 I'm now calling the meeting to order. Apologies for the delays from the technical difficulties. It's already that kind of night. So I just want to start off by saying that as moderator, essential part of my job is to moderate, not just in the sense of managing the speaker queue, but in a deeper sense of being a moderating force to cool passions, the saucer that cools the hot tea, so to speak. Frankly, this is the part of the job that I take even more seriously than all the technical aspects of the rules and procedures, because it's the flaring of passions that are the greatest threats to our institutions of democracy, not the minutiae of whether we're following every last rule precisely to the letter of this rule book. Don't get me wrong, I'm a stickler for rules too. Town meeting is a deliberative legislative body doing the town's official business. When we enter debate, there is no cheering or booing, and certainly no intimidation. If those are the things that you came here for, then you're in the wrong place. This is not a public forum. I watched the video of the artificial turf forum that was held here last Tuesday. That is not how this meeting is going to be run. This is a legislative meeting with a strict agenda, and it is made available to be viewed by the public. Comments during debate that call into question the intentions or the motivations of others will not be tolerated. When I sit in this chair and the meeting is in session, I am the only person in this chamber with the authority to recognize individuals to speak. We've been doing it this way for 216 years in this town, and we're not going to stop tonight. Later tonight there will be debate about artificial turf fields, and as moderator, I take no position on that debate, but I definitely take a position on how we conduct that debate, how we conduct ourselves in this meeting tonight will have lasting effects on our democratic institutions and on our community, and our town meeting's ability to translate the will of the people of Arlington into decisions that affect the entire town. When you speak tonight, consider the lasting effects of your words on this institution and on the civic fabric of this town. Think about whether your words and actions reflect the better angels of our nature. Mr. Helmuth? Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Eric Helmuth, chair of the Select Board. Thank you for your wise words. I hope that we all heed them. It is moved that if all the business of the meeting is set forth in the warrant for the annual town meeting is not disposed of at this session, when the meeting adjourns, it adjourns to Wednesday, May 10, 2023, at 8 p.m. Move to second. All those in favor of if this meeting adjourns tonight convening at Wednesday, May 10, at 8 p.m., say yes. Yes. All those opposed? It is unanimous. Okay, we'll now take a quick test vote. So the test vote is vote yes if you support free speech for people you disagree with. And yes, your vote will, Canon will be used against you in the future by the people who disagree with you. Okay, let's close voting. Oh, very good. Okay. And now Mr. Helmuth will lead us in the National Anthem. Please rise. Okay, thank you. Do we have any announcements or resolutions tonight? Mr. Foskett? I believe we have a slide to show. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Charles Foskett, precinct 10. I would like to ask that Mr. Paul Buckley, a resident of Arlington, be allowed to make an announcement. And he is a resident of Arlington, correct? Yes, sir. Then he has the right to speak. Thank you, Mr. Moderator and members of the town meeting. I'm sorry, just name and address please. My name is Paul Buckley, 68 Beacon Street, precinct 5. I'm the president of Rotary in Arlington, and each year we put up flags. We call them flags for heroes. We moved them up to the water tower when the construction on the high school started. And we asked people to sponsor these flags for $40 each in which you can honor two people for each flag, which are your heroes. We use the money from these flags to give scholarships to students of Arlington High, Minuteman, and Arlington Catholic. The flags go up a little before Memorial Day, and they stay up through Flag Day, June 14th. It's quite a sight with Boston in the background up at the water tower. So if anybody's interested in sponsoring a flag for $40 through Arlington Rotary, it's arlingtonmarotary.com, and there's a flag for heroes section there. We appreciate your support. Thank you very much. Thank you. Mr. Maher, do you have an announcement? Thank you, Mr. Maher. John Maher, precinct 14. I appreciate your words, by the way, Mr. Maher. This is my 48th annual town meeting. I stand here to, as I've in years past, indicate that the Board of Directors of the Sims Memorial Fund here will be soliciting proposals for a grant or grants to non-profit entities whose principal function is to provide health related or health or wellness services to the residents of the Arlington community. The Sims Memorial Fund is the successor to the Sims Medical Use Non-Profit Corporation. The latter entity was established pursuant to the voluntary dissolution of Sims Health Services, which had operated the Sims Hospital in Arlington. Certain provisions of the dissolution agreement has established by the Supreme Judicial Court of the Commonwealth set aside funds remaining from the hospital dissolution to be administered by the corporation. Any inquiries regarding grant application materials may be obtained by contacting the chairperson of the corporation, me, by phone or by, I'll be during the breakdown stairs, or you could find me upstairs in the party room, I mean the satellite room. We have over the years given over a million dollars worth of grants to such entities as the Boys and Girls Club, Youth Consulting Center, School Department, Food Link, Arlington Housing Authority, Arlington Eats, Visiting Nursing Association and others. We average about a $50,000 grant per year. So please reach out to me in years past. Folks from town meeting have come up and it's actually generated new grant proposals. So please reach out to me. I'd be glad to talk to you. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Thank you, Mr. Mark. Do we have any other announcements or resolutions tonight? Mr. Jones. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Alan Jones, precinct 14. Two years ago, town meeting out of the football field overwhelmingly approved Beth Malofcik's article to request the Select Board to proclaim June 24th, Prince Hall Day to commemorate the talk that Prince Hall gave at African Lodge number one in Monotopy on June 24th, 1797. On June 21st, 2021, the Select Board made that proclamation to celebrate Prince Hall Day this year on Saturday, June 24th at 7 p.m. at the Arlington Masonic Temple up the street. The Arlington Historical Society, Arlington's Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Division and Mystic Valley Lodge of Freemasons are hosting a talk by Rosemarie Smirzinski on the life and legacy of Prince Hall. And I hope you can all come to that. I'm going to try to talk Eric into doing the walk-in music. If you would like a souvenir memorial invitation, I have them up front. Thank you. Any other announcements or resolutions? Okay, we have a second to remove Article 3 from the table. All those in favor say yes. All those opposed, no. It is unanimous. Article 3 is now before us. We're now ready to receive any reports. Yes. Allen-Reedy, precinct 16 and chair of the Arlington Community Committee. We have a second to remove Article 3 from the table. All those in favor say yes. All those opposed, no. It is unanimous. Article 3 is now before us. We're now ready to receive any reports. All those in favor say yes. All those in favor say yes. All those opposed, no. It is unanimous. The precinct 16 and chair of the Arlington Permanent Town Building Committee. I move that the report of the building committee be received. We have a second to receive the report of the Permanent Town Building Committee. All those in favor say yes. All those opposed, it is received. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Permanent Town Building Committee was created by Town Meeting. This is your committee. It was created to oversee major construction renovation projects in the town of Arlington, school additions, police station, fire stations, and so on. We have nine members who you can see listed there. We meet twice a month throughout the year to work on all these projects. I would like to thank our long-time town meeting members, Bob Jefferson and John Marr. I'd also like to recognize Bill Hayner from the school committee who after many years of service is stepping down, and I'd like to welcome Paul Schlickman as the new designated representative from the school committee on this important committee. In the past year, we've had two major projects. Could you have the next slide, please? So the Central School, otherwise known as the Community Center for Arlington, this is about a $9 million project, extensive renovations to the interior. A lot of the renovations you don't see. They're behind the walls, HVAC systems, and so on. But also some significant upgrades to the exterior of the building. The renovations are on the ground floor, the first floor and the second floor. Some of you may remember a couple of years ago, a few years ago, the Arlington Center for the Arts moved into the third and fourth floor, and renovations were accomplished on those floors at that time. The facility supports a number of key departments in town, the Council on Aging, Health and Human Services, Veteran Services. And as I mentioned, it's about a $9 million project. At this point, the building has been occupied for close to a year now, but we're still in what we call the close out phase. We're trying to get just the last things done on this project, get all the last documents, make sure everything works, and welcome the public into the building as we have now for almost a year. Could we have the next slide, please? So I just thought I'd show you a couple of pictures. They are worth a thousand words. On the left side, you see the new front entrance, the new south front entrance on Maple Street. And on the right hand side, this is the main corridor on the first floor of the building. Next slide. Upper left, a very significantly improved kitchen facility. This is on the first floor. Those of you who may have gone into the building before renovations would probably remember the last one, which is about the size of a bathroom. This is really a full commercial kitchen. Lower left is the new library, which is down on the ground floor. And on the right hand side, you see the accessible lift, which allows people to move from the ground floor to the east entrance and up to the first floor. Next slide. So the second major project is the town, what we're calling the town yard and municipal services. So this is a large project. This is about a $47 million project. There are four historic buildings on the site, and we are building a very large and new administrative and maintenance facility on the site. There was extensive site work or has been and continues to be extensive site work at this particular location. When it's done, it will house the Department of Public Works, inspectional services, IT, and facilities departments. This is a difficult site. I could spend the rest of the evening or perhaps the rest of the year telling you about all of the issues with this site. Some of you history buffs may know that this was the site of a, I think it was a coal gasification plant. And as a result of these activities, the site has, there's a lot of hazardous materials there, chromium and so on. We punched, I don't know how many holes in the ground even before construction began to make sure we knew where the problems were. But still, every time a shovel went in the ground, it seems as though we found something new. Anything from a pipe that was connected to who knows where to a storage tank that was 50 feet long and contained who knows what. So this has been a very challenging project, continues to be a challenging project. The committee is doing everything it can to deliver this project to the town. I'd say relatively on time, it will be later than the original budget anticipated. And we anticipate delivering it as close to budget as possible, but we are very concerned that we're getting into a phase of construction where we're going to be renovating a couple of the oldest buildings on the site. And there are just things that you find that you could not have foreseen, even with a lot of what we call destructive testing before the project has begun. So we may be back to talk to you in the future, but we're going to do everything we can to stay within the budget of this project and give you a high quality site. So let's move on to some pictures. Next slide. So this is an overview of the site. The large building that you see sort of covered in blue in this picture is what we call Building E. This is the new administrative and maintenance facility that fronts on Grove Street. We've got a minute left. Okay. On the left-hand side, you see the historic buildings which we're calling A, B, C and D, and then the new salt shed. Next slide. Just some other views of this new administrative and maintenance facility, the front on Grove Street and then the large maintenance bays. Next slide. Upper left is the new IT server rooms when it was empty before it was occupied by the servers that moved over from the high school. Lower left, drilling some of those holes. Upper right, a large retaining wall being placed, and then lower right, the salt shed. And then one more slide. And here's the topping off ceremony which took place late last summer with Director of Public Works, Mike Rademacher, signing the final girder. So we appreciate your support so far for these projects, and we're going to do our best to get them done on time and within our budget. Thank you very much. Thank you. Do we have any other reports of committees? Seeing none, Ms. Deschler? Christine Deschler, Finance Committee Chair. I move that Article 3 be laid upon the table. Okay. We have a second to move Article 3 upon the table. All those in favor say yes. All those opposed? It is unanimously Article 44 is before us. Ms. Deschler, did you have anything since this is a Finance Committee, is there anything you want to say about the vote briefly? And then I'll invite Ms. Deschler to take the floor. Ms. Deschler, I move that Article 30 be laid upon the table. We have a second to lay Article 30 to 43, excluding the ones we've already disposed of upon the table. All those in favor say yes. All those opposed? It is unanimous. I move that Article 30 be laid upon the table briefly. And then I'll invite Mr. Ruderman up to introduce the particulars. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Christine Deschler, Chair of the Finance Committee. You will see in the Finance Committee report, Article 44, we are recommending that an appropriation in the amount of $8,932,916 be approved for the Minuteman Regional District. And I will turn it over now to Mr. Ruderman to introduce our guest tonight. Thank you. And as Mr. Ruderman walks up to the podium, can we clear and open the speaker cue please so everyone can start from a clean slate? Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Deschler. And thank you, Mr. Moderator. Michael Ruderman, Page 6-9. I am also Arlington's representative to the Minuteman School Committee. If you're not familiar with it, we are a nine town regional school committee, excuse me, nine town regional school district. Each of the towns appoints one person to serve on the school committee through its select board or board of selectmen. And I'm proud to have been Arlington's representative these past three years. The report that contains the details in the budget presentation will be displayed for you here tonight. It's also been uploaded to the town's webpage for reports and should be linked to the annotated warrant. We're trying to save some money rather than printing, you know, 1,700, 1,800, maybe 2,000 coffees of it to distribute to all the town meeting members in all the member towns. But we'll follow along right here on the screens. It is my privilege tonight to introduce you for the first time to our new superintendent, new in the sense of never having been before this meeting before, but new in terms of being in her first year of service, Dr. Kathleen Dawson. We hired her to start the beginning of this school year. The school committee was uniformly impressed with her credentials and her experiences. She did her undergraduate work at University of Wisconsin, masters at the Harvard School of Education, and her doctors from the University of Pennsylvania. Her most recent superintendency experience comes from North Carolina, but coming back to Massachusetts is something about homecoming for her as she comes back to her roots. She'll give the initial presentation. I'll be available to answer questions. The two of us will be assisted by the inestimable budget director, Ms. Nikki Andrade, who is also here with us tonight. I'm sure we'll be able to answer among the three of us any questions that you may have. With that, I'm going to turn over to Dr. Kathleen Dawson. The clock is actually not... I can see the clock, but the rest of you cannot for some reason, and so we're not going to hold up the meeting on that detail, but I am tracking the time. Dr. Dawson, welcome to the meeting. If you need additional time, please request it in advance, and we can ask the meeting. Okay. Good evening, Mr. Moderator. Thank you so much, and Mr. Ruderman, thank you so much for your kind welcome. Good evening, everyone again. My name is Dr. Kathleen Dawson, and I am the superintendent of Minuteman Regional Vocational Technical School District, and tonight we are here to present a high-level overview of the summary of the fiscal year 2024 budget recommendation for your approval. Next slide. Our budget is grounded in improving teaching and learning for all our students to support us in accomplishing these goals. Minuteman's FY24 operating and capital budget request overall is up 4.5% compared to that of FY23 budget. And on the next slide, here are Minuteman's operating expenses, which are up approximately 6%, operating capital consistent at 0.21%, and the capital building project debt is slightly lower in FY24 than in FY23, and this is an important breakout as seven of our nine member towns voted a debt exclusion on the school building project. And on the next slide, you will see our key objectives and drivers of our FY24 budget. And following on the next slide, the total preliminary assessment for Arlington, including the building project debt service that is excluded from prop 2.5, is approximately $8.9 million. The preliminary assessment for Arlington without the building project debt is approximately $7.1 million. And on the next slide, we are here to show you the comparison of changes in enrollment to the changes in revenue. With a decrease in out-of-district enrollment comes a decrease in revenue from non-member tuition and non-member capital fee, which is set by the state. And on the next slide, you can see from last year to this year the changes in the components of the assessment. Minuteman uses the four-year rolling average of enrollment to determine assessments as noted in the regional agreement. Arlington's four-year rolling average has increased by 15.7% compared to the total assessment increasing of 12.4%. And on the next slide here, we show the percent change in four-year rolling average of enrollment with the percent change in assessment for all our member towns for your review. And it is important to note that the four-year rolling average will eventually even out over the next few years as enrollment becomes more typical of full freshman classes of member towns. So as presented, it is the shifts in enrollment that are increasing the assessments for each member town. The increase is paying for more of your students to have access to a choice in the type and quality of career technical education. The increase in enrollment on the next slide is requiring three additional full-time teachers. And being cautious of our budget and assessments impact on our member towns, Minuteman is not requesting funding for all the positions that we would need to provide the standard of service that we would need to meet our expectations. We, of course, as we do always, teachers step up and we make sure that all of our needs are met. But at bare minimum, we do need three additional full-time teachers. And on the next slide, we know that it's difficult for you to read, but we did want to just share with you that we do not solely rely on our member towns to fund all the district's needs. We work diligently to apply for and receive grant funding. And as you can see, for FY23, we received an additional $3 million to support our initiatives. And another major driver is OPEB, right? The School Committee's responsibility for maintaining the funding for other post-employment benefit liability. This requires a long-term strategy was recommended by our OPEB Advisory Committee. And currently, the fund balance is slightly over $400,000 and we do need to drastically increase our yearly contribution if we are to meet the liability amount of over $20 million. And on the next slide, you'll see that the strategy is to allocate the amount that is currently being allocated to the ESCO lease toward the OPEB payment after the ESCO lease payment ends in FY25. So on the next slide here, you will see the overall budget summary of our operating and capital budget and the breakouts of operating and capital budget request increase of 4.5%. And lastly, our overall budget request in comparison to FY23 is less than the prior year's requests in all categories. So in closing, we return to our values, our students and their learning. We recommend the approval of the FY24 budget that will support the needs of our students and their teachers. And we thank you very much for the continued support from Arlington. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Thank you, Dr. Dawson. Let's switch over to the speaker queue. And let's skip to Ms. Mandel, who I don't believe we've heard from yet. Mona Mandel, precinct nine. Firstly, warm welcome to you, Dr. Dawson. This is your first town meeting for Arlington and on behalf of this town body, we welcome you. And I also wanted to welcome some parents who are also here from the community to hear what you have to share about your vision today. Arlingtonians are very passionate about Minuteman, and so last night at 10 o'clock, I had a couple of... I'm not talking to some Arlington parents, but there were some recent developments that have been happening. So last night at 10 o'clock, I put in a letter to talk about some of this and also some budgetary questions that came out of that. So I submitted the letter on behalf of the group, but I will not be talking about the contents of that. I think everyone in this town hall has... We don't need to talk about what we're not going to talk about. We'll talk about what we should talk about under the budget. Right, so that's what I'm saying. I'm going to keep it to the budget only section. That's implicit, yeah. Yes. So one of the things as a town, a new superintendent, I was really glad to see that you were doing stakeholder meetings and one of them was also an Arlington. So I was wondering if you had also been a driver for this budget that you have presented to us, like the feedback that you've gotten from stakeholder communities. The stakeholder feedback, I would say yes in the sense that I heard from our families the need for continued growth and improvement of our programs and the continued improvement of teaching and learning. So yes. Okay. Was part of the feedback that there needed to be any changes in the administrative staff based on the stakeholder feedback sessions that you had? Because you're new, you're trying to understand the culture. So I was wondering is that something that you also heard that there was concerns about the administrative department in Minuteman. So as it's related. I have a little interjection for a second. Is this a budget question? Okay. All right. Thank you. I also saw thank you very much by the way I did ask you for enrollment numbers and I did ask you pretty late. So I asked you on Saturday and I really appreciate you sharing that information with me. In the past I think we had the breakdown of the numbers of who were coming in at a town level and I think as the town meeting body we all really liked that. I think that you shared that as a percentage. So one of the things I wanted to know was as you were presenting this to the town select board budget to the finance committee as well as the select board did you anticipate some of the changes that would be happening that would impact the budget where you would need to maybe do an outreach to recruit new staff? I'm not clear on what you're asking. Okay. So what I was trying to understand is the elephant in the room is Elephants are not in scope. So anyway do you have any budget for looking for a new key administrator as a principal that is part of this budget already? So the FY24 budget request meets the needs of all of the staffing needs that we need. So it's all in the budget. Okay. Which includes the search process as well? It has in the budget everything we need for meeting all of our staffing needs. One of the drivers that you mentioned was the teacher's contract, right? So Arlingtonians we love our teachers and I think one of the things from a recent meeting as you heard there have been some concerns and so with the no vote confidence and so I was wondering do you anticipate any issues of the ability to do negotiation with the teacher's union with recent developments that impacts the budget? Mr. Ruderman do you have an answer to that question? Thank you Mr. Moderator Michael Ruderman Minuteman school committee. I was a member of the negotiation subcommittee. Two other school committee members were with me officers of the Minuteman faculty association represented their members. I believe we concluded our contract negotiations a little more than a month ago. We came to agreement the lawyers are writing up the memorandum of understanding right now. So as far as the collective bargaining agreement for the next three years that is as they say done and dusted. You have about 30 seconds. I apologize that the timer is not visible. I do have some questions about the enrollment members. Can you speak a little bit to the wait list that Arlington students have? I think they're safe. So is there and are they going to be rejected or are they is there any consideration or is it too early if you could speak to that? It would be too early at this time as we are still accepting making offers as students that they may be declining but as of currently 46 have accepted from Arlington and so far we do have six on the wait list but as seats open up most often fill up all of the seats so that we aim to have zero on the wait list but I cannot guarantee that. This year as member towns have increased their enrollments each year. We're at time. Thank you. Thank you for the tour around the borders at scope. We'll take Mr. Kepline next. Thank you Mr. Moderator Mark Kepline, Precinct 9. I want to thank you for coming. At previous town meetings this has been an opportunity for a man to really do a pitch and familiarize people with the services and the great work you do and the academics and practical education you give. I'd wish to see some of that but I did have a question on education and I'm wondering if you are working with the Arlington Public Schools to maybe figure out the boundaries between the tech education that you do and maybe what the high school here could do and if there's any sort of shift that we might anticipate. Sorry that's not budget but it may affect future budgets. Future budgets are well I'll give some latitude here. I guess I'll allow the question and answer within the scope of does the current budget set up responsibly for future budgets on that point? So in regards to that comment our current budget does set us up for responsible future budgets and I would say that we're always open to partnering and collaborating with our sending member town schools and so we look forward to collaborating with all of Arlington schools and sharing what we do with programs and also allowing Arlington students to have access to experience what we have in regards to tours. I know that we just hosted a number of classes from Arlington for different events so there's that type of collaboration but specifically to what you're asking about the tech and the high school we're always open for partnerships. Okay thank you. And now to budgets so the student enrollments up 10% and the operating expenses are up 27 or 8% is that right? And I'm wondering what's the source of the operating budget increase? Did you want to I'm trying to specify like as far as the operating increase our operating budget most of it is taken up by teacher salaries right and two thirds of our about give or take an estimate two third of our staffing are on the top salary schedule so there's some of that takes up a lot of the operating cost so if Nicky would like to come up our business manager want to elaborate more on that. Peter introduce your name and role or title? Nicky andrade business manager. As Dr. Dawson was saying I will just elaborate further some of our major drivers are the teachers contract that was being negotiated in addition to the new teachers that we needed to based on the growing enrollment higher as well as inflation. We're all suffering from inflation. Is hitting everybody's pockets it's certainly for our students to be able to continue with the state of art equipment they certainly have to have the supplies and materials in able to do all the different programs so that's certainly for our drivers as well not only affecting all of our personal pockets but the vocational space in particular. Consumable costs. Absolutely. One last question is what sort of costs are you looking at for recruitment and headhunter fees or a search committee to find replacement teachers and employees that are eligible? So as stated earlier we have our internal team that works on recruitment and retention for any and all vacancies that is covered within the budget. So they'll do a national search themselves? Well we post nationally as well as internally for some vacancies and we do outreach with our college partners for any number of our vacancies that we have. And you'll expect to fill these positions soon? Yes. Okay. All right thank you. Thank you Mr. Kepline. We'll take Mr. Hamlin next. Guillermo Hamlin, precinct 14 a move to terminate the debate. We have a motion to terminate the debate and we have a second. All those in favor of terminating the debate on article 44 say yes? Yes. All those opposed? No. The noes have it. It's not two thirds anyway. Okay let's take Ms. Karmie next. Hi Gina Karmie precinct 16. I just want to know are there any pending lawsuits or liabilities that the school is facing? Are there any pending lawsuits or liabilities that the school is facing? And the, can you explain to me the relevance to the budget? I'm asking you to explain to me the relevance of the budget. Well it would affect the budget. The cost associated has that been considered in the construction of the budget? Yes. Dr. Dawson. So the school district is not a party to any active litigation as we speak that I'm aware of and legal counsel has always advised me not to discuss publicly any pending or active litigation cases. Okay. Thank you. Let's say Mrs. Orfanos and let's keep the chatter down a bit. Name and precinct please. Michelle Orfanos precinct 13. Good evening. Michelle Orfanos precinct 13. Good evening. As I was looking into the financial impact recruitment and retention has on school budgets I came across this quote there are no great schools without great teachers with that being said I was very concerned when on May 1st after previous grievance filing the entire faculty at Minimann High School held a unanimous vote of no confidence in the superintendent myself and many other parents It's not a large leap to get to the budget with this. If you can tie this, if you can make the case to me that this is related to the budget I'm getting there. Many other parents wonder what impact this would have on the school you have to tie it directly. If any time you said you didn't want to have passionate debate if any time in culture we needed open passionate debate it's today. Continue. Myself and many other parents wonder what impact financially this would have on the school and more importantly the students. In speaking with Michael Ruderman of the school committee we discussed financial impacts of the superintendent's decision not to renew the principal's contract seeing that it's already led to four resignations Mr. Ruderman acknowledged that this was a historic vote and has never happened in Minimann's history. What would be the financial consequences what will be the financial consequences how will the school manage the inevitable upcoming faculty resignations Mr. Ruderman said four words they will be replaced Focusing solely on the financial aspects replacing a teacher requires significant resources and personnel time although costs within a district or school or area substantially the most significant costs are those associated with separation recruiting and new hiring teachers and training replacements. The superintendent has noted that there are already eight full time positions that need to be filled nine if you go ahead with the principal. According to the Society of Human Resource Management SHRM employees estimate the total cost of new hiring employees can be three to four times the position salary employee news said that to replace the cost of an employee a teacher is 33% of the annual salary that ties in with the budget it's not a big leap work institute 2017 retention report stated the replacement cost for teachers is possibly annually 15,000 per person on a median salary of 45,000 a year indeed the cost of vacancies is critical I wonder if you truly thought about and are aware of the negative impact these vacancies are going to generate. Research also shows teacher turnout consistently undermines student achievement in core academic subjects and the student turnover also negatively impacts the school's culture it's my understanding that morale is at an all time low as parents can rescind their acceptance 46 people you said accepted accepted with the 46 students that you accepted 46 from Arlington yes. Parents can rescind the acceptance at any time how does the today's student led and all the negative social media and news surrounding man affect new student enrollment and employees this is beyond there will be order in this chamber Mrs. Orphanos. I'm going to answer your question how is it possible that 100% of the faculty voting no confidence doesn't impact staff retention or recruitment Mrs. Orphanos. She doesn't have to answer the question because I'm ruling it out of scope with all the recent events there are far too many questions that need to be addressed before Arlington considers voting on this budget we cannot in good conscience vote to allocate good money after bad policy do you have anything to say to anything I've said Mrs. Orphanos. Your questions will be directed at the chair yes I allow the conversations to get a little conversational not going to interrupt me no I allow the back and forth to be a big conversational when it's more efficient for the meeting as an optimization for all of our time but not when it's going to be this level of tension between the interactions I am here to mediate and moderate the discussion so as stated the principal stated the superintendent stated they value students all the students and their learning I believe the students have been through a lot through three years and they've lost enough educational time I really hope you can reconsider what you're doing with saving Mr. Tosti. I put together last week a nice chart went on to the department of education database and put it all together all the vocational schools and their per student costs unfortunately due to my technical incompetence I wasn't able to get it in the queue so you people couldn't see it up there anyway but I'm going to say something that most of you already know and I think the superintendent knows also Minuteman besides your great reputation is the most expensive vocational school in the state the spending this is for fiscal 22 was over $34,000 per student other vocational school in the state that was in the 30s was greater warrants at 31 almost all the others were down in the $24,000 to $26,000 a year category not only does Arlington want a great school but we need an affordable school too are there things and I'm not blaming you for this this has been the case for years and years Minuteman can do to help bring down this cost so for the taxpayers of the town of Arlington and our budgets and thank you thank you moderator it is true that we are one of the highest per pupil and as previously shared please understand that we are also one of the highest districts, the highest paying districts and with the two-third of almost on average two-third of our staff being on the top step of the salary schedule it does eat up most of our operating budget and just kind of breaking that down a little bit the salaries are 47.4% of the operating a capital budget employee benefits are 12.3% totaling 59.7% and then of course capital is 22.7% our total operating budget the salaries are 61.2% and employee benefits 15.8 which totals 77% of our operating budget that coupled with the needs of our students and the funding that is required to meet the needs of our students unfortunately that is part of why our per pupil expenditure is as high as it is I think that considering also that we have such a high percentage of our veteran teachers the only way that I can see at this point of lowering assessments is as we bring in new teachers if their salaries are lower that could be a possibility but we truly value our teachers and they're worth every penny that they're paid unfortunately at this time we do not have a plan as far as what you're looking for I wish I had the right answer for you but considering 77% is toward salaries it's hard to say but that's why we do go for grants as much as we can so we're not asking for more than we have to great thank you and let's take Ms. Hyman next as many in this body know I'm fairly critical of Minuteman because of the per student cost sorry as many of you know I'm very critical of Minuteman because of the per student cost I do have a question about that per student cost are all programs at Minuteman the same cost per student so for instance per student in robotics because of the lab expenditures other than the teaching which we know you can't control those salaries need the same the rest of the budget the same as somebody let's say who is in an auto shop I'm going to ask Ms. Andrea to correct me if I'm wrong but I would say it is not equal because each program has different needs and the cost to run each program varies so it is not equal it's equitable it's based on what is needed and the teachers put in their department budget requests each year for the following you know fiscal year based on the needs to run the program and because of that and because of the impact on your budget do you have an assessment of the students who apply what their area of program is their interest in area of program is and how that then translates into the acceptance rates and the wait list and who whether the more expensive programs are getting filled whether the less expensive whether programs where there might be some comparable program at Arlington high school versus students that are interested in age that where there is no comparable program at Arlington high school do you have any sort of assessment like that or students coming into Minuteman I can't speak of Arlington high school but for students coming into Minuteman we do not accept them based upon what they're interested in because part of our philosophy is that our students come in as freshmen and we allow them to explore the options for them to choose at that time now a number of them do have interest programs but as they explore it may change and the only time that we consider what they would prefer is if there is a slot available and if a student wants to change after they've selected already but that doesn't impact our budget because you've told me that there is a difference in the cost of the programs and I also know that previous Minuteman selection criteria for students were biased towards students that were higher achieving in a traditional education setting which is not always aligned with those that are seeking a vocational setting I would wonder if there could be some focus on that analysis so that we make sure that this town's commitment to financially supporting our vocational pathway truly is a vocational pathway for students that might not see a pathway through our main public high school and I just to abbreviate it in the past it seems like students that might have been going towards computer programming or software design had an edge up under the Minuteman selection criteria and as we know from the state law the mandate of vocational schools is to provide the opportunity for high school to internship to career rather than the traditional college pathway and I would just ask as you look at the budget and you look at the expenditures on the programs that we make sure that we are fulfilling our commitment to those students great thank you Ms. Hyam Mr. Schlickman? Good evening Paul Schlickman I served as a member of the Minuteman Regional Vocational Technical School Committee from 1997 to 2001 How many towns are required to approve your budget? Two thirds Two thirds of nine towns Six out of nine Have you achieved that at this point? Yes we have I suggest we approve it Now one thing we have to note is that back in the day when I was a member of the Minuteman School Committee a third of the students were in district a third of them came under a program called Chapter 74 which was a full tuition and a third of them came in school choice $5,000 a pupil so with a third of the member town enrollment and a third of the member town assessment we were subsidizing about $8,000 per student by a third of all the added district students coming in Now we built a new high school it is now suddenly very attractive MSBA came along and said you have to have a smaller school because you have a smaller demographic a couple of the problematic towns got out of the district and we used the opportunity of the new school Well let's not cast aspersions on other towns and we used the opportunity to change the regional agreement so we have a weighted vote so our influence is higher but before us today is one thing and one thing only do we approve the budget amount recommended by the finance committee those are the four corners of the scope do we approve it yes or no losing the member town of the non-member district students was funded in such a way that you had sort of a reserve fund that came and followed back and sort of operates in many ways like some of our revolving funds and losing that income is going to have a temporary blip and it's going to be a bouncy couple of years because for the first time minute man has a wait list we never had before we were under enrolled we were drastically under enrolled at one point this is a good school and within the scope of what we do we should approve this budget now I also remind you what our role is what the school committee's role is in the superintendent's role under the education reform act of 1993 superintendent has a total discretion on personnel decisions period it's not our role to do that it's our role to vote the budget please vote the budget thank you mr. Slickman we'll take mr. Greenspawn next and as mr. Greenspawn comes up I just want to clarify a point that mr. Slickman made the four corners scope implies that it is a rectangle embedded in two dimensional space euclidean space and we should not make those assumptions mr. Greenspawn given my role as a physicist I should debate this I won't Andy Greenspawn precinct five thank you mr. moderator I move to determine a debate on this article that was so close but you made a comment before you moved the question so I do not recognize the motion I'm sorry the same thing happened to me once I made a brief joke it was maybe a little bit funnier than that and I still couldn't terminate the debate so we'll take mr. Grimucci next oh I'm sorry I didn't see mr. Logan I'm sorry sorry about that the cue jumped on me I'd like to introduce a Arlington resident who would like to speak their name is Claudia Danette you said she's a resident of Arlington she has the right to speak is there a microphone in the floating mic in the balcony that she can use thank you everybody and thank you William Logan for introducing me you probably have to hold it closer to your voice can you hear me now can we adjust the gain on the mic maybe hello can I speak up and have it really close to your mouth can you hear me do you have a green or red microphone I think we can adjust it down here oh she's coming down mr. moderator we've had trouble hearing you up here all evening and other speakers as well is that something we can adjust I don't know where she went though is it better if I speak like this Claudia Danette precinct number nine I'm here as I'm a parent currently of a student we were really surprised to hear the recent developments so this have to do with budget and one of the things that we were discussing here is projecting numbers of students entering Minutemen all I can say is from my personal experience and from I know many others I speak to this has been the amazing word that we receive about the culture at Minutemen and how students who have traveled in other environments were thriving here so that's how the process really works when students come because other parents were talking about how things were working so well how the culture was so amazing to promote the best in our kids so when we're discussing I think we are not ready to know exactly the numbers we can project at this point the students could decide to pull off from incoming when I entered parents advise me to go to the school they were right when I talked to other parents of students looking for schools I advised them to go there but I was going based on my experience of these two years and the previous experience that I heard of so we are not sure how that's going to look like when all the students a ton of parents and unanimous vote of the teacher union is not happy with what is happening now we think that Mr. Clement was really we really need to keep this within the scope of the project so basically I feel that we are not ready to really understand the budget when we are not sure what's going to happen how many teachers will need to be replaced how the culture will change I think I will leave it at that but I make a strong point here because basically I'm talking about feelings but it's the feelings that create those data that data and numbers how many students and who are coming into this school thank you we'll take Mr. Grinucci next okay we have a most terminated debate we have a second all those in favor of terminating debate on article 44 say yes all those opposed it is terminated let's now move to the next slide let me just summarize that you can vote yes to appropriate $8,932,916 for the town's share of the operating and maintenance costs of the Minuteman Regional Vocational Technical High School district budget to be expended under the direction of the Minuteman Regional Vocational High School committee that's what we're voting on if you do not approve of that appropriation you can vote no so let's open voting now for article 44 voting is now open okay let's close voting and the budget passes 203 in the affirmative 20 in the negative and seven abstentions so it is now Mr. Ruderman just wanted to say thank you to the members of the meeting thank you to the finance committee in particular our liaison Annie LeCourt who's looked at a lot of Minuteman budgets thank you all very much you don't get to keep that money Mr. Ruderman we have a strict 10 minute break and we'll start at 940 thank you okay we're gonna get started now we're making some adjustments to the audio in the balcony which will hopefully help and as we're getting settled here I just wanted to point out that I rescind my criticism of Mr. Slickman's comment I spoke with finance committee and budgets usually do come in the form literally of rectangles in the form of tables so literally does have four corners so now Ms. Deschler so now we're calling this meeting back to order Mr. moderator I move that article 12 be taken from the table okay we have a motion to take article 12 from the table and we have a second this is an article that was previously postponed all those in favor say yes all those opposed article 12 is now removed from the table all right let's settle down let's settle down let's say Mr. Helmet did you have any introduction you wanted to give okay please oh and FIA we'll start the speaker queue after Mr. Helmet's comments just so we don't interrupt that they're gonna work on it live so thank you for that feedback Eric Helmet chair of the select board the select board unanimously and strongly urges no action on article 12 I'm just gonna briefly state our principal reasons there's gonna be a lot of discussion and debate as there should be but I think it's important to know that the town already has balanced regulatory and policy bodies that deal with this that address the health the environmental concerns and the recreational needs of our playing fields in our visual turf that's the conservation commission the board of health parks and recreation park and recreation commission and the town manager and the vast professional staff that we have and we believe that this is the and that it represents the different perspectives and different priorities that we have in this debate the board also believes that this is the hazards of artificial turf really important the science in this is developing in our judgment although we are not scientists but listening to the debate there's not the kind of broad consensus yet at least I think it's important to know that this is a and we believe that therefore the best policy is instead of a moratorium which we feel is not the right tool for this nuanced question would be a site by site analysis done by the bodies that we already have that look hard at the science look hard at the hazards and look hard at the needs and make a determination about whether a site is appropriate whether mitigation can be put into place what the acceptable standards would be as the science continues to evolve and the moratorium doesn't really facilitate that so we feel like it's not the right tool we trust the current process we trust our town manager and our next one to be fair to put together bodies that would study this fairly and consider all the angles so for that reason we urge no action on article 12 thank you Mr. moderator thank you Mr. Helmuth let's now clear and open the speaker queue and show that we're good and there it is okay we have several motions that were submitted in advance and we have a specific order in which we will go through them which was previously shared so I'll now invite Ms. Milovchuk to introduce her substitute motion to lead us off we have more motions on this article than some town meetings have articles in their warrants by the way thank you Mr. moderator may I have my slides please for my presentation yeah this is the substitute motion there was a slide deck thank you Beth Milovchuk town meeting member precinct nine next slide please the Milovchuk substitute motion would establish a study committee pause any new artificial turf until a report is submitted no later than spring 2025 but maybe sooner next slide please crumb rubber is dangerous it contains polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons heavy metals volatile organic compounds plasticizers carbon black styrene neurotoxins carcinogens and many of the newer natural infill materials including alfalfil contain toxins next slide please there is PFAS in plastic glass in 2019 public employees for environmental responsibility discovered that artificial turf contains polyfloral alcohol substances PFAS the forever chemicals the one you don't want any exposure to PFAS are persistent they bioaccumulate they're toxic all artificial turf that have been studied have PFAS all of them next slide please plastic turf causes local plastic pollution you can see it over on the catholic field on summer street a 20 ton plastic field two acres sheds 480 pounds of microplastics each year into our mill brook into the food chain these plastic particles don't degrade they accumulate in the environment soil water and in your next fish filet or lobster roll next slide please PFAS are toxic forever chemicals they interfere with the body's natural hormones they are hormone disruptors they increase cancer risk they reduce fetal growth they do other deleterious they have other deleterious influences on the developing child's body next slide please there is no safe level of PFAS the EPA as recently as March 2003 proposed parts per trillion for PFAS four parts per trillion that's equivalent to a drop of water in an Olympic size swimming pool there is no dose below which PFAS is considered safe next slide please PFAS leaches off artificial turf fields into water from the wetlands streams rivers and oceans into the food chain the surrounding area quickly becomes contaminated of these sports fields in Martha's venue the study showed that 12 points per trillion of PFAS leaches off of a new field next slide please artificial turf contributes to climate change natural grass absorbs CO2 and releases oxygen artificial turf does the opposite it releases CO2 methane and other chemicals the manufacturing installation service and disposal of a two acre artificial turf field generates a total over its lifetime 55.6 metric tons of CO2 we won't get to mit zero with that next slide please artificial turf sheds microplastics 480 pounds a year next slide please artificial turf is not recycled in the U.S. not recycled the Pennsylvania rematch recycling facility has not been built yet it is being fined by the state of Pennsylvania because there is no stockpiling old fields Exxon's Texas advanced recycling plant that we've heard about uses pyrolysis considered incineration by the EPA it releases PFAS and dioxin up the smokestack and into our air there is no recycling of artificial turf there's repurposing there is no recycling next slide please artificial turf is a disposal nightmare this is the site of Pennsylvania the stockpiling roles have discarded plastic turf it's not recyclable it lasts forever the peach this is the third site that these may be maybe more where these PFAS are leaching out they leach out where it's produced where it's installed and then where it gets disposed and leaching toxins into the environment next slide please PFAS is the newest bestis EPA's new maximum contaminant level will open the door to huge liabilities states are making even more stringent maximal contaminant levels class action suits for contaminated water abound next slide please states are trying to ban artificial turf bills are pending in California Massachusetts Vermont and Connecticut next slide please vote yes on the Milovchik substitute motion vote no on the others vote yes on ours to establish a study committee and we'll pause any new artificial turf until a report is submitted no later than spring 2025 but maybe sooner next slide please article 12 is a response to the land management plan article 12 substitute motion is a response to the idea that plastic fields are safe they are not safe we have worked with the scientific community with toxicologists, ecologists we worked with the scientists who discovered PFAS in artificial turf in 2019 Kyla Bennett and Jeff Gerhardt we brought them to you we did a lot of videos with them we brought the science to you me, Robin, Winnell and Jordan we did this work for you this research for our community there is no artificial turf without PFAS there are tests which will not find PFAS these are promoted to offer a false sense of security don't believe them Arlington faces a public health and environmental health challenge the stakeholders are not just players all of the town residents are stakeholders please vote for the Malovchik substitute motion vote no on the others if you want to make it a one year research juggernaut we can give you some tips vote yes on the Schlickman amendment otherwise please vote no on all the others vote yes on the Malovchik I thank you Mr. Moderator and I thank town meeting thank you Ms. Malovchik like technically you can go back normally we would only allow debate within the scope of the pending motions but because of the there are some subtle interdependencies between some of these motions so I'll allow a limited form of commentary as they're being introduced across the motions even for motions that have not been introduced yet to a point now oh I don't believe we did thank you so we actually Ms. Malovchik we actually need a motion you can just move to substitute the main motion with Mr. Moderator town meeting I move to substitute the motion with the substitute motion and we have a we have a we have a motion to substitute and we have a second and we have a second and it is now before us so now have the main motion of no action and we have the Malovchik substitute motion stacked on top of it I'll now invite Dr. Vakil to introduce the Vakil amendment thank you Mr. Moderator Sanjay Vakil precinct 12 I've learned several specific things in the process of reviewing the research number one PFAS is a real problem based on my research and thankfully from the folks that put this together provided by the proponents I've retired my nonstick pan which is the biggest single source number two there's a massive difference in PFAS and other chemicals admitted by artificial turf fields depending on the specific manufacturer and technology used we should choose carefully number three the current research brings me to the conclusion that the incremental exposure to these chemicals from artificial turf is real but relatively small and in my judgment the benefits of the additional field time to the mental and physical health of our kids outweighs the incremental risk especially as a father of three who knows exactly how much my kids lost when they didn't have outdoor time during COVID the research here is relatively new and I expect it to evolve my opinion and judgment will evolve as well the goal of my amendment is to provide some very clear guidance to the town and parts and rec to choose a field technology which minimizes the risk to those using the field while leaving a path forward to installing I'm happy to answer specific questions about my analysis and decisions if meeting members wish but I don't want to waste any of your time I'll be voting no on the substitute motion if you choose to vote yes I recommend that you vote in my amendment as well thank you can you make your motion? I would like to make a motion to amend we have a motion to amend with the Bikil amendment and we have a second that is now before us as well thank you Mr. Green-Spawn to introduce his amendment and as he comes up I just want to make a brief comment on the ordering of these I applied the Ross rule in determining the order the sequence of the motions which is to start with the broad strokes first and then go to the finer strokes as in Bob Ross the legendary painter Mr. Green-Spawn thank you Mr. moderator Andy Green-Spawn precinct five given the Belmont Health School said they're stepping back from any potential deal to revitalize the Poets Corner playing field for the foreseeable future I would still urge voting for this amendment to exempt the turf moratorium for any town owned or future town acquired land at Poets Corner for a few reasons Poets Corner is in a state of disrepair due to deferred maintenance and also resides on top of an old municipal landfill that was not capped according to now modern requirements the town at present does not have the funds to repair this town owned land but it is still available for sale at three acres which park and recreation has stated would cost about three million dollars currently in addition it is unclear how or to whom the arts biases of Boston may now sell the adjacent six acres of land they own depending on underlying contamination and wetlands the price could be fairly low due to a few potential development opportunities except maybe open space it is even possible the town maybe hopefully could buy and buy the land and wait to develop it or wait for a private public partnership along to help develop it for open space if some alternative public partnership comes along in the next two years or sooner we wouldn't want to stop any potential development that may involve all natural grass or a mix of natural grass and artificial turf given that artificial turf companies are listening to the concerns of the public and are adjusting their materials and manufacturing methods we should not blink at ban such a possibility additionally it appears clear that there may be some potential development around poets corner anyway given the likelihood that there is at least some amount of wetlands covering that area well I personally am unsure about the moratorium on artificial turf for the rest of Arlington and maybe we'll have that decision in the next hour I have filled this file this amendment to seek a compromised position at the time that might be able to achieve a larger consensus of town meeting sorry I lost my mic but I think it's helpful for our constituents of which we probably heard from a lot of residents in town and helpful for the town manager and town staff to see where town meeting stands on the artificial turf issue and all these grainy details of amendments in case further opportunities to redevelop or reconstruct more open space and playing fields come to our door parks and rec and the town manager should have an idea of what types of fields we would be willing to support the future so that we don't end up in this situation possibly in the future so I move my the Greenspawn amendment for the amendments of the substitute motion and thank you everyone thank you do we have a second we have a second to the motion to amend the the law of the substitute motion with the Greenspawn amendment I now invite Mr. Slickman to introduce his amendment Paul Slickman precinct nine in this hall last Tuesday two administrative bodies in the executive branch of our town government were sharply divided over the prospects of a moratorium on turf fields the narratives were sharply different one narrative focuses on protecting us from hazardous chemicals the other focuses on the need for more playing fields in town town meeting as the legislative branch of government has the authority and responsibility to make policy decisions about playing fields in artificial turf beyond the scope of what we can enact tonight recent discussion wanders in and out of the four corners of this trapezoidal article before us I'll allow it my sense is that lush well-maintained natural brass is a good thing and absent any other considerations of the preferred playing surface the playing fields in Arlington lack well-maintained natural grass the line of accountability for the fields leads back here to town meeting as town meeting is the appropriating authority that approves the budgets to support field maintenance Arlington doesn't have enough fields to meet the needs of our community the problem is exasperated when rainy weather prompts the town to take fields offline there are places where natural turf is important or artificial turf is important but not is not essential we only need to look at the athletic fields behind Arlington high school where the artificial turf is a barrier in part of the cap over a site that was contaminated with hexavaliant chromium and manufactured gas products according to the Boston Globe the toxic materials polluted Cutters pond which was filled in in 1932 to create the high school's football field and migrated underground to other parts of the immediate area Miss Malofchuk substitute motion recognizes its reality as it exempted the Arlington high school project from her proposed moratorium some artificial turf is better than others after considering the evidence derived from a study town meeting may choose to set standards for artificial turf for example town meeting may choose to ban crumb rubber but permit organic turf infill in any case there are decisions we are not prepared to make tonight and decisions we are prohibited from making tonight because they are beyond the scope of any article before the 2023 town meeting which is why I am offering an amendment to Miss Malofchuk substitute motion that will limit the moratorium to one year and require the committee formed under this article to present their findings at the 2024 annual town meeting under my amendment the study committee and the moratorium will expire with the dissolution of the 2024 annual town meeting which will give everyone the chance to submit warrant articles and other sufficient data that will enable us to make informed decisions this will also allow town meeting to vote a budget is aligned with the funding required to maintain viable turf fields by senses the town meeting needs more time and more information before it boasts a regulate artificial turf I don't believe a majority of town meeting wants to ban artificial turf and I don't believe a majority wants to walk away and allow artificial turf to be unregulated I move to amend Miss Malofchuk substitute motion to give us a gift of time a short time frame where we can consider the standards we want to set for our playing surfaces without obstructing any potential proposals for playing fields in Arlington please vote yes on my amendment thank you So we have a motion to amend the Malofchuk substitute motion with the Schlickman amendment Do we have a second? We have a second it is now pending before us so I invite Miss Palasotti to introduce her amendment and if by the way if you're just clicking into the speaker queue now you probably won't speak before the Schlickman amendment expires Thank you Mr. Moderator. Janice Palasotti precinct 8 I rise to submit an amendment to the substitute motion to article 12 this amendment makes all members of the artificial turf study committee voting members the ex officio members have extensive expertise in public health education and recreation their perspectives need to be fully reflected in the findings and recommendations of the committee the report to be submitted to this body and available to all Arlington residents needs to include their votes I ask that you vote in favor of this amendment so that if the substitute motion passes all members of the committee can participate on equal footing I ask to submit this motion we have a motion to amend the Malofchuk substitute motion with the Palasotti amendment and we have a second so that is now pending before us and I invite Dr. Dennis to introduce his two amendments he actually submitted more but you're getting a bargain here You're welcome. Greg Dennis precinct 1 I move that my two amendments on article 12 be received We have a motion to receive the Dennis amendments in front of us. Do we have a second? I'll count those as two seconds for the two amendments. Go ahead. And could I have my slides queued up please Yes, there we go. The article 12 substitute motion has at least three serious flaws in needs amendments. Next slide please The first flaw is the denial of voting privileges to some members While town meeting has allowed for non-voting committee members in some special cases in the past there is no compelling reason for it here I served on a committee that for a time had non-voting members I saw how that second class status created a sense of inequity and how it caused some of the non-voting members to simply not show up to meetings where the motion is written. Anyone who has voiced an opinion contrary to that of the proponents has either been relegated to non-voting status or excluded entirely. If we are to have a committee we need one that is inclusive of the diversity of viewpoints in town on this issue. A fix for this flaw is the Palli Asadi and Dennis 1 amendments. Palli Asadi gives voting privileges to all members however that change by itself would make for an even number of voting members and ideally committees have an odd number to avoid blocking on tie votes and to make it a bit easier to reach quorum. To address this my amendment reduces the moderator appointees from 2-1 It also specifies that this appointee is to be the chair and I charged the moderator with choosing someone neutral on the question of synthetic turf for the role I thought it best to avoid starting off the first meeting with a contentious election for chair. Next slide please. A second flaw is that the motion charges the committee with reporting only on the potential problems with turf. There is no mention of all the measures that exist to mitigate or eliminate potential issues. Most of our neighboring communities and cohort towns have installed new turf fields recently or have new turf projects underway. In Cambridge, in Somerville, in Belmont, in Watertown, in Winchester, Brooklight, in Boston and some are doing innovative things in their turf design and procurement from requiring stronger certifications on turf to using newer natural infills to contractually requiring the turf be downcycled at the end of life. Please report Dennis Amendment 2 to ensure the committee takes a look at how our neighbors are installing turf and assembles a set of best practices. If we go forward with the turf project in the future, that research would help us do it in the best way possible. Next slide please. A third flaw is that the substitute motion calls for a moratorium. I had planned on speaking about the outcome of a moratorium, but with today's news that possible outcome has become a reality. Poets will remain an uncapped landfill in an embarrassing place or the St. Camillus land will be sold to the highest bidder. Projects like poets are subject to a deliberative process and we gain nothing from preempting that process. It still had to go before the conservation commission and after further discussion the project would have been brought back to town meeting for approval of a land swap. It didn't make sense to decide the fate of the project now when we could have had a proper vote on it in the future with more information in hand. As for the fix, I had originally had an amendment to strike the moratorium section entirely, but I decided to withdraw it to support the Greenspan amendment, save us a bit of time. Despite today's news, I think we should still support the amendment, at least as a symbolic statement. Next slide please. In making their case for a moratorium, the proponents have cited several communities that purportedly banned or rejected synthetic turf. A little digging reveals many of these examples to be false. Springfield has been touted frequently by proponents as a densely populated community that meets its recreational needs without the need for turf fields. In reality not only has Springfield relied on turf fields for decades, they have two ongoing projects to install at least three new turf fields. We were told Belmont banned turf, not true. In 2019 the Belmont High School Building Committee looked at the research and concluded that turf was a safe and superior choice for their new high school. That field was installed in 2021. It's just an eight minute drive from here if you want to check it out. It's next to an existing turf field they have. We heard that Brookline rejected turf. Nope, at their town meeting last year Brookline created a committee called the Athletic Surface Task Force, cooler than our name. The task force found that turf was a safe and acceptable athletic surface and Brookline is proceeding with a turf installation at their New Driscoll School. We were told Boston banned turf, not true. That and over rejected turf, not true. Of course there's all our neighborhood communities that the proponents have not mentioned like Cambridge and Somerville and Watertown and Winchester, all of whom have installed new turf fields recently. Places like Cambridge and Somerville and Brookline we know these communities are no slouches at environmental responsibility. Our town meeting has followed their lead on many environmental articles. They do not have moratoriums. They all continue to approve of or disapprove of new turf fields on a case by case basis and so should we. Next slide please. How did we get to this complicated situation with multiple substitute motions and several subsidiary amendments? Well an early bad sign was when the proponents showed up to their select board hearing with no details of the study committee. They argued for a moratorium in a vague need to quote unquote study but not a word was written or uttered about who would be doing the studying, how the committee would be composed, or even would be a committee at all. It wasn't until much later that those details were revealed. Earlier public scrutiny and feedback might have given us something better to work with here. Instead I think we have a motion that is unbalanced it's not fully baked and at this point I doubt parliamentary procedure leads us to any kind of satisfactory action on this article. So yes we should try to patch this thing up with amendments but when that's done we should just vote the whole thing down. If supporters of a study committee want to come back in the fall with a balanced and well structured proposal they are welcome to. Thank you. Thank you. I now invite Mr. Benson and or Ms. Stamps to introduce the Benson Stamps substitute motion and while one or both of them come up I just want to clarify that this substitute motion is separate from the Milovchik substitute motion. Only one of them, both of them could substitute the main motion but in the sequence that we're going to do them one would completely clobber the other. So these are not composable. Mr. Benson I'm waiting for this. Okay. And to be clear while we're waiting here the Benson Stamps substitute motion stands alone. We do not have any amendments on it as opposed to the Milovchik substitute motion which has several amendments stacked on it. Can we have our slides? My name is Susan Stamps, town meeting member of Precinct 3 can you hear me okay? And I'm Eugene Benson Precinct 10 town meeting member. The first thing we wanted to say was a response to what happened today where we found out that Bill Monhill had pulled let's not quite sure what they pulled because it was never actually anything that was real. There were no written agreements. There was no money that changed hands to secure future projects or agreements because many people have argued against, some people have argued against article 12 because they want the Poets Corner field. Article 12 has never been about Poets Corner. It's about artificial turf and Arlington is a very progressive town. We've been a leader in the metropolitan Boston area on environmental issues and this put poisons in the ground is really not the direction we want to go in. So I just wanted to say the Poets Corner really doesn't make any difference to the importance of this article. Thank you. So we'll make a motion to substitute our motion to the main motion. Thank you. Can you go to the next slide please. So we're going to discuss three things. Yeah, you may I was so surprised at having come up right now that I forgot to bring my, the candidate we had in the back with the green circle on it. So if you have that that summarizes what we're asking for tonight. It's very much along the line to the melodic motion. We feel that it is better in some ways. It is to establish an artificial turf study committee. We'll get into those details in a minute and it requires a report from the committee. This is too high. Okay, there we go. I don't really need to stand on tip toes. It requires a committee a report from the committee before the spring 2024 town meeting. It could even be one that is submitted to the fall town meeting. And so the time it's flexible and there's a moratorium that's one year. And again that's flexible because town meeting at any time can reverse the moratorium. It exempts the high school from the moratorium because of contracts that we already have signed. And as I said town meeting can lift it at any time. So one of the main reasons why we decided to file this substitute motion was we went to the forum a couple weeks ago on artificial turf. And as some other people said, there were both sides and they weren't talking to each other. And I think you've heard similar things tonight by some of the speakers before us. And we felt there needed to be a committee appointed by town meeting that would report back to town meeting. That would be a fair and balanced committee of stakeholders. So we as town meeting members as the elected representatives of the residents of this town would know what to do when a proposal comes before us. We changed what we think should be the composition of the committee to make it fair and balanced. Can you just hold on a second where a couple of slides behind up on the screen. Could you go forward to slides, please? Seven voting members. One appointed by the conservation commission. One appointed by the park and recreation commission. One appointed by the capital planning committee because whatever we do is going to cost money. Should be in the capital plan. One appointed by the city council. One appointed by the city council. One appointed by the city council. One appointed by the city council. She can do services. Or she can do it herself. A town meeting member appointed by the moderator. And a town resident appointed by the select board. And two non-voting members who can bring information and help the committee. The town's environmental planner, And what we liked about this committee was that they are on a committee and they have to talk to each other and they have to share information versus what we saw the other night, which was they were talking across each other. It really was a debate. It was the same thing as the January 5th, 2023 meeting between Concom and Park and Rec. Next slide, please. We're running out of time. Okay, yeah, we're, yeah. Let's see, what are we doing? Oh, yeah, so, but this is what's, so it's a great committee because it's, it really is a fair group of all the stakeholders. But in addition to that, as you can see from this slide, we have certain requirements for the committee members. They can't have any conflict of interest. They can't have been testified at a court or administrative hearing, either for artificial turf or against it. They can't work for a business that isn't, isn't the artificial turf business or has been involved in construction of an artificial field. There are not being a member of a trade group that is involved with artificial turf. And that way, I think, we'll be able to get people who really are on the committee to look at the science and all the other relevant factors and make a fair and balanced decision. So we think this is the best committee both for the composition and because it's the only one that has these conflict of interest rules for the committee. Committee responsibilities, artificial turf review and report, health safety, environmental impacts, mitigation, which is everything that some of the other people talked about. Should it be from rubber? Should it be Brockville? You know, how do you deal with it? And a comparison of natural and artificial fields compared. Report findings and recommendations at least 30 days before annual meeting a year from now or earlier if the report's ready. So if something comes a year from now, we're set. And then the next slide, please. The next slide. And I think we're just going to get to why because we're almost out of time. Again, the main reason for the composition of the committee is so that people can talk together instead of at each other and arguing and it being really tense and horrible, which is what we've seen so far. That's the why. And oh, and that was just one more slide. I personally had never seen artificial turf. I went to the Arlington Catholic Field a couple of days ago. And the first X you see looks nice and white from a distance. The second one, if you walk up close, you see it's totally covered with rubber. It's unbelievable. Okay. So thank you very much. Thank you very much. And we appreciate your voting for our substitute motion. Thanks. So we now have all the motions pending in front of us. And just to help visualize this, it's like we have one large, if you just indulge me for just a moment, and then we'll get to debate. We have one large platter, which is the main motion on top of that large platter. We have two large plates, which are the two substitute motions. One of those large plates is the Milovchik substitute motion plate, which has six small plates, which is the sixth amendment stacked on top of that. And so we have to vote. That is not described anywhere in this book. But that's how we're going to do it. I won't tell anyone if you don't. And we can now start debate. So let me go to the speaker queue now, and I'll take Mr. Goldsmith. Are we scrolled to the top of the... Mr. Puller. Mr. Puller speak is about an update from today. Okay. Mr. Weinstein. Okay. I understand. I'll make determinations. I'll make the determinations of scope. I'm aware. Okay. Mr. Weinstein, I'm aware of the concern. And Mr. Puller does not have a handset to request to enter into the speaker queue with the town meeting members. I will allow Mr. Puller to speak, and I will be watching close...watch over the scope. Mr. Puller. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Sandy Puller, town manager. I found my town meeting button today, so I hope that that will help everything go smoothly and quickly. A couple of people have made reference to the statement from Belmont Hill, but some people also asked me about it earlier today in town meeting. So I just want to make sure that it's clear to everybody that we received a written notice today from Belmont Hill School, saying that it is pulling out of funding any work at Poets Corner, and that what had been proposed was to have Belmont Hill build a turf field there that could be used by Belmont Hill and by the town. So that is off the table. I would also just like to say, as I have said from the very beginning, since Ms. Palafchuk first offered her amendment, I hope that the town meeting supports the Select Board recommendation of no action. If you feel like voting for a lot of amendments, that I would hope... Mr. Weinstein, you have a point of order? I understand, Mr. Weinstein, I understand the concern. You raised this earlier with me in private. I understood it then, and I understand it the same now. Mr. Puller, please proceed within scope. Thank you. I have opposed this for many of the reasons that Mr. Dennis outlined. One, I think a moratorium is a... Mr. Puller, I want to point out that it's not a time for... I'm not offering you this position ahead of the speaker queue for debate on the amendments, but if you had an update to offer that was relevant to this discussion. Well, I guess I would then ask the question, as the employed town manager of the town, who does get to push a button to speak, when would town meeting like to hear from the town manager on this issue? It is... Hold on, Mr. Weinstein, please, no more outbursts here. The answer to your question, Mr. Puller, is that you may respond to questions that town meeting members may have on this topic. That is an answer I appreciate getting. Not sure that it makes sense, but thank you very much. Thank you. We'll now take Mr. Goldsmith. Gary Goldsmith, precinct 11. I'm a little nervous. I speak from the vast experience of two and a half weeks as a town meeting member. And thank you to my fellow members for working to make the best, really thought-out decisions. I thank the moderator for taking on a challenging task. I thank the parents of children for doing what they think is best in their children's interest and the environmentalists trying to do the right thing for the world that those children will inherit. This is a debate about artists of turf inextricably connected with poets' corner. And I find myself wondering if we're not making short-term thinking and weighing that over wise decision-making. Let's look at the options here. Belmont Hill desperately wants more playing fields. Today's events aside. And they are willing to pay big money to make that happen because they obviously don't have another good alternative to turn to other than this one. The Archdiocese understandably wants to generate sorely needed revenue and ostensibly will immediately sell their land to the highest bidder. But even though Arlington has a hot real estate market, I wonder how attractive a poorly capped landfill will be to developers and will they be willing to take on the cost and the risk of puncturing an unreliable cap. And how many homeowners, no matter how desperate they may be to buy a home in Arlington, which they should, are going to cough a big bucks to buy a house on a sketchy site with potential health risks. I think Arlington may have the stronger hand in this card game if we can resolve the issues in a timely manner. And with that in mind, I support the Benson Stamps substitute motion which offers a clear pathway to a wise and timely decision. I think that both Belmont Hill and the Archdiocese, despite today's events, are likely to work with us if there's a clear end point in sight. They have confidence that their artificial turf option will work and they likely believe that they will get the feel that they want perhaps after a bit of a wait. And how long will that be? The Benson Stamps substitute motion calls for a decision by the 2024 town meeting or earlier if that can be achieved, perhaps at the special town meeting in the fall. Yes, our kids need more places to play, but will they think we did the right thing in 20 years if they have illnesses and injury due to short-term thinking on our part? I have a number of unanswered questions about the alternatives that have been discussed. Is the entire site going to be recapped to 2033 standards? What if the FDA or the CDC concludes that turf actually does have serious health risks and we're stuck with a field that nobody wants to play on and we will be on the hook for pain for recycling the artificial turf in 10 years, perhaps when it's considered toxic waste? How expensive will that be? And will the town meeting members of that time think that we made a good decision? Or were we the last ones to buy into a problem? My point is that we are the governing body for Arlington. We are its legislature. We are the adults in the room. We should be choosing the best long-term decision for the town. That really is the focus of what we're deciding upon. I think the Benson Stamps substitute motion addresses that. I support it. I encourage you to vote for it. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Thank you, Mr. Goldsmith. Let's take Mr. Weinstein next. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Jordan Weinstein, precinct 21. I just first want to apologize for my outburst. This has been a very stressful process to get to this night. The meeting doesn't sincerely appreciate that. Thank you. And I'm also grateful for all the folks who have stepped up and offered amendments and substitute motions for this. I think it's a worthwhile conversation to have. I'm one of the four main proponents of the Milovchik substitute motion. And I'd just like to say a few words about a few of the amendments that have been offered. And the first one I'd like to talk about is the Vakil amendment. He was the first one to speak this evening of these. If anything, it's interesting because Sanjay's amendment makes the case for why we actually need a study committee. This amendment that he offers doesn't address the presence of what's called precursor chemicals that are in artificial turf and can chemically bond into PFAS. We've learned this from discussions with scientists that we've talked about and toxicologists. The testing that he mentions, EPA 537, is a method he recommends, but it only detects a fraction of the PFAS in artificial turf. And he mentions the California and European standards, but they hold no legal or regulatory weight in Massachusetts. And the industry phrase that he uses in his amendment, PFAS-free, is actually nowhere near free of PFAS. But it's so for a minute that you could get PFAS-free turf. You'd still be choosing, if you chose artificial turf, the destruction of oxygen producing green space, green land ecosystem that you're covering, and habitat. You'd also be installing a heat island in an area of Arlington near the Poets Corner region that is already a heat island. And an EPA-defined impervious surface, which is what artificial turf is. And it will add about 27,000 gallons of stormwater per acre per inch of rainfall to already a flood-prone area over an uncapped waste site. PFAS, by the way, even though you may get small exposures each time you encounter it and are exposed to it, is something called bioaccumulative. So small exposures build up in the body to eventually become major problems for you. They cause cancer and other problems. And even if new artificial turf exposes you to very small amounts of PFAS and other toxins, over time, the PFAS and the artificial turf itself gets trampled on, ground up, and pounded into a powdery substance that then, when you play on it or run on it or roll in it, gets thrown up into the air, gets inhaled, it gets into the mouth, it gets ingested, and it can also get absorbed through the body through abrasions, which kids have when they're playing sports. In any event, for all these reasons, I'm asking you to reject the Vakil Amendment. Based simply on the fact that, as it's written, we simply don't know what we're going to be voting for. The Pagliasadi Amendment isn't controversial in my mind. If you think that all members in our Milovchik substitute motion should be unable to vote, please vote for the Pagliasadi Amendment. That would make the three town employees who are currently non-voting members in the Milovchik substitute motion voters, and that would perceptibly and probably make it much more acceptable to a lot of people and maybe make it more unbiased. The Dennis Amendment, the first one, while it pretends to make the study committee more neutral, it takes away one important democratic freedom that was pretty much glossed over here, that most committees have, and that's the ability to choose their own chair. Instead, the Dennis Amendment, number one, imposes a chair from the top as an appointee of the town moderator. Now, I have nothing against the town moderator, but in this regard, this amendment is rather autocratic and not in keeping with our historic and democratic traditions of allowing a committee, a study committee, or any other committee to elect its chair, or maybe even co-chairs, or maybe even a rotating chair, but certainly not a chair that's appointed from above. Dennis Amendment, number two, expands the scope of the study committee to include best practices in the use of artificial turf. That's fine, but it fails to extend the same scope to natural grass fields. In my opinion, this is going to result in a skewing of the study committee to focus on something that really needs to be focused on, or to divert the focus onto something that really needs to be focused on, which is scientific information on the nature of artificial turf and whether it's safe for us to use. If the town decides in the end to use more artificial turf, there would be plenty of time to study best practices, but as it's written right now, the Dennis Amendment, number two, changes the committee's focus, in my opinion, and distracts it, or would distract it, from researching whether artificial turf is safe to use in town. So after all is said and done, I still believe that the Milovchak substitute motion, the original substitute motion is our best choice if we're to have a thorough, rational, scientific assessment of whether or not our town should continue to use artificial turf on our playing field. So I urge you to vote yes on Milovchak substitute motion. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Weinstein. Let's take Ms. Bergman next. I hadn't been called autocratic before. I thought it would sting more. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Robin Bergman, precinct 12. I'm not going to talk about the science and the specific amendments to other substitute motions since Jordan just did. As one of the proponents, one of the small committee that worked on this, I will try to explain to you why I decided to work on this warrant article in substitute motion and why it's so important to me. To quote a letter from the Connecticut Examiner this week, artificial turf fields, it's personal. In doing some climate-oriented work last year, artificial turf kept coming up. I started to go to webinars with scientists and read up on the subject. I had followed the DuPont Teflon scandal and exposés. I had noticed the PFOA scandal with plastic water bottles and was suspicious when everything was suddenly PFOA free. I had not put it all together until I listened to the scientists. These chemicals are all related as a class of chemicals, yet they have rarely been regulated, and when they have, it has been one by one. And when... Sorry, I lost my place here. And when all individual chemicals are regulated, industry tweaks something in the chemical makeup and creates a new one. So now that new one is unregulated and free to be used. There are now somewhere between 12,000 to 14,000 PFAS chemicals. No one is exactly sure how many and the number continues to grow. This is why many scientists now want them to be regulated as a class. I came of age during a time when better living through chemistry and the future is plastics where the slogans of the day. No one thought of any unintended consequences. When I was in high school, I was mystified and horrified when one by one, mothers of my friends started dying from breast cancer. There was a cluster of cancer in my neighborhood. Some of us originally thought we were immune to it because our houses were uphill from what then became known as a Superfund site. Then my sister's best friend who lived two doors away died of childhood bone marrow cancer before she was nine. Fast forward and my mother fought cancer five times and didn't make it on that fifth one. I too had a lumpectomy and have been told I am at high future risk. And so are most of my friends. I can count only a few friends who have not had some form of cancer. Instead of meeting for lunch at a restaurant, it's become frequent to meet for lunch instead at the MGH cafeteria. I have lost too many friends from cancer, including one a week ago. Definition of Superfund site. Locations polluted with hazardous materials and waste. There were heavy metals and all kinds of other toxins in that Superfund site. And I now know there were also PFAS chemicals there just as in artificial turf. And some 50 years later, the site is still in litigation after many proposed projects from housing to an Amazon warehouse have all been canceled because of continuing cleanup safety and liability issues. Artificial turf fields are creating toxic sites as well as leaching materials into the air, land and water. Those of us working on the moratorium have sent you materials and articles about the current science. Artificial turf has multiple toxins, including heavy metals, PFAS, microplastics. New research comes out daily. For example, last week articles about some of these chemicals broaching the blood-brain barrier within two hours. Remember, there are no safe levels of PFAS and no safe levels of lead among other toxins. In 2015, the girls' soccer team in Washington state had a cluster of cancer cases among goalies. Recently, the Phillies reported a cluster of rare brain cancer among ball players. Examples like this continue to come up. It's clear to me that PFAS and artificial turf are the new asbestos, the new tobacco, the new climate science denial. It seems we have not yet learned lessons from these examples. Why would we in Arlington ban plastic bags, ban plastic water bottles, endorse a new campaign to outlaw plastics, create new energy plants to get off fossil fuels, only to install a plastic field that is 40,000 pounds of plastic carpet, the equivalence of two to four million plastic bags just in the top layer of artificial turf alone? To quote but take some liberties from that Connecticut letter again to make it more relatable to Arlington. I am disappointed and puzzled. Why are my friends and colleagues, all fervent advocates for addressing the climate crisis on one hand, voting for removing green space and replacing it with plastic fields on the other hand? How can we as part of the leadership in our town promote new initiatives spanning plastics to combat global warming while signing off at the same time on yet another heat island in town already lacking sufficient green space? Why am I compelled as a member of Arlington Town Meeting to help formulate, discuss, and pass a policy that would place a temporary moratorium on artificial turf fields with a study committee when my compatriots don't see the urgency or the dangers? Maybe it's my lived experience. Maybe my personal story can sway some of your opinions. I ask you for a yes vote to support the Moloff Check substitute motion and a no vote on the other motions and amendments. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Bergman. Let's take Mr. Moore next. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Christopher Moore, Precinct 14. We are seeing a moment in our history of understanding of these chemicals that looks like a lot of other times in science. It's confusing. We have scientists promoted by one side, scientists promoted by the other side, and I think the reason for that is this is how science goes. There are times when things aren't super clear. There are times when we think we see a problem coming. We don't know how bad it is. We don't know if there's a way around it. And I think those things will become more clear over time. We have in front of us a vertebral gauntlet or maybe feast, Mr. Moderator, of... Smorgasbord. Smorgasbord? I'll get with that. Of substitute motions. And then, of course, the side dishes of amendments surrounding the Moloff Check substitute. One thing that's... And I think we've heard really good things from the people who propose those things, and I thank them for their work in doing so. One thing I'd like to understand better is what happens if we take the Select Board's proposal and vote no action on Article 12? What actions does the town plan to take in that case? Okay. Mr. Holmuth or Mr. Pooler? Sandy Pooler, Town Manager. It would be my intention if this no action is voted to appoint a committee to look at the turf issues. I believe further study is important. I believe that the forum we had the other night answered some important questions but also brought up other questions. So I would appoint a committee made up of members of the Conservation Commission, Board of Health, Parks and Recreation Commission, a resident appointed by the Select Board, a resident appointed by the School Committee, a resident appointed by the Manager, and a resident appointed by the Moderator. I would ask this committee to look at the composition of fields, including the use of various components of the underlying structure, the grass blades, the infield, and other materials used to construct artificial fields. I would ask it to look at the testing standards. Many people have talked tonight about what kind of tests there are, and I think certainly any kind of field that might be built in Arlington should pass rigorous tests. I would look at the environmental impacts of all plain fields, grass and artificial turf fields, including the release of chemicals from artificial turf fields, the possibility of reducing or eliminating such releases through the use of alternative materials, the use of chemicals on grass fields. We use a lot of chemicals on grass fields now, and other related environmental issues. The health issues related to playing on fields, including temperature issues, exposure to chemicals, exposure to biological hazards, and injury issues. The recreation playing time on artificial turf fields, the capacity of grass fields to meet the demands for usage, and the life cycle costs of artificial turf fields, including insulation, maintenance, and disposal, also the feasibility of making current grass fields organic. I would ask this committee to make a report by its findings. I would suggest by January 1st, 2024, so there'd be time in case there'd be other warrant articles to propose for the 2024 town meeting. I do this because I think people have raised some very serious issues. I have some very serious questions about turf fields, and I do think it is important to continue to look at this. So if that's how I'm going to vote that way, that would be my next step. Thank you. I think that's a sign that things are working. If you're supporting fields, you've been heard. If you think artificial turf is a terrible thing, you've also been heard. And I like the manager's proposal because it puts together a committee involving citizens along with some of the other committees we already have in town that are working on these issues, for instance, the Conservation Commission, and I believe you included the Recreation Commission as well, or whatever we call them, Recreation People. Sorry about that. So I think the most straightforward path forward here is to take the Select Board's recommendation of no action, not because I'm saying that everything that people have brought up is not important because the government has heard us, and there's a sensible path forward here that involves all of the organizations in our government that already exist and brings those together with other folks to come up with a solution. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Thank you, Mr. Moore. Let's say Mr. Heard next. That's a point of order. Andy Greene, Spana, Precinct 5, thank you. Quick three motion questions. One is the Benson Stamps substitute motion dividable between A and B? If so, does someone have to make an official motion for that? And three, would they have to make a motion before we vote to terminate debate? That's a great question. That's a point of order. It's about procedure. Given the sequence that I laid out that I shared ahead of time with everybody, we would be pretty deep into debate before we know whether the main motion is divisible or not. And because of that, there won't be an opportunity at that point to have a speaker queue to debate or to make motions such as division. In that case, I would be inclined to divide the question in the interest of the meeting, which is my discretion as moderator. And in this case, I feel that that would apply. So if we get to a point where we end up with a main motion that is susceptible of division, then I would be inclined, because the meeting wouldn't be able to have the opportunity to move to divide it, that I would take that stuff myself. But there are many outcomes where we get to a main motion, which is simply not divisible. Mr. Hurd. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. John Hurd, precinct 18. That's the first time I've got to say that. I don't want to repeat what Mr. Halma said in regards to the select board report. I do assume everyone watches all of our meetings and saw everything that was said at the hearings. But I do want to just come up and reiterate just a couple of points that I made then and make a couple more points. To me, as a select board member, Tommy DeMember, residents, I am always baffled by the amazing work that Arlington does in the areas of conservation, the climate resiliency, and I certainly understand where the proponents are coming from on this. I come to this as part of the town administration, as a parent of two boys that get an awful lot of use on the town fields. And I look at this as the proponents had mentioned this pending legislation in the state legislature in Massachusetts right now on artificial turf fields. To me, this is a state issue. For many reasons that the state has the resources to look at artificial turf fields, to bring the right experts in, and to make a very informed decision on the future of artificial turf fields in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It also, on a state level, no pun intended, levels the playing field for our athletes. And I know that there are a lot of concerns and they're valid concerns. I don't want to devalue the concerns of people of the proponents or individuals that want to vote in favor of a moratorium. But to me, there's been a devaluing of the importance of adequate playing fields for our children. And of all the articles that we've passed in recent years, whether it's the bottle ban, the plastic bags, whatever it is, that I've supported in those situations where burdening mainly adults. This is a burden on our children and you're taking away an incredible resource for our children, which is adequate playing fields for all the sports. You have a joint letter from the Arlington Baseball Club, Arlington Soccer Club, and Arlington Lacrosse Club, which for anyone that's involved in local sports knows it very hard for those three organizations to come together on anything relative to playing fields. And I say that in jest, but the reason is we don't have enough. There is a lot of demand for our playing fields. And because I've gone with my boys, I've woken up on a Saturday and said, hey, let's go hit some balls. We've driven to seven fields before and every one of them was occupied. We do not have enough playing fields. This year at least five or six games have been canceled so far. We've only played two or three games because of our playing fields. Poets' Corner, if it rains, the standard is two days after the rains. If it rains on Sunday, Monday closed, Tuesday closed, you can play on Wednesday. And even on Wednesday, you're going to go and you're going to have to push water out of the... I think it's in scope, Mr. Warden, out of the batter's box in order for them to be able to play. So to come in and impose a moratorium on new potential playing fields is just not fair to our children that are playing on these fields. And even with the news today, that doesn't mean that we're not going to have some new potential project that's going to come into play within the timeframe voted on the moratorium. So with that, I would urge that you vote yes on Mr. Dennis' amendment, but as he mentioned, vote no on the main article. And with that, Mr. Moderator, I'd like to invite a town resident to speak with the rest of my time. Okay, you have about two minutes and 10 seconds. Yes, and someone at the town, I think owes a great deal of gratitude to Mr. Phil Lasker. And he is a resident of Arlington. Name and address, please. Phil Lasker, one Claremont Court, chair of the Park and Recreation Commission. Thank you. The Park and Recreation Commission is devastated by the recent news that Belmont Hill School has withdrawn from the Poets Corner project. Unfortunately, their financial situation has changed and their appetite for a lengthy and contentious permitting process has diminished. Our position as a commission has not changed. We oppose any moratorium, prohibition, or ban on synthetic turf. We believe based on independent, scientific, peer-reviewed studies and the input from our experts that synthetic turf is safe. Organically managed natural turf fields are not the answer to solving our field space and quality needs. Poets Corner is still a great location to explore the use of synthetic turf. The community has expressed the desire to have additional field space, less cancellations, improve field conditions, and safer playing surfaces. The way to accomplish this is with synthetic turf. Hundreds of volunteers spent countless hours on this mission. We would like to thank them for their overwhelming support, especially the user groups who really got our message out. Our commission will continue to work hard to bring their vision to reality. We would like to thank the Poets Corner neighborhood who were actively engaged in the process over the course of three public meetings and several years about the project and provided valuable feedback. We would like to thank the Belmont Hill School and the Archdiocese of Boston for this opportunity and hope that we can work together in the future. The town has had a long-standing, mutually beneficial relationship with these parties that will continue for years to come. Finally, we would like to thank Joe Conley, director of recreation for his continued commitment to the town. His passion and dedication are unmatched. For anyone interested in more information about synthetic turf, we will be posting a document on our website as a follow-up to the turf form held last week. Thank you. Thank you. Let's take Mr. Trumbly next. Mr. Trumbly, precinct 19. Mr. Moderator, I had a little experience a little while ago. I almost got involved in picking up an artificial turf field. I think it was a couple of years ago, so I'm getting old and my memory gets a little hazy, but the option was... Picking up like you bought one or you physically lifted one? Well, I'm getting to that. I think it was... Yeah, I just forgot the name of the town. Western or Sudbury. Somewhere out there. They bought a brand-new artificial turf field that was less than a year old, and it rained some, and the water ran across the field a little bit and washed the crumb rubber out of it, and then the field floated away. So I just wanted to bring that to the meeting's attention because we've been talking about chemicals and all this other stuff, and we've talked about the natural process of having your fields float away if it's artificial. Is that your story? And... Yeah. Because I almost had to go pick up the crumb rubber. And since we've been talking about Poets Corner, I'll bring up something different here. I would really like to see the town buy Poets Corner and make playing fields out of it, so they can use this turf... So the purchase of land is not really... I understand that. But the use of the land, whether it's got artificial turf on it does have to do with what I'm going to say. Because I would like to see the town have that and put natural turf on it so that they could use it for a snow dump should we get a winter lake we had not that long ago, or a place to stash... Is this coming around to the use of salt on the road when we can't... No. Salt comes up in the DPW budget. Okay. Anyways, there's a snow dump or a place to stash vegetation should we have another microburst it generates a lot of it. Thank you, Mr. Robert. Thank you, Mr. Tremblay. Let's take Ms. Kelleher. It is 1101. Okay, before I recognize a motion to adjourn, do we have any notices of reconsideration for the Minuteman 44? For the one article that we voted tonight, we have a notice of reconsideration. Okay, so do we now have any motions to adjourn? We have a second? Okay, all those in favor of adjourning yes? All those opposed? You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. We are adjourned.