still have the floor I guess the inference is that we can't do spot zoning so I'll withdraw my proposed amendment okay thank you Mr. Logan I'm precinct too I just had a question if there was any legal challenge to this would the school committee have to deal with this or would the town it's a zoning bylaw that would be the town's issue Ms. Rice would have something to do for a few days so for example at the school committee deemed that there was an inappropriate sign placed there and someone placed a first amendment challenge to it the town would defend that I don't see how they could do that but I have no idea I'm not going to put the car before the horse just a hypothetical thank you Mr. Smith I don't know which Mr. Smith it was don't predict you don't have anything okay Mr. McCabe you wanted to talk last week you still want to talk Harry no pass Mr. McCory pass Janet Leary Jeannie I'm sorry we have to wait for the mic Jeannie Leary precinct 19 I have a lot of concerns about this new wording of Fence Field see I can't even read this I wish we had it handed out but it this athletic field with a permanent structure to see more than 300 persons to me this could mean the summer street field because the rank can fit more than 300 people even though they're not with the field even though they're not with the baseball field and as in a direct a butter to the summer street fields I think as taxpayers the residents who live around the sports complex are not up with a great deal of late night noise we have too lit baseball fields we have the ring going past midnight I don't think that the first summer streets not fenced in on all four sides so it wouldn't and I think it's specifically field is isn't it it doesn't Mr. Care would the skating ring qualify the summer street field under the way the board would issue the special permit outside bleacher on it and we would not consider the rink seating to be part of the athletic field oh good oh good I'm glad to hear that because they did put up signs there years ago and then okay don't know about years ago I really liked your approach when you were saying that you were going to have the signs face the spectators you know so they weren't facing people's homes because you know no one wants to look out the windows at billboards you know so that was very nice the way you said you were going to do that and I appreciate that I was just envisioning these billboard signs all over the place and I just wanted to clarify that great and at one of the point I did watch the school committee meeting when they brought this up about the vote and to me it I forget your name sorry it appeared very ambiguous what where the funds were going to go how it was going to be handled that you know it was very very ambiguous I was kind of surprised that they knew so little about it so that's all I wanted to say thank you thank you Joe Kuro 21 Millet street member of the Arlington school committee I just stand to I believe this may have been stated when this article originally came up I just wanted to make clear the school committee does support the article that is coming to past this I think you've heard the estimate of the athletic advisory committee on the potential revenue I think you all know also the strain that we've been under we've tried very hard not to cut any of our sports offerings but that's come at a great cost to the participants in the form of increased athletic fees I know there are a lot of questions about the direction of fees that's not the purview of this article but just so you know that would require a vote of the school committee to appropriate those funds I believe it's been the sense of our discussions that those funds would be directed towards fee relief but again that would require debate and a vote of the school committee there is also an alternate approach which we could take and which I expect we would be discussing with the athletic advisory committee which would be the potential of entering a memorandum of understanding with the Arlington sports foundations that newly created which may act could potentially act as the agent for selling the advertising here under an MOU with the school department and an understanding of where funds might be directed as far as the type of advertising that would be allowed I think Dr. Hayner is correct we do have a policy on advertising on sports fields it does require that any signage be in good taste it also gives the superintendent the authority to implement procedures to ensure that as well so that is the way that we handle that that's delegated to the superintendent it is possible and it is in our purview to place more specific restrictions on the types of advertising that might appear as well through policy so I hope that adds a little bit of light to some of the questions that have arisen but I would ask to please vote affirmatively on the article and I want to thank the redevelopment board and especially Mr. Kair for all of the this and Mr. Harrington for bringing it forward, thank you see me during the break I'm here I'm here you keep referring to a fenced in athletic field but the motion says a fenced athletic field which is quite a different matter I will inquire what they mean by fenced and then also you are on the list grammar thing if you're going to say one or more you have to put an S in a parenthesis after the word structure you cannot say one or more permanent structure it has to be the S in the past because it's not there thank you we'll make that change correct this gentleman right back here next to the yes you then we're going to take a break after you pass come back in 10 minutes please come in yes sir please come take your seats Mr. Rice has further pointed out to me the answer to this bold question Pierce field is the only one that further qualifies as it's a and Mr. Leary's question it's the only one in an R1 zone all fields are within the R1 which it specifies in the vote so Mr. Good where'd he go hey Andy is Dave Good out there yeah you were the next on the list alright so we're going to have to then entertain a motion from Mr. Tosti to the table if you want to minute me in it's going to move for a while you're not up to that okay ladies and gentlemen I ask you the superintendent for management has been here I ask for your permission to put articles 22 through 17 we're on 17 now right 17 and articles 22 through 60 back up on the table in order to take up article 61 the minute man assessment all in favor so tabled Mr. moderator for myself from the finance committee and the superintendent I ask for an additional 5 minutes I don't think we'll use it but we'd like a total of 15 minutes for the three of us second all in favor please say yes opposed okay I would like to ask Steve DeCorsi to come before the committee to discuss the reasons for the finance committee support of the minute man budget thank you Mr. moderator Steve DeCorsi precinct 2 the finance committee is recommending an appropriation for minute man this year 2 million 352 988 that's a decline of about 14% from the appropriation last year and I'm just going to walk through briefly how the appropriation or the assessment for Ellington is determined last year it's based on the enrollment of in district members communities as of October 1st and as of October 1st 2010 there were 115 full time equivalent students from Ellington the year before there were 131 so there's been a decline in the Ellington population however there's been an increase in the in district enrollment which is a very good news for Ellington because we are a smaller percentage of the overall district at this point a year ago we're at 430 for in district this past year is 445 so the district has actually increased by 3% we've gone down and as our percentage has gone down our assessment has gone down one other thing to wanted to point out we're voting a number which is the Ellington assessment by voting the Ellington assessment we're actually voting acceptance of the Minuteman budget and the Minuteman budget this year we'll introduce Dr. Boquillin who will run through that with you the overall budget for Minuteman this year is $16.4 million it's an increase of 1% from last year just over 1% from a year ago Dr. Boquillin will run through numbers for the past few years but he has been on the job for four years he's going into his fifth year and since he has taken over at Minuteman we have had the pleasure of meeting with him every year and every year he brings us better news in terms of what the assessments per pupil is doing it's coming down the number of students at the school has gone up and while it's not perfect and while there are a lot of people that would like to see the per pupil numbers even lower it's a very positive trend and it's been a very good working relationship that we've had with Minuteman and we look forward to continuing that relationship going forward so at this point I'd like to introduce Dr. Ed Boquillin the superintendent of Minuteman and visiting his 16th community tonight not all on the same evening but this is the last time meeting that he's visiting Dr. Boquillin? Thank you Mr. Moderator, thank you Steve and Al I'm going to go briefly through the slides and I'm pardoned if I turn around the next slide this is our mission I'm not I reordered the slides because it made more sense so I'm not used to this yet even though this is my last town meeting next slide please recently enrollment trends Steve mentioned our enrollment and I want to give you some good news and some okay news, next slide you can see overall the district is up about 10% our member towns are up about 3% we've had an increase in non-member communities as well as what we call the Big Three which is Waltham, Watertown and Medford we're continuing to make some efforts in terms of recruiting and marketing and accessing more families and talking about Minuteman and we've really appreciated the cooperation we've had in Arlington it's been exemplary next slide if we break down this year's enrollment increase I'll just ask you to look at the first gray bar which looks at our freshman class you can see that we've had a 63% increase in our freshman class this year our 9 through 12 enrollment was up slightly about 6% member and non-member postgraduate students were up significantly about 17% from member towns and almost doubled from non-member communities as well I'll talk a little bit more about our postgraduate tuition initiative in a moment but overall our head count is up about 11% and I put the freshman retention rate on there because that's one of the goals that I'm evaluated on as superintendent and it went up 106% next slide so the achievements of our students I'm hoping as the years go by and our enrollment goes up and our finances get more in line I'll spend more time on this but we've had a great class last year 72% of them I believe went on to continuing education in 2 year and 4 year institutions the highest in the state of Massachusetts 19% directly into work I think that's a reflection of the economy next slide please this is another look at our placement rate over the last 4 years overall about a 96% placement rate next slide this is our special ed enrollment it's a little difficult to see but Minuteman is on the far right and all the way going to the far left are some other vocational technical schools and Arlington is on the far left Minuteman has about 47% of the student body on IEP it's the highest in the state as well but I'm also proud to report that this year 100% of our 10th graders passed the MCAS English Language Arts on the first try 97% passed the math on the first try thank you next slide cost control initiatives next slide this is our 5 year historical budget you can see after several years of increases this year that we're in in particular we made some pretty significant reductions to right size Minuteman our budget was reduced by about 7% next year we're anticipating a 1% increase in our overall budget at 16.4 million still lower than 5 years ago next slide we've done this through a combination of attrition and active riffing overall professional staff is down over the last few years but it's down in a way that has not hurt students has not hurt student performance and we need to continue to do this and be mindful of it as we right size the building when I say right size we have the right amount of staff the right mix of programs and I think that's a cost effective way to continue next slide administration we've cut our administration in half over the last 5 years I'll let you know next year if that was a good move next slide and this is a real telling figure this is the actual dollars of salary that we spend the total dollars of salary and you look next year we'll be at 9.1 million of salary and that's lower than we were by over a million dollars 5 years ago next slide this looks at our foundation rate since comparison to other regional vocational schools as well as the state average of vocational education in general and you can see Minuteman in the blue is about $14,900 a few hundred dollars above the average regional career and technical high school there are 26 regional career and technical high schools in Massachusetts the state average for vocational is down a bit because it accommodates all the different models by which regional vocational by models that vocational education is delivered including collaboratives in comprehensive high schools and smaller city vocational schools as we have in Waltham and Medford and Newton next slide right sizing next slide one of the impacts of increasing enrollment and reducing staffing is that our student to teacher ratios by class size is coming back up to where it should be the dark blue on the left is last year the lighter blue is this year that we're in right now and you can see in math and science we've had an increase in the average class size and I'll remind you that 47% of those classes have students that are in receiving special services of some kind next slide this is just another look at what the budgeted per pupil increase had been over the last few years and where we see it going in the trend line next year FY12 we're very conservative in our estimates of about a 2% increase in enrollment we're on track for a larger increase than that right now as we look at the freshman class for next year we have 350 applications for about 240 openings so we're going to have a real waiting list it looks like and that will be mostly a non-member students our member students are now in a place where we have to give those students priority and we're turning away others because of that on the postgraduate side our applications have increased 300% from last year to this year these are our adults that come to Minuteman and receive a vocational technical education and we are going to be getting to charge them tuition which I'll talk about in a minute next slide there's still a strong belief that it's cheaper to be a non-member than a member of the Minuteman Regional School District next slide you can see over the last few years we've tried to change that dynamic so towns that are not members of Minuteman are paying significantly more next year the average student which is the lower cost is about $23,500 and if that student is on an IEP it's about $26,000 which is the lower cost to that non-member district we charge a base tuition next year of about $18,100 if the student is on an IEP there's another $5,000 on top of that and then the district has to pick up all the transportation costs associated with that which average about $3,000 $3,200 per student so there are benefits of membership coming to the budget next slide when we began our budget process we looked at a level service budget of about $17.1 million knowing what all the towns are going through this year I knew that wouldn't fly and that represented about a 5% increase in our budget we looked at other reductions I'm reducing another administrator my assistant superintendent principal position has been eliminated my assistant superintendent principal for next year but the assistant superintendent position is gone so I have no more assistant superintendents after July 1 we looked at teacher reductions support staff reductions and we're looking at one or two program reductions in terms of what we offer so our budget overall is up about 1.1% from this year this is the revenue plan you can see assessments the top line are assessments to our member communities we're anticipating a slight reduction in Chapter 70 aid this is not as low as it could be because we have more students regional transportation aid we're assuming is level funded and that line item over the last 4 years has gone from about $900,000 to $495,000 the state is only reimbursing us about 53% of our actual costs to transport students from the 16 member towns a prior year and current year tuition you can see we're trending to rely less on current year tuition this is what we collect from non-member communities we use it in the revenue plan to offset the assessments from our member towns member postgraduate tuition $75,000 prior to this year FY12 the member towns have picked up the cost of an adult coming back to school there was a strong argument made and I agreed with it that all postgraduate students should be paying their tuition so over the next 4 years we will be increasing the amount of tuition charged to adults beginning with FY12 that represents about 55% of the average postgraduate tuition which is only $5,000 so next year we'll charge 50% we'll reevaluate its impact on applications which it doesn't seem to have any impact and over by FY16 we'll be up to 100% and so no member town will be paying twice to educate a person in their school there was a great argument made that they've gone through the Arlington public schools again to go into Minuteman so we're changing that while we did that we also did three steps to help people pay for their tuition one is all our programs now are approved by the VA so returning veterans and veterans can use their GI benefit to pay the tuition at Minuteman it was a long arduous task but we got it done we also have set up a prepayment plan like folks do with college tuition now eligible under Title IV for Pell grants and student loans to be used to pay that tuition next slide this is the last slide I believe and it's reflective of the assessment that we're asking for this year and you can see there's been a decline over the last few years and a per pupil decline is what we're really looking at because that I think is telling the tale best of all next slide thank you do you want to go out? no I'll answer any questions though Mr. Moderator Mr. Karman Dean Karman, precinct 20 and a member of the finance committee I stand tonight in very strong support for this budget and normally I wouldn't get up for that but equally important I stand in very strong support in respect and admiration for this superintendent when I look at this budget historically when I first joined this was the budget I dreaded the most and why? If you look at if you take out your minute man handout that we got a few nights back and you go to page 9 what you notice is over a 15 year history steadily declining enrollment so enrollment on the 15 year chart peaks at 933 students and is in steady decline so your mind would say to you okay well if it's in steady decline the costs have to be somewhat steady because if student enrollment is going down even with inflation things can't be going up that quickly if you flip the next page to page 11 you see that's not true what you see is that cost continued to rise and what really impacted Arlington in a truly negative way was even though the overall enrollment at minute man was going down our Arlington enrollment if you went back to page 9 wasn't going down so we were getting a larger and larger share of the increase in cost the school got to a point 5 years ago where it was the most expensive school in the state the costs were out of control and as a finance committee member we used to have the superintendent of minute man every year and beg him plead with him ask him to right size the school and he would basically tell us to go pound sand and walk out and you know essentially say well I can get the other 12 member communities all I need is 12 I don't need you good luck and so it was a very frustrating time for me and I'm you know I'm sure for many people in town meeting it was a very frustrating time for you it's about and I can't believe it's 4 years now you know Dr. McQuallan showed up we have our finance committee reorganization meeting in the fall first meeting he asked if he could come to it and talk to us so comes to our meeting he asks us one question what do you want what can I do and you know unfortunately for him years and years of frustration we unloaded on him and we said your school enrollment is going down your costs are going up you have programs that have very small numbers of students in them and you're doing nothing about your predecessor did nothing about it and so if you look at the data that he presented what the superintendent of minute man has done is steadily over years bend the cost curve increase enrollment and it has had a very positive result we have not seen significant increases in the Arlington appropriation we have not seen significant increases in the school clearly as we all know when you have tight fiscal resources especially in the environment he's been doing it in with the general economy down this is a very big achievement and it's a very important achievement because if we were standing here not with a let's say 14% decrease in our minute man assessment we would also be seeing other areas of our general fund where we would have to cut and we would have to lose more services and so with that as the backdrop I would ask everybody to support this budget I would ask everybody to support this superintendent I am sure when you go through a process of right sizing a school you don't make a lot of friends you don't become the most popular person in the school you know like I said I would ask you to support the budget and support the superintendent thank you thank you sir Mr. Schlickman Paul Schlickman, Prec. 9 member of the Minuteman school committee from 1997 through 2001 those were the years sort of the left where things were totally out of control those were the years when 47% of the students were member town students and a third of them were rolling under school choice at $5,000 a piece that's no longer happening the economics have reversed non-member towns are paying more than we're paying the ship has been righted they've looked at the programs there and determined what programs are viable and stopped running expensive programs that were not fiscally viable the ship has been righted and the establishment is truly become responsive to the member towns where the previous administration was very introspective in looking at the school and could count on the support of 11 very small member towns to create the two-thirds majority they needed to get things done the ship has been righted we have something to be very proud of only do we have the best vocational school in the state but is now being run efficiently in a fair manner where the leadership of this district cares about its large member towns and its small member towns and is making sure that they are responsive to both the students who are coming from our communities and to the voters and taxpayers who have to support them it is very, very worthwhile to vote for this budget it is a dream from my first ten years as a town meeting member the years before I became a member of that school committee where this would be an utter nightmare where we would spend over a night just debating a budget that we couldn't disapprove because we already had 11 member towns that had approved it and we were just frustrated now we are proud now we are being listened to this budget deserves our support I only caution you on one thing as those numbers have changed, as it has become more expensive for the non-member towns to go and send kids it will become a better deal for these non-member towns to come and join the district which will require unanimous consent to amend the regional agreement some of the communities there are cities where we are going to need to change the governance structure in some manner and I want you to take a look on page 9 look at Dover when I was there we had a child at Minuteman who had his own personal school committee member the ratio between Arlington and Dover's representation on the Minuteman school committee we had one vote Dover has one vote we have one vote we ranged anywhere from 150 to no actually it's error to one because in 2008 they had zero students no kids but still a vote that's kind of interesting I hope that the message that comes back from this meeting that while we're pleased about this while we have an exceptional superintendent these things can go astray and that as we're looking to attract new member districts who may very well be cities that we're looking at some of the governance structures to make sure that a town like Arlington which is a major contributor or maybe some of the surrounding communities that might want to join this wonderful school of course it's cheaper to join will have a reason to do so and not fear being outvoted by the Dover's of the world thank you very much thank you Mr. Chappett thank you Mr. moderator Roland Chappett precinct 12 I stand to support this budget and I commend Dr. Bukalian for the effort that he has put into Minuteman school you may recall last year I told you that I visited up there a few weeks before our town meeting what impressed me the most was the attitude not only of the kids but the teachers it was a very positive message that was coming back and so I didn't go this year but I'm sure it's the same or even better than it was 12 months ago one of the issues that we talked about briefly last year and I was going to ask Dr. Bukalian to respond to this if I may if you look on page 3 mission and district goals go down to G complete phase 1 MSBA feasibility study and deliver enrollment study et cetera et cetera could you give us a couple of positive remarks just how that's going on doctor thank you Mr. moderator in page 3 I don't have it in front of me but in regards to the regional agreement task force which was looking at our budget our regional agreement I'm sorry I'm just so overwhelmed by all this wonderful talk here I really like a copy of this the regional agreement task force which Arlington was well represented by Mr. Tosti has met for over the last 14 months and came up with some final recommendations that my school committee is now considering in regards to the enrollment study NSDEC completed the New England School Development Council completed a very in depth analysis of our enrollment study and are projecting that by the year 2015 the school will have met its planned effective operating capacity which they have set at 950 so we're well on the track to moving forward with the next phase of a feasibility study which is to hire an owner's project manager and a design firm to understand what the scope of a renovation would be. We're not going to build a new school that's not necessary also in regards to our strategic plan and educational plan we've identified three new program areas to replace the four or five that we will have closed by the end of this fiscal year and those new program areas are exciting and so I'm going to mention tonight one of them is animal science the second one is biosecurity and criminal justice and the third program area is the technical theater arts and we're very thrilled about those and looking forward to working with the designers around what a new minute man might look like I don't expect to come back to any town meeting until 2014 perhaps even 2015 with a real approved scope of work we're working very closely with the town managers and the fin comms and the capital planning committees of all our 16 towns to make sure that we build it right and that we build it to serve our children going forward for the next 50 years because we need it thank you Mr. O'Connor Jim O'Connor precinct 19 sometimes you hear other members say exactly what you want to say and Roli and I were at that meeting and I can't say more about Mr. O'Connor and his willingness to show us around work on the physical plant and he's a star example of things we could do in Arlington to improve our own physical plight thank you Madam Ms. Weber and Ms. Jamison thank you Mr. moderator Gordon Jamison precinct 12 I had a couple quick questions I too am in awe of the superintendent's hard work and how these both he's progressed the school financially as well as with the students so I had a question on his slide where he discussed the current year tuition so if I understood correctly we're paying about 20,000 and the out of districts were in the 23 to 26 range but I have a hard time understanding that when I see the current year tuition at 1.3 million dollars so where does the 20,000 or 24,000 dollars that all those out of district people is that uniform or is that just proposed there are two communities that are under a long-term agreement where they get a slight discount on tuition because they send us a minimum of 50 students they get $1,500 off the base tuition so what's going to be a little confusing is that the number of students who are on IEPs their assessment of $5,000 per pupil goes into another area that's not clearly identified in the current year tuition but in general Minuteman has relied more on prior year tuition so in other words the money we collect this year we would use in FY 13's budget we have chosen to use more current year tuition the previous two fiscal years really to keep assessments down to the member towns it's not a sustainable accounting practice that we want to do it's like continuing to draw down your reserve accounts or your free cash accounts you just can't do that but you have them there so let's use them and that was our approach even with that explanation I see the prior year tuition was $3 million and the assessments is 9 million yet I got the impression that the out of districts are paying $23,000 to $26,000 per student while we're only paying 20 so I'm confused by that I guess I'm having trouble understanding the question is it a math question well so because there's 445 students from member towns and that's the 9 million plus and then there's 309 and my rough estimate is that's about 3 quarters the number and so I'm questioning why other towns are not paying 6 like 2 thirds or 3 quarters of 9 would be a prorated amount for the other towns so somebody's getting a discount I'm confused by that we can talk about this offline I don't think this is going anywhere my business manager is in here with me that's not a problem and then the next thing is this wonderful map that you provided us with this year which is I found to be quite instructive we've heard all these comments about other people should join and further to Mr. Slickman's comment the real reason I wanted to get up here and try to figure out that thing which obviously we're not going to figure out tonight is what can we do to help you since you know you've asked the finance committee how can you help us my question is what can we do to help you is there some type of home rule petition that all these communities could file that would allow us to enlarge the district how can we help you maybe that's something you have to go back and think about but if there's some article or worn articles that we need the past that would help you I personally would be very receptive to that well I appreciate the question I think there are a number of meetings being held around the state around under the umbrella of regionalization and I think some of the talk around regionalization needs to be informed by members of regional vocational technical school districts because there's not a lot of strong voices talking about regionalization within those discussions because there are obviously people towns near us that would benefit from being a part of our district but there's no incentive for them to do that other than the incentive we're trying to create so there may be some opportunities there to talk about that I think in the long term in the fall or in the spring when we come with a change in our district agreement we'll have a whole package that we're going to be explaining that will provide some incentives within that package so passing that district agreement change would probably be the most helpful thing we could be doing to expand the region in a sensible way okay, thank you very much thank you Mr. Wagner thank you Mr. Modere, Carl Wagner precinct 11 I move the question second motion to terminate the debate all in favor please say yes yes opposed say no the debate is terminated we have for us the recommended vote of the finance committee to fund $2,352,988 two-minute man vocational tech all in favor please say yes yes opposed say no unanimous vote and I so declare talk to you, have your money sir, purpose to your rise Mr. Modere, Mike Healy precinct 13 I'd like to take article 17 off the table I think you beat Mr. Tosti by three seconds all in favor taking 17 off the table can we do the whole thing can we do the whole thing can we do the whole thing let's take all of them off the table I move that articles 17 and 22 through 60 except for articles 31,34 and 35 which were already on the table before be taken from the table all in favor please say yes opposed that brings us back to 17 Mr. Leonard thank you Mr. Moderator John Leonard precinct 17 earlier this evening a gentleman asked a question about tagging and I had raised the same question on a previous evening and Tom Manager was kind enough to clear up the subject that in the event of a sign at Pierce Field being tagged it would be the town's responsibility to repair such sign now I granted that could be later changed if the school committee does some procedures but I'm happy with his answer as of right now that the town would be responsible second question I've noticed on some of the slides up here that they've shown of the signs that are going to be put up I suppose we're going to be put up the signs are basically stating like Big A and red and white for Arlington and I'm wondering if there's a misconception in town meeting that these signs are going to be supporting Arlington functions places, clubs and then in small lettering the sponsor will be labeled in the small lettering whereas some people might be thinking is the person sponsoring going to have a position of the sign we're not debating what the signs look like this evening we're strictly allowing the signs to go up but one of the signs will look like is going to be up to the special permit seekers and the ARB if that's who's going to grant these things and the school committee and their regulations for the signs I'm just wondering if that point could be cleared up that is the signs that you've seen here except for those words they've showed you pretty pictures they're not what we've opened on you could be led to believe that the pretty pictures was what the signs would be looking like is what I'm getting at I would take those strictly as theoretical examples not what they're guaranteeing they're going to look like because again like I'm saying the content of the signs is for the benefit of Arlington or for the benefit of the sponsor is where I'm confused I would say the benefit of the sponsors why else would you put money on there the second sign was a little bit deceiving the last question is where these signs are going to be okay where I'm a little bit confused would the signs be placed on individual would they be placed on the existing fencing around the Pierce field in full view of let's say the individual in the stands or would they be on both sides of existing fencing which to me would be like an eyesore Mr. Care what do you envision the placement of these signs to look like it would all be subject to the special permit and the hearings and everything else plans that we've seen are more centered on the field themselves but those are preliminary everything else and nothing's come before us so it's all subject to that special permit process so you're not saying whether you're actually going to erect structures that are going to carry the signs or you're going to have the signs hanging off the existing fencing I think the expectation is the latter but nothing's come before us yet so I mean we need this in order to have that conversation okay then I would be curious I mean I know more discussion is necessary on this but I would be curious that if they did go on the existing fencing it would be overkill on both sides of the fence all the way around the field thank you thank you sir Mr. Wagner thank you Mr. moderator Carl Wagner precinct 11 I move to terminate debate on the question and all articles all issues before us motion to terminate debate on the article and all issues before it all in favor please say yes okay we have two votes oh that was loud everybody doesn't want to terminate debate please say no okay sorry about that debate is terminated we have a force two votes a substitute by the Ellington redevelopment board which is dated May 4th and then there was the original vote first we're going to vote on their substitute vote that's what I mean the substitute motion is the amendment what amendment oh the red yeah I was going to allow that administratively the the one or more permanent because that's um I'll take a vote on that if you want I thought it was administrative all in favor of the substitute motion please say yes opposed say no my opinion it is substituted the main vote as substituted all in favor please say yes opposed say no okay this is zoning so it's a two third so all in favor please rise same tellers please upfront yes we have nine up front Mr. Schwickman 26 Mr. O'Connor 29 Mr. Trembly 31 Mr. McCabe 38 all opposed please rise up front 0 Mr. Schwickman 0 Mr. O'Connor 0 Mr. Trembly 2 Mr. McCabe 1 it is a positive vote 133 to 3 it passes brings us to article 22 by law amendment town meeting standing vote recommended vote this was originally brought by the town meeting procedure committee the selectmen have a recommended vote as printed in their report Mr. O'Connor would you like to address it Mr. O'Connor precinct 19 town meeting procedures committee I find myself in agreement with the board of selectmen and probably with the board of selectmen 99.9% of this body here that we would like to propose this warrant article be passed for the reasons that it would expedite voting counts so that in instances just like the one we just had if there is a super majority required of the body that we don't have to count every vote if we have to count so I would ask you to consider this I know that if prior meeting we were asked to move this matter forward but it wasn't timely at that moment for the moderator's decision so please vote in favor of this along with the board of selectmen in the town meeting procedures committee thank you this matter of information to the meeting we've had 11 such lopsided votes so far this is to address the issue Mr. Berkowitz I would just like to clarify that under this proposal we would still be committed to doubt the vote by five people standing correct you can even still have a roll call with 30 Mr. McCrory Hugh McCrory, precinct 20 and also a member of the town procedures committee actually when the committee took the vote I believe I was the only voice on this when we took the vote I guess I have since changed my mind based on my experience at time meeting yeah I guess the reason why I voted against it wasn't because of the moderator but it's just in the future but I guess I have faith in our excellent moderator and the town in general so I actually urge you to support this article as I will be doing thanks thank you Mr. McCrory, Mr. Fiori Peter Fiori, precinct 2 it's late and I can't think straight can you just explain to me how this changes what we do now I just want to understand I'm not really clear that it changes business the way we do now right now the moderator can declare a majority vote and a unanimous vote so if we're doing zoning bylaws that require a two third vote say if it's anything less than unanimous I can't or any moderator cannot declare it we have to have a two third vote so that's why we have to keep doing standing votes for those folks who decide they want to vote no the moderator would be able to declare a two third vote by the voice vote if in his opinion it is two thirds vote I go through the same with the clerk as we do now for unanimous that there are 85 members present in voting and in my opinion it is a two third vote it can be challenged by the five voters who would stand and challenge the vote we don't lose that right at all otherwise our voting procedures would remain the same we would just give that a little bit of extra and this is provided by state law through the moderator gavel line almost every other representative town meeting around us actually all of them have this article and they use it it's they find it very effective they can't believe we didn't have it so it's all that would change is give me and future moderators the right to declare a two third vote just on the vote we just had 133 two three I could declare that a two third vote we could move on every time in my opinion we do a standing vote between the initial vote the standing accounting the standing accounting it takes anywhere up to five minutes so that's over an hour of time that we've spent doing that exercise okay that's great thank you yeah anybody else wish to discuss the article seeing none all in favor please say yes yes oh my opinion that is a positive vote that brings us to article 24 by law amendment public records recommend a vote of Mr. Loretty recommend a vote of the select there was no action Mr. Loretty thank you I have a substitute motion I'd like to introduce for this article I distributed on Monday I'd like to move that substitute motion yes sir we have a second thank you I submitted this article because I believe there needs to be a better understanding of the public record flow from the town and among some public officials there needs to be a change in attitude about providing public records at a recent town meeting someone spoke of the us versus them dynamic that was taking place in town meeting I think that sometimes occurs with public records as well public records are not their records they are our records but if you read the select report on this article they talk about keeping the fees for public records high enough to serve as a natural gatekeeper to prevent too much access so the thought is unless you really want them and are willing to pay our price you can't have them I reject that attitude I think a more appropriate way to think of public records is the way we think of material in the library access to them is provided without regard to who is asking what is being asked for if it's done at the lowest possible cost then as quickly as possible unfortunately responses to public records request in Arlington are too often handled not as routine administrative matters but rather as political matters I have what to say about that but first I want to talk about the resolution itself it begins with a series of processes which for the most part are taken or borrowed from the secretary of the Commonwealth guide to the public records law and there are a couple others that are simply things that I would regard as good customer service and good management I hope they're not controversial but I'd like to turn to the resolves in the substitute motion in the resolution why I think they're necessary and these resolves are informed by my own experience in making a public records request for emails from last October in the subsequent need to appeal the response of that request to the secretary I'm sorry to the supervisor of records in the secretary of the Commonwealth office as well as to the and it's also informed by the experience of others who have made requests both on the town side and on the school side in particular for email request and I mentioned both sides because we actually have two different email systems in town that are not compatible and not the same so the first resolve talks about the town accepting the offer of free training on the public records law from the state and I think that it's important to do that I think it's a good idea to request that town officials make use of that training because in my experience the public records law really isn't fully understood in this town and I want to give you a few examples of that I spoke to one individual who worked in the IT department a decade ago and he said as early as 2002 it was understood that in order to be compliant with state law archives and emails had to be searchable when I made my request back in October on the town side the town did not yet have a searchable archiving system in for its emails when I presented on this article at town meeting I'm sorry before the select man one of the select asked town council if records that or emails that happen to be embarrassing couldn't be with help fortunately town council corrected her I think you know one of the reasons people make public records requests is they want to get to the truth of the way the town government operates and they don't want to listen or simply accept kind of the public relations presentation we too often get I think there's also a misunderstanding of when you can use attorney client privilege to restrict access to emails when I questioned town council earlier this evening about the zoning board of appeals decision I had asked her for her memorandum to that board and she she denied it on the basis of attorney client privilege that memorandum was made part of the public record for that for that decision by the zoning board of appeals it was distributed to all of the zoning board of appeals members it was in every respect a public record and not covered by attorney client privilege there's also a misunderstanding in town that when you file the public records request if the person you file it with doesn't have that record they have an obligation to forward it to the person who does I've also seen inappropriate charges when some of the mass opponents were making a request for written or paper records to the town the charges for photocopying were not consistent with the state public records law the other thing that happens in the town is that the lowest price employees capable of fulfilling the request are not always being used in the case of emails what has happened in the past is instead of even using town employees at all the town is hiring outside consultants at $100 an hour even when there are lower cost employees in the town who can obtain those records that's not consistent with the law I think at this point that's understood however the expectation of the law and the regulations of the secretary of the commonwealth require that the lowest paid employees be used to obtain the records what the town is now doing is using the highest paid employees in the IT department to provide and respond to requests for emails and that brings me to the next result which is that the town really ought to be using lower cost employees for doing anything and not simply relying on the fact that they're going to be charging back the cost of records to the person making the request certainly you don't expect the head of the library to be helping you find a book or expect the page or a low price or low cost employee to do that the question really is are we going to take a gatekeeper approach to public records or are we going to take a customer service approach now the next result is that the town publish its schedule of fees and this is a direct result of my experience last October originally in the warrant article I talked about actually establishing a set fee for emails that were furnished in response to public records request the original cost estimate I received was a cost of between $1500 to fulfill this request and that was the reason I appealed it now I still have not yet received that request but I have heard about the number of records that were that came out of it and I should tell you the reason I made this request had to do with a property on Dudley street that in 2009 was scheduled to come before the redevelopment board for an environmental design review special permit in 2010 comes around and now that very same development is scheduled to go before the zoning board of appeals and I wanted to find out what happened and why the people behind me decided that they didn't have to comply with your zoning bylaw so I filed the this public record request for all the emails that one related to 39 Dudley street and two contained four names and two of those names were the past and present owner of that property and two of those names were for local attorneys who commonly have business before the ZBA and before the zoning enforcement officer and one of those people I believed or had come to understand had actually helped the zoning enforcement officer write a letter to the redevelopment board explaining why this project now was not didn't have to go before the redevelopment board well anyway the upshot of all this is that there were approximately 200 hits for emails that were relevant to the property address but there were 4000 emails related to the names of these people and my immediate reaction is first my god what have I done how did I come up with that many emails but also if you looked at the formula that is in the warrant article the total cost that could be charged back to me for that for those emails was over $850 when in fact the revised price that came back after I appealed the amount was $200 so in fact the amount of the formula was really too high so I think it's important instead just to have that information published so people know what the schedule of fees is we publish fees for everything else in town I don't see a reason why I can't publish them for the amount that the town is charging to respond to public records request and finally the last result is to actually keep records on what requests are and what the amount is that the town is charging for them in fact this is something that's already required in the state law the request themselves are public records and so are the cost estimates and the state has a whole bunch of regulations about record retention policies so I think eliminate the problem that I see of some people not being charged anything for public records and one individual Mr. Spring cited the example that when he requested a bunch of emails for the Boris Klopp one of their he was charging nothing they were giving to him promptly at no charge nothing like the $1500 that I was charged and I think if everyone knows exactly how much people are being charged for a particular request it really indicates whether the town is making those charges appropriately so I'd like to come back to where I started and that is I believe the town needs a better understanding of the public records law and how to respond to it and that record custodians those are the people to whom the requests are made should not be thought of as gatekeepers they should be people who respond to the request as quickly and economically as possible and the town really needs to comply with not only the letter of the law but also the spirit of the law not waiting to the 10th day the maximum amount of time allowed before they respond not using the most expensive people they can to respond to a request so for all these reasons I ask you to support the substitute motion for this resolution to send this message to town officials thank you Mr. Loretty thank you Mr. Moderator Joe Tully Precinct 14 when I was a kid I used to like watching the Olympics and I always thought it was really neat to watch everybody set records left and right and I said wouldn't it be great if someday you could hold a world record I thought that was just about the best thing ever and I was fortunate to I think be a fair enough athlete that I had a chance to play a little bit of college athletics but I never really had a record holder in anything but a couple years back I actually was presented with the opportunity to submit a public records request to the town of Arlington to the school committee and the superintendent and I like to think that I'm sort of a record holder of sorts Mr. Loretty I don't know where he is in the hall I would have enjoyed getting a bill for $850 I was asked to pay $194,000 for records and I don't have the letter with me is that we're having some renovations done on the house and I can't get at the file cabinet right now so in lieu of having to take out a second mortgage on my house I had to settle for much less than I originally sought there's no doubt in my mind that public records requests are being treated in a political manner rather than in the forthright manner that I think the secretary of state's office would like them to be treated I would submit that my experience in addition to Mr. Loretty probably speaks to that also a bit of a lesser matter but I've never really tended to get the records within the 10 day period that I've requested them I did make a records request recently and Mr. Good in fact was nice enough to get them in a timely manner but some of the other requests I've made have the town's been rather dilatory in relaying those to me I also tend to get replies from the attorneys representing the school committee in the school district which is odd to me because you know frankly whether somebody wants their attorneys to review something or not review it it doesn't make the record any less of a public record and I think Mr. Loretty spoke to that so I would I'm not going to belabor that point and one final point I didn't want to really reference the ongoing litigation with the oddison people because I think a lot of us are really frankly tired of it but not only do I understand that some of the individuals that prominently splayed emails across various media were not charged for the records I understand that and in fact testified that I was the only person that was charged for asking for public records related to that matter so you know it is what it is I'm a big boy I've staked out some positions on this matter I'm certainly willing to take my beating if people want to try to take their opportunity to stick it to me when I request public records but I think we ought to at least as a town understand that this is what's going on I feel like it's a little dirty secret and it would be nice if we at least got it out in the open and had an open debate about how these record requests are being treated thank you Mr. Tully Mr. Fisher Thank you Mr. Moderator Andrew Fisher Precinct 6 I support the resolution in my case I wrote to the town manager's office for information about of all things the town's liability and property insurance which is through the mass municipal association and I explained part of what was on my mind is I wanted to know if we get a price break for having an animal control officer since in normal homeowner insurance believe it or not dog bites is about 20% of your cost it used to be 33% and I explained that I wondered what prevention so for programs they had and some of you know I'm interested in insurance and the response back was it would cost me $32 an hour to get this information and if I had known the language better I probably could have just asked what the there's a term for the contract but I believe that they the office could have answered my request by just handing me whatever the insurance program is so I wrote back and I explained more that this is just an ongoing interest of mine and I probably could be taken care of by a conversation and indeed two or three weeks later I got a phone call from a woman at the insurance operation from Mass Municipal Association so in the end I had about a 20 minute conversation with her and I think I found out what I wanted to know but my concern is that people be treated equally around these things maybe I'm a naughty boy I don't know and on another occasion I wrote to the CFO of the schools because I wanted information about special ed and here again I was told this couldn't violate privacy and it would cost $32 an hour I don't know where the $32 came from but it was the same number in this case I said what should I do? I said we'll talk to the superintendent so I did and in the meantime I found there's already an incredible report compiled on all those costs so anyway I think this is a real issue and I think it ought to be dealt with more forthrightly and openly because I don't know why one person gets the $32 an hour charge and another person does not thank you thank you I'm just curious if the selectmen have a position on the resolution we'll find out in about one or two people Mr. Sullivan you're next I just want to assure the town meeting members that we do take the public records law very seriously and I've been at town meeting now for some eight years and I must say that I've never seen such mischaracterization of what's going on in these public information requests as I've heard tonight total falsehoods that have been put out here in terms of Mr. Loretty he's made a number of requests for information put to us we've complied with all those requests he's filed a number of appeals with the state anyone knows how the state secretary's office works on this they take those requests very seriously they've reviewed those appeals and they've denied all those appeals they found that the town has complied with all the requests appropriately and again we do take them seriously in terms of some of the requests that may have appeared out of line in terms of the cost of it it may have been a case where they've asked for a substantial number of emails from a database that we really can't search for database records that were put away and it would be very expensive now to go through that on a manual basis but in terms of more recent records that are updated and searchable those are much more readily available and they cost less as Mr. Fisher just mentioned that was not a public records request he was looking for information and an analysis of what would happen to the impacts of asking for a document so that's not a public records request that we denied him or we're going to charge him $36 for and that's why we referred him to the insurance company to look for the answers that he was looking for not the document but to speak to someone so from our perspective here I think this is really just getting to a point trying to insult town officials here and I can assure you again that we've taken all these requests seriously and always will Ms. LeCourt Annie LeCourt precinct 15 the Board of Selectment has not voted on the resolution so there is no statement from the Board of Selectment on supporting or denying this resolution we did vote on the original request I think our biggest concern on the original request was that the proposed fee schedule was very restrictive the the persons who were needed to do the search the particular request that Mr. Loretty made that made him very frustrated about the cost we did need an IT professional to do those searches and that's not an intern in an office who has that technical capability in training and cross training people to do these kinds of searches is not necessarily something you can do for the lowest paid employee it depends on the nature of the records that you're looking for and those search terms and so on and so forth obviously this is all getting easier every day technologically and I do believe we solved the problem technologically eventually and were able to give Mr. Loretty what he was looking for I do have a personal opinion about this particular resolution I think that one of the things that this whole discussion has brought to my attention is a select man that I've raised with the town manager is that we do need to have consistent policies and procedures about how we handle records requests and that information needs to be disseminated to all of our town employees but I don't think that there's any evil intent here to obfuscate when these kind of requests come to busy town employees who have to take time away from the job that they're already hired to do that they're already under resourced to do in order to attempt to comply with the request some of which can be very broad and some of which can be very unclear so personally I you should do whatever you feel is correct about this resolution but I hope that you will not do this in the spirit of feeling like somehow you need to do this to punish town employees who are being recalcitrant because believe me at least on the townside that isn't what's happening I have every confidence that our employees are doing the best that they can to both comply with the law and also to provide good customer service personally I don't know when these kind of requests come in so I don't have the ability to do anything political to prevent response from happening because they go to the department heads or to the person who is concerned to fulfill the request and they don't come to the board of selection for consideration we don't get asked by our staff whether or not it's okay to release the records or whatever our expectation is that staff will always comply with public records law and will always communicate with the citizens in the most forthright and customer service friendly way possible and with the greatest alacrity that's our job as selected to make sure that that's happening from the head on down so that's where I'm standing thank you we have a motion to adjourn before I take the motion any notices of reconsideration on the articles that were voted this evening Mr. Tosti served notice on articles 61 any others seeing none Mr. Tosti has one quick announcement before we vote to adjourn yes I just wanted to remind everybody that on Monday we'll be bringing up the capital budget and then the two schools the Stratton and especially the Thompson school on Monday so I just wanted to make sure everybody was aware that those issues would be coming up on Monday thank you all in favor of German please say yes opposed so adjourned