 So we are calling to meet and order this joint meeting of the Allenton Select Board and the Allenton Housing Authority for Wednesday, December 9th, 2020. As a preliminary matter, this is John Hurd Select Board Chair, permit me to confirm that all members and persons anticipated on the agenda are present and can hear me. Members of the Select Board, when I call your name, please respond in the affirmative. Diane Mahan. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Joseph Carroll. Yes. Steve Ducorsi. Yes. And Len Diggins. Yes. And staff, when I call your name, please respond in the affirmative. Adam Chapterling. Yes. Douglas Hyme. Yes. And Board Administrator Ashley Maher is participating remotely. I'll invite the Chair of the Housing Authority, Nicholas Metropolis, to verify that all Housing Authority members are present and can hear us. Yes. Thanks, John. Brian Connor. Yes. God Talanian. Yes. Joanne Preston. Yes. John Griffin. Can you say yes, John? You're on mute, John. Yep, I'm on. And our attorney, John Greco. Yes. Okay, great. Good evening. This open meeting of the Allenton Select Board and the Allenton Housing Authority is being conducted remotely, consistent with Governor Baker's order of March 12, 2020, due to the current state of emergency in the Commonwealth, given the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. In order to mitigate the transmission of the virus and reduce risk of COVID-19 illness, we have been advised and directed by the Commonwealth to suspend public gatherings and as such, the Governor's order suspends the requirement of the open meeting law to have all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location. Further, all members of public bodies are allowed and encouraged to participate remotely. The order which you can find posted with the agenda materials for this meeting allows public bodies to meet entirely remotely so long as reasonable public access is afforded so the public can follow along with the deliberations of this meeting. Ensuring public access does not ensure public participation unless such participation is required by law. This meeting will feature public comment, even if members of the public do not provide comment. Participants are advised that people may be listening who do not provide comment, and those persons are not required to identify themselves. For this meeting, the select board is convening by Zoom as posted on the town's website, identifying how the public may join. Please note that this meeting is being recorded and that some attendees are participating by video conference. Accordingly, please be aware that other folks may be able to see you and take care not to screen share your computer, anything that you broadcast may be captured by the recording. Please also take care to adjust your screen name or device if you would like to speak in order for us to recognize speakers appropriately and develop accurate minutes. It is helpful for participants to see your full first and last name when calling upon you rather than a nickname. All the meeting materials, except for any executive session materials, are available now on Novus agenda, and we recommend members in the public follow the agenda as posted on Novus unless the chair notes otherwise. We now turn to our first item on the agenda. Before we do so, permit me to cover some ground rules for effective and clear conduct of our business and to ensure accurate meeting minutes. I will introduce each speaker on the agenda after they conclude their remarks. The chair will go down the line of members inviting each by name to provide any comment, questions, or motions. Please hold until your name is called. Further, please remember to mute your phone or computer when you're not speaking. Please remember to speak clearly in a way that helps generate accurate minutes. For any response, please wait until the chair yields the floor to you and state your name before speaking. If members wish to engage in colloquy with other members, please do so through the chair, taking care to identify yourself. Each vote tonight will be taken by roll call vote. All right, so the first step for our business is, and I'll turn to Mr. Petropas. Yeah, can I make a motion to have Mr. Erd act or be the chair for this meeting? So we have a motion, do we have a second? I'll second that. All right, we have a motion by Mr. Metropas, seconded by Mr. Connor. Turn your hand. Mr. Mohan. Yes, thank you. Mr. Porsig. Yes. Mr. Kuro. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. I'm sorry, I got a little out over there. Mr. Erd. Yes. And Mr. Tallanian. Yes. Mrs. Preston. Yes. Mr. Connor. Yes. Mr. Metropas. Yes. Did I get everybody there? You did. Yeah. And then as well. Got enough for a majority, that's it. That's all we need. All right, thank you all. So I had spoken with Chair Metropas before about the way we're going to structure this meeting now that we have all members able to join us. And so what we're going to do is we're going to bring in each, we have seven participants left over. One had pulled up prior to our last meeting. And we also were notified by Regina Pontes and Makaya Healy that they no longer wish to be considered for this role. And so that leaves seven applicants left. What we're going to do is we're going to pull each one up for a one minute introduction and then any questions from board members that they may have for the applicant. And then after we'll take to nominations. Mr. Griffin. John, Mr. Heard, I just want to let you know, William Kennedy has also withdrawn his name from the running for the seat. So. Yeah. So he was the one that I think that withdrew before the last meeting that we had. And then we had two additional, nine original, which leaves us. Sorry, six. I have seven. All right, we'll go through. Mr. Carl. No, that's what I was going to say. Yeah, sorry. Six. And Ms. Chappelline, do we have Ms. Fiorella Badia with us? We do. I will promote her to panelists. You know what I did? I skipped six when I was now bringing out my candidates. Is that the new mask, Kim? Common core. Hey, Ms. Fiorella, Ms. Badia, can you hear us? Yes, I can. Can you hear me? Hi. Yes, we can. Okay. It says unable to access cameras. Does that matter? That's no problem. If your camera is not working. So if you can just take about one minute just to introduce yourself a little bit about your background and why you want to serve on the housing authority, please. All right. Well, thank you. Good evening. Select board members and board of housing authority. My name is Fiorella Badilla. I am an immigrant from Costa Rica and have been a resident of the United States since 2007. I attended and graduated from Arlington High School. And during this time, I've been an advocate to foreign exchange students at AHS, vulnerable families, senior citizens, individuals with special needs, and to monotony minor families where I am a tenant at. I'm currently working to reestablish the monotony minor tenants association, which has been inactive for the last nine years. I have provided oversight on the administration of programs at ABCD Opportunity Center, executive and approved funding controls to resale consignment shops called Thrive Exchange and Pop Central. And at these stores, I organize and develop policies for the homeless community at Central and Davis Square outside of monotony minor. I have had physicians, which will assist me in my work with the AHA board in high school. For three years, I volunteered with John Leone, the town meeting moderator. I learned a great deal about town government while assisting moderator Leone at town meetings. In addition, I volunteered at ABCD Opportunity Center, assisting recent immigrants by helping them with paperwork to become citizens and organizing resumes for job applications. Thank you. You can just wrap up. You're just a little bit over your minute here, just because we have a few more applicants. Okay. I believe I have the skills and experience to make an important contribution to the work of the AHA board. Thank you for considering my application. Thank you. So I'm going to turn to the board just because I can see everybody on my screen instead of going through each person individually. Is there anyone that has any questions, comments for Ms. Bedilla? Do not. Well, thank you. And thank you. Thank you. All right. So next we have Marion King. Hi, Ms. King. Can you hear us? Yes, I just had to unmute myself. Sure. So if you can just take about a minute and start video. Okay. It is in a key. Okay. Well, my name is Marion King. And I'm happy to be here tonight with the Housing Authority Board and the Selectment. And I bring to the table my years of experience in nursing, problem solving, empathy and caring, my years in gerontology, home visit nursing, and even my own parenting of biracial children, including multiple births and my mother's a twins club organization. I helped reform the Tenant Association many years ago with the help of the mass union of public housing tenants and the assistance of the Arlington League of Women Voters. And I was very active with the mass union of public housing tenants attending many of their workshops and learning a lot about public housing. I have interacted with many public housing tenants, both in Arlington and across the state. I have been to many Arlington Housing Authority Board meetings and other meetings across Arlington and have been an active town meeting member in Pre-Sentences. That's about a minute and a half, if you can just wrap up. Okay. I plan on continuing to help monotony manner tenants to help form the Tenant Association and to help set up tenant associations for dispersed tenants, as I think that is the future of public housing in Arlington since large facilities for low income tenants will no longer be able to be built. All right. Thank you. Thank you. All right. I show up here. Do we have any questions, comments from Ms. Thank you, Ms. King. Thank you. All right. And so, Cynthia McGinty. There's somebody named Cynthia, who I will assume is Cynthia McGinty. Ms. McGinty, are you able to hear us? If so, please unmute your microphone. Oh, there you go. My name is Cynthia McGinty. I am a tenant at QSAT Terrace. I've been here for 11 years. I was president for two one-year terms and vice president for 40 years. I am very involved in everyday doings in the building and I know what all of the problems that tenants have daily to bring to their board or to housing, the housing authority. So I had a speech here and I got ruined. I would like to open, if I were a member of the board, I think it would be important to open communications between the buildings and share ideas that we have, especially now with COVID. There have to be activities that we can join in given COVID restrictions to help with the socialization of the tenants. Isolation is a real fear for these people. I heard about monotony manner and the problems, well, the problem I heard about was mice and we have those in all the buildings. Some of the issues that would come up for family housing. You just get over your around a minute and a half going. You can just wrap up, just wrap up. Okay. I am aware of the problems of tenants and I feel that would help me to be a good board member. Thank you. All right. Thank you. And does anyone has any questions or comments for Ms. McGinty? Thank you, Ms. McGinty. All right. Next, we have Anne McGinnis. Good evening. Thank you so much for having me. My name is Anne McGinnis. I am a lifelong Arlington resident. Investing in my community is an act I firmly believe in. Currently, I volunteer with high rock weekly at the monotony manner. And prior to that, I was volunteering with food link. I chose these volunteer opportunities because I believe in basic need relief locally. Professionally, I am a licensed clinical social worker and I work within the Cambridge housing authority. Being a board member would allow me to deepen the basic journey I am on and empower Arlington residents, which is an act I firmly believe in. Thank you for this opportunity. Thank you. Appreciate this. Any board members have any questions for Ms. McGinnis? All right. Thank you. All right. Moving on. We have Betsy Rulon. Doris C. Rulon? Yep. Thanks. I took a stab that she would go with her nickname on her resume. Ms. Rulon, can you hear us? I'm reading a screen. There. Have you got me? We can hear you now. Thank you. Good. Thank you. My name is Doris Rulon and people say that I get things done. Let me tell you a story. For instance, down in New York, AT&T had a network switch in the World Trade Center, which of course was taken out in the bombings. What I did was I created a call forwarding system for 100 companies so that they could get communication with their various customers. That remained in place until the following April. What I do is I connect people to services that they may not even know exist. For example, offenders or people who have been in rehab when they reenter society need to depend upon the services that the state provides. However, it's difficult to go from office to office, from building to building, most only get to maybe the second or third service. I coordinated a program where all of the services were in one room. Each sat at a desk and so the participant would go from desk to desk to desk to get all of the needed services. That program was sufficiently successful so that the recidivism rate was reduced from 85% to 30% and replicated in Springfield and Lawrence. Closer to home here in Arlington, I joined Drate Village about 11 or 12 years ago. When I first came in, there were two residents who were wheeling in grocery carts down from Trader Joe's, the day old bread and vegetables. It was spread out on tables so that the residents could take the groceries. This turned in when we lost our 501C3, this turned into food link. Six o'clock in the morning, three days a week, I went down and we spread the food out on the tables. I heard from peers and managers, Betsy is the go-to person, Betsy is the person who gets things done. We had Christmas parties, the select tones used to come and sing to us. We had Christmas dinners and we had St. Patrick's Day dinners. We had monthly birthday parties. I think that the board could use the kind of experience that I could bring to the board relative to my statewide experience. The last time I presented in front of a group was at AT&T. After the meeting, they said, boy, she sure talks a lot and I'm sorry. That's what I've done today as well. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right. Does any board members have any questions for Ms. Rilan? Thank you, Ms. Rilan. All right. Our last applicant that we have tonight, number six, is Mr. John Ward. Can you hear me now? I can. Okay. My name is John Ward. I live in Winslow Towers for the past two and a half years. The past two years, I've worked endlessly to understand the operations of the Housing Administration and the Board of Directors and their relationship with the Department of Housing and Community Development. On paper, it is an excellent organization that has everything in place to make it a fine and fine-tuned operation, which it has been for the past 50 years. I want to thank Mr. Murray for his 22-some years of dedicated service to the Housing Authority. I personally feel like I have all the abilities to hit the ground running when it comes to serving on the Board of Directors fulfilling the end of Mr. Murray's term. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Ward. Does anyone have questions for Mr. Ward? All right. Thank you, Mr. Ward. All right. So, this will move on to the next portion, which would be the nomination, and then we can discuss nominees as we go. In Trinidad or Mr. Petropoulos can jump in if I say anything incorrectly here, but what we're going to do is we're going to open up for nominations. Once we have nominations, we'll go to a round of votes. If in any round any applicant gets a majority of the votes, then that's the applicant that's selected. If we have three nominations and in the first round, no candidate gets a majority of the votes, we will eliminate the lowest vote-getter and proceed to another round of votes with just the two, the top two vote-getters of the nominations. Attorney Heim, does that sound correct? That's pretty much it. We do have Attorney Heim's memorandum regarding the process and the requirements of who and who we can nominate and who we can vote into the Housing Authority, but at this time, does anyone have any questions for Attorney Heim with the process? Ms. Preston? Yes. So there's no discussion of the relative needs of the board versus the candidates before we vote on them, before we eliminate most of them. So as you nominate someone, you can certainly tell your fellow, all the board members, why you nominated that person. And if as we nominate, I can look to the board to see if anybody has any questions or any comments that they want to make about each nomination. So it wouldn't be appropriate to go through each person individually and discuss that person. Okay, Mr. Connor? I'd like to nominate Betsy Rulon for the position. Okay. We have a nomination for Ms. Rulon. Do we have a second? Gar, we'll second. All right. Do we have any additional nominations? Ms. Preston? I'd like to nominate Marion King because I think that it would be very good to have someone who had a full knowledge of monotony manner and forming tenants associations. And so if very much needs attention of the board, and I think her years and years of experience, working with tenants here on a state level would be very important to improve the lives of all the tenants, but especially monotony manner, which has gotten little attention. And it doesn't even have a tenants association for nine years. And I think Marion could help remedy that and help us understand all of the tenants' needs and wants. Thank you. Thank you. Do we have a second? I'll second. Mr. Chair. Mr. Carroll? All right. Do we have any additional nominations? Mr. Diggins? Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'd like to nominate Fiorella Badella. And my reason is that she also has a strong connection to monotony matter. She lives there. She was a student at AHS there. And I think she brings the perspective of a young person. And I know that youth doesn't have a lot of experience, but we get ourselves into this catch-22 situation where we want people would experience me, but we have a hard time giving them the experience. I'm truly impressed that someone at her age is wanting to get involved in a board like this. Certainly, when I was her age, that wasn't what I was going for at all. I think it's laudable. I think giving her this position temporarily now would be a springboard for someone like her. I talk with her. I'm very impressed. One way or another, I'm going to work with her. As you all know, one of the things I ran on was getting youth more involved in government. And I think there's just something about her that's really impressive. And what I will throw in to try to make this a little more exciting, maybe for you all, is that I want to work with her. And this isn't my board, but a work with her to help maybe build the Tennis Association, we get Precinct One more involved in local politics, as we know. Precinct One has really low turnout. I think we can double-task on this, a multi-task on this, and not only get a Tennis Association, but get Precinct One just be more part of the community. I'm excited about her, so that's why I put her up for nomination or nominator. Mr. Chair, second, if I could make comments? Yes. I definitely would second Mr. Jiggins' nomination for Ms. Bedella. As someone who lived in an anatomy manner in the 70s and 80s, I lived on Ladner Street, Memorial Way, and then right before I got married on Fremont Street. I think it's really important to, I think with the Housing Authority, we have Drake Winslow, Chestnut Manor, but we also have an Anatomy Manor. And I'd like to see work with my colleagues on the Housing Authority that we do everything we can to promote outreach for that. I just had a conversation today with a town manager after the governor's announcements about the vaccine dosages and distribution of that. I know with the flu clinic, there were clinics or flu vaccinations posted in other buildings, but not in an anatomy manner. And to me that I was very troubled by that because I know when I lived in an anatomy manner, there was the fear of contacting for help because you'd be afraid that you went up 20 or $30 a month, which was a lot of money back then and is a lot of money now. So I did have a conversation today with the manager regarding working with the Housing Authority on when vaccine dosages are distributed to include and work with the Housing Authority and take guidance from them in terms of all of their buildings that they were seeing, but especially around Manor and Manor. So I want to agree with my colleague, Mr. Diggins, about Ms. Badilias' offer to serve. I'd like to see whatever can be done to not only provide outreach, but to have more inclusion with Tennis and Manor. I know the select board through Janet McGuire and Pam Regan have services extended to children who live down in the Manor, but I'd like to work with the Housing Authority through whomever is appointed to fill Mr. Murray's vacancy, who I have great respect for. And I thank him for not only serving on the Housing Authority, but also the select board. So for all those reasons, I will second Mr. Diggins' motion. Thank you, Mr. Heard. Before we open for discussion, is there any additional nominations? All right. Is there anyone that would like to speak to any of the candidates before we vote? Mr. Chairman. I just would like to add a little bit more in terms of why I nominated Betsy. Sure. We have worked with her for many, many years. What she didn't tell you was she was president up a drake for years and was very successful in that food program up there, which later became food link. But Betsy is, I don't know if you've got the chance to review her resume, an extremely educated woman, PhD from Harvard, master's degree from Harvard, and she's really, she looks at projects in a different perspective. She looks at it from a full encompassing outside looking in perspective. And she truly is somebody who is a bridge builder and really could take the lead in some of these things that you're all discussing, you know, tenant associations. She had the most successful one. So, you know, the problem, there's a different situation and monotony in that they're in different buildings and it's families and there's no one function hall for the folks to get together and so forth. So it's a different dynamic in terms of tenant associations and a lot of them, you know, work and so forth. So it's a lot more difficult than one of the towers, but Betsy certainly has the ability to be a leader and to be a strong advocate for the tenants, both young and old. So that's why I had nominated her. Any additional comments? All right. And so I would just say, just for the public perspective, just so they know, we do have detailed resumes of all of the six applicants for us, as well as a statement of attention, why they want to run. So even beyond the times they were able to speak today, we do have a lot of information about each tenant. We have attorney Heim's memorandum, just from my perspective with all that's going on and the uncertainty in the law, even though we know we're not required to appoint a tenant, I think, even though we have a number of great, great applicants that I think would serve very well on the board, that's just, that's one of the things that I'm going to vote on is a tenant and then just based on the information we've received from the applicants, both in their resumes and tonight. So with that, I will turn to attorney Heim. We'll do a roll call vote. Instead of yes or no, you will just tell us which of the three applicants that were and have been nominated, you are voting for in this first round of voting to see if we have a majority vote. Attorney Heim. And Mr. Her before I begin that roll call vote, I just want to clarify something for anybody who might be confused by my memo. The example in there was just an example. We obviously have a nine member joint body. The majority is five votes for all the folks who might be watching or the candidates themselves. So somebody needs to get to five to be successfully with that, I will do the first sort of this time. I will start with the housing authority. And then I'll move. And I'm sorry, I don't recall everybody's seniority. So I'm just going to sort of do the best I can. Mr. Talanian. I seconded Brian's nomination of Betsy Rulon and we'll stay with that. Ms. Pressner. I'd like to vote for I'm most interested in getting someone who will present the interests of monotony manner. So I would I thought he a rally gave the best presentation tonight and I'd like to vote for her. Mr. Connor. Betsy Rulon, please. Mr. Metropolis. Sorry, I was on you. Betsy Rulon, please. Now I'll turn to the small world. Ms. Mahan. I'm sorry, Mrs. Mahan. My apologies. Thank you, Attorney Heim. I will cast my vote for Ms. Bedilla. Mr. Dacorsi. Yes, I will also cast my vote for Ms. Bedilla. Mr. Diggins. Ms. Bedilla, please. Thank you. Mr. Curell. Mr. Latia. Mr. Herb. And I was very impressed by Ms. Bedilla, but just by the fact that we attended, I'm going to vote for Ms. Rulon. By my count, we have, I believe, five votes for Ms. I'm sorry. I want to make sure you get the name right. Bedilla. And four votes for Ms. Rulon. That's a successful Thank you. All right. And Attorney Heim, is there anything else that we need to cover? You're on. Not unless there's any business of the joint body, a motion to adjourn, and I'll take another roll call vote on that. Yep. So we'll seek a motion to adjourn. Move to adjourn. Is that the second from? Second. All right. So you have a motion to adjourn by Mrs. Mahan, seconded by Mr. Curell. Attorney Heim. Mr. Mrs. Mahan. Yes. Thank you, Attorney Heim. Mr. DeCorsi. Yes. Mr. Giggins. Yes. Mr. Curell. Yes. Mr. Herb. Yes. Mr. Tulanian. Yes. Mr. Preston. Yes. Mr. Conner. Yes. Mr. Metropolis. Glad the weather participated with us. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you. So long.