 Good evening. I'm calling to order the meeting of the Arlington Select Board for Wednesday, March 30th, 2022. This is Select Board Chair Steve DeCorsi. With me tonight in the Select Board chambers are John Herrod, Diane Mahon, Eric Helmuth, Doug Heimtown Council. Ashley Marslack, Board of Manager. Mr. Diggins, if you can hear us, if you can respond in the affirmative. Okay, thank you. And Mr. Chapter Lane, could you also respond in the affirmative if you can hear us? Thank you. Tonight's meeting of the Arlington Select Board is being conducted in a hybrid format consistent with an act signed into law on February 15th, 2022, that extends certain COVID-19 related measures. The Act includes an extension until July 15th, 2022 of the remote meeting provisions of Governor Baker's March 12th, 2020 executive order suspending certain provisions of the Open Meeting Law. The Governor's order, which is referenced with agenda materials on the town's website for this meeting, allows public bodies to meet entirely remotely, so long as reasonable public access is afforded, so that the public can follow along with the deliberations of the meeting. Before we begin, permit me to offer a few notes. First, this meeting is being conducted via Zoom, is being recorded, and is also being simultaneously broadcast on ACMI. The persons wishing to join the meeting by Zoom may find information on how to do so on the town's website. Persons participating by Zoom are reminded that they may be visible to others and that if you wish to participate, you are asked to provide your full name in the interest of developing a record of the meeting. All participants advise that people may be listening who do not provide comment, and those persons are not required to identify themselves. Both Zoom participants and persons watching on ACMI can follow the posted agenda materials also found on the town's website using the Novus Agenda platform. Finally, each vote tonight will be taken by roll call. Once again, we have a full agenda, so let's see how much of the town's business we can get done tonight. I'll now move to the next item on the agenda, item two, Discussion and Approval, Arlington Community Electricity Program, Default Renewable Rate, Talia Fox, Sustainability Manager, and Adam Chapterling, Town Manager. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So while Talia is joining the meeting, I will just briefly say that Talia is going to run through a presentation on this program, and ultimately what we'll be asking for is the board's authorization for myself working with Talia and our energy broker, Good Energy, to establish a default rate and thereby then execute a contract for the next aggregation. But with that said, I see Talia on the screen so she can go ahead and share her screen and run through a presentation, and then we'll both be happy to answer the board's questions. Great. Thank you. Good evening, Ms. Fox. Sorry, on the pronunciation. Nice to see you, Talia. Nice to see you. Thank you so much. I will just share my screen right now. Can everyone see my screen? Yes. Okay. Great. Good evening. My name is Talia Fox, and I am Arlington's new Sustainability Manager, and it's a pleasure to meet all of you who I have not yet met. I will be presenting briefly on the context for the upcoming contract renewal for the Arlington Community Electricity Program and the opportunity to increase the default level of renewable energy. And as the town manager said following the presentation, we will ask the select board to discuss that target percentage. So you may know that the town is required to pay for electricity distribution through our utility ever source, but we can choose to purchase electricity supply from competitive suppliers. Arlington Community Electricity, or ACE, was launched in 2017. It is a town vetted municipal aggregation program enabled by state law that allows us to purchase electricity supply in bulk. This has several benefits, including environmental impact, because ACE enables us to purchase clean electricity, like wind and solar, beyond state requirements. Stability because ACE rates are fixed for the contract duration, typically two to three years, while utility rates fluctuate with the market. Competitive rates, which have resulted in significant savings over the life of the program previously, future savings cannot be guaranteed. Consumer choice by offering program options with different levels of additional renewables and continuity, and that discounts for income qualified customers and net metering benefits for solar generators are unaffected. This graph shows rates of the ACE default, or local green option, compared to ever source residential rates over the lifetime of the program. The blue line is the ever source rate, which you can see has changed every six months. The green line is the ACE rate over time, which has remained consistent. And this consistency has resulted in approximately $2.3 million of savings since 2017 when the program began. This next slide lists the four products that ACE currently offers. Three of the products offer more renewable energy than what is required by the state, layered on top of a basic product that meets state requirements. That additional renewable energy is represented here by the green bars. This first product, the local green option on the left, is the default option. Anyone who opens an electricity account in Arlington will automatically be enrolled in this option, which offers 11% more renewable energy than what the state requires. The customer can then choose to pay for more renewables through the 50% or 100% options, or opt down to a fourth basic option, which simply meets state requirements and is the cheapest of the four options. All of the additional renewables are categorized by the state as Massachusetts class one renewables from local solar, wind, anaerobic digestion, and low impact hydropower sources. On this next slide, I want to emphasize some of the program successes. We have very high participation, about 16,000 accounts, or about 75% of all accounts in town, and many people have opted up to the 100% and 50% options, about 1100 in total as of January. And this is due to the success of our opt-up campaign led by community volunteers, which has encouraged a 60% increase in opt-ups compared to our last contract. And as I mentioned, the cumulative savings through the program are significant, a total of $2.3 million, which is on average about $153 per account. The environmental impact is also significant. Customers have purchased more than 15.1 million kilowatt hours of additional renewable energy, enough to power 2,600 average Arlington homes on renewables. Here I'd like to offer some considerations for the upcoming contract renewal. Our current contract expires at the end of November of this year, and we are in conversations with our consultant around the upcoming bidding process, and we expect to sign a contract in April or May. After the bid, we will come back to the select board for approval, and the town manager will sign a new contract. We have the opportunity to select a default rate of renewable energy that is higher than that current 11% default rate that I mentioned. And the Net Zero Action Plan, which the select board endorsed in 2021, advises the town to exceed the current 11% default for the upcoming contract, and achieve 100% renewables in the ACE default in total by 2030. For comparison, our current 11% default level yields a total of 31% renewables, consisting of the 11% on top of the 20% state-required renewables. So we have a bit of a ways to go to get to our 100% goal. Fortunately, we will have at least two additional contracts to raise the default level prior to 2030, as these contracts have typically lasted, as I mentioned, two to three years each. I want to note that the market, as we know, is volatile right now due to the global pandemic and due to geopolitical conflict. So it is likely that the cost of that ACE basic product will increase in the next contract. As a reminder, that ACE basic product is that lowest cost option for our program that I showed before with the 0% additional renewables. Unfortunately, we cannot estimate what this cost will be, given how volatile the market is. But what we can say is that this rate will be competitive with the utilities rates, and we can estimate the cost of the additional renewables in the default, the 50%, and the 100% products that I also reviewed before, which are layered on top of that ACE basic product. Right now, for example, our current 11% ACE default cost the average residential participant an additional $19 per year on top of the average cost of electricity, which right now is about $600 per year for the average residential customer. And estimates for our upcoming contract indicate that every additional 5% of renewable energy adds around 10%, excuse me, $10 per user per year. And I'll talk about these cost estimates in more detail on this next slide. So to inform our discussion of the default rate right now, this slide shows cost estimates for the upcoming contract for only the additional portion of renewables. So these figures are the additional amount above what a participant would pay if enrolled in just that ACE basic product, the cheapest option competitive with utilities rates that all participants could opt down to at any time. The first column here is the percentage of additional renewables. Right now, again, we're at 11% for our default. So this table is showing options ranging from 15% to 35% just for discussion purposes. That second column is what the user would pay on top of the ACE basic option. And the last two columns are the total amount of renewables factoring in state requirements in 2025, which is likely around when our next contract would end, and 2030, which is when we need to meet our 100% renewable goal. And what I flagged here are two potential options just for discussion purposes, a 20% default level in that first column would yield the total of 60% renewables by 2030. And we'd be about a third of the way to our 100% goal because we'd have two more contracts to increase the default level by 20% each. A 30% default level now in the first column would yield a total of 70% renewables by 2030. So we'd be halfway to our goal and would have two more contracts to make up the remaining 30%. Last, I'll just note that it's also possible but not guaranteed that we could see additional increases in the state requirements, which would increase the totals in the last columns here. So with that, I will conclude my presentation and turn it back over to Adam. We also, I believe, have our consultant on the line to answer any questions. And I thank you all for your time and I look forward to this discussion tonight. Thank you very much, Ms. Fox. Mr. Chapter Lane, would you like to add anything? No, I have nothing to add to that excellent presentation, but happy to answer questions. And I know as I discussed with the chair prior, I do think there's members of the public who may have comment and question as well. Okay, so I'll turn to the board if there's any questions now and then we'll hear from the public and then we'll see if we can have a vote at the end of the presentation. Mr. Hillman. Thank you. Thank you for the excellent presentation for your good work. Can you help us understand, you know, the table of potential costs with the percentage increases is very helpful. Can you put that in context with what we think the market rates will be? And, you know, I guess what I'm looking for is do you have, I know that this is speculation, you know, that this is, there are no guarantees in this market for the REX, but where do you think our extra class percentage target would be your best guess to where, you know, to where that would be put us at parity with where the market rates are, so that we're, it wouldn't be necessarily costing consumers more than if they weren't in ACE at all. So, if you want to take a crack, tell you. So, I would actually differ specific questions on market rates. If Patrick, from Good Energy, our consultant is on the line, I just think he will be able to speak a little bit more specifically to those estimates. As far as I understand from him, we can't actually know specifically what the market rates will be, but I think Patrick might be able to say them more here, so. Yes, hello. This is Patrick. Hi. Good evening. Yeah, thank you. So, yeah, I think Talia laid it out well. So, we've been working as the town's consultant since the program launched, and effectively, every time we're going out to bid, we're sort of working in whatever the market conditions are at that time, and looking to strike at an optimal time and lock in a fixed price that's stable, and that we believe will have savings. But as Talia noted, we, because the utility set their rates every six months, things can really change a lot in each six month period, and as you saw in that chart, that's why we have that variability up and down. So, you know, I think if you had looked back over the previous contract, this current one that we're in right now, the Ace Basic product is saving your average user something like $45 a year, and as Talia noted, those extra renewables right now are costing around $19 or $20. So, you get a sense that you're paying, we're overall coming out ahead. And we're not unfortunately in the business of forecasting that the future rates, if we did, it's kind of like the stock market, if we knew exactly where it was going to head, we'd be probably on a beach somewhere. So, I think what we've found is, you know, your 11% rate today is at a rate that's been sort of a high degree of likelihood, you know, of being lower than the utility still. And the more you increase that, I think it's more about sort of the probability that you may end up paying more. So, I think moving to something, I think we would say moving to something like, you know, that 20% rate that Talia mentioned would, I think, would still keep you in a pretty good probability of having savings. If you were, you know, looking at maybe above the 30%, that might be a little bit more on the edge there. That's actually really helpful given the uncertainties in the market. Do you think that, you know, if I were to ask you, again, your best projection, you know, we know you're not in a fortune telling business, what are our best shot at if we wanted to break even? Supposing our priority was to say that we want to keep it competitive, not necessarily be less expensive than market, but for the sake of the climate, you know, trying to try and really maximize that. You mentioned 20% of one end and 30% of the other end would 25% be a reasonable ballpark if we wanted to try to keep it about break even. I have to say I'm hesitant to add that, but if I could, I think that, you know, Talia laid out the benefits of this program really well, and particularly as we move into an era of increasing volatility. And I think we're seeing, you know, there are, as Talia mentioned, the geopolitical issues happening out which are part of that volatility, but another, I think we really think that that volatility, it has definitely increased since the program, you know, traditionally started. And we think that's really here to stay largely because the world is going through an energy transition, you know, decarbonization efforts are really ramping up around the world. And that itself, you know, these types of major transitions themselves have volatility as we take, you know, major steps forward and sort of backwards here and there. And the other thing is natural gas now in New England, in the winter, we get the sort of the last bit of natural gas we need from liquid natural gas that's shipped in. And because we're constrained on the pipeline. And what that means is that those ships can go to really any port around the world. And so we're now competing in a global market for natural gas. So there are a few of these factors that suggest the volatility is here to stay. And I think that really underscores the value of these programs in providing a fixed and, you know, stable price through that, even if maybe it's a little bit higher on average or it's a little lower, but doesn't quite hit that mark. We have still, I think, yeah, had that stability. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, no, and I know I've been trying to pin you down on something that can't be, but I think what's been useful to me is your answers to those impossible questions because I think it provides some of the context and the way we need to think about it. So I appreciate it very much. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Okay, thank you, Mr. Helmut. And Patrick, just for the record, if you could tell us your last name. Oh, thank you. Yes, Patrick Roche. Okay, thank you. Any other questions? Mrs. Mahan? A few of my questions really, Mr. Helmut, covered. So I'm going to try not to re-ask them. But we're talking about this right now and talking about establishing a default rate. Did I read the materials correctly that we have another one or two opportunities where we can revisit the default rate before 2030? Correct. So we end up executing contracts for the best price, and getting the best price means sometimes the duration varies. So the first contract was about two years. This most recent contract, I believe, was 33 months or 34 months. So that will play out when we get bids in the upcoming weeks. But the overall point is that somewhere within that two or three year timeframe means we probably will do this, including this time three more times before we get to 2030. Okay. And the reason I'm kind of putting that into play of my thinking is not really sure, just reading my limited financial expertise in terms of the economy. I won't even go into stocks and everything like that. But I'd like to do this. Where I'm coming from is that we start off incrementally slower, slowly, not slower, slowly understanding that unlike when we were stuck in Neswick or the Nifty's variance, it's a 15 year decision and you're stuck. And I understand, I guess the only question I'll repeat that Mr. Helmuth has already asked is, where you factor in there, I think it said something, every 5% or 10%, is every 5% or 10% is about, you have in the materials, a $10 per year projection. So is that 5% or 10% is an estimated $10 per year? And in my hearing that I really can't hang my hat on that because you're saying, I don't want to say you have no idea, but. Go ahead Mr. Chaplain. I think this is like the difficulty in predicting what's going to happen in the future. No, no, well they put it in there. So if it's in there and you're asking me to make a decision, if it's just kind of baseless and you just tell me don't use that, then I won't use that. And I'm not trying to be sarcastic or anything, but I look at the information provided, I'd like to get to the maximum that we can, but also recognizing, you know, the times that we're in. So that what was provided, should I hang my hat on that at all or no, just throw that out the window? That's not something that's really valid, it's just in there. Well I would say, and certainly Ty and Patrick can add maybe more meat to this, is that there's likely more volatility in the electricity supply than there is in the REX, which is the renewable energy. So when Mr. Helmuth and Patrick were just going back and forth, I think a lot of that was about the actual supply. So how much are we paying per kilowatt hour? And that is where all the volatility is and that's the number that's really hard to predict. I don't think Patrick or his team can tell us what REX are going to cost to the dollar for the next eight years, but I think for the life of this next contract, they have a high degree of ability to say that it will be that amount you referenced, which was I think you said $10 for every five percent, because the REX amounts right now are far less volatile than the actual kilowatts. I would say Adam got that exactly right. All right, I'm going to try not to reiterate points. Reiterate, please. So my first line of question was along the same lines of Mrs. Mahan. I looked at that figure and I thought to myself, and I don't want to offend anybody, but I was like, wow, that's not a huge increase here for every five percent we go up, $10 a year. That seems reasonable and it allows us to be a baseline for to look at how far we want to increase this. And it also lets us go, we have to take a vote, then we have to go out and face our constituents and neighbors and friends and family and tell them why we voted a certain way. And I am at least based on the materials I'd go out and I would say, well, this is the numbers that we're provided with. So I guess my question regarding the $10 is not, I don't want anyone to tell me it's exact or they can predict the future, but is if, when we say volatility, is it going to be $11 per five percent or is it potential that it could be $20, be four times as much as the increase that we're seeing. So is the volatility a smaller percentage of that $10 or is it likely to be sort of an extreme percentage off of what we're seeing here? Does that make sense? Oh, I'm sorry, go ahead, Mr. Chapter. You both signaled, but go ahead. So I want to, you know, and to be fair, you know, Talia and I have to spend hours with Patrick to get our heads around all of this. So the volatility is around the price for the electricity supply, which is highly influenced by the cost of natural gas. And the natural gas market is what is so volatile right now. So the price that we are having, that we, you know, that no one can really predict is how much anybody, whether you're part of this program or not, is going to be paying per kilowatt hour for electricity going forward. What we have more assurance of is when we're buying the renewable energy, which is added on or part of what we're buying. We know what that costs. We know what the price of a wreck is. So there actually, there isn't really volatility in that five percent equaling $10 right now. Okay. The volatility is in, again, whether you're just part of Eversource or National Grid or you're part of an aggregation, there's volatility in the actual price of the electrons that are flowing through the wires that we're using in charge to per kilowatt. Okay. And I get that. I'm just saying, is it possible that based on market volatility, the prices could be $20 per five, per every five percent that we increase, as opposed to the $10 figure that we're seeing? Patrick, what do you think about that? Yeah, I think, you know, I think what we would expect, the price of the renewable energy, you know, may move a little bit, but it might be more like $11 or maybe $12. That's the kind of movement we would expect to possibly see. Yeah. So that, I mean, that is the answer that I'm looking for because as long as we, and again, we're not going to hold out anybody to what they say because it's not, you can't guarantee what, you can't affect the market. But I mean, if it's $12 per five percent, and I was just doing rough figures, if we were going from 10 percent to 50 percent, and I was at $80 at $10 per five percent, now we're up to 100. That's still, you know, within a reasonable amount I would see to be able to achieve our renewable energy goals. And then, so we're trying to set, so say we set the default rate at 30 percent, it's currently at 11 percent. Is there going to be any, if someone opts down, does it go from 30 percent directly to zero, or is there in between stage that they can, can they opt down to 11 percent from 30 percent? So the way it's currently set up is there's the default which everybody goes into, and then there's the opts up of 50 percent or 100 percent. So when you opt down, you go down to zero additional, but you still are getting the renewable energy that's currently required by the state to be provided by any electricity supplier. So you don't opt down to zero percent renewable energy, but you opt down to zero percent extra renewable energy. Is there, if we increase the default, and someone says, all right, you know, 30 percent is a little more risk that I want to take. I'm going off to zero percent because this is what's on the front of us. Is there a, an option in between zero and 30 percent, or is it just either the 30 percent's the default, and if you opt down from the default, you're down to the zero percent additional? Mr. Chapterling? Oh, no, Mr. Go ahead. Go ahead. I think I'm going to ask Patrick a question. My concern would be whether or not that would impact the aggregation plan that's been approved by the state. And I'm not sure we could do that without, without opening a whole multi years long process with the state again. Yeah, Adam is spot on. So the aggregation plan that's approved by the Department of Public Utilities specifies a number of options. It says that your default product can have more renewables than required, and you can have these optional ones that go up. And also says you can have one that has no extra renewable energy. So there's not really, in the way the aggregation plan is written today, there's not space for some sort of middle ground between the two. And I think also what we've found is the basic is that where we, the basic as we call it, it's just been really helpful to, it's in fact, it's even more sort of beneficial that the higher your default option is just so that there's a kind of a place for everybody. And also we don't have too many choices. And sometimes you can have that analysis paralysis. There's so many choices. So I think for this renewal, particularly we are, we are, we only have an up to down that goes to zero additional. Yeah, I'm not advocating to have an in between option. I just wanted to see if that option, the 11% would disappear. So that's fine. Thank you, Mr. Hurt. Mr. Diggins, did I saw your hand go up earlier? Did you, I don't know if you have questions now, if you want to defer? No, no, I'll ask some questions now. Thank you, Mr. Chair. None of these I think will be repetitive. And feel free to give me as short answers as you want. I'll just make a comment though and maybe you can chime in on this. My sense, my sense is about with renewables. I mean, if anything, the risk change would be to the downside as we get better at producing the renewable energy. I mean, my sense is that it gets cheaper means so that, that I think that we might actually end up seeing that instead of it being, you know, $10 per five, five percent, it might actually be lower. Agree, disagree? That's all you Patrick. Yeah, I think, I think it's a great question because on the one hand, yes, renewables are getting cheaper every day as we scale up. On the flip side, all of our states in New England particularly have renewable energy standards that are increasing every year. So the new renewables that are coming on are cheaper than the old renewables and increasingly cheaper than even natural gas. But the total demand for renewables is increasing at a rate that's pretty equal to that. So effectively, we're still, generally, we're still looking at sort of increased cost for renewables. But you're right that the new stuff that's coming online is getting cheaper. Steve, all right, so that's an interesting problem to have. I mean, so as we increase the demand on the new renewables, the price goes up. But hopefully that will increase the incentive to create more new renewables. That was insightful. Thank you. So what are the communities doing? I mean, I saw in one of the letters that Newton went up to 80%. Do we have a sense of what other communities are doing in terms of how much mean they are increasing the minimum? Bye. Yeah, I can start with that. Yeah, Newton is probably the one of the outliers in the state. They added 62% on top of the states 20%. And that gets you to about 80%. And yeah, the state's at 20% next year, so this year, sorry. So let's see. Somerville launched their program about the same time, or really the same time as Arlington. They are looking probably at the 15, 20% range. They have 10% right now. I think what we've seen is Arlington was one of, along with Somerville and it was one of the first to do 5% back in 2017, which was like, can we do this, 5%? Can we do this? And the answer was yes, we can do it, which is great. So then most, Arlington and Somerville, Melrose was similar, doubled to 10 or 11% in your case in the renewal. And then most other communities have kind of followed suit. So 10% is sort of the new around the state for these green aggregations, 10% has kind of become the new norm. You've definitely got a few communities who like Bedford recently went up to 20%. Westboro is up at 20%. You're seeing sort of like the leaders now, or like they're sort of like, you know, 10 communities or less probably who are 20% or above, I would say. Yeah. Great. Thank you. So any sense of the elasticity of what happens as you increase the percentage? Do people tend to drop off as we increase the minimum? And if so, do you have a sense of what that rate is? Yeah, what I could say overall is, and I think Talia mentioned this a little bit in the program, that the program has got actually a few more participants in it now than when you launched originally. And I think what we've seen across our communities is the economic competitiveness of the rate is really what keeps participation up. And because when you don't compete well, that's when third-party marketers start really swooping in or people leave to go to the utility. So I think, you know, we have, yeah, so I think that's sort of the trade-off there is keeping within striking distance, yeah, of the utility rate. And this is a question I think I know the answer to this, but might reveal a gap in my knowledge. For those who have opted into 100%, then anything that we do now isn't going to affect what they pay. Yes or no? And if it's yes, I'm really interested. So we will be getting a new rate for all of the options. We'll have to get new pricing. So we won't be changing. So I effectively, yeah, so everybody, every rate will be, will be getting a new rate that, yeah. Yeah, I understand. But my point I guess is that the, so based on the percentage, like if we go up by 5%, it's $10 a year more. I mean, those who are at 100% are pretty much at their maximum, right? And so now the only change to what they pay is based on the rate. It's not really based on the percentage of the mix that the town determines. Correct? Correct. Okay. All right. So, so, so 1600 or 1100 people in Arlington really won't care what we do with respect to this. Okay, got you. Yeah, well, well, I mean, I would just say preliminarily, I mean, I like the notion of going to 30% mean and then making the next two increases later on, smaller. I like the future boards whether I'm on it or not, me to look back at us and go, you know, guys, thank you very much as opposed to me, as opposed to me effectively kicking the can down the road for longer. I mean, I think you get more bang for our buck with respect to what we're trying to accomplish, with respect to trying to accomplish with global warming and trying to do better by the climate and people coming after us by doing more sooner. And, and so, so yeah, that's where I'm headed, but let's hear from our chair and others. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Dickens. I have a few questions. One on the term of the contract that you're going to, you're going to seek bids shortly and we did 36 months at 33 months last time. And not knowing what the bids are going to be, do you recommend a 36 month period as opposed to going out two years due to the volatility? Because I want to try to kneel down some things that we may vote to authorize tonight. Go ahead, Patrick. Yeah, we, when we do go to bed, we always get terms from as short as a year, you know, out to three years or sometimes a little bit, a little bit longer. What we're seeing right now is that the future years, the future year curves are pricing lower. So, you know, two years going to be cheaper than a one year, three years are going to be cheaper than a two year. So, I think having that ability to go out three years and potentially, you know, even sometimes it can really matter, even extending a month or two can actually, depending on, can have an impact. So, I think having the ability to go, to go long would be, would be good to have that, have that ability. Okay, and one of the, we voted this three years ago and it was probably about 60 degrees warmer than the night we voted it than it was today. We were in the lines hearing room at the time. And one of the real concerns we had as a board is when we set the default rate, we went to increase it, we were concerned about maintaining the default rate because that, what we don't want to have happen is to have a rate that people go back to the basic or up down to the basic if you will. And part of our vote three years ago was, was basically giving the manager discretion to, to find a percent that, that he deems reasonable and sustains membership in the default. And so, you know, we've heard a different number of different communities have, have different percentages until you get the bids back, you won't know where that is. And I'd be in favor, and we'll hear from the public too, of, of giving the manager some discretion on this and recognizing that we want to increase the default. But just like you're uncomfortable answering what's going to happen in the future, it's hard for us to pick a percentage when the bids haven't come back in, but we can give direction to the town manager on that. Just a question on the, on the opt-ups, because right now we have a 50% opt-up and a 100%. Again, this is a discussion we had before and in talking to the town manager, it seems that people, not too many people opt-up to the 50%. You either go all the way up to 100 or you stay at the, what is now the 11%. And, and so Mr. Chapterling, are you looking for direction from us too on the number of opt-ups on, on this, this next agreement that, that may be entered? So thank you, Mr. Chairman. So I, I don't think we would, we weren't specifically asking for it, but we would welcome that guidance. And as you just mentioned, I think the reality is that if we get up towards that 20% or more, it will render the 50% opt-up option somewhat moot or futile in that we will be at or above that percentage. So, you know, if ultimately the board is voting to give me some discretion in exercising a contract that increases the default while protecting enrollment and default, and that via that discretion, we get close to 50% total in the default, I think we would likely try to move forward with a plan that only has the 100% opt-up. And if the board endorses that, that would be helpful to know. That's all the questions I have for right now. So I think at this point, why don't we hear from the public and then we can see if we have any motions. Sure, the first person I'm going to throw is Susan. Yeah, I'm going to have Susan identify herself. Okay. Good evening. Hi, good evening. Yeah, if you could just identify yourself for the record and for the public, and sorry, I should have said this earlier, for the public comments, if you could limit the comments to three minutes or less, we would appreciate that. Thank you. Thanks. So my name is Susan Brau, the RAU, and I've tried to limit this to three minutes, hopefully I can. I'm from Warren Street in Arlington, and I'm here in strong support of increasing ACES default rate to as high as we possibly can go, even higher than what was presented in the materials that was made available to town meeting. I understand, like Ms. Mahan mentioned, that the price of everything is going up right now. It's really a terrible time to be grappling with the utility pricing decision. Food costs are rising, gas costs are rising, streaming platforms like Netflix and the Amazon are rising, and I'm sure like putting on another pricing consideration for Arlington households may feel a little insensitive, but it might be insensitive. Even while I was talking to town residents about this ACES contract, I kept wishing that this negotiation was happening at a different time before inflation became such a factor for everyone. And especially before increased prices to cold, I'm angry that gas companies and Netflix and Amazon kind of beat up the people's pocketbooks on this one, because those companies like Netflix and Amazon aren't as sensitive to Arlington residents as I know the town manager is, I know the sustainability manager is for Arlington, I know the board members are for Arlington. They've worked in a really healthy profit margin on all of their price increases, so while we're worrying about the environment, they're going to be fine with the margins that they've added to all of their pricing for groceries and gas and all of that. When I look at the price increases for the default range, it looks like the increases that we're worrying about are maybe like 30, 40, 50 dollars more per year to make our electricity sustainable, but that's really not a lot when we think about it. When we think about the increase that Netflix or Amazon is asking for, we're right in that area. I think if we talk about the really bold increase for Arlington, when I look at the town's chart about pricing and it talks about a 5% increase in the default level may cost Arlington households $10 on average per year, that means if we reached for 100% renewable energy by 2025, it might cost the average household about $140 more per year. It's just per year to get to that 100% rate, which really doesn't feel like that much to me. So even though I know that we're talking about a smaller default, I really want to put this in perspective that we reached for the moon, what that might mean. You're just over three minutes now, so if you have a sentence or two to wrap up on, that's fine, but otherwise... No, I appreciate that. So I appreciate that. I'm really not flippant about the cost of $140. I know that that's a stretch for some people, but I really want us to be very bold in this decision and think about it in terms of all the other costs that we have in our household budgets. Thank you for your comments. Good evening, Mr. Lenov. Good evening. I'm Alan Lenov. For the past two years, I've been in a group of volunteers working to publicize and promote the ACE option to choose 100% local renewable electricity. We've used several approaches to spread the word, including distributing over 150 yard signs. I've delivered over 100 of them myself. My motivation to spend time promoting ACE comes from being aware that we're on track to leave our children a severely damaged world with enormous costs for them to bear. I think you hear a lot about flooding in East Arlington already. Rising sea levels threaten to make the flooding much worse and affect many more properties. Though our efforts to encourage people to opt up to 100% have been very successful, as Talia talked earlier, in comparison with other towns that have similar energy programs. But with all our work, the vast majority of ACE customers are still at the lower default percentage. Most of those people have not made a decision that the default is right for them. They simply haven't tuned in or they're confused about electricity choices or they just have not gotten around to finding the opt up form and filling it out. We need to make rapid progress toward getting our town to 100% renewable electricity. And to get to our goal of 100%, we will at some point have to go beyond aiming to match or beat the ever source price. I believe that we should raise the ACE default rate to 30% over the state minimum with this next ACE contract. And I ask that you endorse taking that step. Thank you, Mr. Lough. Good evening. This is Ryan Kapolsky. I live on Summer Street in Arlington and I appreciate the opportunity to speak tonight. I'm actually here this evening as a member of the Clean Energy Future Committee and specifically I'm the liaison on the committee to work with town staff on the action item in the net zero action plan regarding getting us to 100% renewable electricity by 2030. I've also been on the energy working group since 2010 or maybe even earlier. So I had a small hand in helping the town establish the ACE program back in 2017. I want to start by just expressing my appreciation to the select board for continuing to support all the town's efforts around energy efficiency, clean energy and climate resiliency. I've worked on this my entire career and it's great to live in a town where the town is leading on these important issues. I think you've already heard from a couple of members of the public, you'll hear from a bunch more and you've heard from our town staff around the options. Reducing our emissions from electricity is one of the most important things we can do to meet our climate goals and it's actually the ACE program is actually one of the most cost effective ways to do that. We're talking a lot about cost but this is actually a fairly cost efficient way to achieve emissions reductions. So I would just encourage you to be as bold as you can as you give guidance to the town manager and to the sustainability manager. I'm actually very confident we'll get to 100% by that 2030 time frame as we implement ever higher levels but I'll also point out that it's the cumulative emissions that matter. So it's not just the annual target but actually the total emissions that go into the atmosphere. So the more aggressive we can be now, the more impactful our decisions will be. Thank you very much. Thank you. Good evening, Ms. McIntyre. Hi everyone. Sorry I'm a little bit dark today. My name is Patty McIntyre. I'm a member of Mothers Out Front and I'm also co-coordinator with Sue Rao who spoke earlier on Mothers Out Front's ACE campaign. When I was thinking about what I was going to say tonight, I came across a newspaper article that I thought was timely and important. I don't think with three minutes I'm going to be able to quote some of the items in the article but I'll just mention it and mention some of the points that struck me. So in yesterday's New York Times, Thomas Friedman wrote an opinion piece on how to defeat Putin and save the planet which I think is very timely and he talks about how we need to get off our oil addiction and what it means for the world economy. He talked about hopeful things, things that we can do, solutions but a couple of the things in his opinion piece struck me and one of the ones that he mentioned was that climate change has not taken a time out for the war in Ukraine. Have you checked the weather report for the north and south poles lately? Simultaneous extreme heat waves gripped part of Antarctica this month, driving temperatures there to 70 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the average for this time of year and areas of the Arctic making them more than 50 degrees warmer than average. That really struck me and it scares me and it scares me to read about wildfires on the west coast and hurricanes and floods and tornadoes and all of the terrible weather that we've seen over the past many years. So sometimes it makes me want to crawl into bed and pull the covers over my head and sometimes I just want to watch Netflix that Sue said is so expensive but I can't do that. I have two kids, two young adults and I need to try to do everything I can to help. It's why I joined mothers out front and why I urged the town to take bold action for the ACE program by raising the default as high as possible. Thank you very much. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening. My name is Amy Anzac. That's A-N-T-C-Z-A-K. I've been a resident of Arlington for eight years and I'm here as another member of mothers out front and as a mother of two young children. I have seven year old twins. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. I can vividly remember when I realized how dire the climate crisis was. It was 2018 and the United Nations IPCC report had just come out that said we only had 12 years to make pretty drastic systemic changes before the effects of climate change became irreversible and that hit me like a ton of bricks. I remember sitting at the table reading the New York Times article about the report while my kid sat across from me eating a snack dropping gold fish all over the floor and I just thought my god these three-year-olds would only be 15 and 12 years. What kind of future was waiting for them? And unfortunately here we are almost four years later with even less time to make necessary changes and the world continues to use fossil fuels and emit greenhouse gases at an alarming rate. Now as a mom of young children the thing I need more than anything else is time as I'm sure so many of you can relate to. I need more time with my kids to run errands to catch up on work. There's just never enough time but the same is true for climate change right? We are simply running out of time. Today's young people will grow up in a climate altered by our choices right now. Four years ago Arlington faced a choice of whether to adopt community choice aggregation and by choosing to take action we've saved over 10 million tons of CO2 emissions. That's amazing but it's nowhere near enough and the time for small incremental changes has passed. If we want to make sure that our children have a livable climate we need to take bold action now. I urge you to raise the default rate for renewable energy for the town to the highest rate feasible given the crisis facing all of us. Here in Arlington we've declared a climate emergency and we've set a goal to reach net zero by 2050 and that's great but frankly 2050 is too late. We need to reach net zero well before that and increasing the default rate for through the ACE program is the fastest and most efficient way to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. As others have mentioned tonight renewable energy is the cheapest source of energy and as more solar panels and wind farms are installed it will only get cheaper. Relying on fossil fuels as an energy source is not only environmentally irresponsible but it gets more fiscally irresponsible every year and clearly current events have shown us that relying on oil and gas for energy is dangerous for so many reasons. Arlington has been a leader on many fronts and this issue should be no different. Let's show our children what bold leadership looks like and that we did everything we could to make a difference for them. Thank you so much. Thank you for your comments. Okay and while we're waiting how many people are on the list right now? Okay thank you. Why don't we at that for that we'll have the four speakers and then we can get back to our deliberations. Okay good evening. Good evening. My name is Bruce E. Moulton. I live in Crescent 12. I have been a member of Sustainable Arlington for 12 or 15 years and I am co-chair currently of Sustainable Arlington. I am speaking first to say that at our March 16th meeting our group took a vote to ask for the highest possible increase in the default amount of renewable energy just as we did at the time of the last contract negotiation. We think that climate change is kind of like a wildfire and you're fighting a wildfire you don't turn the hose in the opposite direction and we are asking that we turn everything we've got to reducing the amount of fossil fuels producing our electricity and that is by increasing the renewable energy percentage in the default as high as possible at our earliest possible opportunity. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening. My name is Neely Perlmutter. I live on Harlow Street increasing to seven. I'm also a member of Mothers Out Front and I support everything that has been said so far. I will simply add that I am urging you to act as leaders in this fight we are in for really the future of our children. We heard earlier tonight that what towns do matters, what towns do matters to other towns. We in Arlington have been a leader and by increasing the default as much as possible we can continue to push other towns around Massachusetts to raise the amount of default that they see as possible. We also are leaders because we communicate to the market that there is a market for renewables and so we help to increase the supply by sending signals to the market that we care about having renewable energy and last of all we send a signal to our children that we are leaders in the fight against climate change so that as our children look at us asking how we have helped to fight this fight that we are in we can look them in the eyes and tell them how we are leaders in this fight. I urge you to set the highest default possible. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Can you hear me? Yes. All right. Hi everyone. My name is Claire Moody, M-O-O-D-I-E. I live on Richardson Ave. I'm writing as co-coordinator of Mothers Out Front Arlington, Peer School Green Team Lead and also for the mother of two young boys. I too am strongly in favor of the highest default rate possible for ACE. We need to shift as quickly as possible to renewable energy sources so we can meet our net zero plan for the town. An increase from 11% to 20% or even 30% over the state requirement just isn't enough to meet our goals. Show Arlington's leadership in the area and make the time-sensitive shifts we need to make now. Energy prices are in flux for several reasons including the heartbreaking geopolitical conflict in Ukraine. It's the time to invest in local renewables not continue to be dependent on fossil fuels including natural gas. We are a town committed to taking care of each other and I'm proud of the town's work to support households in need of assistance for example including the low-income health home energy assistance program. I know this work will continue and Mothers Out Front can welcome any conversations to ensure all residents' needs are met. Also the 72 pages of letters that you've received in support of a higher default rate for ACE is a strong indication of the support across the town. Please approve the highest rate possible this year to get as collectively as a town on to 100% local renewables as quickly as possible. My family and I thank you. Thank you. Hi can you hear me? Yes we can. Sorry I'm having problems with my camera but thank you for recognizing me and giving me an opportunity to speak. I live at 99 Warren Street. Len Diggins alluded to one letter referencing the action that the Newton's Select Board took and that was my letter and I just want to say that it seems to me that 80% renewable as a default and 60% above the state minimum is something that Arlington ought to be shooting for ought to be matching if not in this round then certainly in the next round and I guess it strikes me that we consider it good that 1,100 households in Arlington are opting up when that's only 7% by my math of the total households in Arlington. I submit to you members of the Select Board that people aren't opting up because people have their heads in the stand and that you as leaders ought to be stepping up the way that the leadership in the town of Newton is doing and recognizing that we're in big trouble here as Patty McIntyre alluded to the article in the Times two days ago said that we're above freezing in the Antarctic and the Arctic both poles and it's winter in the Antarctic right now. It's above freezing in parts of the Antarctic in winter now. I'm not only upset because I'm scared about the future of our planet and our civilization. I'm upset because I'm seeing my own kids. I have two young adult kids and I'm seeing them being even more negative than I am and losing hope and it just seems like I mean I understand that in Arlington we're doing more than most communities right like you know having a goal of getting to 100% in 10 years that's great that's more than most communities but it seems to me that we ought to be up there with Newton because when we look at what is being done at other levels of government and in the private sector there's just a complete abdication from responsibility just to cite two examples of the in the federal government the Biden administration which is supposedly you know introducing this great amount of leadership on climate just decided to replace 165,000 old mail trucks with mostly gasoline mail trucks when the technology is there to buy electric mail trucks right it's affordable the technology is there it's low hanging fruit it would have a lot of symbolic symbolic value and the Biden administration is saying no that's too much of a heavy lift. Excuse me Mr. Hazelton you're you're at about 315 so if you could wrap up your comments please. Okay thank you so I guess what I'm what I'm asking for is for leadership from the town select board to acknowledge that we as a progressive community need to be way out in front not just better than Summerville. Thank you. Thank you very much. Can you hear me? Yes good evening Mr. Hanlon. Thank you. My name is Patrick Hanlon I live on Park Street in Precinct 5 and I'm a town meeting member of Precinct 5. I submitted probably about three or four pages of the 72 pages of letters that you already have so I don't really need to say all that much orally I just wanted to try to focus in on some background assumptions of much of the conversation. The first thing I think that that the people who've talked to sent you the letters if you've talked tonight have at least provided some degree of security when like Mr. Heard you face your constituents and explain what it is you decided to do you're just as apt to have people applauding your leadership if you are bold here than people questioning your fiscal responsibility so I think that should be reassuring. Second is I think that Len Diggins is exactly right that not only will future boards but Arlington will thank you for being aggressive now and front loading the changes that need to take place. As Mr. Patofsky told you the key thing is not whether or not you get to 100% by 2030 it has to do with cumulative emissions and if you get get there sooner rather than later the value of cutting those emissions or of cutting the amount of emissions that ultimately are are done because of what the electricity you're buying are more important. Basically when you're dealing with climate change back loading the solution is almost never the right answer and so you need to sort of take into consideration that acting soon is really important and maybe more important than how much you do all together. As is frequently said winning slowly is another word for losing when you're dealing with this and therefore being bold now and doing as much as you can now is something that that is valuable. If we were dealing with steady energy prices this would have a this conversation would have a slightly different tone. There's a certain degree of caution and anxiety that is created by all of the uncertainty that there exists in in the market which is relatively less stable now than it has been in the past. It's an ironic thing because if there is a problem later on it's likely to be not because of the instability of the the instability of the of the renewable the REX it's the instability of the underlying amount if if there's a sharp inflation in the electricity price for example the base electricity price the REX will be relatively cheaper compared to the underlying price. So it would be a good thing to sort of be a little nervous about being nervous and to think that it's time really to to knuckle down and to do as much as you can now. I know it can't be everything but it can be a lot and you should be as courageous as you can bring yourself to be. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. And before I turn it back to the board if I could just we know that the opt-up to the 50% and the 100% was about 7% but what's the breakdown currently between those who selected the fault rate versus the basic if you have it. I think I do have that handy or Talia do you have that. So I have the number of accounts in the oh and so you're asking the default versus the basic is that right. Yes. Okay I have Patrick I have here the 150% options. Yeah so I've got the basic we have a little over 1% I think we have about 170 participants in there. Okay. Thanks Patrick. So 90 if my math is right 92% selected the fault rate then 7% who walked up 1% of select the basic and 92% selected the fault. Right. That's right. That's work. Yeah. Okay. All right. Good. All right. So I'll turn it to the board. I know we're talking about you can't tie anything to it but when we're talking about $10 per year at 5% that's at $600 per year for electricity. I'm assuming can somebody give me the range or give me if you're at basic versus 100 approximately what your yearly bill is right now because I'm assuming it's probably more than 600 more times than not per year. Do you understand my question if I can get the range of I know you picked for $600 a year it's about $10 don't hold us to that but can you give me a guesstimate range of what the actual participants yearly electricity bills are. Yeah. Mr. I could I could start to jump in. So with in the current contract it's if you were going to from the basic to the 100% it's somewhere around $170, $180 extra a year. So that's on top of that say 600 base and what is also helpful to know is that 600 is for the supply portion of the bill. So there's also the delivery portion that just ever source and that's about the same amount it's about another another 600. So yeah. Thank you that's that's what I thought and I want to ask the chair the vote tonight and I'd like to be aggressive and set a higher percentage and I'd like to be compared to when other communities are contemplating this Allington sort of be in the forefront although I don't know if we can get to the Newton 80% here tonight I'm not advocating for that but am I correct in understanding that the vote that or am I incorrect that the vote tonight is to approve and authorize the town manager the sustainability manager along with the consultant to set the what I think I'm hearing from my colleagues and myself the most high aggressive rate versus us saying what that rate is tonight. Given the uncertainty that's that's what I think would be prudent for for us because the town manager and the consultant aren't going to have the bids in yet. I can read what the actual vote was from last time maybe just to do and again last time there was a concern about savings in the program. I don't think you're hearing that from anybody here tonight. We're really talking about increasing the percentage of renewables. So the last time we authorized the town manager to enter a 36 month contract. I'm going to at that time there was a goal to maintain town savings. I don't think that's going to be on the table anymore over the length of the contract. But here here's the part that I think is relevant in increasing the mix of renewables to a percent that the town manager finds feasible and sustains our membership in the default. Now I think we could provide a range. We want it no lower than this maybe have a goal on the upper end and give them some flexibility there depending on what happens. But again open that up to the board. Mr. Helman. Did you have anything further Mrs. behind on that or no I'll make a motion in the somebody else does if it doesn't get made. Yeah I don't have a motion but I think I just want to you know I've traveled from starting this discussion a few weeks ago thinking we should preserve savings. And I've come out of this realizing that you know I think a lot of people have asked us to to raise it to the maximum. Well the maximum will be 100 percent. But I think that we have to be honest that that would almost certainly have an effect of getting people to just drop out you know and drop down to zero. So I think the real maximum for me is that whatever the level is that will preserve participation. Because if we go to 100 percent we could lose more renewable general utilization than we gain. And I think it's really important for the public to understand that that's the parameter that we have to respond responsible for. If the town manager and our consultant and Ms. Fox felt like we could do 100 percent now and preserve participation I'd be there. You know I think there's a lot to be said for getting ahead of 2030. I don't know you know and that's where I think we need their their expertise particularly since we know of the bids. And the last thing I just want to say Mr. Hanlon referenced his letter and I think it was a wonderful letter and the most wonderful part was the last line where he said we're urging us to resolve uncertainties in favor of the climate. And I think for me there are going to be edge we're talking about the edges here. There are going to be uncertainties and where we risk. I want to risk in favor of the climate. And I think I'm really comfortable talking to our constituents and saying that that's what we did. I don't know where the number is. I want it to be high. But that's kind of how I'm thinking and I will leave it to those of you who've done this before to formulate a motion. Mr. Hurt. Thank you Mr. Chair. Yeah and again to Mr. Hanlon's point that he made in sort of along the same lines of what my colleagues have said I'm certainly aware that I think the residents want us to be as aggressive as possible with the amount of renewables that we put in the default rate. And I 100 percent agree with that goal. And like Mr. Helming said as I look at the increases in the potential fluctuations I mean again I don't want to speak lightly of price increases for people but I'm not I don't look at the price the potential price increases as the barrier to us going to 100 percent or a higher amount. I think it would be nice for this board to say you know we're going to put it 100 percent to show that we're behind fighting the climate crisis. But we also have to strategize when we do this to make sure that not only are we making a statement but we're also affecting the maximum amount of change and the maximum amount of carbon reductions that we can through this program. And so that's the considerations that we have to make that might make this vote a disappointment for some of our residents and that's just something as being an elected official that you have to deal with sometimes. But I mean I think from so a couple of the options that we've seen where we have the four tiers and it sounds like we can go to three tiers. I mean I think we should be aggressive as aggressive as we can be and authorize the manager to be as aggressive as he can be with the amount of renewables that we put in the default rate and then just leave it to the 0 percent that we have to have in there and the 100 percent that we have to have in there because it just seems a little confusing when you have something in between. And with the three rates in my mind I'm thinking that we would set it around 50 percent that might be too aggressive based on the contract that the manager has to negotiate from ourselves. But I mean I think we do have to put some sort of so I would advocate given the manager guidance for three a three tiered rate system and put a range of 30 to 50 percent based on and say whatever he is based on his negotiations within that range what is the most beneficial contract that he can negotiate on behalf of the town. And in the third tier so that would be the basic default and 100 percent that would be the okay. Mr. Quick question. Sure. Mr. Heard is the 30 percent 30 percent is that inclusive of the state minimum or on top of the state minimum which is around 20 percent. So I was looking at the rates as we had it here with the 11 percent so on top on top of it. Yeah. I'm sorry. Mr. Chair. I again I look at the range from zero. So the state minimum is 20 percent. I'm looking at zero to 100 from from that perspective. Yes. So that would be the 30 percent plus the 20 percent. Okay. All right. Any other comments? I have a couple on Mr. Diggins. So well thank you Mr. Chair. I mean so it's not at all clear to me that even if we you know well first off me what is the maximum that we can raise it by. I'm not sure to whom that question is. I imagine see the atom or one of our guests. Mr. Chapelle. Are you asking I mean are you asking could we go to 100 percent if it was the will of the board. Well no I'm just wondering what what what. So the state next year or at 23 is going to be at 20 percent. So then for us to get to 100 percent it would be 80. We'd be plus 80. Right. The state goes up by 2 percent a year. By 2 percent a year. Okay. Got you. Got you. So then so then but when we make our contract we are going to be locking in a percentage or does that percentage fluctuate or change as the state steps up. We would lock in our percentage but then be the beneficiary of step ups in the state program. But our local percentage would be locked in at 100. I got you. I got you. I mean so so if we go the maximum then we would have every incentive thing to do a longer contract which could that's could possibly bring our rates down. Yes. Okay. Well yeah and depending on what the bids actually are when Patrick and his team have good energy comes to us and said today today's the good bid day here are the bids that are in hand 12 month 24 month 36 month whatever is most beneficial. So we get we get bid information before we commit. Is that the deal. We don't have to commit. I thought maybe we had to make a commitment before we went to bid. So ultimately the way that all I can speak to is the way this has played out the past two times and it's been that you know with about one or two days notice the team from good energy will email us or call us and say Wednesday our projections our experts are telling us Wednesday will be a very good day to bid these costs. Can you be available at 11 o'clock. And we will say yes we're available at 11 o'clock and they will come in with you know they'll literally get those bids emailed to them while we're sitting in the room and then based on what those bids are the past two times we've made the decision about what we think we can do for a default under that guidance the board gave with a focus on both in the past providing savings or maintaining savings as well as maintaining as many people as possible in the default right even what the board is the contours of what the board has discussed so far we would sit in that room again focused on maximizing the default while protecting the default aimed at not having people migrate out of the default into the basic right and and on what basis would you be determining that people going to migrate out because that's what my question was about the elasticity I mean it seems like we have no real elasticity data that we would use we would depend again on Patrick and his colleagues at Good Energy looking at what they think market rates are going to be or what utility pricing is going to be and ultimately the way this has played out in the past is the team from Good Energy saying if you go over X cents a kilowatt hour our fear would be you would see a larger number of people migrating out of the default and that's based on just a rough understanding of what their projections show utility rates will be in the upcoming periods and the pictures this hasn't actually been set tonight or with any level of detail you saw in that chart changes every six months right the utility sets their rate every six months it's high in the winter January to June lower usually in what's the summer rate setting period which is July to December so when Good Energy looks at this they're going to try to like look at it across the board and we almost always want to be a winner or at least even in that winter setting you don't want to lose in the winter because you don't want people to leave the program all together and you have an expectation you might not win in the summer because summer rates are always lower because you don't have the heat load and the electricity load at the same time but ultimately with Good Energy's expertise they're going to give us their best you know projection or assumption for where we'll be at a safe number and keeping people in the program all right all right well I think me if we give you discretion to be as aggressive as possible be and it seemingly we're aiming it seems like we're gonna have a floor at 30 you know I'm fine with that and I'll just say one of the way to discuss this is like me right now we're seeing like let's say me if we do the x percentage mean is it's $50 a year mean if we said $500 every 10 years mean it would be like oh my goodness mean that's a lot but if we say $5 a month you know I mean that goes down a little more easily too so I think it's just really what kind of unit time we discuss this and that can make it easier for people to accept so that's it thank you thank you Mr. Diggins yeah so just on that the percentages that that were provided and I was actually happy to hear that the basic was only one percent I mean we know now at 11 percent people are opting down if they're entering the program they're coming in at the default rate at 92 percent and for whatever reason whether it's education whether it's the way the program is presented or people just don't want to go up only seven percent are going up above the default so this room on the default and you know perhaps there's a way to to get the 100 percent up I'm questioning my mind whether there should be a category between the default and 100 but I think given maybe less is better for for this time period and just have a default and 100 percent but it it's I think we've all been struck by the by the comments that we've received and I just notice a big difference from three years ago to today the urgency to do something so I'm just speaking for myself I mean I could support a target of 30 but giving the manager some you know some room depending on on what comes in on the on the on the bids but maybe put a floor too that it it shouldn't be below a goal of 30 but no event less than 20 given where where things are and maybe that's too too broad a goal but I think you have opt ups the nice thing about this program having opt ups you set a default you want to maintain the default rate you want to increase the percentage of renewables and give people an opportunity to go up but that's that's the nice thing about having an opt up provision so you don't want to go too too high and and respecting what happened and good luck to them but I think we want to maintain the default rate and encourage people to opt up and see how that goes in three years from now we can take another look at it that's just my individual comments based on what we found here Mr. Helmuth just a quick question do we know does anyone said for thinking about whether we have how many gradations we have how many would people opt up do they do we have most of them go into 100% mostly go into 50% you know is that just about all 100 I think from earlier thank you okay so at this point we have a motion Mr. Chair just to clarify are you looking to maintain the four options no I was just thinking out loud I thought maybe we should have four but clearly the 50% option has not been well received hasn't been used so maybe it's better to have fewer options so I could I would support your use of three options because I think most people that take the time to go through the process to opt up and look at the actual monetary difference are going to go for the 100% that's why I think we should and if we're going to push the default to somewhere closer to the middle I think it makes sense to have the three yeah no no I agree and I'm looking down the road if three years from now we don't if we find a lot of people still not upping up then I think I would go back to to a midpoint but anyway at this point Mrs. Mahan I'd like to make a motion to um uh authorize the town manager to um establish the ace default rate um amongst the three tiered system um discussed by the board tonight um with a goal of uh no less than 20 percent um um and I don't want to say but up to 30 percent I'd say the goal of no less than 20 percent um but um leave it to the manager that when the bids come in the board would anticipate perhaps 30 percent or higher um but not too much higher um would be our our goal for right now so uh vote to approve and establish the town manager to um set the ace default rate after the bids come in and that process plays out a minimum of 20 percent a goal of 30 percent or more okay thank you can I second that in Mrs. Mahan and just add just the word just wording that with the target of maintaining of setting the rate such that it will it won't drive people out of the system or I didn't say that very artfully but yeah to set the rate as high as possible without causing a flood from the default rate okay Mr. Joe yes um if I wanted to see if my colleagues were willing to set a higher floor what would be the best way to do that would I offer my own motion or ask for an amendment yeah I think you could ask for amendment that's so um if my colleagues would support it I would I would um thinking again about Mr. Handlin's exhortation to to resolve uncertainties in favor of the climate um being 25 percent I would feel better about I'd be I'd feel great about 30 percent I don't know if we're there yet um but um if there's support I I would love for us to try to push it a little bit I'd be happy to do that but I just want could I um ask I did the chair your thoughts of the manager us setting percentages and everything everything is really contingent upon about how those bids come in yes um so I don't want to limit it um I'd be happy to discuss the 25 percent but but that's that even further tie the manager and um Ms. Fox and I'm sorry I'm blanking on Mr. Roche's hands um what do you think yeah I I I think I mean we have a goal of 30 percent and only because we don't know what's coming I think the message to the manager is we'd like to see 30 percent and if it if it's feasible even higher but if if if bids come in and it and it looks like there there could be a drop in the default I I don't want that range to be so limiting to the manager but I so I understand what you're saying but I I think if Mr. Chaplain you're getting a message from us where where we think that the range should be but um Mr. Hurd and again we trust the time manager to handle this contract appropriately we could say not to over complicate this motion but a floor of 25 percent with giving the manager discretion in the event that pursuing to the bids in the advice of our consultants going to 25 percent or higher would cause less participation that's fine I'm whatever we can get back to me a good motion is something that's just general which is to authorize the manager um to negotiate the saddle should default rate we can have whatever we want to that but I I know the manager has heard our sentiments I just don't want to so I'm fine whatever gets us to the vote okay all right um so I think we'll get to a vote if do we have a second on Mr. Hurd's amendment yes okay all right and I think the language that Mrs. Mahan provided you know with that one with that one change and and knowing that's feasibility or diminution in the default is something that needs to be considered I think we're ready for a vote yeah okay so on a motion um made by Mr. Hurd made made by Mr. Hurd now made by Mrs. Mahan seconded by Mr. Hurd attorney hon. Mr. Hurd? Yes. Mr. Diggins? Yes. Mr. Helman? Yes. Mrs. Mahan? Yes, thank you. Yes. It's unanimous vote okay thank you Ms. Fox. Thank you Mr. Roach for your time tonight. Thank you. Item three consent agenda reappointment to the Ellington redevelopment board Ken Lau approval second okay we have a motion for approval by Mr. Hurd seconded by Mrs. Mahan um attorney hon. Mr. Hurd? Yes. Mr. Diggins? Yes. Mr. Helman? Yes. Mrs. Mahan? Yes. Mr. DeCorsi? Yes. It's unanimous vote okay thank you. I'm getting jelly so if anyone's watching me at home I'm only sitting like this it's not body language that I'm frustrated I'm just cold. You threw me off when you were looking at me and you said Mr. Diggins. I thought I was supposed to vote again. Um keeping us on our toes. Oh my lord we still haven't got the ability. We have a lot of quick items on our agenda tonight. Item four presentation and requested adoption Ellington housing plan Jennifer Rait director of department of planning and community development Kelly Lanema assistant director department of planning and community development. Good evening Ms. Rait good evening Ms. Lanema. Good evening. Good evening. Thank you for having us here tonight to discuss the Ellington housing plan um I'm going to kick it off I'm Jennifer Rait I'm the director of planning and community development for the town and I'm joined by Colleen Lanema the assistant director of the department of planning and community development. Thanks Kelly. Thank you for being here. Thank you very much for having us Mr. Chair. I appreciate the support of the manager and the board's time and attention tonight. I'm going to give you an overview sort of a background before we start our discussion so if you'll if that is okay. Sure. Thank you. Following the adoption of the master plan by the Ellington redevelopment board and its endorsement by town meeting in 2015 the department of planning and community development began implementation including moving forward with the first recommendation in the housing section of that plan quote plan for affordable housing by creating a housing production plan. The plan was adopted by the ARB and the select board in 2016 but it expired this past November in 2021. The plan was expansive with many broad as well as very specific goals and recommended actions. We accomplished several but not all of the strategies in that plan which included amending the zoning bylaw to allow for mixed use parking reductions and accessory dwelling units helping the housing corporation of Arlington to develop 48 new permanently affordable housing units providing funds to preserve existing affordable housing including updates to Arlington housing authority properties creating six new affordable homes through our inclusionary zoning bylaw through mixed use development establishing the Arlington affordable housing trust fund as well as seeking funds for the trust through a real estate transfer fee. It was important to update the plan as it has proven to be very helpful as a guide for many of our planning and community development efforts including community conversations rather and education. The housing plan helps us better understand Arlington's housing needs and demand development constraints and opportunities and improves our vision and shapes outcomes for future housing. Additionally the plan helps us to control our 40 feet destiny if you will as it helps the town to add to our housing inventory the subsidized housing inventory which is monitored by the Department of Housing and Community Development. The plan also helps us to address the unmet housing needs of residents who make low and moderate incomes in our community to influence the type amount and location of mixed income and affordable housing and to possibly prevent unwanted 40B development through a certified housing production plan in favor of residential development that complies with local zoning. Due to our prior housing production plan the town currently has a certified plan which allows our CBA to deny comprehensive permit applications that do not align with local needs. We started working on updating the plan for the next five years in late 2020 and as you know that was during the pandemic. We provided a range of unique engagement opportunities to provide us with input throughout the housing planning process. These opportunities went above and beyond the standard required to forums. They provided education and outreach opportunities and helped helped us to meet people where they were at literally at their kitchen tables by providing what was called a quote meeting in a box. We offered that meeting types that meeting type twice attended farmers markets provided an interactive mapping opportunity conductive surveys held forums had interviews and also held a community conversation on fair housing while we worked on a parallel effort to create a fair housing action plan. The Arlington housing plan that is before you tonight once it is adopted by this board will be sent to the Massachusetts Department of Housing and Community Development for approval. The plan is consistent with DHCD's HPP guidelines and the purposes of Chapter 40B housing production plan in that the plan analyzes demographic and housing data for an understanding of where Arlington is today where it has been and where it needs to go identifies local housing needs and how those needs relate to conditions throughout the region recognizes the town's efforts to create affordable housing and how the town could do more identifies housing development barriers and opportunities educates one of our community about Arlington's need for more affordable housing and a wider variety of housing types and lastly guides future affordable housing development to a variety of places in Arlington both along the obvious roadway corridors such as Mass Ave and Broadway as well as across the town's varied neighborhoods. We're excited about the many opportunities that this plan provides and initiatives that are starting to move forward including that the plan will help at the Arlington affordable housing trust fund with the development of its action plan focus funding priorities for the community preservation act and community development block grant program as well as ARPA funding encourage new partnerships and relationships including more opportunities to partner with the Arlington housing authority and to help advance future amendments to our regulations to accommodate redevelopment. I want to thank all who participated in the plan development specifically the housing plan implementation committee and Kelly Linema for her leadership as well as our consultant team Barrett planning group and Horsley Witten group with that I will stop there and turn it back to you Mr. Chair for questions. Thank you so much. Thank you Ms. Wright. Okay I think we are going to have public comments for this this evening but I will start with comments or questions from board members. Mr. Helman? This will seem a little bit out of the blue but some of the feedback we've been receiving from residents about expressing concern about increasing the number of households in town revolves around infrastructure specifically our water and sewer capacity and Mr. Chair perhaps through you the town manager might comment on his opinion and that of of his DPW leadership and staff about the town's infrastructure capacity in that regard if there are any concerns about what is contemplated in this plan and in its targets with respect to that infrastructure. Mr. Chapter? Thank you Mr. Chairman and through you to Mr. Helmuth. So I have talked about this with the DPW director and the primary concern about our water and sewer systems capacity revolves much more around what's called inflow and infiltration and that is where there are segments of the system where water groundwater usually or potentially even leaking water from some of our water pipes is infiltrating the sewer system and thereby creating more flow than can be processed at the deer island treatment plant during a storm event. There's far less concern about adding just daily flow from an increase in the number of households. When a significant project goes forward whether it be something like the Sims project a number of years ago or a matter like the 1165 or Mass Ave project the MIRAC property that this board discussed some time ago now there's always discussion about the water and sewer system to make sure that valves and pressure release valves and other systems are adequate but my understanding is the actual capacity of the system to handle flow especially outflow is not a matter of great concern given the way the system is currently constructed. If there are people now it's let me just see what it's about 915 and we've got a bunch of things on so let's let's do this we'll we'll take public comment later than 945 and if we get them before then great so go ahead Ms. Meyer. Am I speaking? Yes you are. Go right ahead Ms. Preston. Right now. Thank you Mr. Chair. Joanne Preston I'm a commissioner of the Arlington Housing Authority and I have some comments on the housing plan that are made in consultation with our executive director. I want to start off by saying in the 2016 housing plan the Arlington Housing Authority is described as a vital partner in maintaining and increasing housing diversity and affordability. No such description is in the 2022 plan. Instead the housing Arlington Housing Authority is described in a number of inaccurate and negative statements which I would like to ask that are corrected because it's a five-year plan and the plan is used often in funding decisions and I'm afraid we would be negatively impact. There are too many to say in this short amount of time so I'd just like to take the ones on page three. The first one the Arlington Housing Authority has not actively pursued new housing in a long time. That should be replaced with after 50 years of building 715 units of deeply affordable housing for over 1,000 low-income residents. The Arlington Housing Authority is now modernizing its housing stock but at the same time we have applied in the last year for funding to increase our deeply affordable housing. So that's wrong. Two the Arlington Housing Authority lacks resources to manage the properties it already owns. That should be replaced with despite a tight budget the Arlington Housing Authority is able to manage day-to-day maintenance. I'd like to note that the Arlington Housing Authority has an active maintenance plan has been regularly meeting its goals and has tenant participation in monthly maintenance meetings. Three the Arlington Housing Authority manages five public housing developments. Well it also has five condominiums and two small houses. All are under the state requirements for deeply affordable housing that meet or exceed those on the subsidized housing inventories. Four a house and a condominium which are not income restricted. Well they're under the Arlington Housing Authority however I would like to replace it with a house and a condominium that should be included in the subsidized housing inventory as they meet all requirements it's just a matter of submitting paperwork. These corrections should be made and with many more that I don't have time to talk. My great concern is several of these negative comments have already been on the online newspaper and I was unable to talk the the reporter out of them because after all they're part of the formal housing plan and I can imagine as we move forward with the Arlington Housing Authority now on creating new low-income housing units that these negative there are other ones too negative statements about the housing authority will be used in making decisions. Excuse me Mr. Preston you're at about three and a half minutes so if you can wrap up please. Oh my last sentence thank you so I wish we seriously consider the the need to change these comments about the Arlington Housing Authority as it is the largest entity for affordable housing in Arlington and it deserves to be recognized as such thank you. Thank you for your comments. Hi can you hear me okay yeah can you hear me okay if you have a phone if you can twist it because you're you're not you're sure yeah is that any better yeah that's all right thank you very much my name is Carl Wagner I live at 30 Edge Hill Road in Arlington thank you to the chair and to the board for hearing me tonight I've been present at the housing production plans presentation to the ARB and it made a lot of the meetings around this before also I think this plan is really faulty and I hope that people on this call as members of the public will recognize that you five are are only elected political officials who can stop this faulty plan from going through it doesn't mean that a housing plan in general is a bad idea it means that this one which was produced by a consultant who should have known better because the consultant also worked on the master plan would reduce the diversity of housing in Arlington and the production plan was presented terribly to the ARB I'm not sure they even saw the final version they voted on the public did not see the final version which included at the very end reducing single family zoning to make it two family zoning and most crucially to allow three families in this in the two family zones those those versions at least that were not visible to the public that I could see I wanted to remind the select board that the ARB and the planning department were specifically warned by the town meeting 2019 after they tried to put through density proposals that the town needed to be consulted and the people in the town needed to have a say in any kind of density proposals and the 2019 result in town meeting was the density articles were rejected on December 16th 2021 this plan was presented by the consultant to the ARB and the lead consultant said what we're doing by increasing the zoning to make two families in the one family and three families in the two family is we're going to cause housing choice for higher income people who can pay for more housing in prices this housing will increase the cost of Arlington's housing it won't reduce it we don't need to be increasing the cost of Arlington's housing we need to be helping the people who live here we need to reduce their taxes not increase them which this would this proposal would do there are other problems in the plan you can see I'm focusing on the two families and single family and three families in the two family zone another huge problem was that the state requires this plan to take into consideration changes affected in services like schools and the plan gives only cursory time to that finally I know I'm probably running low on time I'd ask you select board members you actually live in Arlington like the people on this call who are concerned about this the planning department head doesn't live here you have to vote today on something that could really really hurt Arlington do you want your names to be attached to something that would would turn Arlington into an urban expensive place I ask you please reject this until it comes back with a much better version thank you very much thank you mr. Wagner I'm gonna see I'm gonna see you okay yes thank you am I here yeah here I am can you hear me yes we can very good before I start we only both my wife and I wish to address the meeting we both got our like put our names in and she's agreed that I should I should speak first and if you would also recognize her at a subsequent time that would be appreciated because we both have thoughts on this problem okay well excuse me going back to the I've been involved with zoning issues in the town of Arlington I'm sure for any anymore longer than anyone else in this this virtual room I guess you could call it going back to my first town meeting in 1970 I stood with the people of East Arlington fighting unsuccessfully on not too bad the first MuGarff project which wanted to plant high rise zoning which would have permitted the MuGarff people to put high rise residential buildings in the swamp a few years later we found out that it wasn't a swamp it was a wetland and you can't really do too much in a wetland so they came back with a 40p which will which ultimately was approved that that will let them put something in the some parts of wetland and avoid local environmental protections but as this the reason I go back this far in history and I've been involved in many many zoning issues in the past 50 odd years is that I've seen a lot of plans and you've come meeting reports and annual reports and this report that report we used to have a newspaper to report of these kind of things and this is the worst one I've ever seen it is not only it has the sort of mistakes that Ms. Freston elaborated on in his first speaker but but it has more terrible ideas and Mr. Wagner spoke about the the elimination of single-family zones that's a real blow against homeowner choice people want to family house have plenty of opportunities in the many two-family zones and the two-family zones are really pre-existing in the single-family district but but people in the single-family district if you're going to do away with it they don't have that choice to live in a single-family district and I don't think that's fair and basically I will this this plan if adopted and implemented to destroy the town of Arlington as we know it now there's some folks appointed uh employees and board members who think that's okay uh I hope that you elected members elected by the people will not think it's okay to destroy our town and that that you will stand up and look at this plan and I hope you've read it and I I hope you find that the many that the many bizarre new crazy ideas that are in there are inappropriate for Arlington remember the the master plan which was worked on not by a small committee and and and by some consultants but by by a large a large group over a period of years uh and approved by town meeting said the only housing we need is affordable housing and senior housing this plan does almost nothing for affordable housing and doesn't even mention the senior house not one mr warden I'm going to have to stop you there you're about three and a half minutes but thank you for your comments thank you mr chairman still waiting for her okay yeah thank thank you can you hear me yes okay great um I let's see I I think also um mrs warden wants to speak I think that's what mr warden was saying at the end okay great um I wrote to you this afternoon this morning I hope you got a chance to read it um I agree with uh mr Wagner and the previous speaker mr warden I just I just want to approach this like I'm a civil engineer and I can't even fathom um the proposed changes without a study of the town's infrastructure so I'm just going to speak to you as um a professional civil engineer and um I don't understand like you know the response from the town manager of infiltration and inflow of course that's an issue um in any sewer system uh and I described in my letter infiltration is like groundwater getting into cracked pipe inflow is um sources that we know say um some pumps going into sewer and that's um yeah that's clean water getting into the sewer and yes um as far as calculating flow um you can't ignore adding additional raw wastewater into the system when the system is old um and and you just can't blanketly you know say it's okay you have to look at it and study each area and it's miles of sewer so I just the report I was I couldn't believe it they only have two paragraphs and it's titled water and sewer and it's titled water and sewer but there's no mention of the sewer and what they do mention about the water is so minimal they mention a project that mwa is doing you know clearly they just pulled it from a website somewhere it's it's so irresponsible um I just don't even know how to emphasize this to you um I just hope that you do read um this section that I'm talking about and then read my letter because I I tried to you know briefly describe how an engineer sizes a sewer just so you know you know and um we you know we literally count the lots okay so like you know you take a street and you look at the zoning and you count the lots so say if there's 50 lots you say okay well how many bedrooms per lock can we expect for a residential area and then if it's a commercial use you estimate it based on what you think the building's going to be used for and this is um standard engineering practice and it's not you know it's it's it works so far right um but it doesn't you know we can't just blanketly change it without consideration and study um so you know if this aligns with the the water system plan for the town and the sewer you know I'm sure there's a sewer plan for the town then let me know and that would give me comfort but as far as I could read in this report there was no information no coordination with the department of public works um I understand like I I think it's just very irresponsible to say okay the only issue is II um if you're planning on changing a neighborhood and I gave a scenario of a certain amount of houses tied to a pipe and sure if you're upstream you're okay but if you're the house downstream yeah yeah we have a number of speakers tonight you're three and a half minutes but I appreciate the written comments and your comments this evening thank you thank you mr chairman Don Seltzer Irving Street um way back in January I wrote to the board with a detailed account of some of the deficiencies in this housing production plan I'll try to briefly summarize these points the state guidelines require that housing plans use the most recent available census data for demographics and housing stuff it's written right there in the guidelines most of the research for this plan was done prior to the release of the 2020 us census data last summer and instead relies upon out of date american community survey data in a moment I will explain why that is significant this plan was also prepared too early to account for the mbta housing mandate which will significantly shape our housing and zoning decisions in the next five years particularly in the ally floodplain a second flaw in this plan is that it promotes the contentious issue of eliminating single-family zoning districts this goes far beyond the scope of what the state requires a plan that addresses developing affordable housing barrett consulting the author of the plan was clear that this particular proposal had nothing to do with affordability but was to promote greater choice among a certain demographic it seems that we do not have a sufficient supply of one million dollar plus duplex condos to meet the market demand an affordable housing plan is supposed to address the needs of those making less than median family income not those making more than 200 percent of am i but the most glaring deficiency of this five-year plan is that it fails to include the required infrastructure analysis on the capacity to accommodate anticipated future growth most notably in our schools our previous housing plan devoted four pages to this type of analysis this consultant has written but a single paragraph which dismisses school capacity as being of no concern based solely upon the 2015 McKinnon forecast and this is where the 2020 census becomes vital Arlington's population is growing much faster than predicted back in 2015 we have already reached a population level that the McKinnon report predicted we would not see for at least a decade or two that 2015 school enrollment forecast is rapidly becoming obsolete it did not anticipate our actual population growth and it did not take into account increased housing growth nor changing family demographics which would result from new denser housing we need a housing plan that takes these into consideration we need to have a clear idea of what actual enrollment growth will be in the next decade and whether we can accommodate it with larger class sizes having to rent portable classrooms again or if we'll need to plan for a new 50 million dollar elementary school that is what we need in a five-year plan thank you thank you mr selter you'll be having a little technical difficulty yes i can can you hear me yes we can thank you so much my name is josephine babiars i live on edge hill road in arlington and i second the comments against this particular proposal i have a concrete example at the end of my road at the corner of edge hill and johnson there was a single family home it is turned into two condominiums the list price for one was one million i think one million thirty and the other one was one million and a hundred thousand it was on a corner so there was a capability of having a different curb cut and there is virtually no yard or any kind of setback it this house was actually in a two-family zone the remainder of my street along with many others in the single family area have yard lots of maybe 500 000 square feet i don't know how you would build with zoning and all of the code requirements a two-family house given access maybe you don't think there would be a need for a uh two driveways but people tend to use garages for storage more than anything else and i don't know what to do with the crowding arlington is a town not a city and i think we lose a great deal by forcing single family zoning into two family i would urge the board to postpone this decision and require additional information about how this could actually work in the town of arlington using the single family zoning areas you propose to change as templates is it possible to have a fire um and ambulance access what about the curb cuts that you would need how is that going to impact the different code requirements do we have sufficient in in addition to the requirements for education and requirements for um the sewers that have been talked about do we have sufficient police protection do we need to increase increase fire protection because of the increased density so i would really urge the board to require additional information before you take this momentous vote thank you very much for hearing me thank you okay good evening mrs warden hello can you hear me yes we can thank you um patricia warden please thank you thank you whatever else i say tonight i want to be clear that this housing plan is a disgrace it will destroy arlington it enabled there is almost nothing in it to help ensure sustainable climate provisions in housing production or to provide affordable housing although the master plan specified that the housing arlington needs is affordable housing and senior housing the report is a blueprint for enrichment and exploitation of arlington for developers land owners hoarding landowners and their heirs it is a mendacious document replete with false statements if you are selected for choose to approve it then you are choosing to condone false statements look at my testimony and to enrich developers and landowners at the expense of taxpayers mega million dollar urban rides and the diverse residents of arlington and those in danger of homelessness and displacement what is the purpose of these hearings and um are these hearings just a survey the report should have and could have recommended for the affordable housing trust fund to dedicate its funds to help the arlington housing authorities mention of its large inventory of serviced affordable units and to enable purchase and renovation of existing market units for use as housing authority units available to those families um making less than 30 percent of area median income that would have brought the housing policy housing plan into affordability requirements compliance with the state right now the housing plan is not compliant and should be rejected as a result we see the affordable housing trust fund now competing against the housing authority for funds without giving any commitment as to how their funds will be used for affordable housing and if they will be used instead for incentivizing undesirable development um such as environmentally damaging 40 b project which are favored by the affordable housing trust fund chair and very ubiquitous for developers arlington now is about to experience a regime change um with a new manager we should make sure that she or he is not settled with this defective plan please do not approve this housing plan in its current form thank you very much uh let me just say that i have participated in the housing policy implementation committee for three years and i now have three minutes to discuss my experience there thank you thank you mrs warden okay so that concludes public comment thank you for the comments and the written submissions that we received uh as well so um and i will look to the board for any further comments questions uh mr hurt so i think there's a lot to unpack with 110 page plan but i mean i would say that this plan is the result of a lot of work in the the town the planning department and residents who have been involved in the process and as you go through 110 pages of recommendations you're not gonna i don't think anybody is gonna read through and agree with every statement that they see in the plan but we've certainly seen what the benefits and we've heard what the benefits are of having the plan in place um so though i don't again i don't think we're here to say that we agree with every word and every line that's been put into this plan but as a whole this plan is the sum of all the efforts in town to look at what our housing stock is look at what our housing needs are what the barriers are and what where we go from here and i i i support the plan and i'd like to move approval of the plan to adopt the plan yep um and again there's parts of the plan that i think one of the most controversial parts that's mentioned the plan that we've heard here time and time again is the elimination of single family zoning and we're all town meeting members and we're all about to take this the answer to that aspect of this plan we're going to hear in the next couple months as to whether or not the town's ready for that um so there are long-term goals here the short-term goals here and some will come together quickly some to will take some time but you know i'm very happy with the efforts of the town with the planning department and our town manager town staff and everyone that i'm sure just about every member that works at town hall has some hand in putting this together and you know i think it is a good statement of what our goals are what our needs are and a path to get there thank you mr hurt mr diggins i'll second that and and having been a part of the process being uh me and as mr hurt said i mean he why it's the straw man in the sense to say it's not perfect but it means we it's a good iteration you know and we will iterate on it again in five years you know and and we will listen to people's um critiques being issues being with it and and and deal with them accordingly mean with respect to how we execute on this plan and then how we formulate the next one so so um as someone would say onward with this plan thank you thank you mr diggins uh mr helmet um yeah i appreciate what my colleagues are saying it is not possible to get a plan of this complexity and to agree with everything in it you know and i think that's not the point of the plan the plan is to give us a roadmap and a menu because we need to address the problem and you know and i think i would respectfully disagree with some of the residents who you know who we spoke with great conviction i think this plan does a lot to to try to do meaningful things to support affordable housing our problem is not a lack of vision in affordable housing it's a lack of tools and resources and a lot of that flows down from the federal and from the state level frankly there's things that we're trying to do with the real estate transfer for you think that would do a great deal towards making some of this possible so i think in fairness this plan contemplates a lot that would do that and i think our staff and in the town work hard on that the one thing that gives me some pause is the single family zoning issue and that's just because we are at a decision point right now i think we're about to find out i think on monday while the arb feels about it we'll shortly find out how time meaning feels about it and although you know notwithstanding what i just said um that we're not going to find out everything that we like and or that we necessarily are ready for it doesn't seem poignant to me that we're at a place where we are going to for good or for ill tackle this issue head on right now and get an answer right now and if this is a five-year plan i kind of want to know um because once we adopted we adopted it's ours and we're saying that we want to do this and again i know you know there's 110 pages in it so i i i don't know i don't know a motion or amendment i'd like to hear i think from from our final member here thoughts on that that's just kind of i'm just pointing out this moment in time that we're at with this particular issue given the community sentiment um and i you know i'm conscious that um you know i've often said to people i said this one was came pending for the seat last year i think maybe all three can that said you know that we're intrigued by that possibility and probably not ready for it so you know i think we just you know we have to grapple with that and doesn't necessarily mean it comes out of the plan um but i'm just putting it out there mrs maher um thank you um and as mr heard um stated in his motion this is to adopt a plan adopt a framework um to replace the plan that's i think existed for five years as this will moving forward we need to have something um i do want to um and and again this is not taking any changes it's adopting a framework anything substantive has to go to town meeting the redevelopment board and then the town meeting and sometimes this select board gets to weigh in on it so this you know this nothing here got approved we adopted a plan a framework i i do want to say one thing um with respect to our colleague on the allington housing authority if i could ask um the planning directive is rate um from from here on and sort of moving forward when we have reiterations of certain parts of um this um housing plan that we've adopted um especially on um two of the points regarding um the housing authority uh if we could just sort of reframe that um in the sense of uh you know the housing authority does have um properties that they're managing um and i don't know if well i think we can moving forward instead of saying you know lacks the proper resources if we could sort of word that is you know is continuously working um for um state as well as town funding for cdbg you know if we could kind of reframe that um because i know with the electrical boxes um with the new roof things like that um with the new executive director with current um veteran colleagues on the housing authority as well as um two new additions of miss preston and miss bedelia that um the board really is you know they've gone to apply for cpa funding they've come to cdbg which miss rate um uh also oversees that and um has been instrumental with miss linema in terms of a last-minute request to that we get did get from the housing authority that cdbg was part of that so we can't ask the consultant to completely rewrite this report but as we do move forward um i would respectfully request that we um not adopted those two particular points word for word from the consultant and we do rephrase them to properly reflect where we are right now i'm not saying um what was said in the past i'm not gonna you know judge on that but um it and that's just you know you know not not a criticism just um i understand where the comments came from you know perhaps two three years ago but um we are where we are right now um and again i want to stress that um uh miss rate and miss linema um have been working with the housing authority um and the more increased capacity as they've been appearing before us in in in different avenues that are afforded to them so sorry i didn't mean to go long in the tooth on that i just wanted to raise that and i know from working with both these women um that you know they're they're definitely in agreement with that because you know we have been working with the housing authority and our colleagues on there and we'll continue to do that so thank you so much okay thank you thank you mrs mahan yeah and i also want to thank miss rate miss linema and in the entire the housing production plan implementation uh committee for all their work there are 42 i believe um strategies that are that that are in the program and i think there's a lot of excellent ones um i share mr helmets concern about the first one which is the allowing two family homes and our zero and our one as of right as a as a near term goal um and i think incremental change is good we talked to miss rate about this earlier and shared some of my concerns and where the arb is going to be talking about this on monday and i know they voted to adopt this plan but they they they also haven't taken a position on the the warrant article to um remove or to allow uh two family housings as of right in our zero and our one and i'm having some difficulty just getting my arms around that in light of the report the arb issued as part of the special town meeting in november 2020 um also following what's going on in cambridge where the planning board um has basically said the end of single family zoning will take long study to avoid a worse wealth gap and that's a concern that the cambridge is dealing with the city council is directing this so i'm at a position where i there's a lot of here that i agree with there's a lot here that things are aspirational i think it's it's good to support but for me i'd like to hear from the arb in terms of what they do on on monday night on this because i i just feel like given where they were and given this as a as a wholesale change um and the fact that this is a five-year program i'd like to see what they have to say to help me consider my vote here and i know this is only one strategy out of 42 but it's the first strategy and it's a near term strategy and i i don't want to be in a position where i voted to adopt this where and then there's a subsequent vote on monday night or get more information and given where we are time frame wise i don't feel like a little extra time um is going to make a difference in terms of when this gets approved and what the what the impact is on um on the plan being submitted and approved so i i that's what that that that's where i am on this right now mr hurt yeah i mean i'm not sure what the timeline is with the necessity of approving this i'm happy to either withdraw or amend the emotion if the board would feel more comfortable tabling this to another meeting um the way i i think and i sort of touched on this and i certainly have concerns as well i didn't want to turn this into a hearing on single family zoning as opposed and i mean i think we're all have a chance to speak on that shortly i mean again this is a set of guidelines a set of goals and i had viewed it as you know it's in there and i think a lot of people have reservations and we'll see what happens with town ultimately you know we'll see how the arb votes but then ultimately we'll see how town meeting votes and it will either be a goal that we had that didn't come to fruition or not um i don't think if we town meeting votes it down again i'm not sure we'll see it in the next five years maybe we will but again if the board would prefer to table this vote to a subsequent meeting then i'm happy to amend my motion well you don't want to once the table the the vote to adopt it okay and put it on another agenda and then go through all this again well i no not the public hearing process well i i think we Monday night we're gonna hear from the arb on it that's what you wanted okay we're gonna i i i think the fact that the time frame is near term for this and and where there is going to be a vote by the by the board that makes the recommendation to town meeting in less than a week it's it's i tend to well i spoke before mr herdman's motion that i i certainly would support that and and again if this was a longer term goal that was in here i think i could probably get my arms around it to to support it but i think there needs to i think we need to hear from the air being um so any further comments mr diggins so me so my understanding is that the rb may approve the plan correct the adaptive plan the air be adopted the plan if i may um mr chair sure the air be adopted the plan at a meeting in january yes and this was and this was was kind of before us on february 7th right correct so so why is it that it didn't come to us at that point in time were we just busy me i was here i'm trying to think there were a number of requests mr diggins and and we had agendas and then there was issues with the consultant not being available so there was delays due to our agenda and then delays due to the the availability of the consultant the consultant was supposed to be here at this meeting at other meetings that we pushed this off i see okay and um and and um so let's say a rb floats down um the two family um the rezoning or or allowing two families in one family what then happens i'm sorry what happens if a rb me doesn't go a lot doesn't piece of information for us and we this was presented to us and and i asked this question when i was in the meetings and i was told well you don't necessarily this is an aspirational document so you don't necessarily have to agree with everything okay it's important for me to know what what i rb thinks on this in the short term where this is a near term goal so it's a piece of information that i'll use and that may help my decision whether i i move to make an amendment to this maybe or or adopt it it's five days away i'd like to hear what they have to say mr hurt just a procedure sorry okay mr diggan did you want to say anything for i'm sorry it's responding to no i'm fine i'm fine i'm done thanks sir just a procedural question so if we make an amendment since the a rb has already voted to approve and adopt this plan if we make an amendment and we approve an amended version does it have to go back to them has to go back attorney hind thank you mr chair the same plan has to be approved by the a rb and the select board otherwise there'll be a discrepancy in them and you have to certify to the dhcd that this is essentially the same plan and what are our time constraints well mr chair yes i'll if the plan director or the town manager may be aware of time constraints that i'm not aware of but the idea is that you submit a plan and while the plan is if you don't have a plan in place you don't have the safe harbor status that it can afford for a period of time so i think that's probably the main concern if i'm mistaken uh the manager or the director uh can can correct me you correct as i understand of it mr council yeah so i get that and i think we have somewhat of a foresight as to what potential 40 b projects we have and there's no unfriendly 40 b's down the pike that we would need that for so i mean again i'm fine pushing it off to whatever i want everyone on this board to be comfortable making a decision and i certainly think it would be in the best interest of the plan to have a unanimous vote if we get to that and if that's what we need to do to get it right then i'm happy to do that again i just i don't know that the way that the a rb will vote will determine my view on single family voting whether they go it or not i we have our own views and we'll all express them if we choose to a town meeting but i'm happy to vote to push it off it doesn't seem like it's time critical to approve it today any further comments okay so we have a motion to table by mr herd that was seconded by mr helmeth um attorney hind mr herd yes mr diggins yes mr helmeth yes mrs mahan yes mr decors yes his name is folk okay thank you uh next item on the agenda is item five review and discussion nasty hcd draft guidelines for mbta communities jennifer rate director department of planning and community development and kelly lineman assistant director department of planning and community development mr rate thank you mr fair um heli is going to present but i'm going to give a little introduction first so thank you again for having us here tonight i'm jennifer rate i'm the director of planning and community development for arlington so we are going to talk about mbta communities the zoning requirements the eligibility and what we understand based upon draft guidelines that we currently have from the department of housing and community development please uh go ahead um so the i'm gonna just one more slide sorry kelly we didn't practice um so the uh the critical thing to understand is that we are we're presenting tonight because we have draft guidelines in place and we also have some eligible uh eligibility requirements that we have to meet which includes this presentation to the board um so what kelly is going to do is walk us through what it means to be to remain eligible for certain types of funding what we understand about those guidelines and she's also going to share with us the different scenarios that we have explored if those draft guidelines were in place and those were the requirements that we had to comply with um we intend to have a very public uh community planning process once we actually know what the requirements are and to potentially engage some assistance with that process through designers and other planners to assist the department and the redevelopment board in putting putting together a thoughtful proposal that would ultimately have to be adopted by town meeting in the future so with that i'm going to turn it over to kelly who will walk us through the guidelines thank you thank you bennie and thank you so members of the board um kelly linema assistant director of the department of planning and community development as you can see here this is the language from the 2021 legislative housing choice legislation it is somewhat broad um basically just saying there needs to be one district of reasonable size within a half mile of a subway station or a bus station that is how as it applies to arlington where multifamily housing is permitted as of right and by family they mean no age restrictions and it's going to be suitable for families with children additionally the legislation requires that this district this multifamily zoning district be um have a minimum gross density of 15 units per acre and that means it's inclusive of street sidewalks open space etc DHTD was given the mandate to come back with draft guidelines and guidance on how how these how this broader legislation could be interpreted and so what they've done is established that a reasonable size to DHTD is a district that is at least 50 acres in total where at least where multifamily development which counts as three or more residential units per per development is allowed by right without age restrictions or bedroom limits in arlington the number um they've also established a capacity threshold and what that means is not on top that's not a capacity for housing on top of what we already have it's a capacity for housing as if there was nothing on the land right now um and this is determined based on for arlington because we are a rapid transit community this is based on 25 percent of our total housing units so in arlington this is our district needs to allow for a capacity by right of multifamily housing for 5,115 units and at least half of the land area of the district is within one half mile of the station so what this also means is that so long as one half of 50 acres one half so 25 acres as long as that is within the half mile radius of a station the rest of the district can extend beyond that station get into that a little bit more in the scenarios and by complying that allows us to remain eligible for certain funding sources by those funding sources we're talking about mass works grants which are a substantial funding source for communities all across the state this is for designing construction of funding for public infrastructure um we're also talking about a smaller pot of funding but still important from housing choice initiative which allows for capital grants um updating master plan planning studies zoning amendments that sort of thing and arlington doesn't qualify for a local capital projects fund um primarily this is really for communities that have gaming or casinos and so we're not eligible for this fund in the last five years arlington has not applied for or received mass works of housing choice initiative funding but i should note that we just completed a contract with we just finished a contract with stan tech for the mass abin ableton project and as part of their scope for this project they're helping us to apply for a mass works grant in june so it's really important that we maintain compliance with mbta communities legislation so that we remain eligible for this funding source um the mass works as i mentioned is a large source of 1.1 million per on average for the 51 communities that they gave funds to last year um we are not currently eligible for housing choice initiative grants but we could be in the next one of two years i'm happy to answer questions about that but i think what most importantly is that the state could funnel more funding through these programs that are tied to incentive based standards in the future so we don't know what other sorts of funding sources they're going to be tied to compliance with helping choice over the mbta communities when we look at whether arlington complies now we really don't so we um we don't have restrictions on family housing but we also don't allow much by right nothing more than two units on a parcel which is allowed in the r2 zone other everything else has to be approved through a discretionary permit process we also don't have a district of a reasonable size within a certain distance of an mbta station or that capacity for 5,115 units although when you do look at the density in our in arlington in east arlington we're not that far from that so you can get kind of a picture of what a density of 15 units per acre looks like for context um the timeline um if you have comments on the guideline which i know we're submitted as part of your packet those guidelines are those comments are due to dhcd tomorrow so i'm glad we're able to get to this presentation today the next steps for us as jenny mentioned we're giving this presentation to you which allows us to submit a letter to dhcd stating that we are maintaining our compliance and in december then we need to notify them that we are not compliant but what this does is it it has us start to work on an action plan for maintaining compliance and and that action plan would be due about a year from now and then in december of 2023 dhcd is requiring that we are implementing the action plan but this means that town meeting would need to adopt zoning by law amendments and so again as jenny mentioned there would be a public process as part of it as part of developing the recommendations and the zoning amendments for town meeting to submit your comments you can do so at mass.gov slash mbta communities we are respectfully asking that ucc staff on any of these comments or provide us a copy of them um as we're going to be working on this going forward it's really helpful to know what people are saying um so that we can we can work with the community and in the development of plans that our community endorsed um the final guidelines will be issued in the end of summer early fall of 2022 and so until that point we're sort of holding off we're sort of done some test pieces to understand size and scope which i'll show you in a second um but we're holding off on those until we receive those final guidelines to really understand what we need to comply with some initial ideas for compliance um we could reduce the development subject to a special permit so we could allow for three or more residential units in select areas um looking at specific districts we could look at structures along or immediately behind mass avenue or thinking about allowing a little bit more by right in districts that are already higher density districts um we also this is a recommendation of the housing plan and a recommendation of the net zero action plan is to create a large 40 r district um and we can get into more details on that if you have questions and allow um two accessory dwelling units by right in single family zones we did want to look at um we wanted to provide the board with sort of a conceptual sense of what 50 acres looks like on the ground and so again this is very conceptual these are not plans this is just kind of trying to give you a sense of what is 50 acres and how much how much acreage would we actually want to look at when we're thinking about that calculus of acreage versus density and number of units so we looked at these three areas here east Arlington which is the one that everybody thinks about when they think about MBTA communities because we are a rapid transit station but also looking at Arlington Heights because the bus station with some minor amendments to the guidelines could actually be qualified as a station location and we also included Arlington Center in this just so that we could get a sense of it's not it's not compliant with the guidelines but if we did want to extend a district in order to get more acreage to sort of think about what could that look like around the center so just for a sense of how big is 50 acres so in east Arlington here this is about a 65 to 70 acre district where more than half of it is within that half mile radius in Arlington Heights this is looking at a really narrow strip of land that's within a half mile radius almost entirely within a half mile radius of the bus station and then extends from the Lexington border almost halfway toward Arlington Center between Arlington Center and Arlington Heights. One thing to note with those two prior examples is that those are pretty low-sized districts and they may not the town may want to consider doing something a little bit larger because we do need to have that capacity for 5,115 units so that capacity in that area may not be suitable based on what residents are looking for and so we also just looked at what if we did something around each of our three business districts. One of the things that the guidelines do allow for is for multi family or sorry for mixed use development so we can include site plan review and encourage mixed use development with commercial on the ground floor so we may want to think about how this contributes to our economic development potential in town. We also can put affordability requirements as part of the zoning and so that's definitely something we would want to talk about with the community. And then our final example here which is you're seeing here is a district that could be between 200 and 450 acres which does bring us down to if you if you had 15 acres per unit that that district size would get if we had 15 acres per unit by right this would this would basically be the size of that the middle strip here but you could consider doing an overlay which would be a set distance from the massive board. I'm going to hand this back over to Jenny but again we're here to answer any questions you might have and we'll keep you informed as we move forward with this process. Kelly. Go ahead Ms. Wright. Yep thank you. Just one one quick note on Kelly's the scenarios that we shared that were for illustrative purposes only and for the purposes of this discussion. We picked up the bus depot as you may have seen that is also not known whether or not that is actually an eligible location. It may or may not be and the guidelines are a little unclear about that so I just want to make it clear that we're we're these are all exploratory and for discussion only and with that I'll turn it back to you Mr. Chair. Thank you. Thank you very much and just for purposes of the presentation I know we have to receive the presentation you mentioned the deadline for submitting comments and the fact that the final guidelines will be issued later in the end of summer or September time period is that okay yes you know I mean so for tonight's purposes we can have a discussion but you're looking for us just to receive this report and offer any comments is that we are just yeah looking to have a discussion with you we you can just accept the report and the conversation but there is nothing for you to act upon tonight as Kelly was suggesting the deadline for comments to the Department of Housing and Community Development for anybody who wishes to comment is by tomorrow March 31st and that of course could include the board. Thank you. Thank you. All right I'll turn to the board. Mr. Herd. I'll move receipt. Second. Okay motion by Mr. Herd seconded by Mrs. Mahan. Any further comments? Mr. Helm? Oh go ahead Mrs. Mahan. Just really not to get into a discussion about it tonight because as the chair and Ms. Ray just pointed out we're in the infancy of this process and we really don't know what it is. I just do want to raise my concerns when I first look at this especially for East Allington and the current Mugar process that we're going through this the way you look at it could sort of fly in the face of that or fly against the prevailing idea for that area down there but having said that until we know exactly what the guidelines are what does what is eligible and can be approved and then if especially I mean basically there's really just two places I can think of in Allington as you pointed out the bus station and our wife and our wife is certainly taking the oak tree development out of it really better assault with the Cambridge side development of it but I'm getting ahead of the actual conversation because I don't know what the parameters of the matrix of actually what the guidelines are what it is the town our municipality needs to fulfill and agree to but also on the on the converse what that opens that area of that town to in order to accept the fund so I'm happy to you know initiate the process I do have some concerns going in but I don't think they're valid right now because none of us knows exactly what the actual legal framework is I just wanted to put that out there which I know you're already have an eye towards looking at that anyways it's not like I'm the only person who's come up with that so thank you Mr. Chair. Thank you Mrs. Mahan. Mr. Helmuth. Just quickly I wanted to express my appreciation for the quality of this presentation even though as my colleague Ms. Mahan said you know we don't know what the guidelines look like it's really helpful to start it helped me understand what this could look like what kinds of decisions that we in town meeting may have to make and what some opportunities there are a lot of information crammed into a very short presentation but the decisions were great and just credit where that's due thank you very much. Thank you Mr. Helmuth. Mr. Diggins. Yes I was on part of the meeting with the META advisory board and we talked about this yesterday you know and the state is really committed to helping communities work with me this HCA you know this is all part of the Housing Community Act you know 2021 and so they are going to really help communities develop the inaction plan at least that's the current plan with the current administration I mean into all of this I mean we toss in I mean a gubernatorial election but hopefully I mean the next administration will stick with this plan because I mean the whole point of it is to create more housing I mean the state is committed to that it realizes the importance of it and it realizes also that different communities are going to have different needs but the goal is to help the communities as much as possible through this process. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Diggins yeah and I also want to thank you both for the presentation and for the materials just where we are relative to the draft guidelines and where we're going forward so we appreciate the presentation and for you sticking around with us tonight I know Monday night you had a late night too probably with the ARB meeting so thank you thank you both very much it's on a motion for receipt by Mr. Hurd seconded by Mrs. Mahan attorney Hine. Mr. Hurd. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Helmuth. Yes. Mr. Mahan. Yes. Mr. Corsi. Yes. Mr. Adams. Vote. Thank you both. Thank you. Thank you so much for your time tonight. Sure. Okay so the good news for the board we're moving on to warrant article hearings however the good news is that what we did the other night because of timing on the agenda we put all of the articles that were scheduled to be heard on Monday because we didn't know what we were going to get through we have completed just about all of them so as I go through this I think we can move through these pretty rapidly the first two the first one article 21 this this was related to Mr. Diggins well what was presented the other night on article 7 and if town meeting votes approval of the study commission this one will not be necessary so we were advised by attorney Hine to vote a will report on article 21 because we will wait to see what town meeting does I think that's what we talked about attorney Hine is that I'm sorry I may have misunderstood Mr. Chair I actually think that you could vote no action you've got a recommendation of action on the other article that article also contains the language or take any action related there too if for some reason town meeting wanted to extend the life of the committee I think you probably could under that article if it was really desperately necessary or you know we could try to revisit the article 24 so I think with the explanation in the comment that the only reason you're not recommending action is because you've received a recommendation is that is that fair to say Mr. Diggins I know that you've done a tremendous amount of work with this that yeah I mean it's fair to say I mean that was my understanding too but I wasn't going to try to play town council but I'm free with you okay all right talk to Mr. Herd vote no action on article 21 okay second okay and we had extensive public comment the other night on article 7 so I'm not going to I don't think there's anybody on the list of this anyway so uh so in a motion of no action by Mr. Herd seconded by Mr. Helmuth attorney Hine Mr. Herd yes Mr. Diggins yes Mr. Helmuth yes this is Mahan yes Mr. DeCourst yes Jim's vote okay great thank you article 24 now this is one that we um in talking to the town manager we also have had some discussions with the chair of the finance committee um the finance committee wanted to have some uh shared their thoughts on this with us and I um we couldn't arrange times to do that because of the way the schedules worked on their meetings in our meetings and so what we agreed to do is we will hold off on this until we get that feedback out of fairness to them um and so what I suggest if if the board is is willing is that we would put a will report in in our select board report and see if we can get this done between now and town meeting so okay motion by Mr. Mahan seconded by Mr. Herd any questions comments okay um attorney Hine Mr. Herd yes Mr. Diggins yes Mr. Helmuth yes this is Mahan yes Mr. DeCourst yes unanimous vote okay um see how quickly we're moving through this article 23 this is a vote on the board of youth services um attorney Hine thank you Mr. Chair I just wanted to report on this article that I think the right posture is to take a recommended vote of no action not because the board of youth services is not interested in updating portions of its essentially charter if you will but because researching the creation of the board of youth services and its operative guidelines has been a little bit trickier than a lot of folks anticipated it was originally created in 1962 I think and then it was a little bit hard to track down some later votes that amended it so I think this is the type of thing where if the board is okay with it the request is for no action at this time and that they'll come back to the next annual or special town meeting whichever occurs sooner to revisit this okay thank you attorney Hine Mr. Herd vote no action on I move no action on article 23 second second second by Mr. Helmuth any comments questions from board members seeing none I nobody is on the list so on a motion of no action by Mr. Herd seconded by Mr. Helmuth attorney Hine Mr. Herd yes Mr. Diggins no I'm sorry yes sorry sorry Mr. Helmuth yes this is Mohan thanks for waking me up Mr. Diggins yes yes it's unanimous vote okay and the last one we have done all the others the last one this evening is article 47 I believe that's the endorsement of parking benefit district expenditures is that ready tonight Mr. Chapter Lane it is and if the board if it pleases the board I can quickly share my screen give a brief overview and then answer any questions the board might have okay can can you all see that spreadsheet the larger please a little tough yeah because it's okay I just had my exam this week but they didn't clear to me so I'm glad I uh that's it yeah there we go yeah that's better all right let me just move my screen around here so let me focus in on can you see my cursor here yeah I want to focus in on what we're asking the board that this is the total parking package that we bring to the finance committee and then we'll be contained within I think both the boards and the finance committee's reports but after meeting several times with the parking advisory committee we came together with a list of proposals for the FY 23 parking benefit district expenditures that we'd like approval for the past couple years with the pandemic revenues been down and because of revenue being down we have not expended very much from you know toward the parking benefit district in fact we we only project to spend in this current fiscal year $20,000 towards the seasonal planters in the center however because we haven't spent money and we had collected a significant amount of revenue before the pandemic we do have a balance of $427,000 in the parking fund which allows us in FY 23 to make this request of $200,000 for the parking benefit district so the first item you see are is the Chestnut Street safety improvements in the amount of $50,000 this is directly related to the approval of the board back at its meeting in February 23rd to expand the parking benefit district to Chestnut Street so that the improvements improvements that were recommended by TAC and then are now being further designed by STAN TAC that these monies can go towards that actual implementation the next item is for the Russell Common Lot in the amount of $65,000 that lot has long been of interest to those serving on the parking advisory committee and also members of the Chamber of Commerce for some landscape beautification and lighting improvements and we'd like to put this $65,000 amount towards that we'd like to continue the seasonal planting amount and the amount of $20,000 and actually that first planting this season will go in next week next we'd like to replace the sidewalk on old Mystic Street you all probably know what this is but in case you don't that's that pedestrian walkway in between Whittemore Park and the commercial buildings that wooden strings is in facing on Mass Ave it hadn't been included as part of the Arlington Center sidewalk replacement so it is still aging brick and we'd like to make it consistent with the rest of the center sidewalk and funded out of this parking benefit district account and then finally the railroad lot blue bike station we have moved it from the sidewalk where it was placed but we want to make sure and put an investment in keeping it in the parking lot where it's currently located but doing so in a fashion that will keep it off the ground and let snow operations and snow clearing happen while it is in place so that it can be operable year round so we don't exactly know what it will cost but we'd like to put at least $25,000 towards that to improve that site and make it operable year round for blue bike users so that adds up to a total of $200,000 for the parking benefit district would very much like your favorable action on it but be happy to answer any questions you have. Thank you Mr. Chaplain. Questions of Mr. Hurd? I'll move positive action and as a member of the parking advisory committee I keep forgetting the name of the committee I'm sorry about we went through a number of options as to how to spend the money this year and really the theme I think as you could tell is kind of helping rejuvenate the Arlington Center district and we've done a few walk-throughs of the Russell Commons lot and I think when you drive by it it doesn't seem so bad when you walk through there's a lot to point out and a lot to work on and those were kind of the key points that we're trying to accomplish with the request this year is to try to you know we're getting through the tail end of the utility work in Arlington Center and we can start the revitalization of Broadway Plaza and to put some of this money into the surrounding areas so we have a complete product to start to fill some of the businesses that we had that we lost in the past couple of years and rejuvenate that one particular district and I think with these requests we're going a long way towards achieving that goal so thank you. Thank you Mr. Hurd. Do I have a second? Second that and you know and I'm glad Mr. Hurd explained that because we hear a lot from residents who understandably are frustrated with the vacant storefronts and you know there are a lot of it's a complex issue but I think it's important just for the public to understand that the town really has that on our radar and that this is a really good example of one thing that we're doing that will help. Thank you Mr. Helmuth. Any further comments? Mr. Diggins? Thanks for replacing the old bricks sidewalk. It's dangerous. That's right. This is a public hearing is there anybody on the list? Seeing none. Okay so an emotion for favorable action by Mr. Hurd, seconded by Mr. Helmuth. Attorney Hyde. Mr. Hurd. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Helmuth. Yes. Mrs. Mahan. Yes. Mr. Corsi. Yes. Okay so that concludes our Warren article hearings. Final votes and comments it looks like a long list but again I believe the only ones on tonight are going to be article 8 and article 19. We've already voted on article 6, article 9, article 17, article 20, article 22, article 26, article 73 and just want to check with Attorney Hyde. I think we voted article 25 as well. I believe so. Okay sorry. Yeah that was one open one. There are a few here that we don't have back tonight. Yes. Okay good because they were just heard on Monday or they're not quite ready because the tape from our last meeting is still not available. That's correct. Okay all right so let's move to our and these were two that were held from the from the last meeting articles 8 and 19 so we'll go to article 8 and I think there were a couple proposed changes so I don't know I think those have been circulated to board members so if anybody wants to make a motion on that or have any comments. Mr. Diggins would you like to speak to mine? Sure. Yeah yeah yeah thank you Mr. Chair. So so my my suggestion is really just a clarification under the section 3 subsection a under the appointment of the commission I'm suggesting that item 5 one member nominated by the Envision Arlington Diversity Task Group co-chairs and then we add the words with the with the approval of the Envision Arlington Standing Committee. The reason for that being that the Diversity Task Group does not have a formal membership anybody can show up they're not they're not appointed there's no appointment process so I think that if the Standing Committee has the ultimate vote that's helpful to them as well. Okay thank you Mr. Helmuth and Mr. Diggins I believe you had an additional an insert on the comments for this if you want to speak to that. Sure it was just to reflect me what happened in the meeting we we did amend you know the recommendation of the study committee to allow for law enforcement the retired law enforcement that are not from Arlington need to be eligible and so I think that it should just the record the comments should just reflect what happened so I hope that was just neutral I mean it just kind of stated what happened that there was a vote and and and the the record of the vote and left it at that no I didn't add any editorial and didn't edit or I editorialize it all so I hope that's acceptable. Okay thank you so on both of those if we if anybody wants to make a motion on that for final vote okay second second okay a motion by Mrs. Mahan seconded by Mr. Herd attorney Mr. Herd yes Mr. Diggins yes Mr. Helmuth yes Mrs. Mahan yes Mr. DeCoursey yes unanimous vote okay Mr. DeCoursey I'm sorry may I yes go ahead turn I think you're going to add one more Mrs. Maher actually yeah caught it and give her credit I think it's article 12 that's right I mean just yeah thank you Ms. Maher for that yeah article 12 the bylaw amendment for single use plastic water bottle regulation that one we have not voted attorney Heim did circulate that so to the board for any motion or comments move approval second second okay questions comments seeing none on a motion for approval by Mr. Helmuth seconded by Mr. Herd attorney Heim Mr. Herd yes Mr. Diggins yes Mr. Helmuth yes Mrs. Mahan yes Mr. DeCoursey yes unanimous vote okay and the last one this evening this was a hold on article 19 I believe Mr. Diggins had asked for a hold on it I don't know if there's any proposed changes well yes me so this is one where I was I'm seriously kind of pointing changing my vote to no action because in the discussion I didn't want it to be a back and forth it was late of course you know or at least it was looking like it's going to be a late evening and I do understand me that there has been I think a good president of having these things done by at least another committee means that and I think the one stated is the not cemetery committee but the public memorials thank you public memorials committee thank you and and so I'm I mean I'm inclined to let that happen because me I I could easily imagine a situation where I mean if we were brought a number of these we would want something like the public memorials committee you know to exist me so that there could be some standard way of dealing with this you know I mean the way things happen I understood the argument then at the time you know and I just want to give maybe a little more information than is necessary but the sequence of the vote just made it hard for me not to at least vote positive action on it I mean we Mr. Hurd had made the motion and I'd seconded it and so when the vote came the sequence of the vote you kind of by coincidence was that me Mr. Hurd went first and I went second and I was just couldn't really vote against it having seconded it although I understood the argument for no action I would hope though that in the process of the memorial committee hearing this that they would entertain Mr. Schlichtman's request meaning that he could take it to them and make his case for it you know so with that hope you know and perhaps Mr. Heim can tell me if that is part of the process maybe you know I'd be happy to change my vote to no action I was just going to turn to Attorney Heim because this is one of those rare instances where it was a three to two vote so if Mr. Diggins were to change his vote it would change the outcome of the recommendation but if you could talk to us about the procedure for that there's no formal requirement for you guys to have a hearing on this kind of thing if you want to change your votes you can change your votes in the quantum of your vote that's up to the board whether a you want to entertain a change to a previously registered vote of the board at this point in time on something that is not legally required it's not like I know we call them hearings but they're not ARB hearings which are required under chapter 40a so if the board wants to change its vote I it's really up to you to decide how much process you want to afford that whether you want to consider reopening the hearing or whether you want to just flip the vote now based on what your discussion has been it's entirely up to the board's discretion in terms of how it wants to handle this specific situation it's not usually you would have like a sort of motion for reconsideration first if you wanted to add a little bit of formality to it would be you know will we will the board allow reconsideration of the article and then secondly will the board vote again it also might give an opportunity to mr. herd mr. helmet that they want to stick to their guns or they want to change their position you know so I would guess my recommendation would be first take a vote to whether or not you'll reconsider the previous action and then secondly take a take a fresh vote and I understand that we haven't posted it as a warrant article hearing but it is a vote in comment so that's that's my perspective all right thank you I know I I think that's appropriate to mr. Dean sorry mr. Chris again I know that mrs. Mahan may have been the only person here who's experienced this before I don't know if there's been a precedent in the vice-chair's experience I have not seen a change of vote that would actually change the outcome which is a new situation as far as I'm concerned yeah I think I I I had it when I first joined the board but because I wasn't at the hearing it was just a comment that had I voted the board's outcome would have been different but but we said you know we put a stop at the at the election that's that's the only thing I don't miss my honey okay okay I just wanted to confirm that and respect that if the board has had a past practice on this I'm not aware of it okay all right so mr. Diggins would you like to bring a motion for reconsideration sure sure but just so just a quick question about the the the public memorial committee so would mr would mr. Schlickman be able to make his case um to them do you know mr. Heim yes mr. Schlickman I'm sorry mr. Chair yes go right yes mr. Schlickman doesn't need to go to town meeting to achieve this goal I think we all agree on that it was just a little bit ambiguous as to whether or not town meeting could you know take a vote on this so he would be able to take it to the public memorials committee which would make a recommendation to this board and this board would vote on whether or not they agree with the public the public memorials committee and either name it after him or not after the nightly all nightly ozies or not if that answers your question mr. Diggins thank you mr. Mr. Heim I should have just said yes or no sorry okay mr. chapter and I think wanted to provide an answer as well thank you mr. Chairman just not to uh but to find a point on it but I think practice has been for this board to make referrals to the public memorials committee and not for them to necessarily directly receive requests from residents so that I I don't mean to split hairs too much but I think this board could certainly forward their request to the public memorials consideration okay thank you okay so did you you made the motion mr. Diggins is that or maybe you haven't made it I asked if you want to make it I mean so I'd like to make a motion for to reconsider being on my vote in on article 19 okay and do we have a second second okay second by mrs. Mahan um we'll comment before mr. Hurd I I don't want to make a comment that would be longer than a vote I just I didn't know we had a motion for reconsideration I thought we would just re-vote it in final votes and comments with a new vote but whatever we got to do yeah well that we all know what the goal is and we'll have the vote on reconsideration if that's a favorable vote then we will vote re-vote the article okay so on a motion by mr. Diggins seconded by mrs. Mahan for reconsideration turning time mr. Hurd yes mr. Diggins yes mr. Helman yes this is Mahan yes mr. Decorsi yes okay so the matter is before you for reconsideration okay and mr. Diggins if you'd like to bring a motion on the article now right so so the motion would be no action on the article yes mr. Chair yes yes so I'd like to make a motion for no action on article 19 okay do a second second okay um Mr. Helman yeah so for me this is not the clear-cut thing so you know I'm fine with how this goes I think I'm gonna stay with my original vote just just because my belief is that the this is a novel situation and that the best a better avenue would be the town meeting rather than public morose committee but you know okay not a hill I'm gonna die on okay thank you mr. Helman I guess I would just say that it's such a unique situation that mr. Schlickman found an unnamed stretch of roadway so I don't anticipate you know people coming out of the woodwork to rename the multitude of unnamed roadways that we have in town so I'll stick with my original vote too as well okay all right thank you thank you so and a motion for no action by mr. Diggins seconded by mrs. Mahan attorney huh mr. Herd no mr. Diggins I think about that yeah mr. Helmeth no this is Mahan yes mr. DeCorsi yes vote is three to two carries for no action I will draft a comment that is consistent with much of this but refers it to that recommends referral to the public memorials committee is that okay thank you turn him yes okay um all right so that concludes the final votes for tonight there will be a few that we will address at the next meeting next item item seven correspondence received requests for memorial for Julia Miller before I asked for a board voting I think uh mr. chapter I believe we discussed this I think your recommendation would be a referral to the parks and recreation commission is that that is correct and they are expecting it okay all right um so if I have a motion yeah it's a lovely idea and we've received and referral to the parks and recreation okay second and second by mr. Herd okay um so in a motion by mr. Helmeth seconded by mr. Herd attorney huh mr. Herd yes mr. Diggins yes mr. Helmeth yes mrs. Mahan yes mr. DeCorsi yes to Nana miss vote okay uh new business uh mrs. Mahan attorney huh we have a single special town meeting warning for your consideration it's an eminent domain taking for safe route schools which means that it shouldn't clog up your counter too much thank you okay thank you and while he isn't here i'm going to turn to mr. chapter lane across the room for any uh new business no new business today thank you okay thank you uh mr. Helmeth nothing for me thank you mrs. Mahan just one thing um and I discussed this with attorney heim and the chair um really briefly but um there's a meeting tomorrow that it's my understanding the town manager and attorney heim will be attending with the mwr a it's a meeting that um which i'm really excited about this news that the save the owl wife now has not only the mystic river watershed um joining in that effort but the child's river watershed um regarding the cso discharge in the owl wife um so there's already been a pre-planning meeting before that which was very very positive um but there'll be meeting tomorrow and and what i wanted to bring to my colleague's attention which we're all aware of that um April 1st is the deadline for the cso permities who currently are permitted to discharge cso's into the owl wife being mwr a the cities of cambridge and someville they have to submit um to uh gp and epa again go ahead yes right um that their plan for how they're going to address that if they're going to continue doing that if there's um an alternative plan and a and a b uh the good thing is to save the owl wife mystic river watershed and child's river watershed did already submit a letter their own testimony to the april 1st deadline to the d e p in the epa saying that this practice has to stop and stands unified in that and so um i know either at the next select board meeting or perhaps i don't know if and when we may have an executive session on this will be you know brought up to speed again we're in the beginning of this um as well as um the chair and i have asked the town manager and town council after april 1st and d e p and epa gather their required remarks from cambridge some of all mwr a they'll come out with their own sort of draft report can can you am i saying anything incorrect no okay and um once that happens um that the town manager attorney heim will get that back to all of us and we'll be in back on this and this is separate from the nifty's permit process which is also coming up so i just think that's good news i was so excited that you know it's definitely spreading so thank you mr chair thank you mrs martin mr diggins our thanks mr chair and so just a quick couple things in the civic engagement group is is having a forum on the annual town surveys and by that i mean the past survey review of that one from 2021 a discussion about the current survey in an early discussion about the 2023 survey and also this um the current survey that deadline has been extended to may 1st mean and finally i'm wearing my heart tie and i don't do that just anytime it's because it's your last meeting it's your last meeting it's your last meeting mr chair me and so um it's been great you know and appreciate the great job you've done you really did a wonderful job keeping at least me informed of what's going on and and i appreciate your patience and your leadership over the last year and it was great that you got to be back so thank you thank you mr diggins mr hurt thank you i just wanted to say after a long string of 11 o'clock end time meetings i always look forward to the meetings that fall the end of that the conclusion of warrant article hearings so and then thank you for your leadership this year and i just wanted to let you know though i haven't made a decision i'm strongly considering voting for you on saturday thank you i appreciate the consideration thank you very much and and i i want to thank everybody this is this is my last meeting as chair i want to thank miss maher miss costa and mrs kruppelka for all the support that they've uh given me that the past year and in the direction on different things i want to thank attorney heim we work very closely on a number of uh items um throughout the year i want to thank mr chapter lane uh as well we did we had a lot of contact throughout the past year with meetings i want to thank my colleagues uh for all your support made my job a lot easier the first time i had done it and they really appreciate everybody's support and the collegiality so um with that i will take a uh motion to adjourn second second okay so motion by mrs maher and second is by mr helman pretty hard to get too excited about that mr herd yes deans yes mr helman yes mrs mahan yes sir yes meeting adjourned thank you