 Hello, everyone. Welcome. I'm James Milan, and I am joined today for the town moderator debate by the two candidates for that race, the only contested race in this year's election. And they are Greg Cristiana and John Leone. Gentlemen, thanks so much for being here. Appreciate it. We are going to basically have two-minute opening statements. I'll just quickly go through what we're going to do. We'll have two-minute opening statements from each of the candidates. They will be Greg presenting first and then John. And that was determined by a coin toss before we went on air. And then we will have three short sections of questions, very short, in fact, each one of them. And I'll explain each of those. I will introduce each of those at the beginning of each of those sections. And then we will finish with one-minute closing statements from each of the candidates in reverse order from the opening. So without further ado, let's get going. So we'll begin with you, Greg, two-minute opening statement. Great. Thanks, James. I want to start by thanking ACMI for hosting this debate and the audience watching at home for tuning in. I grew up in a household where I was the youngest of four boys. I learned from a young age that if I wanted to be heard, I had to speak up. It's a lesson that my wife and I have been successful in stilling in our daughter and our son, maybe too successful at times, but it's a lesson that will serve them well. And so it was with that spirit that I banded together with other parents who were concerned about the crowding in our school's classrooms. That's when I first heard about town meeting, this place where people speak and decisions are made. And I wanted to see it for myself. And what I saw was pretty amazing. I saw one of the purest, longest-lasting forms of representative democracy in existence today, 252 elected volunteers spending hours together deliberating and deciding policies as representatives of the 45,000 Arlingtonians not in the room. A year later, I entered that hall as an elected member of town meeting. This year, we're seeing an unusually high rate of attrition from town meeting. 45 town meeting members have decided to not run for reelection. I've spoken with several of them, and there are many reasons why they're not running. And it's not any one person's fault. But it's clear that there's an atmosphere at town meeting that some members feel creates an unequal playing field. We need leadership that can create a welcoming environment that encourages participation by all members. We also need leadership that prioritizes outreach into our community to invite and inspire more people to participate in our civic institutions. If elected town moderator, I will bring my innovative spirit and my passion for democracy to this critical Arlington institution. Thank you. John, two minutes. Thank you. I'm John Leone, and I am again seeking reelection as your town moderator. I respectfully ask for your support and your vote. I believe that I am uniquely qualified to hold the moderator office. I pride myself in my honesty, directness, and fairness. Upon being reelected, I will continue to run a fair, efficient, transparent, and well balanced town meeting. I've been an active town meeting member for 27 years, assistant moderator for three years, and moderator for 14. I've presided over 112 town meetings. I planned, organized, and ran the 2020 town meeting on the high school football field, and then moved to Zoom and a customized voting portal to conduct a 2021 town meeting. The responsibility of town moderator is to oversee and manage our town meeting and make appointments to several committees. A moderator must have a good knowledge of Massachusetts general laws, town bylaws, and the moderator's role is not a policy position. The moderator needs to maintain impartiality and independence and should never engage in advocating for or against or take a position on any issue. The moderator's job is to welcome all members into the meeting, skillfully manage the speaking time, to give all members the opportunity to weigh in on the debate on an issue. Why do I do this? Because I deeply believe in participatory democracy. I respect the volunteer service of our town meeting members. I've worked to focus town meetings time on the governing decisions requiring thoughtful debate through several innovative reforms that I've instituted which have reduced the pre-pandemic average to only six sessions, making service more manageable for town meeting members, which in turn has encouraged more voters of all diversities to run for town meeting. I'm John Leone. Thank you. Thank you both. So in this first section of questions there's really just one question and I will be asking the same question to both candidates and each of you will have two minutes to respond. And we are taking the order in which I asked the question or to whom I asked the question. The order is coming from the ballot so because Greg you are first on the ballot I will be directing the question to you first. Again it is the same question for both candidates two minutes and the question is the town moderator's role as you both have just described is a complex and multifaceted one. What do you identify as the most challenging aspects of the job and why do you think you're well suited to take those on? Please be as specific and concrete as possible. Great thanks James. And so I think the hardest part of the job is to take a room full sometimes a virtual room is in the last couple years during the pandemic of 252 town meeting members and other bodies that are there such as the select board and other officials and to be able to create an environment where all voices can be heard in a manageable way. Obviously not everyone can speak at once so the moderator's job in the context of town meeting is to be able to give everyone a fair chance at speaking. And we can get into the details of the speaking queues we might get into that and other questions as well but we want to focus here on what's happening in that hall and kind of managing the discussion, the deliberation that happens at town meeting. And there's also a big part of the job that happens outside of town meeting which often gets less attention which is the appointments to dozens of town committee positions and I would bring a significant amount of transparency to the process of appointing members to those town committees. Today you can find on the town's website the various you can look around and I've searched around for all the various committees, the town committees that are listed there that the moderator has appointments to but there's no one central place so you can't just look up and find like what are all the appointments that are like what are all the vacancies that someone might be interested in and that's something I would bring a significant amount of transparency to and also outreach to the community to let folks know what those vacancies are and that the moderator appoints them and just bring that information to the community. And in particular and we might talk more about this later as time is running short the town meeting procedures committee is a very important committee which has vacancies that I would fill very quickly. Thank you. Thank you very much John. Thank you. The moderator's position is multifaceted it ranges from getting the warrant in final form with the board of select the select board getting it out to the town meeting members getting all of the materials out to town meeting members prior to the meeting started we have to get out proposed votes recommended votes reports of the committees all to the town meeting members over the last few years I have been working with the town IT staff to digitize all of that material so that we have it up on the website under the interactive warrant one of the aims of that was to reduce the paper waste that goes into the town and also to save the town quite a bit of money it's working very well unfortunately the pandemic put a little bit of a hold on it the most important part of the moderator's job is obviously running the meeting you have to deal with a diverse group of people 252 town meeting members approximately 30 town officials board members who all want to speak at once so what I have done and what has been the procedure of the other moderators is a speaking list very very um oh my goodness what I want to say very primitive everyone raises their hands and you write them down from that list you generally call in order but if you have heard six or seven people from the yes side you have to get some people from the other side of the offense you want to hear people from the no side or the people who have questions so it's the moderators duty and job to know how all of the members are mostly going to speak based upon their past performances and to make sure you call upon those members so that you get a good um debate and you hear all points of view prior to the vote being terminated and taking the vote on the issue it's very important that we have a full and fair debate from all sides that's one of the most important jobs of the moderator thank you thank you um we'll move on to the next section and this section will have just two questions in it and um the person that I direct the question to will have two minutes to respond and then the other candidate will have a one minute rebuttal period um I'm going to start by directing the first question to you John and I have the two questions here but I don't know which one of them it will be I will be surprised as will you so to you John in the context of the work you've done in service to the town what are you most proud of and please also cite one thing you wish you had done differently I'm proud of the work I've done for the town on many different committees and which I won't go over them all here because of my two minutes but if you go to my website Leone Moderator you'll be able to find that all listed but I'm most proud of the work I've done as the moderator in getting a meeting that is run efficiently and fairly and that we get down to the business that really needs to be done one of the things that I directed that we will do with the consent agenda there are many housekeeping articles every year that we we vote on to fund water and sewer construction the parades the cemetery etc I packaged all of those into a consent agenda and able to free up that much time to spend on more substantive debates and that way it's more useful for the town meeting members and it also has eliminated three four five six days of town meeting time which I think has been a great benefit for the members who who wish to get home at the end of the night and don't want to be coming down to town hall Arlington is an outlier and the length of times our town meetings used to take we're still a little bit of an outlier but I don't wouldn't want to rush it anymore Arlington has its own town meeting and its own traditions and cadence of the meeting and I want to preserve that things I would have done differently all my opponent seems to think the speaker's list is a big deal I would have told everyone right up front that I take the list I generally call in order but I do remain able as the moderator to choose off of the numerical list and take people out of order just as I had said before to make sure we have a full and fair debate I would have done that I hadn't made that clear to the meeting for that I apologize but I think we have a good meeting and I wouldn't have changed too much more except for continuing improvements thank you very much great you have one excuse me you have one minute for a bottle great and so I'll come back to the speaking list I just want to start with what the work that I've done that I'm most proud of and and focus on that first which is the work that I've done within Envision Arlington I've served there as the co-chair of the Envision Arlington Standing Committee recognized the need going back over a year ago that we didn't have the right structure organizationally in place because it's a fixed number of seats on the committee we couldn't scale to the kind of volunteer outreach that we wanted to do to the community to bring more diverse voices into it and so I spearheaded the effort and drove the effort to create the civic engagement group to be able to scale up our volunteer effort organizationally that way as far as the speaker queue I don't have any problem at all with the moderator whether it's Mr. Leone or whoever becomes moderator having discretion about the speaking order the problem that I have with it and a lot of town meeting members I've spoken to have had with it is that there's a lack of transparency about what that order is and why it's chosen thanks very much I understand a minute is goes by quickly yes so now staying with you Greg what changes or improvements would you like to see in the role of town moderator and if you believe that it's best to keep things just as they are please explain why right so thank you where I would begin is in the preparation before town meeting even begins there's the preparation that town meeting members have and there's an orientation every year at least I think that we've had it every year might have skipped a year and we need and it's a pretty minimal orientation and especially the newer members that I've spoken to I've spoken to several dozen town meeting members many of them newer members in recent years and one of the issues one of the themes that I keep hearing coming up in those conversations is a lack of preparation going into town meeting about what to expect not just what's on the specific article or the town warrant that year but what to expect going into the hall right or in the case of the virtual town meeting last couple years and so I would put a lot of effort into working as town moderator working with members ahead of time to help orient them in a more comprehensive way for what to expect another thing that I would change is we mentioned again the speaking queue again I think it's I think it's totally reasonable for the moderator to have discretion about the speaking order and they can think of a number of cases where that's not only legitimate but very beneficial to the meeting as Mr. Lee only has mentioned however when we don't have transparency about what that speaking order is and what's being manipulated about that order it invites distrust right and that sort of distrust can get into it gets into the cracks of our institutions because these are these democratic institutions are built on a foundation of trust with the membership in that body and with the the residents and the voters in our town and to be able to build trust we need more transparency about what what the order is in which members have requested to speak and if there is an exception made I would be completely transparent and explicit about that thank you okay thank you very much John one repeat the question sure absolutely it is um what changes or improvements would you like to see in the role of town moderator and if you believe that it's best to keep things just as they are please explain why I would keep the new member orientation which I developed and instituted prior to my moderatorship there was no new member orientation I tend to disagree with the characterization of it I would I would like to see different uses of the electronic clicker's if we could use those in order to get a speaker list digitally then I would love to do that however the technology to this date hasn't allowed that so if I can continue to work with the um the vendor who will allow the units to be used for that great I would change that I would like to see the meeting back in the hall this year the digital uh the video meeting the on zoom who's just terrible everybody hated it let's face it no one liked it I would change that and would put us back in the hall all right thank you very much thank you so we'll proceed to the third and final section of questions and here we have uh invited the two candidates to pose questions to each other so the way that we'll do this is that John will ask the first question of Greg John has 30 seconds in which to ask that question Greg will have two minutes to respond and John will have a minute to respond to that response all right so um if you're ready your question my question is actually broken into two parts Greg what experience do you have organizing presiding over and running a town meeting style meeting with recommended votes main motions amendments substitute motions and the competing interest of 252 town meeting members all of whom who want to speak and the dozens of town officials all of whom participate in our legislative process the second part of that would be your campaign seems to be focused on publicly displaying the speaker list during the town meeting how exactly would you do that okay um two minutes okay so let's start with the second part first um the my camp first of all I think that's a a an unfair mischaracterization uh of my campaign that it focuses on the speaker list it's one of many points and anyone can at home can go to my website at gregformoderator.com and you can see my platform there and so the speaker list is not figured prominently into that it's one detail of many many ideas second of all the the so to answer the specific question about how I would do that I think it would be different for in person than it would be for over virtual and so there's very limited time to go into how that procedure would work I can put information up on my website that'll detail this but for example one possibility is that we actually that we show a speaker list at the display at the back of town hall when we're in person the speaker list in the virtual format very briefly we already have a speaker list but it's it's in alphabetical order which is not very helpful because that's not the order in which speakers either requested to speak nor is it the order in which they're selected to speak by the moderator so it's it's not a very useful indication of the speaking queue and so how I do that in the virtual format I would show the order and this would also and I'd make another adjustment to the meeting which is that there would be an on-deck area for instance where the next speaker is already queued up on the panel or in person similarly there'd be a spot where they can sit at the podiums near the front so we'd have much faster transition time to avoid a lot of dead time throughout the meeting which as far as experience years ago I did serve as an officer in an organization that followed Robert Robert's rules of order which is not quite the same as town meeting time the handbook that we have here for the town moderators role has a lot of similarities but also a lot of differences as well and and so yeah so I have some experience in that department but okay thank you and you have one minute to respond yes I would challenge the veracity of the ability to have a speaker list in the hall it's to have a pre-programmed list prior to the start of the meeting it's inherently unfair to the meeting members a lot of members don't realize they want to speak until they get in there and we start our debate if we have a pre-ordained list that's going to limit debate and it's going to limit the ability of the other members who wish to speak the list as excuse me as I did not say I did not say a pre-ordained list got sir the the um oh he's he's up right he he hold on one sec just pause the timer for sec I gotta get my train of thought back yep go ahead when you're ready yeah exactly um the speaker okay ready go the speaker list is not necessarily a list of people who are going to get called in a specific order it is a list of people who wish to speak just because some people are faster with the clicker or they're faster with getting their hand up doesn't mean they get to speak first especially in the hall where the list is which way did I look which way did the clerk look inherently unfair thank you all right thank you and I will just remind you both please don't interrupt each other during your even if you hear something that you disagree with vehemently or feel is untrue okay thank you um Greg your turn to ask a question okay my question is the town meeting procedures committee is responsible for understanding matters that affect the desire of residents to become town meeting members under your leadership as moderator as a committee member and as the appointing authority for this committee how would you rate the committee's performance in this regard okay I um two minutes I would disagree with that that's not the charges listed in the town bylaws article one section one section eight the town meeting procedure committee has traditionally been used and utilized when a idea is brought to us either as a warrant article or as someone has an idea of how they wish to change uh some procedure in town meeting the meeting will then convene and meet and we discuss that issue we either go forward with it as a town meeting and we bring a bylaw or we comment on the other person's bylaw in order to refine that so it would work within the confines of our town meeting it has never been used as a ad hoc committee to change town meeting traditions or how it functions in the manner in that manner could it be I think it could be but that's not how it has functioned in the past and it's not how I envisioned that meeting happening so there is an opening or two on it if there was a warrant article we would appoint town meeting members who wanted to be on that committee which I do through outreach as I do on all my committee appointments I advertise in the only can advocate I have a posted on the town website we hey and we have it there's a committee opening a spot on the town website and they are always listed there every committee that I appoint to I get that on there I wait till I get resumes I personally interview everyone of a committee that I would think about in point in appointing and then I make my appointments and there aren't dozens and dozens of those committees there are maybe seven ten of those committees and frankly if there is in the manager's office a list of who's on all those committees when their terms expire and I'm advised by the manager's office when that happens that is a role they took over in order to make the moderator's job a little bit easier thank you all right Greg you have thirty seconds I'm so excuse me one minute great thank you first of all I wouldn't be looking to make the moderator's job any easier I'd actually make it quite a bit tougher by taking on new responsibilities and second of all I question the accuracy of that characterization about the town meeting procedures committee respectfully this is posted on the website I'll share the link and I'll post this on my website as well this is under town governance boards and committees town meeting procedures committee that procedural matters that affect the desire of voters of the town to become town meeting members is listed it's actually the only responsibility listed there I know according to the bylaws it's not the only responsibility but it is the one that is listed on the webpage for the committee on the town's website so that's unfortunate if that's not widely known but we should publicize that and the committee has held one perfunctory meeting a year as far as I can find and minutes have not been posted on the website the town's website for over a decade as far as I can find one of my first orders of business you said that there was one or two vacancies I can be more specific there's actually two vacancies okay I'm sorry we're going to have to cut you thank you there and time does fly I appreciate I appreciate that fact thank you both again for being here we're going to move right into closing statements and we'll start with you John again reverse order from the opening very good thank you to ACMI James Maughan and my opponent for the chance to speak with you the voters of Arlington I'm an attorney with 37 years of legal experience in a law practice here in Arlington my professional experience combined with my service as your moderator for 14 years my deep understanding of mass general law town bylaws and the way our town government functions makes me the right choice for town moderator if you would like to discuss the moderator's office please feel free to call me 7-8-1-6-4-1-3-5-4-6 or email me at John at LeonieModerator.com please visit my campaign website LeonieModerator.com I ask for your support and your vote for me as moderator on Saturday April 2nd I'm John Leonie thank you very much thank you sir and great one minute great thanks James town meeting is built on timeless principles representative democracy and open dialogue and these principles need to be coupled with periodic examination of what's working and what can be improved I will bring energy and new ideas not just my ideas but through a diversity of voices and perspectives of both new members and longtime members I will dedicate myself to making sure that everyone's voice is heard town meeting is central to how we govern Arlington and make important decisions about our future you can find more about my priorities for improving transparency responsiveness and inclusion on my website as town moderator I will continue to work to increase civic engagement in town to uplift voices that have not always been heard in our town government and to ensure the smooth operation of town meeting conducted with fairness and respect for all its members I ask for your vote for town moderator on Saturday April 2nd thank you and with that we will we conclude this debate for town the town moderator office in this the year 2022 we appreciate again both candidates being here Greg Cristiana and John Leonie thank you gentlemen for your time and we encourage you as both candidates have done to get out there and vote on Saturday April 2nd for ACMI and for the candidates for town moderator I'm James Milan thank them for we thank them for joining us and we thank you as well we'll see you next time thank you