 All right, I am Christine Deschler, Chair of the Own Finance Committee, and I'm calling the May 8th, 2023 meeting of order. First, I wanna confirm attendance of members of the committee and make sure people can hear and be heard. So when I call out your name, could you please answer the in the affirmative and if you are joining us by a Zoom, could you indicate that as well? Starting with Jordan. Here. Shane. Here, remote. Jennifer, here. Sophie. Here, remote. Brian, Carolyn, Rebecca, here. Josh. Here. Grant. Attending via Zoom. Charlie. Here. John. He is signing on right now. Here. All right. Just made it under the wire. Yes. Darrell. Annie. L. Jones. Here. Topher. Here. Peggy. Altosti. Here. Dean. Dave. Here, remote. And Tara. Here. All right, so let me read the script. On March 29, 2023, Governor Healy signed its law supplemental budget bill, which among other things extends the temporary provisions of the overmeeting law to March 31st, 2025. This further extension allows public bodies to continue holding meetings remotely without a quorum of the body physically present at a meeting location so long as adequate alternative access to the deliberations of the meeting is provided to the public. Adequate alternative access includes providing public access through Zoom video conferencing, which we are doing tonight. Ensuring public access does not ensure public comment or public participation. This meeting will not feature public comment. Those wishing to provide comments may do so by emailing our executive secretary Tara Bradley at tbradleyattown.arlington.ma.us. Please note that this meeting is being recorded and that some attendees are participating by video conference. Accordingly, 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. All supporting materials have been provided members of this body are available on the town's website unless otherwise noted. The public is encouraged to follow along using the posted agenda unless the share notes otherwise. I will introduce each speaker and then recognize members wishing to provide any comment, questions or motion. Please hold until your name is called. For those attending remotely, please remember to mute your phone or computer when you're not speaking. And everyone, please remember to speak clearly in a way that helps generate accurate minutes. We will take votes by way of roll call votes. First order of business is the minutes. I think we just have May 3rd to approve, correct? Yes. They can accept me. Second, second. Any revisions, changes, errors, corrections, anyone sees? All right, we'll take a vote to approve the minutes. Starting with Jordan. Yes. Shane. Yes. Jennifer. Yes. Sophie. Yes. Brian. It's not here. Carolyn is not here. Rebecca. Yes. Josh. Yes. Grant. Yes. Charlie. Yes. John. Yes. Daryl isn't here. Annie isn't here. Al Jones. Yes. Topher. Yes. Peggy is not here. Al Tosti. Yes. Dean is not here. Dave McKenna. Yes. Okay, the minutes pass unanimously. All right, so we're doing Minuteman. Then article 12, and then 30, and then 32, and then we'll get into the final seconds. 31. 31. 31 is the dog care. Okay. 32, I think is the last. Yeah, I remember what it was. Are we going into the 12 right after Minuteman? Yes. So I'm hoping that we'll start to find these articles tonight. We'll see. There's a little bit more to do about Minuteman than I was expecting today. So we'll see how long that takes. So I don't think we'll finish tonight. I don't think we can finish on Monday. I mean, Wednesday, but maybe on Monday. So the end of your dinner, any updates, Tara? We've had eight people respond to the poll so far. Two people cannot attend the Thursday, the 15th date, but everyone who has responded so far says that they can do Wednesday the 21st. And we have two folks saying that they would be hesitant to attend an inside function if the COVID numbers were not good at that time. And so, yeah. So if we do Wednesday, we have two possibilities raining. One is to shift it to Thursday. Another possibility is to just go inside some place because you don't need to order food for, you can wait 48 hours in advance. You could sort of see the rejection if the Russian is all like clear, clear. You make a different choice than if it's iffy. That makes sense. So we could do those. I don't know, Charlie, if Thursday would work for people if we weren't able to do it Wednesday. There was just rain that one day, but not Thursday. So you're saying if we were to do something outside? Yes, so one of the things Charlie seemed happy to host again I'm putting more to it now. He said he was ambivalent when I asked you. Oh, you're ambivalent? Oh, I'm sorry. I thought I didn't. Oh, no, because I can look for inside instead. I already asked my wife for confirmation. Okay. I mean, it's up to you. So if you decide to come to our house, we can go inside of the range. Right, okay. And then if people aren't comfortable around it. I have 35 people there, thanks to you. Okay, so that could be the... Okay. I have some ideas already, but budget numbers again. What should I think we have? How much? I think it was the ballpark in last year. I think it was like 800 for the magic bites order. And then there was some beer. And then I got gifted a lot of rosé for my birthday that I don't drink. So I just brought, but that didn't really get touched as much. Oh, I went for the budget that was 800. So I think I could do that. Okay, I think we, yeah. If we're talking about 30, about 30 people, or we're talking about much more than that. So I estimated like 25 to 30. So if everyone in the finance committee comes, and me, and Julie Wayman, and John Deist, Peter Howard, and Mary Margaret Franklin, that's like 25 people. Okay. And we have some others that stepped down last year. Oh yes, right, yes. Yeah, I think 820. So 30 then, yeah. I think the top, we could go up to 1,000. Okay, that's easy to do. So it sounds like people with the safest course would be outside. That's okay, I'm not trying to say. It is, it is more in position on you than any guess. It's a little safer because people were wandering around. We're not like sitting in the hallway, the same people for three hours. Yeah. I remember after dinner, we had a nice little circle on the wall. Yeah, it was nice. That's a beautiful yard. It's really nice. That's my wife's yard. Yes, it is beautiful. We should have it this year just so all the new people can see it. All right, so maybe we would have the 21st with the rain date, the 22nd is seven years. That's what I was thinking, it makes sense, but we could also go inside, that would be the other option. Yeah, okay. Sounds like a good idea. Sounds great. That's all I had. Does anyone have anything else that they want to raise, bring it up right now? This is just an off the wall question, but if it seems as though they're postal for post corners falling apart, would the town, and let's just say we would like the town to think about doing something in terms of the Archdiocese property, would the finance committee take a position on that or how would something like that unfold? Who would start it? What's that? Who would start it? Yeah. I mean, with this opposition that some people might say, well, the town can't afford to do anything like that. It's just like, We need to acquire it. What's that? We need to acquire the property. Well, I guess so, yeah. Or control it, yeah, acquire it, control the development of it or something, acquire it to build a turf field there. That's three years when we did the Sims. I know. So we got something out. I mean, there's a lot of other properties that have gone away because we haven't done anything. I just don't know if the finance committee would take a role or a position in that or it's just after the manager or how that would work. Well, with the Sims property that was actually instigated by Alan McLennan. And it was, we had a debt exclusion, but we also, the result of the property paid, that never hit the tax rate. Right. For two reasons. One is we did it through an urban renewal fund or structure. I can't remember whether we've created a new one or we use the one over here in Maple Street. But we had a, it was through an urban renewal. And then secondly, we sequestered all the revenues from it until the bonds were paid off, which we finally did about three years ago. So it actually didn't cost the taxpayers. So we bought and ended up with a revenue for this thing, partially developed. Well, I mean, there are lots of different options, right? We might say we really want fields there because there would be really valuable things. So in order to do that, we have to buy the parcel or we might say we want to buy it because we really want to have something else happen there to control the development. Yeah, but the point that I try to make is if we buy it and put fields there, that's not going to produce revenue. That's right. So that's why, that would be money related. And that's going to have a big impact on the capital plan. Spending does, that's why we're... Yeah, no, I understand. I'm just saying that there's a whole, if you look in the capital plan, they have a queue a while long, worthwhile projects and it would be difficult. And that's not a finance committee. At first blush, that's not a finance committee initiative. But it would be a capital plan. You see students debt on the capital plan and that's exempt debt then, doesn't that hit the... No, I think it's paid off. It's paid off now, but for the last few years, hasn't it been on the capital plan? Yeah, but it gets paid. We passed an article in the town meeting that says all the revenues that come from SIMS go to that, pay the debt. So it never really affected... Got it, okay. I mean, I remember seeing it off, but I didn't really... In the wash, basically. What are the revenues for the SIMS field? Or where do they come from? Like people... Well, SIMS is a residence. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were going to field. SIMS is like... It was like the hospital. Oh, okay. So they turned this thing down. We got a woods. Oh, up on the hill? Yeah. Oh, okay, yeah. Yes, okay. You can see it from the high school. Yeah, come on. I've heard the open space committee maybe looking into that. Have some sort of multidisciplinary brains to hold it. Now it's like the doors are sort of open. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And it's out of scope, I think, for this particular town meeting to discuss that. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Come on, Dave, let's maybe get some... I mean, there is a fall time meeting, but I don't know. There may be a fall time meeting. There's going to be a fall time meeting, but I'm not sure. Right. We deal with some of that. Right. Does anyone know if we have exceeded the 40B threshold at this point? Oh, no. No, we're near. No, we're near? Really? Yeah, we're about... We seem to always be just under. No, we're way under. We're under 7%. Okay. No, no, no. I can tell you're a great player. Oh, sorry. Oh, yeah, go ahead. Yeah, go ahead. Here we are. Yeah, there's debate about the land. But there's only a few municipalities that have ever gotten approval for that land number. It's very hard to meet. The state is very strict about that. So it's still not clear that... I mean, there are people who argue that we're just under it or about we're over it, but I'm not sure the state takes that. So it's not a Sunday or anything, because that's obviously the issue. I don't think the state makes that position. The state's very, very concerned about that. The country is closer with sunny side and stuff like that. With what? With sunny side and stuff like that. We must be giving... 50 units, that's not very many. I mean, the grand scheme. But against the land. The land. Oh, the land issue. Yeah, again, again, there's only a few municipalities that have gotten approval from states. So I think the states are very careful. So when they turn you down and you appeal it, you go to a housing board. Right. So it seems like we've been this close to it. Yeah. There are a number of areas. There's been a number of projects. And at some point... Yeah, but I think it's... You have to understand these people are advocating that we're close to it. And then the state's perspective. And I feel like those are just different. It's like Zeno's Paradox. It's the catch 22. They raise the number of missions every time the guy gets close to it. That's very similar to it. Yeah. Yosarian was his name. Yes. Yes. Well, I got to go fill my water bottle. All right, so... See you guys down there. Motion to adjourn. So we'll move this one. All favor. Aye. Aye. Sure, thank you. Thank you very much.