 Thank you. Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the Arlington Board of Selectments meeting for October 27, 2014. It is a little past 7.15, and I do call this meeting to order. I would like to remind everyone that we are being filmed by ACMI, so please smile widely when at the microphone, and also we have some hearing assistance devices. If anyone is in need, please talk to Marianne about that. So, let's get started. If you are looking at the agenda, we are going to move a couple of things around. We're going to start with item number 10, which is a proclamation for Arlington Recycles Week, and we are going to move agenda item number 4 to the end of the meeting, which is the Selectments Handbook, because that's more of an internal issue, and I'm sure you all don't want to hear that discussion. But either way, let's get started. Gordon Jameson. Yes, as we discussed, Mr. Byrne beforehand, we're going to dispense with the proclamation so we can promote recycling and do a quick recap for the board. This is sort of our annual song and dance in that regard. Actually, I think this is the 10th year we've had this proclamation, so we've been working at this a long time, and we want to thank you for your ongoing and continued support, and also the support of the residents in this regard. So each year, around the time when there's America's Recycles Day, which is November 15th every year, many years ago, we started declaring it Arlington Recycles Week. We started off the first handing out bins, and what was the predecessor of the community collection day, which we'll get into in a second. But over that period of time, we've reduced our solid waste that we'd burn at the north and over incinerator by one-third, saving the town over two and a half million dollars. We're at 40% diversion, so municipal solid waste is the sum total of solid waste, your trash, plus your recycling, plus your yard waste. So 40% of the total in the town of Arlington is diverted to recycling or composting for the yard waste. The board has agreed to a 50% target, which would require another couple thousand tons for it to be taken out of the waste stream, and that would save us an additional $150,000 a year. So how do we go about doing that? We had a great increase in great reduction in solid waste when we switched the new provider, JRM. We lost about, we reduced our tonnage by about 2,000 tons just by switching to that and have weekly recycling and requiring recycling. So community collection day is one way of doing that, and I provided the board with a handout about the materials that people can see at the website. There's a very nice collection of materials there. This happens each fall and spring. The fall one is November 15th from 9 to 11 at the DPW Yard on Grove Street. Don't come early, don't come late. And I mean it, because otherwise you're in a line out to Mass Ave, and if you come late, they're closing up shop because the DPW staff has other things to do. We take clean clothing books and toys for children. Bicycles for bikes not bomb with a small donation to ship it to overseas either to a family where this would be their soul. Transportation or people in inner city Boston. E-waste. If you can't make it to the DPW office in the yard off Grove Street during normal business hours, you can drop off your E-waste. There's a small fee for monitors and laptops. Paper shredding. People love the fact that you can bring two boxes of personal items to be shredded for free. They're either locked up in shredded offsite or shredded onsite. The offsite is better because we don't have to listen to the noise all day. Bottles and cans. The high school group raises their environmental group, raises their funds for the work that they do by collecting returnable bottles and cans. They do $300 or $400 each weekend in the spring and fall, so it's good for them. We've got a new one. You should go on the website to look at this rigid plastic. So those rigid plastic toys, those wheel go things, and we now bring those and those will be recycled. A big hit over the last couple of years has been foam, you know, styrofoam. Again, look to the website. Each of them have to have the right numbers and don't separate your egg cart tops and bottoms because the numbers is only on one half. Scrap metal. Another one. One of the DPW guys came up with this idea. So this is not appliances. This is like pipes and things. It's a nice way for people to get rid of that. Rechargeable batteries, not car batteries, not alkaline. Alkaline are not toxic. They can go in the regular trash. Those are accepted. Textiles. Again, textiles can be taken to many of the recycling bins in town and sneakers are being collected again. And if you want to work on getting people to help truck those someplace, that would be helpful. Medications and sharps. We no longer accept medications like we used to in the past. Those are accepted 24-7 at public safety and sharps. And mercury items will collect those. Remember, household hazardous waste is not what this event is about. That is collected at Hartwell Avenue. And even there, they don't want your late text paint because they won't take it. You have to let that dry out. So there's a whole bunch of, so the other events we've been doing other than this is, where are my notes? Is over the last six months, we've had a series of series of articles in the advocate and other places around town. And those, if you go to the recycling committee page, you can see a nice presentation of all these different articles. Some of them are about all the things you can do beyond recycling. Composting, kitchen composting, textiles, foam recycling, rigid plastic in a community, and paper. You can almost always recycle more paper. And one of the things that we look towards going to the future, and it's going to take some time to get a town-wide service, but individuals can do quite an effective job. The next big thing for us to get our tonnage down is compostable kitchen waste. It's wet, it's not smart to burn water at the incinerator, and people can do it easily. Now I personally believe it or not do not have a composting bin, but I have a nice arrangement with a very active couple across the street, and they love to have my kitchen scraps. So I have an old coffee plastic, the Folgers thing, that I put them in as a container, and once a week or so I walk across and add to their collection, and they're quite happy to have it for their garden that they just put in. So there's lots of ways to do it. If you don't have it, you can collaborate with other people, but that is the next big thing. So we hope that people will not only do textiles and paper and cans and bottles and all those other things, but they begin to think about kitchen recyclable. So that's pretty much my song and dance for the time. Go to the website, the town website, the recycling and trash is now prominent on the front page. I really can't miss it. It actually leaps out and grabs you, which we're very happy about. It's one of the most often visited sites on the website. And remember, Community Collection Day, November 15th, 9 to 11 at the DPWR on Grove Street. Don't come early. Don't come late. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, Kevin. Mr. Greeley. Thank you. Do you recycle kids by any chance? I thought yours had gotten old enough to maybe get out of the house by now. If you could help with that. But Gordon, I am interested. Thank you for the excellent work you and all of the recycling committee does for this. Do you have a position on the ballot question related to recycling? I mean, the bottles? Yeah. Yes, I think what saved us, yeah, I would personally, we and I believe the committee is in favor of that. I believe the Board of Selectment is in favor of that as well. Because This is the last meeting, sorry. Well, many years ago, the Board did vote to support that issue, I believe. Yeah, that's before the current recycling process, which we now have with the new trash collection. Right, so the fact of the matter is, my understanding is the ones that have deposits that 75 to 80% of those are recycled and the ones that don't is 25%. Despite the fact that we have It would increase the recycling. Pardon? It would increase the recycling. No, more importantly, it would reduce our tonnage. It would save us money because those things will be taken out of the trash stream. Right. And that is, that to me is the biggest savings that will be happening around the state is that every city and municipality in the state will instantaneously save money on their trash disposal. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And that is our focus over the years. Mr. Kira. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Jamison. I did have a question on the textiles. You mentioned here clothing, bedding and shoes are recyclable. Now we're not talking about clothing for resale. You're literally talking about recycling the materials themselves. Yeah, so the stuff that is used up, we ask people to bring to the planet aid type bins or the stop and shop. Because what they find unacceptable in those locations, they sell to people that turn it into the sound insulation for your automobiles. Some of that fiber gets redone into that or redone into other things where it can be used. The types of materials we wish to collect are lightly used things that can be resold at the little fox or donated to locations like that. So this is still usable materials that are lightly used, not things that have been used up. The used up ones we really prefer people bring to one of those other locations. Okay, so you really, you are. Where's the fiber, and Julie Brazil, the other co-chair, wrote a very nice article that is one of those articles that was in the advocate that's also available on the recycling page that people can learn more about there. Yes, but thank you for that question. Great, thank you. One of the takeaways it's for, you know, doing good while doing good by helping out all these different organizations. Great, thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Jameson. Thank you. Any other discussion from the board? Is anyone else in the audience here to speak on this matter? Seeing none, yes. I move approval on the proclamation. Second. We have a motion to second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? I have nothing. Thank you. Thank you much, guys. Have a good day. For approval, bond sale, general obligation bonds, Mr. Gilligan. Good evening, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. I'm here this evening to ask that you approve the bond sale that was recently conducted on behalf of the town. We sold $12,218,000 worth of bonds on October 15th. There were seven bids. They all occurred within seven and a half minutes. Wow. That was the age of modern technology. I'm pleased to report that Morgan Stanley was the winning bidder. The coupon rate for the bonds was 3.12%, which is a great rate in and of itself. However, the news is better than that. We received a premium of over $1 million, which nets out to a total interest cost of 2.11% for that $12 million issue. So it's good news all the way around. If the board has any questions, I'll be more than happy to answer them. As I said, it's one of the larger bond issues that we've had over the years. The only one on the top that was a $14 million issue a couple of years ago. This takes care of all the capital projects that were voted at town meeting, including the water meter replacement. You may note in the memo that I gave you earlier, we are actually borrowing less than what was authorized by town meeting, given the town manager's acumen and the director of public works ability to do certain work in-house. So we were able to cut the cost, the borrowing cost of $800,000. I am prepared if the need arise and the manager so informs me that we'll be able to conduct a short note borrowing for that $800,000 if need be. You'll also notice that there were two votes taken at town meeting for a water facilities improvement project and a sewer facilities improvement project. We are not borrowing money for those two projects. We've been informed by the MWRA that the town will be eligible for a new grant and loan program that they're about to come out with. So we're saving on borrowing costs as well as that and that will most likely be a 75% loan and a zero, I'm sorry, 75% grant and 25% zero interest loan. So across the board we're doing very, very well. And that's about all I have except one note in being prepared for Mr. Greeley's question as to how much having a triple A rating saves the town. With this particular issue, given the dump or bump up that we achieved back in 2008, the town will save $194,605.34. And that's just for this issue alone. We have saved considerable sums of money every year that we've gone out to borrow. Thank you, Mr. Gilligan. Mr. Greeley. Thank you, Mr. Gilligan. Excellent job as always. So Steve, the one million premium, why'd we save that? What happens is in a bidding process, to be competitive and not to cut the rate too high, bidders will not bid too low. But to win the business, they will pay the town a premium, which means they pay us cash. Which drives the interest cost, the net interest cost down. So instead of the coupon rate, which is what will appear on the bonds, is 3.12%. But the cost to the town because of the cash payment nets out at 2.11%. It's an incredible savings to the town. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Mahan. Move or approve? Second. Second. Excuse me. Any further discussion from the board? Any further discussion from the audience? Seeing none, all those in favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank the members of the board and I wish you good luck in signing those 30 pieces of paper. Thank you. Moving on. Presentation. Solar installation on town property. Ruthie Bennett, the regional energy manager and Amresco representatives. So I'm going to give a brief intro if that's all right, Mr. Chairman. So we have with us tonight, Ruthie Bennett, energy manager for the town, our regional energy manager for Arlington and Bedford, as well as some representatives from Amresco. And as the board knows, Arlington's been a green community since 2010. It's been interested and involved in energy efficiency measures since well before that. And we've had a lot of efforts towards green initiatives. One area that we have not made a lot of progress on is renewable energy. So that's sort of the next frontier for us. I should say we did make some progress with renewable energy on private residences in the past several years, but not on town property. So going back earlier this year, Ruthie applied for a grant from the state for owner's agent technical assistance to help us begin the process of working with a solar developer to potentially put solar panels on school and town buildings. We were awarded that grant. We started working with the Cadmus group to help us look at two regional procurements that we were part of and decide what solar developer we wanted to work with. Through that process, the town decided to work with Amresco. And Amresco is now working with Cadmus and with Ruthie, looking at a number of buildings in town, as well as a couple parking lots for potential solar installations. I know the board has a presentation before them tonight with some sketches of the roofs that are being looked at. But we wanted to take this opportunity for the folks from Amresco to introduce themselves to the board, talk a little bit about the process they're following, looking at buildings in town, and then answer any questions that you might have. Thank you very much. So, Ed. Good evening, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. My name is Ed LaPore. I'm a senior account executive for Amresco in the business development group. And also representing Amresco tonight to my left is Jerry Cantor, project development manager, and Jim Walker, vice president of solar photovoltaics. I'm going to give you just a quick background on Amresco. Amresco was incorporated in 2000 and went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2010. And in 2013, Amresco had an annual revenue of $574 million. Amresco has over 900 employees in 60 offices, 900 employees in 34 states in five Canadian provinces. We're corporately located in Framingham, Massachusetts. Jerry is prepared to give a brief update on the solar photovoltaic project where it stands now and what we'll be doing moving forward. Jerry. Thank you. Good evening, Mr. Chairman and members of the board. I understand you have in front of you this presentation. So I will go through the sites that we are looking at briefly and then take any questions you have. First, let me say that the numbers that you see here are preliminary. This is the result of our initial screening process, and I'll tell you what that means in a moment. So they are subject to change. The engineering process is still ongoing. The first school you see here, the Arlington High School, as a result of our initial screening, we anticipate that the production, the kilowatt hours, might be around 200,000 annually. To give you some context, in the fiscal year 14, the high school used about 1.5 million kilowatt hours. So that's about 13, 14 percent. For the middle schools and then elementary schools, on an annual basis they might use around 300,000 kilowatt hours. So depending on the site, it might be one-third to say 40, 45 percent of annual production or consumption for the schools. So as I said, these are preliminary numbers. As an initial screening, our engineering team will go out to the site, and they'll use aerial photography and take a look at a couple of things. So first they're looking at the space available for solar panels, and they're also looking at shading. Too much shading means the production will be low and we don't want to put panels in a location like that. So that might include shading from trees, it might include shading from nearby buildings, and it might include shading from rooftop structures such as air handling units, etc. The systems on these rooftops, to tell you just two things about them. One, they're low-profile. So they might be, once engineering is all said and done, maybe at about a five-degree angle to the plane of the rooftop, possibly 10 degrees. Second, they're ballasted. So that means they are sitting on top of the rooftop, they're weighted down, they do not penetrate the roof. And there's a membrane in between the ballast and the panels and the roof itself. So the roof is protected, the roof warranty is not voided, etc. What we're in the middle of doing right now is taking this screening-level process to a second stage of review where we send a structural engineering firm out to the site. In order to actually put panels on the rooftop, we need to know that the roof can take the extra weight. And so we are in the middle of that right now. The engineering firm has been out there. They're going out again tomorrow morning for a final review on two of the schools. We did review four or so other small sites, the DPW building and a couple of other schools. I say small, what I mean is that there was not a lot of availability for solar panels. And so low capacity means it's going to be a higher cost. And so right now they have been removed off of our list of sites. There's a potential for putting canopies over a couple of the parking lots. We are looking into that as well. We anticipate working with Ruthie and the town and having a contract signed by the end of the year. Construction would take place in the spring or summer next year. And we'll work with the schools around the school schedule so we keep disturbance of the students to a minimum. For instance, we can work around MCAD dates. We can do as much of the construction as possible in the summer, et cetera. Any questions? I'd be happy to take them. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for the presentation here. I had a couple of questions. First of all, I see the first year production estimate, 678,059 kilowatt hours. On each of the buildings, how does that, I mean, off the top of your head, how does that match up to the actual demand within those buildings? So the actual annual consumption. Yes. So it would be about 13 or 14 percent of the high school, so the 200,000 for the high school. Yeah. For the middle school and elementary schools, we can look at actual data, but it is approximately 45 percent on the middle school, give or take, and maybe about a third for some of the smaller systems. So you're never in a situation where you're selling back to the grid? It's unlikely it's possible in the summer off hours that you could be selling back to the grid. The way it works, though, is these systems aren't going to produce more than the schools are using overall over the course of the year. Yeah. So you actually get a credit on your bill. It's called a net metering credit, virtual net metering, and we don't anticipate exceeding what the town can monetize for net metering credits with this production. Okay. How long do you anticipate the system? What's the warranty on the systems or the usable life of these systems? So a contract would typically be around 20 years with an option for renewal. The usable life of the system is likely longer, 25, 30, even 35 years. One of the reasons I'm asking is I see there's a big installation at Arlington High School, and I think we all hope and pray that within the next five, six, seven years, there'll be major work there. Some of these structures may not even exist anymore at that point. So how easy is it to transfer a bill? Hi, Ruthie Bennett. We've taken into account that not all the roofs will last 20 to 30 years, particularly the high school. So the price that will pay for electricity includes the fact that there might be some downtime for some of the roofs. So the price for electricity actually includes a lot of different pieces of information as opposed to now where we just buy a kilowatt hour from Endstar and they give it to us. This is a whole contract for all the buildings for 20 years, and it includes all these issues of maybe there'll be downtime, maybe a roof. If you know if there's a problem with a roof, you have to fix it. We take some panels off, we fix it, we put it back. So that's all included in the eventual price that we pay in the contract with Amoresco. Okay, great. Thank you very much. Thank you. Mr. Greely. Yeah, that was mine. These things can be taken off one roof and put on another one, but you're saying it's covered anyhow, even if it has to be new panels. It's not inexpensive to take them off, but you can take them off if the roof needs to be fixed. So if there's a leak or if we take down the school and put up a new school, they are removable. It's not easy, but it's definitely doable. And Amoresco understands that, particularly with the high school, they know that we hopefully will have a new high school. And it certainly may reach the point where as we negotiate and investigate that we look at the high school and say, okay, it doesn't make sense today to do panels. Let's wait until a construction. But we still need to see more numbers before we can make that decision. Right. So actually in the next sort of two to three weeks, we're really coming down to what the number is going to be for the per kilowatt hour that we're going to purchase. And that'll help us really tighten up. The high school is a big influence in it because it has such a big capacity. But on the other hand, if it's not going to be here in five years for two years, that really affects the price. So we're definitely keeping that in mind. Could I ask, because I think you're going to want to answer this next one. Yes. Which is why not, why should we not, I'm just curious about technology advances. The technology now would produce 200,000. Why don't we sign a 10-year and then maybe in 10 years that technology will produce the million we need. Well, that's actually, I think, more of an Amoresco question because they're signing a contract for 20 years and that relates to their financing. So we're really all saying we're going to be in this together. We get this really good price as long as we're still having these panels for 20 years and they can take that to the bank and finance it. So yes, maybe in 10 years we wish you would have waited, but we have 20 year guarantee. We have a constant number for our electricity costs for 20 years. The assumption being that our friends at Endstar will be escalating their prices and we won't have to be hit with that. Endstar? No. Thank you. I'm not bad-mouthing anybody, but you know, it is a trade-off. Right. But, you know, this is here now. We have, we did the procurement two years ago. We have a grant for assistance. It's coming together now, so. Great job. So what about technology? Is it advancing such that these panels would produce more energy in the near future? Do you want to take this one? Oh, sorry, I don't know. That's fine. Jim Walker. Kevin wants to ask a question. Well, I'll answer two of your questions, actually. With respect to technology, it's just like computers, right? You didn't have iPads 10 years ago, but that didn't stop you from buying a computer 10 years ago. But the difference is that a solar panel system costs many millions of dollars. So we could pay it off in 10 years. It would just mean a higher electricity price now. And so most communities prefer a really low price that they have for 20 years, especially given all the volatility that they face in school budgets. That's mainly what the municipalities are concerned about. And we can offer that low price that gives them the most savings by going out 20 years. As far as you had also asked about roofs, different municipalities do it different ways. So we just, our first solar PV system was in the city of Newburyport. And that was the first in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts that was under power purchase agreement. And it was the first that was done under net metering. And it was done six years ago. And it was on the knock middle school. And they decided that they were going to replace part of the roof. The way that they prefer to do it was they prefer to include the removal and replacement of the panels in their contract with their contractor. So we just supervised it and made sure that they uninstalled it properly and reinstalled it properly. But they included that in the solicitation that they had and they determined that was their least expensive way to do it. So different municipalities do it different ways. Thank you. And I understand the cost and thank you for that explanation. But what about the technology here? No doubt the technology will change. And you could have a 10-year contract. It will be a higher electricity cost. No, I understand. But technology is definitely changing and will change. Okay. I expect. Thank you. I hope anyway. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. A couple questions, I guess. And first of all, I'm not sure if it's for Ruth, you, the town manager. The coordination with the schools, how is that working? Or what's happening with? So a lot of the discussions about this happen around the energy working group table of which the school CFO is a member. And this group that's before you here tonight will be going to the school committee next week. Two weeks. So we are coordinating with the school. Having the school CFO at the regular conversations really probably answers most of what I was after there. Thank you. What parking lots are we looking at? Or is that not really, how does that work? So we're looking at the DPW parking lot. Yeah. And the one on Mass Ave and Water Street, I think it is. The municipal one behind, I'm the name of the restaurant. The Russell Common Lot. Say it again. The Russell Common Lot. Right. Okay. I'm sorry. What are we talking about? We're going to put a roof over the Russell Common. No, no, no. I said the wrong one. The Water Street Lot. The Water Street Parking Lot. But still it's a roof with these panels on it. I'm going to look at the numbers. Right. So we can send you a picture. You can Google it. But it basically is a tall pole with holding the panels. And it's tall enough so that all the DPW trucks can get underneath it. I mean it clears everything. What's interesting is that it shades the cars. It also keeps the snow off the cars. So it's got a lot of value. I've been waiting. I'm just putting it on a parking lot. I've been waiting for them to install those. An alewife. I'll be a happy man when they do that. And I guess my last one also, again, maybe Ruthie or a town manager. So tell me more about how, like, what does this mean financially in terms of a process? Like, is this just no cost to us and it just happens and we just pay the cost for electricity? Is there a capital ally? What would be the competing model that we look at? That's right. You had it right. I mean this is what's great about this, you know, 20 year relationship is that it is no capital outlay for us. Amoresco installs them. They pay the purchase price. They pay the construction cost. We have a whole set of construction details with them in the agreement. And then we have a new set electricity cost for 20 years. And there's, if there's a shortfall in the production, there's, you know, documentation in the agreement. What happens to that? They have to cover it. So it's, but there is no capital outlay for us as a town. It's fixed just for the portion that's coming from this project. Just from the panel. Right. So we'll have a bill that's sort of panel cost and then we'll have the rest with our friends at end star, their cost. Whatever that may be. I know after you, you might ask my questions. I guess I just have one more, which is, you know, I certainly don't need this tonight, but just in the big picture is thinking about how we know whether or not this is the right model for Ellington. Like how are other towns doing it? What towns are they? I always like looking and seeing what, okay. Right. Well, actually, I mean, maybe the time, Andrew, speak to that. We were part of a regional procurement to get this whole relationship until we are one of multiple towns who've gone down this road and we're not the first to have a power purchase agreement. It's more common in municipalities because there is no capital outlay. Yeah. Okay. I'll listen to the sales guy, but I also want to hear our people on this one too. More of an engineer. In any event, the way all the municipalities are using power purchase agreements, and there's two reasons for that. One is that it's a lot of money and they'd rather use, you had a bond, they'd rather use that bond money for either a new school or, you know, water pipes or whatever rather than solar panels. The second is that we as a company, a private company, can take advantage of the 30% investment tax credit. Municipality cannot take advantage of the 30% investment tax credit. So that gives a financial advantage that's available right now. Now, that's scheduled to go away after 2016 or it will be reduced to 10%. So there are mechanisms in the federal IRS rules that allow us in the municipality to benefit together through those tax benefits. And that's why all the municipalities are doing this. Okay. I definitely understand that motivation. That makes a lot of sense to me. I just want to make sure that that truly does align with what we're trying to do. Yeah. I'll quickly say, and I can certainly give you a better answer in the future, but I'm not aware of any Massachusetts municipality who has done this without pursuing the PPA because of the high upfront capital investment. Okay. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. Yes, Ms. Mannheim. Just on that, and then you might have, just to follow up on that, and I'm going to go from a very shaky memory from two years ago. Actually, a former colleague and former State Senator Bob Haven had contacted me and I had met with a couple of people from Amoresco. One was a gentleman from Arlington. And at the end of that meeting, I just contacted the town manager. And if my memory was correct at the time, I was told that Lexington was coming on board, that Amoresco was approaching Arlington, Belmont, and a few other contiguous communities. And the reason why I don't have more of a memory than that is I just called the town manager who said he was on it. So I was just wondering, is my memory correct that you do, and the reason I'm asking this question is, you know, I believe Lexington, if they hadn't signed on, they already were in the process of Arlington and Belmont. I'm thinking of regional projects like Minuteman, like our lab community schools, things like that. That's where maybe, you know, another next step sort of discussion is. So is my memory correct regarding Amoresco and what contiguous communities you are involved with? So regarding Lexington, your memory is correct. Okay. We are completing construction on six sites in Lexington as we speak. Right. But Lexington did follow a different path. Lexington had a strong community energy committee, and they decided to go out for a separate RFP, which we won and were selected, and we're now finishing up that construction. We signed the contract a couple months ago and we're rapidly finishing that up. We've also done, in the MAPC region, I don't know if I'll remember them all, Melrose, separately we've done Waltham. I think you got Belmont. Did you get Belmont? I don't know. It doesn't matter. I'm just thinking for the town. I can't remember. But there's a whole bunch of towns. I can't remember all the towns. Just as a follow-up, in the future, if there are any regionalization opportunities on investments, whether they base school or DPW services, I'm going to leave it to the town manager in this working committee that if, you know, Alington, Belmont, Lexington on board, that's another thing we should look at when we're talking about our regionalization goals. But I'll leave it at that. Thank you. Thank you very much for being here tonight. This can be a pretty exciting project. I do just have two hopefully quick questions. The first is that, so say you start implementing these next spring, I think, is what you said potentially. How long would the project take for them to come online? From start of construction to finish on the order of three months, perhaps. Okay, that's pretty quick. And my other question is, who is responsible for the maintenance costs? You know, wiring faults, bad panels, et cetera. Right, so MROSCO has an in-house operations and maintenance team located in our Framingham office. Right now, we're doing O&M for about 17 megawatts of projects, largely in Massachusetts. And along with that, there is an annual preventative maintenance site visit as well as continuous monitoring of the system. So if there is any issue, we get an automatic alert, an email alert goes to the team, and they'll go out to see what's going on and conduct any repairs as necessary. Awesome. If you could come to the microphone when you. We own the system and we are fully responsible for making sure that it operates as planned. And we have banks that we have to satisfy and they really want us to make sure that's operating well. I'm sure. Thank you. I just want to say from the town point of view, the value to us is, first of all, they totally operate and maintain it. And if it doesn't produce, they're responsible, right? We have an agreement about how much it has to produce. So we don't have to worry and watch because it's really in their interest. That's an aligned interest. So that's one of the values of not owning it ourselves because we don't have that kind of maintenance staff in hand. Thank you. In terms of schedule, also, we will work with the schools. So it could be a three month process, but it also could be a little bit longer in terms of April is MCAS time and we don't want to do it then. So it's a little bit flexible. The goal is to get it done by the summer. So it's up and running when school starts. So thank you very much. Yes, Mr. So, Adam, let me, what do you need a motion from us on this tonight? No, this was strictly informational to us so that you wouldn't be surprised six months from now. And solar panels were up on a crane somewhere up at the school. Yep. Okay. Thank you. Any further discussion from the board? Any questions from the audience? Charlie. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Members of the board, this is a 20 year contract from what I understand. And I just like to draw the board's attention to our recent experience with 20 year contracts or more. One was Neswick, which was a power contract. And I was here when that, I voted for it actually, I have to say. Actually, it was about 30 years ago, 35 years ago. And we couldn't get out of it when the power differential, when the cost of, the differential cost of power in the market versus what we were paying turned around and went the wrong way. And it, as anybody who suffered through town meeting in that period can recall the problems associated with that. Perhaps one of the benefits has been that it created the recycling committee that Gordon Jameson heads that seems to work right now. But that's one of the few that I can recall. Secondly, I think we're still struggling with the Minuteman contract after 45 years. And we can't seem to get out of it. So I would caution the board to be very careful about getting involved in 20 year contracts, especially I think your question about the technology changing. The other things that can change is the cost of power produced by alternative technologies. So I mean, I'm not saying that this is not a good technology or the price isn't right, but I'm very concerned that we'd get involved in another long term contract where we don't know what it's going to look like in the future. And then the other question is, is this going to go before town meeting? How does the town enter into a 20 year contract committing future town meetings for an expenditure without getting the approval of town meeting? I thought that was a bond or something. Do you have a comment? Mr. Council? It's really more tantamount to a, I don't think it's really tantamount to a bond in the sense that it doesn't commit us to a debt. I'm happy to examine the question more closely. I'm quite confident that one town meeting cannot bind another town meeting except for a bond unless there's some sort of special, I don't know, something. Otherwise, the third year in, you know, if you don't get to vote a town meeting on this, it's gone. So I think that's something that you should consider. And then the last question is, what are the exit strategies if we want to get out of this contract? How do we get out? That's a fair question. The Grinch that sold Christmas, I'm sorry. Thank you, Charlie. Perhaps the town manager will look into those concerns and record back. Thank you very much. And thank you all again for being here. That was, oh, we have another hand. Please come forward if you could give your name as well. Hi, I'm Brooks Harrelson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and board. I'm familiar with maintenance repair and operation software for large systems such as this, and assume that a company like Amoresco would have a very sophisticated one in place. I'm wondering, I'm also aware of the tremendous work that Ms. Mahan has done over many years improving the electricity in Arlington. And I personally am a proud recipient of the benefits of that. I would like to know about transparency and reporting. Will the MRO systems for this system be integrated with MRO reporting systems in Arlington? Thank you. Thank you very much. Perhaps you can answer that question. I just, the, what we'll provide the city of Arlington, the town of Arlington, is a website. So there'll be transparency so that, and an educational program. So anyone in the town can see how the system is performing on an hour-by-hour basis. And there's graphs and charts and all the type of information that are readily available as well as the schools. So we have an integrated program with help on the curriculum to help the schools look at it. But it's readily available and all the information can be downloaded. We are under an obligation to the banks, besides an obligation to the town, to make sure that these are producing the kilowatt hours that we said that they would produce. It's an absolute requirement of our loan for this. So that's why we monitor it. Our own software for the maintenance, since we're maintaining, won't be integrated or there's no plans integrated, because we don't want anyone from the town to go near it, really, except if there's an emergency. Because we have the liability and the responsibility for it. We don't want someone who hasn't been trained to inadvertently do something to the solar panels. So anyway, we take full responsibility for the maintenance and operation of the systems. Thank you. And just to add quickly, I assume you may be online right now or you would have access. If you want, by way of an example, you can go to the city of Newton website. If you click on sustainability on the left sidebar and scroll down to the page, there is a link. And up will pop the website, which will be a similar to what Arlington would be offered. And you can see the 15-minute increment, I believe, energy production, as well as the equivalent carbon offsets and also putting it into terms that everyone can understand number of cars taken off the road from the system compared to general energy production from the grid, et cetera. Thank you. One last thing in terms of transparency. There will be a flat-screen monitor in each building that has panels on the roof. And what you see on the website from Newton will be the same thing that's shown there. So there's a curriculum, but there's also sort of, as every student or teacher or principal parent walks by, there will be obvious what it's producing. The maintenance is different, but in terms of what we're producing for each building, that'll be transparent all the time, not just on a website, but on a monitor in the buildings. Thank you. Any further discussion from the audience? Seeing none, no further questions from the board. Well, thank you all very much for being here. And I look forward to getting responses from Mr. Chaplain on those questions. Moving on, for approval, we have the opening of the 2015 warrant for town meeting. Yes, Ms. Mohan. I'd like to move for the annual town meeting taking place on Monday, April 27th, 2015 at 8 p.m. that the warrant will open Tuesday, December 2nd, 2014 at 8 a.m. and remain open until 12 noon on Friday, January 30th, 2015. Second. We have a motion and second. Do we have any discussion from the board? Any discussion from the audience? Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? 5-0. As I mentioned previously, we will be addressing agenda item number four at the end of the meeting. So moving on, the consent agenda. We have the minutes of meetings for September 22nd, 2014. We have a request for a contractor drain layer license, C.M. Conway construction. We have a request for a contractor drain layer license from Insight Contracting. And we have a request for the permit for the Veterans Day Parade, which will be held on Tuesday, November 11th. Move approval, subject to our conditions is set forth. Second. We have a motion and second. Any discussion on these? Any discussion from the audience on the consent agenda? Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? 5-0 vote. Moving on, we will now have a public hearing on the disposition of 1207 Mass Ave, which is the former DAV building. And we're really just looking to hear what your thoughts are on how this building will best serve the town moving forward. We have been hearing correspondence from community members, both online and via telephone calls. And I really, I look forward to having a discussion on this matter. Mr. Chaplain. And just to build on that, Mr. Chairman, in the announcement that the town and the board issued, we did allow for residents to be able to send written documentation up until next Monday. So I would say tonight shouldn't close out the discussion, but begin public discussion. And if anybody wants to submit, anybody at home watching wants to submit something in writing by next week, they can do so. Yes, we'll be happy to consider it. I'll begin. Is there any discussion from the board before we get started? Yes, Mr. Chair. I was just wondering if it might be helpful just in a few sentences to set up for folks who might be watching at home how we came to this point? Sure. So we have a group that is meeting on, you know, to consider the future direction of the DAV. We had a tour of the facility for the Board of Selectment. And that committee is made up of myself, Mr. Dunn, Mr. Chaplain, and our former veterans agent, Bill McCarthy. I'm sorry, Bill. No offense on that. And, you know, we decided that this, we really were looking for a transparent and open process. And we thought that having a public hearing to take input would be a great first step in that. This will, and I guess there are several possibilities, you know, that come to potentially selling the building, leasing the building, you know, using it for other town purposes. And we're really looking forward to a robust discussion on that. So please, we'll just take, you know, take audience members by raising your hand. Okay. We'll start with Mr. Harrington. And we'll go row left to right and then back that way. So we have a system. Thank you very much. Sean Harrington, Precinct 15. One of the things I was actually really looking at is the idea of more meeting spaces for Arlington. You know, as someone who chairs a local committee here in town, meeting space is a great thing to have. But sometimes places like the senior center become very full. Recently, when my group, the Arlington Republican Town Committee, had a meeting at the senior center, there was a large event going on in the May Room of a Catholic women's dinner, which is fine. But it was, you know, with all these different events going on, depending on different noise levels, stuff like that, it sometimes distracts people from the meetings that they are having, you know, people walking through, you know, the dining, you know, the dinner that they're having to get to this meeting. They're wondering, you know, who we are and we're wondering who they are. I hope that there's a real thought in making this a meeting place and possibly even a place to rent out for weddings or what have you. I know that there's a bar already set up there. I don't know if it'd be possible to, you know, try to renovate it, keep, so it's a good meeting place and also a place for functions that the town can rent out and make more money off of and also give more mini space that I think is needed for Arlington residents. That's pretty much it. Thank you very much, Mr. Gilligan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. If the board is entertaining an option to sell that property, that real property, I would be inclined to support that. I think the property could be returned to the tax rolls and improve the tax levy of the town. But more importantly, I think the board should consider that the proceeds of the sale of real property that's currently owned by the town should be used to mitigate the borrowing for the improvement of other real property within the town, whether it be the Stratton School or Arlington High School. And the proceeds should be used either to mitigate the borrowing, in other words less than the total amount to be borrowed with principle, or it should be used for the payment of the debt service for whatever borrowing those projects entail. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Foskett. Excuse me. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. I was along with Jack Herd and Dennis Sullivan, co-chairman of the Rebuild II debt exclusion campaign in 2000. And we raised at that time through a debt exclusion of $34 million for the rebuilding of the second group of our Arlington elementary schools. It's now 2015, and we have not completed the Stratton building. About a month ago, the school department appeared before the Capital Planning Committee, and after a lot of work that was done by the Stratton School Building Committee, and some consulting architects came back with a plan for a $10 million project. And candidly, knowing the costs over the years and the passage of time and the things that have to be done there, I don't question that number. In fact, it might grow over time looking forward. We have in the Capital Plan right now, my memory serves me right from last year, one and a half or $2 million that we have already sort of programmed in for the Stratton School. So we're looking for another $8 million, and most of this has to come, most or all of it has to come from our non-exempt budget. So following Mr. Gilligan's comments, I would like to put a little more focus and respectfully recommend to the board that this asset be sold in some fashion or another, and that the funds be used to support the reconstruction of the Stratton School. Thank you. Thank you very much. Can we start? Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. Neil Mongold, 12 Brattle Place. I'm a member of the Housing Corporation of Arlington, which owns and promotes affordable housing in Arlington. I would just like to say encourage the board to consider and the town to consider the use of the property as a mixed-use property with commercial space on the ground floor and affordable housing above. I think that's in concert with what the master planning committee has been working on for the town for the main commercial arteries, and there is a desperate need for affordable housing in Arlington. The Housing Corporation of Arlington has over 1,000 households on its waiting list, and I just wanted to encourage you to consider that as one of the possibilities. Thank you. Thank you very much, sir. Yes, please. My name is Richard McElroy. I'm a near neighbor of a 1207 Mass Ave. I'd just like to point out some issues that have to be considered in this whole process. Right now, in that two-block area, there are three empty store fronts. I'm afraid that it's not a really viable business area. This obviously would be a commercial property, and of course there's concern what kind of business is going to move in there. The activities now on that two-block area are mostly nine-to-five-style businesses. It'd be detrimental to the neighborhood to have a late-night establishment there. Another issue is there is no parking, no lots nearby, very limited on-street parking. Again, it may not work out as an appropriate place for a restaurant. Going back to the issue of who actually may buy it, of course we have to consider if it's sold, there'd be very little control over who the buyer would be, and other than through licensing, what kind of activities would go on in that business. If we'd have a lease arrangement, that probably would give the town more leeway in selecting a more appropriate document for the establishment. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, sir. Yes. Thank you very much for having this open forum. My name is Kerry Conrad. I run the Arlington Soapbox Derby. I would really like to see a mixed-use center used in that space. We would be very motivated to assist the town in refurbishing the space, bringing it up to code, being a very good neighbor for those in the neighborhood, and liquidating an asset is always a very attractive thing to do when trying to meet a budget. I spent most of my career with making these types of decisions. Acquiring this type of asset when you're looking for a solution is infinitely more difficult. You have, we have, as a town an asset. I think it can be put to excellent use, and I would like you to consider that as a possibility. Thank you. Sorry, Mr. Chairman. Yes. I'm sorry. I understood the argument about acquiring the asset, but I didn't, in the beginning, you led with a suggested use for it, and I didn't follow. Mixed-use. I didn't follow. So rather than just be self-serving and say that the Arlington Soapbox Derby, which is a 77-year-old program, seven years in Arlington, 88 years in existence, we send three people to Akron, Ohio every year. They're children. It's the oldest STEM program, the greenest STEM program, rather than all that self-serving, which I'm sure everyone knows, right? Yes. Everyone knows about the Arlington Soapbox Derby. I could have done that speech from my head, right? But you stick with me for a while and you have it down. So that's my suggestion if you're asking me what to put in there, but just for this forum, I think the town is in need of a mixed-use facility. Thank you. Thank you very much. Moving on to what would now be the third row, Alan Jones. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. I'm Alan Jones, precinct 14, and I hope you don't mind. If I read a little bit, I'm not very good at improvising unless I have a Stratocaster in my hand. Good evening. Thank you for holding the hearing. I don't think I need to tell any of you what a co-working space is, although there are a lot of definitions that include hacker space and maker space and fixture spaces and office-sharing, desk-sharing. And I don't need to tell you that's a great location. It's close to the highest businesses. It has great access to hardware and lumber and lots of food and the UPS shipping. The access by foot, by public transportation, they're all really excellent. I'm sure you're also aware of the economic advantages and other benefits of the town and residents of the town of encouraging the development of local innovation economy and stimulating business growth in the heights. The planning department's been exploring options and looking for ways to the town government to support the innovation economy. We had the planning department held a great seminar a couple months ago about that. And I think the availability of this property is a unique and timely opportunity for the town to show its support for local innovators and creatives by providing a specific material stimulus and time-certain goals with minimal cost and risk to the taxpayers. I'm well aware of the properties likely to be sold eventually to support renovations of the Stratner of the High School and I'm in support of that. So what I'm asking the board to consider is to delay the sale for, let's say, a year and give the local innovation economy time to organize, develop, and execute a plan to create a co-working space, demonstrate its economic feasibility, and eventually either buy the property or return it to the town in a better condition than it is now with, presumably, a higher resale price. I'm proposing a multi-phase plan that minimizes risk and taxpayer funding and has specific milestones which would determine whether or not to proceed to the next step. Phase one would be to initiate the formation of a management group guided by the planning department. My experience is that some form of grassroots cooperative could be the best form, but it could also start with the inappropriate for-profit business with good experience in funding. Phase two would be to develop a credible business plan that would support the building expenses and operating costs, no doubt, through some combination of facility rentals by the desk, by the hour, by the month, by the office, by the basement. And the plan would be based on some very limited period of zero or below market rent from the town, and since the DAV wasn't paying rent or property taxes, there's no immediate loss, and so far no taxpayer cash has been spent. If the organization comes together and a reasonable plan's made, a business plan that makes itself sustaining, the first two steps meet their goals, then phase three would be for the town or the co-working group to minimally renovate the property. We know this is class three space, it's good for some things, probably wouldn't be so good for other things. Basically clean out the junk and make sure the critical mechanical systems all work. I don't know exactly what that would take, but since it was occupied fairly recently, I've got to believe it's in a reasonably good condition, and I've walked through it, I've seen the space. Alternatively, the management group could be charged with raising the funds for renovation, either procuring donations, grant scholarships, prepaid memberships, bank loans, if they had a good enough business plan, to finance the renovations. Then in phase four, the management group would do a minimal build out with a combination of volunteer labor, donated furnishings and equipment, lots of paint. This is where the group would have choices to make about what the space would best be used for, and it also put some serious skin in the game. When you talk to the people who founded Artisans Asylum and Green Town Labs and all the other places, they always started with a community of people really dedicated to it. This would be the turning point, is this really a group that could run it and is the enthusiasm there? At the end of an agreed upon trial period, the property would be sold, either to the co-working group if it was thriving, or to somebody else at market value. The cost of the taxpayers would be a one-year delay in the availability of sales proceeds and the tax revenues, and actually look at it a lot like what we did with the Sims property, where we guide the development of it, make sure that it's something that's compatible with what the neighbors need, what the community needs, what the people need. I think it could really have a compatible plan to show that the town does support smart economic growth and the quality of life for many residents. So thank you for considering that. Thank you very much. Thank you. Yes, please. Brooks Harrelson, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Board. I'm speaking as an interested party. I would be a prospective tenant in a co-working space. I have been looking for space for my business in Arlington for three years. I've been looking at co-working spaces and all of the spaces that I find I'm priced out of because they're all for companies that are funded by venture capital. The character of the people who are looking for co-working space in Arlington is very different. They are very small entrepreneurs. They are not venture funded. The size of the co-working spaces are way too large. Having some kind of community support to get it off the ground so these businesses can begin to thrive would create, in my opinion, an economic center in Arlington Heights for which I have found no similar opportunity in the three years that I've been looking. In addition, there are two different groups who have been forming management groups which could come together around such a space as disabled American veterans space. These spaces, these groups include small home-based businesses out of Arlington, Belmont and Medford. They include artists and makerspace people and there is opportunity to put in spaces that could be used by, for example, the high school for makerspaces for high school students to encourage innovation in the schools. So I'd like to encourage strong consideration of the kind of proposal that Mr. Jones put forward. It seems like now is a very good opportunity and this is an unparalleled opportunity for the economy, economics of Arlington. Thank you. Thank you very much. Is there someone next to him? Yes, with the hand up. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Leon Joseph-Dwarvin. I'm the major of the United States Army retired. I'm a lifelong resident of Arlington, graduated in 1967. I'm a member of disabled and Medford veterans. The property was acquired by the Arlington selectman on January 1, 1901. I was given over in lease, or 99 year lease to the DAV, or actually the Arlington veterans in 1934. Because the state DAV wasn't being appropriated to their money that they wanted to take out of that club, which was unprecedented, they came to Arlington to remove our alcohol license. That's fine, but we're still an organization under the National Charter. We left there, Arlington has had no, it has cost Arlington nothing to support this building for 100 years. We have taken on that responsibility all told. We were going to go in for adverse possession, why rock the boat with the talent that we all come from and live in. The property that should still be considered, keeping them in the Arlington realm, the property has no floor. It's got a solid basement. Right there, it nixes almost anything else that you want to do with the property. I mean, we've heard people say, food pantry, this, that. You can't do it unless you bring the building up the code, bringing up the code is almost a million dollar project. So you better after dumping it and building something, or put all veteran services and other services, town services into the building. Selling it, the money you're going to get out of that, if you can open this place up for town services, it's much better. Get the veteran service, you'll finally have a decent man in the office here. Jeffrey is a hard-working man, he knows how to help veterans. And being stuck in the corner where he is, he's a little tough, he doesn't have any space to be able to bring other veterans in to assist him. You have quite a few veterans in this town. You can get, housing has their own people, but you have other offices here that are crowded and jammed into the annex in here. Opening up for town facilities, for them to have something to conveniently use together. You don't have any problems. Selling it, it's like selling a card collection. You've got something for, that's worth $1,000, but in essence, it's worth a lot more. You get that $1,000 gone, you're going to make money, it's going to be gone the next day. You have the property now. It hasn't been bringing in any money for you people ever before. We've been taking over all the expenses, the roof, the new roof, to do this the best. We've covered it all these years. Your predecessors, your family predecessors that were here, that's what's happened here. When we got into 34, World War I veterans ran the town. After World War II in Korea, they were still on the selection board, and they made sure that according to the laws of Massachusetts, they had to give veterans a place to be able to meet, take care of themselves, and bringing people that needed applications and petitions to get their benefits. Which is when I do, I'm retired, I have nothing else to do but raise a 16-year-old daughter. And I've been a widow over 15 years, so I'm an ATM machine now. It's something that I treasure dearly, and I would never trade it for a thing. I had to retire from the service, I had to retire from the CIA, the minute my wife died, but the things I've gotten out of it have been more than what I, I got a lot out of my professional career, but I got a lot more out of my daughter. You know what I mean? And she even comes down, she helps us at the American Legion to be able to bring her things, her girlfriends and whatnot. We get it, we're making it a family again. Back when we were a strong club, we had Christmas parties for the town kids. And we had Easter and Thanksgiving. We've got the manager of the town, the manager of the building and the commander, James Crowley. He was a town employee, he retired. And for two months before we got him into work over the VFW, I thought he was going to die, because he was there every day making sure things were going on. And we have that kind of loyalty for the people in the club. And if the town user for other offices and whatnot, you've got a good army of people in the back of it that are going to help. You know, we don't need a compensation. We just need something to do for the veterans. We need something. And the VFW, it's a lounge. The Legion, it's a lounge. We had a lounge there in the DAV, but we had a back room where we made sure we got one over problems. Once a week I'm there getting people in what Bill McCarthy couldn't do, that he didn't have the time to do, because, you know, he's got a set of situations that he has to work with. Having been a Sergeant Major, I had to step on a few toes here. But the bottom line is I could slide things by, make sure that our veterans got seen, got upgraded, and got their benefits so they wouldn't have to live in agony and disability all their lives there. And I know... Thank you. I know that the other plans they're having in the building are good business plans. I agree with that 100%. But I'm not the best speaker on the wall, but the bottom line is the veterans still... I wish we had seven times one afternoon, and I needed that place to go to make sure that my head was halfway screwed on, walking straight, you know? We've all put our time in to do things that the nation wanted from us. We didn't care about the politics, nothing else. We wanted to come home and be with our family again. We fought for each other to be there. But we had a will to this country to do what we did. And I somewhat feel a little hurt by the fact that now all of a sudden everybody wants to jump on a piece of property and get the quick cash and walk away. And you may not do that. You may put it in for another use, but to put it in for a commercial use is going to be very difficult because whoever takes it over is going to bring it up the code. Very expensive. I mean, I've got my real estate license had that for years. I have phrased the property. It's going to cost almost $1,000,000 to bring it up the code to do anything. I mean, that basement downstairs, it floods every year up to 3.5 feet. Without a flooring, that's what's going to happen. The roof, we've placed twice in the last 22 years. It gets expensive, but we've taken care of it. And I'm sure the town appreciates that too. And the town can think about using it in some way that I'd love to see the Mediterranean moved over there and a few other officers moved over there. Now, if we can't use it, we're more than happy to help the people that I'm using. So if you could take my suggestions under your hat. Thank you, sir. Make sure the chairman gets one for sure. Make sure he gets one for the chairman. The chairman. Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Oh, I thought he had limited ones. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much, sir. Thank you. Yeah, please. Is there anyone else in back in that same row as that gentleman would like to discuss this? Yes, come forward. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and board. I first came to about this property. I think I actually met you. The gentlemen were taking down their pictures and their awards the day I went in there to rent for the property. Excuse me, sir, not to interrupt. Can you give your name? Oh, sorry, it's Eric Love. And I'm a part of this community. I work with middle school and high school youth. I was getting to that point. So I was looking for a space for, to work with middle school and high school youth and after school enrichment program to have kind of self discovery, think boy scouts, girl scouts, meets theater and arts. And I went to this space and I did see these gentlemen having to take down their pictures and their awards and it was heartbreaking to see the elders of our community losing the one place they can go to relate to each other. Because maybe because the experiences they've had, we've had different experiences in them and that they need a space to come together. Another thing that has brought me here today, though, is one of my students also said, we need a space for kids to come together. And there is just isn't spaces. We do rent at the senior center and space is very limited there. We do go to the Fox library, we do go to the Robbins library and in that search to try to find spaces for students, I also know Brooks and Allen and I heavily support their theories. I came to know within two emails 50 artists that are looking to rent for teaching personal space or collaborative space. And I have 12 artists that are willing to sign a one to three year lease blindly with any place that I choose because they believe in the mission statement that I put out. So those are a lot of numbers and these aren't young people, it's mostly people older than 30 and 40. Some of them are retired, some of them are not. But as Allen was pointing out, places like Artists Asylum has really brought in a huge economic development interest into the city. So you're looking at Cambridge and Somerville. What does Somerville have happened in the last three or four years and all the technology people are moving there and it's creating more interest in raising the land and the property of the land. So we all know that artists come in, something gets developed and then the land property goes up. I live in South Boston, I don't live in Arlington, but I do live in the distillery building and I can tell you that there's million dollar condos going up 20 at a time every month and they're just three bedrooms. So I took some notes on here, we had one, two, three, four, five for a meeting space, a place where people can come together for events, maybe there's some, in the basement there's some offices, rooms, creative stations. However, as much as I like to push forward my own beliefs and this project I've been working on for over a year with Arlington residents, I do feel that the veterans need a space to be and if there was a way to come to some kind of mutual understanding of maybe we create a place that enshrines 21st century skills and STEM type research and has a lot of fun tools and the veterans could be a part of that process as well, enabling them with new ways to communicate and express themselves. And I feel like a marriage of that sort might be beneficial for everyone because I would like to see generational bridging happening, there's a gap with generations and people are losing the importance of eldership. And maybe that doesn't come out in the numbers but I think for morals and trying to give children in ourselves moral compasses it's important to put elders back in front of the children and therefore that will close the bridge between elementary, middle school, high school adults and elders and I know this because I've been doing it if you put them in the same building they have the same interest, they automatically start talking and then you have people sharing stories. That's all, thank you. Thank you very much. Any further discussion from the audience on 1207 Mass Ave? Seeing none, any discussion from the board? Also seeing none, so... Oh, yeah. I'm just curious first of all that has the subcommittee reached a recommendation on this yourselves? Are we waiting until we pass? No, we were through the public hearing for us. We were waiting to hear from the public and we wanted to have a discussion before making any official recommendations. Okay. And that process is still going on and will be going on for the next week or so as more ideas come into town before we meet again and try to put together a recommendation I assume. I also had a question which I think is for town council. My understanding is that if the board were to move forward with the recommendation for a sale we would have to do that through the context of town meeting which would mean a two-thirds vote of town meeting to put it up for sale and of course we know we have the period afterwards we wait for the attorney general's approval and then of course there's a long period presumably appraisals are involved before things can go up the market so has there been any analysis I don't know who to direct this to but of what a time frame would look like if the board were to pursue a sale option, a realistic time frame. So in addition to some of the things that you've outlined in the property most dispositions of the property would also require us to follow the 30B process so we'd have to put even for a sort of public good use we'd still have to put it out for a disposition RFP process sale or lease and we might be able to there's a lot of different options that have been discussed tonight and if the board were to take any of those options they would have different nuances but you'd first have to go through that process and then you'd basically have a contract contingent upon town meetings approval and usually the attorney general's office completes its review of town meeting sometime in August, September it depends on how much work they have it may be a little bit different for approving a disposition as opposed to a warrant article but it would be able to give us news a little faster than that but it'd be up to them I'm just asking this because I'm trying to synthesize we've heard a lot of good testimony tonight I'm trying to synthesize everything that we've heard and you know I do firmly believe that you sell a capital asset it is to fund another capital asset so as the capital planning committee will get it put forth that if we were to pursue the sale that should be funding Stratton or one of our other build projects but I also heard Mr. Jones's testimony proposing something along the lines of a trial period which may actually be inherent in this the period of time Mr. Jones reference might actually be there the shortest period of time that we could feasibly sell the property anyway I don't know how long a 30B process takes or what it involves or if it's needed correct me if I'm wrong but we could do that process before town meeting yes exactly so that's one thing that I'm trying to so you'd have to do the 30B process before town meeting okay you have to basically have something lined up unless we're going to call a special town meeting you'd have to have basically the agreement in place okay I'm just putting that out there just to establish that I think a trial period like that may be feasible even within the bounds of pursuing a sale I also want to note something that Mr. Mongold said you're absolutely right there has been a lot of discussion within the master planning process around multi-use multi-use especially along the commercial corridors in Mass Ave some commercial and some residential you may or may not recall it was an attempt several years ago to pass zoning changes that would allow more of that within Arlington and it was it was defeated but it's been such a recurrent theme throughout the master planning process that I have to think that I can't speak for the advisory committee but I have to think that something along those lines is going to be pursued again and I have to think and I know the planning director's back there and I don't want to put her on the spot but I have to think that if somebody referenced the analogy I think Mr. Jones referenced the analogy to Sims that if this were a parcel that were a potential candidate for rezoning along multi-use that potentially we'd be increasing the value to ourselves through that process I just want to put a few of those things out there because we've had a lot of ideas put on the table and I don't know if they're all mutually exclusive if we're talking around a time trial basis and potential disposition of an asset but also potentially increasing the value of that asset through the master planning process so as we go down this road I just wanted to put some of those ideas out there for my colleagues and the subcommittee to consider as we go forward I agree with every speaker that spoke I just don't think we can satisfy all of them and just briefly because it is a public hearing and we are leaving it open I believe for at least another week for comments I have peaks and valleys of what I've heard and yet not to hear so don't take the fact that I really don't have any remarks either way PROACON except for the fact that there's a process in place for all the week that this is open I do want to let my colleagues on the board as well as the rest of the committee receive all that information compile it in whatever format they deem appropriate and you know I assume there'll be a recommendation or recommendations but if it's possible if we could just get a very brief synopsis or glossary of the 30 requests that we got if some of them are consistent you know you don't have to repeat it we've got five were for co-working three were for veteran youth programs things like that you know if you could just break down just so we know how the requests came in if that's not sort of insurmountable task if that's okay Mr. Chair thank you excuse me I'm just really glad we've done this hearing it was very interesting for me to think about it more I agree completely yeah this was very helpful and I do want to encourage anyone watching that has some ideas to please send your recommendations what you'd like to see happen to 1207 Mass Ave I did see another one hand up in the back if you wanted to talking amongst the other veterans around town and many of them are contractors and many of them are willing to if we can keep it within the family here they're willing to put in the effort of refurbishing the building not for free because they are small businesses but at least for cost so you can also consider that in the value of trying to get things together we're townies too we don't want everything to go and you'll get an awful load you know that thank you very much sir I graduated at the same time what can I tell you but that's something that you've got to put into consideration too because the costs are going to be a big factor in what you want to do with the building and if we can do that let's get everybody involved thank you very much I really appreciate the time thank you although now I'm voting against them very short any further discussion seeing none but we will compile this and we will meet again to discuss what will happen moving forward and I'd just like to thank everyone for being here today so thank you moving on we have an appointment to the Council on Aging for an emergency thank you for being with us tonight I hope you found that interesting as we did please tell us a little bit about yourself where should I start I was born in Allington in a lifelong resident and it looks like some of my history is disappearing I was born at Sims Hospital I worked for six years for Brigham's and I think your relative John used to work at the Brigham's he worked for me and Diane and I have worked for a number of years on getting some parking signs put up thank you Diane I attended Allington High just had my 50th reunion last week ago Saturday at the town hall I'm a graduate of Northeastern University Business Administration I've had my own business for ten years and when Staples came along I closed that and I moved on to Fidelity Investments for 20 years so within Fidelity Investments I had a lot of business experience business analyst and they decided to put me through computer school for six months and learn how to be a mainframe computer software engineer and that's when I left Fidelity when my job went to New Hampshire I'm currently working part time at the Council on Aging as a driver I love interacting with the seniors because I love their lack of filters it's just wonderful and Eric brought up a good point a little while ago when he talked about intergenerational programs the Council on Aging has one that I'm well aware of but there are others that I've talked with the board as a guest saying I'd like to see more intergenerational programs for high school students and others because the bridges that are laid by those meetings are just astounding I've been married with my lovely wife Diane for forty three years it feels like eighty six to her that's true and we get married by a wonderful priest who decided to leave the priesthood and guess which church we got married at St. Jerome's I told you my history is getting slowly devolved here I'm currently taking a Spanish course sponsored by the Council on Aging just trying to get my toes wet in that language and the Council is offering so much to so many people and I think we as a group in town don't get the message out to all the seniors of all the programs that are available and nor do we use the Executive Secretary over there the Executive Director to the talent that she brings to that office she has so many ideas and she has so many opportunities to run new programs for our seniors and I just want to be a part of trying to help her get that done thank you very much Mr. Cure thank you for volunteering you have an impressive background I do have to note though that you are associated with which are no longer with us if we confirm your appointment in five years with the Council on Aging still be in existence no comment thank you very much thank you thank you for what you have already done Council on Aging you have done some training for them you are aware of that reading this at Boston coach did you know Mike Fox was there I worked with him a lot he is a fabulous guy he is not afraid to shake things up thank you for your willingness to serve we are lucky to have you I know this motion I will second I do want to say having worked with you in the past first of all thank you for all your dedication not only on the Council on Aging but also other issues that involve neighborhood and quality of life but also understanding the process that you know sometimes you want to rush from point A to B and you don't understand how you can't get there you certainly shown restraint as well as the ability there you go exactly but also to you know find the process and the ability to go along the guidelines and actually as you say persevere and hang in and I know you will bring that same tenacity to the Council on Aging I am thrilled what you said about the intergenerational remarks I am a big proponent along with everybody else with that like to find more avenues that we can do that and I know you have worked on and I think you might reference in here a few projects with Susan so you are going to hit the ground running on this thank you for your kind remarks earlier and I look forward to your appointment thank you very much your passion comes through and I am really excited thank you very much for volunteering my pleasure sir no and I agree you are willing to do this and I also like that you have taken the programs so you have that first scene experience that I don't know all Council on Aging members have so yeah thanks this will be great and I hope you enjoy it so we have a motion in a second all those in favor please say aye thank you thank you moving on request for a transfer of stock professor and director issuance of stock John Chen from SONO good evening Mr. Chairman board members my name is Chris Coleman I am here on behalf of the applicant the restaurant we are talking about is SONO Asian cuisine located at 469 or 471 Summer Street four things we are looking for permission to do here tonight there is a new stock holder that is going to be holding stock in a corporation so it is going to be a transfer of stock as well as appointment of new officers and directors Mr. Wu Chen here is the current manager that will remain unchanged he will be issued another 5000 shares of stock in the corporation to make it a total of 10 that he will be holding and so Wan Wan Lin Mr. Lin is transferring his shares 5000 shares to John Chen it is still going to be all U.S. citizens as far as the majority of the board of directors the new officers Mr. Chen currently is the clerk he will also now be the president, treasurer, clerk and a director and Mr. Chen will be the new director who is acquiring Mr. Lin stock so other than that there will be no change that the restaurant and no real impact other than a new owner is going to be involved the criminal background of the past court thank you very much sir so now I will turn to the executive board comments Mr. Dunn Second with the procedural question there is three actions in there is it appropriate that we vote all three at once or should we vote them separately attorney Heim and Mrs. Sullivan I'm just saying that he wants a vote on transfer of stock, a vote of issuance of new stock and a vote for new officer and director to voting on all three of them together. That's fine. I just want to make sure. One piece at a time. Thank you. Thank you very much. So we have a motion and a second. Any further discussion from the board? Seeing none, any discussion from the audience? Seeing none. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. For approval, spyponds, beer and wine, change of hours. Sean Galvin. I could have sworn I saw him earlier. I think he's out in the hall. Do you want me to go check? Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. I thought I heard his voice. Perhaps we'll move on to Citizens Open Forum in table number eight for the time being. Moving on, Citizens Open Forum, except in unusual circumstances, any matter presented for consideration of the board shall neither be acted upon, nor a decision made the night of the presentation in accordance with the policy under which the open forum was established. It should be noted that there is a three-minute time limit to present a concern or request. Please first. Sean. Thank you very much. Sean Harrington. Sorry, Charlie. Sean Harrington, precinct 15. I'm coming forward because there's an election cycle coming up. And so there's been some misinformation given about local aid for Arlington. Not intentionally, I don't think, but an issue that I think isn't. I think it's important. It's been said that the, by our state, Rep. Sean Garbley, that in the past five years, local aid has been increased by 35% for the town of Arlington. However, if you look at former finance committee meetings, quotes from our town manager and many others, local aid hasn't had more than a 1% increase every year in the past five years. And going back, actually a quote from Charlie Foskett, I believe, one meeting was, if you look at local aid for Arlington versus inflation, we are down 55%. I believe I got the quote correct. The reason I bring this up is I think it's really important for people to realize from our elected officials that this isn't true, that 35% increase in local aid hasn't happened. It seems that there's some creative accounting going on here in the sense of school building reimbursement rate, which has been cut by 30% from by the legislature, but that's a whole nother ball game, is being added to this, added to the local aid increase that's being perpetuated through town during this election cycle. More or less what's been the math they're using is that if I was to make a thousand bucks in one week, spend 300 bucks on office supplies and get reimbursed at 300 bucks, I made $1,300 in that week. That's just not true. I think that's very important that we set the record straight and actually for possibly board of select men and other boards in town to set the record straight by saying, no, these are the numbers for local aid. If you look at local aid, we've had a 1% growth every year. Actually, if you look at the numbers for 2014, once you take away what we're paying for kindergarten, once we've got full day kindergarten, local aid is actually lower than it was in 2002 when it was cut during the recession, which is an interesting fact to know. I mean, if you could ask any board in our elected board of select men, yes, tell me, I'm sure you could ask the chairman of the finance committee or any member of the finance committee. They will tell you local aid has not seen a 35% increase. It's just creative accounting. You know, not trying to say that it is done with some malicious intent. I just think it's using the wrong math. But I think it's important to set the record straight on what the real math says about the issue. Thank you. Thank you, Sean. Yes. Next, citizens open forum. Please, sir. Good evening. My name is a good evening. Good evening. Chairman and members of the board of the select men. And my name is Charlie Hayes and I'm from precinct 11. And I'm here to discuss the decision that was made by the town to reallocate space at the Wellington senior center and transfer it to the council on aging. And it's too bad. Mr. Masi didn't hear this, but it's just, in my estimation, it's an unfortunate thing. I'm speaking only as a senior from Wellington and a taxpayer from Wellington. Or the Wellington senior center or the Wellington seniors association. In my opinion, the decision made in transferring these spaces is really most affordable. The advocate printed an article in the paper approximately two weeks ago. And it was, you know, if you read it, it was on the first page. It just, it stated that the council on aging will control space. And when one reads that, it's just very misleading. You wouldn't say, well, so what? That's not much of an issue. But if you read the entire article, it is pretty moving. It impacts the senior center very, very much in its operation. The council on aging went to the town to request additional space because they, to satisfy their needs. And it was presented to the town, was it developmental? ARB. What is it? The redevelopment board. Oh, redevelopment program. Okay. And a department. And it was determined that space was available at the senior center that could satisfy this need. Well, that decision may be very good from the town's vantage point, but from the senior center advantage point, it certainly isn't. They've been working in a space that's been provided by the town for over 30 years, and they have done extremely well. It's run by 12 to 15 volunteers that supplement one full-time employee and one part-time employee to carry out their numerous tests. And I personally believe that they have provided a significant contribution to the seniors of Arlington. It's not the greatest place in the world, but they don't have much parking area at all. That's one of the biggest deficiencies in the facility. Excuse me, Mr. Hayes. We are reaching the three minutes. Three minutes, okay. So if you could just make some closing remarks, that would be great. Okay. It's just that my consensus is that the decision was made by the town was too abrupt and was not done to see the impact that would affect both parties, especially the senior center. So with that, I would request a reconsideration of the decision by the redevelopment board in the reallocation of spaces from the senior center to the Council on Aging. Thank you for your attention. Thank you for being here today, Mr. Hayes. Mr. Foskett. Mr. Chairman and members of the board, first of all, let me say that I have deep respect for the Board of Selectment and the tremendous amount of work that you put in every year, year after year. And deeply appreciate it. However, I appear before you tonight on the subject of the CPA tax act as a little bit of a scold, perhaps a modern-day Savonarola trying to get you back to the straight and narrow. And I'm here to ask you to deeply consider changing your vote to support the vote no on ballot question number five. I have three reasons for that. Last Tuesday at the Long Range Planning Committee meeting, which chaired by Mr. Currow, the town manager presented a new five-year plan in which our projected deficit and fiscal year 2020 was $14.2 million, up a million point four since the April plan presented to town meeting by the town manager and the finance committee. So our position deteriorated by $1.4 million in six months for good reasons. And I'm not here to discuss those reasons. But the conclusion, if I can sort of broadly suggest it or summarize it by the Long Range Planning Committee and its chair, was to ask the town manager to develop some new plans which included rethinking a lot of things and to try to get the structural deficit down to a range that could support an override. So I believe that's inevitably going to involve expense reductions in service cuts. And it's unconscionable to me that members of this board are supporting the CPA tax increase override when we are looking at cutting expenses and reducing service over the next five years, four years, in order to be able to affect the override that we all know we're going to need. Secondly, there's been a lot of discussion about the so-called implied debt limit that would be discussed in the capital budget at town meeting. And I have to say that that was based on an estimate of $120 million school expense. And that school budget, that school project is now getting in the $150 to $200 million range. So that first of all takes a chunk out of that implied debt capacity. But the CPA tax itself is going to suck up 60% of that implied debt capacity. So if the CPA tax passes, the entire school project is going to be sitting out there in its naked glory as a full tax increase to the citizens of the town, and that's just not acceptable. And I think my third comment would be that there's a tremendous reliance on the so-called state matching funds. In 2002, the state matching funds, the collections from the registry deeds was $34, $35 million. There were 34 towns in the CPA. And now there's 155. Excuse me, Mr. Foskitt, if we are reaching three minutes, if you could make a closing statement. Thank you. So we've gone down to $140,000 collected per town. And in summary, the CPA tax is just, for all of those reasons, a very bad deal for Arlington. And I hope that the Board of Select and re-considers their individual positions and recommends that the citizens vote against ballot question number five. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Foskitt. Is anyone else here for Citizens Open Forum? Seeing none, thank you all for joining us tonight. That was some good discussions on a few different topics. So I assume that we could not find Mr. Galvin. So perhaps we'll table that until the next meeting and hope that he can join us. Mr. Chairman, is it Nessus? Does he have to be here? I mean, it's just a change of hour. Yeah, I mean, I would move we supported, but. We have done restaurant change hours on the consent agenda in the past. This is a new venue for a change of hour. So it's, you know, passing still. Mr. Cure. Yeah, thank you. I have no problem supporting it also without him here. I just, I was a little bit confused by the advisory from the state though. On the one hand, it seemed to say that local licensing boards didn't even have to approve these, that the stores only had to notify us. But on the other hand, it then advised them to apply for a change of hour. So it wasn't even clear to me whether we needed a vote or not. I think it's probably better to err on the side of caution in the sense that if you take the vote and it has no effect, I don't think it really causes a problem. But if the advisory, confusing as it is, ends up requiring the vote, because they say they have to apply for it, you might as well. Well, if you made a motion, Mr. Grilly, I'll second it. I did make a motion. Yeah. I moved approval, yeah. I'm also fine with it as long as everyone else is. Okay. We have a, you made a motion, Mr. Grilly. Yes, sir. And Ms. Mohan seconded. We have a motion to second. Is anyone here to talk about this? Nope. Seeing none. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Congratulations to Spipon Berenwein. Mr. Chairman, Ms. Sullivan just wanted me to remind everyone that she does need signatures on that. That does require, so it would require a vote for the ABCC too. Thank you. Excellent. Okay, so we're all set then. Moving on, our planning director, Carol Kowalski, to talk about the commercial vacancy trend report. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, members of the board. I am Carol Kowalski, director of planning, community development. Ted Fields is our economic development planner, and Ted is actually going to give you the vacancy report. He'll talk about that, and then I'll discuss some broader perspective on economic development to give you some context. Ted, please. Hello, I'm Ted Fields, economic development planner. So thank you for inviting me to address you tonight. About six months ago in the spring, the board asked the planning department to provide information on commercial property trends, specifically in the areas of vacancy rates and turnovers, average turnovers for various types of properties. The planning department went out and procured a data system called the COSTAR, multiple listing service system. It's a subscription. And we are going to summarize some of the key findings for you tonight. I have provided you with a memorandum and a chart that goes into greater depth of detail. In the interest of brevity, I will address the vacancy and the turnover matters, and then feel free to ask me questions. Vacancy rates are, by definition, the amount of available vacant commercial space divided by the existable rentable space. And right now Arlington's overall vacancy rate is very low at 1.5%, compared to some of our neighbors. Lexington, for example, is at 9.9%. Cambridge is at 6.2%, and Belmont is at 2.8%. And that's for all different types of commercial properties, shops, offices, and industrial factories and warehouses and whatnot. Today, our vacancy rate for all commercial properties is lower than pre-2007 levels. It's dropped quite a bit. And as a response, our rents, average rents have gone up, especially for retail spaces. With turnovers, or average turnover, I should say, the definition of turnover is time on market for vacant spaces from when they've become vacant to when they're reused, released. Arlington's turnover rate right now for all different types of property is about 17 months, and that's on par with the levels in Lexington, Belmont, and Winchester. But it's considerably longer than Cambridge and Somerville and Medford, too. So with that said, I will be happy to address your questions. Thank you. Mr. Dunn. First of all, thank you very much for this. I was definitely one of the people who was asking for this, and I'm really happy to see it having seen it. Now, of course, I do have questions. Sure. So I was pretty stunned to see the vacancy rate as low as it was. And so the first thing, of course, you do is you say, like, how good is the data source? How much do you trust these numbers? And so my first question is, how much have you vetted it? How much do you trust it? Where do you think it's right? Where do you think it's wrong? Well, to our knowledge, given the research that we did, COSTAR is the most accurate data service within our budget range, which is under $5,000 per year. It is the only service that we could find in that price range that actually has a research staff that vets each listing and updates each listing on a monthly basis. Competitors such as LoopNet do not do that. It's just more of a bulletin board for property owners and brokers to post listings, but they don't check them for accuracy for whether they're live or dead or whatnot. So to our mind, the COSTAR subscription was the most cost-effective way of getting a regular, monitored, relatively accurate stream of information on a continual basis. That said, I have looked at their listing information and what they list as vacant and what's not available, and not every property owner utilizes a broker who advertises space on COSTAR. Many of the smaller property owners, especially of small storefronts, will do their marketing themselves. So for that reason, I've gone out and I've supplemented the listings that aren't on COSTAR that are visible within town, either for rent signs or are advertised through other medium with the COSTAR data, and I indicate that on the chart there. Actually, then it helped me a little bit more with that. So I've got the line graph, and then I've actually printed out even this chart. Okay, yes, the tables. Basically, COSTAR right now, in the COSTAR system, it's advertising a 1.5% rate. Adding in the properties that aren't on COSTAR that comes up to about 3%. So tell me, is that here anywhere or no? It's in the table. It's in that heavy box near the end. Oh, so the total vacancy rate. Oh, now I understand what you did there. Yes. So even with the properties that aren't on COSTAR, the overall vacancy rate is still quite low in town right now. As I say in my memo, vacancies in town tend to be very visible because they're right on Mass Ave or to a lesser extent on Broadway. They're very visible. Many of them are clumped in clusters in the center and the heights. Somebody was mentioning before the cluster of vacancies around the 1207 Mass Ave property. But there's quite a bit of commercial space in town that's not as readily visible, that is tenanted. So it's important to put the vacancy numbers in that perspective. That's pretty good. I like taking this source and adding your own information. I really like that methodology. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Miss Juan. I guess I just saw the piggyback and I think I already heard the answer. I was thinking of what properties get reported. What about the properties? Most of them are highly visible ones where the owners are choosing to say, I'm just going to wait it out. Right. I'm going to go on. But I guess the crux of my question would be most respectfully, what is the, what should, what are we being asked to do with this information? Is this, I mean, this is great information to have, but why do we have it? What do you suggest this will enable us to do, aid us to do? I'm not. Well, I think first and foremost, members of the board requested this information at a meeting in the spring. Oh, okay. Then I apologize. I must have missed that meeting. And beyond answering a question that we should be doing with this data, or is this just a, you wanted to know the information, here's the answer. Is that what it is? Well, I think it also just, it speaks to the health of the economy. It speaks to the efforts of the economic development, or Ted being the economic development staff and planning. And I think Carol's going to get into some of the broader pictures. And I missed two meetings. So I apologize. I wasn't there for the beginning. So that's why perhaps I'm not getting it. Thank you. I'll hand you over to Carol. Thank you, sorry. Excellent. Well, if I, we have some more questions coming your way. I think Ted. Did you have I actually wanted to give my answer to Mrs. Mahan, if that's appropriate, but what I do with this data. So for me, when we're talking about policies where we're talking about, whether it's parking on Mass Ave, whether it's talking about zoning changes that we, like, you know, weigh in on or anything like that. For me, I like the more I can know about what the actual situation is as opposed to the, like we, like I know which stores I notice or vacant and stuff like that, but that doesn't mean what's the big picture. And so for me, this helps me decide votes that we take that are policy driven about economic activity. And so that's why I'd ask for it. So I just, I hope that helps answer your question. Thank you. Mr. Kiera. Well, I would just piggyback on Dan. I think actually great. We had a great example earlier tonight. I mean, I think as we're discussing potential uses for that property on Mass Ave and potential conversion to commercial, it's, it's very helpful to understand what this market is looking like for myself and what potential impact is for the decisions we make there. But that's one thing I would. Thank you. Mr. Green. Yeah. I was going to ask, is that space considered part of this vacancy? The 1207. Yes. Right now it is not co-stars listening. It has not on the market. I can certainly add it to it and tweak the numbers to some degree. And Ted, is there such a thing as a waiting list? Do we know that? That a lot of other businesses would love to open in Arlington? And having spoken with a number of property owners, a number of them have, are talking with many different possible tenants for vacant properties. Thank you. Thank you. I have one question. It seems in, do you have a theory on why our industrial flex space is up, has a total vacancy rate of 11.7% while, you know, everything else is down between, you know, one and three essentially? Well, a number of those properties are older. And many of the uses in them are no longer very profitable and have either ceased business or are running along at a fairly low rate. And in some of those spaces, the remaining businesses have only taken up a part of the space. So I think those properties just, they have large blocks of space. And in many cases, they're used for short term storage uses like warehousing and whatnot that tend to be a little bit more volatile. They're used maybe for part of the year, not part of the year. If you notice, the flex space tends to have a very short duration of turnover, about four and a half months. So that it is rather flexible space. It's used as needed and then kind of goes offline. So right now there's a number of properties that just aren't being used and aren't being marketed very heavily, but they are out there and they are garnering some interest. Thank you very much. Yes. Thank you. There is another phenomenon that I think you, you hint at here in the report. Yeah, actually you reference it in the report. I think a lot of times when we see vacant retail space, in particular we, a lot of times we'll assume that, well they can't find any tenants for that space. Correct. But clearly that's not always the case that sometimes it is a situation where the landlord is just being much more selective in the tenants that they bring in. And I didn't know if you could shed a little bit more light on what the landscape is in Arlington. Having talked to a number of brokers in town, they report that as vacancy rates have gone down and has the rental, especially for retail space, the rentals have gone up. Property owners are more able, if they want to, to wait and look for the perfect tenant instead of renting to any, the first person who comes in. Many property owners, especially those without large levels of debt on property, are waiting for very high quality tenants who have the right types of businesses to accentuate their other, the businesses of their other tenants and that have the greatest possibility of renting for five, ten years at the rates that are advertised. And these property owners are willing to wait to get the right tenant. Thank you very much. Any further questions from the board? Just one quick comment, and I want to apologize if my question was taken any way, but maybe because where I said I did miss two meetings, so apologies to my colleagues. Just maybe in the future, if possible, more times than not, when we get backup material, there's some sort of cover letter, even if it has two or three sentences that comes from whomever, whether it's the department head, the town manager, or Mr. Fields that would say, you know, in response to the board's query, please see the enclosed backup plan. Most of the documents that we have, there's usually some, and it doesn't have to be a cover letter and it doesn't have to be, you know, maybe one or two sentences or maybe for board members like me that missed the meeting and weren't there for step one, it might aid me in the future to not ask that question and maybe have it be misconstrued. So thank you. Thank you. Is anyone in the audience here that wants to say a few words on this agenda item? Seeing none. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Moving on. Ms. Kowalski. So I wanted to give a little context for Ted's presentation, a little broader perspective on why we do economic development, which I think is what Ms. Mohan is trying to get at. When we engage in economic development, we're trying to do a few things. We're trying to create tax base. We're trying to increase property values, to retain and attract wealth. We're trying to bring spending from outside of Arlington into Arlington and keep that investment here. We're trying to reduce poverty. That's one reason why communities do economic development. Creating jobs, retaining jobs. We do it for economic stability so that we can weather economic cycles better and for economic self-sufficiency. So we're not dependent on, as dependent on the state, for example. There's an important interplay and balance among those elements. We also can measure those elements. That's really important. Otherwise we really don't know how we're doing. When we think of economic development in Arlington, we kind of reflexively think of the stores and the restaurants. But I want to give you two examples of how these elements play out in Arlington. We have two businesses in two of our commercial districts that attract from the outside $2.4 million in spending to the other businesses in those districts. But all together, those two businesses have less than eight full-time employees. So they don't create a lot of jobs, but they attract a lot of wealth, comparatively speaking. Then on the other hand, on our top 10 employer list, half are tax exempt or governmental organizations. So they create jobs, but they're not contributing to the tax base. So I'm giving you those two examples to see how you might get, you know, on this list of economic development elements, you want to balance. You don't want to have only job creation. You don't want to have only attracting wealth from outside. So I also think it's important for us to remember that we have a lot more businesses than we have landowners. But the landowners are really in the power seat. I think you all realize that. But it's hard for us to bear that in mind because they're less visible. But we always want to ask ourselves, what are our policies and practices, what message are they sending to property owners and business owners? Some of the policies you've undertaken recently have been beneficial and have had a direct impact on the landlords and the businesses. You allowed beer and wine licenses. That was this board's action. And think of how fundamental, how fundamentally that changed Arlington's economic development. You took on a change in parking policy to create more parking availability. That's really powerful. The board's support in investment for public infrastructure investment is very important because when the municipality invests in infrastructure, the private sector invests in their own properties. They see it as a vote of confidence. They say, I know this is a good bet here. Are permitting processes and even pre-permitting certain sites for the types of businesses we want can also attract the types of businesses that we see as part of our culture that will create the type of jobs we want and attract the kind of wealth we know we could take advantage of with the training that in the high education level of Arlington, which we kind of take for granted, but it's a demonstrated asset that's been identified by the economic development self-assessment tool that was done for us a few years ago. I want to comment briefly on a little bit of history. When technology was emerging as an economic development force in this region, MITRE Corporation, does anyone remember MITRE Corporation? MITRE Corporation had one of its first offices in Arlington at the Old Ring Sanatorium. This was in 1958, but they were forced out because it was a residential district and there was some suspicion about what they were doing. There wasn't a lot of understanding, but it was also a residential district, so they went out. Also, in 1968, Wang Labs really didn't have much of a reputation in computers until they bought the biggest data processing company in Massachusetts at the time, Arlington, Massachusetts. Our geography and our populace signaled to us we're located in an area and we have a population that we can take advantage of for economic development. Getting back to our real estate, we have very little land that's zoned. We decided a long time ago we were going to be predominantly I know you've all seen this. This is just our zoning map. But look how much of it is dark, yellow or light yellow or green. That's residential or parks or schoolyards. The colored strip in the middle it's a fraction of our land area but that's what we've got to work with for economic development. So we have excess, we have some capacity under our zoning but it's very challenging. I think one of the recommendations that will come out of the master plan will be to consider up zoning some of our commercial districts to allow us to meet that demand and to boost our economic development. So to wrap up, I think it's important to remember we need to measure we need to compare ourselves against similar communities what this costar that's an example of the type of economic metrics we should be using. We need to compare over time to observe trends and we need data from a variety of sources. So I want to ask you to always think about what type of economic development benefit are we getting from our actions? How would we measure it? Is it measurable? And to try to instill that throughout the whole organization? Because every contact we have with a property owner or a business is critical. It sends a message of are we expecting you? Are we welcoming you? So I applaud you for the policies that you've taken that have been so good for business over the recent years. And as we're concluding the master plan I hope that you'll continue to have that perspective when you consider future policymaking including supporting possible zoning changes that might come as a recommendation of the master plan. You received an invitation to the November 6th presentation from the master plan consultant next Thursday. And I hope you'll consider attending that'll be a joint meeting with the master plan advisory committee and the redevelopment board who will be expected to hold the public hearing as soon as possible vote to make it our policy. Thank you. Thank you very much, Carol. Do we have questions from the board? Mr. Cure. Thank you for the presentation. I appreciate the work that you all do. I do notice in the material you gave us that the very first resource that you direct us towards are some case studies on business improvement districts. Is this something that's been actively discussed with some of the merchants and businesses in town? I notice that it does have to be initiated by them but presumably with some direction. No, I don't think we're quite ready. I think we're building up, I think the merchants are building up to possibly persuading their own landlords to adopt a business improvement district. The landlords, it's not the business owners, it's the landlords that have to adopt a bid. That's challenging. That also underscores why it's so important to have good relationships with our landlords. I want to show the board a couple of things that are available so you can see some of the work that Ted has done. I know the board's been interested in storefront enhancement. There is a storefront enhancement program. Ted put this brochure together and there are a few copies that you can share if you're interested in taking a closer look. There's also a new business guide on our website and it's also hard copies are available for prospective businesses coming to Arlington. Great, thank you. Also, I did want to just note that I've appreciated that you've organized these seminars on working spaces and co-working arrangements and I did want to note that a number of the people that have gone to those seminars and I think that's why you were hearing that as a theme through some of the testimony this evening was as a direct result of some of the work that our planning department has done around this to bring in some of the leaders in the field. So thank you on that. Further questions from the board? Mr. Greely. Nothing, I just really appreciate the work Ted and Carol are doing for us. I always bore you with stories of when I was a lad but when I was first on the sport the vacancy rate was 26 percent and we actually, as a group, went up to Lexington Center to try and figure out why they were thriving and we weren't and it's just thrilling here, it's 1. whatever percent 7, Ted was it? 1.5 percent now and as I've also told you all before a few years back the Lexington Center came to Ireland to study why we were so thriving and they had such a higher vacancy rate I think it's a very good sign for us there's not much room for growth but may it continue to be that lower vacancy rate and I think you're right there's no question restaurants alcohol have made a huge difference in terms of that's the biggest difference over my 26 years. So is that you taking credit for this low percentage now Kevin? There's not many liquor things that have been done in this town without my vote. I would like to note that the economic development director of Lexington is an Arlington resident and recently joined our master plan advisory committee so I think they're still trying to learn from us. Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity. Sorry, was anyone in the audience here to speak on this? Could I have a copy? Moving on. Discussion on Mount Pleasant Cemetery parking and cut through traffic. Mr. Trappling. Thank you Mr. Chairman. So as you may recall town meeting there were several warrant articles dealing with issues at the cemetery so the chairman and I have had several discussions over the past couple months about bringing this back to the board for discussion and follow-up. And there's really two separate areas that I addressed in a memo I provided to the board. I'll start with the second issue being cut through traffic. That's an issue that folks at town meeting raises a concern and something that the DPW director and I certainly saw as a concern and I believe at that time we committed to performing some kind of traffic counter traffic study to try to get a handle on exactly where the people came from and they exited so where we could best consider the installation of an impediment I will say to reducing that cut through traffic. So the DPW director has got a proposal to perform that study. This would be a very accurate study. It would actually involve counting in the morning rush hour and the afternoon rush hour afternoon starting from school rush all the way in to the end of work day rush. So I think it's called a source destination because we identify where we're going to count where people come in, where they leave and how long they're in the cemetery so we can determine exactly again the best way to limit cut through. So that study is going to go forward wanted to be able to tell the board that publicly say that that's going to happen and it happened very soon before the winter begins so that we can make a follow up recommendation. I'm sorry did you say it will start when? I don't have a date but it will drive through that day. That wasn't directed at you. The second issue addressed first in the memo was the issue of parking on CHMF in the cemetery and I think as we all recall that really had a very long discussion at town meeting and I've sat with the DPW director as well as the police chief to talk about what was causing parking there, issues to address and what can be done. Those discussions left us very comfortable that either stricter enforcement of the current regulations of no parking for other than cemetery business could be manageable or something else could be manageable. So I wanted to prompt a dialogue with the board tonight to suggest some guidance for me for the cemetery commission really based on what we heard at town meeting. I think there was sort of a diversity of opinion of perhaps putting time limited parking for people who want to walk in the cemetery or do some other sort of passive recreation bird watching in the cemetery which might not be interpreted as strictly cemetery business. So from the town's point of view with construction starting to subside from the national grid project understanding we do have construction for the third phase of the community safety building coming up next year but with the focus on that of trying to make sure those contractors park off-site being something we want to do we're comfortable we can generally not have to use that space for any kind of town overflow parking but enough for me I didn't want to prompt a discussion of the board for appropriate solutions as the board sees fit. Thank you Mr. Shepplin. I was really happy that Adam wanted to put this on the agenda. It's very fitting and I think we can all agree that if we went back to town meeting without addressing this we'd all be in a big big trouble. So that being said I just would like to open up for the board for preliminary discussion and then of course I'll get the audience involved. Yes Ms. Mahon. I'll try to be brief. Regarding the first item you addressed the parking I fully support that process in terms of signage. I wouldn't propose particular signage anywhere because I think this various groups that you've referenced you will work with will come up with that and then you can present that to the board whether it's just to move receipt and it's an action you do on your own or whether you need to vote on the board. On the cut through traffic I'm just trying to go by the memory of town meeting and things that you know that were noted a few times and I think someone on behalf of the town responded that we would look into this or study it. There were two or three town meeting members who came up and asked why we weren't putting closing off at particular times particular access points whether it be on Midford Street whether it be halfway on each side of the bridge whether it be Satchimab whether we do that and where we do it and B when would the chains go up or would it be a combination thereof that maybe there's permanent chains on each side you know structures and that Satchimab and Pleasant Street the chains won't go up until 9 p.m. so it might do assume that's also inherent in terms of what you're going to look at that's exactly what we want to get out of the study. Okay so since I don't see it there are other things and then the only other thing that I think is the second or third piece that you and the chairman will also be getting things together and presenting to us was and I know you gave a brief report to town meeting regarding any sort of road improvements road infrastructure improvements you know curbing things like that you said that there was a plan to do that but I think and you can speak better to this that we as part of committing to a plan that we did we still need to go to next year's town meeting you mean what's my memory? That's right so water system improvements are underway right now there's money in the current capital plan to begin roadway improvements but to really do the full roadway improvement up to the level of where we wanted to get after last year's town meeting discussion on the I-16 capital budget as well So my question would be if I'm taking those as three different action steps and we have the funding for one and two in town meeting approval can we begin that process or do we have to wait until we go to next year's town meeting and get the funding for the third piece like do you need all the funding set in place or when we go back to town meeting next year we can say it's three things you've already appropriated funding for one and two and we've started it now we need three or we say we've appropriated funding for one and two but we need you to appropriate the funding for three so we can start all three So I think by the time we're actually done with the water improvements we'll be into next spring anyways and then I believe DPW would prefer to issue one big roadway improvements contract so we'll be ready to roll early in next fiscal year if and when we get that next appropriation So we'll see a little bit of activity early spring I just want to show that we've put in an action plan moving forward we'll basically say once you do this then we can hit the ground running okay that's fine thank you very much Thank you Mr. Dunn Just my thoughts on the parking for discussion the manager is definitely some of the signage is conflicting and I think making unified and improving its clarity is I think a good thing we should also not just the signage but think about expectation setting like what is appropriate in the space and I definitely believe that using it as an open space in respectful ways is appropriate and something that I definitely want us to support where we can and so no that does not mean a lacrosse field but yes it does mean bird watching and somewhere I think we can find a happy place where those things can happen similarly for parking there are places in the cemeteries where it's appropriate to park and there are some places where it isn't appropriate to park and I think that we should be able to make a policy or a signage set or something that can help guide what those are and I don't have a firm set in mind but I do think about the very beginning there in Satchimav where you're right up against a building there's no grave there you can pass by parking there to me seems like it probably should be legal but then parking on a grave obviously or in a way that's blocking access to graves wouldn't be so that's my thoughts on that thank you Mr. Reilly just a couple quick questions and if you said this forgive me Adam the bridge is included in what's currently under study yes what they'll be able to tell is where someone came in and where they went out so if they count someone that's coming off Medford street and leaving on Satchimav they'll know they went over the bridge okay so you know once we look at those numbers we'll be able to tell if whether you know a bridge obstacle or a closure at Medford or Satchim is the appropriate action and anything related to study in the chapel and the rehab of that chapel down there that's not related to any of us you know there is a capital request but I'd have to refresh myself before I could speak in depth on that any further discussion on the board so I have a couple thoughts one I think this might be a good follow up to Mr. Dunn's comments was I really at town meeting there were some ideas about time limited parking I really like that idea in there and I think that's a good way to manage using the cemetery in respectful ways with open space like bird watching as well as making sure people aren't going there and spending all day long leaving cars for an extended amount of time which there was quite a bit of frustration on a town meeting so I'd like that to be considered as this moves forward I just think that it could solve quite a few problems pretty easily and I'm happy to hear that this study is going to be done quickly because with tonight with the opening of the warrant I think it's only appropriate that you know the town can see the results of that study and we can take some action prior to the warrant you know with definitely closing so give some you know residence the time to react to whatever we want to do and keep that in mind that being said I'm pretty happy with the direction this is going for right now and yes Mr. Graham. While we're getting a report on this tonight the manager has been working on this for a while it's not like we're just starting I didn't mean I just want to clarify to the millions watching at home in terms of it is something that we took very seriously and have been looking into it you know something like time limits though we have to think about the enforcement and the size of that property to have enforcement of time limits would be very difficult for example when Mr. Harrington came before us to complain about brother's grave we put up curbing immediately and stop that any further deterioration into that part of it on SageMav and we put up a sign that said no cemetery business parking only but as we know from his report a town reading in all of the many pictures still people park there you know even though it wasn't for a cemetery business now with the problem of the construction which continues for the community safety and in that area as well but so we just we have to also consider enforcement as well as whatever rules we do place on parking once it's down there of course thank you now I would like to open it up to the audience yes Mr. Harrington hello again Sean Harrington precinct 15 I wasn't planning on speaking on this one I actually didn't even see this on the screen I'm surprised yep actually it's kind of ironic I don't know if that would be the right word I just came from a way as Steve did earlier for a friend of mine that passed away who will be interned at Mount Pleasant I believe I'm starting to get to know way too many people in Mount Pleasant anyways sorry the thing I was going to just remind people was that during town meeting I had put up an amendment about the parking situation a lot of people were concerned that was too strict that the original proposal was too strict on well you can't just say you have to look at birdwatches there is some conservation land in the cemetery where people can walk through and I remember putting up a proposal I can't remember the exact words off the top of my head but more or less trying to make sure that it was more open that people in the cemetery you know cemetery use as long as you're in the cemetery and you're not parking your car and going off to Dunkin Donuts or whatever you know you're fine and that passed by huge colors so I'm glad to see that that's a real big part of the discussion because I think as we all agree there are so many good uses for that cemetery and it's just a question of making sure that people are respected I'm really glad to see the boards moving on this and a reference that not many people are going to get but they should Google it and know it I'm a political junkie so good to see that's something called the kingdom model is working in effect where public outcry was made and the legislative process is being made to render the outcry thank you thank you Sean any further discussion from the audience any further discussion from the board well I just want to thank the board for their feedback and I will report back with more action moving on we have a request for Wellington Street referral to tech back to Mr. chapter Lane thank you Mr. Chairman so provided to the board tonight was a request from a resident Mr. John Byrne resident of Wellington Street in regards to concerns he had about the speed of traffic I've cut through traffic on Wellington Street so Mr. Byrne first came in to speak with me to speak with me in the office to address the issue sent me this follow-up email that you'd provided to which I had asked the police department to send a response which they did and we provided that to Mr. Byrne the police department has scheduled traffic patrols I still owe Mr. Byrne the details of when those will be dispatched from the police department but ultimately I'll let him speak to the issue himself but Mr. Byrne wasn't satisfied with the police department's response to the matter and was requesting that it be referred to tech which would obviously be an action of the board of selectman Mr. Byrne requested that we put the question before the board for a potential referral and that's why we have it on the agenda here tonight thank you Mr. Chapter Lane Mr. Byrne you have an excellent last name good evening Mr. Chairman good evening members of the board as Adam had relayed I just wanted to ask if we could elevate this to the transportation advisory committee I feel that the speeds that people are traveling on Wellington street are in excess of the speed limit I know that the speed limit does not get posted because there's a general understanding that side streets such as Wellington have a speed limit of 30 miles per hour I feel that aside from there being a significant volume of traffic there because a lot of people use it as a cut through street between Mass Ave that people feel like they really need to accelerate on the hill and as a result of that people are traveling at speeds that are in excess of the speed limit on a consistent basis a story that I had relayed to Adam was that I had my 11 year old niece visiting me three or four weeks ago she wanted to go out and ride her bike she was enamored of the hill and she wanted to ride down the hill and she wanted to ride up the hill and I just didn't feel that it was safe for her but you know let's just walk down to the field and you can ride your bike around the field so I just wanted to come here tonight to respectfully request that the issue be elevated I understand that the police have made an effort and I appreciate that but the police can't be there at all times so I am asking for at minimum a reduction in the speed limit with a posting there so if it's perhaps 20 miles an hour and there's a sign to remind people and if there's any other deterrent that people can have instituted to try and stop them from you know accelerating on the hill and accelerating down the hill with the Boys and Girls Club there at the bottom there's obviously a lot of children at play and I just feel like there's a real potential for some sort of accident or bad happening so I just wanted to make that request before the board tonight so thank you very much for your attention thank you thank you for coming in I will open up to discussion from the board and I just want to lead off by saying I'm probably not going to vote to send this to TAC so Corey Riteau our parking officer did respond to what the concerns were and I thought he laid out a pretty reasonable response and I don't think TAC and I don't want to speak for TAC but I wouldn't see them altering too much these recommendations and I think that if you are, if you do watch these meetings we send quite a lot to TAC and we send really big projects and they are they do get overwhelmed by the amount of things we send to them and I just think that this is Corey's response did kind of put things in perspective for me I think that it doesn't really need to be examined further by TAC but with that I open it up to my colleagues as well and happy to hear what they have to say yes I think in essence I agree with you on most of it I would just note one thing that part of the request is to change the speed limit but if I'm not mistaken we don't have that authority to change speed limits the only thing we have been able to do in the past is to change the speed limit but it has no legal standing that's because of the state law the state really handcuffs local communities you know if other members of the board were so inclined I might be willing to ask for TAC's opinion on that one piece of the request around an advisory sign but I think most of the points that the chair has made are well taken thank you Joe I understand the request for the signage and I live on a little teeny short cutthroat street between Quincy and Robbins road but I'm right near the middle school and amazing the amount of number one traffic and speed that they rise up to in such a short amount of distance is probably 8 to 910 houses on each side and they're probably doing most people out there think they're doing 40 50 miles an hour and then someone comes out from traffic enforcement they're doing 22 at the beginning 28 at the end so I've never really allowed any of my kids unfortunately it's kind of the nature of the times that we live in in terms of when I used to play in the streets and you could shoot hockey and have your basketball unless you live on a cul-de-sac some of the other points in here over the past I've been looked at intensively by town departments the bridge which some of it is private land the bridge down by Palm Lane that was looked at extensively I want to say 7 to 11 years ago and the official request was there used to be a sign and or practice that when you went under that bridge you had to beep and honk your horn and that was the impetus of the starting point for looking at that and the request was made then in terms of can you make it one way can you put speed bumps in can you do things like that and after everything was said and done it was just sort of signs were taken down enforcement when the park was redesigned down by spy pond it kind of came out a little bit more so that kind of cut down by the boys and girls club since that is I guess there are some speed bumps that do close that traffic down there and again there was a request by some neighbors who recently moved in near the boys and girls club again within the past 10 years to look at configuring it whether it's one way and again we've had people go out and look at this and for me I'm all for looking at something again but I don't think circumstances are too high so with tax request that they are overburdened to not basically send them a do over I wouldn't be inclined to refer this thank you for the comments yes Mr. I heard Joe say this and I'm sorry I was reading this at the time do we have the authority to change the speed limit you said you don't think we do as well I don't believe we do I could look into alternative options but I don't think the selectments traffic power is what would be the process I believe contact DOT and they would have to examine it well I would move we at least do that myself and I agree with Diane and I don't necessarily agree that this should go to tax because we're very familiar and have had this before us a number of times before the only one I can see my way clear to is the put up a speed limit of 20 miles an hour I couldn't but we don't have that authority but I would I would move that we send a letter to the DOT and start the process for requests that they look at at the very least I think let's get someone looking at it perhaps we should look into the actual process on how that goes because it seems there has to be we're not 100% sure of that so perhaps we can consider it and look into that further after we know the right route to go down because I think ultimately you have to file legislation because when residents of Gray Street wanted 25 miles per hour 20 years ago what I was directed to is the then senator and then state rep that it would have to go to the state house and get a vote there and they did put the legislation in but you know it wasn't successful so I think ultimately I agree with the chairman that in with Kevin but let's see what the process is is it contacting DOT first but I think what it might be is you have you know request to file that legislation yes what would be the process and then take further steps from there but part of that motion would be to Adam to instruct the police to continue a little bit increased patrols and stuff in that particular area we have a motion a second further discussion I'm definitely in favor of the the element of trying to manage this best through enforcement because I'm definitely I'm really concerned that piecemeal re re redoing street speed limits something it's a it's a path that that scares me I am yeah but I have no investigating more and figuring out how to do that process I have no processes yes sir please come to the microphone again Kerry Conrad district 11 I'm also a member of the town of Arlington traffic committee and I would be glad to perhaps deal with this more organically take Mr. Chapendale into the committee have him voice to the people that are closer to this issue as a father of four when your kids are playing hockey out in the street and someone that is not a part of Arlington drives through the town which we all have to go through Medford we all have to go through other towns and we aren't as close to that community as we are and when those people drive through your streets they sometimes aren't as careful as we are I know that's a broad brush but that's why as Mr. Greeley can attest I got very vocal with them one day and he gave and he said you know what no good deed goes unpunished we're going to put you to work and I would this is a very close to me when your kids are out in front of you and a car goes zooming by you know it's touched us all right so I'd like to take that and if there's no objection that sounds excellent to me and I appreciate that's good thing you were here so perhaps you two can you know have a conversation offline and move forward down there excuse me carry got me out of hockey game had a few issues about traffic I said is this something you're interested in so he's now an associate member attack but a very good one thank you Mr. Chairman so we have a motion to second all those in favor please say aye aye opposed thank you very much now there are some extra bodies here there anything else on the agenda that you were interested in I just want to make sure before we got into our policy handbook discussion so now we if you remember we did move agenda item number four to the end of the meeting which is a discussion concerning the selectments handbook chapters one and four so that being said I'd like to open up for discussion Mr. Grayley so I would like to move that we approve chapters one through four with two exclusions the history piece I'm still tracking down Richard Duffy to try and get him to write a history of the Board of Selectment for us to conduct at this point in time just because I feel we need more work on that and more discussion around it so I don't feel that's quite complete enough but otherwise I do move to the Board that they approve chapters one through four and we just owe a huge vote of thanks to Douglas Heim and the kind of work that he really has put into this and we've worked hard at it Andrew Yves Marianne Sullivan a number of people are working on this and helping me put this together to now bring it before you but with the Board's approval I move that we approve chapters one through four excluding history and excluding the code of conduct they're coming back it's just at this point in time yes Mr Joe he didn't know which one of us got first just one really quick question is there anything in number three actually that you want us to approve today or is it all because I think if we're excluding the code of conduct that's excluding all of three is that correct? it's entirely three is the code of conduct as I was just saying yes so it's one, two, and four so I have some comments but I can certainly please Joe first of all thank you I'm very excited about this I'm very excited about the work that's been done I just had two comments on it I think you have a very good discussion in here of the types of appointments that the Board makes appointments that we make directly perhaps yet moving forward if we this is nothing against this but maybe if we do give sure sure I guess you had to do that I had it in my head sorry I guess it's around page 11 and 12 okay there's a discussion there are several sections here that deal with the different types of Board appointments that are made there's staff appointments there are those direct appointments that are made by the Board including the staff there are appointments by Town Manager we approve there's also the statutory direct appointments there seems to be one type that was missing although maybe it falls under the statutory direct appointments there are a couple of types of appointments that we make that come down from the general laws that aren't listed here they're like local cultural councils that actually devolves from the Massachusetts cultural council there's the commission on disabilities as two that derive from general laws I don't know I know this isn't an exhaustive list but I didn't know if it made sense to include those there so that's the only question I had there it is not an exhaustive list but we certainly wanted to include the ones that we really are currently doing so but which ones do you want to add is the council on disabilities and the cultural council okay I think commission on disabilities don't you recommend we just do a perfunctory yes but that's a manager but it does come down from that list is in F1 so ones that the Town Manager appoints that we approve is F1 F1 and the other I'm sorry can I just are you saying that are these going under appointments of the Town Manager or are they going under direct appointments of the board on page 14 the commission on disability appointment it should be included there under the Town Manager appointment what's that you're referring to was it Joe under the Town Manager appointment the cultural one that question still out there that question is still out there that needs to be defined I'm not sure the answer on that one so perhaps we'll look into where the cultural council appointments which is very helpful in the handbook because I don't know the answer I can certainly look into that and we could even have a vote that says please we can amend it at any point but you could also have a vote that says we approve this section subject to addition of appropriate you know commissions under statute if there's two you want me to specifically look at I think if the board is comfortable with that I'm comfortable with that but we agree let's add for now commission on disabilities under Town Manager appointees that we approve that's fine and the other one that I have is on page 10 it's seniority and proceedings in the absence of board officers we don't have this situation now but reading this section it looks like there is one potential question that arises if it says here that if let's see if the two officers are missing in any board of select in the absence of the elected chair and the vice chairman the most senior member of the board and attendance shall preside as acting chairman which and then there are rules for seniority after that we don't have the situation on the board now we could have the situation we'll just be hypothetical I'm not picking on you Dan let's say Dan leaves Dan is now the we now have a junior member in there Mr. Byrne and I are on the board and Mr. Byrne is the vice chair the two of you for some emergency can't be here we now have to figure out who's running the meeting we say that the seniority is dictated by vote of the board then who's going to run that meeting to determine that so it seems that either it seems there are one of like three ways we could do it we could either just say well we recognize that and maybe the board administrator is going to run an election then to see who's running but it seems a little odd to do it in the middle of the year maybe we could do that at the either at the beginning of the year Joe let me stop you this situation couldn't happen it couldn't happen with this board it couldn't happen period if Diana and I so you used us as an example correct this board right so Diana and I aren't here you and Steve can't have a meeting it's two people no no no no no we're saying there's a junior member in this seat so we're saying if the if the if the third and fourth ranking members have equal seniority as Steve and I do right can I interject for a second who's the presiding I think what Mr. Cura is raising is a chicken and egg problem so that if there are if the chairman and the vice chairman are missing and the terms of service does not clearly indicate who's the senior member of the three remaining board members it says that the a vote of the board of selectmen shall determine who's senior but because there's not a chairman or vice chairman there's no one present to conduct that vote correct and I think that we can solve that one of two ways you can either say at the beginning of the term the board of selectmen you know shall vote to determine who shall be the senior officer in absence in any situation where you've got two people who've served the same amount of terms or we can just put in for any such circumstance the board administrator shall conduct the election or should conduct the vote on seniority correct I mean you could create a position of secretary whose job is simply to conduct the meeting if the chair vice chair wraps up Mr. Chairman this was one of the things actually on my list that I want to talk about what I would prefer is that the seniority of two individuals being elected at the same time and having saved the serve number of total terms is determined by who had the superior number of votes in the previous election so whoever wanted the ballot box is quote senior so who had the majority of votes superior number majority implies more than 50% I'm just saying I want to make sure you're not I'm saying whoever I'm saying so in the for example in the very specific example that we need to determine who was more senior Steve or Joe give an absolute their current titles we would say that it's Joe because he got more votes our vice for us in this very specific case can I just ask Doug one question and I have no problem with that the way I'm reading this is that first up defines who the senior member of the board is then it defines the process that if you go down and the chairman and vice chairman isn't there and it says the way I'm reading it it says if that circumstance exists then it shall be a vote of the board and the way I'm interpreting that the board is referencing the now three members who are missing chairman and vice chairman so that's where I'm saying is so all right if you could work on it because I'm hearing Mr. Curie is highlighting a good point that I don't think we noticed which is that there's as I said a chicken and egg problem where and how is the vote going to be conducted so however you further define Dan's last step it's a highly unlikely situation and it can't happen on this board but there are things that the chairman sometimes has to do by him or herself or this is really going to kick in because so for instance like the parts where it talks about the role of the chairman like sometimes there's an or in the event of like we have a designee to the town emergency committee and if that person is unavailable who's going to be the next selectment appointee to that person like that's going to be the time that you want to know just who is the person on this list and when it's chairman and vice chairman it's really easy because the third person is where it gets tricky and it's not super tricky and the times that the number of times that this is going to be invoked is so small but at the same time I was saying you know give us a rule that we can use every time no matter what and except it would most likely happen so Dan yes it would but that's it use a rule that it can be invoked every time no matter what so if I may Dan what you're recommending then this is at the top of page 10 right seniority in the instance of two individuals being elected at the same time and having served the same number of total terms is determined by the top vote getter say it say the word you want is determined by who got who received more votes in the previous election who received the superior number of votes at the last election sure it's even their previous election because we've already determined that that's the case if they have the same seniority I have no objection to that that works so that's all that's funny and yes Mr. Don a couple more so first think it's great like comments here are improvements over something that is a great document page 9 it says all five members must be present to hold the annual board of election I would prefer that we change that word to should as in all five members should and there's two reasons for that one is in the case of illness for instance if one of us has a hospital stay or something like that we don't want to be hung up without having that the second thing is that the meeting is fairly long publicized beforehand it's the first meeting before the election so that date is set fairly well in advance and I guess on some level we have to rely on the discretion of each other to be smart about how this is and I just rather say should than must I agree you do I don't but how do the rest of you feel there was a pretty robust discussion on this topic I'm trying to remember it I'd love to hear it this board should choose their chairman and because someone misses a meeting that person didn't have a say in electing the chairman I mean I really strongly believe in this the chair and the vice chair serve at the will of this board as in we could tonight we move even if we wanted we would never do such a thing I don't believe we might wait till Diana's chair again you've done it to me twice I think that's enough if you want to go back we can but thinking of that point and taking it further if it became four we don't require all five in this four we could have two two and against time I'm thinking out loud perhaps this is where we would get into voting remotely I was wondering Dan I caught a cell is that what it's called that if a member cannot physically be present their vote may be taken if people feel really strongly about it I'd rather just leave it as a word and should we get there across that bridge because worst case scenario what you do is you do something crazy it's our handbook it's not a binding bylaw for instance if we come around to next April and I'm in the hospital for a month but you know crazier things have happened then I would hope that the board's business would go on and if you feel really strongly about it I'm not I don't think we can do that just to if it helps smooth things out a little bit that is a circumstance in which remote participation could be appropriate so that might be a possibility that would be available to members of the board I would feel pretty strongly about including that just because I do think you know it's an important job is electing the chairman and vice chairman and I do think that all five voices should be heard there as well I agree except we don't need to do it here there will be a separate section on remote participation right there will be and I'm not I mean there will be and I think we'll put that in there but we wouldn't even need to in the sense that I believe this body is already in remote participation in those types of circumstances and it's only allowed under the open meeting law in certain situations like a hospitalization so I'm ready to move on to the next one then if I feel like please and I'm happy because this is the discussion that I was looking for Pro Tem doesn't have a P on it it's still an A we did go around and about on that is it a pro tem forum? it is but it's an abbreviated pro tem I thought the section on tradition wait a minute original position on that for the members of the board why are you so sure you sound very sure A, three years of Latin B, I looked it up this afternoon online well if it's online it must be true okay I thought the section on the election tradition was very elegantly handled I thought that was a really good way to do that one last suggested change and that is in C where we talk about professional expertise we'll page you, I'm sorry I'm looking for it, it was section C and I was talking about left hand side of page 12 okay I scrolled ahead so above where it says C1 it says select as a body may utilize the professional expertise and resources of the town human research director I would recommend we choose to change word may to should because I think we're just in the same sense as the stuff that we talked about the code of conduct that we're not approving tonight where we say there are things that we should do that we're not required to we're not required to use those professional services we don't, we're doing the job wrong I'm fine with that that works for me yeah I'm fine with that but I owe people drinks what's that? I owe people drinks, I told them I didn't think we'd get this through this board so I was wrong but I'm fine with should, I really am I've reached the end of my list the reason I felt we don't need it is I felt it was a duh that we could use those resources but you even want to strengthen it Dan I understand to should and that's okay, I mean I think the process Adam has put in place that is followed by Karen in that division is a very strong process and we certainly should adapt it adapt, adopt it as well can I just state my concerns on should yes, please first of all we do have a separation of board of selectman town manager and his or her department heads number one number two I don't mind doing that but even in current case scenario and I've had this conversation with the town manager and we're working this out in terms of I just want to make sure that we're not boxing ourselves into a process where especially around the actual mechanics and functionality that we abdicate our position in terms of hiring appropriate personnel in there because we have a set of guidelines and we also you know the board of selectman's office is inherently and has to be by law separate from town manager and his department heads and here's my fear and I'm just going to use case in point with the board of selectman's office we're advocating to a process that doesn't really give us a power role empowerment role and by the process defined by the human human resources director because they don't have the criteria and they don't know the day to day workings of the selectman's office and exactly what needs to happen we could ultimately follow the process that is outlined for town department heads different positions that the town side the town manager side and his department heads are aware of but we could potentially follow the process do it right do it their way and unfortunately not get and I'm thinking especially around the selectman's office so I don't know if the manager because we've kind of been having these conversations anyways so did you I don't want to keep talking if you're going to save me yes please so I think I don't think there's anything in this language that says the human resources director will take over a search process I think it talks to the expertise and the resources of knowing how to administer both the recruitment and issuing a recruitment document collecting resumes aiding in review and then conducting a search process or conducting an interview process and I think we've made incredible strides in the past year with the HR director though separate and under the town manager's authority working with the board of assessors and the treasurer in a search and recruitment process and having there be no abdication of authority but rather a coordination of resources and using expertise where it exists this would create a great synergy with what's happened with the treasurer's office and the board of assessors office and I personally think it would be very important to maintain I don't think there's any statement of abdication because the board would absolutely be via pointing authority and I wouldn't expect them to abdicate any of that authority in following a process okay so I was on the understanding in past practice that that wasn't the case you and I have discussed that with this office but you know what you can change it to whatever you want and then this is a document that is going to be for us over the course of the next nine to twelve months if my concerns still relay out after conversations with Mr. Greeley and Mr. chapter lane then we can come back and revisit it so I'm happy to do what the majority of the board wants to do okay thank you Diane I will agree that going back to remember the coordinated finance stakeholder group that we were working on that was a pretty big part of you know the discussion it was trying to get everyone on board to kind of break down those silos across town and I am and I agree that you know while we don't want to give up the authority to make these choices I think that you know I don't think that's saying should necessarily means that we will always do exactly what they want but it says that you know there's some assets there that are probably helpful to us and they can't be helpful moving forward and there's something that we should consider so I think that that's a majority going the other way down to that sorry where were we further issues I think Diane has been waiting ahead of me thank you Diane has changed my mind back to let's leave it at May utilize let me tell you why if I may Dan of course because it is not technically what we did in selecting the town manager each member of this board named a person to a committee that we put together to review and we did use Karen I believe to review what's the word I'm looking for the screen resumes and then bring me for us candidates and then we conducted into then we but it's not we really entirely drove that process on all three of the town managers that I've been part of in terms of that replacement so we did utilize them though we did utilize Karen or I don't know if Karen was the first woman whoever was in that position we had Karen each time we had Karen all three times so but I like that each member of this board got to name one person to be on the screening committee for us so anyhow I'm back to may utilize versus should so sorry it's just it's interesting to me that you because I actually was I was going to use the exact same argument I was going to say when we hired Adam we did utilize the resources of the personnel department and I think that we did it appropriately and we held our authority the whole time to me that so we did use those things and we should have done that and we should do it in the future we have the exact same example but we've reached apparently different conclusions we've done in the past and we don't have to do this in the future or future board doesn't have to be done in the past we've done a two pot process the first pot involved Karen in the committee their recommendations then it came to this board and then with the caveat this has been done in the past doesn't have to be done in the future that the board was welcome to take all those recommendations are some of them and what was exercised in the past with Mr. Sullivan and a former colleague Mr. Lyons we can accept all the recommendations from some of them but the more important salient point was we can accept the five recommendations from that initial screening committee but if there was somebody who applied for a position and a member of the board of select said they didn't make the cut from Karen and her committee but we would like to advance them forward to the interview so to me using the word should and what you just described is still completely compatible because we're still using that and you know we're still using those recommendations and resources I'm just gonna keep going the one the specific example that I have in mind for Arlington it's recent history is in the school department there's a personnel decision made that did not involve proper use of professional staffing advice and that has cost the town dearly and if it's one lesson that I think we should learn in particular, because none of us are paid well enough to be a human resource professional. We should make use of that. And if we don't, that's the thing that I'm most, I'm not trying to get some, when I say should, I'm not in particular trying to give away the power that the board has, because I really think that we should hold onto that, which is why, in particular, where we say the hiring and supervision of all board appointed total employees is firmly vested within the board. The selection as a body should utilize the professional experiences. Like, I'm not worried about giving away too much power, but I really do think that using that professional stuff is what inoculates us against making some terrible mistakes. I wonder, I, sorry, one second. I do think, pretty soon we're just gonna take a vote on this. I would like to hear what Joe thinks. And then, I think right after that, we should have a motion. And then some much of storm out and rage. I think that would be perfect. Right. So, remember, and if I may, Mr. Chair, I already have a motion on the board to accept all this. So, he would have to move to make an amendment. Yes. Thank you. Mr. Curell. Because I'm not friendly accepting it. No, no. I was gonna suggest language that maybe would be friendly to both of you. Shell utilizes the resources as deemed appropriate by the board. That makes clear that the judgment is still vested with the board. David, again? Shell. Shell utilizes the secret one half dozen. I think, if I correctly understood, it would be adding to the end of that sentence as deemed necessary by the board. But he's putting in shall instead of should. And instead of may. So, did you? I think when you put the clause as deemed necessary by the board, it almost doesn't matter with the board. Mr. Chairman. Yes, Mr. Chair. I move that we change the word may to should in the sentence preceding C1. Do we have a motion? I mean, do we have a second? I'll second it. We have a motion a second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. All those opposed? No. Joe, did you vote? Yes, I did. Oh, okay. So that's three to two. It's being changed. Thank you. All right, I quit this whole project. I had one more small thing that I just noticed. I thought Dan still got stuff. Oh, do you? No, that was it. End of by list. Okay, sorry. Hopefully, this is just very quick. Page 13 D1, reappointments of direct appointees and holdover appointees. We note here that the board through its office notifies the appointees within this discussion of holdover appointees continuing on with their duties, but there's no requirement placed upon us to act in a timely manner. This, if I remember, this is something that we were speaking of after it was kind of a last minute thing that we didn't probably devote as much attention to as we should have during the meeting, but. Can I just speak in this quickly? Obviously the process that's outlined here is what should be done. That all this stuff should be done in a timely fashion. I think what this holdover piece is trying to acknowledge is that every once in a while something might fall through the cracks and it'd be helpful to know what should happen in that event. That there's a lot of folks that this board appoints even more than the town manager appoints, although it doesn't cover that. And in the event that for whatever reason, the term technically expires, but it has not been filled with someone new. This is the process by which the board would deal with that situation. And there's a couple of scenarios where that might happen that it's not even a mistake by the board. There's just a meeting gets canceled that would have otherwise happened, but for a power outage town hall, things like that. It protects us all. It protects us all. I just would feel comfortable if we had a statement that the board shall act on all reappointments in a timely manner. I'm fine with that. Just, I think if we determine a time, because I know we had it, I think it was with Ed Choi. He basically said I'm done right now, but I'll stay here and it had something to do with the Sims project. I'll stay here until you find somebody. We went through the process and we weren't comfortable. And he was allowed to, you know, so if it's general, that it's not saying within 90 days, I'm fine with that. I just wanna make sure we have the wording, the verbiage that allows us to do that. Because he was kind enough to say to let us do it some more, because he wanted to go. My memory is correct. So I'd like the move to add that sentence to board. Shall act on all reappointments in a timely manner. Yeah, I'm happy with that too. Where would you like that? It's sort of Mr. Curell. At the end of D1. At the end of D1. Unless, did you say you wanted even more specific? No, no, I said I didn't want a specific. For that case in point. I was just trying to give a case in point. Okay. So that is D1. Are you all set? All set? Ms. Mahan? Yes, thank you. Mr. Greeley? I am tingling with excitement. I move that we, with all the amendments that have been voted and accepted, we accept chapters one, two, and four with the exclusion of the history at the part of chapter one. Second. We have a motion to second. Is anyone in the audience like anything to say on this? Seeing none. I would like to say I was really, I thought that was great. Good. Bad, that's exactly what I was, I'm hoping that this goes like. You are an interesting dude. And so all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Steve, you may be in the right career. Moving on to correspondence received. Yes, and I would just like to point out that with the digital speeding device request from Ms. Gaffney, I have spoken with her individually and we are kind of examining that request and we'll report back. So we have a motion to move proceed. Do we have a second? Second. Second and congratulations on the grant. Yes. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Nothing to vote. Thank you everyone. New business, Ms. Sullivan. Mr. Heim. I have two small matters of new business. I'll be quick. One is that I wanted to let the board know that the next section of the selectments handbook that we're working on is meetings and hearings which covers agenda, public participation, meeting procedure, and minutes. If there's any comments that the board members would like to advance to me or Ms. Sullivan in advance of sort of working on these drafts, we'd welcome them. The second is a minor, well, somewhat of a minor thing that I wanted to apprise the board of. The board may recall that there was a lawsuit filed against the town of Arlington, Juliana Rice, and Joseph, Julia Mary. I'm happy to report that the court granted the town summary judgment in all counts. While there is an appeal process in that matter present, we're looking in good shape on that front. Were all the parties granted or just us? That's right. All the parties in the, all the defendants. Thank you. Mr. Chappell. Good. Thank you. Very briefly, town for the second year in a row has received the Distinguished Budget Presentation Award from the Governmental Finance Officers Association for the Town Manager's Financial Plan. Credit for that really goes to Andrew Flanagan. So it's, for the first time last year it was awarded, and I think it's, from what I understand, it's tougher for us to keep it for the second year, so I was very happy we were able to do that. Second, I think as the board knows, we had the entire traffic signal at the intersection of MassAbb and Route 60 in front of Cambridge Savings Bank collapsed during the Nor'easter last week. You've probably seen the temporary lights that are up, still working with DPW to figure out what the schedule is for the erection of a more permanent light fixture. I know Ms. Mahan has mentioned to me the need for potentially supplementing those temporary lights with signs if we don't have something moving faster, so I'm gonna keep an eye on that so that we are controlling the intersection as appropriate while the temporary lights are there. Not to go with the great detail, the problem really is the big pole that the lights go on are not that easy to come by. So we're trying to find a used one that another city or town has decommissioned, getting one that's the right size with the right bolt pattern that I learned today is very difficult. If we can't find a used one, it's a 60-day lead time to get a new one, so there's more to come there and I'll let the board know what the status is, but just wanted to give you an update on the traffic lights that are currently sitting in barrels on the corners of MassAbb. Would I add on that? Thank you very much. That's just my one piece of new business which piggybacks that. Yes. The request that in terms of the signs is if this is gonna be a long-term thing, not fixed in the next couple of weeks, because we had to deal with what we get for signage, a lot of people are taking that right-hand turn and the reason to put no turn on red, you're still, 50% of the traffic probably will start to obey no turn on red, but 50% is still gonna say they don't have that dedicated arrow, but having that sign there just by the nature of people in cars, when they do see people walking across, I think it will tend to make them stop more, let them go, and then continue on through and take that right. And several people had asked if the town could do that, but if the town manager or Mr. Rademacher thinks this should be some other wording or verbiage on the signs to address that, I'm fine with that. That's it, thank you. Thank you. Mr. Trepley. You're good. You're good. Just one quick one and I'm sorry, I didn't call Adam on this, but Adam, can I ask, do you know around the Thompson School, is that project considered complete? And the reason I ask that is, a couple of residents of North Union Street asked whether or not there's more paving to be done on North Union Street. Is there a, are you being- I mean, so not the school, but the street paving project? The street, North Union, yeah. You know, I would have to look at the paving schedule to see if we have it in the contract for next year. I know there was a lot of gas work, so let me check and file- Yeah, I just didn't know whether or not it was related to the final rebuild of the Thompson or not, and I should call you on that. Yeah, was gas work related to the Thompson? I can relate to that. Okay, thanks, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, you're welcome, Mr. Brown. Mr. Dunn. Three items, believe it or not. I know. Oh. First off, just as was mentioned, long-term planning committee did meet this week. Well, last week, excuse me, and no decisions or anything like that, but we're definitely talking about the budget, in particular for the next, the upcoming cycle that we're gonna kick off this winter, and talking about the long-term plan, like the five-year cycle and how that meant. So no decisions, but definitely research and discussion going on with that. Number two, this is our last meeting before an election, so I just wanna remind everybody, November 4th, Tuesday, which is a week from now. We've got elections coming up, and so everyone should remember to do that. And last one, let's see if you can cross this one off too, Joe. Twice. You saw this on the Arlington email list, and as someone who rode crew, as I refer to it, 60 pounds ago. Congratulations to the Arlington Belmont crew who took away the championship trophy at the Massachusetts Public School Rowing Association Fall Championship. The boys, novice, and varsity teams took place, and the girls took the second highest point totals. So congratulations to them. Third year in a row. Great news. Yeah. Fantastic. Thank you, Dan. Thank you, I'll try to make it real quick. First of all, the manager and I were, last week we went to the regional Legislative Breakfast and Mass Municipal Association. It was held in Bedford this time. They do them twice a year in each region. A lot of different things of relevance to us because there were about five or six legislators there, including Alice Peisch, who's the House Education Chair. So there was some discussion of Minuteman. The message was very loud and clear that we're all gonna have to get our acts together before we're gonna get the state to listen to us, the MSBA, and to really push any project forward. There was a lot of discussion in the foundation budget as well. And I'm not gonna get into a lot of detail there. Two things of maybe more immediate relevance to us. Maybe it was partly because we were in the first CPA community and in the first project that they had, which is the Old Town Hall in Bedford, there was discussion about what the legislature and how they're approaching the funding issues that Mr. Foskett mentioned when he came up earlier this evening. So they're clearly taking that seriously. And there was a lot of disappointment about the state's economic development package. I don't know if, one of the things that the MMA was pushing for hard was to give cities and towns independent authority over these caps on the liquor licenses at the restaurants. And it failed this year. So we don't have to go through this dance that we just went through a town meeting. We're gonna be going through when our restaurants run out. So they're gonna make another run at that, I think this year. It seemed to be pretty high on the list. So I just wanted to report that back. Two special events last week. The Chamber of Commerce had their recognition banquet and they recognized our fire department and our police department for all that they do for the town. We're obviously very proud of them, as well as a number of local business Cambridge savings. It was always our lead on town day and does so much. Barbara Papalo who has organized a center merchants as well as Bob Bows and Maureen Gormley for their service to the Chamber. And on Friday night was the night out on the town which supports the Arlington Youth Counseling Center. Mr. Lyons came back and gave a nice remembrance of Dr. Foley. And there was also a brief remembrance of Maliki Shaw-Jones who was one of our Board of Youth Services members who passed away in August and was a wonderful guy. And so there's a lot of good stuff going on in town. He was there last year as a matter of fact. He certainly was. He certainly was. So a lot of good stuff going on in town this past week. Thank you very much, Mr. Curell. And one of the best parts of going last is that most get eaten up. So do we have any motion to adjourn? Second? It's a second, sorry. All those in favor, can we say aye? Aye.