 Good evening everyone. Welcome to the select board of Monday, March 30th, 2020. As a preliminary matter, I'm Diane Imahan, select board chair. Permit me to confirm that all members and persons anticipated on the agenda are present and can hear me. Members, when I call your name, please respond in the affirmative. Mr. Dunn. Here. Mr. Kiro. Here. Mr. Hurd. Here. Mr. DeCorsi. Here. Staff, when I call your name, please also respond in the affirmative. Our town manager, Mr. Chatelang. Here. Town council, attorney Heim. Here. Ashley Maher with the select board office, this is remote. Good evening. This is an open meeting of Allington select board and it's being conducted remotely, consistent with Governor Baker's executive order on March 12th, 2020, due to the current state of emergency and the Commonwealth given the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. In order to mitigate the transmission of the virus and reduce risk of COVID-19 illness, we've been advised and directed by the Commonwealth to suspend public gatherings and as such, the governor's order suspended the requirement of the open meeting law to have all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location. Further, all members of public bodies are allowed and encouraged to participate remotely. The order which you can find posted with agenda materials for this meeting allows public bodies to meet entirely remotely, so long as reasonable public access is afforded so that the public can follow along with the deliberations of the meeting. Ensuring public access does not ensure public participation unless such participation is required by law. Even if members of the public do not provide comment, participants are advised that people may be listening who do not provide comment and those persons are not required to identify themselves. For this meeting, the select board is convening by Zoom is posted on the town's website identifying how the public may join. Please note that this meeting is being recorded and that some attendees are participating by video conference. Accordingly, please be aware that other folks may be able to see you and that you take care not to screen share your computer. Anything that you broadcast may be captured by the recording. Please also take care to adjust your screen or device name if you would like to speak. In order for us to recognize speakers appropriately and develop accurate minutes, it is helpful for participants to see your full first and last name when calling upon you rather than a nickname. For novice agenda supported meetings, all of the materials for this meeting except any executive session materials are available on the novice agenda dashboard and we recommend the members in the public follow the agenda as posted on novice unless I, the chair, note otherwise. Now, some meeting business ground rules. We're now turning to the first item on the agenda. Before we do so, permit me to cover some ground rules for effective and clear conduct of our business and to ensure accurate meeting minutes. I will introduce each speaker on the agenda after they conclude their remarks. The chair will go down the line of members inviting each by name to provide any comment, questions, or motions. Please hold until your name is called. Further, please remember to mute your phone or computer when you are not speaking. Please remember to speak clearly in a way that helps generate accurate minutes. For any response, please wait until the chair yields the floor to you and state your name before speaking. And if any members wish to engage in colloquially with other members, please do so through the chair, taking care to identify yourself first. You will now go to agenda item two update of on town of Wellington response to COVID-19 pandemic, our town manager, Mr. Chapter Lane. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll be brief, but I did wanna take this opportunity to update the select board as well as those joining the Zoom meeting and watching at home to give a brief update on the town's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. I think the first thing I would say is the best source of information that we can provide is the daily notices that we're sending out via the town email list, as well as posting the same information to the town website daily at 5 p.m. Also, every Friday we are sending out an Arlington alert that's the townwide phone call, trying to provide what we deem at the end of the week the most critical information or updates for people to be aware of. We're also updating our social media channels, Facebook and Twitter. So we're trying to reach as broad an audience as possible. And then finally, in terms of communication, I've also been interviewing via Zoom with ACMI once, maybe twice a week, and ACMI is making that available as well. So we're trying to push out information via as many channels as possible so that the residents of the town are as informed as possible about the actions that we're taking. Moving beyond that, I think the second most important thing for me to say is a thank you to the town staff, specifically the staff at Health and Human Services that are truly working seven days a week around the clock in their response to this crisis. They're doing important work. They are the team that is informed of the case count. And as many have probably read today, our case count rose to 19 positive cases in Arlington. Also, very sadly, we learned of the first death of a resident of Arlington from COVID-19 today, a 68-year-old male. So not that anybody was not considering this to be real or taking this seriously, but that certainly brings it home and makes it much more real to many of us, certainly those who knew the deceased as well as his family and loved ones. Moving on from there, I think I wanna just give an update on what the Board of Health staff is doing. On a daily basis, they're working with the state DPH, working through a state database to identify people who are positive for COVID-19 in Arlington. From there, they begin with called a process of contact tracing, working to determine who that person who's been found positive may have been in contact with as DPH defines a contact, which in general terms is being within six feet of someone who's been found positive for more than a 15-minute period of time. So they work to trace as many contacts as they can identify, reach out, communicate with those contacts, and then place them in quarantine. And this is all in an effort to break the line of transmission of the virus. So these are efforts that are ongoing and will be ongoing to try our best to contain the virus spreading in Arlington. Beyond that, it's our Board of Health staff that is advising us on the measures that we should be taking as a general public and as a population here in Arlington to try to stem or break the line of transmission or stem the spread of the virus in Arlington. So it's been our Board of Health staff that has advised us on the closures that have been put in place. We're now operating under the governor's closure of all state schools until May 4th. We're operating under the governor's order of closing all non-essential businesses until April 7th, excuse me, as well as his stay-at-home advisory. Though today he mentioned that he would be likely making an announcement about an extension of that non-essential business closure as well as the stay-at-home advisory. So we'll be waiting tomorrow for what that announcement may be. However, it's our Board of Health that had been advising us all along to close our playgrounds, close our basketball courts, our tennis courts, and continually issuing guidance to people in the town to try to practice proper social distancing, staying six feet away from non-family contacts so that, again, we can do everything we can to break the line of transmission. On a daily basis, members of the team, myself included, are in contact with state officials. We're in contact with other local officials in the region and we're in contact with the regional hospitals to have an understanding of what they're facing and what we can be doing to help and communicate with them. And most of all, I want to just re-emphasize the message we've been putting in our notices every day as well as what has been included in the Arlington Alert the past two weeks. And that is, if at all possible, Arlington residents, please stay home. It's okay to go for a walk to get exercise. It's okay to go to the grocery store, to the pharmacy, or to help someone who's in need of help. But generally, if we all work together, staying home, avoiding contact with non-family contacts is the best work we can do to break the line of transmission. And this is, it's such an interesting, I would say, sociological study here that all of our efforts are being put towards the hope that nothing will happen. If we are successful in the efforts that we've put forth, it will mean that hospitals are not overwhelmed, less people come down with the virus at least in a short period of time, and less people die. And it's odd, I think, for most of us to picture an outcome being something not happening, but that's what we're working towards. And right now, the experts that have been advising us and advising state leaders are saying we're at least another week, maybe two weeks away from knowing whether or not our efforts have been successful. So we've been in this for about two weeks. We're starting the third week. We need another full week or more to know if we've actually started to bend that curve down so that the hospitals will be able to treat people that will inevitably contract COVID-19. So I wanna assure the board, I wanna assure the public, we're gonna continue working on this every day. We're gonna continue communicating with the public and the manners in which we have and even trying to expand that. There's a number of ways we're looking at trying to expand it. And we remain ready to serve the town and get through this together. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chaplain. I agree. The best place to go for any information, allingtonma.gov. I do wanna thank our town manager, Adam Chaplain, for really, along with his department heads for health and others, really getting ahead of this. I know when March 13th, when the governor had his first conference and I along with my colleagues separately, we're talking with our town manager. Really didn't hear a lot coming out of the governor, but your town manager, Mr. Chaplain, was already ahead of this issue. First few days, some people thought maybe we were going a little pushing a little too overboard or a little too alarmist, but Allington's really been safe before the trend of what everybody else is doing. And it's really strange right now because we have to tell everyone, please stay apart so we can get back together sooner. I agree with the town manager in terms of the governor stating from his experts that he hears the surge hitting anywhere from April 7th to April 17th, possibly the 21st. And I really hope I wanna reiterate what the town manager, Mr. Chaplain, has said through all of his efforts and all of our sacrifices, I really hope it's a teeny little bump or blip and we really don't see any catastrophic numbers of Allington residents or anybody as a result of the coronavirus. So with that, I will go to agenda item three. We have a discussion and vote postponement of the annual town election. Our town council, Attorney Hyme. Thank you, Madam Chair. To provide a brief update to the select board and members of the public who are watching, listening and participating. On Friday, the Board of Registrar, along with Assistant Town Clerk, Janice Weber, I believe is on this meeting with us, I had a meeting to discuss the select board's position to postpone the election. There was a discussion of a number of items, but the sudden substance of that meeting was that they concurred with the timeline. They did not express an explicit preference between the two dates that had been suggested for June 6th and June 13th. There was a discussion about wanting to make sure that the election could take place before town meeting, which is consistent with what the Board and the moderator had been discussing. There was some discussion of some very specific technical issues about the registrars themselves collecting votes. But again, the short of it is, is that they concurred with the general timeline that the Board has outlined and voted to support either June 6th or June 13th as an appropriate time. If the Board will indulge me for a moment, I wanna maybe head off a few questions given that the chapter 45 of the Acts of 2020 had just been passed when we last discussed this earlier that same day. And note for some folks in the public some important features of the legislation that will help to determine the overall timeline why it's important for us to buy this time. So first and foremost, I wanna note that as the Board adjusts the date of the election, voter registration will by law be adjusted as well. Folks will be able to register to vote up to 10 days before whatever date this Board sets. So 10 days before June 6th or 10 days before June 13th. New ballots can be printed, but they have to be identical to the ballots that we had previously prepared. Absentee ballot voting is essentially been greatly expanded in the sense that any person can participate by absentee ballot voting if they assert that health concerns due to COVID-19 are the reasons that they wanna participate by an absentee ballot. There's a technical box that has to be checked that's physical disability, but I think that the overall purpose of the legislation is to allow as many people as necessary to vote by absentee ballot. Also anybody who already voted by absentee ballot, their votes count. If they wanted to change their vote by voting in person, there is a mechanism to do that, although it has to be before their absentee ballot was counted. Finally, the legislation also expands what's called early voting by mail. It allows for folks to engage in early voting, but only by a remote means. It does not open up early voting at the polls. In fact, it specifically says that there will not be early voting physically at poll locations. But between that and the expansion or the relaxation of absentee ballot standards, a lot of folks who would have heightened concerns about their health and participating even in a June election could avail themselves of either absentee or early voting by mail. With that, I'll be happy to answer any questions. I don't know if the assistant town clerk has any further observations about the Board of Registrar's meeting, but again, they're supportive of the timeline that this board originally contemplated. Okay, thank you. Attorney Hyme, what I'll do is before I call on my colleagues, since it was referenced and we need to hear about the Board of Registrar's as well as the town clerk's office, I'll call on the assistant town clerk, Mrs. Weaver. Thank you, Diane. Doug, I was unaware of anything about early voting for the town election. So I don't think that's on the table. We have no early voting ballots and we weren't notified of that. Okay, well, that's something that we'll certainly have to discuss. But again, in some in substance, the absentee ballot process is gonna be very, very similar. If folks have an acute or actually folks just say that they have a COVID-19 health-related concern about voting at the polling locations, they'll be able to access absentee ballots. Obviously, we only have so many absentee ballots and I know that the town clerk's office has been working hard on these issues already and we'll have to access more. I believe that's correct, right, Janice? Yes, that is correct. Okay, thank you so much. Mr. Kiro? Yes, thank you very much. I'm going for the unmute and I'm trying to read the statute in the same window. Actually, to Ms. Weaver's question, I wonder if the town council could clarify, when I was looking through the statute, it looked like it said that absentee ballots could be mailed out as the early voting ballot and that individuals are not required to actually submit the application even for the early voting ballot, that any form of written communication. My understanding of that was that even an email with the appropriate information would suffice. Is my understanding of that correct? Through you, Madam Chair, to the town council. Attorney Heim? That's correct. There's basically an additional early voting sort of vehicle that was sort of modified early voting that was inserted in the legislation. There might be some things that we sort of need to figure out as to exactly how that works and how it's distinct from the absentee process. But yes, it does say that you can file a request with the clerk's office to vote early by email. There may need to be some follow-up discussions with the clerk's office about how exactly that operates. And as I said previously, all the ballots essentially have to be identical even to the ballots that as much as practically possible to the ballots that we had previously developed. Got it. Thank you. Thank you. Madam Chair, is this an appropriate time to make a... Well, I have a couple more comments and then I wonder if it's an appropriate time to make a motion. Yes, please. Okay. So the additional comments I wanted to make around this, this is a very unusual election. And even in talking to some folks in the community, there was confusion. There were some folks who thought that this was an exclusively early voting election that was going to be taking place. And I tried to explain that it's actually a hybrid, that the polls will be open, but the early voting option for this election only by mail will be available. And that does, I think raise the challenge, I think for all of us to engage in a really vigorous public information campaign. I know, I saw that we received a letter just as we were coming into the meeting from a group of town meeting candidates who asked for our assistance in making sure that folks are aware of the change date of the election, the fact that early voting ballots will be available. They suggested billboards and major intersections and I defer to the town manager on whether a couple of those might be possible. I would think particularly in the grocery stores because that's just about the only place people have to go right now. There were three other suggestions. One was to recruit the assistance of ACMI, holding a series of virtual debates among the candidates to town-wide office, which of course there were no debates. And I know ACMI is hearing, we don't control that, but I know Jeff you're listening. One was to put out a mail or two registered voters alerting them the availability of unrestricted absentee ballots with the early voting process. I don't know what the feasibility of that is, but I'd like to recommend, and I'm sure it will be incorporated in all of the extensive outreach that the town manager has been doing in conjunction with the COVID-19 crisis that this specifically will be put front and center, especially the early voting piece. It's so new for everyone. The last thing that was requested in this letter, I think it's probably a little bit more problematic because it asks to pursue options for mailing statements from all candidates running for town-wide office so voters can make informed decisions from the safety of their homes. That seems to be bordering on the using public resources I think for campaigning. I'm not sure if it's equal opportunity. I mean, it's a public information piece, but it seems to mirror a lot of what the league already does. And it may be worth just reaching out to the league and see if they have any intention of bolstering their efforts. I think they'd already sent out their candidate profiles and maybe they're looking to bolster that. So it's something I hope we'll just think about as we get closer to this, using some of the outreach mechanisms we've used for the public health outreach that will also incorporate some repeated messaging about the fact that we have changed the date of the election. You don't have, if you don't feel safe, you do not have to come to the polls, but you can request an early voting ballot and this is the way to do it. So that's the comment part. As far as the motion, I would like to move that we set the date of the municipal town election for Saturday, June 6th from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. The motion by Mr. Curell set the date of the municipal elections to Saturday, June 6th, 2020, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Is there a second, Mr. Hurd? Second. Seconded by Mr. Hurd. I do want to call on my colleagues and I'll actually do that first. I just want to check with Mr. Curell that that was your complete discussion for now. Yeah, that was my motion. I think we all saw the correspondence from Ms. Kramer regarding availability of the town hall and I think that when we discussed this last week, my initial preference was June 6th as well because it keys off of the date that the legislature set for special elections and a couple of, I think it's Senate districts. So where we'd go to Saturday after those. So it seems to make sense. Madam Chair, Janice would like to either ask a question or give some input. Yes, I would. We have one second time. Yes, I'd just like to state my concern about this early voting because that's a whole different ballot altogether and we were never apprised with the fact that we might have early voting. An absentee ballot voting is basically the same in this situation because of the coronavirus. And if we go to early voting, that's just a whole different thing. And that means we sort of have to set up another way to do that. And I think it would be, well, I think it would be too hard to get everything ready for that. I can do it, but we were never apprised of that. We were told that we were not having early voting for the town election. And actually the absentee ballot serves the same thing. So I don't see the necessity of confusing the voting. I can leave that to Attorney Hyme in terms of the interpretation that we got from the legislation out of the state house. And I believe I saw something, I believe it came from you from the town clerks organization that spoke about absentee ballot and then they called it mail-in voting. And then they spoke to early voting. So what we can do is I've had conversations with the select board office and I'll leave it to Attorney Hyme along with meeting with Mrs. Weaver and others. We're gonna do everything that we need to do under the law as well as try to take another step forward like we always do. So that's still to be determined exactly what the election will look like. I think as my colleague, Ms. Carol stated from what I've read from what came out of the state house, there it does include mail-in, and it does include early voting. So we need to have further discussions on that. Mr. Hurst, did you have any further comments? I'm sorry. Yeah, I just wanted to concur with the date. I think the June 6th date is gives us, based on where we're looking to start town meeting and give us a little time between the election and town meeting, so people that are elected can prepare. I think the June 6th date is the preferable date. And just as far, I think, you know, as we talk about early voting versus absentee ballot, residents just wanna be sure that they can get a ballot sent to them. And if we just call it absentee ballot, that's fine. We just have to make sure that we can get our hands on as many as the state will provide us to make sure we can, because it's certainly gonna be a lot of demand for the absentee ballots in this election. And so we wanna be prepared for that. And people in just simplify the process, and I think as Attorney Hyam mentioned, if we can make it so people don't have to go into the clerk's office, they can just email the information to have the absentee ballot sent to them, then they can send it back in. I think that satisfies what people are looking for. But we don't have to get too much into the weeds about absentee ballot versus early voting, if we can do it through the absentee ballot system. That's it for me. Mr. Dacourcy. Thank you, Madam Chair. I also agree with the June 6th date. And for reasons Mr. Hurd said having to do with, it still gives us a chance to get into town meeting later in June. And I do think for purposes of tonight's vote, it's really to select June 6th as the date. And it sounds like there still needs to be some more discussion on logistics. And I think as long as we're clear and we can have those discussions sooner rather than later, we can keep the public updated so that people have enough time to make their decisions as to how they're going to vote. Mr. Dunn. Thank you, Madam Chair. June 6th sounds good to me. I very much agree with the way Mr. Dacourcy expressed it, which is that we're setting the date tonight and there's still a lot of logistics of that to work out. And I absolutely, and I know I absolutely encourage the clerk's office and the select board office and the town manager's office to make it as easy as possible for people to vote. This has been a long standing position of mine and I'm happy to keep banging the drum on it in this unfortunate situation. And in terms of the letter we got from some of the candidates just before the meeting started, I think I'm in favor of most of the stuff in there. I just think, but I also think that we should continue to, it's all about these public and private partnerships in there. And I mean that in terms of like ACMI and the legal women voters and things like that, it's not this one isn't just on the town. It's doing notification about things like elections requires a lot of people to work together through a lot of channels. And I think that we should absolutely do a lot to do that, to work those partnerships to get that publicity to happen. And my final thought is just to repeat something that I said last week, which is I recognize full well that taking this vote is extending my term, which is really unorthodox, but I've thought about it a lot and I do think it is the right thing to do. And I will, you know, I'm gonna be serving a couple of months longer than I thought I would. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Mr. Dunn. And I agree in terms of, I know I and others that I've had extensive conversations recently as today with Mrs. Kopalka and Fran Reedy in the select board office, because this isn't the first time when we've had to have early voting, already thinking about the logistics, also discussing with the town manager, Adam Chapter Lane, but I don't wanna go into specifics yet until we know exactly what kind of pie we're baking here, what needs to be done, but everything certainly is doable in terms of what I think and my colleagues do in terms of the interpretation of the vote, this vote moving forward. And I would before I call for the motion, I also would, as you know, I'm up for reelection. You can also find online with the Allington Advocate or questions, five questions answered once a week, yourallington.com also has four or five questions, as well as their ACMI taped from the town-wide candidates. Candidate profile, you can go on ACMI, each candidate had up to five minutes. Go on to the on-demand government channel feature. Go to acmi.tv and you could find exactly how to get there when all of that is running and rerunning and rerunning. And certainly I'll leave it to Mr. Chapter Lane in terms of the points that my colleagues outlined that were raised in terms of what's appropriate. I certainly wanna get the word out as we all do, every way we possibly legally can, because this really is uncharted territory on that. So with that, on a motion by Mr. Kearrow, seconded by Mr. Herb to set the day of the municipal election for Saturday June 6, 2020, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., roll call, turning high. Turning high. Sorry about that. Thank you, Madam Chair. Mr. DeCorsi. Yes. Mr. Herb. Yes. Mr. Kearrow. Yes. Mr. Dunn. Yes. Ms. Lohan. Yes. So that's a unanimous vote, five to zero. Thank you. We now go to correspondence received. We have two requesting to left board to accelerate public road projects. Joseph Rice via our request to answer center. I apologize if I said your name incorrectly. And dangerous intersection at Wachuset Avenue on Appleton Street from Mock Lepper of Wachuset Avenue. Mr. DeCorsi. Steve, you're muted. Thank you, Madam Chair. I move receipt of both letters and I wanted to speak briefly to the dangerous intersection letter and perhaps move that that be referred to TAC for further review. But that intersection, it's those of you who are up in the down school area know that it is a dangerous intersection. And I actually went to the down school as a safety patrol at the down school and that was my intersection. So I know it very well that there is a stop sign there on Appleton Street going westbound into the intersection that wasn't years ago. And that's the issue that's being raised through this letter. So perhaps there is a way to see if there is either more signage that can be done or just to study it and get back to us on that. Is there a second to move receipt, correspondence received, Mr. Dunn? Second. Mr. Heard? I will come. I was just going to say, as far as that stop sign, just it might be just an aspect of painting it. So I don't know if we want to send it to the town manager before sending it to TAC just to see if that is a more viable option. If the problem is making a stop sign more visible, what it didn't sound that he was trying to change the traffic laws other than just getting people to stop at the stop sign. That might be something we could do in a quicker manner, but deferred to the board. Sorry, thank you Mr. Heard. The email that I received, there were a couple of things in there request for a speed bump as well as, I think he said something of a yellow Marvin. So I think that's where the TAC would come in. So we'll take the motion to move receipt. I'm sure the town manager will take the pass at the part of it that's applicable to him. And then after that, any of those other points if possible, go on to the transportation advisory committee, but recognizing the times that we're in right now and some things that we were able to get done much sooner have to sort of be put on sort of the slow track, not that anything's going to stop and not happen. So, but I think that's what we'll do if that's okay, Mr. Chaperling. Yes, I mean, I guess the board could certainly refer to TAC, we could refer to the senior transportation planner who works closely with TAC, whatever the board's prerogative is, we'll get to the same place. The decorcy, is that amenable? That's fine, actually I'll defer to the town manager on that, if you would prefer that we send it to the senior transportation planner first, that's fine with me. Yeah. Motion to move receipt by Mr. Decorsi, seconded by Mr. Dunn, roll call, attorney Heim. Mr. Decorsi? Yes. Mr. Hurd? Yes. Mr. Currow? Yes. Mr. Dunn? Yes. Ms. Lohan? Yes, we'll receive five zero. We now go to new business, attorney Heim. No new business, thank you. Thank you, and thank you, I want to thank attorney Heim. I'm very grateful for everybody, for everything, but he certainly has helped me in terms of having a virtual select board meeting, as well as writing up preamples for me and the like, and he along with the town manager. Diane, can I ask you a question? Are you going to allow any questions? There's no citizens open forum. Well, we didn't have it last week either, but you allowed questions before votes were taken. I know, but we need to get, that's because everything was brand new and we were discussing options. This is pretty straightforward. I'm trying to maintain a select board meeting. Do you have questions? That's 30 seconds or less, who I'm not sure who I'm talking to. This is Jordan Weinstein. Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure, to be honest with you, this is taking me a bit by surprise, because I was prepared to basically follow, and many of us have questions that we have about 70 or 80 people. No, you have 50 people watching this right now. I know, but there's a lot more. Many of us have questions that we thought that we were going to be following the same format as last week. There's a lot discussed this evening about early voting versus absentee voting, and there aren't quite a few questions. For example, why wasn't a later date considered for given that all the candidates can't do the typical campaigning and need as much time as possible to make themselves recognized and get name recognition and get themselves before the voters? Why was June 6th chosen when 30th? I'll definitely answer this question, but I just want to remind everybody that these are unusual circumstances. This is a select board meeting. And I know you and others have attended select board meetings unless its citizens open forum, unless it's an agenda item that a proponent or it's a public hearing. We do not have public comment and conversation back and forth on every single select board meeting. Well, you didn't have any comment or conversation at all, Diane. I know, and maybe I'm kind of living with that. I was trying to, you know, considering that we were having a first meeting, and we, this is a brand new discussion about setting elections and about town meeting. So I had to allow some latitude there. And I don't want to go back and forth because what we're basically doing here is following under state law. We need to schedule the election before June 30th of 2020. We set a date. I think perhaps we're being a bit ambitious with that. I think we need to wait out to see circumstances could change that we could be revisiting this issue again, but I don't have a crystal ball in terms of what the coronavirus in its course is going to look like. So a new business, Mr. Chathaling. Well, no new business. Thank you. New business, Mr. Heard. I just want to thank all the department heads in the town that have been working so hard to keep us safe and particularly the town manager. And then just say a big thank you to any Arlington residents that work in the medical field. I know people in the medical field are really straining themselves and going above and beyond whatever the call of duty that they ever thought that they would have to work. And so just thank you to all Arlington residents that are helping others out there. Thank you. Mr. Carroll, no business. Yeah, thank you. I echo Mr. Heard's thanks to the staff. I also want to thank a number of Arlington volunteers and community residents have been trying to really organize around helping others within the community. There's a mutual aid Arlington organization that I know has spun up mutualaidarlington.org. They're looking for volunteers to work on a very hyper-local basis within their neighborhoods just to make sure there are no neighbors in need and also to help fight social isolation. I also saw that we had an announcement came out of the planning department facilitating the possibility for community activists to work together on the amazing Arlington initiative to allow residents to come up with ideas and work within their areas as well around fighting social isolation. And frankly, that might actually be one way also to make sure that some of the important information around the public health emergency and the election and such reaches those who may not be plugged into our existing communication channels. All I have. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Mr. Carroll. New business, Mr. Dunn. I'll echo my thanks for public safety, health, and to employees, it's tough times and we appreciate what they're doing. Thank you. New business, Mr. Dacorsi. Thank you, Madam Chair. Yeah, I wanna echo the statements of my colleagues. Also recognize that today is actually National Doctors' Day and on top of our town workers, our first responders, I do wanna thank our doctors and all healthcare professionals for all the work that they're doing and just wanna encourage everybody over the next few weeks, you've been from the governor, you've been from the town manager. Critical these next few weeks are so really important for us to work together by staying apart. Thank you. And before I now, well, I'll announce the next meeting April 27th, 2020, before I take a motion to adjourn, I just wanna again emphasize, please go to ArlingtonMA.gov, Mr. Chathlin. I do have one more question if you have the time for it. Excuse me, Jordan. I thought that, I thought we were meeting next week on the sixth, Madam Chair. We had a meeting scheduled for the sixth, and right now there's not anything before us. If there's some reason, we still have the meeting on the sixth if you want, but right now I don't have anything on the agenda for it. We do have one time sensitive PDBG related warrant article hearing, but I suppose, why don't we, we can talk about that this week and if the meeting's necessary. Yeah, we need it. We can advertise as necessary. Okay. Excuse me, Chairwoman Mohan, I also have a quick question, Elizabeth Dre. We're at the end of the meeting now. I'm sorry that I really can't straighten the format. So, I'm just looking for education as to what, what are the rules? Cause I'm just, where can I look to find the rules about participation just out of respect? I just don't know what they are. Okay. If you go to, would it be the special state? No. Attorney Hine, I don't know if it's chapter 45 of the acts of 2020. Could you, am I citing that correctly? Can you explain to us how to sign up for citizen's participation? All right. All right. All right. Madam Chair, do you want me to speak briefly to this? Yes, if you could. And then I need to take a motion to adjourn after I do my new business. Thank you, Attorney Hine. Thank you, folks. I think there's two separate lines of things that folks are a little bit confused about. One is if we don't have citizens open forum on the agenda, we don't have a citizens open forum. Public participation is not generally something that happens unless it's a hearing or it's via citizens open forum. Obviously last week, there was a lot of discussion and the chair opened for public comment on the initial discussion to set the date of opposed to take a vote to postpone the town election. Having chosen a couple of dates to run by the board of registrars, the board of registrars had a vote and they recommended that same time. So in terms of tonight's meeting, the rules are generally set forth in places like the other meeting law, the select board's handbook, things like that. With respect to voting, I think the thing that I want folks to come away from this understanding is that there will be opportunities to vote by mail. And whether you call those early voting or you call them absentee voting, there's gonna be opportunities for folks to vote by mail-in ballot. And the clerk's office, I'm sure will be publishing some information. I'll make sure to work with them. I know the town manager will be concerned about it too. Make sure that folks understand what are kind of distinctions without a difference in terms of early voting versus absentee ballots. They're gonna be the same ballots one way or the other. Thank you, Madam Chair. Okay. And with that, just to follow form, regularly, next regularly scheduled meeting is April 6th, 2020. I will have conversations with the town manager and others and if we do have something on the agenda, we will be meeting on April 6th. If not, I'll give the appropriate notice to my colleagues. With that, I'll take a motion to adjourn. Will there be public forum at the next meeting on April 6th? Motion to adjourn by Mr. Dacorsi. So moved. Seconded by Mr. Heard. Second. A roll call, Attorney Heim. Mr. Dacorsi. Yes. Mr. Heard. Yes. Mr. Currow. Yes. Mr. Dunn. Yes. Ms. Mahon. Yes. Thank you and good night. Thank you.