 And it is now 804. And I call this meeting to order. This is Wednesday, May 11th, 2022, night six of the annual town meeting. Again, if you didn't get your vote in for the attendance check-in, it's effectively just a test vote. So don't worry about that. So let's, before we get started, let's bring up the Star Spangled Banner. Sorry, I was muted. Just some brief opening remarks and then we'll jump right in. Tonight we're taking up special town meeting which has six articles. You can find those articles from the portal by clicking the button labeled STM 2022 docs on the left-hand side of the portal. Hopefully you've already reviewed those articles. We'll then take up financial articles including the town budget either tonight or on Monday, May 16th. Then we'll return to Article 19 where we left off at the end of Monday's meeting. Excuse me, a quick note on points of order. These are still being used in ways that aren't intended by the rules. So if you're wondering whether we skipped a formal step or if you have questions, I encourage you to use the Q&A which we monitor. And that way it won't interrupt the meeting. As I mentioned at the opening of Monday's meeting and I posted a message to this effect this afternoon we're behind the pace that we're going to need to finish by June 20th. And June 20th is the deadline for us to have a budget and time for the new fiscal year. To help us pick up the pace, I'm going to try something new tonight. When we get 15 minutes into debate on an article, once the current speaker at that time has finished, I'll call for a straw poll using raise hands in Zoom to poll how many members are interested in terminating debate. I'd like to, I'd like these straw polls to finish in about 30 seconds, which is a lot faster than the official votes which take around four minutes. If the number of hands from the straw poll is 75% or higher then I'll invite one of the members who raised their hand to move to terminate debate and we'll proceed to take an official vote at that point to terminate debate which requires a two thirds vote as it normally does. If the number from the straw poll in Zoom is less than 75% then we'll just resume debate and go back to the speaker queue. Speakers in the speaker queue are still free to move to terminate debate at any time. You don't need to wait for my straw polls to trigger termination of debate. And I'll continue with these straw polls no more than once every 15 minutes during debate. After tonight's meeting and before we reconvene on Monday I'll consider whether to keep or adjust or abandon this practice based on how effective it appeared to be tonight. Sometime meeting members have reached out to me to voice their concern since I put this announcement out that shortened debate may skew the debate toward one side unfairly. Especially if you have fewer speakers they might all be speaking to one side of the debate. To address this concern if only one if one side of the debate has not been voiced by the time a straw poll reaches the 75% threshold I'll give the unvoiced side of the debate an opportunity to speak before selecting someone who wants to terminate debate and hopefully it mitigates that concern. So let's now, let's say we need to take a few quick votes to adjourn the annual town meeting which we've been in for a couple of weeks now or a few weeks and we need to open the special town meeting which will essentially be embedded within the annual town meeting. So let me just pull up right here. Okay, so let's see. Mr. Fosk do you have any motions to offer at this point? I move we adjourn the annual town meeting until immediately after the special town meeting dissolves on a Monday, May 16th, 2022 whichever comes sooner. Second. We have a second. So Mr. Fosk is moving to adjourn the annual town meeting until after the dissolution of the special town meeting and we have a second from Ms. Brazil and raise hands and zoom let's enable that. And if there are any objections to adjourning the annual town meeting so that we can begin the special town meeting raise your hand and zoom now if you have any objections to that procedure seeing none, I declare that a unanimous vote and so the annual town meeting is now adjourned. Mr. Roscoe, do you have any motions to open the special town meeting? I think that would be the chair of the select board. Oh, sorry, Mr. Diggins. No problem, Mr. Moderator. It is requested that the members of the select board and elected officials of the town, town manager, department heads of the department of staff, superintendent of schools and staff, committees, commissions and boards of the town, minute man regional, occasional technical school, district committee and superintendent, members of the electronic voting committee and staff, members of the general court representing Arlington and also any consultants who have been retained to work for the town relative to articles to be acted upon by this meeting and representatives of the news media be permitted to sit within the town meeting enclosure. Second. We have a second. I call the special town meeting to order. This is Wednesday, May 11th, 2022. And Madam Clerk, do you have a reason to believe that this meeting was appropriately called by the select board and that the constable made a return of service on the warrant in accordance with the laws? Yes, I certify. Mr. Diggins. This move that if all business of the town, of the meeting as set forth in the warrant for the special town meeting is not disposed of at this session when the town meeting adjourns, it adjourns to Monday, May 16th, 2022 at 8 p.m. Okay, do we have a second? Second. Okay, we have a motion by Mr. Diggins that if we do not finish the special town meeting tonight that we will adjourn to Monday, May 16th. We have a second from Mr. Foskett with raised hands in Zoom. Let's make sure that's enabled. Do we have any objections? Seeing none, I now call for announcements and resolutions for the special town meeting. Any raised hands for that? Seeing none, ready to call for reports that are ready to be received. I have a second from Mr. Foskett. Yes, I'm trying to answer the call for reports. I don't know what, I just pressed the point of order. Charles Foskett precinct 10 and chair, a chair of the finance committee. I move that the report of the finance committee at the special town meeting be received. Do we have a second? Second. Okay, we have a second from Ms. Brazil to receive the finance committee report for special town meeting. And any objections? Seeing none, it is received. I believe we need to take article one. Mr. Monterey, I think we need to get a report from the ARB. Have that received? Okay, I see a hand from Mrs. Zemberry. Hello, Rachel Zemberry, chair of the Arlington Redevelopment Board. I move that the report to special town meeting from the Arlington Redevelopment Board be received. We have a second from Mr. Foskett to receive the report from the Arlington Redevelopment Board for special town meeting. Any objections? Raise hands and zoom if you have any objections. Seeing none, it's unanimous vote. Please proceed, Mrs. Zemberry. Do you want to speak to the report or do you just want to speak to the article? No, thank you. I just wanted to make sure it was deliberative. Great, thank you. Mr. Moderator, I move that article one be laid upon the table. Second. We have a motion by Mr. Foskett to lay article one of special time meeting on the table and a second from Ms. Brazil. Any objections to that with raise hands and zoom? Any objections to laying article one on the table so that we come back to it later? Seeing none, article one is now on the table and article two of special time meeting is before us. Okay, let's roll up article two of special town meeting. Okay, so this is a zoning bylaw amendment related to family child care. Ms. Zemberry, as a proponent of this, as chair of the Arlington Redevelopment Board, do you have anything to speak to about this? Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Rachel Zemberry, chair of the Redevelopment Board. I'd like to request that the prerecorded video for article two related to family child care be shared at this time. Okay, can we bring up that video please? Hello, I'm Rachel Zemberry, chair of the Arlington Redevelopment Board, also known as the ARB. And I will be taking you through article two, a bylaw amendment related to family child care for the 2022 special town meeting. The purpose of the amendment is to expand the 2019 annual town meeting zoning amendment to allow administrative review of in-home family child care facilities. A special permit is currently required for family child care, but not for other forms of child care. The Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care establishes strict standards for annual monitoring of family child care. As such, this amendment would remove a special permit from the ARB as a requirement. The ARB would add provisions for administrative review by the Department of Planning and Community Development for family child care to our board rules and regulations. This is consistent with policies in neighboring municipalities. The amended text includes the definition of family child care in section two, and changes to the table of uses from requiring a special permit for in-home family child care facilities to permitted as of right wanting compliance with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts standards for the licensure or approval of group daycare centers. And subject to any compliance with the Arlington Redevelopment Board rules and regulations. The board feels that this clarification is necessary to eliminate a redundant permitting process in establishing an in-home family child care facility. The ARB voted five to zero at our April 25th meeting to recommend favorable action on article two. Thank you. Hello, I'm Rachel. Thank you, Mr. Moderator, I have no further comments. Mr. Moderator, you're muted. Great, thank you, sorry about that. Let's see, do we have the speaking queue open and anyone wishes to speak on this? Now is the chance. Okay, so let's take Mr. Rudick. First time speaking at town meetings, I just wanna make sure that I'm coming through. Yep, you are, just name and precinct. Great, Ben Rudick, precinct five. Just wanna say, I think this is a wonderful change, wonderful article. I have two small children in daycare right now, a four-year-old and a two-year-old. It is phenomenally expensive and I have a third on the way in a few weeks and anything that can be done to make the opening of new daycare centers easier in Arlington is going to be tremendous and I hugely recommend you to support this. We have a desperate need for childcare in the area. And I also know as having work to open, attempt to open a daycare for my synagogue that the state permitting process is extremely robust and I have no concern whatsoever that we run any risk by taking away this special permit requirement as the EEC even in the state is very effective at their review. Thank you. Great, thank you. And congratulations on your new addition. Let's take, I don't believe we've heard from Ms. Nathan yet so why don't we take her next? Sorry, can you hear me? Yes, I can, just name- Oh, good, thank you. I just- I'm sorry, name and precinct please. Oh, sorry, Michelle Nathan, precinct 11. I have no idea what this is all about because I have no history and I'm new to the town. So I couldn't, I didn't have any time to do research before I got on the call. So can somebody like explain this simply? So I have some kind of background and I know what I'm voting on. Thank you. Yeah, so Ms. Zimbari, can you give a brief summary of this? Sorry. Of what this changes in kind of in late terms. Absolutely. Rachel Zimbari, Chair of the Redevelopment Board. In simple terms, the current by-law which requires people who are looking to open a home daycare to go through a process which is in conflict with a current state law which refers to the Dover Amendment which requires a, that the Dover Amendment requires that the childcare facilities be allowed as of right. However, we do not have that currently in our by-law. So this would change that current conflict that we have and also remove an onerous provision. There still would be oversight by the town. What this amendment proposes is that instead of coming to the redevelopment board which can be a lengthy process that the applicants instead work together with the Department of Planning and Community Development for an administrative review. Okay, so in even simpler terms, Ms. Zimbari, would it be fair to say that voting yes on this article changes the zoning by-laws to allow childcare facilities in more zones or in more circumstances? Is that fair? It, I would say that it allows them with, I wouldn't say that that's necessarily the case. I would say that it allows them as of rights would allows them without needing to come for an additional permit. Got it. Okay, I believe that answers Ms. Nathan's question. Thank you. Let's take Mr. Rosenthal next from the queue. Finally, it gave me the mute and can you hear me now? I guess I can. Name and precinct please. Mark Rosenthal, precinct 14. I received a communication today from somebody in my precinct regarding this. So I feel as an elected representative that it's my responsibility to read what they had to say. I'm just going to read a couple of points, not the entire email, but she gives her reasons as to why she objects to this as the following. One, living very near family childcare business can be a horrible experience. Two, the often loud noise from family childcare can happen early all day and into the evening. Three, the noise includes loud outdoor and indoor play talking and traffic, some horns during early pickups and late drop offs. And four, trying to sell a home near a known family childcare might hugely reduce the home selling price. So I just wanted to communicate to town meeting that not everybody's in favor of this. Thank you. Very thank you, Mr. Rosenthal. Let's take Ms. Mann next. Name and precinct please. Nora Mann, precinct 20. Move to terminate debate on this and all matters pertaining there too. Okay. We have a motion to terminate debate. So do we have a second? And we have seconds from Mr. Palmer, okay. And so let's bring up a vote, open voting for termination of debate of article one of special town meeting. So we'll still be voting in the enforced voting by waves. Again, if you're getting a message that your wave has not come up yet and you need to wait for the next wave, we'll be cycling through those. So if you get first chance now, you'll get last chance on another vote. We do have a point of order for Mr. Wagner. If that's something that could be put into the Q&A that we can address kind of asynchronously during voting, I'd encourage that. But otherwise, let's bring up Mr. Wagner to offer his point of order to his Mr. Wagner. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Can you hear me okay? Yes, I can. Name and precinct please. Thank you. Carl Wagner, precinct 15, very simple point. I heard you say maybe I'm wrong, article one. I believe this is article two, just for clarification. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Yes, I'm sorry. This is article two of special town meeting. Thank you. Thank you for that. In the future, that would be something that I do have the Q&A screen up. So I will be able to see that if someone wants to put that in there for a quick correction, but thank you. So this is for termination of debate on article two, the zoning bylaw change related to family childcare. We have 200 votes cast, we're still missing about 50. So we'll wait a little bit longer. Let's try to get these votes in as quickly as we can because that can shave off time in these meetings. Because as I said earlier, we spend looking at the numbers from previous meetings, we spend about four minutes, a little bit longer actually for each vote, including termination of debate. And all those votes at all those four minutes of voting do add up. And so we can shave time off if we're able to get votes in faster. Obviously we're limited by the waves of voting that we enforce because of the server load issues, but okay, so now we're missing about 35 votes. Okay, so let's give another 15 seconds. And you can always put your vote in the Q and A. Can we get the instructions up in the Q and A as well? I'm gonna go another 10 seconds, five seconds. Okay, let's close voting on termination of debate on article two of special town meeting and motion passes 88%, 192 in the affirmative, 26 in the negative, debate is terminated on article two of special town meeting. So we'll just cycle through the screens. If you missed your voting screen for your precinct, you can always click the view votes button on the left side of your portal. Okay, so we've cycled through all the precincts. So let's bring up, let's open voting for article two, special town meeting. And a yes vote here means that you're in favor of changing the zoning bylaws to allow child care facilities without requiring additional permits. If you wanna keep the current restrictions and the requirements around permits for child care facilities, then you would vote no. Excuse me, Mr. Moderator. The title of this does not look right. Oh, that's not, yeah. Looks like we still have the terminate debate up. I'm gonna close this and start again. Okay, apologies for that. Sorry, thank you. So we need to make sure that that doesn't overwrite the record for the termination of debate that we did the first time, but I guess that's something we can do offline. Cause I believe we have the voting records even if we repeat a vote. And so we'll just know that the second one was bogus. Okay, so now we're voting on article two of special town meeting for real, the zoning bylaw change related to family child care, vote yes if you wanna change the zoning bylaws to allow child care facilities without requiring additional permits and vote no if you want to continue requiring the additional permits beyond what folks have a right to do. Otherwise, just about 200 votes in. Let's try to get our votes in as quickly as we can. Sooner we get them in. Cause I don't wanna close voting because we always still have a lot of votes outstanding. So the quicker we get them in, the quicker we can close voting. And if you have trouble getting into voting through the portal, you could always enter your vote through the Q and A or you can call Ms. Brazil at 781-316-3071. Okay, we're still missing a handful of votes here. Let's just give folks another 15 seconds or 10 seconds, five seconds. Okay, let's close voting. And the motion passes 201 in the affirmative, 21 in the negative and three abstentions. Article two, special town meeting passes. Okay, so we'll just cycle through the screens. Okay, so let's now open article three, special town meeting. And let's bring up Ms. Zembury again. Did you wanna introduce this article for us? Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Rachel Zembury, Chair of the Redevelopment Board. I'd like to request that the prerecorded video for article three related to signs be shared at this time. Okay, let's bring up the video for article three, please. So I'm Rachel Zembury, Chair of the Arlington Redevelopment Board, also known as the ARB. And I will be taking you through one article three, a by-law amendment related to signs for the 2022 special town meeting. In 2019, a substantial revision of the signage by-law was approved by the annual town meeting, creating clearer and more stringent guidelines for signage in our town. Since that time, the need for several new types of signage types has arisen, including signage for shared mobility stations, such as blue bikes and electric vehicle charging stations. The purpose of this amendment is to create a new mobility station sign type for micro-mobility docking stations and ED charging stations. This new sign type law for wayfinding and community-oriented signage on docking stations and support an important element of marketing and funding for public mobility stations. Content and signage may be subject to select for review and approval. This new signage type, as proposed, is consistent with policy and neighboring municipalities. The amended text includes the definition of a mobility station, shared mobility docking station and electric vehicle charging station and general requirements for all signs with regard to location within the public way or private property. The table of signage types by district has been amended to include the new mobility station sign type which is allowed by right in all districts. The amendment also includes the addition of specific regulations and requirements, including illustrations and diagrams covering the number, size, location, illumination and permitting requirements for this new signage type. The ARB believes that this by-law amendment is necessary to support these important public amenities. The ARB voted 5-0 at our April 25th meeting to recommend favorable action on Article 3. Thank you. All right, thank you. I'm Rachel Zembery. Do you have anything to add, Ms. Zember? No, thank you, Mr. Moderator. All right, thank you. Let's go to the speaking queue. Let's take Ms. Leahy. Lori Leahy, Precinct 21. I'm assuming you can hear me. Yes, I can, go ahead, please. All right, I just haven't done this on this computer yet. So I just had a couple of questions. Will there be a limit on the number of these sound signs in the town? And will they be illuminated all night, like day and night? Okay, so let's ask Ms. Zembery. Ms. Zembery, will there be a limit on the number of signs and will they be illuminated throughout the night? Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Rachel Zembery, Chair of the Redevelopment Board. I'd actually like to ask Jennifer Rae, the Director of the Department of Planning and Community Development to address those two questions. Okay, Ms. Rae. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Jennifer Rae, Director of Planning and Community Development. To answer the two questions, the limit on the number of these types of signs is limited to the number of docking stations that the town currently has available. So right now we have five stations. We might have six or seven. I don't project that we would have more than that number at this particular moment in time. So it would be limited to those stations that we have in place or docking stations, I should say. The limit in terms of the number of those signs on EV charging stations would be contingent upon how many private charging stations come forward and wish to seek this opportunity to install a private charging station. So that might be, there may be more of those types of stations in the future. So I do not have a specific limit for those types of stations. These would not be illuminated at night in either the bike share docking stations or in the EV charging station. Thank you. Great, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Great, thank you. Let's take Mr. Kaplan next. Hi, Mark Kaplan, precinct nine. I have a number of questions and issues with this article. First is the bit about select men approving advertising content. I believe that is in opposition to the Supreme Court ruling, Reed versus Town of Gilbert, Arizona, where government may not have control over the content of free speech and advertising and signage. Do you have an answer for that? I personally don't. Mr. Heim, Town Council, do you have an answer to that about the case in Gilbert, Arizona? Doug Heim, Town Council. Not exactly sure what the specific context is here. I don't think that anybody's suggesting that the select board would approve the substance. I think what Mr. Kaplan is correctly referring to is that the government generally doesn't approve things based on the message of the commercial content in the same way it did once upon a time. It's not my understanding that that's what's happening here. I think that when we're talking about select board approval, I don't believe, and I'm happy to be informed about this, but we're talking about the content substantively of what's on the docking station advertisements. Thank you. So, Mr. Heim, do we know who's the responsible party for selecting the advertising? Like who's the decider on it? In terms of the mechanics of Doug Heim, Town Council, thank you, Mr. Moderator. Have a good evening, folks. I'd have to defer to either Ms. Emesbury or Ms. Ray in terms of who selects the advertising. But I don't think that there's an approval of content, like an application as you might have, like let's say that if somebody put an application in front of the redevelopment board or the select board for something, what the constitution doesn't allow is for us to favor certain types of speech over others, commercial or non-commercial. But again, I don't believe that that's my understanding. I don't want to take off all of Mr. Kevill's hand, but I don't think that's what's happening. Okay, let's go to Ms. Ray. Ms. Ray, do you have an answer to who selects the advertising for these charging stations? Jennifer Ray, Director of Planning and Community Development. So I think there's two questions. One is what the select board does in this process and then what would happen if there was advertising at these stations? The first part is that, yes, the select board approves the docking station locations and I think that if we were to have what we would call a sponsor of a docking station, this is at some point in the future. Should we need assistance in funding the operation and maintenance of the station, then we could potentially have a sign, one of the sign panels be reserved for that particular sponsor of the station. And if that was the case, it would be something that we would ask the select board to approve as part of the overall docking station approval. However, we cannot go so far as to have overall the types of regulations that are being talked about would not be over, cannot be over-regulated by the select board, the content of that signage. Okay, great. Mr. Kaplan, you said you have other points. Oh yes, thank you. I'd like to give a little history. The town spent many years working to eradicate roadside advertising on billboards from the town and allowing illuminated, unassociated advertising again after Arlington worked so hard to eliminate it, isn't progress. And now the point is, I'm wondering why special treatment is being given for some for-profit companies and will others sue for equal rights? Why are zip cars not included? And why do you deny non-profits another unsustainable money losing entities, similar signs and advertising? So by certain vendors, are you referring to blue bikes in particular, or is that? Well, they're getting special treatment. So why not allow zip cars or other for-profit corporations to advertise along our roadways? Right, so let's ask Ms. Ray. Ms. Ray, why blue bikes not other corporate entities participating in this? Jennifer Ray, director of planning and community development. I think that we would have a process where if we were looking for sponsors for a docking station, we would make that available to people who were interested in such a sponsorship for a station. And again, we would bring that to the select board for their review and approval. And there would be a discussion when they review it and we would figure out what the best sponsor might be for those locations. Why? Because these types of signs are everywhere in all kinds of communities throughout the bike share network. That is currently blue bikes. And it's really not, we're not saying that these are billboards. They're not any different than if something was posted on say a bus shelter or other locations along our main corridors. Not all of the bike stations or the docking stations are actually located along Mass Ave or other main corridors. Some of them are in other locations. So I think the types of things that are being discussed here are beyond the scope of this particular warrant article. And if they're addressed, they'd be addressed during the select board's review and approval process. Okay, who enforces the sign regulations? So we're coming out, you have 15 seconds left in your time. Okay, for years, there's been a, there's a church that has displayed six or more signs when allowed to officials refuse to enforce this. And Mr. Kepai, we're out of time for your speaking slot. So we're gonna have to, thank you. Let's see, let's, we still have some speakers in the queue who were left over from before. So I believe Mr. Quinn is next. Name and precinct, please. Michael Quinn, precinct 10. I'm still trying to get an understanding of what it is we're approving here and how it would change for the blue bike facilities that we have in Arlington. So I was hoping actually that we'd see pictures of what the blue bike facilities look like now and how they would look different in the future. Certainly when I come past the blue bike facility, on Broadway near the Thompson School, it's a big, obvious looking setup that I don't think needs any further advertisement of its own to let people know that it's there, but perhaps I'm not understanding it. So if we were to take that facility and now add additional, this warrant article to it, how would the look of that facility change if it was done out to the max of what this article would allow? Okay, let's see if Ms. Wright, can you answer that? Okay, can you kind of paint a picture of how passage of this article would change the appearance of these stations, of like the blue bike stations? Jennifer Wright, Director of Planning and Community Development. The appearance of the stations would not change. They would look exactly the same. What this would allow is for that mobility station to have essentially the sign that you see right now that you just mentioned would look exactly the same. And it has a picture of something promoting blue bikes. Usually there's a photo on that side of the panel that has people showing people riding bikes and it says blue bikes. And then on the other side of that panel, it could be either something promoting a community event is a possibility. Or if, again, there were title sponsors of an actual station, it could be something set aside for the title sponsor or it could be both. There are many options, but the actual physical sign is a sign that is attached to the docking station and it is there right now. So what you're looking at will be exactly the same, but it may have other types of signs allowed. Thank you. Thank you. So as I'm understanding this, the whole facility stays the same, but now we're gonna add or replace something that is there with commercial advertising as being the change to that and adding lighting of some sort in certain hours. Thank you. I'm all set. Great, thank you. And we are coming up soon on the 15 minute mark as I promised, but we can take one more speaker before we hit that mark. So let's take Ms. Dreyf. Name and precinct, please. Good evening, Mr. Moderator, Elizabeth Drey precinct 10. I have some questions about the financials. I'm wondering if there's any idea about how much money this will generate and where that money goes. Is it possible, does any of that advertising money benefit Arlington in any way? Does it come into our coffers or does it deduct, could it be deducted from this $100,000 that we have dedicated in future years? So that's my question. And I just also like to respectfully remind town meeting members that the proper term for our executive branch is the select board. Thank you very much, Mr. Moderator. All right, thank you. Ms. Wright, do you have an answer for how the advertising that the revenue from advertising is used in town or where that goes? Jennifer Wright, Director of Planning and Community Development, any revenue that would be generated from any signage would go directly to funding the docking stations in our community related to the bike share program. So it would all be, it would all go into that system so that it can operate and so that we can maintain it. Thank you. So, thank you. So it doesn't go to blue bikes, that money comes into Arlington and we can use it to offset future financial support of the blue bikes, is that correct? That's my understanding what Ms. Wright just described, yeah. And my other question was, does there any approximation of how much money this will raise? Ms. Wright, do you have an estimate on the advertising revenue? Jennifer Wright, Director of Planning and Community Development. No, we do not have any projection of what we would be seeking to raise or how much money we might be able to raise per station at this particular point in time. We're just creating a sign option so that if we did, if we were going to try to find sponsors for the stations, we would have the space to be able to showcase that. If we don't have the space, then we would not seek that type of sponsorship. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Great, thank you. So, Mr. Foskett has a point of order, let's take that. Charles Foskett, Precinct 10, Chair of the Finance Committee. Mr. Moderator, does this article include a revolving fund to collect this money? Ms. Wright, does this article include a revolving fund? I actually might defer that to the town manager if that is okay. Mr. Chapter Lane, do you have an answer to whether revolving fund is associated with this article? Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Adam Chapter Lane, town manager. No, no, this is strictly a zoning article proposing to amend the zoning bylaw. The establishment of a revolving fund would need to be done under a separate warrant article. And given as Ms. Wright described a moment ago that this is simply enabling the possibility of this in the future with no proposals or immediate plan to begin soliciting such signage, there is no current proposal to establish a revolving fund to handle any potential revenues. I think, yeah, I apologize. That really is not a point of order. I probably should not have allowed that and I apologize for that. So we are past the 15 minute mark. So let's enable raise hands and zoom. And let's see. So we have a point of order before we do that from Mr. Leone. Let's take that. Mr. Moderator, I'm bringing raise a point of order on your proposal to self limit the speaking of town meeting members with your termination of debate pre-termination. There's no provision in our bylaws to moderate the terminated debate. And I think that using this scheme that you're proposing is unfairly limiting debate and stifling the debate of the town meeting members on these important issues. We are town meeting members. We're elected to debate articles. If it takes us a long time to debate those articles, I believe we should be able to do so. I don't think we should have an arbitrary 15 minute debate time limit set for our debate. Thank you. All right, thank you. I guess what I will say is that town meeting members have a right to speak, to have a right to have an opportunity to speak on these articles. Town meeting members also have the right to vote on these articles. And they also have the right to call for termination of debate. And it does complicate things to have a transparent speaking queue where we could see the order of things. And I would posit that we are not doing anything that's fundamentally different than what we've done in the past. We're just doing it more openly, which requires more explanation and it involves kind of showing what might have been previously like the hidden variables in the system. So I don't see it as a fundamental change from what we've done in the past. It's being presented, I believe, differently. We have another point of order from Ms. Nathan. Hello, Mr. Moderator, Michelle Nathan, precinct 11. I just wanna say I agree wholeheartedly because I do a lot of research and I know I'm new to the town, but I'm trying to do my best to participate and to be informed. This is going so quickly that my inclination is just to vote no because I don't know what I'm voting for. And it's language that I'm not always clear about, but more importantly, I don't know the history of these things. I don't wanna vote yes because it's not fair to people I represent. I don't, I feel like this is going so fast just to get this done with. So it doesn't feel very democratic. Thank you. Right, I would just say that I'd say that it is democratic because this is simply a straw poll so that not just I, but the meeting can get a sense of how many members, what fraction of members are interested in terminating debate. And so it's still up to the meeting. It's just giving more signal, more information to the meeting about where other members are at as far as does it hire to terminate debate. And then so if the straw poll does exceed a 75% threshold, then we would go to a formal vote or we would allow someone the opportunity to terminate debate and then we would take a formal vote at that point which needs to reach the two thirds threshold. And so fundamentally, that hasn't really changed. So now I'm, let's see, we have no more points of order. So let's proceed now. So if you wish to, if you're interested in, like this is not binding, but if you're interested in terminating debate to see the debate terminated at this point, I ask that you raise hands and zoom and I'll allow 30 seconds to do that. So it's time boxed. And again, we're gonna try this for tonight and I will assess between the end of the meeting tonight and the beginning of the meeting on next Monday, on the 16th, whether this is something we wanna continue doing and I'll take feedback over that time. So we're really just trying this out tonight to see whether this is effective or not. And let's just go another five seconds. And so the threshold is, because the number of attendees, there's 240 attendees, there's 14 of those who are staff who will not count in the denominator of this vote or this straw poll. And so that would put the threshold at 170. So if we get 170 raised hands in zoom, then I would consider that a trigger for me to select someone from the speaking queue who's interested in terminating debate. And if we don't reach that threshold, then we'll just continue debate as we normally would. And I would hope that in the future, when we try this like I'm saying the next article, we'll have fewer points of order about this and this would be a much smoother, quicker process. So I'm gonna cut this off now. We've had more than 30 seconds at this point. There's 128 raised hands. And so we're about 42 raised hands short of that three quarters threshold. So we're gonna go back to continuing debate and that was completely democratic. And so hopefully next time we're able to do that more efficiently. So let's go back to the speaking queue. And we'll take, well, before we do that, we'll take a point of order for Mr. Wagner. And I hope this is actually a point of order. Name and precinct, please. And folks can lower their hands now and soon. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Can you hear me okay? Yes, I can. Name and precinct. Well, Wagner, precinct 15. How could we tell that that vote by hand was 100 and whatever you said, 140. How could we tell who voted and how many we voted? Are you unable as an attendee? Are you unable to, because I see a different view potentially in Zoom than you do. Are you able to see the number of attendees that have written? I could see it a minute ago when I couldn't speak. I think you promote me to being a speaker a different way, but I'm sorry. Is it obvious the number of people who voted and who said yes and who didn't say yes by raising or not raising their hand? Oh, I see someone in the panel is telling me that who has more experience with Zoom women are internals. And I do, it says that no, that attendees are not able to see the number. Then I respectfully ask that this system be modified if we must do it, that we should be able to see the actual number of people who said yes or no and who they are. Otherwise, I know none of you would do this, but how can we trust government to give us the correct number? Thank you. Yeah, I mean, we need some basic level of trust. There's a number of people on the panel. And plus, it would become apparent pretty quickly if I lied and said that we exceeded the 75% threshold of 170 hands raised and then we went to terminate debate and we only got like 140 votes, then clearly something fishy happened. So I think that's the accountability that you're looking for. So let's go back now to the speaking queue. We'll go to next, Pretzer. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. David Pretzer, precinct 17. I just wanna say that it's very important for Arlington to support alternate forms of transportation like biking. And so if these signs can provide an avenue to increase the number of bike share stations in Arlington and increase the opportunity for people to choose more environmentally friendly forms of transportation that want to, this will reduce congestion on our roads, reduce emissions and promote more environmentally friendly forms of transportation. And so I think that's very important and I encourage folks to vote for this proposal. Thank you. Great, thank you. Let's take Ms. Hyam next. Libba Hyam, precinct 15. I move to terminate debate on the article in all matters before it. Okay, so we have a motion to terminate debate. But first we have a point of order from Ms. Leahy. I will point out of while we're bringing up Ms. Leahy just that the straw poll that I did earlier, I believe the number was 140. So I don't remember the number now, but hopefully Ms. Hyam took note of that so that we would know whether we're actually at the threshold or not for two thirds. Ms. Leahy, your point of order, please, name and precinct. Lori Leahy, precinct 21. I would like to know if I'm able to propose an amendment and if so, how would I do that? At this stage, well, we have a motion to terminate debate. So if that vote passes the two thirds threshold, then debate is over. Otherwise, if that vote fails to terminate debate and we return to the speaking queue to continue debate, then speakers from the speaker queue can move to amend the main motion of article three. And if it's simple enough, I may accept it. If there's nuance or subtlety to it, we'll have to take it from there. Thank you, Ms. Murray. So we have a motion to terminate debate by Ms. Hyam. And did we get a second for that? It looks like we got a second from Mr. Moore. And so let's bring up a vote to terminate debate. Or this is a two thirds vote. So if you're in favor of terminating debate on article three of special town meeting about creating a new sign type, then vote yes, to terminate debate. If you want to continue to debate, then you want to vote no. We have about 200 votes cast. So let's try to get the remaining 40 or so votes in as quickly as we can. I'll take this while we're waiting for those votes to come in. There was a question earlier in the Q&A, I don't see it there now that how would I as the moderator know if I did it one of these straw polls and I wanted to offer an opportunity to an unvoiced side of the debate to speak, how would I know who was going to voice the other side of the debate? And the way that I would do that, I did this similar approach with the resolution that we had the other night where I would ask for raise hands for someone who wants to speak to the other side of the debate that has not been voiced. And I would pull that person to the front of the speaking queue. So we're voting here on termination of debate of article three, the special town meeting. We still have several outstanding votes. I just voted just a handful of folks who are have been active in the portal. Recently, let's just give another 15 seconds for the last chance to vote. They can always enter in the Q&A if you're having trouble through the portal that the portal has been pretty reliable lately. 10 seconds, five seconds, and then we'll close voting on termination of debate of article three. Okay, let's close voting. Okay, and the vote passes, 77%, 174 in the affirmative, 50 in the negative. Debate is terminated. And so another time saving measure that we could have here since we may have a lot of these votes in terminating debate across articles, we probably don't need to cycle through these screens. So I'll ask, especially for the main motions, we will cycle through them, for amendments we'll cycle through them for termination of debate. I'll ask that if anyone wishes to see the screens to raise their hands and zoom, otherwise we'll just skip the rotation through the precinct voting screens for termination of debate. And hopefully that might take a little bit of time. So we'll try to do that next time. Okay, so debate is terminated in article three. So let's bring up the vote for the main motion of article three, and there's no amendments. So okay, so voting is now open on article three of a special time meeting vote yes, or if you are in favor of creating a new sign type located at shared mobility and electric vehicle charging stations that allows advertising with lighting. If you're in favor of that, vote yes. If you're not in favor of the creation of a new sign type for this purpose, you want to vote no. So please try to get your votes in as soon as your wave is ready or allowed to vote. And on the redevelopment boards recommended vote of favorable action on article three of special town meeting for zoning bylaw change to introduce a new sign type. So if you want to introduce a new, if you create a new sign type located at shared mobility and electric vehicle charging stations that allows advertising and lighting, you vote yes. And if you're not in favor of this new sign type you would vote no. Right, so there's a question in the Q and A about that the enabling legislation for virtual town meeting requires votes to be displayed. I have asked Mr. Heim to counsel this. I believe that given that the entire voting history in the platform is available that the votes are readily accessible. Okay, so we're still waiting for just a handful of votes to come in. Let's just wait another 15 seconds. This is a main motion of article three, new sign type, 10 seconds. It always use the Q and A, still five seconds to get your last vote, to get your votes in and let's close voting now on the main motion. Okay, and it passes 172 votes in the affirmative 51 in the negative three abstentions. And this requires a two thirds vote and it passes with 77%. And so we'll cycle through these screens. If you miss your precinct screen and it goes by too quickly you could always click view votes on the left-hand side of the portal. And there's a question to Q and A about announcing the vote quantum. I will try to remember to do that like as we go into voting. Apologies if I missed that going into this vote. Okay, so with article three finished let's bring up article four. This is another article from the Redevelopment Board. So let's bring up Ms. Zembury again to speak to this. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Rachel Zembury, Chair of the Redevelopment Board. I'd like to request that the prerecorded video for article four related to non-conforming single family or two family dwellings be played at this time. Okay, let's bring up the video. I'm Rachel Zembury, Chair of the Arlington Redevelopment Board also known as the ARB. And I will be taking you through one article four, a bylaw amendment related to non-conforming single or two family dwellings for the 2022 special town meeting. This amendment was brought to the ARB by the Zoning Board of Appeals and the Zoning Bylaw Working Group and resolves the conflict between a Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision and the town of Arlington Zoning Bylaw. Massachusetts General Law Chapter 40A Section 6 includes a second accept clause which allows rights for non-conformities that existed prior to zoning codification. Massachusetts Chapter 40A and our Zoning Bylaw Section 8.1.3B establishes criteria for expanding non-conformities. However, our Zoning Bylaw Section 8.1.3C limits prior non-conformance rights contrary to state law. This amendment affirms that a variance is not required for expansions of existing prior non-conformities that are not substantially more detrimental than the existing non-conformity to the neighborhood while new non-conformities require a variance. The amended text includes the removal of subsection C from section 8.1.3 which is currently in conflict with state case law. The ARB believes that this bylaw amendment is necessary to maintain compliance with current state regulations. The ARB voted five to zero at our April 25th meeting to recommend favorable action on article four. Thank you. So welcome everyone. Okay, so let's go to the speaking queue. So we have Mr. Jamison, let's bring him up. Thank you, Mr. Moderator Gordon. Jamison, precinct 12. Just in case anyone's confused, like in article two, this just brings us in line with the state law. We really don't have a choice about this. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Great, thank you. Let's bring up Mr. Jockett next. And while we're bringing up Mr. Jockett, Ms. Zenbury, can you confirm that this article seeks to bring our zoning bylaws into alignment with state law? Is that accurate? Rachel Zenbury, chair of the redevelopment board. Yes, Mr. Moderator, that is correct. Okay, thank you. Mr. Jockett, name and precinct. Daniel Jockett, precinct six. I'm going to terminate debate on article four. Okay, we have a motion to terminate debate. Do we have a second? Okay, we have a second from Mr. Hamlin. So let's bring up, let's open up a vote for terminating debate. Okay, so we're voting to, whether to terminate debate on article four of special time meeting. And what I will do after this vote, if anyone is interested in seeing the vote screens, I asked that you'll, like after the vote closes, which it hasn't closed yet. So don't worry yet. After the vote closes on termination of debate, if anyone is interested in seeing the vote screens rotated, you can raise your hand and zoom. And we will show all the precinct screens so you can see all the votes. And if it's unanimous and that no one wants to see those screens, we will skip them. And those are available immediately in the view votes. If you click the view votes button in the portal, those are there after the vote closes. So we have about 200 votes cast. We still have about 25 missing from active members who have been active in the portal in the last few minutes. And this is a two thirds vote to terminate debate on article four. And just a reminder, if the last person in the queue is interested in terminating debate, if there's no one after them in the queue, debate would just naturally terminate, which would actually be more efficient. Of course, you never know if someone's going to ring in to speak instead. So missing just a few more voters here who have not voted yet, but they've been active in the portal. So let's just go, remember, you can always vote. If you're having trouble in the portal, you can vote in the Q&A or call Ms. Brazil. Let's just give folks another 15 seconds, 10 seconds. Last chance to get your votes in, five seconds. This is for termination of debate on article four. Okay, let's close voting. I'm looking for two thirds threshold. If not, we will continue to debate. And so it passes with 93%, 266 in the affirmative, 14 in the negative. And now if we can enable raise hands and zoom, if you want to see the remainder of these precinct screens, you can raise your hand and zoom now and we'll leave the screens up until they complete through the last precincts. Otherwise, we'll just skip this and people can look at a few votes in the portal. Just give people a few seconds if they want to. So we have one hand to continue the rotation of screens. So we will rotate them until completion. Thank you. Okay, and while we're waiting there, I'll, okay, it looks like we're done. So let's now bring up, let's open the vote for the main motion for article four of special town meeting. And if you are in favor of changing the zoning bylaws to bring them into alignment with state law in ways that are kind of difficult to summarize, you want to vote yes. If you're not in favor of bringing the zoning bylaws into alignment with state law on these specific points, then you would vote no. And so when your wave of voting comes up, please vote as soon as you can. We're still voting in the three waves. So you should see a message in your portal that says whether voting is enabled or whether you have to wait for a future wave of voting. We have about 200 votes in, still missing about 30 or so from folks who've been recently active in the portal. So a way to get longer, try to get your votes in as quickly as you can so we can close voting down to about 17 active users. If you haven't voted yet, please vote. If you're in trouble in the portal, you can vote through the Q&A or call them as Brazil. And if we haven't already, if we can get those, let's get those instructions up in the chat. We're getting close. Let's just give another 15 seconds to finish voting on the main motion, 10 seconds, main motion of article four, special town meeting. If you're in favor of bringing the zoning bylaws into alignment with state law, vote yes. Otherwise vote no, five seconds. Okay, let's go ahead and close voting. This is a two, sorry, I don't know if I mentioned, this is a two-thirds vote. And it passes 213 in the affirmative, nine in the negative two abstentions. Since this is the main motion, we will just go ahead and watch the rotation of the screens through the precincts. We're now through three of the five articles in the special town meeting that actually require substantive votes. So hopefully they'll be able to, and we're almost at the halfway mark in the meeting. So hopefully we can finish out the others in the second half of this meeting and return to the annual town meeting. Okay, so we've psyched through the votes. And so let's take our 10 minute break now. And when we come back at, let's say, 936, we will take up article five of special town meeting. Okay, so I'll see you in about 10 minutes, 936. Okay, let's come back now. And we'll now have in front of us article five of the special town meeting. Okay, and this is a finance article. So Mr. Foskett, do you wanna lead us off here? On the article five? Yes, Mr. Moderator. Thank you, Charles Foskett, precinct 10, chair of the finance committee. A very briefly last annual town meeting, town meeting allocated, appropriated a million, 94,055 dollars to the finance committee reserve fund in the event that the school department student population growth recovered to prior numbers. It did not, the finance committee did not need to use the funds, but finance committee cannot transfer from the reserve fund to anything but a department. This article transfers the money to the override stabilization fund. So it's available for revenue in next fiscal year. If it stays in the reserve fund, it would go into free cash at the end of the year and not be available for another year. So we ask your favorable vote on this article. It is a simple majority. Okay, and let's say, thank you, Mr. Foskett. And does anyone wish, if anyone wishes to speak on this article about transferring roughly $1 million to the override stabilization fund now is your chance. And if no one wishes to speak, then we can just go straight to a vote and please don't be the only person on speaking queue and move to terminate debate because that'll just kind of chew up three to four minutes. So seeing no speakers, let's open up voting on article five, the special town meeting. Okay, so if you are in favor of transferring roughly $1 million to the override stabilization fund, vote yes. If you are not in favor of that transfer of funds, vote no. And we're doing the wave-based voting by precincts. So please pay attention to the message that you're seeing in the portal about when you're able to vote. Some folks are being held back by waves to prevent overload of our system. So please vote as soon as the system allows you to vote. We've got 180 votes coming in quick. Still needed about another 40 from folks who have been recently active in the portal. Now just about 30 folks that we're waiting on. So if you're in favor of transferring roughly $1 million into the override stabilization fund, please vote yes. If you're not in favor of that transfer, vote no. Okay, I'm waiting for about 20 folks now. Please try to get your votes in. All the waves of precincts should be now permitted to vote. So please vote as soon as you can. If you're having trouble through the portal, you can always type your vote into the Q&A or you can call Ms. Brazil. I'm waiting for about 15 folks now. Just to remind you, I'm no longer calling out individual names, that was not a popular thing to do. So just be mindful of whether your vote was actually went through or not, whether you actually confirmed your vote before walking away from your computer. Probably shouldn't be walking away from your computer anyway in the middle of the meeting, but okay. So most votes in, let's just wait another 15 seconds and then we'll close voting on the main motion for article five to transfer roughly a million dollars to the override stabilization fund about 10 seconds, five seconds to get your vote in. Okay, let's close voting on article five of special time meeting and vote passes, 215 in the affirmative, two in the negative, two abstention. So we'll just cycle through the screens here. Okay, so we got through all the screens. So article five is closed. Let's bring up article six of special town meeting. And this is also a finance article. Mr. Foskett as chair of the finance committee, do you want to speak to this? Yes, thank you, Mr. Moderator. Charles Foskett precinct 10 chair of the finance committee. So the town has a long practice that when it makes, that it will make improvements to private ways, but the butters have to pay for these improvements through a variety of methods, either directly installment or by a surcharge on their taxes. In the last couple of years, but the town also has a revolving fund which provides working capital to fund these improvements waiting for the funds from the butters to come in. So the Department of Public Works has been involved in some larger, more expensive projects. And this article provides $100,000 in fiscal 2023 as working capital for these projects. And eventually all the money that is spent by the Department of Public Works gets returned to the general fund. Right, and so just make sure I have this right. This is for appropriating $100,000 $100,000 from the reserve surplus accounts, which were released by the Board of Assessors earlier this year. And remember, we discussed that at the beginning of the special town meeting as well. Right, and this is appropriate into the private way is repairs, private way revolving fund. Into the private way repairs revolving fund, correct? Yes, sir. Yeah, got it. Okay, so thank you. So let's go to our speaking queue. Let's take up Mr. Revolak. Good evening, Mr. Moderator Steve Revolak, Precinct One. I was just wondering what private ways we've been repairing it. Thank you very much. Okay, so let's bring up Mr. Rademacher for that. Director of Public Works. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Michael Rademacher, Director of Public Works. I don't have a list of recent private ways that repaired available at this time, but I'm happy to answer the question offline. Let's see, Mr. Poulter has his hand raised. Deputy Town Manager. Good evening, Sandy Poulter, Deputy Town Manager. The significant road that was repaired recently was Mount Gilboa. It was about a $150,000 repair of that private way. Most of the private ways that we repair are a fraction of that, usually $25,000 or $30,000. So that was the most recent one. And then we're waiting for more applications to come from residents to go before the select board for their approval of future repairs. And so we will know once those are submitted. Okay, thank you. Mr. Rademacher, anything else? Nothing further, Mr. Moderator, thank you. All right, thank you. Let's take Mr. Franzosa next. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Alexander Franzosa, Precinct Six. I was hoping to get some clarification as to whether this revolving fund actually contributes public funds to private repair, or if it's meant as a placeholder until the final a butter payments can be received. Thank you. Mr. Foskett, do you have an answer? Yes, yes, sir. So the revolving fund pays the vendors who do the work under the direction of both the internal expenses and the external expenses under the direction of DPW. The, when the work is undertaken, the butters are already liable to pay those expenses. Some may pay their share immediately. Some may pay in certain installments and others may pay through a surcharge on their taxes. So this is essentially a working capital fund that allows the work to go forward as the payments are coming in. Okay, great. Any other questions, Mr. Franzosa? No, thank you, Mr. Moderator. Great, thank you. Let's take Mr. Mornex. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Christopher Moore, precinct 14. I move to terminate debate. Okay, we have a motion to terminate debate from Mr. Mornex. We have a second. We have a second from Mr. Hamlin. So let's open up voting for termination of debate of article six of special town meeting. This is a two thirds vote to terminate debate. Okay, so if you're in favor of terminating debate, yes, if you want to continue debate, vote no. Remember we were still voting in waves that are being enforced by the system. So if you see a message that your wave has not come up yet, just sit tight and be ready to vote when your wave opens up for voting. And the sooner we get all votes in or nearly all votes in, the sooner we can look at the results and move on to either vote on the main motion or to continue debate. Okay, we have a point of order from Ms. Weber. Can we take her up while we continue to leave voting open? Ms. Weber, I'll just state your name and precinct and your point of order. Janice, we have a precinct 21. I don't know if this is a point of order. I just want to know why the person who seconds something is never up on the screen. What do you mean by that? Like not up on the screen? Like is the name not up here? Who seconds the request is never up on the screen. Like you don't see their name appear on the screen. I think we should see that. We did before and I don't know why we don't know. I'll take a stab at that. Maybe someone from the tech side can give a better answer. A guess that I have is that all of our different screens are refreshing at different times. And it's possible that we're moving quickly through the procedures like that, that I see it on my screen before you see it on your screen. And it's possible that maybe we're clearing that before it shows up in your screen. So what you see on your screen, like in your portal versus what I see in my kind of moderator's portal versus what we see on the Zoom are not all synchronized. And so, yeah, someone's telling me from the panel that correct, this is likely a refresh issue. So sometimes you'll see it and sometimes you won't depending on how the refresh timings of these different views of the system are hitting different folks screens, if that makes sense. Yes, thank you. Yeah, thank you. Okay, so we have 217 votes in. We're still waiting for about a dozen votes from folks who've been recently active in the portal. So let's just wait a little bit longer. Let's go, let's give 20 seconds. So if you're having trouble with the portal, you can still put your vote into the Q and A, 15 seconds, 10 seconds. This is for terminating debate on article six, five seconds. And let's close voting and whether to terminate debate on article six of special town meeting. And debate is terminated 90 or I'm sorry, with 202 in the affirmative, 20 in the negative and three abstentions, 91%. So debate is now terminated. If anyone wishes to see all these screens, please raise your hand and zoom. Let's enable raise hands and zoom. If you want to wait for all of these precincts to show votes on termination of debate, you can raise your hand now. We have a hand, so we'll wait for the screens to go through. So after we get through all these precinct screens, we will take up a vote on the main motion for article six of the special town meeting. Okay, let's bring up a vote on the main motion. And this is a majority vote. Voting is now open, although you might be limited based on the waves of voting to kind of rate limit the votes going into the system so it doesn't get overloaded. So if you are in favor of appropriating $100,000 into the private way repairs revolving fund, vote yes. If you are not in favor of that appropriation into that fund, you can vote no. So there was a request in the Q and A just now about the moderator who announced who is raising their hand to see the votes just like we would for a roll call vote indicated by standing. I can do that. So there's Mr. Gersh, by the way, who raised his hand to cycle through the termination of debate voting screens. I think it's a reasonable thing to ask. That's right, yeah, as Mr. Wagner pointed out earlier, it's like the attendees don't see the same view that I do from my view on the panel. So I'll try to remember to point that out. Thank you. Okay, we have 211 votes in, still waiting for about 20 from the recently active members. This is the main motion for Article 6 of special town meeting, vote yes. If you're in favor of appropriating $100,000 into the private way repairs revolving fund, vote no. If you are not in favor of that appropriation for about a dozen active members in the portal to vote, let's give folks 20 seconds. You could always vote in the Q&A if you're having trouble through the portal, 15 seconds, 10 seconds to vote on Article 6 of special town meeting, five seconds, appropriation of $100,000 into the private way repairs revolving fund. And let's close voting. Okay, motion passes, 219 affirmative, five in the negative, it is a positive vote. We will cycle through these screens for the main motion unconditionally. And I'll say just a couple more screens to go. There we go. And so Article 6 is now disposed of. Yes, Mr. Foskett. I move that Article 1 be taken from the table. Do we have a second? Second. Okay, so we have a motion by Mr. Foskett to take- Mr. Moderator. Yes. I move that the special town meeting be dissolved. Second. First, let me ask for any raised hands and submitted objections to Mr. Foskett's motion to take Article 1 of special town meeting from the table. Seeing, and we had a second from Ms. Brazil, seeing no objections through raised hands, Mr. Foskett proceeds. Mr. Moderator, I move that the special town meeting be dissolved. Okay, do we have a second? Second. The motion by Mr. Foskett to dissolve the special town meeting, which means closing it permanently. And we have a second from Ms. Brazil. Do we have any objections? If so, raise hands and zoom. There's no more business to do in the special town meeting. So, objecting, talk clear what we would do within the context of meeting, seeing no objections. I declare special town meeting 2022 dissolved. And now, let's see. And so now we automatically trigger what Mr. Diggins called for earlier in the evening, at the beginning of the evening, which is that, let's see, we now return to the annual town meeting. And so we are back now at Article 19. Mr. Moderator. Mr. Foskett, go ahead. Yes, Mr. Moderator, I would like to make a motion that Articles 19 through 47 be tabled. Okay, we have a motion to table Articles 19 to 40. Through 47. Seven, yep. And we have a second by Mr. Foskett. We have a second from Ms. Brazil. The point of this, in case folks are wondering, is to skip ahead to the finance articles, which includes the town budget, which we wanted to do on the heels of the dissolution of the special town meeting. So this is just a procedure for being able to skip ahead by tabling all the intervening articles between where we were at on Monday and up to the first open finance article. We have a point of order from Mr. Schlickman. Let's take that. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Paul Schlickman, pretty sick nine. 46 and 47 have been adjudicated. So we're only tabling up to 45? That's a good point. Correct. That's correct. Thank you. Okay, we're laying on the table. Actually, 18, because 17 is already on the table. 18 through 45. It's 19 through 45. Oh, you're right. We already did 18. Yep, 19 to 45. Thank you. Yep. Mr. Foskett. Is a friendly amendment. Great, thank you. And can we get another second on that? Oh, we have seconds already in the portal from Ms. Korbo-Houdek. So raise hands and zoom if you have any objection to laying on the table articles 19 through 45, which would bring us to 48. So I have one, I see one objection. So it's not a unanimous vote, but it is overwhelmingly a majority vote that I declare. So articles 19 through 45 are now laid upon the table. Obviously any articles in that range that we've already disposed of from the consent agenda would not be included in that implicitly. And so that brings us now to article 48. So Mr. Foskett, that is a finance article from the report of the finance committee. Mr. Foskett, do you wanna introduce article 48? Yes, thank you, Mr. Moderator. Charles Foskett, precinct 10, chair of the finance committee. The various position descriptions in the town classification plan periodically are modified, amended, added or deleted by the human resources department. So this article enumerates the changes that the department was just to make in the pay and classification plan meeting. The number of the articles have financial sum next to them and some have no financial sum next to them. The items that don't have a financial sum next to them have no impact on the fiscal 23 budget. Perhaps it could be for a variety of reasons. For example, the position isn't currently filled. On the other hand, the way you see numbers, this is where these are increases either due to step functions or other reasons that are different than the departmental budgets that are presented in article 55. So these are just the incremental amounts related to the changes, either reclassifications, additions or deletions in the pay and classification plan. Thank you. Thank you. So let's head now to our speaking queue. Let's take up Ms. Friedman. Beth Ann Friedman, piece 15. Do any of these positions represent or do any of these changes represent new positions? Mr. Foske, do you know of these? Yeah, I can say that where they're added, some of them are new positions, but if you want a more detailed response than that, perhaps we should go to the director of human resources, Ms. Malauye. Yeah, could we bring up the director of human resources please to answer that question, Ms. Malauye. Thank you, Mr. Moderator, Karen Malauye, director of human resources. I'm looking quickly through the list of where we're adding titles. Okay, 2A is not new, 2B is not new. C is a replacement, a new title. Mental health clinician is technically a new title, but that is because we had AYCC clinicians that were previously contracted and after a review of how those positions were classified, we deemed that those were more appropriately employees. So mental health clinician is new to the paying class plan. And Water and Sewer account manager is a title that was omitted from last year, although the position has been in existence for a couple of years now. I'm sorry, Ms. Malauye, let me just cut you off there, just checking with Ms. Freeman. Is that enough of an answer or would you like to continue enumerating through the positions, the classifications? Well, it's my understanding that the sworn article has the potential of creating a new position that ends up in the budget next year as something that town meeting approves and I get confused as to what is a change of title versus creation of brand new position. So that's why I was asking the question. I still haven't gotten a full answer. So far, none of the examples represent the creation of a brand new position that will end up in the budget, the might be conversion of position being paid of grants to something that's being paid out of the town budget. But I'm wondering if there are any positions that actually are being created for next year. Right, let's take another try at that, Ms. Malauye, without enumerating all of the positions, are you able to identify examples from- Maybe I can clarify that. Mr. Fosk, go ahead. If you look at the numbers next to the various items, none of these figures represent a full salary. So these are adjustments to positions that are currently in the plan. As you were saying, Mr. Fosk, if there were new positions in there, we would see the full salary, which would be on the order of dozens of thousands of dollars rather than a few thousand dollars. 800 or 1,000, yes. Okay, thank you very much, Ms. Moderator. Thank you. Let's take Mr. Tremblay next, please. And Tremblay Precinct 17, I'm sorry, Precinct 19. I'm just curious about how this works. For instance, section one C, energy project manager MTP-8 to MTP-11. Yep. And then we move over a page and we're gonna delete a position, energy and project manager MTP-8. So it looks like they're changing the position to MTP-11 and making it impossible to go back to MTP-8, is that- Ms. Moderator, I think I can answer that, Mr. Fosk. Did I assume like MTP-8 to MTP-11? That's the range, like 9, 10, 11, right? But then we're deleting- Yeah, there are various levels in the plan. Yeah. 9, 10, 11, okay? So either an employee or a manager might determine or request that the position be reclassified because the job description has changed. In other words, maybe previously the person was operating a small machine and then suddenly is operating a piece of heavy equipment or something to that effect. Responsibility is higher. So it requires different compensation. So just to make sure I understand, and for the meeting, MTP-8, for instance, there's like an old MTP-8 in that position is being deleted, but there's a new MTP-8 through 11, which may be different responsibility. Sure, no, no, not true, two. In other words, the person is now an MTP-8 and that job description is going away and that person is now going to be in a position of MPT-11 because it's a more responsible job that requires different compensation. So MTP-8 to MTP-11 is not the range, but that represents someone transitioned from 8 to 11? That's correct. Okay, does that- So then the reason why the MTP-8 is being deleted is because it's no longer needed. Yeah, because someone essentially got a promotion or elevated to MTP-11. In terms of, yes. Okay, does that answer your question, Mr. Tremblay? Well, yeah, but that leads to another one. So since there's no money attached, does that mean that that position is currently empty? Or just that there's no difference in pay? Mr. Foskett? It means that there's no difference in pay. Okay, sounds like the town's getting- In other words, in each of these positions, there are steps. So the person might be in a, let's say hypothetically a step six position, but a step three in the new one. And those may be the same number. Okay, so let's go to Mr. Chapellein. Maybe you have a more precise answer here. Thank you, Mr. Moderator, Adam Chapellein, town manager. In this specific instance that's being inquired in regards to, for the better part of about a decade now, we have had an energy and a project manager. That position was vacated. In looking at the market, we determined that both the pay adjustment, the actual job duties of that role, as well as the title needed to be upgraded. So what you see mapped out in sections one, two, and three is our intention to change the compensation of that position from an MTP eight to an MTP 11. If you look in section two, you see that we have what appears to be the creation of a sustainability manager being compensated at a level of MTP 11. And then in section three, the elimination of the energy and project manager title. And the cumulative effect of those three things is now having a sustainability manager compensated at the MTP 11 level and budgeted in the planning and community development office. Thank you. Does that answer your question, Mr. Trappley? Do you have anything further? Well, I'm still scratching my head here a little bit. Does that, so does that mean we're not, we no longer have an energy and project manager at level MTP 11? Mr. Chaplain? Adam Chaplain, town manager. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. That is correct. There is no longer a position if this is voted on by town meeting tonight, there will no longer be a position of energy and project manager. However, they will officially in the paying classification plan be the position of sustainability manager classified at MTP 11 of which the position is currently filled out. We currently have a sustainability manager being paid at the level of MTP 11. Okay. So does this MTP 11 pay a lot more than MTP 8? Well, it looks like there's no difference in salary according to, like there's no adjustment here. Okay, it's just a different description of job duties. That's what it seems to be, yeah. Well, I always wondered how this works. Is there any way of getting, you know, and I don't want to belabor the point now, it's a little late for that. But for next year, for instance, is there a way of getting a description of what all these various things are? Cause... I think it's a note that we can take and address offline for next year to make it more clear what all this means to someone who's not immersed in these classification titles. I am definitely not. All right. Thank you very much, Mr. Walker. Let's take Mr. Moore next. A name and precinct place. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Christopher Moore, precinct 14. I move to terminate debate on the article. Here we have a motion by Mr. Moore to terminate debate. We have a second. We have a second from Ms. Brazil. So let us take a vote now on whether to terminate debate on article 48 for positions reclassification. Okay. If you are in favor of terminating debate on article 48, vote yes. As soon as the portal allows your wave of precincts to vote and if you are in favor of continuing debate, you'll vote no. Vote yes to terminate debate. Vote no to continue debate on positions reclassification. And again, voting is gonna remain open for probably a couple of minutes until we get a sufficient number of folks voting. But when we do eventually close voting, I will ask if there are a show of raised hands and zoom at that point, whether anyone's interested in seeing all the voting screens, basically any objections to just skipping that. And if there are any objections, I'll just relay that. And since folks can't see the raised hands of some other members, I'll just relay the name of that person and we'll show the screens if there's any objections. Okay, we have about 200 votes so far. Try to get your votes in as quickly as you can. And this is for terminating debate requires 2 thirds vote. I'm still missing about 10 recently active members who have not voted yet. Several more who have not been active recently. So why don't we give another 30 seconds. And if you're in trouble at the portal, then you could always get your vote into the Q and A. About 10 seconds, I'm sorry, 20 seconds, 20 seconds. 15 seconds, 10 seconds. Please get your votes in. Five seconds until we close voting on terminating debate and let's close voting on terminating debate. Oh wait, let's say hold up. We're still getting a voice, I guess a verbal vote. See how we all set? Panelists, just want to make sure no one's actively trying to get their vote in. I don't want to cut them off. Seeing none, let's close voting now. We're all done, yep. Okay, so debate is terminated with 207 in the affirmative, 14 in the negative and two abstentions. So if anyone objects to skipping these screens to show the votes, you can raise your hand and zoom. And if there are no objections, we will skip the remaining screens and move on to voting on a main motion. I see a raised hand from Mr. Kaba. So let's continue watching the screens. And then once we get through all these precinct screens, we will take a vote on the main motion for Article 48. So that's all the screens, all the precincts. So let's open up a vote on the main motion for Article 48. And this is a majority vote. Okay, so voting is now open on the main motion. If you're in favor of reclassifying positions that involves deleting some positions and changing the pay on other positions or reclassifying them, then you wanna vote yes. If you're opposed to reclassifying positions and you wanna keep them the way that they have been defined previously, then you would vote no. So with the waves of voting, try to vote as soon as you can and then we can get through voting faster the sooner folks vote. Just past the 200 vote mark, still waiting for about 20 folks who've been actively engaged in the portal to still vote. So wait just a little bit longer, try to get your votes in as soon as you can, please. Votes are still kind of trickling in. Let's just give another 25 seconds. 20 seconds, you can always put your vote into the Q&A and just type it in if you're having trouble in the portal. 15 seconds till we close voting on Article 48 positions reclassification. 10 seconds, five seconds until we close voting and let's go ahead and close voting and the vote passes, 214 in the affirmative, five in the negative, one abstention, Article 48 passes. So we'll wait now for cycling through the precinct screens and while we're waiting for that just let folks know that actually on the previous article that we voted on, we actually, we passed the halfway mark of the 83 total articles to vote on 77 from annual town meeting and six from the special town meeting for a total of 83. We passed the halfway mark. That's the good news, the bad news is 25 of those. Most of those were from the consent agenda. So it's kind of dubious to say that we're halfway done, time-wise. Okay, so let's now open Article 49, now that we've disposed of Article 48. This is also an article that's coming to us from the report of the Finance Committee. Mr. Foskett is Chair of the Finance Committee. Do you want to speak to this article? Yes, thank you, Mr. Moderator, Charles Foskett, precinct 10, Chair of the Finance Committee. Mr. Moderator, I would like to move to Table Article 49. Town has settled with two union organizations and is in negotiations with a third. And this third organization may soon be resolved and we'd like to postpone this article or table this article until the clarity is reached on that particular negotiation. And it may not be such a very long time, but it's appropriate to table it and deal it all at once. It will not change the total dollar figure that's in Article 49 in the Finance Committee report. It will just reallocate those sums and allow town meeting to approve the negotiated contracts. Okay, so we have a motion to lay, and I'll kind of reinterpret it a little bit, to lay Article 49 on the table. We have seconds already, the first second from Mr. Quinn. So let's enable raise hands and zoom. Are there any objections to Mr. Foskett's motion to lay Article 49 for collective bargaining on the table to offer more time? And we will come back to this later in town meeting. Okay, seeing no objections, it is unanimous. So Article 49 is now laid upon the table. That brings us to Article 50, town budgets. This is also an article coming to us from the report of the Finance Committee. Mr. Foskett, do you wanna? Yes, thank you, Mr. Moderator. So Article 50 refers to the budgets that are presented in Appendix B in the Finance Committee report. And it may, in the interest of efficiency, it may be useful for you to follow a procedure whereby you request people to hold a particular budget, sub-budget, if they wish to debate it so that we can efficiently vote the articles after the debates. Yep, okay. And so, yeah, so let me explain what Mr. Foskett's referring to. Article 50 covers the town budgets. I'm going to name each of the department budgets and the enterprise funds. This exercise will be similar to the holds that we did on the consent agenda, except that a hold here means that you want to discuss that budget or that fund. To keep it simple and hopefully efficient, we're going to use raised hands in Zoom if you wanna hold a budget or a fund so that it can be discussed. If there were no raised hands for a given budget or fund, then we just won't discuss it. There won't be any debate over it. You can find the budgets and funds in the Finance Committee report, Appendix B. B is in budget. I don't think that's why they chose that letter, but Appendix B in the printed version of the FNCOM report, Appendix B is immediately after page 30, like printed page 30. If you're looking at the PDF page numbers in the digital version, it's page 33. There are 27 department budgets, which are numbered one to 27 and five enterprise funds designated with letters A through E. I'll name each of these in order with a brief pause in between. And if you wanna discuss a given budget or fund, please raise your hand in Zoom. And I'll call out the name of the first person I see requesting the hold and the name of the budget or fund. There won't be any seconds here. This will be simpler than what we did for the consent agenda. If there was a mistake and I accidentally attributed your name to a budget that you didn't intend to hold, then please use the Q and A in Zoom to briefly explain the mistake and we'll fix the error as we go. We can do that kind of asynchronously as we're going through. So I think this will be more clear once we actually get into it, unless you're familiar with this from previous years in town meeting. Once we've run through all the budgets and the funds to determine which ones should be discussed, we'll then begin discussion on the ones that were held, okay? So let's get started. So can we bring up, let's say the FINCOM Report, Appendix B? As I said, if we're presenting the PDF, it'll be page 33. Okay, can we show you one screen here? There we go. Okay, and the first thing we should see, we should see like these boxes and the first one in Appendix B. And we have a point of order, but Mr. Levy says there's no point, no need to call on until after the process is done. Okay, so we will come back to that. Okay, good. So let's make sure that raised hands are enabled in Zoom and I'll just give a brief pause in between each of these. So it's a number one finance committee. If you want to hold, okay? So we have a raised hand from Mr. Rebelak. Okay, so it's clear hands. Number two, select board. If you're interested in discussing the select board budgets, raise your hand. Seeing none, let's move on to number three, town manager. Can we scroll down? Okay, so we have a raised hand by Mr. Mar and Mr. Leone. Select board, I'm sorry, the town manager budget. Number four, human resources. Anyone interested in discussing human resources? Now it's time to raise your hand. Seeing none, moving on to number five, budget number five, information technology, IT. If you're interested in discussing that, you can raise hands now. Seeing none, let's move on to six, comptroller. If you're interested in discussing the comptroller budget, raise your hand now. Seeing none, let's move on to budget number seven, treasurer, collector. If you want to discuss this budget, you can raise your hand. Seeing none, let's move on to budget number eight, postage. If you're interested in discussing postage budget, raise your hand now. Seeing none, let's move on to number nine, the budget for board of assessors. If you want to discuss this, please raise your hand and zoom. Seeing none, let's move on to budget number 10, legal. Legal budget. If you're interested in discussing this budget, raise your hand and zoom. Seeing none, let's move on to budget 11, town clerk. We have one hand by Ms. Benedict. Okay, thank you, lower hands now, thank you. Okay, so let's move on to board of, okay. Hands are cleared now. Budget 12, board of registrars. If you're interested in discussing the board of registrars budget, raise your hand now. Seeing none, let's move on to 13, parking budget. If you want to discuss the parking budget, raise your hands now. Seeing none, let's move on to budget 14, planning and community development. If you want to discuss this budget, raise hands. Okay, we have a hand from Mr. Oster. Okay, it's clear hands. And let's move on to budget number 15, redevelopment board. If you want to discuss this budget, raise your hands now. Seeing none, let's move on to budget number 16, zoning board of appeals. If you want to discuss this budget, raise your hands now and zoom. Okay, we have one from Ms. Friedman. Okay, let's lower hands. And budget number 17, public works, Mr. Tremblin, yes. And there's a bit of a tradition there. Let's lower hands now and let's go to budget number, scroll down a bit to budget number 18. So a couple of pages down. Facilities. Anyone who's interested in discussing the facilities budget, raise your hands now and zoom. Okay. Ms. Thornton. Okay, let's clear hands. And let's move on to budget number 19, police services. Okay, we have a hand from Mr. Tremblin. Okay. And Mr. Weinstein. And let's go to budget number 20, fire services. Any, if there's any interest in discussing the fire services budget, raise your hands now. Seeing none. Budget number 21, inspections. If you want to discuss the inspections budget, raise your hand now, Mr. Jamison. Okay. Okay, it's clear hands and budget number 22, education. If you want to discuss the education budget. Yes. Ms. Ecksten. Okay. Number of folks. Okay. So it's clear hands now. Okay. And budget number 23, libraries. If you're interested in discussing the fire services budget, raise your hands now. Seeing none. Budget number 21 inspections. If you want to discuss the inspections budget, raise your hands. If you're interested in discussing the libraries budget. Raise your hands now and zoom. Okay. Seeing none. Let's go down to budget number 24, health and human services. If you want to discuss the health and human services budget. How's the time raise your hands. Seeing none. Let's move down to. Budget 25. We're almost done with the budgets. Retirement. If you're interested in discussing the retirement budget. If you're interested in discussing the retirement budget. Raise your hand now. And there was a question in the Q and a, but possibly to take the education budget out of order. For the superintendent's. Schedule. And then. I'm happy to do that. Just as we did with like minute man, for instance. Okay. So seeing none for the retirement budget. Let's go into budget number 26. Okay. So Mr. Trumblay is saying something. I'm asking about police facilities. Okay. So I'll take a note of that. We did, we did have Mr. Weinstein for. For police budget number 19. So I think we're covered there. Thank you. Mr. Trumblay. Budget number 26, the insurance budget. Anyone interested in discussing that raise your hand now. Okay. Okay. Report from, okay. Budget number 27 reserve fund. If you're interested in discussing that budget. Raise hands now. Okay. Seeing none. I guess, well, that's a fund now. I'm not sure why the fund has a. Numeric designation, but okay. So let's move down to. Fund a enterprise fund a water and sewer enterprise fund. Raise hands now. There's only a few of these. So we're almost done. Seeing none. Let's move down to. The letter B recreation enterprise fund. If you want to discuss this fund, raise hands now. Seeing. Seeing none. Let's move down to. Let her see the Ed Burns arena enterprise fund. If you want to discuss this fund, you can raise hands now. Okay. Okay. Let's do a couple more. Let's go to. Letter D council on aging. I'm not sure what the trends this short for, but the council on aging, the enterprise fund. If you're interested in discussing this raise hands now. Seeing none. Last, but not least. Letter E Arlington youth counseling center. We have one from Ms. Benedict. I'm assuming that's for the. Let's say the Arlington youth counseling center enterprise fund. That's not the case. Let us know in the Q and A. We can fix that. Okay. So that takes us through the budgets and the. The funds. So. We have one from Ms. Benedict. I'm assuming that's for the. Let's say the Arlington youth counseling center enterprise fund. I'm assuming that's for the. The. The funds. So. Okay. So we want to take. Let's take Ms. Exton and. Michael Mason to panelists, please. And Dr. Homan. Superintendent of schools. I believe it's already on the panel. So. I'm happy to take. Ms. to take that out of order because of the superintendent's schedule. So hopefully we have enough time here at 10.39. So we need to wrap up in about 20-ish minutes tonight. So hopefully we can at least get through the school budget. So do we wanna bring Dr. Homan? Do you wanna speak, or Ms. Extended, did you want to introduce the school budget? Yes, please. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Just quickly, we do want to take, we wanna circle back to Mr. Levy's point of order. I'm Mr. Moderator at Dave Levy, precinct 18. Would it be possible at some point to hear from Mr. Foskett as head of the finance committee about his views of the overall budget and concerns with overrides or where the town may be, you know, having some concerns and expenses versus revenues at some point, I think we'd all benefit from just his perception, just studying the numbers in more detail than some of us. Let's take that offline. And since we're short on time here, let's try to get through the school budget like presentation and discussion while we have Dr. Homan here. Thank you. So I see Ms. Extended, did you wanna introduce the school budget? Thank you, Mr. Moderator, Liz Extend, precinct 13 and chair of the Arlington school committee. I request that the prerecorded presentation of the Arlington public schools budget be, or the school committee budget be played. Yes, let's bring that up. And also just like the procedures that I mentioned earlier about the straw polls, like every 15 minutes about terminating the bid. I'm not gonna do that here during the budgets because that'd be really weird because this is just an oddly shaped warrant article that has a lot in it as far as budgets. So it doesn't really apply here. So don't worry about those interruptions. So if you could bring up the video for... I'm here to be trying to locate the video. Chair of the Arlington school committee. Are we not finding it in the ACMI playlist? Oh, I think we have it. Good evening. I'm Elizabeth Extend, precinct 13 and chair of the Arlington school committee. The Arlington public schools have had a busy and productive school year, including the onboarding of our new superintendent of schools, Dr. Elizabeth Homan. In September, 2021, students returned to buildings full time after two years of disrupted schooling. And in February, 2022, we opened the new steam and performing art swings at Arlington high school. In addition to maintaining our high quality programming across the district, this budget works to support students in all areas of development and promotes equity of access. This budget includes support for students, social, emotional and mental health, addresses increasing enrollments at the secondary level, ensures access to necessary related services for all students and continues work towards goals of the five-year budget plan. This year's budget also eliminates elementary instrumental music fees and high school athletic fees. This change supports our continued work toward equity by allowing access to all for these important aspects of a well-rounded education. Additionally, participation in the performing arts and athletics support improved mental health and enhanced student engagement in school. APS is able to include the aforementioned budget additions despite continuing to spend 10% less per pupil than the town manager 12 average. Unfortunately, the Arlington public school teacher salaries continue to be behind those of the other town manager 12 towns. And APS would like to close that gap in an effort to attract and retain a strong and diverse workforce. Now, Superintendent Holman and Mr. Mason will share more specific details about this year's budget. Thank you. Good evening town meeting members. My name is Liz Holman and I am the superintendent of Arlington public schools. I am joined by our chief financial officer, Michael Mason. And we would like to begin by thanking our student artists whose artwork graced the cover of our FY23 budget, which we are pleased to present to you this evening. I want to begin by articulating what some of our priorities were as we developed the FY23 budget. Chief among them was enrollments. We are keeping a close eye on enrollments and have increasing enrollments at the secondary level in particular and leveling off enrollments at the elementary level. Also among our priorities was ensuring that we met the needs of students as we recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, making sure that we can offer them opportunities to connect with school in meaningful ways and support their academic needs as well as their social, emotional and mental health. As I said, enrollments are a major driver of the Arlington public schools budget. What this slide is demonstrating are the different projections that we have gotten over the years to help us project enrollments and budget accordingly. And the key thing to realize about this graph is that it's demonstrating that while our October 1 snapshot demonstrated right here by this little green dot showed our enrollments right along our projections, we currently have more students in the system as of March than we had in October. And so it makes it difficult to project what our enrollments will be in the coming years and we anticipate they'll be somewhere in between the projections that we've received from our vendors or that we've calculated ourselves and some of the larger projections that we've gotten before the COVID-19 pandemic. As you can see, there's a huge impact of the pandemic right here. This is where we lost enrollments and we're now gaining a lot of those enrollments back. Mr. Mason. Yes, thank you, Dr. Holman. I think what we're going to demonstrate is that our public schools from fiscal 2016 to fiscal 2020 trails behind the town manager 12 average as well as the state average per pupil average. Let me clarify that and that the gap is if you look at a trend line, the gap seems to continue to grow year to year and despite having trailing behind our town manager 12 and the state average, we have been able to still provide an excellent education for the students of our long term. However, with that per pupil average trailing the town manager 12, it also leads to us trailing behind in salaries of our largest direct instruction staff, which teaching assistants are behind the town manager 12 average of up to 40% on the low end and our teachers are 5% below average and when you compare this to even other work groups in the town of Arlington, you'll see that our staff is below their average compensation to their comparable in the town manager 12. Overall, this slide here is a reflection of what our budget is made of and what our budget is what we value and over 75% of our budget is toward direct instruction, which includes elementary education, secondary education as well as 25.8% going directly towards students with special needs and special education. The other is covered by management and administration as well as curriculum development, which has supports the instruction and as well as facilities and other operational costs. Overall, our total budget for fiscal 23 is $1,447,869. That is $4,343,235 higher than the fiscal 22 budget. However, before that does not go directly to just adding positions, we do have to look at what cost living increases that we have to give to our staff, we have to look at any contractual obligations that we may have with vendors or even our staff that have contracts or even our bargaining units and then as well as we have to look at inflationary costs and that is what we are covering about $448,000 to that about $450,000 this we have to reduce some positions or reduce allocations of certain resources by $2.1 million to actually leave us with something to be able to provide funding for new positions or new initiatives that we would like to take on which leaves us about $2.4 million for proposed additions that I will hand back over to Dr. Holman to discuss with you. Thank you Mr. Mason and this slide gives some highlights of some of the additions that we are prioritizing for the FY23 year. Among them you will notice that we are eliminating instrumental music fees and athletic fees in an effort to give some funds directly back to taxpayers who might want their children to go to school in meaningful ways during extracurricular times. We are also adding librarians and digital learning teachers, interventionists English learner teachers, special education teachers, team chairs and coordinators as well as content area teachers at the secondary level in response to increased enrollment. As you will notice down here we have been able to use budget efficiencies in order to fund other additions and we have net additions of $14.1 additional positions in the Arlington Public Schools to ensure that our students continue to receive an excellent and equitable education in Arlington. Thank you very much for sticking with us for this brief presentation and we look forward to answering any questions that you might have. Thank you. Okay, so go ahead. Ms. Eksten, do you have anything to add before we open up to questions? No, thank you Mr. Moderator. Okay, so we are running a little late so we're at 10.49 and I do want to make sure that we have the opportunity to ask Dr. Homan any questions about this or the school department any questions about the budget. So if we do run a little late I do ask for your forbearance. So let's take Mr. Jamison from the speaking queue. Any questions about the education budget? Thank you Mr. Moderator Gordon Jamison precinct 12. During our precinct meetings, precinct meetings of 12 and 14, one of the bracket parents presented an issue of concern that I'll raise now. The bracket has and I checked it on the report it's enrollment is down about 17 and doesn't seem to be rebounding like most of the other elementary schools are. Is that just the population that goes to the bracket or is there some internal issues that need to be addressed. Dr. Homan do you have an answer for Mr. Jamison. Sure thank you Mr. Jamison. So we are closely monitoring enrollments and we have seen trends like this one the trend you're noticing at bracket is a true trend we've seen enrollment there. It's hard to tell whether or not that's because of real estate trends because of moves in and out of town because of the pandemic. It's not unlike trends we've seen at some of the other schools. So we've had other places where we've taken sections that we may have had three sections it's reduced to two or we may have had four and we've taken it down to three because of students who left town or left for private schools during the pandemic and those enrollments just simply never bounced back. We do have a bounce back and enrollment at bracket for next school year so we're beginning to see that we're net down one section at bracket which is reflected in the FY23 budget for next year. So we're not seeing that as a programmatic challenge as we don't have any trends that we're seeing at the bracket school in particular that indicate to us that families are leaving for any one particular reason that's linked to programming. However I will say that we do have some relatively volatile enrollments throughout the district that are impacting our budgetary planning. So I think that in reply would be that by far and away the bracket was the most heavily hit and it has not bounced back really at all. Granted you see things positive things for next year. Thanks very much. Thank you. Let's take someone out of order here just a voice I don't think we've heard yet this town meeting. Let's take Ms. Thornton next. Name and precinct place. Ms. Sliiske are you able to unmute the question. I'm not sure I should be here. I'm here for the appendix B18 but it just says article 50. Facilities. Okay so I think we'll probably just reset the speaking queue between each of the budgets. Okay thank you. Thank you. In the vein of taking someone who I don't think we've heard from yet yet. Ms. Sliiske are you able to unmute. Can you hear me. Yes name and precinct place. Amy Sliiske precinct 17. Thank you superintendent for the very challenging important work that you do. I'm actually a pediatric occupational therapist and I know how important the paraprofessional staff is and I'm concerned at how relatively low their pay is. I don't know if you're the person to ask about this but I want to make sure that this concern is raised. Absolutely we share it and we have taken it into consideration and budgeting for this year by making sure that we set aside funds that we can use for bargaining purposes to make sure that we have competitive salaries with our neighboring towns and with the department of the care staff and with the staff that we make sure that we have enough money to prepare professionals or among them. Thank you. Let's take Mr. Kepline next. Hi thank you Mr. moderator Mark Kepline precinct 9. I've not been on town meeting for about 10 years so I able to deliver services, and I'll say athletics, or music, or classroom assistance. Brookline furloughed 196 employees in the town. And these employees worked out were able to do fine because they were able to retain medical benefits. And the state unemployment compensation is second highest in the country. And they got $600 a week on top of that from the federal government. So I'm wondering why you didn't attempt to save taxpayers millions of dollars by doing this. Thank you. Dr. Holman, do you have an answer for Mr. Kepler? I believe my response would be that our teachers and several of our coaches were working during the shutdown. Many of them remotely are coming up with alternatives to remote programming. I'm not aware of any municipalities in the state or really in the country that furloughed educational workers during the height of the pandemic. OK. I may not agree, but I can't really fight that. Thank you. OK, thank you. Actually, I do want to ask Dr. Holman, since we are running close to 11 PM, which is usually when we adjourn, is there a possibility for you to return, because it seems like there may be plenty of more questions for you on Monday or is that not going to be a possibility? Because I know you're going to have a tight schedule. I will make what needs to work, Mr. Moderator. Thank you. Let's also take, I don't think we've heard from Mr. Oster in some time. Let's take Mr. Oster next. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Adam Oster from Precinct 3. My question concerns the school department's role in the town's sustainable transportation plan and its net zero action plan, which concerns climate change goals. I see those two efforts as closely connected. And of course, the school operation is a large part of the municipal operation. So in the school budget for next year, what actions does the school department plan to take to help implement these plans? The examples I'm going to give are just for illustrative purposes. I don't suppose you're necessarily doing any of these things. But for instance, working with the town and the MBTA and allies to improve bus service to and from school, including restoration of the 79 bus, identification of obstacles to safe walking and biking to school, including identifying safety hot spots, and integration into the curriculum of climate science and related topics. Again, these are just examples. I'm not asking for these measures in particular. Yeah, we are starting to venture out of scope here discussing curricula of the schools. But Dr. Homan, do you have a brief answer to Mr. Oster's question? Sure. I can report that we are in the process of procuring two electric school buses, which we're very excited about through a grant to the EPA. And those are going to begin our process of turning over our bus fleet so that those are more sustainable vehicles. And we intend to do that slowly over time. It does require us to change our infrastructure so that we can charge those vehicles. We are also working on obstacles to biking and safety, installing more opportunity, more options for students to secure their bikes when they are at school and looking into bike safety routes for students to school, particularly right now, collaborating with members of the town on the bike setup lanes in front of the new wings of the new high school. And I would have to defer to my curriculum expert when it comes to climate science, but we certainly have several courses at the high school that are offered in that area. Thank you, Dr. Homan. And thank you, Mr. Moderator. Thank you, Mr. Oster. Let's take Mr. Rosenthal next. I'm waiting patiently to put it at the queue. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Mark Rosenthal, Precinct 14. I have two things I wanna mention, but I think they'll both be pretty quick. The first one is that I also attended the Joint Precinct 12, Precinct 14 Precinct meeting and there was a mother who attended that who said something about bracket that really surprised me. She said that it was her perception that bracket is considered one of the least desirable schools in town among parents, which I found shocking because for the last 20, 25 years, it's always been considered one of the most desirable. And so one thing she brought up was... So let me just interrupt Mr. Rosenthal. This is kind of drifting outside of scope as far as the kind of popularity of schools, but if you have a question perhaps about parity of the experience, then that might be relevant to the budget. Okay. If I can say one more sentence on this and then I'll get to something that is directly related to the budget. Apparently there's a concern about maintenance of equipment, especially playground equipment and a child seems to have been seriously injured there. So not related to the budget, but something that I thought was important to raise with the people in charge of the school system. Now, as for the item related to the budget, I have a question which is probably for Dr. Mason because in one of the slides he showed, he was talking about how compensation for employees of the school system compares to other towns. And it got me wondering, do you happen to know what the aggregate total dollar figure would be to if every employee's salary was raised to the average of what the surrounding communities, what that figure would be? How much would it cost the town? Dr. Mason, do you happen to have an answer to that? Thank you, Michael Mason, chief financial officer. I actually do not have an answer for that. What I could say is that with the current funding that we're receiving, we're not, we will not be able to accomplish that. So we have proposed a budget that would hopefully meet a happy medium and get some of our goals is to actually try to at least get some of the bottom or lower level salary levels higher and more attractable for new potential candidates to come to our district. Thank you. Okay, thank you. If I may suggest it, I think it would be a good idea to try and calculate that figure for next year. So at least the town would know how much of a stretch it would be for us to try and come up to the average. Thank you. Thank you. I trust Dr. Mason could consider taking a note on whether to do that for next year. Let's take. Thank you. Mr. Marge, next. John Marr, precinct 14. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Two previous speakers have spoken to the lack of those average salary compared to surrounding comparable communities that I will be very brief because those points have been made. But as long as I've been at town meeting, there has been promises to bill to bring our teachers who do a tremendous job on a per capita basis. We spend less than our surrounding communities which must be a reflection of the quality of our teachers. But we still lag behind and for many years we've been assured that this will be rectified. I'm heartened to hear that that is being addressed by the superintendent. But I think that time has well passed while that that should occur. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Thank you, Mr. Marr. Let's take Mr. Moore next. Name and precinct team, please. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Christopher Moore, precinct 14. I move to terminate debate on the article. Sorry, on the school budget. Let's see, can we terminate debate on individual budgets? That is how we've done it in the past. If you'd rather had different motion, I'd be open to that too. No, no, that's fine. So we have a second on Mr. Moore's motion to terminate debate on the education budget. So let's bring up a vote to terminate debate. And this will be a two-thirds vote. And so if this vote passes, then we'll be done talking about the education budget and we'll move on. At that point, we'll just adjourn the meeting, I imagine. But otherwise, we will continue debate and we might have to continue that discussion on the education budget when we reconvene on Monday, okay? So voting should imminently be open for whether to terminate debate on the education budget. Not the entirety of Article 50, which is the entirety of town budgets and enterprise funds, but just specifically the education budget. So if you are in favor of terminating debate on the education budget, vote yes. If you're in favor of continuing debate or discussion on the education budget, then you'll want to vote no. I see we had a point of order that was raised and it has now been lowered. So we will continue voting. This is a two-thirds vote. I wanted to terminate debate on the education budget. I'm just a time check, it is 11.05 p.m. I apologize that we're running a little over tonight. About 180 votes cast. We're still missing about 20 from recently active members in the portal. So if you're present, please try to get your vote in as soon as you can. See one mentioned in the Q&A that voting is not working. If you're able to vote through the Q&A, please do so if you're having trouble voting through the portal. Yeah, I see that someone's pointing out that the screen here says that it's terminating debate on Article 50, not the school budget. I don't know if we actually have the proper labeling in the system for that because we have to preload those. Otherwise it takes time during the meeting. So we'll check on that going forward, but I guess I will say, I will make a visual administrative change and say that this is not for terminating debate on the entirety of Article 50. This is narrowly terminating debate on the education budget within Article 50. And we'll try to apologize for that inconsistency. We'll try to resolve that going forward when we reconvene on Monday so we don't have that confusion anymore. But this will not terminate debate on the entirety of Article 50, just the education budget portion of it. Okay, so we still have some, a number of votes we're waiting on. If you have not voted yet, and also please make sure that you confirm your vote, don't just leave it stuck on the confirmation page. So please check your screen, make sure that you've confirmed your vote on whether to terminate debate on the education budget within Article 50. So let's start another number of folks who are outstanding, but let's just give another 20 seconds. And if you're having trouble through the portal, you can vote through the Q&A or you can call Ms. Brazil. 15 seconds and then we'll close voting on termination of debate of the education budget. 10 seconds, five seconds. Okay, let's close voting on termination debate of the education budget and it passes. So debate is now terminated on the education budget and Dr. Homan, Dr. Mason, you are free to go. And we thank you for your time, taking the time tonight, especially running late as we are. So thank you for that. Okay, so now with the education budget behind us and it being 1108, 1109, PM, I would happily entertain a motion to adjourn at this point. Mr. Moderator, I would like to serve notice of reconsideration. Oh, thank you. Yes, any notices of reconsideration? Thank you. Thanks for the reminder. Mr. Moderator? Yes, Mr. Oscar Precinct 10. I'd like to serve notice of reconsideration on Article 48. 48, okay. Do we have any, I assume that Ms. Brazil will note that. Was that your point of order? Yes. Okay, thank you. So we'll clear that. And we have a second from Mr. Miller to serve notice of reconsideration. And let's say, do we have any other enable raise hands in Zoom for anyone else who has notices of reconsideration on any of the articles that we voted on? Note that there were no notices of reconsideration on any of the special town meeting articles and those would need to be dealt with before the dissolution of special town meeting. And since special town meeting has been dissolved, there's no opportunity for notices for reconsideration. Okay, so we have Mr. Froske. Yes, I move we adjourn. Actually, before we take that, we do have raised hand from, actually we have two raised hands. Let's take Ms. Milofchik first and then we'll take Ms. Benedict after that. Let's Ms. Milofchik, are you able to unmute and give us your name and precinct and the article in which you're giving notice of reconsideration. Ms. Milofchik, can you hear us? While we're working out a potential microphone issue, let's actually take Ms. Benedict next and we can circle back to Ms. Milofchik. Ms. Benedict, you have your hand raised? Yeah, can you hear me? Yes, I can. I'm having a precinct 21. I was gonna make a motion to reconsider article 50, but then I realized we were just terminating debate. We weren't really voting on the actual article, correct? That's right, we have neither terminated debate on article 50 nor have we voted on it. We've only terminated debate on the education budget within that. I'm sorry, that's what I meant. That's what I wanna reconsider. You wanna reconsider termination of debate on the education budget. Correct. We'll take note of that and I don't know if that's actually legitimate. I'll have to actually check the book on that. Thank you. All right, thank you. And let's see. And can we take Ms. Milofchik, are you able to get your microphone working? Ms. Milofchik, are you able to, or computer glitch? I think that means it's a computer glitch that, okay, the hand is no longer raised. Okay, did not mean to raise hand. Okay, I see Mr. Kepline has a point of order. Mr. Kepline, and can we make this really brief? Yes, I wish to reconsider on the section 24 of the budget, Health and Human Services, like that to be discussed. I'll take a note of that. And again, I'll need to double check whether a notice of reconsideration should apply in that case. So yeah, I'll take a note. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, so Mr. Foskett. Moderator Charles Foskett, precinct 10, I move we adjourn. Okay, do we have a second? Second. We have a second from Ms. Brazil. Any raised hands in Zoom to object to the motion to adjourn? Seeing none, it's unanimous and we are adjourned and we will reconvene on Monday, May 16th at 8 p.m. Thanks everyone. Sorry for going late tonight. Have a good weekend.