 Calling to order the meeting of the Allenton Select Board for Monday, November 30th, 2020. As a preliminary matter, this is John Hurd, 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. Diane Mahan. Yes, thank you. Joe Kerl. Here. Steve Corsi. Yes. And Len Diggins. Here. Staff, when I call your name, please respond in the affirmative. Adam Chapter Lane. Here. Doug Heim. Here. And Board Administrator Ashley Maher is participating remotely. Good evening. This meeting of the Allenton Select Board is being conducted remotely consistent with Governor Baker's executive order of March 12, 2020, due to the current state of emergency in the Commonwealth, given the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. In order to mitigate the transmission of the virus and reduce risk of COVID-19 illness, we have been advised and directed by the Commonwealth to suspend public gatherings. And as such, the governor's order suspends 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. This meeting will feature public comment. 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 as posted on the town's website identifying how the public may join. Please note that this meeting is being recorded, that some attendees are participating by video conference. Accordingly, please be aware that some folks may be able to see you and 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 name or device name if you'd like to speak in order for us to recognize speakers appropriately and develop accurate minutes is helpful for participants to see your full first and last name when calling upon you rather than a nickname. All the meeting materials for this meeting accept any executive session materials available on the Novus agenda dashboard. We recommend the members in public follow the agenda as posted on Novus unless the chair notes otherwise. 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 comments, questions or motions. Please hold until your name is called. 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. If members wish to engage in colloquy with other members, please do so through the chair, taking care not to identify yourself. This meeting will feature opportunities for public comments on certain agenda items for public comment items after members have spoken. I as a chair will afford the public comment opportunities as follows. I will first ask members of the public who wish to speak to identify their names and addresses only. Once the chair has a list of all public commentators, I will call on each by name in four, three minutes for any comments. Please keep in mind that all participants and members of the public must be recognized by the chair before speaking. Finally, each vote tonight will be taken by roll call vote. And that takes us to our agenda. First meeting item on our agenda is our consent agenda, which just contains minutes of meetings November 4, 2020, November 9, 2020, and November 16, 2020. Ms. Mahan. I'd like to move approval subject to the email corrections we receive from Ms. Mahan today from the select board office. Thank you, Mr. Curl. Second. All right, Mr. Diggins, any comments or questions? No, sir. Thank you. Mr. Corsi. No comments. Attorney Hyde. Mrs. Mahan. Yes, thank you. Mr. Corsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Curl. Yes. After her. Yes. It's unanimous vote. Thank you. And that takes us to our next item on the agenda. Item number three is a public hearing posted for 7pm for a vote on the MWRA debt ship and a discussion vote property tax classification tax rate. Do we have Mr. Tierney and Mr. Feely? Mr. Tierney, I don't see Mr. Feely, but maybe Paul can tell me if I think I saw Attorney Wynne Stanley O'Connor. Maybe she's standing. We can promote Mary Wynne Stanley O'Connor. You're both promoted now, Mr. Chair. Thank you. If you see Dana Mann out there, can you let him in too? Oh yeah, sure. Sure. Mr. Tierney, do you want to kick us off? Sure. Kevin Feely's not in there yet? Anyone see him? No. No. No, I do not. I will start then. Thank you all. Good to see everybody. Before we get to business, I'd just like to thank the board, Mary Wynne Stanley O'Connor, Chairman Kevin Feely, and Bob Reilly, who was not with us tonight, for working close with me throughout the year and their support. And I'd also like to acknowledge my staff of Dana Mann, who was with us tonight, and also Jenny O'Rourke and Mary MacMacon for all the help they give me throughout the year. So without further ado, everyone have their classification package in front of them. First page, just the date and time date of the hearing. If you go to the second page, we have the FY 2020 limit, levy limit. So we add 2.5%. We add new growth of $850,163. It gives us an FY 21 levy limit of $126,776,920. To that, we add the school debt exclusion, the water and sewer debt. So the maximum total to be raised is $138,212,969. We are raising $138,199,499. We're going to divide that by the total taxable assessed value that'll give us our proposed tax rate of $1134 per $1,000 in value. Second page, turn the page. This just gives us our minimum residential factor computation. We'll use that to determine our split rate, if we so choose. You can see in the third, fourth, and fifth column, columns, we have the breakdown of what the rates will be. Go to the next page. This breaks down the percent. If we adopt 1% and just leave a flat rate, the rate will be proposed to be $1134. If we choose to go to 5% split rate, the tax rate will decrease on the residential to $1131, increase on the commercial, industrial, and personal property $1191, which in turn will increase the commercial, industrial, personal property taxes by $283, and decrease the residential by $16.25. If you go down the columns all the way down to the maximum allow of 150%, you can see the impact of shifting that rate. It takes quite a bit of burden on commercial, industrial, personal property. The next page, we have the residential exemption. If we adopt a 20% residential exemption, that will increase the tax rate for everybody to $14.10. If we do a 15% exemption, $13.37. If we do 10%, $12.71, and if we do a 5%, it will increase the tax rate to $12.11. Not many communities in Massachusetts use this. It's usually just for cities and towns that have a lot of apartment buildings in summer homes that are of very high value. The break-even point would be $801,315. That's the point where if we shifted it, you would not see any impact to your tax bill. The next page is just a history of tax rates in town, pretty self-explanatory. Next page is the LA-4, which gives us all of our parcel counts and their corresponding value for each class of property. I'll take a second to look at all of them. The next page is called the LA-13, which just tracks our growth. I can see in the bottom right-hand corner, $850,163 for growth. First two columns are all our prior year abitements and their corresponding values. The next page is our comparison between FY21 and FY20. The top line is the single families. Average value for FY21 is $829,340. Last year was $825,145, as you can see, because it gives you all the percentage of increase and decrease in the middle column for all classes of property. The next page is just a pie chart breaking down where the taxes are going. I will fix their pie chart, it's a little off, and I actually have fixed it on my end and I will fix it before I put it on the town's website. Next page is the tax rate components. It just breaks down to the tax rate into the individual parts, the levy base, 2.5% growth, water and sewer in the school debt. Down the bottom, the average, like I said, the average single family home and the average taxes on a single family home this year will be $9,405, up from $9,126 last year. And the final page is for four surrounding communities. Belmont and Winchester have not responded to me yet, but Lexington has and their average single family home taxes are $16,097 projected for FY 21. Any questions? Thank you, Mr. Attorney. Mary or Dana, did you have anything to add before I turn to the board? I would just, if I could, say that we provide the board a select board with the information for the select board to make the determination as to whether you want to split tax rate or classification. And I will say that the strength in this town continues to be the residential tax base is continuing, is strong, things are selling, over asking price even during the pandemic in town. No, I have nothing to add to that. All right, thank you. All right. And Mr. Carroll? No, thank you very much. I appreciate this presentation. I know that for all the years I've been on the board, we've never entertained a split classification and this is definitely not the year to do it. We have only 5.4% of our tax basis commercial, if I'm reading this correctly. And we know how badly our businesses are struggling. I'd only also point out that I'm so happy to see this sheet now. We see the impact of the decisions that the board made to start rolling back the water sewer shift. And we see that reflected here. And I'm happy to see that number going down. At the same time, understanding that has an impact, and at the same time that we just passed through town meeting, home roll petition to provide water and sewer relief program for our seniors. So thank you very much for this work. I think the only other question that I would have is on the sheet that shows a work up of the classification, I see that the sample impacts are based on an increment or decrement per 500,000. But the last two pages, I assume that's based on a true average tax bill for single-family homes and other classes of property in town. For the average single, I'm sorry? Yeah, the average single-family, we have 94.05. I assume that that's... Yes, that's based on the... I see right above it, yeah, average, average sex value. Correct. 29, 339. Great. Thank you very much. Would a motion be in order, Mr. Chair? If I could ask councils a specific form that this motion needs to take, I know we usually have something in front of us, I think. Would it be to set the tax classification rate at $11.34 per thousand of value? Then... Trenningheim, I don't see him on my screen. That's correct, Mr. Chairman. And we have to take two separate votes, I guess, for that, and for the water and sewer debt shift? Yes, Mr. Chair. Okay, so I'll make the first motion then to set the tax rate at $11.34, with a factor of one. One. Right. Mrs. Mahon. Second. Harry. Mr. DeCorsi. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair. And just to point to clarification, I know we're voting the residential factor of one, and I just want to get back to a Trenningheim. I'm not sure we actually vote the tax rate. I think we just vote the factor, and the assessors determine the tax rate. So I just want to... And it's fine. It's going to be $11.34, but just as a matter of procedure, if I could ask that question. Mr. Chairman, ma'am. Yes. I think in substance, that's correct. It's what you're doing is setting the factor, which yields the rate that Ms. Mahon has referenced. As long as it's clear what the board is doing, I think the motion satisfies that. Okay. Thank you, Trenningheim. Just a couple of comments, and Mr. Kerrow had mentioned it. This year, included in the total levy, we have water and sewer debt of $3 million, $6.91, $4.54. A year ago, that number was over $5.5 million. So we've had a discussion over the past year about shifting debt from the real estate tax bills onto the water bills, and people have contacted us when their water bills came out and said our water bills went up so much, where's the offset on the other side. Here it is, it is as a percent of the total levy, it's smaller, but this is the beginning of it over a three-year period. The other thing I just want to comment on, and I want to thank Mr. Trenningheim for the presentation, is that included in the tax levy this year is $850,000 of new growth, that I believe is about $76 million in value that's been added to the town, and we talk about the need for growth and some people want to have responsible growth in the community, but this is where you see it and how it comes into play. We have growth, it spreads the burden out among taxpayers, lessens the burden for existing taxpayers. So this year I think original projections where it was going to be $650,000 in the five-year plan, it's $850,000. So that's actually good news in terms of where that number is coming in. So just a couple comments on that, and I want to thank you for the presentation. We don't have a lot of time in this meeting, still a lot to cover, so I'm just going to keep it short, and thank you for the great presentation and all the data, and also take this opportunity to thank you for participating in that fiscal resources task force meeting a couple of months ago where we talked about exploring new growth, you really know your stuff and you were so patient with explaining a lot of stuff to me, and I appreciate that, and I'll be happy to vote for this. Thank you. Thank you. So Mr. Chaplain at this point, since this is public hearing, we'll open this up for anyone that wishes to speak. That's our participant, just use the raise hand function on your Zoom application. We'll promote you to panelists. Mr. Chair, if I could, while people are raising hands, if I could just ask, I neglected to ask a question. Yes. And thank you to Mr. Chairman and Mr. Mann. I think it was Ms. O'Rourke and Mr. McMakin. I apologize if I didn't get that right. My question is besides a normal recourse for people seeking relief before the Board of Assessors in terms of abatements and the like, in light of COVID-19 relief grants and other remedies, whether through the CARES Act, a possible future federal monies, or maybe even state allocations, does the Board of Assessors or the Director know of any current opportunities beyond the usual norm because of COVID-19 or anticipate any other possible avenues of remedies to residents or businesses? Not for this year. We don't see any other resources to give any relief since assessments are retrospective and these assessments came out before actually COVID-19 was stressed upon. So for this year, there is not any additional help on the table. Thank you. And unless anyone else has a comment. Mr. Chairman, may I just bring one matter to the attention of the select board. Mr. Tierney came up with a plan last year with respect to abatements that had not been voted on when the pandemic hit so that people, rather than coming to hearings, could provide videos of the inside of their homes to the Board of Assessors so that we could review the abatements that way virtually. So we have developed a plan so that people do not need to come and meet with the Assessors per se, which we intend to continue to do, Paul, right? Yes. Mr. Chaplain, do we have any raise hands? Mr. Chairman, there are no hands raised. All right. With that, we will take a motion by Mr. Curl, seconded by Mrs. Mahan. Turn your hand. Mrs. Mahan. Yes, thank you. Mr. DeCorsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Curl. Yes. Mr. Heard. Yes. Should we hand him his vote? Thank you. And then Mr. Tierney, do you have anything additional to add about the debt shift? No, I think I'm good. Okay. Mr. Mahan. No, I'm all set. Are you calling on me because I might have had a question. Mr. Heard, do we need a separate motion? We need a separate motion on the on what I'm sorry, the last part to set the debt shift to 3691454. I'll second Mr. Curl's motion. Sure. Mr. DeCorsi, any additional comments or questions? No comments. Mr. Diggins. No comments. All right. And we have a motion by Mr. Curl, seconded by Mrs. Mahan. Turn your hand. Mrs. Mahan. Yes, thank you. Mr. DeCorsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Curl. Yes. Mr. Heard. Yes. Mr. Adams. All right. Thank you all. Thank you very much. Thank you. Good night. Thank you. And that brings us to appointments. Item number four on our agenda, open space committee, Emily Nink term to expire June 30th, 2023. And we have Ms. Nink with us. Ms. Nink, can you hear us? Hello, Ms. Nink, can you hear us? Hi. Hello, how are you? Good. If you could just say your name for the record, just tell us a little bit about why you wanted to serve in the open space committee. Sure. Good evening. Thanks for having me. My name's Emily Nink. I recently moved to Arlington over the summer and saw the call for open space committee members and I've been community gardening for quite some time in Everett, Massachusetts. I also worked with the Metropolitan Area Planning Council to do a community food assessment in Everett and contributed the city's first food plan. So I got a little bit of a taste at that point with the open space and recreation planning process because we did the food plan as an addendum to the OSRP and Everett. So I'm excited now to be potentially participating in the OSRP process here in Arlington and contributing however else I can to the needs of the open space committee. Thank you. I'll turn to the board. Mr. Diggins? Well, I would like to move that we approve Ms. Nink to the position on the open spaces committee and I'd like to say a little more after that. Sure. Okay. I mean your CV resume, I mean I'm so impressed. I love the research that you have done with MAPC. I'm definitely interested in whether heirloom tomatoes do taste better or not whether the taste matters. But I think you have so much potential and I really look forward to seeing what you do with the open spaces committee and getting you more, excuse me, perhaps more involved in the town. So thank you so much for signing up for this. You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Diggins? Yes. I'll second Mr. Diggins' motion and also thank Ms. Nink for volunteering for this position and look forward to hearing from you and your experiences here and then best of luck. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Mahan? Thank you Ms. Nink. My colleagues have probably said what I would probably say, but I really value your interest and dedication of volunteerism towards health equality and other social and racial issues that I know you're going to bring to the open space committee, which is really important, vital. And you have the energy and youth to do it. So God bless you. And thank you for doing that. You're a very well-rounded young woman and I appreciate you working with you in the future. Mr. Carl? Thank you very much. I'm always appreciative when long-term, long-time residents volunteer for our boards and committees, but I'm always particularly impressed when folks like yourself who've just moved here volunteer to lend your expertise and your energy to our boards and committees and get involved in our town right from the get-go. So I really appreciate that and thank you and I wish you luck on the open space committee. Thanks very much. Yep. I'm just to reiterate what my colleagues have said. Thank you for your willingness to serve. It's always good to see a couple more jumbos in town governments. You have two on this board. Oh good. So thank you. All right. So we have a motion for approval by Mr. Diggins, seconded by Mr. DeCorsi, attorney Hyde. This is Mohan. Yes, thank you. Mr. DeCorsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Cura. Yes. Mr. Hurd. Yes. And then Ms. Gold. Thank you. Thank you. All right. And that takes us to item number five on our agenda on the traffic rules and order in all the business discussion and approval MBTA proposed service reductions. Mr. Chaplain. Thank you, Mr. Hurd. So as the board may recall, I believe it was at the last board meeting under new business. We addressed the what then were the very freshly proposed service reductions by the MBTA. And we discussed coming back at a future meeting with a letter, an advocacy letter really pleading our case in Wellington for the impact that the proposed cuts would have. So a team of myself, deputy town manager, Sandy Poehler, directing a director of planning and community development, Jenny Rait and our senior transportation planner, Dan Amstutz met several times, drafted a draft letter you saw last week and then put together a revised letter that was sent to the board and downloaded or uploaded on the novice agenda today. We also consulted today with our state senator and two state representatives about how they saw what they saw as a path for effective advocacy. And what we came out of that meeting with was advice from all of them to state our case plainly and directly and what our concerns were about potential losses of service from in terms of the T. They also expressed a willingness to sign on to a letter with the board. If the board did endorse a letter tonight, I would suggest that I could sign it along with the board chair and the three members of our delegation so that we spoke so that we speak with a consistent voice from Arlington. What you'll see in the letter is an outlining of our concerns about the cuts that are proposed to the headways in the 77, potential elimination of the 79 and the 350 and the 80. Our concern with being labeled as an inter-core community. Our concern with a disproportionate impact based on our already pre-existing disproportionately high assessment that we receive from the T as compared to other communities. And overall you'll see throughout the letter our concern about the impacts these proposed cuts will have on our long-standing goals for shifting people out of their cars into other modes of transit. So happy to make any suggested changes the board might have but we do feel it's important to advocate for Arlington at the state level as these decisions are being made over the next several months. Senator Corsi. Thank you Mr. Chairman. Yeah I'd like to move to approve sending the letter and to authorize the chair to sign on behalf of the board and in the town manager. And I also want to thank the town manager and his team for the revisions to the letter. I think it's important for the town to respond to this and to point out some issues both on the routes and on assessment issues and other areas of concern so I think it's an appropriate step. Thank you. Mr. Carroll. Yes I'll second the motion. I appreciate the work that's gone into this and the revisions. I do think that this is clear on my read as to how this impacts us. I appreciate the layering in of some of the demographic information about development trends as well the other activity that the towns engaged in around transportation so I'm happy to support this. Thank you. Mr. Diggins. Thank you. So until I saw our state reps and state senator signing on to this in such a formal way I was going to suggest to me that we make some significant edits mean and probably do so with myself mean and the parties that the town manager had mentioned and along with another member of the select board and getting your permission to submit that and then because the deadline is the fourth and then bring to your review at our next meeting. My concern is that it understands me that we need to advocate for Arlington but we as I've said many times we in any other big any other most of the studies in this country mean Boston Arlington would be a neighborhood mean of Boston and what we've learned from the pandemic mean is that we really need to work together as communities in order to solve the big problems that we face and transportation public transit is a really big one and yes Arlington is going to be affected by the cuts Arlington has citizens residents that need public transportation but every argument that we make about how it will be how would detrimentally affect Arlington is an argument that's going to be made by other municipalities and and so I understand the percentages being here that are affected but this is really one of those cases where it's the numbers that matter not so much to percentages because the other communities mean that have a larger population and so a smaller percentage of people using public transportation but the number of people who are affected by it are higher and we have communities in this region that you have a lot more minorities you know that are going to be seriously affected by by by what's affecting the tea right now the the tea is operating me with a deficit and it's a growing deficit because of the operating loss of operating for lots of affairs and also another thing that's affecting the tea is that because of social distancing it needs to run more buses so that people can ride the buses more safely so we have to shift service in order to take care of places where the demand is increased for so for example the 111 has more people that are using it now because he's coming from from Charleston I mean you can't walk over the Tobin bridge he and and so he only has so many resources that you can pull from and some communities are going to be affected by be the need to pull service in order to take care of those communities and so thinking about the region and thinking about how we we in Arlington we we don't simply we say that the black lives matter and brown lives matter and all lives matter we really try to live up to that and part of that I think really involves us sometimes accepting that yes we advocate me for our residents me but we are part of a larger community and sometimes we have to be appreciate that some of the resources are going to come from us to help the community so I kind of want to see something along those lines in the letter I can appreciate that it would probably be very difficult to edit it I'm going to vote for it me but I just wanted to say this piece here to just say that let's just think about the fact that we in order for Arlington to really do well me the region has to do well me and the Arlington can advocate for itself to the detriment of the neighboring communities me and so the one thing I suggest that we think about should cuts happen me it is that we tried to get me the bus rapid transit to go all the way to Harvard Square me Cambridge has been reluctant to do that but I think now it's the time to push for doing that me if indeed the cuts do happen let's try and find me the residents who are stranded and try to come up with a program in Arlington to help them out and and try to lead by example of what we do when we face adversity and that is that we work with other communities and we work me within our community to try to to make things better so that's my piece thank you thank you Mr. Chair definitely appreciate colleagues in the house in the Senate signing on to a letter and don't mean this sarcastically or undo criticism but to me that's really not doing much signing on to a letter what I'd like to put forth to the town manager and perhaps us to dig ins is that somewhere in the letter I believe I can't remember I know one and two is brain-free in Arlington I can't remember who's one and who's two but in terms of the amount of the assessment that we pay with the MBTA as compared to our town and residents there it's vastly at a disadvantage and that somehow has to be corrected or remedied since I've been on the board I've heard the same mantra over and over again how Arlington is unfairly you know fourfold assessed by the MBTA and that needs to be done and I will vote for this letter I'd like to see some language in there I'd like to see two things some language in there that says you know what our assessment is how it's three or fourfold what it should be and if that the MBTA chooses to go ahead with these really some would say draconian cuts to community community service here in Arlington that we present a factor of how much we're overpaying how much the cut is and what the difference is there and that we will seek through our delegation in the state house to modify Arlington's contribution to the MBTA to that amount now I know some people could say well you can't do that it won't get passed I don't care I'd like to take some sort of action versus everybody just signing on to a letter it might so my request is can we make this letter more stronger and it's sort of saying if you do make these amount of cuts that will affect this amount of ridership in Arlington and we're paying three fourfold that our assessment should be this new number and that the town and the board are going to work with our representatives and senator as well as other representatives and senators to modify our contribution to the MBTA and then my second request would be since Arlington pays so much in my opinion perhaps other people's opinion over double triple pays so much that we ask our senator and two representatives to I understand we have the remedy of submitting public comments and then having the conversation with the fiscal control board in December but that's a sort of free for all that because Arlington does pay so much in my opinion it's really very little that our senator and rep pull the meeting with the general general manager and the town manager and anyone else teaching with Steve pock tack to talk about how we can either not suffer these cuts or we can get a truer MBTA assessment for what Arlington should be paying versus what Arlington is four times paying and I don't I'm not directing this to Mr. Chapter Lane at all because I know we along with my colleagues president and former have discussed this but we're always just sending letters we're always saying how you pay ridiculous amounts but I think we need to I know in the past they say oh yeah I'll never get through the state house I don't care I want to stop the conversation in some way and I'd be sorry to do this to Mr. Chapter Lane take any comments pro or con on the two suggestions I have making the letter much stronger indicating if you make these cuts we're lowering our assessment whether we can do that or not or and or the senator and representatives getting a meeting with you and whoever else with mr pock tack Mr. Corsi you want to come back around that yeah thank you mr chairman um yeah so in this is behind absolutely right about the the issues on assessments over the years when from my days on finance committee this came up year to year as well in terms of Arlington's relative burden compared to other communities I see that there is reference to the assessments in here I mean I I think perhaps a manager can take a look at that section again on the assessments but I think that might have to be a separate discussion in terms of how things are calculated but I certainly agree with the sentiment that Mrs. Mahan expressed there in terms of the you know with some people to the relative unfairness to Arlington in terms of what what's being paid I just think for due to time constraints I'm not sure they'll that there may be an ability to to change the letter much but certainly doesn't mean that we shouldn't look into and advocate for change in that assessment formula mr girl yeah I think mr Mr. Corsi summarized it well but I think we should we should try to figure out as a board how we can make a stronger statement on on the assessments could I ask if I could through you mr chair ask mr chaplain if he has any comments yeah I'd be happy mr chair if that's okay with you yep so um yeah the point is really well taken Ms. Mahan I if the board was okay with it what I could do I I know we sent the letter to our legislative delegation uh and others maybe three to four years ago that specifically called out the contrast between Arlington's assessment and service and Quincy's assessment and service that that's the community that they're really it really starkly paints the picture I could take that you know nearly that exact language that we sent in several years ago and add a line suggesting that um our concern remains about this issue and if unresolved we will seek potential avenues for legislative relief or something to that effect if the board is amenable to that I'm sorry who did you call on you oh um that's fine if it it can appear on the first page maybe not the first paragraph second or third but also if through the chair and actually the direction of the chair and through the chair and the town manager that if we can start coming up with um and I apologize I thought it brain tree but it's Quincy sort of come up with a formula of you know how much we are overpaying and maybe start speaking with the voice from the board in the town and through our delegation that um and I hate to say it like this whether people say it's legal or not or we can't do it or not that we need to say you know what this is what our fair assessment is and this is what we're going to stop paying unless you start treating us fairly and look at it the assessment um so I take what my colleagues uh the chair Mr. Dickens and Quincy and Mr. Cure have said if you can include that Mr. Chaplin early on in the letter in terms of that language but we did state that four years ago and then as all of us have discussed as well as you perhaps discuss something this at a future board meeting um perhaps with our legislative delegation that you know whether it's a road that people say nothing's gonna happen you can't get it done they said that about many years ago I think we need to take that next step and push this issue so I'm happy to vote for this letter with the um uh addendums that have been discussed tonight and I thank you Mr. Chair I know I've taken way too much time and thank you to my colleagues again anything down to that well I mean I don't know the rationale for the the difference in the assessment so it's hard for me to go along um with that notion I mean and I am not wanting to be combative um with the MBTA at this point in time given that you know these cuts are are coming because because we're in a pandemic and the feds aren't giving us money and even if um service begins to come back it's going to come back in a different way that's going to cause a shift in the way that we distribute service just because we need more buses in order to do the social distancing and you can't just get buses like that so there's going to be some effects on the way that things work I mean so I would say we can address the assessments at some other point in time but I'm not really supportive of putting that in the letter now okay you do have to move this along so let's vote on you know we've had I think three members say they're supportive of putting that minor adjustment so um the original motion was Mr. DeCorsi so Mr. Corsi would you like your motion to be with the language as suggested by Mr. Chaplain? Yes yeah I think that's fine I mean there already is a paragraph in there about the assessment so um yeah yeah I'm okay with him adding that okay all right attorney hampton we have a motion to approve the letter with the addition of the language suggested by Mr. Chaplain if you can give us a roll call vote this is mahan yes thank you Mr. DeCorsi yes Mr. Diggins I think it's important for us to be unified yes Mr. Curell yes Mr. Hurd yes so now let's vote thank you all right agenda all right that takes us to item number six on our agenda discussion in vote Miriam High School Athletic Complex project borrowing notification Mr. Chaplain Mr. Hurd I just got an echo there sorry um so this is before the board tonight let me set a little context the board may recall that when we entered into the revised regional agreement rather than towns via their town meeting needing to proactively approve borrowings the section in regards to borrowing was changed in the regional agreement to allow towns within 60 days of the Minuteman school committee voting to borrow to have the town call the special town meeting to oppose that borrowing which would then trigger the ability for the district to go to the district-wide ballot question like occurred during the building project several years ago so that that's sort of the context of why this is before the board tonight the why is the as we know the project the building is done but finalizing the athletic fields is not yet complete with remaining funds from the project and other funding sources as are outlined in the presentation that was provided to the board they were not Minuteman is not fully able to go forward with the project so they're seeking to borrow an additional sum of money they're also however proposing to be able to offset future debt service associated with that borrowing with revenue from renting out the facility if that didn't work out the maximum amount that we would be impacted on a year-over-year basis would be $77,000 in debt service we may have to we may be impacted by that in the first year just given the timing of the debt payments so that that's been that's what has been presented the finance committee vetted this led by chair Foskett Annie LaCorte and Dean Karman I believe attached to the agenda item tonight was their memorandum supporting this and recommending that we not stand in the way of this expenditure but obviously wanted to bring this before the board tonight for their consideration to be sure the board didn't feel the need to call a special town meeting to oppose this borrowing and I'll I'll note that our our Minuteman school committee representative has read okay he's promoted mr. Rubin yes thank you chairman heard I lost the connection there for a moment thank you very much mr. chapter lean has has briefed you well and truly on on on the legal aspects the Minuteman school committee has looked at the money we have left over from the building project we have you know in excess of about five million dollars we are going to devote that now to athletic fields both because it increases the usefulness of the physical plant and it provides equity for our students as well as future possibilities for hosting you know community-wide events we have enough money to build a bare athletic complex but it wouldn't have lights and to and to build a playing field without lights these days is sort of like buying a car without a radio and an air conditioner you will save money you will soon regret it the lights to be to be you know direct about it the lights give us the opportunity to rent these fields on a consistent basis to a number of community parties that have already expressed the interest our consultants have estimated between three and four hundred thousand dollars of unmet need could be could be filled by the Minuteman complex when it fully comes online no one would be reckless enough to promise you numbers tonight on how much revenue stream we would be able to to devote to finishing the fields project but we are confident that we will have money to offset this borrowing and that's why the finance committee of Minuteman has recommended it and the school committee has voted it and you have the opportunity to say no as Mr. Chapter Lane has described or if you choose to let it go forward you need do nothing and we will wait for the remainder of the towns in the district to to voice their disapproval if anyone has any thank you Mr. Rubin Mr. Curl any questions or comments motions I'll I'll move to endorse the requested borrowing thank you Minuteman this is Mohan second thank you Mr. Corsi yeah I'm thank thank you Mr. Rubin for the for the additional information there and and I will support this this you know for this phase in particular it was always understood that Minuteman maybe maybe coming back for additional funds for the playing field so I appreciate the the report and the the work done to date by the finance committee thank you Mr. Negans yes I supported too I mean I just have a quick question about I'm like you know I mean they are so far below even the next highest bid any I'm always suspicious about that any idea how they were able to come into the law I didn't get a chance to query them myself Mr. Diggins I'm thinking though that because they are a very local company they can utilize their own existing facilities for material storage equipment lay down all the ancillary needs that they would have that another company might have to contract with with a private party just to get working space or storage space drop-off space somewhere near the near the job site I don't I can't say for sure but they did impress everyone on the Minuteman school committee with a very very competitive bid and okay all right just like I said I'm always suspicious when it's that low because usually usually comes back to buy it so all right thank you they have a track record of successful projects that that we found fully credible great thanks to appreciate that all right and thank you Mr. Rubin for the presentation attorney Heim we have a motion for approval this is mom yes thank you Mr. DeCorsi yes Mr. Diggins sorry about yes Mr. Carroll yes you heard yes thank you thank you Mr. Rubin thank you members of the board all right and that takes us to correspondence received we have a note from Timor Kayyantar of 58 Bates Road traffic concerns regarding the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue in Bates Road Mr. Carroll I move to refer this to TAC and move receipt of the correspondence yeah Mrs. Mahan second thank you Mr. Corsi any comments no comments Mr. Diggins any comments we can't hear you they sent the TAC yes we'll take it we'll take it all right attorney Heim Mrs. Mahan yes thank you Mr. DeCorsi yes Mr. Diggins yes Mr. Carroll yes Mr. Heir yes unanimous vote all right I think this new business attorney Heim no new business that Mr. Chapelle no new business Mr. Diggins no new business for me Mr. Corsi no new business Mrs. Mahan no really new business I just want to check with the chair and attorney Heim that we don't there will be no motion to adjourn per our November 16th vote that the board of select men shall remain in session in concert with the special town meeting and our adjournment will coincide with the adjournment of town meeting yes attorney Heim that's correct thank you thank you no new business hey Mr. Carroll just very quickly I was thinking of our former colleague Kevin this weekend we've just marked the second anniversary of his passing I've raised with the chair the possibility of exploring at a proper time in a proper manner memorializing his contribution maybe once we get through a COVID he did after all hold the record for service and length of service on on the board and it's a record that'll be hard to match and it's one that I will will not match I want to just let you all know that you know a few weeks ago I know that we we voted to set our town election for April 10th and I just wanted to make it official that I will not be standing for reelection to the board at that time and it has been a great honor and we'll have plenty of opportunities to to discuss things and reflect in the future but I did want to make that official I do usually think about these things in election years during Thanksgiving and thank you all to all of you thank you Mr. Carroll you will certainly be missed all right so with that I have new no new business so we'll click over yeah we will reconvene immediately