 ACMI productions are only made possible with your support. Visit patreon.com slash ACMI to learn how you can help. For the record, this is the March 19th, 2024 meeting of the Arlington Artificial Tour Study Committee. Thank you for everyone who's here and I know Joe's gonna be just a few minutes late today. So, you know, we kept the agenda for this meeting very, oh, well, I know we're gonna have to do some preliminaries, but I'll guess I'll say something before we get into that. We kept the agenda for this meeting relatively short because the work continues with Natasha and me trying to pull all the different strands together and make this a report that flows and sounds like it speaks with one voice. But we really need to finish the conversation we started last week and so that's going to be the primary focus of this meeting as you can tell from the agenda and we'll take as long as it takes to have that conversation, but I'm hopeful that it will, this is not going to be a two or three hour meeting, that this will be a relatively efficient and succinct meeting, I hope. So, but to the agenda, except in some meeting minutes, I hope everyone had a chance to read the minutes from last week. I thought Natasha did a great job with them, synthesizing and reporting on our back and forth on all the topics of conversation. If everyone's had a chance to look at them, I'll entertain a motion. Motion to accept the minutes. Second. There's a second. So motion by Jill, second by Marvin. Yes. Okay. Thank you all for reviewing those. Those were a little challenging to write. So I appreciate it. All right, so, oh, I got to go down the line. So I told you, I'm totally out of sorts. Okay, so Mike. Yes. Okay. Jill Barr, not present yet. Mike said, yeah, who else is in that group? That does not, okay. Marvin. Yes. Okay. And Natasha, yes. Jill. Yes. Okay. Leslie. Yes. And Jim. Yes. Okay. So the motion passes six to zero with one absent. I think I just got a notification that someone joined. So motion passes. I just want to say, before I get to the next item on the agenda, it is, I think Natasha said this last week, but it seems even more noticeable this week. It's so great to see everyone with so much natural light behind them in their various offices, home or otherwise. It's a, especially Natasha, I'm not used to use without overhead lights and it's wonderful to see. So next item is correspondence received, which I believe we received a lot of it, especially because it included some correspondence that just missed our cut off from the prior agenda. So do you want to give us a quick rundown? Yeah. So we had two emails from Robin Bergman. The first was an article plastics, plastic found inside more than 50% of something clogs the arteries, plaques from clogged arteries, I'm sorry. And then the second one was how PFAS, microplastics joined forces as a synthetic, I'm sorry, a synergetic threat. The second email was from Beth Malofchik and that was in regards to turf fields may have forever chemicals. Should kids be playing on them? It was an article and there was a reference to, I believe it was Green-Earlington. And then the third email was from Mike Guildsgame from our committee and he was forwarding on the PDF version of the wetland value table. And I believe that it got mixed up in translation in last week's packet. So that's why he was forwarding it. And that's all I had for correspondence received. Excellent. So at this point, unless anyone has anything else, I think we should just move to the next item on the agenda, which is a continuation or discussion about recommendations and conclusions. So just to give you kind of a sense of where we are, and then I'll obviously turn it over to the rest of the group. But Natasha and I are making very strong progress, although it's taking a long time, a lot longer than we had expected, but probably should have expected to just pull each of the narratives together. And each of the narratives is quite strong. And I believe fairly consistent themes sort of run through the different narratives, but just putting them in a format and having each of the topics kind of flow naturally one from the other with proper headings, of course, it's just, it's a task. It's a task because what we're trying to avoid, I think I said this before, is to have someone read this report and say it looks like it was written by a committee. I mean, everyone will know it was written by a committee, but I don't want them to actually think it reads like it was written by a committee, which is usually an insult. So, you know, I think we're close and we're certainly working really, really hard that by Friday morning, you will receive a full draft copy for comment. There's just things that are taking longer and we'll talk about that in the next agenda. And like little things like getting the citations kind of in a common format and getting the spacing in a common format, just various things that we can continue the work even after we share the draft, but we want to try to send you something that's in as close to final form as possible by the end of this week. And we'll talk about timeline and future deliverables in the next item. But if we do nothing else at this meeting, the most important thing is to continue and hopefully wrap up our discussion about possible findings and recommendations. So to recap where we were, and I think Natasha's minutes did a good job of this, but to recap where we sort of stopped, we were having a discussion about various pieces that might be part of a findings and recommendations section at the end. And there were, there was a consensus among I think everyone on the committee that there was, although people have different views about turf, some people are more positive towards it. Some people are more negative, but no one on the committee was endorsing a moratorium on artificial turf. That's not to say people didn't have a lot of cautionary notes about it. And we will talk about those cautionary notes and potential qualifiers and caveats and things we want to be clear in a report. But just to clarify, no one on the committee believed that a moratorium was appropriate. And in terms of crumb rubber, that was the next subject we covered. And on crumb rubber, no one on the committee really felt strongly that we should continue to, if we did have artificial turf fields ever in Erelington or new artificial turf fields, I should say, things that have not already been built or not already in the process of being built or procured, that there was not a healthy, there was not an appetite for future fields that are not currently in the planning process to have crumb rubber infilled. But Jill, I'll let you jump in there. I think there, I hadn't thought about this until the discussion. I think this whole conversation started with the exclusion of the Arlington High School field, but we have those two turf fields, Arlington High School, which will be new and have a 10 years lifespan. And I don't know the lifespan on the Arlington Catholic field, but if we are going to say new fields, is new fields new from grass to turf? Or when Arlington High School, Arlington Catholic, and I guess eventually Arlington High School goes to replace their crumb rubber turf, are we gonna ask them to move to alternative materials? What is the timeline on that? Is there any ability for them to be grandfathered in? What I would worry about as a parent is, let's say Arlington Catholic is forced to move to a synthetic material and that cost is 20% more, that they actually overuse their field and don't replace it when it should be replaced because of the cost difference. So I think there would need to be maybe some flexibility there. And certainly if we're not talking about the replacement of current turf fields, then that's a whole different discussion. Before we go further on that, I think I'm hoping someone on this call can clarify something for me, but particularly about the Arlington Catholic field. Jurisdictionally, I don't know how much power we have over that. It's not a town piece of property. So I'm not sure how much leeway we have legally or jurisdictionally to prevent them from putting in another artificial turf field. I mean, I suppose if you had a town, well, I guess this is, I looked to, before I say anything, I may regret or many sound foolish. I'm looking to someone for guidance here in the committee about our powers and responsibilities with respect to Arlington Catholic and its field. Wetlands Conservation Commission has approved that field because there's a wetland component. So then Leslie, is that to say that Conservation Commission, if they were going to replace it, it would be something that would have to go before them? That's my understanding. They had to go before them to put it in. Conservation Commission approved both of those fields. Milbrook runs under those fields, also under Buzzlefield. And I believe that they have a jurisdiction, a jurisdictional component to any building that goes on on any of those fields. It's my understanding. I mean, Mike would probably know better. David definitely would. And I see Mike has his hand up. Well, Mike has his hand up. I'll go with Mike and then someone else wants to jump in after him. All right, thanks. Yeah, two quick points. Yes, and I'll leave the jurisdictional issue to David. The, I wanted to make two points. One, I wanted to thank everyone for your comments on our draft submitted. And I've provided Jim and Natasha with some updated language for our section of the report, which I assume at some point we'll get shared out. The other point I wanted to make was that while we have approved, while the Conservation Commission has approved back in, I think 2019 or 2020, those fields, I think there may be some interest in reviewing the infill of Crumb Rubber to see if there isn't an alternative that we might want to think about, given all of the new information in the last three or four years that has come out about that substance. So I just leave that here. And I don't know if David, do you want to comment on the existing fields that have been approved? Yeah, both the Arlington Catholic and Arlington High School sites are jurisdictional to Conservation Commission and I don't know off the top of my head all of the jurisdictional areas that are in, but at least riverfront area, which is 200 feet on either side of Nell Brook in both cases. Yeah, well, so it sounds like in theory the town does have, well, if I say any more, Joe, you have your hand up. I was just gonna say, I mean, an apologies for the background noise. The other source of control is funding, right? So obviously we have no funding control of our Arlington Catholic. We do have, I mean, the schools are complicated because they are legally a separate entity, but from a funding perspective, they get their funding in the town. So like they're not outside the context of something like a debt exclusion for the high school, they're gonna need to come to the town for funding for replacement of the field if that's required at some point. So if the town had a policy of, we only will fund this type of infill or this type of field or whatever it was, then that the capital planning process would be the other sort of quote unquote enforcement mechanism. I'm trying to think if there's any other example of something where we enforce requirements through that and nothing's jumping to my mind, but I'll think about that and see if there's any examples of that. Well, I mean, I do think that this committee has generally been, it's very skeptical crumb rubber infill. But having said that, I think there's a general, jump in if I'm getting any of this wrong or if anyone disagrees. But I also think that we see upside and big potential with alternative infills. I think there's, some of them are still fairly new and there aren't a lot of long-term studies on the crumb rubber infill for better or worse has been around a while. We know a lot about it. Unfortunately, what we know is rather a mixed story or maybe not a mixed story, maybe a slightly negative story, but it's sort of what you know because it's around and it's common. Other infills, as we heard from Ian Cork, people talk about Cork, he said, well, you know, Cork sounds good until it rains and it expands and you get problems with that. So, I mean, there are potential ones with potential huge upsides like, you know, green sand and Brockville potentially. But, you know, I mean, I think just in general, we see the potential of alternative infills but we can't necessarily endorse any of these at this point given the state of research on them. Is that, are you all sort of generally agree with that or am I getting this wrong? Yeah, hi. So, again, just take a step back and just some of the conversation about the jurisdiction and what the town really has control over when it comes to Jonathan Catholic. I just want to be clear and this is something that we certainly brought up, that our commission brought up when this whole process started a couple of years ago. Almost all of our fields and just so we're understanding and are all within conservation commission jurisdiction. And so not all of them, but the ones that would probably be under consideration for artificial turf are all under conservation commission jurisdiction in some manner. But Clinton heard Buzzle, Thorndike, Magnolia, the high school, I don't think Catholic, I think those are the poets. So, you know, all of this quite frankly, no matter what we decide or recommendation has to go in front of the conservation commission. So I think that, you know, it's going to have, it's going to need conservation commission approval in, you know, one way or the other. So there's going to be town controls over whatever infill is recommended. Just wanted to be clear, because if you look at all of the parcels, purely in a park and rec, very, very, very, very limited as to, you know, what in the very small, to be honest with you, what we might consider on our own with our conservation commission's oversight, be able to put turf in. So I just wanted to set the table on that. Thanks. Well, just to highlight, so Joe, you're sort of, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but are you saying that you don't think the conservation commission would be terribly open to? That's exactly what I'm saying. Yeah. So, yes, for future projects that aren't currently under way, it's sort of less, maybe what our preference is and more just the reality is that it's, you have to go with kind of whether you can have a consensus. And that there's probably not a consensus that future projects or future fields that aren't already built should be built with, you know, with Cromrubber and Schoen. And I'm not sure what, you know, again, I'll raise it that I don't know why we, it was excluded as part of the conversation. Those two fields, existing fields, Black Cromrubber, that's the pushback that we consistently received from the public when any time the Park and Rec Commission had any type of conversation. We had people showing up with couples of Black Cromrubber, Black Cromrubber. So, it was excluded in the conversation that we just had a town meeting last year that resulted in this study committee. I believe that we, as you pointed out, Jim, there's a general consensus that we don't believe as a committee, Black Cromrubber, is necessarily a positive when it comes to artificial turf. So, my question, you know, I'm questioning, are we just turning, you know, what is, what is our guidance then relative, you know, are we just ignoring those two fields the way last year's town meeting question did and turning a blind eye to what we found and what our preference is or should there be some sort of recommendation? And if not from this committee, then how is it handled and how is that not, how we would handle future discussions about any of the potential for other fields? Mike, thank you for having me, Mike. Yeah, thank you. I think Leslie has brought up a very important point and it emphasizes for me the importance of looking at site by site to see what the conditions are, what the options are and to do a thorough study both on environmental and human health and safety issues for each proposed site. I do think that it's been, as Jim and Leslie and everybody seems to be thinking, that Cromrubber is probably a very good surface for playing on but has some negative effects that we've brought out in our report and other people have as well. And that's why I mentioned at the outset that I think that while these two fields have been approved under 2019 or 2020 information, those may need to be revisited based on our current information in terms of at least the infill. And the town's jurisdiction and bylaws and regulations have been updated since 2019 and DEP's regulations are, I think, have been updated since then but they're certainly looking at it now. So I think we do have to see what the current status of knowledge is regarding whatever we propose for a particular site. I think what Mike and Leslie are saying makes a lot of sense. However, I'm very hesitant to make, I mean, I've tried to emphasize in this discussion the emphasis on future projects, projects that aren't underway. And by underway, I mean, I don't mean necessarily shovels on the ground. I mean, procurement process is completed. The thing with artificial turf fields is like it or not, every eight to 10 years, you get another bite at the apple to rethink what you want to do. And although we may be hesitant about the fact that there's two fields in town, I might say two, I realize the high school is more than one field, but I'm going to say two places in town where there are artificial turf fields that still have crumb rubber or are going to still have crumb rubber. I'm very hesitant to make anything that this committee says applicable to those considering that that's never really been part of the discussion either when this debate happened in town meeting or in our own discussions. But I want to be sure I'm where everyone else in this committee is comfortable. So it would not be applicable to stuff underway, but when Arlington High School in 10 years or Arlington Catholic in, I don't know how many years goes to replace, we would expect them to I mean, we don't have the power to mandate anything, but we can make a recommendation that, you know, there should be a strong push in whatever procurement process to get a non-crumb rubber. That doesn't mean, I don't think I'm going to necessarily say never say never on crumb rubber, but the strong emphasis should be the default position should be a non-crumb rubber and fill for future projects. I mean, are people comfortable with that? Obviously with the understanding that we need to see with the research on alternative infills, ultimately how it all pans out. It's very promising, has potential. In five to 10 years, there'll be a lot more research on this and hopefully it meets the potential. You know, but with that qualifier, are people comfortable with a recommendation like that? Jim, if I have one question, and this is to Mike, if I could put Mike on the spot for a little bit. So when we first started this process, again, the Park Commission's intention was to go project by project. And at the time, the Conservation Commission was looking to update their wetland regulations and was discussing potentially putting language in their wetland regulations, pretty much prohibiting turf. And they decided at the time to not put the language in at that time because we were going through the turf forum and having conversations at time meeting about the pluses and minuses of artificial turf. But they always held the right certainly to go back and revise their wetland regulations and change them accordingly. So my question to Mike is there been any conversation and the Conservation Commission that they're going to take our report recommendations under consideration, you know, looking at potential wetland regulation changes? Do you know what I mean? Like, are they going to be looking at what we recommend based on our findings to make any potential changes or not to the wetland regulations? Thanks, Jim. Joe, I think the Conservation Commission is aware obviously of these fields and there has been not been any discussion that I recall and David can correct me on jumping one way or the other regarding this report. I think the existing bylaw in the town as well as the P's regulations and our own regulations do speak to different levels of concern depending on what the potential impact is to the wetland resources in the town. So we haven't, I don't believe the commission has made any decision on how we will approach this report that's coming out because obviously this report is non-jurisdictional in the sense that it doesn't make laws itself but will perhaps influence what the town decides to do. No, thanks. Appreciate it. Irvin? I guess if I kind of take off my committee hat and just think, you know, I'm a town meeting member, I'm reading this report and, you know, we are going to recommend that, you know, crumb not be used going forward on new fields. I think it would be kind of, for me, the, you know, kind of a logical question would be, well, what about fields that have been ordered and not installed yet? I mean, to me, that just, that seems like a question that's likely to come up. It's a legitimate question. And there may, there may, you know, there may be no option to do anything differently than, you know, than what's been already specified. But if we think that crumb is not a great thing to be using, should we at least suggest if there are alternatives that are available that can go in, for example, at the high school, you know, and it can be done, you know, within the existing budget. I mean, obviously we're not going to, you know, blow up the budget for stuff. I mean, I know how hard that is to pass every year. My understanding and I would be very wrong, but after having talked to very well informed people about the high school field is we should not confuse the fact that shovels aren't in the ground with the fact that there is still leeway for a change. My understanding is that for, at this point, shovels are fairly imminent and for them to change the infill for the projects, the fields at the high school would require change orders, which would essentially bust the budget for the project. I mean, I don't know how much they'd be starting for square one, but, you know, we all know that this project has been years in the making. Every single line item has been, you know, poured over and swelled over. So I know we hear some things in the comments. We hear my understanding, and I could be very wrong, but the people I talk to seem to be in a position to know a lot about these things is there's very little that I think can be done without messing up a lot of procurement. Right. And I think, you know, and I'm okay with that. You know, I just think that we should be, you know, perhaps prepared to explain that. Yeah, that's fair. I don't know whether that should be something to that effect should maybe be included in the report, just so it doesn't. I think that's fair, too. Because I don't want us to look like we're ducking with an obvious issue. I think that's... And I think that any, you know, from Leslie's point, you know, we're the place that pretty much turf-related recommendations should come from. I mean, if it's not from us, who the hell else does it kind of come from? You know, I mean, presumably we've done the work and looked at everything. So they just, you know, it seems logical for... I think I see Joe Barr's hand up. I wonder if he has... I don't know much about the procurement process. Joe, I don't know. Do you know much about the procurement process or you might have your hand up for another reason? Yeah. No, no, I was going to say. So it was a construction manager risk project and typically that means it's extremely difficult to change the scope after the fact. So even something that seems simple like changing the infill I think would trigger a whole series of questions. And so, I mean, it's worth talking to, I don't know if it's Alex McGee or to someone from the School Building Committee. To just make sure, but I'd be shocked if there wasn't a whole can of worms that got opened if we tried to investigate that. But it's worth trying to run that to ground just to the point it was just made by, I guess, Marvin, that we should at least try to not be active if we're not aware of the issue. We will address it. We will not dwell on it, but we will address it in the report. And you can see how well we do add it in the draft and you can tell us if we did a lousy job or if we can do better. Well, if that's the route we're gonna take, that speaks even more to me to what Mike was saying about decisions being made on a case-by-case basis. I mean, in this case, it sounds like with high school project that there may be reasons to stick with, and they may be economic reasons, certainly not health, safety, or environmental, but economic reasons to stay with the plan as determined. But I think, again, that goes to what Mike was saying in looking at these decisions on a case-by-case basis. What is planned? What are the upsides and downsides of a particular location? If we're not gonna say, blanket, Crumb rubber is bad, we don't think we should be using Crumb rubber in town, then I'm not sure what we can say because I think that was something that was generally, I got the sense, generally felt to be the big downside of this generation of turf products was the use of Black Crumb rubber. And that some of these other, while we may not know and studies are incomplete around many other things, the Black Crumb rubber seemed to be pretty universal, we, something that could be agreed on as a negative. I think that the decisions pertaining to the existing or about to exist fields are, as Jim's pointed out, a bit beyond the scope and also different from the task at hand in as much as we're thinking about prioritizing for the future. Sorry, I have a party crash here. So, I think part of our responsibility then is to evaluate the criteria that we're prioritizing and to make recommendations based on whether we think that the economic arguments, which may well still have some degree of relevance, whether those Trump player health and safety or environmental concerns, etc. And what I've heard of this group so far, they don't. We would definitely opt for something different in order to ensure protections on all of those fronts. So, I'm not sure if I was clear because I had a four-year-old in my lap, but I hope that's, I don't know, clarifying. Yeah. Mike? Yes, as I pointed out, just as a small note early in this process, one of the towns that I contacted said that they did not look at environmental or safety issues. They made a purely economic decision to go the way they went. So, I think we would not be alone in the world in terms of looking at the economics as a main point. But I think that there's also, obviously, in this committee, concern about safety, health, and environmental issues. It's the balance that's the hard part. I think this has been helpful. I want to move us to the next item, unless someone wants to jump in here. I mean, I think the best way I can leave this for now is, let's see how Natasha and I do on this. And then you tell us if we got the essence of this discussion and captured where the committee is or if we failed miserably. But let us take a stab at this. And I think I have a sense of where the committee is, but read the report and let me know if Natasha and I are stuck out in left field here. My sense is, Jim, that this committee is not reticent to express opinions. So, I'm sure you'll hear. No one's going to be shy if we get it wrong. So, the next piece, which I think there's, we haven't talked about all that much, but we have talked about it. And by the way, when I bring up an issue, there's two sets of things to think about each issue. One is, should we even be addressing this? That's sort of the fundamental foundational question. And then the second is if we should be addressing this, what should we be saying on it? But I believe there's been general agreement on the PFAS, well, on one particular part of the PFAS issue that to the extent when one orders an artificial turf field that you can get a certification from the manufacturer, from the factory that it's PFAS free, all the better. But now we know that that doesn't always mean it's 100, it's PFAS free. And we, there's been debate about what PFAS free as certified by the manufacturer or the factory sending it out actually means. And maybe that's where I don't want to say putting that to the side, but that's relevant to the discussion. But I guess, is there agreement on the committee that a requirement, if and when we ever had an artificial turf field, in addition to the other pieces we've talked about, should be that the strong, strong preference or requirement should be that the manufacturer certifies that it's PFAS free? Yes. Again, accepting the existing projects, I guess, is the message that we're going to have to put that caveat on anything we say then based on our prior discussion. So we don't know that either of the two existing fields are PFAS free or have been certified or will be certified to be PFAS free. But what we're saying is if we ignore those two projects going forward, then that should be standard. Yeah, I think that sounds good. The only caveat I would throw at that is that that PFAS free certification should come from an independent laboratory, not from the manufacturer. Because as we've seen that doesn't always give us the answer we are hoping for. Yeah, Mike, it should that I think it's one step further that there should be testing, required testing should be done at the manufacturer level prior to shipping, because I understand as soon as it lands on site, you know, if it's in then tested, it could have rained that night, it could have rained in transport, and it could have PFAS in it from the atmosphere. So I would just say that, you know, we can build into the specifications, you know, testing requirements that need to be done by an independent laboratory before it ships. Yeah, that makes sense. Yep, I agree with Joe on that. Good. Well, that one seemed relatively, I mean, I think we also, I mean, my, you know, I don't want to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat from the jaws of victory here, but, you know, I think we all have to be honest about what PFAS free means, you know, I mean, that doesn't necessarily mean there's no PFAS at all in this field. It just means, well, it means to the extent possible they're certifying that there's no, I mean, there's sort of an acceptance that PFAS is in everything, right? Right, there could, there could be, we haven't tested, we don't know. There could be PFAS and are in existing, in our existing fields. Oh, I'm sure there is, I'm sure there is. So you could, you could potentially go to a field that you're doing, test it and find PFAS. Yeah, but this is, I still think better, better than nothing, a lot better than nothing, and gives some assurances, however minimal or, or maximal they are, but they're, the field doesn't have anything worse than the norm, I guess. Being introduced. Yeah, worse than the control. David? The point about sort of minimal assurances and the discussion that's happened previously about what PFAS free means, I wonder we could make a recommendation about sort of carefully considering what that designation means. I don't know if we can do anything stronger than that necessarily, but it feels like you know, closely parsing, like what are the accepted levels? What are the regulatory standards for PFAS in the environment or in any like, I don't know, health products, whatever you want to point to as a standard. There might be a threshold that we specify or we might look to some future deciding authority to set that threshold and to have some clarity about what PFAS free means. And I would also just caution that we're not just talking about PFAS group of chemicals, we're talking about a longer list that we may want to also include in that, because we know that there are, and we're discovering new ones all the time, but there's certainly more than just PFAS to be concerned. Marvin? I guess I don't see why we can't make a recommendation, you know, that the field carpets be tested at the manufacturer prior to shipping. To me, at least, you know, based on the technology we have, I mean, I'm really concerned about kind of soft peddling recommendations to the point where they'll be meaningless. And it results in, you know, exposure to toxic materials. Yeah, I mean, to be clear, I definitely am in favor of what you described and what Joe suggested. I'm thinking that we might go a step further even and say, you know, whichever body is going to decide in the future about installing a field, that they examine what that certification means, like what level of PFAS are they accepting, what chemicals are comprising that category of PFAS, does it include all of the ones that are emerging now as a concern, like Mike just described, are the levels above or below a given regulatory standard from a different context, like soil's health or human health, etc., etc. Does that make sense? Yeah, I mean, one of the issues is that there really aren't any standards except for in drinking water. And, you know, those may shift over time, but again, there is exposure, you know, unrelated to drinking water that would be nice to prevent. So, you know, this is the other problem that, you know, that the health group ran into, that there are not, there have not yet been defined levels, you know, kind of at what body burden for, you know, PFAS, for phthalates or other materials, you know, can you say, you know, this is harmful to health, this is not harmful to health. We know that more exposure is more harmful than less exposure. And so, to me, we ought to do what we reasonably can, you know, just to make, you know, whatever product we buy, you know, that it's as safe as practicable at the time of purchase. You know, I mean, none of us know what's going to happen 10 years from that. I certainly am not going to know, you know, what's likely to come out. But, you know, we can at least say on the day that we're signing a contract, you know, we've got a product that at least is as safe as, you know, we know how to buy. And I think that would be kind of a reasonable approach to take. I completely agree. Are we good with this one? Okay. So, the next thing I have in my list is heat guidelines. So, to the extent that Arlington ever had beyond existing fields, of course, had artificial turf fields, synthetic turf fields, how do we feel about saying that any such fields, if they're ever built in Arlington, need to have some fairly stringent guidelines related to who, who can play on them and when with respect to heat. Essentially, it would almost sort of be requiring what is sort of already happening, or what we heard is already happening at the high school fields from, from the head athletic trainer who spoke to us, Samantha Jones. You know, I think it can go a long way in, you know, assuring people that, you know, some of the more nefarious aspects of artificial turf field, which as we've seen exist, even if you're, and they're not as bad, but they still exist even with alternative infills, that they're going to be hotter than a normal natural turf field. If we had requirements like the MIA, which says, you know, no one's getting on that field and playing if the wet bulb temperatures above 86.1 degrees Fahrenheit, or setting a different standard, you know, you can set something more stringent than the, than the MIA, but in general, you know, without necessarily getting into specific, you know, wet bulb temperatures or surface temperatures or air temperatures, are people, how do people feel about as part of a recommendation saying that, you know, we need to, we need to set certain limits with respect to whether these fields get used on certain days of the year. I think that's relevant, whether it's artificial turf or grass. And MIA standards seem to be acceptable, you know, documented and acceptable to, you know, what we have. They seem reasonable. They seem accepted within the playing the athletic community. And I think that they do apply, as I read them, it doesn't matter what the surface, it's, you know, if we take as a given, and I think we all do, that, you know, there are certain days that are getting hotter than they used to. It's not that we want to shift athletes off of our, you know, artificial turf into brass fields on a hundred degree day. We want them to be safe from heat exposure, regardless of where they play. It's an excellent point. It's an excellent point. I agree with Leslie's point. And I wonder how that is managed, because right now the high school has an athletic trainer who is doing this testing. I don't know if Joe is going to come on every Sunday and Saturday morning and test. So I think it's the right thing to do, and I hate when things like recommendations are made that there is like actually no way to manage. So how do we, how do we balance that? I think that, procedurally, I think we could work that out similar to field closure due to rain, you know, we can work with the user groups, and they, I think most of them have a dedicated field coordinator. We could kind of shift the onus onto them once we give them the kind of the testing procedures. I think we could work that out. It might not be perfect. Yeah, I don't want to get necessarily, I don't want to necessarily get hung up on this, you know, working in a legislative body. You know, we always tell, you don't have to decide everything. This is why you have regulations. You leave it to the enforcing agency to flesh out a lot of details in, you know, in the regulatory scheme and the regulations here. I'm not sure we need to decide who should be the proper party, you know, to be taking these temperatures or to be monitoring these sites. I think it's enough for us to say, if you build these fields, someone has to do that in the town that has to be, they have to make a priority if someone make that part of their job. Just to hear that wreck thinks that this is reasonable is really what I wanted to make sure. It is helpful to hear. It is like field closure and, you know, keeping the fields closed and teams off the fields. Joe doesn't do that on the weekends. You know, we have to allow for adults knowing the rules to be enforcing the rules. Well, let's be clear. The wet bulb temperature in January is not going to be an issue. Let's hope not. I mean, if it is, then we're all in big trouble. Mike. Yeah. I wanted to just note that one of the things that we were talking about is a sort of a checklist of what we want to make sure people look at before a contract is signed. And I think that as we heard from Ian, I think it's very important that we have something in there about good maintenance of these fields, whatever fields we're putting in, because without that, the artificial turf is not going to last the full amount of time and the natural grass turf is not going to live up to its responsibility, so to speak. So I think maintenance is one thing that we've heard a lot that's so important. I think, Mike, to that point, I'm working on a cost analysis between natural and artificial turf that we've heard from this group and we've got lots of different information that I'm putting together. And that's one of the pieces in that section that talks about the importance of maintenance. So I think we'll cover it there. But I would say that when you do give the final document a read, if you think it should be placed somewhere else or if anyone does, that maybe that's something that you just let us know about. We'll ring the bell loudly. You can tell us if we rang it loudly enough on maintenance. Excellent. Because that's not only a fiscal matter, but it's also potentially a safety matter. If infillism is replaced and you don't have shock absorption, then, you know, so... So for a more controversial topic, which we have not spent very much time, any time discussing, but I did want to put it out there, because I believe this was in Brookline's recommendations. A similar committee in Brookline looked at this issue and made this recommendation. And Natasha, jump in if I'm getting this wrong. But they also had age guideline related to artificial turf. I believe in Brookline they said no one K through 8 should be playing on artificial turf fields. If they had an option they should be playing on natural turf fields and only people in grades 9 and above should be playing on any of Brookline's artificial turf fields. Am I getting that right Natasha? That's what they said. Now we've never really discussed this issue. So I'm open to views. I mean, I'm not necessarily proposing it. I'm not necessarily endorsing it, but I'm saying it is a potential guideline you can put out there. I think that's ridiculous. But why build it if you're not gonna, you know, let the full community use it. That's when you're getting your money's worth. I would be very, very curious to the science that they use to make that determination on on age. And anyone also knows who schedules fields, knows high school athletes, grades 9 to 12 athletes are on turf fields potentially six days a week. As compared to youth athletes, maybe 45 minutes a week. So I have no idea where they're they're getting that from. I think it would be relevant if we were allowing crumb because I think kids eat dirt kids eat like little kids take all kinds of things with them. I think where we're not allowing crumb we've really already given that safety piece a look. I think part of this probably comes from the fact that kids are more susceptible to adverse health effects at much lower levels than adults. That's right. Younger the kids, the more profound that effect, you know, just from a developmental standpoint, you know, organ systems are developing their brains are developing, you know, in the same way that kids are less little kids are less able to regulate heat and kind of like can say, Oh, I'm too hot. I need to sit down. You know, I think that and certainly there's there's a lot of, you know, resources but not on hand to mouth behavior in children. And so that, you know, to me would point to trying to keep kids from having, you know, potential exposure. And if everybody's been using crumb for the most part that, you know, that would be a reasonable argument from my standpoint. But it's arbitrary. I think what they did was was very arbitrary. I mean, I can see the hand to mouth on the youngest, they're not even addressing under kindergarten, where you're much more likely to see that whole, you know, hand to mouth, digging in the dirt and that. And in reality, the reality of the situation is that the younger kids are more likely, I mean, we're never going to have every field in town artificial turf. We're still going to have grass fields. We're still going to be playing on grass fields. And it's those and it's the younger kids that cause less damage to grass fields and would be assigned to grass fields naturally anyway. So I mean, I think we'd have to have a much more I think we'd need to do a lot more research. Why are you limiting it to grades nine to 12? That just again, seems very arbitrary to me. And I don't think I would be able to support something that rigid. And I'll admit, I haven't seen any of the documentation that was used for that. So, you know, I can't speak to that. You know, the studies that I was looking at actually said, one of them showed that like eight to 11 year olds actually had more hand to mouth contact than younger kids. You know, I think, you know, I don't know what's an appropriate cut point. I really truly don't. You know, I and I guess I this is something that to me I would need more work before we can really say something about that. Or at least something I feel comfortable with. And you know, maybe that's like a follow up report or something. Well, I think Leslie probably hit hit on the most relevant point here, which is this a solution in search of a problem. I mean, the idea is, unless every art of every turf, every field in Arlington or, you know, more than a majority of the turf of the field in Arlington become artificial turf is this even an issue? I mean, it's, it's going to be the default is that, you know, on those, particularly the soccer leagues, the young baseball leagues, they're going to be on natural turf field. You know, most, I mean, that's probably where they're going to put those kids just naturally. So, and so I get the sense that this is sort of not, there's not an appetite necessarily to make this sort of recommendation considering it's a little seems up to the group, a little arbitrary, a little undeveloped. Okay. Yes. Recycling. Now, you know, there's been a lot of talk about recycling. And there's been a lot of debate, and not necessarily a lot of agreement on whether recycling is a viable option for artificial turf fields. I think the evidence shows that, yes, there's some recycling, but how widespread it is and how extensive it is is up for debate. I think Ian told us he was aware it was going on, but he wasn't sure how extensive. I know Joe has some information on recycling that he's talked to, like an Arlington resident who has a lot of experience in this area. But before maybe we get into the specifics, are people generally comfortable? I mean, maybe we just start with the easy part. I would assume everyone on this group to the extent we had artificial turf fields in town would want to the greatest extent possible that when those fields reach end of life, that they can be recycled to the greatest extent possible. Whenever they reach end of life, whatever the status of the technology is at that point. Yeah, there may be new technologies like for everything else that are coming along with that, but the concern I've heard raised about the Exxon process of recycling is that it involves pyrolysis, which is essentially heating or burning the materials, which in and of itself, my understanding, and I have no personal knowledge, but my understanding is that not only takes fuel to accomplish, but also results in some air issues and some waste issues. And I'm not sure to what extent that we use word recycling as it's going to something new after it's been processed. I'm not sure to what extent that actually happens. I know that there were some references to some companies that talk about sort of recycling and reusing what the product is. I'm just not sure how efficient or effective that is or what the results are, you know, from my perspective environment. What about the option of it's sort of the other side of the coin or where it's related on recycling? What about contractually requiring end of life responsibility when you purchase the field, basically saying to the, I mean, this is a big issue in all sorts of areas, paint, batteries, you know, charge and all these things now that you bring to the recycling center in Ireland and they say, sorry, we don't take it and we don't know who does try the hardware store in the hardware stores. And you know, I mean, this is becoming an issue with lots of products, but I mean, are people here sort of comfortable or strongly in favor of saying whenever we buy an artificial turf field, it needs to be built into the contract that people were purchasing from will take care of it at the end of life. What does that mean? I mean, it could be that they, you know, take it to a landfill, which, you know, would not make me happy, for sure. I think, you know, if you want to kind of mandate some kind of recycling, but I don't know that that exists. So I don't know whether that's a viable thing to do right now. But just to say, okay, you know, you put it in, you got to deal with it after, you know, potentially leaves us just, you know, stuffing landfills for tons of plastic. Well, I think it depends on how you write the contract. I agree with you, Marvin. We don't want to have, you know, 80,000 square feet of plastic put into a landfill or stored in some place where it's not going to be secured. But I'm not sure what the language is. Certain lawyers or technocrats would have to make that decision. But I think using the most recent effective and safe technology can be built into that contract because, you know, if it's going to be another eight years down the road, 10 years down the road, we may discover something we don't know now. Jim, couldn't you just put something in there that says something along the lines of, you know, our recommendation is that artificial turf would be recycled and the responsibility of the contractor to a recycling method that is approved by the conservation commission or town agencies as such and such, you know, just because who knows? I mean, in eight years, the conservation commission might know a better way to recycle or I think we have to leave that a little open-ended and but at least, you know, carve out the procedure. To Joe's point, I wonder if it's something along the lines of like the most environmentally friendly recycling. Taking it to the public health. Available at the time. Yeah, because this definitely is something, you know, this is where technology is evolving. So we can't know what, you know, five years ago, some of the things that are happening today weren't happening. But five years from now, we don't know what that technology is going to evolve to. We know that it's an important issue that folks are focused on, that industry folks, that scientific folks, that, you know, the general public conservation folks, everybody, everybody's talking about that aspect. And as Jim said, not just of artificial turf, but all of the plastics that exist in our world today. So, you know, I think, you know, there can be language that's specified, and to Natasha's point, you know, to the technology that exists at the time that we're executing the contract, you know, we can certainly say that that is the recommendation that it not end up in, you know, I don't know if we can, you know, say our expectation is that it will not end up in a landfill that it would be disposed of in a method that is the most environmentally sensitive of the time or something like that. Yeah. And you got to think at this point that we're not alone. We're not the only town grappling with these issues. You've got to think that the industry, I mean, you don't want to put too much faith in it, but you have to assume the industry is going to move to where the consumer is, where the customer bases on those switches of towns start saying, I'll buy your field, but it's, I've got some, I've got some caveats, I have some, I have some requirements. The industry is going to get there, maybe not overnight, but the industry is going to get there faster than they would otherwise. So these are great. These are great points. And I bring them down. I think Natasha has two. So you know, beyond those points, you know, we've talked about good maintenance of fields. I know the environmental group stressed organic management of fields. I don't know if we want to be quite that prescriptive, given the costs associated with organic management of fields, but I did want to discuss it a little bit. I mean, I think we all agree high quality maintenance of the fields is important. I just don't know if organic maintenance of the fields or organic management of the fields is necessarily something we should be requiring. This would be to the natural turf, obviously, but as part of our charge, we're to look at both. Right. It's a gold standard from the environmental perspective. I think that we have to recognize, of course, that there are budgetary and other issues that come to play in making decision about those fields, both their installation and their maintenance. So it's, as I was saying before, and we all seem to agree, it's a site-specific kind of issue, whether it's natural turf or artificial turf, that that has to be decided. And it is a budgetary issue as well as other issues. Yeah. I don't know that... Have we gotten the input from our own in-house DPW regarding organic turf maintenance or maintenance? I mean, how far into maintenance of our fields? So, Joe, I was actually going to actually reach out to you because you had forwarded an email at one point and you had put on there, and I'm actually using it as part of the cost analysis, was the comparison of artificial turf, I think it was the Pierce field, as well as the cost associated with organic and non-organic maintenance of, I believe it was being based off of Thorndike field. So those are estimates. Yeah, those are estimates. And again, I just, there's two things. If, certainly I would get Mike Rodimac's opinion, but from what I know, whether we go to organic turf, from a synthetic turf management program, I don't think it matters to be, you know, from a turf, from a quality of turf, from a quality of turf perspective, whether you use organic turf treatment or synthetic turf treatment, I'm not sold on, which is potentially going to give you a better turf. I think they're both going to produce, you know, potentially, hopefully better results than not putting, you know, any fertilizer or any treatment to the turf fields. It really, when we looked at three different fields, I think it was herd, Thorndike, and it was one more escaped me at the time, maybe it was five, I'm not sure. It was just, it was just money. It was approximately three times as much money. And, you know, I think that's really it. It really was, and it's not any additional labor. We're going to contract it out. I think there is definitely other maintenance requirements to get the best results, but that's the same as synthetic turf fields. You know, if we're able to rest them for a season, you're going to get a better result. If we're able to not use them at all in inclement weather, you're going to get a better result. If, you know, you're able to do the deep, tiny aeration, you're able to do other type of maintenance practices on a regular basis, you're going to get a better result, whether it's synthetic turf treatment or organic turf treatment. So again, I don't think there's any, you know, the towns not lean in one way or the other. I think if we had all the money in the world, yeah, we'll try organic. That sounds fine. We'll see how it goes. We'll give it three, four years and see if there's actually better turf quality. I just think it's basically a budgetary question. And Joe, is it going to keep the fields open after a rain? No, absolutely not. So we're still going to have the issues we have in our opening of the, you know, start of the season when the fields are at their most vulnerable still, even if it's organically maintained and the turf is of a better quality. Yeah, it's not going to matter at all. David, do organic products run off into bodies of water less? I think it's about the quantity and the type of products used. I'd be curious to know a bit more about those practices. You know, I compared with what's currently done because I don't know much more about what's currently done than is reflected in the turf maintenance contracts that are viewed for the public land management plan. And so it's sort of comparing apples and oranges to answer that question fully. I'd be interested in seeing, you know, like Joe's breakdown in more detail about what labor goes into each category, what exactly is being applied, et cetera, et cetera. In both cases, there's a state law about the treatment of turf for non-agricultural purposes. You need to test the soil to see if fertilizers needed, for example, and only in certain circumstances are you allowed to apply fertilizer. So, you know, in either case that should be done and we should be minimizing the inputs, whether it's synthetic or organically managed. And there may be something similar when it comes to pesticides, herbicides, et cetera. And certainly going back to Joe's earlier point about the overlap between fields and concomituristictions, their prohibitions and regulations on use of certain herbicides and application rates and methods and so forth. So again, that should be comparable but I don't know that I can fully answer your question because I don't know the difference between what's proposed and what's currently. And again, it's also very site specific, so I don't think you can really generalize about runoff either. It depends on where you are. Jim, I would almost recommend coming from this party, you know, it's simply a, you know, the time meeting turf committee recommends a pilot program, you know, be put into effect to look at the true benefits of organic turf fields. And you know, let's, again, that's going to cost money, but let's let those who have the power of the purse to let's try it at a couple of fields. And that's what we were going to do. And let's see if it works. I mean, right now we're just guessing, you know, I don't know, we try for two years, I come back, I said, oh my God, this stuff is the best thing that's ever happened to the fields. I just, I don't know, you know, our fields are different than other municipalities fields. So I think, you know, maybe as simple as a recommendation that we, you know, look into it and further investigate and potentially try a pilot program at some fields to get better information on the matter. I don't know. I'm just thinking how to move forward with it with actually get some real data. Yeah. I think that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. I mean, I'm struck by, I'm still, you know, struck by Ian's comment when he spoke to us, where he said in his experience, and he had a lot of it, you know, in his experience, 95% of fields in Massachusetts are not properly maintained or not maintained to the level they should be. And that wasn't about organic or anything. It was just, you know, this is, this is the reality we live with. Yeah. I mean, I was, I was troubled there just because of our experience at Robbins Farm. We did that field. Yeah. Ian's company came in because we were having trouble with that field. It was closed for multiple seasons. The turf, natural grass, natural grass turf was not growing well enough to allow activity to happen. And I know even during our conversation with Ian, after Ian's company came in and evaluated it, assessed it, and helped to bring it up, we were seeing in our, in our meeting, folks were posting how that field currently looks, which is. Yeah, no, it's not. Which is not. Yeah, no, that's my standard that. The end of the street for me and the other field is always worse for wear. It's always worse for wear. Again, we've poured, we poured a lot of money into redoing the field and having Ian's company come in and assess the field. And it's no better than it was before we did it because it gets a lot of use. And there are a lot of issues there. Again, it's a site specific type of thing. As Mike, you know, points out that maybe we should be talking about artificial turf at Robbins Farm Park. And I think one of our, one of our issues we've cited is, is the bacterial, cyanobacteria growth in our bodies of water. And I worry that we say, oh, organic is the solution. And if our fields aren't maintained well enough that any chemical can actually get into the field, then we're just going to have runoff, whether it's organic, like a manure, or, or fertilizer. And then essentially we paid a whole bunch more money for something that causes the same problem as, as, as non organic fertilizer. So unless there was like an overarching conclusion that like, as soon as you put in organic fertilizer, it leaches into a hard, not well maintained field, then I think we're just literally throwing money at a problem that's not going to solve the problem. And it's going to continue to pollute our bodies of water. So, so I think there's an argument that the organic chemicals may be better in some other ways, but the critical thing we know is that over nutrients in our bodies of water are causing problems. And I don't think switching to organic is going to solve that problem unless we are maintaining the fields. And Jill, to your, to that point, I think it's not just about the fields either. It's about private residents as well. And there's no jurisdiction over that. So, if we're maintaining the fields organically or there is artificial turf, yes, it may help in some way, but it's not, it's not the entire issue. And so more education and more conversations about what's happening on private residents. And that's not for this real board to really dive into. But I think that's, that's sort of what my, my point was last week about the, the, the, the toxic looms. The watershed takes in more than just field runoff. Yeah. Yeah. I have one more item on my list. And then I, you know, I know it's getting late, but then I'm, I'm open to anything else anyone else has, if I haven't covered it. But and I, this is from the environmental group. There was a recommendation that to the extent artificial turf fields are constructed in new locations in town, that there should be a recommendation that they are not located near the 5% of parcels in town that have been designated by, I believe it was MAPC as, as heat islands. Right. Now, in general, I'm comfortable with that, but I also realize that many fields may be quite, I mean, I'm assuming we have a number of fields that are in close proximity or directly within those heat islands, because they do sort of run through that massive Broadway corridor. What do people think about this? Again, I think it's was presented as something of the best case scenario would be to avoid those, those fields being artificial turf in that area. But again, we'll have to see what fields are proposed, what they're proposed to be built with or, you know, again, the site specific staff, David. So Joe made a point earlier about usability and why construct something that you're not going to let the community enjoy, which I think bears in this question to those areas that are otter in town. If we're honoring the recommendation that we decided on earlier about, you know, sort of setting a temperature limit for use, then we could run into the problem of building something that is pretty regularly supposed to be off limits to players. And again, that's increasingly likely. So I mean, to put a fine point on it, I did an analysis a while ago about the increase in extreme heat days in Arlington, drawing from the state's climate report that came out, I think last summer, I would say. And I think, you know, we're looking at an increase of like a couple of weeks worth of time in the summer where it would be above that sort of a threshold. So if you want to maintain access, then I think citing those fields away from heat islands is a best case scenario just from a usability perspective, because otherwise you're just going to be running into a problem of another of our recommendations conflicting. I guess in this case, it would be a lack of a recommendation. I think the only difference is, Dave, is the middle of summer, those two weeks and, you know, say it's 14 straight days in the middle of, you know, July, August, the usability of those fields, you know, the need is extremely low. It's, you know, the demand, quite frankly, it would be easy to close the fields for 14 days in July and August and not even blink. It's the, you know, where you get the, where you get your use is on those shoulder seasons. So, you know, I totally understand what you're saying. I just don't think in this, in that particular instance, it would make too big of a difference as far as usage. Yeah. I mean, I think that, and I think when we were, when we were looking at the, the report for the hazard, the hazard mitigation report, I mean, that report suggested to me that our problem is water and I mean, to some degree heat, but that overwhelmingly, when we look at the issues in town, it's, it's water, it's flooding. And we may get additional heat days, but as Joe said, those are not the days when there's high usage of, of fields. And it is those days that we're trying to use the fields when, when, when water is the issue. So, you know, I do want to, I do want to, sorry, sorry to cut you off. I do want to raise the issue though that there, there's the technical issue and then there's the political issue. Sorry, I've got this sunlight coming in makes me seem, seem like I've raised the sun coming off me. So, you know, we saw in Maldon that they ended up going with Brockfield infill at the field. I forget which field was it. Roosevelt. Because frankly, it was the only way they get by in from the neighbors who biggest concern was that they were already in a heat island and it was going to accentuate that for that. And they didn't really get into, they didn't care about the playability. That was not their issue. Their issue was they didn't want their neighborhood to get hotter than it already was. And they feared that a traditional chrome rubber infill and an artificial turf would do that. I can easily see communities within those heat islands in Arlington making the same argument. And I guess my view is what's the harm in agreeing to that recommendation from the environmental group? If it means, you know, you get more buy-in from people who don't live in, you know, I mean, I mean, people will always raise the heat issue. But if I feel like it will have much more salience and much more, you know, political weight when it's coming from a neighborhood that's already hotter than the average neighborhood in Arlington. I feel like this is a justice issue of we should be aiming to have these fields where it is less dense and urban. Like we want these fields so all of our residents of Arlington, our children can play. I also don't, I think we have to own that. We don't want to make it hotter for the people. I would assume this is East Arlington on the east side of town where it is already hotter because it's more densely populated. And I think, you know, that's a part of our job. So I don't see. I'm in agreement. But I also think you have to look at accessibility. I think if you're gonna, you know, you go to like the justice point of view is like, you know, for access to our better fields, not to put one of our better fields that can be playable all the time in East Arlington also has another message to the community. Yes. And we've also already talked about how, you know, we're the crumb rubber. We've said no. So we're addressing heat in that respect by saying, you know, we're trying to diminish heat island effect. Like you say, in in Malden they moved to the Brockville for that reason. They were concerned about heat island there. They moved to a different infill. We're saying we're not going to use the crumb rubber that that does have a higher heat index to it. So I think that, you know, well, I mean, to be clear though, in Malden, they moved to the Brockville info. It didn't the public, the neighborhood opposition did not abate. I think it was it gave the city more cover to say they were addressing the issue. But when you read the public comments, you know, nobody changed switch from a no to a yes because of the Brockville. People are very entrenched with this issue. But these were neighbors. These were not necessarily environment, you know, folks from the environmental community. These were these were the abutters who, you know, whether it was staged or not, I won't I won't make I'll take them on their word that it was legitimate. But, you know, they were very, very concerned about a hot neighbor becoming hotter. One of the issues is that there's not a lot of documentation that different infills actually have a significant cooling effect. You know, you can get some cooling relative to crumb, but it's not it won't ever take you down to kind of what a natural grass field is. The other thing is that the blades of grass in the carpet also absorb heat. So, you know, even if you take out the infill issue at all, you're still going to have a hotter surface just because that plastic is going to be absorbing solar solar radiation. So and I think we've made a lot of decisions in this town, you know, to unite the east and the west like Gibbs, for example. But I think in this one, we are not we don't have East Arlington soccer teams playing West Arlington soccer teams. And when you go to the east, you're going to have the crap fields in the West is the kids are playing all around town no matter what. So I feel like the justice there is is really looking at the people's neighborhood and and trying to keep the green space in their neighborhood and their neighborhood cool outweighs the fact that like the field at Thompson is not made of turf in the field at I don't know. McLennan is. So I think I think we have to be really careful here like what is actually happening. And we don't we don't typically assign assign sports by the side of town. I'm always driving to the other every time I have it. So am I. So am I. I'd love it if I got assigned. I'm just telling you and I don't want to belabor it but I hear all of it. Okay. And if we were to put a turf field that poets for instance, so you would have our best fields in town from the high school up. And what I hear all the time is that Arlington is a community that people can walk to and ride their bikes to. And that's how pretty much the motor transportation for kids, besides parents running around and over practice. So if we were to have Herdfield, Robbins Farmfield, Poetscona New Turf high school, they're all best fields in town in North Union, Magnolia, Robbins, Crosby, all fields that are deteriorating because they're getting a ton of use. They're not able to withstand that type of use. Again, I do think it would be, oh, of course, you're going to put another $3 million project in the heights. We would absolutely hear it. And the only thing I question is, you know, we're supposed to be making recommendations, you know, I think based, I don't know, I don't want to make a political recommendation and maybe let that be a project by project basis decision. I just say again, I know would hear it. I can see my email blowing up already. You're putting another $3 million in the heights. I hear it all the time. So I don't want to challenge you, but I mean, there's an assumption there that people want an artificial turf field. And, you know, people in the east might say, we dodged a bullet. But it's project by project. I don't think that's for our recommendation to have to say that. I think if all of a sudden North Union could have the potential to have turf field, those names might love it. We don't know that. I don't want to make that determination that they would hate it. I guess my question is North Union, would that be a wetland issue? Because it seems in my brain that there's no wetlands there. Okay. No, no. Oh, I think, I think thawndyke, thawndyke would be one that, you know, honestly, it would be thawndyke makes the most sense from a usability standpoint to be turf field. You're going to get your biggest bank bebop. But it also has a number of conservation, habitat, you know, ecological issues that probably wouldn't, you know, you wouldn't do it there. So much like the decision that was made for her. Right. I just think we're putting so many, you know, we're coming up with this report. And if it's going to be project by project, I just would hate to, you know, limit the potential. If for some point, it didn't make sense to do it because we're going to do that. Let's go right back to the high school. That's, you know, close enough to the area that you see heat islands. So we're not going to deal with that, but it's in a heat island. Even Crosby field. I mean, Crosby field is horrible because of the money used. If any of you've been to Crosby field, again, I'm not saying we're going to turf Crosby field, but it potentially makes a lot of sense for that to be considered for a turf field. Like it has a school there that's using it all the time. Quite frankly, it has some trees, so it'd be naturally shady. It probably wouldn't be as hot on the field itself. So again, I just don't want to put any limiting factors on it. That's just my two cents. Joe Bart? I mean, it seems like could we at least say it's, you know, highly discouraged or it can only be done. That's where I was getting after this discussion, sort of raising the issue without necessarily a definitive, you must not do this, but sort of as part of the analysis, please consider this. Yeah. I mean, ultimately, none of what we said binding on anyone was we don't have any actual, you know, legislative or other type of authority anyway. Yeah. No. Now that's all I have. I'm sure I've left things out, but are there some issues I've missed that Natasha's missed that really you feel like you have a burning desire to see in a sort of final analysis? We'll let you know Friday. We can go with that, but, you know, I'll sort of put it out there one last time here. Anything we've missed? Anything we've gotten wrong? Anything we've underplayed or overplayed? Well, I just, you know, again, I hope, and I don't know because I haven't seen it really addressed in the separate sections, but kind of this notion that the problem that we're trying to address relative to Arlington is, you know, playability in spring and fall when we have the most, you know, team, we have more sports, more teams, more users, you know, New England climate. So something, you know, to look at that aspect of this that, you know, deals with getting kids out earlier and allowing them to stay out later seasonally. So I'm not sure how that will come up, but I think that that's, again, I think I've said that from the beginning, the, you know, local issue and trying to deal with our local problem. Yeah. And what you say, Leslie reminds me of what Ian Lacy said to us, which, you know, when he did his sort of analysis of costs, he said, you know, yes, a artificial turf field, it'd be based on his analysis would cost more, but he put in a big, big, there was a big but there, he said, but you get more per dollar per hour out of that artificial turf field, then you do the natural turf field. And so you can't ignore that in a cost benefit analysis. And I think, you know, Natasha and I are noting that whether we noted enough or pointed out enough, we'll leave that to all of you to tell us. So I don't want to cut off the sketch, but if there's nothing more, I'd like to just get to the last item about deliverables and timeline. Are we all good though? Yeah. So it's been a great discussion, probably our best, our best since we began this committee. So it's all kind of been leading up to this meeting. And so we will send out if all goes well, the draft report by some point Friday before noon. So the issue is Natasha and I are concerned that from Friday to Tuesday afternoon is not enough time for everyone to fully read this and come to us with comments. For some of you, it might be, you know, my hat's off to you if you give up a good chunk of your weekend to read this, but that's not my expectation. We also know that there's a conflict with a meeting on Hills Hill at next Tuesday at 6 p.m. So our meeting could, you know, could potentially go past six and then we'd be running into our scheduling conflict. So we were inclined to move our meeting next week. We definitely want to have a committee meeting next week, but we were inclined to move it to a different time, preferably on Wednesday or Thursday. We aren't ready to make a decision on that right now, but it would be helpful to get a sense from the committee of what times work for them on Wednesday or Thursday next week or Friday. I mean, I'm not foreclosing Friday, but I could do the same time Wednesday or Thursday. Yeah, for what it's worth, both Wednesday and Thursday are busy for me already. Actually, Thursday would have to be later for me, later than our current. It would have to be six or later. Later is better for me. Jill, you said later is better. I can do the earlier, but later is better. So by later, you mean like a six or seven o'clock later? On Wednesday or Thursday or both? Oh, it seems like most people can only do Thursday. Yeah. Like you do Wednesday. Yeah, later is fine. Not good for David to be later. That just appeared in the comments. He's got a conflict at 7.30. So could we be six? Does that work with Leslie? No. I may not. I might be running into it. Running into the meeting. I could be late. We'll figure this out. We'll find Natasha and I will thread the needle and find something. And you know, we may need a lot of time. We may need less time than I think. You know, we can also talk through things. We can also send us comments. You know, there's that option too, which might actually be even more productive because then we have something right there and writing, but. Is the report going to be sent as a separate attachment and not included as part of a full packet? Yes. The packets have become very unwielding? Yes. No, we will send it as a separate attachment. Okay. I'd be glad to, even though I can't make Wednesday or Thursday, I'd be glad to provide written comments to the committee if that's helpful. I would like to ask one quick question. For me, sometimes I find it's challenging to read such a large document on the computer. Does anybody have a preference that they would like a copy printed out? And if that is the case, I could likely maybe get that to you. But I don't know. Everyone has a different, a different preference. We'll do that for our board of health for some meetings. I'd say you should have a really, really strong preference for that because Natasha is not being, is too humble to tell you that she's, she's spread very thin right now on this. So I don't, if we can avoid having Natasha have to hand deliver hard copies to folks, that would be my preference. I'm happy with the computer. I'm happy with, as long as it is separate from everything else. Second piece of this is, so we would meet next week, Wednesday or Thursday, to be determined, we'll, we'll make that determination when we set up, before we send out the agenda on Friday. The expectation would be we would, so after this meeting, the expectation is three more meetings, with the thinking being a meeting next week to discuss the draft, meeting the following, we probably on the Tuesday again, to, we call it, we don't want to call it a public hearing, but a public input meeting, where we would have more interaction with the public than just through chat. And my preference for that meeting would be an in-person meeting, which Natasha is trying to find a location, probably at town hall or at the senior center that would work, the community center. We can work through whether we also have a hybrid option for that, but my preference would be that the committee members actually be present for that in person, if possible. Which date is that? And a final, sorry? Which date would be that particular meeting? Probably just our traditional Tuesday, Tuesday meeting time, so it would be the April 2nd, April 2nd, are we talking about? Yeah, at 5 p.m. That may be subject to change, but that would be our operating assumption that it would be at that date and time. And then a final meeting the following week, sorry Natasha. I was just going to say, Joe, does the park committee meet that night on the second? Okay. And then a final meeting, probably unless there's a reason to change it on Tuesday, April 9th at 5 p.m., where we would get together one last time, take into account whenever we've heard a public comment, review a final, final report, final draft, discuss it. I'm hoping this will be a rather efficient meeting. Discuss it and then take a vote. Take a vote of the committee or whether we endorse the report. And then in that case, depending, endorse with edits, endorse with whatever, but the idea would be that we would release the report officially, the final, final report at some point on the 11th or 12th of that week, on April 11th or 12th, which is before town meeting. It's a good 10 days, I think, before town meeting begins. So not the 30 days, but still well before town meeting. I think we can do this. I think, you know, taking a little extra time, which by the way, we did send the letter of the Board of Selectment in the town, or the Select Board in the town manager, a town moderator, and, you know, they seem comfortable so far. The input has been, they seem comfortable with us taking just a little extra time to get this right, including the public input part. So Natasha and I have our work cut out for us in the next 48 to 72 hours, but I will just say that Natasha will be reaching out to some of you individually. We have some questions as we've merged all the narratives. There are some things that sometimes raised a question for us, like certain sentences, or like, this doesn't make any sense, or things that seem too good to be true. Like, what's the sourcing for this? Are you sure that that's accurate? Not a lot, but, you know, three or four or five places throughout the document when we merged it. Natasha will reach out to each of the people who wrote each narrative individually. And when she does so, I have only one request, which is please respond to her as soon as possible, because we're really up against it in terms of timing. So if she sends these emails to you tonight or tomorrow, please respond within 24 hours with full response. You know, these will be very, you know, discreet questions, but they require fairly immediate answers. And I think that's all I have. I just had one little addition here, and that is to thank Natasha. I'm part of many organizations, and I've seen lots of minutes from meetings, and I have rarely, if ever, seen such complete, thorough and accurate minutes. Yeah, we could do this without her. Natasha is a superstar there. Let's not be crazy, Leslie. I'm crazy. I've seen it too. She's amazing, and it's been a joy to work with her on this project. We're almost there. We're almost there. And I feel like the final product, obviously, you will all be the judge, but the final product, I feel like will be something we're working towards where every member of this committee can proudly stand behind. Whether they agree with it 100% or 95% or 85%, you know, by and large, they just look at it and say, yeah, this is a job well done. And this is the product of many, many months and many meetings, but we stand behind these recommendations. That's the goal. And I think we're very close to reaching it. So for such a controversial subject, it's been a healthy discussion with an open-minded group of people. Well, that's the key. I think we have a really healthy debate here, and people can disagree without being disagreeable. And frankly, there's been a lot more agreement than disagreement in this group, because I feel like there's been, everyone been incentivized personally to try to get to yes here on something we can all agree on and stand behind. So I'm really impressed with this group. It's been great. Thank you all. And as you can see, the natural light is starting to diminish. So I think that's a sign for us to go have dinner. We're adjourned. Any new business before I entertain a motion to adjourn? Move to adjourn. Second. Second. So Mike. Okay, so we'll go right down the list here. Jill? Yes. Marvin? Yes. Jim? Yes. Leslie? Yes. Mike? You bet. Natasha? Yes. Yes. There was hesitation. You just want to stay. Wow. And Joe Barr? Yeah. Thank you. All right, everybody. Have a great night. Thanks. Bye.